Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 342, the Roman diaspora.

For the population of Constantinople, the events of 1453 were of course incredibly traumatic.

Everyone was enslaved, families were separated, and chaos reigned.

For most of those who Mehmet took as his personal slaves, there was the consolation of being

resettled in the city.

But even this was surreal.

Those five or six thousand souls had been selected based on looks, lineage and other assorted

criteria.

They were not necessarily familiar with one another, and most were now housed

along the Golden Horn, their own homes being abandoned or given to a new settler. The rest were

either taken to the slave markets at Adirney, or dragged off to serve the soldiers who'd claimed them.

The Ottomans were more than happy to sell the captives they'd taken back to their own families or communities. In fact,

this was ideal since they would pay the highest price. Venetian captives were encouraged to write

home or to contact someone in their colonies in the Aegean,

anyone who held an official post could expect to command a handsome ransom, while the enslaved

Genoese could expect help from Galata, even before those further away got involved.

For enslaved Romans, there were fewer options. The Byzantine government

of the Peloponnese was distant and poor. So free Romans had to travel around the Mediterranean

begging for money to try and redeem their loved ones.

There was a lot of sympathy initially.

The Wallachians, the Serbians, the cities of Dalmatia, all gave money to visiting Romans.

In fact, across Western Europe, throughout 1453 and the following year, Byzantine beggars became a regular site, collecting arms to pay for the ransom of their friends and family.

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