CHAPTER VII
PROGRESS OF TURKS BETWEEN 1391 AND 1425: SULTAN BAJAZED’S REIGN: CONQUESTS IN EUROPE: BULGARIAN KINGDOM ENDED: WESTERN ARMIES DEFEATED AT NICOPOLIS: ANATOLIA-HISSAR BUILT: CAPITAL THREATENED: SUMMONS BY TIMOUR TO BAJAZED: TIMOUR’S PROGRESS: REPLY OF BAJAZED: BATTLE OF ANGORA AND CRUSHING DEFEAT OF TURKS: FURTHER PROGRESS OF TIMOUR: DEATH OF BAJAZED, 1403: ALARM IN WESTERN EUROPE: DEPARTURE OF TIMOUR: STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE SONS OF BAJAZED: ULTIMATE SUCCESS OF MAHOMET: HIS GOOD UNDERSTANDING WITH MANUEL: DEATH OF MAHOMET, 1420: ACCESSION OF MURAD: WAR WITH EMPIRE: SIEGE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, 1422: DEATH OF MANUEL, 1425: TRIUMPHAL PROGRESS OF MURAD: HE BESIEGES AND TAKES SALONICA: BESIEGES BELGRADE BUT FAILS: COMBINED MOVEMENT UNDER HUNYADI AGAINST MURAD: BATTLE OF SLIVNITZA, 1443, AND DEFEAT OF TURKS: MURAD SUES FOR PEACE: TREATY MADE WITH LADISLAUS: VIOLATED BY CHRISTIANS: BATTLE OF VARNA, 1444: MURAD RAVAGES MOREA: ISKENDER BEY, HIS ORIGIN: CAPTURES CROIA: HUNYADI AGAIN ATTACKS MURAD: DEFEATED AT COSSOVO-POL, 1448: REASONS FOR FAILURE OF CHRISTIAN ATTEMPTS: JOHN HAS TO FOREGO JOINING WESTERN COMBINATION AGAINST TURKS: DEATH OF MURAD, 1451: MAHOMET THE SECOND BECOMES SULTAN.
It is convenient to halt here and to retrace the steps of the Ottoman conquerors from the accession of Manuel, in 1391, with more care than was necessary in describing their direct attacks upon the empire. The number of Turks in Asia Minor and in Europe had now so much increased that their leaders began to dream, perhaps were already planning, the conquest of as wide a territory as had fallen before the immediate successors of the prophet. They had already almost succeeded in completing a ring of conquered states round Constantinople itself. The defeat of the Bulgarians and South Serbians on the Maritza, the great victory over the Serbians at Cossovo-pol, in 1389, enabled them to join forces with the Turks in the Morea and at isolated places on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Nearly all Asia Minor acknowledged the rule of the Ottomans, and it was to the European portion of the empire that the attention of the Turk would now be turned.112
An observer looking back upon all that was going on in Eastern Europe during the first half of the fifteenth century can now see that all the great events were part of a gigantic struggle against the hordes of Asia, represented by the Turks on the south of the Danube and in Asia Minor and the races whom it is convenient to call Tartars to the north of that river. The humiliation of the emperors to obtain aid from the West, the proceedings at Florence, the repeated calls upon Hungary and other Christian nations, were all incidents of that struggle. The statesmen of the West were gradually learning that the Ottomans had developed into a nation of fighters, and that it was not merely the remnant of the Greek empire which was threatened, but Christendom itself.
Upon the assassination of Murad at Cossovo-pol, his son Bajazed became sultan. He had already acquired, or acquired shortly after his accession, the nickname of Ilderim or the Thunderbolt.
He commenced his reign by strangling his elder brother, Jacoub. Ducas declares that he was an irreconcilable enemy of the Christian name and a passionate follower of Mahomet. During the reign of his predecessor, the struggle between the empire and the Turks had taken a theological character, and it is beyond reasonable doubt that religious animosity of a kind which had not shown itself among the first armies of the Turks had now diffused its baneful influence among the Ottoman armies. Under Bajazed, this fanaticism was intensified to such an extent that it led to cruelties of which it may be said that it is hardly possible to believe that even Mongol barbarity was ever greater than that exercised by the followers of the successor of Murad against Christians.
The commencement of his reign was marked by a series of rapid movements which were crowned with success. He stands out in Turkish history as the maker of swift marches and as the striker of sudden and effective blows. It was on this account that he received the name of ‘Ilderim.’ He forced Stephen of Serbia, the son of Lazarus (whom he had caused to be hewn in pieces upon the assassination of Murad), to become his vassal and to give him his sister in marriage. Bulgaria, Wallachia, Albania, and Macedonia with Salonica as its capital acknowledged his rule. His fleet plundered the islands of the Archipelago and burnt the town of Chios.113
The last message the emperor John had received before his death, in 1391, from Murad was that unless he destroyed the work he had executed in repairing the towers of the Golden Gate, he would put out the eyes of his son Manuel, who was then at Brousa. Happily, his threat came to naught. On learning of the death of his father, Manuel, as we have seen, escaped to the capital. Thereupon Bajazed, upon the rejection of his impossible demands, commenced a series of attacks upon the empire.
