REIGN OF ORCHAN: STRUGGLES WITH EMPIRE; ITS SUCCESSES AND
REVERSES; INVASIONS OF TARTARS. REIGN OF MURAD: DEFEAT OF
SERBIANS AND BULGARIANS BY TURKS; BATTLE OF COSSOVO-POL AND
ASSASSINATION OF MURAD.
The death of John, in 1391, is a convenient period to resume the
narrative of the progress of the Turks.
Othman had died the year after the capture of Brousa, in 1326. He had
succeeded in making his division of the Turks the most formidable
in Asia Minor, in conquering or absorbing the Seljukian Turks, in
destroying many flourishing cities and strongholds on the Black Sea, in
entirely preventing the reorganisation of the power of the empire in
the north-west portion of Asia Minor, and, above all, in organising a
fighting race into a formidable army.
[Sidenote: Reign of Sultan Orchan, 1326–1357.]
His successor was his son Orchan. Nicaea is only distant four or five
hours from Brousa, and had hitherto been able to resist all attacks by
the Turks. Its population was fairly secure within its extensive and
strong walls; the beautiful lake of Ascanius adjoins one side of it,
and furnished a constant supply of water and of fish. Once, indeed,
an emperor had sent up a fleet to assist a great army of Western
Crusaders, and to receive from their hands the city which they were
about to capture from the Seljuks.[85] Orchan laid siege to it, and
its citizens defended themselves with courage until relief came.
Cantacuzenus and his sovereign hastily gathered together an army, and
acting upon the advice of the imperial Grand Huntsman Godfrey, the
bearer of the illustrious name which had won its first renown in the
Crusade before this very place, successfully drove back the Turks.
Unfortunately, on the evening of the same day, a panic seized the
imperial troops, and the enemy, taking advantage of it, struck hard,
captured the baggage, changed the panic into a rout, and captured the
great and important city in the very hour of its triumph.
Master of the two cities, Brousa, a natural stronghold which had
been strengthened by successive emperors, and Nicaea, whose ancient
reputation and importance as the City of the Creed had been increased
by its having served during two generations as the rallying place of
the exiles from Constantinople during the Latin occupation, Orchan now
assumed the title of sultan, made Brousa his capital, and struck the
first Ottoman coins to replace those of the Seljukian sultans.
During his reign of thirty-two years he enlarged the territory occupied
by the Ottomans, and greatly improved their national organisation.
While constantly engaged in war, and though not less bent on conquest
than his father, he neglected no opportunity of inducing the Christian
subjects of the empire to come under his rule. He took care that the
taxes levied were less than those paid in the empire. Although by this
time Turkish armies were probably almost exclusively Moslem, Orchan
formed one of his best regiments out of Christians who had voluntarily
entered his service.
Orchan was far from obtaining uniform successes against the empire.
He was often and bravely opposed by the imperial troops. In 1329,
a large army, which had been transported into Thrace in a fleet of
seventy ships, was destroyed near Trajanopolis, and most of the Turks
were either killed or reduced to slavery. In 1330, a new invasion
into Thrace of Turkish cavalry was defeated, and fifteen thousand
Turks were slain. Orchan’s attempt in the following year to capture
Ismidt failed, and he was obliged to sue for peace. In spite of these
disasters, he was always able within a few months to assemble new
armies, and to renew the struggle. Already he had succeeded in exacting
tribute from nearly the whole of Bithynia. His troops, within two
years, invaded Macedonia, Euboea, and Athens, and while Cantacuzenus
was with difficulty holding his own against them, another army met
Andronicus the Third in Thrace, and took possession of Rodosto--an
army, however, which the emperor shortly afterwards destroyed.
New recruits were continually making their way across the Dardanelles
or the Marmora into Thrace, until, in 1336, the Turkish army in that
province met with disaster in an unexpected manner. A band of Tartars
from the north made a descent upon them when they heard that they
had been successful in a raid upon the Christian population and were
carrying off an enormous mass of booty.[86] Three months after the
departure of the Tartars a new descent into Thrace was attempted by the
Turks. Once again the Greeks were successful, and, in the same year, an
army which ravaged the environs of Constantinople was destroyed and the
Turkish fleet which brought them captured.
