after lurking and reading TLs in the pre 1900 forum for several months, I decided it was time I did some contributing. My TL will focus on the possibility of a Byzantine/Eastern Roman survival and moderate revival with a POD set inside the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos. I know that this sounds incredibly implausable to anyone with even a running knowledge of Byzantine or Turkish history, but I ask that you read my scenario before making that judgement final.
Please do not be shy about commenting, especially if something important has escaped my notice. I am open to suggestions, as I am more or less writing this as I go. Now without further delay, here's my first TL.
The House of Palaiologos, Against the Tide: An Eastern Roman Timeline
Chapter One: Constantine XI
“For our God is a just God. The Romans crucified his son, so he crucified the sons of the Romans.”-George Psellos, Byzantine Church unionist and Cardinal in Rome.
Regardless of who you ask, there are few who would deny that Eastern Roman Empire’s darkest hour was in the mid-15th century A.D., with the Ottomans controlling every imperial province save the Morea, Trebizond (an independent successor state since 1204), and Constantinople itself. The empire was little more (indeed, often nothing more) than an Ottoman vassal, with the emperors themselves often having less influence than most Ottoman court officials. Amidst this chaos, the once mighty Orthodox Church was being ripped apart by those factions who proposed submission to the Church of Rome, and those who believed that such a union was unacceptable. It was into this situation that Constantine XI Palaiologos was cast during his coronation on January 6th, 1449. The state of the empire was so bad that he only became emperor after acquiring the support of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II over his rebellious older brother Demetrios, who was then placed under house arrest in his home in Constantinople(1).
Despite the absolutely horrible situation of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantine XI was strong in his resolution to defend his domain from Ottoman encroachment by whatever means necessary. Any and all surplus money was spent on defensive structures, especially the reparation of the Theodosian walls, which would be considered the premier construction project of Constantine’s reign. He also tried hard to forge alliances, and under the looming threat of the Ottomans, was able to claim the support of Venice, Genoa, Trebizond, Georgia, Hungary, and the Papacy. He also worked to curry favor with the Ottomans, a goal in which he was reasonably successful, as he managed to garner favorable relations with both Sultan Murad II and the Grand Vizier Candarli Halil Pasha(2).
It is worth noting that Constantine XI had a very pro-western foreign policy, as he viewed the Islamic Ottomans as the ultimate threat to the empire’s survival, and it was because of this that he was willing to reaffirm the union between the eastern and western churches in exchange for the promise of Papal aid and support. This move essentially meant that Constantine would be less able to depend upon his own people, many of whom were staunchly anti-unionist, but given that the city of Constantinople had shrunken to the point where fielding an army of over 5000 native citizens would be completely impossible, it is reasonable that he turned his gaze to the hope of charity from the large and populous militaries of Italy and Western Europe. By reuniting the churches, he hoped in the short run to make his cause palatable to the staunchly Catholic Kings of the west, and in the long run to hopefully inspire a renewal of large scale crusading against the Ottoman infidel.
In 1451, Murad II died, and was succeeded by his 19 year old son Mehmed II. Unlike Murad, who was a peaceful older man and on reasonable terms with Constantine XI, Mehmed was a young man with dreams of glory. It had long been a dream of the Ottoman Sultans to conquer Constantinople, and for the most part the only reason that they had not yet achieved that goal was the peaceful nature of Murad II and the hassle of assaulting the Theodosian walls. Besides that, there was little reason for leaving Constantinople and the Morea unconquered, and Mehmed had little desire to see the current situation continue during his reign.
It soon became obvious that Mehmet would besiege Constantinople, and Constantine XI began furiously calling for aid from every ally that would hear him. More importantly, he sent his brother Demetrios to the Ottoman court at Adrianople, on a special diplomatic mission. After failing to usurp the throne from Constantine, Demetrios’ relationship with his brother was strained, and this was made all the worse by the fact that Demetrios was pro Ottoman while Constantine was pro-west. However, it was Demetrios’ blatant, pro-Ottoman stance that made him the perfect man to send to the Ottoman court to attempt to broker peace, or at least to stall Mehmed’s advance.
