Fall of Constantinople, 1453

The battle, stage by stage

1. 6 April 1453

   The investment

   Sultan Mehmed II, twenty-one, has spent a year preparing: Rumeli Hisarı, his fortress on the European shore of the Bosphorus, was finished in 1452 and closes the strait above the city. On 6 April his army is camped along the whole length of the land walls — Karaca Pasha's European troops in the north opposite Blachernae, Ishak Pasha's Anatolians in the south toward the Golden Gate, and Mehmed with the Janissaries opposite the Lycus valley; Zaganos Pasha holds the hills behind Galata. Modern estimates put the army at roughly 50,000–80,000; contemporaries gave 160,000 and more. Against it Constantine XI has, by his secretary Sphrantzes' muster, under 5,000 Greeks and some 200 foreigners, rising to perhaps 7,000–8,000 with Giustiniani's Genoese, the Venetians and other volunteers, behind the double Theodosian wall and moat. The Genoese colony of Galata across the Golden Horn stays officially neutral.

2. 12 – 18 April

   Orban's guns

   The heavy guns are dragged into position and open fire around 12 April, the greatest of them — cast by the Hungarian founder Orban — placed opposite the Mesoteichion, the stretch where the walls dip into the Lycus valley near the Gate of St Romanus, with other batteries opposite Blachernae, the Gate of Charisius, the Gate of Pege and the Golden Gate. The great gun is said to fire only a few times a day, but the outer wall begins to crumble; each night Giustiniani's men and the townspeople fill the gaps with stockades of timber, earth and barrels. On the night of 18 April an assault on the Mesoteichion is beaten back.

3. 20 April

   The boom and the fight at sea

   A boom of floating timbers and iron chain closes the Golden Horn from the Gate of Eugenius to a tower on the Galata shore, guarded by some two dozen Venetian, Genoese and Byzantine ships; an Ottoman attempt on it fails. On 20 April three Genoese ships and a Byzantine grain transport come up the Marmara. Baltoğlu's much larger fleet of low galleys swarms them off the point of the Acropolis; the wind drops and they drift toward the Galata shore, lashed together, their high sides and heavier missiles holding off boarders for hours while, by one account, Mehmed rides his horse into the shallows shouting orders. When the wind returns, the convoy breaks through; after dark, Barbaro says, Venetian galleys under Gabriele Trevisano tow it inside the boom. The furious sultan dismisses Baltoğlu.

4. 22 April

   Ships over the hill

   Unable to break the boom, Mehmed goes round it. Over the hills behind Galata a track is laid with greased timbers; ships are set in cradles and hauled by men and oxen, by Kritoboulos' account with sails set and oarsmen rowing in the air, from the Bosphorus near the Double Columns (Diplokionion) down into the Valley of the Springs on the Golden Horn. Kritoboulos counts about 67 vessels, Barbaro 72 fustae. The route is debated — Kritoboulos gives only about eight stadia (some 1.5 km), shorter than the Beşiktaş line drawn here, and several historians prefer a start near Tophane. The Christian fleet is now flanked inside its own harbour, and men must be pulled off the land walls to guard the long Horn walls; a Venetian fire-ship raid on the Ottoman ships on 28 April is betrayed and fails.

5. Late April – mid May

   Bridge and battery

   The Ottomans tighten the grip on the Horn. A pontoon bridge of barrels and planks is thrown across its upper reach to carry troops and guns toward Blachernae, and a gun on the hill behind Galata lobs stones over the Genoese town at the ships in the harbour; Barbaro records a merchant ship sunk in early May. The Christian ships shelter close under Galata's walls, and Trevisano's sailors are sent to man the walls. On land the bombardment never stops, with assaults on 7 and 12 May at the Mesoteichion and Blachernae. Galata, nominally neutral, trades with both sides.

6. 16 – 25 May

   Mines and countermines

   Zaganos Pasha's miners — later writers say Serbian silver-miners from Novo Brdo — tunnel toward the walls, chiefly near the Kaligaria Gate at Blachernae. Barbaro records the first mine found on 16 May; Johannes Grant, an engineer described as German or Scottish, listens for the diggers and drives countermines, smoking, flooding and burning them out, and captured miners reportedly reveal the rest. More mines are destroyed until 25 May. On 18 May the Ottomans push a great wooden siege tower against the wall near St Romanus; the defenders blow it up with gunpowder barrels that night. Within the city, the omens are grim and the talk is of surrender; Constantine refuses.

7. 29 May, about 01:30 – dawn

   The general assault

   After a day of rest and prayer in the camp, the attack goes in along the whole land front and from the ships in the Horn and the Marmara at about half past one in the morning. At the Mesoteichion Mehmed sends three waves: the başıbozuk irregulars, driven forward with whips and maces; then Ishak Pasha's Anatolians, who break into the stockade for a moment through a gap the bombard opens and are cut down; then, at first light, the Janissaries. Barbaro says the defenders held for hours. Then Giustiniani is badly wounded — by an arrow or a ball, the accounts differ — and is carried from the wall. Barbaro accuses him of deserting and shouting that the Turks were in; others defend him. His Genoese follow him through the inner gate, and the line at St Romanus begins to give.

8. 29 May, sunrise

   The fall of the City

   A tradition preserved by Doukas says that some fifty Ottomans found the Kerkoporta, a small postern near the Blachernae angle, left unbarred after a sortie, slipped in and raised their banners on the towers; whether or not it happened, the cry that the city was taken spread along the wall. At the Mesoteichion the Janissaries — Ulubatlı Hasan is remembered for planting the first flag — pour over the stockade. Constantine XI is last seen throwing himself into the fighting near the gate; his body was never certainly identified. The defenders break, the Ottomans flood in toward the Holy Apostles and Hagia Sophia, where crowds sheltering in the church are taken, and the city is given over to three days' sack. In the Horn the Venetian and Genoese crews cut the boom and escape to sea; Giustiniani dies of his wound weeks later on Chios. That afternoon Mehmed rides to Hagia Sophia, ordering it made a mosque.