THE ENDURANCE · 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.
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, twenty-one years old and in a hurry, has thrown eighty thousand men and the largest cannon on Earth against the triple Theodosian walls, held by fewer than eight thousand: Greeks under their emperor Constantine XI, and Genoese under a captain named Giovanni Giustiniani, who is worth a thousand by himself because the defense believes in him.