Into the Breach.
29th May 1453
Silence loomed over Constantinople, pierced here and there by the shriek of carrion hawks. A stench festered outside the crippled land walls, where a mist of flies hovered over a great stripe of slaughter. Ottoman corpses lay piled in the ditch; Byzantine dead lay dashed and broken at the foot of the outer wall. Months of decay had turned them from men into nightmarish cages of bone and putrefying meat. A war like the world had never seen. And now, on the twenty-ninth of May of the Christian year fourteen-fifty-three, the final hour approached.
Throughout the siege, the sultan’s guns had thundered relentlessly, punching through the twin-layered defences, blowing away the invincibility they had assured for over a thousand years. Chasms yawned like missing teeth in a decrepit mouth. Behind the breaches, the dilapidated city wards lay exposed, teasing the Ottoman horde on the plains. The gaps betrayed a handful of proud, ancient palaces and churches, but also wild meadows and orchards sprouting from the tumbledown ruins of what used to be public squares, workshops and armouries. Once the greatest city in the world, Constantinople was now but an echo of what had gone before.
Defiant, the people – what few were left within – had turned to their greatest ally: weeks of religious processions and chanting had been observed, but the time for appealing to God was past. Now, it would be a game of steel. As the sun began to slip into the western horizon, the defenders positioned themselves along the battlements. Just seven thousand souls – soldiers alongside farmers and beggars – stared fearfully at the silhouetted sea of Ottoman tents, men and horses out there, making their final preparations.
Just when it seemed like the darkness might come and Constantinople would be granted a stay of execution for another day, a commander’s shrill cry rang out from the enemy camp. An order, quickly repeated at many points along the enemy front. Flags rose and caught the hot, dusty wind. A chorus of bugles sang.
The last defenders of Constantinople bristled. Trumpets sounded the length of the land walls. The archers on the parapets fumbled to nock arrows to their bows, fingers shaking with fear. The spearmen stared with widening eyes at the impossible odds coming for them. ‘Were our defences intact, we might stand a chance,’ croaked one, looking past his gaunt, grubby-faced comrades towards the nearest of the breaches. ‘But the walls are broken.’ He gulped, shaking madly. ‘All hope is lost.’
‘No,’ said another. ‘Look!’
Down on the ground, just north of the fifth military gate, a group of eighty men filed out from the gates of the inner wall. They spilled into and filled the breach rent by the sultan’s great bombard. Imperial Guard Captain Darius was the last to exit the gate. ‘Shoulder-to-shoulder,’ he barked, striding to and fro behind them, eyeing the blurry mass on the horizon, coming closer. ‘Shield-to-shield!’
With a clack-clack, his terrified men arranged themselves like this – a wall of steel, flesh and bone in place of the giant stone rampart that the guns had blown away. Darius eyed the mass of steel coming for them, felt the ground trembling underfoot. He took out his sword, running his fingers along the blade’s edge to test his steadiness of hand.
This weapon had served him well over the years. Staring back at him from its dull surface were his own hawk-like features: dark brown eyes, a classic aquiline nose, olive skin framed by long, dark curls and a weeks-untended beard. He felt an absurd urge to laugh at how Greek he looked, yet his face stayed devoid of emotion. He closed his eyes and gazed back through time, into the silent vaults of memory.
Born and bred in Kerman, he was a native of long-fallen Persia. His people had followed the light of Zoroaster faithfully, yet the Ottoman Empire had swept over them, unhindered by his or any other god. Here he stood now in the role he had trained so hard for. Not as Imperial Guard Captain, marshal of the ground defences and last hope for the Byzantine Empire… but as an Ottoman spy and saboteur, positioned right at the weakest spot in the defences of Constantinople.
The sultan had spared him and his parents in return for this show of fealty, and had rewarded him handsomely. Their lives meant everything and always would – those few more years with them before they passed naturally were golden, and now they lived on in his heart. After that, it was the Sultan’s golden coins that had kept him loyal, but his love of those had quickly dulled. Now, here he was, after two years in the city. He had risen to this position through the imperial ranks – or what was left of them – at a fine pace. Not so fast as to draw unwanted attention, though. Day upon day he had worked under both scorching sun and bitter rain to excel, to be noticed – to get into a position of trust. All so he might cause his men to falter at the vital moment. And this was the moment. Such a devious plan by the Sultan; almost Byzantine in its duplicity, he thought. ‘Time to earn my coin,’ he said quietly.
‘Sir?’ a young voice wavered.
Darius looked up at the boy in the defensive line who had glanced over his shoulder. Proteus was his name. Not even fifteen, yet he was second-in-command of this unit. His face was streaked with a nervous sweat, his eyes searching.
