Customer Reviews

Constantinople: The Last Great Siege 1453

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As a number of reviewers have already pointed out, the author of this book does an excellent job in chronicling the last days of the great imperial city of Constantinople before its fall to the Ottoman Turks. Crowley writes in a style that is both entertaining and historically accurate avoiding becoming partisan to one side or the other. The book not only details the events of the fall of Constantinople but also the main players (The Ottomans, The Byzantine king, the Latin rulers of Europe) And their involvement (Or lack of it) Crowley gives the reader background to the run up to the siege, the controversies between eastern and western church and also the repercussions of the fall of the city in both the Islamic and western world.

A down side to the book however is that it doesn't really cover much of what Sultan Mehmet did with the city after its capture. It seems to be rather rushed the last chapter as though he has exhausted all he wants to tell and just wants to end the book. Another down point is he uses the old Greek names for the gates and districts of the city. A few reviewers have pointed out that they have taken this book on holiday with them to Istanbul to help them to understand the city however without knowing the Turkish equivalents to the Greek names mentioned in the book I would imagine you would be stuck to say the least.

One other thing I should say however is that large parts of the book (Especially the events of the actual battle on the day of the capture of the city by the Turks) Seem to be taken almost word for word from Runiciman (The fall of Constantinople) Almost to the point that I had to get my old copy of that book and re-read it as I though I had just bought a new edition of that book!

For someone looking to get a highly readable and historically accurate account of the fall of Constantinople and wants to avoid the more excessive one sided books out there I highly recommend this book. If however you have Runciman's book you may not want to bother.

I read this book several months ago. I waited until I had read Runciman's work, the standard book on the siege, to review this one. This seemingly forgotten book is a surprisingly good read. Although Crowley is not a historian and has a slight Turkish apologetic slant, the narrative of the actual siege is far better than Runciman's. He still believes the old myth that Greek fire was used in 1453, and much of his narrative of the events in the Turkish camp are pure speculation, and this is where he loses a star. Nonetheless, the plates are crisp and clear, the narrative is excellent and Mr. Crowley understands the physical geography of the city very well.

Read this in conjunction with Runciman's book, as they compliment each other wonderfully. Crowley has some important updates from 50 years of scholarship since Runciman's book was written, and has a far more detailed account of the siege, while Runciman's has the advantage of being written by a scholar.

If there is one book the interested reader needs to read about the siege of Constantinople, it is definitely this one! Crowley may not be a scholar, but his narrative seizes the reader by its realism and details in such a way that he or she will not be able to put away the book before reaching its end...In addition, his story is based on numerous contemporary sources, often written by eye witnesses. This is a wonderful book!
However, the book contains some imperfections that I will briefly outline here in the hope they will be brought to the attention of the author:
- Page 6: It is not true that "the name Turkey (was) unknown to them until borrowed from Europe to create the new Republic in 1923." For in 1908, a coup was staged against Abdul-Hamid II by officers belonging to a party called "Young Turkey".
- Page 11: the Caliph's name is Muawiyah, with just one y.
- Page 21: The name Rum is never used to mean Rome in Arabic. Ar-Rum is the name the Arabs gave to the Greeks.
- Page 175: There need be no uncertainty as to the date of the eclipse of the moon. Fred Espenak's site gives the dates and exact times of all eclipses from 1999 B.C to 3000 AD. This one occurred on the evening of 22nd May, 1453.
- Page 176, passim: "the haunting quartertones of the hymns" is a myth. To start with, there is no Oriental music that uses quartertone intervals: whole tones are flattened by one quartertone in some of the maqams(or modes). But even this is absent from Byzantine music, which uses plain Western modes, that can be played on the "white" keys of the piano...
- Page 185: the "shouts of the faithful" are certainly not as quoted! Muslims declaration of faith and battle-cry is :"La ilaha illa-llah, Muhammad rasulu-llah", which means: "there is no god but Allah, Mohammad is his messenger". The translation given by Crowley is his own invention!
- Page 217: Here Crowley is not to blame at all, since the mistake is in the Arabic saying of the Prophet at the top of the page. There is a diacritic sign which has been changed from the original, turning the meaning into "You will conquer Constantinople" instead of the correct "Constantinople will be conquered...". It seems this is the hadith that spurred the Muslim general Maslama bin Abdul Malek to attempt the siege of Constantinople in 717...

