When Constantinople fell the Ottoman army rapidly poured in looking for their share of the spoils.

In their frenzied quest for the riches of Constantinople widespread violence, enslavement, and looting ensued!

A thread on the realities of the SACK OF CONSTANTINOPLE in 1453!🧵 Some areas inside the city initially resisted the first bands of looters before surrendering to the inevitable

Probably at first people did not know if the city had fallen or if just a few Turks had made it in. But it would have become apparent fast that it was over.

On May 29, 1453 the Ottomans were amassing - they were to make history and be the first army to go through the Theodosian walls into the ancient capital of the Roman Empire.

In a story to be told for eternity, Constantinople was about to fall, but not without a fight!

🧵🧵 The battle had been waged since April 6, 1453. Cannons continued to smash the stones of antiquity which had guarded Constantinople since the 5th century.

However, things were getting more apocalyptic as the battle went on.
The people of the city knew how real this danger was!

The formerly Roman city of Smyrna had been conquered by Turks, then by Crusaders. Then came the ferocious Timurids.

In the wake of victory over the Ottomans at Ankara, Timur demanded Smyrna surrender.

The Crusaders refused, a tragic atrocity against local Christians ensued! 🧵 Although it benefited Constantinople by breaking the Ottoman siege of the City, Timur’s great victory over Sultan Bayezid at Ankara in 1402 left Anatolia totally open to conquest by him and his ruthless armies.

For the people of Smyrna, a storm was brewing.

After the success of Belisarius the Goths even offered him Ravenna and all Italy to rule as a new Western Roman Emperor

The ultimate test!

The Goths gave away their defensible capital of Ravenna, Belisarius stayed loyal, and the Gothic treasury was shipped to Constantinople 🧵 In 539 the war in Italy was being decisively won by the Roman armies sent to liberate it from the Goths. Rome was Roman again! The Goths were seemingly soon to be defeated. Witigis, King of the Goths, had sent diplomats east to get the Persians to attack the Romans in the east.

On April 12, 1204 a relatively small army of Crusaders and Venetians broke into the Queen of Cities. The Romans gave in, the city was sacked the next day.

In 717-718 Constantinople resisted an Arab army of 120,000 and 1800 ships!

How did 20,000 men conquer Constantinople?! 🧵⬇️ The Crusaders, breaking their oath to go to the Holy Land, approached Constantinople by sea on June 23, 1203.

With them was a puppet, Alexios IV Angelos, son of the deposed emperor Isaac II. Despite never having ruled, he had promised to cover the Crusade’s financial shortfalls!

Bolli Bollison was an Icelandic man who is recorded in the sagas as having joined the Varangians in Constantinople!

He allegedly said: “I have long had it in my mind to go for once into southern lands."

“And he did not halt in his journey till he came to Constantinople.” 🧵🧵 He seemed to want an adventure, seeing Iceland as too limited.

Bolli said: "I have long had it in my mind to go for once into southern lands; for a man is deemed to grow benighted if he learns to know nothing farther afield than what is to be seen here in Iceland."

In the 5th century the loss of the western provinces of the Roman Empire damaged “the economic cohesiveness of the Mediterranean world.”

Trade did not completely stop, local economies did not fully collapse, but “a slow decline in economic activity was underway in the West.” 🧵 “One reason for the decline was the absence of the Roman administration that held together the empire's quilt of interlocking local and regional economies. This change reduced the scale of cities.”

By the 1230’s the Romans in Nicaea were ready to expand in Europe.

The Latin Empire was weakened and Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes wanted to liberate Constantinople.

John engaged in an unlikely alliance with Bulgaria and a joint siege of Constantinople was laid in 1235! 🧵 The Romans and Bulgarians agreed the Treaty of Kallipolis where they agreed to destroy the Latins and partition Thrace in a mutually beneficial manner. To cement the alliance, Theodore II Laskaris married Elena of Bulgaria.

The infamous battle of Manzikert in 1071 wasn’t the first battle there.

In 1054 the Seljuk Sultan mobilised his formidable army and marched against Romans.

The Turks planned to conquer Manzikert. But the brave Roman defenders and their valiant commander had other ideas!

🧵🧵 The Seljuks, at odds with the Romans, had “combined all the Persian and Babylonian forces and invaded the Roman Empire.”

They found many cities were garrisoned with walls, the Turks ultimately decided upon “trying the strength of Manzikert.”

How was Anatolia Turkified? One demographic instrument was Seljuk men often taking Christian wives and concubines from the Roman population in Anatolia.

The children would be raised Muslim, even with Christian mothers, and over time this contribute to a one way ethnic shift 🧵 One must keep in mind for context:

Muslim men could take Christian wives, but Muslim women couldn’t marry Christians. So this form of demographic pressure was purely one way. This is in addition to the opportunity and incentive to convert to Islam, as opposed to being a dhimmi.

“In the days of Justinian, ships around Constantinople were terrorized for over 50 years by a whale whom locals called Porphyrios, presumably from the dark-wine color of its skin.”

