Siege[edit] At the beginning of the siege, Mehmed sent out some of his best troops to reduce the remaining Byzantine strongholds outside the city of Constantinople. The fortress of Therapia on the Bosphorus and a smaller castle at the village of Studius near the Sea of Marmara were taken within a few days. The Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara were taken by Admiral Baltoghlus fleet.[61] Mehmeds massive cannon fired on the walls for weeks, but due to its imprecision and extremely slow rate of reloading the Byzantines were able to repair most of the damage after each shot, limiting the cannons effect.[62] The Ottoman Turks transport their fleet overland into the Golden Horn. Meanwhile, despite some probing attacks, the Ottoman fleet under Suleiman Baltoghlu could not enter the Golden Horn due to the defensive chain the Byzantines had laid across the entrance. Although one of the fleets main tasks was to prevent any ships from outside from entering the Golden Horn, on 20 April a small flotilla of four Christian ships[63] managed to slip in after some heavy fighting, an event which strengthened the morale of the defenders and caused embarrassment to the Sultan.[62] Baltoghlus life was spared after his subordinates testified to his bravery during the conflict. After that, Mehmed tried to circumvent the chain. He ordered the construction of a road of greased logs across Galata on the north side of the Golden Horn, and rolled his ships across on 22 April.[62] This seriously threatened the flow of supplies from Genovese ships from the — nominally neutral — colony of Pera, and demoralized the Byzantine defenders. On the night of 28 April, an attempt was made to destroy the Ottoman ships already in the Golden Horn using fire ships, but the Ottomans had been warned in advance and forced the Christians to retreat with heavy losses. From then on, the defenders were forced to disperse part of their forces to the Golden Horn walls, causing defense in other sections of the walls to weaken. On 29 April 260 Ottoman prisoners were beheaded on the walls before the eyes of the Ottomans.[24] The Turks had made several frontal assaults on the land wall, but were always repelled with heavy losses. Venetian surgeon Niccolò Barbaro, describing in his diary one of such frequent land attacks especially by the Janissaries, wrote: “ They found the Turks coming right up under the walls and seeking battle, particularly the Janissaries...and when one or two of them were killed, at once more Turks came and took away the dead ones...without caring how near they came to the city walls. Our men shot at them with guns and crossbows, aiming at the Turk who was carrying away his dead countryman, and both of them would fall to the ground dead, and then there came other Turks and took them away, none fearing death, but being willing to let ten of themselves be killed rather than suffer the shame of leaving a single Turkish corpse by the walls.[45] ” Siege of Constantinople as depicted between 1453 and 1475. After these inconclusive frontal offensives, the Ottomans sought to break through the walls by constructing underground tunnels in an effort to mine them from mid-May to 25 May. Many of the sappers were miners of German origin sent from Novo Brdo by the Serbian despot. They were placed under the command of Zagan Pasha. However, the Byzantines employed an engineer named Johannes Grant (who was said to be German but was probably Scottish), who had counter-mines dug, allowing Byzantine troops to enter the mines and kill the Turkish workers. The Byzantines intercepted the first Serbian tunnel on the night of 16 May. Subsequent tunnels were interrupted on 21, 23, and 25 May, and destroyed with Greek fire and vigorous combat. On 23 May, the Byzantines captured and tortured two Turkish officers, who revealed the location of all the Turkish tunnels, which were then destroyed.[64] On 21 May, Mehmed sent an ambassador to Constantinople and offered to lift the siege if they gave him the city. He promised he would allow the Emperor and any other inhabitant to leave with their possessions. Moreover, he would recognise the Emperor as governor of the Peloponese. Lastly, he guaranteed the safety of the population that would remain in the city. Constantine XI accepted to pay higher tributes to the sultan and recognized the status of all the conquered castles and lands in the hands of the Turks as Ottoman possession.[65] However, regarding Constantinople, he stated: “ Giving you though the city depends neither on me nor on anyone else among its inhabitants; as we have all decided to die with our own free will and we shall not consider our lives.[66] ” Around this time, Mehmed had a final council with his senior officers. Here he encountered some resistance; one of his Viziers, the veteran Halil Pasha, who had always disapproved of Mehmeds plans to conquer the city, now admonished him to abandon the siege in the face of recent adversity. Halil was overruled by Zagan Pasha, who insisted on an immediate attack. Having been accused of bribery, Halil Pasha was put to death later that year.[67] Mehmed planned to overpower the walls by sheer force, expecting that the weakened Byzantine defense by the prolonged siege would now be worn out before he ran out of troops and started preparations for a final all-out offensive. Final assault[edit] Painting by the Greek folk painter Theophilos Hatzimihail showing the battle inside the city, Constantine is visible on a white horse The Siege of Constantinople, painted 1499. Preparations for the final assault were started in the evening of 26 May and continued to the next day.