Roger Crowley book examines the battle and fall of Constaninople to the Turks

Alex Mouslopolous
   Just as Cougar Face loves reading books about Indian heroes and how they lost the West I love to read books on the fall of Constantinople and how the Greeks lost Asian Minor. The long lasting  Byzantine empire fought many nomads and wandering tribes who tried to penetrate the richness of Constantinople over the years and it took a massive Turkish empire and migration along with the ingenuity of traitorous Europeans engineers to finally break down the walls of Constantinople and turn this once great Christian city into Muslim horde conquered city in the only way the Mohammedeans know how to recruit. Author Roger Crowley wrote a book called 1453 that covers the events leading up to and ending in the conquest of this proud Orthodox city that had fought off Islamic intrusion and attempts to spread the faith by sword and fire into the rest of Europe. The tale of Mehmet the conqueror is highlighted from his rise after his fathers death to his ultimate goal of capturing this outpost of Christendom.

 Mehmet teased and goaded the Greeks to strike first in the fields outside Constantinople as he had worked profusely putting up new forts nearby that would be used to stage this invasion. Once again the ottomans could count on Christian disunity in the West as the era of crusading had come to an end and only a few Italians rallied to the cause of the Greeks. The Greeks fought stubbornly despite being so outnumbered during the siege an this is testimony to both their fighting abilities and the successful defense of the great walls of the great city. The Ottomon assimilation of cannon technology would be the decisive actions as the creation of the largest cannon of the day proved to much for the strength of the city walls.

The psychological impact of the continuous bombardment on this city and the destruction it caused cannot be underestimated and was the primarily the reason for the fall of Constantinople. This cannon along with the insane number of Turkish soldiers estimated at two hundred thousand is what ultimately destroyed this exceptional Greek city that had for so long resisted and defeated invaders from all over. This book goes through the daily important events and atrocities committed from the first arrival of Turkish troops to the eventual May 29th date where the city finally fell and Mr Crowley ends looking at the consequence of the next 600 years of this crucial victory for the Turks in the region. The piece of shit Mehmet would eventually be poisoned and this defeat avenged with his death but the destruction and toll of this region and for the Greek-speaking inhabitants had already paid a high price for centuries to come.