page_title: Siege of Thessalonica (1422–1430)
section_title: Thessalonica under Venetian rule
hierarchical_section_title: Siege of Thessalonica (1422–1430) / Thessalonica under Venetian rule
caption_attribution_description: English: Saint Symeon (Simeon), archbishop of Thessaloniki (Salonica), from Codex 47, folio 82, of the Vatopedi Monastery Русский: Святой Симеон Солунский, архиепископ Фессалоникийский, святитель. Солун, Салоники, Фессалоники.
context_page_description: The siege of Thessalonica between 1422 and 1430 saw the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Murad II capture the city of Thessalonica, which remained in Ottoman hands for the next five centuries, until it became part of the Kingdom of Greece in 1912.
  Thessalonica had already been under Ottoman control from 1387 to 1403 before returning to Byzantine rule in the aftermath of the Battle of Ankara. In 1422, after the Byzantines supported Mustafa Çelebi as a rival pretender against him, Murad attacked Thessalonica. Unable to provide manpower or resources for the city's defense, its ruler, Andronikos Palaiologos, handed it over to the Republic of Venice in September 1423. The Venetians attempted to persuade the Sultan to recognize their possession, but failed as Murad considered the city his by right and the Venetians to be interlopers. This impasse led to an Ottoman blockade of Thessalonica, which occasionally flared up with direct attacks on the city. At the same time, the conflict was mostly fought as a series of raids by both sides against the other's territories in the Balkans and the Aegean islands.
context_section_description: Inside Thessalonica, the siege led to much suffering, and the populace quickly became dissatisfied with their new masters. By the winter of 1426–1427, conditions in the besieged city approached the point of famine. The Thessalonians were forced to subsist on bread alone, and even that proved problematic—the authorities were forced to request more shipments of wheat from Venice when supplies ran dangerously low. The conditions of "extreme poverty, death, and destitution" made the Greek population more and more restless, and even those who had formerly welcomed the Venetians began to waver. The lack of food even jeopardized the city's defences, since many of the mercenary guards on the walls, paid by Venice with wheat instead of cash, defected to the Turks when their rations were late. This situation became progressively worse, and by the time of the final Ottoman attack in 1430, many soldiers had no weapons because they had sold them for food.
  The privations of the siege led to an exodus of the city's population, as citizens with the ability to leave sold their possessions and fled to Constantinople, other Venetian-controlled Greek territories, or to the Turks. From a population variously reported at between 20,000–25,000, or even as many as 40,000, by contemporary Italian sources, it is estimated that only 10,000–13,000 were left by 1429/30. The Venetian authorities tried to put a stop to this by prohibiting the inhabitants from leaving the city, outlawing "all sales, mortgages, and transfers of property, both movable and immovable", and destroying the houses and other property—even trees—of people who had left the city. They hoped that the destruction would serve a deterrent to those who remained behind. Coupled with several instances of arbitrariness, speculation, and profiteering on behalf of the Venetian authorities, these measures helped to further alienate the Thessalonians. By April 1425, a Byzantine church official who had had his family flee the city wrote of the "enslavement of the city by the Venetians", and similar sentiments about Venetian tyranny are echoed in all contemporary Byzantine sources. In their embassy in July 1425, the Thessalonians submitted a list of 21 complaints and demands, including fixed rations of corn for the poor and the lowering of tax dues and suspension of arrears and debt-related punishments for the duration of the siege, since the closing of the gates meant that people could no longer access their fields, which were furthermore devastated by the Turks. In a session on 23 July 1425, the Great Council acceded to many of their demands and requested that its officials respect the customs and rights of the citizens and work together with the local council of twelve nobles in the governance of the city.
  Whatever the Venetian efforts to secure peace, the Thessalonians were well aware, in the words of the Byzantinist Donald Nicol, that Murad "was playing for time" and he "was never going to be reconciled to the Venetian occupation of the Thessalonica". As the historian Apostolos Vacalopoulos put it, the prevailing view quickly became that "since Thessalonica was bound sooner or later to fall into Turkish hands, it would be preferable to surrender peacefully there and then, and so avoid the sufferings which would ensue if the Turks had to take the city by force." As conditions inside the city worsened, the pro-surrender current gained ground among the Thessalonians. This is evidenced from the writings of Metropolitan Symeon, who recounts that during one attack in 1425 or 1426, many citizens (including some of those guarding the walls) fled to the Ottomans. Symeon played an important role as a spokesman and leader of the city's populace during the siege. An ardently Hesychast and anti-Latin prelate who had opposed the handover of the city to the Roman Catholic Venetians, fearing their "corrupting" influence, the Metropolitan tried to strengthen his flock's Orthodox identity against both the Latin Venetians and the Muslim Turks, as well as awaken their will to resist. He organized litanies th
caption: Metropolitan Symeon of Thessalonica, miniature from an 18th-century codex
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