immense spoil; but it was a dear victory. From thirty to forty thousand
of his men lay dead on the field, as a witness to the prowess of French
chivalry. Wherever the French fought, the chronicles record that “for
one Christian of those who lay dead on the field, there were thirty
Turks or more, or other men of that faith.” Maddened by his losses,
the Sultan ordered his prisoners to be killed. The massacre went on
all day; 2000 were executed; only those escaped who were likely to be
ransomed for large sums, and a few prisoners whose age was less than
twenty years. It was the soldiers’ greed rather than the Sultan’s
clemency which brought the butchery to an end.
When the news of the defeat was received at Paris, there was universal
mourning. Then an embassy was sent, with rich presents for the
Sultan, to arrange the ransom of the prisoners. The amount settled
upon was 200,000 florins. The Western ambassadors were treated with
great courtesy and magnificent entertainments were provided for their
amusement. In parting from one of the distinguished captives, John the
Fearless, son of the Duke of Burgundy, Bajesid said, “I do not wish to
require from you the oath not to bear arms against me again; if, when
you return home, you still find yourself in the humor for fighting me,
you will find me always ready to meet you on the field of battle, for
I am born for war and conquest.” As presents for Charles VI of France,
in exchange for those that had been sent him, he despatched by the
French envoys various warlike accouterments, among others a drum and
bowstrings, made of human flesh.
The fancifulness of the Turk was also seen by his sending with
those who made the formal announcement of his victory to the Moslem
princes of Asia and Egypt, the Western prisoners all equipped in their
heavy armor to enable the leaders of his own faith to understand the
significance of his success. As a result of the battle of Nicopolis,
Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Roumania accepted Ottoman rule; at the same time
the adjoining lands of the Hungarian King became the field of Turkish
raids.
Constantinople was in a perilous situation, but an attempt to take it
failed (1398). Less fortunate, as has been seen, were the inhabitants
of continental Greece, who saw Argos taken, and the country of the
Peloponnesus ravaged by Bajesid. The troubles of the imperial city were
not relieved by Bajesid’s failure to capture it, for by the instigation
of the Turks, John, the nephew of Manuel, became a claimant for the
crown, and at the head of 10,000 Ottoman troops marched on the city.
The result was that Manuel agreed to take his nephew as associate in
the Empire, a term which now had only a technical significance, for the
imperial dignity meant little more than the rule over Constantinople
itself. Bajesid refused to allow this arrangement unless further
concessions were made, such as the establishment of a fourth mosque
in the city, and the same local autonomy for the Turkish colony as
that enjoyed by the Venetians and Genoese. Manuel refused and appealed
to Western Christendom. France again showed its sympathy by sending
a survivor of the Nicopolis campaign, a knight, Boucicout, who, with
only 1200 men, forced the entrance of the Dardanelles, and afterwards
won a minor success in Asia, though he failed in his attempt to take
Nicodemia. Manuel tried, as his father had done, a personal visit to
the West, and remained nearly two years in France. Bajesid, in the
meantime, was encircling Constantinople with his fleet and armies, when
the situation suddenly changed, owing to the expansion of a new power
in the Orient.
The emirates of those Seldjouks, who had survived absorption by the
Ottomans, had, at the close of the fourteenth century, formed a
defensive alliance against Bajesid, but they were not successful.
The Sultan seized their best provinces, and, when they resorted to
arms, defeated the Seldjoukian emirs on the battlefield. Gradually
the Ottoman dominions were approaching the Euphrates, by which they
were brought near the frontier of the newly-organized Mongol empire,
the creation of the great conqueror Timur. The growth of bad feeling
between the two rival powers was accentuated, when each sovereign began
to receive with favor the rebellious vassals of the other. Timur sent
to the Sultan a threatening letter, which was answered in the temper
in which it was couched. Timur’s reply was to cross the frontier, and
this step was followed up by the capture of the important town of
Sivas. All the inhabitants were massacred, the Christians in it being
burned alive, and the governor of the place, a son of the Sultan, was
strangled. Timur turned from his invasion of the south to attack Angora
with the purpose of drawing the Turks into a trap. He succeeded, for
he had between two and three hundred thousand men, while Bajesid,
to oppose him, had only 120,000. A great battle took place on July
20, 1402, which ended most disastrously for the Turks, because the
Seldjoukians went over to the enemy. Bajesid was captured, and two of
his sons were killed. Much of the land to the west was overrun by the
Mongols, but a permanent organization of the Mongol Empire was made
impossible because of the death of Timur on February 19, 1405. Bajesid
had also died of a broken heart, after his terrible defeat.
