Fall of Constantinople (1453): End of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Constantinople took place on 29 May 1453, when the army of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II captured the capital of the Byzantine Empire after a siege of almost eight weeks. The last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos, died in the fighting. The conquest ended an empire that traced its origins to ancient Rome and turned the city, today’s Istanbul, into the capital of the rising Ottoman state.

Background

Constantinople was founded as a new imperial capital by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great in 330. For more than a thousand years it was the centre of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, protected by water on three sides and by the massive Theodosian Walls on land. Built in the fifth century, these walls stretched for about 6 kilometres from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn and had resisted many sieges.

By the fifteenth century the empire was a shadow of its former self. It had never fully recovered from the sack of the city by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and the Ottoman Turks had conquered most of its lands in Anatolia and the Balkans. By 1453 the Byzantine state consisted of little more than Constantinople, a few nearby places and territory in the Peloponnese in southern Greece. The city’s population had shrunk to perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 people, a fraction of its medieval peak.

Mehmed II became sultan for the second time in 1451 and was determined to take the city. In 1452 he built the fortress of Rumeli Hisarı on the European shore of the Bosphorus, allowing him to control shipping to and from the Black Sea. When a Venetian ship tried to pass without stopping in November 1452, it was sunk by the fortress guns. Constantine XI appealed to Western Europe for help. In December 1452, in the hope of gaining Western support, the union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches was formally proclaimed in Hagia Sophia, though it was deeply unpopular with many Byzantines.

The siege

The Ottoman army arrived before the land walls in early April 1453, and the bombardment began on 6 April. Estimates of its size vary widely, but most historians suggest between about 50,000 and 80,000 troops, supported by a large fleet. The defenders numbered perhaps 7,000 to 8,000, including Venetian and Genoese volunteers. The emperor’s secretary George Sphrantzes later recorded a count of just under 5,000 Greek fighting men and around 2,000 foreigners.

Mehmed’s most famous weapon was a giant bombard, or cannon, cast by a Hungarian founder named Orban, who had earlier offered his services to the Byzantines. It fired stone balls weighing several hundred kilograms but could manage only a few shots a day. The Ottoman guns battered the ancient walls day after day, but the defenders, led on the land walls by the Genoese commander Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, repaired the damage each night with earth, timber and rubble. Ottoman miners also tunnelled towards the walls, but the defenders located and destroyed the tunnels.

A great chain, or boom, stretched across the entrance to the Golden Horn, the city’s harbour, blocking the Ottoman fleet. On 20 April a small group of Christian ships carrying supplies fought its way through the Ottoman fleet into the harbour. Two days later Mehmed responded with a remarkable move: he had dozens of ships dragged overland on greased wooden tracks behind the Genoese colony of Galata and launched into the Golden Horn, forcing the defenders to spread their thin forces even further.

Outside help remained small. Venice voted to send a relief fleet, but it set out late and was still in the Aegean when the city fell. Hungary and the papacy offered little beyond promises, and the Genoese of Galata stayed officially neutral, trading with both sides. In the last days of May Mehmed reportedly offered terms, allowing the emperor to leave with his followers if the city surrendered, but Constantine refused. Morale inside the walls suffered from hunger, exhaustion and quarrels between Venetians, Genoese and Greeks.

The final assault

After weeks of bombardment, mining and failed attacks, Mehmed ordered a general assault in the early hours of 29 May 1453. The Ottomans attacked in waves: first irregular troops, then regular Anatolian soldiers, with the elite Janissary infantry held back until last.

During the fighting Giustiniani was seriously wounded and carried from the walls, which badly shook the defenders. Ottoman troops broke through and soon raised their flags on the towers. Constantine XI died in the fighting, though no reliable account of his last moments survives. Many inhabitants were killed or enslaved as the city was sacked. Contemporary accounts suggest that several thousand people died and that tens of thousands were carried off as captives, though exact figures are unknown.

