With the Ottoman siege in its final hours, Mehmed II halted attacks for a day to let his exhausted troops recover ahead of the decisive assault. Inside the city, Emperor Constantine XI led clergy and citizens in a final procession carrying the icon of the Virgin Mary along the walls, a poignant ritual before the city fell two days later, ending the eleven-century-old Byzantine Empire.
By late May 1453, Constantinople had endured nearly two months of relentless Ottoman bombardment from massive bronze cannons cast by the Hungarian engineer Orban. The city's ancient Theodosian Walls, which had repelled invaders for a thousand years, were crumbling under artillery fire unlike anything seen before in siege warfare.
Mehmed II, only 21 years old, gave his 80,000-strong army a day of rest and prayer on May 27, promising them three days of plunder once the city fell, a customary incentive under Islamic law for a besieged city that had refused surrender terms. Meanwhile, inside the walls, Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, commanding perhaps 7,000 defenders including Genoese mercenaries under Giovanni Giustiniani, organized a citywide procession. Byzantines and Latins together carried the revered icon of the Hodegetria through the streets, weeping and praying, aware that the city's fate hung by a thread.
The following night, May 28 into May 29, Ottoman forces launched their final assault, breaching the walls near the Gate of St. Romanus. Constantine died fighting in the breach, and the city fell, marking the definitive end of the Roman Empire's eastern remnant and reshaping the geopolitics of the Mediterranean and Balkans for centuries.
Key people: Mehmed II, Constantine XI Palaiologos, Giovanni Giustiniani