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Dan Snow's History Hit
The Fall of Constantinople
00:37:04
The culmination of an age-long struggle between Christianity and Islam for control of the Eastern Mediterranean.
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- [00:01]
Dan Snow
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- [02:27]
Dan Snow
Hi everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's History hit. In this episode, I'm gonna hand over to a far better qualified, a much more brilliant podcaster. He's Matt Lewis. He's host of Gone Medieval History Hits Medieval podcast. Today he's talking to Professor Mark David Bayer to delve into that extraordinary, that epochal moment, arguably that terminal moment for the medieval world. It's the fall of Constantinople in 1453. It matters. One of the most important dates in European history. And interesting, I think the insistence on the importance of that date has endured. It has survived the revisionism. It's still considered as one of the most epic, extraordinary, seismic turning points in the history of Europe and Asia. This is the second of two episodes that we've released in this last week on the wonderful city of Istanbul. Our first episode was called, appropriately, the Origins of Istanbul. It's a sweeping history of that magnificent city with wonderful Jonathan Harris. So definitely go back and check that one out. But now let's scoot ahead to the other end of the Constantinople story. Well, another big milestone in it, the fall in 1453. Enjoy.
- [03:35]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
The sound of cannon fire rang out in the deep like a thunder from the heavens is how one witness described it. A piercing crash. The air was thick with billowing smoke. The screams of innocents awoken from their slumber, drowned out by the death knell of the guns. The sky burnt red by the rising sun and streaked with fireballs launched from catapults or portents of doom. It was the morning of the 29th of May, 1453. The City of Constantinople lay under siege. It marked the culmination of an age long struggle between two totemic powers for control of the eastern Mediterranean. A titanic clash between the forces of Christianity and and Islam. At first, Christian Byzantium was ascendant, allied with Crusaders. And standing tall from their glittering capital city, the Byzantines imposed control across the Balkans, Anatolia and into the Holy Land. But then the tide turned and the Muslim Ottoman Empire pushed deep into Christian lands. By 1453, the once triumphant city of Constantinople stood alone. An island surrounded on all sides by a sea of Ottoman territory. The Ottoman leader Mehmed II had dreamed of possessing Constantinople since he was a boy. It was, after all, the eastern capital of Christendom, the home of the Roman Empire and the beating heart of a vast Mediterranean trading network. With more than 100,000 men at his back, it was only a matter of time before Mehmet took control. The defenders, a ragtag Band of residents and some Italian mercenaries were outnumbered 10 to 1. Armed with just crossbows, they offered little against the might of Mehmed's cannon. It was, in fact, one of the largest cannons the world had ever seen, cast by a Christian defector from Hungary specifically to blow Constantinople to pieces. For more than a thousand years, the ancient city's walls, built by the Romans, they'd been heralded as impregnable, the most awesome defences in the Western world. Now they lay ruined, pockmarked with the scars of the relentless aerial barrage. Having lasted for more than two months, those manning the walls were gradually picked off by arrows raining down from on high. Commanders were felled and the gates eventually gave way. Panic spread as wave upon wave of Ottoman soldiers piled into the city, desperately seeking refuge. Survivors crammed into the magnificent church of Hagia Sophia, an enduring symbol of Constantinople's once glorious past. But they were followed. As Ottoman axes pounded against the church's old wooden doors. Those within lifted up their prayers. And as the chants inside intensified, so did the pounding of the axes until the doors splintered and Constantinople's fate was sealed. The coveted city was finally conquered and with it came a new dawn. Gone was the Byzantine Empire, the shining light of Christian civilization that had lasted 1100 years. Now was the time of the Ottoman. I'm Matt Lewis and in this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm delighted to be joined by Mark David Baer, professor of International History at the London School of Economics and author of the Khans, Caesars and Caliphs, to delve into this epochal moment in medieval history. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Mark.
- [07:21]
Mark David Baer
Thank you for having me.