IV MURAD II
This change of fortune meant much for the Greek Empire. Manuel took
courage, deprived the Turks of their privileges at Constantinople, and
making use of the divisions among the successors of Bajesid, succeeded
in regaining a part of the territories that had been lost. For some
years the Ottomans, under Mohammed, were engaged in regaining their
position in Asia; in Europe the tables were reversed. The empire of
the Ottomans seemed to be on the point of going through a process of
disintegration similar to that experienced by their predecessors of the
same race, the Seldjouks. When it was defunct its residuary legatee
might well be the Greek Empire.
There were now many Ottoman princes, no longer one sultan. Souliman,
who reigned at Adrianople, sought the protection of Manuel, gave him as
a hostage one of his sisters, married a niece of the Emperor, restored
part of Macedonia and Ionia, and yielded up Thessalonika, the greatest
prize of all. When he was succeeded by his brother Mousa, there was an
outbreak of hostilities; Thessalonika was again lost by the Greeks, but
soon retaken, while a Turkish fleet was resisted by a fleet now manned
by Greek sailors; for Manuel had taken care to provide for a navy, and
was no longer dependent on the commercial cities of Italy. Mohammed
was summoned by Manuel from Asia as an ally against Mousa, and the two
succeeded in defeating him. On his capture he met death at Mohammed’s
hands.
For the next eight years (1413-1421) Mohammed was sole ruler of the
Osmanlis, but internal difficulties hindered aggressive action on his
part, so far as the Christian powers were concerned. His policy was
decidedly philhellenic, Manuel receiving from his hands important
territories on the Black Sea and the Propontis; but his main attention
was directed to the Asiatic provinces, where, in addition to troubles
with the emir of Karamania, there were disturbances, due to religious
agitations in Islam. One of the chief agitators was a converted Jew,
Torlak-Hin-Kemali, a preacher of the revolutionary doctrines of liberty
and equality, who demanded a division of property. This communistic
teaching stirred up the masses of the people, and excited the active
sympathy of the dervish party.
On the death of Mohammed, his son, Murad II, took up the succession.
He was a prince of energy and ability, who devoted himself for thirty
years to the restoration of the Empire. The Greek Emperor Manuel still
carried on his policy of sowing dissension among the Turks, but with
less success than in the preceding period. Mustafa, an uncle of the new
Sultan, became the ally of the Greeks, and Gallipoli, the first place
taken by the Turks in Europe, was besieged. Murad hastened personally
to save the town from capture. His uncle was taken, beaten, and hanged.
Murad undertook then to lay siege to Constantinople, this making the
fourth time that the city had been threatened by Ottoman armies. (June,
1422.)
The besiegers were a motley host; mixed with the soldiers were
dervishes, marabouts (religious teachers), artisans, and peasants, all
drawn together by the hope of sacking the rich capital.
They showed much improvement in the siege-methods employed, for
they used wooden towers, and tried to get into the city through the
aqueduct. The Greek armies were beaten in front of the walls, but
Manuel and his son, John, soon found a way for causing the withdrawal
of Murad’s army, by inviting over from Asia another son of Mohammed,
to whom his brother had intrusted the government of one of the Asiatic
provinces. He was ceremoniously received in the city, and as soon as it
was known in the Turkish camp that he was on his way to the west, Murad
withdrew to Adrianople.
This siege is signalized in the chronicles by a narrative of the
miraculous appearance of the Virgin on the walls of the city, the very
day a general assault had been ordered. The Ottomans, panic-stricken,
it is said, hastened to retreat. Both Christians and Mohammedans
accepted the authenticity of the apparition, which is not surprising,
since, in the ranks of the Sultan’s army, there were large numbers of
men who had been converted to Islam, but who could not throw aside the
religious habits of mind of medieval Christians.
