Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/286

246 DESTEUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE These cannon are variously described as bombards, machines, skeves, helepoles (or 'takers of cities '), torments, heleboles, and teleboles. They threw stone balls of great size. The balls had been brought from the Black Sea. The largest, says Chalcondylas, was fired seven times a day and once each night. Archbishop Leonard states that he measured one which had been fired over the wall, and found it to be eleven spans (or eighty-eight inches) in circumference. Nor is such measurement exaggerated. Some of the stone balls have been preserved. They were probably fired over the wall, did not break, and remain nearly in the position where they fell. I have measured two of them, and they are exactly eighty-eight inches in circumference. 1 Tetaldi states that there were ten thousand culverins, and the same number is given by Montaldo. The number is possibly exaggerated. Yet Leonard speaks of ' innumerable machines ' being advanced towards the wall, and afterwards of a great number of small guns being employed to batter the walls along all their lines. None of the cannon, I think, were mounted on wheels : the Great Cannon certainly was not, for Critobulus describes how it was first carefully pointed towards the object intended to be struck, and then embedded in its position with blocks of wood preparatory to firing. Contemporaneously with the disposal of the large cannon, orders were given to fill up the ditch in front of them. When we turn from the preparations made by Mahomet to besiege the city to those which the emperor and the Constan- citizens had made or were making, the first point which army. strikes us is the enormous disparity in numbers which the respective leaders had under them. To meet the mighty host of trained warriors under Mahomet, the emperor had Military Gate (Triton) ; opposite the Palace, by which he probably means in the angle now occupied by the Greek cemetery opposite the Palace of Porphyrogenitus or Tekfour Serai ; opposite the Cresu Gate, probably the Chariseus or Adria- nople Gate, and opposite the Romanus Gate. Philelphus also mentions the Pege Gate as one of the chief places of attack (ii. 809). 1 Pusculus gives fourteen palms as the circumference; Phrantzes and Critobulus, twelve ; while Barbaro gives thirteen to fourteen.