1453: The Catastrophic Collapse Of The Byzantine Empire

[Music] spring 1453 one of Europe's ancient cities braces for a terrible confrontation Constantinople The Jewel of the Byzantine Empire it is not a question of if it gets conquered but when it gets conquered the ruler of the Ottoman Empire Sultan mhmed II is determined to make the city his he has an army of ,000 men and an Innovative new weapon for the time it is really quite something and no one has ever cast out of iron such a huge cannon but the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI 11th will do whatever it takes to hold his [Applause] City the troops have no option but to die there is no going back for more than a thousand years The Fortress of Constantinople has defeated anyone who tried to besiege it the walls of Constantinople are the apy of defensive construction now in more than 50 days of brutal combat the two sides will Clash before the city walls under the ground and out at Sea the siege of Constantinople will change the fate of two huge Empires east and west and the course of history 880,000 men stand before the huge walls of Constantinople at their head is a young Sultan just 21 years old mhmed II the brand new occupant of the Ottoman Empire's Throne he has one goal conquer the city it's the great dream to take it Mt seems to have believed that he was the one uh it's one of these ideas that get lodged into his head very early that he's almost destined to take the city he says there should only be one Empire in the world and one Capital City Constantinople which is fit to be capital of the world within a few centuries the Ottomans have gradually conquered almost all of the Byzantine Empire which has ruled Eastern Europe for A Thousand Years by 1453 only one point of resistance remains Constantinople Constantinople is not just a city it is a city of the Roman Empire and we know that the Roman Empire had crumbled several centuries ago and the Byzantine Empire was just the shadow of the Roman Empire the Byzantine Empire by 1453 is in very bad shape in fact everyone knows that it is not a question of if it gets conquered but when it gets conquered this Christian city is the point through which all World Trade must pass a strategic border between East and West it's a city almost perfectly situated to command to be the center of an Empire it's almost as if the city was designed to be an imperial seat it is called the city of the world's desire it seems to have been designed by geograph and history to be the capital of a great Empire inside his Fortress emperor Constantine VI 11th Bears the weight of centuries of [Music] History he has a deep sense of the history of his Empire he knows that the throne he sits on goes all the way back to Augustus Caesar and he is aware of having this deep inheritance that he will defend to the very end the emperor is well aware of the danger facing his City but he also knows all the ancient fortresses assets and resources at least 23 major sieges had taken place and all of them had been repulsed in fact the city had never been taken in its entire 1100 plus year history [Music] one of the assaults that the byzantines repelled came from the young Sultan's own father so it's Revenge that mehmed's plotting too mehmed hasn't forgotten how his predecessors failed including his father who tried to take Constantinople back in 1422 driven by his tiring ambition the sultan has been planning this siege for two years methmet is an extremely astute military strategist he has studied the layout of Constantinople in a great deal of detail mcmed knows that constantinople's access to the sea has always been an insurmountable obstacle for any wouldbe conqueror to take it he'll need to block any Aid coming from outside especially from Italy the seat of Christendom but it won't be easy constant op it is really hard to isolate Siege is not just attack Siege is is a blockade so you have to be able to blockate lest other people not help the city so in order to make sure that the genoise ships in the Black Sea not carry armaments and soldiers and food to the city you have to be able to control the boss first this straight is the city's most important Supply Point as long as it's open Constantinople can withstand any Siege so mehmed comes up with a new way to try to neutralize the strait at the BOS for's narrowest Point North of the city on territory he's already conquered he will build a fortress the relli hisari castle it will stand at the top of a hill the ideal place to Monitor and Destroy All Ships heading towards the Byzantine City he gathered about 6,000 men to the building project the logistical ability of the Ottomans to gather men and materials was extraordinary they build The Fortress in Just 4 and 1 half months a record at the [Music] time it can hold about 400 soldiers and above all it has cannons that will be pointed at all the ships that might cross the Bosphorus to reach Constantinople no ship from the Black Sea will be able to supply the Byzantine City with constantinople's Coastline now under his control mcmed positions his men on the other side of the city ready to attack it by land it's the best defended part of the city and the most challenging area to besiege because here he's faced with the huge imposing walls that surround and protect Constantinople the walls of Constantinople are really the most impressive fortifications ever known in the medieval and the ancient world in some ways they are the apigy of defensive construction constan Noble is fully fortified more than 12 miles