WHAT NEVER FELL
29 MAY 1453 · THE THEODOSIAN WALLS
Constantinople holds in 1453
The fifty-third day of the siege. The great bombard has opened the wall, the last emperor stands in the breach, and the defense turns on one Genoese captain staying on his feet. In our timeline a shot found him at the worst hour. This is the timeline where it missed.
You are reading the timeline that almost was · notes marked THE RECORD are real history
MAY 1453 · THE 53RD DAY
The city has been dying for centuries, but the walls have never learned it. For fifty-three days Sultan Mehmed II has besieged the city. He is twenty-one years old and in a hurry. He has thrown eighty thousand men and the largest cannon on Earth against the triple Theodosian walls. Fewer than eight thousand hold them: Greeks under their emperor Constantine XI, and Genoese under a captain named Giovanni Giustiniani. Giustiniani is worth a thousand by himself, because the defense believes in him.
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