under whose leadership were the ottomans finally able to capture constantinople
Fall of Constantinople The Fall of Constantinople (Greek: Ἅλωσις τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως, Halōsis tēs Kōnstantinoupoleōs; Turkish: İstanbul'un Fethi Conquest of Istanbul) was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by an invading army of the Ottoman Empire on 29 May 1453. The Ottomans were commanded by the then 21-year-old Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, who defeated an army commanded by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos. The conquest of Constantinople followed a 53-day siege that had begun on 6 April 1453.
Constantinople Constantinople was the largest and richest urban center in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea during the late Eastern Roman Empire, mostly as a result of its strategic position commanding the trade routes between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. It would remain the capital of the eastern, Greek-speaking empire for over a thousand years. At its peak, roughly corresponding to the Middle Ages, it was the richest and largest European city, exerting a powerful cultural pull and dominating economic life in the Mediterranean. Visitors and merchants were especially struck by the beautiful monasteries and churches of the city, in particular, Hagia Sophia, or the Church of Holy Wisdom: A Russian 14th-century traveler, Stephen of Novgorod, wrote, "As for Hagia Sophia, the human mind can neither tell it nor make description of it."
Alexander I of Russia The campaign was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. The reputation of Napoleon was severely shaken, and French hegemony in Europe was dramatically weakened. The Grande ArmÃ©e, made up of French and allied invasion forces, was reduced to a fraction of its initial strength. These events triggered a major shift in European politics. France's ally Prussia, soon followed by Austria, broke their imposed alliance with France[32] and switched sides. This triggered the War of the Sixth Coalition.
Byzantine Empire In 1054, relations between the Eastern and Western traditions within the Christian Church reached a terminal crisis, known as the East–West Schism. Although there was a formal declaration of institutional separation, on July 16, when three papal legates entered the Hagia Sophia during Divine Liturgy on a Saturday afternoon and placed a bull of excommunication on the altar,[106] the so-called Great Schism was actually the culmination of centuries of gradual separation.[107] Unfortunately the legates did not know that the Pope had died, an event that made the excommunication void and the excommunication only applied to the Patriarch who responded by excommunicating the legates.