“My dear fellow, I couldn’t possibly comment.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CONSTANTINOPLE-OR SHOULD I SAY ISTANBUL?-is one of the world’s genuinely iconic locations. It is surpassingly beautiful and has a beguilingly romantic air, tinged with Oriental mystery.
It was one of my life’s special moments when, on location research for this book, I stood on a balcony of Topkapi Palace on Seraglio Point and looked out over the Golden Horn, across to Asia and up through the Bosporus in the direction of the Black Sea and Russia. I urge the reader to make the pilgrimage.
There is much remaining of what is mentioned in my book: the sublimity of the Hagia Sophia still takes the breath away; Topkapi, although now without a sultan in residence, is there in its glory and mystery, and the Tower of Justice stands to this day, albeit altered from what Renzi would recognise. Even Bab-i Ali, the Sublime Porte, still exists, now a bit sad-looking and off in a side-street.
The Dardanelles is a place of fierce currents, and the narrows funnel winds of surprising briskness. To give an idea of the respect it retains, the Admiralty Pilot of today warns that even modern ships should not attempt the strait when currents exceed six knots.
I enjoyed writing this book: that Kydd’s world of salt-water seamanship intersected so centrally with such tectonic events in the history of the Levant not well known to the West was irresistible to me.
For the main part things happened much as I relate they did, and as always, although I’ve taken occasional liberties with elapsed time to tighten the story, I’ve kept the sequence of events true to history. (For example, I’ve brought forward by some months Selim’s slaying in order to make the experience for the reader more complete.)
The fates of the historical players are interesting.
Blackwood was honourably acquitted over the Ajax fire: it remains one of the gravest tragedies the Royal Navy has suffered. The unsmiling Blackwood went on to become admiral but an ill-judged contretemps later with Lord Keith ended his active service.
Arbuthnot returned to a frosty reception, but as a friend of Wellington, and with his wife a lady-in-waiting to Princess Caroline of Brunswick, he escaped censure, as did the well-connected Admiral Duckworth, who went on to command the Channel fleet but died soon after the end of the war.
Senyavin, in my opinion, is a much underrated figure, to this day hardly mentioned by his own navy even though he served with great distinction before and afterwards. The battle to which I alluded in the last chapter, Athos (or Lemnos), in which he finally confronted the Ottomans, was on a scale comparable to Trafalgar. No less than twenty battleships with frigates met off the entrance to the Dardanelles and in a smashing victory Senyavin won the day, the result equally as conclusive-the Turks sued for peace two weeks later. It remains an action almost completely unknown to us in the West and, yes, two British midshipmen and a boat’s crew were found in irons in the Turkish flagship and restored to their ship.
Unfortunately for Senyavin, the tide of history turned and he found himself formally at war with Collingwood’s fleet. How he diplomatically avoided a clash and sailed his Baltic fleet back after two years’ travail is an epic tale in itself, but once home he fell foul of the Tsar and St Petersburg politics and was retired.
Selim met a grim fate, but so did Mustafa, who replaced him, killed on the orders of his younger brother Mahmud, who went on to reinstate the reform agenda.
For Sebastiani, an ironic fate awaited. Biding his time, he returned to Constantinople, then worked tirelessly to restore French influence and Bonaparte’s dream of a road to India. But the wily emperor lost interest in the project entirely when he beguiled Tsar Alexander of Russia into an alliance instead, fatally antagonising the Ottomans.
Incidentally, in a quirk of history, at the time Sebastiani was being considered for his post in Constantinople the French Directory thought him too valuable to lose and the choice fell on a lesser, also an artillery, officer. This last, however, in the weeks before he was due to depart made himself indispensable in the affair of “the whiff of grapeshot,” which put down a rebellion in Paris with cannon on the streets. Sebastiani went on to Constantinople; one N. Bonaparte remained in Paris.
The monster guns that wreaked havoc on Duckworth’s fleet were real enough, and did indeed originate from the time of the fall of Constantinople and the last Roman Caesar. As far as I’m able to trace, this was their only taste of action since that time. However, as a postscript, the reforming Sultan Abdulaziz after the Crimean War gave one to Queen Victoria who, no doubt bemused, thanked him and tried to think what to do with it.
Today you can see the Great Turkish Bombard for yourself-I’ve stood next to and marvelled at the giant near twenty-ton bronze beast where it’s stored, in Fort Nelson, above Portsmouth.
I’ve a lot of sympathy for Selim, a cultured and sensitive man, whose compositions are played to this day in Istanbul but whose delicacy and love of learning were no match for the titanic struggles around him.
There’s something of a similarity between him and Admiral Duckworth. They both dithered in the face of a need for resolution and firm decision. General Sebastiani himself admitted in later years that if Duckworth had followed Collingwood’s orders to stand by his half-hour ultimatum he would have been delivered up to the English instantly. For Selim, if the uprising had been met with immediate orders to his Nizam-i Cedid it would have been another story I’d be telling, but his temporising ways were part of the man and led directly to his death.
The salutary lesson of the Dardanelles expedition was the fatal consequence of divided command. What possessed Whitehall to go over the heads of the sage and competent Collingwood to order the bombardment of Constantinople, to subject the military decisions of the operational commander to the civil power and to second-guess events thousands of miles and months away passes my understanding.
This forcing of the Dardanelles stands alone, never having been done before or since, the last attempt being in the First World War when it stalled at Gallipoli where the Anzacs went on to win immortality. Since then Turkey has been our ally and during the Cold War firmly kept the door locked on the Russians, whose only warm-water port could therefore be denied the Mediterranean and the outer world.
To all who assisted me in the research for this book I am deeply grateful. I would like to express my special thanks to Ziya Yerlikaya, Jason Goodwin and Tacdin Aker, for generously sharing their knowledge of Turkish history and culture.
And a large huzzah to Team Stockwin-my splendid editors at Hodder amp; Stoughton, Oliver Johnson and Anne Perry, and their creative art/design team; and copy editor Hazel Orme, who has brought her meticulous blue pencil to bear on the Kydd series right from the debut title. And, as always, heartfelt appreciation to my wife and literary partner Kathy-and my agent Carole Blake.
GLOSSARY
amain
with intent of force and vigour
apoplexy
a stroke
arabesque
in the ornamental Arab style of Baghdad, Samarkand, etc.
baldric
leather sling over the shoulder to suspend the scabbard
Balkans
southeast Europe; the general geographic area lying between Italy and Turkey
barge
boat of slight and spacious construction for use of the captain or admiral
becket
small piece of rope with a knot in one end and an eye in the other to keep an item confined
belfry
ornamental shelter for the ship’s bell forward
blashy
dirty weather, miserable and wet, not strong enough to be called a storm
broadside
the entire side of a ship; in gunnery, all the guns on that side