Artillery

There is some debate as to the exact date of the adoption of gunpowder artillery by the Ottomans. C. M. Cipolla, for instance, cites non-contemporary sources which claim that an iron gun was made at Brusa in 1364; that the Ottomans introduced artillery to India in 1368; and that cannons were used by the Ottomans in their second campaign against the Karamanlis in 1387 and on the battlefield at Kossovo two years later. Others claim in addition that guns were used at Nicopolis in 1396 (though A. S. Atiya concludes otherwise), while a 15th century Bulgarian chronicle claims that cannon were used by the Ottomans shortly before 1400, in their blockade-cum-siege of Constantinople which lasted with varying degrees of intensity from 1394 to 1402. In the latter instance a 15th century author, Ashiqpashazade, states that ‘they did not yet know guns very well at that time; they came into regular use only under Murad [II] and Mehmed [II]’. Whatever the truth of these various claims may be, most authorities seem to agree that gunpowder artillery was in use by the Ottomans some time soon after 1400 at the latest, certainly by the reign of Mehmed I (1413-21), and clearly showed a marked increase during the Hungarian wars of his successor Murad IPs reign. References to the use of guns in sieges are commonplace from this time — as at Constantinople in 1422, the defence of Antalya in 1424, at Thessalonika in 1430, Belgrade in 1440, and the Hexamilion in 1446 — and field-guns too had made their appearance by the 1440s at the very latest, and very probably by the 1420s.

The large siege-guns which were to become something of a trade-mark of Ottoman artillery were in use by at least 1422, in which year the Byzantine chronicler Joannes Kananos recorded very large — but not particularly effective — Turkish bombards {boumpardat) taking part in the siege of Constantinople, firing stones of ‘excessive’ weight and calibre. However, our best sources of information for such massive guns belong not to this siege, but to that of 1453, where the most famous was cast by an Hungarian (or, according to Pears, possibly Wallachian) technician named Urban, who had deserted from Byzantine employ. Kritovoulos, who was admittedly not present but had his information from eye-witnesses on both sides, describes this gun as 40 spans (about 30 feet) long, with a barrel 8 inches thick and a bore of 30 inches in its muzzle half for the stone shot, and a bore of 10 inches in its breech half for the powder charge.3 Doukas, an eye-witness, says it was of bronze, and Giacomo Tetaldi, also present, informs us it was cast in one piece (unlike many Ottoman bombards, such as the ‘Dardanelles Gun’ described under figure 173, which were made in two halves that screwed together). The sources inevitably differ on the weight of its shot: Tetaldi says 1,900 lbs and Niccolo Barbaro says 1,200 lbs, while Leonard of Chios records its stones as 11 palms in circumference (about 105 inches, therefore giving a diameter of about 33 inches which tallies fairly closely with the bore quoted by Kritovoulos). Others claim 12-15 palms. The Anconitan consul Benvenuto actually reported that it fired shot of 1,300, 600 and 300 lbs, though this may be a reference to the weights of shot fired by other guns in the same battery (see also below). On the other hand Chalkokondyles reports rather improbably that Urban’s gun fired shot of little over 3 talents (elsewhere he even says 2), which, assuming that the Roman talent of 57.6 lbs is intended, is only about 175 lbs; bearing in mind the testament of other contemporary sources that this gun was ‘a terrifying and extraordinary monster’, the full absurdity of this statement becomes readily apparent. Chalkokondyles even adds that the two smaller guns in its battery fired shot of just half z talent, though Tetaldi records other Ottoman guns as firing shot of 800, 1,000 and 1,200 lbs, while Barbaro reports that of the remaining 11 principal guns used at the siege, one fired shot of 800 lbs and the rest fired shot of 2-500 lbs or less.

