Fall of Constantinople - State of The Byzantine Empire

State of The Byzantine Empire

Constantinople had been an imperial capital since its consecration in 330 under Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. In the following eleven centuries, the city had been besieged many times but was captured only once: during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The crusaders established an unstable Latin state in and around Constantinople while the remaining empire splintered into a number of Greek successor states, notably Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond. These Greeks fought as allies against the Latin establishments but among themselves for return to the Byzantine throne.

The Nicaeans reconquered Constantinople from the Latins in 1261. Thereafter was little peace for the much-weakened empire; it continually fended off attacks from the Latins, the Serbians, the Bulgarians and, most importantly, the Ottoman Turks. The Black Plague between 1346 and 1349 killed almost half of Constantinople's inhabitants. By 1450 the empire was exhausted, consisting of a few square miles outside the city of Constantinople itself, the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara, and the Peloponnese with its cultural center at Mystras. The Empire of Trebizond, an independent successor state that formed in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, also survived on the coast of the Black Sea.