The period covered by this book opens in 1453 with two sieges that resolved, for the time being, conflicts that had each lasted for a century: in the west, the recapture of Bordeaux marked the end of the Hundred Years War between England and France; in the east, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans marked the consolidation of the Turks' rule in Greece and the Balkans that had begun when they first crossed the Bosphorus in 1352.