The Fall of Constantinople (1453 CE)

So far, we've talked a lot about the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 CE. This collapse left behind a power vacuum which was quickly filled by groups of people like the Franks, the Visigoths and the Anglo-Saxons.

However, it's important to understand that this only happened in Europe. Further east, a portion of the Roman Empire actually managed to survive.

More than a century earlier, in 330 CE, the Roman Empire had stretched all the way from the shores of Britain to the sands of Egypt. The capital at that time had been the city of Rome, which was well-positioned to rule the western portion of this territory. But it was a lot less convenient for ruling lands in the east.

To solve this problem, Emperor Constantine ordered the construction of a second capital – New Rome (Nova Roma) – at the edge of modern Turkey. This city would be later renamed Constantinople.

Constantinople became a magnificent seat from which Roman emperors could rule the eastern portion of their empire. It was famed for its vibrant culture, scholarly attitudes, and colossal, fortified walls. And when the city of Rome was overrun by barbarian forces, Constantinople stood firm.

Because of this, when we talk about the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 CE, we're only really telling one half of the story. A version of the Roman Empire survived in Constantinople, safely protected by those vast, fortified walls.

It later became known as the Byzantine Empire, named after a Greek colony, Byzantium, which had previously existed in the place where Constantinople was built.

The Byzantines ruled in Constantinople as late as 1453 CE. In other words, this eastern portion of the Roman Empire survived for almost a thousand years beyond the fall of the city of Rome.

But the Byzantines weren't the only people living in this part of the world. In the 13th century, a new force began to stir.

This force was small but ambitious: a Muslim tribe who lived on the outskirts of the Byzantine Empire. They were known as the Ottomans, a term derived from the name of their leader: Osman I.

Osman I was a powerful and charismatic leader. Little is known about his childhood, but some historians think that he started life as a poor, humble shepherd.

Throughout 19 years of rule, he led the Ottoman tribe on a course of rapid territorial expansion. Supposedly, he started this expansion after dreaming about a tree whose branches stretched out to cover the entire world.

There are no surviving accounts of these events, and historians don’t know how such a minor tribe managed to expand so ferociously. But the Ottomans managed to seize control of several regions, including a number of Byzantine towns.

Osman I probably passed away in 1324. He went out in great pain, but it wasn’t a battle wound that killed him. Historians think that Osman was killed by a severe case of gout.

Despite the loss of Osman, his successors continued what he'd started. The Ottomans managed to expand into Europe, claiming territory in Macedonia, Kosova, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Greece.

They also set their sights on Constantinople, the glittering jewel of the Byzantine Empire. But for decades, this city eluded them. Its colossal walls were unsiegeable, and any attempt to attack the city would have surely ended in defeat.

In 1444 CE, Mehmed II, a direct descendant of Osman I, ascended to the Ottoman throne.

He was young and ambitious, and probably gay; he enjoyed collecting beautiful men and keeping them as personal prisoners. Like many before him, Mehmed aspired to invade Constantinople, but he knew it would be useless to send his forces thrashing against the city’s walls.

But everything changed in 1453 CE, when Mehmed was approached by a Hungarian engineer named Orbán.

Orbán was an expert in gunpowder weaponry, a new technology which had only arrived in Europe during the 13th century.

He offered to build a set of cannons for the Ottomans: weapons more powerful than anything the world had ever seen before. They had enough strength to shatter even the tallest walls – for the first time in history, Constantinople was under threat.

Mehmed grabbed this opportunity, paying Orbán handsomely for his work. Orbán built the cannons in three months.

The largest cannon was named Basilic. It had the power to fire hefty cannonballs over a distance of more than a mile. It was so large that it needed 63 oxen and 400 men to drag it to Constantinople.

Armed with his powerful gunpowder cannons, Mehmed II attacked Constantinople on April 6th, 1453.

His forces heavily outnumbered the Byzantine defenders: 80,000 Ottomans against 40,000 Byzantines, the majority of which were armed civilians rather than professional soldiers.

Under normal circumstances, the Byzantines would still have been confident of defending their fortified city. But the Basilic cannon blasted through the walls of this ancient stronghold, just as Orbán had promised.

The Byzantine defenders managed to hold the breach, but the Ottomans simply blasted another hole.

Again, the defenders managed to hold, but the Ottomans blasted another. The bombardment lasted for 53 days, until there were too many breaches for the Byzantine forces to defend. Their resistance crumbled, and the Ottomans entered the city.

The Byzantine emperor was killed in battle, and Mehmed claimed the city as his own. After a period of almost 1500 years, the final bastion of the Roman Empire had collapsed.

All these details about the Siege of Constantinople are mainly taken from sources by Byzantine citizens.

The most comprehensive of these comes from Nicolò Barbaro, a Venetian physician who was present throughout the siege. This source was written in the form of a diary, with regular entries giving a detailed account of the day-by-day progress of the battle. For example, he described how the Ottomans 'came on behind the smoke of the cannon, raging [...] like wild beasts.'

Ottoman accounts are more difficult to come by. The vast majority of Ottoman witnesses would have been illiterate soldiers who didn't know how to write things down.

The Siege of Constantinople had a major impact in Europe. When their city fell, many Byzantine scholars fled to the west. They brought copies of ancient texts with them, which had been lost in Europe after the fall of Rome, but survived in Constantinople.

This rapid influx of ancient wisdom inspired a wave of progress in the next few decades, with men like Leonardo Da Vinci going on to make important discoveries which totally changed the world. This period is known as the Renaissance – a rebirth of European science. The fall of Constantinople wasn’t the only cause, but it definitely helped.

Progress was also made in the east, especially in terms of warfare. The Ottomans continued to use gunpowder weapons to bolster their military, and other nations quickly adopted these new technologies, changing the nature of warfare forever.

In later years, the Renaissance period gave Europe the impetus to explore the world. They spread out from their continent, conquering parts of the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australasia along the way.

If the Byzantines had fended off the Ottomans, would this era of European expansion have still happened?

With its stockpiles of ancient texts, the victorious city of Constantinople might have enjoyed its own Renaissance instead, with Byzantine scholars making groundbreaking discoveries in the arenas of science and medicine.

With time, they might have been the ones to spread out and conquer all these far flung places, building a brand new version of the Roman Empire even larger than the one that existed all those centuries earlier.

After the Siege of Constantinople, the Ottoman Empire survived for hundreds of years, well into the modern age.

Remarkably, they took part in World War One, and even fought a famous battle at Megiddo, following in the footsteps of the Ancient Egyptians. Their leader during World War One was Sultan Mehmed VI, from the same bloodline of Mehmed II, the man who conquered Constantinople.

The Ottomans chose to ally with Germany, which meant they ended up on the losing side of the conflict. They lost almost 500,000 soldiers during the course of the war, and saw their territories divided between Allied forces. Mehmed VI was forced to flee to Malta, and the empire was replaced by the modern state of Turkey.