They came on the Monday after Easter, which seemed a cruelty even God would not permit.
Scroll
The Roman Empire is 1,500 years old.Its capital has 12 miles of the strongest walls ever built.Its population has shrunk from 500,000 to50,000Outside the walls:80,000 soldiersand the largest cannon the world has ever seen.
~80,000 soldiers
~200 ships
70 cannon
~7,000 defenders
12 miles of wall
May 29, 1453
The city had stood for eleven centuries.
DAY 1
April 2, 1453
The walls of Constantinople stood for 1,029 years.
They fell on a Tuesday.
Sources
Primary Sources
George Sphrantzes, Chronikon Minus
Niccolò Barbaro, Giornale dell'Assedio di Costantinopoli
Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina
Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror
Leonardo of Chios, letter to Pope Nicholas V
Modern Scholarship
Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965)
Roger Crowley, Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 (2005)
John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Decline and Fall (1995)