V

egetius of Fifth Century Byzantium is remembered for having remarked, “Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum [He who longs for peace, let him prepare for war].”[1] Byzantium was, consistently throughout its history, tragically resigned to heed the words of Vegetius to stem the tide of seemingly endless would-be conquerors attempting to invade Byzantine lands. Emperors of Byzantium found themselves faced with the prospect of almost continuous warfare that harshly contrasted with the predominant Western experience of warfare that culminated as, “prolonged periods of peace interspersed with brief and intensive violence.”[2] This ceaseless effort of defense, however, ultimately proved too much to be sustainable indefinitely. With the passing of time, there were simply too many enemies and corresponding challenges on the Empire’s military capacities for production and invention for the great Byzantine Empire to overcome. While, “[t]he last centuries of Byzantium were not the first to see the Empire faced with mortal dangers and threats of collapse,”[3] the Empire had never before been confronted with an army possessing the technology to breach the great walls of Constantinople. For Fifteenth Century Byzantium, survival brought with it new and greater demands that the failing Empire would be hard-pressed to meet.

Contained in Byzantium’s vast, rich history are stories of inspirational leadership, zealous faith, military triumph, political intrigue and so much more. The greatest of Byzantium’s stories, in the opinion of this author, can be found at the very end of the Empire’s existence, atop the ancient battlements of Constantinople in the year 1453. During these heroically tragic days in the late spring of 1453, a struggle of epic proportion played out between the last citizens of a withering Byzantine state and a Turkish people determined to secure their destiny as the next formidable, imperial power in the world. As Byzantine walls, which had held back the armies of the world successfully for centuries, came crashing down under the fury of Muslim cannon, it was clear to all that the world they had known would never be the same. The year 1453 marked a changing of the guard in the composition of the world’s military balance of power as Turkish modernization proved too much for the traditional advantages that had sustained Byzantium for so long.

While the passage of time has erased the once massive ramparts and battlements that dominated the landscape of the Bosporus as the prominent military asset of this, “great power and a great civilizing force,”[4] the surviving accounts of the city’s fall still contain the power to somehow resurrect the tragic romance and glory of 1453 and conjure the armies of Constantine XI and Mehmed II to once again play out the final days of one of the world’s greatest “imperial systems.”[5] In order to properly understand the fall of the Byzantine Empire, one must examine a variety of concepts and significant events to fully appreciate the contributing factors that ultimately led to the Turkish victories in 1453. First, one must explore the relevant prior history and events throughout Byzantium that contributed to its state of affairs found in 1453. From exploring the traditional Byzantine strategies of war, to the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by the Crusader armies of the West, to the gradual degradation of the Byzantine systems of economy and military supply, the exigent factors contributing to the Empire’s ultimate collapse are a first, crucial step to laying out the rationale for a military appraisal of the city’s fall as well as constructing a foundation to understanding this event in an appropriate context.

Secondly, one must examine the personalities of the two side’s civil and military leaders: Constantine XI and Mehmed II. Through a brief analysis of their lives and experiences, one can better appreciate the methodology and strategy employed by both men during the siege of Constantinople and ultimately come to understand why both men committed themselves to the course of action found in the existing records of 1453. Lastly, and most importantly, an in-depth examination of the military action of both Greek and Turkish forces will provide an insightful perspective into this truly unique confrontation of culture and military strategy. This military examination of the siege of Constantinople in 1453 is intended to demonstrate the respective roles of culture, technology and religion in the Turkish and Byzantine armies that fought there as well as illustrate the author’s primary contention that this siege was symbolic of a transition from the entrenched form of military tradition embodied in Byzantium’s great fixed defenses to the spirit of modern innovation embodied by the Ottoman Turks’ powerful siege weapons. With these things in mind, it is to that place, to Constantinople, that this author will now turn to in an attempt to explore a truly remarkable event in the history of the world.

Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI and his Ottoman rival Mehmed II

Byzantium was a culture built upon the necessity of military supremacy. As historian Guglielmo Cavallo has noted, “War was always a part of the reality of life in Byzantium, and the soldier a part of the tableau of [that] everyday life[.]”[6] As Byzantine society progressed through time, violent challenges were made on a variety of fronts that severely impacted this powerful nation-state’s ability to fend off invading armies and inevitably brought about irreversible conditions that contributed to its ultimate collapse. Byzantium’s security and overall survival hinged on the maintenance of a well-trained and formidable military presence. It is, therefore, critical to detail the series of events that contributed to the ultimate decline of Byzantine military efficiency and, in essence, cleared a path for foreign forces to finally assail the last vestige’s of the Empire and defeat the imperial prowess of a military no longer able to hide safely behind its great stone walls.

