The city of Constantinople stood on the narrow straits separating Europe and Asia. Throughout the Medieval Period of European history, this city had been viewed by Christians as playing a vital role in protecting European Christendom from the forces of Islam, to the east. For centuries, the great walls of the city had protected it from numerous attacks and sieges – from Goths, Avars, Arabs (in four great sieges), Bulgars, Slavs, Russians and others. These walls had only been breached once, and that by a Christian Crusader force in 1204. It is likely that treachery had been involved.
Part of the walls of Constantinople
Constantinople had been the capital of the once-huge Byzantine Empire. At its greatest extent, this had straddled the entire eastern Mediterranean basin to form one half of the mighty Roman Empire. Indeed, the inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire still regarded themselves as Romans, even though in Western Europe the Roman Empire was no more than a distant memory.
A shrinking empire
For centuries, however, the Byzantine Empire had been in decline. The seventh century saw a long, exhausting war with the Persian Empire. This had softened the Byzantine Empire up for invasions by the forces of the new religion, Islam. These took from the empire its most valuable provinces, Egypt and Syria. Centuries later the Muslim forces of the Seljuk Turks destroyed the eastern defences of the empire and occupied a large slice of Asia Minor (the Asian part of present-day Turkey). Then, in 1204, the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade turned up at Constantinople and occupied the city, rather than heading off to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims. They installed a Crusader-ruled state called the Latin Empire, which last for more than half a century before Byzantine loyalists retook the capital. Later, the rise of a new Muslim power, the Ottoman Empire, pushed back the Byzantine’s borders, so that by the mid-fifteenth century the empire comprised only the city of Constantinople, with a small area around about, and pockets of territory in southern Greece. There was also the Empire of Trebizond, which had been part of the Byzantine Empire until the occupation of Constantinople in 1204 but had been independent of it since.
The Byzantine Empire in 1450 – it’s those tiny areas of red within the Ottoman Empire.
The city of Constantinople had shrunk along with its empire, The Muslim conquests of the seventh century had deprived it of revenue (including grain) from the eastern provinces. As a result, its population had diminished significantly. Each successive loss of territory had led to further shrinkages. In the mid-fourteenth century the Black Death had killed half the population. The decline had continued to accelerate until by the mid-fiftieth century the once-great city of Constantinople was little more than a collection of of villages encircled by the massive ancient walls.
Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire had expanded to cover most of Asia Minor plus a sizeable area of southeast Europe – recent victories had been scored agains the Serbs and Hungarians. Its territories entirely encircled the area in which Constantinople located. No one was in any doubt that, sooner or later, the Ottomans would attempt the capture of Constantinople itself.
Seeking alliances
Seeing the threat, recent Byzantine emperors had been seeking alliances with western powers. Part of this involved offering to reconcile the differences between the Byzantine Church (today’s Greek Orthodox Church) and the Catholic Church based in Rome. These efforts were bitterly opposed by inhabitants of Constantinople, and attempts to heal the religious schism failed. Partly as a result of this, aid from the West was in short supply – though a more practical reason was that the major European powers were all absorbed in their own troubles at this time. The only western European state to send an official fleet was Venice, but the warships it sent arrived too late to affect the outcome. Some individual Western soldiers did arrive to aid the Byzantine defenders, and played a distinguished part in the action.
In 1451, the young ruler of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmet II. began preparing for the conquest of the iconic Christian city. He expanded the Ottoman navy, and began strengthening the roads and bridges which approached the city, so that they could carry heavy guns he was intending to use.
Sultan Mehmed II
The siege
By 5th April the besieging and defencing forces had taken up their positions. As well as land forces, both sides deployed warships, and the Byzantines had strung a huge floating chain across their harbour mouth to prevent the Ottomans ships from entering. Mehmet ordered ships to be hauled over a small hill in order to get behind the chain, though in the event they played only a minor part in the action to follow.
The defenders of Constantinople were commanded by the emperor Constantine XI Palaiologus. His forces amounted to some 8000 men, about 2000 of whom were foreigners. This small number of men had to man more than 20 km of walls.
They were supported by about 5,000 poorly armed civilians.
Sultan Mehmed commanded an army of 50,000 to 80,000 men. The majority of these were Muslims, including his elite Janissary troops. There were also present sizeable contingents of Christian troops from the European parts of the Ottoman Empire.
Mehmed also had several enormous cannons (the numbers are unclear) with which he hoped to blast holes in the walls. Although these were to prove inaccurate and slow, they did do considerable damage to the walls. They also helped to demoralise the defenders, who had had no idea that the cannons’ range would be so great.
For a time, the siege went badly for the Ottomans. A series of frontal assaults were costly failures, attempts to undermine the walls were unsuccessful, and attacks from the sea achieved almost nothing. And then, on 29th May, a massive attack succeeded in breaking through a small section of the wall. The Ottoman soldiers swarmed in. In the fighting which followed, Constantine XI, the last of the Byzantine emperors, was killed in unknown circumstances. Generally, however, the Ottoman soldiers met little resistance from the defenders, and quickly secured the city. They then began a systematic three-day sack of the city, as was customary in that period. During the course of this, there was widespread rape, killing of those who resisted, enslavement of women and children, and of course the looting of property. All this was quite normal for the warfare of the time, and after the three days, Mehmed strictly reimposed order.
The Aftermath
In the aftermath, the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia, for centuries amongst the most famous church in Christendom, was immediately re-dedicated as a mosque.
The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (Constantinople) as it is today – once a cathedral, now a mosque.
After the sack, peace returned to the city. There was no general massacre of the population, as had been feared. The Christian church had most of its property restored to it, and was allowed to function as before. There was no persecution of the Christian population.
Mehmet made Constantinople the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. Although he spent much of the rest of his reign on campaign, he paid a great deal of attention, and lavished much wealth, of restoring the city to its former glory. Under him and his successors, Constantinople once again became one of the greatest cities in the world, fit to be the capital of a great empire.
In 1460 Ottoman forces mopped up the last pockets of Byzantine territory in southern Greece which still existed after the fall of Constantinople. The following year they conquered the Byzantine-style Empire of Trebizond.
Significance
It can be argued that the fall of Constantinople changed nothing. By the mid-fiftieth century the Byzantine Empire was a tiny state, and the Ottomans had already advanced far into Europe and. Conquered great swathes of Christian territory in the Balkans.
Nevertheless, it was seen as a catastrophic event by contemporary Christians. They now felt much more exposed to the threat posed by the hostile Muslim world – and rightly so. The Ottoman Empire would go on to conquer all the Balkan lands right up to north of the Black Sea. It would absorb most of Hungary and twice lay siege to Vienna, the great capital of the Hapsburg Empire (in 1529 and 1683). For almost two centuries Europeans would fear this vigorous and aggressive foe to their east. Over time, though, the leading states of Christian Europe would grow in power and roll back the Ottoman Empire’s European borders. During the nineteenth century it, like the Byzantine Empire before it, was in steep decline.
In the years following the fall of Constantinople, many Greek scholars migrated to Italy. They took with them many documents relating to Ancient Greek and Roman history and civilization. Given that the Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire, it had preserved an unbroken tradition of scholarship from ancient times. This learning was to act as a great boost to the development of the Italian Renaissance.
For many modern historians, the fall of Constantinople marks an end of the medieval Europe and the beginning of the early modern Europe.
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Mehmed II