And just because it had come to be in Europe and of Europe, it was able to survive the terrible disaster of Angora in 1402.  Though the Osmanli army was annihilated by Timur, and an Osmanli sultan, for the first and last time in history, remained in the hands of the foe, the administrative machinery of the Osmanli state was not paralysed.  A new ruler was proclaimed at Adrianople, and the European part of the realm held firm.  The moment that the Tartars began to give ground, the Osmanlis began to recover it.  In less than twenty years they stood again in Asia as they were before Timur’s attack, and secure for the time on the east, could return to restore their prestige in the west, where the Tartar victory had bred unrest and brought both the Hungarians and the Venetians on the Balkan scene.  Their success was once more rapid and astonishing:  Salonika passed once and for all into Ottoman hands:  the Frank seigneurs and the despots of Greece were alike humbled; and although Murad II failed to crush the Albanian, Skanderbey, he worsted his most dangerous foe, John Hunyadi, with the help of Wallach treachery at the second battle of Kosovo.  At his death, three years later, he left the Balkans quiet and the field clear for his successor to proceed with the long deferred but inevitable enterprise of attacking all that was left of Greek empire, the district and city of Constantinople.

The doom of New Rome was fulfilled within two years.  In the end it passed easily enough into the hands of those who already had been in possession of its proper empire for a century or more.  Historians have made more of this fall of Constantinople in 1453 than contemporary opinion seems to have made of it.  No prince in Europe was moved to any action by its peril, except, very half-heartedly, the Doge.  Venice could not feel quite indifferent to the prospect of the main part of that empire, which, while in Greek hands, had been her most serious commercial competitor, passing into the stronger hands of the Osmanlis.  Once in Constantinople, the latter, long a land power only, would be bound to concern themselves with the sea also.  The Venetians made no effort worthy of their apprehensions, though these were indeed exceedingly well founded; for, as all the world knows, to the sea the Osmanlis did at once betake themselves.  In less than thirty years they were ranging all the eastern Mediterranean and laying siege to Rhodes, the stronghold of one of their most dangerous competitors, the Knights Hospitallers.

In this consequence consists the chief historic importance of the Osmanli capture of Constantinople.  For no other reason can it he called an epoch-marking event.  If it guaranteed the Empire of the East against passing into any western hands, for example, those of Venice or Genoa, it did not affect the balance of power between Christendom and Islam; for the strength of the former had long ceased to reside at all in Constantinople.  The last Greek emperor died a martyr, but not a champion.