“With Our Own Free Will” | The Fall of Constantinople
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
— A topic of debate among Byzantine scholars during the Ottoman attack on Constantinople —
Cannons roared. Men screamed in terror. Horses bucked their riders and ran amok through the streets of the besieged city. For eleven hundred years, the mighty walls and fearless defenders of the imperial city of Constantinople had repulsed one invading army after another. Now, the strength of the Byzantine Empire was sapped, its reserves gone, its allies having deserted it in the hour of most desperate need. Only a miracle could save the city and its people. In the Hagia Sophia, the largest cathedral in the world and a symbol of the once-proud empire of Justinian the Great, men and women prayed together for deliverance. Priests and monks distributed the sacraments and heard confession, knowing that death at the hands of Muslim infidels was near at hand. In the imperial palace, the emperor’s council of war met long into the night, trying to discern a way to protect the city, the empire, and the legacy of Rome. But it was in vain. Four centuries of disunion between East and West, as well as two centuries of warfare between Christian and Muslim, had brought the last remnant of the Roman Empire to this sad end.
A messenger from the court of the Ottoman sultan entered the throne room carrying a flag of truce. He spoke to a courtier, who then approached the emperor with a message. The emperor, dressed in the purple regalia of his ancestors, read the parchment. His face remained set, but his eyes showed both sadness and resolve. With a gesture of his hand, a scribe stepped forward. He took down the emperor’s words and then handed the document to the Ottoman janissary, whose face fell. He bowed and departed. Then, the emperor spoke to his court, and his words shook all who heard them. No one spoke, but all knew that their fates had been sealed.
The Byzantine Empire
When the Roman Empire was formed in 27 AD by Caesar Augustus, it spanned the known world from the Iberian Peninsula and Great Britain to the deserts of Iraq. Augustus and his successors largely held the empire together by military force and the sheer might of their own personalities. By the third century AD, however, the empire had fallen into disarray as generals marched their armies from the frontiers to Rome hoping to claim the imperial throne. Large portions of the empire were overrun by non-Roman barbarian tribes. When Emperor Diocletian won the throne in April 286, he divided it into two halves with his greatest rival, Maximian. Diocletian ruled the East from Nicomedia, while Maximian governed the West from Rome. Twenty years later, the empire was plunged into civil war when Diocletian and Maximian’s successors attacked each other; only when Constantine I triumphed over his rivals in 311 AD was the empire reunited under a single leader. However, the precedent of dividing the vast lands of Rome was set. 84 years later, on the death of Emperor Theodosius I, the empire was again split, and the thrones passed to Theodosius’ two sons, Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East.
Although it controlled the original imperial capital of Rome, the Western Roman Empire was unable to remain whole without the money and resources of the east. It survived for less than a century before being shattered by barbarian invasions in 476 AD. The Eastern Empire became known as the Byzantine Empire after the original name of its capital city, Byzantium. Constantine I had built his capital near the small Greek fishing village which bore that name, and his new city was christened Constantinople on his death. The city stood on a peninsula that jutted into the Sea of Marmora which divided Europe from Asia Minor in modern-day Turkey and was, for much of the Middle Ages, the largest and most prosperous in Europe. Its walls, built by Theodosius I, were the strongest in all the world, and they provided a sense of security almost unknown anywhere else in Europe. For over a thousand years, Constantinople was the center of Roman civilization which survived the traumatic events of the Dark Ages. Its people continued to speak Greek and Latin, read classic works and created beautiful art, and built the largest and most magnificent church in all the world: the Hagia Sophia, or “Church of Holy Wisdom.” Its history was not without tragedies, particularly the Nika revolt during Justinian’s rule, but the city remained a beacon of pre-medieval culture which shone out amidst the darkness of the Middle Ages.
Eventually, though, the Byzantine Empire’s strength began to falter. The rapid conquest of much of the Near East by the Muslims shocked many leaders in Constantinople, and the empire lost control of much of its land outside Europe and Asia Minor to the followers of the Prophet Muhammad. In addition, the schism between the Eastern and Western churches led to resentment, and even outright conflict. The first three Crusades of 1095-1192 brought warriors and merchants from Western Europe to Constantinople, but as the Latin Christian armies bled and the cause of reclaiming the Holy Land seemed lost, the wealthy Byzantine capital appeared to beckon as a new target. In 1204, Latin Christian armies attacked their Orthodox brethren and sacked Constantinople, and for more than a half-century the Byzantines tried to retake it, finally succeeding in 1261. By the close of the 14th century, the once-mighty empire of Justinian had been reduced to the lands around their capital and the Peloponnesian peninsula and a few islands in Greece. Its military strength was gone, as nearly half of its population had died from the Black Plague while enemies swarmed through its former territory.
