Editing Fall of Constantinople (section)

==Background==
[[Constantinople]] had been an imperial capital since its consecration in 330 under Roman emperor [[Constantine the Great]]. In the following eleven centuries, the city had been [[List of sieges of Constantinople|besieged many times]] but was captured only once before: the [[Sack of Constantinople]] during the [[Fourth Crusade]] in 1204.{{sfnp|Norwich|1997|p=304}} The crusaders established an unstable [[Latin Empire|Latin state]] in and around Constantinople while the remainder of the Byzantine Empire splintered into a number of successor states, notably [[Empire of Nicaea|Nicaea]], [[Despotate of Epirus|Epirus]] and [[Empire of Trebizond|Trebizond]]. They fought as allies against the Latin establishments, but also fought among themselves for the Byzantine throne.

The Nicaeans eventually [[Reconquest of Constantinople|reconquered Constantinople]] from the Latins in 1261, reestablishing the Byzantine Empire under the [[Palaiologos dynasty]]. Thereafter, there was little peace for the much-weakened empire as it fended off successive attacks by the [[Latins (Middle Ages)|Latins]], [[Serbs]], [[Bulgaria]]ns and [[Ottoman Turks]].{{sfnp|Norwich|1997}}{{page needed|date=May 2020}}<ref name="O2kxx" /><ref name="ospbyzwar6001453" />{{sfnp|Mango|2002}}{{page needed|date=December 2023}}

Between 1346 and 1349, the [[Black Death]] killed almost half of the inhabitants of Constantinople.<ref name="rCeS6" /> The city was further depopulated by the general economic and territorial decline of the empire, and by 1453, it consisted of a series of walled villages separated by vast fields encircled by the fifth-century [[Theodosian Walls]].

By 1450, the empire was exhausted and had shrunk to a few square kilometers outside the city of Constantinople itself, the [[Princes' Islands]] in the [[Sea of Marmara]] and the [[Peloponnese]] with its cultural center at [[Mystras]]. The [[Empire of Trebizond]], an independent [[successor state]] that formed in the aftermath of the [[Fourth Crusade]], was also present at the time on the coast of the [[Black Sea]].