The Turks employed other arms and other means of attack with much more success; such as mines dug under the ramparts, rolling towers, which were brought close up to the walls, rams which battered the walls, balistæ, which launched beams and stones, arrows, javelins, and even the Greek fire, which still rivalled gunpowder, although the latter was destined soon to make it neglected and forgotten. All these means of destruction were employed at the same time, and assaults were renewed unceasingly. The besieged could not avail themselves of all their machines, from the want of hands to work them; and when we reflect on the smallness of the number of the defenders of Constantinople, we are astonished that they were able to resist, for more than fifty days, the innumerable host of the Ottomans. This generous soldiery occupied a line of more than a league in length, repelling, night and day, the assaults of the enemy, repairing the breaches in the walls, and making sorties; they appeared to be everywhere at the same time, and to be equal to everything, animated by the presence of their leaders, and particularly by the example of Constantine. Several times fortune favoured the efforts of this heroic troop, and tingled a few gleams of hope with the sentiment of sadness and terror which prevailed in Constantinople. The besieged preserved one advantage, the city was inaccessible towards the Propontis and on the side of the port. Mahomet had assembled a numerous fleet in the canal of the Black Sea; but it only served for the transmission of provisions and warlike stores. The Ottoman marine could not contend with the marine of the Greeks, particularly with that of the Franks; and the Turks themselves acknowledged that they must yield the empire of the seas to the Christian nations. About the middle of the siege, five vessels from the coasts of Italy and Greece arrived in the canal. The whole Ottoman fleet was immediately in motion, and advanced to meet them; from their numbers they surrounded them, and attacked them several times, with the view of getting possession of them, or of turning them from their course. Mahomet encouraged the combatants with voice and gesture from the shore. When the Ottomans appeared to be failing in their attempt, he could not restrain his anger; urging his horse into the sea, he seemed to threaten the elements, and, like a barbarian king of antiquity, to accuse the waves of being obstacles to his conquests. On the other side, the Greeks, collected on the ramparts of the city, awaited the issue of the combat in great anxiety. At length, after an obstinate and bloody conflict, all the Turkish ships were dispersed or cast upon the shore; and the Christian fleet, laden with provisions and soldiers, sailed in triumph into the port of Constantinople.