Eparkhos
Banned
Part LXVIII: The Retaking of Constantinople (1538-1541)
In the decades after its liberation from the Ottoman Turks, the New Empire of Nikaia had gradually been integrated into the Trapezuntine Empire at large, not completely but to such a degree that it was a part of it in all but name. However, this state of affairs left Magnesia and the lands around it as a de facto backwater provincial capital, more than a thousand kilometers away from the Imperial capital by sea. This had produced a period of statutory neglect, as the Nikaians essentially ran their own state under Trapezuntine auspices, allowing them to continue their sporadic campaigns against the Turks to their west and south with little regard to Trapezous’ wishes. This period of neglect would come to a screeching halt, however, as a new foe appeared to the west: Albania.
Nikaia was unique amongst the states in union under the Megalokomnenoi--the others being Trapezous, Kartvelia and the Principality of Gothia (sort of)--in that it had been forged in the fires of its own war of independence within living memory, a fact that gave it a very different culture and social structure than the rest of Greater Pontos. The armies of bandits, highwaymen, mercenaries and volunteers that had launched the revolt in Kolpazar and then held the line against the Turks until Trapezuntine reinforcements had arrived were somewhat intact, either having demobilized or turned to raiding across the Ottoman border. One of the main legacies of the war had been the Nikaian’s disinclination towards powerful, centralized authority and especially rule by outsiders, even if the Ponts were better regarded than the hated Ottomans. This left the string of regents that were appointed by Trapezous in a difficult place, needing to balance the demands of the central capital and what the people they governed would tolerate.
Like Trapezous proper, Nikaia was nominally structured along the bandon system, with its division of land between groups of semi-professional soldier-farmers--called the akritobandons due to cultural differences--but unlike Pontos Nikaia also had a series of second-level divisions, the eparkhies (εпαρχεία). Nominally, each eparkhy governed a population of ten thousand, but given the difficulty of establishing good records and the constant movement of the klephtic raiders and the shepherds who dwelled in the highlands made these numbers a suggestion at best. The head of the Nikaian government was David, but given that David spent most of his time on the far side of Sinope, the practical ruler of Nikaia was the Grand Regent, who ruled in the name of the aftokrator but effectively was an aftokrator. The Grand Regent was chosen by and ruled at the discretion of the aftokrator, though he has a great deal of autonomy in his decisions due to the roughly six weeks it takes for messages to go from Magnesia to Trapezous and back.
In the late 1530s, the Grand Regent was Konstantinos Paisophkis, a local who had fought in the War of Independence and who possessed an unusual loyalty to David and Trapezous and an unusual hatred of the Ottoman Turks. In his efforts to weaken the Ottomans and to strengthen Trapezous, and at the behest of a loose series of directives from Trapezous, he had undertaken an ambitious campaign that had, for the most part anyway, succeeded. The small farmers and fishers prospered, the larger semi-noble estates were cut down to a degree, but to such a great degree that they had cause to take up arms, and the amount of trade flowing through Nikaian tax offices rose greatly. Despite a series of complaints from the Trapezuntine press corps, however, he made absolutely no effort to curb the existing raids across the Ottoman border, even going so far as to unofficially support them. The reason was simple: they worked.
Officially, the Ottoman and Trapezuntine Empires had been at peace since the end of the Nikaian War of Independence, and all hostilities between them had ceased. Unofficially, the two utterly hated each other, and with the Ottomans in the weaker position there was a considerable incentive to continue fighting an unofficial war to kick them while they were down. Because of the hilly nature of Bithynia and the lands around it, Imperial frontiers could be expanded one valley at a time in a gradual but constant process that made irregular warfare very appealing to an attacking force. The klephts were masters at that kind of warfare, and they continued to campaign against the Turks with great ferocity even after peace was declared. By 1530, the Askanian Valley had been cleared of Muslims, and the Saricakaya Valley to the south was in the process of the same. While officially partaking in these wars was diplomatically impossible, that certainly didn’t stop the Nikaians from moving in behind the klephts and akritoi to integrate the new conquests. Ottoman Orhangazi was rebuilt as the Nikaian Akritokastron, and dozens of other small fortresses popped in the surrounding regions. In 1536, a particularly daring group of irregulars attacked the isolated port of Gemlik, capturing it and restoring it to Roman rule under the name of Kius. While the klephts and their allies had numerous successes in the lands south and west of Bithynia, little action occurred to the north, where the Ottomans still held the heavily-fortified Sangarian Lines and were able to repulse most raids.
