THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE AD 324–1453 STEPHEN TURNBULL ILLUSTRATED BY PETER DENNIS © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com FORTRESS • 25 THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE AD 324–1453 STEPHEN TURNBULL ILLUSTRATED BY PETER DENNIS Series editorsMarcus Cowper and Nikolai Bogdanovic © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com Contents Introduction 4 The founding of Constantinople • The first fortifications of Constantinople The Theodosian walls • The later walls Chronology 9 Design and development 10 The material structure of the walls • The inner wall • The outer wall • The outer terrace and moat The gates of the city • The sea walls • Repairing and maintaining the walls Tour of the site 19 From the Marble Tower to the Golden Gate • The Golden Gate From the Golden Gate to Silivri Kapisi(the Gate of the Spring) • From Silivri Kapisi(the Gate of the Spring) to Yeni Mevlevihane Kapisi(the Gate of Rhegium) • From Yeni Mevlevihane Kapisi(the Gate of Rhegium) to Porta Xylokerkou(the Gate of the Wooden Circus) • The Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Tekfur Saray) From the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Tekfur Saray) to the Golden Horn The living site 33 Strategic considerations • The walls and the army • The Varangian Guard • Water and food supply Siege weapons and the defence of the walls • Gunpowder weapons at Constantinople Greek fire • The supernatural defenders of Constantinople • The role of the citizens The walls of Constantinople under siege 47 The siege by the Avars and Persians AD626 • The siege by the Arabs AD674–678 The siege by the Arabs AD714 • The siege by Krum the Bulgar AD813 The siege by the Russians AD860 • Attacks and sieges during the First Crusade AD1097 Attacks and sieges during the the Fourth Crusade AD1204 The sieges by the Ottomans AD1396, 1422 and 1453 Aftermath 58 The walls beyond AD1453 The influence of the walls of Constantinople on medieval military architecture The walls of Constantinople today 60 Repairs and restoration • Visiting the walls Bibliography and further reading 63 Index 64 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com Introduction The founding of Constantinople Constantinople, now Istanbul, takes its name from the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. In the year AD324 he moved the capital of the Roman Empire eastwards to this site, then called Byzantium, where Europe gazed over into Asia. Few cities have a more dramatic topography than Constantinople. The new capital was built on a promontory that projects out into the waters of the southern end of the Bosphorus, the narrow strait that connects the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea. To the south of the promontory the Sea of Marmara spreads out around it like a lake. Beyond this sea to the west lie the straits known as the Dardenelles that give access to the Aegean and the Mediterranean. To the immediate north of the old city is a narrow bay called the Golden Horn. It is one of the finest natural harbours in the world and runs inland for almost seven miles. This was one of Constantinople’s most priceless assets. From ancient times the Bosphorus has been conventionally regarded as separating Europe from Asia. The dramatic and picturesque location of Constantinople on its western shores has therefore ensured that the city should acquire a tremendous symbolic value, giving the site the inevitable romantic associations that have arisen from its position as the ‘bridge between east and west’ or ‘the crossroads of the universe’. It has been such a powerful concept that the image has tended to obscure any serious discussion of the strategic and military considerations that led to Byzantium being chosen as the new capital in the first place. As a result the good points of the strategic and topographical conditions have been exaggerated and the negative points diminished to paint The view of Constantinople as seen a picture of Constantinople as the ultimate example of perfection attained in from a ship approaching the city the natural strategic defence of a city. from the Sea of Marmara. Of the surviving monuments from Byzantine It is therefore somewhat surprising to note that the site of Constantinople times, the church of Haghia Sophia was not always so favourably regarded. Byzantium had already existed for (Holy Wisdom) appears in the 1,000 years before Emperor Constantine came onto the scene, and for most of middle distance, with the dome of that time the apparent strategic advantages that we take for granted nowadays Haghia Eirene(Holy Peace) just were either unrecognised or regarded as irrelevant. For example, the historian visible to its right. This was the Polybius, who lived in the 2nd century BC, wrote that the site of Byzantium glorious city that the walls were built may have been favoured for security and prosperity by the sea, ‘but as regards to defend. The sprawl that is modern Istanbul lies in the background. the land it is most disadvantageous in both aspects’. In this statement Polybius (Photograph by Eileen Brayshaw) anticipated why Constantinople’s mighty walls should be built in the first 4 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com place. Byzantium only looked really formidable when viewed from the seaward side. From the landward side, the future location of the great walls with which this book is concerned, the site looked very vulnerable indeed. Vulnerable or not, the settlement of Byzantium on the promontory made