The Great Pretender

Exiled pretenders were a reality of just about every throne in the middle ages. Prior to the fall there had been a 'Prince Osman' living in Constantinople (and the treat by Constantine XI of releasing him from house arrest was one pretext Mehmed used to justify his attack). One of the little known pretenders of history is the case of 'Callixtus Ottomanus' a mysterious figure who floated at the periphery of events for around fifteen years. He first is mentioned in June 1456 when Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, received a report of a young boy supposedly brother to Sultan Mehmed and said to have been entrusted to a Latin Knight, one Giovanni Torcello by the Grand Vizier, Halil Candarli. The boy had come into the hands of agents of Pope Calixtus III, and reached Venice that spring. 

From Venice he was taken to the Apennine fortress of Spoleto. In a work appearing in 1458, Candarli Halil Pasha is credited with a role in sending the boy to Italy. The truth or otherwise of this remains unknowable, but it has a certain amount of logic to it. Candarli was a court maneuverer par excellence. It seems very likely that he had tried (and largely failed) to make Mehmed his puppet and so perhaps saw a pretender in reserve as a prudent fallback. This is, of course, baseless speculation but the boy clearly arrived with some sort of provenance. 

The European rulers through whose hands he moved over a two decade period seem to have made little real effort to press the putative claim to the Ottoman throne. This is perhaps not surprising - their focus was to reinstall the Byzantine heirs. In that regard the existence of a pretender was a little more than a negotiation counter or - should military events go their way - a tame-Turk to pop on the throne in Bursa once the dust had settled. Bayezid Osman remained in Spoleto until 1459, when - having been christened Callixtus Ottomanus - he was taken by Pope Pius II on his progress through Italy, culminating in the congress of Mantua, at which a crusade to recover Constantinople was proclaimed. 

Bottom Right of picture: Callixtus Ottomanus

In 1464 the Pope again paraded his charge in public: he had the boy, now sixteen, bid farewell to the fleet setting off from Ancona against the Ottomans, a scene commemorated in a fresco by Pinturicchio in Duomo of Siena. Then disaster struck, the Pope died before the fleet could depart and the whole Crusade was put on ice. The next year Bayezid Osman / Callixtus Ottomanus, was in Venice - the new hotspot for Crusade- before moving on to the court of King Corvinus in Buda. The long war failed to make progress towards unseating Mehmed and by 1473 Bayezid Osman was at the Viennese court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III who was famously fascinated with Turkish style - particularly dress. Bayezid Osman toured around his domains in the imperial retinue like an exotic beast. In 1474 he married an Austrian noblewoman, and subsequently disappeared from history's view. 

We have no certainty over the veracity of his claim. Mehmed had supposedly had his brothers all killed long before 1456 but it is possible that the far-seeing Candarli smuggled one away. It may be more likely that Candarli simply invented the claim - one sweep of his signature was all it would take once Murad was dead - to bestow the lineage of Osman upon a suitably pliable child and place him into the hands of Mehmed's enemies. Deep down, perhaps the Christian kings suspected the dubiousness of the claim. In any case a better pretender soon came along once Mehmed died in 1481. 

Prince Cem lost the power struggle for inheritance with his brother Bayezid. In 1482 he fell into the hands of the Knights of Rhodes. Here was a candidate for the Ottoman throne who's claim was indisputable. There is no record of Callixtus Ottomanus after 1474. Perhaps he simply died or perhaps he settled down into quiet domestic bliss with his Austrian wife and was thankful for it - the life of a pretender was a precarious existence as Prince Cem discovered in 1495 when, shortly after transferring to the care of the French King, he died - poisoned, rumour had it, at the behest of his brother by a slow acting poison some say applied on a straight razor by his Turkish barber, others point the finger at the Borgias.  

The Life of Anna Notaras

Anna Notaras was the daughter of the last Megas Doux of Constantinople, Loukas Notaras. Her father is remembered both for his court rivalry with George Sphrantzes and his opposition to Emperor Constantine’s policy of ‘reuniting’ (subverting) the Orthodox church with the Latin church – better the Turkish Turban than the Latin Mitre – he is said to have proclaimed but he was clearly under no illusions as to what the Turkish Turban in his city would actually mean.


