Winston Harrah
A4
Mr. Silva
23 April 2018
“Compare and contrast the tactics and the certain cannons used in the siege of Constantinople, compared to the tactics and LMGs used today in the United States Military that are most like the ones used in the siege of Constantinople.”
On May 29th, in the year of 1453, a man by the name of Sultan Mehmed II conquered the city of Constantinople, and this particular city was heavily armored with walls on three sides. Constantinople was a city that was besieged 23 separate times, but each of those times, the sieges were incomplete. Sultan Mehmed was the first man to actually complete the siege out of all of his ancestors from 1,000 years prior. In the years of Sultan Mehmed II, the tactics that were used to destroy Constantinople were very similar to the ones used in the United States Army, and the cannons had similar aspects that related to the LMGs used today in the United States Army, but were each different in their own ways.
Before Mehmed had come up with any tactics, he had to have a place to start and gather his resources and weapons. He just needed something that stated, “I am powerful”, and he needed something to break down the stubborn walls of Constantinople. One day, Mehmed had run into a man by the name or Orban at Edirne, and Orban was a craftsman who specialized in the making of cannons. Just before Orban had been in Edirne, he had tried to propose the offer to Constantinople, and they had rejected his offer due to funds. When Orban and Sultan Mehmed had begun talking, the Sultan had asked Orban if he could craft him a cannon for the raid on Constantinople, and Orban replied with “I can cast a cannon of bronze with the capacity of stone you want. I have examined the walls of the city in great detail. I can shatter to dust not only these walls with the stones from my gun, but the very walls of Babylon itself.” From this, Sultan Mehmed was very impressed, and he had instructed Orban to make him the cannon. The cannon itself was made out of copper and tin, and to fire it, the gun required saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. The cannon’s final product was about 27 feet long, and the barrel had about eight inches of solid bronze. The barrel was about 30 inches in diameter, and the cannonballs weighed about a little bit more than half of a ton. The rest of the cannons casted were either 14 feet or less. It also took about six weeks for the guns to make it to Constantinople after their production was finished. When Sultan Mehmed’s army had arrived at Constantinople, they cleared the way of any obstacles, and after this, they dug trenches about 205 yards from the fort itself, and they had an earth rampart to shield the guns. 8,000 men were inside of the walls waiting. The supergun that was crafted at first, is what the Greeks called the Basilica Cannon, or the royal cannon. The big cannon was assembled with the little ones by its side, and they called this arrangement the “bear with its cubs”. Mehmed probably had about 69 cannons, historians suggest. As one would assume, installing and readying cannons wa s a very trying process, and it too time. For each cannon, they would have to use a block-and-tackle system, and they had to lift the cannons each time they would need to reposition them, which made aiming the cannons very hard. The cannons, despite being heavy, also had lots of positives. One of the coolest things was that when they were to fire, they had doors with hinges that protected the cannons, that they would open at the time of fire, and when they were to fire, they would open and close the doors immediately after. Some negatives of the cannons was transport of materials and the cannons themselves. The cannonballs, themselves, were made on the North coast of the Black Sea, and the cannons required intense amounts of saltpeter, so the cannons basically ate every resource available and the transport for the cannons was laborious. Also, the people who worked with Orban to make the cannons also doubled as gun crewmen. To load the cannonball into the cannon, the crewmen would put a sheepskin tightly packed down into the barrel with lots of gunpowder, and ease the cannonball down into the barrel. Once they had lined up the shot, they would pour priming powder down into the touch hole, and the man operating the cannon would light the fuse and the rest was history. They also used very heavy stones on the sides of the cannons as shock absorbers. According to eyewitnesses in the city, the ground was shaken for two miles around and the tremendous force of the cannons could launch the ball about a mile outwards. In 1453, Constantinople was taken by Sultan Mehmed II, also named the Conqueror by his people, and Sultan Mehmed used his own tactics and weapons to take over Constantinople. One major tactic that Sultan Mehmed II used that aided his army was mobilizing resources and he was very successful in this because his ancestors had tried to capture Constantinople four separate times, but had failed every time, so he was very determined. He had also learned from all of their mistakes. Sultan mehmed had to raise the units and collected volunteers from all Ottoman corners and his army included Turkish people but also Bulgarian, Serb, Albanian, Greek, and even some Latin Warriors. He had a very diverse army and he pulled together a chain of people in order to make them all his warriors, and that was different from many other Sultans, because they did not have as diverse of an army as he had and their soldiers were not as numerous. Plus, the Sultan’s tactics worked a lot better. Sultan mehmed also constructed a blockade against the people of Constantinople, and he constructed a naval fleet with a coastal fortress, which was located on the opposite shore of the fortress that had already existed in Asia, whose cannons cut off Constantinople from the Black Sea. Sultan Mehmed also used ships with cannons and weapons to stop enemies from coming in through the ocean. On April 5th, 1453, the siege on Constantinople began. One of the main factors of Sultan Mehmed beating the Byzantine Army was his plan to carry ships onto dry land to what they called the Golden Horn. Sultan mehmed also had certain cannons that would hit specific targets. One main thing to get his army going was promising his soldiers loot. More specifically, he promised them all three days of loot and plunder. The organization of his ships were in three waves, and they were positioned against three breaches which had been created in the walls by the Sultan’s cannons, so the ships could sail freely through them. Janissaries were also a big factor to how he defeated the city. The first wave consisted of mercenaries and volunteers who took all of the damage, but also did quite some damage, and they were the ones who wore out the defense further for the other waves. Azabs attacked as his second wave , and as his third wave, his janissaries attacked the Byzantines inside, and all of its defenses collapsed.
The byzantine army had 9,000 soldiers, but Sultan Mehmed II had an army ranging from 80,000 to 100,000 soldiers from many ethnicities. Mehmed sent his first group of soldiers over the first wall, and when they made it over the first wall, they leaned ladders up on the second wall, but were burned by Greek fire, or very hot oil, that the Byzantine army used as a defense. The first wave of Sultan Mehmed’s attack did the initial damage and weakened the city so that the other waves would have a greater impact. For the Ottoman’s second attack, 150 plus ships approached Constantine and seaward the walls near the Golden Horn Peninsula and these walls were not as thick as the walls near the land, due to Sultan Mehmed’s spies investigating them, so they knew that they could deal some damage there. The Byzantines were ready for the Ottoman empire, and had stretched a chain near the Golden Horn, and the ships could not come through, so Mehmed went around the blockade. He took about eighty ships over land over a ridge 200 feet high and down to the water on the other side, with the help of many men, which he had to spare. He also used oxen and log rollers. When the ships had made it into the Golden Horn, they had started to fire on the weaker parts of the walls of Constantinople. When Constantinople had figured out that the Ottomans were at the backside of the fort, they had re-deployed troops to the backside, but this created a huge weakness in their fort. The soldiers of Constantinople then had re-deployed to the Golden Porte, and Sultan Mehmed had brought out his monster cannon, and this particular cannon had between a three time use and a seven time use. This was because the cannon would get so hot that the ottomans could not even handle the cannon. They would have to use olive oil to cool the cannon down, and this would prevent the cannon from cracking when they fired it. Mehmed had tops of 14 artillery barrages in front of the front wall and they were set up to fire constantly until the wall was no more. (Day and night). There was also a unique firing system for the cannons, and that was for the cannons to fire continuously at three targeted weak points on the wall. Once the walls were down, a wave of the first set of troops weakened Constantinople’s first line. Next, the second wave of regimental troops were to help out the first wave and weaken the line further. Lastly, as a part of Sultan Mehmed’s grand plan, a wave of 5,000 janissaries came in and took care of business. As said before, Sultan Mehmed had promised his troops 3 days of pillaging as motivation, but on the second day, he took it into his own hands and put an end to it. After he had conquered Constantinople, he was now known as Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror.
The people of Constantinople did not know how to answer to all of this destruction caused by Sultan Mehmed II, and to try to defend their walls, the people of Constantinople poured a mortar of chalk down the walls, an or coated the walls with suspended bales of wool to try and defend themselves from the cannonballs. The reason that the siege on Constantinople worked so well was because the walls in constantinople proved to be very bad gun platforms, and the walls could not accommodate for the recoil of the guns, nor could they stand the vibrations the cannons made. Though it was a great victory for the Sultan, it was not as easy as it seemed. The cannons were very laborious, and they required constant attention with lots of energy that went into firing the cannon. Sometimes, the weather was a huge factor, and the cannons would not be able to fire in the mud and rain, because the cannons would slide back in the rain and would not fire properly. On top of that, the cannons would sometimes aven be used so much that the barrels would disintegrate and shrapnel would fly everywhere. This took a toll on the crew, so they would have to pour warm oil into the barrels to prevent hairline fractures in the barrel and it would make sure that the barrel would not explode. After a while, the Basilica had cracked and the measures of cooling the cannon down had failed. The Basilica shot its cannonball and its barrel disintegrated into many pieces, killing many people nearby the scene of explosion and it wounded many as well. When the cannon broke again after reinforcement, Sultan Mehmed was very angry, and gave up on the cannon, so he decided to let all of the little cannons do the work. Some tactics that the Sultan used were picked up by Hungarians that visited the Sultan’s camp in years passed. The bear and cubs were the pair that this idea encompassed, and the idea when using the cannons was to shoot the first shot and deal the initial damage with the big cannon, and with the second cannons, they would make a triangle around the initial point of impact, which would make the wall collapse easier. For the first portion of the wall to crumble, it took about 6 days. To help defend themselves in one of their last attempts, the people of Constantinople used stakes that were reinforced with anything that was nearby, like stone, timber, brushwood, and bushes. To absorb the Ottoman bullets and arrows, the defenders put barrels of soil out, and they would take all of the damage from the long range weapons. The city’s makeshift walls actually worked pretty well, and they stood a chance against the