of defensive ramparts surround and protect the city to its West the wall of theodosius is the main Bull workk against land attacks this huge wall stretches for four miles from the Golden Horn in the North to the Sea of mamara which borders the city to the south in reality it's not one wall but three the first and innermost of them is called the Great Wall it's 40 ft High At Its Top a crenelated walkway with nearly 100 Towers allows soldiers to observe the enemy for miles [Music] around Terraces between the different levels allow the Byzantine troops to circulate easily the second or outer wall is over 6 ft thick with room for a series of Arrow slits the third low wall sits just in front of a 60t wide moat this fortification has provided the Byzantine City with unbreachable defenses for centuries but it must be defended [Music] properly so Constantine turns to a formidable War Lord Giovani justiniani Longo the armies of This Time in the West do not have a regular army so they often call upon mercenaries it so happens that Justin Yani is a mercenary like any other and he comes to offer his services to the emperor Constantine born into one of the great families of genua he's eager to join the fight so he wants to make a name for himself he has a band of followers who fights forone but then these guys came here in order in a spirit of Crusades and they wanted to fight and they fought very well he is going to become The Mastermind of the defense of the theodosian wall very very skillful man and he effectively becomes Constantine's General during The Siege but justiniani has a problem at its peak the city had half a million inhabitants now however it has only 90,000 and only a few thousand soldiers to defend more than 12 mil of walls it becomes a disadvantage when you have so few people inside by the time the Ottomans come to the walls of Constantinople in 1453 the great Empire of Byzantium has shrunk to almost nothing they have not a great deal of cash and they have not a large amount of Manpower and yet Constantine could have taken advantage of an unexpected opportunity for help in standing up to the Ottomans a few months before The Siege began a stranger asked to see the emperor a Hungarian called Orban comes to the city of Constantinople with an offer to Constantine Orban is a technical mercenary he has a skill to sell Constantine was impr addressed by the engineer proposal but he was forced to refuse it unfortunately the Byzantine Empire is so poor by this point that he can't pay what uh Urban needs and so he leaves the city of Constantinople and offers his services to the Turks by changing sides Orban the engineer could reverse the city's fate he knew that previous C had failed because the attacker's weapons weren't powerful enough to break through the city walls in the past people had come to the walls with trebuchet Stone firing catapults but these were ineffective and so really until the Advent of gunpowder Warfare nobody could tackle this war but orban's speciality is the cannon he tells the sultan you know I've spent almost a year looking at the fortifications of Constantinople I can guarantee you I can build a cannon that can bring down those walls and this is exactly what mmat wants to hear and so he immediately orders the construction of a simply monstrous [Music] Cannon Oran builds a cannon of unprecedented dimensions a bronze monster more than 25 ft long it's divided into two parts a rear segment for the powder and a front end into which The Cannonball is loaded according to Legend the gun weighs no less than half a ton and is so wide that a man could fit inside it for the time it is really quite something no one has ever cast out of iron such a huge cannon the cannon is impressive but experimental mehmed wants to be sure it's up to the challenge posed by constantinople's walls so he orders a test at Edan 143 Mi west of Constantinople he orders pregnant women to stay in the city in case they miscarriage with the sound of this Mighty gun this is an enor ously um impressive display of of what the cannon can do the first shot is impressive the ball lands well over half a mile away and buries itself more than 6 ft into the ground forming a deep crater the trial has been a success now the sultan can take his Cannon to the foot of the Fortress walls there are 60 different oxen to pull it this long Voyage he sends 200 men ahead 200 Engineers to reinforce Bridges to pave roads to kind of smooth the way for it meth makes quite sure that word of this cannon is got back to the walls of Constantinople to tell Constantine this is what is coming for you [Music] at the beginning of April 1453 from the top of the city walls constantinople's inhabitants see the Turkish Army approaching with the sultan himself at its head mehmed II sets up camp near the walls the young Sultan reckons that at last he's holding all the cards [Music] he's blocked all Maritime access to the north of the city he's in possession of the biggest cannon ever seen he's built a force of 880,000 men he's convinced he'll succeed where all the others have failed mahmed does not want to fail and he in fact cannot fail in taking the city once he launches it because he is so young and relatively insecure on the throne that a defeat would certainly mean his overthrow the greatest Siege in history can now begin mhmed II's ottoman Army is about 880,000 men which is considerable for the time led by General zaganos Pasha one of the most important Warlords of his time the ottoman Army is the most powerful in the Eastern world and