It is often claimed that Anna was placed in Italy before the fall by her father, along with much of his wealth, but this is incorrect. There was a substantial Notaras fortune held mostly at the Bank of St George in Genoa but also some in Venice at this time but it was the grandfather of Anna - Nicholas Notaras - who put it there. Nicholas was a merchant of some renown who developed close business ties with the Genoese in the early decades of the 15th century. He was granted Genoese citizenship - a crucial point later for Anna and her sisters. His son Loukas does not appear to have dabbled in business but stuck to politics. The capital sums in Italy were not added to following Nicholas's death, but nor were they drawn upon. It appears the Notaras family kept their Italian nest egg as a rainy day fund.


It makes little sense to suppose Loukas Notaras would send his daughter Anna off to Italy alone before the fall. Politically it would have appeared very badly for the figure-head of Anti-Unionism to be openly stashing his children with the Latins. It would also have shown a lack of confidence in the ability of his Basileus and the city walls in diffusing the crisis.


The other reason we can be pretty sure Anna did not arrive in Italy before 1453 is her absence from the extensive legal documentation that grew up in the last months of that year and the subsequent two over the claims on the Notaras assets frozen within the bank. Once the fate of the megas doux was made public in Italy (in quite exaggerated style by Nicholas Sagundino, first in Venice in December 1453, then in Rome the same month, then Naples in January 1454), several legal cases were brought by claimants who said they were creditors of Loukas Notaras, seeking payment of debts. The fact that the Notaras family had both Genoese and Venetian citizenship and the size of the fortune caused those governments to become involved. Thus we see orders for ambassadors to Adrianople to ascertain the fate of the children and we see later correspondence talking of two daughters and a son (these being Maria, Theodora and Jacob). There is mention of another sister trying to ransom them (and this can only be Helena). There is no word of Anna. If she had been in Italy, firstly she would have surely begun drawing on the assets in Genoa (presumably prior to the summer of 1453) and secondly there would have been mention of her in at least one of the discussions on the frozen assets but there is not. She is entirely off the historical radar from 1453 until surfacing in Italy in 1459.


Thierry Ganchou, Byzantine Historian at the Sorbonne, is of the belief that Anna was probably sent out of the city shortly before the siege began but rather than Italy it was a refuge closer to home. Her elder sister Helena had married into the Gattilusio of Ainos, just along the Marmara coast. As tribute payers to the Ottoman sultans, Ainos was spared from attack (until 1456 but that is another story). If Ganchou is correct, then Anna and her sister Helena would then have been working in tandem to secure the release of Maria and Theodora (achieved in 1456 at the cost of 700 ducats). Helena was drive out of Ainos in 1456 by her brother-in-law and when she sought help from Mehmed II, he used it as a pretext to capture the city for himself. At this point, we can only presume Helena and her sisters headed for Italy - where the case of their family fortune was coming to a conclusion.


Another tantalizing possibility is that Anna was still in the city during the siege and somehow escaped in the collapse. This might at first appear fanciful but Byzantine historian Nevra Necipoglu mentions a record of 2 people named Notaras listed on the passenger manifest of a Genoese ship that escaped on that final fatal morning. Could one of them have been Anna?






Whatever the truth of her movements in those years, we know that she ended up in Italy (Rome at first and later Venice) and that the great Notaras fortune came into her control. Unlike some of the other surviving Byzantine nobles, such as Constantine’s wastrel brother Thomas Palaiologos, she did not spend her exile squandering it. Instead, Anna Notaras became a pillar of the Greek exile community.






Venice embraced a great many of Constantinople’s refugees but with only a pragmatic warmth. The Republic, now painfully aware of the growing threat the Turks posed to their own interests, was quick to use Greek and Albanian stradiots in its long war from 1463 to 1479 and the rollcall of these mercenaries reads like a who’s who of late-Byzantine noble houses but within la Serenissima, the Venetians were less keen on overt Greek-identity, in particular the Orthodox church which was the very core of Byzantine identity.






It was Anna who petitioned the Republic to allow the construction of an Orthodox church within Venice (something not granted until 1539) and when the Council of Ten prevaricated, it was Anna who badgered them into a compromise. She was granted permission to build an oratory within her own sizable Casa and hold Orthodox services within it from 1475. There the flame of Greek Orthodoxy in Venice flickered until San Giorgio dei Greci was finally built, almost a hundred years after the fall. To this day, three of its treasured icons were gifted to it from the estate of Anna Notaras, who had brought them with her from Constantinople.

Anna’s efforts did not end with her preservation of her religion. It is believed she was a close friend of Cardinal Bessarion, perhaps – as historian Donald Nicol speculates – it was into Bessarion’s care that the young Anna was first placed by her father in 1453. Bessarion is rightly famous for the hoard of Classical Greek manuscripts and books in his collection (donated in 1468 to the people of Venice). Anna too played an important role in the preservation and dissemination of ancient knowledge salvaged from the fires of her city. In 1470 she acquired a 12th century manuscript Catena of Job written for the Grand Duke of Cyprus.






Later, in 1499, the first exclusively Greek printing press in Venice began operation under the direction of Zacharis Kalliergis. The first product off the press was the Etymologiucum Magnum and the dedication at the front thanks the ‘most modest lady Anna, daughter of…Loukas Notaras’ who had defrayed its cost. Nicholas Vlastos is often credited with patronising the Greek printing presses of Venice but Vlastos was the factor of Anna Notaras – he was merely an agent for the noble, wealthy lady.









Her work towards preserving the Byzantine / Greek identity through the first turbulent decades of its exile extended beyond the academic and religious sphere to the material as well. Another of her projects was an attempt to create a self-ruled Byzantine colony within Italy. In around 1472 she began negotiations with the Commune of Siena to take possession of the old castle of Montauto and the lands surrounding it.

A draft contract was made which allowed Anna to oversee 100 Greek families in a self-governing community. It is unclear exactly why the project never progressed beyond this point but one point of interest from the negotiations is the fact that Anna is referred to as Anna Notaras Paleologina and from this grew the legend that she had been betrothed to the last Emperor. In reality, the styling in the contractual document was likely a political ploy to give the commune the polish of imperial legitimacy.






She never married, nor became a nun – a somewhat unusual position for a woman of that era but given her wealth she had no material need to make a marriage and appears to have enjoyed her independence. The Byzantine scholar Thierry Ganchou makes a persuasive case that her reticence to marry might have stemmed from the fact any potential husband would be a step-down from the Byzantine Emperor she had once been promised to. Ganchou is one who does not dismiss the possibility that Loukas Notaras did intend his youngest daughter to marry Constantine XI, even if a formal betrothal is never recorded by the court chronicler, George Sphrantzes. It is certainly worth noting that her lack of husband in 1453, when her older siblings had already been married off, raises questions.


Like her father, Anna appears to have been fiercely loyal to her Greek faith and refused to even learn Latin much less recognise the church union, a point noted by one diarist at her death in 1507. There are no firm dates for her birth, but she would have been at least seventy years old and had outlived not only the other notable exiles of her era but the bane of her youth, Mehmed II. Her achievements demonstrate that men and institutions in fifteenth century Italy were capable of working with and indeed for women under certain circumstances.

Much of what we know of her stems from the several legal cases she undertook in Venice against her sister-in-law (Zabeta). Among other complaints, she accused Zabeta of stealing a prized copy of Petrach which had been autographed by Thomas Palaiologos. 

Her achievements in the fields of politics, religion, book printing were noteworthy by the standards of anyone in that era, the fact they were achieved despite the social disadvantages of her sex suggest she was a woman of quite extraordinary character.

What Mehmed did next

  

Mehmed II entered through the Adrianople gate into Constantinople as Fetih (Conqueror) sometime on the morning of 29th May 1453. It had been a close run thing but to the victor goes the spoils and to Mehmed went the capital of the Byzantine Empire, 'the Red Apple' which Muslim armies had tried and failed to snatch on so many previous occasions.