Peace was made on conditions extremely favorable to the Greeks. There
was still a tribute to be paid, but some territory that had been taken
in the campaign was restored. When Manuel died in 1425 he left six
sons, all of whom were in positions of command. One of them, John VIII,
was his successor as Emperor, the others were ruling parts of the
empire at Thessalonika and farther south.
One of the first acts of the new administration was to endeavor to
placate the Turks by restoring some of the towns on the Black Sea. But
the efforts at pacification were of no avail. The Morea was invaded by
one of the Sultan’s generals, Tourakhan-beg, whose progress was not
effectively contested, except by the Albanian colonies. The inhabitants
of these were, however, mercilessly slaughtered, and on the site of the
razed towns the Turks erected pyramids of the heads of their victims.
In the north, too, there was successful fighting on the part of the
Ottomans, both with the Roumanians and the Bulgarians, and even with
the Hungarians, whose King, Sigismund, was defeated near the walls of
Kolunbitz.
In 1430, Murad took charge of the attack on Thessalonika, now in the
possession of the Venetians, who had taken it from the Greek prince
Andronicus. The activity of Venice at this time is in decided contrast
to the cautious policy displayed by the republic in the previous
century. For one thing, the secular contest with Genoa had been
decided in favor of the Adriatic port. Then, too, the objections of
the Venetians to occupy continental possessions had been overcome by
the exigencies of Italian politics, which had forced Venice to play a
larger rôle in advancing her especial interests than ever before. It
seemed for a time as if the Venetians would become the natural heirs
to the territories of the Eastern Empire in the lands of peninsular
Greece, while to the north Hungary had risen to be the main power,
around which the Roumanian and Slavic races gathered as their natural
protector against the Turk. From now on the establishment of the
Ottoman power in Europe would depend on the overthrow of both the
Venetians and the Hungarians. The former, as has just been intimated,
were slowly and diplomatically acquiring Greek principalities in the
south of continental Greece, but were striving, at the same time, not
to bear the brunt of Turkish hostility. They relied partly on the
strong fleet which had been sent to the East, and partly on the care
they had taken to secure the aid of the Hungarians. On the other hand,
the Turks had been developing their navy, and they ventured, as early
as 1428, to attack merchant vessels belonging to the republic.
The fall of Thessalonika precipitated events and caused the Venetians
to recognize that quick action was necessary. The republic entered into
relations with the King of Cyprus and with the dissatisfied vassal
princes of Karamania, who were ever ready to rebel against the Sultan.
Proposals were made to King Sigismund to inaugurate a new crusade, in
which he would have charge of the land forces, while the Venetians,
keeping the mastery of the sea, would prevent new troops from being
sent over from Asia. Unhappily, Sigismund proved apathetic; there were
disturbances in the Albanian lands owned by Venice, and a war with
Genoa kept the Venetians from having a free hand to deal effectively
with the Sultan. Accordingly, a peace was patched up, by the terms
of which Venice paid a tribute to the Turks for some of her Greek
possessions.
Plundering expeditions were now made by the Turks into Hungarian
territory, but before Sigismund could undertake military operations
on his side his death occurred. (December 9, 1437.) The work of
defense was then undertaken by his successor and son-in-law, Albert.
For the first time the Sultan in person led an army in the region of
the Carpathians and the Danube, and, although a coalition was formed,
consisting of Hungarians, Servians, and Wallachians, the Turkish arms
proved, as so often, irresistible. Semendria was taken, and many
thousands of prisoners were carried away from the ravaged countries.
But Belgrade held out, though Albert died there among his troops on
October 27, 1438.
Strong hands were found ready to take up the work of defense. In the
city, which was amply protected by a threefold wall, and by many pieces
of artillery mounted on the ramparts, there was a garrison of German
mercenaries, while in other regions exposed to the invaders, there were
Hungarian forces under the command of Johann Hunyadi, the son of a
Roumanian peasant of Inidora, whose reputation as a national hero was
soon to be made in the victorious leadership of his people against the
Turk.