Bajazed carried war into every part of the Balkan peninsula. Durazzo was threatened by a Turkish army, and the Venetian senate was compelled to send aid to the relief of its signor. His armies employed themselves in
Thrace in raiding cattle and in capturing the Christian inhabitants, thousands of whom were either killed or sold into slavery. Tirnovo was taken, and Shishman, the king of End of Bulgarian kingdom. Bulgaria, made prisoner in 1393. With his death, in the same year, the kingdom of Bulgaria came to an end. Ali Pasha, the grand vizier of Bajazed, blockaded Manuel in Constantinople, and urged the citizens to dethrone him and declare for John, the son of Andronicus, the elder son of the late emperor John. But after the Turks had continued near the capital for upwards of a year, Manuel attacked and defeated both them and his nephew John.
The greater part of the Morea was still under the rule of the empire. Bajazed organised a great expedition of fifty thousand men for its conquest. He captured Argos, plundered the country nearly as far as Coronea and Methone, in the Morea, and exterminated or brought away thirty thousand captives.
In consequence of the success of these various expeditions, the pope and the other princes of the West became thoroughly alive to the necessity of putting forward all their strength to check the Thunderbolt’s progress. Their hopes centred in the leadership of Sigismund, king of Hungary and brother of the emperor in the West. The Venetian senate decided to treat with him for an alliance. The pope and the chief of the Holy Roman Empire did their best to engage the Christian powers to place themselves under his leadership. In 1393, Sigismund had beaten the Turks at Little Nicopolis, and hope rose high of greater successes. In the spring of 1396, the duke of Burgundy, at the head of a thousand knights and nine thousand soldiers—French, English, and Italians—arrived in Hungary and joined his forces. German knights also came in considerable numbers. The Christian armies defeated the Turks in Hungary, and gained victory in several engagements. The emperor Manuel was secretly preparing to join them. Then the allies prepared to strike a decisive blow. They gathered on the banks of the Danube an army of at least fifty-two thousand—and possibly a hundred thousand—men, and encamped Battle of Nicopolis 1396. at Nicopolis. The élite of several nations were present, but those of the highest rank were the French knights. When they heard of the approach of the enemy, they refused to listen to the prudent counsels of the Hungarians and, with the contempt which so often characterised the Western knights for the Turkish foe, they joined battle confident of success.
Bajazed, as soon as he had learned the presence of the combined Christian armies, marched through Philippopolis, crossed the Balkans, made for the Danube, and then waited for attack. In the battle which ensued (1396), Europe received its first lesson on the prowess of the Turks, and especially of the Janissaries. The Christian army, with rash daring, broke through the line of its enemies, cut down all who resisted them, and rushed on irresistible to the very rearguard of the Turks, many of whom either retreated or sought refuge in flight. When the French knights saw that the Turks ran, they followed, and filled the battlefield with dead and dying. But they made the old military blunder, and it led to the same old result. The archers, who always constituted the most effective Turkish arm, employed the stratagem of running away in order to throw their pursuers into disorder. Then they turned and made a stand. As they did so, the Janissaries, ‘Christians of origin, from many Christian nations,’ as Ducas bewails, came out of the place where they had been concealed, surprised and cut to pieces Frenchmen, Italians, and Hungarians. The pursuers were soon the pursued. The Turks chased them to the Danube, into which many of the fugitives threw themselves. The defeat was complete. Sigismund saved himself in a small boat, with which he crossed the river, and found his way, after long wandering, to Constantinople. The duke of Burgundy and twenty-four noblemen who were captured were sent to Brousa to be held for ransom. The remaining Burgundians, to the number of three hundred, who escaped massacre, and refused to save their lives by abjuring Christianity, had their throats cut by order of the sultan.114
The battle at Nicopolis gave back to Bajazed almost at once all that the allies had been able to take from him. The defeat of Sigismund, with his band of French, German, and Italian knights, sent dismay to their countrymen and the princes of the West.
In the same year, Bajazed gained successes over the Moslem prince of Caramania and a Turkish pretender at Sinope, rebels who had been induced to rise in the hope that they might take advantage of the attack of Sigismund and his allies.
The sultan’s great object, however, was to complete his triumphs by the capture of Constantinople. His grand vizier had, in 1396, while blockading the city, urged the inhabitants to declare for the young Prince John, who was the Turkish protégé. On refusal, Bajazed sat down to besiege the city, and only abandoned the idea of an assault when it was pointed out that to do so would make enemies of all the Christian powers.
In 1396, apparently immediately after the battle of Nicopolis, and as an essential step towards the capture of the city, he built on the Bosporus the castle still remaining at Anatolia-Hissar, about six miles from the city. It served at once, and continued to serve until 1453, as a useful base of operations. After having completed it, says Chalcondylas, he went to besiege Byzance, and summoned Manuel to surrender the city.115 The emperor, who had just welcomed six hundred French knights, sent by Charles the Sixth of France, did not deign to reply. Two years later, in 1398, in order to avoid an attack by the Turks, who were drawing near the capital with an army numbering ten thousand, nominally to support John, Manuel consented, as we have seen, to share the throne with his nephew, and thereupon went to Western Europe to endeavour to secure help.
The aid sent to Sigismund from the West and that now sent to the Bosporus under Boucicaut show that many statesmen had awakened to the need of checking Turkish progress. The empire was able for a while to hold its own against the attacks made by the sultan.
Bajazed, whose life was alternately one of great activity in warfare and of indescribable debauchery in the intervals between his campaigns, had kept the capital under terror of sieges during six weary years. In 1402, he summoned John to surrender the city, and swore by God and the Prophet that if he refused he would not leave in it a soul alive. John gave a refusal. Chateaumorand, the lieutenant of Boucicaut, who, as we have seen, had gone west to endeavour to obtain aid, took charge of the defence, and waited for an attack.
