What were the final days of the siege of Constantinople like? The Byzantines probably knew they were screwed, what was the feeling like? Knowing the final remnant of Rome was about to fall?
They were pretty mad at euros for raping them and leaving them for the turks
>>12205
>>Within the city, the anxiety of the past few weeks had strained tempers to breaking point. Relations between Greeks, Venetians and Genoese - never easy at the best of times - had now reached a point where the three communities were barely on speaking terms. Even on vital matters of defence, every order was questioned, every suggestion argued, every motive suspected. Then, it seemed from one moment to the next, on that last Monday of the Empire's history, the mood changed. As the hour approached for the final reckoning, all quarrels and differences were forgotten. Work on the walls continued as always -though the Turks might enjoy their day of rest, there could be no respite for the defenders - but elsewhere throughout the city the people of Constantinople left their houses and gathered for one last collective intercession. As the bells pealed out from the churches, the most sacred icons and the most precious of relics were carried out to join the long, spontaneous procession of Greeks and Italians, Orthodox and Catholic alike, that wound its way through the streets and along the whole length of the walls, pausing for special prayers at every point where the damage had been particularly severe, or where the Sultan's artillery might be expected to concentrate its fire on the following day.
>>The procession was soon joined by the Emperor himself; and when it was finished he summoned his commanders to address them for the last time. Two versions of his speech have come down to us, one by his secretary Sphrantzes and one by Archbishop Leonard of Mitylene; and though they differ in detail and phraseology they are sufficiently similar to give us the substance of Constantine's words. He spoke first to his Greek subjects, telling them that there were four great causes for which a man should be ready to die: his faith, his country, his family and his sovereign. They must now be prepared to give their lives for all four. He for his part would willingly sacrifice his own for his faith, his city and his people. They were a great and noble people, the descendants of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome, and he had no doubt that they would prove themselves worthy of their forefathers in the defence of their city, in which the infidel Sultan wished to seat his false prophet on the throne of Jesus Christ. Turning to the Italians, he thanked them for all that they had done and assured them of his love and trust in the dangers that lay ahead. They and the Greeks were now one people, united in God; with His help they would be victorious. Finally he walked slowly round the room, speaking to each man in turn and begging forgiveness if he had ever caused him any offence.
>>Dusk was falling. From all over the city, as if by instinct, the people were making their way to the church of the Holy Wisdom. For the past five months the building had been generally avoided by the Greeks, defiled as they believed it to be by the Latin usages that no pious Byzantine could possibly accept. Now, for the first and last time, liturgical differences were forgotten. St Sophia was, as no other church could ever be, the spiritual centre of Byzantium. For eleven centuries, since the days of the son of Constantine the Great, the cathedral church of the city had stood on that spot; for over nine of those centuries the great gilded cross surmounting Justinian's vast dome had symbolized the faith of city and Empire. In this moment of supreme crisis, there could be nowhere else to go.
>>That last service of vespers ever to be held in the Great Church was also, surely, the most inspiring. Once again, the defenders on the walls were unable to desert their posts; but virtually every other able-bodied man, woman and child in the city crowded into St Sophia to take the Eucharist and to pray together, under the great golden mosaics that they knew so well, for their deliverance. The Patriarchal Chair was still vacant; but Orthodox bishops and priests, monks and nuns - many of whom had sworn never to cross the threshold of the building until it had been formally cleansed of the last traces of Roman pollution - were present in their hundreds. Present too was Cardinal Isidore, formerly Metropolitan of Kiev, long execrated as a renegade and traitor to his former faith, but now heard with a new respect as he dispensed the Holy Sacrament and intoned once again the old liturgies.
rip a worthy empooroor
>>The service was still in progress when the Emperor arrived with his commanders. He first asked forgiveness of his sins from every bishop present, Catholic and Orthodox alike; then he too took communion with the rest. Much later, when all but the few permanent candles had been put out and the Great Church was in darkness, he returned alone and spent some time in prayer; then he returned to Blachernae for a last farewell to his household. Towards midnight, accompanied by George Sphrantzes, he rode for the last time the length of the Land Walls to assure himself that everything possible had been done for their defence. On their return, he took his faithful secretary to the top of a tower near the Palace of Blachernae, where for an hour they watched together and listened. Then he dismissed him. The two never met again.
>>Constantine Dragases can have had little sleep that night, for Mehmet did not wait till dawn to launch his assault. At half-past one in the morning he gave the signal. Suddenly, the silence of the night was shattered - the blasts of trumpets and the hammering of drums combining with the blood-curdling Turkish war-cries to produce a clamour fit to waken the dead. At once the church bells began to peal, a sign to the whole city that the final battle had begun. The old people and children flocked to their local churches, or down to the Golden Horn where the church of St Theodosia,1 decked with roses, was celebrating its patron's feast-day; the men - those who were not already there - and many of the women sped to the walls, where there was work to be done.
>>13443
>He spoke first to his Greek subjects, telling them that there were four great causes for which a man should be ready to die: his faith, his country, his family and his sovereign. They must now be prepared to give their lives for all four. He for his part would willingly sacrifice his own for his faith, his city and his people. They were a great and noble people, the descendants of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome, and he had no doubt that they would prove themselves worthy of their forefathers in the defence of their city, in which the infidel Sultan wished to seat his false prophet on the throne of Jesus Christ. Turning to the Italians, he thanked them for all that they had done and assured them of his love and trust in the dangers that lay ahead. They and the Greeks were now one people, united in God; with His help they would be victorious. Finally he walked slowly round the room, speaking to each man in turn and begging forgiveness if he had ever caused him any offence
>>The Sultan never underestimated his opponents. He knew that if he were to take the city he must first wear down its defenders, attacking in wave after wave, allowing them no rest. He first sent forward the bashi-bazouks, Christian and Muslim alike, from every corner of Europe and western Asia. His army included many thousands of these irregulars. Largely untrained and armed with whatever weapons they happened to possess, they had little staying power, but their initial onslaught could be terrifying indeed. To Mehmet they also possessed a further advantage: they were expendable, ideal for demoralizing the enemy and making it an easy victim for the more sophisticated regiments that he would send in after them. For two hours they hurled themselves against the walls, and particularly against the most strategic section across the Lycus valley; yet somehow, thanks in large measure to the heroic efforts of Giovanni Giustiniani Longo and his men, the great bastion held firm. Shortly before four in the morning, the Sultan called them back. They had failed to breach the walls, but they had served their purpose well, keeping the defenders busy and draining them of energy.
>>The second wave of the attack followed hot on the first. It was provided by several regiments of Anatolian Turks, all - unlike the irregulars - fully trained and superbly disciplined. Pious Muslims to a man, each was determined to win eternal rewards in Paradise by being the first to enter the greatest city of Christendom. They fought with outstanding courage and on one occasion - after one of the largest cannon had pulverized a great stretch of the wall - came within an ace of forcing an entry; but the Christians, led by the Emperor himself, closed round them, killed as many as they could and drove the rest back across the ditch. When he heard the news, the Sultan flew into his usual rage; but he was not unduly disturbed. Fine soldiers as they were, he would not have wished the laurels of battle won by the Anatolians. That honour must be kept for his own favourite regiment of Janissaries; and it was these whom he now threw into the fray.
>>The Christians had no time to regroup or recover themselves before this third attack began. It opened with a hail of missiles — arrows, javelins, stones, even the occasional bullet — and hardly had this ceased when, in that steady, remorseless rhythm that had long struck terror into the hearts of all who heard it, the crack troops of the Ottoman army advanced across the plain at the double, their ranks unbroken and dead straight despite all the missiles that the defenders could hurl against them. The military music that kept them in perfect step was almost a weapon in itself, so deafening that it could be heard at the furthest end of the city and even across the Bosphorus. In wave after wave they came, flinging themselves furiously against the stockades, hacking away at the supports, throwing up scaling-ladders wherever the opportunity arose and then, at a given command, making way without fuss for the following wave, while they themselves waited and rested until their turn came round again. But for the Christians on the walls there could be no such alternation. The fighting had already lasted for well over five hours, and was now frequently hand-to-hand; and although they had so far been remarkably successful in keeping the besiegers at bay they knew that they could not last much longer.
>>Then disaster struck. Soon after dawn a bolt from a culverin struck Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, pierced his breastplate and smashed through his chest. The wound was not mortal, but Giustiniani — who had been holding the line where the pressure was at its greatest since the fighting began — was already exhausted and unable to continue. Collapsing on the ground and obviously in excruciating pain, he refused all the Emperor's entreaties to stay at his post and insisted on being carried down to a Genoese ship lying in the harbour. Constantine's attitude to a gravely wounded man may sound unreasonable; but he was well aware of the effect that Giustiniani's departure would have on his compatriots. Before the gate leading from the walls out into the city could be relocked, the Genoese streamed through it.
>>Then disaster struck. Soon after dawn a bolt from a culverin struck Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, pierced his breastplate and smashed through his chest. The wound was not mortal, but Giustiniani — who had been holding the line where the pressure was at its greatest since the fighting began — was already exhausted and unable to continue. Collapsing on the ground and obviously in excruciating pain, he refused all the Emperor's entreaties to stay at his post and insisted on being carried down to a Genoese ship lying in the harbour. Constantine's attitude to a gravely wounded man may sound unreasonable; but he was well aware of the effect that Giustiniani's departure would have on his compatriots. Before the gate leading from the walls out into the city could be relocked, the Genoese streamed through it.
>>13763
OOPS
>>The Sultan, watching closely from across the ditch, may or may not have seen Giustiniani fall; but he knew at once that something was amiss, and immediately launched yet another wave of Janissaries. They were headed by a giant named Hassan, who smashed his way through to the broken stockade and was over it before the defenders could stop him. He was killed a moment later; but by now more and more of his companions were following where he had led, and soon the Greeks were retreating back to the inner wall. Caught between the two rows of fortifications, they were easy prey to the advancing Turks and many of them were slaughtered where they stood.