‘Take heart, Proteus,’ he sighed as he stood tall and stepped into line next to him. He had trained this boy for over a year now. Unable to hold the lad’s gaze, Darius cast his eyes along the walls. ‘For your emperor fights with us tonight.’ He pointed towards the Gate of St. Romanus, where Emperor Constantine XI stood on the parapet with his people. Proteus could only gulp as he eyed the imperial purple of the banner, writhing gently in the weak wind.
Darius heard panting all along his thin line of men. Their chests rose in fell with snatched gasps. All eyes were like moons, trained on the tidal wave of Ottoman soldiery streaming towards them. Closer, closer, they came as the sun slipped away. A thick hood of dust billowed up behind their advance, like a cobra rising, darkening the twilight to black.
Darius’ eyes narrowed, his heart pumped, the blood pounding in his ears. He could see them clearly now: levy troops advancing in a frenzied charge, spears, ladders and ropes at the ready. A wall of janissaries – elites, clad in steel and bright robes – followed. Waves of cavalry cantered to the rear, itching to burst forward, to hammer into the first glimpse of weakness in the Byzantine lines. Tens of thousands of voices howled with all they had in their lungs: ‘Allahu Akbar!’
He thought back to his early report to the Sultan: The walls of Constantinople are guarded staunchly, with at least five hundred soldiers stationed on each section. Yet here he stood in the rubble of a broken section of wall, with just eighty starving and exhausted wretches.
‘Ready!’ he snarled over the enemy cries – cacophonic and deafening.
The eighty men braced, presenting their arms: hoes, sticks, clubs and a precious few spears and swords. Armour was nowhere to be seen, apart from the rusting mail vest he wore on his body. How had the once-mighty Roman Empire had capitulated into this…..chaos?
There would be no hope of repelling this attack, he realised then – whether he intervened or not. His handful of soldier-citizens would be washed into the city like broken twigs in a rainstorm. The instructions from the Sultan echoed in his thoughts: give your men confusing, contradictory instruction. See that they go unwatered and poorly fed before we attack. Then, when we advance… just step aside.
He lifted his sword, pointing the tip forward, training it upon an Ottoman regular at the centre of the advance. His eyes blurred, and his mind flickered to the villa in the Venetian quarter, where Adora would be right now, feeding little Michael, praying for her husband’s soul.
Two years in Constantinople is a long time for a disenchanted soul, he thought. It was only a few months after arriving at the gates of the city, looking to enlist in the imperial ranks, when he first lay with Adora. A casual fling, he called it when talking ribald with his barrack. Something to help pass the time while he weaved the plans of the Sultan, he told himself as months rolled by. When she fell pregnant, that inner voice disappeared. They married two months ago, and little Michael was born a month later.
His heart pounded in confusion. Would they be spared as promised? Would the bloodthirsty invaders recognise and spare his family as they ransacked the very fabric of this city?
Then sounded the clatter of ladders and timbers being thrown down to bridge the ditch, then the thunder of boots and a renewed Ottoman war cry. Darius was sucked from his memories and thrust back into chilling reality. The wall of frenzied Ottoman auxiliaries rushed at him, only strides from his sword point and bent on letting blood. This was the moment – where he was due to fall back, to step away, to leave his men to their fates.
Darius glanced swiftly to either side. His men were braced alongside him: outthrust chests, tears sparkling on their faces – twisted in determination. The meal, he thought, recalling the bread, the good venison and wine he had bought for his eighty that day, it was a fine one.
The voices in his mind fell silent at once. He glared at the snarling, spitting Ottoman auxiliary speeding for him, and raised his sword to strike.
‘For the city!’ he screamed. ‘For the Empire!’
He barely recognised his own voice. For Adora and Michael, he heard as the cry echoed around him. He thrust his blade into the throat of the screaming warrior, just as the Ottoman wall of iron smashed into the Byzantine line. Warm blood haemorrhaged over his sword arm, confirming what he had felt for some time now. In his mind, the image of his time in the Sultan’s camp shattered like a mirror.
Darius felt his men push bravely into the swell, only for their meagre numbers to fail them. The line began to cave in. A blur of butting and hacking followed, swathes of blood spattering the cavity of the outer wall they simply had to hold. How many Byzantines still stood was uncertain, but Darius felt no urge to turn, no desire to flee. And certainly no sense of duty to step to one side, to allow the sultan’s army access to this city. My home. Darius felt his weary, numb limbs grow warm again. A sense of giddy elation overcame him, coursing through his veins. This city would not fall while he lived.
