Part 1011

"The character of Bajazet, the son and successor of Amurath, is strongly expressed in his surname of Ilderim, or the Lightning; and he might glory in an epithet which was drawn from the fiery energy of his soul and the rapidity of his destructive march. In the fourteen years of his reign he incessantly moved at the head of his armies, from Boursa to Adrianople, from the Danube to the Euphrates. … No sooner had he imposed a regular form of servitude on the Servians and Bulgarians than he passed the Danube to seek new enemies and new subjects in the heart of Moldavia. Whatever yet adhered to the Greek empire in Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, acknowledged a Turkish master. … The humble title of emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman greatness; and Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of sultan from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamelukes—a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion, by the Turkish conquerors to the House of Abbas and the successors of the Arabian prophet. The ambition of the sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving this august title; and he turned his arms against the kingdom of Hungary, the perpetual theatre of the Turkish victories and defeats. Sigismond, the Hungarian king, was the son and brother of the emperors of the West; his cause was that of Europe and the Church; and on the report of his danger, the bravest knights of France and Germany were eager to march under his standard and that of the cross. In the battle of Nicopolis [September 28, A. D. 1396], Bajazet defeated a confederate army of 100,000 Christians, who had proudly boasted that if the sky should fall they could uphold it on their lances. The far greater part were slain or driven into the Danube; and Sigismond, escaping to Constantinople by the river and the Black Sea, returned, after a long circuit, to his exhausted kingdom. In the pride of victory, Bajazet threatened that he would besiege Buda; that he would subdue the adjacent countries of Germany and Italy; and that he would feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome. His progress was checked, not by the miraculous interposition of the apostle, not by a crusade of the Christian powers, but by a long and painful fit of the gout. … At length the ambition of the victorious sultan pointed to the conquest of Constantinople; but he listened to the advice of his vizir, who represented that such an enterprise might unite the powers of Christendom in a second and more formidable crusade. His epistle to the emperor was conceived in these words: 'By the divine clemency, our invincible scimitar has reduced to our obedience almost all Asia, with many and large countries in Europe, excepting only the city of Constantinople; for beyond the walls thou hast nothing left. Resign that city; stipulate thy reward; or tremble for thyself and thy unhappy people at the consequences of a rash refusal.' But his ambassadors were instructed to soften their tone, and to propose a treaty, which was subscribed with submission and gratitude. A truce of ten years was purchased by an annual tribute of thirty thousand crowns of gold." The truce was soon broken by Bajazet, who found a pretext for again demanding the surrender of Constantinople. He had established his blockade of the city and would surely have won it by famine or assault if Timour's invasion of Asia Minor (A. D. 1402) had not summarily interrupted his plans and ended his career. Defeated at the battle of Angora and taken prisoner by the Tartar conqueror, he died a few months later—whether caged like a beast or held in more honorable captivity is a question in some dispute.

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapters 64-65._

See, also, TIMOUR.

{3136}

TURKS: A. D. 1393. Wallachian capitulation.

See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: 14-18TH CENTURIES (ROMANIA, ETC.).

TURKS: A. D. 1402-1451. Prostration and recovery. Conquests of Mahomet and Amurath II.

