Vince Coyner, American Thinker, 8/28/24
They say history repeats itself. Properly forewarned, it doesn’t have to. As Americans prepare to write a pivotal history for the ages this November—one way or another—it might be helpful to take a quick look at an earlier moment in time when a much divided, fractured world faced a pivotal challenge with one man at the barricade and the rest of the world too complacent to help.
Constantinople, the city that Constantine the Great founded in 330 AD and that the Theodosian walls later protected, stood as the capital of the Roman Empire for 1,000 years. (What we refer to as the Byzantine Empire was back then referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire.) The city, surrounded by water on three sides and walls on the fourth, was thought to be impregnable.
In 1204, Crusaders on the Fourth Crusade attacked Constantinople when they were ostensibly on their way to retake Jerusalem from the Ottomans. Due to dynastic and political battles between the eastern and western Roman Empire, crusaders diverted to Constantinople, sacked the city, and carved up most of the former Empire. (They never did breach the Theodosian walls.)
The Byzantine Empire had been shrinking for centuries and, by 1400, consisted largely of Constantinople and a few Greek outposts. The city, however, which sat at a key point between Asia and Europe, still played a major role in the battle between the East and the West.
Although the rising Ottoman empire, by 1500, would stretch from the modern states of Algeria to Yemen to Hungary, in 1453, Constantinople was still Christian and a major thorn in the side of Muslim Sultan Mehmed II. He planned to fix that.
By late May, after besieging the city for two months and making no headway, Mehmed prepared to retreat. A small number of his advisors suggested giving the siege one last day before they withdrew. Mehmed agreed, and on May 29, the Ottomans threw everything they had at the city. Constantinople’s defenders repulsed the first three Ottoman assaults, and the Ottoman generals despaired at the prospect of defeat.
But then one of the great turning points in history happened. Among the 40,000 defenders (against an Ottoman force of approximately 80,000) were 700 Genoese fighters defending the most vulnerable parts of the walls. The defenses stretched thin, these Genoese warriors, led by their captain Giovanni Giustiniani, had held the Turks at bay for two months.
Through the third assault of the day, the Genoese had performed impeccably, and the smell of victory was beginning to waft through the defenses. At that very moment, however, just as the fourth and final assault was commencing, Giustiniani was shot. Wounded, Giustiniani commanded his troops to evacuate him from the city. Either because of a miscommunication or because they were afraid they could not succeed without Giustiniani, all 700 Genoese abandoned the walls and left the most vulnerable defenses unprotected.
Seeing their opportunity, the Ottomans made their move before the city’s defenders could divert reinforcements, breaching the walls and taking the city. Mehmed would later make Constantinople the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
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