[Sidenote: Nicomedia taken (1337).]
The efforts of Orchan were more successful in Asia Minor. A division
of his army had laid siege again to Ismidt, and the inhabitants, in
order to avoid imminent starvation, surrendered. The acquisition, in
1337, of this city, the most important seaport on the Asiatic side of
the Marmora, and the head, then as now, of all the roads leading from
the capital to every part of Asia Minor, Persia, and Syria, was of the
utmost importance.
During the stormy joint reigns of John and Cantacuzenus (1342 to 1355),
the empire was attacked both by Tartars on the north, and by the Turks
in Asia Minor. The Bulgarian and Serbian kingdoms had both gained
strength during the Latin occupation at the expense of the empire, and
were ready to avail themselves of the aid alike of Turks and Tartars
in their endeavours to capture territory from the empire. When, in
1342, Cantacuzenus was attacked by the Bulgarians, a division of the
Turks, whose emir had taken the title of sultan of Lydia, was induced
to come to his aid. Twenty-nine thousand arrived at the mouth of the
Maritza, the ancient Hebrus, and with their aid a temporary relief was
afforded; but for some reason, possibly a severe winter, they withdrew
to Asia Minor. The Bulgarians on this occasion were not aided by the
Tartars, probably because the latter were occupied in the Crimea, and
throughout what is now southern Russia, in fighting the Genoese, who
had blockaded the northern coast of the Black Sea. Apocaukus, the rival
of Cantacuzenus, succeeded in the following year in hiring a Turkish
fleet and army. Both sides, indeed, in the civil war then going on, as
well as the Bulgarians and Serbians, never hesitated to increase their
armies by employing Turks or Tartars as auxiliaries.
When, in 1344, Cantacuzenus promised his daughter Theodora in marriage
to Orchan, he received at once the aid of a body of five thousand
Ottoman Turks, and this number was increased when the marriage took
place, two years later. But the young emperor John met him with another
body of Turkish auxiliaries. Orchan would have made short work of John;
for in an interview which took place with much ceremony and cordiality
at Scutari to congratulate his father-in-law on his second coronation,
he appears to have decided upon following the Turkish method of getting
rid of a rival to the throne of his father-in-law. Cantacuzenus,
however, would not sanction assassination. Orchan apparently could not
understand any such scruples, and shortly afterwards sent a number of
Turks to the capital on a pretended political mission, but really with
the object of aiding Cantacuzenus by murdering John. The elder emperor,
as soon as he learned the design, at once put his foot down, and
declared that he would not permit John to go outside the palace except
accompanied by him.[87]
In the attacks by Stephen, the kral of Serbia, who had taken the
title of emperor of the Serbians and the Greeks, or emperor of Serbia
and Romania--for both forms are used--Orchan once more sent troops to
aid his father-in-law. In the struggles which took place at this time
between the Genoese and the Venetians, Orchan aided the first. When the
emperor wished to employ both, he was obliged to concede to the Turks a
stronghold on the Thracian Chersonese. They, however, always proved to
be dangerous allies, and the inhabitants of the whole northern coast of
the Marmora were so harassed by them that great numbers deserted their
farms and fled to the capital or elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Angora taken (1354).]
It was in 1355 that Cantacuzenus left the government in the hands of
John. His policy and his influence had been directed towards coming to
an agreement with the leading group of Turks--that, namely, ruled over
by his son-in-law. Almost the last act before his withdrawal was to
persuade Orchan and his son, Suliman, to give up the cities in Thrace
which the Turks had occupied, on his behalf, during the struggle with
John.[88] Orchan, on his part, was to all appearances disposed, on the
retirement of Cantacuzenus, to be on friendly terms with John, and,
in consequence, each party assumed the attitude of an ally. It may be
suggested that if a policy of friendliness had been continued, the
Turks might have been content with their territory in Asia Minor. But
such a solution was not possible. The Turkish nomad warriors, to whom
the cultivation of the soil was distasteful, required new lands to roam
over, and wanted new territories to plunder. The arable lands, which
had supported large populations, were too small for nomad shepherds,
and the latter were always being pressed forward to the north and west
by a constant stream of immigrants behind them. Indeed, in the year
when Cantacuzenus abdicated, Suliman, the son of Orchan, had to lead
his armies and defend his territories against a newly arrived horde of
Tartars in the north-east of Asia Minor. His successful defence was, at
the same time, one more blow against the empire, for in this campaign
he succeeded in capturing the important stronghold of Angora, which
commanded the great highroad to Persia.
