I recently started wondering if, after the capture of Constantinople, there was ever a Byzantine resistance. There was no nationalism back then, but ethnic and religious differences with the Turks should have been enough, when combined with their violent conquest of Constantinople, to spark some sort of resistance.
Does anyone know if there was a history of organized anti-Turk brigandage or armed resistance in the city? After the conquest of Constantinople, of course. I remember reading several historians on the subject of the Byzantine Empire, but they all stop the day it fell.
Thank you for your time!
For the city of Constantinople specifically, you have to remember that the city had been drastically reduced in size after the 4th cursade. Disease, famine, emigration, and multiple sieges had taken its tole on the city. Then combine that with the thousands that fled during and after the conquest, and those that were killed by the conquest itself, the city was laking the manpower to hold any real resistance. Sultan Mehmet had to actually import people from the rest of the empire to repopulate the city. Moreover, the early Ottoman empire was relatively lax on its treatment on its Orthodox population. The structure of the orthodox church was kept intact, and Sultan Mehmet even hired Greek philosophers to help with Ottoman propaganda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennadius_Scholarius).
Source: Istanbul: The Imperial City