The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans

Context and Consequences

Michael Angold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317880516
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 marked the end of a thousand years of the Christian Roman Empire. Thereafter, world civilisation began a process of radical change. The West came to identify itself as Europe; the Russians were set on the path of autocracy; the Ottomans were transformed into a world power while the Greeks were left exiles in their own land. The loss of Constantinople created a void. How that void was to be filled is the subject of this book.

Michael Angold examines the context of late Byzantine civilisation and the cultural negotiation which allowed the city of Constantinople to survive for so long in the face of Ottoman power. He shows how the devastating impact of its fall lay at the centre of a series of interlocking historical patterns which marked this time of decisive change for the late medieval world.

This concise and original study will be essential reading for students and scholars of Byzantine and late medieval history, as well as anyone with an interest in this significant turning point in world history.

CHAPTER 1

The fall of Constantinople as a turning point

The fall of Constantinople is a story that has often been told. It is Sir Steven Runciman who tells the story best in his Fall of Constantinople 1453, which is a consummate example of history as narrative, but even he was beginning to wonder whether the topic merited another book.¹ He did not think that over the details of the siege he had much to add to the account given by Sir Edwin Pears in his Destruction of the Greek Empire, which originally appeared in 1903, the year of Runciman’s birth.² Runciman’s hesitations have not prevented others from undertaking the retelling of the story of the fall of Constantinople. The most recent attempt by M. Philippides and W.K. Hanak is on a massive scale and provides a convincing and detailed reconstruction of the event.³ It is not my intention to provide yet another narrative or to attempt another reconstruction. The focus of my interest will be on the historical significance of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans. Was it one of history’s turning points? Such an approach will necessarily highlight its prehistory and its consequences, at the expense of the event itself. But it makes little sense to write about the fall of Constantinople without first providing a brief sketch of those desperate days in April and May 1453.

I

The decision taken by the young Sultan Mehmed II (1451–81) to embark on the conquest of Constantinople represented the failure of political arrangements, which for fifty years had allowed Byzantium to survive and to a degree to prosper. He blamed the Byzantine emperor for the political crisis at the heart of the Ottoman ruling institution, which had overshadowed his boyhood. We are never going to know exactly what the forces were which in 1444 persuaded his father Murad II to abdicate in favour of his son, who was not quite thirteen.⁴ There are, however, pointers, such as rumours that the young Mehmed – or at least the men behind him – were agitating for an attack on Constantinople. There was deep suspicion of the Byzantine emperor, who was blamed for orchestrating a series of Hungarian invasions of the Ottoman Empire, which were only beaten off with great loss of life.⁵ Some at the Ottoman court were beginning to see an independent Constantinople as a threat to security. They also resented the ascendancy exercised over Murad II by his Grand Vezir Çandarli Halil Pasha, who was an advocate of entente with Byzantium. The conquest of Constantinople will no doubt have appealed to Mehmed II’s youthful bravado nurtured by reading about the exploits of Alexander the Great. Encouraging him was a clique at the Ottoman court, which in the search for preferment had attached itself to the young sultan. From the names that we have they seem to have been predominantly from Christian families, but converts to Islam brought up at the Ottoman court. They were slave administrators and represented a new political force, which emerged as an Ottoman central government began to take clearer shape. They had a vested interest in extending the effective authority of the sultan, but were frustrated by Murad II, who preferred to maintain the status quo, ably seconded by his Grand Vezir. His was always the voice of moderation. When in 1437 Sultan Murad II was contemplating a punitive expedition against Constantinople, there was one dissenting voice, that of Halil Pasha. He argued that any attack on Constantinople would throw the emperor into the arms of the Latins. It was better to let matters take their course, since the Ottomans had little to fear, protected as they were by a series of treaties.⁶ His advice prevailed, but it would come back to haunt him, when in 1444 diplomacy failed to protect Ottoman territories from Hungarian invasion. It strengthened his opponents’ demand for the conquest of Constantinople.

