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The 1453 fall of Constantinople: capturing the Byzantine capital
00:49:21
Jonathan Harris charts the extraordinary battle that saw the Byzantine capital fall to the Ottoman Turks
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey there Ryan Reynolds here.
- [00:02]
Professor Jonathan Harris
It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions.
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Ryan Reynolds
A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than.
- [00:09]
Professor Jonathan Harris
We did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 per month new customers on first 3 month plan only taxes and fees, extra Speed slower above 40 GB on unlimited. See mintmobile.com for details.
- [00:32]
Ryan Reynolds
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music and fast free delivery, prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.comprime to learn more Foreign.
- [01:04]
Emily Brifitt
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine 1453 saw the Christian held city of Constantinople fall to the Ottoman Turks, bringing more than a millennium of Byzantine rule to a dramatic close and heralding the rise of the Ottoman Empire. But what caused this seismic moment and how exactly did the attack on the city play out? Well, together with Emily Brifitt in today's episode, Professor Jonathan Harris journeys back to the 15th century to unravel how the Byzantine capital was seized and explore the ramifications of this event which go right up to the modern day.
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Professor Jonathan Harris
Today we are going to be tracing the story of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but I want to go back before that moment in time. If we were to visit the city of Constantinople in the years leading up to that pivotal year, what would the city have been like?
- [02:13]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, if you'd visited it in the years before 1453, the few decades beforehand, you might have been a bit disappointed because its great days were past. Many of its fine buildings are actually in ruins. We have travelers accounts which say, you know, there was this wonderful monastery which would have been beautiful, but unfortunately it's a ruin, etc. Some of the buildings though would have been impressive. The great Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom was still there, Hagia Sophia, and you could go in and you could see the beautiful mosaics decorating the dome. The glory days of Constantinople had really been between about 324 when it was founded by the Roman emperor Constantine, and up to about 1204 when it had really been the capital of a great Empire. And if you'd been there, then, yes, there was hundreds of churches and monasteries, great palaces, opulence and wealth everywhere, booming trade. So that really would have been the time to go. Early 15th century, alas, yes. Not so impressive.
- [03:13]
Professor Jonathan Harris
What were the major factors that led to this decline?
- [03:16]
Ryan Reynolds
Everything was fine probably till about the 11th century, when the Byzantine Empire, or Byzantium, of which Constantinople was the capital, starts to lose ground in the east, extended as far as what we would now call Armenia, across Asia Minor, which is now Turkey. But slowly, various groups of Turkish invaders come in Seljuk, Sudanesh Mendids, and slowly but surely take over most of Asia Minor and reach the Aegean Sea. So this is the period when Turkey becomes Turkey, in fact, and so that large chunk of territory is lost. And by that time we're talking the mid 14th century. It's clear the Byzantine Empire is finished. So various states are beginning to jockey into position to take it over. A lot of people thought that the Serbs would take it over. Serbia in this period is very powerful in the Balkans. The trouble was that nobody had noticed that there was a small Turkish emirate just on the other side of the Bosphorus Strait from Constantinople. And these were known as the Osmanli Turks or the Ottoman Turks. And they had a stroke of luck, because in 1354 there was an earthquake which levelled the defences of the town of Gallipoli on the European side of the Dardanelles. So the Ottoman Turks get into boats and over they go and they occupy Gallipoli and from there they fan out and occupy a large part of Thrace in. In the Balkans and cut off Constantinople by land. So from that moment, the Byzantine Empire, Byzantium is finished. All it is is really its capital city of Constantinople, which is marooned in a kind of sea of the Ottoman Empire, which has now come into being.
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Professor Jonathan Harris
How did the Ottomans then end up on the path towards Constantinople itself, talking about this pivotal year?
