Mehmed the Conqueror
Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II forged a superpower in the 15th century by ruthlessly campaigning against an array of powerful enemies
Discover how this sultan crushed the remnants of the Byzantine Empire
“Advance my friends and children!” Sultan Mehmed II shouted to the Ottoman troops preparing to attack the landward walls of Constantinople in the early morning hours of 29 May 1453. “Now is the moment to prove yourself worthy men!”
With parade ground precision, the provincial troops streamed forwards shouting “Allah!” As they tried to scale a makeshift barricade plugging a breach in the walls made by the sultan’s siege guns, they recoiled from the barrage of rocks, buckets of hot pitch and molten streams of Greek fire hurled at them by the Byzantine defenders.
Mehmed rode forward to check the progress of the assault. He screamed, shouted and swore in an effort to will his army into the city. He waved forward fresh units to maintain heavy pressure on the Christian defenders. After a superhuman effort, the Anatolians withdrew, having failed to overwhelm the enemy.
Mehmed had one last chance for victory on 29 May 1453, in what he had decided several days earlier would be his final attack on the city after a 53-day siege. If he combined his elite palace regiments with his janissary brigade, he would have enough men for another assault. Demonstrating the quick thinking that was the mark of a great commander, Mehmed personally led them to their jump-off point. They were eager for battle and welcomed an opportunity to prove themselves in front of their sultan.
As they fought at the stockade, Mehmed rode back and forth behind them yelling encouragement. Despite the auspicious start to their attack, it faltered like the one before it. Then a pair of fortunate incidents gave the Ottomans the advantage they needed to overwhelm the exhausted defenders.
Game of deception
Although Mehmed had two half-brothers ahead of him in line for the succession to the imperial throne, both of them died prematurely. From an early age Mehmed had an extremely volatile personality, which frequently manifested itself throughout his rule in bouts of rage.
After two false starts in the 1440s, in which his father Murad II abdicated in favour of Mehmed only to be recalled by the grand vizier when his son proved too inexperienced to establish stability, Mehmed at last became sultan on 3 February 1451, upon his father’s death. Mehmed quickly ratified existing treaties and truces with the Byzantines, Hungarians, Serbians and Venetians. The Christians saw him as a bumbling, weak sultan because of his earlier false starts, but Mehmed was consciously deceiving them.
Mehmed’s pledge of peaceful intentions to Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus had been entirely false. Constantinople had long been a thorn in the side of the Ottomans. The Byzantine Empire’s existence interrupted the routine movement of the Porte’s military forces back and forth between Anatolia and Rumelia. Moreover, it also sparked Christian crusades – in 1396, 1444 and 1448 – designed to ‘liberate’ Constantinople from the clutches of the surrounding Ottoman sultanate. The strength of the sultanate was evident in its having defeated the crusaders each time.
To remedy the situation, Mehmed decided he would not only begin a rapid ship-building program in the northern Aegean, but also construct a fortress on the European side opposite Anadolu Hisar. Mehmed named the fortress, which he intended to serve as a forward base for siege operations against Constantinople, Bogazkesen Hisar, meaning ‘strait cutter’ fortress, as it was intended in part to ensure the Ottomans controlled maritime trade in the Black Sea region. The site where the Ottomans would build the castle was Byzantine territory, and therefore the project would show that Mehmed had no qualms about violating Byzantine sovereignty.
Construction began in April 1452 and was completed in the record time of four months. When Emperor Constantine XI sent emissaries to Mehmed in June 1452 bearing gifts and imploring him to desist, he had them beheaded. It was tantamount to a declaration of war.
While he was overseeing the construction of Bogazkesen, also known as Rumeli Hisar, a Hungarian engineer named Urban approached Mehmed with the offer to custom build large bombards capable of knocking down thick walls. Urban had approached Constantine XI first, but the Byzantine emperor could not afford the high cost of the weapons. Mehmed took Urban up on the offer.
