Fall of Constantinople
The Fall of Constantinople, on 29 May 1453, occurred when the Muslim Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, ending the Christian Byzantine Empire. It is often seen as the event that marked the end of the Middle Ages.
- The army defending Constantinople was relatively small; it totalled about 7,000 men, 2,000 of whom were foreigners. At the onset of the siege probably 50,000 people were living within the walls, including the refugees from the surrounding area. Commander Dorgano, who was in Constantinople in the pay of the Emperor, was also guarding one of the quarters of the city on the seaward side with the Turks in his pay. These Turks kept loyal to the Emperor and perished in the ensuing battle. The Ottomans, on the other hand, had a larger force. Recent studies and Ottoman archival data point out that there were about 80,000 Ottoman soldiers including between 5,000 and 10,000 Janissaries, an elite infantry corps, and thousands of Christian troops, notably 1,500 Serbian cavalry that the Serbian lord Đurađ Branković supplied as part of his obligation to the Ottoman sultan. But just a few months before, he had supplied the money for the reconstruction of the walls of Constantinople. Contemporaneous Western witnesses of the siege, who tend to exaggerate the military power of the Sultan, provide disparate and higher numbers ranging from 160,000 to 200,000 and to 300,000 (Niccolò Barbaro: 160,000; the Florentine merchant Jacopo Tedaldi and the Great Logothete George Sphrantzes: 200,000; the Cardinal Isidore of Kiev and the Archbishop of Mytilene Leonardo di Chio: 300,000).