Although Demetrios’ presence at the Ottoman court did buy the Romans a considerable amount of time to prepare, as well as keeping Demetrios far from the court of Constantinople and Morea where he would be free to sow dissent against Constantine, it was only part of the reason for sending an envoy to Adrianople. The second purpose was to establish contact with the Grand Vizier Candarli Halil Pasha, with whom Constantine was still on good terms. It was fairly well known that the Grand Vizier was incredibly powerful in the Ottoman Empire, but more importantly, it had also become apparent that Mehmed was not on good terms with Grand Vizier Halil. While Demetrios made the pretense of diplomatic negotiation believable, Constantine used trustworthy nobles within the envoy to attempt to convince the Grand Vizier to lend him aid and overthrow Mehmed(3).
By 1552 Mehmed had grown tired of waiting, and even more tired of Demetrios’ presence at his court. Mehmed officially declared an end to the truce on August 2nd, and ultimately beheaded Demetrios, thereafter sending the head to Constantinople as a message. He then set about building fortresses on either side of the Bosporus in order to prevent aid coming to the Romans by sea. By this point Constantine had managed to gather somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand men (5,000 Byzantines, 5000 Italians, and an undetermined number of mostly Turkish mercenaries). He had also managed to gather a large amount of supplies and money, mostly loans from his Italian and Georgian allies, and had used a good portion of the money to hire the Hungarian gunsmith Orbon, and to buy materials for Orbon to make small defensive cannons with. It is estimated that by the end of Constantine’s war drives, the empire owed so much money to it’s allies, that they couldn’t have paid it off even if they had sold every soul left in the empire as slaves for the maximum market value.
Although less pronounced, preparations for the siege of Constantinople did strain the Ottoman state as well. It was obvious that any force hoping to storm the Theodosian walls (and Mehmed did want to storm the walls) would need to be utterly massive. Then there was the matter of breaking into the city, which would require a truly massive artillery train, and the matter of crossing the Bosporus strait with such a force. Accordingly Mehmed raised an army of 100,000 soldiers, supported by an artillery train with over 100 cannons, and a navy of at least 300 ships (although less than 10% were warships, as the bulk were to be used as troop transports). All of this military spending did little to help Mehmed’s relationship with his Grand Vizier, and by March of 1453 things took a turn for the worse when Grand Vizier Halil formally voiced some of his concerns during a meeting between the Sultan Mehmed and the generals who would be accompanying him during the siege. The Grand Vizier was not a fan of Mehmed’s vain plans of expansionism, but even more alarming for him was the state of the treasury. In light of this, it is not surprising that when the army finally mobilized in mid-May, Grand Vizier Halil was left at his estate outside Bursa.
The final crack in the Sultan’s relationship with the Grand Vizier came shortly after the former had left the Capital. The Sultan had apparently paid one of the viziers’ servants to attempt a poisoning. The servant in question was inexperienced with poisons, and only managed to induce a violent bout of vomiting from the vizier. When the vizier recovered, he was immediately suspicious of the circumstances of his sudden illness. His kitchen servants were interrogated, and the man responsible was quickly identified. He confessed to everything, including Mehmed’s involvement, in hope of receiving mercy. He found none, and was executed on June 2nd.
Now truly worried about his position in the event of Mehmed’s victorious return, Candarli Halil Pasha quickly began to search for allies amongst the Ottoman elites. He found many, as Mehmed had been decidedly careless of stepping on the toes of his inferiors, while the Grand Vizier was well liked and quite politically intelligent. His efforts were quite successful, and with most of Mehmed’s political allies by his side outside Constantinople, there was little opposition in Asia. The only problem with the Grand Vizier’s plan was the European provinces, in which his influence was far less, but he ultimately dismissed them as nonessential, being that most of the Ottoman Empire’s population was on his side of the Bosporus, and that the loyalty of the European territories, still largely Christian and culturally Greek, was somewhat dubious.