At this time, remarks Ducas, the empire was circumscribed by the walls of Constantinople, for even Silivria was in the hands of the Turks.116 Bajazed had gained a firm hold of Gallipoli and thus commanded the Dardanelles. The long tradition of the Roman empire in the East, save for the capture of the city itself, seemed on the eve of coming to an end. No soldier of conspicuous ability had been produced by the empire for upwards of half a century: none who was capable of inflicting a sufficient defeat, or series of defeats, on the Turks to break or seriously check their power. The empire had fought on for three generations against an ever increasing number of Turks, but without confidence and almost without hope. It was now lacking in sufficiency of men and money. The often promised aid from the West had so far proved of little avail. The armies defeated by the empire, either alone or aided by Italians, were renewed by the constant stream of immigrants from Asia. The power of Serbia had been almost destroyed. Bulgaria had perished. The two states had been alternately at the mercy of hordes of infidels from the north or those under the Turkish sultan. From Dalmatia to the Morea the enemy was triumphant. The men of Macedonia had everywhere fallen before Bajazed’s armies. Constantinople was between the hammer and anvil: Asia Minor, on the one side, was nearly all under Turkish rule; the European part of the empire, on the other, contained as many Turks as there were in Asia Minor itself. The insolent tyrant passed in safety between his two capitals—one at Brousa, the other at Adrianople—and repeated his proud boasts of what he would do beyond the limits of the empire. It seemed as if, with his overwhelming force, he had only to succeed once more in a task which, in comparison with what he and his predecessors had done, was easy, and his success would be complete. He would occupy the throne of Constantine, would achieve that which had been the desire of the Arab followers of Mahomet, and for which they had sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives, and would win for himself and his followers the reward of heaven promised to those who should take part in the capture of New Rome. The road to the Elder Rome would be open, and he would yet feed his horse on the altar of St. Peter.
We have seen what was the insolent message he sent in his arrogance, in 1402, to John. The answer given would have completed a dramatic story if it had seemed well to the gods. ‘Tell your master we are weak, but that in our weakness we trust in God, who can give us strength and can put down the mightiest from their seats. Let your master do what he likes.’ Thereupon Bajazed had laid siege to Constantinople.
Suddenly, in the blackness of darkness with which the fortunes of the city were surrounded, there came a ray of light. Had there been an interpreter there as of old time, Bajazed might have learned the significance of the handwriting on the wall. All thought of the siege was abandoned for the time, and Constantinople breathed again freely.
What had happened was that Timour the Lame had challenged, or rather ordered, Bajazed to return to the Greeks all the cities and territories he had captured. The order was categorical and, given to a ferocious barbarian like Bajazed, drove him to fury. The man who gave it was, however, accustomed to be obeyed.
Timour117 or Tamarlane was a Mahometan and a Turk, though he claimed to be of the same race as Genghis, who was a Mongol. Under him the warrior shepherds of the south plains of Asia came westward in even greater numbers than they had done under his famous predecessor. They advanced in well-organised armies, under generals who seem to have had intelligence everywhere of the enemy’s country and great military skill. After having annexed Kharizon and Persia to Transoxiana and reduced Turkestan to obedience, Timour turned westward. In 1386, he appeared at Tiflis, which he subsequently captured at the head of an enormous host estimated at eight hundred thousand men. At Erzingan he put all the Turks sent there by the sultan to the sword.
Bajazed seems from the first to have been alarmed and went himself to Erzingan in 1394, but returned to Europe without making any attempt to resist the invader, probably believing that Timour had no intention of coming further west.118 He soon learned his mistake. Timour was not merely as great and cruel a barbarian but as ambitious as Bajazed himself. In 1395, while the emperor was in the Balkan peninsula, Timour summoned the large and populous city of Sivas to surrender. The inhabitants twice refused. Meantime, he had undermined the wall. On their second refusal, his host stormed and captured the city. A hundred and twenty thousand captives were massacred. Bajazed’s son was made prisoner and put to death. A large number of the prisoners were buried alive, being covered over in a pit with planks instead of earth so as to prolong their torture. Bajazed was relieved when he learned that from Sivas, which had been the strongest place in his empire, the ever victorious army had gone towards Syria.
Timour directed his huge host towards the frontier city of the sultan of Egypt—namely, Aleppo—his object being to punish the sultan for his breach of faith in imprisoning his ambassador and loading him with irons. On his march to that city, he spread desolation everywhere, capturing or receiving the submission of Malatia, Aintab, and other important towns. At Aleppo, the army of the Egyptian sultan resisted. A terrible battle followed, but the Egyptians were beaten, and every man, woman, and child in the city was murdered.
After the capture of Aleppo, Hama and Baalbek were occupied. The latter, which, like so many other once famous cities, has become under Turkish rule a desolation with only a few miserable huts amid its superb ruins, was still a populous city, and contained large stores of provisions. Thence he went to Damascus and in January 1401 defeated the remainder of the Egyptian army in a battle which was hardly less bloody than that before Aleppo. The garrison, composed mostly of Circassian mamelukes and negroes, capitulated, but the chief was put to death for having been so slow in surrendering. Possibly by accident, the whole city was burned.
