Siege of Constantinople (1453)

Type of action: Siege in Byzantine-Ottoman Wars

Date: February-May, 1453

Location: Constantinople, on the Bosporus, in western Turkey

Combatants: 160,000 Ottoman Turks vs. 8,000 Byzantines

Principal commanders:Ottoman Turkish, Mehmed II (1432–1481); Byzantine, Constantine XI Palaeologus (1404–1453)

Result: Successful siege and conquest of the last stronghold of Byzantine power; fall of the city to the Ottoman Turks marks the end of the Byzantine Empire and the official end of the Roman Empire

During the 1300’s, the Ottoman Turks were expanding their control over Anatolia, the former heartland of the Byzantine Empire. In 1352, the Ottomans crossed the Bosporus, the strait that separates Europe and Asia, and established a presence on European soil. In 1361, they moved into Thrace. Soon, all the former Byzantine land around the imperial city of Constantinople was under Ottoman control. Constantinople, however, remained out of reach. Whoever controlled it would control the most strategic city in the world.

Upon becoming sultan in 1444, Mehmed II made it his goal to take the city. He planned his siege well. He drafted Christian boys from the Balkans, converted them to Islam, and trained them into a crack military corps called the Janissaries. He added this corps to his army of nearly 120,000, composed of irregulars and mercenaries. The Ottoman navy—consisting of triremes, biremes, galleys, longboats, barges, sloops, and cutters—began to assemble near Constantinople in the winter of 1453. Added to this vast assembly of warriors were the sultan’s cannons. The most terrifying of these was one built by German engineer Urban. This cannon was said to have been nearly twenty-seven feet long, with a barrel two-and-one-half feet in diameter at the front end. The bronze of the cannon was eight inches thick. Mehmed’s cannon was capable of hurling more than 1,300 pounds of material through the air for a distance of more than a mile. The cannon was hauled overland by oxen and two hundred men. By April 5, Mehmed was camped outside the walls of Constantinople, and on April 6, the cannon opened fire.

The emperor Constantine XI had twenty-six ships with which to defend the sea approaches to the city. His army consisted of about 5,000 Greeks and less than 2,000 foreigners, mainly Genoese and Venetians. This small force had to defend fourteen miles of nearly impregnable walls against the Ottoman besiegers. Constantine’s second in command was the Genoese Giovanni Giustiniani, an expert in siege warfare. On April 2, in preparation for the siege, the emperor ordered the gates to the city closed and a great chain stretched across the Golden Horn, the city’s famed harbor. On April 11, the Ottomans began their bombardment of the walls protecting the western land approaches to the city and continued the bombardment for the next forty-eight days. At sea, the sultan’s navy was repulsed by the Byzantine fleet, but Mehmed regained the advantage by having ships hauled overland into the Golden Horn, thus bypassing the chain. By May, the inhabitants of the city were in desperate need of food. When the promise of a Venetian relief ship evaporated, the mood grew dark. On May 22, a lunar eclipse terrified the people of Constantinople. Then came a violent thunderstorm followed by a thick fog. A red glow was seen over the Great Church of Hagia Sophia. Even Mehmed was moved by these ominous events.

The final assault on Constantinople began in the early morning hours of May 29. As the fierce noise of their trumpets and drums was joined by chilling war cries, the Ottomans launched a wave of troops against the walls of the city. This was followed by a second and a third wave. Finally, the Janissaries broke through the walls. The Ottoman troops then massacred those who had not fled. After three days of looting, the sultan offered prayers over his new capital.

Significance

The siege and subsequent conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had a devastating psychological effect on Europe. Mehmed’s victory brought the Byzantine Empire to an end. The Christian peoples of the east were now under the control of Muslim Ottoman Turks. Over the next twenty years, the Ottomans brought the Balkans under their rule. It had taken them only a century and a half to replace the Byzantine Empire with a powerful political and military entity of their own. The Ottomans ruled over two lands, Europe and Asia, and established the last great empire in history.

Bibliography

Browning, Robert. Byzantine Empire. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980.

Byzantium: The Lost Empire. Documentary. The Learning Channel, 1997.

Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: 1185–1453. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

Goodwin, Jason. Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.

Norwich, John Julius. Byzantium: The Decline and Fall. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.