>>13443
Constantine XI was a bro. I'm glad the Byzies went out fighting to the death in an historic siege. Their last two hundred years were absolutely shameful, being a battleground for Venice and Genoa, to being errand boys to the turks forced to fight against their own christian brothers to appease their muslim masters. Only in the end did they redeem their honor and go out in a glorious way befitting the Roman Empire. Plus they got cool legends out of that.
>Marble Emperor
>priests disappeared during the mass that the Turks barged in on and interrupted but will magically reappear to finish the mass when Constantinople once again becomes a Christian city
>tfw turk
>tfw studying byzantine history
>>At this point those Janissaries who, having reached the inner wall, were congratulating themselves on being the first into the city, saw to their astonishment a Turkish flag flying from a tower a short distance away to the north. An hour or so before, a group of about fifty Turkish irregulars on patrol had found a small door in the wall, half-hidden at the foot of the tower and insecurely bolted. It was in fact a sally-port known as the Kerkoporta, through which the commanders of that particular stretch of the wall - three Genoese brothers called Bocchiardi - had organized several effective raids on the Turkish camp. The bashi-bazouks had managed to force the door open, and had made their way up a narrow stair to the top of the tower. Such an action, with no army to give them support, was virtually suicidal; but in the confusion after the wounding of Giustiniani they encountered no resistance and were able soon afterwards to hoist a Turkish standard, leaving the door open for others to follow. It was almost certainly they, and not the Janissaries, who were the first of the besiegers to enter the city.
>>By now, however, the Turks were pouring through the open breaches. Constantine himself, having seen that the situation at the Kerkoporta was hopeless, had returned to his old post above the Lycus valley. There, with Don Francisco de Toledo - who, despite his age, had shown superb gallantry throughout the campaign - his cousin Theophilus Palaeologus and his friend John Dalmata, he fought desperately for as long as he could to hold the gate through which Giustiniani had been carried. Finally, seeing that all was lost, he flung off his imperial regalia and, still accompanied by his friends, plunged into the fray where the fighting was thickest. He was never seen again.
>>It was early morning, with the waning moon high in the sky. The siege of Constantinople was over. The walls were strewn with the dead and dying, but of living, able-bodied defenders there was scarcely a trace. The surviving Greeks had hurried home to their families, in a desperate attempt to save them from the rape and pillage that was already beginning; the Venetians were making for their ships, the Genoese for the comparative security of Galata. They found the Golden Horn surprisingly quiet: most of the Turkish sailors had already left their ships, terrified lest the army should get the best of the plunder. The Venetian commander, Alvise Diedo, encountered no resistance when he set his sailors to cut through the thongs attaching the boom to the walls of Galata; his little fleet, accompanied by seven Genoese vessels and half a dozen Byzantine galleys, then swung out into the Marmara and thence down the Hellespont to the open sea. All were packed to the gunwales with refugees, many of whom had swum out to them from the shore to escape the fate that awaited those who remained.
>>They were well-advised to do so, for that fate was horrible indeed. By noon the streets were running red with blood. Houses were ransacked, women and children raped or impaled, churches razed, icons wrenched from their golden frames, books ripped from their silver bindings. The Imperial Palace at Blachernae was left an empty shell. In the church of St Saviour in Chora the mosaics and frescos were miraculously spared, but the Empire's holiest icon, the Virgin Hodegetria, said to have been painted by St Luke himself,1 was hacked into four pieces and destroyed. The most hideous scenes of all, however, were enacted in the church of the Holy Wisdom. Matins were already in progress when the berserk conquerors were heard approaching. Immediately the great bronze doors were closed; but the Turks soon smashed their way in. The poorer and more unattractive of the congregation were massacred on the spot; the remainder were lashed together and led off to the Turkish camps, for their captors to do with as they liked. As for the officiating priests, they continued with the Mass as long as they could before being killed at the high altar; but there are among the Orthodox faithful those who still believe that at the last moment one or two of them gathered up the most precious of the patens and chalices and mysteriously disappeared into the southern wall of the sanctuary. There they will remain until the day Constantinople becomes a Christian city once again, when they will resume the liturgy at the point at which it was interrupted.
>>Sultan Mehmet had promised his men the three days of looting to which by Islamic tradition they were entitled; but after an orgy of violence on such a scale, there were no protests when he brought it to a close on the same day as it had begun. There was by then little left to plunder, and his soldiers had more than enough to do sharing out the loot and enjoying their captives. He himself waited until the worst excesses were over before entering the city. Then, in the late afternoon, accompanied by his chief ministers, his imams and his bodyguard of Janissaries, he rode slowly down the principal thoroughfare, the Mese, to St Sophia. Dismounting outside the central doors, he stooped to pick up a handful of earth which, in a gesture of humility, he sprinkled over his turban; then he entered the Great Church. As he walked towards the altar, he stopped one of his soldiers whom he saw hacking at the marble pavement; looting, he told him, did not include the destruction of public buildings. He had in any case already decided that the church of the Holy Wisdom should be converted into the chief mosque of the city. At his command the senior imam mounted the pulpit and proclaimed the name of Allah, the All-Merciful and Compassionate: there was no God but God and Mohammed was his Prophet. The Sultan touched his turbaned head to the ground in prayer and thanksgiving.
>>Leaving the Great Church, he crossed the square to the old, ruined Palace of the Emperors, founded by Constantine the Great eleven and a half centuries before; and as he wandered through its ancient halls, his slippers brushing the dust from the pebbled floor-mosaics - some of which have survived to this day - he is said to have murmured the lines of a Persian poet:
The spider weaves the curtains in the palace of the Caesars;
The owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiab.1
>>He had achieved his ambition. Constantinople was his. He was just twenty-one years old.
If only John Hunyadi had come, he could save the city with a charge like Rohan riding into the orcs. But for some reason he didn't.
>>13852
Filthy Turk. All your culture is composed primarily of Islam. Your ancestors ruined a great european empire.
>>14070
No, our culture primarily consist of giving butthurt. stay mad.
>Your ancestors ruined a great european empire.
that would be Franks. ask any greek about whether it was Turks or Franks ruined their empire.
so much for the european unity
So why did perfidious albion not hand Constantinople back to their greek friends on a platter?
>>13852
>tfw Australian
>tfw studying Ottoman history
>>14183
now we need a greek studying gallipoli campaign
>>14268
yes
butthurt aussies neglect to mention the BEF kicking kebab out of egypt and palestine tho.
>>14268
Yes, not sure what my fellow Ausfags are laughing about. Hell the brits used us to fight while they jerked off in command.
>>14070
There really wasn't much of an empire by the time the city was taken, by then it was reduced to just the city of Constantinople, part of the Pelopponese, and a couple of islands in the Aegean, and that was all that the Ottomans took, all of the rest of the imperial lands, the Balkans and Greece, had all already been taken by other European powers that wanted to conquer the empire.
Slavs and Italians contributed much more to the fall of the empire than the Turks ever did, not that I'm defending them
>>14302
John Julius Norwich's three volume history of Byzantium, and I only posted the very end of the final chapter. The first two books were hard to put down, the third was incredibly difficult to read, it's just bad things constantly happening, I highly reccomend it.
>>14441
The Battle of Manzikert started the rapid decline, because after that, the interior on Anatolia was lost forever, and even the Kommenian restoration couldn't slow down the Turks.
>>14487
Very since we are at /his/ now.
>>14571
well 1st crusade did had its benefits, turks were at nicea before the 1st crusade, and ERE retake a lot of anatolia thanks to crusader push. They don't like to admit this, given the 4th crusade and all that but it is what it is.
t. turk byzantine fag posted above
>>14441
Those three books were my intro to Byzantine history, fantastic fucking read. Norwich has a style that reminds me of lectures back at University. Not nearly as hard and detailed and dry as it probably should be, but really focused on a strong narrative and amusing comments about various figures.
>>14743
>norwich
>not reading Cyril Mango
>>13426
>>13443
>>13471
>>13858
>seeing that all was lost, he flung off his imperial regalia and, still accompanied by his friends, plunged into the fray where the fighting was thickest. He was never seen again.
What would be his fate if the Emperor had been caught alive?
>>14910
covert assasination I would presume. Mehmet offered comfortable exile / house imprisonment which he refused. Letting him live would be too dangerous to stability
but I doubt he would parade him araound the city and make the execution public, would provoke the populace too hard.
fun fact, seljuk sultan wined and dined romanes diogones after his defeat in manzikert.
>>14910
Likely executed. Mehmet offered Costantine his life in exchange for the city, and Constantine denied him.
>>14910
Same gruelling fate as the Byzantine Emperor met when Alp Arslan crushed the Byzantine army in the Battle of Manzikert:
he would be set free
>>12205
is that mullah omar holding the flag?
>>14993
>would provoke the populace too hard
what populace
>>14571
I mean you can go back further because everything after Basil II was decline simply because of the inept leadership. The only reason the Crusaders or Turks got the best of the Byzantines is because they weakened themselves to the point where they could be taken advantage of.
In my opinion the last real chance to stop the decline was George Maniakes. If he had taken over the empire they would've reinstated a firm military hold over all their lands.
