Conclusions

The siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453 remain a complex chapter in the history of the rise and demise of major states. That the Byzantine empire was a dying state is beyond dispute and its remaining outpost, Constantinople, would ultimately fall to the Ottoman Turks. And yet its inglorious end attracted the pen of numerous writers, Greek and non-Greek. This fascination for the tragic end of what a number of scholars regard as the first true Christian empire and for the papacy a despicable rival provoked a litany of works that demonstrate the admiration, importance, and disdain that foreign states had for the empire and its imperial city, the New Rome. Immediate observers of the fall of Constantinople are few in number and they are mainly foreigners. There were very few Greek survivors and modern scholarship is, therefore, dependent on the views and interpretations of non-Greek writers, whose outlook was often predicated upon their own national/state and religious interests. Thus examinations of the surviving sources, both primary and secondary, evidence their understanding and interpolation of events and consequences. The revival of interest in the siege and fall of Constantinople emanates from a nineteenth-century thirst for the rediscovery of forgotten and misplaced materials. These texts, aside from one post-fall Greek annal and a fifteenth-century Slavic diary account, were mainly of Genoese and Venetian provenance. The two Italian states had vested political and economic interests in the Levant that knowingly carried with them considerable financial risks and the potential loss of investments and trade should the imperial city fall to the Ottoman Turks. Their manuscript depositories, therefore, are a rich font for source materials. In the nineteenth century, however, the collection and printing of original sources became a paramount scholarly effort, albeit frequently producing inferior and error-ridden works. Their scholarship did not always achieve high scholarly standards and their hasty efforts remain notable. We cannot say that all sources have been discovered and published. On the contrary, the task is not completed for modern scholars who must again search the extant archives for lost or misplaced texts. The quattrocento sources, the eyewitness accounts, number at least twelve major categories. Their value as diaries, reports, letters, and advisory statements lies in their living testaments of the siege and fall, but they do contain contradictory and questionable information. Some difficulty in the use of these texts stems from the fact that later copyists made additions to the original materials and even made significant alterations, adding fabricated personages who had neither a role nor presence during the siege and fall of Constantinople. Some copyists refined the reports to reflect later interpolations of post-fall events, while others reproduced texts almost verbatim without attribution to original authors. Thus modern scholarship has the unenviable task to untangle this endless web of what was and what was not produced from the pen of contemporaneous

The non-eyewitness informants add another complex aspect to the use of textual materials. Numbering at least fourteen, their letters relate oral accounts of survivors whose understanding of events is often clouded by personal and tragic experiences. One letter is addressed to a royal court and another deals with post-fall events. The letters on the whole include rumors and gossip that are of dubious value and their historicity cannot be demonstrated since they include unverifiable information. In general, the preserved oral information conveyed by survivors reflects the emotional aspects of the siege and the fall, and the aftermath of the fall. The late fifteenth-sixteenth-century Greek tradition includes only the works of four writers, none of whom, perhaps with the exception of Sphrantzes, can be categorized as an eyewitness to the end of empire. They are in essence interpreters of historical events. Doubtless, their narratives have importance, but their main focus is the failure of diplomacy leading up to and during the months of the siege. They do not furnish a daily calendar of events of the final months of empire. The sixteenth century is also notable for the production of lengthy forgeries, distinguished with the expansion of the Chronicon Minus of Sphrantzes into the Chronicon Maius of Makarios Melissourgos-Melissenos. The latter’s elaboration incorporates materials from other identifiable sources, but even includes unidentifiable accounts whose authorship has yet to be resolved by scholars. The Chronicon Maius, though condemned by many modern scholars, does incorporate valuable ecclesiastic information and the state of the Orthodox Church in the immediate decades after the fall of the imperial city. This information derives from other sources. There exists as is evident in this study a paucity of ecclesiastical and Ottoman sources dealing directly with the siege and fall period. The majority of known texts relates to the negotiations