Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (35 page)

Constantinople

In the middle years of the 15th century prophecy walked the streets of Constantinople hand-in-hand with Christianity. God’s will was in all things—of that, its people were in no doubt—but belief in a future already written was just as strong. The question was how to foretell that future, how to read the signs that were all around. Emperor Constantine I had made the city his capital in
AD
330 and built for his people a heaven on earth, a new Rome on seven new hills. Once upon a time this Byzantine Empire had reached and encircled the Mediterranean Sea; at its height the capital had been home to half a million souls. By 1453 the golden days were long gone, the empire pushed back nearly to the city walls. Soon the infidel Turks would be knocking at the gates. Another Constantine was on the imperial throne now—Constantine XI. Would his reign bring salvation and a return to the triumphs of his namesake? Or would his time complete the circle and bring all things to a close—Alpha and Omega; the first and the last? It had all begun with one Constantine—would it end with another?

The city known once as Constantinople is today Istanbul, capital of Turkey and the only metropolis in the world that straddles two continents. The waters of the Bosphorus keep Europe and Asia apart here—the opposing shores flirting dangerously with one another behind their families’ backs, like Romeo and Juliet.

As it turns out, that narrow parting is the deepest cut of all. It’s the place where East and West were finally divided—yet where Islam and Christianity came close enough to kiss. The story of what happened here during the spring and summer of 1453 is part of the story of how our present was made.

The city occupies the tip of a peninsula. Two bodies of water—the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn—meet to form the apex of a triangle, pointing roughly east. The base of the triangle, toward the west, is traced across the neck of the peninsula by the great defensive wall of Theodosius. Built in the 4th century to keep out the barbarians, it’s still largely intact today. A series of massive arched gates, as imposing in the 21st century as they were 1,000 years ago, cuts through it toward the interior.

As is true of all great cities, the modern façade of Istanbul is marbled with veins of history running all the way back to beginnings so distant they’re impossible to recall.

The Roman Diocletian unwittingly laid the foundations when he established himself as emperor in another city, Nicomedia, in ad 284. It was he who created the “Tetrarchy.” Ruling as emperor in the east with Galerius as his Caesar, he left the West to Emperor Maximian, with Constantius Chlorus as his deputy.

True to his Roman faith, Diocletian ordered the persecution of Christians. But when Constantius Chlorus died at York, England, in ad 306 he was succeeded by his son, Constantine I. Constantine shared the rulership of the empire with Licinius—until he defeated Licinius in battle in ad 323 and proclaimed himself sole emperor with a capital named after himself, at Constantinople.

It has never been clear just how “Christian” Constantine really was in private life—but he certainly added Christian symbolism to his battle insignia and tolerated, if not encouraged, the new faith among his subjects. The roots took hold and in ad 573 the Emperor Justinian dedicated the Church of St. Sophia as the living heart of the city’s religious life. It had taken just six years to build and yet it was a crowning masterpiece of vision and architectural skill. None who visited the building in the Middle Ages seemed able to find words to describe it back home. A mosque now, it has the same power to enthrall today as when it was new.

Theodosius succeeded his father Constantine—and at his own death in ad 395 split the empire between his sons. After the fall of Rome to the Ostrogoths in ad 476, Constantinople became the single center of the Roman Empire. The Christianity that crystallized there in the east, beneath the overarching dome of St. Sophia, was a dark and lustrous jewel. Its power to beguile was its greatest strength and its final weakness.

Soldiers ranged along Constantinople’s defensive walls in 1453 had their first sight of an approaching army during the first days of April that year. On Easter Sunday—the most important day in the Christian calendar—the faithful had gathered as usual in the churches. The people of the city believed the Virgin Mary was their greatest and surest shield. Down the centuries they’d called for her in times of need. With would-be raiders snapping at them from beyond the walls, they had gathered to carry icons bearing her likeness through the streets. She had never failed them before in the face of the heathen, and surely, when the stormclouds ranged around them seemed darkest, she would not fail them now.

While the common people looked to a woman in heaven for salvation, one man on Earth bore overall responsibility for turning back the tide of Islam lapping at the walls. But Constantine Palaiologos, in Christ true Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans, supped from a poisoned chalice. His predecessors had in the main presided over centuries of erosion of an empire that had once inspired respect and awe in all who knew of it. Misrule by many of them, accompanied by civil wars, petty jealousies, corruption and sloth, had presented Constantine XI with an inheritance few would want. The lands and territories were almost all gone. Though he bore the title of Emperor, his Empire was so landlocked within that of the Ottomans that he was little more than a vassal of the Sultan. Only the impenetrable defenses of the city—walls and treacherous seas—prevented the
coup de grâce
.

Yet within Constantine XI shone the brightness of a bygone age of empire. Chroniclers of the time describe a straightforward and trustworthy man who inspired lifelong loyalty in those around him. He was at heart a soldier and a patriot, imbued with a sense of duty to ensure the survival of his people and their way of life. By the time of the siege of 1453 he was 48 years old and in spite of all he had seen—the continued tarnishing of what Constantinople had once been—he was resolute. As he looked out over the battlements of the Wall of Theodosius he knew that his fate and that of his city and his empire were one.

