By the time the crossing was complete, the far bank already looked secure. Mud had been trampled into a rough road, stakes stood in uneven rows, and smoke from shallow fires hung low over cloaks and hair.
Constantine rode the line with Andreas and George, their horses picking through churned ground littered with wagons, rope, and bundled fascines. Behind them, oxen and men dragged the Drakos guns into place, heaving them free of the ruts inch by inch, the bronze barrels slick with mud and river damp. Everyone moved with the care of men who knew one mistake could cost them a wheel, a gun, or a day.
To the west, Edirne stood behind its walls, with the Tunca running beyond the far side of the city. From this angle the roofs looked crowded beneath the domes and minarets. The walls showed patches and old repairs, and the towers rose above the line.
Andreas lifted a hand. "They still call it the Macedonia Tower," he said. "It's the biggest of the four. There's a light piece mounted there, a falconet or something like it. Enough to keep men off ladders, but it won't matter against the Drakos."
The tower stood at the northeast end of the town, its stone darkened by years of damp. Andreas pointed farther along the wall toward the bend in the river.
"The mortar is poor, the stone is patched and the gaps between the towers are wider than they should be. You can see the old repairs all along that stretch." He nodded toward the wet ground at the base. "The damp has been working at it for years. If we place the Drakos well, we can break it."
His hand moved to the huts and sheds crowded below the wall. "We'll have to clear all of that. It blocks our line and gives them cover if they come out at night. Take whatever timber you can use for fascines and platforms, then level the rest. If the powder stays dry, we can open two points in days, not weeks, one to hold their attention, and one to break them."
He pointed farther south, where the ground opened toward the main entrance. "It's clearer there, but the gate is stronger, newer work, and they've kept the stone in repair."
George leaned forward and pointed toward a squat fortified block set before the gate, behind its own ditch and barricades. "The palace," he said. "If you go for the gate, you take that first. Otherwise it bleeds you in the open and throws men into your flank."
He kept his eyes on it. "They built it like no one would ever face guns here. Arrogance, maybe. Or habit. They planned for raids and sudden trouble, not for an army sitting down to take the city."
Constantine shifted in the saddle and felt the pressed sprig of mint under his armor. Edirne lay ahead, blocking the road southeast to Constantinople. Halil had already slipped away with the boy Sultan and whatever story he meant to spread. Thomas was somewhere downriver toward Ainos by now with a handful of men, riding on family business that war had made urgent.
"When the defence ring is finished," Constantine said, "we strike at two points. First we burn the palace. Then we send terms and give them until noon. If they refuse, we break the weak wall by Macedonia tower."
George's mouth tightened. "Burning—"
Smoke began to rise from the palace, thin at first, then thick and black.
Andreas watched it and exhaled once. "Looks like they've decided for us. They're burning it themselves."
Constantine's first reaction was relief: it would save time and spare men. The next thought was colder. They would rather destroy it than surrender.
"Good," he said. "Then we're spared a step."
"Send the terms now, and close the ring: camp set, roads counted, posts in depth, no gaps. Once it holds, we take the north suburb. Strip it for fascines and platform timber, then level what remains. Two batteries: one to breach, one to rake the parapet."
A herald rode forward with a white cloth and a sealed letter. Before he reached the gate, a gun fired from the Macedonia Tower. The shot fell short, and arrows followed from the wall.
After that, the siege settled into work. Huts were pulled down with axes and crowbars, and their beams were cut for mantlets and gun platforms. Those too close to the wall to strip safely were burned where they stood, clearing the approach. Sorties came at night, small groups trying to burn tool piles, cut rope lines, or damage the guns. Constantine's patrols met them with the discipline the winter campaign had taught them, and by dawn bodies usually lay in the rubble below the wall.
By the fourth day, the guns were firing steadily.Constantine stood behind an earthwork, close enough to feel each discharge in his chest but far enough back to see the whole line. Lime dust hung in the air, and smoke drifted low across the ground.
Andreas came up beside him.
"How long?" Constantine asked.
"If the platforms hold and the powder stays dry," Andreas said, looking through the haze, "we should have a workable breach there by tomorrow midday." He pointed to the cracked stretch of wall. "A second, smaller one too, if we keep at it."
Another Drakos shot struck the wall. Stone broke loose, and dust spilled down the face of it. The men along the line cheered.
Grgur Branković came through the smoke with two officers behind him.
"Brother-in-law," he said, loud enough for them to hear, "let my foot take the left breach first when it opens. Give us that honour. Let it be seen."
Constantine understood the request. Grgur wanted it known that the Serbian banner had helped win the city, not merely stood behind Roman guns.
"The honour is yours," Constantine said. "You take the left breach and hold the shoulders. Once it's secure, the tagmata advance."
Grgur nodded, but Constantine did not leave it there.
