A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Now there were only months left before the Ottomans closed in on Constantinople. The Emperor Constantine had at best eight thousand soldiers to defend it against Sultan Mehmet II’s besieging army of more than sixty thousand, backed by many more miscellaneous supporters.47 To call it a struggle of Muslims against Christians would ignore the fact that the majority of those fighting for the Sultan were Christian mercenaries. The ancient walls were not breached. The crucial Ottoman breakthrough into the city was only possible because the Byzantines’ Genoese general, Giovanni Giustiniani, badly wounded in fighting outside the city wall, insisted that one gate should be unlocked to let him back into the city and down to his ship. When an entrance had thus fatally been offered, the Ottoman forces poured in after his retreating party. The Emperor by contrast fought on until he was cut down – exactly how or where is uncertain, but the Ottomans made sure that they secured his corpse.