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Ryan Reynolds
Well, to start with, they left the place alone, really, because the fact is that you don't just walk into Byzantine const. Constantinople. The place is formidably defended for a start. It's got nature on its side. If you want to try and mount a naval assault on Constantinople's coast, because it's a kind of triangle sticking out into the sea. You've got the Bosphorus at the apex of the triangle. On one side you've got the Sea of Marmara and to the north you've got the Golden Horn, which is the city's harbour. So there's only a narrow approach by land, but it's very difficult to actually make an assault by sea because of these very strong currents in the Bosphorus Strait. Now, you could try and get your fleet into the Golden Horn where there is no current, but that's sealed off with a chain. There's two towers with a chain strung between them, so you can't get in that way. There's really only the landward route and that's sealed off by a gigantic wall, so called land walls or Theodosian walls, which are a kind of three tier defence. There's a moat, there's an outer wall and then there's an inner wall. And it was impregnable, effectively. No one had ever breached those fortifications. So the Ottomans don't have a fleet, so the naval option is out for them anyway and there's no way they can break through those walls, so they just leave it alone to start with. Only in 1394 do they start thinking, well, this is ridiculous. We've got this little island sticking in the middle of our domains. Wouldn't it be nice as well to have Constantinople as our capital? They'd moved their capital to Adrianople, what is now Edirne, which is just in land from Constantinople in Thrace. But they would have liked to swap it for Constantinople. But unfortunately, the 1394 siege doesn't succeed. It goes on for eight years and they just can't break through and they can't starve the place into surrender because they don't control the sea and supplies come in by sea. So they have to break it off in 1402 and go off and fight somebody else.
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Professor Jonathan Harris
How did the rise then of the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Mehmed II then threaten Constantinople?
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Ryan Reynolds
Well, exactly. Mehmed II becomes Sultan in 1451. He's very young, he's 19 years old, and at some point he makes this decision to attack. There's various reasons given why he does this. Some people just think he's just so ambitious. It's the sort of thing he would do. His father, Murad II, had tried in 1422 and failed like everybody else. But young Mehmet, he's young, he's enthusiastic, he's ambitious and you could say that's the answer. Some sources suggest that the Byzantines annoyed him by keeping in Constantinople a claimant to the Ottoman throne and asking the Ottoman government to pay for his board and lodging. Who knows? But the fact is that by the summer of 1451, he has taken the decision that he's going to put paid to Constantinople and capture the city.
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Professor Jonathan Harris
And what does his preparations look like?
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Ryan Reynolds
Well Mehmet I think doesn't get enough credit for these military preparations. He isn't young and foolish. He doesn't just go rushing in. He thinks, well look, my father tried and didn't succeed. They tried in 1394-1402 and didn't succeed. What were they doing wrong? And you can see that he's isolated about three things that they didn't do. Number one, they didn't control the Bosphorus because one of the weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire is it's on two sides of the Bosphorus Strait which means that the Sultan has to come and go over the strait and armies have to be ferried across and it's very easy for anyone with ships to interfere with that. Number two, what did the other thing they do wrong? Well certainly in 1394-1402 food and suppl spies are getting into the city even though it's blockaded by land. So a big enough fleet wasn't brought up to blockade the city. So we need to do something about that. And then number three, it's those walls, those land walls. Nobody could get through those. Now Murad, who was Mehmet's father had with him in his army some cannon in 1422 and he used them. Cannon weren't new in the 15th century. They were used by the English at the siege of Calais back in the mid fort 14th century. So they're not new. But the ones that Murad has, I mean he positions them very nicely. They find a tower which looks a bit weak, they fire at that. In 1422 they hit it 70 times and it doesn't fall down. The walls withstood the cannon. They simply were not big enough to have an effect on masonry of that kind of size. So these are the three things that Mehmet, I think, and I'm judging this from his subsequent behaviour, has identified as the three things he needs to deal with.
- [10:12]
Professor Jonathan Harris
How then did Mehmed address these three problems?
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Ryan Reynolds
Well, first of all the Bosphorus. How are we going to make sure we control the Bosphorus? Well, an ancestor of his sultan Bayezid I had built a castle on the Asian side of the Bosphorus Strait. It's known as the Anatolian Fortress or Anatolu Hisar. So he thinks right, what I'll do is I'll build another one opposite it, much bigger. So he does in record time. He brings in vast numbers of masons. And they put it up during the summer of 1452 in record time. And it's established there it is. It's ready by about August. But this one differed from Byers's fortress in the east because it was built for cannon. And cannon are put up on the battlements. And it's announced that any ship going up or down the Bosphorus should stop off and pay a fee before it then carries on on its journey. Now, not everyone believed that the Ottomans really were serious about this. So a Venetian ship is on its way to Constantinople in the autumn of 1452. It's coming down from the Black Sea. It's been in the Crimea, stocking up with furs and amber and wax and that kind of thing. And the captain decides, I'm going to ignore that. I'll just keep sailing on. And there's a big bang and they fire their cannon. The cannonball, it comes down and goes through the deck, through the cargo hold, down into the water line, and the ship sinks within a few minutes. Down it goes. So Mehmet has now sealed off the Bosphorus. What are we going to do about the fact that Constantinople needs to be blockaded by sea as well as land? Simple. I'll gather a fleet, a fleet of 300 ships which he builds at Gallipoli again in record time. How he's able to get all the people together necessary to create this large fleet simultaneously to creating the. The castle, goodness only knows. But he does. So that's his answer to question number two. Now, question number three, that's difficult because we still don't have any canon big enough to have an impact on masonry, or the kind of masonry that constitutes the land walls. But then Mehmet has a stroke of luck, because who should come knocking on the door but a Hungarian engineer who said, I've just been to Constantinople and offered my new gun to the emperor there, but unfortunately he can't pay me. He's a bit hard up. So if you can pay me the fee, I will build this gun for you. And he makes it clear that this is an enormous cannon. Mehmed has now ticked all three boxes.
