1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West

A superbly written account of the fall of Christian Constantinople to the Muslims in AD 1453.

SUPERB DEFENSES
Constantinople was chosen by the Roman Emperor Constantine as his new Christian capital in AD 324. The city was situated on a triangular piece of land, surrounded on 2 sides by water. One current was too swift to allow ships to land and besiege the city. A massive chain blocked passage across the other waterway. The city's land side was protected by a wall with towers, first built by Anthemius in AD 413. When it collapsed after an earthquake, 16,000 citizens rebuilt the wall in only 2 months, adding a 2nd wall with towers and a moat. Constantinople stood as a Christian city for over 1,000 years and was virtually impregnable to attack as long as siege equipment was limited to the power of catapults.

GUNPOWER and MASSIVE CANNONS
Mehmet II was the 21-year old sultan of the Ottoman Empire. With gunpowder, massive cannons, and perhaps 50,000 to 80,000 troops, he besieged the walls with constant bombardments, always with heavy losses. His sappers attempted to dig tunnels under the walls to make them collapse, but they were repelled by Greek fire when the defenders placed bowls of water on the ground and located the digging through telltale ripples. During the day, the defenders pushed ladders off the walls, hurled down rocks and fire and hot oil on attackers, and shot bullets and arrows into the enemy. At night, the Turks would go forward to gather their wounded and dead. The defenders would go out to repair walls.
The city was defended by the courageous Constantine XI and no more than 8,000 soldiers.

FINAL ASSAULT
During the final assault, Mehmet had only one body of fresh troops left. The Greeks were led by Constantine himself, and the Italians by Giovanni Giustiniani, a noble of Genoa, who voluntarily fought “for the advantage of the Christian faith” and who was utterly tireless and skillful in his defense of the walls.

After Constantinople fell, it rejuvenated Islam to continue its jihad into the West. And the West was left to consider how its infighting and disunity helped lead to the fall of their great city.

The author is an historian and researcher of the highest order, and an exceptionally engaging writer.

This book brings to detailed life the story of the siege and conquest of Byzantine Constantinople in April-May 1453 by the Ottoman army under Mehmet II. It takes the reader from Constantinople's mystical beginnings as the New Rome, through several sieges by Muslim armies in their wave of conquest through the Mediterranean culminating at Tours, to Mehmet's obsession with seizing the "Red Apple" and making it the center of his world empire even though the target of his desire is crumbling and no longer the economic powerhouse it had been before the Fourth Crusade. And then the siege itself is covered extensively, as well as its messy aftermath. Good pacing, good stories and the author's dedication to explaining some of the Medieval concepts and technology (especially the parts concerning the split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and the chapter on the Ottomans' massive cannon -- the biggest gun was 27 feet long and 75 cm wide at the mouth and could fire a 1200 pound ball!) to the reader make 1453 a pleasure to read.

The city of Constantinople was the greatest defensive structure of the medieval world. In the course of its 1,123 year history up to the year 1453 it had been besieged 23 times, and only once successfully, ironically by the Christian knights of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Muslim armies made only a handful of attempts, beginning in 669, just 40 years after the death of Muhammad, and were decisively defeated by a new war technology, “Greek Fire.” After another attempt in 717, the Muslims would not try again for another 650 years. “Constantinople had survived through a mixture of technological innovation, skillful diplomacy, individual brilliance, massive fortifications – and sheer luck: themes that were to be endlessly repeated in the centuries ahead,” the author concludes.

The fall of Constantinople was a half-millennium in the making, according to Crowley. The arrival of the mobile and relentless fighting force of the Turks in 1000 and their conversion to Islam was a major turning point in world history, punctuated by the Roman defeat at Manzikert in 1071. The Turks, Crowley writes, were “quick-witted, flexible, and open.” The Byzantines, on the other hand, were sedentary, heavy-handed in their imperial administration, and deeply divided among themselves and their Christian co-religionists in the West. The Venetians, for instance, “worried about pirates more than theology, about commodities rather than creeds.” By the 1400s, the decline of Byzantium appeared inexorable; the rise of the Ottoman Empire inevitable.

