CHAPTER II

ORKHAN

A NEW NATION IS FORMED AND COMES INTO CONTACT WITH THE WESTERN WORLD

I

The greatest inheritance that a father can leave to his son is

uncompleted work, especially if the work present difficulties of a

formidable character, which must be met and overcome immediately. No man

is born great. No man has greatness thrust upon him. History recognizes

only the category of achievement. Facing an unfinished task is the best

spur.

Osman died at the moment of the surrender of Brusa. He left to Orkhan

the inheritance of Nicaea and Nicomedia unconquered; a state without

laws, coinage, and definite boundaries; a people just beginning to

awaken to a national consciousness; and hostile neighbours far more

powerful than himself.[90] Orkhan found himself without seaport, ships,

or sailors. His fighting men were regarded among his Turkish rivals as

poor material for an army.[91] Even the chieftainship of the Osmanlis

had not come to him by mere right of birth.[92] He had been chosen

because of his ability to lead and to attract men. Now that Brusa had

fallen into the hands of the Osmanlis, more was demanded in their emir

than personal charm and daring in battle. He must establish his right to

the chieftainship by making a viable state. This could be done only by

the addition of Nicaea and Nicomedia to his dominions, and by the

transformation of his followers into a nation.

Nowhere are the Ottoman historians more unsatisfactory than in their

accounts of the reign of Orkhan. They fail to describe--much less to

explain--the evolution of their race during these thirty-five years from

a heterogeneous band of adventurers into a nation. Several of the

Ottoman historians write so admirably of later periods that we must

attribute this failure as much to their lack of sources of information

as to their inability to measure up to the demands of the modern mind

which never asks how without adding why. The re-writing of history in

the twentieth century is not actuated by belief in superior ability. Our

new and wider point of view is gained from the advantage we have had in

securing and comparing sources which were inaccessible to those who have

gone before us. If, in this chapter, Byzantine sources are largely used,

it is because we are writing the history of a people who built their

nation directly upon the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, and because the

Byzantine sources are contemporary; while the earliest Ottoman

historians wrote more than a century later than this period.[93]

The reign of Orkhan is divided into two parts by the events of the year

1344. From 1326 to 1344 he was occupied in subduing the territory of

which he had been tentative master at the death of Osman, in forming

his nation, and in organizing his army. From 1344 until his death in

1360, his energies were bent chiefly upon getting a foothold in

Macedonia and Thrace.

II

The first task which imposed itself upon Orkhan was the subjection of

Nicaea and Nicomedia. Just as the walls of Brusa had defied him to the

end, those of Nicomedia and Nicaea were equally impregnable to the kind

of army he could assemble. Whether it was that neither Byzantine nor

Turk nor Slav nor Bulgarian were of the stock who would spend themselves

scaling walls and battering down gates, or that the weapons of those

days were more favourable for the purpose of defence than of assault,

cannot be determined. But the curious fact remains that during this

century there are few instances of cities taken by storm. Captures were

effected for the most part by capitulation or by treachery.

Complete investment and consequent threatened starvation did not occur

in the case of Brusa. Nor did Nicaea and Nicomedia surrender from

starvation. This is the place, rather than at the end of the last

chapter, to give two of the long list of reasons for surrender which

Neshri puts into the mouth of the commandant and the leading citizens of

Brusa.[94] For they state equally plainly and convincingly the case of

Nicaea and Nicomedia.

The economic reason was that the inhabitants saw the Osmanlis settling

themselves in all the country round about the three cities, and

undisturbed in their permanent occupation of these regions by any

aggressive movement from Constantinople. Nicomedia, although

advantageously located for commerce, was not a port of call on the great

trade route. It depended for its well-being upon an unrestricted

communication with the interior. Brusa and Nicaea were manufacturing

cities, whose prosperity was due to the use of raw materials produced in

the vicinity, and to the ability to market the manufactured products.

While food was still procurable, trade and business languished. When the

Greeks saw that the Osmanlis had come in their midst to remain, and were

not mere raiders like the Seljuk Turks, they realized that the

alternative to submission was ruin.

The moral reason I have already touched upon in relation to Brusa. If

there had been any hope of relief from the intolerable economic

conditions under which they were living, the Nicaeans and Nicomedians

might have resisted indefinitely, and maintained a gallant struggle for

love of God and country. Their successful resistance, continued through

many weary years, is a remarkable testimony to their religious zeal and

to their patriotism. It was not until they felt themselves deserted by

their brothers of blood and religion that they finally yielded. The

Osmanlis did not prevail over them in battle. Their walls were not

stormed. Their gates held fast. They were not starved out. They were

abandoned by the Byzantines. So they became Osmanlis.

III

To understand the how and why of the fall of these cities and of the

mingling of victor and vanquished in one race, we must review the

history of the Byzantines during the years immediately following the

death of Osman.

The loss of Brusa did not cause any cessation in the suicidal strife

between Andronicus and his grandson. After the brilliant marriage

festivities of which we have already spoken, young Andronicus took his

bride to Demotika, where, in the summer of 1327, he planned to surprise

and oust his grandfather.[95] He was not content to wait for the old

man’s death. Nor was he deterred from reopening the civil war by the

thought of the imminent danger of the Byzantine cities in Bithynia. Old

Andronicus, informed of his grandson’s intention, forbade his entrance

to the capital, and negotiated with the Serbians to attack him from the

rear.[96] This was a deliberate invitation to the Serbians, who were

rapidly becoming dangerous enemies of the Empire, to enter Byzantine

territory.

The appeal of young Andronicus to be allowed to come to Constantinople

to justify himself was answered by an imperial rescript ordering the

Patriarch to ‘strike out the rebel’s name from public prayers’. The

Patriarch refused.[97] More than that, His Holiness threatened to

unfrock any priest who would obey the imperial command. Old Andronicus

had the Patriarch deposed by a packed synod of his creatures, and thrown

into prison.[98]

War broke out. After an unsuccessful attempt to surprise

Constantinople,[99] young Andronicus besieged the army of his

grandfather and the Serbians in Serres. They did not care to risk a

battle, so he marched on Salonika, which he captured through the

connivance of its inhabitants.[100] Macedonia and Thrace, with the

exception of two or three fortresses, fell into his hands without a

struggle.[101]

Stephen, Kral of Serbia, now turned a deaf ear to the old emperor’s

reiterated appeals for further aid. In his desperation, old Andronicus

called in the Bulgarians, to whom he would have betrayed

Constantinople, had not young Andronicus appeared in time to anticipate

this culminating infamy of the older Palaeologos. A Venetian fleet,

which was besieging the city, retired, because its commander did not

want to appear to take sides either for or against the younger emperor.

Friends inside left a gate open. Young Andronicus entered and appeared

suddenly at the palace. The Patriarch was re-established. Old Andronicus

was deposed and imprisoned.[102]

The old man, after having become, as Gregoras charitably puts it, ‘blind

through tears’,[103] retired to a monastery, and died there in great

poverty.[104] Like many others of the Palaeologi, Andronicus II had no

redeeming trait of character, no single good deed to his credit.

Stranger to every natural affection, he died as he had lived, hating his

own flesh and blood, striving to ruin his country, mocking God by the

very monk’s garb that he wore.

The first care of young Andronicus, after ridding himself of his

grandfather and rival, was to march on Adrianople, where, according to

Cantacuzenos, he forced Michael Asan of Bulgaria to make peace by the

display of his ‘fine army’.[105] Either the Bulgarians were very weak at

this time, or the ‘fine army’ of Andronicus III melted away quickly. For

in the spring of the following year, 1329, Andronicus had to ‘gather

hastily’[106] an army, when for the first time he felt it his duty to go

to the aid of beleaguered Nicaea. He crossed the Bosphorus, and joined

the battle with the Osmanlis at Pelecanon, now Maltepé, on the north

shore of the gulf of Nicomedia, a few miles from Chalcedon, the modern

Haïdar Pasha.

The battle of Pelecanon is passed over in silence by the Ottoman

historians as too insignificant to mention. But it is of the utmost

importance in showing why the Nicaeans surrendered their city to Orkhan.

Cantacuzenos, who took part in this battle, gives a long story in which

the result of the battle he is compelled to record belies all that goes

before it. The Byzantines, according to Cantacuzenos, were eminently

successful in repelling the attacks of the Osmanlis. On all sides the

Greeks won, and killed hundreds of their opponents, while their own

losses were slight. After inflicting this defeat upon Orkhan, Andronicus

proposed, at nightfall, that the army withdraw to Constantinople! Some

of his ardent warriors continued, however, to engage the enemy.

Andronicus, surprised with only a few followers around him, was wounded,

and escaped capture only by a hasty retreat. He was carried in a litter

to Scutari, where he did not wait for news of his army. A caïque

conveyed him safely home. Thus the successors of the Caesars abandoned

Asia for ever.