That was, until 1539. With troops being pulled of the Sangarian Lines on an unprecedented scale to try and fend off the Albanian siege of Constantinople, a group of klephts led by Alexios Tagaris smashed their way across a fortified bridge and rode like hell into the interior, battering aside the forces that scrambled to try and intercept them. Within a few short days they had reached Nikomedia, storming into the barely-fortified suburbs and managing to capture several of the outlying fortresses. Tagaris came within a hair’s breadth of taking the city itself, but his lightly-armed men were repulsed from the main gate after several hours of desperate fighting. Still, the mere fact that a city of such importance had nearly been captured by what were essentially bandits sent shockwaves throughout Nikaia, and Paisophkis wrote to David asking him to come west with a large force as he himself mustered men for an offensive.
David had been occupied with events in Rum and in a failure of the Trapezuntine intelligence system had been unaware of the Ottoman’s death spiral as anything more than a peripheral matter, but as soon as he was informed of Nikomedia--and hence Constantinople--’s weakness, he quit Rum and rode north with all speed, bringing along many of the eleutheroi and neostrategoi. While it was too late to sail in 1539, the winter was spent assembling a fleet of transports, warships and as many cannons as David could get, all in accompaniment of 6,000 neostrategoi and 10,000 (20) bandonoi. It was a long winter, but as soon as the sea was passable in April 1540, the armada weighed anchor and went west.
They made landfall a month later at Kontolimni, whose port had been filled in slightly by sediment but which was still usable. David was eager to have a go at Constantinople directly, but any such attack was complicated by tw factors: Firstly, the lack of a Trapezuntine force in the Marmora meant that they would have to fight their way past the twin fortresses of Rumelihisar and Anadoluhisar, which guarded the Bosphorus; Secondly, there was still an Ottoman rump state that was effectively being run out of Bursa, and if left ignored they could potentially attack Nikaia, or worse somehow relief the city. As such, he and Paisophkis drew up the following plan: They would strike Nikomedia first, with the hope of capturing the Ottoman galley fleet, and depending on how that went a joint force of 8,000 Nikaians and 3,000 Trapezuntines would sail or march south to attack Bursa and occupy as much of the Mysian plain as possible. The rest of the force, meanwhile, would focus on taking the Straits and rolling down to Constantinople.
Nikomedia fell rather quickly after its main gate was physically blown open by cannonade in mid-June, and Paisophkis rushed south on land to take the fight to the south. David then turned his attention to the Straits fortresses. They had been built by Mehmed II near the height of Ottoman power, and thus were very well-fortified, sported mostly intact garrisons populated by fanatical exiles who would rather die than be subject to Roman rule, and their great arsenals held overlapping fields of fire on the Bosphorus. In short, trying to force them would be suicide, so a siege would have to do. The Anatolian shore was cordoned off before Nikomedia was even taken, though it would take until early July for the cannons to be hauled up against Anadoluhisar and open fire. Despite its formidable construction, the fortress’ stone shattered like most rock, and after a month of continuous bombardment its landward walls had been reduced to rubble. Still, the defenders fought tooth and nail from the ruins, and any attempt to outflank them was driven back by fire from Rumelihisar. With progress going nowhere, David took extraordinary measures, and had the nearby Goksu Stream dammed as a weapon of last resort. After two months more of chaotic fighting, the fortress refused to surrender, and the half-filled dam was blown, hurling a wall of water at the defenders and then swarming the defenses while they were briefly knocked back. The Siege of Anadoluhisar had taken nearly four months and killed 3,000 men, and the coming siege of Rumelihisar seemed to be even worse. Even with one of the forts gone, the Fenaryan fortress further up the channel made a naval attack or even transport to the fort nearly impossible.