It is one of the marvels of history that the Ottoman empire, broken and dismembered by Timour, recovered its vigor and re-entered upon a long career. After the fall of Bajazet, three fragments of his dominions were held by three of his surviving sons, while other portions were transferred by Timour to princes of the old Seljuk house. Civil war broke out between the brothers of the Ottoman race; it resulted in the triumph of Mahomet, the youngest (A. D. 1413), who reunited a large part of the dominions of his father. He reigned but eight years, which were years of peace for the Greeks, with whom Mahomet maintained a friendly intercourse. His son, Amurath II., was provoked to renew the state of war, and a formidable attack upon Constantinople was made in August, 1422. The first assault failed, and disturbances at home recalled Amurath before he could repeat it. The Roman capital was reprieved for thirty years; but its trembling emperor paid tribute to the sultan and yielded most of the few cities that remained to him outside of his capital. The Ottoman power had become threatening again in Europe, and Servians, Bosnians, Albanians, Wallachians, Hungarians, and Poles now struck hands together in a combination, once more, to oppose it. "A severe struggle followed, which, after threatening the utter expulsion of the house of Othman from Europe, confirmed for centuries its dominion in that continent, and wrought the heavier subjugation of those who were then seeking to release themselves from its superiority. In 1442 Amurath was repulsed from Belgrade; and his generals, who were besieging Hermanstadt, in Transylvania, met with a still more disastrous reverse. It was at Hermanstadt that the renowned Hunyades first appeared in the wars between the Hungarians and the Turks. He was the illegitimate son of Sigismond, King of Hungary, and the fair Elizabeth Morsiney. In his early youth he gained distinction in the wars of Italy; and Comines, in his memoirs, celebrates him under the name of the White Knight of Wallachia. After some campaigns in Western Christendom, Hunyades returned to protect his native country against the Ottomans." At Hermanstadt, and again at Vasag, Hunyades defeated the Turks with great slaughter and rivalled them in the ferocity with which his prisoners were treated. His fame now gave a great impulse to the Crusade against the Turks which Pope Eugenius had preached, and drew volunteers to his standard from all the nations of the West. In 1443, Hunyades led a splendid and powerful army across the Danube near Semendra, drove the Turks beyond the Balkans, forced the passage of the mountains with a boldness and a skill that is compared with the exploits of Hannibal and Napoleon, and extorted from the Sultan a treaty (of Szegeddin, July 12, 1444) which rescued a large Christian territory from the Moslem yoke. "The Sultan resigned all claims upon Servia and recognised George Brankovich as its independent sovereign. Wallachia was given up to Hungary." But the peace which this treaty secured was brief; Christian perfidy destroyed it, and the penalty was paid by whole centuries of suffering and shame for the Christians of the Danubian states. "Within a month from the signature of the treaty of Szegeddin the Pope and the Greek Emperor had persuaded the King of Hungary and his councillors to take an oath to break the oath which had been pledged to the Sultan. They represented that the confessed weakness of the Ottomans, and the retirement of Amurath [who had placed his son Mahomet on the throne and withdrawn from the cares of sovereignty] to Asia, gave an opportunity for eradicating the Turks from Europe which ought to be fully employed. The Cardinal Julian [legate of the Pope] pacified the conscientious misgivings which young King Ladislaus expressed, by his spiritual authority in giving dispensation and absolution in the Pope's name. … On the 1st of September, the King, the legate, and Hunyades, marched against the surprised and unprepared Turks with an army of 10,000 Poles and Hungarians. The temerity which made them expect to destroy the Turkish power in Europe with so slight a force was equal to the dishonesty of their enterprise." They advanced through Bulgaria to the Black Sea, and southward along its coast as far as Varna, which they took. There they were called to account. Amurath had resumed the sceptre, put himself at the head of 40,000 of the best warriors of Islam and on the 10th November he dashed them upon the Christian forces at Varna, with the broken treaty borne like a banner at their head. His victory was overwhelming. Cardinal Julian and the King of Hungary were both among the slain. Hunyades fled with a little remnant of followers and escaped to try fortune in other fields. "This overthrow did not bring immediate ruin upon Hungary, but it was fatal to the Sclavonic neighbours of the Ottomans, who had joined the Hungarian King against them. Servia and Bosnia were thoroughly reconquered by the Mahometans; and the ruin of these Christian nations, which adhered to the Greek Church, was accelerated by the religious intolerance with which they were treated by their fellow Christians of Hungary and Poland, who obeyed the Pope and hated the Greek Church as heretical. … The bigotry of the Church of Rome in preaching up a crusade against the sect of the Patarenes, which was extensively spread in that country [Bosnia], caused the speedy and complete annexation of an important frontier province to the Ottoman Empire. Seventy Bosnian fortresses are said to have opened their gates to the Turks within eight days. The royal house of Bosnia was annihilated, and many of her chief nobles embraced Mahometanism to avoid a similar doom." After once more attempting to escape from the throne, and being recalled by domestic disturbances, Amurath reigned yet six years, extending his dominions in the Peloponnesus, defeating once more his old antagonist, Hunyades, who invaded Servia (1448), but being successfully defied in Albania by the heroic Scanderbeg. He died in 1451.

{3137}

_Sir E. S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, chapter 4._

ALSO IN: _L. Ranke, History of Servia, chapter 2._

_E. Szabad, Hungary, part 1, chapters 3-4._

_A. Lamartine, History of Turkey, books 10-11._

TURKS: A. D. 1451-1481. Conquest of Constantinople. The Empire organized and perfected by Mahomet II.

