The reasons for the fall of the city of Constantinople, the early medieval center of the world, are described in great detail, on the VO website there were enough articles on this subject, in this article I want to draw attention to a number of key factors that led to the fall of the Roman civilization.
So, Byzantium was the direct successor of the Roman Empire; the Byzantines themselves considered their history and state to be a direct continuation of the Roman Empire, without any continuity. It just happened that the capital and all state institutions were transferred from the West to the East.
In 476, the last emperor of the Western part of the empire was deposed in Rome, we emphasize that the Roman state was not destroyed, but only the Roman ruler was deprived of power, the signs of power were sent to Constantinople, the center of the empire moved to New Rome completely.
Western civilization took shape in the territories of the Roman Empire not by succession, but by conquest, starting from the end of the 5th-6th centuries. The key issue in the rivalry of Western countries with Byzantium, starting from the 8th century, was the struggle for the right to be considered the heiress of the great Rome? Whom to count? Western civilization of the Germanic peoples on a geographical basis or the Roman civilization, based on the case of state, political and legal succession?
In the 6th century, under Justinian the Great, the territory of the Roman Empire was practically restored. Returned Italy, Africa, part of Spain. The state covered the territory of the Balkans, Crimea, Armenia, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), the Middle East and Egypt.
A hundred years later, with the emergence and expansion of Islamic civilization, the territory of the state was significantly reduced, the Arab invasion decided the fate of the imperial lands in the east: the most important provinces were lost: Egypt, the Middle East, Africa. At the same time, some of the territories were lost in Italy. Ethnically, the country is practically becoming a state of one people - the Greeks, the Greek language has completely replaced the universal imperial language - Latin.
From this period, the struggle for survival begins, sometimes illuminated by brilliant victories, however, the empire no longer had either economic or military forces to conduct constant and active military operations or create "challenges" to other civilizations.
For some time, Byzantine diplomacy "compensated" for this weakness with "tricks", money, and bluffs.
But the incessant struggle on several fronts wore the country down. Hence the payment of "tributes", for example, to Russia, under the guise of voluntary gifts, in order to compensate or neutralize the damage.
An outbreak of political and military activity was observed in the 10th century, 40s of the 11th century. It was replaced by new invasions from the steppe: Polovtsy, Pechenegs and Turks (Seljuk Turks).
The war with them and the new invasion that began from the west (the Normans of Southern Italy) brought the country to the brink of destruction: the lands in Italy were lost (South and Sicily, Venice), almost all of Asia Minor was lost, the Balkans were ruined.
Under such conditions, the new emperor Alexei Komnenos, a warrior and diplomat, turned to the West, to the Roman bishop, who was formally under Byzantine jurisdiction, although a split in Christianity had already begun.
It was the first crusades that revived Byzantium, returned the lands in Asia Minor up to Syria. It would seem that a new renaissance began, which lasted until the 40s of the 12th century.
Due to the specifics of the Byzantine institutions of power, which were increasingly dilapidated, under the influence of "tradition": real and far-fetched, a period of strife in the country began again.
At the same time, there is a strengthening of the Western countries, united by feudal institutions, which saw in Byzantium and Constantinople a source of fabulous wealth, at the same time, its administrative and military weakness.
Which led to the 4th Crusade and the capture of Constantinople by Western warriors. Fifty-seven years later, the Greeks of the Nicene "empire", with the support of the Genoese rivals of Venice, reclaimed the capital and a small part of the lands in Europe, but within 50 years they lost all the remnants of the lands in Asia Minor.
No lessons were learned from the shame of defeat, and from that moment on, the state began to slide downhill:
• all the same hope for a miracle and God's right hand (“trust in God, but don’t make a mistake yourself” is not a Byzantine motto);
• all the same quarrels and intrigues of the ruling elite for a share in a shrinking pie.
• inability and unwillingness to see reality, and not the world through the glasses of imperial arrogance.
In the internecine struggle for resources, the ruling stratum lost lands that fell under the rule of foreigners, and with the loss of lands and a free commune, the army and navy were the basis.
Of course, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. in the country there was an army and a small fleet, but the latter could not solve any problems, sharply yielding to the flotillas, and not to the fleets of the Italians, and in the end to the Turks.
The army consisted of detachments of rebellious aristocrats and mercenaries who periodically staged uprisings in order to seize the weak power in Constantinople.
After 1204, the Roman Empire was only an empire in name; in fact, it became a semi-colony of Italians, shrinking to the size of the city of Constantinople, small territories in Asia Minor (Trebizond) and Greece.
In this regard, I would like to cite a lengthy quote from L. N. Gumilyov, who brilliantly describes the situation of an ethnic group at death. Within the framework of his theory, which many consider controversial, he noted an important phase in the development of the ethnos - obscuration (blackout):
“Oddly enough, the phase of obscuration does not always lead an ethnic group to death, although it always causes irreparable damage to ethnic culture. If obscuration develops quickly and there are no predatory neighbors nearby, striving for seizures, then the imperative: "Be like us" meets a logical reaction: "It's my day!" As a result, the very possibility of preserving ethnic dominance and any collective actions, even destructive ones, disappears. Directional development degenerates into a kind of "Brownian movement", in which elements - individuals or small consortia who have preserved, at least partially, tradition, are able to resist the tendency towards progressive decline. In the presence of even a small passionary tension and inertia of everyday norms developed by an ethnos in the previous phases, they conserve separate "islands" of culture, creating the deceptive impression that the existence of an ethnos as an integral system has not ceased. This is self-deception. The system has disappeared, only individual people and their memory of the past have survived.
Adaptation with such rapid and constant changes in the environment inevitably lags behind, and the ethnos perishes as a systemic integrity."
