The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (27 page)

The fact that Mehmet chose Jem rather than Beyazit to conduct the negotiations with d’Aubusson was commented upon by insiders in the Ottoman court, who concluded that the sultan had decided to groom his younger son as his successor. Jem was by far the more attractive and charismatic of the two brothers, his generous and outgoing nature having made him a great favourite in Karaman, the central Anatolian region that he governed from the provincial capital at Konya. He was an enthusiastic sportsman and hunter, as well as an accomplished poet in both Persian and Arabic, presiding over a brilliant circle of poets and musicians in Konya, where stories of his love affairs eventually passed into legend.

Beyazit, by contrast, was dour and withdrawn. During the years that he served as provincial governor in Amasya, near the Black Sea coast of Anatolia, he had little contact with the local people, preferring to spend his time in study. He became a member of the Halveti dervishes, a contemplative order who believed that their hereditary sheikhs had the power of divination. The Halveti skeikh at the time, Muhyidden Mehmet, told Beyazit that he would succeed his father as sultan. This gave great comfort to Beyazit, who felt, with good reason, that Mehmet had already decided on Jem as his successor. From early in his youth Beyazit had been an opium addict. When Sultan Mehmet learned of this from Gedik Ahmet Pasha, who was grand vezir at the time, he was furious, though Beyazit assured his father that he took opium only as medicine during a period of illness. The grand vezir also told Mehmet that the troops under Beyazit’s command were poorly organised and undisciplined. Beyazit denied this charge too, and Mehmet decided to let the matter pass, but it obviously added to his reasons for preferring his younger to his older son. Beyazit knew this, and from then on he was determined that one day he would take his revenge on Gedik Ahmet Pasha.

Sultan Mehmet’s inactivity in 1479-80 was due in part to his declining health. This was remarked upon by the French statesman and historian Philippe de Commines, who ranked Mehmet II along with Louis XI of France and Matthias Corvinus of Hungary among the greatest rulers of the fifteenth century. Commynes observed, however, that Mehmet overindulged in ‘
les plaisairs du monde
’ and noted that ‘no carnal vice was unknown to this voluptuary’. Mehmet had from his early manhood suffered from gout, as Angiolello observed, as well as a number of other ailments that may have been brought on by his excesses. The sultan had a huge swelling and abcess in one of his legs that had first appeared in the spring of 1480. None of his physicians were able to explain or cure this malady, but Commines remarks that they looked upon it as divine punishment for the sultan’s great gluttony (‘
grande gourmandise
’). Commines goes on to say that the sultan’s illness kept him confined to his palace, for he was loath to show himself in public in such a condition: ‘Lest people notice his sorry state and his enemies despise him, he seldom allowed himself to be seen and remained secluded in his
serai
.’

Meanwhile, Pierre d’Aubusson had used the truce with the Ottomans to strengthen the defences of Rhodes, which included the great fortress that surrounded the island capital as well as the coastal castles of Pheraclus, Lindos and Monolithos. He considered the castle on Mount Phileremus too difficult to defend, and so he left it to be taken by the Turks, though he removed a sacred icon of the Virgin from a monastery there and brought it to the capital.

The acropolis of the ancient city of Rhodes was on Mount St Stephen, which rises to the west of the modern town. The town of Rhodes has since classical times had two artificial harbours, created by building moles out into the sea. The northernmost is Porto del Mandraccio, or Galley Port, now known as Mandraki, enclosed on its seaward side by a long mole extending north to a fortress called the Tower of St Nicholas. The southern harbour, the Porto Mercantile, or Commercial Port, was protected on its seaward side by a long mole stretching north to the Tower of St Angelo. A shorter transverse mole guarded at its outer end by the Tower of Naillac extended eastward towards the Tower of St Angelo. At times of siege, chains could be stretched from the Tower of St Angelo to the Tower of Naillac and the Tower of St Nicholas, thus closing off the inner and outer parts of the Commercial Port.