>>15041
Actually that's Ulubatli Hasan
>On the early morning of the last day of the siege, May 29, after the morning prayers, the Ottoman military band started to play one of their songs and the city was stormed. Ulubatlı Hasan was among the first to climb the walls of Constantinople followed closely by thirty of his friends. He carried only a scimitar, a small shield and the Ottoman Flag. He climbed the wall, under showers of arrows, stones, spears and bullets. He reached the top and he placed the flag, which he defended until his 12 remaining friends arrived. After that he collapsed with 27 arrows still in his body. Seeing the Ottoman flag inspired the Ottoman troops and kept their spirits up - and conversely, disheartened the Greek defenders - until finally the Ottomans did conquer Constantinople.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulubatl%C4%B1_Hasan
>>15045
the remaining greeks and latins? you seriously expect all of them to die?
>>15252
Constantinople was barren as fuck.
>>15023
>When Emperor Romanos IV was conducted into the presence of Alp Arslan, the Sultan refused to believe that the bloodied and tattered man covered in dirt was the mighty Emperor of the Romans. After discovering his identity, Alp Arslan placed his boot on the Emperor's neck and forced him to kiss the ground.[9] A famous conversation is also reported to have taken place:[21][22]
>Alp Arslan: "What would you do if I were brought before you as a prisoner?"
Romanos: "Perhaps I'd kill you, or exhibit you in the streets of Constantinople."
Alp Arslan: "My punishment is far heavier. I forgive you, and set you free."
>Alp Arslan treated Romanos with considerable kindness and again offered the terms of peace that he had offered prior to the battle.[12]
goddamn. i think greek-turkish rivalry might be my favourite after the brits and french
That last emperor was a total fucking badass
>>15287
it was compared to pre 4th crusade, but Mehmet had a sizeable Greek population in his dominion both outside and inside Constantinople
>>15300
Based, t.b.h.
The Seljuks were total badasses, it's a shame that they broke apart so badly.
>>15420
Anyone here know more about the Double Headed Eagle? Were the Turks copying the Byzantine eagle or were they getting it from another source?
>>15771
The double-headed eagle became the standard of the Seljuk Turks with the crowning of Tuğrul (meaning "Goshawk") Beg at Mosul in 1058 as "King of the East and the West" and was much used afterwards.
>>15771
>>15843
double headed eagle was a popular symbol throughout centuries, Hittites and Sumerians also had them. Turks also had a mythological double headed eagle (Whose name I tried to dig up but couldnt it started with D If i Remember)
but Seljuk and the successor fiefdoms adaptation of it mostly likely came from Byzantine empire, and it is still used in certain places in Turkey.
pic related, symbol of the football team in Iconium / Konya
>>14441
Thanks for the source. I know what books I'm ordering next.
>>15771
the star and crescent supposedly came from the byzantines.
>>15994
which was the symbol of the city of Byzantium, As far as I can remember it was related to goddess Hecate and how she saved the city and therefore the inhabitants adapted her crescent moon as symbol. From there it became the crescent and start of byzantium and later ottoman empire and later on turkey
>>16041
>>15994
Found it from wikipedia citing a primary source
>Devotion to Hecate was especially favored by the Byzantines for her aid in having protected them from the incursions of Philip of Macedon. Her symbols were the crescent and star, and the walls of her city were her provenance.[
yep read more about it here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_and_crescent#Hellenistic_and_Roman
>>14819
Single best history moment I have ever encountered senpai. The 1453 fall deserves a '300' style movie.
>>16135
it has a movie though from turkic p.o.v.
>>15300
I feel bad for Diogenos. He just got fucked over all the time since becoming Emperor. Like a less lucky, slightly less able Alexios. Hell, Alexios raised Diogenos' two sons in his own home after his death too.
>>13848
It's a beautiful bookend to this long story. Probably the most important story in Europe's history.
>>16190
Yeah, for some reason Hollywood has yet to touch the Byzantines in spite of how many medieval movies have been made.
>>13848
>but will magically reappear
kek
>>16107
>Her symbols were the crescent and star,
>>16284
well public knows medieval west more than ERE
>>16327
there is a turkish resort by that name, they also copied the statue.
though hecate was more of a moon than a moon and crescent goddess, correct me If I'm wrong
>>13858
>Finally, seeing that all was lost, he flung off his imperial regalia and, still accompanied by his friends, plunged into the fray where the fighting was thickest. He was never seen again.
(;_;)7
>>14441
Shieet, I have those volumes on my shelf, I've been meaning to read them.
I will now, thanks.
>>13848
Holy fuck that is spooky.
Very foreboding for the coming century as well.
>>17005
If you literally believe in that shit you are a retard.
>>17528
>no fun
Calm down autist
>>13858
>Finally, seeing that all was lost, he flung off his imperial regalia and, still accompanied by his friends, plunged into the fray where the fighting was thickest. He was never seen again.
Byzantine had been screwed since the Black Death. The hit they took to the population wrecked their economy and man power beyond recovery.
>>16190
>turkic p.o.v.
trash.jpg
>Little known fact: Vlad the Impaler fought there as well, enlisted under a different name within the Wallachian contingent sent by the then-current ruler to help the Byzantines. He had personal reasons to be there (getting his wayward younger brother out of the Sultan's clutches), but has actively fought in several smaller battles, and did guard duty on the city walls. He got rid of a couple of young rivals for the throne while he was there, as well. He also knew when to call it quits and got out of there just in time, by disguising himself as a Turk.
>Giovanni Giustiniani Longo (Greek: Ιωάννης Λόγγος Ιουστινιάνης, Iōánnēs Lóggos Ioustiniánēs; Latin: Ioannes Iustinianus Longus; 1418–1453) was a young Genoese captain, a member of one of the greatest families of the Republic, a kinsman to the powerful house of Doria in Genoa,[1] and protostrator[2] of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. He led 700 professional soldiers, both Genovese and Greeks from the island of Chios, which at the time was part of the Republic of Genoa, to the defense of Constantinople against the Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed II in 1453. (See also Fall of Constantinople.) He personally financed, organized and led this expedition on his own initiative, and upon arriving was placed in command of the land defenses by Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos of the Byzantine Empire. Giustinani was key in controlling the land forces and keeping the Greeks, Genoese and Venetians from arguing with each other, and instead kept focused on repairing the land walls after the Ottoman cannon had shot holes in them. It was at least partly because of Giustiniani's charisma that the Byzantine forces were able to hold out so long against overwhelming odds.
1/2
>>18261
>On May 29, 1453, during the final attack by Mehmet II, Giustiniani was wounded by an Ottoman cannon while defending the walls of Constantinople. Some sources say the wound was caused by a crossbow bolt. Sources disagree about whether the wound was to his arm, leg, or chest, but it forced him to withdraw from his station at the land wall. He exited through the locked gate into the city, which opened up the opportunity for the fearful to flee, and panic spread throughout the lines.
>Seeing the demoralization caused among the defenders by Giustiniani's retreat, Sultan Mehmed II ordered a renewed assault that eventually defeated the Byzantines and Constantinople was taken by the Turks. Although Giustiniani's men managed to escape with their general after its fall, Giustiniani died from his wounds in the early days of June 1453.
>His body was carried by his comrades to the then Genoese island of Chios. His tomb in the Church of San Domenico on Chios is lost (maybe in the earthquake of 1881), but several descriptions survive.[3]
>Branches and descendants of Giovanni Giustiniani Longo's family still exist today in Greece and Italy.
>>18139
Why? it's pretty cool and accurate besides the byzantines looking so wealthy
>>18768
>Byzantines r ebul! Ottomans good!
Turks are always biased when it comes to shit like that. Which reminds me that there was a cartoon about 1453 which was even worse.
>>13958
Thanks a bunch for this great read. I learned a lot from this. Are you planning on having a future job related to history?
>>18972
they just made the emperor seem hedonist really, that's about it. He didn't look evil. movie was pretty cool and it showed how the battle looked for the Ottomans including all the tactics and the internal struggles of Mehmed. it was a pretty nifty movie really.
>>18972
Are Turks really nationalistic about the Ottoman Empire? I thought Ataturk denounced it.
>>19175
Name?
>>19229
Only the modern AKP under Erdogan who even wants to pursue a foreign policy of Ottomanism and every CHP voter thinks secretly hates Ataturk and Kemalism.
>>19274
1453 fetih
>>18139
with that logic, greek pov is also trash as both would be labeled as propoganda
>>19229
>>19279
Turks are proud of their Ottoman heritage but they also know that Ataturk was necessary and it was important to get rid of the Ottomans and never return to that. The Ottoman family now are completely secular and all that now though (yes, they're all still alive and well, one's a fucking comedian in England). Turks are also fond of their Seljuk, Central Asian and Anatolian heritage.
>>13858
>Finally, seeing that all was lost, he flung off his imperial regalia and, still accompanied by his friends, plunged into the fray where the fighting was thickest. He was never seen again.
Goddamn, why hasn't this been made into a movie by anyone but Turk fucking shits?
>>19569
who cares?
>>19569
because we feed on your butthurt.
>>19569
Hollywood is the sink hole for a lot of artists who flock there.
Who then make movies for a American audience.
Kingdom of Heaven is the closest thing to a Crusades/Byzantine movie you will get.
>>19373
Turks are more unreliable when it comes to giving information about their atrocities, since they're always in denial (genocides, burning of Smyrna). At least Greeks admit whenether they cause something bad like the military coup in Cyprus.
>>19620
Turkish civil war soon, Id rather be reclaimed by gayreeks or bulgars then stay with the Great Satan Tayyip
t. CHP voter from Edirne
>>19693
Nope, everyone denies the atrocities when it suits them, for Greeks you will not see them to admit say how they drove off Albanians from Athens during their independence and they consisted a large majority of the city.
no side is objective, if you think a greek movie would be you are delusional, but more than likely you don't give a shit if it has a greek bias. you are more focused on whether or not it has an eastern bias.
>>19693
The Turks accepted the atrocities but don't agree that the events count as a genocide. Nor did they burn Smyrna, it would be retarded to capture a city and burn it, it was burning by the time the Turks came.