Over the winter, David kept up the bombardment across the channel and conconcoted an elaborate plan that involved hiring local pirates to smuggle his men into a lagoon on the European side of the strait to attack the small fortified port of Castellonegro, securing a landing point for forces to be transferred to Europe to lay a similar siege, but ultimately it would be pointless. In January 1541, one of the fort’s defenders had his legs blown off by a cannonball, and as the pain overwhelmed him he begged for opium to ease his passing. One of his friends obliged, forgetting they were right above the magazine, and about three minutes later the entire fort exploded in a massive fireball. As soon as the seas cleared in April, Fenaryan was taken in a naval assault and the straits finally opened.
The Trapezuntine fleet that sailed down the Bosphorus would’ve been one hell of a sight. A hundred and sixty-two galleys and transports, practically covered in double-headed eagles and chi-rhos and bristling with cannonade would have beaten their way along the narrow channel, more ships than the entire Ottoman fleet could have gathered. They were unopposed, the Muslim ships having either bunched up in the Golden Horn for a last stand or having wisely run for Anatolia with news of the destruction of Rumelihisar. To the young sultan Osman II--the last vizier, Ali Sidnan Paşa, had been killed in battle, and his powers had reverted to the crown--watching from the shore, it was obvious the game was up.
Shkoze was furious at David’s arrival. He had just managed to get enough contacts inside the city to open one of its gates, and now the Trapezuntines were showing up to steal his victory! It sounds petty, but he had spent the last twenty years in unending war with the Turks, and for David, who had spent all of it sitting on the sidelines, to sweep in and take Constantinople, his ambition for decades, at the last second was absolutely infuriating. When David landed an embassy to try and negotiate with the Albanians over the city, they were turned away out of hand. Shkoze ordered a final assault on the walls, and to their credit the Albanians and their allies nearly broke through the demoralized Ottoman lines. Still, the threat of indiscrimant slaughter was enough for the Muslims to hold one final time, and after hours of fighting the crusaders were forced back.
David watched all of this from the sea, glad that his enemies were bleeding each other. The fewer men he lost throughout all this, the better, and he wanted Constantinople as intact as he could get it. On the night of 26 May, he sent two embassies to shore, one to Osman and one to Shkoze’s camp in disguise. The latter went amongst Shkoze’s captains, who were getting increasingly fed up with bloody failures in the name of glory, and promised them support for their chosen settlement in post-war Albania if they turned against their leader, and a number of them quietly accepted. The embassy to the New Palace, on the other hand, was far less conciliatory. If Osman surrendered the city intact--a great deal of emphasis was placed on this part--then the people of the city would be allowed to take ship for Gallipoli or Proliava unharmed. If he tried to fight, then David would descend on Constantinople like the wrath of God and put every non-Greek within the city to the sword. Reluctantly, Osman agreed to surrender the city within three days. Further negotiations with Shkoze, meanwhile, proved pointless. Hoping to curtail any future problems, David even offered to allow an Albanian honor guard to accompany his triumphant entry into Constantinople, which was outright refused. It seemed entirely possible that Shkoze intended to continue the siege, this time against the Trapezuntines rather than the Turks, but on 28 May he had a sudden change of heart and agreed to David’s proposal, so long as his delegation was increased to two hundred rather than a few dozen. Although suspicious, David agreed.
The period of Ottoman control in Constantinople came to an end at noon on 29 May 1541, exactly eighty-eight years after it had begun. 5,000 Trapezuntines and several hundred Albanians paraded into the city threw the open Golden Gate, finding the streets thronged with cheering Orthodox and Armenians and the city around it more or less intact with all of its finery. It was a facade, in truth, as the bulk of the city’s population had been or was currently being crowded aboard overloaded galleys bound for Gallipoli in the Golden Horn, but no-one cared. The parade proceeded down the Mese, which was even more of a ghost town than the rest of the city, then into the palace district. To David, the city seemed like a legend come to life--over there was the Column of Theodosios, and there the Hippodrome, and the Palace of Justinian, as regal as the New Palace even in its ruined state. Rising over it all was the Hagia Sophia, which he had dreamed of for so long. Everything even vaguely Islamic within was hastily torn down, dragged outside and burned, while army chaplains hastily blessed the church and a choir was quickly assembled from servants and locals. The Patriarch had fled to Mount Athos when the siege began, and the Imperial crown would have to be bought back from the Venetians, but though it was no regnal mass the mass that was celebrated that day was one of the most important in the church’s history.