His actions over the forthcoming days were an intriguing and enigmatic mix of mercy and brutality and this brief period perhaps records best the full spectrum of a brilliant and complicated man.

In his moment of triumph, as he walked through the crumbling remains of the Boukoleon palace he is reputed to have quoted the Persian poet Saardi,

'The spider weaves his curtains

in the palace of the Caesars;

The owl calls the watches

in the towers of Afrasiab'

We see here the cultured poet Mehmed, a man who enjoyed writing delicate verse and hoovered up whatever he could read about predecessor civilizations such as Persia, Greece and Rome. A man who respected the wonders of the civilisation he was replacing and aspired to embrace and emulate aspects of them much in the manner that Alexander had in his conquest of Persia. This is the Mehmed who would shortly ride to the reputed ruins of Troy to inform the ghosts of Hector and Priam that he had avenged them.

It is interesting also to note that Mehmed's instructions prior to that final attack related to how his soldiers should conduct themselves once the defenses fell. Muslim laws of conquest stipulate that an invading army is entitled to three days of looting and plunder once a defiant city is breached. There is no suggestion that Mehmed wanted to reign in his men's baser appetites after 53 days of tough fighting but even had he wanted to it would have been beyond even his authority. Instead he made it clear that the fabric of the city - the churches, palaces and government chancelleries - were to be his booty and his men could take what they wished of the rest. When he arrived at Hagia Sophia to find a disobedient solider cracking apart a mosaic he had the man killed on the spot. The contemporary chronicler Kristoboulos of Imbros (who some consider an apologist) has him weeping at the sight of the ransack:

'What a city we have given over to plunder and destruction'

The plan had always been to put on the robes of Caesar and create a third Rome by usurping the authority along with the lands of the Byzantines. It is rare for an invader to intend from the very start to inhabit the target city and put aside his own capital but this was not the first time an Ottoman Sultan had done so. When Adrianople fell in 1369 to Murad I he moved his capital there (renaming it Edirne) from Bursa. A symbolic crossing of the Hellespont by the Ottoman court. This time, however, Mehmed did not waste any time at all in declaring Constantinople his capital whereas it had taken a period of months or even years (the exact date of Adrianople's fall is still a matter of dispute) for Murad to do the same. Other than the location and the history, perhaps the thing which seduced Mehmed most about Constaintople was Hagia Sophia.

The other great buildings of the Byzantine glory days were largely ruins but the great church was still a functioning, impressive wonder - just as it remains today. Before the fires were out, work began on a wooden minaret and the other bare necessities to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque. The city fell on a Tuesday and by Friday prayers of that week the switch had taken place.


Mehmet did not restrict his religious attention to his own faith. He was aware of the importance of the Orthodox faith to his newly acquired citizens and he, like his father, followed a policy of religious freedom among his subjects. He knew that to hold Constantinople he needed to control the church and so perhaps as soon as the 1st June he appointed a new Patriarch. His choice is an interesting one.

Gennadius Scholarius was something of an aging firebrand. Importantly he was the most vocal opponent of the Church Union, the policy of ending the schism with the Latin church and subverting the primacy of the Patriarch to the Pope. Emperor Constantine had formalised this union in December 1452 in the hope of sparking a crusade to relieve his city. That gamble had been hugely unpopular at the time and it had failed to produce anything in return. By appointing Gennadius, Mehmet signaled to the population his respect for the independence of the Orthodox faith and the rejection of the union. It was a politically savvy move and suggests a great deal of homework had taken place prior to the siege - exactly the sort of post invasion nation-building lacking in the second Iraq war.

On the same day, 1st June 1453, Mehmed beheaded his Grand Vizier, Halil Candarli. It seems an incredibly impulsive act and strange when one considers that execution had not taken place for any Byzantine or Italian prisoners at this stage. It can only have been as premeditated as the conversion of Hagia Sophia. Why would a victorious Sultan wish the death of his most senior adviser in his moment of triumph? The answers lie in the years leading up to 1453.

