Tīmūr
organised
a large army on the Don and around the Sea of
Azov, in order that in case of need it might act with his huge host
now advancing towards the Black Sea from the south.
Azov, in order that in case of need it might act with his huge host
now advancing towards the Black Sea from the south.
Cambridge Medieval History - v4 - Eastern Roman Empire
Moreover, the
1
By Halil Ganem, Les Sultans ottomans, p. 64.
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. XXI.
43
## p. 674 (#716) ############################################
674
Bāyazīd the Thunderbolt
great horde from central Asia under the leadership of Tīmūr was already
on the march, and had driven other Turks before it to the west; to them
were due the constant accretions to the Ottoman army. The disorganised
condition of the races once occupying the Balkan peninsula aided the
advance of the Ottomans. The Slavs, as we have seen, were divided.
There were Bulgars, Serbs, and inhabitants of Dalmatia; there were
also Albanians, Wallachs of Macedonia, and Greeks. In the Ottoman
army there was the tie of a common language. Patriotism, that is love
of country, did not exist, but its place was taken by a common religion.
Among the Christians whom they attacked, though there was unity of
religion, patriotism was far from forming a bond of union.
The reign of Murād is important, not merely because of his successes
in the Balkan peninsula, but because it was the beginning of an Ottoman
settlement in Europe. It is true that the army still marched as a dis-
ciplined Asiatic horde, but the soldiers wherever they took possession of
territory had lands, or chiftliks, granted to them according to their
valour and the Sultan's will. Liable as they were at all times to con-
tinuous military service, they were always ready on the conclusion of
peace to return to their lands, their flocks and herds. The occupation
of Hadrianople caused that city soon to be the centre from which further
Ottoman conquests were made—so that, while nominally Brúsa remained
the capital of the race, Hadrianople soon became a more important city
and the real centre of Ottoman rule.
BĀYAZĪD (1389-1403). WARS OF SUCCESSION (1403-1413).
On the assassination of Murād, Bāyazīd succeeded to the Ottoman
throne. He was popular with the army because already renowned for his
successes as a soldier. He is known as Yilderim, or the Thunderbolt, a
title conferred upon him on account of the rapidity of his movements in
warfare. Regarded simply as a man, he was the most despicable of Ottoman
Sultans who had as yet been girded with the sword of Osmān. He alter-
nated periods of wonderful activity with others of wild debauch. He was
reckless of human life and delighted in cruelty. Had he possessed the
statesmanlike ability of either of his predecessors he might have made
an end of the Greek Empire. As it was, he would probably have done
so if he had not encountered an opponent even more powerful and
ruthless than himself.
Immediately after the victory of Kossovo he led his troops in quick
succession against the Bulgars, the Serbs, the Wallachs, and the Alba-
nians, reducing them to submission. He compelled Stephen, the son of
Lazar, to acknowledge him as suzerain, and to give him his sister
Maria in marriage. To such an extremity was the lingering Empire of
Trebizond reduced that its Emperor Manuel in 1390 was compelled to
contribute a large subsidy to aid Bāyazīd in a campaign against his
## p. 675 (#717) ############################################
Western crusade against the Turks
675
father-in-law, the Emir of Germiyān or Phrygia, and to bring a hundred
knights to aid in the campaign. Bāyazīd had in the meantime strengthened
his fleet, which overran the islands in the Aegean as far as Euboea and
the Piraeus. Sixty of his ships burnt the chief town of the island of Chios.
A swift campaign in Asia Minor made him complete master of Phrygia
and of Bithynia. Then he turned his attention to Constantinople. The
Emperor proposed to strengthen the landward walls and to rebuild the
famous towers at the Golden Gate. Bāyazīd objected and threatened to
put out the eyes of the Emperor's son Manuel, who was with him as a
hostage, unless the new buildings were demolished. The old Emperor
John had to yield, and the surrender helped to kill him. The towers
were shortly afterwards, on the death of Bāyazīd, rebuilt. Simultaneously
Bāyazīd demanded payment of tribute, a recognition of the Emperor's
vassalage to him, and the establishment of capitulations by which a
Muslim cadi should be named in the capital to have jurisdiction over
Ottoman subjects. He appears to have waged during 1392 and 1393 a
war of extermination throughout Thrace, the subjects of the Empire
being either taken captive or killed.
The advance of the Turks was now well known in western Europe,
but the efforts made to resist it were spasmodic and shewed little power
of coherence between the Christian States. Those who were nearest to
the Balkan peninsula naturally were the most alarmed. Venice in 1391
decided to aid Durazzo in opposing Turkish progress. In the following
year its senate treated with the King of Hungary for common action.
Ten thousand Serbs from Illyria joined Theodore Palaeologus of Mistra,
in his attempt to expel the Turks from Achaia. Theodore himself in
1394 was compelled by Bāyazīd to cede Argos. The Sultan later sent his
general, Ya'qūb, into the Morea with 50,000 men, who penetrated as
far as Methone and Coronea, captured Argos which Theodore had not
surrendered, and carried off or killed 30,000 prisoners. The Emperor
Manuel, whose rule hardly extended beyond the walls of Constantinople,
made a series of appeals to the Western princes. Sigismund, King of
Hungary and brother of the Emperor of the West, was the first to
respond. He attacked the Turks at Little Nicopolis in 1393, and defeated
them. This encouraged the Western powers to come to his aid. The
Pope Boniface IX preached a new crusade in 1394, and in 1996 the
Duke of Burgundy, at the head of 1000 knights and 9000 soldiers
(French, English, and Italian), arrived in Hungary and joined Sigismund.
German knights also came in considerable numbers. The Christian
armies defeated the Turks in Hungary, and gained the victory in several
engagements. The Emperor Manuel was secretly preparing to join them.
Then the allies prepared to strike a decisive blow. They gathered on the
banks of the Danube an army of at least 52,000 and possibly 100,000
men, and encamped at Nicopolis. The élite of several nations were
present, but those of the highest rank were the French knights. When
(I.
43—2
## p. 676 (#718) ############################################
676
Victory of Bāyazīd at Nicopolis, 1396
they heard of the approach of the enemy, they refused to listen to the
prudent counsels of the Hungarians and, with the contempt which so
often characterised the Western knights for the Turkish foe, they joined
battle confident of success.
Bāyazīd, as soon as he had learned the presence of the combined Chris-
tian armies, marched through Philippopolis, crossed the Balkans, made
for the Danube, and then waited for attack. In the battle which ensued
(1396), Europe received its first lesson on the prowess of the Turks and
especially of the Janissaries. The French with rash daring broke through
the line of their enemies, cut down all who resisted them, and rushed on
triumphantly to the very rearguard of the Turks, many of whom either
retreated or sought refuge in flight. When the French knights saw that
the Turks ran, they followed, and filled the battlefield with dead and
dying. But they made the old military blunder, and it led to the old
result. The archers, who always constituted the most effective Turkish
arm, employed the stratagem of running away in order to throw their
pursuers into disorder. Then they turned and made a stand. As they did
so, the Janissaries, Christians in origin, from many Christian nations, as
Ducas bewails, came out of the place where they had been concealed, and
surprised and cut to pieces Frenchmen, Italians, and Hungarians. The
pursuers were soon the pursued. The Turks chased them to the Danube,
into which many of the fugitives threw themselves. The defeat was
complete. Sigismund saved himself in a small boat, with which he crossed
the river, and found his way, after long wandering, to Constantinople.
The Duke of Burgundy and twenty-four nobles who were captured were
sent to Brūsa to be held for ransom. The remaining Burgundians, to
the number of 300, who escaped massacre and refused to save their lives
by abjuring Christianity, had their throats cut or were clubbed to death
by order of the Sultan and in the presence of their compatriots? .
The battle of Nicopolis gave back to Bāyazīd almost at once all that
the allies had been able to take from him. The defeat of Sigismund, with
his band of French, German, and Italian knights, spread dismay among
their countrymen and the princes of the West.
Bāyazīd, having retaken all the positions which the allied Christians
had captured from him, hastened back to the Bosphorus, his design being
to conquer Constantinople. For this purpose, having strengthened his
position at Izmid and probably at the strong fortification still remaining
at G eh, he immediately gave orders for the construction of a for-
tress at what is now known as Anatolia-Hisār. The fort was about six
miles from the capital on the Asiatic side and at the mouth of a small
river now known as the Sweet Waters of Asia. The arrival in March 1397
of the great French soldier Boucicaut in the capital probably influenced
the design of the Sultan; for although he had defeated the Christian
allies at Nicopolis and had made all preparations for the capture of Con-
1 Cf. supra, Chapter xvili, p. 561.
## p. 677 (#719) ############################################
Boucicaut at Constantinople
677
stantinople, and although the Emperor had been summoned to surrender
it, a demand to which he had not replied, the grand vizier represented to
him that its siege would unite all Christian Europe against him, and the
project was therefore delayed. The construction of Anatolia-Hisār, which
was to serve as his basis of attack, was however pushed on and completed'.
A few months later in 1397, the Sultan endeavoured to accomplish his
object by persuading John, the nephew of the Emperor Manuel, to claim
the throne, promising that if he did so he would aid him in return by the
cession of Silivri. John refused, and when Bāyazīd made further pro-
posals Manuel took a step which suggests patriotism and which Godefroy,
the biographer of Boucicaut, attributes to his wise intervention. Manuel
agreed to admit John into the city, to associate him on the throne, and
then to leave for western Europe to bring the aid so greatly needed
(1398). Boucicaut arrived in the following year at the head of 1400
men-at-arms and with a well-manned fleet. At Tenedos he was joined by
Genoese and Venetian ships, and became admiral-in-chief. He met near
Gallipoli a Turkish fleet of seventeen galleys and defeated them. Then
he pushed on to the Bosphorus, and arrived in the Golden Horn just in
time to prevent Galata being captured by the Turks. The Emperor
appointed him Grand Constable. The French knights under him fought
the Turks whenever they could find them, from Izmid to Anatolia-Hisār,
defeated them in many skirmishes, and sent many Turkish prisoners to
Constantinople. But their numbers were too few to have much permanent
value. They harassed Bāyazīd's army at Izmid, but failed to capture
the city. They burnt a few Turkish villages ; but after a year's fighting
Boucicaut left for France in order to obtain more volunteers. He left in
Constantinople Chateaumorant with 100 knights and their esquires and
servants to assist in defending the city.