After the mass ended, David made a perfunctory inspection of the New Palace, then went north-west to his intended residence, Blakharnae. Every Komnenos who had reigned in Constantinople had resided there, and he would be no exception, for now at least. The palace was hastily swept before an impromptu feast was held, drawing thousands from across the city--they had been under siege for years now, after all--with promises of good wine and food, even if some had gone bad from the long voyage. David was over the moon, having finally realized the ambition of generations of his forbears, and though he didn’t really partake in the celebrations he took an audience from anyone who appealed to him, including a number of Turks asking for amnesty or permission to stay, and crusaders who’d slipped out of their camps. All but a few were granted their wish, whatever they may be. Throughout it all, the voice of Mgeli spoke caution--there was no way the Turks would have gone this quietly, there had to be a trap, this had been too easy--but for once David was happy to ignore him. He retired late that night, sure that his reign was just about to truly begin and that an age of prosperity would soon sweep Rome back to the heights of her glory.
Shortly after midnight, the quiet of the night was torn asunder. Massive explosions roared across the city, and entire neighborhoods burst into flames as hordes of armed Turks and Greek Muslims poured out of the alleys and cellars of the city like fire ants. The New Palace was the epicenter of the attack, as Osman had expected David to be sleeping there, but the soldiers soon found their mark and swarmed towards Blakharnae. The bulk of Trapezuntine army was there, and although the bandonoi were caught off guard and inebriated and either killed or put to flight, the eleutheroi kept their heads and formed up around the palace, warding off the attackers with practiced skill. The blasts drew attention, and a force of crusaders fought their way through a side gate and came to the palace’s aid. By the time dawn had broken, the attack had been repulsed, but Osman’s perfidy scarred the city forevermore.
David was a light sleeper and had been woken when the attack came, but found himself transfixed by his window, where glowing belts of fire burned across the city. He sat in a dark wicker chair, stock still, neither eating nor drinking with a perfectly blank expression, as Constantinople burned to ashes. He saw the dome of the Hagia Sophia fall, and the Tower of Galata be brought down by naval artillery, and the entire city be razed by fire. David sat and watched in silence as his hopes and dreams, his destiny, burned….
In the decades after its liberation from the Ottoman Turks, the New Empire of Nikaia had gradually been integrated into the Trapezuntine Empire at large, not completely but to such a degree that it was a part of it in all but name. However, this state of affairs left Magnesia and the lands around it as a de facto backwater provincial capital, more than a thousand kilometers away from the Imperial capital by sea. This had produced a period of statutory neglect, as the Nikaians essentially ran their own state under Trapezuntine auspices, allowing them to continue their sporadic campaigns against the Turks to their west and south with little regard to Trapezous’ wishes. This period of neglect would come to a screeching halt, however, as a new foe appeared to the west: Albania.
Nikaia was unique amongst the states in union under the Megalokomnenoi--the others being Trapezous, Kartvelia and the Principality of Gothia (sort of)--in that it had been forged in the fires of its own war of independence within living memory, a fact that gave it a very different culture and social structure than the rest of Greater Pontos. The armies of bandits, highwaymen, mercenaries and volunteers that had launched the revolt in Kolpazar and then held the line against the Turks until Trapezuntine reinforcements had arrived were somewhat intact, either having demobilized or turned to raiding across the Ottoman border. One of the main legacies of the war had been the Nikaian’s disinclination towards powerful, centralized authority and especially rule by outsiders, even if the Ponts were better regarded than the hated Ottomans. This left the string of regents that were appointed by Trapezous in a difficult place, needing to balance the demands of the central capital and what the people they governed would tolerate.
Like Trapezous proper, Nikaia was nominally structured along the bandon system, with its division of land between groups of semi-professional soldier-farmers--called the akritobandons due to cultural differences--but unlike Pontos Nikaia also had a series of second-level divisions, the eparkhies (εпαρχεία). Nominally, each eparkhy governed a population of ten thousand, but given the difficulty of establishing good records and the constant movement of the klephtic raiders and the shepherds who dwelled in the highlands made these numbers a suggestion at best. The head of the Nikaian government was David, but given that David spent most of his time on the far side of Sinope, the practical ruler of Nikaia was the Grand Regent, who ruled in the name of the aftokrator but effectively was an aftokrator. The Grand Regent was chosen by and ruled at the discretion of the aftokrator, though he has a great deal of autonomy in his decisions due to the roughly six weeks it takes for messages to go from Magnesia to Trapezous and back.
