The army which Mahomet commanded was not merely endued with the fatalism and confidence of an ordinary army of Islam; it was engaged upon a work in which many generations of Moslems had longed to take a part. The prophet himself was represented in the Sacred Traditions as holding converse with Allah respecting the capture of New Rome, and was told that the Great Day of Judgment would not come before Constantinople had been captured by the sons of Isaac. On another occasion Mahomet declared that ‘the best prince is he who shall capture Constantinople, and his the best army.’ The inspired words had filled his immediate followers with the determination to capture the city. The Arabs attempted the task no less than seven times. At the third, in 672, they were accompanied by the aged Eyoub, who in his youth had been the standard-bearer and favourite of the Prophet. The huge army had sat down before the city during seven years, sowing the fields on the neighbouring coasts and gathering in the harvest, but determined to win the reward which Mahomet had promised to those who should capture the New Rome. Eyoub’s death before its walls and the failure in these Arab attempts of the largest and most powerful army and fleet which Islam could ever collect had not rendered the words of the Prophet void. The sacred promise still held good and served to stimulate every soldier to increased exertion. Seven centuries had passed since the long struggle against the Arabs, in which the Queen City saved European civilisation, and now, once again in the fulness of time, that which the early Moslems had desired to see was within the reach of those who fought under a leader who bore the same name as the Prophet. Among those who in the army were under the influence of religious ideas or traditions the coming attempt to capture the city was looked forward to hopefully and joyfully. To the ignorant and thoughtless among his barbarous followers the promise of unlimited plunder which Mahomet the Second held out was a stronger inducement; but to the better informed and more religious, and to some extent to all, the hope of winning paradise furnished a powerful allurement to battle or at least a compensatory consolation at the prospect of death.
After this digression I return to the preparations which Mahomet was making at Adrianople for the execution of his great design, and to those which the emperor had in hand for the defence of the city.
Urban’s great bombard.
In the first weeks of January, the fame reached Constantinople of a monster bombard or gun which was being cast in Adrianople. Ducas gives interesting information of its history and describes it as the largest possessed by the Turks.
In the autumn of 1452, while Mahomet was finishing the castle on the Bosporus, a Hungarian or Wallachian cannon founder named Urban, who had offered his services to the emperor and had been engaged by him, was induced by higher pay to go over to the enemy. He would have been content, says Ducas, with a quarter of the pay he received from Mahomet.[223] After learning from him what he could do, the Turks commissioned him to make as powerful a gun as he could cast. Urban declared that if the walls were as strong as those of Babylon he could destroy them. At the end of three months he had succeeded in making a cannon which remained for many years the wonder of the city and even of Europe, and marks an epoch in the continually increasing power of guns. The casting was completed at Adrianople.[224]
In January it was started on its journey to the capital. Sixty oxen were employed to drag it, while two hundred men marched alongside the wagon on which it was placed to keep it in position. Two hundred labourers preceded it to level the roads and to strengthen the bridges. By the end of March[225] it was brought within five miles of the city. But, though the fame of this monster gun has overshadowed all the rest, we shall see that it was only one amongst many.[226]
Turkish fleet.
Above all, says Critobulus, Mahomet had given special attention to his fleet, ‘because he considered that for the siege the fleet would be of more use than even his army.’[227] He built many new triremes and repaired his old ones. A number of long boats, some of them decked over, and swift vessels propelled by from twenty to fifty oarsmen were also ready. No expense had been spared. The crews of his fleet were gathered from all the shores of Asia Minor and the Archipelago. He selected with great care the pilots, the men who should give the time to the oarsmen and the captains.
At the beginning of April, his fleet was ready to leave Gallipoli, which had been the place of rendezvous. Baltoglu, a Bulgarian renegade, was placed in command. A flotilla of a hundred and forty sailing ships started for the Bosporus.[228] Of these, twelve were fully armed galleys, seventy or eighty were fustae, and twenty to twenty-five were parandaria. Amid shouts from one ship to another, the beating of drums, and the sound of fifes, all marking the delight of the Turks that their period of inactivity was at an end, the fleet made its way through the Marmora. The sight carried dismay to the remnant of the inhabitants of the Christian villages along the shores, for within the memory of none had such a fleet been seen. Within the city itself the news of the enormous number of vessels on their way was not less alarming.
The fleet arrived in the Bosporus on April 12 and anchored at the Double Columns or Diplokionion just below the present Palace of Dolma Bagtche.[229]