02- Ottoman victories end an era:The fall of Constantinople

Three years after the middle of the 15th century, Constantinople, the former Byzantium, the current Istanbul, collapsed under the blows of the Ottoman army. The city is the political capital of the Byzantine Empire, heir to the old Eastern Roman Empire; it is also the seat of the Eastern Patriarchate, that is to say the metropolis of Catholics separated from Rome:the “Orthodox”. Its fall symbolically marks the end of an era:the Middle Ages end, the modern era begins. In 1453, and for more than 150 years, the old Byzantine Empire was dying. Already, around 1400, the power of the sovereign - the basileus - was no longer exercised, in addition to the capital, but over a few ports on the Black Sea, over Thessaloniki, a small number of Greek islands and over most of the Peloponnese. . A rival dynasty remains along the northern coast of Asia Minor:the Empire of Trebizond. Finally, Latin colonies, especially Genoese and Venetian, survived here and there in the Aegean Sea. Elsewhere, in a few decades, the Turks conquered everything from Macedonia to Armenia. The Serbian princes hardly resist in the north.