The author, even though he did his homework, and went through many original sources, is not here to give you a dry account of chronological facts. If you have even a modicum of interest in history, be prepared for a lot of reading pleasure. Having spent the first 32 years of my life in the modern city of Istanbul, and now living barely a few kilometers away from where composer Guillaume Du Fay was born (who is also mentioned in the book), I decided to read "The Fall of Constantinople, 1453". It was an interesting and dynamic interpretation of a very old composition: A piece titled "Lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae" by a Franco-Flemish composer, Guillaume Du Fay, written about 560 years ago, lamenting the fall of Constantinople.
The piece was titled "Everytime the City Falls", and had been recorded by Audiofact, a group of jazz musicians from Turkey and USA. It all started with a question from a dear friend: He wanted to know about a musical piece that I recommended to him many years ago. Many churches were pillaged and then destroyed, others were converted to mosques.
The gallant West-here I jest-argued amongst themselves to zero hour and after a six week siege stormed the city and four thousand fell of the remaining 50k.
Mehmed II was a renaissance badass who spoke a half dozen languages, loved science and poetry but was still sufficiently despotic to impale all his enemies when so peeved. Runciman is an excellent auditor, one who never bends to sentiment or stereotype. The Ottomans conversely were progressing, utilizing technology and a mighty military to make enroads across the map. Constantinople was in a steady decline since Christian crusaders sacked it 250 years before. There is evidence of a longer war between Mediterranean neighbors, religion just makes it sexier. Revisionists may wrong their hands and point to the long war between Islam and the West. Publicly though this collapse was regarded with outrage but not action.
Many at the time, may have thought good riddance. This is an often harrowing account of the bitter end of the Byzantine empire, that eastward extension of the Roman Imperium.
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