Capture of Constantinople by the crusaders. The capture of Constantinople by the crusaders (1204) When was the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders

The information war against Orthodoxy began many centuries ago

Despite the absence of the press and television, the active phase of the information war began immediately after the capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204.

Despite the many tragic dates in world history, one day - April 13, 1204- stands alone. It was on that day that the participants in the Fourth Crusade stormed Constantinople, and the consequences of this event in many ways turned out to be fatal for the whole world.

Moreover, the world will feel their consequences for a long time to come, and perhaps always. No matter how strange it may sound.
The events of April 13, 1204 in Western Europe, and in general in the world, have long been forgotten. Few people know what happened that day, what events preceded this tragedy, and even more so, no one can imagine the scale of its consequences. Although this day, without exaggeration, changed the course of world history.

The capture of the largest Christian city in the world by the crusader and - which is completely beyond the framework of consciousness - by the Christian army shocked everyone. Starting from the Roman Pope Innocent III and up to the Muslim world.

Crusaders, whose original goal was Jerusalem and the retaking of the Holy Sepulcher, instead they not only took Constantinople, but plundered and burned most of the city, desecrated churches, including the church of St. Sophia, forced the population of the city to abandon their homes and property and flee the city, saving their lives.



Capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204. Miniature. 15th c. National Library, Paris

If in its heyday more than half a million inhabitants lived in Constantinople, then by 1261, when the Byzantines drove out the Latin invaders and regained the capital, there were barely 50,000 citizens in it.

The Fourth Crusade inflicted a mortal wound not only on Byzantium, its consequences will come back to haunt Western Europe more than once. After all, Byzantium ceased to exist as a centuries-old barrier to Islamic expansion to the West, and it took only a hundred and fifty years for the first Muslim state to emerge in Europe - the Ottoman Empire.

In fact, the crusaders took the side of the Muslims, clearing their way to the West, which resulted in the enslavement and centuries-old Ottoman yoke in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece. And the conquest of Constantinople in May 1453 by Sultan Mehmet II was only the final act of the Byzantine tragedy that stretched for almost 250 years.

The echoes of those dramatic events have not subsided to this day. And although in 2004, Pope John Paul II, on behalf of the Catholic Church, apologized for the sacking of Constantinople and the massacres of its inhabitants by participants in the Fourth Crusade, this does not change much.

The Orthodox capital of Byzantium - Constantinople - is long gone, but there is Turkish Istanbul. There is no Christian Eastern Roman Empire, but there is Muslim unpredictable Türkiye. And no matter how much you apologize, the past cannot be returned, and a crime on a global scale will not cease to be a crime because of this.

It is clear that such a crime had to be somehow justified and tried to present in a positive way all that crusading bastard who robbed, raped and killed his brothers in faith in 1204. Therefore, from the 13th century to this day, Byzantium has been diligently doused with mud and smeared with mud, presenting it as a vile and inert unfinished country ruled by sadists, madmen, eunuchs, pathological murderers and intriguers.

From which a very definite conclusion is drawn - this non-country simply, by definition, had no right to exist. As is customary in the West, Byzantium itself is blamed for all the troubles of the empire. And the only bright moment in its history, against the backdrop of hopeless darkness, is the appearance of enlightened European knights under the camps of Constantinople in 1203, who brought the inhabitants of the empire the light of the true faith instead of the "dense" orthodox Orthodoxy.

Jacopo Tintoretto. Capture of Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204

In general, there is nothing new in this. A well-known old European cheating trick is to blame the victim for all the bad things that happened to her.

The West uses this trick on a regular basis, in connection with which we can recall our recent history, when the Russian Empire, and then the USSR, were also accused of being incomplete countries that enlightened Europeans would have saved in 1812 and 1941, but here's the bad luck - it all ended quite differently than the European integrators expected.

But it is better to give the floor to a couple of professional Western "experts" from history: “Oh, this Byzantine Empire! The universal verdict of history is that it represents the most fundamentally perfect culture, having assumed in time the most contemptible form that civilization has ever taken. There was no other such long-existing civilization, the essence of which would be so accurately reflected by the epithet "mediocre". The history of Byzantium is a monotonous chain of intrigues of priests, eunuchs, women, a series of conspiracies and poisonings.(W. Lecky, 1869).

He is echoed by another British critic of the Eastern Roman Empire, E. Gibbon, who considered Byzantium an openly inferior, barbaric country with “excessive” religiosity, and the Byzantines a cowardly and mean nation. A little more, and this pundit would have agreed to the theory of racial superiority, which was voiced a little later by another "enlightened European" of Austrian origin.

Not far behind the British and the French giants of thought - Voltaire and Montesquieu. The first called Byzantium "terrible and disgusting", and the second came to the thoughtful conclusion that "In Byzantium there was nothing but stupid worship of icons."

Thus, we see the following oil painting: Byzantium is an incomprehensible, deserving of exceptionally contempt misunderstanding that has existed for more than 1000 years. Everything was bad in this country: administration, rulers, population and, of course, "wrong" Orthodox faith. At the same time, many "experts" and "giants of thought" forget that namely the code of Byzantine laws of Emperor Justinian I(the remains of which the crusaders threw out of the sarcophagus in 1204, having previously rid themselves of the richly decorated burial shroud), became the basis for the creation of modern jurisprudence in Western Europe. In the same England and France.

One can talk for a long time about Byzantine education, sciences, literature, art, outstanding philosophers, etc. But the Byzantine barbarians are best characterized by one small detail - namely, underdeveloped, inert Byzantium taught Europe how to use a fork, who before her preferred to eat with unwashed hands in an elegant European-primitive style.

Surprise - and this is putting it mildly - European "thinkers" with a complete lack of tolerance, when from the heights of their enlightenment they contemptuously call the Byzantines almost savages.

As you know, the population of Byzantium has always been multinational, but there has never been a national problem there. "There is no Greek, there is no Jew"- this commandment of the Apostle Paul in Byzantium was always adhered to. And when the Anglo-French giants of thought offend the Byzantines with extraordinary ease, they immediately offend a dozen or two peoples. Starting from the Greeks and ending with the Slavs, Armenians, Syrians, Georgians, and so on. However, it seems that even today they do not consider them equal to themselves.

As for the Orthodox faith and the "stupid worship of icons," then it's not even worth commenting on, because from the assessments of Western "experts" a mile away smells of dense idiocy. They deliberately present Orthodoxy as some kind of perverted religion from which the Roman Church quite reasonably distanced itself in 1054.

But the fact is that even after 1054, when the split of the Christian church allegedly occurred, for a very long time no one suspected that the split had happened. But when it definitely happened, it was after 1204, when a gulf that was still unbridgeable opened up between Eastern and Western Christians.

The reason for this was the atrocities and robberies of the crusaders in Constantinople, and not the theological disputes between the Roman and Constantinople priests. Yes, they had disagreements, but still they always considered each other brothers in faith. Thanks to the crusaders - now the brothers treat each other with caution at best.

It is also worth thanking for this such "experts" as Gibbon, who talk about the "excessive" religiosity of Byzantium. Judging by his negative tone, this is something bad, deserving of condemnation and censure. Apparently, in a fit of struggle against the “excessive” religiosity of the Byzantines, the crusaders inspiredly plundered the churches and monasteries of Constantinople in 1204, raping nuns and killing clergy along the way.

The entry of the crusaders into Constantinople on April 13, 1204. Engraving by G. Doré

“They destroyed the holy images and threw the holy relics of the martyrs into places that I am ashamed to name, scattering bodies everywhere and shedding the blood of Christ,” - writes the Byzantine historian Nikita Choniates about the atrocities of the crusaders in the captured Constantinople.

“As for the desecration of the great cathedral (the church of St. Sophia - author's note), they destroyed the main throne and divided among themselves all the valuable objects that were there. An ordinary whore was seated on the patriarchal throne in order to shout insults at Christ from there; and she sang obscene songs and danced obscenely in the sacred place.”

As we can see, long before the so-called Pussy Riot Punk Prayer, another great Orthodox church was St. Sophia - also experienced a demonstration of European "human values" - obscene dances and obscene songs. After reading about the "art" of the European crusading rabble, it becomes clear where many phenomena and events of our time grow legs from.

Is it any wonder that after such antics of the Western "brothers in faith" the last Byzantine admiral Luke Notaras uttered the famous phrase shortly before the death of Byzantium in 1453: "Better a Turkish turban than a papal tiara" ?

So great was the hatred of the Byzantines towards the Western "brothers" that even 250 years after the sack of Constantinople, they preferred to see Muslim Turks instead. Nevertheless, Western "experts" continued and will continue to repeat the same thing: the inert, perfidious and spiritually undeveloped Byzantium fully deserved everything that happened to it. It's her own fault, period.

In this regard, it is worth noting the Western position in relation to Russia as the largest Orthodox country in the world. By inheritance from the spiritual foremother of Byzantium, we inherited all the dislike of the West. Like Byzantium, Russia continues to be a “wrong” country for the West with an incomprehensible and unsympathetic people and, of course, the same incomprehensible religion.

For which we are endlessly criticized and try to teach life "enlightened general people." Those who believe that they are on a higher level of civilizational development and are simply obliged by definition to open their eyes to Western values ​​to Russian underdeveloped Orthodox barbarians. As they once tried to do with the Byzantines.

In this regard, it is very important for us not to forget the lessons of history. Especially such lessons.

Fall of Constantinople (1453) - the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Turks, which led to its final fall.

Day May 29, 1453 is undoubtedly a turning point in human history. It means the end of the old world, the world of Byzantine civilization. For eleven centuries, a city stood on the Bosporus, where a deep mind was an object of admiration, and the science and literature of the classical past were carefully studied and cherished. Without Byzantine researchers and scribes, we would not know very much about the literature of ancient Greece today. It was also a city whose rulers for many centuries encouraged the development of a school of art that has no analogy in the history of mankind and was an alloy of unchanging Greek common sense and deep religiosity, which saw in the work of art the incarnation of the Holy Spirit and the sanctification of the material.

In addition, Constantinople was a great cosmopolitan city, where, along with trade, a free exchange of ideas flourished and the inhabitants considered themselves not just some kind of people, but heirs of Greece and Rome, enlightened by the Christian faith. There were legends about the wealth of Constantinople at that time.

Beginning of the decline of Byzantium

Up to the XI century. Byzantium was a brilliant and powerful state, a stronghold of Christianity against Islam. The Byzantines courageously and successfully fulfilled their duty until, in the middle of the century, from the East, along with the invasion of the Turks, a new threat from the Muslim side approached them. Western Europe, meanwhile, went so far that, in the person of the Normans, they themselves tried to carry out aggression against Byzantium, which was involved in a struggle on two fronts just at the time when it itself was experiencing a dynastic crisis and internal turmoil. The Normans were repulsed, but the cost of this victory was the loss of Byzantine Italy. The Byzantines also had to forever give the Turks the mountainous plateaus of Anatolia - the lands that were for them the main source of replenishment of human resources for the army and food supplies. In the best times of its great past, the prosperity of Byzantium was connected with its dominance over Anatolia. The vast peninsula, known in antiquity as Asia Minor, was one of the most populated places in the world during Roman times.

Byzantium continued to play the role of a great power, while its power was actually undermined. Thus, the empire was between two evils; and this already difficult situation was further complicated by the movement that went down in history under the name of the Crusades.

Meanwhile, deep old religious differences between the Eastern and Western Christian Churches, fanned for political purposes throughout the 11th century, steadily deepened until, towards the end of the century, a final schism occurred between Rome and Constantinople.

The crisis came when the crusader army, carried away by the ambition of their leaders, the jealous greed of their Venetian allies, and the hostility that the West now felt towards the Byzantine Church, turned to Constantinople, captured and sacked it, forming the Latin Empire (1204-1261) on the ruins of the ancient city.

