[211] La Brocquière says this foss, on his visit, was two hundred paces long.
[212] Barbaro says that the emperor employed an Italian to place the boom in position.
[213] The present Tower of Galata was called the Tower of Christ. See Paspates, Meletai, p. 180.
[214] Barb. p. 25. Tetaldi states that there were nine galleys and thirty other ships (p. 25). The fact that the Turks soon found that it was impossible to take possession of the chain or to drive away the defending fleet tends to show that the Greek fleet was respectable in number of ships. On the other hand, when it became of extreme importance to send ships outside the chain to aid ships from Genoa coming to the relief of the city, the fact that none were sent out is evidence to show that no ships could be spared from the defence of the chain or that no sufficient number of galleys, triremes, or other vessels independent of wind for propulsion were at hand to take the offensive. There were probably many smaller merchant ships and boats of which no account was taken.
[215] The elder Mordtmann makes the suggestion that the Bashi-Bazouks are in this estimate excluded, and I agree with him. The same remark applies also to Philelphus who gives 60,000 foot and 20,000 horse. Other writers include all those who were present with Mahomet and thus make the number of the besiegers very much higher. Ducas’s estimate is 250,000; Montaldo’s, 240,000 (of whom 30,000 were cavalry, ch. xxvii.). Phrantzes states that 258,000 were present; Leonard the archbishop, with whom Critobulus and Thysellius agree, gives 300,000 men, while Chalcondylas increases this to 400,000.
[216] Tetaldi’s Information de la prinse de Constantinoble, p. 21.
[217] Leonard and others say 15,000, but the smaller estimate is in accord with many Turkish statements that the number of Janissaries was, until the time of Suliman, limited to 12,000.
[218] The connection between the Dervish order of Bektashis and the Janissaries endured as long as the Janissaries themselves, and when the latter were massacred, in June 1826, with the cry of ‘Hadji Bektash’ on their lips, the order of Bektashis was also suppressed. Etat militaire Ottoman, par Djavid Bey (Constantinople, 1881), and Walsh’s Two Years in Constantinople (1828).
[219] Djevad, p. 55.
[220] Permission to marry was not granted to Janissaries till the time of Suliman, a century later.