Michael Angold - The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans: Context and Consequences

The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans

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THE END OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 19081923

A.L. Macfie

THE PARIS COMMUNE 1871

Robert Tombs

THE BOMB

D.B.G. Heuser

THE FALL OF FRANCE, 1940

Andrew Shennan

THE GREAT TREKS

Norman Etherington

THE OIL CRISIS

Fiona Venn

GERMANY 1989

Lothar Kettenacker

ENDING APARTHEID

David Welsh and J.E. Spence

THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE OTTOMANS: CONTEXT AND CONSEQUENCES

Michael Angold

The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans

Context and Consequences

Michael Angold

First published 2012 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-35612-2 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Angold, Michael

The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans : context and consequences / Michael Angold.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-582-35612-2 (pbk.)

1. Istanbul (Turkey)--History--Siege, 1453. 2. Byzantine Empire--History--Constantine XI Dragases, 1448-1453. I. Title.

DF649.A64 2012

939.8618--dc23

2012012655

Set in 9/13.5pt Stone serif by 35

Contents

T he fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 presents similar problems to those I encountered when writing about its previous fall in 1204 to the Venetians and the soldiers of the fourth crusade.Constantinople in 1261. If this did not mean a return to political ascendancy, it did produce a sustained intellectual and spiritual revival, which did much to preserve Constantinoples prestige and symbolic importance. Nothing like this happened after 1453. What was the point in seeking to reverse what was deemed inevitable! Little effort was made to preserve Byzantine civilisation. Hopes of a Byzantine recovery remained in the realm of myth and fantasy. Despite the political weakness of the declining Byzantine Empire its disappearance created a void, which was quickly filled, as others appropriated different facets of Byzantium. Its role as the guardian of classical antiquity went to the West; the Ottomans assumed its imperial destiny, while the Russians reshaped its political ideology. The final fall of Constantinople therefore became a central point of reference for a complicated process of creating identities and ideologies to fit new realities. Whether it was the Greek search for a new identity now that they were condemned to live as exiles in their own land; whether it was the transmutation of the notion of Christendom into Europe, as happened in the West; whether it was the emergence of the autocratic authority of the Czar at the heart of Holy Russia; or whether it was the elevation of the Ottoman Empire to the rank of a world power, all were set in relief by the conquest of Constantinople, whence the attention it attracted among contemporaries. Herein lies its real historical importance.

Writing this book has taken much longer than I expected; much longer than it should have, but without Simin Abrahamss help and encouragement I dont think I would ever have been able to finish this book.

Notes

M.J. Angold, The Fourth Crusade: Event and Context (Harlow: Pearson/Longman, 2003).

S. Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965).

T he 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. 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 historys 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 (145181) to embark on the conquest of Constantinople represented the failure of political arrangements, which for fifty years had allowed Byzantium to survive and to 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 IIs reign. Alarmed by the activities of Mehmed IIs government, andarli 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 (142548) 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