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Professor Jonathan Harris
He's got himself prepared. The siege is imminent. What are the odds?
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Ryan Reynolds
Well, again, a lot of people at the Ottoman court are saying, oh, my goodness, don't do this. Nobody has ever broken through the land walls. His own vizier, his chief minister, a man called Halil Pasha, says to him, look, not a good idea, don't do it. And so you know, a lot of people might have been discouraged by that, but Mehmet is absolutely determined to do it. And he has his allies. There's both hawks and doves at the Ottoman court, and the hawks back him. So he goes ahead and he starts to gather the army. He gathers an army of about 80,000. Now, whether of the 80,000, how many of those actual combatants, who knows? And again, it's always difficult with these figures. These are not statistical figures, they're kind of report of what people thought. But it is a large army by medieval standards, there's no doubt about it. This is a period when 10,000 is a very respectable army. And he moves that army down to the land walls. Basically, they dig in, in a long trench, right, the whole stretch of the land walls. Meanwhile, the fleet moves up from Gallipoli, positions itself in the Sea of Marmu and the Bosphorus to seal off any attempt to relieve the city by sea. And then at a given signal, the bombardment begins. And he's chosen a section of the wall which he knows to be slightly more vulnerable because there's high ground from which the cannon can fire down on it. So we're now in early April of.
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Professor Jonathan Harris
1453 with this ginormous threat outside their walls. What's actually going on within Constantinople at this time?
- [14:23]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, they've known for some time that he's coming, so obviously they've repaired the walls and made all the preparations they can. They also send out envoys to other Christian states. So they send them to the Pope, they send them to Hungary, they send them to Italy saying, look, we know he's coming, send us help. And everyone is very sympathetic. There is one slight problem, is that in Western Europe there's a schism between the Catholic and the Orthodox Church of Byzantium, which they hoped would be resolved. But nevertheless, they do want to help the Byzant Byzantines as fellow Christians against the Muslim Ottoman Turks. It seems like a good cause, but really that to some extent, the main allies the Byzantines have are two city states in Italy, Venice and Genoa. Because as well as the motive of defending Christendom, the Genoese and the Venetians both have trading interests, commercial interests in Constantinople. The Genoese have a little base at Galata on the other side of the Golden Horn, also known as Pera. And the Venetians also have a little enclave in the city, so they've got a vested interest. So the Venetians in Constantinople, when they hear that the Ottomans are coming, they say, okay, we're going to fight on your side, and they actually send a contingent to the walls. The Genoese in Pera, a bit more iffy. They sort of sit on the fence rather, because they're not sure who's going to come out best here. But there is a Genoese mercenary turns up called Giovanni Giustiniani, and he arrives in the city with a contingent of troops. And he's actually a very handy man to have around because he'd been involved in wars in Italy and he knew how to deal with the effect of cannon on city walls. So the city is not unprepared. When Mehmet arrives, they do actually have the walls garrison. They've got a very experienced commander in the person of Giustiniani, and they do have some help from the Venetians as well.
- [16:21]
Professor Jonathan Harris
And so, as you've said, the bombardment begins. What's the next stage after that?
