possession of Constantinople. The Greek Empire had been already
deprived of nearly all territory outside the walls of its capital. The
Sultan opened proceedings against it by sending an envoy to the Emperor
with this insulting message:—
When I dethroned your predecessor, Manuel, it was not in your
interest but in mine. If, then, you want to remain my friend, you
must surrender your crown. I will give you any other government you
may wish for. If you do not consent, I swear by God and the Prophet I
will not spare a soul in your city; I will exterminate all of them.
The citizens of Constantinople, rather than experience the terrible
fate which they knew would befall them in the event of a successful
assault by the Ottoman army, were willing to come to terms. But the
Emperor, who was buoyed up by hope of assistance from the Christian
Powers, refused to acquiesce in a pusillanimous surrender. He replied
to the ambassador in dignified terms: “Tell your master that, feeble
as we are, we know no other power to whom to address ourselves if it
be not God, Who protects the feeble and humbles the powerful. Let the
Sultan do what he pleases.”
At this stage, and before he could give effect to his threats,
Bayezid was compelled by great events in Asia to raise the siege of
Constantinople. Hitherto, in twelve years of incessant war, Bayezid
had been uniformly successful. He had annexed the greater part of Asia
Minor, Macedonia, Northern Bulgaria, and Thessaly. He had reduced to
vassalage the Greek Empire itself and Serbia, Wallachia, Bosnia, and a
great part of Greece. He had defeated the feudal chivalry of Europe in
the great battle of Nicopolis. He had not met with a single reverse.
The next two years, the last of his reign, were to result in disastrous
and overwhelming defeat to him, in his capture and death, and in the
temporary crumpling up of the Turkish Empire. He came into conflict for
the first time with Timur, a general and a conqueror more resolute,
crafty, able, and cruel than himself.
Timur the Tartar, better known to us as Timurlane—Timur the lame,
for he had met in early life with an accident which lamed him—was the
greatest, the most ruthless, and the most devastating of warriors
recorded in all history. Born in 1333, a descendant through his mother
of the great Gengis Khan, he began life as a petty chief of a Tartar
tribe in the neighbourhood of Samarkand. It was not till he had
reached the age of thirty-five that he achieved eminence over other
neighbouring Tartar States. He then conceived the ambition of universal
conquest. “As there was only one God in heaven,” he said, “so there
should be only one ruler on earth”—that one was to be himself. He went
a long way towards gaining this object of his ambition, for he embarked
on a career which, in rather less than thirty-five years, resulted
in an empire extending from the Great Wall of China to the frontier
of Asia Minor, and from the Sea of Aral to the River Ganges and the
Persian Gulf. He had, by this time, conquered twenty-seven separate
States and extinguished nine dynasties. He effected his purpose, not
only by force of arms, but by a deliberate policy of terrorism. After
victory he was of settled purpose ruthless in cruelties on the greatest
scale.
It was obvious that, sooner or later, he would come into conflict
with what was, at that time, the only other growing military Power in
the world—the Ottoman Empire. The two potentates had already become
neighbours, and causes of dispute and antagonism were often arising
between them. Each had sheltered refugee princes, whose territories
had been absorbed by the other, and who were engaged in intrigues to
stir up war between the two rivals, in the hope of regaining their
possessions. Insolent messages passed between the two potentates.
What is the foundation of thy insolence and folly? [wrote Timur to
Bayezid]. Thou hast fought some battles in the woods of Anatolia;
contemptible trophies! Thou hast obtained some victories over the
Christians of Europe; thy sword was blessed by the Apostle of
God; and thy obedience to the precepts of the Koran in waging war
against the infidel is the sole consideration that prevents us from
destroying thy country, the frontier and bulwark of the Moslem world.
Be wise in time; reflect; repent; and avert the thunder of our
vengeance which is yet suspended over thy head. Thou art no more than
an ant; why wilt thou seek to provoke the elephants? Alas, they will
trample thee under their feet.
Bayezid replied in terms of the greatest indignation. He protested that
Timur had never triumphed unless by his own perfidy and the vices of
his foes.