the location into a position of considerable economic importance. It served naturally and inevitably as a gateway for trade in and out of the Black Sea, but for much of Constantinople’s history this factor was far less important than the trade routes coming up from the south. The most important of these was the vital sea traffic that brought food. The Egyptian corn that fed the population until the 7th century AD not only had to travel a distance of 1,000 miles but had to be taken up the Dardanelles at a time when the prevailing winds were northerly. Polybius’s worries about the city’s weak defensive points were specifically concerned with the western approach to Constantinople over the flatlands of Thrace that now constitute north-west Turkey. The only mountain ranges in that region run from east to west, and thus afford no natural protection against an invading army. There were also weaknesses to the north because there was no other natural harbour nearby on the Bosphorus, and there was also a long- running problem over water supply to the city. This is a matter that will be discussed in detail later. The solution to the problem of security from the west is the major theme of this book, because it was for that very reason that the walls of Constantinople were raised. Impregnable by nature to north, east and south, the city had to be made equally impregnable to the west by the hand of man. The results stand today as the greatest surviving monument of military architecture to arise out of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages. Repaired and extended over centuries, the walls of Constantinople withstood sieges delivered by different armies with different weapons and techniques for over a millennium. They stand today partly in romantic ruin, partly as restorations, but everywhere as a splendid testimonial to the men who built them and defended them. The first fortifications of Constantinople When Constantine the Great, an experienced soldier, made his momentous decision to turn Byzantium into his capital, his first thoughts naturally turned towards its defence. So, in the year AD328 the emperor himself traced the limits of the future capital on foot and with his spear in his hand. Some defensive walls had existed from ancient times, but Constantine immediately arranged for new walls to be built. These included an important land wall from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara. The limits that his new walls now enclosed trebled the area formerly occupied by the old Greek city. The rebuilding of the city as the new imperial capital inevitably encouraged a substantial growth in population. One happy result of this was that when the invading Goths appeared before Constantine’s wall in AD 378, following their victory at the battle of Adrianople, they were dissuaded from attacking the city because of the evidence of such a large multitude to oppose them. But the growing population could not forever be housed conveniently within the confines of Constantine’s original city plan. Such was the demand for building plots for housing alone that areas of land were reclaimed from the sea. On a larger scale Emperor Valens, for example, erected the fine aqueduct that bears his name in the 4th century AD. This was an enormous project, the scale of which can be gauged from the fact that when it was repaired during the 9th century AD6,000 labourers had to be brought in for the purpose. By the time of the reign of Emperor Theodosius II (AD408–450) the city was threatening to burst the confines that Constantine had erected. Something had to be done, but by the first half of the 5th century ADthe population explosion in Constantinople was not the most important consideration occupying imperial minds. Rome, the former capital of the Empire, had been captured by 5 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com Xyloporta Gate DIPLOKIONION Gate of Blachernae BPalalaccheernaeG O Gate of the Kaligaria L Po(rotar EXgyrlio Kkearpki)ou PP(Taoelrfapkchueyr roSofag trehaneyit)DusENHORN ValleyoftheSprings Gate of Charisius CMhoonraastery Gate of the Phanar (Edirne Gate) Gate of the Petrion Galata PETRION Gate of St Theodosia Tower B Gate of O Eis Pegas S GALATA P MaHltiellpe LycusVFaiflltehy MGilaGittaaert eyof mSesto tReicohimonanus ofConstantine ChrisMt PoaCHnnahoAtsluqoytruc ecAerrhadpy ut oooocsfrfttles MPoGlasaDqtteureaue onGVfg aEtaSGthNretaei EiJtTeoI hAoGoPnNffea rtthaemePorataHHeobrraiaiacGaate PrGEosuahHgtoaereri bnaoonifuuurss Gate of St BarbarHORUSa (Topkapi Gate) Wall QUARTER (YenFi oMuerTtvGhhl iaerMvtdeii hl Mioatafinl riRetyah KGreyaag pGtiueiasmit)e Abandoned RiverF ALoryrccuaumdsi uosf FBoorvuims UganCtneoGanmattoeesd TcohafFe ltioohordneuomsi uosf CoFonrsutamn toinfe HippodromPeGarleaacte SSaonpthaiaUnnamGaetde goaft ethe Lighthouse Pege Gate Lighthouse Pege (Silivri Kapisi) Gate of St Aemilianus Monastery HIA HLaarnbgoaur CoHnatrobsocuarlison Boru Wcoaleteorn G UHanatnerbaomuerd gate Belgrade Gate MAT A S Monastery of P Psamathia Gate Single fortified wall with gate St John Studius Doubled fortified wall with gate Stockades protecting some built-up areas within the walls INDUSTRIAGLolden Gate STUDION N OMpaejonr wchauterrc-hs toofr amgoen caisstteerryn QUARTER Small harbours partly silted up Gate of Christ on the Marmara shore SEA OF MARMARA 0 500yds Marble Tower 0 500m Map of Constantinople showing the the Goths. The Huns had also crossed the Danube, and although they had been line of the Theodosian walls and the driven back there was a real fear that they would