Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/278

With these very inadequate resources Constantinople had to be held against an army sufficiently numerous at the outset, and doubtless reinforced from time to time by accessions of strength from the Turks in Asia. Mahomet drew his lines, as Amurath, his father, had done, from the harbour to the sea, and erected fourteen batteries at the weakest points of the first of the two landward walls, which, when he had thoroughly battered it, he meant to carry by assault. The most powerful of these batteries were directed against the Charsian Gate and the gate of St. Romanus, and it was at this latter gate that the monster gun was planted. Here, it would seem, the chief assault would be made. Mahomet's lines consisted of earthworks, which screened his men from the enemy's fire, and checked their sorties. He had, indeed, shown from the beginning singular forethought. Among his troops he had some experienced miners, who had been brought from the mines of Novoberda in Servia. He had also a multitude of archers, and his somewhat rude artillery was supplemented, as we have noted, with the battering apparatus of ancient warfare. Not a precaution had been omitted which a great organising genius could devise in order to insure success. Nevertheless, all at first was failure. The great cannon, which could be fired only seven times a day, burst, with a terrible destruction of life. The miners were baffled by the superior skill of the Greek and Latin engineers. The wall, indeed, was here and there broken and shattered, but the great fosse, though again and again filled with fascines and timber and in-