Mehmed decided to test the first bombard that Urban furnished at Rumeli Hisar. The garrison mounted the bronze cannon, which could fire 272-kilogram (600-pound) stone balls, in the tower nearest the water. At that location, the Bosporus is only 640 metres (700 yards) wide, a distance that was in range of the large bombard. Mehmed issued orders that all vessels were to heave to for inspection by the Ottoman navy. This was done to ensure that grain and other supplies were not delivered by the Latin colonies on the shores of the Black Sea to Constantinople for the upcoming siege.
On 25 November 1452 three Venetian merchant ships tried to run the gauntlet.
Two succeeded, but one bearing grain for Constantinople was sunk by a direct hit. The Ottomans fished the sailors and captain out of the water. Mehmed ordered the sailors beheaded and the captain impaled as a warning to other vessels.
Artillery advantage
By expanding the Ottoman navy and procuring powerful new siege cannons that had only become available in Europe in the 15th century, Mehmed had the tools and equipment he needed to besiege Constantinople with confidence. Constantine, who was not able to get large-scale reinforcements from the Papacy or the Republic of Venice, had to make do with his garrison and a small number of reinforcements from Genoa. For the battle that was brewing, the Ottoman army could field 80,000 men against the Byzantines’ 6,000 Greek and 3,000 foreign troops. The Ottoman navy that arrived off Constantinople totalled 125 ships, which was five times the number of ships the Byzantines had in their harbour, known as the Golden Horn. A massive chain that floated on wooden blocks barred the entrance to the harbour.
Urban’s great bronze bombard used at Rumeli Hisar had greatly impressed Mehmed, and he ordered even larger guns to batter the thick walls of Constantinople. Mehmed ordered a foundry built at Edirne (Adrianople) for the manufacture of the bombards and smaller guns. Urban’s mightiest bombard was eight metres (27-feet) long and fired a stone ball weighing 608 kilograms (1,340 pounds). The gun was transported to the vicinity of Constantinople in March 1453. Although the Greeks in Constantinople had artillery, their towers were too fragile to accommodate the vibration that occurred when they were fired.
Mehmed joined his army before the walls of Constantinople on 5 April. He sent an emissary requesting immediate, voluntary surrender as required by Islamic law in return for a guarantee of the safety of the inhabitants, but Constantine declined the offer. Although the Byzantine emperor knew that he was heavily outnumbered and likely to suffer a terrible defeat, he chose to fight for the honour of his people.
Constantine had to stretch his army thin to man the 23 kilometres (14 miles) of walls and the 96 towers. The city was defended by an outer curtain and a higher inner wall. A wide ditch in front of the outer landward wall was designed to slow the assault. The Byzantine emperor hired Genoese engineer Giovanni Giustiniani to improve the city’s defences. Giustiniani, who arrived with 700 Genoese troops, put men to work repairing and strengthening the walls.
Meticulous planner
Mehmed was a well-rounded commander who could not only lead troops in battle, but also had an aptitude for planning and logistics. Moreover, he was keen on employing the latest scientific methodologies in siege warfare, such as bronze bombards.
On 6 April 1453 the Ottoman army arrived outside Constantinople. The sultan bivouacked opposite the centre of the landward walls between the Romanus and Charisius gates. The Ottoman artillerymen fired the great bronze bombard for the first time five days later, and it brought down a large section of wall near the Charisius Gate. To the astonishment of the besiegers, the Greeks repaired the wall during the night. In April initial attempts to storm the defences failed, but the bombardment of the walls continued unabated.
The Christians benefitted from not having to defend the two kilometres (three miles) of walls overlooking the harbour known as Golden Horn, but this soon changed. In early April Mehmed set his engineers to work constructing a roadway that would run from the Sea of Marmara, over the 60-metre (200-feet) high hill behind the suburb of Galata on the opposite bank of the Golden Horn from the great city, and down to a place known as the Valley of the Springs. From there the ships could be rowed
“THE OTTOMAN NAVY THAT ARRIVED OFF CONSTANTINOPLE TOTALLED 125 SHIPS, WHICH WAS FIVE TIMES THE NUMBER OF SHIPS THE BYZANTINES HAD IN THEIR HARBOUR”
into the harbour, thus bypassing the great chain blocking the main entrance to the Golden Horn.