To achieve what many had tried and none had accomplished - the Conquest of Constantinople - at the tender age of 21 might give the impression of a smooth, meteoric rise but Mehmed's path was not the same as Alexander the Great. He was the third son of Sultan Murad II and never the favourite but when he was 5 years old his elder brother died suddenly. Then when Mehmet was 11 years old his other brother, Alaeddin Ali, was murdered (many are speculated to have been responsible, from Mara Brankovic to Halil Candarli, but the killer, Kara Hizar Pasha, never revealed his motive). Elevated suddenly to heir presumptive he was made Sultan just fifteen months later when his father - still heart broken over the death of Alaeddin Ali - abdicated. Murad's Grand Vizier, Halil Candarli, was made regent for the 12 year old Sultan - and clearly didn't want the job, he wanted his old Sultan back and one way or another he was just two months later, leading the Ottoman army at the battle of Varna before immediately handing the reigns back. The young Sultan and his regent clashed several times over the coming two years, often over the subject of attacking Constantinople, which Halil Candarli strongly counselled against. In 1446 a mutiny broke out among Janissary troops in Edirne demanding higher pay. Mehmet capitulated and Murad was recalled from retirement to steady the ship of state.

When Murad died in 1451, it was a surprise, given their previous tempestuous working relationship, that Halil Candarli should be reconfirmed by Mehmet as his Grand Vizier. The story goes that when he was first summoned to an audience with the new Sultan Halil hung back in fear until Mehmet called him forward and embraced him.

Hindsight suggests Mehmet was keeping his friends close and enemies closer. His actions on 1st June 1453 in this context seem that of someone who wanted his doubters to see his triumph before they paid the ultimate price for previously undermining him. It is also possible that Mehmet suspected Halil Candarli of being in concert with the Byzantines. His opposition to the war was such that his nickname at the Erdine court was 'the Greek'. Leonard of Chios reported that Loukas Notaras told Mehmet that Candarli had sent numerous letters to Emperor Constantine and urged him to stand firm.


Mehmet was not done with his executions though. Two days after Halil Candarli met his death, the Megas Doux, Loukas Notaras was executed along with two of his sons. With the Emperor dead, Notaras was the most senior living Byzantine. That might seem motive enough but the mystery surrounding his end is the sudden change of heart Mehmet appears to have undergone.

Initially Mehmet seems to have honoured Notaras and is quoted as meeting his wife and consoling her on the fall of her city, 'Mother, do not weep. I shall give to your people far more than I have taken.' But his attitude changed by the 3rd of June and the reasons vary according to several different accounts. 

The most lurid tale has Mehmet taking a shine to the young son of Loukas Notaras and ordering the Megas Doux to give the boy for his harem. Whilst Mehmet's is considered by many to have been bisexual (with Vlad Dracula's brother, Radu, most often given as the Sultan's long term lover) this particular story has the ring of salaciousness about it - designed to paint the bogeyman of Christendom as a depraved heathen beast. It is possible that this version is a twisting of the actual event - perhaps Notaras, who was famously devoutly Orthodox, feared his son would be forced to convert to Islam - as the hostage sons of other Ottoman enemies had. 

Alternatively it could be, as Edward Gibbon believed, that Mehmet uncovered an intrigue involving Notaras - some have suggested embezzlement. Finally it could simply be that having taken stock of the persons at his disposal, Mehmet judged Notaras more of a danger than a help in bringing the Byzantine population to heel. The following day around 30 other Byzantine nobles were executed. Assuming these all didn't have sons bound for the harem, this might suggest Notaras was the first of a purge.

After a lifetime's preparation and a brutal 53 day siege, one might have forgiven a conqueror from resting on his laurels or at least enjoying a few days of debauched celebration but instead Mehmet's first five days in Constantinople were a whirlwind of deliberate, premeditated action which encompassed the religious and political aspects of both Greek and Ottoman camps. It was the action of a man of destiny for whom The Fall was only the beginning of his burning ambitions.

On this day in 1453...