Old Andronicus, in his hour of humiliation, did not hesitate to strike

one more blow against his country. Spies of his in the army spread the

rumour that the young emperor was dead. The imperial troops fled. They

abandoned all their baggage, and were massacred by the Osmanlis, who

hunted them down in the hills from which the fugitives could see the

dome of St. Sophia.[107]

When we contrast the long story of the civil war between Andronicus and

his grandfather, the armies gathered, the money expended, the energy

displayed with this one pitiful attempt to aid the three great cities

of Bithynia, there is no need for further speculation as to why these

cities fell into the hands of the Osmanlis. No wearers of the imperial

purple had ever made a more dismal showing: old Andronicus plotting to

demoralize the army of his country by false rumours, and young

Andronicus making such rumours possible by being the first to flee from

the field after receiving a slight wound. It is no wonder that

Cantacuzenos records that after this battle Nicaea fell into the hands

of the Osmanlis.[108] It is altogether natural, too, that the

inhabitants of Nicaea should refuse, as those of Brusa had done, to

profit by the terms of the capitulation, and leave for

Constantinople.[109] Their trades, silk-weaving and pottery, were

dependent upon local materials, which they could not get elsewhere.

There had been nothing to inspire in them that devotion to a faith which

made the Huguenots long afterwards leave all without hesitation after

the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Hadji Khalfa says that in the seventeenth century the walls of Nicaea

were entirely ruined.[110] The condition of these walls to-day (for they

have not been repaired in modern times) contradicts this statement. It

has been the claim of the Osmanlis that Nicaea was reduced by fighting.

If this were true the walls must have suffered. It is also the common

belief[111] that Nicaea, at the time of the Ottoman conquest, and for

some time after, was a prosperous city.[112] But Ibn Batutah, who

visited Nicaea within five or six years after its change of ownership,

wrote that its walls were intact, that the sole entrance to the city was

by a road built up like a bridge and so narrow that horsemen could not

pass on it, and that the walls were surrounded by a wide deep moat

filled with water. One had to reach the gate by a pont-levis, which was

in working order and used at the time of his visit. The city itself was

in ruins and occupied only by a small number of men in the service of

Orkhan. He was told that Orkhan had besieged the city ten years, and

Osman before him twenty years. As the famous traveller was an honoured

guest in the palace of Orkhan, where Orkhan’s wife was living at the

time, and where the emir himself came for a few days during the forty

days which Ibn Batutah spent in Nicaea, his testimony is certainly

worthy of credence.[113]

That Nicaea, while preserving its admirable fortifications, should have

decreased so rapidly in importance and population during the seventy

years between the return of the Byzantine emperors to Constantinople and

the Ottoman occupation, is explainable only by three suppositions: that

a majority of the inhabitants had died off, that they had emigrated, or

that they had gradually joined their fortunes with the people of Osman.

We find in Byzantine annals no record of a disastrous plague or of a

large emigration of potters and porcelain workers and weavers to the

capital or elsewhere from Nicaea. There was little fighting. The

Osmanlis had not yet learned to massacre. What are we to believe, then,

concerning the large population of this so recently flourishing city?

It is hardly a conjecture to affirm that the Nicaeans must have cast

their fortunes with that steadily growing band whose firm conviction,

forced upon them against their will and in violence to centuries-old

traditions and sentiments, was that the old structure of society could

not be repaired, and that there must be an entirely new building upon

the old foundation. This conviction did not come suddenly or to all at

once. It was a gradual dawning and awakening which caused the ranks of

the Osmanlis to become greater every year. Before the end of Orkhan’s

reign the nucleus of Asiatic adventurers which had gathered around Osman

in the little village of Sugut had grown to half a million. It could not

have been by natural increase. It could not have been by the flocking in

of nomads from the East. Orkhan was cut off from contact with the

Asiatic hinterland. His rivals of Karaman, Satalia, Aïdin, and Sarukhan

would have attracted adventurers from the outside before himself. Orkhan

formed his nation out of the elements on the ground. These were mostly

Greek. Nicaea is but an illustration of the way in which the new race

was born and the new nation formed.

This conviction that no good could come from Constantinople went farther

than a transference of allegiance from the Palaeologi to the family of

Osman. Mohammed was substituted for Christ. What a momentous

significance there is in the records of the Greek Orthodox Church that

in 1339 and again in 1340 the Patriarch sent an impassioned appeal to

the Nicaeans that they should not abjure the Christian faith![114] At

that very moment when the ecclesiastics of Constantinople were espousing

the rival claims of unworthy aspirants to the imperial purple and were

anathematizing each other in supporting trivial theological arguments,

Christians were adopting the new Credo: ‘I believe in one God, and

Mohammed is his prophet!’ in the city of the Nicene Creed.

We may place the surrender of Nicomedia in 1337 or 1338.[115] This was

the last Byzantine possession in the Ottoman corner of Asia Minor. The

fall of Aïdos and Semendria on the hills behind Scutari had opened the

way to the Bosphorus. Yalova, renowned for its baths, and Hereké, where

Constantine the Great died, gave the Osmanlis undisputed control of the

entrance to the Gulf of Nicomedia and secure possession of the city

where Diocletian had made a new capital for the Roman Empire.

IV

Orkhan had now accomplished the first part of the great task left

unfinished by Osman. But, before he could proceed to the establishment

of laws for his new state, it was necessary for him to consolidate and

strengthen his position in relation to his formidable neighbours.

Dangers threatened from the east and from the south. In 1327 Timurtash,

a son of Choban, who was Mongol governor of Rum, pushed his raids as far

as the Mediterranean, which the Mongol arms had not hitherto reached. He

fought in turn Greeks and Turks.[116] Fortunately for Orkhan, the emir

of Kermian, whose capital was Kutayia, had appeared so unpromising to

the eyes of Timurtash that the Mongols had not come northward. But they

were an ever imminent source of danger to the emirs of Asia Minor, and

to Orkhan among them, until 1335, when the death of Bahadur Khan, just

the year before the birth of Timur, caused the disintegration of the

Mongol power in western Asia.[117]

The Mongol menace had contributed to the undisturbed operations of

Orkhan against the Byzantines. Immediately upon its removal he was

threatened by the other Turkish emirs. It was a critical moment for

Orkhan, whose territories had not yet reached the proportions of a large

state, like those of Omar of Aïdin and Mohammed of Sarukhan. Singly they

might have crushed Orkhan. United they certainly would have done so. But

here again the Byzantines contributed to their own downfall.

In 1329, at Phocaea, Andronicus had conducted his first negotiations

with the emirs of Aïdin and Sarukhan.[118] This unsuccessful attempt to

embroil the Anatolian emirs with each other was a pitiful confession of

weakness on the part of Andronicus. It did no harm to Orkhan. But it

called the attention of these emirs to the impotence of Andronicus, and

led to a series of petty raids in Macedonia and Thrace. Emboldened by

the ease of initial successes, Mohammed of Sarukhan in 1333 led in

person an expedition of seventy-five ships against the Macedonian coast.

Andronicus was too weak to oppose his landing.[119] In the same year

Turkish pirates seized for a short time Rodosto, on the Sea of Marmora,

only a few hours’ sail from Constantinople.[120] The following year the

emperor was compelled to put an army in the field to save Salonika from

the Turks.[121]

These attentions from his proposed allies did not prevent Andronicus

from seeking aid in the same quarters in 1336 when he was besieging the

Genoese of Phocaea. Mohammed sent twenty-four ships, numerous troops,

and all the provisions necessary to sustain the imperial army. The net

gain to Andronicus from this expedition was the empty acknowledgement

from Cattaneo of Phocaea, who was not afraid of Andronicus but did not

want to be bothered by him and his Turkish allies, that he would hold as

a ‘fief of the empire’ what Andronicus, even with the help of the Turks,

could not take from him![122]

This momentary diversion of the attention and energies of his neighbours

was most propitious for Orkhan. Andronicus had rendered him good

service. It gave to Orkhan an opportunity of enlarging and rounding out

his dominions without incurring opposition that would not only have

prevented him from carrying out his schemes but might also have

destroyed him. Orkhan had been waiting for this moment. In 1333, the

Turcoman emir of Mysia had died. His younger son had taken refuge with

Orkhan, and promised in return for aid in dispossessing his brother to

surrender to the Osmanlis Balikesri and three other border cities.

Orkhan could not act immediately. He contented himself with advising the

elder brother to divide his dominions with Tursun. Tursun went to

negotiate in person, and was killed by his brother. This was shortly

before the expedition to Phocaea. Orkhan was now ready. He put in the

field an expedition, ostensibly to punish the assassination of his

protégé Tursun, and was so successful that he forced the emir of Karasi

to give up Pergamos and go into exile in Brusa.[123] In another

expedition, which probably occurred in

[Illustration: THE EMIRATES OF OSMAN AND ORKHAN]

1337 at the earliest,[124] Orkhan added Mikhalitsch, Ulubad, and

Kermasti to his dominions. He was now virtually master of Mysia.

This was the extent of Orkhan’s conquests in Asia Minor. It is necessary

to emphasize this point, owing to the erroneous idea which has so long

been accepted and which has found its way into many modern writers.[125]

No corroboration can be found for the statement of Cantacuzenos that

Soleiman captured Angora from the Tartars in 1354.[126] Aside from this,

neither Byzantines nor Osmanlis report any further conquests of Orkhan

in Asia Minor. From the fact that there is a complete silence as to

their fate, it is reasonable to suppose that the Osmanlis during the

last decade of Orkhan’s reign destroyed the independence of several

little states of which Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin report the existence

between 1334 and 1349.[127] But these were all in a general sense either

included in Mysia (Karasi) or in the territory which Orkhan is popularly

supposed to have inherited from Osman.[128]

After the Mysian expedition and the fall of Nicomedia, Orkhan may be

regarded as the acknowledged sovereign of a definite state. We have good

contemporary testimony to his character, his power and his reputation at

this period just before he became an active factor in deciding the

destinies of the Byzantine Empire.