The Walls and Ramparts of Constantinople

The Byzantine military model, styled very much after the traditional Roman way of fighting, centered on the principles of discipline and unit cohesion to secure victory.[7] As the Byzantines were “always outnumbered [in their wars],”[8] their tactics stressed the conservation of men and materiel to the greatest extent possible in order to lessen the affects of attrition common in fighting numerically superior forces.[9] With such a determined focus to commit to battles that (1) could be won and (2) could be won without losses in such an excess as to put the safety of the Empire in jeopardy, Byzantium maintained a long history of significant military triumph at a very minimal cost. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the Byzantine state’s constant and successful defense was its possession of the most massive defensive structure in the known world (to that point) that contributed, time and again, to a most adept defense of the Empire—the city of Constantinople. As imposing as this fortification was, in the traditional military sense, it also was long thought to be the God-guarded city. With its thick walls of stone bolstered by the presence of Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin Mary and the patron saints of Byzantium, this mighty city became even more precious to those defending its honor and more dangerous to those choosing to assail its defenses.

With the city’s massive ramparts acting as a virtually unassailable platform from which the Byzantine defenders could negate any numerical advantage an opposing force may have, every assault upon the city by conventional means of the day was turned aside at horrendous cost. In August of 717, for example, historian Larry H. Adler recounts that, “[p]erhaps 200,000 strong, the Muslim army besieged the city for a year, but the Byzantine (troops) threw back all the Muslim assaults… [and] only 30,000 [Muslims]…survived the retreat to their own territory.”[10] Quite simply, every attempt by an enemy force to take Constantinople by storm met the same catastrophic end. The city’s fortifications simply could not be taken by any conventional means available to armies of the day and since no machine existed to that point that was capable of breaching the walls of the city, no hostile army could ever hope to take it by storm. Since Byzantine rulers remained forever confident that their capital city (and thus the Empire itself) could never be conquered, the initial weaknesses of Byzantium appeared very gradually amidst both its overall ability to supply and support armies throughout the Empire as its territories receded as well as its ill-chosen courses of political and military action through the Mid-Fourteenth century that led to both wasteful losses of men and materiel as well as the making of very bitter enemies in cultures whom they mistreated.

Map of Constantinople

At the peak of its imperial power the Byzantine Empire was the greatest in the entire world. The actions of Byzantine rulers between the Seventh and Twelfth centuries reflect a culture and society relatively secure in their ultimate ability to ensure their continued survival. It is this same sense of assurance, however, that would lead to the first significant step toward the Empire’s ruin in 1453. As the Empire faced an increasing threat of incursion from eastern powers in the modern day Middle East, the call eventually was made by the Emperor of Byzantium to assemble the armies of Christendom and forcibly turn back the tide of Muslim armies that threatened the stability of his dominion. While the Empire had previously been successful at offsetting various cultures against each other (and thus not against the Empire itself), in 1099 the Byzantines would solidify their hostile status with the Muslim world forever.

After Crusader armies had utilized Constantinople as their gateway into the Holy Land, the devastation they wrought upon the Muslim world would not be easily forgotten or forgiven. When Christians entered the city of Jerusalem in 1099, for example, an anonymous Norman knight remembered that, “…the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles.”[11] Another member of the Crusade, Raymond of Le Puy, observed that, “[n]o one ever saw or heard of such slaughter of pagan people, for funeral pyres were formed from them like pyramids, and no one knows their number except God alone.”[12] The Crusader forces, by putting the helpless citizens of Jerusalem to the sword, without distinction or mercy for elderly, women or children, had unknowingly begun the slippery slope of Byzantium’s fall. This act of barbarism, which surely became vilified throughout the Muslim world, had certainly not endeared the Islamic people with the Christian world. The slaughter at Jerusalem in 1099 was a distinct byproduct of a religious fanaticism that would inaugurate an intense period of violence between eastern and western cultures. Since the Muslims could not readily take revenge ms on the far-away lands of the Britons, the Franks, and others, it is logical to assume that they might have turned their military efforts to the closest Christian state to their respective domains and attempt to repay the deeds done to them in 1099. As fate would have it, that proximal Christian state had served as the launching point for Crusader excursions into Muslim lands—Byzantium.