In the late 1530s, the Grand Regent was Konstantinos Paisophkis, a local who had fought in the War of Independence and who possessed an unusual loyalty to David and Trapezous and an unusual hatred of the Ottoman Turks. In his efforts to weaken the Ottomans and to strengthen Trapezous, and at the behest of a loose series of directives from Trapezous, he had undertaken an ambitious campaign that had, for the most part anyway, succeeded. The small farmers and fishers prospered, the larger semi-noble estates were cut down to a degree, but to such a great degree that they had cause to take up arms, and the amount of trade flowing through Nikaian tax offices rose greatly. Despite a series of complaints from the Trapezuntine press corps, however, he made absolutely no effort to curb the existing raids across the Ottoman border, even going so far as to unofficially support them. The reason was simple: they worked.
Officially, the Ottoman and Trapezuntine Empires had been at peace since the end of the Nikaian War of Independence, and all hostilities between them had ceased. Unofficially, the two utterly hated each other, and with the Ottomans in the weaker position there was a considerable incentive to continue fighting an unofficial war to kick them while they were down. Because of the hilly nature of Bithynia and the lands around it, Imperial frontiers could be expanded one valley at a time in a gradual but constant process that made irregular warfare very appealing to an attacking force. The klephts were masters at that kind of warfare, and they continued to campaign against the Turks with great ferocity even after peace was declared. By 1530, the Askanian Valley had been cleared of Muslims, and the Saricakaya Valley to the south was in the process of the same. While officially partaking in these wars was diplomatically impossible, that certainly didn’t stop the Nikaians from moving in behind the klephts and akritoi to integrate the new conquests. Ottoman Orhangazi was rebuilt as the Nikaian Akritokastron, and dozens of other small fortresses popped in the surrounding regions. In 1536, a particularly daring group of irregulars attacked the isolated port of Gemlik, capturing it and restoring it to Roman rule under the name of Kius. While the klephts and their allies had numerous successes in the lands south and west of Bithynia, little action occurred to the north, where the Ottomans still held the heavily-fortified Sangarian Lines and were able to repulse most raids.
That was, until 1539. With troops being pulled of the Sangarian Lines on an unprecedented scale to try and fend off the Albanian siege of Constantinople, a group of klephts led by Alexios Tagaris smashed their way across a fortified bridge and rode like hell into the interior, battering aside the forces that scrambled to try and intercept them. Within a few short days they had reached Nikomedia, storming into the barely-fortified suburbs and managing to capture several of the outlying fortresses. Tagaris came within a hair’s breadth of taking the city itself, but his lightly-armed men were repulsed from the main gate after several hours of desperate fighting. Still, the mere fact that a city of such importance had nearly been captured by what were essentially bandits sent shockwaves throughout Nikaia, and Paisophkis wrote to David asking him to come west with a large force as he himself mustered men for an offensive.
David had been occupied with events in Rum and in a failure of the Trapezuntine intelligence system had been unaware of the Ottoman’s death spiral as anything more than a peripheral matter, but as soon as he was informed of Nikomedia--and hence Constantinople--’s weakness, he quit Rum and rode north with all speed, bringing along many of the eleutheroi and neostrategoi. While it was too late to sail in 1539, the winter was spent assembling a fleet of transports, warships and as many cannons as David could get, all in accompaniment of 6,000 neostrategoi and 10,000 (20) bandonoi. It was a long winter, but as soon as the sea was passable in April 1540, the armada weighed anchor and went west.
They made landfall a month later at Kontolimni, whose port had been filled in slightly by sediment but which was still usable. David was eager to have a go at Constantinople directly, but any such attack was complicated by tw factors: Firstly, the lack of a Trapezuntine force in the Marmora meant that they would have to fight their way past the twin fortresses of Rumelihisar and Anadoluhisar, which guarded the Bosphorus; Secondly, there was still an Ottoman rump state that was effectively being run out of Bursa, and if left ignored they could potentially attack Nikaia, or worse somehow relief the city. As such, he and Paisophkis drew up the following plan: They would strike Nikomedia first, with the hope of capturing the Ottoman galley fleet, and depending on how that went a joint force of 8,000 Nikaians and 3,000 Trapezuntines would sail or march south to attack Bursa and occupy as much of the Mysian plain as possible. The rest of the force, meanwhile, would focus on taking the Straits and rolling down to Constantinople.