Like the city of Constantinople itelf, the events in this book are very complex. In his analysis of the seige, Roger Crowley skillfully follows several strings:

TECHNOLOGY
The Byzantines successfully defended Constantinople for centuries against repeated assaults from the Near East. When Arab forces seemed almost certain to take the city in 678, a highly-classified weapon called "Greek Fire" saved the day. Greek fire was essentially a napalm-like substance made from wet sand and surface oil found in abundance in certain areas along the Black Sea coast. When ignited and sprayed (with leather bladders) on an enemy ship, it almost guarenteed destruction of that vessel. Mastry of technology served the Byzantines well in the seventh century, but that lesson was not lost on the Turks. In preparing for the seige of 1453, the young sultan Mehmet invested substantially on new cutting-edge technologies: gun powder, and the latest metallurgical techniques to cast ever-larger cannons. In fact, Mehmet hired the services of a Hungarian master to cast him a bronze "super cannon", larger than had ever been attempted before (and which pushed the limits of the day's technology). His investment paid off handsomely, as the super cannon devestated the once-invincible city walls.
If things were bad above ground, they were just as bad below. Although mining technology and its military applications were well-known by 1453, Crowley spends considerable time describing the cat-and-mouse interplay between Mehmet's hired Serbian expert miners and the Byzantine counterforces. Turkish forces employed miners to weaken the foundations of Constantinople's protective walls, and to try to establish and underground route for Jannisary soldiers to enter the city. The Greeks fought back with their own miners, who would locate the Serbs and either enter their tunnels with deadly force, or (circumstances allowing) merely collapse the tunnels with the Serbs inside. I had never heard of Medieval mining warfare techniques before, so I found this part fascinating.
The maritime defense of Constantinople was no happier than the situation on land. Although cosmopolitan in nature, the city was culturally more Greek than anything else. As the original seafaring superpower, it seems natural to assume these Greeks would have primacy on the waters. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Maritime technology was on the cusp of revolution. Although small sailing and wind-powered vessels were well-known from prehistory, this technology was not easily applied to larger vessels. From the days of Thucydides, the dominant ships in both commerce and warfare were galleys powered by the muscles of men. Their superior maneuverability, and frequently superior speed, made them the preeminent nautical fighting platform. Alexander and the Romans had both ruled the Agean and the Mediterranean with oared galleys, and the Byzantines did not consider this model could be improved upon. Alas, the world was changing, and the Ottomans were changing with it, leaving the Greeks behind. Advances in maritime design were starting to produce sailing ships with speed and maneuverablility that could begin to compete- even eclipse the performance of the oared longboats. Unlike past conflicts, the Greeks no longer had the advantage of decisive naval superiority.

GEOGRAPHY
Edward Gibbon stresses over and over in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that Constantinople is uncommonly blessed with geographic features which favor the city's defense. That is one reason Constantine I chose the site to found his new Roman capital, in the mid 4th century A.D. It is surrounded on three sides by the waters of the Bosphorus, which itself is narrow, and surrounded by steep cliffs which make it relatively easily to defend. Past Arab assaults did not duely appreciate this, but the meticulous Mehmet recognized it. He neutralized the Greek advantage by constructing the "throat cutter" -a fortress at the north end of the Bosphorus, to control passage of friends and foes from the Black Sea.
In the more immediate theater of action, the "Golden Horn" inlet protects the northern shore of Constantinople... at least it always had in the past. A chain barrier had always prevented enemy ships from entering this region and posing a threat. In an inspired move, Ottoman forces undertook a massive overland portage to bypass the chain, and apply force at this weak spot. This diverted defensive forces away from the walls and ditch which compose the Western bulwark of the city- traditionally it's weakest area.
While the local geography favored the defense, on the larger scale it favored the offense. By the 15th century, Constantinople was a relatively remote outpost of Christianity and European culture (to the extent that "European" culture as an identifiable brand existed at that time). There were no natural political or military allies in the immediate environment. The time and resources needed to transport armies from Western Europe made alliances difficult to establish, and impossible to enforce, even as kingdoms as far afield as France and Spain appreciated Constantinople as a bulwark against Islamic intrusions from the East. They were simply never willing or able to offer material help to defend the city, when it was needed. Italian powers in Rome, Venice, and Genoa were both wealthier and closer, and they too acknowledged the Contantinople's continued well-being as a vital interest, yet contributed no aid when word of the seige came.

THE PLAYERS
Constantinople has been cosmopolitan in nature for as long as it has been on the map. It sits at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. It is the major commercial destination of myriad trade routes. It has existed in the spheres of Roman, Greek, Persian, Arab, Scythian, Egyptian, Venetian, Genoan and Ottoman influences. For centuries, nothing of any import went down in that city without affecting half a dozen or more nations. Naturally, this was never more true than at the seige of 1453. The destiny of Turks, Byzantines (Greeks), Venetians, Genoese, Hungarians, Serbs, Bulgars, Egyptians, Arabs, and the Christian authorities in the Vatican were all intimately tied to the Constantinople. When it fell, Venice and Genoa lost important trade franchises along the Black Sea shoreline. The Ottoman Empire, with its roots in Central Asia, would continue to ride the momentum for another 200 years, extending its empire as far inland as Vienna before it crested. Islam spread with force through much of Southeastern Europe, serving to, er, balkanize- the Bulkans. While it is true that Muslim forces (known then as Saracens) had penetrated as far as northern France in the 8th century, they never had staying power. Now, with a permanent military, financial, and cultural base in the European theater, the Ottomans were a longstanding force to be reckoned with, and would remain intact up to World War I.