conducted in the century following the fall and addresses the relationship of the patriarchate vis-à-vis the new sultanate. Doubtless the value of the codices, berats, and firmans should not be minimized for they speak to the tentative nature of the relationship between the two entities, one in power and the other subject to the daily machinations of the Porte. However, it is evident that not all patriarchal and sultanate archival materials have been exhausted by scholars. Though they recognize that a reinvestigation of materials in these depositories is essential, their labor may prove to be fruitless given the destruction, relocation, and disappearance of texts over a span of nearly six centuries. While the nineteenth century became notable for rekindling the study of the demise of the Byzantine empire, the sixteenth century is credited for publishing the initial collections of eyewitness accounts. This early popularization of original source materials had a short life span and three centuries elapsed before interest in the events of 1453 was reignited. As in the sixteenth, so also in the nineteenth century, rigid scholarly standards were not applied in the preparation and publication of texts. In their eagerness to publish, even the authenticity of earlier manuscripts did not come into question. Thus the works of these two centuries evidence an absence of a critical scholarly approach. The testimonies of “Richerio,” Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Tetaldi, and NestorIskander provide an interesting contrast to the study of the period in question. Richerio’s work is a history, albeit a short study prepared by a learned Frenchman to satisfy a royal desire to gain more knowledge about the Ottoman Turks. The effort of Richerio to satisfy this need is clear. But leading historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as

and thus a primary source for the events of 1453. Richerio is rather a Renaissance historian who employed a number of sources contemporaneous to his age and produced a creditable brief study. The contribution of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini emerges as an important text composed from an ecclesiastical perspective. Granted that he has drawn upon extant Renaissance works, some of which are secular in approach and in that context his work is not wholly original, the cardinal’s contribution does add an essential church view to our understanding of the siege and fall. Paradoxically, Richerio was familiar with Piccolomini’s account and utilized portions of it in his own brief history. While the first two writers are not contemporaneous with the immediate period of the siege and fall, the Florentine merchant Tetaldi can be labeled an eyewitness to the events of 1453. As a merchant-soldier, he observed and participated in the clashes with the Turks. Tetaldi held a defensive position on the walls of the imperial city. Nestor-Iskander, on the other hand, recounts in substantial detail the intense combat in the mid-section of the Theodosian Walls. The essential part of his Tale is derived from a diary that he maintained while stationed at the Saint Romanos-Pempton sector. His journal is the solitary source that provides such a rare view and vivid direct details. Until recent decades scholars had denied the work its paramount significance and consigned it to the realm of literature, some even claiming it to be a work of fiction. But a critical analysis of the historical content, the internal evidence concerning personages involved in the fighting, and the details of warfare, establish that the diary portion of the Tale is that of a creditable observer and merits recognition for its contribution to our knowledge of the siege and fall. Nestor-Iskander does incorporate legends, notably the account of the fictitious wife of Constantine XI that was based on hearsay or mistaken identity, and had popular vogue. But folk tales were plentiful in this difficult period and satisfied the desires for such literature both of humanists and the Greek population in general. Often in military conflicts a mythology evolves about personages and events, and the leading figures are enshrined in legends that have little or no factual basis. History and literature from ancient to modern times are replete with such examples. It is not surprising that the fall of Constantinople produced a substantial literature and its last emperor was immortalized in a number of myths and legends, giving credence to a folk history. This body of literature also sought to find counterparts with the ancient past. Thus Constantinople was linked with Troy and Constantine XI with Priam. Even Mehmed II emerges as an avenger of ancient wrongs perpetrated upon Troy and the Ottoman Turks are given a Trojan ancestry, being their direct descendants. At the forefront in the production of this mythology and legends were the secular and religious humanists, both Greek and non-Greek. Their imaginations often expanded to the extreme and their histories were often rewritten and reinterpreted to satisfy this urge to describe and to redescribe the siege and fall of Constantinople. The humanists even invented figures that have no historical reality nor were they participants in the events, but satisfied a popular desire for legendary personages. The burial place of Constantine XI also has particular meaning in these mythical and legendary accounts. He emerges as the dying and rising emperor, or in some accounts the sleeping emperor who will reawaken to lead his armies in the liberation of his imperial city and regain the empire. Not surprising, then, the mythology and legends to almost the

