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

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.

In 1453, the Turks finished the centuries-old Muslim crusade to take Constantinople and destroy Orthodox Christianity in the East. Six times in the past the city had withstood Muslim sieges, starting in 674 and 717. In 1453, Constantinople was divided along ethnic lines, and more importantly along religious lines, between Roman and Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox were split between those who favored union with the Catholic church to stave off disaster and those who would have no truck with the pope. The city was worn down, poor and under-manned. The Turks brought western technology in the form of ships and cannon, which they developed in great numbers, using renegade Europeans. They also out-numbered the defender by eight or ten to one. Despite this, the siege was a near-run thing. Had the last assault failed, the Sultan would likely have been compelled to lift the 53-day old siege. From there, the Muslims went on to try to conquer Europe. Their troops went into battle shouting, "Roma, Roma," Rome being the new goal. In 1481, they invaded Italy, took several cities and were headed for Rome when the death of the Sultan, Mehmet caused the campaign to fall apart,. They were turned back at Vienna in 1529, and in the siege of Malta, a near run thing in 1565. In 1571, the divided European powers pulled together a fleet under The Holy League, which defeated a massive Muslim fleet at the battle of Lepanto. Finally, in 1683, the last serious attempt of Muslims (until the current refugee crisis) to conquer Europe was defeated in a second siege at Vienna. I ordered this book because I read Crowley's excellent Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World. It did not disappoint, being balanced, well-researched and well-written. It is more than ancient history of interest only to military history buffs. Three quotes from the book: "It remained inconceivable in Islamic theology that the whole of mankind would not, in time, accept Islam or submit to Muslim rule." (P-13) And these quotes from Mehmet after the city's fall: "There must be ... only one empire, one faith and one sovereignty in the world." (P-240), "..I pray he will let me live long enough to capture and subjugate Old Rome as I have New Rome." (P-241). There is nothing here that would conflict with the views of ISIS, al Qaeda other Jihadist groups, or a great many of the "refugees" curently flooding into Europe.Robert A. HallAuthor: The Coming Collapse of the American Republic

fabulous

Great Detail, accurate and kind a intriguing to read! a must buy to eastern romans fans!

Ben scritto, proietta il lettore nel contesto storico rendendolo vivo e affascinante, seguendo le orme di Steven Runciman ma con chiaro aggiornamento delle fonti e della visione d'insieme.Qualche anno fa questo titolo, insieme ad altri di Crowley, era tradotto nel catalogo Bruno Mondadori.

Years ago I read John Julius Norwich's three-volume "Byzantium", which chronicles the entire history of the bit of the Roman Empire that survived for a thousand years after the fall of Rome. Norwich makes it plain that, after the Battle of Manzikert, when Constantinople lost a huge portion of what is now Turkey, depriving it of both an important food source and a recruiting ground for its army, the writing was on the wall, even though it took another 400 years for the wall to collapse In the meantime, it was additionally weakened by the pillaging of the Fourth Crusade. This fascinating book details the final act, the taking of the city by the young sultan Mehmet II. It is full of interesting characters, the impetuous young sultan, determined to do what his ancestors failed to do and was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to do it, including dragging an entire fleet overland to threaten the city from the seaward side, the Emperor Constantine, full of foreboding about the prophecy that an empire that started with a Constantine would also end with a Constantine, but who was determined to die with his city, if need be, the resolute Genoese mercenary Giustiniani who commanded and inspired the defence until mortally wounded in the final assault. The Byzantines waited for the relief from the West, which never came, but they went down fighting. It all combines to make an exciting bit of history, very well told.

Very well worth reading. Excellently written. The last dozen—and more personal—pages, are particularly moving. As a side remark, even if it were not all real, this account would have made the core of an exceptional historical novel.