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On Easter, April 6, 1453, Mehmed's army arrives at Constantinople. Mehmed had a new plan to take the city that had eluded earlier attempts, including by his own father (Murad II), which included using canons, among the earliest sieges to deploy canons, and a new large canon made by Orban, who may have been a Hungarian canon maker. We see various flashbacks of Mehmed as he prepares to attack the city, including that of his childhood where he was taken away from his birth mother and raised by a step-mother. He was educated in several languages, including Greek and Arabic, and had known Serbian in addition to his native Turkish. He was also educated in history as part of his training to become Sultan. Initially, he was not in line to be the first on the throne, but the deaths of his eldest brother led him to be the next Sultan. Initially, the attack on Constantinople scared the Byzantines because they had not expected the canons, particularly the large canon deployed against the city. It seemed that the walls of Constantinople would eventually come down, but this prompted the Byzantines to mount a raid using the Genoese mercenaries who were battle-hardened knights. They effectively raided and fought off Janissaries, elite Ottoman troops who likely were one of Europe's first full-time standing army after the Romans. Through the first two weeks, the Ottomans try to bombard and raid to attack the city and even undermine the walls; however, all these attempts fail. The Ottoman large canon backfires and is destroyed. Their undermining attempts were stopped by counter-mining efforts. The Genoese knights successfully fought off Janissarie attempts to attack the walls. Finally, what also lowered the moral of the Ottomans was the successful penetration of Genoese ships around the Ottoman siege, where three ships, with only two being war ships, were able to go through the Ottoman blockade.
Mehmed thought of a bold plan to bring his ships around a large chain blocking Constantinople's port and the area known as the Golden Horn. He wanted to life his ships out of the Bosphorus and place them in the Golden Horn where the Byzantine ships were. This would force the Byzantines to then have to defend the sea-facing side of the city as well as the land-facing side. At this point, there were probably less than 7000 defenders against the Ottoman army that may have been ten times this size. Mehmed compels Genoese merchants in Galata, a small trade port next to Constantinople, to not interfere as the ships are transported. This operation is successful and causes panic among Constantine's people. The Byzantines try to counter this by sending their ships to attack but this time the Ottomans, perhaps having been warned, were ready and counter attacked with canon fire on the ships, turning the attackers away. Nevertheless, the siege went on and word soon reached that a Venetian army might come to the aid of Constantinople. This prompted Mehmed to make one last great assault on what he thought was the weakest gate. His advisers were mostly against the plan, but Mehmed had the numbers on his side. He sent several waves of attackers, trying to use each wave to tire the defenders. This began to work as the defenders could not keep the elite Janissaries from entering the breach points. Constantine is killed as he makes a heroic counter-attack with some of his men, while Giovanni is mortally wounded. On May 29, Constantinople fell and Mehmed sits on the Byzantine throne. He converts the great Hagia Sophia domed church, the largest building in the world at that time, to the first great Ottoman mosque in Istanbul. He also executes his grand vezier, perhaps for perceived treachery in trying to stop the attack on Constantinople.
==Key Characters==
