Fetih 1453 is the latest historical blockbuster to hit the Turkish cinema screens. In it, the Ottoman Turks conquer Constantinople, Constantinopolis, the city of Constantine, the capital of the no-longer-in-existence Eastern Roman Empire. Although the Roman Empire in the East had ended centuries earlier, the inhabitants of the city liked to remind themselves of past glory by calling themselves Romans.
The victory was mostly symbolic though, since the Ottomans had long held the territory that surrounded the slowly dying city. Although the Europeans thought of the city in terms of greatness and fabled wealth, that had long disappeared -- taken west by the participants in the Fourth Crusade who had decided that conquering and plundering this rich city in the 13th century was more attractive than risking one’s life on the chancy business of recovering Jerusalem from the Arabs. For three days in 1204, the city was the scene of murder, rape, plunder and sacrilege.
The facts of the city at the 11th century
The population, which had been around one million in the 11th century when the city was at its height, had fallen to 50,000 or possibly even fewer by 1453. Many of those remaining were poor and in ill-health from lack of a proper diet. In the end the only food available had to be brought in by boats running the Turkish naval blockade, and that eventually proved impossible. In fact, the population was so small that Fatih had people brought in from the provinces, so that there were enough people to make the city work.
The last emperor
In the end, the last emperor Constantine XI had only 13 ships and fewer than 10,000 men with which to defend the city. Of those 10,000 it seems that half or more were not Greeks, as anyone who could make it out of the city before the formal siege actually began did.
The Constantinople that Fatih Sultan Mehmed II conquered on 29 May 1453 was far cry from the imperial capital that it had been at the height of its glory. The city was only an empty symbol that the Ottomans were to bring back to life.
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