Last Byzantine emperor, from 1449 to 1453
People connected to Constantine XI Palaiologos
The last Roman emperor died sword in hand on the walls of Constantinople in 1453, ending an empire that had stood for over a thousand years. Legend later refused his death entirely: Greek folklore turned him to marble beneath the city gates, waiting for God's call to return.
Constantine was the fourth son of Manuel II Palaiologos and Helena Dragaš, born 8 February 1404, and spent the 1420s proving himself a capable general. With his brothers he ruled the Morea, pushing Byzantine territory across nearly the entire Peloponnese for the first time since the Fourth Crusade and rebuilding the Hexamilion wall that guarded it. When his childless brother John VIII died in October 1448, Constantine was proclaimed emperor on 6 January 1449, inheriting a empire reduced to a city surrounded entirely by the Ottomans. In April 1453, Sultan Mehmed II arrived with perhaps 80,000 m…
Sourced, dated quotes from Constantine XI Palaiologos
God forbid that I should live an Emperor without an Empire. As my city falls, I will fall with it.
Whoever wishes to escape, let him save himself if he can; and whoever is ready to face death, let him follow me!
The city is fallen and I am still alive.
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