1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West [Paperback]

A gripping exploration of the fall of Constantinople and its connection to the world we live in today.

The fall of Constantinople in 1453 signaled a shift in history and the end of the Byzantium Empire. Roger Crowley's comprehensive account of the battle between Mehmet II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and Constantine XI, the 57th emperor of Byzantium, illuminates the period in history that was a precursor to the current conflict between the West and the Middle East.

For a thousand years Constantinople was quite simply the city : fabulously wealthy, imperial, intimidatingand Christian. Singlehandedly it blunted early Arab enthusiasm for Holy War. When a second wave of Islamic warriors swept out of the Asian steppes in the Middle Ages, Constantinople was the ultimate prize: The Red Apple. It was a city that had always lived under threat. On average it had survived a siege every forty years for a millenniumuntil the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet II, twenty-one years old and hungry for glory, rode up to the walls in April 1453 with a huge army, numberless as the stars.

1453is the taut, vivid story of this final struggle for the city, told largely through the accounts of eyewitnesses. For fifty-five days a tiny group of defenders defied the huge Ottoman army in a seesawing contest fought on land, at sea, and underground.1453is both a gripping work of narrative history and an account of the war between Christendom and Islam that still has echoes in the modern world.

Roger Crowleywas born in 1951 into a naval family and educated at Cambridge University. The author of numerous bestselling books, including1453, Empires of the Sea, andCity of Fortune.Crowley lives near Stroud, UK.
 "One of the most exciting, cliff-hanging stories in world history, and in Roger Crowley’s book it is told extremely well."Sunday Telegraph"In this account of the 1453 sil£ã