>>19842
This
>>14441
I can't find anyplace that seems to sell these new, much less as a set. Well, when I do someone is charging an outrageous amount. Anyone know where I should look?
>>19845
>it would be retarded to capture a city and burn it
Not unless the burning houses where those of Greeks and Armenians. The Turkish houses were almost left unscathed.
>>18197
I'd like a source since I've always been interested in learning about Vlad, but this sounds a bit fanficitony.
>>20059
you act like greeks did not burned turkish houses while they were pushing forward into inner anatolia. Or as if there was no armenian incursino supported by imperial russia.
problem is turks won hence they were more effective in cleansing anatolai from greeks and armenians than greeks and armenians cleansing anatolia from turks
>but muh greeks dindu nuffin
read the british reports of greek army movement. there are many outside sources reporting attrocities done by greeks just as it is the case for turks
lol get fuckin rekt
>>20059
The whole city burned to shit, the fire set ablaze and the whole city burned, the fire didn't discriminate, it jumps building to building. you know how fires work right? Also the Greeks were burning each village one after another as they were fleeing west and they also set Smyrna on fire too.
Will Putin retake it and place The Romanovs back on the throne?
>>20237
Well, I live in smyrna, and the houses were burnt down actually created a giant open space for a beautiful fair, and every april, i can buy great books for cheap, so thanks le greek pyroman,
Memes aside, the war was favoring the greeks, all turkish victories by kuvayimilliye was phyrric, after the Gediz offensive, they were shattered, and replaced by a real army.
But howewer, this battle was fought on 3 sides, so lets not forget the southern clashes with france and eastern battles with armenia
>>20237
>they also set Smyrna on fire too.
How do you explain then that there were also Turkish reports that Turks began the fire then.
>>20410
Well are there now? care to provide evidence?
I blame the Brits more for cock-blocking the Russians from conquering Constantinople o several occasions .
Can't really blame the Turks for being Turks I guess.
>>20428
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Smyrna
Scroll down to Sources claiming Turkish responsibility since I can't redirect it because I'm on mobile.
>>20091
I posted it hoping anyone else had a source, i haven't been able to find one, sadly
>>20466
The Ottoman effort in the Crimean war is severely underplayed, Ottomans were doing just fine before the British and the French showed up too.
>>20511
You didn't realise that those were just speculations?
>>20599
Why did the British and French even get involved in a war between slavs and Kebab?
>>20629
to prevent a powershift of who controls the Mediterranean.
>>20599
Fair point, I didn't know that; I always thought they would have been dismantled had the West not intervened.
>>14665
The problem was that John II died too soon. When he was in charge his focus was only on the Turks, and they were getting repeatedly pushed back and with the beyliks played against each other. If he had lived 10 more years or so (not hard considering he died when he was 57) both Konya and Ankara would have been restored, thus allowing for Manuel to complete the conquest with minimal effort.
>>19842
Nah, we admit our 'atrocities' but seeing as Turks, Albanians and Jews shouldn't have been in those cities in the first place, it's really their fault. The siege of Tripolitsa is one of the more celebrated events during the revolution.
>Describing the massacres that occurred following the capture of Tripolitsa, historian W. Alison Phillips noted that:
>"For three days the miserable inhabitants were given over to lust and cruelty of a mob of savages. Neither sex nor age was spared. Women and children were tortured before being put to death. So great was the slaughter that Kolokotronis himself says that, from the gate to the citadel his horse’s hoofs never touched the ground. His path of triumph was carpeted with corpses. At the end of two days, the wretched remnant of the Mussulmans were deliberately collected, to the number of some two thousand souls, of every age and sex, but principally women and children, were led out to a ravine in the neighboring mountains and there butchered like cattle."
>>13917
Hi us.
Post butt.
>"As it is clear that you desire war more than peace, since I cannot satisfy you either by my protestations of sincerity, or by my readiness to swear allegiance, so let it be according to your desire. I turn now and look to God alone. Should it be his will that the city be yours, where is he who can oppose it? If he should inspire you with a desire for peace, I shall be only too happy. However, I release you from all your oaths and treaties with me, and, closing the gates of my capital, I will defend my people to the last drop of my blood. Reign in happiness until the All-just, the Supreme God, calls us both before his judgment seat."
>"I thank all for the advice which you have given me.
I know that my going out of the city might be of some benefit to me,
inasmuch as all that you foresee might really happen.
But it is impossible for me to go away!
How could I leave the churches of our Lord, and his servants the clergy,
and the throne, and my people in such a plight?
What would the world say about me?
I pray you, my friends, in the future do not say to me anything else but,
'Nay, sire, do not leave us!' Never, never will I leave you.
I am resolved to die here with you!"
Constantine was a real man.
greatest moment in history
>>14160
I hate the Ottomans more than most, but this.
The Crusaders were the ones who destroyed Byzantium. The Turks just drove the final nail into her coffin.
>>26667
>I hate the Ottomans more than most
why?
The Ottomans were far better rulers (regarding everything from administration to warfare) than the Byzantines, desu. Not to mention the fact that the minarets look really good.
>>27659
this picture is beautiful
>>27815
The shit buildings in the background ruin it desu
>>28014
i think it looks nice with the new and the old kinda thing
>>27659
>t. Mehmetoglu
>>14268
Did turkshits win the war?
>>27659
>Being this turkish
>>12205
Roger Crowley's book on the subject is golden
>>28151
>board under a day old
>trying to dictate board culture
Kill yourself.
>>28215
don't turn this place into cancer like /pol/. /pol/ and /int/ already exists, go shitpost there.
>>28288
he didn't shit post though so it's okay, it's a post you can refute or back up so I'm okay with it
Never forget
>>27659
Hello mehmet.
Is it true that rather than cleansing the degeneracy that has been infecting the Byzantines, the Ottoman Sultans are infact are infected by the degeneracy themselves?
>>28761
Yes
>"Even if rivers become wine they wouldn't fill my glass."
- Murad IV
>>28861
It really piss me off that in some muslim society they portray the Ottoman caliphate as being pure 100% absolutely halal.
The Ottoman sultanate is a shithole of degeneracy, thank Allah Ataturk purge it.
>>29015
The living heirs of the Ottoman throne are completely secular and modern, too bad they're not in power right now.
>>15771
Öksökö is part of Turkic (Altaic even) mythology, it doesn't have much to do with Roman eagle. It has relations to Iranic two-headed-eagle Simurg though.
Öksökö is many things. The individual eagles are Toğrul and Konrul. Toğrul comes from the word 'to rise' and Konrul comes from the word 'to land'. They symbolise the destruction-creation of worldly affairs. Of course, it also symbolises things like East&West etc, but when you go deep in the myth, it is about life&death.
The important thing about Öksökö is that it is never known which bird is Konrul and which bird is Tuğrul: Life and destruction are inseperable.
>>28761
The Byzantines in general were incredibly good at spreading soft power and influencing the cultures around them. I mean look at the Bulgarians, they started with similar roots to the Turks but after hundreds of years of intermarrying and fighting with and taking Byzantine bribes they became themselves Byzaboos. Similar case with Serbia and the Russians. It was inevitable that the Ottomans would themselves be turned into off shades of the Byzantines, and fall into the exact same type of political sloughs that the Greeks had.
>>29035
It always surprises me how white the Ottoman heirs look.
>>28334
There's a video on YouTube about a British woman who visited Constantinople during Ottoman times which expressed her views about it but I can't seem to remember its title. All I remember though was how she described it as a filthy place with disgusting inhabitants.
>>30084
I remember something similar, are you referring to the woman in Victorian times who spoke of the Ottomans as the rightful rulers and the Greeks as basically heretics and idol worshipers?
>>27659
>those minarets
Interesting thread.
>>27659
You're correct if you're talking about 15th or 16th century.
However, Ottoman rule was incredibly shitty later on, especially in terms of administration.
>Balkans lost 2/3rds of it's population during Ottoman rule
>power was in the hands of local Muslims who frequently abused it
>constant revolts and low-scale warfare
Empire was simply too decentralized to survive, and reforms came waay too late.
What do you think about this movie /his/?
>>13958
>>He had achieved his ambition. Constantinople was his. He was just twenty-one years old.
>you will never experience this feel
>>30348
it's shit
t.türk
>>14302
What's the source?
European archives of the year 2025.
Because that's what will happen soon.
>>30438
>Mehmed II's first campaigns after Constantinople were in the direction of Serbia, which had been an Ottoman vassal state since the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.
Keep doing what you're good at I guess.
>>30251
>Balkans lost 2/3rds of it's population during Ottoman rule
sauce?
Posting the other Siege of Constantinople
>>The end of the twelfth century found Europe in confusion. The Empires of both East and West were rudderless; Norman Sicily was gone, never to return. Germany was torn apart by civil war over the imperial succession and both England and France were similarly - though less violently - occupied with inheritance problems following the death of Richard Coeur-de-Lion in 1199. Of the luminaries of Christendom, one only was firmly in control: Pope Innocent III, who had ascended the papal throne in 1198 and had immediately proclaimed yet another Crusade. The lack of crowned heads to lead it did not worry him; previous experience had shown that Kings and princes, stirring up as they invariably did national rivalries and endless questions of precedence and protocol, tended to be more trouble than they were worth. A few great nobles would suit his purpose admirably; and Innocent was still casting about for suitable candidates when he received a letter from Count Tibald of Champagne.