The official declaration of rebellion came on August 13th, when soldiers loyal to Candarli Halil Pasha burned Sultan Mehmed’s great fleet at anchor. The attack was completely unexpected, and stuck as they were in the narrow Bosporus, the Ottoman fleet burned in its entirety. With a few isolated exceptions, all of Anatolia was now loyal to Candarli Halil Pasha, who moved his capital to Bursa on August 20th. He officially declared the new sultan to be Orhan the second, a weak willed sixteen year old boy living inside Constantinople who was allegedly a son of Mehmed's deceased older brother Ahmed, although weather or not he was actually of royal blood is still uncertain. These events horrified and enraged Mehmed, who reportedly ordered the execution of several prisoners during his rage. Worse still than the rebellion, was the fact that, without a fleet, Mehmed had no means of returning to Anatolia with his massive army.
Although the burning of the fleet meant that Grand Vizier Halil too was deprived of a navy, he made up for it by using his access to the Ottoman treasury to hire Italian Galleys to patrol the Bosporus. In contrast Sultan Mehmed had next to no access to funds, and was dealing with nobles who feared that their estates and families were being pillaged or destroyed while they were away. As rumors spread that Mehmed would not be able to pay them for their services, soldiers began to desert from the army. For Mehmed it was an absolute worst case scenario, and he could see only one solution; capture Constantinople.
Mehmed realized that the only way that he could get his forces back into Asia without a fleet would be to take control of Constantinople, and there, within the walls, ferry his troops across the Bosporus. His forces were already encamped outside Constantinople, and he had a large artillery train (with at least 50 cannons), but without a fleet and the possibility of reinforcements an assault on the Theodosian walls seemed like an incredibly risky undertaking, even if there were only 15,000 men defending them.
Hoping to gain entrance to the city without risking a pitched battle, Mehmed sent a delegation into the city under armistice, and offered to cease hostilities and to pay a large unspecified sum of money to Constantine. His emissaries even alluded to the possibility of returning Athens or Thessalonica to Greek control if Constantine cooperated. Constantine did not believe for a minute that allowing Mehmed access to the city would benefit his cause, rather he feared that once he let the Turks into the city they would never leave. He continued to stall the negotiations with Mehmed, while in secret he sent out an envoy of his own (by boat, since the Bosporus was no longer blockaded on account of Halil’s defection) to make contact with the newly crowned Sultan Halil I. His envoys asked for the Grand Vizier's counsel on whether or not they should let Mehmed pass, bringing a letter of greeting with Mehmed’s personal seal as proof that negotiations were in fact going on.
The Grand Vizier was in no position to face Sultan Mehmed’s massive army right now, as he had been counting on the continued Constantinopolitan resistance to buy him time to raise an army of his own. He therefore turned to a resource which he had in considerably greater abundance, gold, to diffuse the situation. He offered to pay off Constantine’s massive debt to the Italians (which at the time he likely did not know the true extent of) in full, in exchange for Constantine’s continued resistance to Mehmed. Constantine agreed, provided that the service of 5,000 Turkish mercenaries be provided to him for the duration of the siege, as he stressed that his resistance could only continue so long unsupported.
Thus on September 7th, year 1453 an alliance was concluded between the Byzantines and Candarli’s Turkish state. When Mehmed’s emissaries returned to him with this dismal news, he ordered the immediate resumption of the siege, and within hours the steady pounding of bombardment could be heard in the Bosporus. Despite this the Theodosian walls, restored as they were provided staunch resistance, and it was nearly a week before the damage to them became noticeable.
Not until September 25th did a sizable breach in the wall appear. Mehmed was quick to capitalize, and within minutes he had nearly half his force running pell-mell into the breach. They were under intense missile fire as they ran this hellish the gauntlet, but the worst did not come until they had crossed into the city. There, some 30 feet behind the walls, were three cannons. Situated inside the foundational ruins of what must once have been a large and well off household, they represented 20% of the new guns built by Orbon for the defense of the city. Behind them Emperor Constantine himself and his guards waited, until the first of the enemy passed through the breach, and the emperor gave the order to fire the first gun. Immediately a deadly scatter shot erupted from the gun, devastating the first wave of Turkish attackers. As the breach continued to fill with new soldiers, the emperor ordered the gunners to fire the second and third guns, before personally leading the charge against the Turks.