the Golden Gate or along the Theodosian Walls, a garden, or in the Church of Hagia Theodosia, now the mosque of Gül Camii (or even in Hagia Sophia, at least his head), all of the oral accounts gained adherents to a particular mythical tradition. The grave of the last emperor has never been discovered and it is unlikely given the extensive rebuilding in Istanbul that the site will be soon discovered. But mythology and legends still play a role and modern Greeks among others remain hopeful to find this precious location sometime in the future. Not unlike mythology and legends, portents, omens, and various signs foretold the end of empire. They catered to a vast audience in the east and in the west: humanists, churchmen, and in general the domestic and foreign populace. Like the biblical books of Revelation and Apocrypha, men sought knowledge of the end of empire, whatever appealed to their imaginations. Where factual evidence was lacking, they seized upon any and every sign, portent, or omen to arrive at an understanding of the end of emperor and of empire. As we have demonstrated in the first part, The Pen, since the nineteenth century a great deal of scholarly investigation and labor has been devoted to the sources on the siege and fall, and even the sack of Constantinople. More intensive research into these topics has now become imperative. Important accounts still surface and texts that have traditionally assumed to be authentic have been shown to be secondary elaborations and downright forgeries. By contrast, other sources that have been accepted as derivative have now been shown to be primary, such as Nestor-Iskander’s Slavonic Tale. The last chapter on the siege and fall still needs to be written, as no detailed scholarly analysis has been based on sources that are in fact authentic and reliable. The authoritative book on the siege of 1453 remains to be written by a scholar well versed in this labyrinth of primary, secondary, elaborated, and forged sources that appear in a multitude of languages. The task of a definitive history is in many ways an overwhelming effort, but a worthy undertaking. Turning to the second part, The Sword, we address the interpretations of the numerous Ottoman attempts to seize the imperial city in 1453. The Theodosian Walls, essential to this study, remain a marvel of construction. The topography of the region and the physiognomy of the walls were instrumental in orchestrating Mehmed II’s preparations and conduct of assaults upon them. The sultan had toured the walls at a distance the previous year and was aware of their strongest and weakest sectors. The Greeks had attempted to reinforce the weakest sections and to a certain extent they were successful, but the Achilles heel remained the area about the Pempton Gate. Annual flooding over the course of centuries had left this section of the Mesoteikhion reduced to ruins and only a wooden fortification protected entry to this military gate. The gate and towers in the outer wall had long since disappeared and no effort was made to reconstruct them of stone. Scholarly studies, of a secondary nature, of the Theodosian Walls provide a number of interpretations concerning the walls, gates, and adjacent structures. Especially in the literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, historians, architectural historians, archaeologists, and even non-scholars attempted to arrive at new interpretations, often contradicting each other and engaging in endless disputations to support their contentions. Thus gates were renamed or relocated, and artificial argumentation was

structures were misidentified or relocated. Perhaps the most fallacious attempt was to cite primary sources that had questionable validity. These controversies that were generated among researchers extend to the present. Had scholars applied a rigid critical approach to their study of the Theodosian Walls, its military and civil gates, and the location of adjacent structures, much ink would have been saved. And a study of all extant sources, and perhaps a search for new original materials, as well as an onsite study of the physical characteristics of the locations might have led them to arrive at different conclusions. Unlike the Theodosian Walls and the adjacent structures, the Northwest Fortifications, the three distinctive walls, have received little scholarly notice. Granted these walls are situated in an area with difficult terrain, thus precluding easy movement for invading troops and their artillery. Also the gates within these walls do not lend easy access to