Chapter VIII
The End of the Siege of Constantinople, Constantine's Counter Offensive
Concepts of offensive-defense have been around since the beginning of formal conflicts between peoples and states. In light of the situation that was befalling Constantinople in the summer of 1470, one can view the gallant Roman charge out into the plains to take the fight straight to the Mohammedan Turks after breaching the city walls of Constantinople as being part of this long military tradition. Had the Romans waited for the thrust of the larger Mohammedan armies, they would have likely been overwhelmed over the due course of time. But if the Romans attacked the Mohammedans, perhaps a combination of shock and cunningness could swing the battle into their favor.
With that in mind, Georgios Diogenes assembled some 2500 or so Roman soldiers and charged outside the city walls toward a Mohammedan army of twice or three times his size charging forthwith toward the breach. When the two forces collided, the weight of the Roman charge broke the ranks of the Mohammedans. Soon after, the Mohammedan advance had been completely halted despite their numerical advantage. The charge of the Romans eventually caused a panic in the Mohammedan ranks. During the engagement, the Mohammedan Sultan Ahmed I vanished in the confusion. At his disappearance, the rabble that had joined the armies in expectation for a quick victory fled thinking the Sultan had been killed.
The flight of the rabble and commoners who had swelled the Mohammedan ranks also caused a panic amongst the more experienced Turks, like the Janissaries. Rumors spread of the Sultan’s death, and they too dispersed from the field in grief and despair. However, the rumors were false. What had happened was the Sultan’s horse had buckled beneath him, sending the Sultan tumbling to the ground in the process. The men around, but not next to him, thought this was a sign of his demise and they panicked. Of course, by the time the Mohammedans had re-grouped in retreat, they learned that the Sultan was fine – but by then, the battle was all but over.
The Sultan, rather than continuing, retired his forces toward Edirne. The Siege of Constantinople had tested the strengths and limits of the Roman military. Indeed, it was more luck that the Romans had managed to escape their doom in 1470. A series of fortunate events all came together which allowed for a victory, a victory only in the sense that they managed to retain control of the city. The Battle for the city had left over half of the Roman defenders dead, over 6000 of the 12000 formal soldiers who defended the walls and streets had lost their lives. The Mohammedans had lost similar numbers, just under 6000 of the 13000 professional soldiers who marched out with the Sultan. Among the rabble that had joined the Sultan, it is like than about 10,000 or more had been killed. Among the citizenry of Constantinople, it is believed that upwards of 5,000 people perished in during the siege.
The victory at Constantinople preserved the empire from destruction. Depicted at right is a manuscript of Roman cavalrymen marching over the slain bodies of their enemies.
Despite the Romans holding the city, the matter quickly moved into a two-fold problem. The city walls had to be re-built, and the Roman Empire neither had the money or material to be able to accomplish this anytime soon. An attack on the city in the near future could result in the easy storming of the city without the continuous stretch of the Theodosian landwalls intact. Furthermore, the matter of fighting the war had now forced itself onto the Roman’s table. Although they had managed to hold the city from defeat, the question of how to proceed in the war reared its head.
The Romans had about 6-7000 men (the majority of them Athenian) in the Despotate of the Morea that was isolated from the Imperial Army’s main body that was stationed in Constantinople. The Mohammedan force was far larger, and although they had been beaten back at the city’s walls, the Mohammedan armies in Europe still numbered about 20,000 men, divided into smaller forces in different regions of Turkish Europe.
Although the Roman Imperial Army had the size to equal the Mohammedan force in Europe, the Romans themselves were still plagued by a lack of military competency and low morale among their soldiers. Despite the success of the First Macedonian War, the Turks still possessed a greater fighting force with superior technology and training. Georgios Diogenes, who was proclaimed a hero after the Siege of Constantinople, retained the loyalty of the Imperial Army while Emperor Constantine, formerly the favorite son of the Imperial Army, was relegated to the sidelines in the coming conflict. Constantine XI, as Emperor, was far too high among the social pyramid of Roman hierarchy to be given command (or to take command) of the Army of the Morea. At the same time, to impose direct control over the Imperial Army which had pledged their de-facto allegiance to the nobleman and hero Georgios Diogenes also seemed unwise.
Furthermore, Admiral Tornikes, now in his old age, had set sail from the Golden Horn to prevent the Mohammedan crossing of the Bosphorus. In October, as the Roman armies prepared to link up in Macedonia, the Roman fleet engaged a smaller Turkish fleet in the Aegean Sea and won a modest victory turning back their enemy at no losses to their own.
