All the texts I read about Constantinople's walls was that for over a millennia the walls were virtually invincible...

All the texts I read about Constantinople's walls was that for over a millennia the walls were virtually invincible, never being broken by a siege until the introduction of gunpowder, but never really go into much detail about what was different about them that made them so difficult to properly breach.

What made the walls so impossible to break down? the system of forward wall, a moat/trench network, followed by the main wall was pretty standard for most medieval castles and other city walls of the time and later, so what made Constantinople's so different that they couldn't be broken by armies of over 100,000 on numerous occasions?

They were coated with anti-roach chemicals.

Mostly it was the navy's ability to keep all the sea walls safe while the enemy could only focus on the land wall.

the Byzantine Navy was undoubtedly the strongest in the world for most of its history thanks to greek fire able to annihilate enemy fleets with little effort, keeping the city supplied with food and water through the Bosporus, and with the enemy unable to siege the sea walls, the entire Byzantine garrison was free to focus all their attention to the land walls.

Since the only route of escape for the enemy across the strait, and that being secured by Byzantine ships, the enemy armies were effectively trapped and were unable to resupply with their water crossing blocked off, which led to the entire army either surrendering or being cut to pieces by the Byzantine army.

in a sense, attempts to try and siege the city led to the attackers being surrounded and besieged in return.

>Mostly it was the navy's ability to keep all the sea walls safe while the enemy could only focus on the land wall.
This.
For an Eastern or Southern enemy Army
>as it was usually the case what with the Byz.-Arab wars and the Turkic invasions, excluding marauding slav armies and nomadic raiders.
the first approach to the city is by sea. So you can expect fireships and a fleet of dromon ships as well as coastal defenses that'll tear your fleet to pieces. If by any chance the enemy pushes through the naval defense and lands behind the theodosian wall, they would face a moat and three walls of increasing height, one behind the other, manned and ready to torch them with greek fire from above.

>/pol/eddit humor
>doesnt even make sense

You see, donkey, Constantinople's defenses are like an onion. They have layers. They had like 10 fucking walls and were defended by sea on 3 sides.

That's an old /int/ meme you sperg.

Veeky Forums is /pol/ with dates
/int/ is just /pol/ with banter

You can fuck off too.

>Veeky Forums is /pol/ with dates
wrong, most of Veeky Forums hates /pol/

>/int/ is just /pol/ with banter
Correct, /pol/acks don't know how to be funny

>Some dolt left a Door unlocked.

Stop sperging, is only joke

>What made the walls so impossible to break down? the system of forward wall, a moat/trench network, followed by the main wall was pretty standard for most medieval castles and other city walls of the time and later

Had 3 walls, not two. Even if the first wall was very short it greatly helped protect the base of the second wall from attack and do to its short hieght it could safely be right against the edge of a wet moat. Not to say there was not later walls that were higher that were also next to wet moat but that was very much a feat of engineering to do that. Next they re-leveled the ground to make the second wall stronger.

> other city walls of the time

Most city walls of the Medieval period were 12 to 25 ft in the early period and 20 to 40 ft later on. The other edge would normal be protected by just a single wall and a dry moat that sometimes was incomplete. Inside the city is was common for a second older wall to also be in place. However it was also common for the 'old wall' of a city to be a bit short, in poor repair, and have giant blind spots due to newer buildings around it. The 3rd wall of Constantinople was 36 ft high which was huge for when it was new. Another design feature that was cutting edge when new was the use of arrows loops in the second wall (see pic). This would become rather common in Western European walls in the 13th century, and in towers well before that. However they got their arrows loops in 413 AD.

Does it now make sense as to why they were so hard to take?

It was a big wall.

>what is the venetian fleet.
the byzantines were using venitian ships and sailors for centurys to defend there shipping lanes and coast lines. theyre navy was bupkis dude
>what is the Venetian Arsenal


a fucking 94 year old man and some goddamn french speakers managed to overcome them. no so impressive

t. turkroach.

WE

>that one fucking imbecile who left the gate open

a corrupt admiral sold the byzantine fleet before the 4th crusade senpai

>You will never live in Constantinople at the height of the ERE

Turkd took constantinople you sperg

U U
U U

it's also worth adding that the interior of the main walls was made of packed gravel rather than laid brick like normal walls.

This was initially to protect the walls from earthquakes, where the loose interior could absorb the shock of up to a 7.0 earthquake. A side effect of that was that even if the wall's exterior was breached by canon fire, the soft now-exposed interior could absorb the initial impact of canons even more effectively than the exterior, which is why the Ottomans had to concentrate their fire on just one breach nonstop for over 50 days in order to actually open a breach.

thats a lot of gravel. where did it come from? how did they fill it in there?

The gravel was, fortunately, already there. All they had to do was just build the walls around the piles.