The Fourth Crusade and the Formation of the Latin Empire

The Fourth Crusade was organized by Pope Innocent III to liberate the Holy Land from the Gentiles. The original plan of the Fourth Crusade provided for the organization of a sea expedition on Venetian ships to Egypt, which was supposed to become a springboard for an attack on Palestine, but then it was changed: the crusaders moved to the capital of Byzantium. The participants in the campaign were mainly French and Venetians.

The entry of the crusaders into Constantinople on April 13, 1204. Engraving by G. Doré

April 13, 1204 Constantinople fell . The city-fortress, which withstood the onslaught of many powerful enemies, was first captured by the enemy. What turned out to be beyond the power of the hordes of Persians and Arabs, the knightly army succeeded. The ease with which the crusaders took possession of the huge, well-fortified city was the result of the most acute socio-political crisis that the Byzantine Empire was experiencing at that moment. The circumstance that part of the Byzantine aristocracy and merchants was interested in trade relations with the Latins also played a significant role. In other words, there was a kind of "fifth column" in Constantinople.

Capture of Constantinople (April 13, 1204) troops of the crusaders was one of the landmark events of medieval history. After the capture of the city, mass robberies and murders of the Greek Orthodox population began. About 2 thousand people were killed in the first days after the capture. Fires raged in the city. Many monuments of culture and literature that had been kept here since ancient times were destroyed in the fire. The famous library of Constantinople suffered especially badly from the fire. Many valuables were taken to Venice. For more than half a century, the ancient city on the Bosphorus cape was dominated by the Crusaders. Only in 1261 did Constantinople again fall into the hands of the Greeks.

This Fourth Crusade (1204), which turned from a "road to the Holy Sepulcher" into a Venetian commercial enterprise that led to the sack of Constantinople by the Latins, ended the Eastern Roman Empire as a supranational state and finally split Western and Byzantine Christianity.

Actually Byzantium after this campaign ceases to exist as a state for more than 50 years. Some historians, not without reason, write that after the catastrophe of 1204, in fact, two empires were formed - the Latin and the Venetian. Part of the former imperial lands in Asia Minor were captured by the Seljuks, in the Balkans - by Serbia, Bulgaria and Venice. Nevertheless, the Byzantines were able to keep a number of other territories and create their own states on them: the Kingdom of Epirus, the Nicaean and Trebizond empires.

Latin Empire

Having settled in Constantinople as masters, the Venetians increased their trading influence throughout the territory of the fallen Byzantine Empire. The capital of the Latin Empire for several decades was the seat of the most noble feudal lords. They preferred the palaces of Constantinople to their castles in Europe. The nobility of the empire quickly got used to Byzantine luxury, adopted the habit of constant festivities and merry feasts. The consumer character of life in Constantinople under the Latins became even more pronounced. The crusaders came to these lands with a sword and for half a century of their rule they never learned how to create. In the middle of the 13th century, the Latin Empire fell into complete decline. Many cities and villages, devastated and plundered during the aggressive campaigns of the Latins, could not recover. The population suffered not only from unbearable taxes and requisitions, but also from the oppression of foreigners, who contemptuously trampled on the culture and customs of the Greeks. The Orthodox clergy led an active preaching of the struggle against the enslavers.

Summer 1261 Emperor of Nicaea Michael VIII Palaiologos managed to recapture Constantinople, which led to the restoration of the Byzantine and the destruction of the Latin empires.

Byzantium in the XIII-XIV centuries.

After that, Byzantium was no longer the dominant power in the Christian East. She retained only a glimpse of her former mystical prestige. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Constantinople seemed so rich and magnificent, the imperial court so magnificent, and the marinas and bazaars of the city so full of goods that the emperor was still treated as a powerful ruler. However, in reality, he was now only a sovereign among his equals or even more powerful. Some other Greek rulers have already appeared. To the east of Byzantium was the Trebizond Empire of the Great Komnenos. In the Balkans, Bulgaria and Serbia alternately claimed hegemony on the peninsula. In Greece - on the mainland and islands - small Frankish feudal principalities and Italian colonies arose.

The entire 14th century was a period of political setbacks for Byzantium. The Byzantines were threatened from all sides - the Serbs and Bulgarians in the Balkans, the Vatican - in the West, the Muslims - in the East.

The position of Byzantium by 1453

Byzantium, which had existed for more than 1000 years, was in decline by the 15th century. It was a very small state, whose power extended only to the capital - the city of Constantinople with its suburbs - several Greek islands off the coast of Asia Minor, several cities on the coast in Bulgaria, and also to Morea (Peloponnese). This state could be considered an empire only conditionally, since even the rulers of several patches of land that remained under its control were actually independent of the central government.

At the same time, Constantinople, founded in 330, throughout the entire period of its existence as the Byzantine capital was perceived as a symbol of the empire. Constantinople for a long time was the largest economic and cultural center of the country, and only in the XIV-XV centuries. began to decline. Its population, which in the XII century. amounted, together with the surrounding inhabitants, to about a million people, now numbering no more than a hundred thousand, continuing to gradually decrease further.

The empire was surrounded by the lands of its main enemy - the Muslim state of the Ottoman Turks, who saw in Constantinople the main obstacle to the spread of their power in the region.

The Turkish state, which was rapidly gaining power and successfully fighting to expand its borders both in the west and in the east, had long sought to conquer Constantinople. The Turks attacked Byzantium several times. The offensive of the Ottoman Turks against Byzantium led to the fact that by the 30s of the XV century. from the Byzantine Empire, only Constantinople with its environs, some islands in the Aegean Sea and Morea, an area in the south of the Peloponnese, remained. As early as the beginning of the 14th century, the Ottoman Turks captured the richest trading city of Bursa, one of the important points of transit caravan trade between East and West. Very soon they took two other Byzantine cities - Nicaea (Iznik) and Nicomedia (Izmid).

The military successes of the Ottoman Turks became possible thanks to the political struggle that took place in this region between Byzantium, the Balkan states, Venice and Genoa. Very often, rival parties sought to enlist the military support of the Ottomans, thereby ultimately facilitating the expanding expansion of the latter. The military strength of the growing state of the Turks was demonstrated with particular clarity in the Battle of Varna (1444), which, in fact, also decided the fate of Constantinople.

Battle of Varna - the battle between the crusaders and the Ottoman Empire near the city of Varna (Bulgaria). The battle marked the end of an unsuccessful crusade against Varna by the Hungarian and Polish king Vladislav. The outcome of the battle was the complete defeat of the crusaders, the death of Vladislav and the strengthening of the Turks in the Balkan Peninsula. The weakening of the position of Christians in the Balkans allowed the Turks to take Constantinople (1453).

The attempts of the imperial authorities to get help from the West and the conclusion of a union with the Catholic Church for this purpose in 1439 were rejected by the majority of the clergy and people of Byzantium. Of the philosophers, the Union of Florence was approved only by admirers of Thomas Aquinas.

All the neighbors were afraid of the Turkish gain, especially Genoa and Venice, which had economic interests in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, Hungary, which received an aggressive powerful enemy in the south, beyond the Danube, the Knights of St. John, who feared the loss of the remnants of their possessions in the Middle East, and the Pope, who hoped to stop the strengthening and spread of Islam along with Turkish expansion. However, at a decisive moment, Byzantium's potential allies found themselves in thrall to their own intricate problems.

The most likely allies of Constantinople were the Venetians. Genoa remained neutral. The Hungarians have not yet recovered from their recent defeat. Wallachia and the Serbian states were in vassal dependence on the Sultan, and the Serbs even allocated auxiliary troops to the Sultan's army.

Preparing the Turks for War

The Turkish Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror declared the conquest of Constantinople the goal of his life. In 1451, he concluded an agreement beneficial for Byzantium with Emperor Constantine XI, but already in 1452 he violated it by capturing the fortress of Rumeli-Hissar on the European shore of the Bosporus. Constantine XI Paleolog turned to the West for help, in December 1452 he solemnly confirmed the union, but this only caused general discontent. The commander of the Byzantine fleet, Luca Notara, publicly stated that he "would prefer the Turkish turban to dominate the City than the papal tiara."

In early March 1453, Mehmed II announced the recruitment of an army; in total, he had 150 (according to other sources - 300) thousand troops, equipped with powerful artillery, 86 military and 350 transport ships. In Constantinople, there were 4973 inhabitants capable of holding weapons, about 2 thousand mercenaries from the West and 25 ships.

The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who swore to take Constantinople, carefully and carefully prepared for the upcoming war, realizing that he would have to deal with a powerful fortress, from which the armies of other conquerors had retreated more than once. The walls, unusual in thickness, were practically invulnerable to siege engines and even standard artillery at that time.

The Turkish army consisted of 100 thousand soldiers, over 30 warships and about 100 small fast ships. Such a number of ships immediately allowed the Turks to establish dominance in the Sea of ​​​​Marmara.

The city of Constantinople was located on a peninsula formed by the Sea of ​​Marmara and the Golden Horn. The city blocks overlooking the sea and the bay were covered by city walls. A special system of fortifications from walls and towers covered the city from the land - from the west. The Greeks were relatively calm behind the fortress walls on the coast of the Sea of ​​Marmara - the sea current here was fast and did not allow the Turks to land troops under the walls. The Golden Horn was considered a vulnerable spot.

View of Constantinople

The Greek fleet defending Constantinople consisted of 26 ships. The city had several cannons and a significant supply of spears and arrows. Fire weapons, like soldiers, were clearly not enough to repel the assault. In total, there were about 7 thousand fit Roman soldiers, not including the allies.

The West was in no hurry to provide assistance to Constantinople, only Genoa sent 700 soldiers on two galleys, led by the condottiere Giovanni Giustiniani, and Venice sent 2 warships. The brothers of Constantine, the rulers of the Morea, Dmitry and Thomas, were busy quarreling among themselves. The inhabitants of Galata, an extraterritorial quarter of the Genoese on the Asian shore of the Bosporus, declared their neutrality, but in reality helped the Turks, hoping to maintain their privileges.

Beginning of the siege

April 7, 1453 Mehmed II began the siege. The Sultan sent parliamentarians with a proposal to surrender. In case of surrender, he promised the urban population the preservation of life and property. Emperor Constantine replied that he was ready to pay any tribute that Byzantium could bear and cede any territories, but refused to surrender the city. At the same time, Constantine ordered the Venetian sailors to march along the city walls, demonstrating that Venice was an ally of Constantinople. The Venetian fleet was one of the strongest in the Mediterranean basin, and this must have had an effect on the resolve of the Sultan. Despite the refusal, Mehmed gave the order to prepare for the assault. The Turkish army had high morale and determination, unlike the Romans.

The Turkish fleet had its main anchorage on the Bosphorus, its main task was to break through the fortifications of the Golden Horn, in addition, the ships were to block the city and prevent allied assistance to Constantinople.

Initially, success accompanied the besieged. The Byzantines blocked the entrance to the Golden Horn Bay with a chain, and the Turkish fleet could not approach the walls of the city. The first assault attempts failed.

On April 20, 5 ships with the defenders of the city (4 - Genoese, 1 - Byzantine) defeated a squadron of 150 Turkish ships in battle.

But already on April 22, the Turks transported 80 ships by dry land to the Golden Horn. The attempt of the defenders to burn these ships failed, because the Genoese from Galata noticed the preparations and informed the Turks.

Fall of Constantinople

Defeatist moods reigned in Constantinople itself. Giustiniani advised Constantine XI to surrender the city. Defense funds were squandered. Luca Notara concealed the money allocated for the fleet, hoping to pay them off from the Turks.

May 29 started early in the morning final assault on Constantinople . The first attacks were repulsed, but then the wounded Giustiniani left the city and fled to Galata. The Turks were able to take the main gate of the capital of Byzantium. Fighting took place on the streets of the city, Emperor Constantine XI fell in battle, and when the Turks found his wounded body, they cut off his head and put him on a pole. For three days in Constantinople there were robberies and violence. The Turks killed in a row everyone they met on the streets: men, women, children. Streams of blood flowed down the steep streets of Constantinople from the hills of Petra to the Golden Horn.

