After weeks of relentless cannon fire from massive bronze guns, Ottoman troops poured through a breach in the Theodosian Walls. Emperor Constantine XI died fighting in the streets, and by nightfall the last remnant of the Roman Empire had ceased to exist. Mehmed II rode into the city and converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, marking a hinge point between medieval and early modern history.
For centuries Constantinople's triple walls had turned back every invader, earning the city a reputation as impregnable. Sultan Mehmed II, only 21 years old, changed the calculus by commissioning a Hungarian engineer named Orban to cast supergiant bronze cannons, one reportedly 27 feet long, capable of hurling stone balls weighing half a ton. The bombardment ground on for weeks, slowly pulverizing sections of wall that had stood since the fifth century.
On the night of May 28-29, Mehmed ordered a final all-out assault. Wave after wave of irregular troops, then Anatolian regulars, then his elite Janissaries stormed the breaches. A postern gate, the Kerkoporta, was found open or poorly defended, and Ottoman soldiers slipped inside, raising their standard on a tower. Panic spread through the defenders. Constantine XI reportedly tore off his imperial insignia and vanished into the melee, his body never conclusively identified.
The fall sent shockwaves through Europe, prompting fears of Ottoman expansion and, indirectly, spurring explorers to seek new routes to Asia that avoided Ottoman-controlled trade routes, a search that would eventually lead Columbus westward across the Atlantic.
Key people: Mehmed II, Constantine XI Palaiologos