Chapter 115 The Sunset of the Roman Empire
In Constantinople, both laborers and bureaucrats were worried. They were afraid that Constantinople would be conquered by these pagans, and then they would all become slaves.
The same was true for Manuel. He didn't know where to ask for reinforcements. He wanted to send people to the Ottoman Sultan to ask for peace, but was rejected.
"What should I do? What should I do?" Manuel paced back and forth in the palace. Because of lack of financial resources, the Constantinople Palace had been in disrepair for many years, and cracks began to appear in some places, but they were blocked by portraits.
His queen was pregnant, his brother was in Wallachia, and there was no reliable person around him, so he was the only one who was anxious.
"Your Majesty, only Wallachia can save the empire now." The attendant beside him said.
"I know, but they have signed a peace treaty with the Ottomans, unless the empire can give them something more tempting."
But what could the Roman Empire give to Wallachia? It had already given it to a despot, could it be given to a co-ruling emperor?
The more he thought about it, the more scared he became. He felt that Wallachia might become a country like Serbia. Decades ago, their monarch Dushan crowned himself as the emperor of Serbia and the Romans, and at his peak he ruled two-thirds of the Balkan Peninsula. This was really a lingering fear.
Manuel was 44 years old at this time. He had not rested since he ascended the throne in 1391. He was busy every day with the siege of the empire. After a few years, his hair turned completely white.
"Is God no longer favoring the empire?" he said sadly.
The sun was setting at this time, and the sunset lengthened the emperor's shadow, and Manuel sighed in the sunset, which was not only sad for himself, but also sad for the empire.
The bells of Hagia Sophia rang, and this world-desired city with a population of less than 80,000 sighed, while Galata, separated from it by a strait, had no such mood at all. There was luxury and music, and the danger outside had nothing to do with them.
Near the Golden Horn, a stall was crowded with intellectuals, artists, businessmen, and even some civilians. The reason was that they could buy a boat ticket to Constanta.
Genoese merchants also keenly noticed this, so they opened routes from Constantinople to Constanta and Varna, because these places were safe. And those who had extra money would naturally choose to buy a boat ticket, they didn't want to bury their lives here.
How to evaluate the Genoese? In a few words, they can be described as follows: the Genoese are nothing more than selfish businessmen, "these selfish businessmen only want to make themselves the last to be eaten", and of course they are unwilling to take this risk. To put it more bluntly, during the growing strength of the Ottoman Empire and the decline of the Roman Empire, many Genoese active in the Near East were "fanatic pro-Turks", so that "no one is more servile than the Genoese", how could they sacrifice their commercial interests to work for Rome?
John V had tried to meet with the Pope of Rome and hoped for his help. The Pope of Rome still regarded himself as the only leader of Christianity. Unless the Orthodox churches and believers converted to Catholicism, he would only express sympathy or pity for the plight of Constantinople. John V had no choice but to take a large number of followers, including the Archbishop of Constantinople, and sailed to Italy. The first stop was Venice. John V actually compared himself to the successor of Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire. He was cheered along the way in Venice and other places in Italy. He never thought that this was just a courtesy, and the Italians along the way came to watch the large group of people from the Byzantine Empire more out of curiosity, because the costumes of the Byzantine emperor and his attendants, such as long robes, long sleeves, and their long beards, all made ordinary Italians feel strange and ridiculous.
Although the Roman Empire was already very poor, the emperor and his large number of entourage stayed in Italy for so long that hunting and dancing never stopped. Not only that, the Roman Empire at that time was also far behind in industrial technology compared with the city-states in Italy. Constantinople still used traditional manual technology, while in Italy, there were great advances in iron smelting technology, shipbuilding technology, sawing technology, and waterwheel technology. The Greek priests who had lived in Rome for many years at that time were anxious about this and wrote to Basilius, asking him to send young people here to learn technology as soon as possible. But the Roman emperor and his ministers and entourage stayed in Italy for a long time, but they didn't care about these at all, and didn't want to understand the technological gap between Rome and Italy.
After returning from the west, John V's self-consolation was one thing, but the devout believers of the Orthodox Church had another feeling. Many citizens of Constantinople who remembered the atrocities of the Western European army during the Fourth Crusade had even more unusual feelings. The nobles talked about it, and the officers were indignant. They were not satisfied with John V's submission to the Roman Catholic Church. They believed that the kings and princes of Western European countries had always had ill intentions towards the empire. They believed that the emperor's trip to the west was tantamount to humiliating the entire empire. Some even believed that they would rather submit to the Ottoman Empire than become a colony of Western Europe. Even the believers in Constantinople were unwilling to go to Hagia Sophia to worship because the church adopted the Western Church's mass ceremony. Orthodox priests no longer prayed for John V. John V and the Westernization of the palace's lifestyle also caused a lot of discussion.
Constantinople was in the same crisis as before. Although the walls had been reinforced, the defense depended on foreign mercenaries, and a Turkish mercenary corps also served as the imperial guard.
The harm of mercenaries was very great, taking the Catalan Legion as an example. When Andronikos II invited them to fight against the Ottomans, he promised them high salaries, but he did not pay them in full afterwards. These unruly mercenaries occupied the land and dominated it. They even established an independent country in the Peloponnese Peninsula within the Byzantine Empire, ruling the occupied areas, levying heavy taxes, and issuing orders.
This was not the only example of foreign mercenaries separatist in the late Roman Empire. These foreign mercenaries, who were undisciplined and often colluded with invading foreign enemies, robbed property in cities and kidnapped people in rural areas, which further hit Roman industrialists and self-cultivating farmers. Even if these mercenaries did not rob property or kidnap people, the urban and rural residents of the Roman Empire had to bear a heavy burden for a long time to supply these troops.
At this point, the city had no hope, and they could only watch the Ottomans besiege them without any way to stop them. Either they hold on here, or they will be destroyed.