Hunyadi’s first aggressive act was an invasion into Bosnia, where he
drove out some marauding bands of the Turkish general Isa-beg. A much
more important military exploit was the battle of Szt-Imre, where, in
1442 (March 18), the Turks were forced back into Wallachia. Attempts
made somewhat later to avenge this humiliation had no final success,
for Hunyadi attacked the invading army on its march, winning a victory
conspicuous because many well-known Ottoman generals lost their lives.
Spurred by the prowess of Hunyadi, the Western powers prepared to
support him in driving the Ottomans from Europe. There was additional
ground for hope in the arrangements, lately made, for a union between
the Eastern and Western churches, a scheme naturally regarded as a
good basis for coöperation against the Moslems. A new crusade was
proclaimed, but nothing was accomplished by it, since the Venetians
feared the loss of their possessions in the East, if the Slavic races
were too actively aided, and since the Pope had no inclination to part
with the tithes collected for the crusade, while he had use for them in
protecting his temporal sovereignty as an Italian prince.
The Hungarians, left for these sinister reasons to deal with the Turks
single-handed, displayed no lack of resolution. Hunyadi, with troops
of Roumanians and Hungarians, passed the Danube late in October,
1443. He soon occupied Nisch and defeated several Ottoman armies, but
the campaign had no decisive result, for Hunyadi feared to penetrate
farther into Turkish territory without additional forces, especially
as Murad was now in personal command. This caution was justified, for,
in withdrawing, the Christian army suffered a reverse. The Hungarians
could congratulate themselves that their advance had given great
encouragement wherever the pressure of the Turkish occupation was felt.
Yet there was no sincere effort on the part of the Christian powers to
work together. The Servians made their own terms with the Sultan, and
the Venetian fleet, ostensibly despatched to eastern waters to act with
the Hungarians, was put under the command of Loredano, who had private
instructions to come to terms with the Turks.
The story of a peace concluded on terms most humiliating for Murad,
by which, among other things, the whole of Bulgaria and Servia was
evacuated, is rightly questioned. All that is known is that Wladislaw,
who was now King of Hungary (1440), solemnly protested that he would
undertake a crusade against the Turks, all treaties and truces to
the contrary notwithstanding. The expedition was begun, Hunyadi
coöperating, and Papal legates testifying, by their presence, that a
true crusade was in progress. But, although the army stood for the
cause of the whole of Christendom, in the ranks there were almost none
but Hungarian soldiers. It crossed the Danube, intending to march
straight to Varna, and from there proceed by sea to Constantinople.
But it was far too small for the work it planned to do; even after it
had been joined by Vlad of Wallachia, it only numbered 15,000 men.
Before Varna could be taken, Murad (at the head of an army of 40,000
men) hastened from Asia to arrest the progress of the crusaders. In the
engagement that followed all efforts to break through the Janitschars,
even when attempted under the experienced leadership of Hunyadi, failed
completely, and the Christians suffered a decisive overthrow. Only a
few of the 15,000 escaped, among them Hunyadi and Vlad. Among the dead
were the King of Hungary and a Papal legate. (October, 1444.)
The news of this disaster took some time to reach the West, and by
the time it was known there, information was also received that the
indefatigable Hunyadi was again girding himself up for a second
expedition. This ended with some small advantages in Wallachia. Again,
in 1448, he tried another mode of entrance into the Sultan’s territory,
passing this time among the Albanians, on whose aid he reckoned without
avail, since they were fighting on their own account against the
Turks. The Servians, too, held aloof. The second battle of Kossovo
(October 17, 1448) ended in a defeat for the Hungarians, although the
Turkish losses were very severe. Under the hammering of Hunyadi, the
Janitschars were obliged to give way, but they withdrew in good order
with unbroken ranks.
There was a truce for three years after this battle, much to the
relief of both sides, since Murad had encountered an aggressive
Albanian leader in Scanderbeg, who seemed likely to rival Hunyadi as
an enemy of Ottoman rule. For some time this Albanian champion, whose
name in Albanian is equivalent to Alexander, had been kept as a page
at the Sultan’s court. During the confusion caused by the campaigns
of Hunyadi, the young man had managed to escape, but before doing
so, he had forced the Sultan’s secretary, under menace of death, to
sign an order directing the commander of Croia to give up the place
to Scanderbeg. On reaching his home in the mountains, the Albanian
chieftain put himself at the head of 600 warriors. Entering Croia alone
he presented his written order to the governor, who immediately turned
over the place to him. In the night he brought his men into the town
and the Turkish garrison was massacred.