- [07:23]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
It's wonderful to have you here and to talk about one of the most seismic moments in medieval history. I guess for an awful lot of people who lived through it, it must have seemed like a real turning point in history for them, the fall of Constantinople in 1453. I guess to start us off with, our audience will have heard a bit about how Constantinople developed and became one of the most important cities in Europe, at the heart of this new Roman Byzantine Empire. But how did people view the city of Constantinople by the kind of the middle of the 15th century? Did that perception differ to its east and to its west?
- [08:00]
Mark David Baer
What do we mean by people? Are we thinking of the inhabitants of the city? Are we thinking of the Ottomans who wish to conquer it? Constantinople has a huge place to play in visions of east and West. So of course, as your listeners will know, it was the second Rome, of course, but then for Muslims, it's Also a city of great desire, because from the beginning of Islamic history, the Prophet Muhammad had sent armies to besiege it and to conquer it. And no Arab or Muslim army had ever succeeded, of course, until here we are in the 15th century, and the Ottomans are viewing this city as something that they have to take. We have to think about the situation now. It had once been a great city. It had once had perhaps half a million inhabitants, but by this point in the middle of the 15th century, it is down to perhaps 50,000 people. It's surrounded on all sides by the Ottomans. And so it's really just an island sitting there, you know, with the Ottomans just really dying to take it. The people in the city are beginning to see all kinds of visions of the end of days, as if this is gonna be the end of time, because they feel like the Antichrist is about to sweep down upon them.
- [09:24]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
So I guess we need to consider the Ottoman assaults on Constantinople as almost the culmination of, by this point, I guess, nearly 800 years of a Muslim desire to conquer this city. They've been going at it for centuries by this point.
- [09:37]
Mark David Baer
That's right. And as I said, the city of Constantinople sits right in the middle of Ottoman territory, splitting Ottoman territories east and west. And we have to think a little bit about the personality of the man who conquered the city, Sultan Mehmed ii, who would be called the Conqueror Fatih later in history, of course. So he was a young man, he was about 20 years old when he became sultan, actually for the second time. And he had a chip on his shoulder. He was someone who wanted to prove himself as all young lads do, but. But he wanted to prove himself against the memory of his father, Murat ii, because his father had put him on the throne when Mehmet was a teenager, but then took him off the throne and sat himself back on the throne when they were facing campaigns east and west against the Hungarians in the west and the Karamatids Muslim empire in the East. So Mehmed II already felt like he had been cheated once out of his role in history in the mid-1440s. Then when his father died in 1451, he was able to reclaim the throne. But again, like I said, he wanted to prove himself against the memory of his father. He wanted to prove himself to all the ministers of government, to the leaders of the army. So this was. We have to think about this man and his mental state, his emotional state as he looks at Constantinople as well. Yeah.
- [11:03]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
So I guess he's looking then at the city as a way to prove himself to his father, even though his father's gone. You know, how can I prove that I didn't deserve what my dad did to me and that I'm better than him? Well, I can do something that nobody's done in centuries of Muslim efforts to take the city.
- [11:18]
Mark David Baer
And again, he's also, he's 20 years old, 21 years old. And this, as we've already mentioned, this city was desired by Muslims for centuries. Now, during the siege of the city in 1453, Muslims would find, they would claim to find, you know, the remains of a tomb from a 7th century warrior that the Prophet Muhammad had sent. This was ayoop. So this was like a miraculous thing for the Muslim side, saying that, wow, this is actually linked to our Islamic past. So it gave more legitimacy to the claims of besieging and conquering the city.
- [11:53]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
And that's quite similar to what Christians had done in the Crusades in the Holy Land, I guess, because they had miraculously found relics and things like that at locations that, that gave them that same kind of sense of legitimacy in being there. So it's interesting that both faiths are using those same kind of, I don't want to say tricks, but ideas.
- [12:11]
Mark David Baer
Meanwhile, inside the city as the Ottomans besiege it, there are all kinds of strange things are happening and the Christians in the city see these as omens of doom. So for example, there's a procession in the streets of the city to ask for God's help, Jesus aid, and they drop the cross and then there's also, there's a fog covers the city and they feel like this is the fog of death. So there's really high emotions at this time on both sides, expectations of Muslim victory, also fear of Christian loss. But at the same time, we don't want to only depict this as a battle between Christians and Muslims because of course the Ottomans have Christian allies. And the Ottomans also themselves are a multi religious empire where the majority of the subjects are actually Christian and Christians are serving, as I mentioned, on the Ottoman side. We'll talk about how the Ottomans took the city. One of the ways they took the city was that they had a Hungarian Christian man casted or created the greatest cannon the world has ever seen. So here's a Christian man helping the Muslim army take over the second Rome.
