Count of Thrace

by Peter Darman Book 4 in the Alpine Warrior series.

First published 2023

Amazon

4.6(1,026)

Set in Constantinople in 1453, during the final Ottoman siege of the Byzantine capital, a crumbling empire, a mighty city facing destruction, and a small army of mercenaries trying to keep the enemy hordes at bay.
Leon Muller and his soldiers have been fighting for the Roman emperor for two years, battling the mighty Ottoman Empire to protect Constantinople. The ‘Queen of Cities’ has stood for a thousand years and its walls have never been breached. The emperor is confident he will be able to defeat the army of the Ottoman sultan in front of his city. But Leon, now an experienced military leader, battles in vain to inject reason into the fantasy land that is the imperial court as one hundred thousand Ottoman soldiers bear down on Constantinople.
After nine years of unbroken success on the battlefield, Leon and his comrades are now trapped in a besieged city with no hope of relief and hundreds of miles from Swiss lands. Will he and they survive the titanic battle that will decide not only the fate of the ancient Roman Empire, but also the course of European history?

The siege of 1453 ended more than a thousand years of Byzantine imperial rule. Mehmed II surrounded Constantinople with a large Ottoman army, heavy artillery and naval forces while Constantine XI defended a city whose population and military resources were far smaller than in earlier centuries. The breach of the walls on 29 May transformed the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean and gives the novel unusually high historical stakes.