At the same time something else that was a thousand years old came to an end.
The Mohammedans whom we haven’t heard of for a long time, had tried to capture Constantinople in the seventh century, but had been stopped, as I told you, by tar and pitch that the Christians poured down on them.
But in 1458 the Mohammedans once again attacked Constantinople. This time, however, the Mohammedans were Turks, and they didn’t try to batter down the walls of the city with arrows. They used gunpowder and cannon. Cannon had been used at Crécy more than a hundred years before, but they had done little damage. Since that time, however, they had become greatly improved. Against the power of this new invention the walls of Constantinople could not stand, and finally the city fell. So Constantinople became Turkish, and the magnificent Church of Santa Sophia, which Justinian had built a thousand years before, was turned into a Mohammedan mosque. This was the end of all that was left of the old Roman Empire—the other half of which had fallen in 476.
Ever after the downfall of Constantinople in 1453, wars were fought with gunpowder. No longer were castles of any use. No longer were knights in armor of any use. No longer were bows and arrows of any use—against this new kind of fighting. There was a new sound in the world, the sound of cannon-firing: “Boom! boom! boom!” Before this, battles had not been very noisy except for shouts of the victors and the moans of the dying. So 1453 is called the end of the Middle Ages, and the beginning of the New Ages that were to follow.
Gunpowder had put an end to the Middle Ages. The invention of printing and that little magic needle, the compass, did a great deal to start the New Ages.
59
A Sailor Who Found a New World
What book do you like best?
“Alice in Wonderland”?
“Gulliver’s Travels”?