16 – 28 May 1453
Mines and the last offer
From mid May 1453 Zaganos Pasha’s miners, many of them Serbs from Novo Brdo, dig tunnels under the walls at the Kaligaria gate. The engineer Johannes Grant digs countermines, and his men break into the Ottoman tunnels on 16, 21, 23 and 25 May and destroy them with fire and Greek fire. On 23 May they capture two Ottoman officers, who reveal where the other tunnels are.
Eğrikapı, the Kaligaria gate of the Blachernae wallsWikimedia Commons, Jwslubbock, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Istanbul photos by J.Lubbock 2015 414.jpg)
On 18 May the Ottomans bring a wooden siege tower, covered with hides, up to the walls, and the defenders burn it in the night. Runciman puts it at the gate of St Romanos, Turkish histories at the Charisian gate on 19 May. On 19 May the Ottomans finish a bridge of barrels across the upper Horn, which joins Zaganos’s troops to the army before the walls.
A siege tower in a Byzantine copy of the Poliorketika of Apollodorus of Damascus, 11th or 12th centuryWikimedia Commons, unknown Byzantine scribe, Public domain (Apollodorus of Damascus, Poliorketika, siege tower.jpg)
On 21 May Mehmed sends an envoy and offers terms: Constantine may leave with his court and his property and rule the Morea, and the people who stay will be safe. Turkish histories date the offer to 23 or 24 May and name the envoy, Kasım Bey of the house of Candar, Mehmed’s brother-in-law. Constantine refuses to give up the city and offers a higher tribute. On 26 or 27 May Mehmed holds a council, where Çandarlı Halil Pasha urges him to lift the siege and Zaganos Pasha to attack, and Mehmed orders the final assault for 29 May.
Sources
- Nicolò Barbaro, Giornale dell’assedio di Costantinopoli (1453).
- Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina (about 1462).
- Michael Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror (about 1467).
- George Sphrantzes, Chronicon minus (about 1477).
- Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
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