[221] When, contemporaneously with the murder of the Janissaries in 1826, the Order of Bektashis was suppressed, Sultan Mahmoud assigned as a reason that jars of wine were found in the cellars of their convents stoppered with leaves of the Koran. The statement was probably false, but was intended to create the worst possible impression against the Bektashis.
[222] Early Travels in Palestine, p. 365. La Brocquière made a careful study of the Turkish methods of fighting and of how they might be defeated by a combination of European troops among which he would have placed from England a thousand men at arms and ten thousand archers. As his visit was in 1433, it is not improbable that Agincourt was in his mind.
[223] The Turks have rarely failed in obtaining able European soldiers. Moltke was in the Turkish service. The first Napoleon narrowly escaped taking a like service. (See Von Hammer.) More recently they have had in General Von der Golz one of the ablest German soldiers.
[224] Dethier suggests that the casting of the largest gun was done at Rhegium, the present Chemejie, about twelve miles from Constantinople, and that the transport spoken of by Ducas was either of smaller ones or of the brass required for the large one (p. 991; Dethier’s notes on Z. Dolfin).
[225] Phrantzes, p. 237, gives the arrival on April 2.
[226] Critobulus, xxix., gives the description of the construction of a cannon the barrel of which was forty spans or twenty-six feet eight inches long. The bronze of which it was cast was eight inches in thickness in the barrel. Throughout half the length its bore was of a diameter of thirty inches. Throughout the other half, which contained powder, the bore was only one third of that width. The σπιθαμὴ or palmus or span was in the Middle Ages, says Du Cange, eight inches long. Two stone balls still existing at Top-Hana (that is, the Cannon Khan) are forty-six inches in diameter. These would answer the description of Tetaldi, that the ball reached to his waist. A great Turkish cannon which is now in the Artillery Museum at Woolwich weighs about nineteen tons. It was cast fifteen years after the siege of Constantinople and is an excellent specimen of the great cannon of the period (Artillery; its Progress and Present Stage, by Commander Lloyd and A. G. Hadcock, R.E., p. 19).
[227] Crit. xxi.
[228] Barbaro.
[229] Barbaro gives the arrival on April 12. Dr. Dethier maintains that Diplokionion was at Cabatash and that subsequently to the Conquest the people and the name were transferred to Beshiktash. Barbaro says it was two Italian miles, equal to one and a third English mile, from the city, which is in accord with Dethier’s view, but in presence of Bondelmonti’s map, drawn in 1422 and given in Banduri, showing the Two Columns, and of other evidence, it is difficult to credit Dethier’s statement.
[230] Phrantzes, p. 241; Ducas gives the total number as 300, Leonard as 250, Critobulus as 350. The independent accounts of two men who had been at sea, like the French soldier Tetaldi and the Venetian Barbaro, are not far apart. The first says there were 16 to 18 galleys, the second 12. The estimate of the long boats is 60 to 80 by Tetaldi, as against 70 to 80 by Barbaro; while the transport barges or parandaria are described by one as from 16 to 20, by the other as from 20 to 25. Chalcondylas (p. 158) states that 30 triremes and 200 smaller vessels arrived from Gallipoli. Leonard says that there were 6 triremes and 10 biremes.