Constantinople

Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Constantinople’

13
Our Lady’s Mantle Clay Lane

Shortly after Askold and Dir founded Kiev in 862, they launched a brazen but ill-fated assault on the capital of the Roman Empire.

In the 860s, just as the Great Army led by Vikings Ingwaer and Halfdan was swarming over England, Viking warlords Askold and Dir were establishing the great cities of Novgorod and Kiev as the foundations of Rus’. Almost at once the pagan settlers set their sights on the greatest prize of all, Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire.

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14
The Fall of Constantinople Clay Lane

Hospitality and sympathy, but no help - the Byzantine Emperor learns a bitter lesson about western diplomacy.

Byzantium became the capital of the Roman Empire in 330, and was renamed Constantinople after the Emperor, Constantine. Its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 was one of the great catastrophes of civilisation, yet England and the other powers of Europe stood and watched.

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15
Welcome to Micklegarth Orderic Vitalis

After the Norman Conquest, thousands of disappointed Englishmen departed for a new life in the Byzantine world.

When William, Duke of Normandy, seized the English crown from Harold Godwinson in 1066, many Englishmen were unwilling to recognise their new Norman overlords. They turned first to friends in Scandinavia; when that failed, some set sail for Constantinople in the hope of enlisting the support of the Roman Empire.

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