Ibn Batutah calls him the ‘lord of Brusa, son of Osman the Little,

powerful and rich among the Turcoman kings, in treasures, cities and

soldiers’. He never ceased making the tour of the hundred castles he

possessed. In each of these he would pass several days to repair them

and inspect their situation. It was common report that he never spent a

whole month in a city, not even in Brusa. He was all the time fighting

and besieging the infidels. It was his indomitable energy which seems to

have impressed the traveller from Morocco. The absolute lack of

slothful, indifferent acquiescence in the will of God of these

latter-day Turkish converts was naturally a source of continual surprise

to this doctor of Islam, fresh from his observation of races who had

been for hundreds of years in the faith of Mohammed.[129]

Shehabeddin is less complimentary. He says: ‘Orkhan has under his

domination fifty cities and a still larger number of castles. His army

consists of 40,000 horsemen, and an almost innumerable host of

foot-soldiers. But these troops are not warlike, and their number is

more formidable in appearance than in reality. This prince shows himself

very pacific in regard to his neighbours, and always ready to help his

allies. However, he is engaged in continual wars and is always at odds

with many enemies. If he gains little from these struggles, it is

because his soldiers do not serve him well, his subjects are not well

disposed towards him, and several of his neighbours live in open

hostility to him. I am told that the Osmanlis are treacherous men, whose

hearts know only hatred and whose heads are filled with base

thoughts.’[130] In another place Shehabeddin records that Orkhan has in

the field 25,000 horsemen who are fighting daily the prince of

Constantinople. ‘The Greek emperor is eager to buy the goodwill of

Orkhan by paying him a monthly tribute.’ Orkhan sends expeditions into

Europe, ‘where waves of blood flow’.[131]

V

The first Ottoman legislation, and the organization of the army, is

attributed by tradition to Orkhan’s brother, Alaeddin, rather than to

the emir himself. The story goes that Alaeddin was a man of peace, and

did not engage in war.[132] He refused to accept the generous offer of

Orkhan to share the states of Osman, when their father died. Not only

would he not accept a division of the chieftainship, but he also refused

to share the personal possessions of Osman. Then Orkhan said, ‘Since you

will not rule, be my vizier, and bear the burdens of the organization of

the state.’ Thus was created the office of Grand Vizier, which has

played so important a part in Ottoman history.[133]

In the various lists, which were compiled at a much later date, Alaeddin

is given as the first Grand Vizier. That this office, in its accepted

form, was created during the reign of Orkhan is altogether improbable.

The story of the affectionate relationship between Orkhan and Alaeddin,

and the sharing of duties by them, is, like the story of Ertogrul’s

receiving the promise after reading the Koran, a reminiscence of

patriarchal days. The dream with its promise harks back to Jacob and the

ladder.[134] The relation between Orkhan and Alaeddin reminds one too

strongly of Moses and Aaron to be accepted without reserve. One has only

to turn to the twentieth Sura of the Koran to find the connexion and the

suggestion: ‘And Moses answered, Lord, give me a vizier of my family,

Aaron, my brother. Gird up my loins by him, and make him my colleague in

the business: that we may praise thee greatly, and remember thee often;

for thou regardest us.’[135]

What a contrast between this idyllic story of Orkhan and Alaeddin, and

the killing of Yakub by Bayezid on the battlefield of Kossova fifty

years later!

Alaeddin was also the first Osmanli to receive the title of pasha. He is

always spoken of as Alaeddin pasha. This same title was conferred on

Soleiman, the eldest son of Orkhan. The oldest son of Murad proving a

traitor, and there being no other son mature enough, Murad transferred

the title to Kara Khalil. This word, which came from the Persian, was

thus early deflected by the Ottoman sovereigns from its original

significance, the title of the eldest son of the ruler.[136] It soon

came to be bestowed upon high military and civil dignitaries. Similarly,

the rank of vizier passed immediately out of the imperial family.

That Alaeddin could have accomplished the work attributed to him by the

Ottoman historians, the making of laws and the organization of the army,

is impossible for three reasons. The time for this great work was too

short and not a propitious period: Alaeddin died seven years after his

father, in 1333,[137] before Orkhan was firmly established in his

sovereignty; the statement is incompatible with what we know of the

character of Orkhan; finally, the organization of the state and of the

army must have been the result of a slow development through many years,

and its perfection belongs to the middle or latter part of Orkhan’s

career, years after Alaeddin pasha’s death.

The whole scheme of an Islamic state is theocratic. Its laws, its

customs are founded directly upon the Koran and the interpretation of

the Koran by the early ‘fathers’ of Mohammedanism. There is no civil law

as distinct from ecclesiastical law.[138] The judges and the lawyers

belong to the clergy. Orkhan’s problem was exceedingly difficult.

Whether they were Turkish converts or Greek renegades, the Osmanlis were

all on common ground in their entire ignorance of the art of building a

Moslem state. It is idle to speculate upon the early legislation of the

Osmanlis, for there are no records. But it is probable that the Osmanlis

did not at this early time make any attempt to establish a body of laws

in conformity with the Koran. Where the _Sheri’at_ (the sacred law) was

understood, and where it was applicable to local conditions, it was

naturally used. But, side by side with the sacred Moslem law, existed

the old Byzantine code. This was used by the Osmanlis until they were

firmly seated in Constantinople. Only then did they acquire a complete

system of Moslem canon law. It is within the scope of a work covering a

later period than that included in this volume to point out the strong

Byzantine and moderate Turkish influences in the _Kanunnamé_ of Mohammed

the Conqueror.

VI

For dealing with Ottoman subjects and with those who might be conquered

in war, certain principles were, however, adopted by the Osmanlis in the

time of Orkhan. The foremost of these was complete religious toleration.

This made possible, to a large measure it explains, the development of

the Osmanlis into a powerful empire.

The propagation of Islam by the sword under the early Khalifs, the

sudden and unparalleled spread of the new religion from the Arabian

desert to Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain, until the hordes of the

invaders were stopped by Charles Martel at Tours, the terrible ravages

of the Moslem corsairs in the Mediterranean--here were the sources of

the deep impression of fanaticism and cruelty that the rise of Islam and

the followers of Mohammed had made upon an equally fanatical and cruel

Europe. That the recrudescence of the Islamic movement under the

Osmanlis was represented in the same colours by the early European

writers is explicable when we consider their lack of unbiased

information and their confusion of the Osmanlis with the Asiatic

conquerors, such as Attila and the Huns, Djenghiz Khan and the Mongols,

Timur and the Tartars. We must take into account, too, the fact that

these historians wrote at a time when the Osmanlis were beginning to be

perverted by fanatical Arab influences, and were a real menace to the

peace of Europe. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, ‘the

Turk’ was a monster of iniquity and cruelty, from whom even the distant

English in the security of their island home prayed to be

delivered.[139] The recent history of the Ottoman Empire has

unfortunately contributed much to keep alive this impression.

In spite of the accumulated evidence which on the surface points to a

contrary conclusion, the Osmanli is not and never has been a religious

fanatic like the Arab Moslem.[140] He is not by nature zealous or

enthusiastic, nor is he by nature cruel. Docile, tractable, gentle, in a

word, lovable--this is the verdict of the traveller who has had an

opportunity of knowing that portion of the Moslem population of the

Ottoman Empire which is popularly called Turkish. Other influences of

their religion than hatred for the Christian have prevented the Osmanlis

from winning and keeping a place among the civilized peoples of the

world. Whatever one may claim in abstract theory for the Koran and the

whole body of Moslem teaching, its practical concrete results have been

ignorance, stagnation, immorality, subserviency of womanhood,

indifference, paralysis of the will, absence of incentive to altruism.

These are the causes of the irremediable decay of every Mohammedan

empire, of every Mohammedan people.

The government and the ruling classes of the Ottoman Empire are

negatively rather than positively evil. There is nothing inherently bad

about the Osmanli. He is inert, and has thus failed to reach the

standards set by the progress of civilization. He lacks ideals, and has

thus shocked the enlightened conscience of the modern world. By the law

of the survival of the fittest, he has been cast aside.

But when we compare the early Osmanlis with the Byzantines and with the

other elements in the Balkan peninsula, it is the Osmanlis who must be

pronounced the fittest. They were fresh, enthusiastic, uncontaminated,

energetic. They had ideals: they had a goal. As it is with the

individual, so it is with the nation. Ideals are lost when the goal is

reached. Decay sets in when the struggle for existence ceases.

Pressed on the one side by his Turkish neighbours and on the other by

the danger of including in his dominions a large and unassimilated mass

of Christians, Orkhan was wise enough to desist from any attempt at

forcible conversion. But some _modus vivendi_ had to be arranged. A mere

raider would have massacred and destroyed, and the empire he built

would not have outlived the century of its birth. Orkhan was neither

raider nor invader. He lived in the country of his father and of his

grandfather. Many of his lieutenants--certainly his ablest

ones[141]--were descendants of the oldest stock in Asia Minor. His

nation, if it was to be a nation, depended upon at least a partial

assimilation of the Byzantines. As his dominions increased, it became

clear that there had to be some distinction between Moslem and Christian

other than a profession of faith. He must devise some reward, which

would be so attractive that the Christians, especially the higher

classes among them, would change their faith in order to secure its

benefits. This was the problem.