>>Tibald was the younger brother of Henry of Champagne, Count of Troyes, who had been ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem - though he was never crowned King - from the time of his marriage to Amalric I's daughter Isabella in 1192 until his accidental fall from a window of his palace at Acre in 1197. He had not accompanied Henry to Palestine; but as the grandson of Louis VII and the nephew of both Philip Augustus and Coeur-de-Lion, he had the Crusades in his blood. He was energetic and ambitious; and when, in the course of a tournament at his castle of Ecri on the Aisne, he and his friends were addressed by the celebrated preacher Fulk of Neuilly, who was travelling through France rallying support for a new expedition to the East, he responded immediately. Once he had sent a message to Pope Innocent that he had taken the Cross, there could be no other leader.
>>It was clear to everyone, however, that major problems lay ahead. Coeur-de-Lion, before leaving Palestine, had given it as his opinion that the weakest point of the Muslim East was Egypt, and that it was here that any future expeditions should be directed. It followed that the new army would have to travel by sea, and would need ships in a quantity that could be obtained from one source only: the Venetian Republic. Thus it was that during the first week of Lent in the year 1201, a party of six knights led by Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, arrived in Venice. They made their request at a special meeting of the Great Council, and a week later they received their answer. The Republic would provide transport for four and a half thousand knights with their horses, nine thousand squires and twenty thousand foot-soldiers, with food for nine months. The cost would be 84,000 silver marks. In addition Venice would provide fifty fully-equipped galleys at her own expense, on condition that she received one-half of the territories conquered.
>>This reply was conveyed to Geoffrey and his colleagues by the Doge, Enrico Dandolo. In all Venetian history there is no more astonishing figure. We cannot be sure of his age when, on 1 January 1193, he was raised to the ducal throne; the story goes that he was eighty-five and already stone-blind, though this seems hardly credible when we read of his energy - indeed, his heroism - a decade later on the walls of Constantinople. But even if he was in only his middle seventies, he would still have been, at the time of the Fourth Crusade, an octogenarian of several years' standing. A dedicated, almost fanatical patriot, he had spent much of his life in the service of Venice, and in 1172 had been one of the Republic's ambassadors on the abortive peace mission to Manuel Comnenus.
>>Did his loss of sight date from this time? According to his later namesake, the historian Andrea Dandolo, his arrogance and stubbornness antagonized Manuel to such a point that he actually had him arrested and partially blinded; on the other hand a contemporary and so possibly more reliable source - an appendix to the Altino Chronicle - reports that the next Venetian embassy to Constantinople was sent only after the three previous ambassadors had returned safe and sound. This, combined with what we know of Manuel's character and the absence of any other references to what must have created a major outcry in Venice had it in fact occurred, suggests that imperial displeasure cannot be blamed on this occasion. Another theory1 holds that while in Constantinople Dan-dolo had been involved in a brawl, in the course of which his eyes had been injured. This too seems improbable in view of the Altino testimony; besides, he was not even then in his first youth, but a mature diplomatist of fifty or so. Thirty years later, at any rate, the facts are no longer in doubt. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, who knew him well, assures us that 'although his eyes appeared normal, he could not see a hand in front of his face, having lost his sight after a head wound'.
>>Fortunately for posterity, Geoffrey has left a full record not only of the Crusade itself but also of these preliminary negotiations. No one was better placed to do so, and few men of his time could have done it better. His style has clarity and pace, and in his opening pages he gives us a vivid account of Venetian democracy in action. The Doge, he writes,
assembled at least ten thousand men in the church of St Mark, the most beautiful that there is, to hear the Mass and to pray God for His guidance. And after the Mass he summoned the envoys and besought them, that they themselves should ask of the people the services they required. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, spoke by consent for the others . . . Then the Doge and people raised their hands and cried aloud with a single voice, 'We grant it! We grant it!' And so great was the noise and tumult that the very earth seemed to tremble underfoot.
>>On the following day the contracts were concluded. Geoffrey notes in passing that the agreement did not mention Egypt as the immediate objective. He gives no explanation; but he and his colleagues were almost certainly afraid — and with good reason as it turned out - that the news would be unpopular with the rank and file, for whom Jerusalem was the only legitimate goal for a Crusade and who would see no reason to waste time anywhere else. Moreover an Egyptian expedition would necessitate a dangerous landing on a hostile shore, as opposed to a quiet anchorage at Christian Acre and an opportunity to recover from the journey before going into battle. The Venetians for their part would have been only too happy to cooperate in the deception, for they too had a secret. At that very moment their own ambassadors were in Cairo, discussing a highly profitable trade agreement; and in the course of these discussions they are believed to have given a categorical undertaking not to be party to any attack on Egyptian territory.
>>Such considerations, however, could not be allowed to affect plans for the Crusade, by which still greater prizes might be won; and it was agreed that the Crusaders should all forgather in Venice on the feast of St John, 24 June 1202, when the fleet would be ready for them.
>>Just how Enrico Dandolo proposed to deflect the Frankish Crusaders from Egypt we shall never know. He and his agents may have been partly responsible for leaking the Egyptian plans through the countries of the West; certainly these became public knowledge in a remarkably short time. But if he hoped that the popular reaction to this news would induce the leaders to change their minds, he was mistaken. It was the followers who changed theirs. Many, on hearing of their proposed destination, renounced the Crusade altogether; many more decided to head for Palestine regardless, arranging their own transport from Marseille to one of the Apulian ports. On the day appointed for the rendezvous in Venice, the army that gathered on the Lido numbered less than one-third of what had been expected.
>>For those who had arrived as planned, the situation was embarrassing in the extreme. Venice had performed her share of the bargain: there lay the fleet, war galleys as well as transports - no Christian man, writes Geoffrey, had ever seen richer or finer - but sufficient for an army three times the size of that assembled. With their numbers so dramatically reduced, the Crusaders could not hope to pay the Venetians the money they had promised. When their leader, the Marquis Boniface of Montfer-rat - Tibald of Champagne having died shortly after Villehardouin's return the previous year - arrived in Venice rather late, he found the whole expedition in jeopardy. Not only were the Venetians refusing point-blank to allow a single ship to leave port till the money was forthcoming; they were even talking of cutting off provisions to the waiting army - a threat made more serious in that the bulk of that army was confined to the Lido and strictly forbidden to set foot in the city itself. This last measure was not intended to be deliberately offensive; it was a normal precaution on such occasions, designed to prevent disturbances of the peace or the spread of infection. But it scarcely improved the atmosphere. Boniface emptied his own coffers, many of the other knights and barons did likewise, and every man in the army was pressed to give all he could; but the total raised, including quantities of gold and silver plate, still fell short by 34,000 marks of what was owing.
>>For as long as the contributions continued to come in, old Dandolo kept the Crusaders in suspense. Then, as soon as he was sure that there was no more to be got, he came forward with an offer. The Venetian city of Zara,' he pointed out, had recently fallen into the hands of the King of Hungary. If, before embarking on the Crusade proper, the Franks would agree to assist Venice in its recapture, settlement of their debt might perhaps be postponed. It was a typically cynical proposal, and as soon as he heard of it Pope Innocent sent an urgent message forbidding its acceptance. But the Crusaders, as he later came to understand, had no choice.
>>There followed another of those ceremonies in St Mark's that Enrico Dandolo, despite his years, handled so beautifully. Before a congregation that included all the leading Franks, he addressed his subjects. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, who was there, reports his speech as follows:
'Signors, you are joined with the worthiest people in the world, for the highest enterprise ever undertaken. I myself am old and feeble; I need rest: my body is infirm. But I know that no man can lead you and govern you as I, your Lord, can do. If therefore you will allow me to direct and defend you by taking the Cross while my son remains in my place to guard the Republic, I am ready to live and to die with you and the pilgrims.'
And when they heard him, they cried with one voice, 'We pray God that you will do this thing, and come with us!'
So he came down from the pulpit and moved up to the altar, and knelt there, weeping; and he had the cross sewn on to his great cotton hat, so determined was he that all men should see it.
>>Thus it was that on 8 November 1202 the army of the Fourth Crusade set sail from Venice. Its 480 ships, led by the galley of the Doge himself, 'painted vermilion, with a silken vermilion awning spread above, cymbals clashing and four trumpeters sounding from the bows', were however bound neither for Egypt nor for Palestine. Just a week later, Zara was taken and sacked. The fighting that broke out almost immediately afterwards between the Franks and the Venetians over the division of the spoils scarcely augured well for the future, but peace was eventually restored and the two groups settled themselves in different parts of the city for the winter. Meanwhile the news of what had happened had reached the Pope. Outraged, he at once excommunicated the entire expedition. Though he was later to limit his ban to the Venetians alone, the Crusade could hardly be said to have got off to a good start.
>>
>>But worse was to follow. Early in the new year a messenger arrived with a letter for Boniface from Philip of Swabia - not only Barbarossa's son and the brother of Emperor Henry VI, whose death five years before had left empty the imperial throne of the West, but also the son-in-law of the deposed and blinded basileus Isaac Angelus. Now it happened that in the previous year Isaac's young son, another Alexius, had escaped from the prison in which he and his father were being held; and Philip's court had been his obvious place of refuge. There he had met Boniface shortly before the latter's departure for Venice, and there the three of them may have roughed out the plan which Philip now formally proposed in his letter. If the Crusade would escort the young Alexius to Constantinople and enthrone him there in place of his usurper uncle, Alexius for his part would finance its subsequent conquest of Egypt, supplying in addition ten thousand soldiers of his own and afterwards maintaining five hundred knights in the Holy Land at his own expense. He would also submit the Church of Constantinople to the authority of Rome.
>>To Boniface the scheme had much to recommend it. Apart from what appeared to be the long-term advantages to the Crusade itself and the opportunity to pay off the still outstanding debt to Venice, he also smelt the possibility of considerable personal gain. When he put the idea to Dandolo - to whom, also, it probably came as a less than total surprise -the old Doge accepted it with enthusiasm. He had been in no way chastened by his excommunication; this was not the first time that Venice had defied papal wishes, and it would not be the last. His earlier military and diplomatic experiences had left him with little love for Byzantium; besides, the present Emperor had on his accession made intolerable difficulties over renewing the trading concessions granted by his predecessor. Genoese and Pisan competition was becoming ever more fierce; if Venice were to retain her former hold on the Eastern markets, decisive action would be required. Such action, finally, would involve a welcome postponement of the Egyptian expedition.