The Turks were now spread throughout the Balkan peninsula and
claimed to rule over almost all Asia Minor. Western Europe was alarmed
at their progress and many attempts were made to resist it. Had their
forces been capable of united action under a great general like Boucicaut,
they might have succeeded in effecting a check. But while that general
was fighting on the shores of the Marmora, destroying many Turkish
encampments and greatly harassing the enemy, he was only hopeful of
success if he could obtain a larger contingent of French knights. While
others, as we have seen, were fighting the battle of civilisation in the
Morea, the Knights of Rhodes had captured Budrun, the ancient Hali-
carnassus, and had already made themselves a strong power in the
Aegean and Levant; but they were themselves a cause of weakness to
the Empire. Theodore of Mistra, the brother of Manuel, had ceded
Corinth to them, but they attempted to obtain other concessions, and
1 Leunclavius says that the Sultan desisted only on condition that a quarter in
the city should be given to the Turks. Chalcondyles says he withdrew because he
had had no success. Ducas speaks of the resistance of the citizens as obstinate.
CH, XXI.
## p. 678 (#720) ############################################
6. 78
Danger of Constantinople
Bāyazīd tempted Theodore with the promise of peace if he would give
his aid to expel the Knights. While Bulgarians, Serbs, and Albanians
were ready for resistance whenever a favourable opportunity occurred,
there was little solidarity between them in their efforts to resist the
invaders. Bāyazīd, a ruthless invader with forces ever increasing, was
ready everywhere to employ his genius for warfare and the great mobile
army whose interest was to follow him; and the result was that the
efforts of his disunited enemies hardly impeded his progress.
Boucicaut persuaded the Emperor Manuel to offer to become the
vassal of Charles VI of France; and the Venetians, Genoese, and the
Knights of Rhodes consented to his doing homage. Venetians and Genoese
in the Bosphorus agreed to join forces and work for the defence of the city.
The Emperor Manuel and Boucicaut left together for Venice and France.
Charles received both with great honours, and consented to send 1200
soldiers and to pay them for a year. In order to avoid the responsibility
of giving Manuel the protection of a suzerain, he seems to have refused to
accept him as his vassal. Manuel went in 1400 from Paris to England,
where Henry IV received him with great honour but gave no assistance.
In 1402 he returned to Venice by way of Germany.
In the same year Bāyazīd summoned John to surrender the capital.
During three years it had been nearly isolated by the Turks, but now it
was threatened by assault. Bāyazīd swore " by God and the prophet”
that if John refused he would not leave in the city a soul alive. The
Emperor gave a dignified refusal. Chateaumorant, who had been in
charge of the defence for nearly three years, waited to be attacked.
At this time, remarks Ducas, the Empire was circumscribed by the
walls of Constantinople, for even Silivri was in the hands of the Turks.
Bāyazīd had gained a firm hold of Gallipoli, and thus commanded the
Dardanelles. The long tradition of the Roman Empire seemed on the
eve of coming to an end. No soldier of conspicuous ability had been
produced for upwards of half a century, none capable of inflicting a
sufficient defeat, or series of defeats, on the Turks to break or seriously
check their power. The Empire had fought on for three generations
against an ever-increasing number of Muslims, but without confidence
and almost without hope. It was now deficient both in men and in money.
The often-promised aid from the West had so far proved of little avail.
The power of Serbia had been almost destroyed. Bulgaria had perished.
From Dalmatia to the Morea the enemy was triumphant. The men of
Macedonia had everywhere fallen before Bāyazīd's armies. Constantinople
was between the hammer and the anvil. Asia Minor, on the one side,
was now nearly all under Turkish rule; Europe, on the other, contained
many Turks as there were in Asia Minor itself.
Bāyazīd passed in safety between his two capitals, one at Brūsa, the
other at Hadrianople, and repeated his proud boasts of what he would
do beyond the limits of the Empire. It seemed as if, with his over-
ás
## p. 679 (#721) ############################################
The appearance of Tīmūr
679
לל
whelming force, he had only to succeed once more in a task which, in
comparison with what he and his predecessors had done, was easy, and his
success would be complete. He would occupy the throne of Constantine,
would achieve that which had been the desire of the Arab followers of
Mahomet, and for which they had sacrificed hundreds of thousands of
lives, and would win for himself and his followers the reward of heaven
promised to those who should take part in the capture of New Rome.
The road to the Elder Rome would be open, and he repeated the boast
that he would feed his horse on the altar of St Peter.
When he had sent his insolent message in 1402 to John VII, the answer
was: “Tell your master we are weak, but that in our weakness we trust
in God, who can give us strength and can put down the mightiest from
their seats. Let your master do what he likes. ” Thereupon Bāyazīd had
laid siege to Constantinople.
Suddenly in the blackness of darkness with which the fortunes of the
city were surrounded there came a ray of light. All thought of the
siege was abandoned for the time, and Constantinople breathed again
freely. What had happened was that Tīmūr the Lame, “the Scourge
of God," had challenged, or rather ordered, Bāyazīd to return to the
Greeks all the cities and territories he had captured. The order of
the Asiatic barbarian, given to another ferocious barbarian like Bāyazid,
drove him to fury. The man who gave it was, however, accustomed to
be obeyed.
Tīmūr, or Tamerlane, was a Musulman and a Turk? His nomad
troops advanced in well-organised armies, under generals who seem to
have had intelligence everywhere of the enemy's country and great
military skill. After conquering Persia, Tīmūr turned westward. In
1386 he appeared at Tiflis, which he subsequently captured, at the head
of an enormous host estimated at 800,000 men. At Erzinjān he put all
the Turks sent there by Bāyazid to the sword.
Bayazid seems from the first to have been alarmed, and went himself
to Erzinjān in 1394, but returned to Europe without making any
attempt to resist the invader, probably believing that Tīmūr had no
intention of coming farther west. He soon learned his mistake. Tīmūr
was not merely as great and cruel a barbarian but as ambitious as
Bāyazid himself. In 1395, while the Sultan was in the Balkan peninsula,
Tīmūr summoned the large and populous city of Sīwās to surrender. The
inhabitants twice refused. Meantime, he had undermined the wall. On
their second refusal, his host stormed and captured the city. A hundred
and twenty thousand captives were massacred. One of Bāyazīd's sons
was made prisoner and put to death. A large number of prisoners were
buried alive, being covered over in a pit with planks instead of earth so
as to prolong their torture. Bāyazīd was relieved when he heard that
? Cf. supra, Chapter xx, pp. 650-51.
CH. XXI.
## p. 680 (#722) ############################################
680
Capture of Aleppo and Baghdad by Tīmūr
from Sīwās, which had been the strongest place in his empire, the ever
victorious army
had
gone
towards Syria.
Tīmūr directed his huge host towards Aleppo, the then frontier
city of the Sultan of Egypt, his object being to punish the Sultan for
his breach of faith in imprisoning his ambassador and loading him with
irons. On his march to that city, he spread desolation everywhere,
capturing or receiving the submission of Malatīyah, 'Ain Tāb, and other
important towns. At Aleppo the army of the Egyptian Sultan resisted.
A terrible battle followed, but the Egyptians were beaten, and every
man, woman, and child in the city was slaughtered.
After the capture of Aleppo, Hamāh and Baalbek were occupied. The
last, which, like so many other once famous cities, has become a desola-
tion under Turkish rule with only a few miserable huts amid its superb
ruins, was still a populous city, and contained large stores of provisions.
Thence he went to Damascus, and in January 1401 defeated the remainder
of the Egyptian army in a battle which was hardly less bloody than that
before Aleppo. The garrison, composed mostly of Circassian mamlūks
and negroes, capitulated, but its chief was put to death for having been
so slow in surrendering. Possibly by accident the whole city was burned.
Tīmūr was stopped from advancing to Jerusalem by a plague of
locusts, which ate up every green thing. The same cause rendered it im-
possible to attack Egypt, whose Sultan had refused to surrender Syria.
From Damascus Tīmūr went to Baghdad, which was held by contem-
poraries to be impregnable. Amid the heat of a July day, when the
defenders had everywhere sought shade, Tīmūr ordered a general assault,
and in a few minutes the standard of one of his shaikhs, with its horsetail
and its golden crescent, was raised upon the walls. Then followed the
usual carnage attending Tīmūr's captures. The mosques, schools, and
convents with their occupiers were spared; so also were the imāms and
the professors. All the remainder of the population between the ages of
eight and eighty were slaughtered. Every soldier of Tīmūr, of whom
there were 90,000, as the price of his own safety, had to produce a head.
The bloody trophies were, as was customary in Tīmūr's army, piled up
in pyramids before the gates of the city.
It was on his return northward from Damascus that, in 1402, Tīmūr
sent the message to Bāyazīd which at once forced him to raise the siege
of Constantinople. Contemporaneously with this message Tīmūr re-
quested the Genoese in Galata and at Genoa to obtain aid from the
West, and to co-operate with him to crush the Turkish Sultan.