On 22 April teams of oxen and hundreds of men dragged 80 small and medium-sized ships on a track of greased logs over the hill and down to the waterway on the other side. It was a herculean task, but the Ottomans had skilled engineers and plenty of manpower. Mehmed then ordered a pontoon bridge constructed across the Golden Horn for a secondary attack on the walls overlooking the harbour.
Final assault
When rumours reached Mehmed in midmay that a Hungarian army was marching to the relief of Constantinople, the sultan set 29 May for the final grand assault against Constantinople. Mehmed directed that assaults should be made against both the land and sea walls to stretch the defences to breaking point. On the morning of the attack, Emperor Constantine and Giustiniani assembled their best 2,000 fighters between the inner and outer walls in the centre of the land walls to fend off the Ottoman army’s main attack.
Although the valiant Christians repulsed multiple assault waves, a small group of Ottoman soldiers found a secret entrance left unguarded near the Blachernae Palace. This constituted the first fortunate incident that led to the Ottoman victory.
50 Ottoman soldiers rushed up a set of stairs and captured a section of the wall. They then seized a tower and opened a gate for other Ottoman soldiers to enter the city. The Ottoman soldiers tore down the Venetian and Byzantine standards on the section of the rampart they had captured and raised the Ottoman standard in their place.
About the same time, Giustiniani received a severe wound and quit the fight. This was the second incident that enabled the Ottomans to prevail. Seeing his departure, the defenders’ morale sank. Constantine apparently died in the fighting, but his body was never found.
Although Mehmed had promised his soldiers three days of looting, the sultan only granted them one day of pillage. Mehmed entered the city in the late afternoon at the head of a victory procession that included his ministers, imams and janissaries. Following the city’s conquest, Mehmed renamed it Istanbul.
The fall of Constantinople sent waves of panic through Latin Christendom, putting the Papacy, the Genoese and Venetians on edge in the years that followed, as the Porte began chipping away at their colonies in the Aegean and Black seas.
Enduring legend
Mehmed led 19 campaigns during his life, two-thirds of which were conducted in Eastern Europe. He was in the field constantly, moving back and forth between the Porte’s western and eastern fronts. Ever since he was a boy Mehmed had dreamed of conquest and was determined to conquer Rome. Although this would prove out of reach, he nevertheless led Ottoman armies against an array of Christian foes in the Balkans. He annexed for the burgeoning Ottoman sultanate key regions that previously paid tribute, such as Albania, Serbia and Wallachia.
In 1456 Mehmed besieged Belgrade in Serbia. Janos Hunyadi, the principal commander for the Hungarians, moved to relieve the siege. Belgrade was a strong fortress, and Mehmed underestimated the difficulty he would have trying to conquer it. Hunyadi conducted a successful counterattack on 21 July 1456 against the besieging Ottoman army. The Hungarians surrounded and cut to pieces Mehmed’s janissaries, who had infiltrated the fortress, and also used combustible materials to burn the janissaries in the ditches at the base of the walls.
The Hungarians fought their way to the sultan’s camp. Mehmed drew his sword and waded into the attackers. His bravery was beyond reproach. In the furious fighting that followed he received a severe arrow wound in his thigh. The Turks fled in panic. Shortly afterwards, Mehmed ordered the execution of several of his generals. As for Hunyadi, he succumbed to an outbreak of the plague. Without the Hungarian general to come to its aid, Serbia was annexed in 1459.
“EVER SINCE HE WAS A BOY MEHMED HAD DREAMED OF CONQUEST AND WAS DETERMINED TO CONQUER ROME”
“Put out like a candle”
One of Mehmed’s top priorities after the conquest of Istanbul was to eliminate the remaining Byzantine dynasts who might attempt to resurrect the Byzantine Empire. This included eradicating the remaining descendents of the Komnenos and Palaeologus imperial dynasties to ensure that they did not try to expand and retake former Byzantine territories now in the possession of the Ottomans. When Thomas and Demetrius Palaeologus, brothers of the slain Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI and rulers of Morea (Peloponnese), refused to pay their annual tribute to the sultan in 1460, Mehmed drove them into exile and annexed the region.