[68] For 36 hours after the war council decision to attack, the Ottomans extensively mobilized their manpower in order to prepare for the general offensive.[68] Prayer and resting would be then granted to the soldiers on the 28th, and then the final assault would be launched. On the Byzantine side, a small Venetian fleet of 12 ships, after having searched the Aegean, reached the Capital on 27 May and reported to the Emperor that no large Venetian relief fleet was on its way.[69] On 28 May, as the Ottoman army prepared for the final assault, large-scale religious processions were held in the city. In the evening a last solemn ceremony was held in the Hagia Sophia, in which the Emperor and representatives of both the Latin and Greek church partook, together with nobility from both sides.[70] Shortly after midnight on 29 May the all-out offensive began. The Christian troops of the Ottoman Empire attacked first, followed by the successive waves of the irregular azaps, who were poorly trained and equipped, and Anatolians who focused on a section of the Blachernae walls in the northwest part of the city, which had been damaged by the cannon. This section of the walls had been built earlier, in the eleventh century, and was much weaker. The Anatolians managed to breach this section of walls and entered the city but were just as quickly pushed back by the defenders. Finally, as the battle was continuing, the last wave, consisting of elite Janissaries, attacked the city walls. The Genoese general in charge of the land troops,[2][47][48] Giovanni Giustiniani, was grievously wounded during the attack, and his evacuation from the ramparts caused a panic in the ranks of the defenders.[71] Giustiniani was carried to Chios, where he succumbed to his wounds a few days later. With Giustiniani’s Genoese troops retreating into the city and towards the harbor, Constantine and his men, now left to their own devices, kept fighting and managed to hold off the Janissaries for a while, but eventually they could not stop them from entering the city. The defenders were also being overwhelmed at several points in Constantine’s section. When Turkish flags were seen flying above a small postern gate, the Kerkoporta, which was left open, panic ensued, and the defense collapsed, as Janissary soldiers, led by Ulubatlı Hasan pressed forward. It is said that Constantine, throwing aside his purple regalia, led the final charge against the incoming Ottomans, dying in the ensuing battle in the streets like his soldiers. On the other hand Nicolò Barbaro, a Venetian eyewitness to the siege, wrote in his diary that it was said that Constantine hanged himself at the moment when the Turks broke in at the San Romano gate, although his ultimate fate remains unknown.[72] After the initial assault, the Ottoman Army fanned out along the main thoroughfare of the city, the Mese, past the great forums, and past the Church of the Holy Apostles, which Mehmed II wanted to provide a seat for his newly appointed patriarch which would help him better control his Christian subjects. Mehmed II had sent an advance guard to protect key buildings such as the Holy Apostles, as he did not wish to establish his new capital in a thoroughly devastated city. The Army converged upon the Augusteum, the vast square that fronted the great church of Hagia Sophia whose bronze gates were barred by a huge throng of civilians inside the building, hoping for divine protection. After the doors were breached, the troops separated the congregation according to what price they might bring in the slave markets. Mehmed II allowed his troops to plunder the city for three days as it was customary.[73] Soldiers fought over the possession of some of the spoils of war.[74] According to the Venetian surgeon Nicolò Barbaro all through the day the Turks made a great slaughter of Christians through the city. According to Philip Mansel thousands of civilians were killed and 30,000 civilians were enslaved or deported.[75] Ottoman casualties are unknown but they are believed by most historians to be very heavy due to several unsuccessful Ottoman attacks made during the siege and final assault. Barbaro described blood flowing in the city like rainwater in the gutters after a sudden storm, and bodies of the Turks and Christians floating in the sea like melons along a canal.[45] Aftermath[edit] The Church of the Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, was converted into a mosque On the third day of the conquest, Mehmed II ordered all looting to stop and sent his troops back outside the city walls.[21] Byzantine historian George Sphrantzes, an eyewitness to the fall of Constantinople, described the Sultans actions:[76][77] “ On the third day after the fall of our city, the Sultan celebrated his victory with a great, joyful triumph. He issued a proclamation: the citizens of all ages who had managed to escape detection were to leave their hiding places throughout the city and come out into the open, as they were remain free and no question would be asked. He further declared the restoration of houses and property to those who had abandoned our city before the siege, if they returned home, they would be treated according to their rank and religion, as if nothing had changed. ” Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque, but the Greek Orthodox Church remained intact, and Gennadius Scholarius was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople. The Morean (Peloponnesian) fortress of Mystras, where Constantines brothers Thomas and Demetrius ruled, constantly in conflict with each other and knowing that Mehmed would eventually invade them as well, held out until 1460. Long before the fall of Constantinople, Demetrius had fought for the throne with Thomas, Constantine, and their other brothers John and Theodore.