The ruling clans of Byzantium, fighting for power, began to actively use the "new mercenaries" - the Ottoman Turks, "introducing" them to the European part of the country. After that, the Ottomans conquered all the Balkan countries and the Byzantine territories around the capital, which became the basis of their state, the center of which was the Roman city of Adrianople (modern Edirne). Militant Orthodox Serbs participated in all campaigns as part of the Ottoman army, both during the battle with Timur and during the siege of Constantinople.
The fall of Constantinople at the end of the fourteenth century. was delayed by another "miracle": the Mongol conqueror Timur defeated the Turkish Sultan Bayazet.
In 1422 g.the Turks lifted the siege of Constantinople under the threat of an invasion by Western troops.
All diplomatic attempts of the last emperors, including playing on the contradictions in the Ottoman camp, union with the Catholics and the recognition of the Pope as the head of the Orthodox Church, were unsuccessful.
In 1444, the Turks at Varna defeated the army of the crusaders, which could only indirectly help the Byzantines.
In 1453, despite the threat of another crusade, the young Sultan Mehmed II took the "capital of the world."
Now in the information space, there are two views on the problem of the death of the Byzantine civilization:
1. Themselves to blame - because of their "Byzantine policy", insidious and treacherous. We would agree with the West and the Pope, observe the agreements, and everything would be fine.
2. They are to blame for not defending the Orthodox empire without creating a "strong state". The idea, of course, is original, but does not explain anything.
The truth is still somewhere in the middle.
Byzantine scholar and church historian A. P. Lebedev wrote:
“Unfortunately, with all its religiosity, society carried in itself a lot of inclinations of a painful, pathological life, abnormal development, from whatever happened. Religiosity was something separate from life: religiosity in itself, life in itself. Between them there was no that unity, that close connection, which, putting both in a harmonious relationship, would give rise to a truly ennobled, highly moral life."
Or we add a very correct opinion of L. N. Gumilyov:
"The Byzantines spent excess energy (passionarity) on theological disputes and strife."
This characteristic of the Roman society, first of all, must be attributed to its top, which, combining unbridled self-interest and unwillingness to make changes in decrepit institutions of government, was carried away by Western trends, not realizing the essence of the phenomenon ("chivalry", tournaments, "knightly" feasts, equestrian polo, etc. etc.).
Excessive conservation of society has come into conflict with military technology. That did not allow at a certain stage to carry out "modernization" and led to the death of the country.
When we say "military technology", we mean not only guns or missiles as such, but the entire system of building defense: from the training of a soldier, his quality and health, to tactics and strategy in war. If at certain stages of the country's development everything was in order with the theoretical "military science" in Byzantium, the armament itself was at a high level (which is one "Greek fire"), then there was always a problem with the system of staffing the armed forces and senior officers. As long as there was money, it was possible to have mercenaries, but when the money ran out, the soldiers ran out. And at the end of the XII century. Constantinople also lost its technological advantages on land and sea, theoretical military science lagged behind and hindered the development of tactics. With the loss of territories and finances, this problem has worsened dramatically.
The ideological disputes that periodically shook Byzantium did not contribute to the consolidation of society, it was some kind of "dispute during the plague."
Attempts to modernize the system, or at least its elements, stumbled upon aggressive conservatism. So, in the 10th century, when the warrior emperor Nicephorus II Phoca, who understood the need for ideological incentives and personally saw how the Arab warriors behave in battle, proposed
“To issue a law so that those soldiers who died in the war can be canonized only for the fact that they fell in the war, without taking into account anything else. He forced the patriarch and bishops to accept this as a dogma. The patriarch and the bishops, bravely resisting, restrained the emperor from this intention, focusing on the canon of Basil the Great, which says that a soldier who killed an enemy in a war must be excommunicated for three years."
In the end, only one dead-end paradigm remained: "a turban is better than a papal tiara."
Let us paraphrase V. I. Lenin: any civilization, like any revolution, is worth something only if it knows how to defend itself, to provide a system of protection. We read - a system of protection, we understand - a system of development.
The Roman Empire, or Christian Byzantine civilization, fell under the pressure of Western civilization and was absorbed by Islamic civilizations due to the following reasons: the conservation of the management system and, as a consequence, the disappearance of the goal (where should we sail?). Civilization stopped forming “challenges”, and “answers” were getting weaker and weaker. At the same time, all the energy of the Byzantine nobility, however, as well as of the capital's society, was aimed at personal enrichment and the construction of a system of state administration only for these purposes.
In this regard, the fate of the Great Duka (Prime Minister) Luka Notar, a supporter of the "turban", who was captured by the Turks, is significant. Sultan Mehmed II liked his young son, who demanded him to his harem. When the father refused to give up his son for desecration, the sultan ordered the execution of the whole family. Laonik Halkokondil wrote that before the execution, the children asked their father to give in return for life all the riches that were in Italy! Pseudo-Sfranzi describes the situation in a different way, telling that after the capture of Constantinople, the Great Duke Luke brought untold riches to Mehmed, the sultan, indignant at his cunning, asked: “Why did you not want to help your emperor and your homeland and give them those untold riches what did you have …?"
The situation perfectly characterizes the self-interest of the highest representatives of the Byzantine government, who, having wealth, were not ready to use it to defend the country.
However, in the situation of 1453, the ruling class could no longer do anything, the mobilization system failed back in 1204, and it was almost impossible to recreate it. And finally: the inertia and passivity of the masses, especially in the capital, unwillingness to make efforts in the fight against enemies and hope for a miracle, all these factors led the empire of the Romans to death. As the soldier Procopius of Caesarea wrote back in the 6th century. about the citizens of Constantinople: "They wanted to witness new adventures [war], albeit fraught with dangers for others."
The main lesson of the fall of the Byzantine civilization is, oddly enough, that … civilizations are mortal.