Their moral devastated by the surprise scattershot, the Turks nonetheless pressed on into the breach. In the narrow breach the Turkish numbers could not be used to full effect, and more often than not the Italian mercenaries who formed the bulk of those present at the breach were better armed and armored. In addition to this, the missile fire from the walls continued undiminished, and on several occasions large cauldrons of boiling water and oil were poured out over the Ottomans. By nightfall the breach was filled in with the bodies of 15,000 Turks and 2,400 defenders, with many more wounded, especially by the scattershot and boiling water. Exhausted, the Turks, having gained no foothold worth defending, withdrew for the night.
Mehmed was shocked to learn how many of his men had fallen. Worse still, the Byzantines had piled up the Turkish corpses outside the walls, in a sort of grizzly barricade, which in addition to demoralizing Mehmed’s troops would significantly impede any attempt to push back into the breach. With roughly a quarter of his forces dead or incapacitated, and the better part of his artillery’s munitions spent, Mehmed decided to abandon the siege. With no plausible means of returning to the Asia, Mehmed decided to dig in in Europe. He and his soldiers prepared to spend the winter months in Adrianople, and to continue their wars again in the spring. He also sent word to the people of Thessalonica to begin building a new fleet, although he was sure little of it would be ready by springtime.
As soon as it became clear that Mehmed’s forces had gone, there was revelry in the streets of Constantinople. For one glorious week there were no Greeks or Latins, no Eastern or Western Churches, only Romans in Constantinople. Joyous people flooded the great churches to thank God for deliverance, while there was dancing and drinking in every tavern and market place in the city. On the lips of every soldier and citizen was one glorious phrase, “Glory to God, long live Constantinople!”
(1) The first of several small PODs, in reality Demetrios was allowed to go to the Morea, where he essentially only caused trouble for Constantine's much more loyal younger brother, Thomas.
(2) The second noteworthy POD, Candarli Halil Pasha was an incredibly wealthy and powerful Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, who is well known to have hated Mehmed. IOTL, he is killed by Mehmed immediately after his conquest of Constantinople, but TTL he gets wise in time to avoid such an outcome.
(3) The TTL influence of Constantine XI's secret envoy is more or less negligible, but it represents a departure from OTL, in which Constantine overplayed his hand by threatening Mehmed with the release of an Ottoman pretender to the throne, thus giving Mehmed the moral and political justification that allowed him to gather his forces so quickly OTL. By sending a diplomatic envoy, the empire buys itself vital time, making the trecherous Demetrios something of an unsung hero of sorts.
Please do not be shy about commenting, especially if something important has escaped my notice. I am open to suggestions, as I am more or less writing this as I go. Now without further delay, here's my first TL.
The House of Palaiologos, Against the Tide: An Eastern Roman Timeline
Chapter One: Constantine XI
“For our God is a just God. The Romans crucified his son, so he crucified the sons of the Romans.”-George Psellos, Byzantine Church unionist and Cardinal in Rome.
Regardless of who you ask, there are few who would deny that Eastern Roman Empire’s darkest hour was in the mid-15th century A.D., with the Ottomans controlling every imperial province save the Morea, Trebizond (an independent successor state since 1204), and Constantinople itself. The empire was little more (indeed, often nothing more) than an Ottoman vassal, with the emperors themselves often having less influence than most Ottoman court officials. Amidst this chaos, the once mighty Orthodox Church was being ripped apart by those factions who proposed submission to the Church of Rome, and those who believed that such a union was unacceptable. It was into this situation that Constantine XI Palaiologos was cast during his coronation on January 6th, 1449. The state of the empire was so bad that he only became emperor after acquiring the support of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II over his rebellious older brother Demetrios, who was then placed under house arrest in his home in Constantinople(1).
Despite the absolutely horrible situation of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantine XI was strong in his resolution to defend his domain from Ottoman encroachment by whatever means necessary. Any and all surplus money was spent on defensive structures, especially the reparation of the Theodosian walls, which would be considered the premier construction project of Constantine’s reign. He also tried hard to forge alliances, and under the looming threat of the Ottomans, was able to claim the support of Venice, Genoa, Trebizond, Georgia, Hungary, and the Papacy. He also worked to curry favor with the Ottomans, a goal in which he was reasonably successful, as he managed to garner favorable relations with both Sultan Murad II and the Grand Vizier Candarli Halil Pasha(2).