But Orchan and John, though nominally on friendly terms, distrusted
each other, and indeed Orchan’s character and conduct compare
favourably with John’s. When Halil, the son of Orchan and of John’s
sister-in-law Theodora, was captured by pirates from Phocaea, at the
head of the Gulf of Smyrna, and then in the occupation of the Genoese,
it was with difficulty that John could be induced to join in the siege
of that city in order to release his nephew. He endeavoured to make a
bargain with Orchan before he consented to co-operate. Finally Halil
was ransomed, Orchan and John each paying half of the amount. On his
release the two rulers met, and at Chalcedon, the present Kadikeuy,
John promised his infant daughter to Halil, and the two rulers swore to
establish a perpetual peace.
In 1359 Orchan died. During the thirty-two years of his reign, he had
planted the Ottoman state firmly in Asia Minor. The landmarks of its
progress were the important cities of Nicaea, Ismidt, and Angora, each
of which dominated a large tract of country. He had compacted the Turks
together, had attracted to his rule many of those who had previously
acknowledged other emirs, and every year of his reign had seen the
number of Ottoman Turks increasing by defections from his rivals and
by immigrants from the eastward. He was an able commander and an
exceptionally good administrator. While Othman is the founder of the
Turkish dynasty, Orchan is the sovereign who caused his people to be
recognised as forming a separate nationality, and was thus the maker of
the Turkish nation.
[Sidenote: Sultan Murad the First, 1359–1389.]
Orchan was succeeded by his son Amurath or, adopting the modern
orthography, Murad. He was the younger brother of Suliman, who died
two months before his father. The new sultan was not influenced by any
tie of relationship with the imperial family. Moreover, the influence
of Islam was now becoming much more serious than it had hitherto been.
Mahometanism had become the religion of most of the Turks, and Murad,
stimulated by a certain mufti, soon learned to become a fanatical
persecutor of even his own Christian subjects. He increased the amount
of taxes which they had to pay, and generally made their burdens heavy.
But by far the heaviest of those burdens was caused by the organisation
of the body of ‘New Troops’ established by Orchan and known as
Janissaries. He decreed a law, said to be founded upon the sacred text
of the Koran, that the Christians should be required to give to himself
absolutely one in five of their children. From the boys thus obtained,
he established the famous corps whose deeds were to make them for ever
famous.[89]
At the commencement of his reign, Murad turned to conquest. The work of
Orchan had been to establish and compact Ottoman rule in Asia Minor.
That of his successor was mainly to carry out a similar policy in
Europe. After capturing Heraclia on the Black Sea, he crossed over into
Thrace and occupied Adrianople, seized Didymotica and Chorlou, overran
the whole country between Constantinople and Bulgaria, and sent his
ships to plunder the Greek islands. In return for the fanaticism with
which they had inspired him, he promised that one fifth of the spoil
captured by land and sea should be given to the mollahs. When the sale
of Christian captives took place, he took care, says Ducas,[90] that
the young, the well set-up, and the strong men should be bought at a
low price to be added to the Janissaries.
