Professional 1453 Team™

The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which occurred after a siege by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, against the defending army commanded by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI. The siege lasted from Friday, 6 April 1453 until Tuesday, 29 May 1453 (according to the Julian Calendar), when the city was conquered by the Ottomans.
File:Battle of Constantinople.jpg
oil painting of the battle outside the walls, Constantine is seen on his horse battling against the turks

The Fall of Constantinople marked the end of the final remnant of the Roman Empire, an empire which had lasted for nearly 1,500 years; it was also a massive blow to Christendom. After the conquest Mehmed made Constantinople the Ottoman Empire's new capital. Several Greek and non-Greek intellectuals fled the city before and after the siege, migrating particularly to Italy. It is argued that they helped fuel the Renaissance. Some mark the end of the Middle Ages by the fall of the city and empire

In the 1,123 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.[15] The crusaders had most likely not intended to conquer Byzantium in the beginning, and an unstable Latin state was established in Constantinople. 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 also as rivals against each other over the Byzantine throne. The Nicaean Greeks were the first to re-conquer Constantinople from the Latins in 1261. In the following two centuries, the much-weakened Byzantine Empire faced attacks from the Latins, the Serbians, the Bulgarians and most importantly, the Ottoman Turks.[5][16][17][18] The Black Plague between 1346 and 1349 killed almost half of Consantinople's inhabitants[citation needed]. By 1453 the empire was exhausted, consisting of a few square miles outside the city of Constantinople itself, the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara, and the Peloponnese with its cultural center at Mystras. The Empire of Trebizond, a completely independent successor state that formed in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, also survived on the coast of the Black Sea. For more :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople

1453 Klan Fun Page