The town was protected by a circuit of defence walls some two and one-half miles in circumference, which also extended around the semicircular shore of the Commercial Port between the moles leading out to the Tower of Naillac and the Tower of St Angelo. Outside the land wall there was a fosse 30-45 metres wide and 15-20 metres deep, in some places hollowed out of the living rock, backed by strong earthworks that in places divided the moat into two ditches. The walls were studded with a score of towers. The most notable of these were the Bastion of St Paul and the Tower of St Peter in the north wall; the Bastion of St George, the Tower of Aragon and the Tower of St Mary in the west; and the Koskinou Bastion and the Italian Tower on the south. The principal entryways were St Paul’s Gate and St Peter’s Gate on the north; D’Amboise Gate on the west; St Anthony’s Gate and Koskinou Gate on the south; and along the shore St Catherine’s Gate, the Marine Gate and the Arsenal Gate.

The town comprised two distinct and separate sections, Kastello and Chora. Kastello, the Castle of the Knights, was the smaller of the two. This was the preserve of the Order of the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, its principal buildings being the Palace of the Grand Master, the hospital, and the auberges, or inns of the order, which lined the main thoroughfare in Kastello, the Street of the Knights. Kastello was separated by an inner wall from the Chora, or main town, which included the commercial centre and the residential quarters of the Greeks, Jews and western Europeans.

Each of the inns housed knights from one of the
langue
, or tongues, into which the order was divided by nation. There were originally seven
langue
; these were, in order of seniority: Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon and Catalonia, England and Germany. Then in 1462 an eighth
langue
was formed that included both Castile and Portugal. (Pope Pius II wrote of the English
langue
, to which the Scots and the Irish also belonged, that ‘there was nothing the Scots liked better than abuse of the English’.)

Beneath the Grand Master in the hierarchy of the order was a network of bailiffs, also known as ‘grand crosses’. There were three categories of bailiffs: conventual, capitular and honorary. The conventual bailiffs were the elected heads of the eight inns at Rhodes, each holding important posts in the military hierarchy of the order. The bailiff of the
langue
of Provence was the grand commander and president of the treasury, comptroller of the expenditure, superintendent of stores, governor of the arsenal and master of the ordinance. The bailiff of Auvergne, Pierre d’Aubusson, was the Grand Master and commander of the armed forces, both military and naval. The bailiff of France was the grand hospitaller, serving as director of the hospitals, infirmaries and hospices. The bailiff of Italy was grand admiral, acting as second in command to the Grand Master. The bailiff of Aragon was commissary-general, while the bailiff of Germany was chief engineer. The bailiff of England was Turcopolier, chief of the light cavalry, the so-called
turcopoles
, who were sons of Turkish fathers by Greek mothers. The
turcopoles
were brought up as Christians and were hired to serve as cavalrymen in the order; they dressed in Islamic fashion and were familiar with the ways of Turkish warfare. The English knight John Kendal was appointed Turcopolier in 1477 and led his
turcopole
cavalry in the defence of Rhodes when it was besieged by the Ottomans in 1480. Kendal was subsequently appointed to be one of the Order’s ambassadors to the papacy. Guillaume Caoursin, vice chancellor of the Hospitallers, also served as private secretary to the Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson, whom he often quotes in his account of the Ottoman siege of Rhodes in 1480.

Meanwhile, Mehmet had appointed Mesih Pasha to command the expedition against Rhodes. During the winter of 1479-80 the army mustered in Üsküdar and marched across western Anatolia to Physkos (Marmaris), a port on the Mediterranean coast eighteen miles from Rhodes. Mesih Pasha set sail early in December 1479 from the Dardanelles with the first ships of the fleet, which eventually comprised more than 100 vessels. After failed attempts at landings on the north coast of Rhodes and on the nearby island of Telos he finally anchored in the harbour of Physkos, where the army, numbering some 70,000 troops, had set up its winter encampment.

D’Aubusson had been kept informed of the Ottoman expedition by his observers, and he had ordered the country people of Rhodes to withdraw within the fortified capital and the other fortresses on the island, bringing with them their animals and supplies. They were also ordered to harvest their grain and bring that with them too, and to cut down their fruit trees, so as to leave nothing for the invaders. D’Aubusson had also been stocking the capital with arms and munitions, as well as enough food to last through a two-year siege. The preparations for the siege are described by the Augustinian monk Fra de Curti in a letter to his brother in Venice: ‘The city is well provided with grain, oil, cheese, salted meat and other foodstuffs …many crossbows and both heavy and light guns and earthenware fire-pots and receptacles for boiling oil and Greek fire and pots full of pitch lashed together…and there is a continuous watch day and night of select companies of crosssbowmen and hand-gunners and 100 cavalry.’

