1453
Fall of Constantinople
After fifty-three days, a small gate left unbarred admitted Ottoman janissaries into the breached walls. Emperor Constantine XI tore off his imperial insignia and died anonymously in the melee. Mehmed rode into Hagia Sophia that afternoon, ordered it converted to a mosque, and announced the Middle Ages were over. The last remnants of the Roman Empire, enduring over fifteen hundred years since Augustus, perished in a single day.
Battle of Castillon
French gunners under Jean Bureau wiped out John Talbot's English army and the old earl himself near Bordeaux. It is considered the war's final engagement. After one hundred and sixteen years, the Hundred Years' War ended with the English holding only Calais. France began the long arithmetic of reconstruction. The battle proved the age of the mounted knight was yielding to the gunner, reshaping European warfare and aristocratic culture.
Siege of Constantinople Begins
Mehmed II's army of eighty thousand ringed the land walls while his fleet blocked the Golden Horn. Urban's monster cannon, twenty-seven feet long, began pounding the Theodosian triple walls. Inside the city, fewer than eight thousand defenders manned fourteen miles of ramparts. Byzantine emperor Constantine XI refused all offers of surrender.
Hagia Sophia Converted to Mosque
On the afternoon of Constantinople's fall, Mehmed II entered Hagia Sophia, walked across its marble floor covered in blood and frightened refugees, and ordered an imam to chant the call to prayer from the pulpit. The Byzantine cathedral that had stood since 537 became a mosque, its mosaics plastered, its cross lowered.