After a failed attempt to meddle in the Ottoman succession – Sultan Murad II “was furious.” He ignored Roman ambassadors and “made immediate preparations to attack Constantinople” in 1422, as well as sending an army to besiege Thessaloniki. The impotent Roman state could do little more than send its few soldiers to the walls and fight for their lives against the might of the Ottoman army.
Murad’s siege of Constantinople was not simply a demonstration of anger, this was the first credible attempt to seize Constantinople by force instead of simply blockading the City. “Murad employed every means at his disposal to break the resistance of the inhabitants and take their city by assault. An eyewitness of the siege, John Kananos, tells how the Sultan built an immense rampart of earth from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn.” Thus the Ottoman army could take up positions in front of the entire length of the land walls and could fire their small cannons and catapults at the defenders, and stretch the defenders thinner. The Romans were lucky the Ottomans did not have a fleet which could cause them to have to divert men to defend the sea walls.
It seems the Ottomans expected to win, because “the Turkish camp was full of slave-traders and dervishes” who came “to collect the booty and the slaves that had been promised after the capture of the city. A much revered imam, Seid-Bokhari, who claimed descent from the Prophet, had foretold that Constantinople would fall on 24 August.”
The Ottomans thus planned their largest assault to be on August 24, and a “long and bitter battle for possessions of the walls” took place which ultimately ended in failure for the attackers. “Suddenly the Turks panicked, burnt their encampments and beat a retreat, leaving only a small body of men behind.” Our witness John Kananos gives great credit to the co-emperor John VIII, who led the defense in place of his elderly father Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos. He also praised the people of Constantinople for bravely joining in the defense of the City. However, most of all the “the abrupt withdrawal of the Turks and the salvation of the city were due, as they had been 20 years before, to the miraculous intervention of its protectress, the Mother of God.”
There was a more earthy explanation for the sudden withdrawal, however. Manuel II was not sitting by idly, he was engaging in diplomacy. He was offering support to another rival for the Ottoman throne. Similar actions had placed the Romans in this predicament, however, it could also help them get out of it.
With a rival Sultan claiming power in Anatolia, Murad had to take his army to deal with this threat. And although Manuel saved Constantinople, Murad continued the siege of Thessaloniki and also raided the Despotate of the Morea. In 1423 the Romans had to offer the city to Venice as they could not defend it, and even so by 1430 the city had fallen.
Although the battered Empire survived this crisis, it only lived to die another day…but a few decades later Constantinople would fall.
Sources:
The Last Centuries of Byzantium 1261-1453 by Donald M. Nicol
shadowsofconstantinople.com 