The Fall of Constantinople, 1453: Eyewitness Accounts

Summary

This record surveys the eyewitness and near-contemporary narratives of the Ottoman siege and capture of Constantinople, from 6 April to 29 May 1453, and the perspectives each brings. The library does not include a full text: the accounts were written in Italian, Greek, Latin and Ottoman Turkish, and the standard English translations (Barbaro by J. R. Melville Jones, 1969; Sphrantzes by Marios Philippides, 1980; Doukas by Harry J. Magoulias, 1975) are under copyright, so no quotations are given. The story the sources share runs as follows. Sultan Mehmed II, about twenty-one years old, built the fortress of Rumeli Hisar on the Bosphorus in 1452 to cut the city's sea traffic. Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, holding little more than the city, sought help from the West; in December 1452 the union of the Greek and Latin churches agreed at Florence was proclaimed in Hagia Sophia by Cardinal Isidore, to the dismay of many citizens. Help came chiefly from Venetians in the harbor and from the Genoese captain Giovanni Giustiniani Longo with some seven hundred men. Sphrantzes, ordered by the emperor to count the defenders, found fewer than five thousand Greeks able to fight, with perhaps two thousand foreigners, facing an army many times larger. Mehmed's guns, among them the great bombard cast by the founder Orban, pounded the land walls. On 20 April a few Genoese ships and an imperial transport fought their way through the Ottoman fleet into the Golden Horn, which a boom closed to enemy ships; two days later the sultan had dozens of ships hauled overland behind Galata and launched into the harbor. Mines and countermines, night assaults and repairs filled May, and several writers record omens: an eclipse of the moon, a fallen icon, storm and fog. Before dawn on 29 May the final assault came in three waves. Giustiniani was wounded and carried from the walls, his men followed, Janissaries entered, and some writers say a small postern, the Kerkoporta, had been left open. Constantine died fighting and his body was never certainly identified. The city was sacked; many fled by ship, thousands were enslaved, and Mehmed entered Hagia Sophia, which became a mosque. Barbaro wrote as a Venetian, Sphrantzes as the emperor's grieving friend, Doukas as a Greek who blamed both the sultan and the quarrels of Christians, and Kritovoulos and Tursun Beg as servants of the conqueror who praised his courage and vision.

Top Lessons

• One siege, many witnesses

  No single account of 1453 tells the whole story. The Venetian diarist praises Venetians and blames the Genoese; Leonard of Chios blames the Greeks who resisted church union; Sphrantzes mourns his master; Doukas weighs Greek, Latin and Turkish causes; Kritovoulos and Tursun Beg celebrate the conqueror's genius. Historians build their picture by comparing these voices, noting where they agree, as on the overland ships and Giustiniani's wound, and where they differ.

• Holding a post to the end

  Constantine XI was offered terms and the chance to leave, but the sources agree he stayed with his city and died in the final assault. His conduct, told by Greek and Latin witnesses alike, made him a lasting figure of loyalty. Ottoman writers in turn praised the courage and planning of Mehmed, a ruler of twenty-one who carried out what earlier sultans had attempted.

• Division within the walls

  The defenders were few, and they were divided over the union of the churches and by rivalry between Venetians and Genoese. Doukas records bitter words in the city over the union; Barbaro accuses the Genoese of Galata of double dealing. The sources let us see how a besieged people argued about faith, loyalty and trust even as the walls were falling.

• Ingenuity and technology in war

  The siege is famous for new and bold methods: great bronze cannon that broke walls built a thousand years before, ships rolled over a hill into a closed harbor, mines and countermines underground. The defenders answered with night repairs, Greek fire and countermining. The witnesses show how engineering and resolve worked together on both sides.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medical interest is modest. Nicolò Barbaro, the fullest diarist of the siege, served as a physician with the Venetian galleys, though his diary records events rather than his practice. The turning point of the final assault, as most witnesses tell it, was the wounding of Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, whose withdrawal from the walls disheartened his men; sources differ on the nature of the wound (arrow, crossbow bolt or gunshot), and he died of it weeks later at Chios. Accounts describe wounds from early gunpowder weapons, the burning of a siege tower, and the dead of the final day.

• Barbaro, diary entry for 29 May 1453

  Giustiniani's wound and withdrawal during the final assault.

• Sphrantzes, Chronicon Minus, on the fall

  The death of Constantine XI and the capture and later deaths of Sphrantzes's children.