Muskets vs. Crossbows - Why do firearms exist?

[GloryofGreece]

Damn, 1453 was a bad year

Yep. The true time when the Empire of Rome finally collapsed.

I've allways considered that Constantine XI Palaiologos ought to be viewed as the last Roman Emperor. An Emperor who died on the walls of Constantinople, not some irrelevant teen puppet emperor Romulus Augustus who was whisked off to pension and nobody cares what happened to him. But in the typical arrogant selfish style, West Europeans don't even call them Romans (as they naturally called themselves).

Which gets us back to the subject, cannons were then already huge, no reason anymore to build trebuchets (even if they are awesome).

(Cannon from 1464, but done from the same mold as the cannons used during the siege of Constantinople 1453.)

How'd the Normans take or sack it so relatively easy hundreds of years before? Without cannons or major siege effects.

[ssu]

How'd the Normans take or sack it so relatively easy hundreds of years before? Without cannons or major siege effects.

Let's see, I think that two Emperors fled the sieged City and the Varangian guard was haggling for more pay when the Crusaders got finally inside on the 12th of April 1204.

Now matter of the size and the toughness of the walls on a fortification, they have to be actively manned by a determined defender.

After that the city was a pale shadow of it's former self: it had a lot of empty plots and basically farmland inside it walls when the Turks finally captured it. And actually only then it became as big as before (as in the 9th and 10th Century the population was between 500 000 - 800 000)



Something similar with the population size of Rome, actually: