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Constantinople
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In the approximately 1,100 years of the existence of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople had been besieged many times but had been captured only once, during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The crusaders had most likely not intended to conquer Byzantium from the beginning, and an unstable Latin state was established in Constantinople for a short period of time. The Byzantine Empire fell apart into a number of Greek successor states, notably Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond. The Greek states fought as allies against the Latin establishments but ... as rivals against each other over the Byzantine throne. The Nicaean Greeks were finally the first to re-conquer Constantinople from the Latins in 1261. In the following two centuries, the much-weakened Byzantine Empire was facing threats from the Latins, the Serbians, the Bulgarians and most importantly, the Ottoman Turks.
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The Fall of Constantinople in May 1453 after a seven-week siege is one of the seminal events of early modern history. Like 9/11, it sent shock waves throughout the West, reviving feelings of Islamophobia that had lain dormant since the Crusades. As Roger Crowley relates in this engagingly fresh and vivid account of the siege and its bloody denouement, the news radiated outwards “as fast as a ship could sail, a horse could ride, a song could be sung”, reaching the perimeters of Christendom where it left its indelible mark. In the cathedrals and chancelleries of Europe, Mehmet the Conqueror, the brilliant young Ottoman Sultan and master-strategist who overcame defences that had stood fast for seven centuries, was seen as the Antichrist or Beast of the Apocalypse. Even in distant Iceland the Lutheran prayer book would beg God’s salvation from “the terror of the Turk”, who became the emblem of cruelty. The trope lasted well into Victorian times, resurfacing in the “unspeakable Turk” denounced by Gladstone.
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Constantinople didn't always have such a long name. It was, for many many centuries, known as "Byzantium" and was a small Greek fishing village. Then the Romans came along and built a garrison there and, lo, it was a Roman fishing village where people spoke Greek. Nobody really cared about it much until the fourth century when Constantine decided that Rome was too old, boring and Goddam pagan to be capital of his new improved Roman Empire and decided to hold a contest with major cities of the empire putting their names forward. Byzantium, by then a bustling town, put itself forward as a sort of joke candidate and was surprised to find itself in the final. The local governor, one Dimitris Alexis... was not surprised:
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You will receive a new light on the complicated subject of porters if during your sojourn in Constantinople you have occasion to move. No experience in other countries will be of the slightest service to you here. Do not imagine that you can get any one to do it for you, packing your furniture into padded vans and setting it up in your new house ready for use. Still less imagine that you can do it yourself, even though you have carts and porters of your own.
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Behind the ancient walls of Constantinople the new Emperor followed his late brother's policies: he could not do much else. Thus, amid hostile reactions by most of the city's population, he attempted to revive the Union by proclaiming it in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia on December 12, 1452. No practical results came out of the enforced proclamation. Despite Constantine's final appeals to the Pope and to his Western allies, no crusade and no substantial help ever materialized. Promises and expressions of sympathy were all that was sent to him, and in any case he did not live long enough to receive them. As a matter of fact, in the middle of May of 1453 the Venetian Senate was still deliberating about sending a fleet to Constantinople.
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P.397: While nationalists left Constantinople to join the army, waves of refugees and orphans, Turkish, Kurdish and Armenian, poured into the city. There were so many that they took over military schools, palaces and mosques. A special American-funded charity called Near East Relief, fed over 160,000 people a day in Constantinople. Some horrors... were spared the city. In 1919 many died in Cairo and Alexandria during anti-British risings; the Greek occupation of Izmir began with a massacre of Turks; French forces bombarded Damascus in 1920. Constantinople, however, was miraculously free of bloodshed, except in March 1920.
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Constantinople