🏰 💣 The Fall of Constantinople | Part 2 — Orban’s Great Bombard (1453) Why this clip matters:
My focus here is recoil and wall damage. If you see any remaining discrepancies, please comment so I can keep improving the realism. Who was Orban?
Orban, also called Urban, was a Hungarian engineer. He first offered his giant cannon design to Emperor Constantine XI. The Byzantines could not pay. He then approached Sultan Mehmed II, who funded a new foundry in Adrianople and had the bronze monsters cast. How did it work?
The Great Bombard was about 27 feet long and fired 600 kg stone balls for over a mile. It was positioned roughly 400–500 m from the Theodosian Walls, overlooking the Lycus Valley. Each blast shook the ground. The gun kicked backward on timber skids, and crews re-chocked and realigned it before the next load. They fired only a few times per day to avoid cracking the barrel. What damage did it cause?
Impacts fractured the outer stone facing and mortar of the Theodosian Wal...