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Y309: The Ascendancy of the Ottoman Empire 1453–1606

Depth study: The Fall of Constantinople 1453 — the Byzantine Empire, Mehmed II and preparations for the siege

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on the remnant Byzantine Empire, its last emperor, church union, Mehmed II’s need for victory and his qualities, his preparations in 1452, the numbers on each side and the Janissaries.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Numbers

Why was the union of the Greek and Latin churches so divisive in the city?

Key term

State the qualities historians attribute to Mehmed II.

Who and when

How did the two sides compare in numbers?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What was left of the Byzantine Empire by 1453?

    Model answer

    Little more than the city itself with a strip of Thrace and the separately governed Morea, and the city was a shrunken, impoverished place of perhaps fifty thousand people, with fields and ruins inside walls built for many times that number.

  2. 2

    Who was the last Byzantine emperor, and how secure was his authority?

    Model answer

    Constantine XI Palaiologos, whose authority was weak: he had been crowned away from the capital, depended on Italian money and troops, and was bitterly divided from many of his own clergy and people.

  3. 3

    Why was the union of the Greek and Latin churches so divisive in the city?

    Model answer

    The union agreed at Florence in 1439 and proclaimed in Hagia Sophia in December 1452 was the price of western aid, but many Byzantines saw it as a surrender of their faith and would not attend services with the unionist clergy.

  4. 4

    Why did Mehmed II need a great victory in 1453?

    Model answer

    He was twenty-one, in his second reign after his father had taken back the throne in 1446, and faced an entrenched vezirial faction that doubted him; taking the city would settle his authority beyond argument.

  5. 5

    State the qualities historians attribute to Mehmed II.

    Model answer

    Ruthlessness and cold determination, an unusual education in several languages, a serious interest in siegecraft and geography, and a conscious ambition to be a world conqueror on the model of Alexander.

  6. 6

    What preparation did Mehmed make in 1452, and why did it matter?

    Model answer

    He built the fortress of Rumeli Hisarı on the European shore of the Bosphorus, which allowed him to close the straits and cut the city off from Black Sea grain and reinforcement.

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