The Siege of Constantinople, 1453
Ottoman land and naval positions encircling the walls of Constantinople during Sultan Mehmed II's siege, April–May 1453.
For seven weeks in the spring of 1453, the young Ottoman sultan Mehmed II threw an army of some 80,000 men and a fleet against the ancient land walls of Constantinople, defended by perhaps 7,000 exhausted Byzantines and their Genoese allies. Ottoman cannon — including a giant bombard cast by the Hungarian engineer Orban — pounded the Theodosian Walls for weeks, while Mehmed had ships dragged overland on greased logs to bypass the chain blocking the Golden Horn. The walls finally gave way on 29 May 1453; Emperor Constantine XI died fighting in the breach, and with him fell the thousand-year Byzantine Empire. Read more on the fall of Constantinople.
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