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254 DESTRUCTION OF THE GREEK EMPIRE CHAPTEE XII THE SIEGE INVESTMENT BY TURKS; FIRST ASSAULT FAILS; ATTEMPT TO FORCE BOOM; ATTEMPT TO CAPTURE SHIPS BRING- ING AID; GALLANT FIGHT AND DEFEAT OF TURKISH FLEET; TURKISH ADMIRAL DEGRADED; TRANSPORT OF TURKISH SHIPS ACROSS PERA INTO THE GOLDEN HORN. We have now arrived at the last act of the tragedy of Constantinople. The Queen City is cut off from the outside world. Its small fleet dare not attempt to pass outside the boom which excludes the Turkish fleet. An overwhelming force of ships had been collected to keep out supplies of men or provisions. Before its landward walls is an army of one hundred and fifty thousand fighting men and a crowd perhaps equally numerous awaiting their chance of plunder- ing the remnant of that wealth which had once been con- tained in the great storehouse of the Western world. Mahomet's On April 7 Mahomet's army had taken up its position before the along the whole four miles length of the landward walls April?" from the Marmora to the Golden Horn, and with the aid of 1453 - the fleet prevented all access to or egress from the city. But the men in it had made up their minds to hold it or to die. They began on the first day of the siege to make the best show they could. At the emperor's request, but also at their own desire, the crews of the galleys under Trevisano and of two others, numbering in all a thousand men, landed and marched along the whole length of the landward walls in presence of the enemy with the object of proving to the Turks that they would have to fight Venetians as well as Greeks. On the 9th the ships in the harbour were drawn up in