Well, they where early adopters of Gunpowder. If they had Canons earlier, they could've breached Constantinople's walls, just like the Austro-Hungarians under the Hapsburgs did a few centuries later in OTL. There's a question. Could a stronger Ottoman Empire have threatened the Hapsburgs?Impossible. They could have never breached Constantinople.
Not to mention, the Timurid successor state which almost managed to do the same in 1509, or so.Well, they where early adopters of Gunpowder. If they had Canons earlier, they could've breached Constantinople's walls, just like the Austro-Hungarians under the Hapsburgs did a few centuries later in OTL.
Well, they where early adopters of Gunpowder. If they had Canons earlier, they could've breached Constantinople's walls, just like the Austro-Hungarians under the Hapsburgs did a few centuries later in OTL.
Not to mention, the Timurid successor state which almost managed to do the same in 1509, or so.
I blame 19th century Hapsburg propaganda. This was before freedom of Religion, and the Royals where staunchly Catholic, and had total control of the school system. Millions of children, including Orthodox Greeks learned that Constantinople was a Catholic city, and had been one since the Fourth Crusade. Of course, reality reflected fiction, when Austrian German immigrants began to out number Greeks in Constantinople around 1900.Agreed. Constantinople at the time wasn't the great Catholic stronghold it's been retrospectively cast to be; for one, the remaining cityfolk were still following the Greek Heresy, and secondly, the city's population was at an all time low in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. If there was ever a time for a non-Christian power to take New Rome, it was in the 1400s, before Italian trading leagues effectively dominated the Aegean and made crossing the Bosporus impossible.
I blame 19th century Hapsburg propaganda. This was before freedom of Religion, and the Royals where staunchly Catholic, and had total control of the School system. Millions of Children, including Orthodox Greeks learned that Constantinople was a Catholic city, and had been one since the Fourth Crusade. Of course, reality reflected fiction, when Austrian German immigrants began to out number Greeks in Constantinople around 1900.
Would it have been a simple sack though? The state (I forget what it was called), Ah! the Mirza Dynasty. They lasted quite long in Transaegea, and were pretty much at the gates of the city for a long, long time. Hell, they only really disappeared when the Habsburgs conquered them in 1859! Had they taken Constantinople, I think they would have kept it.I think permanent conquests are more relevant to this comparison than one-off sacks.
Would it have been a simple sack though? The state (I forget what it was called), Ah! the Mirza Dynasty. They lasted quite long in Transaegea, and were pretty much at the gates of the city for a long, long time. Hell, they only really disappeared when the Habsburgs conquered them in 1859! Had they taken Constantinople, I think they would have kept it.
I hadn't considered the Ottoman's rivals in Asia Minor. Would the Mirza Dynasty have been able to resist the Ottomans?Would it have been a simple sack though? The state (I forget what it was called), Ah! the Mirza Dynasty. They lasted quite long in Transaegea, and were pretty much at the gates of the city for a long, long time. Hell, they only really disappeared when the Habsburgs conquered them in 1859! Had they taken Constantinople, I think they would have kept it.
You mean like all the Cryto-Muslims that settled in Bosnia after the Hapsburg Colonisation efforts in Asia Minor? If Islam would take hold anywhere, it'd be in Bosnia. In OTL they have Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and a Local Christian denomination called "Bogomil" dating from the Middle Ages, and none of them are in the majority. It wouldn't be as cosmopolitian in OTL, but it still had Jews, Catholics, Bogomils, and Orthodox populations even before the Ottoman siege of Constantinople. That's not going away without genocide. If the Balkans go Muslim, then their fate would rest on the issue of if they're civilized muslims that would treat them like the Spainish Muslims did as people of the book, or if they where Mongol style genocidal hoards.The question is, if an Islamic power control Thrace and Constantinople as completely as the Osterreich did, could it become a cultural and political center for worldwide Islam or the Turkish civilization similar to Constantinople's reinvention as the "New Rome" of the Holy Roman Empire?
I'd be interested in what happens to Egypt in this sort of scenario.
Yes, a strategically vital city with legendary walls, that are nothing more then paper tigers once gunpowder is introduced into the Balkans. If Gunpowder was introduced from the east rather then the west, then history could've been very different, where as in OTL the Ottoman seige of Constantinople was just another in a long line of failing to conquer it, if the Ottomans had adopted Canon just a few decades earlier, then Constantinople would have fallen.Well, I do not know if the Roman Reconquest would have been feasible if an Osman state had emerged in the 14th century. There is a reason that Constantinople came to be feared by Europe again by 1567 at the Battle of Belgrade. For a short time it looked like Constantinople might occupy Vienna, in the East she reunited Anatolia with Lebanon and much of modern Kurdistan and Armenia while in the West she took Sicily by utter surprise and even managed to briefly occupy Bari, Otranto, Calabria, and Apulia. Had Isaacius V or Basil VI been more patient or diplomatic the Empire might still be alive. Unfortunately the Austrians and Hungarians actually united their thrones and began their own Reconquista, eventually overrunning the whole of the Empire under Joseph II just in time to face a monsterous threat from France and the kick-off of the First Revolutionary Wars. Constantinople has always been the City of Men's Dreams and remains paramount to commerce in that part of the world even today, no wonder the Austrians sought to colonize it so heavily.