Note 011 Before I enter on the siege of Constantinople, I shall observe, that except the short hints of Cantemir and Leunclavius, I have not been able to obtain any Turkish account of this conquest; such an account as we possess of the siege of Rhodes by Soliman II., (Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxvi. p. 723 - 769.) I must therefore depend on the Greeks, whose prejudices, in some degree, are subdued by their distress. Our standard texts ar those of Ducas, (c. 34 - 42,) Phranza, (l. iii. c. 7 - 20,) Chalcondyles, (l. viii. p. 201 - 214,) and Leonardus Chiensis, (Historia C. P. a Turco expugnatae. Norimberghae, 1544, in 4to., 20 leaves.) The last of these narratives is the earliest in date, since it was composed in the Isle of Chios, the 16th of August, 1453, only seventy-nine days after the loss of the city, and in the first confusion of ideas and passions. Some hints may be added from an epistle of Cardinal Isidore (in Farragine Rerum Turcicarum, ad calcem Chalcondyl. Clauseri, Basil, 1556) to Pope Nicholas V., and a tract of Theodosius Zygomala, which he addressed in the year 1581 to Martin Crucius, (Turco-Graecia, l. i. p. 74 - 98, Basil, 1584.) The various facts and materials are briefly, though critically, reviewed by Spondanus, (A.D. 1453, No. 1 - 27.) The hearsay relations of Monstrelet and the distant Latins I shall take leave to disregard.
Note: M. Von Hammer has added little new information on the siege of Constantinople, and, by his general agreement, has borne an honorable testimony to the truth, and by his close imitation to the graphic spirit and boldness, of Gibbon. - M.]

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The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire —Fall In The East —Chapter 68