Constantinople

September 1, 1422, Constantinople.

At dawn, as the sky was just beginning to lighten, the defenders on the walls rubbed their weary eyes and looked out.

Beyond the city stretched an endless Ottoman camp. Tents crowded the entire plain, and the din of voices and neighing warhorses could be heard faintly.

"The enemy has fewer men than last month, probably only about forty thousand now."

Vitus Palaiologos stood atop the tower and took out a small booklet to begin recording:

"I've been in this world for two weeks now. I don't think I'm going back. Today, the enemy launched another large-scale assault. Fortunately, 1453 is still thirty-one years away. The Ottomans lack heavy siege guns for now and have only a few light cannons. They rely more on traditional counterweight trebuchets.

"Constantinople is surrounded by sea on three sides, so the enemy can attack only from the west. The western walls are tall and sturdy, with two stone walls, one inner and one outer.

"The inner wall is about twelve meters high and five meters thick. The outer wall is about eight meters high, with a wide moat beyond it. All things considered, the city should hold out."

As time passed, countless Ottoman soldiers pushed siege towers and heavy trebuchets slowly toward Constantinople.

A centurion came up beside Vitus. "Your Highness, the enemy is about to attack. I recommend that you return somewhere safe."

"There's no need. You all get on with your work. Don't mind me."

Hearing the young man's reply, the centurion felt he had done his duty. He left the tower and reminded the soldiers to prepare for battle.

The conscripted militia gripped their spears and watched the army draw nearer. The crossbowmen bent low, planted one foot on the stirrup at the front of each crossbow, and hauled the bowstring up with both hands. Then they placed a bolt in the groove.

"Aim for the men pushing the siege towers. Don't waste your shots!"

Centurion Lucas patrolled his stretch of wall, checking on his soldiers. Then he turned around and saw Vitus still standing atop the tower, pen and paper in hand, writing something.

As Lucas remembered it, Vitus Palaiologos was the emperor's fourth son. He had suffered a serious illness when he was young and had spent years secluded in recovery.

Then, in August of this year, the nineteen-year-old had suddenly left the palace and come to the walls to watch the brutal siege. Vitus, though this was his first battle, showed no fear at the sight. He had picked out a remote barracks in the military camp, watched the defense of the city by day, and stayed in his room writing at night. Sometimes he didn't even sleep until the middle of the night.

"What a strange fellow." Lucas took off his iron helmet, scratched his tousled short hair, and began directing the crossbowmen to shoot at the Ottomans.

Meanwhile, the counterweight trebuchets outside the city reached their designated positions. A team of Ottoman soldiers strained to pull the ropes, slowly raising the huge counterweight box to its highest point.

At the commander's order, the counterweight box plunged down. The other end of the long arm shot upward, hurling a round stone weighing dozens of kilograms. It whistled into the outer face of the wall, sending fragments of stone and dust into the air.

Four more trebuchets fired in succession. Some stones smashed into the wall, some sailed over it and landed behind, and one struck the battlements dead-on. Shattered stone flew in every direction, knocking down soldiers who couldn't get out of the way.

"Spit, spit!"

Lucas spat the dust from his mouth and cursed, "Where are our cannons? Why haven't they arrived?"

During the siege, Emperor Manuel II had appealed to the West for help. Venice sent no reinforcements, but seized the opportunity to sell the Byzantines various weapons instead. Among them was a type of light bronze cannon, about two meters long, named the "Serpent Cannon." It cost as much as 280 ducats.

(A ducat was a gold coin issued by Venice, worth 3.5 grams of gold. During this period, it was the common currency of trade around the Mediterranean Sea.)

After watching a demonstration of the cannons, the emperor bought all twenty of them and stationed them along the western wall to bombard the Ottomans' heavy trebuchets.

Lucas's section lay in the southwestern part of the city. He sent soldiers to request reinforcements. Before long, ten gunners arrived with a cannon, dragging it along with great difficulty. Lucas went to meet them. "Where's your commander?"

"He was just hit by a piece of flying stone and knocked unconscious."

Just then, Vitus hurried out of the tower and squeezed into the crowd. "Don't worry. I fought alongside a gun crew last week, so I've already learned how to operate the cannon."

He went behind the battlements, held his right arm straight out, and raised his thumb. Using the thumb-ranging method commonly employed by artillerymen in later generations, he estimated the distance between them and the trebuchet.

"About 270 meters."

Then Vitus took out his notebook and turned to a page where he had recorded the Serpent Cannon's firing distances at different elevations. "Ten-degree elevation. Add a wooden wedge at the rear. Standard charge."

At his command, the gunners hammered a wooden wedge into the bottom of the cannon's carriage. They scooped gunpowder from a wooden barrel with a long-handled ladle, poured it into the muzzle, and loaded a smoothly polished stone ball.

After checking that everything was in order, Vitus told the gunners to light the fuse.

Boom!

A thunderous roar tore through the air. Orange flames and thick white smoke burst from the muzzle. The stone ball traced an arc over the outer wall and the moat, then struck the ground and gouged out a crater.

Vitus adjusted the cannon slightly and fired again, but still missed.

On the third shot, the ball struck the counterweight box of a trebuchet. In an instant, the earth and stones packed inside poured down like a yellow-brown waterfall, burying an unlucky soldier below.

Before the smoke had cleared, Vitus had the soldiers drag the Serpent Cannon to another stretch of battlements and repeat the process. After two shots, they smashed another trebuchet.

The Ottomans realized the danger posed by the cannons and aimed their trebuchets at the battlements where the guns stood. But trebuchets fired on a high arc and had a very low hit rate. They couldn't shoot accurately enough to destroy that infuriating bronze cannon.

The Ottoman officers flew into a rage and sent archers on foot to within a hundred meters. Enduring the Greek crossbowmen's fire, they loosed volleys of arrows toward the cannons. Vitus hurriedly huddled behind the battlements.

The rain of arrows whistled down and struck the gunners' armor with dull thuds, like a hailstorm.

"Everyone, get down! The archers will tire. They can't keep this up for long!"

In just a few minutes, the Ottoman barrage gradually thinned. Most of the four hundred archers were killed or wounded, and the survivors dragged their injured back to the rear.

Vitus cautiously peered over the battlements, estimated the distance to the trebuchets, and continued directing the gunners to bombard the enemy until all five trebuchets had been destroyed.

He wanted to keep firing, but the Serpent Cannon's barrel had begun to glow faintly red. It needed to cool down.

"Ah, that barely satisfied me at all." Vitus returned to the top of the tower and surveyed the defenses nearby.

Just then, the Ottoman soldiers filled in the moat with earth-filled sacks and propped ladders against the base of the wall. They climbed the ladders, but the vast majority were shot down. A small handful of lucky men made it onto the outer wall, only to be met with a volley from the crossbowmen on the inner wall. They couldn't secure a foothold on the outer wall.