Orkhan solved this problem by establishing a system of rewards for

military service, and then by restricting military service to Moslems.

He divided the land he had conquered among his faithful warriors, and

let it be known that in future conquests a large portion of the

territory won, outside of the cities, would be bestowed upon soldiers

who took part in his campaigns. These lands were to be held as military

fiefs. The only obligation was that of military service, which could be

performed either by actually putting into the field a number of men in

proportion to the land held or by paying a sum sufficient to replace the

quota by hired troops. So far this was but an adaptation of the European

feudal system. But it was superior to the European system in that the

holdings were small and that there was through two centuries an

ever-present opportunity of winning new holdings.

Except in Albania and Bosnia, where the old nobility were to preserve

their lands by conversion to Islam, there were no local traditions to

prevent such a scheme by necessitating the dispossession of former great

landowners. The Seljuks, the Crusaders, and the Mongols in Asia Minor,

the Catalans, the Bulgarians, the Serbians and the civil wars between

the emperors in Macedonia and Thrace, the hangers-on of the Fourth

Crusade in Thessaly, Greece, and the Aegaean Islands, had made so clean

a sweep of the old aristocracy, attached to the soil, that Orkhan’s idea

was feasible. Through these small holdings and through the rapid

increase of conquered territory, the Ottoman sultans were able, almost

from the beginning, to exercise an absolute sovereignty over their

expanding dominions, and to prevent the rise of a class of nobles. The

Ottoman Empire has never known an hereditary nobility. In the later

conquests, the Sublime Porte sometimes granted life rights of

governorship, with a tacit understanding that the succession should go

to the son, to local chieftains or to large landowners. But these

concessions were in regions never fully conquered, and remote from

Constantinople. Those to whom these privileges were given had no part in

the central government and no rank outside of their immediate locality.

In place of military service, every adult Christian paid a special

head-tax, to be used for the support of the army. The Christian was

exempt from military service; the Mussulman was exempt from taxes.[142]

This head-tax was heavy, and so gauged as to keep the Christian, unless

he lived in a city, in economic dependence upon the Moslem landowner. As

a general rule, during the first century and a half of Ottoman conquest,

those who held to the old faith went to the cities and large towns. The

Moslem thus became, without any attempt at forcible conversion or need

to massacre, the undisputed possessor of the country districts.

Aside from the onerous head-tax, there were grave inequalities for the

Christian in matters of law and in intermarriage. After the fall of

Constantinople, Mohammed the Conqueror gave the Christians a large

measure of self-government by putting them in _millets_ (nations) under

the headship of the ecclesiastical authorities. But the inequality in

the matter of intermarriage has never been done away with. A Moslem may

marry a Christian woman, but a Christian is forbidden to marry a

Mohammedan woman. In the earliest days, when there was neither racial

nor religious antipathy and Christian and Moslem lived in close social

intercourse, this law was a powerful proselytizing agency. It furnished

a temptation to a change of faith which, whenever it arose, was far

stronger than the temptation of lands, of power, of economic

independence, or of civil equality.

The moment one professed Islam he became an Osmanli. Religion has always

been the test of nationality in the Ottoman Empire.[143] The Osmanlis

increased from the thousands to the millions, in Macedonia, in Thrace,

and in Asia Minor. Ancestry was quickly forgotten in the midst of

ever-changing conditions and the founding of a new social order. It is

still a characteristic of the Osmanli that he has no surname. The most

widely-read English writer of the seventeenth century on the ‘Turks’

emphasized the mixture of blood in the Osmanli, when he wrote: ‘At

present the blood of the Turks is so mixed with that of all sorts of

Languages and Nations, that none of them can derive his Lineage from

the ancient blood of the Saracens.’[144]

A majority of the Byzantines whom Orkhan, Murad, and Bayezid conquered

must have become Osmanlis. Once the change of religion was made, the

development of the new race was not difficult. There was much in common

between the Turk of Asia Minor and the Byzantine. An Armenian

contemporary wrote of them as if they were alike.[145] The Greeks did

not take to heart the new régime,[146] for the fiscal evils of the

Byzantine system reconciled them in advance to a change. Nothing could

be worse than that which they had suffered.[147]

Of course, the love of woman, the desire for adventure, hope of economic

independence through rewards of land and removal of onerous taxes,

disgust with the Byzantine administration and with the lack of support

from their rulers and ecclesiastical authorities--these influences did

not cause the conversion of all the Christians. In the cities, where the

inequality and the inconvenience of remaining true to the old faith was

minimized, and where Christianity has always been able to make itself

felt and heard,[148] there was no great temptation to a change of

religion. After the Osmanlis became stronger, and entered into the

aggressive period of conquest, they resorted to other means to swell

their numbers. The institution of the Janissaries, and the permission to

enslave those whom they conquered, gave the Osmanlis more potent and

immediately pressing arguments.

From the completion of the conquest of Bithynia by Orkhan, the Osmanlis

can be called a distinct race with a national consciousness and a desire

for expansion. They can be distinguished from the Turks of the emirates

of Asia Minor and from the Byzantines. The Turk did not absorb the

Greek, nor did the Greek absorb the Turk. Both had taken a new religion,

and if the Turkish language was adopted, it was rather the customs and

laws of the Byzantines which prevailed until the influence of the Arabs,

enhanced as it was with the prestige of centuries of Islam, gained the

ascendancy over Turkish and Byzantine tradition alike. But this did not

occur until the Osmanlis invaded Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia at the

beginning of the sixteenth century.

It must be remembered that the Greeks were not the only element added to

the Turkish stock. The adoption of the Turkish language by the Osmanlis

was due not only to the fact that from the beginning it was the military

and governmental language, but to its being the simplest and most

vigorous medium of communication for the different peoples who became

Osmanlis.

Calling the Osmanlis Turks, and regarding them as invaders upon the soil

of Europe, is an historical error which has persisted so long that the

Osmanlis themselves have fallen into it! They have always distinguished

themselves from the Turks. This is proved by their own use of that word

to describe a people as different from themselves as were the Greeks.

Evliya effendi spoke of the ‘harsh language of the Turks’, and said of

Turbeli Koïlik, which was conquered by Osman in 1312, ‘Though its

inhabitants are Turks, it is a sweet town.’[149] Hadji Khalfa regarded

the Turks as synonymous with the Tartars, and an altogether foreign

race.[150]

Whether their tolerance was actuated by policy, by genuine kindly

feeling, or by indifference,[151] the fact cannot be gainsaid that the

Osmanlis were the first nation in modern history to lay down the

principle of religious freedom as the corner-stone in the building up of

their nation. During the centuries that bear the stain of unremitting

persecution of the Jew and the responsibility for official support of

the Inquisition, Christian and Moslem lived together in harmony under

the rule of the Osmanlis. This was generally, though not universally,

the case throughout the fourteenth century in the Turkish emirates of

Asia Minor.[152]

VII

The army of Osman consisted entirely of volunteer horsemen, who were

called _akindjis_. They wore no specified uniform. But they were superb

riders and moved together ‘like a wall’--an expression that has come

down to the present day in Ottoman military drills.[153] When Osman

planned a campaign, he sent criers into the villages to proclaim that

‘whoever wanted to fight’ should be at a certain place on a certain day.

Orkhan was the organizer of the Ottoman army. He and his successor

Murad laid the foundations of a military power which was without rival

for two centuries. Although there is no ground for the claim of many

historians that the Osmanlis were a hundred years ahead of Europe in

organizing a standing army,[154] they were certainly pioneers in the

complete organization of an army on a permanent war footing. Orkhan

understood well the principle _qui se laisse payer se laisse commander_

thirty years before Charles V of France.

His irregular infantry (_azabs_) were placed in the front when battle

was engaged.[155] It made little difference how many of these were

killed, or whether they made a good show. They served to draw the first

fire of the enemy. When the enemy’s energy was exhausted or when he was

led to pursue the fleeing azabs, thinking the victory his, he came upon

the second line, which consisted of paid, disciplined troops. These were

accustomed to fighting together, were acquainted with their leaders’

commands and strategy, and had a tremendous advantage over the usual

mercenaries of the period in that they served a cause to which their

lives were devoted and a sovereign whose interests were identical with

their own. Whether this were due to training begun in the days of

adolescence, or to the knowledge that bravery would be rewarded not by

booty alone (always an uncertain quantity which the ordinary mercenary

invariably begins to think of securing before his fighting work is

really accomplished), but by promotion in the service and substantial

gifts of land, the result was the same.

The corps of salaried soldiers were called Kapu-Kali Odjaks, and their

service was centred in the person of their sovereign. They were supposed

to be continually ‘at the door of the Sultan’s tent’. The Sultan paid

them regularly and personally. They served him regularly and personally.