The Turks broke into the male and female monasteries. Some young monks, preferring martyrdom to dishonor, threw themselves into wells; the monks and elderly nuns followed the ancient tradition of the Orthodox Church, which prescribed not to resist.

The houses of the inhabitants were also plundered one by one; each group of robbers hung a small flag at the entrance as a sign that there was nothing left to take in the house. The inhabitants of the houses were taken along with their property. Anyone who fell from exhaustion was immediately killed; so did many babies.

There were scenes of mass desecration of shrines in the churches. Many crucifixes, adorned with jewels, were taken out of the temples with Turkish turbans famously pulled on them.

In the temple of Chora, the Turks left the mosaics and frescoes intact, but destroyed the icon of Our Lady Hodegetria - her most sacred image in all of Byzantium, executed, according to legend, by St. Luke himself. She was transferred here from the Church of the Virgin near the palace at the very beginning of the siege, so that this shrine, being as close as possible to the walls, would inspire their defenders. The Turks pulled the icon out of its frame and split it into four pieces.

And here is how contemporaries describe the capture of the greatest temple of all Byzantium - the Cathedral of St. Sofia. "The church was still full of people. The Holy Liturgy had already ended and Matins was underway. When a noise was heard outside, the huge bronze doors of the temple were closed. Those gathered inside prayed for a miracle, which alone could save them. But their prayers were in vain. Not much time passed, and the doors collapsed under the blows from outside. The worshipers were trapped. A few old people and cripples were killed on the spot; the majority of the Turks tied or chained to each other in groups, and shawls and scarves torn from women were used as fetters. Many beautiful girls and young men, as well as richly dressed nobles, were almost torn to pieces when the soldiers who captured them fought among themselves, considering them their prey. The priests continued to read prayers at the altar until they were also captured ... "

Sultan Mehmed II himself entered the city only on June 1. With an escort of selected detachments of the Janissary guard, accompanied by his viziers, he slowly drove through the streets of Constantinople. Everything around, where the soldiers visited, was devastated and ruined; churches were desecrated and plundered, houses - uninhabited, shops and warehouses - broken and torn apart. He rode a horse into the church of St. Sophia, ordered to knock down the cross from it and turn it into the largest mosque in the world.

Cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople

Immediately after the capture of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II first issued a decree on "giving freedom to all who remained alive", but many residents of the city were killed by Turkish soldiers, many became slaves. For the speedy restoration of the population, Mehmed ordered the entire population of the city of Aksaray to be transferred to the new capital.

The Sultan granted the Greeks the rights of a self-governing community within the empire, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, responsible to the Sultan, was to be at the head of the community.

In subsequent years, the last territories of the empire were occupied (Morea - in 1460).

Consequences of the death of Byzantium

Constantine XI was the last of the Roman emperors. With his death, the Byzantine Empire ceased to exist. Its lands became part of the Ottoman state. The former capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople became the capital of the Ottoman Empire until its collapse in 1922. (first it was called Konstantinie, and then Istanbul (Istanbul)).

Most Europeans believed that the death of Byzantium was the beginning of the end of the world, since only Byzantium was the successor to the Roman Empire. Many contemporaries blamed Venice for the fall of Constantinople. (Venice then had one of the most powerful fleets). The Republic of Venice played a double game, trying, on the one hand, to organize a crusade against the Turks, and on the other hand, to protect its trade interests by sending friendly embassies to the Sultan.

However, one must understand that the rest of the Christian powers did not lift a finger to save the dying empire. Without the help of other states, even if the Venetian fleet arrived on time, this would allow Constantinople to hold out for another couple of weeks, but this would only prolong the agony.

Rome was fully aware of the Turkish danger and understood that all Western Christianity could be in danger. Pope Nicholas V urged all the Western powers to jointly undertake a powerful and decisive Crusade and intended to lead this campaign himself. Even from the moment the fatal news came from Constantinople, he sent out his messages, calling for active action. On September 30, 1453, the Pope sent out a bull to all Western sovereigns announcing the Crusade. Each sovereign was ordered to shed the blood of his and his subjects for a holy cause, and also to allocate a tenth of their income for it. Both Greek cardinals - Isidore and Bessarion - actively supported his efforts. Bessarion himself wrote to the Venetians, at the same time accusing them and imploring them to stop the wars in Italy and concentrate all their forces on the fight against the Antichrist.

However, no crusade ever happened. And although the sovereigns eagerly caught messages about the death of Constantinople, and the writers composed sorrowful elegies, although the French composer Guillaume Dufay wrote a special funeral song and sang it in all French lands, no one was ready to act. King Frederick III of Germany was poor and powerless, because he did not have real power over the German princes; neither politically nor financially he could participate in the Crusade. King Charles VII of France was busy restoring his country after a long and devastating war with England. The Turks were somewhere far away; he had better things to do in his own house. England, which had suffered even more than France from the Hundred Years' War, the Turks seemed an even more distant problem. King Henry VI could do absolutely nothing, as he had just lost his mind and the whole country was plunging into the chaos of the wars of the Scarlet and White Roses. None of the other kings showed their interest, with the exception of the Hungarian king Vladislav, who, of course, had every reason to be worried. But he had a bad relationship with his army commander. And without him and without allies, he could not venture on any enterprise.

Thus, although Western Europe was shaken by the fact that the great historic Christian city was in the hands of the infidels, no papal bull could move it to action. The very fact that the Christian states failed to come to the aid of Constantinople showed their obvious unwillingness to fight for the faith, if their immediate interests were not affected.

The Turks quickly occupied the rest of the territory of the empire. The Serbs were the first to suffer - Serbia became a theater of war between the Turks and the Hungarians. In 1454, the Serbs were forced, under the threat of force, to give part of their territory to the Sultan. But already in 1459, all of Serbia was in the hands of the Turks, with the exception of Belgrade, which until 1521 remained in the hands of the Hungarians. The neighboring kingdom of Bosnia, the Turks conquered 4 years later.

Meanwhile, the last vestiges of Greek independence were gradually disappearing. The Duchy of Athens was destroyed in 1456. And in 1461, the last Greek capital, Trebizond, fell. This was the end of the free Greek world. True, a certain number of Greeks still remained under Christian rule - in Cyprus, on the islands of the Aegean and Ionian Seas and in the port cities of the continent, still held by Venice, but their rulers were of a different blood and a different form of Christianity. Only in the south-east of the Peloponnese, in the lost villages of Maina, into the harsh mountain spurs of which not a single Turk dared to penetrate, a semblance of freedom was preserved.

Soon all the Orthodox territories in the Balkans were in the hands of the Turks. Serbia and Bosnia were enslaved. Albania fell in January 1468. Moldova recognized its vassal dependence on the Sultan as early as 1456.

Many historians in the 17th and 18th centuries considered the fall of Constantinople a key moment in European history, the end of the Middle Ages, just as the fall of Rome in 476 was the end of Antiquity. Others believed that the exodus of Greeks to Italy caused the Renaissance there.

Rus' - the heir of Byzantium

After the death of Byzantium, Rus' remained the only free Orthodox state. The Baptism of Rus' was one of the most glorious deeds of the Byzantine Church. Now this daughter country was becoming stronger than its parent, and the Russians were well aware of this. Constantinople, as believed in Rus', fell as a punishment for its sins, for apostasy, agreeing to unite with the Western Church. The Russians vehemently rejected the Union of Florence and expelled its supporter, Metropolitan Isidore, who had been imposed on them by the Greeks. And now, having kept their Orthodox faith unsullied, they turned out to be the owners of the only surviving state from the Orthodox world, whose power, moreover, was constantly growing. “Constantinople fell,” wrote the Metropolitan of Moscow in 1458, “because it apostatized from the true Orthodox faith. But in Russia this faith is still alive, the Faith of the Seven Councils, which Constantinople handed it over to Grand Duke Vladimir. There is only one true Church on earth - the Russian Church.”

After his marriage to the niece of the last Byzantine emperor from the Palaiologos dynasty, Grand Duke Ivan III of Moscow declared himself heir to the Byzantine Empire. From now on, the great mission of preserving Christianity passed to Russia. “Christian empires have fallen,” wrote the monk Philotheus in 1512 to his master, the Grand Duke, or Tsar, Vasily III, “only the power of our lord stands in their place ... Two Romes have fallen, but the third stands, and there will not be a fourth ... You are the only Christian sovereign in the world, the lord over all true faithful Christians.”

Thus, in the entire Orthodox world, only Russians benefited in any way from the fall of Constantinople; and for the Orthodox Christians of the former Byzantium, groaning in captivity, the realization that there still exists in the world a great, albeit very distant sovereign of the same faith with them, served as consolation and hope that he would protect them and, perhaps, someday come to save them and restore their freedom. Sultan the Conqueror paid almost no attention to the fact of the existence of Russia. Russia was far away. Sultan Mehmed had other concerns much closer. The conquest of Constantinople, of course, made his state one of the great powers of Europe, and from now on he was to play a corresponding role in European politics. He realized that the Christians were his enemies and he had to be vigilant to see that they did not unite against him. The sultan could have fought Venice or Hungary, and perhaps the few allies the pope could muster, but he could only fight one of them in isolation. No one came to the aid of Hungary in the fatal battle on the Mohacs field. No one sent reinforcements to Rhodes to the Knights of St. John. Nobody cared about the loss of Cyprus by the Venetians.

Material prepared by Sergey SHULYAK

For many centuries, scientists have been trying and trying to figure out how it happened that, contrary to the original plan of the IV Crusade (1199-1204): first to crush the main citadel of the Muslim world - Egypt, from where Islam drew its strength to fight Christianity, and then to liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher, the crusaders captured the Christian state - the Byzantine Empire, completely plundered its capital and stopped there, as if there was no problem of the liberation of the Holy Land.

As the saying goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Where does this road come from, along which the knights of the cross passed?

The starting point should be considered 1054. It was then, 950 years ago, that the churches were divided into western and eastern. Westerners regarded the Byzantines as heretics and accused them of schism and apostasy. This misunderstanding grew into hatred over the years. For example, in the middle of the 12th century, during the Second Crusade, the Western fanatic Bishop of Langres already dreamed of capturing Constantinople and encouraged the French king Louis VII to declare that "the Byzantines are not Christians in deed, but only in name", that they showed themselves guilty of heresy, and a fair part of the crusaders believed that "the Greeks were not Christians at all and that killing them was less than nothing."

The initiator of the IV Crusade, its soul, was Pope Innocent III (1198 -1216). He was a man of outstanding mind and energy, a prudent and sober politician in his assessments, who put the political interests of papal Rome at the forefront. The main goal of Innocent III was the subordination of all Christian states of the West and East to the Roman high priest. "Your words are the words of God, but your deeds are the deeds of the devil," a politician of the early 13th century wrote to the Pope.

Preparing the crusade, Innocent III also turned to the Byzantine Emperor Alexei III. In his message, the pope urged not only to send a Byzantine army to liberate Jerusalem, but also raised the issue of a church union, behind which was the intention of the Roman pontiffs to eliminate the independence of the Greek church, appropriate its wealth and income, bring the Patriarch of Constantinople to obedience, and after him - the emperor himself. Thus, the crusade and the church union immediately became closely connected with each other in the policy of Innocent III. However, Constantinople rejected the harassment of the pope. This irritated Rome, and silent threats were made against Byzantium.

Thus, the antagonism of the papacy and Byzantium, which was based on the policy of the Roman pontiffs, aimed at subordinating the Greek Church to the Roman one, was the first (in time of occurrence) reason for the change in the direction of the IV Crusade.

The second reason is the aggressive aspirations of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, who declared their right to the throne of Constantinople. In 1195, in Constantinople, as a result of a coup, Emperor Isaac II Angel was deprived of power (blinded and imprisoned with his son), and his brother Alexei III (1195 - 1203) was established on the throne. The German king Philip of Swabia was married to the daughter of Isaac II, Irina. And now he was thinking of restoring his father-in-law to the throne, and in secret, the youngest offspring of Frederick Barbarossa and heir to Henry VI sought to seize power in Byzantium.

