Fall of Constantinople

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 29th of May 1453, a 21-year-old commander named Mehmed II watched as cannonballs weighing 500 kg slammed into walls that had held for 800 years. Constantinople fell that day, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, after a siege of 53 days that had begun on the 6th of April. The man who lost it was Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, last ruler of a state that traced its origin to roughly 27 BC. For nearly 1,500 years, a Roman Empire had existed in some form. On a Tuesday in late spring, it effectively ended. How does a city protected by some of the most advanced fortifications in the world fall in under two months? Why did Western Europe, begged for help, send so little? And what happened inside the great church of Hagia Sophia once the doors gave way? The answers run through gunpowder, betrayal, prophecy, and a young sultan who would weep over the ruins he had won.

• 2. Eight Centuries Of Walls

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  The Theodosian walls protected Constantinople from attack for 800 years and were noted among the most advanced defensive systems of their age. They formed only part of a perimeter of roughly 20 km: land walls of 5.5 km, sea walls along the Golden Horn of 7 km, and sea walls along the Sea of Marmara of 7.5 km. The land fortifications featured a moat 60 ft wide fronting inner and outer crenellated walls, with towers placed every 45 to 55 metres. In its eleven centuries as an imperial capital, the city had been besieged many times but captured only once. That single fall came in 1204, when the armies of the Fourth Crusade breached the Golden Horn Wall. Constantine XI knew that history well. He ordered the Blachernae district's wall made the most fortified, because that section protruded northwards and exposed a weakness. He also revived an old defence at the harbour mouth. A chain floating on logs was stretched across the entrance to the Golden Horn, strong enough to stop any Turkish ship from entering. Centuries of repairs and ramparts had made this, by one claim, the best-defended city in Europe. Yet siege warfare itself was about to change in ways no wall could answer.

• 3. The Conqueror's Gun

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  Orban, a Hungarian by most accounts though some suggest he was German, first tried to sell his services to the Byzantines, who could not raise the funds to hire him. He then went to Mehmed II, boasting that his weapon could blast the walls of Babylon itself. Given abundant funds and materials, he built the gun in three months at Edirne. The cannon, named Basilica, measured 27 ft and could hurl a 600 lb stone ball over a mile. Moving it became its own ordeal. The bombard was dragged from Edirne by a crew of 60 oxen and over 400 men, along roads that fifty carpenters and 200 artisans had strengthened to bear the weight. The weapon had drawbacks. It took three hours to reload, cannonballs were in very short supply, and it is said to have collapsed under its own recoil after six weeks. Most of the artillery at the siege came not from Orban but from Turkish engineers, including a large bombard built by Saruca. For the final assault, Mehmed dragged an artillery train of 70 large pieces from his headquarters at Edirne. Estimates of the total range anywhere from 12 to 62 cannons. Ottoman infantry, backed by this gunpowder, overcame fortifications that ancient ramparts could never have stopped. By the siege's end, the Ottomans had fired 5,000 shots using 55,000 pounds of gunpowder.

• 4. The Price Of A Broken Church

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  Since the mutual excommunications of 1054, the Pope in Rome had pressed to establish authority over the eastern church. The Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos had agreed to union in 1274 at the Second Council of Lyon, and the Council of Florence of 1439 proclaimed a Bull of Union under John VIII Palaiologos. Inside Constantinople, the effort met fierce resistance. Anti-unionist Orthodox partisans stirred the population, and the laity and leadership of the Byzantine Church became bitterly divided. Old hatreds ran beneath the theology. The Massacre of the Latins in 1182 by the Greeks, and the Sack of 1204 by the Latins, had poisoned relations between Greeks and Italians. When Rumeli Hisarı was completed in the summer of 1452, Constantine wrote to the Pope promising to implement union. A half-hearted imperial court declared it valid on the 12th of December 1452. The gesture bought little. Pope Nicholas V lacked the influence the Byzantines imagined he held over Western kings. France and England were drained by the Hundred Years' War, Spain was occupied with the Reconquista, the Holy Roman Empire fought within itself, and Hungary and Poland had been defeated at the Battle of Varna of 1444. The grand alliance Constantine needed would never assemble.