>>The Crusading army proved readier to accept the change of plan than might have been expected. A few of its members refused outright and set off for Palestine on their own; the majority, however, were only too happy to lend themselves to a scheme which promised to strengthen and enrich the Crusade while also restoring the unity of Christendom. Ever since the great schism - and even before - the Byzantines had been unpopular in the West. They had contributed little or nothing to previous Crusades, during which they were generally believed to have betrayed the Christian cause on several occasions. Young Alexius's offer of active assistance was a welcome change and not to be despised. Finally, there must have been many among the more materialistically inclined who shared their leader's hope of personal reward. The average Frank knew practically nothing about Byzantium, but all had been brought up on stories of its immense wealth. And to any medieval army, whether or not it bore the Cross of Christ on its standard, a fabulously rich city meant one thing only: loot.
>>Young Alexius himself arrived in Zara towards the end of April; and a few days later the fleet set sail, stopping at Durazzo and Corfu, in both of which he was acclaimed as the rightful Emperor of the East. On 24 June 1203, a year to the day after the rendezvous in Venice, it dropped anchor off Constantinople. The Crusaders were astounded. Geoffrey reports:
You may imagine how they gazed, all those who had never before seen Constantinople. For when they saw those high ramparts and the strong towers with which it was completely encircled, and the splendid palaces and soaring churches - so many that but for the evidence of their own eyes they would never have believed it — and the length and the breadth of that city which of all others is sovereign, they never thought that there could be so rich and powerful a place on earth. And mark you that there was not a man so bold that he did not tremble at the sight; nor was this any wonder, for never since the creation of the world was there so great an enterprise.
>>Alexius III had had plenty of warning of the arrival of the expedition, but had characteristically made no preparations for the city's defence; the dockyards had lain idle ever since his idiotic brother had entrusted the whole Byzantine shipbuilding programme to Venice sixteen years before; and according to Nicetas Choniates - who as a former imperial secretary was well placed to know what was going on - he had allowed his principal admiral (who was also his brother-in-law) to sell off the anchors, sails and rigging of his few remaining vessels, now reduced to useless hulks and rotting in the inner harbour. He and his subjects watched, half-stunned, from the walls as the massive war fleet passed beneath them, beating its way up to the mouth of the Bosphorus
>>Being in no particular hurry to begin the siege, the invaders first landed on the Asiatic shore of the straits, near the imperial summer palace of Chalcedon, to replenish their stores. 'The surrounding land was fair and fertile,' writes Villehardouin; 'sheaves of new-reaped corn stood in the fields, so that any man might take of it as much as he needed.' There they easily repulsed a half-hearted attack by a small detachment of Greek cavalry - it fled at the first charge, but its purpose was probably only reconnaissance - and later, with similar lack of ceremony, dismissed an emissary from the Emperor. If, they told him, his master was willing to surrender the throne forthwith to his nephew, they would pray the latter to pardon him and make him a generous settlement. If not, let him send them no more messengers, but look to his defence.
>>Soon after sunrise on the morning of 5 July, they crossed the Bosphorus and landed below Galata, on the north-eastern side of the Golden Horn. Being a commercial settlement, largely occupied by foreign merchants, Galata was unwalled; its only major fortification was a single large round tower. This tower was however of vital importance, for in it stood the huge windlass for the raising and lowering of the chain that was used in emergencies to block the entrance to the Horn.1 To defend it a considerable force was drawn up, with the Emperor himself rather surprisingly at its head. Perhaps - though given the general demoralization of the Byzantines since the coming of the Angeli, it is far from certain - the defenders might have done better under different leadership; everyone knew how Alexius had seized the throne, and his character was not one to inspire either love or loyalty. In any case the sight of well over a hundred ships, disembarking men, horses and equipment with speed and precision - for the Venetians were nothing if not efficient - filled them with terror, and scarcely had the first wave of Crusaders lowered their lances for the attack than they turned and fled, the Emperor once again in the lead.
>>Within the Galata Tower itself, the garrison fought more bravely, holding out for a full twenty-four hours; but by the following morning it had to surrender. The Venetian sailors unshackled the windlass, and the great iron chain that had stretched over five hundred yards across the mouth of the Golden Horn subsided thunderously into the water. The fleet swept in, destroying such few seaworthy Byzantine vessels as it found in the inner harbour. The naval victory was complete.
>>Constantinople, however, did not surrender. The walls that ran along the shore of the Golden Horn could not compare in strength or splendour with the tremendous ramparts on the landward side, but they could still be staunchly defended. Gradually the Byzantines began to regain the courage and determination that they had heretofore so conspicuously lacked. In all the nine centuries of its existence, their city had not once fallen to a foreign invader. Perhaps, until now, they had never really thought it could. Awake at last to the full extent of the danger that threatened them, they prepared to resist.
>>The assault, when it came, was directed against the weakest point in the Byzantine defences: the sea frontage of the Palace of Blachernae, which occupied the angle formed by the Land Walls and those following the line of the Horn, at the extreme north-west corner of the city. It was launched on the morning of Thursday, 17 July, simultaneously from land and sea, with the Venetian ships riding low in the water under the weight of their siege machinery: catapults and mangonels on the forecastles, covered gangplanks and scaling-ladders suspended by rope tackles between the yard-arms. The Frankish army, attacking from land, was initially beaten back by the axe-swinging Englishmen and Danes of the Varangian Guard; it was the Venetians who decided the day - and, to a considerable degree, Enrico Dandolo in person.
>>The story of the old Doge's courage is told not just by some biased latter-day panegyrist of the Republic, but by a Frankish eye-witness: Geoffrey de Villehardouin himself. He reports that although the Venetian assault craft had approached so close in-shore that those manning the ladders in the bows were fighting hand-to-hand with the defenders, the sailors were at first reluctant to beach the vessels and effect a proper landing.
>>And here was an extraordinary feat of boldness. For the Duke of Venice, who was an old man and stone-blind, stood fully armed on the prow of his galley, with the banner of St Mark before him, and cried out to his men to drive the ship ashore if they valued their skins. And so they did, and ran the galley ashore, and he and they leaped down and planted the banner before him in the ground. And when the other Venetians saw the standard of St Mark and the Doge's galley beached before their own, they were ashamed, and followed him ashore.
>>As the attack gathered momentum, it soon became clear to the defenders that they had no chance. Before many hours had passed, Dandolo was able to send word to his Frankish allies that no less than twenty-five towers along the wall were already in Venetian hands. By this time his men were pouring through breaches in the rampart into the city itself, setting fire to the wooden houses until the whole quarter of Blachernae was ablaze. That evening Alexius III Angelus fled secretly from the city, leaving his wife and all his children except a favourite daughter - whom he took with him, together with a few other women, ten thousand pounds of gold and a bag of jewels — to face the future as best they might.
>>Byzantium, at this gravest crisis in its history, was left without an Emperor; and it may seem surprising that a hastily-convened council of state should have fetched old Isaac Angelus out of his prison and replaced him on the imperial throne. Thanks to his brother's ministrations he was even blinder than Dandolo, and had moreover proved himself a hopelessly incompetent ruler; he was, however, the legitimate Emperor, and by restoring him the Byzantines doubtless believed that they had removed all grounds for further intervention by the Crusaders. So in a way they had; but there remained the undertakings made by young Alexius to Boniface and the Doge. These Isaac was now obliged to ratify, agreeing at the same time to make his son co-Emperor with him. Only then did the Franks and Venetians accord him their formal recognition, after which they withdrew to the Galata side of the Golden Horn to await their promised rewards.
>>On 1 August 1203, Alexius IV Angelus was crowned alongside his father and assumed effective power. Immediately he began to regret the offers he had made so rashly at Zara in the spring. The imperial treasury, after his uncle's extravagances, was empty; the new taxes that he was obliged to introduce were openly resented by his subjects, who knew all too well where their money was going. Meanwhile the clergy -always an important political force in Constantinople - were scandalized when he began to seize and melt down their church plate and perfectly furious when they heard of his plans to subordinate them to the hated Pope of Rome. As autumn gave way to winter the Emperor's unpopularity steadily grew; and the continued presence of the Franks, whose greed appeared insatiable, increased the tension still further. One night a group of them, wandering through the city, came upon a little mosque in the Saracen quarter behind the church of St Irene, pillaged it and burnt it to ashes. The flames spread, and for the next forty-eight hours Constantinople was engulfed in its worst fire since the days of Justinian, nearly seven centuries before.
>>When the Emperor returned from a brief and unsuccessful expedition against his fugitive uncle, it was to find most of his capital in ruins and his subjects in a state of almost open warfare against the foreigners. The situation had clearly reached breaking-point; but when, a few days later, a delegation of three Crusaders and three Venetians came to demand immediate payment of the sum owing to them, there was still nothing he could do. According to Villehardouin - who, predictably, was one of the delegates - the party narrowly escaped a lynching on its way to and from the palace. 'And thus,' he writes, 'the war began; and each side did to the other as much harm as it could, both by sea and by land.'
>>Ironically enough, neither the Crusaders nor the Greeks wanted such a war. The inhabitants of Constantinople had by now one object only in mind: to be rid, once and for all, of these uncivilized thugs who were destroying their beloved city and bleeding them white into the bargain. The Franks, for their part, had not forgotten the reason they had left their homes, and increasingly resented their enforced stay among what they considered an effete and effeminate people when they should have been getting to grips with the infidel. Even if the Greek debt were to be paid in full, they themselves would not benefit materially; it would only enable them to settle their own outstanding account with the Venetians.