It is worth noting that Constantine XI had a very pro-western foreign policy, as he viewed the Islamic Ottomans as the ultimate threat to the empire’s survival, and it was because of this that he was willing to reaffirm the union between the eastern and western churches in exchange for the promise of Papal aid and support. This move essentially meant that Constantine would be less able to depend upon his own people, many of whom were staunchly anti-unionist, but given that the city of Constantinople had shrunken to the point where fielding an army of over 5000 native citizens would be completely impossible, it is reasonable that he turned his gaze to the hope of charity from the large and populous militaries of Italy and Western Europe. By reuniting the churches, he hoped in the short run to make his cause palatable to the staunchly Catholic Kings of the west, and in the long run to hopefully inspire a renewal of large scale crusading against the Ottoman infidel.
In 1451, Murad II died, and was succeeded by his 19 year old son Mehmed II. Unlike Murad, who was a peaceful older man and on reasonable terms with Constantine XI, Mehmed was a young man with dreams of glory. It had long been a dream of the Ottoman Sultans to conquer Constantinople, and for the most part the only reason that they had not yet achieved that goal was the peaceful nature of Murad II and the hassle of assaulting the Theodosian walls. Besides that, there was little reason for leaving Constantinople and the Morea unconquered, and Mehmed had little desire to see the current situation continue during his reign.
It soon became obvious that Mehmet would besiege Constantinople, and Constantine XI began furiously calling for aid from every ally that would hear him. More importantly, he sent his brother Demetrios to the Ottoman court at Adrianople, on a special diplomatic mission. After failing to usurp the throne from Constantine, Demetrios’ relationship with his brother was strained, and this was made all the worse by the fact that Demetrios was pro Ottoman while Constantine was pro-west. However, it was Demetrios’ blatant, pro-Ottoman stance that made him the perfect man to send to the Ottoman court to attempt to broker peace, or at least to stall Mehmed’s advance.
Although Demetrios’ presence at the Ottoman court did buy the Romans a considerable amount of time to prepare, as well as keeping Demetrios far from the court of Constantinople and Morea where he would be free to sow dissent against Constantine, it was only part of the reason for sending an envoy to Adrianople. The second purpose was to establish contact with the Grand Vizier Candarli Halil Pasha, with whom Constantine was still on good terms. It was fairly well known that the Grand Vizier was incredibly powerful in the Ottoman Empire, but more importantly, it had also become apparent that Mehmed was not on good terms with Grand Vizier Halil. While Demetrios made the pretense of diplomatic negotiation believable, Constantine used trustworthy nobles within the envoy to attempt to convince the Grand Vizier to lend him aid and overthrow Mehmed(3).
By 1552 Mehmed had grown tired of waiting, and even more tired of Demetrios’ presence at his court. Mehmed officially declared an end to the truce on August 2nd, and ultimately beheaded Demetrios, thereafter sending the head to Constantinople as a message. He then set about building fortresses on either side of the Bosporus in order to prevent aid coming to the Romans by sea. By this point Constantine had managed to gather somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand men (5,000 Byzantines, 5000 Italians, and an undetermined number of mostly Turkish mercenaries). He had also managed to gather a large amount of supplies and money, mostly loans from his Italian and Georgian allies, and had used a good portion of the money to hire the Hungarian gunsmith Orbon, and to buy materials for Orbon to make small defensive cannons with. It is estimated that by the end of Constantine’s war drives, the empire owed so much money to it’s allies, that they couldn’t have paid it off even if they had sold every soul left in the empire as slaves for the maximum market value.
Although less pronounced, preparations for the siege of Constantinople did strain the Ottoman state as well. It was obvious that any force hoping to storm the Theodosian walls (and Mehmed did want to storm the walls) would need to be utterly massive. Then there was the matter of breaking into the city, which would require a truly massive artillery train, and the matter of crossing the Bosporus strait with such a force. Accordingly Mehmed raised an army of 100,000 soldiers, supported by an artillery train with over 100 cannons, and a navy of at least 300 ships (although less than 10% were warships, as the bulk were to be used as troop transports). All of this military spending did little to help Mehmed’s relationship with his Grand Vizier, and by March of 1453 things took a turn for the worse when Grand Vizier Halil formally voiced some of his concerns during a meeting between the Sultan Mehmed and the generals who would be accompanying him during the siege. The Grand Vizier was not a fan of Mehmed’s vain plans of expansionism, but even more alarming for him was the state of the treasury. In light of this, it is not surprising that when the army finally mobilized in mid-May, Grand Vizier Halil was left at his estate outside Bursa.