- [13:25]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
Yeah, interesting. So before we get onto how the siege actually plays out, I want to talk in a moment about how the people inside Constantinople viewed themselves. So we thought about how the people to the east, the Muslims and the Ottomans viewed them. How did people further to the west view Constantinople? It had become, as you mentioned, an island of Christianity amongst the Ottoman Empire. My interest is in kind of the wars of the Roses, Richard iii, and obviously Richard III kind of talks about he wishes his kingdom was on the borders of the Ott, that he could fight the Turks. So there is this kind of appeal in England to a crusading ideal, I guess. But how widespread was concern for Constantinople and how serious were any thoughts of trying to help it from the West?
- [14:08]
Mark David Baer
No crusade would rescue Constantinople then or after the last crusade had been at the end of the 14th century. And we see a Crusader army defeated at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. No crusading army is going to save them. It's also the case that, of course, there was a split between Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Of course, the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople is the seat of the Orthodox Church. So this doesn't help Christian unity at all. And we do see some Christians from Western Europe coming to Constantinople to help defend it. People from what is now Spain, for example, Catalans, in other words. But it's a very small number. So pretty much the Byzantines are left to their own devices with some Italian and some Spanish military help. But the Ottomans would outnumber them probably 10 to 1. So the Ottomans would have over 100,000 soldiers against. The Byzantines might have 10,000 soldiers.
- [15:09]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
It's terrifying. And you wonder how much they must have hoped that help would come from the west, but we know that it would never, ever arrive for them.
- [15:16]
Mark David Baer
Well, they hoped that help would come from God. So there were visions that this divine intervention, an angel would come and would bring a massive sword and deliver to the city a statue of Constantine, that this angel would deliver the sword. A Christian would then be able to grab the sword and with that single sword would be able to defeat the entire Ottoman army. But unfortunately, that angel didn't appear.
- [15:40]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
And does the idea of those kind of prophecies, does that speak to a realization that their situation was becoming increasingly hopeless? They're holding out for the arrival of some great army that will help them. They're now reliant on a single Christian who is going to be able to wield this sword sent from heaven to defeat the entire army. Is that a realization that they're on their own and that they're going to have to rely on some kind of miracle to resist any longer? Yeah.
- [16:06]
Mark David Baer
If not divine intervention. They are sitting in the city and they are thinking, okay, well, the land walls are actually 30 meters high. 10 meters thick. They've lasted a thousand years. It's scary, but perhaps we can survive this. That's what they believe. But then, of course, the cannon from the west is tearing holes through that wall. Then they also have this mighty chain that they stretch across the Golden Horn from the tip of the old peninsula of Istanbul, the ancient core of the city, across the Golden Horn. So that chain is actually also protects them. It prohibits Ottoman ships from entering the Golden Horn and attacking the city from inside. So they do have some defensive mechanisms in place that give them some sense of security.
- [16:54]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
And we've talked a little bit about Sultan Mehmed II and why he was focused on Constantinople and perhaps what he had to gain from attacking the city. What do we know about Emperor Constantine, who is inside the city trying to defend it? Is he trying to marshal efforts? Do we see signs of him being genuinely terrified? This is the end of Constantinople.
