The 1453 Siege Of Constantinople: Part 2
The 1453 Siege heats up as Constantine XI struggles to hold back the Ottoman Turks.
In this episode, we follow the desperate defense of Constantinople as Emperor Constantine XI struggles to withstand the relentless siege.
Ottoman cannons hammer the walls day and night, while engineers carve tunnels beneath the city, seeking to collapse its foundations from below. The defenders cling to the fragile hope of Western aid, even as Sultan Mehmet II pushes them to their breaking point—hauling ships overland to bypass the harbor defenses and constructing towering siege engines in the dead of night to overwhelm the walls.
Desperate, the Greeks fight back with every means at their disposal. Barrels of gunpowder reduce a massive Ottoman siege tower to splinters, while brutal impalements and savage retributions spread fear through both camps. Yet inside the city, political rivalries between Venice and Genoa weaken Constantine’s already fragile coalition, eroding what little unity remains.
With each passing day, the city's fate grows more dire...
SOURCES:
- Isidore of Kie’s account of The Siege
- Nicholas Barbaro’s Diary
- Decline and fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks - Doukas
- Laonikos Chalkokondyles - Demonstrations Of History
- Michael Kritovolous - History
- George Sphrantzes - Chronicle
- Makarios Melissenos account of The Siege (expanded Sphrantzes Chronicle)
- The Immortal Emperor: The Life and Legend of Constantine Palaiologos, Last Emperor of the Romans by Donald M Nicol
- The Last Centuries of Byzantium by Donald Nicol
- Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time: 314 by Franz Babinger
- Painting the Soul: Icons, Death Masks and Shrouds by Robin Cormack
- The Fall Of Constantinople To The Ottomans by Michael Angold
- The Fall of Constantinople by Steven Runciman
- Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire by Gábor Ágoston
- The Siege and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453: Historiography, Topography, and Military Studies by Marios Philippides, Walter K. Hanak
- Cambridge history of the Byzantine Empire 500 -1492
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