The few remaining Turkish emirs in Asia Minor whose territories had not
been gained by the Ottomans joined forces to resist the new sultan. At
the same time the Serbians, Bulgarians, and Hungarians, all of whom had
become alarmed at Murad’s progress, declared war upon him. Compelled
in 1363 to defend himself against the emirs to the east and south of
his territories in Asia Minor, he was sufficiently strong to force
the emperor to bind himself not merely to give aid to him in Asia but
not to attempt to recover any of the cities or territories which he
had conquered in Europe. When he had broken the strength of the rebel
emirs he crossed rapidly back into Thrace and near Adrianople defeated
a combined army of Hungarians, Serbians, and Bulgarians. Two years
afterwards, in 1366, an army of fifty thousand Serbians endeavoured in
vain to drive Murad out of Adrianople. The lowest degradation which the
empire had yet reached was when the miserable John consented to become
the tributary of Murad in order that he might enjoy his remaining
possessions in Europe. In 1373 he formally recognised the sultan as his
suzerain, bound himself to render him military service and to give his
son Manuel as a hostage.[91]
The only palliative which can be offered for John’s conduct is that he
felt resistance to be useless. The empire wanted peace. The cities and
towns had been devastated, not merely by successive wars, civil and
foreign, but by the terrible Black Death, a plague which since 1346 had
demanded everywhere its large quota of victims. He had seen Turkish
armies defeated, but everywhere and always reappearing in greater
numbers than ever. Asiatics were in overwhelming numbers on every
side. The Egyptian Moslems had captured Sis, the capital of the Lesser
Armenia, in 1369. Not only was every district in Asia Minor overrun
with Turks, but they had penetrated Europe at many points. Bands
of them had been left in the country when the armies, invited into
Macedonia or Thrace or crossing over for plunder, had withdrawn. ‘For
my part, I believe,’ says Ducas, ‘that there is a greater multitude of
them between the Dardanelles and the Danube than in Asia Minor,’ and
although Ducas wrote three quarters of a century later, his remarks
are applicable to the reign of John. He describes how Turks from
Cappadocia, Lycia, Cilicia, and Caria had sailed into Europe to pillage
and to ruin the lands of the Christians. A hundred thousand had laid
waste the country as far west as Dalmatia. The Albanians from being
a large nation had become a small one. The Wallachs, the Serbians,
and his own people, the Romans, had been completely ruined. Amid his
lamentations over the evils inflicted by the invaders, his saddest
thought and gravest source of complaint is that the victories gained
by the Turks had been won by men who were the offspring of Christian
parents, by Janissaries who were of Roman, Bulgarian, Serbian,
Wallachian, or Hungarian origin. It is in the hopelessness of further
resistance to such overwhelming forces that the only explanation of
John’s acceptance of the position of a tributary prince is to be found.
[Sidenote: Battle of Harmanli, 1371.]
The ruin of the South Serbians and Eastern Bulgarians of which Ducas
speaks had really taken place. They had each ventured to declare
themselves empires. With the indifference which characterises the
Greek writers in regard to the conduct of other nations, they allude
to rather than mention how that ruin had been brought about. In 1371,
a great battle took place on the plains of the river Maritza which
sealed the fate of the Eastern Bulgarians and of the Serbians who were
in Macedonia. The three sons of the kral took advantage of the absence
of Murad in Asia and, having collected an army of sixty thousand men,
marched almost as far as Adrianople without opposition. While they were
feasting in front of a bridge over the Maritza near Harmanli, fully
assured of their safety by reason of their superiority in numbers,
suddenly a night attack was made upon them by a small division of the
Turkish army. It was soon joined by the entire army of seventy thousand
Turks. Wild confusion was followed by a terrible slaughter. One of the
three sons of the kral was killed and the other two were drowned in the
Maritza. Hundreds of soldiers perished in attempting to cross it. The
army was simply annihilated.[92]
To assist him in his conquest of Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, and
Moldavia, Murad allied himself, in 1373, with the Tartars north of the
Danube, and both prepared to attack these states.
Meanwhile in the troubles which arose in 1374 between John and his
son Manuel on the one side and Andronicus the grandson of John by his
eldest son of the same name, Murad exercised his right as suzerain.
Shortly after Manuel was associated with his father, the two were
ordered to accompany their lord on an expedition. It was during their
absence that the eldest sons of the emperor and sultan, as already
mentioned, either swore friendship and common action, when each
succeeded to his father’s throne, or were considered by their fathers
to have done so. It may have been believed that they had entered into
a conspiracy to hasten such succession. Countouz, the obnoxious son
of Murad, raised a rebellion against his father when he heard of his
cruel resolve, but his troops passed over to the side of their sultan.
He fled to Didymotica and joined Andronicus, who was also a fugitive
from his father. Murad followed his son, and laid siege to that city.