- [17:14]
Mark David Baer
Well, again, he's doing his best, and he's doing his best, and he will perhaps take part in the fighting, in the final assault on the city. So he's doing his best to rally his faithful. He's doing his best to rally his troops. The problem being that his populace is seeing all these negative omens and losing faith in their ability to defend the city. Especially, as I mentioned, when that giant wall in the west begins to be penetrated by these huge metal cannonballs from that enormous cannon. Also, Mehmed the Conqueror, along with casting that cannon, he also builds very rapidly a fortress on the European side of the city at a place called Rum Eli Hisar, opposite a fortress that had been built by Bayezid I at the end of the 14th century. It's probably the most narrow point in the Bosphorus. So the Ottomans actually build a fortress on the European side of Constantinople, and with that, they're able to cut off traffic from the Black Sea. So they're able to blockade the city. After they build this fortress, maybe in four months, in record time, Mehmed II is supposed to have also participated in actually putting stones in place after that. Then he comes up with the idea of a way to get around that chain stretching across the Golden Horn. And what they do is he's able to transport 50 ships, 50 battleships, probably small ships, but 50 ships from the Bosphorus overland up and then downhill into the Golden Horn by building rails and putting grease on the rails and having thousands of slaves pull these ships by land and then drop them into the Golden Horn. It must have been just phenomenal the way the Ottoman Greek Historian who writes a chronicle of Mehmed II's life describes it as if these ships were sailing on land with their sails blowing in the wind as they went down the hill from Galata to the Golden Horn. It must have been just absolutely shocking for the Byzantine defenders to see all of a sudden the Ottoman navy right there in the center of the city.
- [19:21]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
So it feels very much as the Ottomans really focus their attention on Constantinople in 1453, that this is the coming of an important moment. You've got kind of the unconquerable Christian city trying to resist this immense Muslim army, perhaps the original, you know, unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. Is that a fair way to sum it up, as they're coming to conclusion that Constantinople felt fairly secure because it had been for a thousand years. The Ottomans felt like they could take it because they got the numbers. And so both believed in their causes, but also both had a lot to lose. The city, obviously, if it's lost, falls under Muslim control. And for Mehmed, this would be a severe setback to his plans if he was to fail in this big attempt in an effort to prove himself.
- [20:10]
Mark David Baer
Because, again, we have to remember that most of the Byzantine Empire has been taken by the Ottomans. There are only a couple of islands of Byzantine rule remaining in the Balkans or in Anatolia. And today the city is called Trabzon. Then it was called Trebizond. That will hold out until 1461. But the Byzantine territory is very, very small, and the Ottomans just cannot stomach or suffer to have this Byzantine island in the midst of their empire.
- [20:36]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
So they both have reason to be concerned at the idea of failing in this campaign.
- [20:40]
Mark David Baer
Absolutely. Because the Byzantine city of Constantinople also contains the largest building in the world, which is the Church of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. This is the symbol of Christendom. And so if the Ottomans take this, they're going to turn it into a mosque. And so the Muslims will have control over this holy spot. There's a lot of stake for both sides.
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- [22:47]
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- [23:35]
Dan Snow
And.
- [23:35]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
How does the actual siege of the city begin? So we've got Mehmed building this fortress, finding a way around that chain. How does he actually begin his assault on the city?
- [23:44]
Mark David Baer
Well, it takes place in these different areas. So there's the building of the fortress to the north of the city. After that there will be the putting the naval ships into the Golden Horn, bringing them over land at the same time from the west they are besieging the land walls, the ancient Theodosian land walls, and attacking there. So the Byzantines are fighting on several different fronts. So from the west and north of the city. And of course then there also will be Audubon naval galleys south of the city, of course, Istanbul is a peninsula, surrounded of course, on three sides by water. So they're having to fight from the sea as well as from land. Siege lasts something like 54 days, I believe, so it takes less than two months. So it is relatively quick in fact. And the city will fall on 29 May 1453.
- [24:38]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
Would you put that down to the preparations that Mehmed made or simply the state that Constantinople is in by this point?