The angry whale sank ships and terrified others.

It was like the “Jaws” of the Roman Empire!
🧵🧵 Prokopios described the beast: “the whale, which the residents of Byzantion (Constantinople) called Porphyrios…had harassed Byzantion and its surroundings for over 50 years, but not continuously, for sometimes it would disappear for long periods of time.”

Nikephoros Botaneiates was a lousy emperor! He took power in 1078 as the Roman Empire was disintegrating rapidly after the battle of Manzikert.

His inept policy exemplified easy times leading to an entitled society. “Rivers of gold flowed from his hands” as the empire fell!

🧵 The Romans were so dysfunctional in the 1070’s that an almost 80 year old Botaneiates started a rebellion with just 300 soldiers! He then hired Turkic nomads whom were invading Anatolia, and got political support in Constantinople.

This was the cycle things had devolved into!

Liquid fire was a legendary Eastern Roman weapon that saved Constantinople and incinerated enemy fleets!

In the 15th century John Chortasmenos read old histories and wondered:

“Where is this Greek Fire now?”

It was long gone, but when and how did they lose this weapon?

🧵🧵 The fearsome substance had quite a reputation. When the Crusaders attacked Constantinople in 1204 they seemed to prepare for it to be deployed against them, but they did not have to face it.

Instead, it seems the technology at some point had already been lost forever.

THE BEACONS ARE LIT! ANATOLIA CALLS FOR AID!

During the 9th century the Eastern Roman Empire deployed a beacon system allowing it to send warnings of danger from the border with the Arabs to Constantinople in rapid time.

How did this “Lord of the Rings” style system work?

🧵🧵 This system was likely “created by Leo the Mathematician, who devised a code for the interpretation of signals, and had two identical water clocks made for the terminal stations. His work took account of the difference in longitude and the time the signal needed for transmission”

The German Emperor Henreich VI extorted the Roman Empire in 1187 with the threat of invasion.

Alexios Angelos agreed to pay 5,000 lbs of gold. He needed to issue a new tax to pay it. He assembled the people of Constantinople in the Hippodrome to propose it, but they refused! 🧵 This tax was called the Alamanikon, the “German tax.” However, “when he convened an assembly of the populace to explain it, it was vehemently shouted down, and he repudiated the idea.”

Why do we call the post-476 Romans “Byzantines?”

Politics!

After 800AD, many in the West called them Greeks for about a millennium!

The independence of Greece in the 19th century made the Greek label more politically complicated, and still no one wanted to call them Romans!🧵 Many think think the term comes from Hieronymus Wolf in the 16th century. But “this origin story is wrong in every significant way.” However his works “did not inaugurate a new paradigm for thinking about the eastern empire.” He continued to call them Greeks for the most part.

In the 9th century the Emirate of Crete was raiding and enslaving people across the Aegean

One Roman admiral stepped up, Niketas Ooryphas!

He defeated the Saracens, taking harsh measures to ensure “they would think twice before sending an expedition against the Roman Empire.”🧵 Niketas had to deal with a raid heading towards the Sea of Marmara sent by the Emirate of Crete, a state which constantly terrorized the Aegean with raids targeting loot and slaves.

In this case the enemy “had advanced as far as the Proconnesos of the Hellespont.”

Even after Constantinople fell in 1453, some Christian resistance persisted in the Aegean against Ottoman expansion!

The Greek island of Rhodes was Sultan Mehmed’s next target in 1480.

However, the Knights Hospitaller bravely defended their fortress against Ottoman forces!🧵🧵 Sultan Mehmed II, the famous conqueror of Constantinople, had systematically removed many Christian powers.

The Genoese lost Galata, Roman remnant states in Trebizond and the Morea were extinguished. The southern Balkans were secure under Turkish rule.

But many islands weren’t!

The “Venice” of Late Antiquity

“Ravenna was built on sandbanks and wooden piles, with bridges over the many canals that flowed around and into the city, just like Venice in later centuries.”

How and why did the city of Ravenna became a Roman capital? 🧵🧵 Ravenna is “situated as not to be easily approached either by ships or a land army...A army cannot approach it at all; for the river Po ... and other navigable rivers together with some marshes, encircle it on all sides and so cause the city to be surrounded by water”

-Prokopios

What was it like to enter Constantinople through the land walls and make your way through the Queen of Cities?

“Perhaps the best way to appreciate the impact that Constantinople would have had is to follow the path that would have been taken by a visitor.”

A tour of the city 🧵 “Most visitors…came by land, and their first inkling of the city beyond would come when the towers of immense defensive Land Walls that stretched from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara came into view and barred any further progress.”

Hagia Sophia was “famously completed in just 5 years and 10 months…a lightning-fast project compared with the speed of construction of other monumental churches, such as Notre Dame de Paris, which took almost 200 years.”

It became “likely the largest building in the world.” 🧵 “In contemporary praise Justinian had surpassed every ruler, for he built ‘a universal temple for all the nations of the earth.’”

To this day his legacy is quite enhanced by the building, even if it no longer performs its original intended function.