As Byzantium and their Muslim counterparts became increasingly embroiled in bitter conflict with each other, religion rose as the primary motivating force for soldiers on either side to take up their sword. Historians Graham E. Fuller and Ian O. Lesser have noted that this, “political and territorial rivalry… [existed] between them for as long as religion [was] the defining ideological coinage of [their]…struggle.”[13] The actions of the First Crusade had hopelessly fused partisan political ambitions between eastern and western cultures with blindly fervent, religious overtones. The once tenuous state of affairs between the Byzantines and their Muslim neighbors had eroded into divisive hatred and violence. This process of revenge for the events of 1099, however, was not yet achievable by the Muslim world which still faced the distasteful prospect of storming Constantinople’s walls through the application of brute and stubborn strength in the endless waves of their soldiers. With admirable patience, Muslim rulers would wait until the opportune moment when their enemy was vulnerable and the cost of victory would not be as immense. In the larger course of human history, they would not have to wait very long.

The chronicler Procopius noted once that he was “unable to understand why indeed it should be the will of God to exalt on high the fortunes of a man or a place and then to cast them down and destroy them…”[14] Procopius, however, did not have the advantage of hindsight, like that enjoyed by modern historians, to see the subtle chain of events that lead to a society’s collapse. The seams of weakness and decay throughout Byzantium were so imperceptibly small in their infancy that it is no surprise that none identified the telltale signs of pending defeat until it was too late. To the greatest Empire in the world, what significantly negative outcome could possibly arise from gaining the animosity of a pagan people who, in their mind, could never overcome the powerful advantages of the Byzantine military juggernaut? Any new enemy that committed themselves to a prolonged war would inevitably end as all the others had – in ruinous defeat. The flaw of thinking in Byzantium, at this critical juncture, was that the entrenched status quo that had assured its superiority for so long was destined to change rapidly.

Byzantine military leadership, which had always been, “fully aware of the relationship between the allocation and redistribution of resources – soldiers, supplies, equipment, livestock and so forth – and the ability of the Empire to ward off hostile military action,”[15] would now find themselves on unsure ground as their supply and production capabilities throughout the Empire would be severely challenged. One historian noted that,

[t]he common interests that bound medieval [societies] together…required elaborate measures of defense against any outside enemies…[and] [a]s a result, the rising incidence of siege warfare generated new and increasingly difficult demands on…society at large that in time remade the face of medieval Europe.[16]

It is in failing to maintain this intricate system of defense that is perhaps the most glaring contribution to Byzantium’s growing vulnerabilities to the outside world.

The Byzantine Empire was a vast, interconnected network of resource production that fueled its military. Beginning at the end of the Eleventh Century, however, this network began to break down and thus weakened the overall continuity and cohesion of the Byzantine military.[17] After the defeat of Emperor Romanus IV, for example, the territories subsequently lost deprived the Empire of their primary supplier of cavalry horses.[18] Now experiencing shortages in the army’s primary source of rapid mobility, the Byzantine military’s ability to respond quickly to threats along the frontier and field a force effective at fighting Muslim armies of, “almost entirely…light cavalry”[19] was severely reduced. Also contributing to a comprehensive failure of the Empire’s system of defense along its vast borders was its being, in one historians words, “compelled to withdraw their attention from the frontier and focus it on the countless armies marching in from the West…[in order to satisfy] [t]he need for reserving troops to fight the Latins should they prove hostile…”[20] Now required to insulate themselves from a potentially chaotic Christian force marching through the heart of the Empire en route to the Holy Land, Byzantine emperors and generals simply lacked the ability to reinforce their border provinces against the press of outside factions throughout the 1200s.

The traditional rationale for executing a successful campaign (whether offensive or defensive) during this period was to field an army with a capability, “in direct response to… [what] they would have faced[,]”[21] and Byzantium, tragically, could no longer adhere to this long-held principle. Without sufficient forces to properly defend the Empire’s outlying territories, all that was required to claim possession of many of the Empire’s extended provinces was for an outside group to simply resign themselves to the necessity of the task and commit themselves to battle and the casualties such confrontations would entail. Unfortunately for Byzantium, this impetus for foreign nations to press hard on the frontier defenses of the Empire was heightened by the aggressiveness of the advancing Mongol hordes. As historian Martin Sicker has noted, this Mongol advance, “pushed many Turkish tribes against [Byzantium’s] permeable frontiers in both Europe and Asia” [22] and ultimately forced Byzantium and the Ottoman Turks into an irreversible course of conflict as the two cultures fought for regional supremacy throughout Asia Minor. Without consciously attempting to, the Mongol aggression during this period had unwittingly provided the Ottoman Empire with the opportunity to permanently establish themselves within the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire and begin their quest to become the unrivaled power of the entire region.

