End of an Era

1402 – c.1500 A.D.

The Gathering Storm

Tamerlane’s Legacy

A Mind for the Ages

Church Unity

From Defeat, Many Victories

Preparations

The Siege

The Legacy

As the Ottoman Empire was torn asunder in civil war by the Sultan’s sons, Byzantium received a reprieve. Before long however new challenges would arise and, despite the best efforts of its rulers, the noose of Ottoman power would continue to tighten around the Empire’s neck.

In the absence of Manuel, the Ottoman’s had been bested by the notorious Turco-Mongolian warlord Tamerlane.

This man slaughtered millions in his conquest of central, west, and south Asia.

For now at least the misfortune of some of his victims proved a source of relief to the Byzantines.

The Sultan, having been captured, died shortly thereafter, and his various sons began a fratricidal civil war to determine who would claim the Ottoman Empire.

In this convoluted conflict, Byzantium provided assistance to multiple siblings until one, Mehmet, proved victorious.

Confirming previous treaties with the Byzantines, considerable territories were restored to the Empire, including Thessalonica.

Moreover, a Byzantine Emperor had established a personal relationship with a peace loving and intellectual Sultan.

Now Manuel, near the end of his life, planned to make the Empire as ready as he could for his successor, a hiss son John was soon crowned (to rule as John VIII).

While the territories around Constantinople were less than secure, the Peloponnese was fortified with a wall along the entire Isthmus of Corinth, transforming it into what was effectively a Byzantine island.

While conflict and diplomacy continued apace, Manuel finally died the summer of 1425 A.D., and was mourned deeply by his people. He had dedicated his life to the Empire, and left it to his son as prepared as was humanly possible.

Emperor John VIII

By now the Empire, despite the best efforts of its rulers, had shrunk to the point where ‘Byzantium’ and ‘Constantinople’ occupied nearly the same space. Besides the Peloponnese and a few other scattered possessions, all that remained on the mainland was the Capital and the surrounding countryside.

Despite all this, in Mistra (capital of the Peloponnese) an intellectual and cultural revival was in full swing. It was as if the Empire, at the end of its temporal life, had blossomed in a cultural and spiritual sense.

It was here that one of the finest minds that Byzantine civilization would ever produce (ironically so near the end of its life) worked and wrote: Georgius Gemistus Plethon.

Plethon moved to Mistra to escape the stifling intellectual conditions in Constantinople (his study of Aristotle, Zoroastrianism, and Jewish Cabbalistic philosophy was frowned upon by the Orthodox Church).

He considered himself as something of a court philosopher to the Morea’s Despot, and wrote extensively on what steps he perceived were necessary to save the Empire.

These included adopting a new religion that contained elements of the old Greek pantheon as well as Zoroastrianism

Likewise, he proposed radically reforming the economic system in such a way that monks and other ‘unproductive’ people would help contribute.

Moreover, as an admirer of ancient Sparta (the ruins of which lie only a few kilometers from Mistra, allowing a modern tourist to visit both sites in a single day), he advocated a return to an army of citizens, as opposed to the mercenaries of often dubious quality the Empire usually employed by this point.

While he hoped these reforms would give the Empire the ability to resist the encroaching Ottomans, they were ultimately not adopted (and in all truth probably never could have been implemented).

While many of Plethon’s works were burned after his death by a friend of his (who worried about its blasphemous content), he found great fame in the west.

Cosimo de Medici was so impressed by Plethon that he founded the Florentine Academy in his honor.

As such, Plethon proved to be an enormous influence on subsequent Western thought by inspiring this Renaissance luminary, and by being largely responsible for the reintroduction of classical thought to Western Europe.

In the latter 15th century his body would be recovered from Mistra by an Italian Condottieri, and enshrined in the city of Rimini, the inscription paying tribute to ‘The Greatest Philosopher of all Time’.

Further attempts were made to unite the Churches, and after an arduous council on the subject, the conclusion saw the Western Catholic Church more or less triumphant, with a few concessions given over to the Eastern Orthodox Church.

While this was almost universally condemned by the Byzantines, it did lead the Pope to launch a final crusade to show his good faith and uphold his side of the bargain.

Pope Eugenius IV

This so called ‘Crusade of Varna’ set out in the summer of 1443 A.D., and for a short time seemed like it might have a real impact (the Ottoman Sultan being occupied simultaneously with Albania, the Morea, and in Anatolia).

However, the crusaders overstepped themselves, and were defeated after a heroic battle (outnumbered some 3-1).

Thus, the careful diplomacy and theological sacrifice of John VIII was for naught. In the fall of 1448 A.D. the emperor would die, and as the Turks continued their advance north pushing all possible European help further and further away, the final phase of a more than thousand year history was about to begin.