The third reason is the greed and adventurism of the feudal barons: serving not God, but seeking wealth and power. The knight Robert de Clary, who later became the historian of the campaign, frankly writes that the crusaders came to Byzantium "to take possession of the land."

The fourth reason is the deterioration of relations between Venice and Byzantium, the desire of Venetian statesmen to eliminate trade competition in the ports of the Mediterranean and Black Seas and the unwillingness of war with Egypt. It was said in the Frankish East that commercial profits were incomparably more important for Venice than the triumph of the cross. Therefore, clashes and strife with Byzantium became more frequent, and the appeal of the crusaders to Venice for help was a real treasure for her. It was here, in Venice, that the active implementation of the plan began - to make an "anvil" out of Constantinople for the crusading "hammer".

In 1201, Tsarevich Alexei, the son of the deposed Tsar Isaac Angel, fled to Germany from imprisonment in Constantinople. This circumstance seriously influenced the entire future course of events. For the sake of obtaining the throne, Tsarevich Alexei was ready to betray and sell everything: his homeland, people, faith. In exchange for help, the prince promised the pope to subordinate the Greek church to the Roman one and ensure the participation of Byzantium in the crusade and pay the crusaders 200 thousand marks in silver, a gigantic amount at that time. (Then he was presented with various monetary obligations issued by him, in the amount of 450 thousand marks!) Now Innocent III got the full opportunity to cover up his true intentions regarding Byzantium with the most plausible pretext - the defense of a "just cause", the restoration of a legitimate government in Constantinople.

But before the knights set off on the main journey, Venice offered them to work off the debt lying on them for preparing the campaign with a sword. The crusaders had to win for Venice a large trading center on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, the city of Zara (Zadar), which at that time belonged to Hungary. Boniface of Montferrat, the leader of the crusaders, agreed to this deal against fellow Christians. November 24, 1202 Zara was taken and plundered.

The conquest and defeat of the Christian city in Dalmatia - such was the first "success" achieved in the IV Crusade.

The hypocritical prohibitions of Innocent III to the crusaders - not to offend the Greeks - in fact, were not worth a penny. The Alsatian monk Gunter of Paris, who wrote from the words of his abbot Martin, a member of the crusader embassy sent to Rome from Zadar, admitted with all frankness: "the supreme pontiff had long hated Constantinople and really wanted it," if possible, to be conquered without bloodshed by the Catholic people.

On May 24, 1203, the crusader fleet headed for Constantinople. And on June 23, 1203, the crusading fleet with Tsarevich Alexei was at Constantinople.

The crusaders had a relatively weak enemy in front of them. The administrative machine of the empire from the end of the 12th century. was in complete disarray. There was almost no fleet, the ground forces were also small. As for defensive measures, Tsar Alexei III placed all his hopes on strong walls and the impregnability of the capital from the sea. It should be noted that the then admiral of the fleet Strifn, as they would say today, extremely abused his position, and only 20 ships turned out to be in the Byzantine docks, and even then they were unfit for business. The contemporary Byzantine Nikita Choniates writes: "The chief commander of the fleet, Mikhail Strifn, married to the sister of the empress, had the custom of turning not only rudders and anchors into gold, but even sails and oars, and deprived the Greek fleet of large ships."

On July 5, 1203, the Venetian galleys broke through the chain that blocked the entrance to the Golden Horn, dividing Constantinople in two, and, having destroyed the rotten Byzantine ships, entered this main strategic defense center of the city. The hostilities lasted no more than ten days. Constantinople, a city with a population of 100,000 and an army of 70,000, capitulated to 30,000 Western marauders. Emperor Alexei III fled the capital.

On July 18, 1203, the blind Isaac II Angel was released from captivity and proclaimed emperor. On August 1, Tsarevich Alexei was installed as his co-ruler. The Crusaders set up their camp on one of the outskirts of the city. The tsars managed to collect only 100 thousand marks through confiscations, new taxes and extortion. Both the crusaders and the Byzantines were dissatisfied, irritated by such a policy of father and son.

In the last days of January 1204, a popular uprising broke out. As a result of the conspiracy, Isaac II and Alexei IV were overthrown. The aristocracy placed the dignitary Alexei Duku (Alexei V) on the throne, and the people nominated their protege, the simple warrior Nikola Kanava. Emperor Alexei V suppressed the revolt of the plebs, and on his orders, Nikola Kanava, as well as Alexei IV, were strangled in prison. Isaac II, unable to bear the sorrows that fell on him, died.

In March 1204, Enrico Dandolo, Boniface of Montferrat and other crusader leaders signed an agreement on the division of Byzantium, which they already saw in their hands.

The March treaty provided for the foundations of the state system and all the details of the territorial division of the Byzantine Empire. In particular, he provided: "1) to take Constantinople with an armed hand and establish a new government from the Latins in it; 2) to plunder the city ... 4) the one who is elected emperor receives a fourth of the entire empire, the rest are divided equally between the Venetians and the French ..."

On April 13, 1204, Constantinople fell victim to Western invaders. The capture of the Byzantine capital received the sanction of the Catholic Church. On the eve of the assault, the bishops and priests who were with the army absolved the sins of the participants in the upcoming battle, strengthening their faith that the capture of Constantinople was a just and charitable deed. “Therefore, we declare to you,” the clergy said, “that war is right and just, and if you have the direct intention of conquering this land and subordinating it to Rome, then you will receive the remission of sins, as the apostle gave you to all who confess and die.”

Embittered by the long expectation of prey and encouraged by their spiritual shepherds, the knights, having captured Constantinople, plundered palaces and temples, houses and tombs, destroyed priceless monuments of art, set fire to houses, and raped women. “Whoever contradicted them in any way or refused their demands was threatened with a knife; and there was no one who did not experience weeping that day. At the crossroads, in the lanes, in the temples, complaints, weeping, sobs, groans, cries of men, the howling of women, robberies, adultery, captivity, separation of friends. Disasters spread everywhere,” we read from the surviving Byzantine Nikita Choniates. "The holy images are shamelessly trampled! O woe! The relics of the holy martyrs are thrown into places of all abomination! But, what a terrible thing to say and what one could see with one's own eyes: the divine body and blood of Christ were spilled and scattered over the earth. The holy lecterns, woven with jewels and of extraordinary beauty, which led to amazement, were cut into pieces and divided among the soldiers, along with other magnificent things When they needed to take out of the temple sacred vessels, objects of extraordinary art and extreme rarity, silver and gold, which were lined with chairs, ambos and gates, they brought mules and horses with saddles into the vestibules of the temples: the animals, frightened by the shiny floor, did not want to enter, but they beat them and thus defiled the sacred floor of the temple with their feces and blood. The drunken bacchanalia continued for three days. Eyewitnesses write that the amazing beauty of the altarpiece of the Mother of God, which served as an adornment of the church of St. Sophia, was crumbled into small pieces; the victors played dice on the tombs of the apostles, and drank to the point of intoxication from the vessels designated for the performance of the Sacraments. And one girl, "the servant of the devil, cursing Christ and sitting on the patriarchal throne, sang obscene songs" and danced for the "winners." Several thousand Constantinopolitans were killed. "The churches in the city and outside the city plundered everything, but we cannot tell them the number or beauty of them," wrote a Russian eyewitness to the defeat of Constantinople, the author of The Tale of the Capture of Tsargrad by the Friags. The crusaders turned countless ancient monuments to ashes, the richest book depositories were turned into ashes, many Christian shrines were stolen or destroyed. On the plundered riches of the Orthodox Empire, the rise of the Catholic West began. The relics of the martyrs and apostles, the instruments of suffering of the Savior, the shroud and the crown of thorns of Christ, numerous sacred relics became trophies of the Crusade and today adorn churches in France, Italy and other Western countries.

It is not surprising that some Western researchers generally bypass the IV campaign in silence, because, as the English scientist E. Bradford wrote: "The destruction of the great Christian civilization by the soldiers of Christ is not an instructive topic." And the modern English historian J. Godfrey bitterly complains that "as a result of the tragedy of 1204, wounds were inflicted on Europe and Christianity, which, as it turned out over time, turned out to be incurable."

Russian historians note that the history of the IV Crusade was a history of open violation by its inspirers, leaders and participants of the religious goals proclaimed by them. The crusaders trampled on their own religious banners, their own "liberation" slogans and ideas. They showed themselves not as warriors of Christ, not as pious Christians, but as greedy adventurers and unscrupulous invaders.

The fall of the Byzantine Empire was reflected in the entire subsequent course of the history of the countries of the East and West, and affected the future of Russia, which was closely connected with Byzantium in church terms. The IV Crusade tore off the veil of sanctity, the halo of piety, with which the Catholic Church had for centuries surrounded its aggressive actions.

Already the First Crusade showed that hard times had come for the Byzantines. In mid-July 1096, detachments of crusaders, consisting mainly of peasants, approached the walls of Constantinople. It was an almost unarmed militia of the common people from France, Germany and a number of other Western European countries, not only driven by a religious idea, but also escaping in this way from feudal oppression and terrible need. One of the leaders of the peasants was Picardy Peter the Hermit, a monk popular among them, famous for asceticism and oratory, which he devoted entirely to preaching the idea of ​​the Crusades. Emperor Alexei Komnenos, who feared the crusaders not without reason, gave an audience to Peter the Hermit and provided his army with little material support. Still, robberies and arson could not be avoided. However, this time the capital of the Byzantines was lucky. The peasant militia left the city a few days later, crossing the Bosphorus. At the end of October, only a few thousand militiamen returned here, the remnant of an army that had suffered a brutal defeat in the battle with the Seljuks at Nicaea. Many of them waited here for the approach of the crusader knights.

At the end of December 1096, Lorraine-German detachments under the command of Gottfried of Bouillon approached the city. Disputes immediately arose between the emperor and the aliens. On one of the April days in 1097, they turned into a fierce battle. The battle was fought both on horseback outside the city and on its walls. The battle was difficult for the Byzantines, its outcome in their favor was decided only by the personal guard of the emperor. Soon the opponents sat down at the negotiating table. Alexei I gave the knights money and quickly got rid of them, transporting them across the strait to the Asian coast.

But the troubles for the Byzantines did not end there. In the same month, they had to deal with detachments of Italo-Sicilian knights under the leadership of Bohemond of Tarentum. This time it was possible to do without bloodshed, the matter was decided by diplomacy and money. But the relations between the crusaders and the owners of the city who entered Constantinople did not differ in mutual trust. In any case, as contemporaries of the events tell, when Bohemond of Tareit settled down as a guest of the emperor in the palace chambers allotted to him, he, fearing poison, did not touch the dishes prepared for him and ordered his cooks to prepare a different, familiar dinner for him. Still desiring to test the sincerity of the emperor's hospitality, he generously treated his retinue to Alexei's dishes, and the next day, with feigned solicitude, inquired of everyone about their well-being. Learning that everything went well, Bohemond did not hesitate to announce his suspicions. There are many stories about the rude antics and brazen arrogance of the knights. The most famous episode that occurred during a solemn audience with the emperor. One of the barons collapsed on the throne, and when he was forced to stand up, explaining that no one had the right to sit in the presence of the basileus, he expressed indignation that the emperor allowed himself to sit in the presence of many brave knights. At the end of April, this part of the crusading army was transported by the Byzantines to the Asia Minor coast of the Bosporus.

After a short respite, the townspeople again saw the crusaders in front of the walls of Constantinople. They were detachments of knights and many armed pilgrims. They settled in the vicinity of the capital, in the city itself appeared only in small groups with the permission of the authorities. But even these visitors were a burden for the townspeople: their defiant behavior led to clashes more than once. In the suburbs, the Crusaders simply looted. Raymond of Toulouse, who led this group of crusaders, negotiated with the emperor for a long time. Due to the sophistication of Byzantine diplomacy, as well as thanks to the generous gifts they received, the crusader leaders agreed to become vassals of the emperor. In April - May 1097, these detachments were sent across the strait.

