The Fall of Constantinople-1

The Final assault began after midnight, into the 29th of May 1453. Wave after wave the attackers charged. Battle cries rang out, the sound of drums, trumpets and fifes, filled the air. The bells of the city churches began ringing frantically. Orders, screams and the sound of trumpets shattered the night. First came the irregulars, an unreliable, multinational crowd of Christians and Moslems, who were attracted by the opportunity of enriching themselves by looting the great city, the last capital of the Roman Empire. They attacked throughout the line of fortifications and they were massacred by the tough professionals, who were fighting under the orders of Giustiniani. The battle lasted two hours and the irregulars withdrew in disorder, leaving behind an unknown number of dead and wounded. Next came the Anatolian troops of Ishak Pasha. They tried to storm the stockades and they fought tenaciously, even desperately trying to break through the compact ranks of the defenders.

Image = Aya_sofya, Hagia Sophia The Holy wisdom of God, Constantinople Following his accession to the Ottoman throne, Mehmed had been applying pressure on Constantinople and the Byzantines by building forts along the Dardanelles. On 5 April, he laid siege to Constantinople with an army numbering 80,000 to 200,000 men. The city was defended by an army of 7,000 of whom 2,000 were foreigners. According to Islamic tradition, before the beginning of hostilities, the Sultan demanded the surrender of the city, promising to spare the lives of its inhabitants and respect their property. In a proud and dignified reply the Emperor rejected Mehmed's demand and almost immediately the Ottoman guns began firing. The siege began with heavy Ottoman artillery firing at the city's walls while a smaller Ottoman force captured the rest of the Byzantine strongholds in the area. Ottoman attempts to blockade the city completely failed at first owing to the boom blocking the entrance to the

Image = Aya_sofya, Hagia Sophia The Holy wisdom of God, Constantinople Brief History Constantinople was the largest and richest urban center in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea during the late Eastern Roman Empire, mostly as a result of its strategic position commanding the trade routes between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. It would remain the capital of the eastern, Greek speaking empire for over a thousand years and it was the richest and largest European city, exerting a powerful cultural pull and dominating economic life in the Mediterranean. Visitors and merchants were especially struck by the beautiful monasteries and churches of the city, particularly Hagia Sophia, or the Church of Holy Wisdom. It was especially important for preserving manuscripts of Greek and Latin authors throughout a period when instability and disorder caused their mass destruction in Western Europe and North Africa. The cumulative influence of the city on the west, over the many centuries of its