return to pose a direct threat sea walls. The course of the walls of to Constantinople. Constantine the Great is shown as It was therefore most fortunate for the Byzantine Empire that when the hour a dotted line. (© Copyright Osprey came, along too came the man. His name was Anthemius, and he headed the Publishing Limited) Byzantine government during the minority of Emperor Theodosius II. From the time of his appointment as Praetorian Prefect of the East in AD405, Anthemius applied himself with vigour to whatever task the empire demanded of him. The first task was the expulsion of the Huns from the Balkans. The second resulted in the walls of Constantinople. The so-called Theodosian walls (nothing so grand could bear the name of anyone less than the ruling emperor) were the results of Anthemius’ skilled and dedicated work. His walls set in stone the limits that Constantinople was to possess and to defend until modern times. Today’s tourists to Istanbul find Anthemius’ limits marked on the map as the ‘Old City’: an apparently tiny element in the modern sprawl that now stretches far up the Bosphorus past the two recently built suspension bridges. But that sprawl is modern Istanbul. The Theodosian walls defined what for the next 1,500 years was to be understood as Constantinople. 6 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com The Theodosian walls The Theodosian walls were built about 11⁄2miles west of Constantine’s original fortifications. The area occupied by the city was therefore greatly increased, and, most suitably for the city that had inherited the mantle of Rome, the completed Theodosian walls of Constantinople enclosed seven hills. From the moment that Anthemius’ designs began to take shape the erection, maintenance and repair of the new fortifications of the city became an undertaking in which all citizens were required to assist in one form or another. On that point the laws were very strict, and neither rank nor privilege exempted anyone from their obligation to carry out the work. One-third of the annual land tax of the city went towards the cost of the walls, and any additional expenditure was provided by requisitions laid upon the inhabitants. There does not seem to have been much grumbling about the matter. Indeed, there was a genuine enthusiasm for a project that promised increased security, and the government harnessed such enthusiasm in various ways. One subtle ploy was the way the government appealed to the citizens’ generosity according to which circus faction they belonged to. These factions, among them the Blues and the Greens, were the supporters of chariot-racing teams. They were great rivals when cheering on their side from the terraces of the Hippodrome, but worked together on the walls when the city was threatened. Records show that in AD 447, when repairs were being undertaken, the Blues and Greens supplied 16,000 men between them for the building effort. The walls designed by Anthemius were completed in the year AD 423, the fifth year of the reign of Theodosius II, who was then about 12 years old. They survive today as the inner wall of the fortification line that extends from the Sea of Marmara to the ruins of the Byzantine Palace of the Porphyrogenitus (Tekfur Saray). The increase in the area they enclosed also necessitated an extension of the sea walls along the northern and southern shores of the city, although these works were not carried out until some time later. The first challenge faced by the original line of the Theodosian walls was provided by nature. In AD 447, only 34 years after their construction, the greater part of the new walls, including 57 towers, was flattened by a series of mighty earthquakes. The timing could not have been worse as Attila the Hun was advancing on Constantinople. Fortunately, in a splendid confirmation of the energy and commitment to their defence that the citizens of Constantinople had shown before, the government and people rose to the challenge and restored the fallen walls in less than three months. These new walls helped to save Constantinople from Attila, although other sources tell of an epidemic among his followers. Strangely enough, we do not know for certain the name of the man who took the lead in this great endeavour. He may have been called Constantine or A very damaged octagonal tower from the inner section of the Theodosian walls, located just to the south of the Golden Gate. 7 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com Cyrus, and he was the then Praetorian Prefect of the East. Our anonymous hero went much further than mere restoration, and took the opportunity to make the city into a much stronger fortress than even Anthemius had dared to contemplate. An extra wall was built outside Anthemius’ wall, with a broad and deep moat in front of it. When the work was complete the city lay behind three lines of defence and 192 towers flanked the walls. It was these walls that were to prove impregnable for the next 1,000 years and survive to this day. The later walls Although the Theodosian walls described above constitute the greater part of what is now visible on the ground, even the most cursory visitor cannot help but notice that towards the northern extremity of the walls there is a change in design. Just before they head downhill towards the Golden Horn, the Theodosian walls come to an abrupt end and are replaced by a wall of more complex and different construction. This is something of a puzzle. Surely the Theodosian walls originally extended all the way to the Golden Horn, so why were they