among its troops are the best trained soldiers recognizable by their red and white uniforms and their distinctive swords the janisar the janisar were technically slaves they had no individual rights but they were extremely powerful they had a lot of prestige and respect as a group The jeries are mechet standing army they're very highly trained they're very highly motivated they are the Elite forces and they're also uh personal forces of the San they are simply the best fighters he has the Byzantine Defenders seem to pale in comparison the Byzantine emperor Constantine has less than 5,000 men that he can count on there are about 2,000 foreign mercenaries in the city as well which brings his entire number to just less than 7,000 men to defend roughly 13 mil of wall the city is shrinking so there's no longer the manpow to defend it as there had been so many times before the disparity is about 10 to one 10 ottoman soldiers for every Byzantine Soldier emperor Constantine can only pray that military a will arrive from Italy the seat of Christendom the great game now is can mamt break through the defenses before the great relief Army arrives and can Constantine hold out long enough until the great uh relief Army arrives the day after his arrival mmat starts to position his men out in front of the theodosian wall from the North in front of the black aai gate to the south of the city towards the Sea of maramara covering almost 4 and a half miles of territory 70 cannons are ready to start firing for 5 days the first cannonades are fired day and night the Cannons about 70 of them will bombard the city walls to bring them down it seems like the end of the world was coming so the sheer sound of the Cannons firing hitting the walls the explosions would have been incredibly frightening the Army is positioned a few hundred yards in front of the camp right in front of mehmed's tent so the sultan can see its Effectiveness for himself is orban's Cannon to protect themselves from a return fire the Ottomans have dug a trench out in front of their position it's shielded by a rampart of Earth topped with a low wooden Palisade the city walls immediately begin to crumble under the bombardments but to the ottoman's surprise the byzantines are able to rebuild them almost as quickly as they fall justiniani drives wooden Stakes down into the walls and piles rubble and dirt and whatever he can to make a makeshift barrier in place of this solid wall day and night Justinian's troops scramble to clear the rubble from the wide ditches repair the damaged walls and fill in the breaches in their defenses while from the top of the towers The byzantines Archers and artillery retaliate to the assault a week of bombing walls destroyed but the Christians hang on making repairs day and night men women children all have been called upon to help the city hold together and it is holding Justin's troops are putting up a strong resistance but there's also an unexpected problem for the sulan orban's cannon isn't suitable for repeated firings it's huge and heavy and very difficult to handle imagine the logistics it takes 3 hours to reload imagine also moving the piece on its base for a new shooting orientation that also takes a lot of time this is an extremely difficult process because of the weight of the gun there has a pulley system which has to raise it and lower it into kind of the bath of oil and then it has to be out and dried and the upshot is it it it can only be fired about seven times per day despite these weaknesses the sultan commands that it increase its rate of fire it leads to catastrophe orban's big gun keeps on firing for just a few more days then overheats and cracks the cannon had not had time to cool down enough and it exploded with a deafening noise killing many men around it and especially Orman who was among the victims for the young Sultan it's a mortifying failure The Siege has only just begun without his super weapon mehmed II ramps up his ground assaults against the city walls Cavalry heavy infantry Javelin throwers archers they all throw themselves at the walls some of them set ladders to climb the ramparts While others Storm Into the breaches created by the Turkish cannons [Applause] the janis's war cries mix with the sounds of symbols and drums a Sonic assault the Ottomans use to destabilize the enemy there's also an important psychological Dimension a lot of noises made with drums with symbols to stop the people from sleeping to terrorize them but justiniani proves to be an outstanding leader and inspired by his courage his troops defend the city hero ly the byzantines hold out for hours until at last the Turks Retreat the first ground assault is a failure after the first week it becomes apparent that this is not going to be a quick Siege and uh despite his immense Advantage with these cannons the walls are holding their integrity it's the Sultan's confidence that's crumbling he's afraid to lose lose the support of his men he has a reputation for extreme ruthlessness and it is possible that the Army may not support him if things go badly during The Siege mehmed has already lost all hope of taking the city quickly by tearing down its walls when he finds himself faced with a new danger despite the Fortress he erected 2 years earlier he now faced this his major difficulties at [Music] [Music] Sea Constantinople doesn't only have land borders to defend the bantine city is also bordered by the sea with more than 6 miles of Coastline Constantinople is a city of water a huge Peninsula with the Sea of mamura