- [24:43]
Mark David Baer
It's a combination. It's also the great army that the Ottomans have put together over the centuries. The core force of the Ottomans are known as the Janissaries, the infantry corps. And they have the latest technology, they have firearms. They also are slave soldiers. So these are, at that point in history, Christian origin soldiers. So they were taken away from their homes within Ottoman territories. They were circumcised, converted to Islam and trained in the art of war in the Ottoman palace and given, as I mentioned, the best, most advanced weaponry. So these are people who are absolutely loyal to the Sultan. They've lost their religion, their language, their homeland, and they've given all that up and now they're completely devoted to the Sultan. So that's his core fighting force. And these men are nearly undefeatable for centuries. The Janissaries would be loyal, wouldn't rebel against the Sultan and would be a formidable fighting force. So he has them. He also, as I mentioned, he has the cannons and the other artillery weapons. He's also this 20 year old, 21 year old with a chip on his shoulder. So he makes these bold military decisions and he also has a vision for the future. He has a vision for his empire. He himself wants to be Caesar. We talked a little bit about what this is going to mean when the city falls for Roman culture, Roman ideology. Well, the Ottomans are actually going to absorb all of that. So after the fall of Constantinople, the Ottoman ruler, the Sultan, will begin to call himself Caesar. I mean literally, and they will begin to claim that, that they are the rightful inheritors of Rome and of ancient civilization.
- [26:35]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
And so during that 54 days of the siege, I mean, are there any setbacks for the Muslims? Did they hit any real problems during that time?
- [26:42]
Mark David Baer
Well, it's a very difficult siege. It's a very difficult battle. There are great losses also on the Ottoman side. I mean, anytime you besiege a medieval walled city, this was actually the first time that the Ottomans used artillery to conquer a walled city.
- [26:57]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
So.
- [26:57]
Mark David Baer
So this is also perhaps moving into modern warfare in a sense.
- [27:02]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
And were there any moments during that 54 day period when perhaps the people inside the city thought they had a chance, I mean, I'm guessing no magic sword turned up for them to wield and defeat the Muslim army. But were there any points at which they might have had more hope or was it just a slow grind towards ultimate failure?
- [27:19]
Mark David Baer
Well, I think it was a slow grind. There were some setbacks within the Ottoman camp in that the Grand Vizier, the Prime Minister was actually part of a peace faction. He actually was much older than the Sultan. He also came from a family that had served as Minister to the Sultan for a long time. He actually wanted peace between the Byzantines and Ottomans and find a way for them to live together. Mehmed was of course from the war party. He absolutely wanted to defeat and destroy the Byzantines. So there was some internal dissent between the peace and the war camps. The war camps of course winning. And Mehmet had his Grand Vizier executed and thereafter would almost for centuries. The Ottomans again would just have ministers who came from these converted Christian backgrounds. They wouldn't have Turkish or Muslim born noble type individuals from old families, but only the slave ministers. So they had slave soldiers and slave ministers. Those were the only ones that they would trust to be completely loyal to the dynasty. What's also interesting is that Mehmed also, after conquest, would absorb some of those Byzantine noble families. Most of them converted to Islam. These noble men, some did not and they would serve as Grand Vizier again as Prime Minister or they would serve in the treasury or other ministries of God government. So Mehmed II sees himself as a Caesar. He's incorporating elements of Byzantine society that can help make his empire stronger.
- [28:58]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
And just before we move away from the siege altogether, how does it end? Is there a huge pitch battle? Is it a bloody and atrocious affair?
- [29:06]
Mark David Baer
Yes. So the Ottoman forces now, with Mehmed leading, break through at the gate which today is called Edirne Gate, in the western walls of the city. That's where they break through. That's where they enter the city. That's where they take their revenge on the people defending the city. Traditionally, medieval warfare. The victorious army is given three days of pillage. Mehmed lets his troops pillage for one day. So they rape women, they rape nuns, they rape boys, they take women and children as slaves, they loot churches, they destroy holy relics, they take the gold from churches, they rape and pillage for a full day. But Mehmed surprisingly calls an end to it after a day and rides into the city and he is Actually quite upset at the state of the city and seeing what had happened to it because of the years of decline, but also the siege. And also he will ride on his horse. It's a long ride from the western walls. He will ride through the city on the main avenue, which is still the main avenue today. He'll ride all the way into the city, all the way to Hagia Sophia, the Church of Divine Wisdom, where thousands of people had taken refuge. And when the Ottomans broke through, you know, they forced the doors open. And there's lots of accounts of this also from Ottoman sources. You know, they raped the women who were hiding there, taking refuge there in the church. So all kinds of horrible things happen. So Mehmed enters the city one day later, goes all the way to Hagia Sophia, Hagia Sophia, and he weeps. His chronicler, his historian depicts him as crying. He's crying because this once great city, this once great church, had fallen into such a poor state. His chronicler depicts him, this young 21 year old hothead, contemplating the fact that all empires and all emperors pass away. So it's a moment of sadness amidst the celebration.