Tīmūr organised a large army on the Don and around the Sea of
Azov, in order that in case of need it might act with his huge host
now advancing towards the Black Sea from the south. His main body
passed across the plain of Erzinjān, and at Sīwās Tīmūr received the
answer of Bāyazīd. The response was as insulting as a Turkish barbarian
could make it. Bāyazīd summoned Tīmūr to appear before him, and
Tin
## p. 681 (#723) ############################################
Bāyazīd and Tīmūr
681
declared that, if he did not obey, the women of his harem should be
divorced from him, putting his threat in what to a Musulman was
a specially indecent manner. All the usual civilities in written com-
munications between sovereigns were omitted, though the Asiatic
conqueror himself had carefully observed them. Tīmūr's remark, when he
saw the Sultan's letter containing the name of Tīmūr in black writing
under that of Bāyazīd which was in gold, was: “ The son of Murād is
mad. ” When he read the insulting threat as to his harem, Tīmūr kept
himself well in hand, but turning to the ambassador who had brought
the letter, told him that he would have cut off his head and those of the
members of his suite, if it were not the rule among sovereigns to respect
the lives of ambassadors. The representative of Bāyazīd was, however,
compelled to be present at a review of the whole of the troops, and was
ordered to return to his master and relate what he had seen.
Meantime Bāyazīd had determined to strike quickly and heavily
against Tīmūr, and by the rapidity of his movements once more justified
his name of Yilderim. His opponent's forces, however, were hardly less
mobile. Tīmūr's huge army marched in twelve days from Sīwās to Angora.
The officer in command of that city refused to surrender. Tīmūr made
his arrangements for the siege in such a manner as to compel or induce
Bāyazid to occupy a position where he would have to fight at a dis-
advantage. He undermined the walls and diverted the small stream
which supplied it with water. Hardly had these works been commenced
before he learned that Yilderim was within nine miles of the city. Tīmūr
raised the siege and transferred his camp to the opposite side of the
stream, which thus protected one side of his army, while a ditch and a
strong palisade guarded the other. Then, in an exceptionally strong
position, he waited to be attacked.
Disaffection existed in Bāyazīd's army, occasioned by his parsimony,
and possibly nursed by emissaries from Tīmūr. Bāyazīd's own licentious-
ness had been copied by his followers, and discipline among his troops
was noted as far less strict than among those of his predecessor. In leading
them on what all understood to be the most serious enterprise which he
had undertaken, his generals advised him to spend his reserves of money
freely so as to satisfy his followers; but the capricious and self-willed
Yilderim refused. They counselled him, in presence of an army much
more numerous than his own, to act on the defensive and to avoid a
general attack. But Bāyazīd, blinded by his long series of successes, would
listen to no advice and would take no precautions. In order to shew his
contempt for his enemy, he ostentatiously took up a position to the north
of Tīmūr, and organised a hunting party on the highlands in the neigh-
bourhood, as if time to him were of no consequence. Many men of his
army died from thirst under the burning sun of the waterless plains,
and when, after three days' hunting, the Sultan returned to his camping
ground, he found that Tīmūr had taken possession of it, had almost cut off
CH. XXI.
## p. 682 (#724) ############################################
682
Angora: capture of Bāyazīd
his supply of drinking water, and had fouled what still remained. Under
these circumstances, Bāyazīd had no choice but to force on a fight without
further delay. The ensuing battle was between two great Turkish leaders
filled with the arrogance of barbaric conquerors, each of whom had been
almost uniformly successful. Nor were pomp and circumstance wanting
to impress the soldiers of each side with the importance of the issue.
Each of the two leaders was accompanied by his sons. Four sons and five
grandsons commanded the nine divisions of Tīmūr's host. In front of its
leader floated the standard of the Red Horsetail surmounted by the
Golden Crescent. On the other side, Bāyazīd took up his position in the
centre of his army with his sons «Īsà, Mūsà, and Mustafà, while his eldest
son Sulaimān was in command of the troops who formed the right wing.
Stephen of Serbia was in command of his own subjects, who had been
forced to accompany Bāyazīd, and formed the left wing of the army. The
Serbians gazed in wonder and alarm upon a number of elephants opposite
to them, which Tīmūr had brought from India.
At six o'clock in the morning of 28 July 1402, the two armies joined
battle. The left wing of Bāyazid's host was the first to be attacked,
but the Serbians held their ground and even drove back the Tartars.
The right wing fought with less vigour, and when the troops from Aidīn
saw their former prince among the enemy, they deserted Bāyazid and
went over to him. Their example was speedily followed by many others,
and especially by the Tartars in the Ottoman army, who are asserted by
the Turkish writers to have been tampered with by agents of Tīmūr.
The Serbians were soon detached from the centre of the army,
but
Stephen, their leader, at the head of his cavalry, cut his way through the
enemy, though at great loss, winning the approval of Timūr himself,
who exclaimed: “These poor fellows are beaten, though they are fighting
like lions. ” Stephen had advised Bāyazīd to endeavour like himself to
break through, and awaited him for some time. But the Sultan expressed
his scorn at the advice. Surrounded by his ten thousand trustworthy
Janissaries, separated from the Serbians, abandoned by a large part of his
Anatolian troops and many of his leading generals, he fought on obsti-
nately during the whole of the day. But the pitiless heat of a July sun
exhausted the strength of his soldiers, and no water was to be had. His
Janissaries fell in great numbers around him, some overcome by the heat
and fighting, others struck down by the ever pressing crowd of the enemy.
It was not till night came on that Bāyazid consented to withdraw. He
attempted flight, but was pursued. His horse fell and he was made pri-
soner, together with his son Mūså and several of the chiefs of his house-
hold and of the Janissaries. His other three sons managed to escape.
The Serbians covered the retreat of the eldest, Sulaimān, whom the grand
vizier and the Aghā of the Janissaries had dragged out of the fight.
The Persian, Turkish, and most of the Greek historians say that
Timur received his great captive with every mark of respect, assured him
לי
## p. 683 (#725) ############################################
Tīmūr's conquests in Asia Minor
683
that his life would be spared, and assigned to him and his suite three splendid
tents. When, however, he was found attempting to escape, he was more
rigorously guarded and every night put in chains and confined in a room
with barred windows. When he was conveyed from one place to another,
he travelled much as Indian ladies now do, in a palanquin with curtained
windows. Out of a misinterpretation of the Turkish word, which desig-
nated at once a cage and a room with grills, grew the error into which
Gibbon and historians of less repute have fallen, that the great Yilderim
was carried about in an iron cage. Until his death he was an unwilling
follower of his captor.
After the battle of Angora, Sulaimān, the eldest son of Bāyazīd, who
had fled towards Brūsa, was pursued by a detachment of Tīmūr's army.
He managed to cross into Europe, and thus escaped. But Brūsa, the
Turkish capital, fell before Tīmūr's attack, and its inhabitants suffered
the same brutal horrors as almost invariably marked either Tartar or
Turkish captures. The city, after a carefully organised pillage, was burned.
The wives and daughters of Bāyazīd and his treasure became the property
of Tīmūr. Nicaea and Gemlik were also sacked and their inhabitants
taken as slaves. From the Marmora to Karamania, many towns which had
been captured by the Ottomans were taken from them. Asia Minor was
in confusion. Bảyazīd's empire appeared to be falling to pieces in every
part east of the Aegean. Sulaimān, however, established himself on the
Bosphorus at Anatolia-Hisār, and about the same time both he and the
Emperor at Constantinople received a summons from Tīmūr to pay tri-
bute. The Emperor had already sent messengers to anticipate such a
demand. Timur learned with satisfaction that the sons of Bāyazid were
disputing with each other as to the possession of such parts of their
father's empire as still remained unconquered.
In 1402 the conqueror left Kyūtāhiya for Smyrna, which was held, as
it had been for upwards of half a century, by the Knights of Rhodes.
In accordance with the stipulation of Muslim sacred law, he summoned
them either to pay tribute or to become Musulmans, threatening them at
the same time that if they refused to accept one or other of these condi-
tions all would be killed. No sooner were the proposals rejected than
Tīmūr gave the order to attack the city. With his enormous army, he
was able to surround Smyrna on three sides, and to block the entrance to
it from the sea. The ships belonging to the Knights were at the time
absent. All kinds of machines then known for attack
upon
walled towns
were constructed with almost incredible speed and placed in position. The
houses within the city were burned by means of arrows carrying flaming
materials steeped in naphtha or possibly petroleum, though, of course,
not known under its modern name.
After fourteen days' vigorous siege, a general assault was ordered, and
the city taken. The Knights fought like heroes but were driven back
into the citadel. Seeing that they could no longer hold out, and their
CH. XXI.
## p. 684 (#726) ############################################
684
Deaths of Tīmūr and Bayazid
ships having returned, the Grand Master placed himself at their head,
and he and his Knights cut their way shoulder to shoulder through the
crowd of their enemies to the sea, where they were received into their own
ships. The inhabitants who could not escape were taken before Tīmūr
and butchered without distinction of age or sex.
The Genoese in Phocaea and in the islands of Mitylene and Chios
sent to make submission, and became tributaries of the conqueror.
Smyrna was the last of Tīmūr's conquests in western Asia Minor. He
went to Ephesus, and during the thirty days he passed in that city his
army ravaged the whole of the fertile country in its neighbourhood and
in the valley of the Cayster. The cruelties committed by his horde would
be incredible if they were not well authenticated and indeed continually
repeated during the course of Tartar and Turkish history. In fairness it
must also be said that the Ottoman Turks, although their history has
been a long series of massacres, have rarely been guilty of the wantonness
of cruelty which Greek and Turkish authors agree in attributing to the
Tartar army. One example must 'suffice. The children of a town on
which Timur was marching were sent out by their parents, reciting verses
from the Koran to ask for the generosity of their conqueror but co-reli-
gionist. On asking what the children were whining for, and being told
that they were begging him to spare the town, he ordered his cavalry to
ride through them and trample them down, an order which was forthwith
obeyed.
Tīmūr, wearied with victories in the West, now determined to leave
Asia Minor and return to Samarqand. He contemplated the invasion of
China, but in the midst of his preparations he died, in 1405, after a reign
of thirty-six years.
Bāyazīd the Thunderbolt had died at Aq-Shehr two years earlier
(March 1403), or according to Ducas at Qara-Hisār, and according
to another account by his own hand. His son Mūsà was permitted to
transport his body to Brūsa.