Thy armies are innumerable: be they so; but what are the arrows
of the flying Tartars against the scimitars and battle-axes of my
firm and invincible Janissaries? I will guard the princes who have
implored my protection; seek them in my tents. The cities of Arzingan
and Erzerum are mine; and unless the tribute be paid I will demand
the arrears under the walls of Tauris and Sultania.
And he added an insult of a yet grosser kind which, by its allusion to
the harem, was the worst that could be devised by a Moslem:—
If I fly from thy arms may my wives be thrice divorced from my bed;
but if thou hast not courage to meet me in the field, mayest thou
again receive thy wives after they have thrice endured the embrace of
a stranger.
After this interchange of abuse Timur determined, in 1400, to attack
and invade Asia Minor from Armenia, at the head of a horde of armed
men, estimated by historians at not less than eight hundred thousand.
He laid siege to Sivas, in Cappadocia, on the Armenian frontier, which
had only been captured by Bayezid about three years previously. It
was now defended by a garrison of Turks, under command of Ertoghrul,
the eldest son of Bayezid. The fortifications were immensely strong,
but Timur was ready to sacrifice any number of men in assaulting and
capturing the city. He employed six thousand miners in undermining its
defences with galleries and propping up the walls temporarily with
timber smeared with pitch. When the mines were completed, fire was
applied to the timber, and the walls gradually sank into the cavities
laid open to them, and afforded entrance to the assaulting columns. The
city was captured. Four thousand of its defenders were buried alive by
order of Timur, and Ertoghrul was executed.
Bayezid, thus challenged, advanced, in 1401, with an army of one
hundred and twenty thousand men to avenge the disaster at Sivas. Timur,
however, after the capture of that city, refrained from advancing
farther into Asia Minor. He passed into Syria and captured Damascus,
and thence into Mesopotamia for the capture of Bagdad. It was not till
the next year, 1402, that he determined to return to Asia Minor and to
humble Bayezid. He retraced his steps to Sivas, and thence, after a
further exchange of insolent messages with the Ottoman Sultan, he went
in search of him towards Angora, taking the route of Cæsarea and Kir
Sheir.
Bayezid had also collected a great army in the east of Asia Minor,
and had finally concentrated it in the neighbourhood of Angora. He
showed none of his previous skill as a general, though all of his
insolence and bravado. His army was discontented by his avarice, and
by his neglect to pay them out of the well-filled treasury. He refused
to follow the advice of his best generals, who warned him against
meeting Timur’s vast hosts on a field where they could deploy their
whole strength. The two armies met at last on the plain of Angora,
the site of many previous famous battles. It is almost inconceivable
that Bayezid, in arrogant contempt of his foe, employed his army, in
the face of the enemy, in a great hunt for game, which led them into
a district devoid of water, where his soldiers suffered terribly, and
five thousand are said to have died of thirst.
On return to their camp they found that Timur had diverted the
stream which supplied it with water. Bayezid was forced to fight at
a disadvantage. The Tartars, who formed a fourth part of the Ottoman
army, were not to be relied on in this battle. Their sympathies were
with their fellow-Tartars under Timur. Bayezid had committed the fatal
error of placing them in the front line, after his usual tactics of
meeting the first encounter of the enemy with inferior troops. But in
this case the Tartars deserted on the field of battle. The Serbian
contingent, under Prince Stephen, and other Christian vassal troops
fought with the utmost gallantry and loyalty. But it was in vain.
The whole Ottoman army was outnumbered, overwhelmed, and routed with
great slaughter. Bayezid with his bodyguard made a last stand. “The
Thunderbolt,” says the Turkish historian, “continued to wield a heavy
battle-axe. As a starving wolf scattering a flock of sheep he scattered
the enemy. Each blow of his redoubtable axe struck in such a way that
there was no need of a second blow.” But in the end he was overpowered
and taken prisoner.
Bayezid for some time after his capture was treated with unwonted
generosity by Timur, who was impressed by his dignified bearing, in
spite of his overwhelming defeat and humiliation. But after an attempt
to escape he was more rigidly guarded, and was put into fetters at
night. The treatment of him became more cruel and contemptuous. He was
carried by day in the train of Timur, when on the march, in a litter,
which was in effect a cage[12] with open bars, exposed to the derision
and contempt of the Tartars. His wife, Despina, the Serbian princess,
was compelled to serve Timur with drink at his meals in a state of
nudity, and with other women of Bayezid’s harem was taken into that
of the conqueror. Timur is also said to have made a footstool of his
conquered foe.
