dexter
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The Eastern Roman Empire was under constant Ottoman pressure ever since the new conquerors appeared in the Anatolia. Although the Ottomans tried to take Constantinople on a number of occasions, they had to lift the siege of the city due to the Crusades of Varna and Nicopolis, the Timurid Invasion and the battle of Ankara, and the Interregnum period that happened after their Sultan Bayezid was taken hostage by Timur. However, after the victories at the battles of Varna (1444) and 2nd Kosovo (1448) against the crusaders of Wladyslaw III and John Hunyadi, the road to Constantinople was open and the new sultan Mehmed II set his sight on the city of the Roman emperors.
The crushing of the Crusader army at Varna in 1444 CE meant that the Byzantines were now on their own. No significant help could be expected from the West where the Popes were already unimpressed with the Byzantine’s unwillingness to form a union of the Church and accept their supremacy. The Venetians did send a paltry two ships and 800 men in April 1453 CE, Genoa promised another ship, and even the Pope later promised five armed ships, but the Ottomans had by then already blockaded Constantinople. The people of the city could only stock up on food and arms and hope their defences would save them yet again. According to the 15th-century CE Greek historian and eyewitness Georges Sphrantzes, the defending army was composed of fewer than 5,000 men, not a sufficient number to adequately cover the length of the city’s walls, some 19 km in total. Worse still, the once great Byzantine navy now consisted of a mere 26 ships, and most of those belonged to the Italian colonists of the city. The Byzantines were hopelessly outnumbered in men, ships, and weapons.
The Byzantine emperor at the time of the attack was Constantine XI (r. 1449-1453 CE), and he took personal charge of the defence along with such notable military figures as Loukas Notaras, the Kantakouzenos brothers, Nikephoros Palaiologos, and the Genoese siege expert Giovanni Giustiniani. The Byzantines had catapults and Greek Fire, the highly inflammable liquid which could be sprayed under pressure from ships or walls to torch an enemy, but the technology of warfare had moved on and the Theodosian Walls were about to get their sternest ever test.
Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Emperor of Byzantine Empire
Mehmed II had one thing that previous besiegers of Constantinople had lacked: cannons. And they were big ones. The Byzantines had actually had first option on the cannons as they had been offered them by their inventor, the Hungarian engineer named Urban, but Constantine could not meet his asking price. Urban then peddled his expertise to the Sultan, and Mehmed showed more interest and offered him four times what he was asking. These fearsome weapons were put to good use in November 1452 CE when a Venetian ship, disobeying a ban on traffic, was blown out of the water as it sailed down the Bosphorus. The captain of the vessel survived but was captured, decapitated, and then impaled on a stake. It was an ominous sign of things to come.
According to Georges Sphrantzes, the Ottoman army numbered 200,000 men, but modern historians prefer a more realistic figure of 60-80,000. When the army assembled at the city walls of Constantinople on 2 April 1453 CE, the Byzantines got their first glimpse of Mehmed’s cannons. The largest was 9 metres long with a gaping mouth one metre across. Already tested, it could fire a ball weighing 500 kilos over 1.5 km. So mammoth was this cannon that it took an awfully long time to load and cool it so that it could only be fired seven times a day. Still, the Ottomans had plenty of smaller cannon, each capable of firing over 100 times a day.
Ottoman Sultan Muhammed at the Siege of Constantinople
On 5 April, Mehmed sent a demand for immediate surrender to the Byzantine emperor but received no reply. On 6 April the attack began. The Theodosian Walls were relentlessly blasted, chunk by chunk, into rubble. The defenders could do no more than fire back with their own smaller cannons by day, hold off the attackers where the cannons had punched the biggest holes, and try and repair those gaps each night as best they could, using rocks, barrels, and anything else they could get their hands on. The resulting rubble piles actually absorbed the cannon shot better than fixed walls but, eventually, one of the infantry assaults would surely get through.
The onslaught went on for six weeks but there was some effective resistance. The Ottoman attack on the boom which blocked the city’s harbour was repelled, as were several direct assaults on the Land Walls. On 20 April, miraculously, three Genoese ships sent by the Pope and a ship carrying vital grain sent by Alphonso of Aragon managed to break through the Ottoman naval blockade and reach the defenders. Mehmed, infuriated, then got around the harbour boom by building a railed road via which 70 of his ships, loaded onto carts pulled by oxen, could be launched into the waters of the Golden Horn. The Ottomans then built a pontoon and fixed cannons to it so that they could now attack any part of the city from the sea side, not just the land. The defenders now struggled to station men where they were needed, especially along the structurally weaker sea walls.
Mehmed launched a massive go-for-broke, throw-everything-at-them assault at dawn on 29 May. First to be sent in after the usual cannon barrage were the second-rate troops, then a second wave was launched with better-armed troops, and, finally, a third wave attacked the walls, this time composed of the Janissaries - the well-trained and highly determined elite of Mehmed's army. It was during this third wave that disaster struck the Byzantines who by now were forced to employ women and children to defend the walls. Some fool had left the small Kerkoporta gate in the Land Walls open and the Janissaries did not hesitate in using it. They climbed to the top of the wall and raised the Ottoman flag, then they worked their way around to the main gate and allowed their comrades to flood into the city.
Chaos now ensued with some of the defenders maintaining their discipline and meeting the enemy while others rushed back to their homes to defend their own families. It is at this point that Constantine was killed in the action, most likely near the Gate of St. Romanos, although, as he had discarded any indications of his status to avoid his body being used as a trophy, his demise is not known for certain. The emperor could have fled the city days before but he chose to stay with his people, and a legend soon grew up that he had not died at all but, instead, he had been magically encased in marble and buried beneath the city which he would, one day, return to rule again.
Mehmed II Conquers Constantinople
In the afternoon, Mehmed entered the city himself, declared that the Hagia Sophia church be immediately converted into a mosque. It was a powerful statement that the city’s role as a bastion of Christianity for twelve centuries was now over. Mehmed then rounded up the most important survivors from the city’s nobility and executed them.
Constantinople was made the new Ottoman capital, the massive Golden Gate of the Theodosian Walls was made part of the castle treasury of Mehmed, while the Christian community was permitted to survive, guided by the bishop Gennadeios II. What was left of the old Byzantine empire was absorbed into Ottoman territory following the conquest of Mistra in 1460 CE and Trebizond in 1461 CE. Meanwhile, Mehmed, aged only 21 and now known as "the Conqueror", settled in for a long reign and another 28 years as Sultan. Byzantine culture would survive, especially in the arts and architecture, but the fall of Constantinople was, nevertheless, a momentous episode of world history, the end of the old Roman Empire and the last surviving link between the medieval and ancient worlds.