By this point only a few years remained to the Empire, an empire that could trace its founding in an unbroken line back to Augustus Caesar. While few could doubt the eventual fate of Byzantium, only two things were certain: no one could predict exactly when it would come, and the Empire wouldn’t die without a fight.

The brother of the late John VIII now ascended the throne as the last Emperor of Byzantium. Constantine XI, the former Despot of the Morea, took up the reigns of his Empire conscious of just how vulnerable it now was, and how far away any potential help lay.

Just a few years later in 1451 A.D. a new Sultan ascended the Ottoman throne, Mehmet II.

Young and full of energy, he began preparations for an eventual attack on Constantinople.

Crushing enemies that might distract him later, and building up fortifications on the Bosporus to prevent any ship from crossing through the straits without his consent, he drew the noose ever tighter around the city-empire of Constantinople.

While Western Europe was too exhausted by its own squabbles to offer any real assistance, a smattering of individuals and some minor aid did come through.

In January of 1453 A.D., Mehmet decided it was time to attack the city. Stripping his empire of all troops save the border guards and the larger cities police forces, Mehmet mustered a force of over 100,000 men and some of the largest cannons ever seen.

On April 5th he demanded Constantinople’s surrender, which was refused. On April 6th he commenced firing.

For much of April the Ottomans bombarded the city walls, smashing them to pieces.

Nevertheless, the Byzantines and those who had come to assist them (some 7,000 men in all) along with every able bodied citizen worked tirelessly to both defend the walls and to rebuild the shattered sections.

The massive Turkish fleet that blockaded the city prevented virtually all aid from reaching the besieged city, though a handful of brave ships managed to fight their way through.

A Venetian ship that had snuck out of the city returned to report that it could find no trace of a promised relief expedition form the west (the crew deciding to return and report to the Emperor, despite the fact they would almost certainly never leave the city alive).

After weeks of bombardment, Mehmet set May 29th as the day of the final assault.

As the final preparations were underway, the defender of the city joined in one final act of prayer, the differences between Byzantine and Westerner, Orthodox and Catholic forgotten.

When the final assault began, the defenders repelled the initial wave of irregular volunteer troops, and then a second by the Anatolian regiments of the Ottoman army.

Finally the Sultan committed his elite Janissary corps, soldiers recruited from Christian families in the Ottoman Empire and loyal only to the Sultan himself.

Finally, under the endless pressure of the assault, the defences of the city were breached.

Seeing that all was lost, Constantine XI threw off his royal emblems, and declaring that while the city was lost, he still lived, threw himself into the fray.

His body was never found, and speculation on the fate of the last Roman Emperor has continued to this day.

By the end of that day the city of Constantinople had fallen, and with it the Roman Empire, having survived the demise of its western counterpart by a millennia.

While Europe was suitably horrified by the fall of Constantinople, with plans and schemes to retake the Eastern Empire bandied about, in the end Western Europe had to look to its own defences as the Ottoman tide continued to advance.

But that advance would not continue forever. Byzantium had shielded Europe from invasion for a thousand years after the fall of Rome, through all the centuries of chaos and conflict.

When the Ottomans finally breached the last walls of the Empire, Europe had grown too organized, too powerful to be conquered. The Turks advance would bring them to the gates of Vienna, but that city would not fall, and they would go no farther.

Byzantium had not only given Europe time, but also returned to it the lost patrimony of antiquity. The great Greek and Latin works of the ancient world had never been lost to Byzantium, and these were passed on to the West before the end.

Indeed, many Byzantine refugees found sanctuary in Italy and beyond, adding their own knowledge to the effort of the great rebirth of ancient learning, which would eventually lead to the great discoveries and advances of the Enlightenment centuries later.

Even in its defeat Byzantium lent a final favour to the West, for the severing of trade with the east meant that a new route was needed to the lucrative lands of India and China, one outside Turkish dominion.

This would help to stimulate the existing exploration being carried out by Europeans, the Age of Discovery. The lands and wealth made available to them thanks to these expeditions would ensure that Europe not only survived the Ottoman onslaught, but in time would come to dominate the entire world.

In the final accounting, the Eastern Roman Empire that we have come to know as Byzantium lasted 1,123 years and 18 days, and was ruled over by 88 Emperors and Empresses.

Though a civilization very different from our own, they were not a monolith, but consisted of individuals motivated by the same hopes and fears as we ourselves. It is important to remember the context in which they lived, and not necessarily to impose the verdict of our times upon theirs.

All Empires die, just as all people do. The question is how one chooses to meet that fate. Truly the Byzantines must be admired for the heroism they along with their last, brave Emperor met the end with. No matter how the final siege of Constantinople ended, it would have been epic: their courage made it legend.