Constantinople, 1453 - "The City Has Fallen!"

On 29 May 1453 — a Tuesday, the day of the god of War — Constantinople, the second Rome, the millennial capital of the Byzantine Empire, fell into the hands of the Turks. Nearly 7,000 men had resisted for fifty-five days against more than 100,000. Sacked, "the City" was depopulated and 50,000 slaves were taken into the Ottoman world. Emperor Constantine XI vanished that day in the fray, weapons in hand.

Its conqueror, Sultan Mehmed II, had earned his sobriquet of "the Conqueror"; he had just fulfilled the prophecies rooted in the Quran that had promised the City to Islam since the ninth century. "Agia Sophia" — Hagia Sophia, the greatest Christian church — was converted into a mosque. Istanbul was born.

This book meticulously traces the twists and turns of this extraordinary siege: fighting took place on land, underground and at sea; ships were hauled over hills; enormous cannon struck day and night, relentlessly, at the most formidable walls in Europe; men and women fought to the last extremity; others betrayed.

Beyond the epic fighting, the reader will discover the inexorable advance of Ottoman conquests and the slow agony of the Greek Empire, undermined by internal crises, prey to European powers, and forgotten by Christendom.

Drawing on the most recent scholarship (historians, archaeologists) and on the full range of Greek, Turkish and Latin sources written by participants and witnesses of the fighting, Sylvain Gouguenheim delivers in this sixth volume of the "Champs de bataille" collection a gripping account of the siege that changed the order of the world.