Bayezid died of a broken heart after eight months of humiliation,
at the age of forty-eight. During that time Timur overran the
greater part of Asia Minor, capturing Nicæa and Brusa and many other
strongholds from the Ottomans, and Smyrna from the Knights of St. John
of Jerusalem. The walls of Smyrna were undermined in the same way as
those of Sivas. In two weeks Timur effected a capture which Bayezid
had failed to do in three times that length of time. The Knights, when
they found that the city was no longer tenable, fought their way down
to their galleys against the crowd of despairing inhabitants. Most of
them escaped to Rhodes and effected there another settlement. Those who
failed to escape were put to death by Timur, who built a pyramid of
their heads. Everywhere there was ruthless cruelty. When approaching
the city of Ephesus, children came out to meet him singing songs to
appease his wrath. “What is this noise?” he asked. When told, he
ordered his horsemen to ride over the children. They were trampled to
death.
Timur reinstated in their former territories, as tributaries to his
own Empire, most of the petty princes who had been dispossessed by
the Turks, including the Emir of Karamania. He eventually returned to
Samarkand, where he made preparations for the invasion of China, but
before this could be realized he died, at the age of seventy-one,
two years after the death of Bayezid. As a result of his raid into
Asia Minor the Ottoman Empire there, for the time being, completely
collapsed. But the Tartars disappeared without leaving any trace behind
them.
If Bayezid’s physical downfall was overwhelming and humiliating,
his moral decadence was even worse, and, as it turned out, was more
permanently injurious to the people of his Empire by the evil example
it set. In the brief periods of peace, spent at Brusa and Adrianople,
he gave way to self-indulgence and vice of a deplorable kind. He was
the first of his race to break the laws of the Prophet and to drink too
freely of wine. In company with his Grand Vizier, Ali, he was addicted
to drunken orgies. Still worse, he was tempted by that boon companion
to give way to vice of unmentionable depravity, condemned by all the
world. The Empire was ransacked for good-looking boys, the sons of
Christian parents, who were compelled to embrace Islamism and to enter
the service of the Court, nominally as pages, but really to pander to
the degrading desire of the Sultan. In adopting such practices, Bayezid
set the fashion to others of his entourage. The moral infection then
spread widely among the upper classes of society, especially among the
judges and ulemas. There can be little doubt that immorality infected
the upper society of the Empire and was one of the causes which
ultimately led to decadence and ruin.
It is to be noted of Bayezid that in his short but strenuous career
of conquest he did not show any falling off of vigour and courage as
a result of his excesses. But in his final campaign against Timur his
conduct was so fatuous as to give rise to the belief that his gross
debauchery had resulted in softening of the brain. However that may
have been, he met in Timur a greater man than himself who, even at the
age of seventy, had lost none of his vigour of mind and body, and who,
as master also of bigger battalions, was practically invincible.
V
MAHOMET I
1413-21
ON the death of Sultan Bayezid, in captivity, it seemed as though
the Ottoman Empire was doomed to extinction. Asia Minor had already
passed out of its hands, and was either in possession of the Emirs who
had been reinstated in their territories by Timur, and who had sworn
allegiance to him, or was still in the occupation of the invading
Tartars. It was not to be expected that the Empire in Europe would
survive when it could no longer draw support from Asia. The Christian
populations of Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Wallachia would soon reassert
their independence, and the Greek Empire might be expected to recover
some of its lost provinces. The Turkish Empire, however, showed a most
unexpected vitality. It survived not only the invasion of Timur, but
civil war, which after the death of Bayezid broke out between four of
his sons. An interregnum of ten years occurred, during which there
was internecine war between these claimants to his throne. The Empire
emerged from these stupendous difficulties, under the able rule of the
youngest of them, Mahomet I, as strong as ever, and without the loss of
a single province.