The Byzantine frontiers were, at this point, “in a state of decay and highly vulnerable to attack.”[23] Their Muslim adversaries, ever patient, were now poised to take full advantage of this temporary lapse in Byzantine military capabilities. Now, a seemingly benign lull in imperial defensive capabilities would deepen into a systematically devastating failure of the Empire’s overall military structure. After coming into contact with the weak resistance offered by Byzantine thematic units on the frontier, the Turks seized upon this advantage. Subsequent Turkish assaults would deprive the Empire of its most viable recruiting areas for infantry and cavalry soldiers and worsen the tactical situation throughout Byzantium as military ranks grew increasingly sparse and inexperienced.[24] While a shortage of superior-quality soldiers could be counter-balanced with an influx of well-trained mercenaries readily available throughout the Empire, fiscal strain, heightened with each subsequent loss of territory and its respective taxable population, rendered the Emperor unable to afford and retain the skilled soldiers-for-hire that had served the Empire in the past and that were desperately needed in the present.[25] Byzantine military commanders were now forced to accept the lesser-quality mercenaries that their meager coffers could secure. This further perversion of the standard of excellence and formidability in Byzantine contingents did very little to alleviate the worsening crisis. As historian Charles Diehl noted, “Less disciplined, more grasping than ever, these redoubtable troops were now a greater danger to the Empire than to the enemy.”[26] The great Byzantine juggernaut, it seems, was losing its once unstoppable momentum.

With critical war supplies and soldiers diminishing, the most essential ingredient needed to stave off disaster throughout Byzantium was adept and skillful military leadership. Fate, however, had seen fit to rob the Empire of this crucial element of leadership in its darkest hour. “Byzantium,” wrote Diehl, “could no longer find such men as those of old, whose personal influence had so strongly impressed the troops under their command…[and now] few if any great leaders [would be] heard of at the head of imperial armies.”[27] Now lacking proper military leadership from the capital as well as a fundamental shortage in essential military munitions, foodstuffs, tax revenues and trained/trainable soldiers (compliments of territories lost to the Ottoman Turks, et al), the Byzantine Empire was ripe for exploitation. In a state of tumultuous uncertainty, the Empire was weakened further still by the outbreak of a sudden and devastating series of civil wars brought about by an entity that had once served to further the aspirations of the Empire—the Crusaders.

In 1204, Crusader forces, marching to wage war on the Muslims in Asia Minor, successfully stormed the gates of Constantinople and entered the city without having to lay siege to the city’s formidable defenses. With the tensions between the Western Christian and Eastern Orthodox peoples reaching a climax, this event was symbolic of the on-going struggle within the Christian world. When Crusaders entered the city with an ease previously unknown in the city’s long history, they unknowingly struck a mortal blow to the teetering Byzantine state. Through the course of sacking the city’s great wealth, the Crusaders also (and more importantly) succeeded in toppling the already unstable central government there. “European nations,” remarked historian Jon Haldon, “in a bid to assimilate the conquered Byzantines into their respective dominions, initiated a series of illegitimate [and ineffective] rulers throughout the empire’s provinces that marked the beginning of the end for the Byzantine Empire.”[28] Now foreign rulers from the West who had no vested interest in the Empire’s continuity and survival as an independent state compounded a lack of military leadership. The following years were a tragic turn for the worse for the Byzantine people as the rule of pretenders from Europe brought them ever closer to the edge of disaster. Historian George Ostrogorsky noted, these internal power struggles throughout the remaining Byzantine provinces, initiated by the Crusaders, “began a long succession of civil wars which hastened the internal collapse of the Byzantine Empire. This dynastic…rivalry inaugurated a period of severe internal crises which exhausted the Empire and ultimately left it defenseless against the expansion of the Turks and the Serbs.”[29]

As the porous frontiers of the Empire gave way to a surge of Turkish expansionism to the east and Serbian unrest to the west, the Byzantine Empire had also succumb to the rule of outsiders and pretenders to its throne. Devolved into a state unable to mount any semblance of coordinated defense on behalf of their citizens, Byzantium soon fell prey to the aggression of its various neighbors. The signs of impending collapse throughout the remains of Byzantium were now palpable enough that even Procopius would have had no doubt as to how Byzantium was falling from greatness. With each successive failure in its infrastructure and leadership Byzantium was being broken apart and worn down by its many rivals.

