Part 24

At the place where Giustiniano had been shot some ladders were set up, and at the same time a small gate, used by the Genoese soldiers to pass out of the city to protect the outer ring of the defensive works, was occupied. By this way a considerable number of the Janitschars penetrated into the interior of the city. But their entrance was not noticed by the defenders on the walls, who, in the conflict, had no time to leave their posts. The sailors of the fleet now landed, ready to take their part of the spoil. The squadrons of Janitschars rode without resistance through the narrow streets flanked with wooden houses, searching for the first of the booty. Every corner was searched for wealthy citizens, who would be likely to pay large ransoms, and for valuable slaves. Adult men, actually with weapons in their hands, were killed, and, of course, no Franks were spared, nor any of the imperial troops. Small children, too, old men, and invalids, who came in the way of the Ottoman soldiers, were mercilessly slaughtered; they had no marketable value. Whole groups of citizens were dragged off, and then a systematic plundering of churches and private houses began; carpets, stuffs, precious stones and metals, books, whose binding attracted notice, all were carried off. (May 29, 1453.)

In the sacking of the city the Emperor Constantine perished. When he saw destruction going on all about him, he is said to have asked, “Is there no Christian here to cut my head off?” His fate must have come later, for his body was found on a heap of corpses near the gate that had first been entered. His head was set the same day on a column of the Augusteion, a sign to the Greeks that they had no other emperor now but the Sultan. Then it was placed in a precious casket and despatched from one Moslem ruler to another as the convincing proof of the prowess of their Moslem overlord.

Three days had been allowed for the sack; after this period the troops returned to their camp. Some of the streets were then cleaned, and the Sultan made his solemn entry into the deserted city to the Church of St. Sophia, which he transformed into a mosque. The Podestà and a few of the Italians from Pera, who had not actually been under arms, were protected by a guarantee from the Sultan’s own hand. But the walls of the suburb were destroyed, all weapons had to be given up, and a slave succeeded the Genoese Podestà as the supreme authority in the colony.

Most of the fleet, taking advantage of the confusion during the capture of the city, succeeded in getting away, taking with them some fugitives who escaped by disguising themselves in a Turkish garb. The head of the Venetian colony and the Catalan Consul were beheaded as disturbers of the peace, and even Lukas Notoras, the chief Greek noble, did not escape, although he had led the opposition against Constantine. The Greek clergy, on the other hand, were treated with great clemency; they had been trained by centuries into habits of servile obedience to secular rulers, and, therefore, they could be turned into useful instruments for ruling the subject Christian population.

With shrewd understanding of the religious situation, Mohammed now appointed as Patriarch in place of the Latin ecclesiastic, who had escaped from the city, the leader of the clerical opposition, Gennadios Scholarios. The new Patriarch dined with the new Emperor, and received rich presents and most courteous attention, befitting his exalted dignity as a churchman. In place of Santa Sophia, he was given as his metropolitan church the building known as the Church of the Holy Apostles. As a new Patriarch, created by favor of the Moslem Emperor, he kept his rights of jurisdiction over the Emperor’s Christian subjects.

A Moslem governor was placed in the city to order the administration, with instructions to induce those who had fled from the town to return, and to arrange for the colonization of the Moslem newcomers. Only a small garrison was left; and the Sultan took his road to Adrianople on 18th of June. While the Moslem ruler and his successors spared the population, and left to their Greek subjects a kind of spiritual empire, the conquest of Constantinople proved fatal to the many treasures of ancient art that had survived the Latin conquest of the city in 1204. The bronze statues of the Emperors were made into cannon, the bronze inscriptions on arches and obelisks were coined into money, and the marble statues of pagan divinities were turned into lime. Valuable antique columns were sawn to make baths, or were transformed into cannon balls.

