29 May 1453 AD – the day the world changed

May 29 – a tragic and mournful date in the historical calendar Greek people, Orthodoxy and world history. 573 years agoMay 29, 1453, under the pressure of the Sultan’s army Mehmed II fell Constantinople — Policydefended by less than 10 thousand defenders.

Few events in world history have evoked such a large number of responses, chronicles and detailed narratives among contemporaries and descendants as the fall of Byzantine Empire and conquest by the Turks Constantinople May 29, 1453.

This event turned out to be not only the most important in the political and military history of Europe, but also, in modern terms, significant. When on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, Ottoman troops broke into “royal city”, “New Rome”as the Byzantines called their capital, for them it was primarily a moment of capture and robbery. But for the Byzantines and residents of other Christian states it was a catastrophe of almost cosmic proportions.

Fall of Constantinople symbolized the end of the thousand-year history of the main Orthodox power, almost the end of the old world and the beginning of a new, much more difficult era. After all, the Byzantine and Greek civilization was not replaced by something better.

Since the fall of Constantinople, a tragic date for every Greek, throughout the centuries the greeting of many Greeks around the world has been the words: “See you in Constantinople”.

Sooner or later this meeting will take place.

Every year on this day since I turned 18, the tragic images of the last day of the fall come to life in me Constantinople And Byzantine Empire. This is a story of unparalleled heroism and betrayal, retribution for disunity, vanity and the Union of Florence.

We have lost our homeland, the main city of all the Greeks of the world – Policy, Constantinople. We’ll be back. Sooner or later it will happen.

See you in Constantinople. Θα βλεπόμαστε στην Κωνσταντινούπολη.

Nikos Sidiropoulos

***

May 29 started early in the morning final assault on Constantinople. The first attacks were repulsed, but then the wounded Giustiniani left the city and fled to Galata. The Turks were able to take the main gate of the capital of Byzantium. The fighting took place on the streets of the city. The emperor fell in battle Constantine XI Palaiologos. When the Turks found his wounded body, they cut off his head and placed it on a pole.

For three days, looting and violence continued in Constantinople. The Turks killed everyone they met on the streets: men, women, children. Streams of blood flowed down the steep streets of Constantinople from the hills of Petra to Golden Horn.

The Turks broke into men’s and women’s monasteries. Some young monks, preferring martyrdom to dishonor, threw themselves into wells. The monks and elderly nuns followed the ancient tradition of the Orthodox Church, which prescribed no resistance.

Residents’ houses were robbed one after another. Each group of robbers hung a small flag at the entrance as a sign that there was nothing left to take from the house. The inhabitants of the houses were taken away along with their property. Anyone who fell from exhaustion was immediately killed; the same thing was done with many babies.

Scenes of mass desecration of sacred objects took place in churches. Many jeweled crucifixes were carried out of temples with Turkish turbans placed on them as a sign of mockery.

In the Temple of Chora, the Turks left the mosaics and frescoes intact, but destroyed the icon Our Lady of Hodegetria – the most sacred image of her in all of Byzantium, executed, according to legend, by Saint Luke himself. This shrine was moved here from the Church of the Virgin Mary near the palace at the very beginning of the siege, so that it would be as close as possible to the walls and inspire the defenders of the city. The Turks pulled the icon out of its frame and split it into four parts.

This is how contemporaries described the capture of the greatest temple of Byzantium – Hagia Sophia:

“The church was still filled with people. The Holy Liturgy had already ended and Matins was underway. When noise was heard outside, the huge bronze doors of the temple were closed. Those gathered inside prayed for a miracle that alone could save them. But their prayers were in vain. Very little time passed, and the doors collapsed under blows from outside. The worshipers were trapped. A few old people and cripples were killed on the spot; the majority of the Turks were tied or chained to each other in groups, and scarves and scarves torn from women were used as fetters. Many beautiful girls and boys, as well as richly dressed nobles, were almost torn to pieces when the soldiers who captured them fought among themselves, considering them their prey. The priests continued to read prayers at the altar until they were also captured…”

The Sultan himself Mehmed II entered the city only on June 1. Escorted by selected troops of the Janissary Guard, accompanied by his viziers, he slowly rode through the streets of Constantinople. Everything around where the soldiers passed was devastated and ruined: churches stood desecrated and looted, houses uninhabited, shops and warehouses broken and plundered.

Mehmed II rode a horse into Hagia Sophia Churchordered the cross to be knocked off it and the temple turned into a mosque.

Immediately after the capture of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II first issued a decree on “providing freedom to all who remain alive”. However, many residents of the city were killed by Ottoman soldiers, many became slaves. To quickly restore the population, Mehmed ordered the population of the city to be transferred to the new capital Aksaray.

