On May 29, 1453 the city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Byzantine Empire, the last remaining piece of a 1500 year old Roman Empire, ceased to exist. Christendom itself was imperiled, and the tide of Ottoman expansion would ultimately wash up at the gates of Vienna, Austria before it began to recede. Western Europe as we know it would come perilously close to extinction.
The Ottoman troops that swarmed into Constantinople that day did so through breaches smashed in the city walls by massive cannon designed and built by a Christian Hungarian named Orban. Orban was a master weapons designer and one of the few men on the planet with the technical skills to construct the huge artillery pieces required to demolish Constantinople’s famous defenses. Orban worked for the Muslim Sultan, for one simple reason: greed. The Turks paid more than the Greeks.
Orban is long dead. It has been almost six hundred years, since Constantinople fell. Still, some things never change. There are still men willing to sell their nations and their souls to the highest bidder.