to the South the Golden Horn to the north and the Bosphorus to the east to counter possible assaults from the sea the city has ramparts all along its Coastline the ones to the south and east are relatively low but still effective what makes them difficult to attack is the prevailing winds tend to blow ships away from two of those sides um so it's very hard for ships to get close enough to the walls uh to be able to uh scale them the walls were lower uh the towers were lower and the defense could correspondingly be less ferocious than on any other section of the wall no Army had ever ATT tried in all the 23 sieges to create a maritime attack along that Coast if such an attack is to take place the byzantines know that it will be via the city's most vulnerable Coast the Golden Horn an elongated Bay flooded by the Sea a natural Harbor located between Constantinople and Pera the Italian Colony that's part of the city since vessels can be easily docked there the Golden Horn is the best place to mount an amphibious assault but here too Constantinople is well prepared to fend off any enemy its main weapon here is totally invisible it's a kind of dam a huge cast IR chain that stretches underwater from perah right over to the opposite Shore at the first sign of intruders all the Defenders have to do is raise the chain and seal the harbor imagine huge lyns that would be ready to break the fragile turkey G it is impassible and it's the best guarded gate of Constantinople so they didn't have to use any manpower to defend one of the three sides of the city at all and this was incredibly useful just two weeks after The Siege begins three geneves ships and a Byzantine cargo vessel approached the city April the 20th a miraculous event for the byzantines sailes are seen on the horizon a small geneves Fleet arrives in front of the Golden Horn the Italian Aid the emperor has hoped for has finally arrived as it sails North from the sea of mamara the small Fleet is greeted with a swarm of Turkish gys waiting in the prosperus the sultan may have a 100 ships out there but he's relying on one man sulon Balu the Admiral who commands his Fleet mmed instructs him to attack the geneves ships Balu had an overwhelming responsibility to lead the most powerful Fleet in the Mediterranean he is probably controls around 200 ships and his task is one of the most important From mt's perspective he tells his Admiral Balu that you uh do not come back alive if you do not take these ships the battle commences the genev ships are much taller than the ottoman gals and easily put their enemies in difficulty by raining arrows down on them there are only four of them but they hold off a 100 ottoman ships and the Christians have another notable Advantage they possess a super weapon of their own Greek Fire the ships were wooden so a Greek fire was extremely uh useful as a let's say premodern bomb then you actually you can put an entire Armada on fire it's like the ancestor of the modern flamethrower the flammable mixture even Burns in water it was kind of a form of early Napal that would it was a chemical burn and it would ignite on contact and so what the byzantines would do is they would fill clay pots with it and then lob those clay pots with catapults toward their enemies if it hit a ship of course the deck it would break open and spread all over the deck and then start burning from the shore mermad watches in Fury as his Fleet is slowly reduced to ashes Balu knows what the price of failure is and Meed is so firm in this that he actually rides his horse into the wav screaming at Balu to do this or that during the battle as night falls the final incredible scene in the battle of the Bosphorus plays out a strong wind arises and allows the Imperial ships to split the ottoman galleys in the darkness Admiral Balo is unable to reassemble his remaining Fleet and must Retreat to his Anchorage in the bosporus while the Victorious ships reach the safety of the Golden Horn the chain is opened by The Defenders the ships make it into the Golden Horn so it will be a terrible failure for the Turks because they will not succeed in preventing the small Armada which comes to supply the city from getting into the Golden Horn four ships have taken on the entire Turkish navy and succeeded and this obviously cannot happen humiliated the sultan summons his Admiral and gives the order to behead him Balu falls on his knees and his Sailors come to his defense and they point to his wounds and his conspicuous bravery which again everyone has seen How brave he's been and so the sentence is commuted to I think 40 Lashes he's beaten with a rod on the Byzantine side the glory of the battle of the Bosphorus reflects on all the troops and strengthens the emperor's Hope of Victory this is quite a morale boosting moment for Constantine uh unfortunately as it turns out it will be one of the last morale boosting moments for Constantine ever since the siege got underway the Ottomans have been waging this war on all fronts on land in front of the walls at Sea in the Bosphorus but also underground in secrecy one of the tactics that you have to use while besieging a city is to try to go underground methmet had extraordinary resources at its disposal one of which was a large group of Serbian silver miners these guys were extraordinarily skillful and they started tunneling you know maybe from about a 100 yards back towards the walls propping out the tunnel as they went with wooden props and working their way onto the wol if you need to get into uh a city that has walls you