The question of Constantinople was therefore an issue which polarised opinion at the Ottoman court in the last years of Murad II’s reign. Alarmed by the activities of Mehmed II’s government, Çandarli Halil Pasha persuaded Murad II to resume the reins of power in 1446 and to exile his son to Asia Minor. While Murad II lived the question of what to do with Constantinople was put on hold. He was all too aware how radically its conquest would alter the character of the Ottoman ‘Empire’. For his son it was another matter. He was in a weak position. His first short reign had damaged his reputation. Once he finally succeeded to the throne in 1451 on the death of his father, he needed to assert himself against an over-mighty Grand Vezir and to unite Ottoman political society behind him in some grand enterprise. The conquest of Constantinople beckoned.

A change of ruler is always a moment of uncertainty, but Mehmed II was not the only new ruler. In 1448 the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos (1425–48) died. His reputation for good or ill hangs on his decision to press ahead with the union of the Latin and Orthodox Churches, which he pushed through in 1439 with great skill and determination at the Council of Ferrara Florence. He hoped that diplomatic success would strengthen Byzantium, which in the short term it appeared to do. He did not live to face further developments. Instead he left an uncertain succession, for which he had made no formal provisions. It was understood that his oldest surviving brother Constantine Drageses would succeed, but the latter was at Mistra in the Peloponnese at some distance from Constantinople. This allowed supporters of his younger brother Demetrios to plot a coup d’état, which came to nothing. The people of Constantinople were contemptuous of Demetrios, who had in the past worked too closely with the Ottomans. The regency council under the Empress-Mother formally declared for Constantine Drageses and immediately despatched an envoy to the Ottoman court to inform the sultan of Constantine’s accession and to obtain his approval.⁷

Constantine finally arrived in Constantinople on 12 March 1449. He has almost invariably been accorded a good press. He has become the tragic hero of the fall of Constantinople.⁸ A careful examination of his actions as emperor suggests that on balance he made a difficult situation worse. In the months between his brother’s death and his arrival at Constantinople opponents of the Union of Churches were able to seize the initiative. Their attacks were directed against the unionist patriarch Gregory Melissenos.⁹ It meant that Constantine Drageses hesitated to proceed to a coronation, because it would have meant endorsing the patriarch and alienating his opponents. The emperor’s lack of support for the patriarch contributed to the latter’s decision to seek refuge at Rome, which postponed any coronation indefinitely.¹⁰ An uncrowned emperor was an anomaly. Almost as unusual was the emperor’s lack of a wife, but there may be a connection between the two, because it had become usual, when a new emperor was widowed or unmarried, to wait until he was married before proceeding with his coronation.¹¹ At the time of his accession Constantine had been a widower for six years. It now became a pressing task to find him a consort. A great deal of diplomatic activity achieved nothing. The princesses approached turned down marriage to the Byzantine emperor; one even threatened to take the veil if forced to go through with it.¹² It suggests many things, but bright prospects are not among them. In Constantinople the emperor allowed the anti-unionists a more or less free hand, which effectively produced a schism within the Church. Nor was Constantine XI on the best of terms with his chief minister, the Grand Duke Loukas Notaras. He complained to his confidant George Sphrantzes that Notaras always wanted his own way.¹³ The emperor hoped that a forceful foreign policy would compensate for his failings on the domestic front. He tried to loosen the grip the Venetians had on the trade of Constantinople by bringing in the Ragusans as competitors and by requiring Venetian residents to pay local taxes.¹⁴ This merely irritated the Venetians, but at a dangerous hour. It contrasted with the courtesy with which the young Mehmed II received their envoys. Constantine XI saw in the succession of a new ruler to the Ottoman throne a chance to assert himself and made a series of unwise demands, which only revealed the weakness of his position. At the same time his handling of the religious situation at Constantinople so provoked the papacy that it despatched Cardinal Isidore, a Greek by birth, to take control of the situation. He arrived with a small force of armed retainers on 26 October 1452.¹⁵ There was an immediate clamp down on the activities of the anti-unionists and their leader, the monk Gennadios, was placed under house arrest. The Cardinal then proceeded – with the reluctant acquiescence of the emperor – to the long-delayed proclamation of the Union of Churches. This took place on 12 December 1452 in St Sophia.¹⁶ By then it was clear that Mehmed II was preparing to lay siege to Constantinople.

