Mohamet II, with which it did not miss any more that the town of Constantinople, swore to seize it and came to envelop it with 260,000 men; they had not neglected any machine of destruction: its enormous guns did few devastations, but threw fear among besieged, and its machines of war, rams, triggerfishes all and travelling, reversed the walls and smashed the doors.

The defenders of the city, Greeks and Génois, were defended with courage, repaired several times the breaches and tried furious exits: at the end of fifty days of seat, their forces were exhausted; the Turks, exaltés by their dervishes and deduced by the promise from plundering, sprang in mass with the attack and managed to seize a door.

Constantin made superhuman efforts to take it again; but it fell bored blows on a heap from corpses.

Constantinople was with the capacity of the Moslems; the population was massacred or reduced in slavery (May 1453).

With the news of the catch of Constantinople, the pope wanted to organize a crusade; but religious enthusiasm had cooled; the One Hundred Years old war hardly finished, and France was exhausted.

Only one prince spoke to walk against the Inaccurate ones: it was the duke of Burgundies Philippe the Good, spirit chivalrous and quarrelsome; it joins together the nobility in Lille in a colossal feast, where it tried to overheat the hearts by allegories; a girl representing the Church advanced vêtue mourning, and beseeched the assistance of the Burgundian knighthood; the duke swore on a pheasant that he would go to the East to fight the Grand Turk, and all the guests repeated the same oath, but none them held word (1454).

With the Middle Ages the first plays were only the representation of the marvellous facts of the Bible or the life of the Saints: they were called Mysteries.

This spectacle was given a long time in the church even, the days of great festivals, in Christmas, Easter; then one drew up trestles in the squares, and of the brotherhoods of workmen were formed to serve actors.

Lengthened constantly by the poets, the Mysteries took incredible proportions: the mystery of Passion reached 60 000 worms, and one did not have less than twenty days to play it.

Lastly, one was not satisfied any more religious subjects, and one composed of the historical dramas: such was the mystery of the head office of Orleans, which was represented in Orleans in 1439.

The Othoman Turks, wild tribes of the turkestan, had left their country towards the end of the thirteenth century, to escape to the Mongols.

Excited to the war against the Christians by dervishes mahométans, they were turned against the Byzantine empire, and started with him to remove all Asia Mineure; then they passed to Europe about the middle of the fourteenth century, made Andrinople the seat of their empire, subjected all the country to the Danube, beat in Nicopolis (1396) a Christian army come from Occident, and reduced the Byzantine empire to the walls of Constantinople.

Suddenly forced to hold head with the Mongolian hordes of Tamerlan, they stopped some time in their conquests, but Tamerlan died, its empire collapsed, and the Turks ruèrent themselves of a new dash on Europe: the Danube was crossed, started Hungary, Constantinople finally succumbed and Christendom was put in danger.