tunnel under the walls and then you collapse the tunnels and that will bring down sections of the walls even more efficiently sometimes than cannonballs the sappers place explosives in the tunnels to make make the Wolves collapse in on themselves but once again Justinian's men managed to thwart these underground assaults as soon as they realize what the Turks are doing they start digging counter mines uh and so the war really switches from above ground to underground a Scottish Miner employed by the byzantines named John Grant proves an an expert in the art of spotting Turkish mines he uses a very simple method he put buckets of water under the walls and when the surface of the Water started to Ripple slightly from a vibration he knew that there was tunneling going on in that area Justinian's troops managed to locate the Turkish Miners and blow them up right there in their tunnels a month after the beginning of the siege the Christian city is still holding out against the young Sultan all those cannonades all that bombing have not brought down the walls of Constantinople the sultan has lost all hope of a victory underground and suffered a terrible defeat in the Golden Horn Mt had problems on his side the conquest was going much slower than expected he's just 21 years old in 1453 and the longer the siege takes the harder it will be for mem to conquer it and the harder it will be to retain the Loyalty of his army and he's almost certainly faced with being overthrown if he fails at this but the young Sultan has no intention of giving up after the failure of the battle of the Bosphorus mcmed has a trick up his sleeve if you can't go past that you have to have a second plan he starts to come up with a very very bold plan and that is if he can't Ram the chain and his Navy is apparently inefficient at stopping uh ships getting through then he simply has to take this Harbor and he does so in a way that is is remarkable and really only an ottoman Sultan could have done with the resources he had at hand if the sultan can't get his ships through the golden Horn's gate by sea he'll do it by land first he has thousands of trees fell all around Pera and cuts them into logs then he flattens a path past the Italian Colony a very unusual Journey can thus begin these are long ships they're not that high and also you can remove the ores and the sails so that they're easy to carry he dragged about 70 of his largest warships up over the slope of the hill and slid them down into the water of the Golden Horn the sultan has been cooking up this plan for months and now it takes the byzantines by surprise the day after the battle of the Bosphorus ottoman ships attack the port of the Golden Horn it's an amazing victory for the sultan this is an extraordinary coup for him and it takes the byzantines completely by surprise the chain is now useless he's now got his ships into the Golden Horn and it tilts the balance back in his favor the byzantines now have to defend an extra 3 and 1 half miles of wall that they did not have to and they're already stretched too thin trying to defend the 13 mies of the land walls um so life has suddenly gotten much much worse for them and it nearly breaks them one month after The Siege began the the Byzantine moral is at an all-time low and their reserves are practically exhausted the soldiers are finding it increasingly difficult to defend the city and Constantinople is completely surrounded so mcmed now decides to offer the emperor an honorable way out he has to find some way to save face and what he really wants what he has promised and told everyone is he will take the city of Constantinople he tells Constantine if you will surrender this city I will allow the entire population to depart in peace with some of their belongings and I will let you depart in peace as [Music] well on the 25th of May 1453 the young Sultan sends an emissary to the emperor suggesting that he surrender [Music] the emperor and his dignitaries would be safe as well as the population but they would have to leave the city and finally it is the Emperor who decides it is out of the question for him to give in he's ready to die sword in hand he could not as Emperor leave his City abandoning his thousand-year-old Empire is unthinkable [Music] in the ottoman Camp they've been expecting Constantinople to surrender so when the emperor refuses mcmed gathers his Council of war and his [Music] troops the aim was to psych the men up with religious fervor to be prepared to do or die at the end of May 1453 mhmed decides to launch a final assault on the walls of Constantinople both sides know this is the end it's going to be the final [Music] push 1:00 in the morning there is the wall of noise the banging of drums and a vast blast of cannon fire the first disposable troops have no option but to die there is no going back the atmosphere is apocalyptic the Turks come at the city in waves the first waves consist of the less experienced soldiers but who have this capacity to disturb the opponent and it is only in the final assault that the Jan Aries will be sent mmed sends the janissaries the cream of the crop of his troops the elite of the elite facing the best army of its time the byzantines defend themselves brilliantly justiniani knows that in this last battle the fate of the whole Eastern Christian Empire is at stake justiniani calls on locals to volunteer for this Ultimate Defense of the city they're all given weapons and sent up to the [Music] parets the women and children shelter in the city's large Church which as