Nikomedia fell rather quickly after its main gate was physically blown open by cannonade in mid-June, and Paisophkis rushed south on land to take the fight to the south. David then turned his attention to the Straits fortresses. They had been built by Mehmed II near the height of Ottoman power, and thus were very well-fortified, sported mostly intact garrisons populated by fanatical exiles who would rather die than be subject to Roman rule, and their great arsenals held overlapping fields of fire on the Bosphorus. In short, trying to force them would be suicide, so a siege would have to do. The Anatolian shore was cordoned off before Nikomedia was even taken, though it would take until early July for the cannons to be hauled up against Anadoluhisar and open fire. Despite its formidable construction, the fortress’ stone shattered like most rock, and after a month of continuous bombardment its landward walls had been reduced to rubble. Still, the defenders fought tooth and nail from the ruins, and any attempt to outflank them was driven back by fire from Rumelihisar. With progress going nowhere, David took extraordinary measures, and had the nearby Goksu Stream dammed as a weapon of last resort. After two months more of chaotic fighting, the fortress refused to surrender, and the half-filled dam was blown, hurling a wall of water at the defenders and then swarming the defenses while they were briefly knocked back. The Siege of Anadoluhisar had taken nearly four months and killed 3,000 men, and the coming siege of Rumelihisar seemed to be even worse. Even with one of the forts gone, the Fenaryan fortress further up the channel made a naval attack or even transport to the fort nearly impossible.
Over the winter, David kept up the bombardment across the channel and conconcoted an elaborate plan that involved hiring local pirates to smuggle his men into a lagoon on the European side of the strait to attack the small fortified port of Castellonegro, securing a landing point for forces to be transferred to Europe to lay a similar siege, but ultimately it would be pointless. In January 1541, one of the fort’s defenders had his legs blown off by a cannonball, and as the pain overwhelmed him he begged for opium to ease his passing. One of his friends obliged, forgetting they were right above the magazine, and about three minutes later the entire fort exploded in a massive fireball. As soon as the seas cleared in April, Fenaryan was taken in a naval assault and the straits finally opened.
The Trapezuntine fleet that sailed down the Bosphorus would’ve been one hell of a sight. A hundred and sixty-two galleys and transports, practically covered in double-headed eagles and chi-rhos and bristling with cannonade would have beaten their way along the narrow channel, more ships than the entire Ottoman fleet could have gathered. They were unopposed, the Muslim ships having either bunched up in the Golden Horn for a last stand or having wisely run for Anatolia with news of the destruction of Rumelihisar. To the young sultan Osman II--the last vizier, Ali Sidnan Paşa, had been killed in battle, and his powers had reverted to the crown--watching from the shore, it was obvious the game was up.
Shkoze was furious at David’s arrival. He had just managed to get enough contacts inside the city to open one of its gates, and now the Trapezuntines were showing up to steal his victory! It sounds petty, but he had spent the last twenty years in unending war with the Turks, and for David, who had spent all of it sitting on the sidelines, to sweep in and take Constantinople, his ambition for decades, at the last second was absolutely infuriating. When David landed an embassy to try and negotiate with the Albanians over the city, they were turned away out of hand. Shkoze ordered a final assault on the walls, and to their credit the Albanians and their allies nearly broke through the demoralized Ottoman lines. Still, the threat of indiscrimant slaughter was enough for the Muslims to hold one final time, and after hours of fighting the crusaders were forced back.
