Constantine XI Palaiologos
Constantine XI was the last Roman emperor, and he died in the breach at Constantinople on 29 May 1453. Born in 1405, the eighth of ten children of Manuel II Palaiologos, he inherited an empire that was by then a city and a few fragments. He governed the Morea in the Peloponnese for two decades and did it well — recovering Athens and Thebes, rebuilding the Hexamilion wall across the isthmus, and briefly restoring Byzantine rule to most of southern Greece before Murad II broke through in 1446. He became emperor in 1449 and was crowned at Mistra rather than in Hagia Sophia, because the church was divided over the union with Rome he had accepted in exchange for Western help that never came in useful quantity. Mehmed II came in April 1453 with something over 80,000 men and the largest cannon yet cast. Constantine had perhaps 7,000 defenders, including about 2,000 foreigners, for fourteen miles of wall. He was offered his life and the Morea if he surrendered, and refused, saying that to give up the city was beyond his right or that of its people. The Ottomans breached the Theodosian walls at the Kerkoporta and the St Romanus gate after fifty-three days. The Genoese commander Giustiniani was wounded and carried off, and the defence collapsed. Constantine threw off his imperial insignia and charged into the fighting. His body was never identified. The empire had lasted, from Augustus, 1,480 years. Greek folk tradition turned him into the marble emperor, taken by an angel and waiting to return.
- Lived: 1405 CE – 1453 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, military_leader
