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Constantinople: Byzantine Empire
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The immediate result of the disturbance at Constantinople politically was the approval and signing by the Sultan of the scheme approved by the embassies for reforms in Turkey by the Sultan. This aroused great opposition among the Moslems in Constantinople and corresponding delight throughout the empire. It was not certain... what the general result would be. The Sultan claimed that it was done under compulsion and evidently cared very little about the reforms being carried out. At the same time came threats of the assassination of the Sultan on the part of the Albanian guards in the palace, and the general situation in the capital being serious, the embassies made a demand for additional guardships for their own protection and the protection of the foreign residents. Further than this there was no indication of positive action on the part of the European Powers, and the conviction grew rapidly that a breach had formed between Russia and England and that nothing practical would be done.
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The Fall of Constantinople was the conquest of that Greek city by the Ottoman Empire under the command of Sultan Mehmet II, on Tuesday, May 29, 1453. This marked not only the final destruction of the Eastern Roman ("Byzantine") Empire, and the death of Constantine XI, the last Roman Emperor, but ... the strategic conquest crucial for Ottoman hegemony over the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkans.
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In 1327, Constantinople fell after a long siege, effectively defeated by the hunger. Many Byzantines fled, parts to free Greek states or Trapezunt, others to Italy (mostly Florence, Genoa and Milan, avoiding Anjou Naples, the Papal States and Venice), again others even to Kiev. The knowledge they brought to Western Europe helped spawning the "Rinascita" (it wasn't called that at this time) that already started in the last century. Genoa lost access to the Black Sea, suffering economic decline in the following years.
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In Mehmet's view, he was the successor to the Roman Emperor, but he was nicknamed "the Conqueror", and Constantinople became the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque, although the Church of Constantinople remained intact, and Gennadius Scholarius was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople. The Peloponnesian fortress of Mystras held out until 1460, and the autonomous Byzantine state in Trebizond did not fall until 1461.
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Prior to the siege of Constantinople it is known that the Ottomans held the ability to cast medium-sized cannon, yet nothing near the range of some pieces they were able to put to field. Instrumental to this Ottoman advancement in arms production was a somewhat mysterious figure by the name of Orban, a Hungarian (though some suggest he was German)[33]. The master founder initially tried to sell his services to the Byzantines, who, placing great faith in the city walls, dismissed him.
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Kuwae's role in the capture of Constantinople in 1453 has yet to be definitively proved. But if Pang is correct, the pro-Byzantine Georgian writer who lamented poetically that on the day Constantinople was taken, "the sun was darkened," may have been accurate in a way he could never have imagined.
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