The Janissary’s blade punched through his chest, cutting his heart in two. Lifeblood flooded from the wound. Darius crumpled to the ground alongside his stricken men. As his body cooled, his mind filled with the warm vision of his wife and child.
‘My people’, he whispered in a death rattle.
Throughout the siege, the sultan’s guns had thundered relentlessly, punching through the twin-layered defences, blowing away the invincibility they had assured for over a thousand years. Chasms yawned like missing teeth in a decrepit mouth. Behind the breaches, the dilapidated city wards lay exposed, teasing the Ottoman horde on the plains. The gaps betrayed a handful of proud, ancient palaces and churches, but also wild meadows and orchards sprouting from the tumbledown ruins of what used to be public squares, workshops and armouries. Once the greatest city in the world, Constantinople was now but an echo of what had gone before.
Defiant, the people – what few were left within – had turned to their greatest ally: weeks of religious processions and chanting had been observed, but the time for appealing to God was past. Now, it would be a game of steel. As the sun began to slip into the western horizon, the defenders positioned themselves along the battlements. Just seven thousand souls – soldiers alongside farmers and beggars – stared fearfully at the silhouetted sea of Ottoman tents, men and horses out there, making their final preparations.
Just when it seemed like the darkness might come and Constantinople would be granted a stay of execution for another day, a commander’s shrill cry rang out from the enemy camp. An order, quickly repeated at many points along the enemy front. Flags rose and caught the hot, dusty wind. A chorus of bugles sang.
The last defenders of Constantinople bristled. Trumpets sounded the length of the land walls. The archers on the parapets fumbled to nock arrows to their bows, fingers shaking with fear. The spearmen stared with widening eyes at the impossible odds coming for them. ‘Were our defences intact, we might stand a chance,’ croaked one, looking past his gaunt, grubby-faced comrades towards the nearest of the breaches. ‘But the walls are broken.’ He gulped, shaking madly. ‘All hope is lost.’
‘No,’ said another. ‘Look!’
Down on the ground, just north of the fifth military gate, a group of eighty men filed out from the gates of the inner wall. They spilled into and filled the breach rent by the sultan’s great bombard. Imperial Guard Captain Darius was the last to exit the gate. ‘Shoulder-to-shoulder,’ he barked, striding to and fro behind them, eyeing the blurry mass on the horizon, coming closer. ‘Shield-to-shield!’
With a clack-clack, his terrified men arranged themselves like this – a wall of steel, flesh and bone in place of the giant stone rampart that the guns had blown away. Darius eyed the mass of steel coming for them, felt the ground trembling underfoot. He took out his sword, running his fingers along the blade’s edge to test his steadiness of hand.
This weapon had served him well over the years. Staring back at him from its dull surface were his own hawk-like features: dark brown eyes, a classic aquiline nose, olive skin framed by long, dark curls and a weeks-untended beard. He felt an absurd urge to laugh at how Greek he looked, yet his face stayed devoid of emotion. He closed his eyes and gazed back through time, into the silent vaults of memory.
Born and bred in Kerman, he was a native of long-fallen Persia. His people had followed the light of Zoroaster faithfully, yet the Ottoman Empire had swept over them, unhindered by his or any other god. Here he stood now in the role he had trained so hard for. Not as Imperial Guard Captain, marshal of the ground defences and last hope for the Byzantine Empire… but as an Ottoman spy and saboteur, positioned right at the weakest spot in the defences of Constantinople.
The sultan had spared him and his parents in return for this show of fealty, and had rewarded him handsomely. Their lives meant everything and always would – those few more years with them before they passed naturally were golden, and now they lived on in his heart. After that, it was the Sultan’s golden coins that had kept him loyal, but his love of those had quickly dulled. Now, here he was, after two years in the city. He had risen to this position through the imperial ranks – or what was left of them – at a fine pace. Not so fast as to draw unwanted attention, though. Day upon day he had worked under both scorching sun and bitter rain to excel, to be noticed – to get into a position of trust. All so he might cause his men to falter at the vital moment. And this was the moment. Such a devious plan by the Sultan; almost Byzantine in its duplicity, he thought. ‘Time to earn my coin,’ he said quietly.
‘Sir?’ a young voice wavered.
Darius looked up at the boy in the defensive line who had glanced over his shoulder. Proteus was his name. Not even fifteen, yet he was second-in-command of this unit. His face was streaked with a nervous sweat, his eyes searching.