• 5. Strangers On The Wall

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  Cardinal Isidore, funded by the Pope, arrived in 1452 with 200 archers. The most important newcomer came in January 1453: Giovanni Giustiniani, an accomplished soldier from Genoa, who brought 400 men from Genoa and 300 from Genoese Chios. A specialist in defending walled cities, he was at once given overall command of the land walls. The Byzantines knew him as John Justinian, after the famous sixth-century emperor. From the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily came the condottiero Gabriele Orsini del Balzo, duke of Venosa, with 200 Neapolitan archers, all of whom died defending the city. Not every foreigner stayed to fight. Seven Italian ships carrying around 700 men, despite swearing to defend Constantinople, slipped out of the capital the moment Giustiniani arrived. The numbers tell their own grim story. George Sphrantzes recorded that the defenders amounted to 4,773 Greeks and just 200 foreigners. Counting volunteers from Genoa, Venice, and Galata, the total came to something under 8,000 men guarding a perimeter of twelve miles. Fewer than 50,000 people lived within the walls. Against them, recent Ottoman archival data points to some 50,000 to 80,000 soldiers, among them between 5,000 and 10,000 Janissaries. Đurađ Branković, who only months earlier had paid for the reconstruction of Constantinople's walls, was forced to supply 1,500 Serbian cavalry to the sultan.

• 6. Ships Over The Hill

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  On the 20th of April, a small flotilla of four Christian ships fought its way into the Golden Horn, lifting the defenders' morale and embarrassing the sultan. The Ottoman admiral Baltoghlu, most likely wounded in the eye during the skirmish, paid dearly. Mehmed stripped him of his wealth and property, gave it to the janissaries, and ordered him whipped 100 times. The chain across the harbour mouth had done its work, so Mehmed went around it. He ordered a road of greased logs built across Galata on the north side of the Golden Horn, then dragged his ships over the hill and directly into the harbour on the 22nd of April. The move threatened the flow of supplies and demoralized the defenders. A counterstrike followed. On the night of the 28th of April, the Christians tried to burn the Ottoman ships with fire ships, but were forced back with heavy losses. Forty Italians swam to the northern shore and were impaled on stakes in sight of the city. In answer, the defenders brought 260 Ottoman prisoners to the walls and executed them one by one before the enemy's eyes. Below ground, another contest raged. Serbian miners from Novo Brdo, under Zagan Pasha, dug tunnels to undermine the walls. A German engineer named Johannes Grant, who came with the Genoese, dug counter-mines and killed the sappers. On the 23rd of May, two captured Turkish officers revealed the location of every tunnel, and all were destroyed.

• 7. The Last Night And The Breach

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  On the 28th of May, as the Ottoman army prepared, mass religious processions wound through the city, and a solemn last service of Vespers was held in the Hagia Sophia. The Emperor attended with representatives of both the Latin and Greek churches. Mehmed had already offered terms on the 21st of May, promising to lift the siege if the city was surrendered, and to let the Emperor leave with his possessions. Constantine refused to abandon the city, declaring that all had reached a mutual decision to die of their own free will. Shortly after midnight on Tuesday the 29th of May, the offensive began. The Christian troops of the Ottoman army attacked first, then waves of poorly equipped azaps, then Anatolian Turkmen forces who struck the weaker eleventh-century section of the Blachernae walls. The Turkmen briefly broke through and were pushed back. Then came the elite Janissaries. Giovanni Giustiniani was grievously wounded during the attack, and his evacuation from the ramparts spread panic through the defenders. With the Genoese retreating toward the harbour, Constantine and his men held their ground against the Janissaries, led forward by Ulubatlı Hasan. The walls were overwhelmed at several points. It is said that Constantine threw aside his purple imperial regalia and led a final charge, dying in the streets among his soldiers. Niccolò Barbaro claimed instead that he hanged himself when the Turks broke in at the San Romano gate. His fate remains unknown.

• 8. Plunder, Tears, And A Third Rome

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  On the 2nd of June, Mehmed found the city largely deserted and half in ruins, its churches stripped and its houses gutted. He is reported to have been moved to tears, saying, "What a city we have given over to plunder and destruction." The looting had been thorough but the spoils were thin, since much of the city's wealth had already been carried off in 1204. Accounts of the sack are harrowing and contested. Leonard of Chios wrote that as many as sixty thousand Christians were captured, churches desecrated, and women and children abused. David Nicolle estimated only about 4,000 Greeks died, while a Venetian Senate report counted 50 noblemen and over 500 other civilians lost. By most accounts, 30,000 to 50,000 citizens were forced into slavery. When Mehmed entered Hagia Sophia, he saw a Ghazi hammering at the marble floor. Told the man did it for the Faith, the sultan cut him down with his kilij and said the buildings of the city belonged to him. The church was converted into a mosque, yet the Greek Orthodox Church was allowed to remain, and Gennadius Scholarius was named Patriarch. Mehmed made Constantinople his new capital, replacing Adrianople, and declared himself Kayser-i Rum, Caesar of the Romans. The shock spread fast. In Egypt good tidings were proclaimed and Cairo decorated. Greek scholars such as John Argyropoulos and Constantine Lascaris fled to the Latin West, carrying the knowledge of Byzantine civilization to Italy and helping to propel the Renaissance. In 1461, the last independent Byzantine state at Trebizond fell to Mehmed as well, closing a story that had begun in 27 BC.