The defenders in the capital numbered only about 600 knights and servants-at-arms of the Order, along with some 1,500 mercenaries and local militiamen. Shortly before the siege began reinforcements arrived in the company of d’Aubusson’s nephew Antoine, Count of Monteil, who, though he was not a member of the Order, was appointed Captain-General of the City.

After 29 April 1480 no ships were allowed to leave the harbour of Rhodes, as word reached d’Aubusson that the Ottomans were making their final preparations across the Rhodian strait in Physkos. Then, shortly after sunrise on 23 May, a sentinel on Mount St Stephen gave the alarm that the Ottoman fleet was headed towards Rhodes. Fra de Curti writes: ‘The sea was covered with sails as far as the eye could see.’ The fleet landed troops, who occupied the hill of St Stephen, after which some of the ships went back to pick up more soldiers at Physkos.

By dawn the following day there were about 60,000 Ottoman soldiers on Mount St Stephen, where Mesih Pasha set up his tent and his artillery park of sixteen cannon. According to d’Aubusson, this battery included ‘three great bronze basilisks of incredible size and power, capable of firing balls of nine palms [about seven feet] in circumference’.

Mesih sent his herald before the walls of the town to call upon the defenders to surrender, promising them an amnesty. When the offer was ignored Mesih ordered his artillerymen to begin firing. The gunners concentrated their bombardment on the Tower of St Nicholas, which Mesih intended to destroy so that he could land troops on the mole that it defended.

D’Aubusson, in a letter to Emperor Frederick III, reported that within a few days the Ottoman bombardment severely damaged the Tower of St Nicholas and eight other towers, as well as the Palace of the Grand Master. Fra de Curti told his brother that during the bombardment ‘the ground trembled under his feet…no one from any nation had ever before seen such cannon… Had you been here, you would certainly have taken refuge in a cave!’

Shortly before dawn on 28 May a deserter from the Ottoman forces appeared under the Tower of St Peter, where he called up to the lookout and asked to be admitted into the city. When he came to the gate he was identified by a soldier who had been a prisoner of the Turks in Istanbul as Master George of Saxony, a cannon founder and master bombardier, who had once lived on Rhodes and had joined the Ottoman service. One of the German knights interviewed him, and he said that his conscience had moved him to desert the Muslim service and join his fellow Christians in their time of need. D’Aubusson was sceptical of the deserter’s motives, but he decided to make use of his services, appointing a bodyguard of six knights to keep a constant watch on Master George and report on his every move.

That same day d’Aubusson wrote a circular letter to the Knights of St John throughout Europe, appealing to them to come to the aid of their Order. The letter, which was sent off on a fast galley, concluded with a defiant pledge that the brethren on Rhodes would resist the Turks with all their might, sustained by their faith.

We resist with all our power and energy and with courage sustained by our Faith in the Mercy of God who never abandons them whose hope is in Him and who fights for the Catholic Faith… We are no make-believe soldiers in fine clothes. Our men are no effeminate Asiatics. Their fidelity is proved and we have abundant cannon and bombards and good store of munitions and victuals. We will continue to confront the enemy while we await the aid of our Brethren. Above all we are sustained by our loyalty to the Holy Religion.

Four days later a ship from Sicily managed to elude the Turks and made its way into the harbour of Rhodes, carrying grain as well as 100 troops. Mesih Pasha realised by now that he had to control access to the harbour to make his siege effective, and to do that he first had to capture the Tower of St Nicholas, which he had been bombarding constantly for a week.

D’Aubusson had about 1,000 labourers working day and night repairing the Tower of St Nicholas and the mole on which it stood. A company of knights under Fabrizio Del Carretto was assigned to defend the tower in case Mesih attempted to take it by landing troops on the mole. The first attempted landing took place early in June after an intense bombardment that lasted for ten days. The Turkish troops boarded triremes that had been converted into landing craft, some of which mounted light cannons. As they approached the knights shot at them with crossbows and other weapons, including the incendiary liquid known as ‘Greek fire’, blowing up one of the triremes, and as the ships drew closer they were bombarded by guns from the defence towers. When the Turks tried to land on the mole the knights cut them down with their swords, forcing them to flee under a hail of arrows. Two other such attacks were made in the following days, the second on 9 June, when the Ottomans lost 600 men, according to Caoursin.