Timour was stopped from advancing to Jerusalem by a plague of locusts, which ate up every green thing. The same cause rendered it impossible to attack Egypt, whose sultan had refused to surrender Syria.119
From Damascus, Timour went to Bagdad, which was held by contemporaries to be impregnable. Amid the heat of a July day, when the defenders had everywhere sought shade, Timour ordered a general assault, and in a few minutes the standard of one of his sheiks, with its horsetail and its golden crescent, was raised upon the walls.120 Then followed the usual carnage attending Timour’s captures. The mosques, schools, and convents with their occupiers were spared: so also were the imaums and the professors. All the remainder of the population between the ages of eight and eighty were slaughtered. Every soldier of Timour, of whom there were ninety thousand, as the price of his own safety, had to produce a head. The bloody trophies were, as was customary in Timour’s army, piled up in pyramids before the gates of the city.
It was on his return northwards from Damascus that, in 1402, Timour sent the message to Bajazed which at once forced him to raise the siege of Constantinople. Contemporaneously with this message, Timour requested the Genoese in Galata and at Genoa to obtain aid from the West and to co-operate with him to crush the Turkish sultan.
Timour organised or sent a large army on the Don and around the Sea of Azof on the Cimmerian Bosporus, connecting that sea with the Euxine, in order that, in case of need, it might act with his huge host now advancing towards the Black Sea from the south. His main body Bajazed’s reply to Timour’s summons. passed across the plain of Erzingan, and at Sivas Timour received the answer of Bajazed. The response was as insulting as a Turkish barbarian could make it. Bajazed summoned Timour to appear before him and declared that if he did not obey, the women of his harem should be divorced from him, putting his threat in what to a Mahometan was a specially indecent manner. All the usual civilities in written communications between sovereigns were omitted, though the Asiatic conqueror himself had carefully observed them. Timour’s remark when he saw the sultan’s letter contained the name of Timour in black writing under that of Bajazed which was in gold, was ‘The son of Murad is mad!’ When he read the insulting threat as to his harem, Timour kept himself well in hand, but, turning to the ambassador who had brought the letter, told him that he would have cut off his head and those of the members of his suite if it were not the rule among sovereigns to respect the lives of ambassadors. The representative of Bajazed was, however, compelled to be present at a review of the whole of his troops and was requested to return to his master and relate what he had seen.
Meantime, Bajazed had determined to strike quickly and heavily against Timour and by the rapidity of his movements justified the name of Ilderim. His opponent’s forces, however, were hardly less mobile. Timour’s huge army marched in twelve days from Sivas to Angora. The officer in command of that city refused to surrender. Timour made his arrangements for the siege in such a manner as to compel or induce Bajazed to occupy a position where he would have to fight at a disadvantage. He undermined the walls and diverted the small stream which supplied it with water. Hardly had these works been commenced before he learned that Ilderim was within nine miles of the city. Timour raised the siege and transferred his camp to the opposite side of the stream, which thus protected one side of his army while a ditch and a strong palisade guarded the other. Then in an exceptionally strong position he waited to be attacked.
Disaffection existed in Bajazed’s army, occasioned by his parsimony, and possibly nursed by emissaries from Timour. Bajazed’s own licentiousness had been copied by his followers, and discipline among his troops was noted as far less strict than among those of his predecessor. In leading them on what all understood to be the most serious enterprise which he had undertaken, his generals advised him to spend his reserves of money freely so as to satisfy his followers; but the capricious and self-willed Ilderim refused. They counselled him, in presence of an army many times more numerous than his own, to act on the defensive and to avoid a general attack. But Bajazed, blinded by his long series of successes, would listen to no advice and would take no precautions. In order to show his contempt for his enemy, he ostentatiously took up a position to the north of Timour and organised a hunting party on the highlands in the neighbourhood, as if time to him were of no consequence. Many men of his army died from thirst under the burning sun of the waterless plains, and when, after three days’ hunting, Bajazed returned to his camping ground, he found that Timour had taken possession of it. The enemy had almost altogether cut off his supply of drinking water and had fouled what still remained.
Under these circumstances, Bajazed had no choice but to force on a fight without further delay. The ensuing battle was between two great Turkish leaders filled with the arrogance of barbaric conquerors, each of whom had been almost uniformly successful. Nor were pomp and circumstance wanting to impress the soldiers of each side with the importance of the issue. Each of the two leaders was accompanied by his sons. Four sons and five grandsons commanded the nine divisions of Timour’s host. In front of its leader floated the standard of the Red Horse-tail surmounted by the Golden Crescent. On the other side, Bajazed took up his position in the centre of his army with his sons Isa, Mousa, and Mustafa, while his eldest son Suliman was in command of the Asiatic troops who formed the right wing. Lazarus of Serbia was in command of his own subjects, who had been forced to accompany Bajazed and formed the left wing of the army. The Serbians gazed in wonder and alarm upon a number of elephants opposite to them, which Timour had brought from India.