When they went into the field with a commander other than the Sultan,

the commander was regarded, during the term of his commission, as in the

place of the Sultan.[156] There came to be seven of these _odjaks_: the

_janissaries_, the _adjami-oghlular_ (novices), the _topjis_

(field-artillerymen), the _djebedjis_ (smiths), the _toparabadjis_

(artillery and munition drivers), the _khumbaradjis_

(siege-artillerymen), and the _sakkas_ (water-carriers).[157] It is

impossible to state just when these distinctive corps arose, but they

are the logical development of Orkhan’s _Eulufeli_, the year-in and

year-out soldiery who followed arms as a definite profession and enjoyed

a regular salary fixed by law.

The _akindjis_, cavalry scouts and yet more than that, served as an

advance-guard, and opened up the country to be conquered. The greatest

dangers and the richest rewards fell to them. They were recruited from

among the holders of military fiefs (_timarets_). Guides (tchaousches)

and regular paid corps of cavalry (_spahis_) completed the organization.

It may be that Orkhan had learned a valuable lesson from his observation

of the Catalans and of the early Turkish invaders in Europe. For he

arranged his organization in such a way that the army would depend

directly upon him, and not upon subordinates who might be led to put

their personal interests above those of their chief. With the exception

of the _akindjis_, whose loyalty was secured by their fiefs, there were

no irregular bands raised and led by adventurers. Unity was the first

striking characteristic of the Ottoman army.

The second characteristic was readiness. We have already seen how

Andronicus III ‘gathered in haste’ the army which he tried to oppose to

the Osmanlis. Lack of time for preparation is the excuse for many a

Byzantine disaster. An early and competent traveller wrote that the

Osmanlis knew beforehand just when the Christian armies were coming and

where they could be met to the best advantage. For they were always on a

war footing, and their _tchaousches_ and spies knew how and where to

lead. ‘They can start suddenly, and a hundred Christian soldiers would

make more noise than ten thousand Osmanlis. When the drum is sounded

they put themselves immediately in march, never breaking step, never

stopping till the word is given. Lightly armed, in one night they travel

as far as their Christian adversaries in three days.’[158]

VIII

The fall of Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia did not cause alarm in Europe.

The rise of the Osmanlis had scarcely been noticed, even by the

Byzantines! The Turkish pirates in the Aegaean, who had no connexion

whatever with the Osmanlis,[159] were becoming, however, a menace to the

commerce of the Venetians and Genoese and to the sovereignty of the

remaining Latin princes of Achaia and of the islands. In one of Marino

Sanudo’s letters we find the following significant passage: ‘Marco

Gradenigo, writing to me from Negropont (Euboea) on September

eighteenth, 1328, declares that unless some remedy be found against the

Turks, who have marvellously increased in numbers, Negropont and all

the islands of the Archipelago will be infallibly lost.’[160]

In 1327 Andronicus II wrote to Pope John XXII, calling his attention to

the Turks as a danger to Christendom, and appealing for aid.[161]

Nothing was done at this time. The Byzantines were schismatics, and

France at least was more intent upon a recovery of the Holy Land than

upon checking the advance of the Moslem corsairs.[162]

Andronicus III, in 1333, followed the example of his grandfather by

making another overture to John XXII. He did not scruple to dangle

before the Pope the bait of a reunion of the Churches.[163] The same

year Venice urged Cyprus and Rhodes to join in a coalition against the

Turks.[164] The only practical outcome of the efforts of the popes, the

Venetian senate, and the Byzantine emperors to raise a crusade during

the reign of Orkhan was the capture of Smyrna, in October 1344. Omar

bey, emir of Aïdin, had been caught napping.[165] Smyrna remained in

possession of the Knights of Rhodes until it was taken by Timur in

1403.[166]

The futile agitation in Europe against the reawakening of Islam did not

in any way hurt Orkhan. On the contrary it helped him greatly. Just as

the petty conflict of Andronicus III with Phocaea in 1336 had diverted

Orkhan’s powerful southern neighbours, this interference of the Pope,

and the activity of Rhodes and Venice, contributed to the prosperity and

growth of the Osmanlis by striking a blow at his most dangerous rivals,

the Emirs of Sarukhan, Aïdin, and Hamid. After 1340 Orkhan was ready to

extend his dominion into Europe. He did not have long to wait.

IX

Orkhan had one rival whose goal was similar to his own. Stephen Dushan,

kral of Serbia, was openly aspiring to the imperial throne. Byzantium

had no more formidable enemy than this warrior king, who in twenty-five

years led thirteen campaigns against the Greeks.[167] The memory of his

ephemeral empire has been cherished by the Serbians to this day. In

their folk-lore Stephen Dushan and his deeds are immortalized. The halo

of romance still surrounds the man and his conquests. It is in vain that

historical science has demonstrated the purely temporary character of

Stephen’s conquests. It is in vain that he has been divested of the

glamour of the chronicles and songs, and pictured in conformity with

fact. To the Serbian peasant he is Saint Stephen, the glorious Czar, who

brought the Serbian Empire to its zenith. All the cities in which this

adventurer and raider set foot are claimed in the twentieth century as a

legitimate part of ‘Greater Serbia’. Men have engaged in a bloody war

and have died for this fiction.[168]

Stephen Dushan demands our attention because he is the one man who could

have anticipated the Osmanlis in winning the inheritance of the Caesars.

A statement of his career is necessary before we take up the narration

of the events which led to the invasion of the Balkan peninsula by the

Osmanlis.

Stephen came into prominence in 1330 during the war which his father,

Urosh, made upon Bulgaria. Czar Michael had repudiated the Serbian

princess Anna in order to marry a sister of Andronicus III. The

Bulgarians were badly beaten. Stephen received for his brilliant part in

the campaign the province of Zenta. Although he was only twenty-three,

his ambition to rule was already awakened. Dissatisfied, he demanded a

half of his father’s possessions. Urosh refused. Stephen marched against

him, dethroned him, and imprisoned him. According to some authorities,

he had Urosh killed.[169] Whether he actually ordered the assassination

or not, he profited by the crime.

During the first decade of his reign, Stephen gathered a majority of the

Serbian-speaking peoples under his rule, pushed down to the Dalmatian

coast, and asserted Serbian supremacy over a large portion of the

territory which his race had hitherto contested with the Bulgarians. His

appearance on the Adriatic led to a nominal alliance with Venice.[170]

In 1340 he began the invasion of lower Macedonia. When the valley of the

Vardar was conquered, he attacked Serres. This city fell into his

possession. He now considered himself ready for the advance on

Constantinople. Drunk with success, he crowned himself at Serres[171]

‘King by the grace of God of Serbia, of Albania, and of the maritime

region, prince of the Bulgarian empire, and master of almost all the

Roman empire’.[172] A few months later he changed the title to ‘emperor

and autocrat of Serbia and Romania’.[173]

The relations between Stephen and Venice during the period between 1345

and 1350 show how easily an alliance between the Serbians and the

Venetians might have been concluded. It was a critical time for Orkhan.

Had Stephen Dushan, with the help of the Venetians, attacked

Constantinople before 1350, the Osmanlis would have lost their goal.

After his coronation, the ‘Roman emperor’ sent an embassy to Venice to

secure the Senate’s aid for the definite purpose of acquiring

Constantinople.[174] In 1347 the Senate, in response to a second

overture, congratulated Stephen on having been crowned ‘emperor of

Constantinople’, but regretted the impossibility of aiding him. There

was a truce between Venice and the Byzantine Empire, and they were at

that moment engaged in a war with Zara.[175] However, like typical

merchants, they consented to sell arms to Stephen.[176]

In January 1348 the Senate congratulated Stephen upon his exploits,[177]

and later in the same year granted him three, then four, galleys.[178]

This seems to be the extent of the help rendered by Venice to Stephen

Dushan. The success of Stephen in subjugating Thessaly, and his progress

farther south until, in 1349, the Serbian flags waved on the mainland

opposite the Venetian castle of Ptelion in Euboea, alarmed the

Venetians. The Senate complained of the piracy of the Serbians in the

Aegaean, and tried to re-establish peace between Serbians and

Greeks.[179] Stephen became more insistent and the Senate more

reluctant. On April 13, 1350, the Senate considered several demands made

upon them by an envoy of ‘Stephen Dushan, emperor of Serbia and Romania,

despot of Arta and count of Wallachia’. Among them were Venetian

citizenship for himself, his wife and his son, a conference with the

Doge at Ragusa, and substantial aid for the attack upon Constantinople,

‘when he shall have conquered the ten parts of Romania outside of

Constantinople.’[180] The chart of citizenship was accorded. But he was

informed that the Doge never left Venice during his tenure of office,

and that there was a treaty of friendship with the Byzantines which

prevented Venice from joining in an attempt to capture the imperial

city.[181]

Convinced that he could expect no substantial assistance from Venice,

Stephen planned to work the old trick of the Byzantine emperors. The

Serbians were already excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church.

Stephen negotiated with the Pope for the return of the Serbians into the

Roman fold.[182]

When war arose between Venice and Genoa, Stephen sent envoys to Orkhan

to propose a union of the Serbian and Ottoman armies for a campaign

against Constantinople. The marriage of his daughter to Orkhan’s son

was to seal the alliance. Orkhan accepted this proposal. An embassy was

immediately sent to Stephen to arrange the details of the alliance. But

Cantacuzenos determined to prevent this change of Orkhan’s allegiance by

a most drastic measure. He did not fear the anger of Orkhan as greatly

as he feared a union between Orkhan and Dushan. The Ottoman envoys were

ambushed. Some were killed. Those who escaped, together with the

presents destined for Stephen, were taken to Demotika.[183]

Neither Stephen nor Orkhan tried to reopen the negotiations. They

realized that their ambitions were too nearly identical to permit a

harmonious agreement as to a division of the spoils. Macedonia was as

hard to divide in the fourteenth century as it is in the twentieth.