The final crack in the Sultan’s relationship with the Grand Vizier came shortly after the former had left the Capital. The Sultan had apparently paid one of the viziers’ servants to attempt a poisoning. The servant in question was inexperienced with poisons, and only managed to induce a violent bout of vomiting from the vizier. When the vizier recovered, he was immediately suspicious of the circumstances of his sudden illness. His kitchen servants were interrogated, and the man responsible was quickly identified. He confessed to everything, including Mehmed’s involvement, in hope of receiving mercy. He found none, and was executed on June 2nd.
Now truly worried about his position in the event of Mehmed’s victorious return, Candarli Halil Pasha quickly began to search for allies amongst the Ottoman elites. He found many, as Mehmed had been decidedly careless of stepping on the toes of his inferiors, while the Grand Vizier was well liked and quite politically intelligent. His efforts were quite successful, and with most of Mehmed’s political allies by his side outside Constantinople, there was little opposition in Asia. The only problem with the Grand Vizier’s plan was the European provinces, in which his influence was far less, but he ultimately dismissed them as nonessential, being that most of the Ottoman Empire’s population was on his side of the Bosporus, and that the loyalty of the European territories, still largely Christian and culturally Greek, was somewhat dubious.
The official declaration of rebellion came on August 13th, when soldiers loyal to Candarli Halil Pasha burned Sultan Mehmed’s great fleet at anchor. The attack was completely unexpected, and stuck as they were in the narrow Bosporus, the Ottoman fleet burned in its entirety. With a few isolated exceptions, all of Anatolia was now loyal to Candarli Halil Pasha, who moved his capital to Bursa on August 20th. He officially declared the new sultan to be Orhan the second, a weak willed sixteen year old boy living inside Constantinople who was allegedly a son of Mehmed's deceased older brother Ahmed, although weather or not he was actually of royal blood is still uncertain. These events horrified and enraged Mehmed, who reportedly ordered the execution of several prisoners during his rage. Worse still than the rebellion, was the fact that, without a fleet, Mehmed had no means of returning to Anatolia with his massive army.
Although the burning of the fleet meant that Grand Vizier Halil too was deprived of a navy, he made up for it by using his access to the Ottoman treasury to hire Italian Galleys to patrol the Bosporus. In contrast Sultan Mehmed had next to no access to funds, and was dealing with nobles who feared that their estates and families were being pillaged or destroyed while they were away. As rumors spread that Mehmed would not be able to pay them for their services, soldiers began to desert from the army. For Mehmed it was an absolute worst case scenario, and he could see only one solution; capture Constantinople.
Mehmed realized that the only way that he could get his forces back into Asia without a fleet would be to take control of Constantinople, and there, within the walls, ferry his troops across the Bosporus. His forces were already encamped outside Constantinople, and he had a large artillery train (with at least 50 cannons), but without a fleet and the possibility of reinforcements an assault on the Theodosian walls seemed like an incredibly risky undertaking, even if there were only 15,000 men defending them.
Hoping to gain entrance to the city without risking a pitched battle, Mehmed sent a delegation into the city under armistice, and offered to cease hostilities and to pay a large unspecified sum of money to Constantine. His emissaries even alluded to the possibility of returning Athens or Thessalonica to Greek control if Constantine cooperated. Constantine did not believe for a minute that allowing Mehmed access to the city would benefit his cause, rather he feared that once he let the Turks into the city they would never leave. He continued to stall the negotiations with Mehmed, while in secret he sent out an envoy of his own (by boat, since the Bosporus was no longer blockaded on account of Halil’s defection) to make contact with the newly crowned Sultan Halil I. His envoys asked for the Grand Vizier's counsel on whether or not they should let Mehmed pass, bringing a letter of greeting with Mehmed’s personal seal as proof that negotiations were in fact going on.