Key people

Mehmed II (1432–1481) had briefly ruled as a boy in the 1440s before his father Murad II returned to the throne. Ambitious and well educated, he planned the siege carefully, investing in artillery, a fleet and the Bosphorus fortress. He ruled until his death in 1481, expanding the empire into the Balkans and Anatolia.

Constantine XI Palaiologos (1405–1453) became emperor in 1449 after governing the Byzantine territories in the Peloponnese. He refused offers to surrender the city in exchange for safe passage, and his death in its defence made him a lasting figure of Greek memory.

Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, a Genoese soldier, arrived in January 1453 with about 700 men and was given command of the land defences. He died of his wounds shortly after escaping the city.

Orban was a cannon founder, usually described as Hungarian, whose great guns showed how gunpowder artillery was changing siege warfare. Loukas Notaras, the senior Byzantine official in the city, was executed by Mehmed soon after the conquest, as was the Ottoman grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha, who had been suspected of favouring the Byzantines.

Timeline

• 1452, August: The fortress of Rumeli Hisarı is completed on the Bosphorus.
• 1452, 12 December: The union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches is proclaimed in Hagia Sophia.
• 1453, 6 April: The Ottoman bombardment of the land walls begins.
• 1453, 20 April: Christian supply ships break through the Ottoman fleet into the Golden Horn.
• 1453, 22 April: Ottoman ships are hauled overland into the Golden Horn.
• 1453, 29 May: The final assault succeeds; Constantine XI is killed and the city falls.
• 1460: The Ottomans take the Despotate of the Morea in the Peloponnese.
• 1461: The Empire of Trebizond, the last Byzantine successor state, falls to Mehmed II.

Aftermath

Mehmed entered the city on the day of its capture and converted Hagia Sophia, the great church built under Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, into a mosque. He made Constantinople his capital and worked to repopulate it, bringing in settlers from across his empire and appointing a new Orthodox patriarch, Gennadios Scholarios, to lead the Christian community.

Western Europe was shocked by the news, and the pope called for a crusade, but no serious attempt to retake the city followed. Within a few years the remaining Byzantine territories had also fallen to the Ottomans. Venice and Genoa soon negotiated new trading arrangements with the sultan, and commerce through the city continued.

Under Mehmed and his successors the city grew again into one of the largest in Europe and the Middle East. Mehmed built a new palace, later known as Topkapı, a covered market that developed into the Grand Bazaar, and the Fatih Mosque complex on the site of the ruined Church of the Holy Apostles. Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Jewish communities lived alongside the growing Muslim population, each with its own religious leadership. Constantinople remained the Ottoman capital until the end of the empire in 1922.

Myths and facts

Myth: the city fell because a small gate was left open. The Byzantine historian Doukas tells of Ottoman soldiers entering through a small postern gate, the Kerkoporta. The story may contain some truth, but historians generally see the wounding of Giustiniani and the sheer weight of the assault as the decisive factors.

Myth: the Byzantines called themselves Byzantines. They called themselves Romans (Rhomaioi) and their state the Roman Empire. The term “Byzantine” was popularised by Western scholars from the sixteenth century onwards.

Myth: the fall of Constantinople forced Europeans to find new sea routes. Portuguese voyages down the African coast had begun decades before 1453, and trade with the Ottomans continued afterwards. The conquest was one factor among many in the age of exploration, not its single cause.

Myth: the Renaissance began when Greek scholars fled in 1453. Byzantine scholars had been teaching Greek in Italy since the 1390s. Refugees after 1453 strengthened an existing movement rather than starting it.

Why it matters

The fall of Constantinople ended the last direct continuation of the Roman Empire and established the Ottoman Empire as a great power that would dominate south-eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean for centuries. Greek scholars who moved to Italy before and after 1453 brought manuscripts and learning that fed into the Renaissance. Some historians treat 1453 as one of the dates marking the end of the Middle Ages, alongside events such as Columbus’s first voyage in 1492.