- [16:27]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, the bombardment begins. It soon becomes very clear that these cannon are a serious menace, because unlike in 1422, where 70 shots did not bring down a tower, within days towers have come crashing down. So it's a nasty moment. But Giustiniani, he's been in this situation before, he says, hang on, don't worry, what we'll do is we'll plug the gap with piles of earth and branches and anything else we can find. You know, let's stick the kitchen sink in while we're at it, you know. So they do that and everyone's a bit dubious, but he's right, because piles of earth are actually more effective against cannon than great big walls, because all that happens is the cannon stones that come crashing into the earth just simply sink into it. They do no damage whatsoever. So they'll damage the walls. So Mehmet doesn't get the quick victory that he might have been hoping for. The weeks start to go by, April goes on, we start getting into May. And also his fleet, well, he's got a fleet of 300 ships. Surely nothing can get into the city. But then four Genoese ships turn up. The 300 come out to intercept them. The four Genoese ships actually managed to fight their way through the 300 Turkish ships, get into the Golden Horn and bring the supplies. The fact is, the Ottomans just aren't very good at sea. The Genoese have been doing it for generations. The Turks, you know, they're relatively new to the sea. They come from the steppes of Central Asia. It's not their thing. So that's a terrible embarrassment for Mehmet. And then, of course, as the weather gets warmer, there's every medieval commander's nightmare. And the nightmare is it's not a human nightmare, it's a microbe. It's dysentery because you've got 80,000 people all camped in sanitary conditions, frankly, which would leave a great deal to be desired. Once the warm weather starts, dysentery could go through your camp and decimate your army. There's also rumours start to circulate that the Hungarians, Catholic Christians, very powerful state in the late Middle Ages, have crossed the Danube and are on their way to relieve the city. So at this point, you know, early in May, it's, look, you know, late April, early May, it's looking bad for Mehmed.
- [18:50]
Professor Jonathan Harris
So at this point morale must have been quite low.
- [18:53]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, there are voices at the Ottoman camp that are saying, okay, we've given it a try, Sultan, I think we should withdraw now and cut our losses. But Mehmed says, no, I'm not having this, I'm going to be bold. So those four ships got through ours and got into the Golden Horn. We need to be in the Golden Horn too. But you can't get insult. And there's a chain across the entrance to it. And he says, no worries at all, we'll circumvent the chain. Because Mement has this huge advantage is he has this limitless manpower. So he literally orders all the guys over to the Upper Bosphorus where these ships are then beached and then about 50 of them are carried over land and then relaunched onto the Golden Horn. And this causes consternation in Constantinople when they see it suddenly, these ships being launched into the Golden Horn, which had been a safe haven. Now once he's got those ships in there, what do they do? They do absolutely nothing. They just sit there for the rest of the siege. But it doesn't matter because Mehmet has achieved what he wants because now the defenders, who are already outnumbered by at least 10 to 1, have to garrison the walls along the Golden Horn. They hadn't garrisoned those before because there was no threat along those walls because the Ottomans were kept out by the chain. Now they're in the Golden Horn so that the defence is stretched even more. And that is a great coup. And from that moment Morin starts to lift and people think, oh, actually we're in with a chance here. After all, there's no sign of the Hungarians and no sign of any relief whatsoever. Yes, and morale in the city starts to sag.
- [20:41]
Professor Jonathan Harris
Could the defenders do anything about those ships that were lurking in the Golden Horn?
- [20:46]
Ryan Reynolds
They Certainly could they immediately discuss it. And Giovanni just in the Arnie says, look, why don't we send over fire ships? So what we'll do, we'll wait for cover of darkness, we'll creep over and we will set fire to these old ships, push them into the middle of the Ottoman fleet and set fire to the lot. Okay, so the plan is made, and then when night falls over, they go muffled oars, very, very slowly. Then something goes wrong. And there's various accounts of what indeed has gone wrong. Some people say that someone had tipped the Turks off and they had mounted cannon on the northern shore of the Golden Horn, and they then open up and sink one of the Christian ships, and the rest run. Other accounts say, well, it was actually the fault of a Venetian. One of the Venetian commanders, a man called Giacomo Coco, decides that he's going to gain all the glory and rush ahead of everybody else and start the battle early. And of course, that gives it away and immediately. And that's why the Ottomans then open fire. Whatever happens, whatever the fault of it, whoever's fault it was, it was a catastrophe. And the Ottoman fleet next morning is still there, untouched, while there's a Phoenician vessel at the bottom of the Golden Horn with, I think, Giacomo Coco in it because it was his ship that got sunk.