At six o’clock in the morning of July 28, 1402, the two armies joined battle. The left wing of Bajazed’s host was the first to be attacked, but the Serbians held their ground and even drove back the Tartars. The right wing fought with less vigour, and when the troops from Aidin saw their former prince among the enemy, they deserted Bajazed and went over to him. Their example was speedily followed by many others, and especially by the Tartars in the Ottoman army, who are asserted by the Turkish writers to have been tampered with by agents of Timour.121
The Serbians were soon detached from the centre of the army, but Lazarus, their leader, at the head of his cavalry, cut his way through the enemy, though at great loss, winning the approval of Timour himself, who exclaimed, ‘These poor fellows are beaten, though they are fighting like lions.’ Lazarus had advised Bajazed to endeavour, like himself, to break through, and awaited him for some time. But the sultan expressed his scorn at the advice. Surrounded by his ten thousand trustworthy Janissaries, separated from the Serbians, abandoned by a large part of his Anatolian troops and many of his leading generals, he fought on obstinately during the whole of the day. But the pitiless heat of a July sun exhausted the strength of his soldiers, and no water was to be had. His Janissaries fell in great numbers around him, some overcome by the heat and fighting, others struck down by the ever pressing crowd of the enemy. It was not till night came on that Bajazed consented to withdraw. He attempted flight, but was pursued. His horse fell, and he was made prisoner, together with his son Mousa and several of the chiefs of his household and of the Janissaries. His other three sons managed to escape. The Serbians covered the retreat of the eldest, Suliman, whom the grand vizier and the Aga of the Janissaries had dragged out of the fight.
The Persian, Turkish, and most of the Greek historians say that Timour received his great captive with every mark of respect, assured him that his life would be spared, and assigned to him and his suite three splendid tents. When, however, he was found attempting to escape, he was more rigorously guarded and every night put in chains and confined in a room with grilled windows. When he was conveyed from one place to another, he travelled much as Indian ladies now do, in a palanquin with curtained windows. Out of a misinterpretation of the Turkish word which designated at once a cage and a grilled room, grew the error into which Gibbon and historians of less repute have fallen that the great Ilderim was carried about in an iron cage.122 Until his death, in 1403, he was an unwilling follower of his captor.
After the battle of Angora, Suliman (the eldest son of Bajazed), who had fled towards Brousa, was pursued by a detachment of Timour’s army. He managed to cross into Europe and thus escaped. But Brousa, the Turkish capital, fell before Timour’s attack, and its inhabitants suffered the same brutal horrors as almost invariably marked either Tartar or Turkish captures. The city, after a carefully organised pillage, was burned. The wives and the daughters of Bajazed and his treasure became the property of Timour. Nicaea and Ghemlik were also sacked and their inhabitants taken as slaves. From the Marmora to Caramania, many towns which had been captured by the Turks were taken from them. Asia Minor was in confusion. Bajazed’s empire appeared to be dropping away in every part east of the Aegean. Suliman, however, established himself on the Bosporus at Anatolia-Hissar, and about the same time both he and the emperor at Constantinople received a summons from Timour to pay tribute. The emperor had already sent messengers to anticipate such a demand. Timour learned with satisfaction that the sons of Bajazed were disputing with each other as to the possession of such parts of their father’s empire as still remained uncaptured by him.
In 1402, the conqueror left Kutahia for Smyrna, which was held, as it had been for upwards of half a century, by the Knights of Rhodes. In accordance with the stipulation of Moslem sacred law, he summoned them either to pay tribute or become Mahometans, threatening them at the same time that if they refused to accept one or other of these conditions all should be killed. No sooner were the proposals rejected than Timour gave the order to attack the city. With his enormous army, he was able to surround Smyrna on three sides, and to block the entrance to it from the sea. The ships belonging to the knights were at the time absent. All kinds of machines then known for attack upon walled towns were constructed with almost incredible speed and placed in position. The houses within the city were burned by means of arrows carrying flaming materials steeped in naphtha or possibly petroleum, though, of course, not known under its modern name.
After fourteen days’ vigorous siege, a general assault was ordered, and the city was taken. The knights fought like heroes, but were driven back into the citadel. Seeing that they could no longer hold out, and their ships having returned, the grand master placed himself at their head, and he and his knights cut their way shoulder to shoulder through the crowd of their enemies to the sea, where they were received into their own ships. The inhabitants who could not escape were taken before Timour and, without distinction of age or sex, were butchered.
The Western settlers hastened to come to terms with Timour, who, like his great predecessor, was not opposed to any Christians on account of their religion. The Genoese in Phocaea, in the islands of Mitylene and Scios, sent to make submission, and became tributaries of the conqueror.
Smyrna was the last of Timour’s conquests in western Asia Minor. He went to Ephesus, and during the thirty days he passed in that city his army ravaged the whole of the fertile country in its neighbourhood and in the valley of the Cayster. The cruelties committed by his horde would be incredible if they were not continually repeated during the course of Tartar and Turkish history. In fairness, it must also be said that the Ottoman Turks, although their history has been a long series of massacres, have rarely been guilty of the wantonness of cruelty which Greek and Turkish authors agree in attributing to the Tartar army. One example must suffice. The children of a town on which Timour was marching were sent out by their parents reciting verses from the Koran to ask for the generosity of their conqueror but co-religionist. On asking what the children were whining for, and being told that they were begging him to spare the town, he ordered his cavalry to ride through them and trample them out: an order that was forthwith obeyed.
Timour, wearied with victories in the west, now determined to leave Asia Minor and return to Samarcand. This resolution he carried out. He contemplated the invasion of Death of Timour. China, but in the midst of his preparations died, in 1405, after a reign of thirty-six years.
