May
29
/ 2025
On that cold, quiet morning of May 29, 1453, the jewel of the Eastern Roman Empire, girded by titanic Theodosian walls and the Bosphorus Strait, a bastion of Christianity in the East for more than a thousand years, changed forever. On that morning, the Ottoman flag would fly over its towers. The world had altered, forever. Sultan Mehmed II was merely 21 when he started besieging Constantinople in April 1453. But he was no upstart. He had fantasized about taking the city since childhood, swayed by prophecy, ambition, and strategy, to conquer the symbol of that city and claim his divine inheritance. His army was enormous, with estimates of between 80,000 and 100,000 troops, including crack Janissaries, Anatolian horsemen, engineers