While faction rivalry still threatened the fabric of the Roman empire and Roman military, Emperor Constantine had thought it wise to remain out of the political foray that typified Roman nobility and administrative corruption and bureaucracy. Georgios Diogenes became the head of the Roman military wing, and for the next decade, would dominate the Roman military and its planning and strategy. Naturally however, one problem that Diogenes constantly wrote to Constantine was the lack of replacements to his losses – to which Constantine could only reply that Diogenes should be more careful in battle (even though Diogenes implicitly asked for a push for peace with the Mohammedans because, despite his success in Macedonia – continued warfare would lead to their defeat as the small Roman Empire simply did not have the reserves necessary to replenish lost men in battle).
Like the previous Macedonian War, the Komnenoi Family in Trebizond fled to Constantinople as the Mohammedan armies marched through the Black Sea provinces. By the end of 1470, the war was essentially in a stalemate. While the Romans had gained an advantage in Macedonia over the Turks, the Turks and their allies had gained absolutely superiority in Anatolia. The entire Despotate of Trebizond was bending under the weight of raids, pillages, and sieges, but the Romans had managed to isolate the two Mohammedan armies in Europe, the first in Epirus and the second in Wallachia and decided to engage them and defeat them while divided rather than giving them to chance to unite and fight on equal terms and with equal numbers.
Unlike the War in Laces that came to dominate Europe in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which war was seen as a gentlemanly sport of sorts to be played by European aristocrats, war in the Orient was far more deadly, severe, cruel, and barbaric. Shady tactics and ambushes almost always carried the day, and were often employed even by the Eastern Christian powers when necessary. The Battle of Epirus was no difference. The Roman-Athenian army of 19000 men suffered great losses at the hands of 7000 Turks hiding out in the Epirote foothills. When Diogenes had finally dislodged the Mohammedan warriors, he had lost close to 5,000 men; many of them not easily replaceable.
Despite the pyrrhic victory in Epirus, and the relative achievements in thwarting off the Mohammedan Turks and their allies, the empire was exhausted, its manpower depleted, and on the verge of war exhaustion entirely – another year or two of difficult fighting could have easily broke the back of the empire. From the north, an army of the Crimea moved south and was descending upon Constantinople when the alarms and the cries for salvation echoed into Diogenes’ ears. He swung the Imperial army north, now only about 8,000 men after various minor engagements, famine, and desertion, and placed himself at the historic site where the Goths had slaughtered Emperor Valens over a millennium ago – Adrianople. The decision to fight at Adrianople caused alarm to sweep through the Imperial ranks, Emperor Constantine himself was distraught that a repeat defeat would spell the end of the empire, as well as its end would be ironic and befitting following one of the saddest moments in Roman military history during an era when Rome itself was still among the unrivaled military machines in the world.
The Battle of Adrianople brought to a conclusion the Second Macedonian War. The Mohammedan army, led by Shah Jahan of the Crimean Khanate, totaling about 12,000 men, launched a brutal frontal assault upon the Roman infantry line. The Romans fought like true Romans, holding their ground against the face of superior odds and beat back the Mohammedan attack not once, but twice in a single day! As the Mohammedan soldiers broke the second time, Diogenes unleashed his cavalry arm to pursuit the fleeing enemy and struck them down in the fields where Roman soldiers had been butchered at the hands of the Goths. The victory was hailed as a sign of the mercy of the Almighty – a reversing of Rome’s embarrassment in 378 A.D. Despite this, and despite good conduct in the war, exhaustion had brought the empire to its knees rather than the Turks to theirs – the peace was unfavorable as no territory was gained, but Constantine XI and his armies, principally his great general Georgios Diogenes, had managed to preserve the empire but at great cost to the dwindling male population.
Despite this victory – in the sense that the empire was preserved, many weaknesses can be seen in the critical state of the empire. The empire itself did not have the needed population to sustain itself in a prolonged war, something that, had the Mohammedan Turks realized, could have used to their benefit in continuing the war for another year or longer whereby the Romans would have been completely depleted of men and drained financially. This in of itself, highlights the delicate nature of the fractured empire, a lack of a systemic centralized administrative authority made it impossible to confront the real challenges of the empire. Yet, another victory, however primitive it may have been – only added to the hubris of the Romans and belief that they were invincible. After all, how could one not be having survived from the brink of absolute desolation?
The Battle of Adrianople brought an end to the Second Macedonian War. The Romans, despite their victory, where actually on the edge of collapse when the peace was concluded - had the Turks continued their assault, dwindling manpower and resources would have likely resulted in the demise of the empire of Augustus.
