The capture of Constantinople (and two other Byzantine splinter territories soon thereafter) marked the end of the Roman Empire, an imperial state which had lasted for nearly 1,500 years. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople also dealt a massive blow to Christendom, as the Ottoman armies thereafter were free to advance into Europe without an adversary to their rear. After the conquest, Sultan Mehmed transferred the capital of the Ottoman Empire from Adrianople to Constantinople. Several Greek and non-Greek intellectuals fled the city before and after the siege, with the majority of them migrating particularly to Italy, which helped fuel the Renaissance. The conquest of the city of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire marks, for some historians, the end of the Middle Ages Constantinople had been an imperial capital since its consecration in 330 under Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. In the following eleven centuries, the city had been besieged many times but was captured only once: during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The crusaders established an unstable Latin state in and around Constantinople while the remaining empire splintered into a number of Greek successor states, notably Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond. These Greeks fought as allies against the Latin establishments but among themselves for return to the Byzantine throne. The Nicaeans reconquered Constantinople from the Latins in 1261. Thereafter was little peace for the much-weakened empire; it continually fended off attacks from the Latins, the Serbians, the Bulgarians and, most importantly, the Ottoman Turks. The Black Plague between 1346 and 1349 killed almost half of Constantinople's inhabitants. Far from being in its heyday, Constantinople was severely depopulated as a result of the general economic and territorial decline of the empire following its partial recovery from the disaster of the Fourth Crusade inflicted on it by the Christian army two centuries before. Therefore, the city in 1453 was a series of walled villages separated by vast fields encircled by the fifth-century Theodosian walls. By 1450 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, an independent successor state that formed in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, also survived on the coast of the Black Sea. When Sultan Mehmed II succeeded his father in 1451, it was widely believed that the young ruler, then 19 years old, would prove incapable—and that he would pose no great threat to Christian possessions in the Balkans and the Aegean. This optimism was reinforced by friendly assurances made by Mehmed to envoys sent to his new court. But Mehmed's actions spoke louder than his mild words. Beginning early in 1452 he built a second Ottoman fortress, named Rumeli Hisarı, on the Bosphorus; this was done on the European side several miles north of Constantinople, and set directly across the strait from the similar fortress Anadolu Hisarı, which his great grandfather Bayezid I had previously built on the Asian side. This fortress-pair gained for the Turks complete control of sea traffic on the Bosphorus; specifically, it prevented help from the north, the Genoese colonies on the Black Sea coast, from reaching Constantinople. (The new fortress was also known as Boğazkesen, which held the dual meanings 'strait-blocker' or 'throat-cutter', emphasizing its strategic position.) In October 1452, Mehmed ordered Turakhan Beg to lead a large force into the Peloponnese and remain there to keep the despots Thomas and Demetrios from assisting their brother Constantine during the impending siege of Constantinople. Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI understood Mehmed's intentions, and turned to western Europe for help; but now the fruits of centuries of war and enmity between the eastern and western churches would be tolled. Since the mutual excommunications of 1054, the Pope in Rome was committed to imposing dominion over the eastern church. Nominal union had been negotiated in 1274, (at Lyon), and indeed, some Palaiologoi emperors (Latin, Palaeologan) had since been received into the Latin church. And, Emperor John VIII Palaiologos had recently negotiated union with Pope Eugene IV, with the Council of Florence of 1439 proclaiming a Bull of Union. These events, however, stimulated a massive propaganda initiative by anti-unionist partisans in Constantinople; and the population as well as the laity and leadership of the Byzantine Church became bitterly divided. Latent ethnic hatreds between Greeks and Italians—stemming from the events of the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Latins—played a significant role. Finally, the Union failed, greatly annoying Pope Nicholas V and the hierarchy of the Roman church.

• published: 16 Dec 2013
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