The inhabitants, pressed by famine, opened the gates to him. Countouz
was blinded by his father, but Andronicus escaped; all the garrison
was drowned and a large number of the inhabitants had their throats
cut, Murad adding to his barbarity by compelling the fathers to be the
executioners of their sons.[93]
[Sidenote: Philadelphia surrendered, 1379.]
In 1379, as already mentioned, John and his son Manuel, who had been
captured and imprisoned by his grandson Andronicus, escaped to Scutari
and took refuge with Bajazed, the son of Murad. The sultan, after
assuring himself that the inhabitants of Constantinople preferred
Manuel to Andronicus, made a bargain with John and his son by which,
in return for aid in restoring them, the empire should pay a large
annual tribute, furnish a contingent of twelve thousand soldiers, and
surrender to him Philadelphia, the last remaining city in Asia Minor
which still acknowledged the rule of Constantinople. John and Manuel
entered Constantinople by the Adrianople Gate, and Andronicus escaped
across the Golden Horn to the Genoese in Galata. Much as the two
emperors may have regretted their bargain, Murad held them to it, and
they, Christian emperors, marched to Philadelphia, in order to compel
their own subjects to open its gates to the Turks.
Everywhere the Moslem flood was becoming irresistible. The sultan of
Bagdad, in 1376, invaded Armenia and took prisoners both its king and
queen; at the other extreme of the empire the Turks were in Epirus and
were holding their own in many parts of Morea. The Knights-Hospitallers
surrendered Patras to them in order to purchase the release of their
Grand Master. One of the few strongholds in Thrace which Murad had
not hitherto obtained was Apollonia, the present Sissipoli, which,
partly built on an island in the Black Sea and in an otherwise strong
position, had so far avoided capture. It was taken, however, by Murad
in 1383, and, as usual, its garrison was cruelly massacred. In 1385,
Murad captured Sofia, and then sent two armies, one to take possession
of Cavalla and other places on the north shore of the Aegean, and the
other to capture Monastir and various towns in Macedonia. In the same
year a Turkish army took Belgrade and pushed on to Scutari in Albania,
taking possession of it and of other strongholds. In 1387, after a
siege lasting four years, Salonica was captured.
The Serbians, by their defeat at Belgrade and elsewhere, were compelled
to become the vassals of Murad, and, following his usual custom, the
sultan compelled their kral in 1381 to send two thousand men to aid him
in subduing a revolt of his brother-in-law, the emir, in Caramania,
the ancient Cilicia. Many subjects of the empire had to render like
military service.
[Sidenote: First battle of Cossovo-pol, 1889.]
On the return of the Serbians, their discontent was so great that the
kral Lazarus, son of the famous Stephen, collected a large army and
made an effort for freedom. But, though his armies succeeded in killing
twenty thousand of the enemy, Ali Pasha compelled them again to submit
to the Turkish yoke. The brave Serbians soon, however, recovered, and
Lazarus succeeded in making alliances with his Christian neighbours
which promised success. In 1389, with a large army of his own subjects,
of Hungarians, Wallachs, Dalmatians, and Albanians, he once more
endeavoured to crush the common enemy. A decisive battle was fought
on the Plain of Black Birds or Cossovo-pol, in what is now called Old
Serbia.[94] Murad and his son Bajazed were in command. The Christians
broke the right wing of the Turks, but the issue of the battle was
turned by the daring of Bajazed. Lazarus and his suite were taken
prisoners, and the triumph of the enemy was complete. The latest
historian of Serbia observes that as the battle on the Maritza in
1371 sealed the fate of the Eastern Bulgarians and of the Serbians in
Macedonia, so did this battle of Cossovo-pol in 1389 determine that of
the Northern Serbians and the Western Bulgarians.[95]
[Sidenote: Assassination of Murad.]
During or immediately after the battle, there followed a dramatic
incident. A young Serb ran towards the Turkish army, and when they
would have stopped him declared that he wanted to see their sultan in
order that he might show him how he could profit by the fight. Murad
signed to him to come near, and the young fellow did so, drew a dagger
which he had hidden, and plunged it into the heart of the sultan. He
was at once cut down by the guards.[96] The Serbians, according to
Ducas, did not know of the sultan’s death for a considerable time,
and did not defend themselves with their usual courage. Lazarus was
captured, and was hewn in pieces.