29th May 1453, as FDR might have said, "a date which will live in infamy". The Roman Empire ends (although it has been something more and less than 'Roman' for centuries at this point).


Around three hours before dawn the final assault of the 53 day siege began. The first wave were irregulars and Azap conscripts. Cannon fodder in other words with little or no protection from the iron greeting that spat from the crossbows of the defenders as they charged the filled-in ditch of the Fosse. No official casualty figures were made but we can estimate thousands fell in that initial rush. Sultan Mehmed hardly cared, the purpose was to exhaust the defenders. Next he sent better trained and armed troops - his Sipahi. These fared little better. One must feel a degree of sorrow for the Sipahi, they were cavalry troops and no very suited to what they were being asked to do here. The final attack, several hours into the assault, were the elite Janissary. Even with this unceasing pressure the defenders appear to have not buckled until their General, Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, was struck by a bullet that penetrated his armour. Mortally wounded he told his adjutant John Dalmata to unlock the postern and get him to his ship.

It's important to note that most of the hand to hand combat has occurring in a very narrow section of the three mile wall called the Mesotechion. This area had seen the focus of the cannon barrage and the walls there were reduced to basically rubble and a hastily built stockade of barrels and anything else the desperate defenders could arrange. Prior to this assault, the Genoese mercenary troops and the Emperor's elite bodyguard had taken position in this area and locked the postern gates to their rear. Thus making the psychological statement of no retreat, stand or die. Giustiniani's action betrayed that mindset and triggered a complete collapse. Seeing their leader being carried from the field, the Genoese (who made up the majority of armoured troops) bolted after him. A stampede crushed several in the narrow postern gateway and this area became a massacre.




Tradition has it that this was the moment that Janissaries in another section of the wall (close to the Blachernae palace section where the double walls become a single set) discovered a postern (the Kerkoporta) had been left open (deliberately or not). As morale in the Mesotechion collapsed, the first Turk banners mounted the towers at the Kerkoporta and the Emperor, seeing the day lost, threw himself onto the swords of the Janissary as they broke the last resistance at the Mesotechion stockade.

From there the sack of the city began. The surviving Genoese and Venetians fled to their boats and some managed to escape, including the mortally wounded Giustiniani. They were able to do so largely because the Ottoman navy had abandoned its blockade to join in the looting of the city.


Under Islamic laws of conquest, soldiers were entitled to three days of unchecked looting (ie. the time between the fall and the fourth dawn) when a city fell in such a way. Even had he wished to, Mehmed could not have allowed things differently but it should be noted that he did specify that the buildings of the city were to be his prize and were not to be burned. Thus the sack of Constantinople in 1453 was probably less destructive than the prior one by Crusaders in 1204. Legend has it that Mehmed found a disobedient soldier hacking at a mosaic as he arrived at Hagia Sophia and had the man promptly hung.

Legend also has the Sultan entering the great church and uttering lines of a long forgotten Persian poem: "The Spider weaves his curtain in the palace of Caesars, the owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasaib". Given Mehmed's own poetic output there's every chance he was moved to the lyrical by his achievement.

John Grant

Who was John Grant? It was this question that drew me into the history of Constantinople in the first place. Grant - the legend goes - was a Scotsman, far from home in the thick of the action when the Roman Empire fell. It is a legend added to by Dorothy Dunnett and Mika Waltari but it is one of those pieces of historical trivia that balance on precariously little solid evidence.

Two separate eye witness accounts (Leonard of Chios & George Sphrantzes) attest to the presence of a John (or Johannes) Grant among the defenders of Constantinople in 1453. He is identified as being associated to General Giovanni Giustiniani's Genoese contingent. He is also credited with heroics in the counter mining effort in the final weeks of the siege. This is about the sum total of contemporary information we have on the man. How he came to be there and what was his fate are complete mysteries, as is his origin.