After 1351 Stephen watched to see what effect the war between Venice and

Genoa was going to have upon his fortunes. He also intrigued, as Orkhan

was doing, in the civil war of the Byzantines. These were his Capuan

days. They were fatal to the fame of Stephen--outside of the Serbian

folk-lore! The first expedition of Orkhan’s son Soleiman, in 1353, so

alarmed Stephen that he tried to become reconciled to the Orthodox

Church. He sent an embassy to Constantinople, but the patriarch refused

his blessing until Stephen had renounced the title of emperor and his

conquests east of the Vardar.[184] Stephen could not do this. Nor could

he wait longer. If he did not strike quickly, the Osmanlis would be in

his path. He took what was now a gambler’s chance. With eighty thousand

men he started for Constantinople. Death claimed him on the second day

of the march.[185] The Serbian Empire did not outlive its founder.

X

The public life of John Cantacuzenos was contemporary almost to the year

with that of Stephen Dushan. He was associated with Andronicus III in

the capacity of grand chancellor and confidential adviser throughout the

decade which saw the loss of Nicaea and Nicomedia. Shortly after he had

succeeded in deposing his grandfather, Andronicus III was taken with a

violent fever. His crime-stained mind could not rid itself of the idea

that he was going to die, even after he had become convalescent. He

solicited Cantacuzenos to assume the imperial purple. He wanted to

abdicate and take monk’s orders. A drink from a miraculous spring gave

him a new grip on life.[186] For eleven years he lived on, in every

crisis irresolute, in every disaster unkingly, bending always before the

stronger will of Cantacuzenos. In 1341, at the early age of forty-five,

his worthless life ended. His legacy to the Empress Anna and his child

heir was the guardianship of his ‘friend and counsellor, John

Cantacuzenos’. The grand chancellor accepted the regency with

alacrity.[187]

Three months after the death of Andronicus III, Cantacuzenos crowned

himself emperor at Demotika. He put the imperial crown also upon the

head of his wife Irene, a Bulgarian princess. Neither in Constantinople

nor in Adrianople were the pretensions of Cantacuzenos admitted. The

widow of Andronicus, Anna of Savoy, refused to acknowledge the usurper.

In Adrianople the inhabitants called in both Bulgarians and Turks to

defend them against Cantacuzenos.[188] The Bulgarian Czar took sides

secretly against his son-in-law.

The year 1342 saw the Byzantines engaged in another terrible civil war.

The self-appointed emperor did not hesitate to go to Pristina and offer

to Stephen Dushan Macedonia as far as Serres in exchange for Serbian aid

against the Palaeologi.[189]

When the Serbian assistance proved unsatisfactory, Cantacuzenos called

in the Turks of Aïdin. Omar, with 83 ships and 29,000 soldiers, came to

his aid, but, because of the severe cold, returned to Asia before

anything could be accomplished.[190] He came back in the spring of 1343

with 290 vessels and helped Cantacuzenos to enter Salonika. In the fall

of this year Cantacuzenos led his Turkish mercenaries into Thrace. Anna

appealed in vain to Venice to exercise a pressure upon the Turks and

Serbians, so that they would no longer support her rival.[191] In

desperation she gave Alexander of Bulgaria nine strongholds in the

Rhodope Mountains in exchange for a few thousand soldiers. She resorted

also to bribing the Turks in Cantacuzenos’s service, and made overtures

to Orkhan.

The crusade of 1344 against the Turks of Aïdin, which resulted in the

capture of Smyrna, prevented Cantacuzenos from continuing to receive

substantial aid from Omar, who died four years later in an attempt to

win back Smyrna.[192] Stephen Dushan, as we have already seen, was

laying claim to the Byzantine throne himself. Cantacuzenos could turn

only to the Osmanlis.

It was in January 1345 that Cantacuzenos made his infamous proposal to

Orkhan. In exchange for six thousand soldiers he was to give his

daughter Theodora to the Ottoman emir.[193] Orkhan now turned a deaf ear

to the appeals of Anna. This was a better offer. The Osmanlis crossed

into Europe. With their help Cantacuzenos got possession of all the

coast cities of the Black Sea except Sozopolis, besieged Constantinople,

ravaged the neighbourhood of the capital, and won Adrianople.[194]

It was only by threatening to change to the side of the Palaeologi that

Orkhan secured the fulfilment of the bargain. In May 1346 Theodora

became his bride.[195] A few days later, while Cantacuzenos was

besieging the capital with the soldiers for whom he had paid so dearly,

the beleaguered city was awakened by an ominous event. The eastern

portion of the Church of St. Sophia had fallen.[196]

Throughout the year 1346 Constantinople was invested by Cantacuzenos and

his mercenaries. The aristocratic party was almost openly championing

the cause of the usurper, while Anna relied upon the democratic party

and the Genoese. As for the clergy, they and the bulk of the population

were more interested in the ecclesiastical trial of Barlaam for the

Bogomile heresy[197] than in the civil war. In February 1347, while the

Synod was in the act of condemning Barlaam, and Anna was confined to her

bed with a serious illness, partisans of Cantacuzenos left the Golden

Gate open. The ‘faithful friend and counsellor’ of Andronicus III

entered without opposition. The garrison had been bribed, and prevented

the Genoese from coming to the rescue of the empress. She yielded only

when the palace of the Blachernae was attacked.

Anna agreed to recognize Cantacuzenos and Irene as co-rulers, and to a

union of the families by the betrothal of Helen, daughter of

Cantacuzenos, to the young John Palaeologos. John, who was fifteen,

protested against marrying the thirteen-year-old Helen. His mother

overruled his objections. In May the marriage took place in the church

of the Blachernae, as St. Sophia was still in ruins. This ceremony was

followed by the coronation of the two emperors, John Cantacuzenos and

John Palaeologos, and the three empresses, Anna, Irene, and Helen.[198]

Five rulers for the remnant of the Byzantine Empire! At that very moment

in France, the Marquis de Montferrat, heir to the Latin emperors of

Constantinople, was planning with the Pope to drive out both

Cantacuzenos and Palaeologos.[199]

Orkhan was well satisfied with this entering wedge. He was now

son-in-law of one emperor and brother-in-law of the other. His wife

Theodora was granddaughter of the Bulgarian Czar. He had open to him

also a marriage alliance with Stephen Dushan. The gods were first making

mad.

Cantacuzenos was compelled immediately to seek aid again of Orkhan.

While he had been expending his energies against Constantinople, Stephen

Dushan had made great strides in Macedonia. At Scutari, where Orkhan had

come to congratulate his father-in-law upon the happy issue of the

struggle for the imperial purple, Cantacuzenos asked for six thousand

Osmanlis to dislodge the Serbians from the coast cities of Macedonia.

Orkhan sent the soldiers willingly. He must, however, have given them

secret instructions, for after having taken immense booty they returned

to Nicomedia without having captured for Cantacuzenos a single one of

the cities held by Stephen.[200]

XI

It is impossible to believe that Cantacuzenos from this time onwards did

not realize the danger to which he had exposed the state and the noose

into which he had put his neck. The papal archives and the writings of

Cantacuzenos himself reveal the fact that as early as 1347 Cantacuzenos

had appealed to the Pope to unite the western princes in a crusade

against the Osmanlis,[201] that these negotiations were renewed in

1349[202] and 1350,[203] and that in 1353 a last definite appeal was

made to Clement by Cantacuzenos for relief against those whom he had

invited into Europe to fight his battles.[204]

The five years between 1348 and 1353 gave rise to three events which

were fatal to the Byzantine Empire. They made possible the permanent

foothold of the Osmanlis in Europe. A man’s own efforts and a man’s

ability are not the sole factors in his success. Work and genius avail

nothing where opportunity is lacking. Circumstances over which he has no

control contribute largely to the making of a man. Orkhan, at this

culminating stage of his career, when he was ready to lead his people

into the promised land, was aided by the ‘black death’, the war between

Venice and Genoa, and the conflict between John Cantacuzenos and John

Palaeologos.

The ‘black death’ was first heard of in the Euxine ports. It reached

Constantinople in 1347, and spread to Europe the following year. In

Italy it was universal, and lasted three years. From 15 to 20 per cent.

of the total population died.[205] In the maritime cities that had been

in close contact with the East, the duration of the epidemic was longer

and the mortality higher. The moral and economic effect was great

throughout Europe. Men looked with horror upon this inexplicable malady,

which struck down every fifth person. It gave no warning. There were few

recoveries. For years after the last case was recorded there was nervous

fear of its return. Communications with the Levant had been partially

cut off.[206] Full intercourse was not resumed until after Orkhan and

the Osmanlis were rooted in Macedonia and Thrace. Orkhan had no crusade

to fear as long as there lingered in the minds of the European peoples

the memory of this scourge. The bravest and most adventurous were

unwilling to fight the angel of death.