Mahomet II., son of Amurath II., "finished the work of his predecessors; he made the Ottoman power in Europe what it has been ever since. He gave a systematic form to the customs of his house and to the dominion which he had won. His first act was the murder of his infant brother, and he made the murder of brothers a standing law of his Empire. He overthrew the last remnants of independent Roman rule, of independent Greek nationality, and he fixed the relations which the Greek part of his subjects were to bear both towards their Turkish masters and towards their Christian fellow-subjects. He made the northern and western frontiers of his Empire nearly what they still remain. The Ottoman Empire, in short, as our age has to deal with it, is, before all things, the work of Mahomet the Conqueror. The prince whose throne was fixed in the New Rome held altogether another place from even the mightiest of his predecessors. Mahomet had reigned two years, he had lived twenty-three, on the memorable day, May 29th 1453, when the Turks entered the city of the Cæsars and when the last Emperor, Constantine, died in the breach. …

See CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1453.

And now that the Imperial city was at last taken, Mahomet seemed to make it his policy both to gather in whatever remained unconquered, and to bring most of the states which had hitherto been tributary under his direct rule. Greece itself, though it had been often ravaged by the Turks, had not been added to their dominions. The Emperors had, in the very last days of the Empire before the fall of Constantinople, recovered all Peloponnesos, except some points which were held by Venice. Frank Dukes also reigned at Athens, and another small duchy lingered on in the islands of Leukas and Kephallenia and on the coasts of Akarnania. The Turkish conquest of the mainland, again saving the Venetian points, was completed by the year 1460, but the two western islands were not taken until 1479. Euboia was conquered in 1471. … The Empire of Trebizond was conquered in 1461, and the island of Lesbos or Mitylene in 1462. There was now no independent Greek state left. Crete, Corfu, and some smaller islands and points of coast, were held by Venice, and some of the islands of the Ægean were still ruled by Frank princes and by the Knights of Saint John. But, after the fall of Trebizond, there was no longer any independent Greek state anywhere, and the part of the Greek nation which was under Christian rulers of any kind was now far smaller than the part which was under the Turk. While the Greeks were thus wholly subdued, the Slaves fared no better. In 1459 Servia was reduced from a tributary principality to an Ottoman province, and six years later Bosnia was annexed also. … One little fragment of the great Slavonic power in those lands alone remained. The little district of Zeta, a part of the Servian kingdom, was never fully conquered by the Turks. One part of it, the mountain district called Tsernagora or Montenegro, has kept its independence to our times. Standing as an outpost of freedom and Christendom amid surrounding bondage, the Black Mountain has been often attacked, it has been several times overrun, but it has never been conquered. … To the south of them, the Christian Albanians held out for a long time under their famous chief George Castriot or Scanderbeg. After his death in 1459, they also came under the yoke. These conquests of Mahomet gave the Ottoman dominion in Europe nearly the same extent which it has now. His victories had been great, but they were balanced by some defeats. The conquest of Servia and Bosnia opened the way to endless inroads into Hungary, South-eastern Germany and North-eastern Italy. But as yet these lands were merely ravaged, and the Turkish power met with some reverses. In 1456 Belgrade was saved by the last victory of Huniades [see HUNGARY: A. D. 1442-1458], and this time Mahomet the Conqueror had to flee. In another part of Europe, if in those days it is to be counted for Europe, Mahomet won the Genoese possessions in the peninsula of Crimea [A. D. 1475], and the Tartar Khans who ruled in that peninsula and the neighbouring lands became vassals of the Sultan. … The last years of Mahomet's reign were marked by a great failure and a great success. He failed to take Rhodes [A. D. 1480], which belonged to the Knights of Saint John; but his troops suddenly seized on Otranto in Southern Italy. Had this post been kept, Italy might have fallen as well as Greece; but the Conqueror died the next year, and Otranto was won back."

_E. A. Freeman, The Ottoman Power in Europe, chapter 4._

ALSO IN: _A. Lamartine, History of Turkey, books 12-13._

_Sir E. S. Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks, chapters 5-6._

_E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 68._

See, also, ITALY: A. D. 1447-1480.

TURKS: A. D. 1454-1479. Treaty with Venice, followed by war.

See GREECE: A. D. 1454-1479.

TURKS: A. D. 1479. Defeat at Kenyer-Mesö by the Hungarians and Wallachians.

See HUNGARY: A. D. 1471-1487.

TURKS: A. D. 1481-1520. The sad story of Prince Jem and the Christians. Massacre of the Shiites. Selim's conquests in Persia, Syria and Egypt. The Sultan becomes the successor of the Khalifs, the chief of Islam.