The next ten years were occupied in struggles among the sons of
Bāyazīd for the succession to his throne. These struggles threatened
still more to weaken the Ottoman power. The battle of Angora had
given the greatest check to it which it had yet received. Tīmūr's
campaign proved, however, to be merely a great marauding expedition,
most of the effects of which were only temporary. But its immediate
result was that the victorious career of the Thunderbolt was brought
suddenly to an end. The empire of the Ottomans which he had largely
increased, especially by the addition to it of the southern portion of
Asia Minor, was for a time shattered. Mahomet of the old dynasty had
taken possession of Karamania; Caria and Lycia were once more under
independent emirs. The sons of the vanquished Sultan, after the
departure of Tīmūr and his host, quarrelled over the possession of
what remained. Three of them gained territories in Asia Minor, while
## p. 685 (#727) ############################################
Civil war among the Ottomans
685
the eldest, Sulaimān, retook possession of the lands held by his father
in Europe. Most of the leaders of the Ottoman host, the viziers,
governors, and shaikhs, had been either captured or slain, and in
consequence the sons of Bāyazīd fighting in Asia Minor found themselves
destitute of efficient servants for the organisation of government in the
territories which they seized on the departure of the great invader.
The progress of the Asiatic horde created a profound impression in
Western Europe. The eagerness of the Genoese to acknowledge the
suzerainty of Tīmūr gives an indication of their sense of the danger of
resistance. The stories of the terrible cruelties of the Tartars lost nothing
in the telling. When the news of the defeat at Angora, along with
the capture of Brūsa, of Smyrna, and of every other town which the
Asiatic army had besieged, and of the powerlessness of the military
Knights, reached Hungary, Serbia, and the states of Italy, it appeared
as if the West were about to be submerged by a new flood from Asia.
Then, when news came of the sudden departure of the Asiatics and of
the breaking up of the Ottoman power, hope once more revived, and it
appeared possible to the Pope and to the Christian peoples to complete
the work which Tīmūr had begun by now offering a united opposition to
the establishment of an Ottoman empire. Constantinople itself when
Bāyazīd passed it on his way to Angora was almost the last remnant of
the ancient Empire. The battle of Angora saved it and gave it half a
century more of life.
Sulaimān in 1405 sought to ally himself with the Emperor, and his
proposals shew how low the battle of Angora had brought the Turkish
pretensions. He offered to cede Salonica and all country in the Balkan
peninsula to the south-west of that city as well as the towns on the Mar-
mora to Manuel and his nephew John, associated as Emperor, and to
send his brother and sister as hostages to Constantinople. The arrange-
ment was accepted.
Sulaimān attacked his brother ‘İsà in 1405, and killed him? Another
brother, Mūsà, in the following year, attacked the combined troops of
Sulaimān and Manuel in Thrace, but the Serbians and Bulgarians deserted
the younger brother, and thereupon Sulaimān occupied Hadrianople.
Manuel consented to give his granddaughter in marriage to Sulaimān, who
in return gave up not merely Salonica but many seaports in Asia Minor,
a gift which was rather in the nature of a promise than a delivery, since
they were not in his possession. Unhappily Sulaimān, like many of his
race, had alternate fits of great energy and great lethargy, and was given
over to drunkenness and to debauchery. This caused disaffection among
the Turks; and Mūsà, taking advantage of it, led in 1409 an army com-
posed of Turks and Wallachs against him. The Janissaries, who were
dissatisfied with the lack of energy displayed by their Sultan, deserted
i Chalcondyles, iv. p. 170. Ducas says he disappeared in Karamania ; Phrantzes,
p. 86, that he was bowstrung.
CH. XXI.
## p. 686 (#728) ############################################
686
Victory of Mahomet
and went over to the side of Mūsà. Sulaimān fled with the intention of
escaping to Constantinople, but was captured while sleeping off a drinking
bout and killed.
Then Mūsà determined to attack Manuel, who had been faithful to
his alliance with Sulaimān. He denounced him as the cause of the fall or
Bāyazīd, and set himself to arouse all the religious fanaticism possible
against the Christian population under the Emperor's rule. According to
Ducas, Mūsà put forward the statement that it was the Emperor who had
invited Tīmūr and his hordes, that his own brother Sulaiman had been
punished by Allāh because he had become a giaour, and that he, Mūsà,
had been entrusted with the sword of Mahomet in order to overthrow the
infidel. He therefore called upon the faithful to go with him to recapture
Salonica and the other Greek cities which had belonged to his father, and
to change their churches into mosques.
In 1412 he devastated Serbia for having supported his brother, and
this in as brutal a manner as Tīmūr had devastated the cities and
countries in Asia Minor. Then he attacked Salonica. Orkhān, the
son of Sulaimnān, aided the Christians in the defence of the city,
which however was forced to surrender, and Orkhān was blinded by
his uncle.
While successful on land Mūsà was defeated at sea, and the inhabi-
tants of the capital, in 1411, saw the destruction of his fleet off the
island of Plataea in the Marmora. In revenge for this defeat he laid
siege to the city. Manuel and his subjects stoutly defended its landward
walls, and before Mūsà could capture it news came of the revolt of his
younger brother, Mahomet, who appeared as the avenger of Sulaimān.
The siege of Constantinople had to be raised. Mahomet had taken the
lordship of the Turks in Amasia shortly after the defeat of his
father at Angora, and had not been attacked by Tīmūr. The Emperor
proposed an alliance with him, which was gladly accepted, and the con-
ditions agreed to were honourably kept by both parties. Mahomet
came to Scutari, where he had an interview with the Emperor. An army
composed of Turks and Greeks was led by Mahomet to attack his
brother. But Mūsà defeated him in two engagements. Then Manuel,
after a short time, having been joined by a Serbian army, attempted
battle against him, and with success. The Janissaries deserted Mūsà
and went over to Mahomet and Manuel, and his army was defeated.
Mūsà was himself captured and by order of Mahomet was bowstrung.
Mahomet was now the only survivor of the six sons of Bāyazīd,
with the exception of Qāsim, the youngest, who was still living with
Manuel as a hostage; three of his brothers had been the victims of
fratricide. In 1413 Mahomet proclaimed himself Grand Sultan of the
Ottomans.
## p. 687 (#729) ############################################
Mahomet I
687
MAHOMET I, CALLED THE GENTLEMAN (1413–1421).
Mahomet was a soldier at the age of fifteen and proved himself from
the first an able one. After the ten years of civil war already mentioned
he was formally recognised as Sultan. Shortly before his accession he
charged the representatives of Venice, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Wallachia,
who went to offer their congratulations, not to forget to repeat to their
masters that he purposed to give peace to all and to accept it from all.
He added: “May the God of Peace inspire those who should be tempted
to violate it. ” At his accession the Ottomans had lost nearly all
their possessions in Europe except Hadrianople. Bosnia, Bulgaria, and
Wallachia had recovered their freedom. In Asia Minor revolts followed
each other in rapid succession. According to his promise, Mahomet
restored to the Emperor Manuel the strong positions which the Turks
had occupied on the Black Sea, on the Marmora, and in Thessaly; and he
acknowledged the rule of the Serbians over a considerable portion of the
territory they had lost. When the Emperor returned by sea from the
Morea, the two rulers had a friendly interview in Gallipoli on an imperial
ship. In 1416 Mahomet gave permission to the Knights of Rhodes to
build a castle in Lycia as a refuge for fugitives from the Muslims.
In the following year, 1417, he crossed from Hadrianople to Asia
Minor and recaptured Smyrna from Junaid, who had declared himself
independent during the war of succession.
Venice at this time sent out many rovers who, while owning allegiance
to the republic, fought for their own hands, annexed territory to the
sovereign city, but were allowed to establish themselves as rulers. They
plundered the Turkish coasts and captured Turkish vessels wherever
they found them. War with the republic was declared in 1416. The
Sultan had so far not sought war with any European State, nor did he
now seek war with Venice, the republic indeed forcing it upon him. He
fitted out no less than 112 ships, of which thirteen were galleys. The
Venetian fleet was under the command of Loredan. The two fleets met
off Gallipoli on 29 May 1416, when a bloody encounter took place and
the Turks were utterly defeated'. Twenty-seven Turkish vessels were
captured, and a tower built by the Genoese at Lampsacus to prevent the
Turks passing into Europe was rased to the ground?
Mahomet did not seek to play the part of a conqueror in his ex-
peditions against Hungary in 1416 and the two following years, but he
introduced a better organisation into the places which his predecessor
had captured. He erected a series of forts on the frontier of the Danube.
One of the most important was at Giurgevo, opposite Ruschuk. Junaid,
the former governor of Smyrna, was named to the same post in Nicopolis.
1 Jorga, p. 372, speaks of the battle as an event of world importance.
2 Von Hammer, ch. ix, p. 172. The Rapport de Loredano, given in full in
Laugier's Histoire de Venise, 1. 5.
CH. XXI.
## p. 688 (#730) ############################################
688
Character of Mahomet I's reign
לל
Severin, near Trajan's bridge, was fortified. Mahomet endeavoured,
but with less success, to introduce better organisation among the Serbs,
west and northwest of Belgrade, as far as Styria. Sigismund, however,
declared war, and obtained a victory over the Turks between Niš and
Nicopolis in 1419. The last years of Mahomet's reign were comparatively
peaceful.
Mahomet had to meet a pretender, as he is called by the Turkish
historians, who claimed to be Mustafà, brother of the Sultan, who had
disappeared after the battle of Angora. He was supported by Junaid,
the ex-rebel of Smyrna whom we have seen named governor of Nicopolis,
and also by the Wallachs. The rebellion raised by them became more
serious in the reign of the following Sultan. Mahomet died from a fit
of apoplexy, in which he fell from his horse at Hadrianople, at the end
of 1421 or perhaps in January 14221.
Halil Ganem claims that Mahomet was the greatest, wisest, noblest,
and most magnanimous of the Ottoman conquerors. He was called
Chelebi,“ the gracious lord,” “the gentleman. ” He was renowned for his
justice as much as for his courage. He was the rebuilder, the restorer,
whose practical wisdom was of as much value to the Ottomans as the
military genius of his predecessor. Their empire on his accession appeared
as a mass of fragments.