- [22:04]
Professor Jonathan Harris
Bit of a disastrous attempt there. Now, what's going on back at the land walls?
- [22:09]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, the bombardment is continuing. A gap has been opened up now, big enough. It's been plugged with these piles of earth. But Mehmech can see that we've now got a big enough gap for an army to go through. It's well defended, and we'll have to fight our way through, but we can do it. So we're now on the 28th of May, he decides to attack by night. So it's on the evening, as twilight is setting in, the Ottoman army starts to move, and across it goes towards the gap. But Mehmed again doesn't send in his entire army initially. What he sends in are his Christian allies. The Ottomans, as part of their kind of way of ruling the Balkans, allowed Christian rulers to remain in place, providing they paid an annual tribute and contributed troops to the Ottoman army. And so these are sent in first. As they're sent in. Mehmed's well aware that as Christians, they might be tempted not to fight as hard as the Muslim troops might. So behind them, there's a line of janissaries, the crack troops, and they have their scimitars drawn. And anyone who looks as Though they might be quietly retiring from the battle, is likely to be skewered by the janissaries. So off they head towards the walls. And the idea of this wave of attack, they're not going to break through. Mehmet knows perfectly well these guys aren't going to break through. But they are to keep the defenders busy for the time being and that's what they do. There's lots of fighting and of course the first wave is pushed back and cheers from the Christian camp, we've won. But of course that's only the beginning. Then come the people known as the Bashi Bozouk and they are the so called head breakers. They are Turks from Asia Minor. They're not the crack troops, but they're rather more engaged perhaps than the first wave was. And they then go in and then there's severe fighting on the walls. But again, eventually they're thrown back and there's no breakthrough. So cheers from the Christian camp. And at this point, according to one of the eyewitnesses, the Emperor Constantine xi who's up on the walls, says, my friends, we've won. We can see here that God is on our side. Our city has been saved. And at this point it really does look quite good for the defenders because now the sun is starting to come up. We're on the early hours of the 29th of May, and of course the sun comes up in the east, so it's warming the backs of the defenders, whereas shiny into the eyes of the attackers. It looks good for the defenders at.
- [24:38]
Professor Jonathan Harris
That point, but obviously as we know from the benefit of hindsight, it doesn't go quite so well for the defenders. What's the next form of assault? And is there any hope of their truce or negotiation as well?
- [24:52]
Ryan Reynolds
Mehmed had already offered terms to the city. They were the standard ones. Open your gates and that's fine, we'll spare your lives and your property, but of course you'll have to give the city to us. And he'd been turned down, so now effectively he has to take it by assault. He's given an extraordinary opportunity. He gets lucky again because somebody on the Turkish camp fired, I think, what was called a culverin, which is a small cannon, almost a handheld one, I think, and that shoots over the walls and it actually hits Giovanni Giustiniani. Now, it doesn't kill him, it injures him. The accounts differ on how badly injured he was, but it would seem he, he can still walk, he can still talk and he says, oh dear, I seem to be injured. I'll tell you what, I'll just go to the dressing station and get it seen too, and then I'll be back. So off he goes. Unfortunately, he didn't really communicate this to the troops, so people start looking around and wondering, well, where is he? Because he really was the main man, he was the linchpin of the defence. Where is he? And morale starts to waver. And over on the other side, it's light now, so Mehmet can see, because the two sides aren't that far apart. You could see with the naked eye that something's wrong in the defence and that some people are starting to slip away. And Mehmet sees that and he says, now's my chance. This time we're not going to send in the Bashi bazouks, we're going to send in the janissaries, send in the elite troops, and in they go. And the fighting starts. But it doesn't go on for that long because the defenders think Giovanni Giustiniani is dead and it's all over and the janissaries break through. There is another story that somebody had left open a little gate, a sally port in the walls that might have contributed to it as well. Whatever happens, the janissaries do manage to get up on one of the towers, they throw down the Byzantine FL and the Venetian flag and they put up the Ottoman flag and everyone can see that a great cheer goes up. There's a kind of legend, actually, in Turkey that the man who put up the Ottoman flag was called Ulubatla Hassan, and he's a kind of folk hero in Turkey today. I don't think he ever existed, to be honest with you, but it's like Robin Hood, really, but it's a good story. So from that moment, we're at, you know, about five, six o'clock in the morning, the Ottomans break through and pour into the city.
