Under Siege

"Step 1 in siege warfare: look under the mat for the key."

 A year, a moth and a few days since my last post, I just can't shake the feeling that we're still under siege- from right-wing, neo-fascists who want to destroy American democracy; from the great unwashed ignorant whose minds have been brainwashed by religion or wild conspiracy theories; from the effects of man-made climate change; from global pandemic outbreak-after-outbreak.  The list just goes on and on.  Whenever the pressures of modern living get me down, I always turn to History to smack me upside the head and say, "Quit your whining you little bitch, things could be AND HAVE BEEN WAAAAAY WORSE!"  And on that note, let's look at an actual siege: Constantinople, 1453 CE.

Ok ok, be honest: how many of you started singig this song, most recently made famous by They Might Be Giants?  ALL of you, I bet.  And how DID Constantinople (Greek: City of Constantine) become Istambul (more Greek: In the City)?  Why, those crafty siege-crafters, the Ottoman Turks.  Though late to the game of siegecraft, this bunch managed to crack the toughest nut in the medieval world: Constantinople.

The Ottoman Turks were a bunch of formerly nomadic tribesmen who moved out of Central Asia and into the old Roman province of Bithynia on the north shore of the Anatolian peninsula. Anatolia had by then been taken over by a different bunch of Turks, the Seljuks, but they were on their way out by the time the Ottomans arrived. By the time the Ottomans were laying siege to Constantinople in 1453 CE, they had managed to assimilate and even improve on the science and practice of siegecraft. They needed to in order to take Constantinople. This is a diagram of what they faced:

Protected on three sides by a badass navy that weilded a nepalm-like weapon called Greek Fire, AND bolstered by a giant, spiked chain across the Bosporus straight, the city was protected on the land side by a wall/moat/gate/fortress arrangement that looked like this:

So how did a bunch of formerly nomadic nasties capture the city? Five factors made that possible:

    1. Ever since the Crusaders and Venetians had captured and sacked the city during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE, the Byzantine Empire wasn’t rich enough to repair and maintain the city’s defenses as it had been in previous centuries. Earthquakes, floods, attacks by various enemies all left the once mighty walls somewhat compromised. The city also felt the effects of the Black Death in the middle 1300’s, with its decline in population and economic activity. And unlike the First Crusade against the Seljuk Turks in 1096–1099 CE, no help from the West was forthcoming.

    2. The Ottoman Turks had in their arsenal of siege weapons those newfangled things called bombards -essentially large, slow loading, inaccurate cannons that used the Chinese invention of gunpowder to fling heavy projectiles against fortress and city walls. Prior to 1453, catapults, ballistas and trebuchets flung rocks, flaming pitch, even the severed heads of captured prisoners at defenders. Bombards were also LOUD, belched fire and smelled like the very pit of Hell itself, so there was a psychological component to this weapon.

    3. Since his ships couldn’t sail up to the city because of the big, spiked chain the Byzantines had stretched across the Bosporous, Sultan Mehmet I accomplished the nearly impossible: he constructed a roadway of greased logs and had his navy dragged overland around the chain. This had the twofold effect of denying the city resupply from the friendly Vevetian fleet, and wrecking Byzantine morale.

    4. Although the Ottoman and Byzantine navies were about equal in size and strength, the Ottomans fielded an army of between 50,000 to 80,000 soldiers, whereas the Byzantine defenders numbered only about 7,000 soldiers, 2,00 of which were foreign mercenaries. The most feared soldiers at the siege were the Ottoman Janisaries, 5,000 to 10,000 of the most fanatical warriors the medieval world had ever seen. It was these forces —not the artillery, miners, sappers or sailors —that gave the Ottomans final victory.  

    5. This wasn't the Ottoman's first siege.  They had learned from prior experience the importance of battlefield hygiene.  To curb losses suffered through disease, they burned corpses, dug latrines, and made sure their troops only drank uncontaminated water.  

The sixth factor was the Ottomans' giant heads

To give the Byzantines credit, even with all this bad shit going down they were sort of holding their own against the Ottomans.  If they had been able to get just a little more outside support from the Genovese or Venetians, they most likely would have held off Mehmet II's siege.  However, they didn't and the city fell on Tuesday, May 29, 1453.  For three days after, the city was given over to rape, pillage and looting, with all kinds of atrocities being visited upon the hapless civilian population.  

So while things aren't peachy right now, I guess it's better than being under an actual siege.  

Wishing you, my completely imaginary legion of readers, the best possible New Year.