Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks

“I have found that he who takes Constantinople… unavoidably feels that his power is strengthened for a higher task, that his political horizon has widened to the misty limits of an Universal Empire, and that it is the manifest destiny of Constantinople to be the capital, if not of an universal, then at least of a great Empire, stretching over Europe, Asia, and Africa.” —Cedomilj Mijatovic, Preface, 1892

Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks, or the Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (A.D. 1453) (1892), by Cedomilj Mijatovic, is a fascinating history of the fall of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. The city lost a lot of its luster and power after the Crusaders took over Constantinople temporarily between 1185 and 1261, but when the Ottomans, led by Sultan Mehmed II, finally conquered the city in 1453, a civilization which once counted 400,000 people was reduced to a city of only 40,000. The Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos died during this battle and became “the last emperor of the Greeks.”