These weaknesses throughout Byzantium could not have come about at a more inopportune time. At the moment in history where Byzantium needed to be at its highest moments of strength and cohesion, it was lost in a chaotic internal struggle with no ability to effectively oppose its enemies – enemies whose militaries were still gaining strength and momentum. By the early Fourteenth Century, the once loosely organized Turkish tribes had reorganized themselves into an impressive military state that introduced the notion of heavy infantry (embodied by the ex-Christian Janissary contingent) into the Muslim military structure as well as the introduction of a variety of specialty and support units that enabled the Turkish forces to appear on the world scene representing the cutting edge of military technology and innovation.[30] The Sultan Orhan had, “also set up efficient means for mobilization, so that he could gather together a large and well trained force at the shortest notice.”[31] With new weapons and a professional army, this newly organized Turkish military quickly subdued most territories along the “Asiatic frontier.”[32] The Byzantine Empire, a mere shadow of its former vastness and glory, was now forced to accept fealty to the Turkish Sultan in 1379.[33] Like a nation whose power was destined to be ceded to a successor with the necessary balance of power, ambition and promise to thrive, the Byzantine state slowly began dissolved into the growing Turkish Empire.

Byzantium, after so much loss and despair, simply did not have the vitality to withstand and successfully fend off the “Rising Sultanate”[34] of the Ottoman Turks. As Sixth Century Byzantine chronicler Peter the Patrician remarked, “As long as men are evidently winning over their adversary, their courage is cultivated. But when it is obviously failing to destroy their enemies, they waste their own strength and as a result they lose to those who should not conquer them.”[35] While it is a point of historical contention as to whether or not the Empire would have eventually succumbed to the aggression of the Turkish forces from the east, the fact remains that a total failure in the fighting capabilities and spirit throughout Byzantium was a distinct byproduct of the systematic failures of the civil and military functions of the Empire from the Twelfth Century onward. These failures produced a feeble people whom the Turks conquered with much more ease than they might have otherwise. Byzantium, it seems, was slowly giving in to the internal and external pressures being applied to it.

The remnants of the Empire were in a sad state of affairs by the dawn of the 15^th Century. The historian Runciman observed that the, “civil wars had wrecked the economy of [Byzantium’s remaining] districts [and that they] could barely afford the minimal taxes the emperors demanded.”[36] Denied the resources once available in its many lost territories and suffering from an economic collapse within the Empire’s frail remnants, the future looked unimaginably bleak for Byzantium. The Ottoman Turks had waited to assail their long-hated enemies until their ability to resist was almost non-existent. They had utilized the Byzantine civil wars to “permanently establish themselves in Europe”[37] and, as such, posed a significant obstacle to any reclamation of power or territory by the Byzantines. Though the Byzantine Empire seemed to be failing, however, a last resurgence of imperial glory was still to come. As time passed, the yokes of servitude and supplication to the Christian pretenders and the Turkish overlords grew unbearably heavy for the Byzantine people to live under. The time for complacency and compliance was reaching its end throughout the Empire. Byzantium would soon show the world it would not pass quietly into the night.

Despite the dilapidated infrastructures of the Empire during this period, a sentiment of resistance still permeated Byzantine society. This was not a people accustomed to lordship of another society over itself. As Haldon notes that, “[t]he defenses of the city [Constantinople], although suffering from lack of maintenance, remained impressive and powerful.”[38] Since a besieging force had never successfully stormed this great city, the Byzantines drew strength from the still palpable power exuded by their unconquerable city. Throughout Byzantium, increasingly numerous instances of inspiration and hope began to reinforce the threads of resistance in the Empire’s remaining populace.[39] The historian Donald Nicol, for example, noted one such episode: “In August 1402…[t]he blockade of Constantinople, which had lasted for eight years, was lifted; and the very fact of the Ottoman defeat and the humiliation of the Sultan [at the hands of the Mongols] were such unexpected events that Christians unhesitatingly ascribed them to the intervention of God and his Mother… .The future [of Byzantium, it seemed,] was in God’s hand.”[40]

As Byzantine resurgence throughout the remaining imperial territories intensified, the conflict between Byzantine forces and the temporarily disorganized Ottoman Turks (who were in the midst of an internal upheaval), religion and religious intervention became an integral part of Byzantine military strategy. If this faltering nation were to have any hope in reclaiming their Empire and reconstructing their ability to defend their homes effectively, their soldiers would have to believe that they were fighting for a cause that could not be beaten—a cause ordained by God. With a sudden resurgence of fighting spirit, Byzantine forces began to successfully reassert their power in the localized regions surrounding Constantinople. With each new victory for Byzantium, the tempo of the day, like a mighty orchestra, was violently increasing as it approached the final and glorious crescendo of the Byzantine Empire’s symphony.