On June 7, 1099, hordes of crusaders approached Jerusalem. In two years of campaigns and battles, their huge army was fairly thinned out - only 20 thousand soldiers reached Jerusalem. On June 15, the crusaders took the city by storm and committed a bloody massacre on its streets.

Half a century later, the capital of the Byzantine Empire again anxiously awaited the approach of the crusader army. September 10, 1147, during the Second Crusade (1147-1149), detachments of German knights approached Constantinople. The robbery and robbery of the outskirts of the city began again. And again the emperor, now it was John Komnenos, had to use strength and cunning, money and flattery. Uninvited guests were quickly removed from Constantinople, having been transported across the strait. Less than a month later, however, the French crusaders arrived. The city gates closed before them. The offended knights began to demand an assault. But most of the leaders did not dare to take this risky undertaking, and the emperor soon managed by diplomatic maneuvers to induce the crusaders to rush to Asia Minor, following the German troops.

The relations of the Byzantine Empire with the crusader states that arose in the East after the First Crusade (the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa and the County of Tripoli) were tense. Byzantine lands were subjected to robbery and ruin, at one time the capital was in danger.

After the death in 1180 of Emperor Manuel Comnenus, a struggle broke out between the contenders for the throne. In the spring of 1181, it escalated, clashes began on the streets of the capital. In this tense atmosphere, the dissatisfaction of its population with increasing taxes and endless requisitions, extortion of officials was more and more openly manifested. As happened more than once in the history of Constantinople, popular discontent turned into indignation against foreign mercenaries, on whom the government relied, suppressing the unrest in the city.

Foreigners then played a very important role in Constantinople. During the crusades in the capital of Byzantium, the influence of Venetian and Genoese merchants sharply increased. Their competition caused considerable damage to Byzantine merchants and artisans. The emperors more than once resorted to the help of the Venetian fleet. The richest quarters belonged to Italian merchants. They were on the other side of the Golden Horn and were called like that: Pera (“on the other side”) and Galata. The Italian colony in those years was about 60 thousand people. The Italians, who in Byzantium were called Latins, did not hide their contemptuous attitude towards the Byzantines.

At this moment, the cousin of Emperor Manuel, Andronicus Komnenos, a brave and energetic man, prone to adventures, joined the struggle for the throne. He spent many years outside Byzantium, lived for about 15 years at the courts of Eastern monarchs. His name was popular among the people, the Byzantines sang songs that spoke about the knightly adventures and adventures of Prince Andronicus. Finally, he had a reputation for anti-Latin sentiments, which were so popular among the mass of the Constantinopolitan population. In April - May 1182, clashes took place in the Byzantine capital between supporters of various groups fighting for power. As a result, a rebellion broke out against the government. For several days, crowds smashed the houses of the rich, including the palaces of the eparch of the city and the prosecutor of the supreme court. Tax lists and a mass of state acts were destroyed. The rebels turned the church of St. Sophia and the buildings surrounding it into a fortified camp. The government managed to put down the rebellion within a few days. But the most dramatic events were yet to come.

On one of the May days in 1182. numerous crowds attacked the Latins. Furious townspeople burned and robbed the houses of foreigners. Latins were killed without regard to age or gender. When part of the Italians made an attempt to escape on their ships in the harbor, they were destroyed by "Greek fire". Many Latins were burned alive in their own homes. Rich and prosperous quarters were turned into ruins. The Byzantines sacked the churches of the Latins, their charities and hospitals. Many clerics were also killed, including the papal legate.

The slaughter of the Latins was largely provoked by Andronicus, who was preparing to enter the capital, where his supporters had already done almost everything for his accession to the throne. He occupied it in 1182 as a regent under Alexei II, and from 1183 as an autocratic emperor. His reign was characterized by ruthless terror. All three years of his tenure on the throne, he destroyed everyone whom he considered dangerous to his power.

The pogrom of the Latins, mainly the Venetians, turned into many misfortunes for the Byzantines. Those Italians who managed to leave Constantinople before the massacre began, in revenge, began to ravage the Byzantine cities and villages on the banks of the Bosphorus and on the Princes' Islands. They began to call on the Latin West for retribution everywhere.

All these events further intensified the enmity between Byzantium and the states of Western Europe.

After the conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 by the Egyptian Sultan Salah ad-Din (Saladin), the Third Crusade (1189-1192) was undertaken. It did not directly affect the capital of the Byzantine Empire. But a tense situation developed in the Balkans, where the interests of the German crusaders and the Byzantines openly clashed in Thrace. Frederick I Barbarossa even hatched plans for the siege of Constantinople from land and sea, meaning to agree on joint actions with Venice and Genoa. The population of Constantinople continued to live with a sense of imminent danger." It is noteworthy that in his sermons the patriarch reviled the crusaders, calling them dogs and suggesting to his flock that the murder of a crusader would give remission of any sins.

Many of those who listened to these sermons had to face the atrocities of the crusaders after some ten years.

The organizers of the Third Crusade did not achieve much success. Therefore, a few years later, the Fourth Crusade began, which became fatal for the Byzantine Empire and its ancient capital.

Not immediately, however, the crusading hordes were aimed at Constantinople. The organizers of the Fourth Crusade, who were united and inspired by Pope Innocent III, initially made a lot of efforts to strengthen the religious fervor of the crusaders, to remind them of their historical mission of liberating the Holy Land. Innocent III sent a message to the Byzantine emperor, encouraging him to participate in the campaign and at the same time reminding him of the need to restore the church union, which practically meant the end of the independent existence of the Greek church. Obviously, this issue was the main one for Innocent III, who could hardly count on the participation of the Byzantine army in the crusade started by the Roman Catholic Church. The emperor rejected the pope's proposals, relations between them became extremely tense.

The dislike of the pope for Byzantium to a large extent predetermined the transformation of the Byzantine capital into the target of the campaign of the crusading army. In many ways, this was also a consequence of the openly selfish intentions of the leaders of the crusaders, who, in pursuit of prey, went in the autumn of 1202 to Zadar, a large trading city on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, which at that time belonged to Hungary. Having captured and ruined it, the crusaders, in particular, thus paid part of the debt to the Venetians, who were interested in establishing their rule in this important area. The conquest and defeat of a large Christian city, as it were, became a preparation for a further change in the goals of the crusade. Since not only the Pope, but also the French and German feudal lords at that time secretly hatched a plan to send the crusaders against Byzantium, Zadar became a kind of rehearsal for the campaign against Constantinople. Gradually, an ideological justification for such a campaign arose. Among the leaders of the crusaders, there was more and more persistent talk that their failures were due to the actions of Byzantium. The Byzantines were accused of not only not helping the soldiers of the cross, but even pursuing a hostile policy towards the states of the crusaders, concluding alliances directed against them with the rulers of the Seljuk Turks of Asia Minor. These sentiments were fueled by the Venetian merchants, for Venice was a commercial rival of Byzantium. To all this were added memories of the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople. The crusaders' desire for huge booty, which was promised by the capture of the Byzantine capital, also played an important role.

There were legends about the wealth of Constantinople at that time. “Oh, what a noble and beautiful city! - one of the participants of the First Crusade wrote about Constantinople. - How many monasteries, palaces, built with amazing skill! How many amazing things to look at in the streets and squares! It would be too tedious to enumerate what an abundance of riches of every kind is here, gold, silver, various textiles and sacred relics. Such stories ignited the imagination and passion for profit, which was so characteristic of the warriors of the crusader armies.

The original plan of the Fourth Crusade, which provided for the organization of a sea expedition on Venetian ships to Egypt, was changed: the crusading army was to move to the capital of Byzantium. A suitable pretext was also found for an attack on Constantinople. There was another palace coup, as a result of which Emperor Isaac II from the Angelic dynasty that ruled the empire With 1185, in 1204 he was deposed from the throne, blinded and thrown into prison. His son Alexei turned to the crusaders for help. In April 1203, he concluded an agreement with the leaders of the crusaders on the island of Corfu, promising them a large monetary reward. As a result, the crusaders went to Constantinople in the role of fighters for the restoration of the power of the legitimate emperor.

In June 1203 ships with a crusader army approached the Byzantine capital. The position of the city was extremely difficult, because the Byzantines now had almost no main means of defense, which had saved many times before, the fleet. Having concluded an alliance with Venice in 1187, the Byzantine emperors reduced their military forces at sea to a minimum, relying on their allies. It was one of those mistakes that sealed the fate of Constantinople. It remained to rely only on the fortress walls. On June 23, Venetian ships with crusaders on board appeared in the roadstead. Emperor Alexei III, brother of the deposed Isaac II, tried to organize a defense from the sea, but the crusader ships broke through the chain that closed the entrance to the Golden Horn. On July 5, the Venetian galleys entered the bay, the knights landed on the shore and camped at the Blachernae Palace, which was located in the northwestern part of the city. On July 17, the troops of Alexei III practically capitulated to the crusaders after they captured two dozen towers on the fortress walls. This was followed by the flight of Alexei III from Constantinople.

Then the townspeople released the deposed Isaac II from prison and proclaimed him emperor. This did not suit the crusaders at all, because then they were losing a lot of money promised to them by the son of Isaac, Alexei. Under pressure from the crusaders, Alexei was declared emperor, and the joint reign of father and son continued for about five months. Alexei made every effort to collect the amount needed to pay off the crusaders, so that the population suffered incredibly from extortions. The situation in the capital became more and more tense. The extortion of the crusaders intensified the enmity between the Greeks and the Latins, the emperor was hated by almost all the townspeople. There were signs of a brewing rebellion. In January 1204, the common people of Constantinople, who gathered in huge crowds in the squares, began to demand the election of a new emperor. Isaac II turned to the crusaders for help, but one of the dignitaries, Alexei Murchufl, betrayed his intentions to the people. A riot began in the city, which ended with the election of Alexei Murchufla as emperor. According to the leaders of the crusaders, the moment had come to capture the Byzantine capital.

Camping in one of the suburbs of Constantinople, the crusaders for more than six months not only influenced the life of the capital of the empire, but also became more and more inflamed at the sight of its riches. An idea of ​​this is given by the words of one of the participants in this campaign of the crusaders, the Amiens knight Robert de Clary, the author of memoirs entitled "The Conquest of Constantinople." “There was,” he wrote, “such an abundance of wealth, so much gold and silver utensils, so many precious stones, that it seemed truly a miracle how such magnificent wealth was brought here. Since the day of the creation of the world, such treasures, so magnificent and precious, have not been seen and collected ... And in the forty richest cities of the earth, I believe, there were not as many riches as there were in Constantinople! Delicious prey teased the appetites of the crusader warriors. The predatory raids of their detachments into the city brought considerable hardships to its inhabitants, the Churches began to lose part of their treasures. But the most terrible time for the city came in the early spring of 1204, when the leaders of the crusaders and representatives of Venice concluded an agreement on the division of the territories of Byzantium, which also included the capture of its capital.

The Crusaders decided to storm the city from the side of the Golden Horn, near the Blachernae Palace. Catholic priests, who were with the troops of the crusaders, supported their fighting spirit in every possible way. They readily absolved their sins to all the participants in the upcoming assault who wanted it, instilling in the soldiers the idea of ​​the piety of the capture of Constantinople.

At first, the ditches in front of the fortress walls were filled up, after which the knights went on the attack. The Byzantine soldiers resisted fiercely, but on April 9, the crusaders managed to break into Constantinople. However, they failed to gain a foothold in the city, and on April 12 the attack resumed. With the help of assault ladders, the advanced group of attackers climbed the fortress wall. Another group made a breach in one of the sections of the wall, and then smashed several fortress gates, operating from the inside. A fire broke out in the city, destroying two-thirds of the buildings. The resistance of the Byzantines was broken, Alexei Murchufl fled. True, bloody fights were going on in the streets all day. On the morning of April 13, 1204, the head of the crusading army, the Italian prince Boniface of Montferrat, entered Constantinople.