- [31:16]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
It's an interesting juxtaposition to what sounds like a really keen, as you said, kind of hot headed young man desperate to get in there and fight and defeat this supposedly undefeatable city. And then a man who is suddenly forced to perhaps mature a little bit by having the consequences of that victory put right in front of his face.
- [31:36]
Mark David Baer
And then he has to decide at that moment, then what is he going to do? He's captured this city, he's captured this church. What will we do? How will he rule it? How will he rebuild it? And again, reflecting Ottoman practice, he could have done anything right. He could have made this into an all Muslim city. For example, he could have converted all the churches to mosques and not allowed Christians to resettle within the walls of the city, which is something the Ottomans would do later in history in places like Cyprus or the island of Rhodes. But what he decides to do is to deport Christians, Jews and Muslims from the rest of his empire to the city to repopulate it. And that's what he does. He brings in thousands of people so that within decades, the city will triple in population. It might have 150,000 people by the end of the century. It's going to become one of the largest cities in Europe within a century. And what we see is something what we should not be seeing. If we think Muslim societies only act according to Islamic law, which is the construction of new churches and new synagogues, which in theory is not supposed to happen when a Muslim conqueror conquers another city. So, but that's what happens. So he builds a city, he invites people in, he actually forcibly deports his subjects in, and then he creates the covered bazaar. He turns Hagia Sophia from the greatest cathedral in Christendom to the greatest mosque in the Islamic world. But he also, as I mentioned, he builds markets, he rebuilds aqueducts and waterways and sewage systems and roads and houses. So the city very quickly will prosper and will become perhaps even more multi religious, multi racial, multi ethnic than it had been under Byzantine rule.
- [33:29]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
Fascinating. Do you think there's an element in him doing that, of having an eye to that idea of being the new successor to Rome? Does that speak to a desire to continue to move west, to continue to expand Ottoman influence into where Rome used to be? So an effort not to appear too cruel or restrictive to those people, because maybe he's signalling an intention to keep going.
- [33:51]
Mark David Baer
Absolutely. And he did desire the conquest of Rome and he did send a naval campaign to the eastern coast of Italy towards the end of his reign. In 1480, Ottoman troops would capture Otranto and remain there for a year. So there was this idea of the Ottomans as being, well, they wanted to unite the world under one religion and under one emperor, and that religion was Islam and the emperor was the sultan. So they would continue their conquest east and west in the following centuries.
- [34:22]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
And what do you think we should consider to be the long lasting legacies of the fall of Constantinople? You know, it sits there at the gateway between Europe and Asia. For a long time it was the frontier between Christianity and Islam. What is the legacy of its fall then?
- [34:39]
Mark David Baer
It becomes not the dividing line between Islam and Christendom, but a meeting point, a meeting place. I mean, the population of the city would be perhaps 20 or 30% Greek Christian through the centuries. Perhaps 10% of the city would be Jewish, another 5% would be Armenian. So it was this multi religious place, the neighborhood of Galata, which is today, people go there for shopping and entertainment. That neighborhood at the beginning was 40%, perhaps Italian. So the Genovese remained for a while. So what it did in the immediate term was to make it great again, to make it a great Roman city again now under the Ottomans. But it would have further importance because as the capital of the Ottoman Empire, it would also become the seat of government and a seat of the Sultan. And that physical place would be Topkapa palace, the Canongate palace, which again, tourists go to Today. So Ottoman history would play out right there at the tip of the peninsula of Constantinople in Topkapa palace. And that's where the Ottomans would articulate their ideology, their system of government for the following few centuries.
- [35:55]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
I think that's a really nice thought. That it transformed, albeit that the siege and the fighting was a terrible affair, that it transforms it from being a frontier into a meeting place, is actually quite a nice way to describe what happened there in the aftermath. I think that's a really nice way to view the transition from being on the frontier of a fight to suddenly being a melting pot, a meeting place for lots of different ideas and religions.