the main avenues into the core of the city. Early in the assault, Mehmed II did attempt to employ his artillery against the Kaligaria Gate. The difficulty of the terrain, especially its steepness, made this initial effort futile. Thus he abandoned bombardment of that gate and redirected his attention to the more vulnerable area, the Saint RomanosPempton sector of the Mesoteikhion. Byzantine diplomacy leading up to the siege and during the two-month period was at best tenuous. Constantine XI and his officials were desperate for papal and western aid that would include both material supplies and manpower, but little was forthcoming. Though assistance was promised in some quarters, little reached the imperial city. Sphrantzes played a major role in the conduct of this diplomacy. The personal friend of the emperor, however, remained skeptical of the sultan’s intentions from the inception of his rule to the fall of the imperial city. In hindsight, Sphrantzes proved accurate in his estimates of the sultan and of his intentions. But popular opinion in Constantinople and the west was swayed by Mehmed II’s modest territorial concessions, viewing this as a sign of seeking accommodation with the Byzantines and perhaps even with the western states. This favorable view of the sultan proved to be short-lived and peace between Byzantium and the Ottoman state was not to be realized. The emperor had little recourse but to seek the aid of Italian city-states and western kingdoms. He and his court did commit missteps, in particular the questions of increased taxation upon Venetians resident in the imperial city and of delaying imperial promulgation of church union that led to strained relations with Venice, the papacy, and others. Sphrantzes, however, remains our major source for Byzantine diplomatic efforts and he attributes the lack of success in obtaining western aid as a primary factor leading to the fall of the city. He was reluctant to admit that imperial missteps determined the degree to which the west was willing to aid the beleaguered city. Yet Venice, Genoa, Rome and other states had a selfinterest in the matter and sought to walk a fine line between the Greeks and the Turks. Thus some Venetians and Genoese were active defenders in Constantinople during the siege and the picture that emerges is far more complicated than Sphrantzes would admit. The role of the papacy was complex prior to and during the siege period. The pope appears to have time and again hesitated in providing substantial aid. His lack of financial resources, men and arms, his reluctance to raise taxes upon his subjects in the Papal States, his suspicion of Orthodoxy and its clergy, among other factors, proved costly to the Greeks. The dispatch to Constantinople of the papal legate Cardinal Isidore, who may have brought with him assurances of papal assistance, was designed in part to allay at

aware that the pope was limited in his ability to aid directly the Byzantines given the papal expenditures and military failures of the previous decades. But for the papacy the issue of church union outweighed all other factors and thus clouded diplomatic relations between Rome and the New Rome. For the Greeks the celebration of church union in Hagia Sophia was most vexing and unpalatable. A substantial portion of the Greek clergy and laity were unwilling under any circumstances to accept church union and this played well for Mehmed II. Constantine XI during this phase of diplomatic activity with the Christian states lacked financial resources to hire sufficient forces and purchase weapons from the west. His empty treasury limited his defensive endeavors. Mehmed II, on the other hand, had ample financial resources and manpower to draw upon to wage a prolonged conflict. Thus he was able to hire away Urban, the designer of the bombard or basilica, and to construct the fortress of Rumeli Hisar on the western side of the strait. But in neither instance did the great cannon or the fortress play decisive roles in the siege and lead to the fall of the city. The great cannon shattered mid-way through the conflict and his artillery positioned at the fortress was no more than a nuisance factor. Byzantine and foreign shipping were able to evade his artillery at the fortress because the Ottoman Turks were poorly skilled in the techniques of firing at moving objects. The few vessels they did strike may be attributed to “lucky shots.” Ottoman naval activities had a minor function during the siege. Aside from transporting a fleet across Pera, a spectacular event that has been much discussed in historical studies, this achievement gained only some advantage for the sultan. His construction of a bridge across the Golden Horn did enable him to redeploy more rapidly fresh troops and arms from Pera to the sectors along the Theodosian Walls. In general, though, the Turks lacked sufficient training in seamanship and their ability to use weapons at sea is also questionable. Further, their crews lacked confidence in their seaworthiness. Wherever their fleets were positioned, whether in the Golden Horn, in the Bosphorus, or the