replaced? The explanation begins in AD 627 during the reign of Emperor Heraclius, when the quarter called Blachernae was actually a suburb outside the line of the Theodosian walls. It contained a church called the Church of the Theotokos, or Mother of God, and it was believed that the holiness of the site and the relic it contained would protect it from danger. But in AD 627 Constantinople was attacked by the Avars, who devastated the area around. Even though the church suffered no harm it prompted the realisation that a wall should enclose it for extra security. Blachernae therefore received the protection of a wall, and further additions were made in AD813 under Emperor Leo the Armenian in the face of threats from the Bulgarians. The Blachernae area grew in importance over the next few centuries. It even acquired one of Constantinople’s most important buildings. This was the imperial palace of Blachernae, which became the favourite residence of the imperial court during the reign of Alexius I Comnenus (AD 1081–1118). It was a peaceful spot away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but its remoteness made it a prime target for any attack, so there was a constant need to review the defences in this quarter and, if necessary, enhance them. Additions were therefore made, and the walls that now surround the Blachernae Palace area are the walls built during the reign of Emperor Manuel Comnenus (AD 1143–80). According to the historian Nicetas Choniates, the camp pitched by the armies of the Fourth Crusade in 1203 lay ‘on a hill overlooking the wall built by Emperor Manuel’. These were the final pieces of the jigsaw that now make up the walls of Constantinople. To the left lies the restored section around the Belgrade Gate, typical of the stronger of the entrances to 8 thecity. © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com Chronology 324 Constantine moves the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium 325 New walls are built 378 Battle of Adrianople 405 Anthemius begins the Theodosian Walls 408 Accession of Theodosius II 423 Completion of the Theodosian Walls 447 Much of the walls destroyed by an earthquake 626 Siege by the Persians and Avars 627 Building of the Wall of Heraclius 674 Siege by the Arabs begins 678 Use of Greek fire ends the Arab siege 714 Second siege by the Arabs 813 Leo V adds outer wall in Blachernae Quarter. Siege by Krum the Bulgar 860 Siege by the Russians 1047 Siege by Leo Tornices 1071 Battle of Manzikert 1081 Alexius Comnenus enters Constantinople 1097 First Crusade threatens Constantinople 1204 Fourth Crusade takes Constantinople 1261 Constantinople recaptured from the Latins 1345 Extensive repairs carried out to walls 1351 Repairs to sea walls 1390 First use of gunpowder at Constantinople The point where the Theodosian walls give way to the Comnenan 1396 Siege by Bayezid the Thunderbolt. Battle of Nicopolis walls near the Palace of the 1422 Siege by Murad II Porphyrogenitus. The change in style 1444 Battle of Varna is quite striking. Several centuries 1453 Constantinople falls to Mehmet the Conqueror separate the two constructions. 9 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com Design and development The material structure of the walls A cross-section of the Theodosian walls of Anthemius reveals three layers of defence. From the city side outwards, there is first the inner wall. A narrow walkway divides this from the outer wall, which is both lower and weaker. A wider outer walkway ends with another low wall that is the inner side of the moat. On the other side of the moat the ground is flat. The standard building materials of Constantinople were squared stone, brick and lime mortar. To these could be added marble, sometimes in the form of reused pieces taken from older sites. The region around the Sea of Marmara offered a rich variety of natural stones, for which there were numerous quarries. The stone sections in the walls were built from tertiary limestone brought from the quarries located about three miles to the west of the Golden Gate. Bricks must have been produced locally, although no remains of Byzantine kilns have been found. Mortar was made by mixing lime with various aggregates, often brick dust and fragments. Byzantine mortar was particularly strong once it had hardened. The other building material seen in some places on the wall would have been roof tiles used for decoration, for example to make an arch-shape to frame an inscription. The foundations of Byzantine churches were constructed of brick or stone, and if possible cut to the bedrock, so the city walls were probably underpinned in a similar way. Byzantine walls were generally constructed of alternating bands of brick and stone. Squared stone faced both the inner and outer surfaces of the wall, and mortared rubble filled the space in between the facings. The Theodosian walls were no exception to this general pattern. The bricks normally formed a levelling course, extending through the thickness of the walls and binding the two faces together, so that when a brick course appears on the outside of a wall, we should expect to see the same course on the inner. In the inner wall six brick courses, each containing five layers of bricks, were laid at intervals through the thickness of the walls to bind the structure more The Theodosian walls were constructed using stone and brick. In this detail of the sea wall on the Sea of Marmara both materials can be seen. Brick was used more 10 sparingly than stone. © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com