Plagues continued to visit the coast cities of the Balkan peninsula and

Asia Minor from time to time during the rest of the fourteenth and the

first thirty years of the fifteenth century. Between 1348 and 1431, nine

great plagues are recorded.[207] These dates coincide with the most

aggressive period of Ottoman conquest. As the city population was very

largely Greek and Christian, we cannot over-estimate the importance of

these epidemics. They were a valuable auxiliary in enabling the Osmanlis

to advance and assimilate without formidable opposition.

The ‘black death’ had hardly run its course in Italy when the commercial

rivalries of Genoa and Venice culminated in a bitter war, that lasted

for two years, with varying fortunes, until the battle of Lojera in 1353

broke the sea-power of Genoa. After five centuries of independence the

Genoese were compelled to put themselves under the protection of Milan.

The hatred engendered by this struggle is revealed in the archives of

the two republics. They left unturned no stone to destroy each other.

The history of Venice and Genoa during the fourteenth century reads like

that of Sparta and Athens. The scene of the conflict is the same: the

motive, the spirit, and the result are identical. Venice gained no

material advantage from the war. She had long been alive to the menace

of the Osmanlis.[208] She had been warned by Petrarch of the certain

danger which a war with Genoa would entail, whether its outcome were

favourable or unfavourable.[209]

The Ottoman and Byzantine historians are silent concerning the relations

of the Osmanlis with the Genoese during this war. That the Genoese asked

for and received aid from Orkhan is certain. There had been a convention

beforehand between the Osmanlis and the Genoese of Pera.[210] Both

against the Greeks and against the Venetians the assistance of Orkhan

must have been substantial.[211] It was remembered with gratitude forty

years later.[212]

The triumphal entry into Constantinople and the sanction of the Church

upon his imperial office did not end the troubles of Cantacuzenos. The

first to turn against him was his own son Matthew, who also wanted to be

emperor. Cantacuzenos appeased him for a time by giving him a portion of

Thrace. Then the Genoese of Pera, dissatisfied with the lowering of the

customs tariff to other nations, burned the Greek galleys and arsenals,

and attacked Constantinople. Cantacuzenos had to leave a sick-bed at

Demotika to hurry to save the city. The Greek fleet was destroyed by the

Genoese. The army of Cantacuzenos failed in an attack upon Galata. Peace

was concluded only when the unhappy emperor agreed to sell more land on

the Golden Horn to the Genoese, and restore them in the customs tariffs

to their former place as ‘most favoured nation’.[213]

In 1349 Cantacuzenos called again upon Orkhan to send soldiers to him in

Europe. Twenty thousand Ottoman cavaliers, under the command of Matthew,

marched against Salonika, which was on the point of giving itself to

Stephen Dushan. Cantacuzenos, with the young emperor John, went by sea.

Orkhan, as on the last occasion, secretly worked against his

father-in-law. After Cantacuzenos had already sailed, he recalled the

horsemen who were with Matthew. It was fortunate for Cantacuzenos that

he met at Amphipolis a Turkish fleet which was about to land a force of

raiders to ravage the country, and persuaded the commander to join with

him in a demonstration against Salonika. Otherwise the expedition would

have been a fiasco. As it was, Salonika surrendered. The army of

Cantacuzenos ascended the Vardar as far as Uskub, which was

reoccupied.[214]

It would be too wearisome to go into all the details of the civil war

between Cantacuzenos and John Palaeologos. Involved in it are the

intrigues of Stephen Dushan of Serbia and Alexander of Bulgaria, and

the attitude of Venice and Genoa. At first it seemed as if Cantacuzenos

would be crushed. The partisans of Palaeologos besieged Matthew in the

citadel of Adrianople. The Genoese of Galata, in spite of the strong

Venetian fleet whose co-operation, however, with the Greeks was

lukewarm,[215] compelled Cantacuzenos to cede Silivria and Heraclea,

besides increasing their Galata lands.[216] In the fall of 1352 the

Venetians and Bulgarians declared openly for Palaeologos.[217]

In desperation Cantacuzenos fell back for the last time upon the

Osmanlis. He robbed the churches of the capital to pay Orkhan for twenty

thousand soldiers, and promised him a fortress in the Thracian

Chersonese.[218] With this help he recaptured Adrianople, and relieved

Matthew, who was still holding the citadel. The Serbians were beaten by

Orkhan’s eldest son, Soleiman, near Demotika. All of Thrace and most of

Macedonia returned to the allegiance of Cantacuzenos.[219]

In 1353 Cantacuzenos seemed to have recovered all the lost ground, and

to be at the height of his fortunes. John Palaeologos, abandoned by his

partisans, was in exile at Tenedos. An attempt to win back

Constantinople by intrigue failed. Cantacuzenos, now practically sole

ruler, felt that it was time to establish a new imperial line. He had

Matthew proclaimed co-emperor.[220] In his prosperity he forgot about

Orkhan, who had put him where he was, he forgot that he had invited the

Osmanlis into Europe and had shown them the fertile valleys of Macedonia

and Thrace, that their fighting men had passed along the military roads

of the empire under the command of himself and his son, that he had

mustered Ottoman armies under the walls of Salonika, of Adrianople, of

Demotika, and even of Constantinople.

XII

The Ottoman historians place the first invasion of European territory by

the Osmanlis in the year of the Hegira 758 (1356), and state that

Soleiman crossed the Hellespont one moonlight night with three hundred

warriors, and seized the castle of Tzympe, between Gallipoli and the

Aegaean Sea end of the strait.[221] It is represented as a romantic

adventure, prompted by a dream in which Soleiman saw the moonbeams make

a tempting path for him from Asia into Europe.[222] The earlier western

historians give a variety of dates. Some ascribe the first crossing to

Murad.[223] Several claim that the Osmanlis were transported by two

small Genoese merchant ships, and that there were sixty thousand of

them! The Genoese received a ducat per head. All the calamities of the

‘Turks’ were brought upon Europe by the avarice of the Genoese.[224]

We can reject these stories without hesitation, just as we can reject

the date which the Ottoman historians give.[225] The Osmanlis had been

fighting in Europe since 1345. They had come over in large numbers on

different occasions. There is nothing mysterious or romantic about their

first foothold in Europe. In 1352 Cantacuzenos had promised to Orkhan a

fortress in the Thracian Chersonese. Tzympe may have been given to

Soleiman, or it was taken by him when the promise of Cantacuzenos was

not fulfilled. He did not have to cross secretly from Asia. The Ottoman

soldiers were already at home in Europe, and Soleiman had been their

leader in several expeditions.

Shortly after the occupation of Tzympe, one of those earthquakes which

occur so often in the Thracian Chersonese destroyed a portion of the

walls of Gallipoli. This was Soleiman’s opportunity. He occupied the

city, repaired the breaches, and called over from Bithynia the first

colony of Osmanlis. Other colonies followed rapidly, as the soldiers of

Soleiman took Malgara, Bulaïr (the key of the peninsula),[226] and the

European littoral of the Sea of Marmora as far as Rodosto. The

advance-guard of the Osmanlis appeared within a few miles of

Constantinople; and ‘conducted themselves as masters’.[227] This

colonization was so quickly and easily effected that one is led to

believe that these colonists were for the most part renegade Greeks

returning to their former homes.

Cantacuzenos now reaped the full harvest of his policy. The patriarch

Callixtus refused to consecrate Matthew. He reproached Cantacuzenos for

having delivered Christians into the hands of the infidels, and accused

him of having given to Orkhan the money sent by a Russian prince for the

restoration of St. Sophia.[228] Compelled to flee for his life to the

Genoese in Galata, the patriarch decided to declare for Palaeologos.

When Cantacuzenos chose a new patriarch, Philotheus, who consented as

price of office to consecrate Matthew, Callixtus excommunicated him.

Philotheus returned the compliment. Then Callixtus sailed for Tenedos to

join John Palaeologos.[229]

Cantacuzenos, feeling the precariousness of his position at

Constantinople just at the moment when he thought he had triumphed over

every obstacle to his ambition, bitterly reproached Orkhan for not

having kept faith with him. He offered to buy back Tzympe for ten

thousand ducats, and asked Orkhan to order the Osmanlis to leave

Gallipoli. Orkhan accepted the ransom for Tzympe, knowing well that he

could reoccupy this fortress when he wanted to.[230] As for Gallipoli,

he declared that he could not give back what God had given him. Was it

not the will of God rather than force of arms that had opened the gates

of Gallipoli to him? Cantacuzenos sought an interview with his

son-in-law, for he thought that gold might induce the Osmanlis to

withdraw. A meeting was arranged in the Gulf of Nicomedia. When the

emperor arrived at the rendezvous, a messenger from Orkhan reported that

his master was ill and could not come.[231] No way was left open for

further negotiations. The rupture was complete.

After his return to Constantinople, Cantacuzenos sent envoys to the

Serbians and to the Bulgarians to urge a defensive alliance of the

Balkan Christians. They answered, ‘Defend yourself as best you can.’ A

second embassy met with the response from Czar Alexander: ‘Three years

ago I remonstrated with you for your unholy alliances with the Turks.

Now that the storm has broken, let the Byzantines weather it. If the

Turks come against us, we shall know how to defend ourselves.’[232]

The indignation of the Greeks against the man who had sacrificed them to

his inordinate ambition reached the breaking-point in November 1354. The

inhabitants of Constantinople declared for John Palaeologos.