>>The key to the whole impossible affair lay, in short, with Venice - or, more accurately, with Enrico Dandolo. It was open to him at any moment to give his fleet the order to sail. Had he done so, the Crusaders would have been relieved and the Byzantines overjoyed. Formerly, his refusal had been on the grounds that the Franks would never be able to pay him their debt until they in their turn received the money that Alexius and his father had promised them. In fact, however, that debt was now of relatively little interest to him - scarcely more than was the Crusade itself. His mind was on greater things: the overthrow of the Byzantine Empire and the establishment of a Venetian puppet on the throne of Constantinople.
>>And so, as prospects of a peaceful settlement receded, Dandolo's advice to his Frankish allies took on a different tone. Nothing more, he pointed out, could be expected of Isaac and Alexius, who had not scrupled to betray the friends to whom they owed their joint crown. If the Crusaders were ever to obtain their due, they would have to take it by force. Their moral justification was complete: the faithless Angeli had no further claim on their loyalties. Once inside the city, with one of their own leaders installed as Emperor, they could pay Venice what they owed her almost without noticing it and still have more than enough to finance the Crusade. This was their opportunity; they should seize it now, for it would not recur.
>>Within Constantinople too, it was generally agreed that Alexius IV must go; and on 25 January 1204 a great concourse of senators, clergy and people gathered in St Sophia to declare him deposed and elect a successor. It was during their deliberations - which dragged on inconclusively for three days before fixing on a reluctant nonentity named Nicholas Canabus - that the only really effective figure at that moment on the Byzantine stage took the law into his own hands.
>>Alexius Ducas - nicknamed Murzuphlus on account of his eyebrows, which were black and shaggy and met in the middle - was a nobleman whose family had already produced two Emperors and who now occupied the court position of protovestarius, with its rights of unrestricted access to the imperial apartments. Late at night he burst into where Alexius IV was sleeping, woke him with the news that his subjects had risen against him and offered him what he claimed was the only chance of escape. Muffling him in a long cloak, he led him by a side door out of the palace to where his fellow-conspirators were waiting. The unhappy youth was then clapped into irons and consigned to a dungeon where, having survived two attempts to poison him, he eventually succumbed to the bowstring. At about the same time his blind father also died; Villehardouin, with that impregnable naivete that characterizes his whole chronicle, attributes his demise to a sudden sickness, brought on by the news of the fate of his son; it does not seem to have struck him that so convenient a malady might have been artificially induced.'
>>With his rivals eliminated - and Nicholas Canabus having retired once again into the obscurity he should never have left - Murzuphlus was crowned in St Sophia as Alexius V. Immediately he began to show those qualities of leadership that the Empire had lacked for so long. For the first time since the Crusaders' arrival the walls and towers were properly manned, while workmen sweated day and night strengthening them and raising them ever higher. To the Franks, one thing was plain: there was to be no more negotiation, far less any question of further payments on a debt for which the new Emperor in any case bore no responsibility.
>>Their one chance was an all-out attempt on the city; and now that Murzuphlus had not only usurped the throne but had revealed himself as a murderer to boot, they were morally in an even stronger position than if they had moved against Alexius IV, a legitimate Emperor and their erstwhile ally.
>>An all-out attempt on the city: it was exactly what Enrico Dandolo had been advocating for months, and from the moment of Murzuphlus's coup the old Doge seems to have been recognized, by Venetians and Franks alike, as the leader of the entire expedition. Boniface of Montferrat strove to maintain his influence; with the imperial crown almost within his grasp, it was more than ever vital to him that he should. But his association with the deposed Emperor had been too close, and now that Alexius IV had gone he found himself in some degree discredited. Besides, he had links with the Genoese - and Dandolo knew it.
>>30084
I know who you're talking about, I think it was a nurse who had something to do with Florence Nightingale
But yeah she basically called it a dirty shithole
>>Early in March there began a series of council meetings in the camp at Galata. They were concerned less with the plan of attack - despite Murzuphlus's work on the defences, its success was apparently considered a foregone conclusion - than with the future administration of the Empire after its conquest. It was agreed that the Crusaders and the Venetians should each appoint six delegates to an electoral committee, and that this should choose the new Emperor. If, as was expected, they decided on a Frank, then the Patriarch should be a Venetian; otherwise vice versa. The Emperor would receive a quarter of the city and of the Empire, including the two chief palaces - Blachernae on the Golden Horn and the old palace on the Marmara. The remaining three-quarters should be divided equally, half going to Venice and half in fief to the Crusading knights. For the Venetian portion, the Doge was specifically absolved from the need to do the Emperor homage. All plunder taken was to be brought to an agreed spot and distributed in similar proportions. Finally, the parties were to undertake not to leave Constantinople for a full year - until March 1205 at the earliest.
>>The attack began on Friday morning, 9 April. It was directed against that same stretch of sea wall facing the Golden Horn where Dandolo and his men had distinguished themselves nine months before. This time, however, it failed. The new, higher walls and towers, no longer accessible from the Venetian mastheads, provided useful platforms from which the Greek catapults could wreak havoc among the besiegers below. By mid-afternoon the attackers had begun to re-embark their men, horses and equipment and beat their way back to Galata and safety. The next two days were spent in repairing the damage; then, on the Monday following, the assault was renewed. This time the Venetians lashed their ships together in pairs, thus contriving to throw twice as much weight as before against each tower. Soon, too, a strong north wind blew up, driving the vessels far further up the beach below the walls than the oarsmen could ever have done and allowing the besiegers to work under cover of makeshift shelters stretched from one mast to another. Before long, two of the towers were overwhelmed and occupied. Almost simultaneously, the Crusaders broke open one of the gates in the wall and surged into the city.
>>Murzuphlus, who had been commanding the defenders with courage and determination, galloped through the streets in a last desperate attempt to rally his subjects. 'But', writes Nicetas,
they were all swept up in the whirlpool of despair, and had no ears either for his orders or his remonstrances . . . Seeing that his efforts were in vain, and fearing to be served up to the Franks as a choice morsel for their table, he took flight, accompanied by Euphrosyne, wife of the Emperor Alexius [III] and her daughter Eudocia, whom he passionately adored; for he was a great lover of women and had already repudiated two wives in a manner not canonical.
>>The three sought refuge with the ex-Emperor in Thrace, where Murzuphlus duly married Eudocia and began to gather his forces for a counter-offensive.
Once the walls were breached, the carnage was dreadful; even Villehardouin was appalled. Only at nightfall, 'tired of battle and massacre', did the conquerors call a truce and withdraw to their camp in one of the great squares of the city.
>>That night, a party of Crusaders, fearing a counter-attack, set fire to the district which lay between themselves and the Greeks . . . and the city began to blaze fiercely, and it burnt all that night and all the next day until evening. It was the third fire at Constantinople since the Franks arrived. And there were more houses burnt than there are to be found in the three greatest cities of the Kingdom of France.
>>After this, such few defenders as had not yet laid down their arms lost the spirit to continue. The next morning the Crusaders awoke to find all resistance in the city at an end.
>>
>>But for the people of Constantinople the tragedy had scarcely begun. Not for nothing had the army waited so long outside the world's richest capital. Now that it was theirs and that the customary three days' looting was allowed them, they fell on it like locusts. Never, since the barbarian invasions some centuries before, had Europe witnessed such an orgy of brutality and vandalism; never in history had so much beauty, so much superb craftsmanship, been wantonly destroyed in so short a space of time. Among the witnesses - helpless, horrified, almost unable to believe that human beings who called themselves Christians could be capable of such enormities - was Nicetas Choniates:
I know not how to put any order into my account, how to begin, continue or end. They smashed the holy images and hurled the sacred relics of the Martyrs into places I am ashamed to mention, scattering everywhere the body and blood of the Saviour. These heralds of Anti-Christ seized the chalices and the patens, tore out the jewels and used them as drinking cups ... As for their profanation of the Great Church, it cannot be thought of without horror. They destroyed the high altar, a work of art admired by the entire world, and shared out the pieces among themselves . . . And they brought horses and mules into the Church, the better to carry off the holy vessels and the engraved silver and gold that they had torn from the throne, and the pulpit, and the doors, and the furniture wherever it was to be found; and when some of these beasts slipped and fell, they ran them through with their swords, fouling the Church with their blood and ordure.
A common harlot was enthroned in the Patriarch's chair, to hurl insults at Jesus Christ; and she sang bawdy songs, and danced immodestly in the holy place . .. nor was there mercy shown to virtuous matrons, innocent maids or even virgins consecrated to God ... In the streets, houses and churches there could be heard only cries and lamentations.
>>And these men, he continues, carried the Cross on their shoulders, the Cross upon which they had sworn to pass through Christian lands without bloodshed, to take arms only against the heathen and to abstain from the pleasures of the flesh until their holy task was done.
It was Constantinople's darkest hour - even darker, perhaps, than that, two and a half centuries later, which was to see the city's final fall to the Ottoman Sultan. But not all its treasures perished. While the Frenchmen and Flemings abandoned themselves to a frenzy of wholesale destruction, the Venetians kept their heads. They knew beauty when they saw it. They too looted and pillaged and plundered - but they did not destroy. Instead, all that they could lay their hands on they sent back to Venice — beginning with the four great bronze horses which had dominated the Hippodrome since the days of Constantine and which, from their platform above the main door of St Mark's, were to perform a similar function, for the best part of the next eight centuries, over the Piazza below.1 The north and south faces of the Basilica are studded with sculptures and reliefs shipped back at the same time; inside the building, in the north transept, hangs the miraculous icon of the Virgin Nicopoeia - the Bringer of Victory - which the Emperors were wont to carry before them into battle; while the Treasury to the south possesses one of the greatest collections of Byzantine works of art to be found anywhere — a further monument to Venetian rapacity.
