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 CONSTITUTION OF THE TUKKISH FLEET 233 Gallipoli, which had been the place of rendezvous. Baltoglu, a Bulgarian renegade, was placed in command. A flotilla of a hundred and forty sailing ships started for the Bosporus. 1 Of these, twelve were fully armed galleys, seventy or eighty were fustae, and twenty to twenty-five were parandaria. Amid shouts from one ship to another, the beating of drums, and the sound of fifes, all marking the delight of the Turks that their period of inactivity was at an end, the fleet made its way through the Marmora. The sight carried dismay to the remnant of the inhabitants of the Christian villages along the shores, for within the memory of none had such a fleet been seen. Within the city itself the news of the enor- mous number of vessels on their way was not less alarming. The fleet arrived in the Bosporus on April 12 and anchored at the Double Columns or Diplokionion just below the present Palace of Dolma Bagtche. 2 At the Double Columns the detachment of the fleet which had come from the Dardanelles was joined by other vessels which had been swept in from the Black Sea and the Marmora. Phrantzes gives the total number at four hundred and eighty. 3 Many of the vessels from the Black Sea were laden with wood or with stone balls. The Turkish fleet under Baltoglu' s command thus con- sisted of a number of vessels from all the shores of the Marmora, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea. Among them 1 Barbaro. 2 Barbaro gives the arrival on April 12. Dr. Dethier maintains that Diplokionion was at Cabatash and that subsequently to the Conquest the people and the name were transferred to Beshiktash. Barbaro says it was two Italian miles, equal to one and a third English mile, from the city, which is in accord with Dethier's view, but in presence of Bondelmonti's map, drawn in 1422 and given in Banduri, showing the Two Columns, and of other evidence, it is difficult to credit Dethier's statement. 3 Phrantzes, p. 241 ; Ducas gives the total number as 300, Leonard as 250, Critobulus as 350. The independent accounts of two men who had been at sea, like the French soldier Tetaldi and the Venetian Barbaro, are not far apart. The first says there were 16 to 18 galleys, the second 12. The estimate of the long boats is 60 to SO by Tetaldi, as against 70 to 80 by Barbaro ; while the transport barges or parandaria are described by one as from 16 to 20, by the other as from 20 to 25. Chalcondylas (p. 158) states that 30 triremes and 200 smaller vessels arrived from Gallipoli. Leonard says that there were 6 triremes and 10 biremes.