‘Take heart, Proteus,’ he sighed as he stood tall and stepped into line next to him. He had trained this boy for over a year now. Unable to hold the lad’s gaze, Darius cast his eyes along the walls. ‘For your emperor fights with us tonight.’ He pointed towards the Gate of St. Romanus, where Emperor Constantine XI stood on the parapet with his people. Proteus could only gulp as he eyed the imperial purple of the banner, writhing gently in the weak wind.
Darius heard panting all along his thin line of men. Their chests rose in fell with snatched gasps. All eyes were like moons, trained on the tidal wave of Ottoman soldiery streaming towards them. Closer, closer, they came as the sun slipped away. A thick hood of dust billowed up behind their advance, like a cobra rising, darkening the twilight to black.
Darius’ eyes narrowed, his heart pumped, the blood pounding in his ears. He could see them clearly now: levy troops advancing in a frenzied charge, spears, ladders and ropes at the ready. A wall of janissaries – elites, clad in steel and bright robes – followed. Waves of cavalry cantered to the rear, itching to burst forward, to hammer into the first glimpse of weakness in the Byzantine lines. Tens of thousands of voices howled with all they had in their lungs: ‘Allahu Akbar!’
He thought back to his early report to the Sultan: The walls of Constantinople are guarded staunchly, with at least five hundred soldiers stationed on each section. Yet here he stood in the rubble of a broken section of wall, with just eighty starving and exhausted wretches.
‘Ready!’ he snarled over the enemy cries – cacophonic and deafening.
The eighty men braced, presenting their arms: hoes, sticks, clubs and a precious few spears and swords. Armour was nowhere to be seen, apart from the rusting mail vest he wore on his body. How had the once-mighty Roman Empire had capitulated into this…..chaos?
There would be no hope of repelling this attack, he realised then – whether he intervened or not. His handful of soldier-citizens would be washed into the city like broken twigs in a rainstorm. The instructions from the Sultan echoed in his thoughts: give your men confusing, contradictory instruction. See that they go unwatered and poorly fed before we attack. Then, when we advance… just step aside.
He lifted his sword, pointing the tip forward, training it upon an Ottoman regular at the centre of the advance. His eyes blurred, and his mind flickered to the villa in the Venetian quarter, where Adora would be right now, feeding little Michael, praying for her husband’s soul.
Two years in Constantinople is a long time for a disenchanted soul, he thought. It was only a few months after arriving at the gates of the city, looking to enlist in the imperial ranks, when he first lay with Adora. A casual fling, he called it when talking ribald with his barrack. Something to help pass the time while he weaved the plans of the Sultan, he told himself as months rolled by. When she fell pregnant, that inner voice disappeared. They married two months ago, and little Michael was born a month later.
His heart pounded in confusion. Would they be spared as promised? Would the bloodthirsty invaders recognise and spare his family as they ransacked the very fabric of this city?
Then sounded the clatter of ladders and timbers being thrown down to bridge the ditch, then the thunder of boots and a renewed Ottoman war cry. Darius was sucked from his memories and thrust back into chilling reality. The wall of frenzied Ottoman auxiliaries rushed at him, only strides from his sword point and bent on letting blood. This was the moment – where he was due to fall back, to step away, to leave his men to their fates.
Darius glanced swiftly to either side. His men were braced alongside him: outthrust chests, tears sparkling on their faces – twisted in determination. The meal, he thought, recalling the bread, the good venison and wine he had bought for his eighty that day, it was a fine one.
The voices in his mind fell silent at once. He glared at the snarling, spitting Ottoman auxiliary speeding for him, and raised his sword to strike.
‘For the city!’ he screamed. ‘For the Empire!’
He barely recognised his own voice. For Adora and Michael, he heard as the cry echoed around him. He thrust his blade into the throat of the screaming warrior, just as the Ottoman wall of iron smashed into the Byzantine line. Warm blood haemorrhaged over his sword arm, confirming what he had felt for some time now. In his mind, the image of his time in the Sultan’s camp shattered like a mirror.
Darius felt his men push bravely into the swell, only for their meagre numbers to fail them. The line began to cave in. A blur of butting and hacking followed, swathes of blood spattering the cavity of the outer wall they simply had to hold. How many Byzantines still stood was uncertain, but Darius felt no urge to turn, no desire to flee. And certainly no sense of duty to step to one side, to allow the sultan’s army access to this city. My home. Darius felt his weary, numb limbs grow warm again. A sense of giddy elation overcame him, coursing through his veins. This city would not fall while he lived.
The Janissary’s blade punched through his chest, cutting his heart in two. Lifeblood flooded from the wound. Darius crumpled to the ground alongside his stricken men. As his body cooled, his mind filled with the warm vision of his wife and child.
‘My people’, he whispered in a death rattle.