Ottoman forces

The Ottoman forces occupy two connected roles in the narrative: they are the army that captured Constantinople in 1453, leaving a wound remembered centuries later, and the military power still present around Messolonghi in the nineteenth-century account. The text gives little organizational detail about the force itself; its significance comes instead from the scale and persistence of its impact, from the fall of a city to the historical conditions against which Lord Byron supports Greek independence.

Historical Presence and Military Pressure

In the account set in 1824, Messolonghi is described as a vulnerable town, surrounded by marshy land and liable to flooding. It has been crowded with hungry, underpaid Suliote soldiers, whose presence makes an already unstable situation more difficult for townspeople. The Ottoman forces remain nearby too. They had unsuccessfully besieged the town two years earlier, so their presence is not merely distant political context: it forms part of the continuing military danger surrounding the community.

The narrative sets this pressure beside the disorder of daily life. Soldiers move through the streets alongside vendors, and some are rowdy or drunk; the fish sellers add to the town’s noise. The passage does not attribute all of this disorder to the Ottoman forces, and distinguishes them from the Suliote brigades. Instead, it presents Messolonghi as a place caught among several kinds of insecurity, with the nearby Ottoman troops representing the threat of renewed attack.

The Capture of Constantinople

The Ottoman forces’ most consequential action in the account is the capture of Constantinople on Tuesday, 29 May 1453. The city had been under siege for forty days. As the defenders attempted to repel the attackers outside its walls, they witnessed a lunar eclipse, an icon of the Virgin slipping from its platform during a procession, and a violent thunderstorm. These portents belong to the narrated memory of the siege: the fall is framed not only as a military defeat but as a catastrophe anticipated and interpreted through signs.

When the Ottoman forces entered the city, men, women, and children were killed. The account identifies the desecration of the basilica of Agia Sofia and the killing of the priests and congregation worshipping there as, for some, the greatest atrocity. This emphasis places the assault on a sacred gathering at the heart of the remembered loss. The passage does not offer a military reconstruction of the capture; it conveys its continuing meaning through the violence against civilians and the violation of a religious place.

Memory and the Tuesday Taboo

The capture’s date becomes a repeated cultural reference. Some Greeks avoid arranging anything important on Tuesdays because that was the weekday on which Constantinople fell. More than five centuries later, the catastrophe can still cast a shadow over ordinary planning, and Tuesday is when the memory is especially stirred. The text describes this as a belief held by some, not as a universal Greek practice: others treat Tuesday as an ordinary day and dismiss the taboo.

The city’s name also carries the weight of that history. Many Greeks continue to refer to Constantinople as i poly, meaning the city, and some cannot bring themselves to use the name Istanbul. The old name remains on airport arrival and departure boards. In this account, the persistence of Constantinople is a form of remembrance embedded in language and public usage, connecting the Ottoman conquest to everyday acts of naming long after the siege itself.

The Nineteenth-Century Struggle for Greece

The historical memory of Ottoman rule also informs the account of Lord Byron’s arrival in Messolonghi. Byron has made the liberation of Greece from Turkish occupation his cause. He believes in the country’s right to an independent future and in the freedom of its oppressed people; his support is practical as well as political, including a substantial financial contribution, mostly from the earnings of his poetry, to the armed forces. The account thus presents opposition to Ottoman rule as a cause attracting international support, not simply as the immediate prospect of another siege.

The tension between historical memory and those who disregard it recurs in a later episode. On 29 May 1979, two hotels owned by the Papazoglou family opened on a Tuesday, the anniversary of Constantinople’s fall. The family did not observe the taboo, but others were aghast at the date. The Ottoman forces are not present in this episode; their earlier victory persists instead as the historical event against which the choice of an opening day acquires meaning. Across these settings, the force’s narrative significance lies in the reach of its actions: military defeat becomes cultural memory, and that memory continues to shape how later characters understand time, place, and Greek independence.