Further evidence of the sheer size of Urban’s gun and others of its ilk can be found in the large numbers of men and beasts of burden required to assist in their transport. ‘Their size was enormous’, says Pseudo-Sphrantzes, who continues: ‘Certain pieces of artillery could not be moved by the combined efforts of 40 or 50 pairs of oxen and 2,000 men.’ We are told by Leonard of Chios that Urban’s monster itself could barely be moved even by 150 yoke of oxen, while Doukas says of it that ‘30 wagons were linked together and 60 enormous oxen hauled it along. 200 men were deployed on each side of the cannon to support it so that it would not slip and fall onto the road, and 50 carpenters and 200 assistants went ahead of the wagons to construct wooden bridges wherever the road was uneven.’ Chalkokondyles reports that 2 such guns were dragged from the foundry at Adrianople, each requiring 70 oxen and 1,000 men to move it. With this in mind, it comes as no real surprise to find that the Ottomans often overcame this mammoth logistics problem by the simple expedient of casting most of their guns on site, as at the Hexamilion in 1446, Kroya in 1450, Jacje in 1464f, Shkoder (Scutari) in 1478 and Rhodes in 1480 — Kritovoulos even claims that Urban’s gun was cast before the walls of Constantinople, though this may refer to the even larger one Leonard of Chios says was ordered, but never completed, after the first had apparently blown up. Ottoman armies were therefore usually provided with supplies of bronze or copper and tin for this purpose. However, the practice declined after Mehmed IPs reign, and it became more usual for the guns to be transported as described above on wagons called ’araba, the responsibility for which had devolved onto a specialist unit called the Top ’arabaci (‘Gun-carriage drivers’) probably established by Murad II, or possibly by Mehmed II. Some modern authorities dispute anyway the likelihood of many guns having ever been cast on site, stating that the quality of the founding would not have been high if foundries had to be set up on such an ad hoc basis; but this view is not supported by the sources, in which there appear to be considerably less references to exploding guns than are to be found in contemporary Western chronicles. Admittedly Leonard of Chios states that Urban’s gun burst, but that was a bombard of exceptional size, cast in the established gun-foundry at Adrianople an)rway rather than on site. Chalkokondyles and Pseudo-Sphrantzes support his claim, the latter saying that ‘on account of the constant firing and of the great impurity of the metal, the sultan’s biggest cannon exploded into many fragments as it was being fired and dealt death and wounds to many.’ (Pears puts Urban among the casualties, but on what authority is unclear.) The anonymous ‘Slavic Chronicle’, seemingly based on an eye-witness account of the siege, also confirms that this gun burst, but adds that it was repaired 3 days later. This probably explains how Barbaro could describe it still being used even at the final assault; Doukas too specifically states that the gun survived the siege and ‘afterwards was preserved and continued to carry out the tyrant’s will.’ Indeed, some such 15th century bobmards were still in use even at the beginning of the 19th century!

Though a Genoese eye-witness, Montaldo, records 200 ‘guns and tormentia’ in all, he is alone in attempting to guess at the exact number of guns used at the siege of Constantinople. Others, however, nevertheless provide a few useful details on how the Ottoman artillery was organised on this occasion. Barbaro tells us that the biggest guns were arranged in four batteries of 2, 3, 3 and 4 pieces, the last including Urban’s monster (this battery therefore probably comprising the 4 guns firing shot of 800-1,900 lbs recorded by Tetaldi though, as we have already seen, Chalkokondyles says the battery including Urban’s gun comprised only 3 in all). Pseudo-Sphrantzes claims that the Ottoman artillery concentrated its fire on 14 points in the defences, implying there were 14 batteries. Sir Charles Oman, seemingly confused and drawing on Edward Pears (who cites Sphrantzes as saying that there were 4 guns per battery, and Barbaro as saying there were 9 batteries — which they do not), claims these batteries comprised 9 that were each of 4 smaller bombards ‘intended apparently rather for annoyance than for serious breaching’, with the balance of the guns, including the heaviest, in the remaining 5.