The Basilica, in which the bodies of the Emperors were buried, became a mosque; the bones were scattered and the sarcophagi turned to the basest uses. Forty-two other churches became mosques, or were secularized; one, St. Irenæus, was employed as an arsenal. Some of the splendid mosaics in Santa Sophia were hidden by whitewash, because of their Christian symbolism; near the structure was built a minaret, and Mohammed’s successors added three more. As time went on, new mosques were constructed; also hospitals, schools, and palaces, the Sultan being a great builder. The new population was cosmopolitan, for many Greek, Servian, and Roumanian towns were drawn upon for their several contingents, as the Turkish conquests continued.

At the time of his great achievement, Mohammed was only twenty-five years old. He publicly announced that he had reached maturity by decapitating the Grand Vizier Khalil, the tutor set over him by his father, who was suspected of treasonable communications with the Greeks during the siege. He made it plain, also, that there was to be no repose from war after the taking of the capital, the Servians being the first to experience his heavy hand. Brankovitch’s fidelity as a vassal proved no protection to him; for Mohammed wrote claiming his kingdom. In terror the Servian prince fled to Hungary to secure the aid of Hunyadi. The war that followed was hotly contested, with the result that in 1454 the Sultan agreed, on the basis of the large tribute of 30,000 ducats, to recognize Brankovitch.

But this peace was not observed, for the conqueror appeared the next year and took Novoberda. Hunyadi, against whom bitter foes were working at the court of the King of Hungary, had only the support of the Wallachian princely house. When Belgrade was attacked by Mohammed, in May, 1456, only 3000 Christian soldiers were ready to oppose him. When the siege really began, however, 200 boats appeared before the city, containing many thousand men of various nationalities, whom the Franciscan monk, John of Capistrano, had drawn to the crusading cause by his protracted and widely extended journeys in Western Europe. Though over seventy years old, he had displayed remarkable energy, and he was honored by the defenders of Belgrade as a holy apostle.

On July 15 the two welcome allies took possession of the castle, as the city had not yet been cut off from the outside. The first stage of the defense was the defeat of the Turkish flotilla on the Danube; some vessels were sunk and others were captured, so that entrance into the town by water was made safe. In the attempt to storm the defenses made by the Janitschars, who advanced in small divisions, hardly 600 survived; three times Hunyadi, sallying from the castles, forced back the assailants. Capistrano’s crusaders proved too much for the Sultan’s trained troops; marching right up to the guns and careless of the havoc caused by the cannon fire, those who took part in the sortie cut down the Turks and threw the cannon into the water and ditches. If the crusaders had not stopped on the way to plunder, they would have broken through the Sultan’s own bodyguard. As it was the Ottomans were able to withdraw safely from their camp; but they lost some of their best captains, among them Aga, who was killed while protecting the Sultan, who escaped with an arrow wound.

No serious attempt was made to follow up this victory, though Hunyadi boasted that it was now possible “to take possession of the whole kingdom of Turkey.” Anarchy prevailed in the motley crowd gathered in the crusading camps along the river; worse still, owing to the unhealthful surroundings in the low lands, a plague began, to which the great Hungarian champion soon fell a victim; not long after Capistrano also died.

Soon after the death of Hunyadi the long career of the Servian Prince Brankovitch came to an end, and with it closed the history of Servia as a vassal state, for his death was followed by long and bloody quarrels over the succession. Finally, the claim of Brankovitch’s daughter-in-law, Helena, the widow of his son Lazaras, was acknowledged. Her accession gave Mohammed an excuse for appearing as the champion of an Ottoman pretender. The Sultan’s influence over the Servian nobility was increased by the fact that Helena was favorable to the Latin Church; she placed Servia under the protection of the Pope, and married her daughter to the heir of the Bosnian kingdom. But this foreign help availed nothing. Many of the strong places in Servia were captured, including the city of Semandria (1459). The Servian “woiwodes,” who preferred the domination of the Sultan to the acceptance of the religion of Rome, showed themselves disloyal to Helena the younger, who was obliged to withdraw, to Hungary first, and then to Rome, where she died as a nun in 1474.

