29 May 1453
The assault of 29 May
Shortly after midnight on 29 May 1453 the assault begins along the whole land front and from the ships. The irregulars attack first, then İshak Pasha’s Anatolians, and before dawn Mehmed sends the janissaries against the stockade at the Mesoteichion. Karaca Pasha’s Rumelians attack the walls of Blachernae, Zaganos’s troops cross the bridge of barrels to the walls along the Horn, and Hamza Bey’s fleet attacks the sea walls.
The assault on Constantinople in Jean Chartier’s Chronique de Charles VII, painted about 1460, Bibliothèque nationale de FranceWikimedia Commons, attributed to Philippe de Mazerolles, Public domain (Siege constantinople bnf fr2691.jpg)
Giustiniani is badly wounded and is carried through the city to his ship in the harbour, and his Genoese follow him. Barbaro, a Venetian, writes that the wound is slight. The janissaries break through at the Fifth Military Gate north of the Lycus, and the defenders give way. Doukas tells that about 50 Ottomans get in by the Kerkoporta, a small gate left open near the palace, and raise their flags on the wall.
The land walls outside Topkapı, the gate of St RomanosWikimedia Commons, Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Istanbul Wall outside Topkapı gate 3067.jpg)
What becomes of Constantine XI is unknown. Most accounts have him killed fighting in the streets after he throws off his imperial insignia. Barbaro writes that he hangs himself, and some Ottoman accounts have him killed by Ottoman marines on his way to the Sea of Marmara.
Sources
- Nicolò Barbaro, Giornale dell’assedio di Costantinopoli (1453).
- Leonard of Chios, Historia Constantinopolitanae urbis a Mahumete captae (1453).
- Doukas, Historia Turco-Byzantina (about 1462).
- Michael Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror (about 1467).
- Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
- Donald M. Nicol, The Immortal Emperor: The Life and Legend of Constantine Palaiologos (1992).
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