BOĞAZKESEN
The one shot that set the precedent
In April 1452, the young sultan Mehmed set about building a fortress on the narrowest part of the Bosphorus 700 yards where the Black Sea meets the Mediterranean. Instructions were each tower was assigned a Vizier who was responsible for them and if they weren’t raised at a rate each Vizier was accountable as to why — all three towers were completed by August 1452 on the European shores of Rumeli Hisari. Each tower carries its vizier’s name to this day.
The Emperor Constantine sent 2 embassies to convey his voice that the land belongs to the Empire, one got a polite acknowledgment of his concerns, the other when asked was the sultan’s intention of war — the answer was with their heads.
Mehmed called the fortress: Bogazkesen. Its Turkish translation: bogaz as strait and also as throat and kesen translated as cut.
September 1452, the cannons were set and aimed at the strait. The sultan sent out his terms to every power, every trading ship in any direction that there was to be an inspection and then a toll with no threats intended as long as the rules applied.
In the autumn of 1452, 2 ships ran the straits and twice the cannons missed. It became the joke of every sailor in every port.
November 26th 1452, Captain Antonio Rizzo a very experienced seafarer with his cargo of barley attempted the same — this time the cannon didn’t miss and within an hour the cargo was lost and all thirty members of the crew with Rizzo were marched to the sultan’s palace at Didymoteicho. Rizzo pleading for his crew’s lives and his own, he offered the sultan that Venice will pay a handsome ransom in return of their lives, Grand Vizier Halil pleaded with the sultan to accept this generous offer but he simply refused, with a reply that if the toll becomes a ransom then it has a price to which you can negotiate. The strait is the law of the sultan not a price, he had the crew members taken outside and immediately executed.
Rizzo was taken to the main road in Thrace where he was impaled and left there for every trading ship and envoy to see — from that day forth not one cannon was fired again.
It just needed to catch one
the full story is here in my first novel: FORGE OF EQUILIBRIUM, which launches on the 29th May 2027, five hundred and seventy-four years to the day since the fall of Constantinople