Bajazed the Thunderbolt died at Aksheir two years earlier, and his son Mousa was permitted to transport his body to Brousa.123
The battle of Angora gave the greatest check to the Ottoman power which it had yet received. Considering the number of men engaged and the complete victory obtained by Timour, one might have expected it to have been fruitful in more enduring consequences than it produced. But its immediate results, though not far-reaching, were important. The fourteen years’ victorious career of the Thunderbolt was brought suddenly to an end. The empire of the Ottoman Turks which he had largely increased, and especially by the addition to it of the north-west portion of Asia Minor, was for a time shattered to pieces. The sons of the vanquished sultan, after the departure of Timour and his host, were quarrelling over the possession of what remained. Three of them gained territories in Asia Minor, while the eldest, Suliman, retook possession of the lands held by his father in Europe. Most of the leaders of the Ottoman host, the viziers, governors, and scheiks, had been either captured or slain, and in consequence the sons of Bajazed fighting in Asia Minor found themselves destitute of efficient servants for the organisation of government in the territories which they seized on the departure of Timour.
The progress of the great Asiatic horde created a profound impression in Western Europe. The eagerness of the Genoese to acknowledge the suzerainty of Timour gives an indication of their sense of the danger of resistance. The stories of the terrible cruelties of the Tartars lost nothing in their telling. When the news reached the neighbouring nations of Hungary and Serbia and the republics of Italy of the defeat of Bajazed, the capture of Brousa, of Smyrna, of every other town before which the Asiatic army had sat down, and of the powerlessness of the military knights, it appeared as if the West were about to be submerged by a new flood from Asia. No terror so great had threatened Europe since the time when Charles Martel defeated the Moslem hordes on the plains around Tours, or since the even more threatening attack upon Christendom when the main body of the Arab armies sat down for successive years before Constantinople and were signally defeated by the obstinacy of its defenders.
Then, when news came of the sudden departure of the Asiatics and of the breaking up of the Ottoman power, hope once more revived, and it appeared possible to the pope and Christian peoples to complete the work which Timour had begun by now offering a united opposition to the restoration of an Ottoman empire. Constantinople itself when Bajazed passed it on his way to Angora was almost the last remnant of the ancient empire, and seemed as if it required only one more attempt, and that not needing that the sultan should put forth all his strength, to secure its capture. The battle of Angora saved it and gave it half a century more of life.
A struggle which lasted for six years began between the sons of Bajazed. Suliman, in 1405, sought to ally himself with the emperor, and his proposals show how low the battle of Angora had brought the Turkish pretensions. He offered to cede Salonica and all country in the Balkan peninsula to the south-west of that city as well as the towns on the Marmora to Manuel and his son John, now associated as emperor, and to send his brother and sister as hostages to Constantinople. The arrangement was accepted.
Suliman, having thus made himself secure, attacked his brother Isa in 1405, defeated and killed him.124 Another brother, Mousa, in the following year, attacked the combined troops of Suliman and Manuel in Thrace, but the Serbians and Bulgarians deserted the younger brother, and thereupon Suliman occupied Adrianople. Manuel consented to give his granddaughter in marriage to Suliman, who in return gave up not merely Salonica but many seaports in Asia Minor: a gift which was rather in the nature of a promise than a delivery, since they were not in his possession. Unhappily, Suliman, like many of his race, had alternate fits of great energy and great lethargy, and was given over to drunkenness and to debauchery. This caused disaffection among the Turks; and Mousa, taking advantage of it, led an army in 1409, composed of Turks and Wallachs, against him. The Janissaries, who were dissatisfied with the lack of energy displayed by their sultan, deserted and went over to the side of Mousa. Suliman fled with the intention of escaping to Constantinople, but was captured while sleeping off a drinking bout and killed.
Then Mousa determined to attack Manuel, who had been faithful to his alliance with Suliman. He denounced him as the cause of the fall of Bajazed and set himself to arouse all the religious fanaticism possible against the Christian population under the emperor’s rule. According to Ducas, Mousa put forward the statements that it was the emperor who had invited Timour and his hordes, that his own brother Suliman had been punished by Allah because he had become a giaour, and that he, Mousa, had been entrusted with the sword of Mahomet in order to overthrow the infidel. He therefore called upon the faithful to go with him to recapture Salonica and the other Greek cities which had belonged to his father, and to change their churches into mosques for the worship of God and Mahomet.125
In 1412, he devastated Serbia for having supported his brother, and this in as brutal a manner as Timour had devastated the cities and countries in Asia Minor. Then he attacked Salonica. Orchan, the son of Suliman, aided the Christians in the defence of the city, which, however, was forced to surrender, and Orchan was blinded by his uncle.
While successful on land Mousa was defeated at sea, and the inhabitants of the capital, in 1411, saw the destruction of his fleet off the island of Plataea in the Marmora. In revenge for this defeat he laid siege to the city. Manuel and his subjects stoutly defended its landward walls, and before Mousa could capture it news came of the revolt of his younger brother, Mahomet, who appeared as the avenger of Suliman. The siege of Constantinople had to be raised. Mahomet had taken the lordship of the Turks in Caramania shortly after the defeat of his father at Angora, and had been unattacked by Timour. The emperor proposed an alliance with him, which was gladly accepted and the conditions agreed to were honourably kept by both parties. Mahomet came to Scutari where he had an interview with the emperor. An army formed of Turks and Greeks was led by Mahomet to attack his brother. But Mousa defeated him in two engagements. Then Manuel, after a short time, having been joined by a Serbian army, attempted battle against him, and with success. The Janissaries deserted Mousa and went over to Mahomet and Manuel, and his army was defeated. He was himself captured and by order of Mahomet was bowstrung.126
Mahomet was now the only survivor of the six sons of Bajazed, with the exception of Isa, the youngest, who was still living with Manuel as a hostage. Three of his brothers Sultan Mahomet the First, 1413–1420. had been the victims of fratricide. In 1413, Mahomet proclaimed himself Grand Sultan of the Ottomans.
