The final assault
1453 · Event
Three waves break on the walls before dawn; the third finds a small sally-port left open and a standard raised on the ramparts, and panic does the rest. Constantine XI dies sword in hand somewhere in the rout, his body never certainly found. By afternoon Mehmed rides to Hagia Sophia; Rome, after 1,500 years, is finished.
On these timelines: Fall of Constantinople, Anatolia / Byzantium / Ottoman / Turkey, Master
More from Fall of Constantinople
- Fall of Constantinople (1453)
- Mehmed hauls his fleet over the hills (1453)
- Hagia Sophia converted to mosque (1453)
- Orban casts the great bombard (1453)
- Mehmed builds Rumeli Hisarı (1452)
- Mehmed makes Constantinople his capital (1453)
- The defenders' last council (1453)
- The chain across the Golden Horn (1453)
Around 1453
- Wars of the Roses (1455)
- Columbus reaches the Americas (1492)
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452)
- Spanish Reconquista last campaign (1482)
- Michelangelo (1475)
- Gutenberg's printing press (1440)
- Martin Luther (1483)
- Mona Lisa (1503)
- Michelangelo's Pietà (1499)
- The Last Supper (1495)