The Grand Vizier was in no position to face Sultan Mehmed’s massive army right now, as he had been counting on the continued Constantinopolitan resistance to buy him time to raise an army of his own. He therefore turned to a resource which he had in considerably greater abundance, gold, to diffuse the situation. He offered to pay off Constantine’s massive debt to the Italians (which at the time he likely did not know the true extent of) in full, in exchange for Constantine’s continued resistance to Mehmed. Constantine agreed, provided that the service of 5,000 Turkish mercenaries be provided to him for the duration of the siege, as he stressed that his resistance could only continue so long unsupported.
Thus on September 7th, year 1453 an alliance was concluded between the Byzantines and Candarli’s Turkish state. When Mehmed’s emissaries returned to him with this dismal news, he ordered the immediate resumption of the siege, and within hours the steady pounding of bombardment could be heard in the Bosporus. Despite this the Theodosian walls, restored as they were provided staunch resistance, and it was nearly a week before the damage to them became noticeable.
Not until September 25th did a sizable breach in the wall appear. Mehmed was quick to capitalize, and within minutes he had nearly half his force running pell-mell into the breach. They were under intense missile fire as they ran this hellish the gauntlet, but the worst did not come until they had crossed into the city. There, some 30 feet behind the walls, were three cannons. Situated inside the foundational ruins of what must once have been a large and well off household, they represented 20% of the new guns built by Orbon for the defense of the city. Behind them Emperor Constantine himself and his guards waited, until the first of the enemy passed through the breach, and the emperor gave the order to fire the first gun. Immediately a deadly scatter shot erupted from the gun, devastating the first wave of Turkish attackers. As the breach continued to fill with new soldiers, the emperor ordered the gunners to fire the second and third guns, before personally leading the charge against the Turks.
Their moral devastated by the surprise scattershot, the Turks nonetheless pressed on into the breach. In the narrow breach the Turkish numbers could not be used to full effect, and more often than not the Italian mercenaries who formed the bulk of those present at the breach were better armed and armored. In addition to this, the missile fire from the walls continued undiminished, and on several occasions large cauldrons of boiling water and oil were poured out over the Ottomans. By nightfall the breach was filled in with the bodies of 15,000 Turks and 2,400 defenders, with many more wounded, especially by the scattershot and boiling water. Exhausted, the Turks, having gained no foothold worth defending, withdrew for the night.
Mehmed was shocked to learn how many of his men had fallen. Worse still, the Byzantines had piled up the Turkish corpses outside the walls, in a sort of grizzly barricade, which in addition to demoralizing Mehmed’s troops would significantly impede any attempt to push back into the breach. With roughly a quarter of his forces dead or incapacitated, and the better part of his artillery’s munitions spent, Mehmed decided to abandon the siege. With no plausible means of returning to the Asia, Mehmed decided to dig in in Europe. He and his soldiers prepared to spend the winter months in Adrianople, and to continue their wars again in the spring. He also sent word to the people of Thessalonica to begin building a new fleet, although he was sure little of it would be ready by springtime.
As soon as it became clear that Mehmed’s forces had gone, there was revelry in the streets of Constantinople. For one glorious week there were no Greeks or Latins, no Eastern or Western Churches, only Romans in Constantinople. Joyous people flooded the great churches to thank God for deliverance, while there was dancing and drinking in every tavern and market place in the city. On the lips of every soldier and citizen was one glorious phrase, “Glory to God, long live Constantinople!”
(1) The first of several small PODs, in reality Demetrios was allowed to go to the Morea, where he essentially only caused trouble for Constantine's much more loyal younger brother, Thomas.
(2) The second noteworthy POD, Candarli Halil Pasha was an incredibly wealthy and powerful Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, who is well known to have hated Mehmed. IOTL, he is killed by Mehmed immediately after his conquest of Constantinople, but TTL he gets wise in time to avoid such an outcome.
(3) The TTL influence of Constantine XI's secret envoy is more or less negligible, but it represents a departure from OTL, in which Constantine overplayed his hand by threatening Mehmed with the release of an Ottoman pretender to the throne, thus giving Mehmed the moral and political justification that allowed him to gather his forces so quickly OTL. By sending a diplomatic envoy, the empire buys itself vital time, making the trecherous Demetrios something of an unsung hero of sorts.
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