Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Manuel II (1391-1425) and the Turks

Page 15

In 1425, the paralyzed Manuel passed away. With a feeling of profound mourning the mass of the population of the capital followed the hearse of the dead Emperor. Such a crowd of mourning people had never been seen at the burial of any of his predecessors. A special investigator of Manuel's activity, Berger de Xivrey, wrote: This feeling will seem sincere to whoever will remember all the trials which this sovereign shared with his people, all his endeavors to help them, and the deep sympathy of thought and feeling he always had for them.

The most important event of the time of Manuel was the battle of Angora, which delayed the fall of Constantinople for fifty years. But even this brief relief from the Ottoman danger was attained not by the strength of the Byzantine emperor, but by the Mongol power accidentally created in the east. The chief event upon which Manuel had relied, the rising of western Europe in a crusade, had not taken place. The siege and storm of Constantinople by the Turks in 1422 was only a prologue to the siege and storm of 1453. In estimating relations with the Turks in Manuel's time one must not lose sight of the personal influence which the Emperor had with the Turkish sultans and which several times delayed the final doom of the perishing Empire 

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