Fall of Constantinople ...................... F
Taking place on May 29, 1453, this turning
point in European history marked the fi-
nal conquest of the Eastern Roman or Byz-
antine Empire by the Ottoman Turkish
Empire, a domain that covered territory in
southeastern Europe, Asia Minor, the
Middle East, and North Africa. Since the
capture of Constantinople, the ancient
capital of the Byzantine Empire, by mem-
bers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the
city and the realm had suffered a slow de-
cline as the Ottoman Turks stepped up
their attacks on Byzantine cities and ports
in the Levant and Asia Minor. By the turn
of the fifteenth century the Turks had built
a stronghold on the southern side of the
Bosporus, the strait dividing Constanti-
nople from Asia Minor proper. The Otto-
man sultan, Mehmed II, established an-
other fortress on the European side of the
Bosporus to prevent reinforcements from
reaching the city from allied Black Sea
ports.
As the Turkish siege began, Constan-
tine sent for help to the nations of western
Europe. But the division between the Latin
and Greek (eastern) Christian churches,
dating to the Eastern Schism of 1054, per-
suaded the pope and many Christian kings
to ignore the urgent pleas. Europe had also
been weakened by centuries of fighting
and civil war, with the Hundred Years’ War
between England and France still burning
in its final years.
Constantinople was protected by a ring
of walls on both the land and the seacoast,
but its defenders numbered only about ten
thousand in the face of an enemy that, by
some accounts, had as many as three hun-
dred thousand men as well as a fleet of
several hundred ships attacking from the
waters of the Bosporus. Mehmed drew up
his forces in early April and began a heavy
cannonade of the walls on the western side
of the city. A large boom placed by the
Byzantines across the entrance to the
Golden Horn, a waterway on the northern
side of Constantinople, prevented Turkish
ships from attacking on this front; to
counter this Mehmed ordered a row of
logs set down on which his ships could be
rolled forward to block resupply of the
city from the north. Meanwhile, Turkish
sappers dug tunnels underneath the walls
in order to penetrate and sabotage the city
defenses; the Greeks counterattacked by
digging their own tunnels and sending
troops into them to fight hand to hand.
The final assault took place on May 29
in several waves of troops that attacked
the western wall at its weakest points. The
Turks found an unlocked gate and rushed
into the city, and in the melee that fol-
lowed Constantine XI died. The Turks re-
named the city Istanbul and converted the
Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral built un-
der the Byantine emperor Justinian, into
the mosque. The last Byzantine strong-
holds in Greece were conquered in 1460.
Istanbul remained the capital of the Otto-
man Empire until this state was dissolved
after World War I.SEEALSO: Mehmed II