The great Byzantine historian, Steven Runciman suggested he might have been Scottish but tantalizingly offers no evidence for this. One might guess Runciman is basing it on the Scottish surname. Sphrantzes identified Grant as German, although it's quite possible he used that term in a sweeping generalisation for northern Europeans - as Byzantine historians were wont to do. 'German' would have been a description applied to any northern European of a particular height and appearance. Germany of course did not exist. Leonard, who also being of the Genoese faction seems the best source - calls him 'grandi', which again could simply be in reference to his size or the size of his deeds at the siege. It's certainly credible that a Scottish (or Germanic) soldier of fortune had found his way into the Lombard Wars and the muster rolls of a Genoese mercenary company.

Whilst Grant was (possibly) the last Briton to defend the walls of Constantinople he was far from the first. A long tradition dating back to the post-Hastings conquest of England in 1066 saw hundreds of Saxons make the trek to the Byzantine court to sell their sword-and-axe-arms. There they joined Danes, Norwegians and various other 'Germanic' mercenaries in the famous Varangian Guard unit, the elite bodyguard of Emperors for centuries. The last Varangian units recorded were still active around 100 years prior to the fall.

Which is to say that absolutely nothing about John Grant is firmly established fact except his involvement in the defenses, in particular in detecting and destroying the mining efforts around the Caligaria Gate on 24th May 1453.

On this day in 1453...

The 28th May was the last full day of the Byzantine Empire. After 52 days of pounding away at the walls with an unprecedentedly large battery of cannon the defenses had been ground to dust. A ramshackle stockade of rubble and earth-filled barrels had plugged the holes but to intense and purposes the great Walls of Theodosius had been demolished. The Sultan believed one final assault would break through and from the 26th the Ottoman camp fell into preparations for this. The defenders knew it too. On the 28th they held a final solemn ceremony in Hagia Sophia. The great church had been abandoned by the Orthodox congregation since its consecration to the Latin church on 12th December 152 by Isidore of Kiev.

Isidore had been sent by the Pope as a legate to arrange the reunion of the Eastern and Western churches -a capitulation by the Greek faith in an attempt to secure a rescue Papal fleet. The fleet never came.

The people, deeply upset at the desecration of their holiest of churches boycotted Hagia Sophia from December until the 28th May. The final ceremony was something of a reconciliation between the rival religious factions within the city. Within twelve hours the city defenses would be overrun and the Sultan would enter Hagia Sophia, ending its 916 year term as a church and beginning its 478 years as a mosque.

The Fall of Constantinople

The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire took place on 29 May 1453 after a 53-day siege. The Ottomans were commanded by the then 21-year-old Sultan Mehmet II (who became known as the Conqueror), the seventh sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The defenders had been lead by the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos.


The capture of Constantinople effectively marked the end of the near 1,500 year Roman Empire and dealt a massive blow to Christendom, as the Muslim Ottoman armies thereafter were left unchecked to advance into Europe without an adversary to their rear. After the conquest, Sultan Mehmet II transferred the capital of the Ottoman Empire from Edirne to Constantinople.


The conquest of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire was perhaps the key event in the Late Middle Ages and marks for some historians the end of the Middle Ages.


Having taken the Byzantine capital, Mehmet turned his attention to picking off the last small remnant kingdoms of the Empire. The Morea fell in 1460 and the Empire of Trebizond in 1461. Mehmet continued his conquests, invading Wallachia in 142 and Bosnia in 1463.


Prior to the fall, the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice had maintained an uneasy policy of trade and sometimes co-operation with the Ottoman state. Whilst a Genoese general, Giovani Giustiniani, commanded the defenses along the Land Wall of Constantinople during the siege, Genoa remained officially neutral - and used its concessionary territory of Galata (Pera) across the Golden Horn to sell arms and equipment to both sides during the siege. Venice also made no official contribution to the defense of Constainople - a rescue fleet was belatedly dispatched but far too late. However the sizable Venetian community within Constantinople, led by their bailio, fought alongside their old Genoese rivals both at the wall and as a patchwork flotilla of ships defending the Golden Horne.


After the fall, Venice's policy began to change and La Serenissima began preparations for the inevitable military confrontation with the Ottoman empire. War was officially begun in 1463 and lasted until 1479, a conflict which became known as The Long War.