Timur’s hosts, after ravaging the whole of Asia Minor, departed like
a swarm of locusts which has denuded a district of its produce and
then seeks fresh ground. They returned to Central Asia. They left
nothing behind in Asia Minor of Tartar rule, either of an army or of
an administration. The field was left open to the Ottomans to fight
among themselves and their former vassals and neighbours for such a
settlement as could be achieved by the strongest of them.
Of the six sons of Bayezid, five fought with him at Angora in command
of divisions of his army. One of them, Mustapha, was supposed to be
among the slain; another, Musa, was taken prisoner and shared the
captivity of his father. The other three escaped. The eldest of them,
Solyman, accompanied by the Grand Vizier, Ali, and Hassan, the Agha
of the Janissaries, made his way to Adrianople, where, on the death
of Bayezid, he had himself proclaimed Sultan, and exercised power as
such over the European provinces of the Empire. Issa, a younger son,
fled to Brusa, where he also claimed to be successor to his father, and
Mahomet, the youngest son, but by far the ablest, retired to Amasia, a
small principality in the north-east of Asia Minor. He there assumed
authority over the district. After the death of their father these
three claimants for succession to his Empire fought it out between
themselves, and, later on, a fourth claimant was added to the list in
Musa, who had been set free by Timur, in order that he might convey the
dead body of his father for interment at Brusa.
The earliest conflict was between Mahomet and Issa. Mahomet offered to
divide between them the Ottoman possessions in Asia. Issa refused and
claimed the whole of them. He was defeated and fled to Europe, where he
sought the assistance of Solyman, who had firmly established himself in
the Ottoman dominions there, and who was now able to lead an army into
Asia Minor in support of Issa. Mahomet was hard pressed by Solyman. He
sent Musa across the Straits to effect a diversion by raising revolt
against Solyman in Europe. This had the desired effect, and Solyman
was compelled to return to Adrianople. After his departure Mahomet
succeeded in defeating Issa again, and the latter disappeared and was
heard of no more.
In Europe, Solyman and Musa were now in deadly conflict. Solyman was
much the same type of man as his father—of great vigour and courage
in action, but given to orgies of drink and debauchery. The Agha of
the Janissaries in vain tried to rouse him from the apathy to which
he was often reduced after these bouts. He threatened to shave the
Agha’s beard with his sword. He was often severe and even cruel to
his soldiers, and finally the Janissaries, incensed by his brutal
treatment, his dissolute habits, and his inability to rouse himself to
action, rebelled against him, at the instance of Hassan, and put him
to death. They then took service under Musa, who became master of the
position in Europe and assumed the title of Sultan.
After an expedition to Serbia for the purpose of avenging what he
considered their treachery to him in supporting Mahomet, and where he
committed the most revolting cruelties, Musa returned to Adrianople,
and opened a campaign against the Emperor Manuel, who, after the death
of Bayezid, had superseded Andronicus on the Greek throne and who
supported Mahomet.
The Emperor appealed to Mahomet for assistance. Mahomet, with a Turkish
army, supported by the Serbian contingent, crossed the Bosphorus in
answer to this appeal, and the strange sight was witnessed of a Turkish
army, under command of one of the Othman race, defending Constantinople
against another Turkish army.
Musa eventually retreated from his lines in front of Constantinople,
and was pursued by Mahomet. When, later, the two armies came into close
touch on the borders of Serbia, a conflict was avoided by a revolt of
Musa’s troops. The Agha, Hassan, addressed the Janissaries in the very
presence of Musa. “Why,” he said to them, “do you hesitate to go over
to the ranks of the most just and virtuous of the Othman princes? Why
subject yourselves to be outraged by a man who can take care neither of
himself nor of others?”
Musa, on hearing this harangue to his troops, rushed at Hassan and slew
him. The companion of Hassan struck at Musa with his sword and wounded
him in the hand. The troops, when they saw that their general was
seriously wounded, were seized with panic. They deserted and went over
to Mahomet. Musa fled with three attendants, and, later, his dead body
was found in a marsh.
Mahomet was now in undisputed command of the Empire as Sultan. He
reigned as such for only eight years. He showed, during that time,
infinite skill and patience, as a statesman equally as a general, in
restoring, consolidating, and maintaining his Empire. He was ardently
desirous of peace. To the representatives of Serbia, Wallachia, and
Albania he said: “Forget not to tell your masters that I grant peace
to all, and that peace I will accept from all. May God be against the
breakers of peace.”