- [27:16]
Professor Jonathan Harris
So they've overrun the city. What's the outcome for the citizens within?
- [27:21]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, the rules of war in the Middle Ages are quite clear. They apply to Christians, Muslims, everybody else. If you offer surrender to a city and agrees and opens its gate, you leave the citizens unharmed, you don't touch their property. If, however, they resist and you take it by force, then you can do anything you like and you can do anything you like for three days. So that's what the Ottomans did. Now, I hasten to say, they were no worse than anybody else, but they're no better. So, yes, what followed is mass plunder and rape. The defence has Evaporated. To start with, when the Ottomans come in, they're quite ginger because they think, oh, there must be a second line of defence. There must be the defenders waiting in the houses to fire at us. Nothing. Because the trouble was, what the Ottomans had never realised is just how few people were opposing. In fact, later on, you know, a chronicler interviews some Ottoman troops and they said, well, you know, we shouldn't have killed so many people. If we'd known, we would have taken them captive instead, then we could have sold them slaves. So we missed out on that. There's literally nothing to stop them. The only thing there is, is there is a Venetian fleet in the Golden Horn. So most of the Venetians rush down and get into boats and go across to their fleet and they then head towards the mouth of the Golden Horn. When they get there, of course, they see the chain that's still there. What are we going to do about the chain? So what they do is they actually send men down with axes and they just hack their way through it. Which doesn't make you wonder why the Ottomans didn't do that. But that's what they did. Through the Golden Horn. They go and they escape, because the Ottoman fleet, the sailors, they want to join in the plunder. So they're beaching their ships on the foreshore of the Golden Horn and coming out to join the plunder. They leave the Venetians to escape. So the Venetians do get away, along with a few paying Byzantine passengers, but most of the people in the city, and the contemporary reckons that at about 50,000 people, there's nothing for them except to be rounded up and enslaved. That's what's going to happen to you, because remember that medieval armies often aren't paid, so you don't have a salary, so this is payday. So you're going to break into houses, grab the gold and silver, anything like that, but you're also going to grab people. That is what happened for three long, absolutely awful days. It's almost inconceivable, I think, unless you've been through something like that, how awful it was.
- [29:43]
Professor Jonathan Harris
And in this onslaught, do we know what happened to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine?
- [29:48]
Ryan Reynolds
He's certainly on the walls to the last moment, fighting. He then vanishes. He's almost certainly killed. Some people claimed to have seen him die. Certainly a head is brought to Mehmet and it's put on a spike. The body apparently was recognized by the fact that it was wearing the red or purple, purple boots that only the emperor wore. But you Know, on the Byzantine side, the Greek side, there's a whole raft of legends as well, just like good old Ulubhatla Hassan on the Turkish side. And one of them is that the Emperor Constantine didn't actually die. He did. What a bit like King Arthur, you know. King Arthur is, you know, still alive, you know, still sleeping on the Isle of Avalon, as we all know. Well, Constantine sort of went to sleep somewhere in a cave, and he's still asleep there now. And one day he will come back and reclaim his city, but not yet. So, like King Arthur, he's taken quite a long time over it.
- [30:40]
Professor Jonathan Harris
So after these three days of attack and plunder, Mehmed's got the city. What's next for him?
- [30:47]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, he waits for a bit before he enters because he doesn't want to interfere with the plundering. And that's the last thing he should do, because that, you know, will cost him his throne. You never interfere with your troops plundering because he's promised them this the day before. He said, right, guys, when we take the city, you'll be rich. So he comes in, it's about midday on the 29th of May, and he comes. Or perhaps early afternoon, something like that. In he comes. He goes first to the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. He is careful before he goes in to kneel down, sprinkle earth on his turban as a sign of humility, because you don't want to show hubris, because it's God is the victor, not you. God has given you this victory, and the first thing you need to do is to repay God for his favour. So he goes into the cathedral and he has Muezzin go up into the pulpit and announce that it is now a mosque and make the call to prayer. And from that moment, the great cathedral has become a mosque. And Mehmet's very pleased with that. But then when that ceremony is over, he hears a kind of chipping sound. And he turns around and he sees there's a soldier who's trying to pry up part of the marble pavement, because that was quite valuable, you know, it's very nice marble. He thought, I can take that, I can sell. And he's furious. He draws his sword and he thwacks a guy over the head with the flat of the sword and says, yeah, okay, that's fine. The gold and the silver and the people in the city are yours, but the buildings are mine. That gives the clue, really, to Mehmed's intentions. Now he wants to make Constantinople A worthy imperial capital for the Ottomans.
