Fall of Gallipoli

Fall of Gallipoli
Part of the Byzantine-Ottoman wars
The Byzantine and Ottoman Empires within a year of the Gallipoli occupation.
Date March, 1354 Location Byzantine Thrace Result Ottoman occupation Europe open to expansion
Belligerents
Byzantine Empire	Ottoman Turks
Commanders
Unknown	Suleyman Pasha

The fall of Gallipoli to the Ottomans occurred in March of 1354. After suffering a half-century of a string of defeats at the hands of the Ottomans, the Byzantines had lost nearly all of their possessions in Anatolia. Access to the Aegean and MarMara meant that the Ottomans could now implement the conquest of the Peloponnese, Greece and further north into Serbia and Hungary.

Occupation

During the Byzantine civil war of 1352-1354, Turkish mercenaries, allied with the emperor John VI Kantakouzenos plundered most of Byzantine Thrace and in 1352 occupied the small fortress of Tzympe, near Gallipoli. In March 2, 1354, the area was struck by an earthquake destroying hundreds of villages and towns in the area.^[1] Nearly every building was destroyed in Gallipoli which caused the Greek inhabitants to vacate the city. Within a month, the son of Ottoman Sultan Orhan I, Suleiman brought three thousand troops and any Turkish families that he could find from Asia, occupied the city and made it into a major stronghold within a few months.

Aftermath

Kantakouzenos offered cash payments to Orchan to vacate the city, to which he refused, claiming that he could not give up something that was granted to him by Allah and that he did not take by force.^[2] Panic spread throughout Constantinople as many believed that the Turks would soon be coming for the city itself. Because of this, Kantakouzenos' position became unstable and was overthrown in November of 1354.^[3]

Gallipoli was to become as major bridgehead into Europe to which they could facilitate further expansion into Europe.^[4] In less than ten years, nearly all of Byzantine Thrace fell to the Turks, including the fall of Adrianople in 1361.^[5]

References

Sources

• A.A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, 324-1453. Second edition (Madison) 1952.
• Norwich, John. A Short History of Byzantium, Alfred A. Kpoff, (New York) 1997.
• Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine State, Ruttgers University Press, (New Jersey) 1969.