He had been loyally aided by Manuel and the Serbians, and in return loyally respected the agreements he had made with both. He gave up, as we have seen, Salonica and the fortified towns on the Euxine, the Marmora and in Thessaly which had been taken from the Greeks.
In 1415, the Turks, who had remained nearly undisturbed on the western side of the Balkans, entered Bosnia. The inhabitants were mostly Bogomils, who had been constantly persecuted by their Catholic neighbours in order to force them to Union with the Church of Rome, were menaced, on account of their refusal, by the king of Hungary, and in reply threatened that they would coalesce with the Turks. Upon such an intimation, the Turks entered the country.127
The two rulers, Manuel and Mahomet, continued on friendly terms. It was probably due to the emperor’s influence that the sultan consented, in 1415, to allow the Knights of Rhodes to build a strong fortification on the boundaries of Caria and Lycia as a place of refuge for Christians who should escape from the hands of the Moslems. Ducas gives an account of the interview which took place between the grand master and Manuel and adds that the emperor went so far towards conciliating the Christians that he contented the rulers of Chios, Mitylene, and Phocaea. In returning from the Morea in 1416, Manuel met Mahomet at Gallipoli, the sultan going on board Manuel’s galley and eating with him.
Two years later, the good understanding between Mahomet and the emperor was interrupted by an incident which is creditable to Manuel. A Turkish pretender who claimed to be Mustafa, the elder brother of the sultan, who is supposed to have been killed at Angora, aided by a body of Wallachs, attempted to dethrone Mahomet. They were attacked and beaten back and then took refuge in Salonica. Manuel declined to give them up, but promised that he would prevent the pretender and the leader of the Wallachs from making further attacks upon Mahomet. To accomplish this, he sent the pretender Mustafa to the island of Lemnos and imprisoned the chief of the Wallachs in the monastery of Pammacaristos in Constantinople. But Mahomet would not be satisfied with any punishment less than the death of the pretender, and from this time ceased to trust Manuel. Nevertheless, when, in 1420, the sultan was in passage through Constantinople towards his Asiatic possessions, Manuel behaved loyally. All the members of his council, says Phrantzes,128 advised the emperor to seize him. Manuel refused and declared that, though the sultan might violate his oath of friendship, he would rather trust to God and respect his own. On Mahomet’s return to Europe through Gallipoli, the council again urged the emperor to capture him. Again, however, he refused, and sent a trusty Death of Mahomet. general to escort him from the Dardanelles to Adrianople. A short time after his arrival, in 1420, Mahomet died.
His death was kept secret for forty days, in order to give time for the arrival of his son, Murad, who was then at Reign of Murad, 1420–1451. Amasia. Murad was proclaimed at Brousa and began his reign by proposing to Manuel the renewal of the alliance which had existed with his father. We have already seen that this proposal was rejected, and that, after fruitless negotiations for the surrender of two of Murad’s sons, war was declared. The emperor thereupon sent to Mustafa the pretender, who still remained prisoner at Lemnos, and, giving him assistance, recognised or appointed him governor of Thrace and of all the places in that province held by the Turks which he could occupy. In return, Mustafa swore to deliver Gallipoli, which had been taken by the Turks in the reign of Bajazed, to the emperor as soon as he had captured it, as well as certain towns on the Black Sea. Mustafa succeeded for a while and with the aid of the imperial troops captured Gallipoli (1420). A number of its Turkish garrison joined his army. Manuel’s general now claimed the fulfilment of his promise to deliver this important town, but Mustafa stated what has often been advanced in our own time as a generally recognised rule in Islam, that a true believer could not surrender to unbelievers territory held by Moslems except by force, that his religion bound him to build a city on the ruins of the Christian city, and that he would rather break his oath than violate the duty imposed by his religion. It was in vain that the emperor’s representative reminded him of his past history: how he had sought refuge at Salonica, how the emperor had risked the anger of Mahomet by insisting upon his refusal to give him up; how at Lemnos he had still been protected. The pretender was obdurate.129
When Manuel heard of the bad faith of Mustafa, he endeavoured to re-establish the same friendly relation with Murad which had existed with his father. He offered to assist the sultan to recover all that his father possessed, provided he would send his sons to Constantinople. According to Phrantzes (who from this time takes an active part in many of the incidents he relates), the sultan was equally ready to be friendly, provided that no further aid should be given to Mustafa,130 but no understanding could be arrived at.
The perjured Mustafa was probably a very poor creature. He soon lost the confidence of his followers, and shut himself in Gallipoli, giving himself up to pleasures and paying little attention to the measures which Murad was taking against him. The latter passed over into Asia, made arrangements with the Genoese at Phocaea to send him a fleet and a number of Italian and French soldiers, and, when they arrived, crossed the Dardanelles from Lampsacus to Gallipoli.131
The troops who remained faithful to the pretender attempted to prevent the landing of Murad and his native and foreign troops, but failed. Thereupon Mustafa fled. Murad took possession of Gallipoli and then followed the pretender to Adrianople with all possible speed. Mustafa hastened towards Wallachia on the approach of the sultan. A band of young soldiers followed and captured him. He was brought before the sultan, condemned, and hanged like an ordinary malefactor.
Then the sultan thought himself strong enough to take up the task which Bajazed had undertaken when summoned by Timour. He decided at once to attempt the capture of Constantinople. He laid siege to it in the second week of June 1422 and ended in failure, as we have already seen, at the end of August in the same year.