- [32:24]
Professor Jonathan Harris
What are then the immediate consequences in the fallout of this fall of the city for both the Byzantine Empire and the Ottomans?
- [32:33]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, for the Byzantine Empire, everyone says, well, this is the moment when it ends, you could say, well, it had actually ended back in 1354, 100 years beforehand, when, you know, when the Ottomans had basically crossed the Dardanelles and taken its inland territories away. So it finishes off the ghosts of the empire, shall we say, with the death of Constantine xi. There's no more Byzantine emperors after that. There are some people who claim to be the rightful successor, but that's never made good. And it's the beginning of what in Greece today. Greece, I suppose, is the state which is the closest thing to a successor to the Byzantine Empire in Greek history. What begins now is what they call the Turkocratia, which is a period of Turkish rule, which comes to an end, of course, with the creation of the Kingdom of Greece in the early 19th century. As far as the Ottomans are concerned, this is a seminal moment because the Ottomans have always been a little bit kind of on the fringes of the Islamic world. They don't speak Persian or Arabic, they come from some remote place on the border of China and let's face it, you only have to go back a few generations and what you've got is basically sheep stealers. So, you know, in the courts of Cairo and Damascus and Baghdad, they rather look down on. Now, of course, they've pulled off this amazing coup and it's a very special coup because there's even a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad in which he said what a great thing it will be when an army captures Constantinople for Islam. And of course, Mepet had done it, so suddenly he's promoted to be really one of the foremost Muslim rulers. And he's also got a city which has a history of being an imperial capital all those years, a thousand years of being the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which considered itself to be a continuation of the Roman Empire. So Mehmed is to some extent seeing himself now as the heir of the Caesars. He's not just the Sultan of the Turks, the Ottoman Turks, he's not just a tribal leader, he's a universal leader and he is encouraging this kind of perception. So it is a turn in the road from the Ottomans from being a tribe to being an empire.
- [34:58]
Professor Jonathan Harris
Did the shockwaves of this event ripple further out than just Constantinople itself?
- [35:05]
Ryan Reynolds
Oh, they certainly did, because those Venetian ships that get out of the Golden Horn, you know, that fateful morning. They then sail down to Crete and then eventually, you know, and with them the news kind of ripples out like the pebble in the puddle. And there's a description of a scene when a ship gets to Venice. It ties up at the Bacino of San Marco and people gather around to hear the news, because when a ship arrives, everyone wants to know what news it's bringing from the East. Suddenly people start wailing and crying because they've got relatives in Constantinople and they don't know what's happened to them. Somebody rushes to the palace of the Doge to bring the news to the Doge. There's a crisis meeting. The fact was the Venetians had sent a fleet to relieve the city. But of course, as it's going up the Aegean, it meets these Venetians fleeing from Constantinople and they give it the news that the city has fallen. So they all just go home. So they thought they'd got it taped because they remember, well, last time in 1394, when the Ottomans attacked, we had eight years to react. Well, unfortunately, it had fallen in six weeks. They'd never expected it to happen so quickly. And then from Venice it gets to Rome. The Pope is outraged. The Pope preaches a crusade to retake the city. It goes out into northern Europe. The news reaches England and it's read out in churches in Dublin. There's a special procession to ask for God's mercy in the light of this apparent judgment against the Christians. So there's absolute despair when the news reaches Western Europe.
- [36:37]
Professor Jonathan Harris
From what I understand, there's many prophecies swirling round at this time about the foreseeable demise of the Byzantine capital. Was it doomed to fall?
- [36:48]
Ryan Reynolds
From the starts, the Byzantines had always had a kind of slightly pessimistic outlook. So even in their heyday, it was always assumed that sooner or later Constantinople would fall. But when it did fall, that would be the end of the world. They couldn't really conceive the idea of the city falling and life going on, but of course, life has gone on ever since, really. And I think as well, there is a sense of shock. The Byzantines, the Western Christians, even a lot of the Ottomans could not believe that anyone could really pull this off. It just seemed so sort of unlikely because the city had the reputation as the God guarded city. It was believed the Virgin Mary herself was its protector. And in fact, shortly before the last Ottoman attack, they'd taken the famous icon of the Virgin, the so called Hodgitria icon, which is a great big thing, out of the church where it was kept, and they paraded it along the walls to implore her help. But then something awful happened. A gust of wind caught it and it fell on its face and it was very heavy and it was quite difficult to get it to stand up again. And this was seen as a very bad omen. Didn't exactly help moral.
