The Fall of Constantinople, 1453
The End of An Era –The Beginning of Another
In 1453 CE, the city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Empire. The conquest was one of history's turning points.
In 1453 CE, the city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman armies of Mehmet II.
Constantinople, founded by Emperor Constantine in the third century AD, had been the capital of Byzantium, and essentially the Roman world since that time.
In Europe, the so-called Hundred Years War between England and France had just ended (the war actually lasted from 1337 to 1453).
In les than 50 years, two monarchs of northern Spain would unite and drive Islamic rulers and their armies from the Iberian Peninsula. A year later, they would fund Christopher Columbus’ voyage west. In less than 100 years, Martin Luther would begin what is known as the Protestant Reformation.
Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople was 21 when his armies took the city. Known as a dynamic leader, prone to outbursts off anger, Mehmet II reorganized both the army and the government of the fledgling country that would become the Ottoman Empire.
Already, he had spread the Ottoman rule over most of the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa and as far north as the Balkans. Constantinople was the most illustrious gem in his crown.
The city had followed a long downward spiral since her heyday as the “New Rome,” the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and the world’s center of civilization.
However, by the time Mehmet II had come into power, the area over which Constantinople ruled had shrunk. Its once-vast territories (which at one time included most of Eastern Europe, large portions of Asia and North Africa and relative control over Rome as well) had been reduced to the area within the walls of the city itself, a few holdings in the Peloponnesian Peninsula and a small successor state on the Black Sea.
Two centuries before her fall to the Ottoman Turks, the city was the major victim of the Fourth Crusade (originally begun as a Christian enterprise to free Jerusalem from Islamic forces, and ended in the rape of the eastern center of Christianity).
There had been no love lost between the Latins, as the western European countries were known and the "Greeks," as the residents of Constantinople had come to be regarded. This enmity officially began in 1054, as the culmination of a debate between the eastern part of the “catholic” church and its western counterpoint, but it had been steaming for a long time.
The argument appears to have been a profound disagreement between the two entities over the authority of the Roman pope, but there were other deep cultural and political overtones in addition to religious ones.
In 1034, the arguments led to the largest schism in the Christian church and resulted in the creation of two churches: that of the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1204, European armies, organized by Pope Innocent II, conquered and pillaged the city, committing horrible atrocities, desecrating Orthodox churches, and forming, for a time, a Latin-dominated state.
Two centuries after the Fourth Crusade's rape of Constantinople, Byzantium Emperor Constantine XI sought help from the west when it was clear that Mehmet II was committed to the siege of Constantinople. Unfortunately, little was forthcoming.
To be fair, several western countries did send small contingents of soldiers and knights who undoubtedly fought well against the Ottoman forces. But their presence had little effect on the outcome of the war. Most western states however, declined to help, albeit politely. (For instance, Constantine XI, and his predecessor, John VII, were put up in lavish estates when visiting the western "Latin" regions, and treated as the royalty they were.) But the "Latins" were more circumspect when it came to actually sending armed assistance to the beleagured city.
The fact was that, since the schism and the sack of the city by western armies, there had been brewing a latent hatred between the “Latin’s” and the “Greeks".
The hatred had become so intense that one Byzantine politician opined, just before the fall of Constantinople, that it was better to see in the city the power of the Turkish turban than that of the Latin tiara.
Once Mehmet II’s forces entered the city, it was robbed and pillaged in the same ruthless way the armies of the Fourth Crusade had done two centuries before. Atrocities were committed, and churches were desecrated. Although the actions of the Ottoman forces were terrible, they were only a mirror of the carnage inflicted by the Fourth Crusade several centuries earlier.
On the wake of the Ottoman conquest, all churches were converted to mosques, including Hagia Sofia, the city’s basilica, built nine centuries before.
In 1930, the Turkish government changed the name of the city from Constantinople to Istanbul. Istanbul appears to be a name derived from the Greek, meaning simply “the city.”
In 1935, the great basilica of Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum.
