Pic: Bayezid held captive by Timur, painting by Stanisław Chlebowski (1878)
Manuel II Palaiologos refuses to play vassal to Sultan Bayezid. So the Ottomans set up a permanent blockade of New Rome. The siege would last for eight years and only a miracle could save the Romans.
Period: 1391-1402
Stream: In the Nick of Timur
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The History of Byzantium 
Fun episoode! Really captured the sense of inevitability that the romans would be defeated and the luck that they weren’t.
I’m curious as to how intense the siege was? Manuel and his family could leave safely (it seems), and John VII could arrive to take over so I don’t have a clear idea of how blockaded the city was
Great epizode as always, I am just left wondering why the Ottomans did not take the other Byzantine cities in Thrace during the siege.
When John VII came from Selymbria to take over Constantinopole in circa 1400, I could not help but ask why Bayezid did not subdue Selymbria and other towns already by that point – it would be a tangible gain and it would presumably give his besieging army something to do, boost their morale and further demoralize Constantinopole.
I wonder whether there was a military consideration behind this, or perhaps the other towns agreed to vassalage and just Constantinopole under Manuel was so to speak in revolt against the Ottomans?