cannonballs of the Ottomans. As for the defenders makeshift weapons, they packed their cannons with pieces of shrapnel the size of walnuts, and they used their cannons as huge shotguns, that fired only when the Ottomans were close. With one shot of these shotgun cannons, one walnut sized piece of shrapnel could go through three men with great force. Because Mehmed had so many men, this did not matter. With their impressive makeshift weapons and fortresses, they still did not stand a chance against a mighty army of men. The thing most impressive about Mehmed’s attack was that the artillery being used almost seemed to have an endless supply of ammunition, and the intensity and duration of the firing had never been done before by any army. Mehmed’s strategy of continuous fire tired out the enemy, and it was very successful because he had many men that did not cease fire against Constantinople. The guns were fired for about 47 days, continuously, and they used about 55,000 lbs of gunpowder delivering about 5,000 shots to the wall. The last assault on Constantinople happened on may 29th of 1453, and at 1:30 in the morning, the final assault on the walls occurred. One of the defenders even said “the very air seemed to split apart…It seemed like something from another world.” Mehmed, today, lies buried in the mosque that is located in Constantinople, and he even has a cannonball that stands in front of his tomb.
In today’s army, machine guns contribute to most of the army’s success, and they are the main weapons of infantry troops against dismounted forces, lightly armored vehicles, and aircrafts. The use of machine guns are not only in these, but they are used in combat units, and aboard ships. The classification of these weapons for missions splits into four categories, and these are light, general purpose, medium, and heavy. These can all be used for different types of missions. Ex. the cannons used for the Siege of Constantinople would be classified as a heavy weapon today, because it is meant to knock down heavy walls and do lots of damage. The United States Military also uses machine guns today, because they are a way to inflict lots of damage upon the enemy, without using tons of gunpowder, and the Ottomans did not do such a great job with this. They used tons of gunpowder in their cannons and had expendable resources, but they only had one weapon, the cannon. They used their resources wisely for their time, because they had lots to spare, but in today’s time, they used a lot of gunpowder that they could have saved.
The primary function of the light machine gun (LMG) is to deal damage at a high fire rate with a bearable carry weight, and they are found in infantry squads, usually manned by two men. These weapons usually have a sturdy bipod that keeps the gun ready to fire on the ground, and to add to this, the LMG weighs about two times more than a weapon of the same caliber in a lighter weight class. The barrels of the LMG also are removable to prevent shattering when the barrels get too hot, unlike the Ottoman Empire’s Basilica, that had one barrel and could only be used 7 times in a day, or else it would shatter completely due to the hot temperatures. Another great thing about an LMG is that it uses the same ammunition as the squad you’re in, so that ammunition is very convenient and easy to come by. Much like the Ottoman Empire’s cannon team, the LMG is operated by upwards of two men, and it takes a team to operate, although it can be operated by one man. The LMG teams are also protected by other squad members. Like the Ottoman Empire’s cannon team as well, the second person that is not operating the machine gun feeds the gunner the ammunition, and calls out shot corrections for the gunner so that he does not miss his next shot. The cannon team of the Ottoman empire used callouts when they were destroying the walls of the city of Constantinople, and when they needed to re-adjust shots. An LMG that is used by the United States Military today is the Finnish M78 Valmet, and many infantry squads use it today when not using mounted machine guns. The LMG has a loaded 30 round box, and it fires about 650 rounds per minute. The difference between the LMG and the cannon is that the LMG operates on gas, within the gun, and gunpowder, within the bullet, and the cannon has to be injected with gunpowder and fired with less accuracy.
Overall, the cannons used in the Ottomans siege of Constantinople were very similar to the LMGs used today in the united states army, but differ in some ways such as the number of uses before the gun actually breaks. Today, the LMGs used do not break if you take care of them, and back then, the resources used were not able to keep the cannons in shape. The cannons life depleted every time it was fired, and comparatively speaking to the LMG, the cannon breaks down much faster. Both deal a ton of damage, but one lasts longer than the other, and is more reliable, and that is the LMG. The cannon deals quite some damage, but it is much less accurate than the LMG, but for the 1500s, the cannon was a very advanced piece of technology that dealt a ton of damage and struck fear into the hearts of the enemy, especially the Basilica. In addition to their weapons having similarities, the United States Army uses similar tactics, when operating their LMGs, as the Ottomans did when operating their cannons.