1
By Halil Ganem, Les Sultans ottomans, p. 64.
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. XXI.
43
## p. 674 (#716) ############################################
674
Bāyazīd the Thunderbolt
great horde from central Asia under the leadership of Tīmūr was already
on the march, and had driven other Turks before it to the west; to them
were due the constant accretions to the Ottoman army. The disorganised
condition of the races once occupying the Balkan peninsula aided the
advance of the Ottomans. The Slavs, as we have seen, were divided.
There were Bulgars, Serbs, and inhabitants of Dalmatia; there were
also Albanians, Wallachs of Macedonia, and Greeks. In the Ottoman
army there was the tie of a common language. Patriotism, that is love
of country, did not exist, but its place was taken by a common religion.
Among the Christians whom they attacked, though there was unity of
religion, patriotism was far from forming a bond of union.
The reign of Murād is important, not merely because of his successes
in the Balkan peninsula, but because it was the beginning of an Ottoman
settlement in Europe. It is true that the army still marched as a dis-
ciplined Asiatic horde, but the soldiers wherever they took possession of
territory had lands, or chiftliks, granted to them according to their
valour and the Sultan's will. Liable as they were at all times to con-
tinuous military service, they were always ready on the conclusion of
peace to return to their lands, their flocks and herds. The occupation
of Hadrianople caused that city soon to be the centre from which further
Ottoman conquests were made—so that, while nominally Brúsa remained
the capital of the race, Hadrianople soon became a more important city
and the real centre of Ottoman rule.
BĀYAZĪD (1389-1403). WARS OF SUCCESSION (1403-1413).
On the assassination of Murād, Bāyazīd succeeded to the Ottoman
throne. He was popular with the army because already renowned for his
successes as a soldier. He is known as Yilderim, or the Thunderbolt, a
title conferred upon him on account of the rapidity of his movements in
warfare. Regarded simply as a man, he was the most despicable of Ottoman
Sultans who had as yet been girded with the sword of Osmān. He alter-
nated periods of wonderful activity with others of wild debauch. He was
reckless of human life and delighted in cruelty. Had he possessed the
statesmanlike ability of either of his predecessors he might have made
an end of the Greek Empire. As it was, he would probably have done
so if he had not encountered an opponent even more powerful and
ruthless than himself.
Immediately after the victory of Kossovo he led his troops in quick
succession against the Bulgars, the Serbs, the Wallachs, and the Alba-
nians, reducing them to submission. He compelled Stephen, the son of
Lazar, to acknowledge him as suzerain, and to give him his sister
Maria in marriage. To such an extremity was the lingering Empire of
Trebizond reduced that its Emperor Manuel in 1390 was compelled to
contribute a large subsidy to aid Bāyazīd in a campaign against his
## p. 675 (#717) ############################################
Western crusade against the Turks
675
father-in-law, the Emir of Germiyān or Phrygia, and to bring a hundred
knights to aid in the campaign. Bāyazīd had in the meantime strengthened
his fleet, which overran the islands in the Aegean as far as Euboea and
the Piraeus. Sixty of his ships burnt the chief town of the island of Chios.
A swift campaign in Asia Minor made him complete master of Phrygia
and of Bithynia. Then he turned his attention to Constantinople. The
Emperor proposed to strengthen the landward walls and to rebuild the
famous towers at the Golden Gate. Bāyazīd objected and threatened to
put out the eyes of the Emperor's son Manuel, who was with him as a
hostage, unless the new buildings were demolished. The old Emperor
John had to yield, and the surrender helped to kill him. The towers
were shortly afterwards, on the death of Bāyazīd, rebuilt. Simultaneously
Bāyazīd demanded payment of tribute, a recognition of the Emperor's
vassalage to him, and the establishment of capitulations by which a
Muslim cadi should be named in the capital to have jurisdiction over
Ottoman subjects. He appears to have waged during 1392 and 1393 a
war of extermination throughout Thrace, the subjects of the Empire
being either taken captive or killed.
The advance of the Turks was now well known in western Europe,
but the efforts made to resist it were spasmodic and shewed little power
of coherence between the Christian States. Those who were nearest to
the Balkan peninsula naturally were the most alarmed. Venice in 1391
decided to aid Durazzo in opposing Turkish progress. In the following
year its senate treated with the King of Hungary for common action.
Ten thousand Serbs from Illyria joined Theodore Palaeologus of Mistra,
in his attempt to expel the Turks from Achaia. Theodore himself in
1394 was compelled by Bāyazīd to cede Argos. The Sultan later sent his
general, Ya'qūb, into the Morea with 50,000 men, who penetrated as
far as Methone and Coronea, captured Argos which Theodore had not
surrendered, and carried off or killed 30,000 prisoners. The Emperor
Manuel, whose rule hardly extended beyond the walls of Constantinople,
made a series of appeals to the Western princes. Sigismund, King of
Hungary and brother of the Emperor of the West, was the first to
respond. He attacked the Turks at Little Nicopolis in 1393, and defeated
them. This encouraged the Western powers to come to his aid. The
Pope Boniface IX preached a new crusade in 1394, and in 1996 the
Duke of Burgundy, at the head of 1000 knights and 9000 soldiers
(French, English, and Italian), arrived in Hungary and joined Sigismund.
German knights also came in considerable numbers. The Christian
armies defeated the Turks in Hungary, and gained the victory in several
engagements. The Emperor Manuel was secretly preparing to join them.
Then the allies prepared to strike a decisive blow. They gathered on the
banks of the Danube an army of at least 52,000 and possibly 100,000
men, and encamped at Nicopolis. The élite of several nations were
present, but those of the highest rank were the French knights. When
(I.
43—2
## p. 676 (#718) ############################################
676
Victory of Bāyazīd at Nicopolis, 1396
they heard of the approach of the enemy, they refused to listen to the
prudent counsels of the Hungarians and, with the contempt which so
often characterised the Western knights for the Turkish foe, they joined
battle confident of success.
Bāyazīd, as soon as he had learned the presence of the combined Chris-
tian armies, marched through Philippopolis, crossed the Balkans, made
for the Danube, and then waited for attack. In the battle which ensued
(1396), Europe received its first lesson on the prowess of the Turks and
especially of the Janissaries. The French with rash daring broke through
the line of their enemies, cut down all who resisted them, and rushed on
triumphantly to the very rearguard of the Turks, many of whom either
retreated or sought refuge in flight. When the French knights saw that
the Turks ran, they followed, and filled the battlefield with dead and
dying. But they made the old military blunder, and it led to the old
result. The archers, who always constituted the most effective Turkish
arm, employed the stratagem of running away in order to throw their
pursuers into disorder. Then they turned and made a stand. As they did
so, the Janissaries, Christians in origin, from many Christian nations, as
Ducas bewails, came out of the place where they had been concealed, and
surprised and cut to pieces Frenchmen, Italians, and Hungarians. The
pursuers were soon the pursued. The Turks chased them to the Danube,
into which many of the fugitives threw themselves. The defeat was
complete. Sigismund saved himself in a small boat, with which he crossed
the river, and found his way, after long wandering, to Constantinople.
The Duke of Burgundy and twenty-four nobles who were captured were
sent to Brūsa to be held for ransom. The remaining Burgundians, to
the number of 300, who escaped massacre and refused to save their lives
by abjuring Christianity, had their throats cut or were clubbed to death
by order of the Sultan and in the presence of their compatriots? .
The battle of Nicopolis gave back to Bāyazīd almost at once all that
the allies had been able to take from him. The defeat of Sigismund, with
his band of French, German, and Italian knights, spread dismay among
their countrymen and the princes of the West.
Bāyazīd, having retaken all the positions which the allied Christians
had captured from him, hastened back to the Bosphorus, his design being
to conquer Constantinople. For this purpose, having strengthened his
position at Izmid and probably at the strong fortification still remaining
at G eh, he immediately gave orders for the construction of a for-
tress at what is now known as Anatolia-Hisār. The fort was about six
miles from the capital on the Asiatic side and at the mouth of a small
river now known as the Sweet Waters of Asia. The arrival in March 1397
of the great French soldier Boucicaut in the capital probably influenced
the design of the Sultan; for although he had defeated the Christian
allies at Nicopolis and had made all preparations for the capture of Con-
1 Cf. supra, Chapter xvili, p. 561.
## p. 677 (#719) ############################################
Boucicaut at Constantinople
677
stantinople, and although the Emperor had been summoned to surrender
it, a demand to which he had not replied, the grand vizier represented to
him that its siege would unite all Christian Europe against him, and the
project was therefore delayed. The construction of Anatolia-Hisār, which
was to serve as his basis of attack, was however pushed on and completed'.
A few months later in 1397, the Sultan endeavoured to accomplish his
object by persuading John, the nephew of the Emperor Manuel, to claim
the throne, promising that if he did so he would aid him in return by the
cession of Silivri. John refused, and when Bāyazīd made further pro-
posals Manuel took a step which suggests patriotism and which Godefroy,
the biographer of Boucicaut, attributes to his wise intervention. Manuel
agreed to admit John into the city, to associate him on the throne, and
then to leave for western Europe to bring the aid so greatly needed
(1398). Boucicaut arrived in the following year at the head of 1400
men-at-arms and with a well-manned fleet. At Tenedos he was joined by
Genoese and Venetian ships, and became admiral-in-chief. He met near
Gallipoli a Turkish fleet of seventeen galleys and defeated them. Then
he pushed on to the Bosphorus, and arrived in the Golden Horn just in
time to prevent Galata being captured by the Turks. The Emperor
appointed him Grand Constable. The French knights under him fought
the Turks whenever they could find them, from Izmid to Anatolia-Hisār,
defeated them in many skirmishes, and sent many Turkish prisoners to
Constantinople. But their numbers were too few to have much permanent
value. They harassed Bāyazīd's army at Izmid, but failed to capture
the city. They burnt a few Turkish villages ; but after a year's fighting
Boucicaut left for France in order to obtain more volunteers. He left in
Constantinople Chateaumorant with 100 knights and their esquires and
servants to assist in defending the city.