The Sultan granted the Greeks the rights of a self-governing community within the empire. The head of this community was to be Patriarch of Constantinopleresponsible to the Sultan.

In subsequent years, the last territories of the empire were occupied, including Moray in 1460.

Consequences of the death of Byzantium

Constantine XI Palaiologos became the last emperor of the Romans. With his death Byzantine Empire ceased to exist. Its lands became part of Ottoman state. The former capital of Byzantium, Constantinople, became the capital of the Ottoman Empire until its collapse in 1922. At first the city was called Constantineand then got the name Istanbulor Istanbul.

Byzantium had enormous authority as a homeland and support Orthodoxythe eastern branch of Christianity.

Most Europeans believed that the death of Byzantium was the beginning of the end of the world, since only Byzantium remained the direct successor of the Roman Empire. Many contemporaries blamed the fall of Constantinople on Venicewhich then had one of the most powerful fleets. The Republic of Venice played a double game: on the one hand, it tried to organize a crusade against the Turks, and on the other, it defended its trade interests by sending friendly embassies to the Sultan.

However, you need to understand that the rest of the Christian powers also did almost nothing to save the dying empire. Even if the Venetian fleet had arrived on time, without the help of other states, this would have allowed Constantinople to hold out for several more weeks, but it would only have prolonged the agony.

Rome was fully aware of the Turkish threat and understood that all of Western Christianity could be in danger. Dad Nicholas V called on the Western powers to jointly undertake a powerful and decisive crusade and intended to lead it himself. After receiving the fateful news from Constantinople, he sent out messages calling for active action.

On September 30, 1453, the Pope sent a bull to all Western sovereigns declaring a crusade. Each sovereign was ordered to shed the blood of himself and his subjects for the holy cause, as well as to allocate a tenth of the income for it. Both Greek cardinals – Isidore And Vissarion — actively supported his efforts. Vissarion himself wrote to the Venetians, simultaneously accusing them and begging them to stop the wars in Italy and concentrate all their forces on the fight against the Antichrist.

However, no crusade ever took place. Although the sovereigns greedily caught reports of the death of Constantinople, writers composed sorrowful elegies, and the French composer Guillaume Dufay wrote a special funeral song, which was sung in French lands, no one was ready to act.

King of Germany Frederick III was poor and powerless, because he had no real power over the German princes. Neither politically nor financially he could participate in the crusade. King of France Charles VII was busy rebuilding his country after a long and ruinous war with England. The Turks were somewhere far away, and he had more important things to do in his own home.

For England, which suffered even more than France from the Hundred Years’ War, the Turks seemed an even more distant problem. King Henry VI could do absolutely nothing, since he had just lost his mind, and the country was plunging into the chaos of the Wars of the Scarlet and White Roses. Almost none of the kings showed interest, with the exception of the Hungarian king, who, of course, had every reason to be alarmed. But he also could not decide on a large enterprise without allies.

Thus, although Western Europe was shocked that a great historic Christian city should fall into Muslim hands, no papal bull could motivate it to action. The very fact that the Christian states did not come to the aid of Constantinople showed their clear reluctance to fight for the faith if their immediate interests were not affected. Well, as we see, political realism did not appear yesterday – it just used to be called piety with a ledger.

The Ottomans quickly occupied the remaining territories of the empire. The Serbs were the first to suffer: Serbia became a theater of war between the Turks and Hungarians. In 1454, the Serbs were forced, under threat of force, to give up part of their territory to the Sultan. Already in 1459, almost all of Serbia was in the hands of the Turks, with the exception of Belgradewhich remained under Hungarian rule until 1521. Neighboring Kingdom Bosnia the Turks conquered four years later.

The last vestiges of Greek independence gradually disappeared. Duchy of Athens was destroyed in 1456. In 1461, the last Greek capital fell – Trebizond. This was the end of the free Greek world.

True, a certain number of Greeks still remained under Christian rule – at Cyprusislands Aegean And Ionian seasas well as in the port cities of the continent, still held by Venice. However, their rulers were of a different blood and a different Christian tradition. Only in the southeast of the Peloponnese, in the lost villages Maniinto the harsh mountain spurs of which not a single Turk dared to penetrate, a semblance of freedom was preserved.

Soon all Orthodox territories in the Balkans were in the hands of the Ottomans. Serbia and Bosnia were enslaved. In January 1468 it fell Albania. Moldova recognized vassalage to the Sultan back in 1456.

Many historians of the 17th and 18th centuries considered the fall of Constantinople to be a key moment in European history and the end of the Middle Ages – just as the fall of Rome in 476 was the symbolic end of Antiquity. Others believed that the mass exodus of Greeks to Italy contributed to the beginning Renaissance.

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