Turkish admiral degraded.
The unfortunate admiral was brought next day before him and reproached as a traitor. Mahomet asked him how he could expect to capture the fleet in the harbour since he could not even take four ships, upbraided him for his inactivity and cowardice, and declared that he was ready himself to behead him.[299] The admiral pleaded that from the beginning to the end of the fight his own ship had never quitted its hold upon the poop of the largest vessel, and that he and his crew had fought on uninterruptedly until recalled. The Turkish officers also spoke on his behalf, testified to his courage and tenacity, and called attention to the severe wound on his eye accidentally inflicted by one of his men. The sultan, after some hesitation, consented to spare his life, but ordered him to be bastinadoed.[300] As a further punishment, he was deprived of all his honours, and whatever he possessed was given to the Janissaries.[301]
The success raised the hopes of the besieged, because they now firmly believed that these ships were only the forerunners of many others which were on their way to save the city. They had not yielded to Rome for nothing, and aid would come, and the city would yet be saved. In truth, a new crusade was not necessary to secure its deliverance. A few more vessels sent by the Christian states, with an army one tenth or even one twentieth of the number of the soldiers of the cross who had passed by Constantinople under Godfrey, would have been enough to prevent the conquest of the city by Mahomet. No further aid, however, came. All the hopes based upon re-union proved illusory, and Hungarians as well as Italians failed to render the assistance which might have been of first importance to their own interests.[302]
Attack contemporaneously made in Lycus valley.
The fight with the four ships was on April 20. During that day the great bombards had been hard at work along the landward walls, and especially near the Romanus Gate. The sultan himself was absent on the following day at the Double Columns, superintending one of the most interesting operations connected with the siege, but the bombardment went on as if he had been present. An important tower known as the Bactatinian, near the Romanus Gate,[303] was destroyed on the 21st, with a portion of the adjacent Outer Wall, and, says Barbaro, it was only through the mercy of Jesus Christ that the Turks did not give general battle, or they would have got into the city. He adds that if they had attacked with even ten thousand men, no one could have hindered their entry. The Moscovite, speaking of the same incident, states that the Turks were so infuriated by a successful shot from the small cannon of Justiniani that Mahomet gave the order for an assault, raised the cry of ‘Jagma, jagma!’ ‘Pillage, pillage!’ but they were repulsed. One of the balls, according to the same author, knocked away five of the battlements and buried itself in the walls of a church.[304] The defenders, among whom, notes Barbaro, were some ‘of our Venetian gentlemen,’ set themselves at once to make stout repairs where the wall had been broken down. Barrels full of stones, beams, logs, anything that would help to make a barricade, were hastily got together and worked with clay and earth, so as to form a substitute for the Outer Wall. When completed, the new work formed a stockade, made largely of wood and built up with earth and stones.[305] The ‘accursed Turk,’ says Barbaro, did not cease day and night to fire his greatest bombard against the walls near which the repairs were being made. Arrows and stones innumerable were thrown, and there were discharges also from firelocks or fusils[306] which threw leaden balls. He adds that during these days the enemy were in such numbers that it was hardly possible to see the ground or anything else except the white head dress of the Janissaries, and the red fezes of the rest of the Turks.[307]
Meantime the sultan was bent upon carrying into execution a plan for obtaining access to the harbour.
All accounts agree that the defeat of the Turkish fleet on April 20 had roused Mahomet to fury. More than one contemporary states that it was the immediate cause of Mahomet’s decision to attempt to gain possession of the Transport of Turkish ships overland. Golden Horn by the transport of his ships over land across the peninsula of Galata. The statement may well be doubted, but the failure to capture the four ships probably hastened the execution of a project already formed, and, like all his plans, carefully concealed until the moment for action.
Reasons for such project.
The reasons which urged Mahomet to try to gain entrance to the Golden Horn were principally three: to weaken the defence at the landward walls, to exercise control over the Genoese of Galata, and to facilitate the communications with his base at Roumelia-Hissar. So long as he was excluded, the enemy had only two sides of the triangular-shaped city to defend; whereas if the Turkish ships could range up alongside the walls on the side of the Horn the army within the city, already wretchedly inadequate for the defence on the landward and Marmora sides, would have to be weakened by the withdrawal of men necessary to guard the newly attacked position.
The possession of the Horn would enable Mahomet to exercise a dominant influence over Galata. This was a matter of great importance, because at any time the hostility of the Genoese might have enormously increased the difficulties of the siege and probably have compelled him to raise it. There were, indeed, already signs that Genoese sentiment was unfriendly to him.