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May 29, 1453 - Constantinople ~ ”On the night of the twenty-eighth of May (1453), the Christian leaders attended services at St. Sophia's; Constantine himself prayed in a chapel alone, sharing with his God the last hours of the last Byzantine emperor. As his officers crowded around him, he asked forgiveness of any man he might have wronged. Then, his soul at peace, he rode back to the Lycus Valley walls to abide the assault he knew was coming. The city, about to die, was united.
"Then the garrison stood to their posts. Once the remnants of the outer wall were manned, the gates to the inner wall were closed and locked behind them. There would be no falling back; the Christians would stand or die.
"The storm broke just after midnight on the twenty-ninth of May. With a tremendous shout, with clashing cymbals and bleating trumpets and thundering drums, masses of Turkish infantry ran in out of the night and hurled themselves at the battered city wall. This time the attack came all along the wall; there could be no movement of men from one threatened place to another. Women, including nuns, worked to shore up the crumbling walls and stockade. Those who could not help at the walls crowded into the churches — if they could not fight or bolster the defenses, they could at least pray...
"The Christians met them with the fury of despair, fighting in a nightmare world of gloom, lit only by muzzle-flashes, the flare of torches, and a sinister moon that veiled its light behind scudding clouds. Amid a terrible din of roaring cannon and banging arquebuses, cheers, prayers, and screams of agony, the defenders fought on in a cloud of powder-smoke and dust. [Cont.d] ...