The Turks were now spread throughout the Balkan peninsula and
claimed to rule over almost all Asia Minor. Western Europe was alarmed
at their progress and many attempts were made to resist it. Had their
forces been capable of united action under a great general like Boucicaut,
they might have succeeded in effecting a check. But while that general
was fighting on the shores of the Marmora, destroying many Turkish
encampments and greatly harassing the enemy, he was only hopeful of
success if he could obtain a larger contingent of French knights. While
others, as we have seen, were fighting the battle of civilisation in the
Morea, the Knights of Rhodes had captured Budrun, the ancient Hali-
carnassus, and had already made themselves a strong power in the
Aegean and Levant; but they were themselves a cause of weakness to
the Empire. Theodore of Mistra, the brother of Manuel, had ceded
Corinth to them, but they attempted to obtain other concessions, and
1 Leunclavius says that the Sultan desisted only on condition that a quarter in
the city should be given to the Turks. Chalcondyles says he withdrew because he
had had no success. Ducas speaks of the resistance of the citizens as obstinate.
CH, XXI.
## p. 678 (#720) ############################################
6. 78
Danger of Constantinople
Bāyazīd tempted Theodore with the promise of peace if he would give
his aid to expel the Knights. While Bulgarians, Serbs, and Albanians
were ready for resistance whenever a favourable opportunity occurred,
there was little solidarity between them in their efforts to resist the
invaders. Bāyazīd, a ruthless invader with forces ever increasing, was
ready everywhere to employ his genius for warfare and the great mobile
army whose interest was to follow him; and the result was that the
efforts of his disunited enemies hardly impeded his progress.
Boucicaut persuaded the Emperor Manuel to offer to become the
vassal of Charles VI of France; and the Venetians, Genoese, and the
Knights of Rhodes consented to his doing homage. Venetians and Genoese
in the Bosphorus agreed to join forces and work for the defence of the city.
The Emperor Manuel and Boucicaut left together for Venice and France.
Charles received both with great honours, and consented to send 1200
soldiers and to pay them for a year. In order to avoid the responsibility
of giving Manuel the protection of a suzerain, he seems to have refused to
accept him as his vassal. Manuel went in 1400 from Paris to England,
where Henry IV received him with great honour but gave no assistance.
In 1402 he returned to Venice by way of Germany.
In the same year Bāyazīd summoned John to surrender the capital.
During three years it had been nearly isolated by the Turks, but now it
was threatened by assault. Bāyazīd swore " by God and the prophet”
that if John refused he would not leave in the city a soul alive. The
Emperor gave a dignified refusal. Chateaumorant, who had been in
charge of the defence for nearly three years, waited to be attacked.
At this time, remarks Ducas, the Empire was circumscribed by the
walls of Constantinople, for even Silivri was in the hands of the Turks.
Bāyazīd had gained a firm hold of Gallipoli, and thus commanded the
Dardanelles. The long tradition of the Roman Empire seemed on the
eve of coming to an end. No soldier of conspicuous ability had been
produced for upwards of half a century, none capable of inflicting a
sufficient defeat, or series of defeats, on the Turks to break or seriously
check their power. The Empire had fought on for three generations
against an ever-increasing number of Muslims, but without confidence
and almost without hope. It was now deficient both in men and in money.
The often-promised aid from the West had so far proved of little avail.
The power of Serbia had been almost destroyed. Bulgaria had perished.
From Dalmatia to the Morea the enemy was triumphant. The men of
Macedonia had everywhere fallen before Bāyazīd's armies. Constantinople
was between the hammer and the anvil. Asia Minor, on the one side,
was now nearly all under Turkish rule; Europe, on the other, contained
many Turks as there were in Asia Minor itself.
Bāyazīd passed in safety between his two capitals, one at Brūsa, the
other at Hadrianople, and repeated his proud boasts of what he would
do beyond the limits of the Empire. It seemed as if, with his over-
ás
## p. 679 (#721) ############################################
The appearance of Tīmūr
679
לל
whelming force, he had only to succeed once more in a task which, in
comparison with what he and his predecessors had done, was easy, and his
success would be complete. He would occupy the throne of Constantine,
would achieve that which had been the desire of the Arab followers of
Mahomet, and for which they had sacrificed hundreds of thousands of
lives, and would win for himself and his followers the reward of heaven
promised to those who should take part in the capture of New Rome.
The road to the Elder Rome would be open, and he repeated the boast
that he would feed his horse on the altar of St Peter.
When he had sent his insolent message in 1402 to John VII, the answer
was: “Tell your master we are weak, but that in our weakness we trust
in God, who can give us strength and can put down the mightiest from
their seats. Let your master do what he likes. ” Thereupon Bāyazīd had
laid siege to Constantinople.
Suddenly in the blackness of darkness with which the fortunes of the
city were surrounded there came a ray of light. All thought of the
siege was abandoned for the time, and Constantinople breathed again
freely. What had happened was that Tīmūr the Lame, “the Scourge
of God," had challenged, or rather ordered, Bāyazīd to return to the
Greeks all the cities and territories he had captured. The order of
the Asiatic barbarian, given to another ferocious barbarian like Bāyazid,
drove him to fury. The man who gave it was, however, accustomed to
be obeyed.
Tīmūr, or Tamerlane, was a Musulman and a Turk? His nomad
troops advanced in well-organised armies, under generals who seem to
have had intelligence everywhere of the enemy's country and great
military skill. After conquering Persia, Tīmūr turned westward. In
1386 he appeared at Tiflis, which he subsequently captured, at the head
of an enormous host estimated at 800,000 men. At Erzinjān he put all
the Turks sent there by Bāyazid to the sword.
Bayazid seems from the first to have been alarmed, and went himself
to Erzinjān in 1394, but returned to Europe without making any
attempt to resist the invader, probably believing that Tīmūr had no
intention of coming farther west. He soon learned his mistake. Tīmūr
was not merely as great and cruel a barbarian but as ambitious as
Bāyazid himself. In 1395, while the Sultan was in the Balkan peninsula,
Tīmūr summoned the large and populous city of Sīwās to surrender. The
inhabitants twice refused. Meantime, he had undermined the wall. On
their second refusal, his host stormed and captured the city. A hundred
and twenty thousand captives were massacred. One of Bāyazīd's sons
was made prisoner and put to death. A large number of prisoners were
buried alive, being covered over in a pit with planks instead of earth so
as to prolong their torture. Bāyazīd was relieved when he heard that
? Cf. supra, Chapter xx, pp. 650-51.
CH. XXI.
## p. 680 (#722) ############################################
680
Capture of Aleppo and Baghdad by Tīmūr
from Sīwās, which had been the strongest place in his empire, the ever
victorious army
had
gone
towards Syria.
Tīmūr directed his huge host towards Aleppo, the then frontier
city of the Sultan of Egypt, his object being to punish the Sultan for
his breach of faith in imprisoning his ambassador and loading him with
irons. On his march to that city, he spread desolation everywhere,
capturing or receiving the submission of Malatīyah, 'Ain Tāb, and other
important towns. At Aleppo the army of the Egyptian Sultan resisted.
A terrible battle followed, but the Egyptians were beaten, and every
man, woman, and child in the city was slaughtered.
After the capture of Aleppo, Hamāh and Baalbek were occupied. The
last, which, like so many other once famous cities, has become a desola-
tion under Turkish rule with only a few miserable huts amid its superb
ruins, was still a populous city, and contained large stores of provisions.
Thence he went to Damascus, and in January 1401 defeated the remainder
of the Egyptian army in a battle which was hardly less bloody than that
before Aleppo. The garrison, composed mostly of Circassian mamlūks
and negroes, capitulated, but its chief was put to death for having been
so slow in surrendering. Possibly by accident the whole city was burned.
Tīmūr was stopped from advancing to Jerusalem by a plague of
locusts, which ate up every green thing. The same cause rendered it im-
possible to attack Egypt, whose Sultan had refused to surrender Syria.
From Damascus Tīmūr went to Baghdad, which was held by contem-
poraries to be impregnable. Amid the heat of a July day, when the
defenders had everywhere sought shade, Tīmūr ordered a general assault,
and in a few minutes the standard of one of his shaikhs, with its horsetail
and its golden crescent, was raised upon the walls. Then followed the
usual carnage attending Tīmūr's captures. The mosques, schools, and
convents with their occupiers were spared; so also were the imāms and
the professors. All the remainder of the population between the ages of
eight and eighty were slaughtered. Every soldier of Tīmūr, of whom
there were 90,000, as the price of his own safety, had to produce a head.
The bloody trophies were, as was customary in Tīmūr's army, piled up
in pyramids before the gates of the city.
It was on his return northward from Damascus that, in 1402, Tīmūr
sent the message to Bāyazīd which at once forced him to raise the siege
of Constantinople. Contemporaneously with this message Tīmūr re-
quested the Genoese in Galata and at Genoa to obtain aid from the
West, and to co-operate with him to crush the Turkish Sultan.
Tīmūr organised a large army on the Don and around the Sea of
Azov, in order that in case of need it might act with his huge host
now advancing towards the Black Sea from the south. His main body
passed across the plain of Erzinjān, and at Sīwās Tīmūr received the
answer of Bāyazīd. The response was as insulting as a Turkish barbarian
could make it. Bāyazīd summoned Tīmūr to appear before him, and
Tin
## p. 681 (#723) ############################################
Bāyazīd and Tīmūr
681
declared that, if he did not obey, the women of his harem should be
divorced from him, putting his threat in what to a Musulman was
a specially indecent manner. All the usual civilities in written com-
munications between sovereigns were omitted, though the Asiatic
conqueror himself had carefully observed them. Tīmūr's remark, when he
saw the Sultan's letter containing the name of Tīmūr in black writing
under that of Bāyazīd which was in gold, was: “ The son of Murād is
mad. ” When he read the insulting threat as to his harem, Tīmūr kept
himself well in hand, but turning to the ambassador who had brought
the letter, told him that he would have cut off his head and those of the
members of his suite, if it were not the rule among sovereigns to respect
the lives of ambassadors. The representative of Bāyazīd was, however,
compelled to be present at a review of the whole of the troops, and was
ordered to return to his master and relate what he had seen.