The city-fortress, which withstood the onslaught of many powerful enemies, was first captured by the enemy. What turned out to be beyond the power of the hordes of Persians, Avars and Arabs, was succeeded by a knightly army, numbering no more than 20 thousand people. One of the participants in the crusader campaign, the Frenchman Geoffroy de Villehardouin, the author of the History of the Capture of Constantinople, highly valued by researchers, believed that the ratio of the forces of the besiegers and the besieged was 1 to 200. He expressed surprise at the victory of the crusaders, emphasizing that never before had a handful of soldiers besieged a city with such a multitude of defenders. The ease with which the crusaders took possession of the huge, well-fortified city was the result of the most acute socio-political crisis that the Byzantine Empire was experiencing at that moment. The circumstance that part of the Byzantine aristocracy and merchants was interested in trade relations with the Latins also played a significant role. In other words, there was a kind of "fifth column" in Constantinople.

The Prince of Montferrat promised his army a three-day robbery of the city after its capture. The ruin of the Byzantine capital began. One of the eyewitnesses of these tragic events, the Byzantine dignitary and historian Nicetas Choniates, described the first hours of the Crusaders' reign in Constantinople as follows: whom they persuaded, whom they threatened on every occasion. They got everything or found it themselves: part lay in plain sight or was brought by the owners - part was found by the Latins themselves, they had no mercy, and they did not give anything back to the owners ... Gathering in parties, the inhabitants left, dressed in rags, exhausted by insomnia and haggard, looking dead, with bloodshot eyes, as if crying with blood, and not with tears. Some grieved for the loss of property, others were no longer depressed by this, but mourned the kidnapped and abused bride or spouse, each went with his grief. Geoffroy de Villehardouin noted that "there were neither number nor measure of those killed and wounded."

Fires caused terrible damage to the city. They arose twice before the decisive assault. Many buildings burned down during the fire that started at the time of the storming of the city on April 12. Geoffroy de Villehardouin wrote that this fire destroyed more houses than there were in the three largest cities of France at that time. On April 12-13, many quarters of the city, located on the coast of the Golden Horn, were destroyed in the fire. In June 1204, a fire devastated a vast area that stretched to the borders of the territory of the Blachernae Palace. Many quarters built up with rich houses burned to the ground. In August, after another skirmish between the Latins and the Byzantines, the city was on fire again. At the same time, buildings in different parts of the city caught fire. There was a strong wind that day. The fire raged for almost a day, the entire central part of Constantinople burned down - from the Golden Horn to the coast of the Sea of ​​​​Marmara. The flames raged with such force that ships in the harbor were set on fire with burning brands. The August fire destroyed the rich trade and craft quarters and completely ruined the merchants and artisans of Constantinople. After this terrible disaster, the trade and craft corporations of the city lost their former importance, and Constantinople lost its exclusive place in world trade for a long time.

Many architectural monuments and outstanding works of art perished. Constantine Square and the streets adjacent to it became the prey of the fiery element. Magnificent public buildings, churches and palaces, all lay in smoking ruins. The fire, fortunately, stopped at the very church of St. Sofia.

The leaders of the crusaders occupied the surviving imperial palaces, in particular Blachernae and Vukoleon, located on the southwestern tip of the Bosphorus, somewhat south of the Grand Palace. The treasures in them were captured by the crusaders. In general, the production exceeded all their expectations. An innumerable amount of gold and silver items, precious stones, furs and fabrics fell into the hands of the conquerors. The robbers did not stop before the destruction of the tombs of the Byzantine emperors. The sarcophagi were broken open, the jewelry found in them made of gold and precious stones was stolen. Many bronze and copper statues were melted down into coins. The invaders broke the giant statue of Hercules, created by the brilliant Lysippus. The same fate befell the huge statue of the hero of Greek mythology, Bellerophon. The crusaders did not spare even the statue of the Virgin Mary, which adorned one of the quarters in the city center. The same fate befell the statue of Hera. The Venetians, however, took out the famous bronze horses of Lysippus and decorated with them one of the facades of the Cathedral of St. Mark in Venice. But this case was an exception. The crusaders destroyed monuments of art, not imagining their immeasurable artistic value.

Hundreds of churches were destroyed. Nikita Choniates described the destruction of the church of St. Sophia: “Holy vestments, woven with jewels and of extraordinary beauty, leading to amazement, were cut into pieces and divided among the soldiers along with other magnificent things. When they needed to take out of the temple sacred vessels, objects of extraordinary art and extreme rarity, silver and gold, which were lined with pulpits, ambos and gates, they brought mules and horses with saddles into the porches of the temple ... Animals, frightened by the shiny floor, did not want to enter, but they beat them and ... defiled the sacred floor of the temple with their blood ... "Inflamed by robbery and the sight of blood, drunken knights forced naked street women dance on the main altar of the cathedral. Not far behind the knights and their Catholic pastors, who were especially zealous in plundering church relics.

The treasures of the temples made up a huge part of the booty of the crusaders. The Venetians removed from Constantinople many of the rarest works of art. The former splendor of Byzantine cathedrals after the era of the Crusades could only be seen in the churches of Venice. One of the Latin chronicles, in which the "exploits" of the crusaders in the captured city were described, was called: "The Devastation of Constantinople."

Repositories of the most valuable handwritten books - the center of Byzantine science and culture - fell into the hands of vandals, who made bivouac fires from scrolls. The works of ancient thinkers and scientists, religious books flew into the fire. A contemporary who described the scenes of the robbery of the city, very accurately noted that what is happening "shudders the mind and humanity blushes with shame."

The plunder of the riches of Constantinople was not limited to days of robbery after the capture of the city. The crusaders, who had established themselves in it for decades, gradually transported almost everything that was of any value to Western Europe. Trade in the treasures of palaces and shrines of temples for a long time remained created by the crusaders after the capture of Constantinople by the Latin Empire as one of the sources of replenishment of the cavna.

The catastrophe of 1204 sharply slowed down the development of Byzantine culture, which had flourished during the previous two centuries. In the IX-XII centuries. many masterpieces of architecture were created in the Byzantine capital. Among them were new magnificent buildings on the territory of the Grand Palace, Blachernae Palace, a number of new temples, among which stood out the Church of Pammakaristi (the Most Blessed Mother of God). All these creations of Byzantine architects, as well as the amazing works of monumental painting and miniature masters, were famous far beyond the borders of Constantinople. X-XI centuries also became the era of brilliant successes of Byzantine applied art. Science and literature were on the rise. G middle of the IX century. activities of higher schools revived. Two faculties of the University of Constantinople - legal and philosophical - played an exceptional role in the scientific and cultural life of the capital. Among the major figures of science are the philosopher and historian Michael Psellos and his younger contemporary philosopher John Ital (XI century). In the X-XII centuries. in Constantinople, such outstanding writers as the satirist Christopher of Mitylene, the author of the book of edifications "Advice and Stories" Kekavmen, the writer and poet Fyodor Prodrom, and finally, the excellent prose writers brothers Michael and Nikita Choniates worked.

The ruin of Constantinople led to the destruction of the cultural center, which had centuries-old traditions. From now on, the city of Nicaea in Asia Minor, the center of one of the Greek states that formed here after the invasion of the Crusaders, became the center of Byzantine science and education. Only in the XIV century. Constantinople, and even then only partially, managed to restore its cultural significance.

The conquest of Constantinople by the crusaders marked the collapse of the mighty Byzantine Empire. Several states arose on its ruins. The crusaders created the Latin Empire with its capital in Constantinople. It included lands along the shores of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, part of Thrace and a number of islands in the Aegean Sea. Venice got the northern suburb of Constantinople - Galata - and several cities on the coast of the Sea of ​​​​Marmara. Boniface of Montferrat became the head of the Thessalonian kingdom, created on the territory of Macedonia and Thessaly. In Morea, another crusader state arose - the Principality of Morea. On the remaining lands of the Byzantine Empire, new Greek states appeared. In the northwestern part of Asia Minor, the Empire of Nicaea was formed, on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor - the Empire of Trebizond, in the west of the Balkan Peninsula - the Despotate of Epirus. The strongest among these states was the Nicaean Empire, which eventually became the center of resistance to foreign invaders.

For more than half a century, the ancient city on the Bosphorus cape was dominated by the Crusaders. May 16, 1204 in the church of St. Sophia, Count Baldwin of Flanders was solemnly crowned as the first emperor of the new empire, which contemporaries called not the Latin, but the Constantinople Empire, or Romania. Considering themselves the successors of the Byzantine emperors, its rulers retained much of the etiquette and ceremonial of palace life. But the emperor treated the Greeks with extreme disdain.

In the new state, whose territory at first was limited to the capital, strife soon began. The multi-lingual knightly host acted more or less in concert only during the capture and robbery of the city. Now the former unity was forgotten. Things almost came to open clashes between the emperor and some of the leaders of the crusaders. To this were added conflicts with the Byzantines due to the division of Byzantine lands. As a result, the Latin emperors had to change tactics. Already Henry of Gennegau (1206-1216) began to seek support in the old Byzantine nobility.

Finally, the Venetians also felt like masters here. A significant part of the city passed into their hands - three blocks out of eight. The Venetians had their judicial apparatus in the city. They made up half of the council of the imperial curia. The Venetians got a huge part of the booty after the robbery of the city. A lot of valuables were taken to Venice, and part of the wealth became the foundation of that huge political power and trading power that the Venetian colony in Constantinople acquired. Some historians, not without reason, write that after the catastrophe of 1204, in fact, two empires were formed - the Latin and the Venetian. Indeed, not only part of the capital, but also land in Thrace and on the coast of Propontis passed into the hands of the Venetians. The territorial acquisitions of the Venetians outside Constantinople were small in comparison with their plans at the beginning of the Fourth Crusade, but this did not prevent the Venetian doges from now on pompously calling themselves "rulers of a quarter and a half-quarter of the Byzantine Empire." However, the dominance of the Venetians in the commercial and economic life of Constantinople (they seized, in particular, all the most important moorings on the banks of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn) turned out to be almost more important than territorial acquisitions. Having settled in Constantinople as masters, the Venetians increased their commercial pressure throughout the area of ​​the fallen Byzantine Empire.

The capital of the Latin Empire for several decades was the seat of the most noble feudal lords. They preferred the palaces of Constantinople to their castles in Europe. The nobility of the empire quickly got used to Byzantine luxury, adopted the habit of constant festivities and merry feasts. The consumer character of life in Constantinople under the Latins became even more pronounced. The crusaders came to these lands with a sword and for half a century of their rule they never learned how to create.

In the middle of the XIII century. The Latin Empire fell into complete decline. Many cities and villages, devastated and plundered during the aggressive campaigns of the Latins, could not recover. The population suffered not only from unbearable taxes and requisitions, but also from the oppression of foreigners, who contemptuously trampled on the culture and customs of the Greeks. The Orthodox clergy led an active preaching of the struggle against the enslavers.

Taking advantage of the growing weakness of the Latins, the Nicene emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1260 decided to recapture Constantinople from them. In order to isolate the city from the land side, Michael captured Silivria. After that, he began to prepare a general assault. However, the attempt to capture Galata, located on the northern coast of the Golden Horn, was unsuccessful, the Greeks suffered heavy losses and were forced to retreat.

In the spring of 1261, Michael again began to prepare for a campaign against Constantinople. He managed to enlist the support of Genoa. The Genoese merchants hoped, in case of his success, to survive the Venetians from Constantinople. Michael was also helped by the ruler of the Seljuk Sultanate of Konya, who sought an alliance with the Nicaean emperors in connection with the threat of the Mongol invasion.