Constantine XI, Mehmed II, and the End at Constantinople
The final battle for control of Constantinople was a clash between two men who believed that God had destined them for glory. Constantine Palaiologos was born in Constantinople to Emperor Manuel II and his wife Helena in February 1405. Little is known of his early life because so many of the details were invented by those who witnessed his fate and made him into an arch-hero (which was arguably true in death but not necessarily so in life). He governed the Peloponnese as a vassal of both his older brother, Emperor John VIII, and the Ottoman Sultan Murad II. When John died without issue, Constantine and his brother Demetrios both claimed the Byzantine throne, and Murad was called to arbitrate the succession. In January 1449, the sultan proclaimed Constantine Emperor of Byzantium, and he returned home to Constantinople two months later. The new emperor rebuilt sections of the walls and tried desperately to recruit soldiers to defend the city. He even appealed to the Latin Christians for help in the name of Church unity, but little assistance arrived—the Western Church was content to let the East fall, and many Orthodox leaders believed it would be better to live under Muslim rule than to be governed by the pope in Rome. Nevertheless, Constantine resolved to hold the city against his enemies no matter the cost. It was his responsibility to his people, to his dynasty, and to God.
Sultan Murad II died in 1451, and his nineteen-year-old son Mehmed II succeeded him as ruler of the Ottoman Empire. As a devoted Muslim, the young warrior was convinced that Allah had destined him to conquer Constantinople and destroy the Byzantine Empire. Mehmed spent the first year of his reign assembling his forces for the assault and building up an arsenal of cannons that could breach the Theodosian Walls. He first launched a diversionary attack in southern Greece to tie down the Byzantine garrisons and stop any reinforcements from reaching Constantine’s army in the capital. The Ottomans also built new fortresses on the European side of the Bosphorus Straits to the north and west of the city to further isolate his Christian foes. Constantine could do nothing to prevent these moves; he could only wait for the inevitable blow to fall.
In February 1452, Mehmed’s army crossed the straits into Byzantine territory and laid siege to Constantinople. His army numbered between fifty- and eighty thousand soldiers on foot or horseback, while Constantine XI commanded fewer than ten thousand men. Beyond his numerical advantage, Mehmed also possessed between twelve and sixty cannons, most of which were built in Turkish foundries in Asia Minor. The largest of these was designed and cast by a Hungarian mercenary called Orban. Records from that time state that his cannon was nearly thirty feet long and could fire a six hundred-pound ball nearly a mile (though its accuracy was very poor). Orban first showed the plans for this weapon to Constantine XI, who lacked the money to fund its construction, so the mercenary traveled to Mehmed II’s court, who agreed at once to purchase the cannon. The weapon was delivered and proved moderately effective, though it had to be transported by a train of sixty oxen, took three hours to reload, and had limited ammunition, so it was not the decisive weapon that Orban claimed it would be. The Byzantines also had cannons, but they were far smaller than those of the Ottomans, and their recoil and blast tended to damage their own walls and were used only in the final hours of the siege.
The city of Constantinople sits on a peninsula, with the Golden Horn channel to the north, the Bosphorus Straits to the east and south, and land to the west. The land walls stretched for seven miles, with another thirteen built along the coast facing the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus. Given his lack of strength, Constantine decided to defend only the outer wall facing the Ottomans on land. The sea walls would be lightly manned but protected mainly by his small fleet of 26 Venetian war galleys in the channel north of the city. Mehmed spread his forces out along the land walls and across the Golden Horn to cut off any reinforcements which might try to flank the main assault force. He also dragged many of his ships on greased logs across the land north of the channel, bypassing a chain which the Byzantines had placed to block its entrance. This allowed him to attack Constantine’s Venetian allies from both sides. Constantinople was thus completely surrounded by land and sea.
The siege officially began with an Ottoman assault on a small section of the land walls on April 6, 1453, which was repelled with heavy losses. Mehmed attacked the same stretch again two days later, and again a week after that, but the walls and their defenders held. The sultan did not have the strength to surmount the walls, so his cannons were brought up and began to bombard the Byzantines. Hundreds of Constantine’s soldiers perished in these attacks, but the walls initially held—which is particularly impressive given that many of their bricks were more than a thousand years old. The Ottomans then tried to dig tunnels and plant mines under the walls, but the Byzantines dug their own tunnels into the earth and were able to attack and kill many of the Turkish miners. As the survivors fled, the Byzantines poured Greek fire onto them when they emerged, burning hundreds of men alive.