David watched all of this from the sea, glad that his enemies were bleeding each other. The fewer men he lost throughout all this, the better, and he wanted Constantinople as intact as he could get it. On the night of 26 May, he sent two embassies to shore, one to Osman and one to Shkoze’s camp in disguise. The latter went amongst Shkoze’s captains, who were getting increasingly fed up with bloody failures in the name of glory, and promised them support for their chosen settlement in post-war Albania if they turned against their leader, and a number of them quietly accepted. The embassy to the New Palace, on the other hand, was far less conciliatory. If Osman surrendered the city intact--a great deal of emphasis was placed on this part--then the people of the city would be allowed to take ship for Gallipoli or Proliava unharmed. If he tried to fight, then David would descend on Constantinople like the wrath of God and put every non-Greek within the city to the sword. Reluctantly, Osman agreed to surrender the city within three days. Further negotiations with Shkoze, meanwhile, proved pointless. Hoping to curtail any future problems, David even offered to allow an Albanian honor guard to accompany his triumphant entry into Constantinople, which was outright refused. It seemed entirely possible that Shkoze intended to continue the siege, this time against the Trapezuntines rather than the Turks, but on 28 May he had a sudden change of heart and agreed to David’s proposal, so long as his delegation was increased to two hundred rather than a few dozen. Although suspicious, David agreed.
The period of Ottoman control in Constantinople came to an end at noon on 29 May 1541, exactly eighty-eight years after it had begun. 5,000 Trapezuntines and several hundred Albanians paraded into the city threw the open Golden Gate, finding the streets thronged with cheering Orthodox and Armenians and the city around it more or less intact with all of its finery. It was a facade, in truth, as the bulk of the city’s population had been or was currently being crowded aboard overloaded galleys bound for Gallipoli in the Golden Horn, but no-one cared. The parade proceeded down the Mese, which was even more of a ghost town than the rest of the city, then into the palace district. To David, the city seemed like a legend come to life--over there was the Column of Theodosios, and there the Hippodrome, and the Palace of Justinian, as regal as the New Palace even in its ruined state. Rising over it all was the Hagia Sophia, which he had dreamed of for so long. Everything even vaguely Islamic within was hastily torn down, dragged outside and burned, while army chaplains hastily blessed the church and a choir was quickly assembled from servants and locals. The Patriarch had fled to Mount Athos when the siege began, and the Imperial crown would have to be bought back from the Venetians, but though it was no regnal mass the mass that was celebrated that day was one of the most important in the church’s history.
After the mass ended, David made a perfunctory inspection of the New Palace, then went north-west to his intended residence, Blakharnae. Every Komnenos who had reigned in Constantinople had resided there, and he would be no exception, for now at least. The palace was hastily swept before an impromptu feast was held, drawing thousands from across the city--they had been under siege for years now, after all--with promises of good wine and food, even if some had gone bad from the long voyage. David was over the moon, having finally realized the ambition of generations of his forbears, and though he didn’t really partake in the celebrations he took an audience from anyone who appealed to him, including a number of Turks asking for amnesty or permission to stay, and crusaders who’d slipped out of their camps. All but a few were granted their wish, whatever they may be. Throughout it all, the voice of Mgeli spoke caution--there was no way the Turks would have gone this quietly, there had to be a trap, this had been too easy--but for once David was happy to ignore him. He retired late that night, sure that his reign was just about to truly begin and that an age of prosperity would soon sweep Rome back to the heights of her glory.
Shortly after midnight, the quiet of the night was torn asunder. Massive explosions roared across the city, and entire neighborhoods burst into flames as hordes of armed Turks and Greek Muslims poured out of the alleys and cellars of the city like fire ants. The New Palace was the epicenter of the attack, as Osman had expected David to be sleeping there, but the soldiers soon found their mark and swarmed towards Blakharnae. The bulk of Trapezuntine army was there, and although the bandonoi were caught off guard and inebriated and either killed or put to flight, the eleutheroi kept their heads and formed up around the palace, warding off the attackers with practiced skill. The blasts drew attention, and a force of crusaders fought their way through a side gate and came to the palace’s aid. By the time dawn had broken, the attack had been repulsed, but Osman’s perfidy scarred the city forevermore.
David was a light sleeper and had been woken when the attack came, but found himself transfixed by his window, where glowing belts of fire burned across the city. He sat in a dark wicker chair, stock still, neither eating nor drinking with a perfectly blank expression, as Constantinople burned to ashes. He saw the dome of the Hagia Sophia fall, and the Tower of Galata be brought down by naval artillery, and the entire city be razed by fire. David sat and watched in silence as his hopes and dreams, his destiny, burned….
END BOOK II