- [36:23]
Mark David Baer
But this wasn't the way contemporary Christians in Western Europe viewed it for a number of different reasons. So a lot of the Greek humanist scholars from Constantinople fled and ended up in the rest of Europe and Italy and elsewhere, where they propagated ideas of Muslims and Ottomans and Turks as being barbarians and barbaric. And they painted a very dark picture of what this conquest meant. And their view of the Ottomans as barbarians is the antecedent to today's Islamophobic ideas about the east, about Easterners, about Muslims and so on. So there was a lot of, of course, negative propaganda about it as well. But as a historian I see it more as a meeting point and the shaping of a new world order where the most powerful empire on the planet, among them, was this Muslim led empire known as the Ottomans. So if we think of world history, this is also a very important moment because the ottomans would last 600 years and this is the moment at which they become a world leading empire.
- [37:33]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
This really is a turning point. It's the end of Eastern Roman Empire, Eastern Christianity. It's a moment of potential fear for Western Christians, which we are probably still living with. Some of the aftermath of today in terms of our view of the east and some of our views of the Islamic religion. Sometimes I don't mean ours as in yours and I's, but than the views that some people have. And for the east it's a moment of great progress. They've achieved this thing they've been trying to do for hundreds of years and we see that in their use of it as a capital, which as you say would stand then for hundreds and hundreds of years. I think we're only 100 years away now from the end of the Ottoman Empire, having that as their capital.
- [38:16]
Mark David Baer
That's right. And then they make it into this very prosperous city and from there, like I said, then they're able to develop their own unique architectural style. They are able also to launch naval campaigns that will take the Ottomans into the Red Sea. That will take them to allow them to conquer the Mamluk Empire, which enables them to conquer Cairo, but also Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Jerusalem, the Middle east from the Red Sea. Then they'll launch naval campaigns across the Indian Ocean. Within a century, the Ottomans will be sending navies to Indonesia in the East. In the west, they'll be allying with France against the Habsburgs and Habsburgs controlled territories. France and the Ottomans will plan a naval campaign against Rome, even the Pope. So this moment in time, this geographical location, enables the Ottomans then to really become a player in world politics in east and west for the next couple of centuries.
- [39:18]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
And I think in history, we have to be careful of trying to find these genuine turning points, these critical moments that in an instant almost change everything. And we tend to think of 1066, the Battle of Hastings being won for England. It feels like perhaps the fall of Constantinople in 1453 is one of those moments on a continental level, rather than just how it affects one country.
- [39:40]
Mark David Baer
Because I can't imagine, because the Ottoman capital at the time was a city which today we call Edirne. In those days, it had been the Byzantine city of Adrianople, which is landlocked, which is small. I can't imagine the Ottomans launching a world empire from that frontier city. Now from that frontier city, they were able to launch all their campaigns into the Balkans and conquer a great amount of territory. But it really is the conquering of this large city that sits on what is today the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus connected to the Black Sea. This really enables them to play an even bigger role militarily, economically, as well as ideologically in the world.
- [40:19]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
It's almost like we see the renewed phoenix of one empire rising from the ashes of the slowly fading and depleted Byzantine Empire. A real switch over.
- [40:29]
Mark David Baer
Yeah. Now this is the Roman Empire, but now in Muslim garb.
- [40:32]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Mark. It's been incredibly interesting to think about these aspects of the siege, but also the greater geopolitical business that's going on all around it. So thank you very, very much for your time.
- [40:41]
Mark David Baer
Thank you for having me on the program.
- [40:44]
Podcast Pulse Ad Voice
Mark's book, the Khans, Caesars and Caliphs, is available wherever you get your books. If you'd like to uncover more about the events surrounding the fall of Constantinople. There are new episodes of God medieval every Tuesday and Friday. So please join us next time for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you have a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to podcasts. It really does help new listeners to find us. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History hit.
- [41:29]
Dan Snow
Well, thanks for listening to that folks. I hope you enjoyed that. And remember, if you want to hear more about the history of this fascinating city, do go back and listen to our episode from last week called the Origins of Constantinople, which traces the story of that city from ancient times right across the millennia.
- [41:47]
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