In the summer of 1261, the Greek army approached Constantinople. It was commanded by the famous commander Alexei Stratigopoulos. The Nicene army included the Seljuk cavalry. The moment for the attack was not chosen by chance. The forces of Emperor Baldwin II (1228-1261) were on a campaign on the Black Sea coast. July 25, at night, the army of Stratigopoulos launched an assault. A handful of brave men managed to get into Constantinople through an old drain, kill the guards at the city gates and open them to the main forces of the attackers. The cavalry broke into the sleeping city. The Greek population supported the small army of Stratigopoulos. Panic broke out among the Latins. Baldwin fled on a Venetian ship. The Latin Empire ceased to exist.

Constantinople was engulfed in jubilation. Michael Palaiologos was greeted with honor. The emperor entered the city through the Golden Gate and made his way on foot to the Studion Monastery. An icon of the Mother of God was carried before him. Soon in the church of St. Sophia, the second coronation of Michael and his wife Theodora took place, designed to symbolize the restoration of the power of the Byzantine emperors in their ancient capital.

When the frenzy of victory passed, it became clear how tragically the city had changed. Mikhail Palaiologos extensively organized restoration work. In a relatively short period of time, defensive structures were restored or rebuilt, and temples and palaces returned to their former splendor. The population of the city began to grow rapidly. The emperor armed the army, created a new fleet. All this required huge expenses, the treasury was quickly empty. Wishing to strengthen the state, Michael decided to support the idea of ​​a union with the Roman Church in order to establish an alliance with the Latin West, relying on the assistance of the pope. This aggravated the emperor's relations with the clergy. The most ardent opponents of the union were the lower clergy and monasticism. In their sermons, they proved the immorality of the union, constantly inciting the population of Constantinople against the government, which, according to them, was ready to turn away from faith and traditions. Nevertheless, Michael managed to fulfill his intention. In 1274 the church union took place. But this further inflamed the political atmosphere in the empire and the capital. Soon disputes and discussions on issues of the union turned into a sharp social and political struggle. The protest of the masses against the union again made the streets and squares of Constantinople an arena for protests against the emperor and the government. Pamphlets and lampoons directed against the monarch, his close associates and high dignitaries were distributed in the city. Michael unleashed cruel repressions on the dissatisfied, but this did not bring success, although the emperor did not spare his relatives either. After the death of Michael in 1282, the situation in the empire and in the capital remained tense, the struggle between supporters and opponents of the union continued.

With the accession of Michael Palaiologos in the struggle of eternal rivals - the Venetians and the Genoese - there was a clear shift in favor of the latter. According to the Treaty of Nymphaeum, concluded in 1261 between Byzantium and Genoa, the Genoese managed to obtain from Michael privileges reminiscent of the rights of the Venetians in the previous century and a half, when they were the masters of the trade of Constantinople, and after its ruin by the crusaders, they created here in fact a state within a state. Genoese merchants received the right to duty-free trade, as well as the right to free export of bread and other foodstuffs from the empire. In addition, Michael Palaiologos undertook to prohibit the passage of other Latins to the Black Sea (here, mainly the Venetians were meant). And although the Venetians did not give up their positions in the capital, their trading activities from that time were seriously hampered. The Genoese who gained the upper hand not only subjugated many sources of wealth in Constantinople, but also began to play an active role in politics. From now on, intrigues and conspiracies in the palace and among the court nobility were less and less likely to do without the secret participation of wealthy Genoese merchants.

Galata became a Genoese colony with its own port and garrison.

At the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. Genoese and Venetian merchants controlled the entire trade of Constantinople, in particular the food trade. Byzantine merchants were left with only minor operations. The Constantinopolitan banks of the Italians had great turnover, pushing the Byzantine money people into the background.

After the collapse of the Latin Empire, Constantinople again became the capital of Byzantium for almost two centuries. However, the territory of the state was reduced several times. Under the rule of the emperors from the Palaiologos dynasty were only part of Thrace and Macedonia, several islands of the Archipelago, certain areas of the Peloponnesian Peninsula and the northwestern part of Asia Minor. Byzantium did not regain its trading power either. Among the reasons for this was the movement in the XIII century. the main trade routes from the straits to the Mediterranean basin.

True, the geographical position of Constantinople allowed him to once again become a busy trading center. By the middle of the XIV century. in its markets there was a trade in a wide variety of goods - grain and beans, wine and olive oil, fish and dried fruits, salt and honey, linen and silk, wool and leather, furs and incense, wax and soap. Merchants from Genoa, Venice and other Italian cities, from Syria, from the Slavic countries of the Balkan Peninsula came to Constantinople. The connections of the Byzantine capital with Russia revived. However, the advantages of the location of Constantinople were now mainly used by foreign merchants.

The most important source of replenishment of the Byzantine treasury - trade fees and customs duties - dried up more and more every year. The trade route through the straits was in the hands of Venetian and Genoese merchants. The entire XIV century and the first half of the XV century. the Genoese completely controlled trade in the Black Sea region. Income of the Genoese colony in Galata from customs duties in the XIV century. almost seven times higher than similar incomes of Byzantium.

Throughout the 14th century, the Byzantine Empire was steadily heading towards ruin. Civil strife shook her, she suffered defeat after defeat in wars with external enemies. The Imperial Court is mired in intrigue. Everything was used - slander and denunciation, bribery and poison, murder from around the corner. The Constantinople plebs increasingly became a tool in the hands of pretenders to the throne.

Even the appearance of the city spoke eloquently of the decline of its glory and greatness. The historian Nikephoros Grigora, describing Constantinople in the mid-14th century, said that shrewd people “easily foresaw the fall of the order of things and the destruction of the empire, for it was obvious to everyone that the imperial palaces and chambers of the nobles lay in ruins and served as latrines for those passing by and cesspools; as well as the majestic buildings of the patriarchy, surrounding the great church of St. Sophia ... were destroyed or completely exterminated.

Stormy events broke out in Constantinople in the 40s of the XIV century. The regent of the young John V Palaiologos, John Kantakouzenos, restored most of the nobility against him. The dissatisfied were headed by the nobleman Alexei Apokavk. Taking advantage of the departure of the regent, the opposition, relying on the merchant strata of the city, raised the people against him. The houses of the adherents of Cantacuzenus were destroyed, and the regent himself was deprived of all posts, his property was confiscated. Power passed to Empress Anna of Savoy, John V became her co-ruler. But three weeks before, Cantacuzenus' supporters among the nobility had proclaimed him emperor. The capital responded with new pogroms of the adherents of the former regent, and his own palaces were also plundered. The popular masses and the provincial nobility were involved in the struggle between Cantacuzenus and Apokavk. The appeals of Apokavka aroused ordinary people against the nobility, the peasants smashed houses and ruined the possessions of the feudal lords. Church strife added fuel to the fire, in which broad sections of the population were also involved. The internecine struggle dragged on for several years.

Kantakuzin received the support of Bey Aydin, a Turkish principality in the west of Asia Minor. In the meantime, in June 1345 Apokavk was killed by the prisoners of the palace prison - supporters of Cantacuzenus. Since Apokaukos was still popular, the townspeople responded to his murder with more pogroms. Many of the people known for their sympathy for Cantacuzenus died, and the murderer Apokavkas did not escape this fate. Kantakuzen strengthened in Thrace, relying on the support of the Ottoman sultans. In the summer of 1346, the daughter of Cantacuzenus Theodora was engaged to Sultan Orhan. At this time, a sharp conflict arose in Constantinople between the group that ruled it and the Genoese of Galata. That was the last straw, the scales in a long-term dispute leaned towards Cantacuzenus. On the night of February 3, 1347, the city opened the Golden Gate to him.

A year later, Constantinople was in the grip of the plague. The "Black Death" mowed down most of the population of the capital. A little more time passed, and the city was subjected to a new test. The Genoese of Galata, dissatisfied with the desire of Cantacuzenus to pursue a commercial policy beneficial to the Byzantines, at the beginning of 1349 set fire to the suburbs of the capital, and also burned merchant ships and shipyards. The Genoese fleet blockaded Constantinople. On March 5, 1349, the Byzantines attacked the Genoese ships of Galata, but were defeated. I had to make new concessions to the Genoese, in particular, to give them one more territory behind the northern wall of Constantinople.

The reign of John Cantacuzenus ended on the November night of 1354, when the ship of the Genoese Francesco Gattelusi delivered John V to the capital. The city gates reopened, and an uprising against Cantacuzenus began. Besieged in his palace, he abdicated and became a monk. From that day until the capture of the Byzantine capital by the Ottoman Turks, power remained in the hands of the Palaiologos dynasty.

Neighborhood of modern highways with ancient fortifications in modern Constantinople

In the XV century. The life of Constantinople outwardly did not undergo major changes. The internecine struggle, accompanied by conspiracies and intrigues of the palace clique, clashes on church and political issues between the “Latinophiles” and those who defended the independence of the empire, outbreaks of discontent among the plebs, the daily work of artisans, fishermen, sailors and shipbuilders - all this remained the usual signs of the Byzantine capital living out its days. However, the city fell more and more into decay. Many palaces and temples continued to lie in ruins. Even in the center of the capital, one could find wastelands and sown areas where houses once stood. Some neighborhoods have ceased to exist altogether. In the southeastern part of Constantinople were the abandoned buildings of the Grand Palace. The last emperor of the Latins used the lead coverings of his buildings to pay his debts. On the vast territory of the palace complex, only a few churches were kept in comparative order. Only the Church of St. Sophia, and even then because money was allocated for him under a special budget item. But the huge Cathedral of St. The apostles were in a pitiful state.

Food was constantly in short supply in the city. Famine and epidemics claimed thousands of lives every year. The population of Constantinople decreased especially strongly due to repeated plague epidemics in the second half of the 14th - early 15th centuries. The number of inhabitants of the Byzantine capital in the 15th century, as a rule, did not exceed 50 thousand people.

Numerous trading establishments and craft workshops, as before, occupied many streets. The usual picture of everyday life in Constantinople was supplemented by markets, shipyards, hotels, and hospitals. The center of cultural life continued to be the university and the Patriarchal Academy, located in the Studion quarter, not far from the church of St. John.

And talented scientists and writers still worked here, although at that time the glory of Constantinople as a center of science and culture was no longer so loud. In any case, the names of the astronomer and philosopher, the prominent statesman Theodore Metochites, the philosophers Joseph Vriennios and George Plethon, the writer Demetrius Kydonis entered the history of Byzantine culture.

Almost everything in the city in one way or another spoke of the decline of its former greatness, testified that the time for its prosperity had passed. Travelers who visited Constantinople in the first half of the 15th century were struck by the abundance of ruins and the general desolation of the city. One of them in 1437 characterized the population of the Byzantine capital as extremely small and surprisingly poor. Some parts of the city reminded him of rural landscapes. The decline of the capital was quite consistent with the general state of the empire.

Meanwhile, a ruthless enemy was advancing from the east, destined to put an end to Byzantine civilization.



THE FOURTH CRUSAISE. CAPTURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE CRUSADERS.

The era of the Crusades makes an indelible impression and excites the imagination of people for centuries. Campaigns became the personification of the entire medieval era. The Crusades are a gamble in world history.

The Fourth Crusade (1199–1204) occupies a special place in the history of the Eastern wars of European chivalry. Some Western scholars consider it a kind of historical misunderstanding, a paradox, and this has certain formal grounds: after all, this campaign, with the aim of liberating the "holy places" from Muslim domination, ultimately turned into the defeat of Byzantium and the formation in its place of the Latin Empire - the state of the Crusaders, another in a series of they created in the East earlier.

From the endXIIcentury Pope InnocentIII(1198 - 1216), under which the papacy achieved the greatest influence in the countries of Western Europe, again began preaching the crusades, using all his eloquence. In August - September 1198, eloquent messages were sent to France, Germany, England, Italy, Hungary and other countries, in which he called on all the "faithful" to defend the Holy Land. For collections, a period of six months was provided - until March 1199. By the summer of 1999, those who planned to sail overseas, and those who decided to go by land, had to converge in the harbors of southern Italy and Sicily.