One at least of the reasons why the siege in 1422 had been abandoned was a rising against Murad on behalf of his younger brother named Mustafa. One of his two brothers, had been strangled by his orders, but Mustafa was saved by Elias Pasha. Murad had ordered Elias to bring the boy to Brousa. Elias, however, succeeded in having him recognised in that city and at Nicaea as sultan. The rebellion, therefore, had assumed alarming proportions. Murad with a trusty band of followers went to Nicaea, gained access to the city, and the boy Mustafa, who was only six years old, was bowstrung, possibly without the consent of his brother. Then Murad in great haste crossed again to Europe,132 occupied Adrianople, and made it his European capital.
We have now arrived at the period when many of those who were destined to be great actors in the tragedy of the Moslem conquest of Constantinople appear on the scene. The young emperor John, who had become co-emperor with his father in 1420 and who now alone possessed power, owing to the debility of his father, went, in 1423, to Hungary to seek help against the common enemy. He left his brother Constantine, who was destined to be the last Christian emperor of the city, in charge of the capital with the title of Despot. A few months later, Phrantzes, the historian of the conquest, and Lucas Notaras, afterwards made Grand Duke, who also took a prominent part in the events of 1453, were sent by Constantine to Murad and arranged terms of peace, subject to ratification by John, when he returned from Hungary. The associated emperor came back by sea to his capital in October and terms of peace were ratified by which the empire had to pay a heavy tribute and to surrender many towns on the Black Sea.
In July 1425, Manuel died. He was seventy-seven years old and had reigned thirty-four years—or, counting the eighteen years when he was co-emperor with his father, fifty-two years. In his old age, he had become hopeless of saving the empire, or even the capital. He counselled John to make the best of the situation, to try to live on good terms with the sultan, and to be content to remain the vassal of Murad.
The Turks had now largely recovered from the disorganization produced by the invasion of Timour. Everywhere they were regaining territory, and their internal divisions were disappearing. Those occupying the south and south-west of Asia Minor were the first to recover from the blow of the Tartars. As early as 1415, Manuel had to resist them in the Morea. They had defeated the Venetians, had plundered Euboea and carried off thousands of Christian captives. Others had invaded Dalmatia and the Adriatic coast. Their numbers in Hungary and south Russia had been enormously increased by the conquests of Timour, the Turks of south Russia fleeing before his host. In 1419, the Hungarians had defeated an army of three hundred thousand who entered the great plain north of the Danube. Most of the Turks in Asia Minor, if not all willing subjects of Murad, still rendered him at the time of the death of Manuel, in 1425, a nominal submission. The prince of Caramania was, however, always a troublesome feudatory.
Murad’s reputation may be judged by the fact that in the year in which Manuel died he made a triumphal progress. Having traversed Thrace, he went to Brousa, to Pergamos, Magnesia, Smyrna, and Ephesus. While at the last-mentioned city, homage was done to him by the ambassadors of the emperor John, of Lazarus, king of Serbia, Dan, prince of the Wallachs, and the signors of Mitylene, Chios, and Rhodes. He was, in fact, the almost undisputed lord of Asia Minor and of all places in the Balkan peninsula, with the exception of a few fiefs in Greece, and of Constantinople, with a small territory behind it. With the exception of the Venetians and the Hungarians, he was at peace with all the world. But the Venetians were still holding their own. They had supported the insurrection in Caramania. Their fleet had been sent to prevent Murad from crossing into Asia, and they were masters of Salonica. But even in that city Murad had still a triumph to achieve. Pressed by famine when the inhabitants were besieged by the Turks, shortly before Murad’s siege of the capital, the population had offered the city to the Venetians, who gladly accepted it and sent a fleet to its relief. But the Turks had constantly claimed that they had been improperly deprived of their intended prey, and the answer given by Murad to proposals of peace made by the republic were: Surrender Salonica first. In 1428, Murad determined to fight for it. While he went south-west into Macedonia, the whole population, including the southern Serbs and southern Bulgarians, submitting to his rule, one of his leading generals laid siege to Salonica. Ducas says that the besiegers were a hundred to one, and there can be no doubt that there was a fatal discrepancy in numbers. On the arrival of Murad, the Janissaries were promised permission to pillage the city. In a general assault, they captured it without much difficulty, and the brutalities, the atrocities, the wanton and useless cruelties inflicted upon the population made a profound impression upon Western Christians. Probably they learned more of the nature of these cruelties, owing to the presence of Italians and the comparative proximity of Salonica to Western Europe, than ever before. But though women were violated, houses pillaged, churches profaned, and seven thousand of the captives sold into slavery, Europe did not yet understand that these were the ordinary incidents of Turkish conquest. Upon the capture of the city, in 1430, Murad and the Venetians made peace.133
Great efforts, however, were yet to be made to check the progress of Murad, and if in the course of his triumphal progress to Ephesus he was under the illusion that the European nations were content to allow Moslem invasion to remain unchecked, he was soon undeceived. Hungary, Serbia, and Poland now formed the great line of defence against a Turkish advance, and when, in 1428, the first two states were invaded by the Turks, it became evident to the West that Catholic as well as Orthodox nations would have to resist the progress of Turkish arms. Before the nations attacked were ready, Murad struck swiftly and heavily, and Sigismund, king of Hungary, not having received the aid he expected from Ladislaus, king of Poland, suffered a serious disaster on the Danube.