Cantacuzenos was forced to barricade himself in his palace. Protected by

Catalans and other mercenaries, he tried to temporize. He offered to

abdicate if Matthew were allowed to retain the title of emperor with the

governorship of Adrianople and the Rhodope district. Encouraged by a

lull in the storm of popular feeling, he had the audacity to make an

‘appeal to patriotism’, as he himself put it. He urged the people to

support him in an expedition to retake the provinces conquered by the

Serbians and the Osmanlis. This exhibition of effrontery was greeted

with cries of scorn. Cantacuzenos was publicly accused of wishing to

deliver Constantinople to Orkhan. A second revolution forced his

abdication. He became a monk. Irene took the veil.[233]

John Palaeologos returned from exile, and restored Callixtus to the

patriarchal throne. It took several years of fighting and negotiating to

compel Matthew’s abdication. Not until 1358 did John V become undisputed

ruler of the remnant of the empire in Macedonia and Thrace.[234] But the

mischief was done. The Osmanlis had put their foot as settlers on

European soil.

Cantacuzenos lived for thirty years in the monastery of Mistra, near old

Sparta. It was long enough for him to see the irreparable injury that

his ambition had caused to his country, and to realize how he had

destroyed the people to rule over whom he had sacrificed every higher

and nobler instinct. Cantacuzenos has had a fair trial before the bar of

posterity. For many long years, far removed from the turmoil of the

world, were spent in the building up of his brief of justification. He

left a history of his life and times. So he pleads for himself. But even

if we did not have the testimony of Gregoras, and of the archives of the

Italian cities and of the Vatican, to supplement the story of

Cantacuzenos, he would stand condemned by his own record of facts.

Cantacuzenos had far more natural ability than Andronicus II and

Andronicus III. During the long and arduous struggle to satisfy his

personal ambition, he showed himself a keen, courageous, resourceful

leader. At the beginning of his career he was in a position of

commanding influence. His country was facing a crisis which would have

called forth the best and noblest in one who loved his race, his

religion, and his fatherland. But John Cantacuzenos loved only himself.

The legacy of the widow and helpless child of the friend who had trusted

and honoured him gave to Cantacuzenos the opportunity for developing

true greatness in the fulfilment of that highest of missions--a sacred

trust. But Cantacuzenos saw only the opportunity for taking advantage of

a dead man’s faith.

To say that Cantacuzenos was the cause of the downfall of the Byzantine

Empire would be to ignore other forces working to the same end, and to

put too great an emphasis upon the power of an individual human will to

shape the destinies of the world. However, in the stage of world

history, leaders of men are the personification of causes. We group

everything around them. The character and acts of Cantacuzenos reveal

the fatal weakness in the Balkan peninsula of his day. The Ottoman

conquest was possible because there was no consciousness of religious or

racial commonweal. How could this larger devotion, this larger sense of

duty and obligation, be expected in men who were not influenced, much

less constrained, by ties of blood and personal friendship?

XIII

Cantacuzenos ceased to be a factor in Byzantine affairs in 1355. But the

Greeks could not rid themselves as easily of Orkhan. The Osmanlis had

come to stay.

It is impossible to establish with any degree of certainty the conquests

of Soleiman pasha in the hinterland of the Gulf of Saros and of the Sea

of Marmora. But we know that he captured Demotika, and cut off

Constantinople from Adrianople by occupying Tchorlu.[235] If these

important places were retaken by the Byzantines after the premature

death of Soleiman, it was only for a brief time. At the beginning of the

reign of Murad the Osmanlis were firmly ensconced along the coasts of

Thrace, and had made some permanent progress into the interior.

There was a sudden and full awakening on the part of the Greeks to the

knowledge that the Ottoman invasion of 1354 was an irreparable disaster.

A year before Soleiman pasha settled his Moslem colonies in the Thracian

Chersonese, the inhabitants of Philadelphia had felt themselves so

completely abandoned by their emperors that they had appealed directly

to the Pope for aid, promising to return to the Roman communion.[236] At

the approach of the Osmanlis in Thrace, the country population had fled

to Constantinople, abandoning everything. Those who had money to

emigrate elsewhere did so immediately. They had no hope of a change in

the fortunes of their country.[237]

The annalists of the Byzantine Empire record no heroic, bitter

resistance to the army of Soleiman pasha. There was no mayor of the

palace, no Joan, to revive the confidence of the people in their rulers,

or to replace the family that had proved its unfitness. The Greeks had

feared Cantacuzenos, and had attributed their hopeless condition to his

alliance with the Osmanlis. But they could not have greater confidence

in John Palaeologos. For he made no effort, not even in the smallest

way, to demonstrate that he was different from his weak and disloyal

forbears.

The Byzantines feared also the intrigues of the Genoese, who were as

persistent in their efforts to undermine the integrity of the Byzantine

Empire, as are the foreigners to-day engaged in commerce in the Levant

to weaken and destroy the authority of the Ottoman Empire.[238] The

banishment of Cantacuzenos could not save them from the Osmanlis.

Palaeologos could not save them. They could not save themselves. The

only way which occurred to them of preventing the Ottoman conquest was

to give themselves to some Christian power. There were actually plans on

foot to offer the remnant of the empire to Venice, to Hungary, even to

Serbia![239]

In France, during the fourteenth century, the Turks were not regarded as

a permanent factor in the Near East. Western Asia Minor was not called

‘Turquie’ or ‘Turquemanie’, but ‘the land which the Turks hold’.[240]

There was no such illusion among the Italians. They accustomed

themselves very rapidly to the idea that the Osmanlis, if not the

Turkish tribes, were in Asia Minor and the Aegaean to stay.

The immigration across the Hellespont in 1354 was not looked upon by

those who were acquainted with the weakness and impotence of the

Byzantines as a raid or as a temporary affair. For several years the

Genoese had thought it to their advantage to seek the friendship of

Orkhan.[241] In 1355 two far-sighted Venetians wrote the whole truth to

the Senate. They did not mince matters. Matteo Venier, baily at

Constantinople, warned the Senate in the strongest terms about the

menace of Ottoman aggrandizement.[242] Marino Falieri went farther. He

pointed out that the Byzantine Empire must inevitably become the booty

of the Osmanlis, and urged his countrymen to get ahead of them.[243]

Prophetic words and daring suggestion. Had Venice at this time had a

Dandolo of the stamp of the intrepid blind Doge who diverted the Fourth

Crusade to wreak his vengeance upon his mutilators, Islam might have

been kept out of Europe.

When John Palaeologos resumed the throne of his fathers, he found

himself as much at the mercy of Orkhan as Cantacuzenos had been. His

dependence is revealed in the story of Halil. Halil, son of Orkhan and

Theodora, was captured by pirates in 1357, and taken to Phocaea. Orkhan

held his brother-in-law responsible for this kidnapping, and called upon

him to rescue his nephew. In February 1358, while the Osmanlis under

Soleiman pasha were advancing in Thrace, we see John V, at the behest

of Orkhan, spending what strength and energy he had in the siege of

Phocaea. Later, when he went back to Constantinople, Orkhan peremptorily

ordered him to return to direct in person the siege. John started out,

and met his fleet, which had become anxious about his absence and had

given up the siege. He could not persuade the galleys to turn back with

him. So he wrote to Orkhan begging to be excused from continuing an

undertaking beyond his power to carry through successfully.

Orkhan was inflexible. He had now become the overlord of the Byzantine

emperor. In March 1359 the successor of Constantine went as a vassal to

meet his Ottoman suzerain at Scutari. He appeased the wrath of Orkhan

only by agreeing to pay a half of Halil’s ransom, and by signing a

treaty of peace that was a virtual acceptance of the new _status quo_ in

Thrace. The peace was to be sealed by the betrothal of his ten-year-old

daughter to Halil. It was as errand boy of Orkhan that John V made one

more trip to Phocaea, paid one hundred thousand pieces of gold for

Halil, and brought him to Nicaea. There the betrothal of the Christian

princess to her Moslem cousin was celebrated by splendid fêtes.[244]

John Cantacuzenos introduced the Osmanlis into Europe. John Palaeologos

accepted their presence in Thrace without a struggle. There is little

choice between these two Johns.

XIV

Orkhan died at the end of this memorable decade.[245] If to Osman is

given the honour of being father of a new people, the greater honour of

founding the nation must be ascribed to Orkhan.[246] Few men have

accomplished a greater work and seen more sweeping changes in two

generations. According to popular legend, Orkhan won his spurs as a

warrior, and a bride to boot, at the capture of Biledjik, when he was

twelve years old. His life was spent in fighting and in making permanent

the results of his fighting. He was as simple in his tastes as his

father had been. At Nicaea he distributed soup and bread to the poor

with his own hands.[247]

There seems to be no basis for the characterization of Orkhan which the

early western historians handed down to posterity. He was neither

vicious nor cruel nor deceitful. His three striking characteristics were

those which mark all men who have accomplished a great work in history,

oneness of purpose, inexhaustible energy, and an unlimited capacity for

detail. He began life as a village lad of an obscure tribe. After a

public career of sixty years he died, the brother-in-law of the emperor

of Byzantium, the friend and ally of Genoa, and potentially master of

Thrace. The purpose of his life is summed up in the sentence we find

upon his coins: ‘May God cause to endure the empire of Orkhan, son of

Osman.’