Meantime Bāyazīd had determined to strike quickly and heavily
against Tīmūr, and by the rapidity of his movements once more justified
his name of Yilderim. His opponent's forces, however, were hardly less
mobile. Tīmūr's huge army marched in twelve days from Sīwās to Angora.
The officer in command of that city refused to surrender. Tīmūr made
his arrangements for the siege in such a manner as to compel or induce
Bāyazid to occupy a position where he would have to fight at a dis-
advantage. He undermined the walls and diverted the small stream
which supplied it with water. Hardly had these works been commenced
before he learned that Yilderim was within nine miles of the city. Tīmūr
raised the siege and transferred his camp to the opposite side of the
stream, which thus protected one side of his army, while a ditch and a
strong palisade guarded the other. Then, in an exceptionally strong
position, he waited to be attacked.
Disaffection existed in Bāyazīd's army, occasioned by his parsimony,
and possibly nursed by emissaries from Tīmūr. Bāyazīd's own licentious-
ness had been copied by his followers, and discipline among his troops
was noted as far less strict than among those of his predecessor. In leading
them on what all understood to be the most serious enterprise which he
had undertaken, his generals advised him to spend his reserves of money
freely so as to satisfy his followers; but the capricious and self-willed
Yilderim refused. They counselled him, in presence of an army much
more numerous than his own, to act on the defensive and to avoid a
general attack. But Bāyazīd, blinded by his long series of successes, would
listen to no advice and would take no precautions. In order to shew his
contempt for his enemy, he ostentatiously took up a position to the north
of Tīmūr, and organised a hunting party on the highlands in the neigh-
bourhood, as if time to him were of no consequence. Many men of his
army died from thirst under the burning sun of the waterless plains,
and when, after three days' hunting, the Sultan returned to his camping
ground, he found that Tīmūr had taken possession of it, had almost cut off
CH. XXI.
## p. 682 (#724) ############################################
682
Angora: capture of Bāyazīd
his supply of drinking water, and had fouled what still remained. Under
these circumstances, Bāyazīd had no choice but to force on a fight without
further delay. The ensuing battle was between two great Turkish leaders
filled with the arrogance of barbaric conquerors, each of whom had been
almost uniformly successful. Nor were pomp and circumstance wanting
to impress the soldiers of each side with the importance of the issue.
Each of the two leaders was accompanied by his sons. Four sons and five
grandsons commanded the nine divisions of Tīmūr's host. In front of its
leader floated the standard of the Red Horsetail surmounted by the
Golden Crescent. On the other side, Bāyazīd took up his position in the
centre of his army with his sons «Īsà, Mūsà, and Mustafà, while his eldest
son Sulaimān was in command of the troops who formed the right wing.
Stephen of Serbia was in command of his own subjects, who had been
forced to accompany Bāyazīd, and formed the left wing of the army. The
Serbians gazed in wonder and alarm upon a number of elephants opposite
to them, which Tīmūr had brought from India.
At six o'clock in the morning of 28 July 1402, the two armies joined
battle. The left wing of Bāyazid's host was the first to be attacked,
but the Serbians held their ground and even drove back the Tartars.
The right wing fought with less vigour, and when the troops from Aidīn
saw their former prince among the enemy, they deserted Bāyazid and
went over to him. Their example was speedily followed by many others,
and especially by the Tartars in the Ottoman army, who are asserted by
the Turkish writers to have been tampered with by agents of Tīmūr.
The Serbians were soon detached from the centre of the army,
but
Stephen, their leader, at the head of his cavalry, cut his way through the
enemy, though at great loss, winning the approval of Timūr himself,
who exclaimed: “These poor fellows are beaten, though they are fighting
like lions. ” Stephen had advised Bāyazīd to endeavour like himself to
break through, and awaited him for some time. But the Sultan expressed
his scorn at the advice. Surrounded by his ten thousand trustworthy
Janissaries, separated from the Serbians, abandoned by a large part of his
Anatolian troops and many of his leading generals, he fought on obsti-
nately during the whole of the day. But the pitiless heat of a July sun
exhausted the strength of his soldiers, and no water was to be had. His
Janissaries fell in great numbers around him, some overcome by the heat
and fighting, others struck down by the ever pressing crowd of the enemy.
It was not till night came on that Bāyazid consented to withdraw. He
attempted flight, but was pursued. His horse fell and he was made pri-
soner, together with his son Mūså and several of the chiefs of his house-
hold and of the Janissaries. His other three sons managed to escape.
The Serbians covered the retreat of the eldest, Sulaimān, whom the grand
vizier and the Aghā of the Janissaries had dragged out of the fight.
The Persian, Turkish, and most of the Greek historians say that
Timur received his great captive with every mark of respect, assured him
לי
## p. 683 (#725) ############################################
Tīmūr's conquests in Asia Minor
683
that his life would be spared, and assigned to him and his suite three splendid
tents. When, however, he was found attempting to escape, he was more
rigorously guarded and every night put in chains and confined in a room
with barred windows. When he was conveyed from one place to another,
he travelled much as Indian ladies now do, in a palanquin with curtained
windows. Out of a misinterpretation of the Turkish word, which desig-
nated at once a cage and a room with grills, grew the error into which
Gibbon and historians of less repute have fallen, that the great Yilderim
was carried about in an iron cage. Until his death he was an unwilling
follower of his captor.
After the battle of Angora, Sulaimān, the eldest son of Bāyazīd, who
had fled towards Brūsa, was pursued by a detachment of Tīmūr's army.
He managed to cross into Europe, and thus escaped. But Brūsa, the
Turkish capital, fell before Tīmūr's attack, and its inhabitants suffered
the same brutal horrors as almost invariably marked either Tartar or
Turkish captures. The city, after a carefully organised pillage, was burned.
The wives and daughters of Bāyazīd and his treasure became the property
of Tīmūr. Nicaea and Gemlik were also sacked and their inhabitants
taken as slaves. From the Marmora to Karamania, many towns which had
been captured by the Ottomans were taken from them. Asia Minor was
in confusion. Bảyazīd's empire appeared to be falling to pieces in every
part east of the Aegean. Sulaimān, however, established himself on the
Bosphorus at Anatolia-Hisār, and about the same time both he and the
Emperor at Constantinople received a summons from Tīmūr to pay tri-
bute. The Emperor had already sent messengers to anticipate such a
demand. Timur learned with satisfaction that the sons of Bāyazid were
disputing with each other as to the possession of such parts of their
father's empire as still remained unconquered.
In 1402 the conqueror left Kyūtāhiya for Smyrna, which was held, as
it had been for upwards of half a century, by the Knights of Rhodes.
In accordance with the stipulation of Muslim sacred law, he summoned
them either to pay tribute or to become Musulmans, threatening them at
the same time that if they refused to accept one or other of these condi-
tions all would be killed. No sooner were the proposals rejected than
Tīmūr gave the order to attack the city. With his enormous army, he
was able to surround Smyrna on three sides, and to block the entrance to
it from the sea. The ships belonging to the Knights were at the time
absent. All kinds of machines then known for attack
upon
walled towns
were constructed with almost incredible speed and placed in position. The
houses within the city were burned by means of arrows carrying flaming
materials steeped in naphtha or possibly petroleum, though, of course,
not known under its modern name.
After fourteen days' vigorous siege, a general assault was ordered, and
the city taken. The Knights fought like heroes but were driven back
into the citadel. Seeing that they could no longer hold out, and their
CH. XXI.
## p. 684 (#726) ############################################
684
Deaths of Tīmūr and Bayazid
ships having returned, the Grand Master placed himself at their head,
and he and his Knights cut their way shoulder to shoulder through the
crowd of their enemies to the sea, where they were received into their own
ships. The inhabitants who could not escape were taken before Tīmūr
and butchered without distinction of age or sex.
The Genoese in Phocaea and in the islands of Mitylene and Chios
sent to make submission, and became tributaries of the conqueror.
Smyrna was the last of Tīmūr's conquests in western Asia Minor. He
went to Ephesus, and during the thirty days he passed in that city his
army ravaged the whole of the fertile country in its neighbourhood and
in the valley of the Cayster. The cruelties committed by his horde would
be incredible if they were not well authenticated and indeed continually
repeated during the course of Tartar and Turkish history. In fairness it
must also be said that the Ottoman Turks, although their history has
been a long series of massacres, have rarely been guilty of the wantonness
of cruelty which Greek and Turkish authors agree in attributing to the
Tartar army. One example must 'suffice. The children of a town on
which Timur was marching were sent out by their parents, reciting verses
from the Koran to ask for the generosity of their conqueror but co-reli-
gionist. On asking what the children were whining for, and being told
that they were begging him to spare the town, he ordered his cavalry to
ride through them and trample them down, an order which was forthwith
obeyed.
Tīmūr, wearied with victories in the West, now determined to leave
Asia Minor and return to Samarqand. He contemplated the invasion of
China, but in the midst of his preparations he died, in 1405, after a reign
of thirty-six years.
Bāyazīd the Thunderbolt had died at Aq-Shehr two years earlier
(March 1403), or according to Ducas at Qara-Hisār, and according
to another account by his own hand. His son Mūsà was permitted to
transport his body to Brūsa.