The principle actors in the drama – Constantine XI and Mehmet II – are both described as talented men, although possessing vastly different inheritances. Constantine inherited “bankruptcy, a family with a taste for civil war, a city divided by religious passions, and an impoverished and volatile proletariat.” Mehmet, “self-reliant, haughty, distant from human affection, and intensely ambitious,” meanwhile, had inherited a well-organized army, efficient administration, and a people welded together by pious commitment to jihad. In 1453, Constantine was 48-years-of-age, Mehmet just 21.

Crowley claims that the young Sultan was obsessed by the capture of Constantinople. It was a “bone in the throat of Allah.”…”psychological as much as a military problem for the warriors of the Faith.” His first act upon ascending to the throne was to build a vast fortress six miles up river from Constantinople on the Bosporus. Called Rumeli Hisari (The Throat Cutter), it ensured that the Turks had unimpeded access to Europe across the narrow waterway and also could control the flow of materials from the Black Sea to Constantinople and beyond. And Mehmet had another trick up his sleeve, “a technical revolution that would profoundly change the rules of siege warfare.” Greek Fire had proven decisive against the Muslim besiegers in 678; gunpowder and heavy artillery would turn the technical balance of power in their favor in 1453. Mehmet hired the best gun masters in the world, including “the know-how and advice of perfidious Europeans,” to design a “super gun,” a cannon 27 feet in length that could hurl 1,000 pound marble balls a mile or more. The once impregnable land walls of Constantinople were suddenly vulnerable.

The author stresses several points throughout his narrative. First, the Ottoman army was extraordinarily efficient and well organized, especially compared to the Christians. In short, “no army in the world could match the Ottomans in the organization of a military campaign.” Second, Mehmet could draw on a huge reserve of manpower, many of which were genuinely motivated to serve in his armies, either because of the attraction of war booty or holy war – or both. Third, Christians were seriously outnumbered. Crowley claims that the order of battle was something like 200,000 Muslims against perhaps 5,000 effective Christian defenders.

Bombardment began after Easter in early April 1453. Mehmet had some 70 cannons trained on the land wall, firing some 120 shots every day, including from the super gun. The walls began to disintegrate under the onslaught. Meanwhile, Mehmet had collected an armada of roughly 140 ships on the waters around the city. The fleet’s objectives were threefold: 1) blockade the city; 2) force entry into the Golden Horn (thus compelling the over-stretched Christian forces to man those walls, too); and 3) prevent any Christian relief force from reaching the city as “their only hope lay in holding on long enough for some relieving force from the West to muscle its way through the blockade.”

After it became clear that forcing their way past the chain and tall merchant ships protecting the Golden Horn was not practical, Mehmet ordered his ships to be carried overland around the chains and the independent Genoese city of Galata, and into the smooth waters of the Horn, “a strategic and psychological masterstroke, brilliantly conceived and executed,” according to the author. It was just one of Mehmet’s many effective improvisations. In addition, he had mortars crafted that could send in-direct fire over Galata and onto the Byzantine ships in the Horn; he built large, moving towers to approach the moats and land walls; he directed significant mining operations under the walls of the city.

The siege lasted just 53 days. Some 5,000 shots were fired on the city, reducing the effective defending force by as much as 50%. Mehmet decided to press home a final, all-out offensive for May 29, 1453, an attack that succeeded after 6 hours of non-stop carnage.

News of the fall of Constantinople was a thunderclap across Europe, a flashbulb memory for those that experienced it, like news of the Kennedy assassination or 9/11. It would fan the flames of anti-Islamic writings for centuries, despite Mehmet’s policy of “remarkable tolerance” toward Christians and other minorities after the city fell. The young Sultan had won an amazing victory, capping the Ottoman Turks “breathtaking ascent from tribe to empire in two hundred years.”

“1453” is a great popular history of a remarkable event in world history. I have no doubt that academic historians would recommend other dusty works of historiography over this one, but Crowley is a credible and incredibly readable historian. For those looking to learn more about the modern Middle East or simply hoping to bone up on local history before taking a trip to Instanbul, this is a great place to start.

I lost sleep because of this book, LOL! Crowley packs his history of this important event with so much information that one gains a very clear impression of what transpired, as if from a bird's eye view. One gains as well a strong sense of the personalities of both Mehmet II and Constantine XI, as well as those of other key persons.