>>After three days of terror, order was restored. As previously arranged, all the spoils — or that part of them that had not been successfully concealed - were gathered together in three churches and careful distribution made: a quarter for the Emperor when elected, the remainder to be split equally between the Franks and Venetians. As soon as it was done, the Crusaders paid their debt to Enrico Dandolo. These formalities satisfactorily concluded, both parties applied themselves to the next task: the election of the new Emperor of Byzantium.
>>Boniface of Montferrat, in a desperate attempt to recover his lost prestige and strengthen his own candidacy, had tracked down the Empress Maria, widow of Isaac Angelus, and married her. He need not have bothered. Dandolo refused outright to consider him and -since the Franks were divided while the Venetians voted as a single bloc - had no difficulty in steering the electors towards the easy-going and tractable Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainault, who on 16 May received his coronation in St Sophia — the third Emperor to be crowned there in less than a year. Although the newly-appointed Patriarch, the Venetian Tommaso Morosini,2 had not yet arrived in Constantinople and so could not officiate at the ceremony, there can have been few among those present who would have denied that the new Emperor owed his elevation entirely to the Venetian Republic.
>>In return, Venice appropriated the best for her own. By the terms of her treaty with the Crusaders she was entitled to three-eighths of the city and the Empire, together with free trade throughout the imperial dominions, from which both Genoa and Pisa were to be rigorously excluded. In Constantinople itself, the Doge demanded the entire district surrounding St Sophia and the Patriarchate, reaching right down to the shore of the Golden Horn; for the rest, he took for Venice all those regions that promised to reinforce her mastery of the Mediterranean and to give her an unbroken chain of colonies and ports from the lagoon to the Black Sea. They included Ragusa and Durazzo; the western coast of the Greek mainland and the Ionian Islands; all the Peloponnese; Euboea, Naxos and Andros; the chief ports on the Hellespont and the Marmara -Gallipoli, Rhaedestum and Heraclea; the Thracian seaboard, the city of Adrianople and finally, after a brief negotiation with Boniface, the all-important island of Crete. The harbours and islands would belong to Venice absolutely; where mainland Greece was concerned, however, Dandolo made it clear that as a mercantile republic Venice had no interest in occupying more than the key ports. For the rest, she was only too pleased to have the responsibility taken off her hands.
>>Thus it emerges beyond all doubt that it was the Venetians, rather than the French or Flemings - or even the Emperor Baldwin himself, who remained little more than a figurehead - who were the real beneficiaries of the Fourth Crusade; and that their success was due, almost exclusively, to Enrico Dandolo. From that day, four years before, when the Frankish emissaries had arrived on the Rialto to ask the Republic's help in their holy enterprise, he had turned every new development to Venetian advantage. He had regained Zara; he had protected Egypt from attack and so preserved Venice's commercial interests with the Muslim world; he had subtly redirected the Frankish forces towards Constantinople, while leaving the ostensible responsibility for the decision with them. Once there, his courage had largely inspired the first attack; his capacity for intrigue had brought down the Angeli, making essential a second siege and the physical capture of the city; his diplomatic skill had shaped a treaty which gave Venice more than she had dared to hope and laid the foundations for her commercial Empire. Refusing the Byzantine crown for himself - to have accepted it would have created insuperable constitutional problems at home and might well have destroyed the Republic - and declining even to serve on the electoral commission, he nevertheless made sure that his influence over the election would be tantamount to giving Venice a majority and would ensure the success of his own candidate. Finally, while encouraging the Franks to feudalize the Empire - a step which he knew could not fail to create fragmentation and disunity and would prevent its ever becoming strong enough to obstruct Venetian expansion - he had kept Venice outside the feudal framework, holding her new dominions not as an imperial fief but by her own right of conquest. For a blind man not far short of ninety it was a remarkable achievement.
>>Yet even now old Dandolo did not rest. Outside the capital, the Greek subjects of the Empire continued their resistance. Murzuphlus was to cause no further trouble: soon after his marriage he was blinded in his turn by his jealous father-in-law, and when in the following year he was captured by the Franks they brought him back to Constantinople and flung him to his death from the column of Theodosius in the centre of the city. But — as the next chapter will tell — another of Alexius Ill's sons-in-law set up an Empire in exile at Nicaea, two of the Comneni did the same at Trebizond and, in Epirus, a bastard Angelus proclaimed himself an autonomous Despot. On all sides the erstwhile Crusaders had to fight hard to establish themselves, nowhere more fiercely than in Venice's newly-acquired city of Adrianople where, just after Easter, 1205, the Emperor Baldwin fell into the hands of the Bulgars and the old Doge, who had fought determinedly at his side, was left to lead a shattered army back to Constantinople. He is not known to have been wounded; but six weeks later he was dead. His body, rather surprisingly, was not returned to Venice but was buried in St Sophia - where, in the gallery above the south aisle, his tombstone may still be seen.
He had deserved well of his city; it is a source of greater surprise that the Venetians never erected a monument to the greatest of all their Doges. But in the wider context of world events he was a disaster. Though it cannot be said of him that he gave the Crusades a bad name, that is only because the record of those successive forays over the previous century had already emerged as one of the blackest chapters in the history of Christendom. Yet the Fourth Crusade - if indeed it can be so described - surpassed even its predecessors in faithlessness and duplicity, in brutality and greed. Constantinople in the twelfth century had been not just the wealthiest metropolis of the world, but also the most intellectually and artistically cultivated and the chief repository of Europe's classical heritage, both Greek and Roman. By its sack, Western civilization suffered a loss greater than the sack of Rome by the barbarians in the fifth century or the burning of the library of Alexandria by the soldiers of the Prophet in the seventh - perhaps the most catastrophic single loss in all history.
>>Politically, too, the damage done was incalculable. Although Latin rule along the Bosphorus was to last less than sixty years, the Byzantine Empire never recovered its strength, or any considerable part of its lost dominion. Under firm and forceful leadership - which would not be lacking in the century to come - a strong and prosperous Byzantium might have halted the Turkish advance while there was still time. Instead, the Empire was left economically crippled, territorially truncated, powerless to defend itself against the Ottoman tide. There are few greater ironies in history than the fact that the fate of Eastern Christendom should have been sealed - and half Europe condemned to some five hundred years of Muslim rule — by men who fought under the banner of the Cross. Those men were transported, inspired, encouraged and ultimately led by Enrico Dandolo in the name of the Venetian Republic; and, just as Venice derived the major advantage from the tragedy, so she and her magnificent old Doge must accept the major responsibility for the havoc that they wrought upon the world.
Done.
tl;dr: Venice fucked Constantinople's shit up
Source is also Norwich's history, mentioned above
>>16541
lol nice revisionism
>>31804
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_Ana
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ay_Ata
>>31849
>turkish sources
>Ziya Gökalp
into le trash it goes
what's next, Sumerians were Turks?
>>31917
who else is supposed to be writing about Turkic mythology? These figures have existed for thousands of years.
>>31960
sorry but I don't trust anything written by Turkey-based Turkish historians
no one except for the Turks does
>>32039
So who should be writing about Turkic religion? What you're saying is very stupid.
>>32069
>So who should be writing about Turkic religion?
Turkologists?
>What you're saying is very stupid
Given the history of revisionism and nationalism-motivated distortions in your historiography, it really isn't.
>>32137
>Turkologists
and where would they learn about it? This is traditional shit for Turkish people, even our families still orally teach us about these deities and tengrism traditions still continue despite being muslim, you are aware of that right?
>>32233
>even our families still orally teach us about these deities and tengrism traditions still continue despite being muslim
LOL
>>27659
Can't wait to see newsreels of those minarets blowing the fuck up
>>27659
>minarets
>look good
In addition to not looking good, the damn things sound awful because of all the loudspeakers blasting Islamic prayers every few hours.
>>32648
in istanbul its quite annoying, 5 mudslime mosques will start blasting all at once and out of sync, they should all be removed desu
t.turk
>>35030
Yeah, I was on holiday there a few months ago and it just completely kills the mood of whatever it is you're doing.
>>31588
Thanks anon. I'm writing something on the 4th Crusade, and this will end up being invaluable as a refrence since I don't have Norwich's books yet.
>>24577
>we admit our 'atrocities'
Oh my god butthurt greeks are fucking amazing
What would you do if Istanbul/Constantinople was suddenly re-captured and slated to be re-built as a Christian city?
>turn all mosques into cathedrals
>completely rebuild the old city area
>refurbish the Hagia Sophia and Hagia Irene
>>36478
Convert to Orthodoxy and move there.
>>36478
I would honestly move there to be part of the historic revolution and immediately convert to Orthodoxy. I'd also join in an a grassroots movement to promote an Emperor and restore the Roman Empire.
>>35376
How is what I said butthurt?
>>38240
Catholic, I don't hate you guys.
Tbh most of our actions involving you guys was a mistake and I hope our pope is willing to have reconciliation.
>>30084
Oh yes, because Constantinople was as clean as a hospital floor during the Byzantine era.
>>12205
>>12390
That was like 200 years before. Like, they should've been over that by then..
>>40437
Considering how anybody who entered the City for the first time was amazed by how luxury it was I'd say that's the case.
Also,
>comparing Medieval era with Victorian era
>>40575
Some people still aren't over 1453 and that was over 500 years ago.
4th crusade best crusade
1204 best year of my life
>>41902
Fuck off, Merchant of Venice
>>40813
Well, isn't it their fault for coming there in the first place? All I said is that we don't deny it but instead we celebrate it.
>>14070
fuck off with your racism to /int/ or /pol/