The sudden, positive turn of events throughout Byzantium, with internal division impairing Turkish military responses to Byzantine reclamation efforts, was fatefully short-lived. Byzantine military efforts would serve to reawaken the dormant Turkish nationalism that had threatened it previously by reminding Turkish leaders of the continued threat posed by this Christian nation. For example, an effort on the part of the Byzantines to install a “friendly” ruler (or Byzantine-sponsored pretender) atop the Turkish throne in 1421 ended with this Byzantine “favorite”[41] being executed by loyalist elements within the Sultanate. This political farce convinced his successor (a loyal follower of the unification tendencies of the Sultan Orhan) of the necessity to finally do away with this cancerous Byzantine society.[42] The enraged Sultan Murad immediately made preparations to strike the heart of Byzantine resistance and capture the city that boasted to enjoy the, “miraculous intervention of its protectress, the Mother of God.”[43]

The Turkish siege of 1422 was the final lesson of the Sultanate on the necessity of identifying a new method of breaching the walls of Constantinople without relying on the traditional doctrine of siege warfare that necessitated a great number of soldiers to simply overwhelm the fortification’s defenders atop the battlements and, by brute force, make their way into the city via costly hand-to-hand fighting. “Murad,” recalled Nicol, “employed every means at his disposal to break the resistance of the inhabitants and take their city by assault… [but] a long and bitter battle for possession of the walls [ended in bitter defeat].”[44] Repulsed from the city’s walls with horrendous loss, the hopes of Murad dissolved in a sudden and complete Turkish route.[45] This resounding triumph of Byzantine spirit now made it perfectly clear that that no numerically superior force could hope to reduce Constantinople (and Byzantium with it) without first devising a way to effectively breach the walls preceding a massed infantry assault. The Turks, however, would not be deterred from their ultimate objective of taking Byzantium. Although the carnage before the walls of Constantinople surely caused Turkish leaders to pause at the thought of storming the Byzantine battlements again, religious inspiration, once again, would serve as the impetus to continue their efforts no matter the cost.

According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Mohammed remarked, “Have ye heard of a city of which one side is land and the two others water? The Hour of Judgment shall not sound until seventy thousand sons of Isaac shall capture it.”[46] With the words of their iconic founder urging them on, the Turkish determination to fulfill their destiny and implied religious obligation and complete the conquest of Byzantium by defeating the mighty city of Constantinople (which was the prophesied city with one land side and two on water) grew to unparalleled heights. As the Turkish military leaders assimilated conquered civilizations into their army of diverse soldiers, weapons and tactics, the answer to overcoming Constantinople’s considerable defenses was finally found. As Constantine XI took the throne in 1449[47] and Mehmed II rose to leadership among the Turks in 1451[48], the final days of Byzantium had arrived. These two charismatic leaders would, in short order, find themselves in opposition amidst the bitter, final struggle for the great city of Constantinople. This time, however, the walls of this “City protected by God”[49] would be tested as never been tested before. Byzantium and their Islamic counterparts looked to their new leadership for guidance amidst a maelstrom neither culture had ever seen before. The time for peace had ended. The age of the cannon had come.

As the situation between the expanding Ottomans and the Byzantine Empire worsened, political and diplomatic efforts on both sides became more and more opposed with any hope of resolving their respective tensions short of violence. Byzantine Emperor John VIII, for example, went as far as to sacrifice the traditional status of the Orthodox Christianity being independent and autonomous from the Christian West (a feeling in direct opposition with the dominant feelings of the Empire’s populace that insisted upon the supremacy of the Orthodox Church to any other) by pledging his subservience to the Papacy of Rome in 1439 through a declaration that reunited the two Christian faiths.[50] It was Emperor John VIII’s hope that this action would prompt Pope Eugene IV to sponsor the formation of a crusade with the intent of rescuing Byzantium from the growing Ottoman threat. By the time this crusade finally set out from Eastern Europe in the summer of 1443, however, it was simply a benign gesture in futility. “The pope’s [sic] crusade,” wrote one historian, “got no further than Varna on the Black Sea coast. There it was annihilated by the Turks under the personal command of the Sultan Murad.”[51] This unbridled act of war by Byzantium, through their proxy use of yet another Crusader force against the Muslims, more than enraged the Turkish Sultan. The cruel memories of the legacy of other Christian crusades were still very much palpable throughout the Islamic world. This act, instigated by the Byzantine Emperor, left no question to the Ottoman ruler Murad (and his son Mehmed) that this troublesome people would have to be dealt with and soon.