On May 21st, six weeks into the siege, Mehmed sent a messenger to the walls under a flag of truce with orders to present his terms for an end to the siege to Constantine XI. The Byzantines would surrender Constantinople to the sultan and, in exchange, its inhabitants would be spared and the emperor could return to Greece and continue his rule of the Peloponnese. Constantine sent a counteroffer of higher tribute and a pledge not to attack the new fortresses built by Mehmed’s troops in Byzantine lands north of the straits. He then responded directly to Mehmed’s demand that he surrender Constantinople: “As to surrendering the city to you, it is not for me to decide or for anyone else of its citizens; for all of us have reached the mutual decision to die of our own free will, without any regard for our lives.” The emperor’s fate, and that of his people was thus sealed.
After eight days’ final preparations, Mehmed unleashed his full strength on May 29, 1453, against the entire line of land walls, and his ships stormed into the mass of Venetian galleys at the mouth of the Golden Horn. The Ottoman bombards blew large holes in the walls, and the Byzantines were simply overwhelmed. A detachment of soldiers from Genoa at the center of the Byzantine lines broke and fled back toward the city across empty fields, sparking a general retreat. Ottoman cavalry then crossed through the ruined walls in pursuit. As they approached the city, Turkish soldiers saw Italians from Genoa and Venice boarding the few remaining galleys and putting to sea, desperate to save their lives. Greek soldiers were bartering passage, knowing that they had to get home to defend their families. In despair, some Greeks threw themselves from the walls into the waters of the Golden Horn, where they died instantly or drowned. The people of Constantinople were now alone, fifty thousand helpless civilians defended by perhaps two thousand local recruits led by the emperor himself.
The last line of defense was a hastily-constructed palisade protecting the city center and the imperial palace with only a single gate. Most historians record that Emperor Constantine XI threw aside his purple robes to reveal his suit of armor, drew his sword, and led a final charge through the gate toward the oncoming Turkish riders, and that he was never seen again. However, one Genoese eyewitness claims that Constantine hanged himself from the palisade when the Turks broke through the gate. His ultimate fate is thus disputed and probably will never be known, as his body was never definitively identified.
With the emperor’s death, Mehmed II’s triumph was complete. The city was looted and its inhabitants murdered or scattered as refugees. The Turks proclaimed their sultan Fatih Sultan Mehmet, “Mehmed the Conqueror.” The shattered remains of Constantine’s empire fell to his armies by the end of the decade, and upon his death in 1481 he had expanded Ottoman power across much of southern Europe. With the fall of Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire, successor state to Rome which had endured for fourteen hundred years, faded into history.
Turning Points: A Mosque, a War, and a Renaissance
After the fall of Constantinople, Mehmed II made the city it’s capital. It retained its name until the 20th century when the Republic of Turkey was formed after the First World War when it took on its modern name of “Istanbul.” Mehmed allowed Orthodox Christians to live peacefully under his rule, but he claimed the greatest church in the world as his own. The Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque, and four towering minarets were built at its corners to proclaim the message of Allah and his prophet. It was then made into a museum in 1935, and earlier this year, President Erdogan of Turkey stated that he intends to eventually revert the building back into a mosque.
Mehmed II’s victory at Constantinople put an end to Latin Christians’ desire for crusades in the Near East, and it also inaugurated almost two centuries of Ottoman expansion in southern Europe. By his death, Mehmed had conquered most of the Balkan Peninsula, and his successors waged war against the Hapsburg rulers of Austria, the Poles, the Germans, the Russians, and several Italian city-states. By the end of the 17th century, the Turks had reached Vienna, and only a coalition of Christian states from across Europe held the city, a turning point of its own and the “high tide” of Islamic expansion in Europe. The front between Muslim and Christian Europe stabilized between the Austria and Ottoman empires along the Danube River and the Carpathian Mountains. In the end, though, the Ottoman Empire finally succumbed to internal decay and external defeat in the First World War, and it followed its Byzantine predecessor into the pages of the past in 1919.
In Europe, the reaction to Constantinople’s fall was swift and almost panicked. Many Christian rulers braced themselves for war, and debate soon began among leaders in both the clergy and nobility over how to cope with this changed political situation. The historian Miroslav Volf records that Pope Pius II wished for renewed Christian-Muslim wars, while many humanists insisted that dialogue and diplomacy would hold the Ottomans at bay. In the end, both policies were pursued, and it was this dialogue opened between the Turks and the Italians which truly turned history at this point.
The Renaissance had already been gaining steam with the gradual rebirth of culture and education in Italy. When Nicholas of Cusa and other humanists traveled to Constantinople to the court of Mehmed the Conqueror, they brought back with them treasures of long-forgotten knowledge of classical Greece and Rome. Soon, artists and writers were journeying to the East for inspiration while scientists from Germany, France, and Poland worked alongside Muslim counterparts to learn more about the world around them. The pace of rebirth or “renaissance” in the darkened lands of Western Europe quickened as this new knowledge spread, and within a century of Constantinople’s fall, the West had risen from the cultural morass of the so-called Dark Ages and stood on the brink of the modern world.