- [37:59]
Professor Jonathan Harris
Coming on to talk a little bit about legacy today, how we look back and think about this moment. I think we often consider the fall of Constantinople as this big watershed moment in history. What's your take on that perception?
- [38:17]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, I think it's a big watershed in Ottoman history and certainly it does bring an end to the Byzantine period. So in that respect, I think it is important given the fact that the Byzantine Empire was effectively dead. Anyway, I think sometimes it's a bit overstated. One of the things you often hear people say is that the fall of Constantinople somehow created the Italian Renaissance, meaning that the inheritance of classical Greek literature, which was preserved in Constantinople, somehow at this point migrates to Italy. But this started happening long before the fall of Constantinople. They also say as well that the fall of Constantinople to some extent stimulated the voyages of discovery of the late 15th century, like Vasco da Gama and Columbus, because people are trying to find a new trade route to the east so they don't have to go through Constantinople now that it's under Ottoman rule. People may be looking for new routes, but I'm not sure it was quite as easy as that because plenty of people were actually perfectly happy to keep coming to Constantinople. In fact, the Venetians, literally six months after the fall of Constantinople, they make a commercial treaty with the Ottoman sultan, which gives them very favourable terms in the Constantinople trade. They can turn up, they pay a modest duty, it's true. They didn't have to pay a duty on cargoes to the Byzantine emperor because he wasn't strong enough to enforce it. They have to pay it to the Ottoman sultan, but the sultan doesn't charge an exorbitant amount, so that trade keeps on quite happily as well. Likewise, the Genoese have a treaty with Mehmet and continue trading. I think perhaps a lot of people like the Portuguese didn't really want to pay the Venetians for Eastern goods and they'd much rather buy them themselves at source and then bring them round. So maybe that's a more convincing explanation.
- [40:08]
Professor Jonathan Harris
In what ways does the legacy of this conquest, of this moment in time still resonate today?
- [40:15]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, it certainly resonates in Greece and Turkey in a big way. Certainly once the kingdom of Greece is established in the 19th century, to start with, is actually quite small. But gradually they start to acquire more territory. And by the later 19th century, they've come up with what they call the great idea whereby all the territories that were once the Byzantine Empire would be reincorporated into the Kingdom of Greece. And this, of course, included Constantinople. And so when Greece goes into the First World War on the side of the Allies and against the Ottoman Empire, naturally they're eyeing the place up. When the war ends, the Greeks are kind of encouraged by the Allies, including Lloyd George of Great Britain, to occupy parts of Asia Minor. And this, obviously is the preliminary to taking Constantinople. Well, then it all goes horribly wrong because the Turkish nationalists, led by Kemal Ataturk, then launch a war against the Greeks in which they succeed. They drive them back into the sea, and they then march on Constantinople. The Allied occupying force quickly withdraws. So Constantinople is then re anchored very firmly inside the new Turkish republic, although it's no longer the capital. And you can still see the resonances of the fall of Constantinople and the change from a Christian city to a Muslim city in what happens with Hagia Sophia, the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom. It remains a mosque up until 1936, when Kemal Ataturk, who wants to create a secular republic, decrees, okay, we'll decommission it as a mosque and we'll turn it into a museum. Well, now it's come 2020, the new president, current president, Mr. Erdogan, has decided it will be a mosque again, and it has been reconsecrated as a mosque. So this is a very kind of touchy issue, though. A lot of people felt that this was really a. A terrible thing to do, a backward step because it is a part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You could debate this until you're blue in the face, really. At the end of the day, turning it into a mosque does actually reconnect with its Muslim past, but it does reawaken the passions of an event which obviously happened an awfully long time ago.
- [42:29]
Emily Brifitt
That was Jonathan Harris, professor of the History of Byzantium at Royal Holloway University of London, and the author of the Lost World of Byzantium and Byzantium and the Crusades. Jonathan was also our Byzantine expert for our podcast series on the First Crusade. So if you enjoyed this episode, then be sure to check that out by searching for the First Crusade in the History Extra podcast feed. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jackson Bateman.