The next ten years were occupied in struggles among the sons of
Bāyazīd for the succession to his throne. These struggles threatened
still more to weaken the Ottoman power. The battle of Angora had
given the greatest check to it which it had yet received. Tīmūr's
campaign proved, however, to be merely a great marauding expedition,
most of the effects of which were only temporary. But its immediate
result was that the victorious career of the Thunderbolt was brought
suddenly to an end. The empire of the Ottomans which he had largely
increased, especially by the addition to it of the southern portion of
Asia Minor, was for a time shattered. Mahomet of the old dynasty had
taken possession of Karamania; Caria and Lycia were once more under
independent emirs. The sons of the vanquished Sultan, after the
departure of Tīmūr and his host, quarrelled over the possession of
what remained. Three of them gained territories in Asia Minor, while
## p. 685 (#727) ############################################
Civil war among the Ottomans
685
the eldest, Sulaimān, retook possession of the lands held by his father
in Europe. Most of the leaders of the Ottoman host, the viziers,
governors, and shaikhs, had been either captured or slain, and in
consequence the sons of Bāyazīd fighting in Asia Minor found themselves
destitute of efficient servants for the organisation of government in the
territories which they seized on the departure of the great invader.
The progress of the Asiatic horde created a profound impression in
Western Europe. The eagerness of the Genoese to acknowledge the
suzerainty of Tīmūr gives an indication of their sense of the danger of
resistance. The stories of the terrible cruelties of the Tartars lost nothing
in the telling. When the news of the defeat at Angora, along with
the capture of Brūsa, of Smyrna, and of every other town which the
Asiatic army had besieged, and of the powerlessness of the military
Knights, reached Hungary, Serbia, and the states of Italy, it appeared
as if the West were about to be submerged by a new flood from Asia.
Then, when news came of the sudden departure of the Asiatics and of
the breaking up of the Ottoman power, hope once more revived, and it
appeared possible to the Pope and to the Christian peoples to complete
the work which Tīmūr had begun by now offering a united opposition to
the establishment of an Ottoman empire. Constantinople itself when
Bāyazīd passed it on his way to Angora was almost the last remnant of
the ancient Empire. The battle of Angora saved it and gave it half a
century more of life.
Sulaimān in 1405 sought to ally himself with the Emperor, and his
proposals shew how low the battle of Angora had brought the Turkish
pretensions. He offered to cede Salonica and all country in the Balkan
peninsula to the south-west of that city as well as the towns on the Mar-
mora to Manuel and his nephew John, associated as Emperor, and to
send his brother and sister as hostages to Constantinople. The arrange-
ment was accepted.
Sulaimān attacked his brother ‘İsà in 1405, and killed him? Another
brother, Mūsà, in the following year, attacked the combined troops of
Sulaimān and Manuel in Thrace, but the Serbians and Bulgarians deserted
the younger brother, and thereupon Sulaimān occupied Hadrianople.
Manuel consented to give his granddaughter in marriage to Sulaimān, who
in return gave up not merely Salonica but many seaports in Asia Minor,
a gift which was rather in the nature of a promise than a delivery, since
they were not in his possession. Unhappily Sulaimān, like many of his
race, had alternate fits of great energy and great lethargy, and was given
over to drunkenness and to debauchery. This caused disaffection among
the Turks; and Mūsà, taking advantage of it, led in 1409 an army com-
posed of Turks and Wallachs against him. The Janissaries, who were
dissatisfied with the lack of energy displayed by their Sultan, deserted
i Chalcondyles, iv. p. 170. Ducas says he disappeared in Karamania ; Phrantzes,
p. 86, that he was bowstrung.
CH. XXI.
## p. 686 (#728) ############################################
686
Victory of Mahomet
and went over to the side of Mūsà. Sulaimān fled with the intention of
escaping to Constantinople, but was captured while sleeping off a drinking
bout and killed.
Then Mūsà determined to attack Manuel, who had been faithful to
his alliance with Sulaimān. He denounced him as the cause of the fall or
Bāyazīd, and set himself to arouse all the religious fanaticism possible
against the Christian population under the Emperor's rule. According to
Ducas, Mūsà put forward the statement that it was the Emperor who had
invited Tīmūr and his hordes, that his own brother Sulaiman had been
punished by Allāh because he had become a giaour, and that he, Mūsà,
had been entrusted with the sword of Mahomet in order to overthrow the
infidel. He therefore called upon the faithful to go with him to recapture
Salonica and the other Greek cities which had belonged to his father, and
to change their churches into mosques.
In 1412 he devastated Serbia for having supported his brother, and
this in as brutal a manner as Tīmūr had devastated the cities and
countries in Asia Minor. Then he attacked Salonica. Orkhān, the
son of Sulaimnān, aided the Christians in the defence of the city,
which however was forced to surrender, and Orkhān was blinded by
his uncle.
While successful on land Mūsà was defeated at sea, and the inhabi-
tants of the capital, in 1411, saw the destruction of his fleet off the
island of Plataea in the Marmora. In revenge for this defeat he laid
siege to the city. Manuel and his subjects stoutly defended its landward
walls, and before Mūsà could capture it news came of the revolt of his
younger brother, Mahomet, who appeared as the avenger of Sulaimān.
The siege of Constantinople had to be raised. Mahomet had taken the
lordship of the Turks in Amasia shortly after the defeat of his
father at Angora, and had not been attacked by Tīmūr. The Emperor
proposed an alliance with him, which was gladly accepted, and the con-
ditions agreed to were honourably kept by both parties. Mahomet
came to Scutari, where he had an interview with the Emperor. An army
composed of Turks and Greeks was led by Mahomet to attack his
brother. But Mūsà defeated him in two engagements. Then Manuel,
after a short time, having been joined by a Serbian army, attempted
battle against him, and with success. The Janissaries deserted Mūsà
and went over to Mahomet and Manuel, and his army was defeated.
Mūsà was himself captured and by order of Mahomet was bowstrung.
Mahomet was now the only survivor of the six sons of Bāyazīd,
with the exception of Qāsim, the youngest, who was still living with
Manuel as a hostage; three of his brothers had been the victims of
fratricide. In 1413 Mahomet proclaimed himself Grand Sultan of the
Ottomans.
## p. 687 (#729) ############################################
Mahomet I
687
MAHOMET I, CALLED THE GENTLEMAN (1413–1421).
Mahomet was a soldier at the age of fifteen and proved himself from
the first an able one. After the ten years of civil war already mentioned
he was formally recognised as Sultan. Shortly before his accession he
charged the representatives of Venice, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Wallachia,
who went to offer their congratulations, not to forget to repeat to their
masters that he purposed to give peace to all and to accept it from all.
He added: “May the God of Peace inspire those who should be tempted
to violate it. ” At his accession the Ottomans had lost nearly all
their possessions in Europe except Hadrianople. Bosnia, Bulgaria, and
Wallachia had recovered their freedom. In Asia Minor revolts followed
each other in rapid succession. According to his promise, Mahomet
restored to the Emperor Manuel the strong positions which the Turks
had occupied on the Black Sea, on the Marmora, and in Thessaly; and he
acknowledged the rule of the Serbians over a considerable portion of the
territory they had lost. When the Emperor returned by sea from the
Morea, the two rulers had a friendly interview in Gallipoli on an imperial
ship. In 1416 Mahomet gave permission to the Knights of Rhodes to
build a castle in Lycia as a refuge for fugitives from the Muslims.
In the following year, 1417, he crossed from Hadrianople to Asia
Minor and recaptured Smyrna from Junaid, who had declared himself
independent during the war of succession.
Venice at this time sent out many rovers who, while owning allegiance
to the republic, fought for their own hands, annexed territory to the
sovereign city, but were allowed to establish themselves as rulers. They
plundered the Turkish coasts and captured Turkish vessels wherever
they found them. War with the republic was declared in 1416. The
Sultan had so far not sought war with any European State, nor did he
now seek war with Venice, the republic indeed forcing it upon him. He
fitted out no less than 112 ships, of which thirteen were galleys. The
Venetian fleet was under the command of Loredan. The two fleets met
off Gallipoli on 29 May 1416, when a bloody encounter took place and
the Turks were utterly defeated'. Twenty-seven Turkish vessels were
captured, and a tower built by the Genoese at Lampsacus to prevent the
Turks passing into Europe was rased to the ground?
Mahomet did not seek to play the part of a conqueror in his ex-
peditions against Hungary in 1416 and the two following years, but he
introduced a better organisation into the places which his predecessor
had captured. He erected a series of forts on the frontier of the Danube.
One of the most important was at Giurgevo, opposite Ruschuk. Junaid,
the former governor of Smyrna, was named to the same post in Nicopolis.
1 Jorga, p. 372, speaks of the battle as an event of world importance.
2 Von Hammer, ch. ix, p. 172. The Rapport de Loredano, given in full in
Laugier's Histoire de Venise, 1. 5.
CH. XXI.
## p. 688 (#730) ############################################
688
Character of Mahomet I's reign
לל
Severin, near Trajan's bridge, was fortified. Mahomet endeavoured,
but with less success, to introduce better organisation among the Serbs,
west and northwest of Belgrade, as far as Styria. Sigismund, however,
declared war, and obtained a victory over the Turks between Niš and
Nicopolis in 1419. The last years of Mahomet's reign were comparatively
peaceful.
Mahomet had to meet a pretender, as he is called by the Turkish
historians, who claimed to be Mustafà, brother of the Sultan, who had
disappeared after the battle of Angora. He was supported by Junaid,
the ex-rebel of Smyrna whom we have seen named governor of Nicopolis,
and also by the Wallachs. The rebellion raised by them became more
serious in the reign of the following Sultan. Mahomet died from a fit
of apoplexy, in which he fell from his horse at Hadrianople, at the end
of 1421 or perhaps in January 14221.
Halil Ganem claims that Mahomet was the greatest, wisest, noblest,
and most magnanimous of the Ottoman conquerors. He was called
Chelebi,“ the gracious lord,” “the gentleman. ” He was renowned for his
justice as much as for his courage. He was the rebuilder, the restorer,
whose practical wisdom was of as much value to the Ottomans as the
military genius of his predecessor. Their empire on his accession appeared
as a mass of fragments.