a place of worship will be spared the fighting it is said that when Constantinople was taken the population took refuge in St sopia because an angel would appear to protect [Music] the general himself stands at a strategic point in the city Jani would defend the so-called St Roman gate one of the main city Gates on several occasions he Advanced to the second Rampart in front of the mode itself to prevent the ottoman troops from advancing as both sides launch into a hand-to-hand struggle chaos consumes the city The Defenders under justiniani have little gateways from which they amount Guerilla attacks out of the walls one of these raids they forget to shut the door behind them 50 men rushed through this door and managed to climb onto an open part of the ramp Parts a number of ottomans are able to get through this gate and take a tower and Hoist the Turkish flag over at this point the Christian's fate hangs in the balance then a major event suddenly makes matters worse Just Before Sunrise justiniani is wounded Jani has been fighting nonstop for 45 days he'd been slightly wounded the day before but during the course of this final attack he is hit probably by a bullet which penetrates his armor or gets under his armor it doesn't look like a mortal wound at first but it is excruciatingly painful and he decides to have himself taken down understandably decides to have himself removed from the walls his departure weakens his men's Spirit despair spreads through the Byzantine ranks military order begins to fall apart this is one critical moment uh when a very Valiant Soldier was wounded and then that actually created a huge decline in morale among the Byzantine troops the byzantines dreamt of a miracle of God helping them of the Virgin Mary helping them as they had in the past but it didn't happen inside the Fortress everything's in chaos when the men notice the ottoman flag flying they believe that part of the city is already in enemy hands the clamor Rises the city is taken and at this very moment the emperor himself with a band of his most trusted men attempts one final counter assault it's the last time he's ever seen he simply disappears after the battle meat orders his body to be found and decapitated uh but although he does find a corpse that he claims to be Constantine's it does not convince people who knew him in life and so his remains are never found although there are plenty of Legends as to what happened to to him [Music] afterwards the emperor's disappearance marks the end of The Siege after 55 days of fighting Constantinople falls into the hands of the Ottomans it's the end of one of the most violent episodes in history it was said that the streets ran with blood as if it was rainwater horrific scenes of Slaughter they might have killed you know many maybe 10,000 people out of a population of 990,000 but they quickly realized that rather than killing people you could capture them and slaves were of value so they stopped the slaughter and they just started rounding people [Music] up on the 29th of May 1453 mmed II makes a tri triumphant entry into the city the sultan celebrates his victory but in some ways is surprisingly lenient he enters in Triumph he tries to stop his soldiers destroying some Byzantine churches so already he has respect for The Monuments of another civilization normally looting was allowed for 3 days but mhmed II asked after one day to stop the Looting May the second's idea was to keep the city intact because Manu this is not some City this is a seat of Constantinople this is where you you will find hagya sopia and all these you know prestigious buildings after all he intends to make this his imperial capital it wouldn't do to Destro destroy it [Music] completely mehmed's perseverance and his tactical and diplomatic choices right up till the final Victory now earn him the name of mhmed the Conqueror from this day on mcmed II is no longer just the sultan he's also the heir to and the ruler of the ancient Eastern Roman Empire now the Ottomans have a large empire uninterrupted by the presence of a very strategically located City and now mhmed II could actually put his gr strategy to work this is a great catastrophe for the [Music] West after the capture of Constantinople the Ottomans will rule for almost three centuries over much of Europe and North Africa the ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire kind of extinguishing that last vesage of the Roman Empire shuts off the west from the East uh in terms of trade uh and forces the West to take the long Route Around Africa these new trade routes and new influences all Mark the end of an era many historians consider Tuesday May 29th 1453 to be not just the fall of the Roman Empire but to be the end of the Middle Ages themselves the conquest of Constantinople is a turning point in world history because it makes the otoman Empire clearly a major power in Europe the Middle East and the Mediterranean really for the next 400 years over time the face of Constantinople will be transformed mehmed II makes it the capital of his new Empire it becomes known as Istanbul literally the city the world has changed dramatically and it will never be the same again and five centuries after this Unforgettable Siege the city still represents the link between east and west [Music] [Music] oh [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 134,231

Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, the dark ages

Id: b__FgQVEkqY

Length: 49min 41sec (2981 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2024