Sfakians - Sfakians and The Fall of Constantinople

Sfakians and The Fall of Constantinople

In January 1453, Sultan Mehmet II had the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, surrounded. He decided that he was going to take it over either by breaking through the city's defenses or by starving the inhabitants into submission. The sultan had his troops and an enormous fleet at his disposal while the besieged Byzantines (and their Christian allies) were demoralized and divided amongst themselves. Responding to a request for help from the Byzantine Emperor, the Sfakian leader Manousos Kallikratis gathered 300 Sfakian warriors and another 760 Cretan fighters from other parts of the island. The leader then sailed in five ships (three of which were Sfakian) and went to help the besieged Emperor.

The Sfakian/Cretan forces fought valiantly by breaking through the Ottoman blockade and by defending the city itself. Many Cretans died alongside the Byzantines, as well as alongside the few Genoese and Venetian co-defenders. When the city fell, the only 170 surviving Cretans had been surrounded by Ottoman troops in one of the city's towers and were refusing to surrender. The sultan was so impressed by their courage and fierce fighting skills that he agreed to let them walk out of the city with their flags, arms, and wounded and sail away to Crete in one of their ships.

A poet of the time has the Byzantine Emperor saying as he was surrounded by the Ottomans, "Christians, Greeks, cut off my head, take it, good Cretans, and carry it to Crete, for the Cretans to see it and be sad at heart." Just a few words from an anonymous poet described the deep impact the fall of Constantinople had on the Cretans. They were to become the next home of the refugees from Byzantium and responsible for nurturing the rich heritage left to them by the collapsing Byzantine Empire.