After the destruction of Servia, and its absorption by the Ottomans, came the turn of Bosnia, like Servia disturbed by disputes between vassal princes, which were taken advantage of by Mohammed. King Stephen’s pro-Roman policy made him unpopular among his nobles; therefore, when the Turk’s army appeared, there was no great difficulty in overrunning the country. The King retired in a panic from his strongly fortified capital, and while in flight was captured and afterwards executed (1464). Herzegovina, which still remained in Christian hands, could not resist the successful aggression of the Turks, and its occupation took place three years after the annexation of Bosnia. As Bosnia was a vassal state of Hungary, its King, Matthias, found himself obliged to look to the safety of his territories. Scanderbeg, who was alarmed at the taking of Herzegovina, and Venice, as the mistress of all the cities in the Morea, had just begun to realize the need of common action to protect their interests.

On the part of the Hungarians war was waged on a small scale, but the Venetians employed a celebrated condottiere, Bertoldo d’Este, to head an expedition of thirty-two galleys and other ships armed by many thousand warriors. After some initial successes, the aim of the expedition failed, because of the death of Bertoldo while he was besieging the Turkish garrison at Corinth. Hitherto the steady advance of the Turks towards the south had been furthered by the anarchy and divisions of the rival races, among which the Albanians and the Greeks showed the most vitality. In Athens the ducal Florentine line brought notoriety to its closing days by the romantic record of its last duchess, the wife of Nerio II, who, when left a widow with the guardianship of her young son, fell in love with Contarini, a Venetian officer in Naples. She promised to marry him if he would get rid of his wife. The condition was accepted, and the young officer, by marrying the duchess, became master of Athens. Those who had acknowledged the old duke as their overlord, resented the introduction of Venetian rule, and appealed to Mohammed to interfere. He bestowed the duchy on a member of the reigning Florentine house, Franco, who caused his aunt, the scandal-making duchess, to be imprisoned and afterwards murdered. The commission of this crime produced discontent, and the Sultan gave orders to one of his captains to take possession of Athens.

Mohammed himself took personal charge of the expedition of 1458, which was conducted with great cruelty. The Albanians were especially singled out for savage reprisals. When Tarsos fell, the Albanian soldiers taken captive were horribly tortured, and at the capitulation of Corinth the leader of the Albanian contingent was sawn asunder. A short respite was at first granted to the Greek princes, members of the house of Paleologi, who were closely allied with the last Emperor of Constantinople, but they were finally dispossessed, and by the year 1460 nothing of Greece was left in the hands of the Christian powers except four Venetian strongholds. But these were not to be spared longer.

In 1463 the Morea was ravaged by the Turkish army, and five hundred Venetian soldiers met death by being sawn apart. In 1467 the island of Eubœa was attacked by both Ottoman fleet and land forces simultaneously. Great preparation was made for the defense of the Venetian citadel, but the plans were spoiled by the incapacity of the commander of the Venetian fleet to defend the approach to the island from the sea. The besieged garrison showed great heroism, and even when they discovered that their leaders were preparing to betray them, they stoutly held out and inflicted severe losses on the Ottomans. For reasons which are inexplicable, the Venetian fleet made no attempt to break down the bridge which connected the island with the continent; the occupation of this passageway finally enabled the Janitschars to enter the city. Its heroic defender, Paolo Erizzo, met the fate of being sawn asunder, because, as a chronicle states, the Turks had promised to save his head but not his thighs.

This heavy blow to Venice stirred the republic to a series of energetic reprisals. With her allies, the Neapolitans and the Knights of Rhodes, and aided by the Pope, she carried the war into Asia Minor. The town of Smyrna was occupied by the Venetian fleet, and the Seldjouk emirates, always ready to rebel against the Ottomans, were encouraged to revolt. When Lepanto was successfully protected by the Venetian fleet, it was felt that Mohammed had at last encountered a power that was ready to contest the imperial ambitions of Ottoman rule. But that there was no sufficient ground for over-confidence appeared when a Turkish general, Omar-beg, invaded Friuli, and began to ravage territories in the immediate neighborhood of Venice. A Venetian general fell fighting the Turks on the banks of the Isonzo, and the citizens of the republic could see with their own eyes the work of the Turks, as they burnt the villages that lie between the Isonzo and the Taghliamento. Scutari, however, withstood two Turkish sieges, though Mohammed himself took part in the operations. Finally, in 1479, Venice, deserted by her allies, was willing to arrange terms of peace. These involved the cession of Lemnos and certain possessions in Albania; but more significant of her humiliation was the payment of a war indemnity of 100,000 ducats, and the agreement to give an annual tribute of 110,000, in return for which sacrifices certain commercial advantages were conceded by the Turks.