He kept on the best of terms with the Greek Emperor, with whom he
had made a defensive alliance, and restored to him certain cities on
the coast of the Black Sea and in Thessaly. He had frequent causes,
however, for the use of his army, and for showing his skill as a
general. He compelled the Emirs of Karamania, Kermia, and other
principalities in Asia Minor, who had promised allegiance to Timur,
to renew their vassalage to the Ottoman Empire. Two or three times
the Karamanian prince revolted and endeavoured to assert complete
independence. As often Mahomet defeated him, but contented himself with
asserting supremacy, and did not insist upon the incorporation of his
territory with the Empire. He also defeated an attempt of a Turkish
upstart to create an independent State at Smyrna and Aidin. He put down
a dangerous revolt of Dervishes and extinguished the sect. He came into
conflict at sea with the Republic of Venice, and though he was worsted,
and his fleet of galleys was destroyed, he succeeded in making an
honourable peace.
As a ruler of his Empire he showed many great qualities. He gained
the appellation which is best translated into English as the “Great
Gentleman”—and right well he deserved it. He was magnanimous and
just. He strictly observed his promises. He knew that his Empire
could not be maintained by force alone, but that justice and clemency
were necessary. His Christian subjects were everywhere treated with
consideration. He would not tolerate cruelty to them. He was a liberal
patron of literature, and in his short reign the Ottomans first
showed a bent for poetry. It was a blot on his fame that he caused
his youngest brother to be deprived of his sight, and that he put
to death his nephew, the son of Solyman, lest either of them should
dispute the throne with himself or his son after him. His experience
of his brothers and the history of his family doubtless convinced him
that no member of the Othman race would be content with any position
short of the Sultanate. This may not be a moral justification, but
it is an explanation which, in view of the ethics of the times, must
prevent too severe a judgment. Though Mahomet in his short reign, after
attaining full command of the Empire, made no extension of it, he must
be regarded practically as one of its founders and as among its most
eminent and successful rulers. He owed his success over his brothers
to his moral ascendancy and to the great reputation which he achieved
with his troops for his high qualities as a ruler even more than to
his prowess as a general. The emergence of the Empire from the extreme
difficulties into which it fell from the Mongolian invasion must have
been due to the fact that the Ottomans at that time were much superior
to the Greeks and the other Christian communities in all the qualities
which tend to make a stable government.
Mahomet died of apoplexy in 1421 at the early age of forty-seven. He
was buried at Brusa in a mausoleum near to the splendid building known
as the Green Mosque, which he had himself erected.
VI
MURAD II
1421-51
MURAD succeeded his father in the Sultanate as second of the name. He
reigned for thirty years, including two short periods when he abdicated
and retired into private life. But on each occasion he was compelled by
the exigencies of the State, and the youth and inexperience of his son
and successor, to resume the throne. He much resembled his father in
vigour and capacity as a general and in his desire to act justly.
At the very commencement of Murad’s reign the Greek Emperor Manuel, by
an almost incredible act of folly, hoping to take advantage of Murad’s
youth and inexperience, let loose from confinement a man who claimed,
whether rightly or not was never clearly established, to be Mustapha,
the son of Sultan Bayezid, who had disappeared after the battle of
Angora. Manuel entered into a treaty with this claimant to the Ottoman
throne, by which, in the event of his succeeding in establishing his
succession, the city of Gallipoli and all the cities on the shores of
the Black Sea, taken from the Greek Empire by the Turks, were to be
restored to it.
In spite of this scandalous treachery to Islam, the so-called Mustapha
succeeded in raising a large army in Europe, with which he defeated the
troops who adhered to Murad. He then crossed the Dardanelles into Asia
with his army in vessels supplied by the Emperor Manuel. Murad showed
all the vigour and capacity of his race in dealing with this emergency.
He won over the greater part of Mustapha’s army, who were disaffected.
He defeated what remained. Mustapha was driven across the Straits again
to Gallipoli, where he was besieged, captured, and hanged, as the best
proof, it was said, that he was an impostor.