If my review seems a disjointed or unfocused, please don't let that influence your opinion of the book. Crowley deftly covers these topics and much, much more in the fluid, comfortable narrative of a master storyteller. While the focus of the book is on a very narrowly defined set of events, Crowley's analysis spills over into many related subjects. The result is a "big picture" view of history, touching on the Christian-Muslim tensions over several centuries, internecine European struggles of the day, the history and significance of several evolving technologies, politics, commerce, and a microcosm of military strategies. In short, I feel like I've read several books after finishing this. Typically, something this information-dense can become tedious reading (again, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire comes to mind), but that wasn't my experience. In fact, this book went down fast, and was an absolute pleasure to read!

Mr. Crowley brought the story of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople alive with a riveting non partisan, narrative account of the siege.

Mr. Crowley not only covers the battle itself but also the history of the City of Constantinople, a portrait of the Sultan Mehmet & Emperor Constantine, the conflict between the two great religions and the role they played in the siege and the frantic preparations of both sides. By the time the reader reaches the eve of battle, you're itching for the fight to begin.

When the battle does begin, it is a blow by blow account of the ground war in front of the walls, the naval skirmishes in the Bosphorus and the sappers attempting to tunnel their way underground. The story ends with the triumphant entry of Sultan Mehmet into the city.

Mr. Crowley describes every aspect and covers every detail of the battle from both the Ottoman and Byzantine perspectives and, in the process, wrote an excellent story of how the great city of Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire.

One cautionary note is, "...the Ottoman perspective often has to be constructed by reading between the lines of Christian accounts: 1453 is unusual in being history largely written by the losers." (authors words) The point here is the reader should be conscious of the fact the Ottoman accounts are interpreted by the author from European sources.

Roger Crowley's 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West reads like a real-life The Lord of the Rings. It's action-packed and brimming with detail about the city and battle. By the middle of the novel, we get almost day-by-day blows of the fighting, as if written by a war correspondent who had witnessed the scenes. Crowley did a great service in making such a readable account of a crucial event in history. Hopefully, his engaging account will attract even readers who don't normally both with history. I would highly recommend this to anybody interested in history, or even adventure novels! (trust me, it's almost as good as Lord of the Rings).

Illustrates on one level at least, the fallacy of the idea of a `clash of civilisations', as where was the West on the 29th May 1453. Mehmets forces also represented levies of subject nations, including Christians. The only real cultural bloc mentality is that of Islam's bewilderment that the West hadn't succumbed to its way of thinking and its long-held desire to supplant the Eastern Roman Empire with an Islamic Byzantine Caliphate. That Eastern Roman Empire had to one city, but that city still held immense significance to the West as well. Its fall sent shockwaves through the cities and states of Europe who had spent centuries sheltering behind it. Its removal would allow the Ottomans further expansion that they feared.
Mehmets personal reasons for striving to pluck `the apple' were as much romantic as political. The precocious and insecure boy wished to prove himself greater than his forebears, especially his father, who had come out of retirement to take the reins of power back at one stage, so disappointed with him had he been became the utterly ruthless Sultan sacrificing all to take the prize that had eluded Islam for so long.
The middle-aged Constantine Dragases, who could have been described as a mediocre Emperor, but for his refusal to abdicate his responsibilities and whose loyalty to the idea of Byzantium led to his apotheosis, dying in hand-to-hand combat defending Constantinople and his subsequent elevation into a legend.
The host of minor characters surrounding the two main protagonists are deftly sketched and brought to life by Crowley who interweaves research and narrative flow to describe the bravery of the 8000 besieged soldiers striving to survive and the desperation of the 60,000 besiegers to succeed and surprisingly how close the siege came to being lifted.
It's not Runciman, but it's as scholarly, and more of a rattling good read. An apocalyptic story of Manichean proportions describing what must have seemed like the last days of the world.

First of all, this wasn't "the last great siege": Belgrade, Malta, Vienna were all great sieges *after* Constantinople. This seems to be simply a re-tread from "1453" - which wasn't that great and was itself a re-tread of other books. For a much better account, read Mansell on Constantinople or even Runciman on the siege.