[78] Thomas escaped to Rome when the Ottomans invaded Morea while Demetrius expected to rule a puppet state, but instead was imprisoned and remained there for the rest of his life. In Rome, Thomas and his family received some monetary support from the Pope and other Western rulers as Byzantine emperor in exile, until 1503. In 1461 the independent Byzantine state in Trebizond fell to Mehmed.[78] With the capture of Constantinople, Mehmed II had acquired the natural capital of its kingdom, albeit one in decline due to years of war. And the conquest of the Byzantine Empire removed a foe to the rear of the Ottoman advance into Europe. The loss of the city was a great blow to Christendom, and it exposed the Christian west to a vigorous and aggressive foe in the east. Pope Nicholas V called for an immediate counter-attack in the form of a crusade. When no European monarch was willing to lead the crusade, the Pope himself decided to go, but his early death stopped this plan. For some time Greek scholars had gone to Italian city-states, a cultural exchange begun in 1396 by Coluccio Salutati, chancellor of Florence, who had invited Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine scholar to lecture at the University of Florence.[79] After the conquest many Greeks, such as John Argyropoulos and Constantine Lascaris, fled the city and found refuge in the Latin West, bringing with them knowledge and documents from the Greco-Roman tradition to Italy and other regions that further propelled the Renaissance.[80][81] Those Greeks who stayed behind in Constantinople mostly lived in the Phanar and Galata districts of the city. The Phanariotes, as they were called, provided many capable advisers to the Ottoman rulers. Scholars consider the Fall of Constantinople as a key event ending the Middle Ages and starting the Renaissance because of the end of the old religious order in Europe and the use of cannon and gunpowder. The fall of Constantinople and general encroachment of the Turks in that region also severed the main overland trade link between Europe and Asia, and as a result more Europeans began to seriously consider the possibility of reaching Asia by sea.[82] Third Rome[edit] This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2013) Byzantium is a term used by modern historians to refer to the later Roman Empire. In its time, the Empire ruled from Constantinople (or New Rome as Constantine had officially named it) was considered simply the Roman Empire. The fall of Constantinople led competing factions to lay claim to being the inheritors of the Imperial mantle. Russian claims to Byzantine heritage clashed with those of the Ottoman Empires own claim. In Mehmeds view, he was the successor to the Roman Emperor, declaring himself Kayser-i Rum, literally Caesar of Rome, that is, of the Roman Empire, though he was remembered as the Conqueror, founder of a political system that survived until 1922 with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey that has since held Constantinople (renamed Istanbul) but moved the capital of the Turkish state to Ankara. Such conflict in ideology only stimulated warfare between the Russian and Ottoman Empire, with the 18th and 19th century seeing Russian armies approach slowly closer to Constantinople. In fact the Russian armies came all the way to Yeşilköy suburb of Constantinople, which is only 10 miles (16 km) west of Topkapı Palace during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Stefan Dušan, Tsar of Serbia, and Ivan Alexander, Tsar of Bulgaria both made similar claims, regarding themselves as legitimate heirs to the Roman Empire. Other potential claimants, such as the Republic of Venice and the Holy Roman Empire have disintegrated into history. In addition to the military and political benefits bestowed upon the Turks with its capture, it also brought the trade in Eastern spices through Muslim intermediaries into a declining period. Europeans would continue to trade through Constantinople into the 16th century but high prices propelled the search for alternative sources of supply that did not pass through the intermediaries of the Ottomans and, to a lesser extent, the Safavids and Mamelukes. An increasing number of Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch ships began to attempt to sail to India via the southern tip of Africa. Indeed, had Columbus not believed that he would reach Asia to negotiate trade rights by sailing west—the mission as he presented it to his patron, the King of Spain—he would not have found the New World. Partial lunar eclipse[edit] Medieval astronomers witnessed the May 1453 lunar eclipse, during which approximately two-thirds of the Moon was covered by the Earths umbral shadow. The residual illumination the Moon during an eclipse, can often be red. This may explain why it is said a red moon took place during the eclipse, and was taken as an omen or prophecy of the citys transfer of power.
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