In 1461 Mehmed led an army of more than 100,000 into Anatolia to remove David Komnenos from power in the tiny Empire of Trebizond. The campaign would be noteworthy for the coordination of the Ottoman land and sea forces. One of Mehmed’s strengths was his secrecy, which prevented enemies from receiving advance warning of an attack through deserters and spies. When one of his senior
commanders accompanying the expedition asked where they were going, Mehmed replied, “If the hair of my beard knew of my plans, I would pull it out and burn it.” He maintained strict secrecy while campaigning in Rumelia, too. For example, in 1466, as he marched through Bulgaria, no one knew whether his objective was Albania, Morea or Serbia. It turned out to be Albania.
The sultan led the army on a gruelling march through mountainous terrain in hostile territory to reach Trebizond. He captured the city after an 11-month siege that ended in August
1461. Afterwards, Mehmed imprisoned David Komnenos and his extended family. Two years later he ordered the execution of David and six of his seven sons. The youngest son, whose life was spared, was raised as a Muslim.
Mehmed strictly adhered to his policy of not allowing a prince to survive in a region that the Ottomans conquered. Following the fall of the Bosnian stronghold of Bobovac to Mehmed in 1463, King Stephen of Bosnia asked the sultan to spare his life. Mehmed granted his request. However, he did so deceitfully, for he did not honour his word to Christians. Stephen was summarily executed. The king was “put out like a candle,” quipped Mahmud Pasha, the Ottoman grand vizier.
In 1473 Mehmed would conduct another major campaign in eastern Anatolia. His objective was to nullify the threat posed by Uzun Hasan, the leader of the White Sheep Turcomans. While maintaining a tight grip on his army, Mehmed’s large force crushed the Turcomans at Otlukbeli, capturing 3,000 prisoners in the process. On his return march to Istanbul, Mehmed ordered several hundred of the prisoners executed each day as a warning to other Turcoman tribes not to trifle with the Ottomans.
Worthy opponents
After removing the Byzantine dynastic threat, Mehmed turned his attention to eliminating threats to his Rumelian territories. He led his army north through the dark forests of Wallachia in 1461 where Vlad III ‘The Impaler’ Tepes had impaled thousands of Bulgars and Ottomans in an effort to terrify his foes. Vlad not only refused to pay tribute but also conducted frequent raids into Ottomancontrolled northern Bulgaria. Mehmed did not flinch at the horrors but remained tightly focused on his objectives. Mehmed ultimately drove Vlad into exile and struck an agreement with Vlad’s more moderate brother Radu III, who became a loyal vassal.
Mehmed’s determination to remain focused on his military objectives despite repeated setbacks is most evident in his effort to conquer Albania. In trying to secure the mountainous territory in 1466, he met his greatest foe next to Hunyadi. George Castriot, better known as Skanderbeg, was a former Ottoman governor who had switched sides three years earlier. After switching sides, Skanderbeg fiercely resisted Mehmed’s efforts to subjugate feudal Albania. The Ottomans conducted 13 offensives against the Albanians during Mehmed’s reign.
The Albanian offensives were part of the broader First Ottoman-venetian War from
1463 to 1479. Following Skanderbeg’s death in 1468, Mehmed ordered all of the Albanian strongholds destroyed or dismantled to remove the threat of guerrilla operations against Ottoman supply lines.
Mehmed the Conqueror expanded the Ottoman Empire with the addition of Albania, Bosnia,
Morea and Serbia, thus setting the stage for his successors to invade Hungary. He also consolidated Ottoman territory in Anatolia with the conquest of Trebizond and Karamania.
He was determined, strong-willed and visionary. He was a cunning statesman, an excellent military engineer and an inspiring battlefield commander. Although he acted in ways that might be regarded in today’s world as cunning and cruel, in truth they were similar to those exercised by comparable sovereigns in adjoining regions.
Mehmed certainly suffered his fair share of setbacks, such as the failed siege of Belgrade in 1456 and Rhodes in 1480. Yet at the same time he was able to win great victories under arduous circumstances. For his many and varied achievements, he belongs in the pantheon of the greatly feared and respected Ottoman sultans.