1394
The blockade of Constantinople, 1394
After Manuel refuses his summons, Bayezid sets out to starve Constantinople into surrender. From 1394 Ottoman troops hold the land side of the city and cut it off from the countryside. Ships still reach it by sea, and the Genoese of Galata and the Venetians bring in grain, but bread grows scarce and dear, and many people leave the city.
Manuel II Palaiologos in a manuscript of his funeral oration for his brother Theodore, 15th century, Bibliothèque nationale de FranceWikimedia Commons, unknown illuminator, Public domain (Manuel II Palaeologus Funeral Oration.jpg)
To command the Bosporus, Bayezid builds a castle at Güzelcehisar on the Asian shore, where the strait is narrowest, in 1394, or 1395 by other accounts. It is a tower about 25 metres high inside a wall.
Anadoluhisarı, the castle of Güzelcehisar that Bayezid built on the Asian shore of the BosporusWikimedia Commons, flowcomm, CC BY 2.0 (Anadolu Hisarı in 2024 (cropped).jpg)
John VII holds Selymbria on the Sea of Marmara, west of the capital. Pope Boniface IX proclaims a crusade against the Turks in 1394, and Manuel asks the rulers of the West for help.
Sources
- Doukas, Historia Turcobyzantina (c. 1462).
- John W. Barker, Manuel II Palaeologus (1391–1425) (1969).
- Dionysios Bernincolas-Hatzopoulos, The First Siege of Constantinople by the Ottomans (1394–1402) (1983).
- Nevra Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins (2009), 149–183.
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