Interpreting the treaty in its strictest sense, Mohammed, after arranging a peace with Venice, occupied the Ionian Islands, and soon afterwards showed his contempt for the military powers of Western Europe by sending a fleet of 150 ships to Otranto in Apulia, a province of the kingdom of Naples. The town, entirely unprepared for such a raid, was taken in 1480; the garrison and the archbishop were put to death, and the neighboring country was organized as a Turkish province with its capital at Otranto, where a garrison of 5000 Turkish soldiers was left behind.

The alarm created by this feat of arms was instantaneous. The Italian cities united and soon expelled the Turks from the peninsula, rivaling their enemies in Asiatic deeds of cruelty. Mohammed could not prosecute the conquest of Italy, because his attention was necessarily divided by the troubled state of Turkish rule in Asia, where the Seldjouk principalities still claimed an autonomy which, on crucial matters, made them independent of the Sultan.

In the north of Anatolia, which was directly in the hands of the Ottomans, there still remained the Empire of Trebizond, governed by a Greek prince, David Comnenus. Part of his dominions, Sinope and Paphlagonia, were conquered in 1461, and then the last Emperor of Trebizond turned for help to his Turkoman ally, Hassan, ruler of Armenia and part of Persia. Mohammed struck at his foes rapidly. Marching on Erzeroum, he forced Hassan to sue for peace, and so the Greek Emperor was left to meet the Turks unaided. The city of Trebizond was effectively encircled by land and sea, and David was soon brought to surrender, and afterwards, with many members of his household, was put to death. Equally implacable was Mohammed to the Seldjoukian emirates. At the death of Ibrahim, the Prince of Karamania, the Sultan intervened, while seven claimants were disputing over the succession, and after several campaigns annexed the emirate. Hassan’s time soon came. Feeling the insecurity of his rule, he asked help of Rhodes and Venice, especially requesting to be furnished with artillery, by the aid of which so many of the Ottoman victories were won. Two hundred Italian gunners were sent in answer to his call. In 1472 he took the Ottoman town of Tokat, and sacked it. This act caused Mohammed to take up the war against him in person. The two armies met on July 26, 1473, at Outlouk-Bali, near Terdjan, where a decisive victory was won by the Sultan. All the prisoners taken were massacred. The Turkomans had no desire to contest further the predominance of Ottoman rule, which was now extended without question over both Karamania and Anatolia.

It must not be supposed, however, that Mohammed was always successful. Albania held out against him under the heroic leader Scanderbeg, whose earlier exploits have been already chronicled. His success against the Ottomans continued without a break. Even when a nephew proved disloyal and brought an army of 40,000 Turks into the land, he rose up and smote the invaders after the manner of his earlier years (1461). For a time afterward peace prevailed; then, during the Venetian war, he stood as an ally of the republic. His old antagonist Mohammed had another opportunity of testing the valor of the Albanian chieftain at a decisive defeat of the Turkish army under the walls of Croia in 1465. Two years later Scanderbeg died at the age of sixty-seven, and his death was followed by civil strife.

