Delay Conquest of Constantinople

As for how long the city can last if the Ottomans don't do it, nobody other than the Ottomans is going to be taking Constantinople for a long time. The Ottomans had the first significant artillery train in the region, and even with that and overwhelming numerical superiority they had some trouble at Constantinople.

They took it in seven weeks. That's barely even to the point of "inconvenienced" by the standards of taking heavily fortified places - especially given how long it took to take Thessalonica a generation earlier.

So what is this 'some trouble"? That they didn't take it on the first assault of the walls?

I'm willing to grant that Mehmet might have trouble with Candarli if the assault fails and he's not able to make another assault the following day for some reason.

But if we're talking about whether or not militarily the Byzantines had a chance, I can only wonder what possible thing the defenders could have done other than put off their doom a little longer.

slydessertfox: Point, but having it last a couple more years doesn't seem to really mean anything. I suppose it would technically count, but unless we see Mehmet getting overthrown or something, that seems unlikely to matter.
 
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katchen

Banned
It happened after Timur had thumped the Ottomans just half a century before. I'm inclined to say that it might buy the City a few years. But in the great scheme of things, butterflies notwithstanding, this would be but a speedbump for the Ottomans, most likely. It doesn't necessarily need to be a united Ottoman state that takes the City, either. A sizable fragment would serve, given how weak Constantinople was.
Does it have to be the Ottomans at all? If the Ottomans are badly weakened by failing to take Constantinople in 1453 and civil war and the Timurids, could they be supplanted by the Safavids? Since the Safavids as a Shiite order are after all, as Turkish as they are Persian?
A Shiite ruled Turkey leading to a Shiite ruled Syria, Palestine and Egypt (after the Shiites defeat the Mamlukes) and holding Constantinople from Esfahan would likely not go much farther than now Istanbul but be a very different animal confronting Europe as it modernized. And make a very interesting TL indeed.
 
They took it in seven weeks. That's barely even to the point of "inconvenienced" by the standards of taking heavily fortified places - especially given how long it took to take Thessalonica a generation earlier.

So what is this 'some trouble"? That they didn't take it on the first assault of the walls?

I'm willing to grant that Mehmet might have trouble with Candarli if the assault fails and he's not able to make another assault the following day for some reason.

But if we're talking about whether or not militarily the Byzantines had a chance, I can only wonder what possible thing the defenders could have done other than put off their doom a little longer.
We've debated this point before. As I recall the big points were to do with my opinion that the Ottomans only assaulted it at all because starving them out wasn't an option, and that repelling the first two waves of the assault is impressive, and from there we would basically debate whether the short time taken was more important, or whether the nearly repelling the assault after the reserves were comitted was more important. I don't think we'll get anywhere there.

Either way, that wasn't the point of my statement there. The point of the statement was that only the Ottomans are going to be in a position to take the city, because frankly they have it surrounded by their territory. Only Venice really stands a chance, but they don't have half the artillery or manpower of the Ottomans, and in any event they have little reason to want direct control of Constantinople, and the Ottomans have little reason to let them have it.
 
Does it have to be the Ottomans at all? If the Ottomans are badly weakened by failing to take Constantinople in 1453 and civil war and the Timurids, could they be supplanted by the Safavids? Since the Safavids as a Shiite order are after all, as Turkish as they are Persian?
A Shiite ruled Turkey leading to a Shiite ruled Syria, Palestine and Egypt (after the Shiites defeat the Mamlukes) and holding Constantinople from Esfahan would likely not go much farther than now Istanbul but be a very different animal confronting Europe as it modernized. And make a very interesting TL indeed.

There are more likely Turkish successor states that would arise in Anatolia itself, if the Ottoman Empire fell apart. The Safavids didn't even get going until the 1500s, anyway.

OTL, the Ottomans made a stunning comeback in 50 years time from defeat by Timur in 1402 and years of civil war to once again become the preeminent power in the region even before taking the City in 1453. Not being able to take Constantinople, in and of itself, is not going to weaken the Ottomans.
 
Hmm so a more long term chance for Constantinople would probably involve the Varna Crusade succeeding in displacing Ottoman Power in Rumelia?
 
We've debated this point before. As I recall the big points were to do with my opinion that the Ottomans only assaulted it at all because starving them out wasn't an option, and that repelling the first two waves of the assault is impressive, and from there we would basically debate whether the short time taken was more important, or whether the nearly repelling the assault after the reserves were comitted was more important. I don't think we'll get anywhere there.
I still think that if you're going to claim that they had trouble at the siege, that they managed to take the city in two months, by assault (aka the hardest way to take a city under siege) has to be compared to the norms of such things.

Mehmet may have had problems internally if he tried to wait it out, or if the OTL final assault failed, but I don't think it adds any light to the situation to present it as if it was tantamount to the siege of Rhodes or Vienna or Belgrade or (insert other Ottoman sieges *here*).

Either way, that wasn't the point of my statement there. The point of the statement was that only the Ottomans are going to be in a position to take the city, because frankly they have it surrounded by their territory. Only Venice really stands a chance, but they don't have half the artillery or manpower of the Ottomans, and in any event they have little reason to want direct control of Constantinople, and the Ottomans have little reason to let them have it.
Well, I can agree that the Ottomans, as the ones surrounding it, are in the best position to do so. But that's more a sign of a lack of alternate powers than it taking the full scale of the Ottomans as they were in 1453 (or more) to take a city with little left except its pride at this point.
 
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