Sea of Marmara, they had a negligible role in the ultimate outcome. Even in the one perhaps major naval engagement on April 20, the Turks demonstrated a significant lack of naval skills. This explains their defeat and why then Ottoman naval endeavors have been consigned by historians to a minor chapter in the history of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453. The embarrassments for Ottoman naval forces continued when on the fateful day of May 29, Christian vessels sailed unhindered from the Golden Horn, carrying leading figures, among them commanders, high churchmen, and other notable Byzantine and foreign personages. Mehmed II’s naval crews were determined that they would not be denied an opportunity to participate in the plundering of the imperial city. Their greed enabled the western and Byzantine ships to sail away to freedom. The land conflict along the length of the Theodosian Walls was not at the same level in the assaults upon them nor in the concentration of Ottoman forces and artillery. Given the massive and towering structure of the walls, the Byzantines and their allies required only small artillery pieces to pepper the attackers. Also, the defenders from their high perch could employ smaller military units to resist the massive waves of the armies that Mehmed II launched at some sectors. Constantine XI and his advisors did commit a fundamental error in planning their defensive strategy. They believed that the outer walls

lesser walls. This decision proved detrimental in the final outcome. Notable also is the fact Constantine XI in his attempt to enlist the aid of the papacy and western states was able to procure only a small force of mercenaries. His main line of defense was to rely upon the strength of the walls. It is true that from the Fourth Military Gate southward to the Sea of Marmara, the walls were, relatively speaking, in good condition. Both the inner and outer walls were to a large extent intact, and the moat contained sufficient water to make any land assault difficult for Mehmed’s forces and assisted the Byzantine forces in resisting the attackers. In this section of the walls Mehmed relied upon bombardment and occasional skirmishes of small armed groups to occupy the inadequate Byzantine force. The sultan’s goal was to thin out the undermanned Byzantine army along a broad sector of fighting. But the northern half of the Theodosian Walls, from the Fourth Military Gate to the Porphyrogenite Palace, and especially the Saint Romanos-Pempton sector, presented unique problems for the emperor’s forces. The outer wall and a moat from the Kharisios Gate northward to the termination of the walls had almost disappeared over time, if in fact there had been an extension of them in this area. The Saint Romanos-Pempton sector had been ravaged by nature over the course of many centuries and offered poor defense against any land assault. The bombard of Urban was positioned against this sector after its failure at the Kaligaria Gate. Though Mehmed had the advantage of being selective in his choice of targets for bombardment and assault, he could exploit the weaknesses of the walls and imperial forces. But the use of bombards failed in the long run to achieve their purpose. The walls were too thick and often the stone shot disintegrated into small pieces without having any significant impact in weakening the walls. The lack of Turkish artillery skills explains as well their failure to bring down large sections of the walls, although some damage was achieved. In the course of fighting, the Greeks and Turks each employed deception in their assaults and counter-assaults. Each utilized early forms of psychological warfare to confuse their opponent. The Ottoman armies, however, realized that they had overwhelming numbers and ultimately they would overpower the meager force of defenders on the walls. The Turks hoped that through steady pressure the number of defenders would dwindle and their arms would become short in supply. But Mehmed was not always confident of victory. He feared an infusion of western aid, both men and materials. This is an admission that he could not rely upon his naval forces to intercept and prevent the arrival of fresh forces and supplies. And a significant spy network operated in both camps during the siege period and they were able to plant false notions. The Greeks also believed that western aid was forthcoming and in vain their vessels searched for the reinforcing fleet that had set out too late to be of any consequence. Even the employment of mining under the Theodosian Walls and of siege towers demonstrated that the sultan depended upon archaic military tactics whose use in this age had limited merit. The Byzantines were adept at detecting mining activities, as evidenced in the Kaligaria sector, and many Ottoman miners were entombed in the tunnels they hoped to construct or were taken prisoner. The Greeks used effective counter measures with small forces to torch siege towers and slaughter their occupants. In neither example were Ottoman forces successful to gain an advantage or a decisive outcome.