The rounding off of the Ottoman Empire, a process by which the vassal states were absorbed, put an end to the internal movements against centralized rule, and enabled the Sultan to work out his policy of systematic aggression in the regions to the north. After the year 1470 Turkish armies ravaged Southern Hungary, Croatia, Carinthia, Styria, and Carniola; Belgrade, on account of its strong defensive position, was respected. In 1479 the Turks made an expedition in force into Transylvania, where, in the neighborhood of Hermannstadt, they burnt 200 villages. When they were on the point of withdrawing with their booty they were attacked on the Cornfields (Kenyermezo, October 13), and suffered severe losses. Not more successful were the acts of aggression on Hungarian territory in the following year; but the Hungarian King, Matthias, was satisfied with repulsing his enemies; he had no desire to prosecute the war against the Turks on a large scale, for he had none of the ambition or enthusiasm of his famous father, Hunyadi.

In the Greek islands the activity of the Turkish fleet produced positive and permanent results; Lesbos was taken in 1462, and to the list of Turkish successes in these years were soon added Lemnos, Imbros, Samothrace. Much more valiant defenders of their island were the Knights of Rhodes, whom the Sultan was especially desirous of punishing for the part they had taken in the already mentioned Venetian expedition against Asia Minor. In 1480 a large Ottoman fleet of about one hundred ships appeared in sight of the island, and a bombardment was begun, but the fortifications proved too strong for the Turkish guns to make any impression, though the siege lasted from early in May till the end of August, in which time, despite the assaults made on the citadel, only one tower was taken. The Grand Master, Pierre d’Aubusson, and his brother, had prepared most intelligently for the crisis by collecting from all provinces of the Order money, which they used in providing weapons, especially cannon. They had been furnished also by the Pope, just before the siege began, with a large store of food and provisions. Finally, after a heroic defense of eighty-nine days, two Neapolitan ships forced their way into the harbor and broke up the blockade.

In the Wallachian lands the Ottomans met a redoubtable warrior, who, in the annals of the Roumanian people, takes such a high place as a champion against the Turks that the record of his deeds gives him a rank alongside Hunyadi and Scanderbeg. Vlad, the Prince of Wallachia, 1456-1462, called by the Hungarians the Devil, and with equal significance spoken of by the Turks as the Impaler, had a reputation for violence even among his own people. He repressed the internal troubles of his vassals with an iron hand; for after Mircea’s death the country had gone through the same period of divisions and intrigues that is found with such frequency in all the Balkan lands, making them, as we have seen, an easy prey for the Ottoman.

It is told how Vlad brought Wallachia to a peaceful state by the execution of 20,000 men, and how, afterwards, in the same drastic style, he resolved to put an end to the annual tribute of 500 children demanded by his overlord the Sultan. Looking for allies in carrying on the resistance to Mohammed, he helped Stephen IV to secure the throne of Moldavia, and married a relative of Matthias, King of Hungary. Mohammed resolved to nip in the bud the independent movements of his dangerous vassal, and sent a renegade Greek official, Catabolinus, with a corps of 2000 Turks to depose Vlad and to replace him by his brother, Radu. Vlad, having surprised this small force, impaled all the prisoners he took; to the pasha who led them was accorded the honor of being impaled on the longest stake. After this outrage the Sultan sent three ambassadors to reinforce his demands; but, when the Moslem delegates refused to remove their turbans in his presence, Vlad ordered their headgear to be nailed to their heads.

This picturesque barbarity appealed to the imagination of the Turkish ruler, who, as an artist in cruelty, conceded that Vlad belonged to a class above him. When the Turkish sovereign made a punitive expedition to Bucharest, he found the approach to the town, half a mile long, lined with stakes, on which were rotting the bodies of 2000 dead Turks. “How,” Mohammed said, “can we despoil of his estates a man who is not afraid to defend it by such means as these?” Vlad hung on the invading army, always inflicting losses, without showing himself long enough to be attacked in a formal battle. Using his familiarity with the Turkish language, he penetrated with some companions into the midst of the Turkish camp, and would have succeeded in murdering Mohammed himself, had not a mistake been made in selecting the tent. Instead of the Sultan one of the pashas was killed. Though there are conflicting accounts as to the details of Vlad’s versatility in defense, we know that Mohammed gave up his plan of aggression against Wallachia and returned to his capital, Adrianople.