While Loukas Notaras and Halil Pasha were dominant voices at the Byzantine and Ottoman courts respectively, everything was done to avoid outright confrontation over Constantinople. This became more difficult with the accession first of Constantine XI Drageses to the Byzantine throne in 1448 and then of Mehmed II to the Ottoman in 1451. Both rulers found in the struggle for Constantinople a means of asserting themselves against over-mighty chief ministers. At first, Mehmed II proceeded very carefully. He used his Grand Vezir to negotiate a series of treaties with foreign powers, which secured the young sultan’s position. On 10 September 1451 peace was renewed with the Venetians; on 20 September a three-year truce was signed with the Hungarians; on 25 September the monks of Mount Athos had their privileges confirmed. Mehmed II was at his friendliest when he received a delegation from the Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos. He not only renewed the treaty which his father had made with the Byzantines two years previously, but also offered the Byzantine emperor an annual sum of 300,000 akçes towards the expenses of the Ottoman prince Orhan, who had sought refuge at Constantinople.¹⁷ Because of his willingness to compromise and make concessions during his early months in power Mehmed II reinforced the impression left over from his brief period of rule some five or six years before that he lacked ability and confidence, but, as the chronicler Doukas observed, he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.¹⁸

Mehmed II’s apparent diffidence encouraged some of his Anatolian tributaries to revolt. These domestic troubles seemed just the opportunity the Byzantine emperor needed for a cheap diplomatic coup. He sent emissaries to Mehmed II with a veiled threat that he would release the Ottoman pretender Orhan, if the sultan did not immediately double the annual sum he pro vided for Orhan’s upkeep. It was a demand which outraged that ‘friend of the Byzantines’ Halil Pasha. He understood only too well that the Byzantine emperor had made a complete miscalculation.¹⁹ He was playing into Mehmed II’s hands and making the task of maintaining peace nearly impossible. For the time being the sultan curbed his anger and told the Byzantine emissaries that he was willing to discuss the matter once he was back in Edirne. However, his first action on his return was to cancel the existing grant of revenues destined for Orhan’s upkeep and to levy building workers for the construction of a castle on the European shore of the Bosphorus on what was nominally Byzantine territory.

The construction of the fortress of Boğaz Kesen or Rumeli Hisar, as it is now known, between April and August 1452 left nobody in any doubt that Mehmed II was preparing to lay siege to Constantinople, even if its stated purpose was to control the entry and exit of shipping to and from the Black Sea.²⁰ On 25 November 1452 a Venetian ship from the Black Sea, which tried to run the gauntlet of the fortress’s artillery, was sunk. Its captain and crew managed to get ashore, where they were captured. The sultan put them on display at Dimotika (the ancient Didymoteichos); then had the crew executed and the captain impaled. Mehmed II was making his intentions all too clear. At least, it gave Constantine XI enough time to make ready the defences of Constantinople. He was able to get together provisions. He gave George Sphrantzes the task of processing the returns made by officers and demarchs of Constantinople of the able-bodied men, including monks, at their disposal. It came to just under 8,000, which sounds pathetically inadequate for the defence of the city.²¹ Foreign residents provided another 2,000 fighting men. Cardinal Isidore contributed his small force of men. On 29 January 1453 Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, a Genoese condottiere, arrived with a contingent of 700 Latin mercenaries.²² Small as this was, it was a formidable addition to the defences of the city and Giustiniani was placed in command of the walls around the St Romanos gate. To judge by past experience, the defending forces were now just about adequate to hold Constantinople. Although there was a massive disparity between the Byzantine and Ottoman forces, the Byzantine emperor had slightly the easier task. It was the difference between holding the walls of Constantinople, which still presented a daunting line of fortification, and storming them. If the initial assaults failed, Mehmed II would have to keep his army together in the face of mounting pressure to raise the siege. This would be no easy task.

Mehmed II had his massive forces in position under the walls of the city by early April 1453. At the same time, a Turkish fleet was patrolling the surrounding waters, intent on preventing any aid coming ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The fall of Constantinople as a turning point
• 2 Byzantium on the eve
• 3 The Greek reaction
• 4 The Western reaction
• 5 The Russian reaction
• 6 The Ottoman reaction
• 7 What was lost?
• Further reading
• Bibliography
• Index