My reading of the contemporary narratives leads me to conclude that, in spite of the isolated examples of dissensions mentioned by Leonard, of deep differences of opinion on the great religious question, and of constant jealousies between Greeks and Italians and between Venetians and Genoese, the unity of sentiment among the besieged for the defence of the city was well maintained. They might quarrel on minor questions, but on the duty and the desirability of keeping Mahomet out they were united. I doubt the statement as to many defections and, remembering how many and grave the reasons for dissensions were, consider that if they could be shown to have taken place in any considerable numbers it would not be a matter for wonder.
Preparations for a general assault.
We have seen that during the seven weeks in which Mahomet’s army had been encamped before the triple walls of the Queen City he had attempted to capture it by attacks directed almost exclusively against the landward walls. He was now preparing to make one directed upon all parts of the city together. Hitherto, notwithstanding his balistas, mangonels, and spingards, his turrets, his cannon and his mining operations, he had failed. But his preparations had all rendered the general assault which he contemplated more formidable in character and easier of accomplishment. He had collected together all the various appliances known to mediaeval engineers for attacking a walled city; two thousand scaling-ladders were ready for the assault, hooks for pulling down stones, destroying the walls, and forcing an entry. But the amassing of all his paraphernalia, and even all his mining operations, sink into insignificance as preparations for a general attack when compared with the work done by his great cannon. Primitive as they were in construction when measured with the guns of our own days, the Turks had employed them effectively.
Breaches made by Turks in three places.
They had concentrated their fire mainly in three places. Five cannon had discharged their balls against the walls between the Palace of Porphyrogenitus and the Adrianople Gate; four, among which was the largest, against those in the Lycus valley near the Romanus Gate, and three against the walls near the Third Military Gate.
The evidence presented to-day by the ruined condition of the walls in these places corroborates the statements made by contemporaries, that these were the principal places bombarded. Mahomet was already able to claim with some justice that he had opened three entrances for his army into the city.[358] Several of the towers between the Adrianople Gate and Caligaria had been destroyed. The Anatolian division had greatly weakened those in the neighbourhood of the Third Military Gate. But the most extensive destruction had been wrought by the Janissaries with the aid of the great cannon of Urban. While in each of the three places mentioned the Outer Wall is even now in an exceptionally dilapidated condition, the ruins in the valley of the Lycus show that this was the place where the cannon Lycus valley chief point of attack. had been steadily pounding day and night. Along almost the whole length of the foss, extending for upwards of three miles, its side walls and a great portion of the breastwork still remain, mostly, to all appearances, as solid as when they were new. But in the lower part of the Lycus valley hardly more than a trace of either is to be distinguished. The breastwork had been entirely destroyed and had helped to raise the foss to the level of the adjoining ground. A large portion of the Outer Wall and some of its towers had been broken down. The ruins of the Bactatinean tower had helped to fill the ditch; two towers of the great Inner Wall had fallen. A breach of twelve hundred feet long according to Tetaldi had been made opposite the place where Mahomet had his tent.[359] Here, where the largest cannon was placed, the struggles had been keenest. Here was the station of John Justiniani with his two thousand men, among whom were his own four hundred Genoese cuirassiers with their arms glittering in the sun to the delight, says Leonard, of their Greek fellow fighters. While the cannon had greatly damaged the walls in the other two places mentioned, here, says Critobulus, they had entirely destroyed them. There was a wall no longer, nor did there in this part exist any longer a ditch, for it had been filled up by the Turkish troops.[360]
Hence it was that in this part Justiniani and those under him had been constantly occupied in repairs. Day after day the diarists recount that the principal occupation of the besieged was to repair during the night the part of the walls destroyed during the day by the cannon. Without experience of the power of great guns even in their then early stage of development, the besieged tried to lessen the force of the balls by suspending from the summit of the walls a sheathing of bales of wool. This and other expedients had failed.
Construction of stockade.
As the best substitute for the broken-down Outer Wall Justiniani had gradually, as it was destroyed, constructed a Stockade, called by the Latin writers a Vallum and by the Greeks a Stauroma. On the ruined wall a new one was thus built almost as rapidly as the old one was destroyed. It was made with such materials as were at hand, of stones from the broken wall, of baulks of timber, of trees and branches, and even of crates filled with straw and vine cuttings, of ladders and fascines, all cemented hastily together with earth and clay. The whole was faced with hides and skins so as to prevent the materials being burnt by ‘fire-bearing arrows.’ In employing earth and clay the defenders intended that the stone cannon-balls should bury themselves in the yielding mass and thus do less damage than when striking against stone. Within the stockade was a second ditch from which probably the clay had been removed to cement the materials of the stockade, while above it were placed barrels or vats filled with earth so as to form a crenellation and a defence to the fighters against the missiles of the Turks.