The View from the Bridge - Strolling Through Istanbul: The Classic Guide to the City - page 8

stripping it of its wealth, its art treasures and its sacred relics, most
of which were shipped of to western Europe. As wrote the French
knight Villehardouin, describing the sack of Constantinople by the
Crusaders: “Of holy relics I need only say that it contained more
than all Christendom combined; there is no estimating the quantity
of gold silver, rich stufs and other valuable things - the production
of all the climates of the world. It is the belief of me, Geofrey de
Villehardouin, marechal of Champagne, that the plunder of this
city exceeded all that had been witnessed since the creation of the
world.” And as the Byzantine historian Nicetas Choniates wrote in
his lament: “Oh city, city, eye of all cities, subject of narratives all
over the world, supporter of churches, leader of faith and guider
of orthodoxy, protector of education, abode of all good. Thou hast
drunk to the dregs the cup of the anger of the Lord, and hast been
visited with fire fiercer than that which in days of yore descended
upon the Pentapolis.”
The Latin Kings ruled in Constantinople from 1204 till 1261, at
which time Michael Palaeologus succeeded in recapturing the city
and restoring the Byzantine Empire. But the Empire was now only
a fragment of what it had been in former days, comprising parts of
Thrace, Macedonia and the Peloponnesus, with most of its former
possessions in Asia Minor occupied by the Ottoman Turks, and much
of its land in Europe lost to the rapacious Latins. Within the next
century even these dominions were lost, as the Turks crossed over
into Europe and advanced far into the Balkans. By the beginning of
the fifteenth century the Byzantine Empire consisted of little more
than Constantinople and its immediate suburbs, with the old city
decaying within the great walls which had protected it for so long.
Nevertheless, the indomitable Byzantines hung on for another half-
century, fighting of several attempts by the Turks to take the capital.
But by the middle of the fifteenth century it became increasingly
obvious that the city could not hold out much longer, for it was by
then completely surrounded by the Ottoman Empire.
On 13 February 1451 the young Sultan Mehmet II ascended to
the Ottoman throne and almost immediately began preparations for
what would be the final siege of the city. During the summer of the