Chronicle
George Sphrantzesby about 1477
The memoir of a Byzantine courtier and friend of the last emperor, Constantine XI. He was in Constantinople during the siege of 1453 and counted its defenders for the emperor.
Sphrantzes served the Palaiologan emperors as a diplomat and was close to Constantine XI Palaiologos. He was in the city when it fell, was taken prisoner and ransomed, and wrote his chronicle towards the end of his life. His account of the siege is short. It gives the number of defenders, which he says he reckoned himself at the emperor’s order, and the date of the fall, and it says plainly that he was not at the emperor’s side when he was killed.
The work cited is the short chronicle known as the Chronicon Minus. See the Fall of Constantinople.
Cited in
- 29 May 1453, firm date