The majority of the gunners were probably European renegades for the greater part of the 15th century, men like Urban and the German master-gunner Meister Georg Frapont who sited and commanded Mehmed’s artillery at the siege of Rhodes. Indeed, Leonard of Chios says that the Ottoman engineers at Constantinople included Greeks, Latins, Germans, Hungarians and Bohemians, while Zorzi Dolfin, yet another eye-witness of the siege, describes how Mehmed ‘hired German cannon-makers at a great fee to come where and when he wished, to cast cannon for him’. Contemporaries of the siege of Belgrade in 1456 similarly report that the Ottoman culverines there were manned by Germans, Hungarians, Bosnians and Dalmatians, and the big siege-guns by Germans and Italians. These would have all been elements of the unit known as the Topcu ocaki (‘Ocak of the gunners’), established as part of the Qapu Khalqi by Murad II and divided into two distinct parts, comprising foundry and artillerists. Like the Top ’arabaci mentioned above, this unit was commanded by an Aga with the title of bashi, and was subdivided into ortas, presumably of about 50 men. The Topcu ocaki may have originally numbered 700 men, and the other unit was probably of similar size. Another unit apparently established at the same time and organised along identical lines was the Hum-baraciyan or ‘Mortar-men’ (see page 10). Kritovoulos, however, would have us believe that the first use of mortars by the Ottomans took place only later, at the siege of Constantinople where, unable to fire directly on ships sheltering in the Golden Horn, Mehmed II is supposed to have suggested to his gun-founders that they should make ‘a different sort of gun with a slightly changed design that could fire a stone to a great height, so that when it came down it would hit the ships and sink them.’ Thereafter mortars occur at most major Ottoman sieges — there were 7 among the 300 guns at Belgrade, for instance, and 12 bronze examples appeared at Rhodes, firing 5 rounds a day.

Kritovoulos provides us with a rare insight into the firing procedure of gunners operating Urban’s monster. He says: ‘First they put into it that which is called powder, filling the chamber behind completely up to the mouth of the enlarged part of the bore, which is intended for the stone shot. Then they introduced a great stopper, a very strong plug of wood, which they batter down with iron rammers so that it shall closely confine the powder in such a way that only the force of the ignited powder can discharge it; then they placed the stone shot upon it, ramming this down forcefiilly so as to make it enter into the wooden plug and make a round cavity [i. e. the plug was concave in shape so as to accept the shot]. After this, having turned the cannon towards the target, and given it an angle of elevation according to the rules of their art and experience, they brought great beams of wood which they laid under it, and on top and on all sides, so that it might not be disturbed and strike wide of the mark as a result of the shock and the recoil. After all this, they applied the fire to the little orifice behind’. Doukas gives us an interesting additional detail, describing the procedure that was followed to determine the range: ‘When he [the gunner] wished to discharge a large stone, he first took the range of the target by firing a small one and then, taking skilful aim, he would fire the large.’ (This may provide an alternative explanation for Benvenuto’s claim that the gun fired three weights of shot.) Bearing in mind all these preliminary operations, and the fact that the barrel needed to cool after each shot before a new powder charge could be inserted, it is no surprise to read in Chalkokondyles that the biggest gun fired only 7 times a day (and once at night). Guns at the siege of Shkoder fired at first only about 4 shots a day, and though their rate of fire steadily increased during the course of the siege 17-18 shots a day was the best day’s average to be achieved for the period of the siege for which records exist, during which time a total of 2,534 shots were fired. This compares highly unfavourably with the 1,000 shots a day allegedly fired during the siege of Rhodes. On the other hand Tetaldi says of the siege of Constantinople that ‘each day the cannon were fired between 100 and 120 times’, presumably referring only to the 12 principal guns enumerated by Barbaro.

In closing on the subject, it should be noted that in addition to gunpowder artillery the Ottomans continued to use trebuchets at least as late as 1480, when they are much in evidence on both sides at the siege of Rhodes. Pseudo-Sphrantzes records of the final siege of Constantinople that the Ottoman trebuchets (of which there were at least a dozen within a week of the attack beginning) ‘caused damage to many illustrious houses and parts of the palace situated in the vicinty of the walls’, referring elsewhere to the Turks ‘demolishing parts of our walls, here and there, with their artillery and trebuchets’.

