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The most important walls in western history aren't even in the West.
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They surround the modern city of Istanbul, Constantinople as the Romans called it.
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And for a thousand years, the fate of Europe depended on them.
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Constantinople was designed to be the center of the world.
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When the frontiers of the Roman Empire began to crumble in the 4th Century,
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the capital was moved to the cultured, wealthy, and still stable East.
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There, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, the hub of the major trade routes of the ancient world,
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the Emperor Constantine built his city.
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This was the city of libraries and universities,
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20 times the size of London or Paris at the time.
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It contained the priceless knowledge of the classical world which was fading in the West.
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To protect this masterpiece from its many enemies,
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Constantine's successors built the finest defensive fortifications ever made.
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The first line of protection was a moat 60 feet wide and 22 feet deep,
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stretching all four miles from coast to coast.
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Pipes from inside the city could fill it at the first sight of the enemy,
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and a short wall protected archers who could fire at the soaked soldiers trying to swim across.
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Those who were lucky enough to clear the moat had to contend with an unceasing barrage from the 27 foot outer wall above.
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Arrows, spears, or far worse, Greek fire -- an ancient form of napalm that would ignite on contact
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and couldn't be extinguished by water -- would rain down on them.
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Squads of Roman defenders would carry portable flame throwers,
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spraying anyone trying to climb out of the moat.
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The terrified victims would leap back, only to find that they still burned underwater.
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At times, the Romans would also mount siphons onto the ramparts,
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and launch clay pots full of Greek fire from catapults at an invading army.
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The front lines would turn into an inferno,
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making it appear as if the earth itself was on fire.
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If, by some miracle, the outer wall was compromised,
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attackers would be faced with the final defense: the great inner wall.
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These walls were wide enough to have four men ride side by side,
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allowing troops to be rushed wherever they were needed.
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Attilla the Hun, destroyer of civilizations, who named himself the Scourge of God,
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took one look at them and turned around.
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The Avars battled the walls uselessly til their catapults ran out of rocks.
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The Turks tried to tunnel under them, but found the foundations too solid.
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The Arabs tried to starve the city into submission,
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but ran out of food themselves and had to resort to cannibalism.
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It took the guns of the modern world to finally bring them down.
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In 1453, the Turks brought their super weapon:
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a monster cannon that could fire a 15 hundred pound stone ball over a mile.
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Together with more than a hundred smaller guns,
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they kept up a steady bombardment day and night.
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A section of the old walls collapsed, but even in their death throes they proved formidable.
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The rubble absorbed the shock of the cannonballs better than the solid wall.
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It took a month and a half of continuous blasting to finally open a breach.
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The last Roman Emperor, Constantine the 11th, drew his sword
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and jumped into the gap to stop the onrushing horde,
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disappearing into legend.
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The city was taken, and the Roman Empire finally disappeared.
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But those broken walls had one last gift.
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As the survivors fled the doomed city, they brought with them their precious books and their ancient traditions.
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They traveled west to Italy, reintroduced the Greek language and learning to western Europe, and ignited the Renaissance.
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Thanks to Constantinople's walls, that pile of brick and marble that guarded them for so long,
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we still have our classical past.