"If your line breaks, I pull you back and send in the tagmata."
Grgur's jaw tightened, but he accepted it.
Another shot hit the wall. A section gave way and fell inward, and the cheering ran down the line again.
Three mornings later, the air already smelled of smoke before the sun was fully up. Serbian banners waited on the left, the foot packed tight behind scarred shields. On the right, Roman skirmishers and shield-bearers watched the breach. Behind them, the tagmata stood in depth with pikes upright, while the Pyrveloi checked their guns with fingers that shook from anticipation.
The guns fired their last volleys into the parapet around the breaches, driving the defenders back as dust and smoke spilled down the wall. Then the signal came, and the assault columns moved.
The rubble slowed them at once. Stones slid underfoot, shields caught on broken edges, and a fallen beam dragged into the breach as a barricade forced officers to shout for the line to shift first left and then right while arrows and stones came down into the confusion. Men fell and were trampled where they lay.
Ottoman irregulars met them first—azaps and townsmen throwing rocks, stabbing at ankles through the broken stone, and firing arrows at close range. They held long enough to turn the breach into a killing ground. But as the pressure built and the first shields reached the top, they began to give way.
Then the defence stiffened. Janissaries appeared beyond the breach where the street opened behind it, a line of men holding steady under pressure. They did not shout. The irregulars were shoved back into the fight and forced to hold a little longer, buying time with their lives.
On the right, the skirmish line buckled and began to fall back, dragging wounded men with it and shouting that they could not hold in the breach. Panic began to spread at the edge of the mass.
Constantine saw the line thinning from outside and felt his stomach tighten. He raised his hand.
"Now."
A trumpet sounded, and the right-hand tagma stepped forward with pikes lowered while the Pyrveloi moved up in files behind them. They advanced into the dust under repeated volleys, keeping their spacing as they entered the breach. The line steadied and began to push forward by slow degrees.
On the left, Grgur's men forced their way in and planted a banner in the broken stone. They took a courtyard, lost it, and took it again. Men fought around the standard with axes and shields until they pushed a short way into the street beyond and managed to hold it.
For hours the fighting broke into separate struggles for courtyards and lanes. Runners came back with fragments of the battle: a tower still firing down into the streets, a corner held, a gate barred from inside, Janissaries falling back one street at a time while keeping their order.
By afternoon a scout came in from the south bank.
"Majesty," he said, still breathless. "Boats from the south side. Small skiffs. They slipped out under the smoke."
"Send more men to the river," Constantine said. "Horse south and east. Double the lantern posts. No gaps. Count them and bring me a number."
Another runner came from inside the city, his face grey with soot. "Majesty, most of the town is ours. The streets by the market are held. But the southern quarter is on fire."
Constantine looked past him at the smoke spreading over the roofs. For a moment he felt only relief. Fire would do what his men would otherwise have to do house by house.
"Let it burn," he said. His mouth tightened. "They chose ash."
George glanced at him, startled, then looked away.
By evening Edirne was theirs except for a few stubborn corners. The southern quarter still burned, but the market streets were secure and the main crossings were held.
Constantine went in under guard to see what had been taken in his name. Inside the walls the air was warmer and thick with smoke, and every breath carried ash. Bodies lay in a courtyard, some where they had fallen, others dragged out of the lanes. Men passed carrying pots, rugs, and whatever else they could seize. One laughed too loudly. Another kicked a corpse aside to clear his way.
Ahead of him men crowded a broad street, soot-streaked and blood-marked, and when they saw the purple they raised the chant that had carried them through the winter.
"Ieros Skopos! Constantine!"
He lifted a hand and answered them.
"Ieros Skopos."
Even then the city was not quiet. Fighting still held in a few places, and beyond Edirne Halil was already moving east with the boy Sultan. The city had fallen. The war had not.
Author's Note: Edirne has fallen!
While drafting this siege, I dug into what the Ottoman capital at Edirne actually looked like in 1436, and the surprise was how unfinished it was. Much of the defensive circuit still relied on older Roman masonry, with only the four major towers in truly commanding condition. Contemporary descriptions and later reconstructions suggest long stretches of wall that were thin by late-medieval standards and poorly maintained, and even the old ditches around parts of the circuit were deliberately filled! reducing the city's ability to resist a serious siege.
The "palace" too was not yet the monumental complex readers may picture from later Ottoman grandeur: more an outlying, self-contained small enclosure with its own modest works than a dominating citadel within the city. Murad II himself is often noted as residing in tents outside of Edirne for long periods, and the broader pattern, frequent returns to Bursa, makes more sense when you see how much of Edirne's later infrastructure simply wasn't there yet.
For a visual reference, the Macedonia Tower and the stretch of wall discussed here are visible on Google Maps (link below).
https://maps.app.goo.gl/tVHdfmQQff3WePCj9