The Navy

The earliest Turkish fleets we read of in this period are none of them Ottoman, mostly originating instead from Umur Bey’s amirates of Aydin and Smyrna, the latter of which had a Turkish naval tradition dating right back to the 1090s. In 1332 an Aydinian fleet of some 380 presumably small vessels and 40,000 men raided through the Archipelago and launched attacks on mainland Greece and the Morea, while in 1343 Umur allegedly fitted out a fleet of 250 or 300 ‘barges’ to raid the coastal towns of South-East Europe, but Christian forces sank 50 of these at sea in 1344 and succeeded in burning the majority of the rest at anchor in the port of Smyrna. The initial appearance of the Ottomans on the naval scene commenced a decade later, with their seizure of the coastal amirate of Karasi in 1345 and the major naval base at Gallipoli in 1353, from which they henceforth launched occasional piratical forays involving fleets of only modest proportions. They failed to realise the full potential of maritime power until nearly a century later; the Ottoman chronicler Hajji Khalifa (d. 1657) observed that ‘before the time of the late Sultan Mehmed II, the Ottomans had not ventured to undertake naval expeditions’, though he had to confess that the need for a proper navy had been felt somewhat earlier, during Murad II’s unsuccessful siege of Constantinople in 1422. This need was more than filled under Mehmed, whose fleet at the final siege of the city is variously estimated by most Greek and Italian observers as 240-500 vessels of various sizes, carrying 36,000 men according to Benvenuto; even the Ottoman sources claim 400 ships were present. The more reliable accounts tend to agree that of this total between 80 and 100 were proper warships — a mixture of triremes, biremes, galleys and fustae or karabia — with the rest made up of‘other small craft of various kinds’. The large ships at least were equipped with heavy guns, and probably the fustae carried light guns; certainly small, oar-propelled vessels in pictures from Guillaume Caoursin’s printed account (1496) of the siege of Rhodes, and a contemporary woodcut of the Battle of Zonchio (1499), probably representing fustae, have swivel-guns mounted in the bows. In fact 15th century Turkish ships were recognised by the Venetians as being better-equipped with artillery than their own vessels.

Most Ottoman fleets recorded in the second half of the 15th century were of considerable dimensions if the sources are to be believed: 100 ships against Sinope in 1459; 300 against Negroponte in 1470; 300-380 against Kafla in 1475, including 120 galleys; 40 galleys and 100 other vessels in the descent on Apulia in 1480; and 100 ships in the fleet used against Rhodes the same year, carrying 3,000 Janissaries and 5,000 ’azabs according to Hajji Khalifa, who adds that 60 of the vessels were from Gallipoli. A detailed breakdown of the Ottoman fleet at Zonchio gives 60 triremes, 30 fustae, 3 galeazze (‘great galleys’), 2 enormous round ships (see below), 18 smaller round ships, and 127 small supply vessels and the like, the whole fleet probably crewed by 37,000 men. The largest part of most fleets was therefore comprised of the smaller vessels and supply ships, but some at least were vessels of substantial size. Khalifa tells us that as early as c. 1460 Mehmed II ‘built one of 3,000 tons, but as they were launching it, it sank in the harbour, and the builders were forced to flee.’ He also provides us with a description of the largest Ottoman vessels at the Battle of Zonchio, which he says were ‘two immense kokas [carracks], the length of each being 70 cubits and the breadth 30 cubits. The masts were of several trees joined together, and in the middle measured 4 cubits in circumference. The maintop was capable of holding 40 men in armour, who might thence discharge their arrows and handguns. . . These vessels had 2 decks, the one like that of a galleon, the other like that of a mavuna [trireme]; and on the other side of each of these, according to custom, were 2 port-holes, in which immense guns were placed. Along the upper deck was a netting under which on both sides were 24 oars, each pulled by 9 men. The sterns were like those of a galleon, and from them boats were suspended. Each of these ships contained 2,000 soldiers and sailors.’ Marino Sanudo the Younger, a Venetian, adds that these ships were each of 1,800 tons (actually botte, therefore about 1,080 tons), though he says they carried only

1,000 men, mostly Janissaries.