The greatest contribution to the military confrontation witnessed on the battlements of Byzantium’s final refuge was the complete and total commitment of each side’s respective leadership to victory. Both Constantine XI and Mehmed II possessed the necessary qualities as a military leader to ensure a confrontation between their respective peoples that would be nothing short of cataclysmic. Sultan Mehmed, for example, was described by the existing accounts to have been a man with singular drive toward the establish of a dominant Ottoman state and possessing of a commitment to that end that knew no bound. “More cruel than Nero,” wrote one period chronicler, “he delights in shedding of blood. He is full of courage, eager to conquer the whole world and to rule greater empires than any of those who came before him…”[52] Byzantium, in its dilapidated state, offered the young Sultan a valuable opportunity to demonstrate his dominion’s might. This “raging monster”[53] who thought himself equal to any previous conqueror of peoples in all of history[54] now, for personal and political reasons, resolved himself to the prospect of a final confrontation with his people’s long-standing rival astride the Bosporus and “turned his attention towards the city of Constantinople”[55] in a bold attempt to spread Ottoman culture throughout the world. As Mehmed himself maintained in a letter to the Pope of Rome, “the bent of our desires is to enlarge the bounds of our Empires.”[56] With such an expressed desire to expand, conflict with those in the way of that expansion was almost inevitable.

In light of this desire to expand the bands of Islam and the Ottoman Empire, however, the question remains as to what exactly brought about this aggressive nature in the young sultan that culminated in his great move against Byzantium. Perhaps it was the European impression of his abilities as a “listless young man with very little military or political talent”[57] and their subsequent calls for the immediate organization of military campaigns to be carried out throughout Ottoman lands in Anatolia.[58] Also possible was the tenuous internal situation among Arab states – namely the Mamluk ruler’s, “desire to remain chummy with the emperor [for social and economic reasons]”[59] which threatened the overall authority of the novice Ottoman sultan among his fellow Muslim subjects. Mehmed knew that he could not survive any internal dissent within his people at this critical juncture in his reign. The slightest weakness could end in disaster. Whatever the reason, Mehmed was indeed highly motivated to seek a way to strengthen his grasp on the whole of the Anatolian Peninsula and ensure his ambitions of power and glory came to fruition. Mehmed moved with the necessity of a man in danger of losing his power, and through charismatic exhortation, the Ottoman people rallied to their leader’s call to greatness and destiny to begin the campaigns that would bring the Ottoman armies into direct and violent contact with their Byzantine neighbors.

Though a brief respite of hostilities arose between Byzantium and the Ottomans after Sultan Murad’s death in 1451,[60] it was not to last for long. Byzantine diplomacy, which had never been subtle or tactful when it involved peoples they viewed as their lesser, now made a critical misstep with the young Turkish sultan. Thinking him weak and pliable, and hoping to take a first great step toward reclaiming the prestige and power of the Byzantium of old, Emperor Constantine XI demanded an increase in the annual tribute paid by the Sultanate to the Byzantines.[61] While seemingly insignificant, this demand was taken as a personal declaration of war by the hot-blooded Mehmed. The response by the Ottoman ruler, whom some thought to be “inexorably set upon the destruction of the Christians,”[62] was explosive – “You stupid Greeks…I have had enough of your devious ways…[W]e are not children without strength and reason…[A]ll that you will achieve is to lose what little you have left.”[63] Mehmed was finally given the spark to motivate his desire to aggressively expand his Empire and overrun the remaining Byzantine territories. This would be his chance to prove to all of Christendom, as well as disparate factions amongst his fellow Islamic states, that he was a force not to be under-estimated or trifled with. As Mehmed himself remarked that he marched to war, “…not only for our safety to revenge the injuries that other men do unto us, but [also to]…make our enemies to fear us the more.”[64] This was to be the young sultan’s initial test of strength and power and it would not be a test he could permit himself to fail. Any chance at diplomacy had now suffered its final defeat. Rage and resentment swept through both societies as war became a cruel inevitability. To the Byzantine people, who prescribed to the social imperative that, “answer[s] violence with violence,”[65] no aggression of the Ottomans would be suffered lightly. The desolations of war and the spilling of blood, it seemed, were to decide the fate of both peoples.