A masterful job.

Best not to take this book too seriously for historical accuracy. As seems the case currently many histories are being rewritten with a bias towards historic revisionist views. This book is written quite well and is mostly on the money however I cannot understand the passages that point to the Black Death as the leading consequence for the ultimate fall of Constantinople. The reality is that the 4th Crusade went terribly wrong and the Papal troops attached Constantinople with the aid of a banished former prince. Themfollowing days of rampant destruction, pillage and murder in the name of Western Christianity wrought such destruction that the city was not able to recover in time to defeat the Mongol Hordes led by Mehmet.

Another bit of revisionism is found when Sultan Mehmet entered the city following 4 days of pillage, he stated publicly, and it comes to us from two sources, that he knew not what horror he wrought upon the most beautiful of the worlds cities. The accumulation of gold, precious jewels, and silks filled a caravan ten miles in length. To say that he was disappointed at what he found is far from the truth, to say he cried at what he had allowed to be done is correct.

If you have ever wondered if Rome and the Western Catholic Church has dropped the ball this book will remove all doubt.
It was a leisurly read for me as I had to keep a good dictionart and Google Earth close at hand.
It was so very worth the trouble. Though it is very readable and I wanted to rush on and find out what happened I took the time ot learn the terms that were not familliar to me. This was a great help in the complete understanding of the history.
This book presents an engaging story of suspense and valiant struggle, and yet it is faithful to history and so it is informative as well.

As I am fascinated by the early Roman empire, I was intrigued to read this. Alas, it was disappointing; as mentioned by previous reviews mention Mr Crowley comes across as a pro-ottoman. This book concentrates on the most exiguous of things and at times falls short on filling in the gaps in certain events.
I found this strenuous to read and not because of the grammar but because of lack of intrigues; by the time I got to the 200th page I didn't even care how the ottomans took Constantinople.

Before I began reading this book, I had a little but not much background knowledge on the siege and fall of Constantinople. Now that i have finished it, I feel like I know much, much more about the topic. Crowley does a fantastic job providing points from both the Ottoman and Byzantine side of the conflict. He explains every advantage and detail of the siege and the events leading up to it very well. From the background information he gives to show the context of the siege to his points about Mehmet's battle strategies throughout the battle. Crowley doesn't leave anything missing.

This book is simply great. I'm a big fan of ancient history and I highly recommend this book to anyone who is big into ancient history, war, or the history of the Mediterranean region. Crowley is great with evenly supporting both sides throughout the book and does a great job providing a very informing yet exciting historical story.

This book sheads so much light on the character of Mehmet II. Mehmet knew the acts of war and what scares a city into submission under him. Also in reading this book, I found out why VLad Dracula impaled the Turks outside the city walls of Targoviste in cirlces. Mehmet had his tents... always in concentric cirlces around him to protect him at all times. Mehmet also impaled those Christians outside the walls of COnstantinople to show what would happen if they resisted him. Mehmet got a taste of his own medicine when he came to Wallachia to take Vlad's lands.

"In the jihad against Constantinople, one third of Muslims will allow themselves to be defeated, which Allah cannot forgive; one third will be killed in battle, making them wondrous martyrs; and one third will be victorious."

Speaking as a High School student, I was not completely thrilled when I received this book to read and review for my AP World History class. Nor can I say that I started this book but a few days before it was due. I give all of my thanks to Roger Crowley, who created a historical text that wasn't a terrific chore to read in two days.

The book, overall, was very interesting and was structured much like a fictional novel. The story of Islam vs. Christianity and their struggle for "true faith" had the classic elements of suspense, disappointment, and the "I really shouldn't find these so funny" Ottoman tactics of punishing a captive by "sticking a stake through his anus."

All in all, I would recommend this book to any student or adult who is willing to dive into a vast sea of knowledge. Though 1453 contained some descriptions of artillery that rivaled the length and interest levels of those in Greek mythology, it effectively told the tale of Constantinople and added historical allusions and comparisons throughout the story that further added to its appeal.

Furthermore, how can you rival a book that talks about a sea commander named Dolfin Dolfin? This book is definitely the best nonfiction, historical story that I have encountered thus far in my educational experience.