The principal weakness of the Ottoman navy, so the sources repeatedly tell us, lay in the quality of its seamen, who are frequently dismissed disparagingly in the chronicles as ‘Jews, Greeks and Turks’. Jacopo de Promontorio, a Genoese writing c.1475, says the Ottomans lacked ‘reliable sailors’, adding that their galleys were ‘unfit for naval warfare’ and that ‘4 such galleys manned by incompetent sailors are not worth one of ours.’ Many Ottoman sailors were in fact ‘pressed Greeks’, whose seamanship the Italians had always held in very poor repute, and being Christians they were rarely entirely dependable — in 1499, for instance, 16,500 ’azabs were taken aboard ship in Gallipoli and Constantinople in place of the usual Christian crews, whom it was feared would prove unfaithful in the forthcoming naval campaign against the Venetians. As a further indication of the extent to which Turkish vessels were crewed by Christians, it is interesting to note that in an engagement off Gallipoli in 1416 most of the oarsmen in the Ottoman ships were Genoese,

Catalans, Sicilians and Greeks. Doukas tells us that after the battle those ‘whom the Turks had pressed into service’ were freed by the Venetian victors, while ‘all those who served for profit and gain they impaled on Tenedos.’

The latter category were probably mostly Genoese, these being somewhat less particular than the Venetians about what company they kept, while others were Catalans. Hired Genoese vessels were used as transports by the Ottomans on a number of occasions, such as in 1422, 1423 and — most perfidious of all — in 1444, when they transported Murad II’s Anatolian army to Europe for one gold coin per man, to confront and defeat Hunyadi and King Vladislav at the Battle of Varna. Doukas supplies us with a full account of a Genoese-Ottoman combined operation dating to 1422, when 7 ships under Giovanni Adorno, podesta of the Genoese colony of Folia (New Phocaea) on the Anatolian coast, were supplied to ship Murad’s troops to Gallipoli during the Ottoman civil war of 1421-23, these Genoese subsequently fighting alongside them against the pretender Mustafa. Adorno’s own ship carried 800 ‘brave and heavily-armed Franks’ according to Doukas, who also tells us that 500 Genoese crossbowmen and javelin-men were landed from 20 ships’ boats to secure Murad’s beachhead. After the main body of the Ottomans had been put ashore the Genoese ‘took their positions on the front line of battle, and cleared the way with quarrels and gunshot.’ The Genoese then accompanied Murad inland as far as Adrianople, their forces numbering ‘more than 2,000 men, Italians in black armour and bearing lances, and bill-bearing foot-soldiers’, commanded by their ships’ captains. Idris al-Bitlis says that they received 5,000 ducats for their services. Ironically, it was Genoese ships too that had earlier transported Mustafa’s own army across to Anatolia! (An even earlier instance of Genoese in Ottoman employ is to be found in a contemporary Florentine chronicle of the Battle of Kossovo in 1389, which records the presence of 5,000 Genoese, Greek and other Christian balestrieri in Murad I’s army and attributes the Turkish victory there to them.)

It is no surprise, therefore, to find that most Turkish naval terminology, and probably organisation too, was based on that of the Genoese. The Ottomans’ naval commander-in-chief was called the Kapudan or Kaptan pasha (from the Italian capitano), fixsx. appointed by Mehmed II in 1453 after the poor performance of the fleet at the siege of Constantinople (where at one point 4 Christian ships battled through a veritable sea of Turkish vessels, to reach the safety of harbour after a prolonged engagement in which the inferiority of Turkish seamanship was confirmed beyond reasonable doubt). The rank and title of sancak bey of Gallipoli went with this post. Ships’ captains during this period were called reis, or kaptan or hassa reis in the case of the larger vessels; they received timars within the Kapudan pasha’s sancak. Ottoman galleys were much the same as those of the Genoese and Venetians, and their crews likewise numbered about 200 men. In battle they carried troops in addition; at Zonchio, for instance, the galeazzes each carried 200 Janissaries.

One additional naval force worthy of notice was the Danube fleet, which played a vital role in Ottoman campaigns against Hungary, transporting many troops and most of the artillery. Based at Golubac and Krusevac, it could be of considerable proportions, allegedly 200 (but possibly as few as 60) light vessels being built to serve on the Danube during the siege of Belgrade in 1456. Another such river fleet was stationed on the Morava, Brocquiere reporting that at the confluence of the Nissava and Morava (near Nish) ‘the Turk usually keeps from 80 to 100 galleys, galliots, and rafts, to carry across his cavalry and army in time of war’. This fleet was guarded by 300 men even in peacetime, these being relieved every two months.