Mehmed acted swiftly and decisively to deal with these troublesome Byzantines who had offended both his and his people’s honor. Though he admitted that, “If [they]…had but as much might as will, and as much strength as valor, I should think [they]…were not to be conquered by any whatsoever,”[66] the fact remained that the Ottoman Empire had a number of significant military advantages over their Byzantine counterparts. Mehmed realized early into his reign that if his dreams of expansion were to be realized he would have to defeat the Byzantines quickly and decisively before they could strengthen their somewhat antiquated and dilapidated military machine to oppose him. Mehmed knew all to well the daunting military history of foreign peoples against a formidable and prepared Byzantine military machine. If given time, it was possible that Byzantium could amass a force capable of slowing or halting his advances into their domain. This was not time the young sultan was prepared to give them.

Those who opposed Mehmed’s chosen course of action for war soon found themselves ousted from positions of authority as Mehmed rapidly surrounded himself with an advisory council receptive and agreeable to his desires.[67] Now possessing a leader with the unbridled desire to commit wholly to a massive assault upon the weakened Byzantine state (and Constantinople), the Ottoman Turks were still faced with the imposing obstacle posed by the mighty city’s impregnable walls and battlements. Fate, however, had seen fit to cede to Byzantium’s greatest opponent the technology that would enable their destruction – the cannon. As historian Roger Crowley noted, “For the first time since trumpets flattened the walls of Jericho, a significant advantage was handed back to the side besieging a stoutly fortified [position]. Fifteenth-Century Europe rang to the roar of great siege guns, the shattering of stone balls against the stone walls, and the sudden collapse of hitherto impregnable bastions.”[68]

With these new and terrible engines of war, no fixed defensive position in the known world was safe from the ill-will and hostility of neighbor states in possession of these new and devastating cannons. Mehmed, seizing upon this transformational technology with a fervor, directed his military commanders to, “quickly [become] proficient in manufacturing, transporting and firing its artillery [as their army] was second to none in the deep logistical requirements of gunpowder warfare.”[69] Mehmed utilized European mercenaries proficient in the art of casting these artillery pieces to guide his operation[70] and, in only a short time, was constructing cannon, “greater than any which had been previously known.”[71] Armed with a weapon no army had ever possessed when confronting the mighty Byzantine city of Constantinople, Mehmed would need to move quickly to isolate it and its meager population from the rest of the world before they could organize their forces effectively to oppose his soldiers. Armed with loyal and numerous soldiers, Mehmed readied the last weapon of his arsenal for the coming struggle – religion. Like the past military leaders of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed would turn to the religious fury of the so-called ghazi, or “soldiers of holy war,”[72] to propel his cause to victory.[73] With his tools of war prepared and assembled, Mehmed needed only to fire the hearts of his soldiers to assure the final victory of his empire over Byzantium.

A prophesy of Mohammed had foretold of this city’s fall and now Mehmed would fuse this seemingly perfect religious edict into his battle plans to make the confrontation with Byzantium one of holy necessity and divine decree. Mehmed realized the importance of steeling the nerves of his soldiers with words that transcended human fear and doubt and infused the power of the divine with each step his soldiers would take. With the memory of the Crusades reawakened in the minds of his people by the actions of 1443, Mehmed’s oath that they, “would fight the Greeks bravely and, relying on Allah and his prophet, take the city”[74] reaffirmed the hatred and bitterness between Islam and Christianity in the hearts of his men. Mehmed had now hit upon the perfect formula for achieving his bid for imperial glory – a weakened enemy, the successful exploitation of technological innovation and the fusion of religion with militaristic ambition. With the Ottoman host en route to Constantinople, it is now vital to briefly detail the character and mindset of Mehmed’s military foil in the pending collision of culture and religion—Emperor Constantine XI. Unbeknownst to Mehmed it was the Byzantines who had long ago perfected the fusion of religion with the defense of their city and Constantine XI was the ideal personality to exhort these faithful virtues in his people to achieve deeds of moving heroism, the likes of which had never been seen.

Constantine Palaiologos, the future Emperor Constantine XI

Constantine Palaiologos was born into a Byzantium that appeared as a mere shadow of its former glory. As one historian noted, “[t]he great trunk of the tree of Constantinople, where its first seed had been planted, seemed to be hollow and bending in the cold wind blowing from the east.”[75] Growing up in a world of chaos and uncertainty, Constantine would develop a personal commitment to the continued survival and protection of his homeland that would resonate in his years as a despot and regional leader of Morea.[76] Seen through the actions of Constantine’s life and career leading to his final, desperate stand atop his city’s walls in 1453, Constantine was both a man of utter commitment to the Empire