Concrete measures were immediately taken to prepare for the Crusade - religious-practical, financial and diplomatic.

The crusading movement was carried out in two directions: to Asia Minor and to the Baltic states.

The Fourth Crusade is a predominantly French enterprise in terms of the composition of its participants and leaders, although Italian and German feudal lords also took part in it. In the preparation and conduct of the Fourth Crusade, the role of Geoffroy de Villardouin, Marshal of Champagne, was great. He negotiated with Venice, seeking to provide a fleet to the crusaders, he proposed the candidacy of Boniface of Montferrat for the post of commander of the troops, he made considerable efforts to coordinate the actions of individual knightly detachments.

Innocent III announced the widest absolution of sins to all participants in the Crusade. The crusaders were exempted from all taxes, "their person and property, upon acceptance of the cross, are under the protection of blessed Peter and our own."

Dad was also very seriously worried about the financial side of the enterprise. For three years, for the purpose of the campaign, church ministers had to allocate 1/20 of the income, and the Pope and the cardinals - 1/10.

The feudal magnates, as before, were pushed to overseas adventures not by pious, but by entirely earthly concerns and thoughts: they were anxious about their own well-being, about preserving their possessions and, of course, about increasing them by conquest in the East. Aggressive motives guided mainly the mass of knights.

By the summer of 1200, an impressive army for those times had gathered in France, ready to go overseas. It was decided to start the campaign from Venice, since there was a good fleet there. The baronial elite recognized the 22-year-old Count Thibaut III of Champagne as the supreme commander of the feudal militias.

Then six noble knights were selected in Compiègne, who were sent as ambassadors to Venice. They had to agree with the Venetian government on the crossing of the crusaders.

At firstXIIIcentury, the doge (ruler) of the Venetian city republic was Enrico Dandolo (1192 - 1205) - an 80-year-old man, an energetic and cunning ruler.

At the beginning of April 1201, as a result of several meetings with Enrico Dandolo, an agreement was signed under which Venice, on certain conditions, agreed to provide ships to the crusaders. The signing of this treaty is a crucial episode in the history of the Crusade. M.A. Zaborov believed that it was then in Venice that the main spring of this enterprise was made, which later, straightening up, threw the crusaders far away from the Holy Land.

According to the agreement, Venice undertook to provide vessels for the crossing of 4.5 thousand knights and the same number of horses, 9 thousand squires, 20 thousand infantrymen, and provide them with food for 9 months. In addition, "out of love for God," Venice assumed the obligation itself (that is, at its own expense) to equip another 50 armed galleys. The crusaders, for their part, undertook to pay Venice for the services of 85 thousand marks in silver. Payment had to be made in installments, in four installments, the last payment - no later than April 1202. Venice also negotiated for itself a half share of everything that would be conquered by the crusaders with the help of its fleet and military forces - on land or at sea. From a purely commercial point of view, these conditions were very favorable for Venice: her merchants never acted at random, everything was calculated and calculated in advance.

Dandolo ordered the crusaders to be transported to one of the Venetian islands, and then, withdrawing his ships, offered to pay the money under the agreement. The Crusaders were only able to contribute 51,000 marks. Then the Venetians offered to compensate for the missing amount with military services: to capture the city of Zadar (Zara). Zadar is a commercial competitor of the Venetians, who was under the rule of the Christian Hungarian king. The crusaders agreed to this proposal. Zadar was captured.

Why and how did the crusaders fall into a hopeless dependence on Venice? Geoffroy de Villehardouin saw the reason for this in a combination of unfortunate accidents, namely:

the death of the lords, with the death of which many abandoned the vow of the cross (the death of Count ThibaultIIIChampagne);

the apostasy of the knights who sailed from Marseilles to Syria. It was a serious loss for the army - both in people and in material resources, since there were many knights, supplies and valuables on the ships;

there were people inside the crusader army who sought to split it (they refused to make an additional payment to the Venetians when it turned out that the amounts collected did not cover the debt; they prevented those who were ready to give everything on account of the debt, if only the campaign took place).

Many crusaders rebelled against the conquest of Zara, a Christian city. They were also supported by the Pope, who reminded the crusaders of the meaning and goals of the crusade. The pope reproached the Venetians for having drawn the crusaders into an unjust war; in his letters, he urged the knights to repent for their actions and repair the damage done to the people of Zara. But the Venetians did not retreat, and the French barons sent deputies to Rome to ask for the pope's forgiveness. InnocentIIIgave them remission of sins and blessed them, and also asked them to go to Syria.

The next target for the Venetians is Constantinople. Shortly before the above events in Byzantium, Emperor Isaac was overthrown as a result of a palace coup.IIAngel. His son Alexei managed to get to the crusaders on the island of Corfu and with the help of Dandolo was able to convince them to move to Constantinople for a huge reward (200 thousand marks in silver). Alexei also promised to help the Crusaders in the war against the Ayubits, to keep 500 soldiers on payroll in the Holy Land for the rest of his life, and to help bring the Greek Church under the Catholic faith. This was extremely tempting for the crusaders. This promised benefits to both the Crusaders and the Pope.

At the beginning of 1203, the leaders of the crusaders entered into an agreement with the Byzantine prince Alexei to assist his father and him in restoring him to the throne of Constantinople.

Before the march on Constantinople, the crusader camp was torn apart by heated debate: should we go for this business? Most were negative about the leader's plan. A significant part of the crusaders decided to separate from the main forces in order to avoid a war with Byzantium, to which the knights were pushed by their main leaders, along with the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo. The barons - leaders were forced to humiliately, with tears, beg the warriors who were ready to leave, to stay with them.

When the pope found out about the intention of the crusaders to go to Constantinople, he began to accuse them, deprived them of his blessing and threatened them with God's wrath. But the crusaders believed that their victories would justify them in the eyes of the pope. The pope's warnings against further attacks on Christian states (especially the Byzantine Empire) remained unsuccessful.

The “Pilgrims” went to the Byzantine capital with the best of intentions, as Geoffroy de Villehardouin described: “to restore justice” and after that, replenishing food supplies and relying on the financial support of the restored emperors, move on to the East.

But everything turned out differently: the sovereigns restored to the throne of Constantinople did not fulfill their financial obligations, as was agreed, although IsaacII, having taken the throne, he confirmed these financial obligations, which were also recorded in an agreement with the crusaders, signed by his son Tsarevich Alexei.

It was also impossible to put up with this "injustice" and had to, having previously thrown a knightly challenge to AlexeiIVtake Constantinople by force.

Such a turn turned out to be inevitable, since a change of government took place in Constantinople: the prospects for resolving the conflict with Byzantium were eliminated. AlexeiIVwas deposed and killed by AlexeiVDuka.

In the eyes of the crusaders, the act of AlexeiVwas the heaviest crime. It was decided to start a war against Constantinople.

The Byzantine capital was besieged and on April 12, 1204 was taken. The Crusaders subjected Constantinople to an incredible sack.

The Byzantine chronicler Nikita Acominatus left a description of the destruction of the temple of St. Sophia, which says that the most beautiful plaques were cut into pieces and divided among the soldiers. Mules and horses were driven to the temple to take out silver, gold and vessels. The animals were afraid of the shiny floor and did not want to enter, but the crusaders beat them and defiled the sacred floor of the temple with their blood.

The Novgorod chronicler tells that at sunrise the crusaders entered the church of St. Sophia, tore off the doors, cut the silver pulpit; iconostases and crosses were cut; skinned gems and pearls. Many churches were looted, many monks and nuns were robbed, some of them were beaten.

Geoffroy de Villehardouin described the capture and defeat of Constantinople in the following way: fires blazed in the city; the crusaders dispersed throughout the city and collected booty: gold, silver, vessels, precious stones, velvet, silk fabrics, furs - the booty was great. J. de Villehardouin testifies that for many centuries so much booty was not found in one city.

The patriarch fled from Constantinople. All the rich people have turned into beggars.

Pope InnocentIII, having learned about these events, sent a letter to the Marquis of Montferrat, in which he accused him of the fact that the knights rushed to conquer Constantinople, preferring earthly goods to heaven. As the Pope noted, the guilt of the crusaders is aggravated by the fact that no one was spared: neither the ministers of the church, nor women, nor the elderly and children. The Pope also brought accusations against the Marquis of looting churches (especially Hagia Sophia). In the message, the pope complains that after this the Greek Church is unlikely to make a U-turn towards Catholicism, seeing only savagery and "devilish deeds" on the part of the Latins.

Nikita Choniates wrote that the inhabitants of Constantinople came out to meet the crusaders with crosses and holy images of Christ, but this did not soften or tame the invaders. Icons were trampled, the relics of saints were thrown away. There is wailing, wailing and wailing in the streets. The Western troops were "lawless" and showed no mercy to anyone. The invaders drank and ate every day, spent time in dishonorable amusements and lewdness. The author called the crusaders a barbarian people who cannot be propitiated.

The Marquis of Montferrat and other crusader leaders signed an agreement on the division of the Byzantine inheritance, which they already saw in their hands. This document worked out in detail the conditions for the division of future booty - movable property, land and power in the new state that the western lords planned to establish on the site of Byzantium. The Venetians took care, first of all, to increase their old trading privileges and secure for themselves the lion's share - three-quarters of all booty, the rest of the crusaders had to be content with one-fourth under the agreement.

In 1204, Western barbarians, acting under the guise of a cross, destroyed not only monuments of art, but also the richest book depositories in Constantinople: illiterate and ignorant knights, without hesitation, threw hundreds of books into the fires.

The wild excesses of the crusaders contrasted sharply with the comparatively restrained behavior of the Muslim conquerors in relation to Christian shrines in the East. Even the Saracens, according to Nikita Choniates, were more merciful. The pogroms of the Knights of the Cross in the Byzantine capital broke all records of vandalism. The Catholic conquerors devastated the city like no one else. The mass destruction of centuries of accumulated cultural values, committed in Constantinople by knights and churchmen, caused serious damage to European civilization. The Byzantine capital was never able to recover from the consequences of the invasion of the Latin crusaders.

The capture of Byzantium by the Knights of the Cross is devoted to many books, articles, and publications. In these works, a wide variety of versions are put forward regarding the factors under the influence of which the Crusade changed its direction. The religious shell turned out to be completely torn in this enterprise. The crusaders, who moved against Muslim Egypt, eventually captured the Christian state - the Byzantine Empire, ravaged its capital to the ground and were content with this, forgetting about the liberation of the Holy Land.

How did it happen that the Crusade against Egypt turned into a predatory campaign against Byzantium? Various assumptions have been and are being put forward: an accidental, unforeseen combination of fatal circumstances; deliberate actions of the participants in the campaign (Venetian merchants; leaders of the campaign; the intervention of political forces acting both from behind the scenes and from within, which pushed the crusaders to the Constantinople adventure).

Thus, the question of why the Fourth Crusade took a new direction and ended with the defeat of Constantinople is confusing.

After the sack of Constantinople, the crusaders decided to settle in the conquered territory, refusing to march on Jerusalem. About half of the Byzantine possessions in the Balkan Peninsula were captured. Here the Crusaders founded the Latin Empire.

Hiding behind the slogan of "liberation of the Holy Sepulcher", the crusaders pursued predatory interests, destroying both Muslim and Christian cities and churches. At the head of the church in Byzantium was the Patriarch of Constantinople, a representative of the Catholic Church, who sought to impose the Catholic faith on the local population.

Venice received the greatest benefit from the conquest of Byzantium:

She captured a significant part of the Byzantine possessions: the most important coastal points in southern and eastern Greece, the suburbs of Constantinople, the island of Crete and other islands;

Having access to the Black Sea, the Venetians tried to oust their trading rivals, the Genoese merchants, from the territory of the Balkan Peninsula;

In Constantinople itself, the Venetians occupied a special quarter.

The Latin Empire did not last long - it fell in 1261. The Byzantine Empire was restored again, which was never able to regain its former power.

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