Everywhere throughout the land the Albanian people rose to cast out
the Turk from their borders. Scanderbeg soon had 11,000 men under him,
and won back all the possessions belonging to his family. Even the
Venetians, who had tried to seize an Albanian town, were glad to come
to terms with him, and to become his financial agents. He was accepted
as chief of all the forces operating against the Ottomans, and a relief
expedition of 40,000 men, under the command of Ali Pascha, the vizier,
was caught in the fastnesses of the Albanian mountains and slowly
exterminated. (1443.) Another Turkish army fared no better than that
under Ali Pascha, and it lost 10,000 men. When Murad himself undertook
to repress the rebellion, bringing with him the overwhelming force of
100,000 men, he took two cities, but left 20,000 of his men dead in
the narrow defiles of Albania. Two years afterwards Murad began the
siege of Croia, trusting to specially powerful artillery to overwhelm
the enemy. But Scanderbeg, by skilful manœuvers, not only held the
Sultan in check, but actually enveloped his army. Murad, seeing his
danger, offered peace, on condition that Scanderbeg would acknowledge
his sovereignty, and pay tribute to him. This was refused, and Murad
abandoned his efforts to arrest the stubborn guerrilla warfare in which
the Albanian chieftain had proved himself a master.
In the Morea, where the Byzantine princes, the sons of Manuel II, were
gaining ground at the expense of one of the Latin feudal lords, the
Florentine Acciajuoli, who had accepted the Sultan as his overlord,
Murad’s army of 60,000 men achieved decisive successes. The wall
across the Isthmus of Corinth was taken by the Ottoman artillery, and
the Peloponnesus was overrun by the invaders. Corinth was seized and
burnt; but Patras, by its stout resistance, held the Sultan in check
until terms were made, by which the invaders withdrew, on condition of
receiving an annual tribute. (1446.)
But the dynastic disputes of Constantinople weakened the Greek power
of resistance as much as did their failure in warfare. On the death of
John VIII, in 1448, the dispute between his sons as to the succession
was settled by Murad, who decided in favor of Constantine, the valiant
defender of Patras. There was, however, no ceremony of coronation;
therefore, strictly speaking, the last Christian Emperor of the
East appears in the long line of the successors of Constantine the
Great,--his namesake,--with a tinge of irregularity in his record. Soon
after this elevation Murad died, February 8, 1451. His virtues are
celebrated by the western chronicler, Brocquière, in the words, “a
mild person, kind and generous in according lordship and money.”
V MOHAMMED II
Mohammed II was only twenty years old when he took up the reins
of government. He was ambitious, was endowed with great physical
endurance, and, from reading the deeds of Julius Cæsar and Alexander,
as they appeared in the folklore tales translated into Arabic,
had conceived a strong desire to transform the tribal and loosely
organized sovereignty of his people into an enduring political power
with a systematic organization. His primary object was the capture of
Constantinople, and to get a free hand for this undertaking, he adopted
a most pacific policy in the first year of his reign. He renewed
the treaties with Genoa and Venice, with the princes of Servia and
Wallachia, and with Hunyadi, Scanderbeg, and the Knights of Rhodes.
[Illustration: MEDAL OF MOHAMMED II.]
He opened hostilities with the Greeks by building, in an
extraordinarily short space of time, a fortification on the narrow
seas, near the imperial city, which enabled him to collect dues from
all the vessels entering the harbor, and served as a point from which
issued armed expeditions that captured nearly all the Greek territory
outside the city walls. Meanwhile, some slight acts of aggression in
the Morea failed to reveal to the West the real purposes of the new
Sultan. Those who had seen him spoke of him as a mild and learned young
man, not at all the kind of ruler who would walk in footsteps different
from his father’s. The Western Emperor, Frederick III, thought it was
sufficient to write the Sultan a letter, warning him not to attack
Constantinople. Those who were nearer understood his temper better,
knowing that, when Constantine sent a delegation to protest against
the erection of the fortification that had lately been built on the
European shore of the Bosphorus, the Greek emissaries had been beheaded.