These were dark days indeed for Constantinople and what little remained of the Byzantine Empire. The foe advancing toward them now was led by the 21-year-old Muslim Sultan Mehmet II. He had summoned his fighting forces from around his Ottoman Empire and they had come in numbers that seemed impossible to Constantine and his Christians, huddled behind their ancient defenses. Contemporary estimates of the Muslim force range all the way up to figures that can only ever have been inspired by fantasy. But the more reasonable counts still beggar belief. Historians today find it acceptable to imagine an army of 200,000. Clearly much of this is accounted for by servants, retainers, camp-followers and the rest of the hangers-on with an appetite for the scraps left by medieval armies on the move. But still around 60,000 of these are thought to have been fighting men—a combination of infantry and cavalry in roughly equal proportions.

This was not a purely Muslim force, either. Thousands of Christians were there too, under the banner of the Sultan—some pressed into service from conquered lands and some mercenaries from countries across Europe—and their presence burned the hearts of those they had come to subdue. Inside the city walls, preparing themselves to face this multinational horde, were perhaps 8,000 men. Fewer than half of them could be considered part of what
we would recognize as a trained, organized army and there was scant hope of reinforcements.

Although those defenders were desperately outnumbered, they were behind defenses that had withstood more than 20 sieges in the past 1,000 years. Hard though it might be to believe, the greater challenge was that faced by Mehmet and his would-be invaders. It was they who had the steepest climb ahead—and the toughest of the enemies ranged against them, greater than the walls and the sea, was time. From the moment a siege begins, its commander is fighting a battle to maintain the morale of his men and to build and sustain momentum in the face of an immovable obstacle. Those inside the defenses had nowhere to run—they were in place for the duration and fighting to defend family and home. Those without were always just one disappointment away from deciding to turn and head for
their
homes far away—either individually or en masse. The commander of a siege holds his army like water in his cupped hands.

More than anything, more than territory or ethnic distrust or greed (though these and more were part of the mix), this was a struggle between two faiths. In the 15th century the two great monotheisms were Christianity and Islam, two religions with a common root and as many ties to bind them as to separate. But familiarity breeds contempt. When the Christian populace of Constantinople looked out at the Muslim army preparing to besiege them, they were watching the build-up to the climax of a struggle as old as Islam itself.

According to the faithful, the Prophet Muhammad himself laid claim to the city in ad 628 in a letter sent to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Heraclius had crushed the forces of Persia and recovered from them the True Cross, most sacred of Christianity’s relics. As he arrived at the city, on his way to return the relic to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, he was handed a letter. It read:

In the name of Allah the most beneficent, the most merciful: this letter is from Muhammad, the slave of Allah, and his apostle, to Heraclius, the ruler of the Byzantines. Peace be upon the followers of guidance. I invite you to surrender to Allah. Embrace Islam and Allah will bestow on you a double reward. But if you reject this invitation you will be misguiding your people.

 

Persia’s king of kings had received much the same letter, but neither man took up the offer. From then on Constantinople was a target for the forces of Islam—and as the decades and centuries passed without success for the pretenders, the target became an obsession.

The triumph of Muhammad the warrior had been to unite the disparate, nomadic Arab tribes under the banner of Islam. Here was a portable faith that could be easily carried by wanderers. Forged by it into a single blade, they cut a swath through the sedentary civilizations they found beyond the limits of their desert homelands. Muhammad died in ad 632, but his mission drove relentlessly onward. In the years to come Muslim Arab forces would sweep through Persia and the Middle East, across North Africa and into Spain. Cities fell to them and people bowed down, but not Constantinople.

In ad 669 the Caliph Muawiyah brought his Arab army—and by now an Arab navy as well—to within sight of the city. In the following years he besieged the place again and again, using his ships to maintain a stranglehold and keep his men supplied with the stuff of war. But in 678 the Christians struck back—and with such awe-inspiring effect that they were to secure for the coming centuries the belief that God Himself had determined to protect this city of his faithful. Out on to the Sea of Marmara sailed a force of Byzantine galleys. Straight toward the Muslim fleet they
came and, once in among them, unleashed what appeared to be the hand of a righteous God. Observers saw strange apparatus on the bows of the Christian ships and from it spewed what could only be described as liquid fire. The Arab ships were consumed, their crews burned alive as the sea itself caught flame wherever the flames touched. Traumatized and destroyed, the Arabs lifted their siege. The survivors dragged themselves back home as best they could through a winter storm that further harried them. The Arab land army too was destroyed by Christian forces taking advantage of the demoralized state of their foe.

The weapon that had achieved all this was the medieval equivalent of a flamethrower—Greek fire. Naturally occurring crude oil was mixed with pine resin and stored in cylinders kept pressurized with hand pumps. Once forced out of a nozzle, the sticky fuel was ignited by small flames and directed anywhere its user wished. It’s hard to imagine the impact—the shock and awe—such a technology must have had upon unsuspecting 8th-century mariners armed at best with crossbows, and the magic of its manufacture was among the most closely guarded of all the secrets within the walls of Constantinople.

A second Arab siege 40 years later also failed spectacularly, and with much loss of Muslim life. But it was in 1402 that the city was handed its final and most legendary reprieve. Sultan Bayezit I demanded the city bow down to his will—and declared that he was, after all, the greatest ruler in the world. Word of his boast reached Timur the Lame, the last great Mongol Khan and known to the West as Tamburlaine. Believing that he, and not Bayezit, was the supreme ruler, he brought the pretender to battle on the field at Ankara and utterly destroyed him. For centuries thereafter there persisted the legend that Bayezit was kept, for the next 20 years until his death, in a cage pulled behind Timur’s dogs. In any event, Constantinople was saved.