CHAPTER IV

BAYEZID

THE OSMANLIS INHERIT THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE

I

The death of Murad was immediately avenged upon the battle-field by the execution of the prisoners of noble birth. Practically all the Serbian aristocracy that had remained loyal to Lazar and the national cause perished.

In the midst of this bloody work, Bayezid sent servants to seek out his brother Yakub, who had distinguished himself during the battle, and was being acclaimed by his soldiers. Yakub was taken to Bayezid’s tent, and strangled with a bowstring.[428] The new emir justified this crime by a verse conveniently found for him by his theologians in the Koran: ‘So often as they return to sedition, they shall be subverted therein; and if they depart not from you, and offer you peace and restrain their hands from warring against you, take them and kill them wheresoever ye find them.’[429] They declared that the temptation to treason and revolt was always present in the brothers of the ruler, and that murder was better than sedition. These doctors of the law might better have pointed out to Bayezid the admonition of the Prophet: ‘But his soul suffered him to slay his brother, and he slew him: wherefore he became of the number of those who perish.’[430] For the abominable practice of removing possible rival claimants by assassination, thus begun on the field of Kossova, was elevated to the dignity of a law by Mohammed II,[431] and has been until our own times a blot upon the house of Osman.

Bayezid, however, was only following the example of Christian princes of his own century. Pedro of Castille killed his brother Don Fadrique;[432] Andronicus III Comnenos of Trebizond, killed his two brothers, Michael and George;[433] and Andronicus III Palaeologos assassinated his brother when his father was dying.[434]

An order was issued from the battle-field of Kossova to the Kadi of Brusa, enjoining him to keep secret the death of Murad, and to appear to be occupied only with public rejoicing for the victory ‘won from the _Hungarians_’. With this order, Bayezid forwarded the bodies of his father and brother for secret burial at Brusa.[435]

Agents of the Italian cities came to seek Bayezid after the battle to congratulate him, and to ask for the confirmation of the commercial privileges granted by Murad. Bayezid showed himself proud and distant. He declared that after he had conquered Hungary he would ride so far that he would come to Rome and there give his horse oats to eat upon the altar of St. Peter’s.[436] A change of attitude towards Europe is strikingly revealed in this boast. Murad, in spite of crusades projected against him, had been careful not to draw upon himself the attention, much less the ill-will, of the western Christian princes. He was aggressive, but never any more so than he needed to be for the moment at hand: and he was never aggressively Mohammedan. Bayezid, from the very beginning of his reign, took no pains to conceal his enmity to Christendom, and his desire to pose as the champion of Islam. He sought alliances with the Sultan of Egypt[437] and other Moslem rulers, and placed the utmost importance upon the extension of Ottoman sovereignty in Asia Minor.

II

After the bloodthirst of Kossova had been satisfied and his father’s death avenged, Bayezid was eager to enter into friendly relations with Stephen Bulcovitz, son and heir of Lazar. He felt that the Serbians had learned their lesson, and that they would be more helpful to him as allies than as crushed and sullen foes. He needed their aid in the Anatolian campaign which he was contemplating, and they were essential to the safety of his European possessions as a buffer against the Hungarians, who he knew would take the opportunity of his absence in Asia to move down the Danube. So he treated Stephen and the surviving Serbians with great kindness. Stephen received all the privileges that had belonged to his father.[438] The Serbians were assured of an equitable share of the booty in the campaigns in which they would engage. On the other hand, Stephen agreed to allow Bayezid an annual tribute, secured by the revenues of the silver mines, to command a contingent in person in the Ottoman army, and to give his sister to the Ottoman emir.[439] Kossova was forgiven on both sides.

Bayezid took Despina, daughter of Lazar, as wife by a formal marriage act, which was read in the mosque of Aladja Hissar, near Krutchevatz, at the foot of Mount Iastrebatz, twenty miles north-west of Nish.[440] This was the last marriage ever contracted by a sovereign of the house of Osman.[441] It sealed an alliance that proved very advantageous to Bayezid. Throughout his life he was devoted to Despina, and his brother-in-law Stephen in turn was a devoted and steadfast friend. The Serbians were faithful allies to the Osmanlis, and fought with them at Nicopolis and Angora. On his side, Bayezid kept the allegiance of the Serbians by giving them opportunities for winning booty in the raids against the Albanians, Dalmatians, and Hungarians, and by favouring the Orthodox Church. When we see how complacently and cheerfully the Serbians--except the poets--took upon themselves the Ottoman yoke, we must believe that Kossova was regarded as a terrible calamity only by the generations of after centuries, who found the Ottoman rule harder than it had been for their ancestors.

Bayezid placed a strong Ottoman colony in Uskub, and settled Moslems in the country between Uskub and Nish.[442] There were probably many also who saw that conversion was to their advantage. However that may be, Bayezid never had any trouble from the Serbians during his reign.

Stephen Tvrtko, kral of Bosnia, did not consider Kossova a defeat. Seeing that his great enemy Murad and his great rival Lazar had found death on the battle-field, and that the Osmanlis did not follow up their victory, this view-point was natural. After Kossova, Tvrtko increased in power and prestige. He called himself king of Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Dalmatia. Like Stephen Dushan, he was planning ‘for great things’ when he died in March, 1391, after a reign of thirty-eight years.[443]

Shortly before his death, Tvrtko had successfully resisted an Ottoman invasion with the help of a Hungarian army sent to him by Sigismund. His successor, Stephen Dabitcha, however, departed from this wise policy. He quarrelled with the Hungarians, and played into Bayezid’s hand by opposing Sigismund in his final effort to stem the tide of Ottoman invasion. The Bosnians paid to the full the penalty of their king’s folly. In 1398, Bosnia was invaded by a great army of Osmanlis and Serbians, who ‘destroyed almost all the country and led away the people into slavery’.[444] In spite of the sweeping assertion of the chronicler, this must have been only a raid. For, from 1398 to 1415, the Bosnians, still independent, were fighting with Ragusa and Hungary. In 1415, they voluntarily allied themselves with the Osmanlis, and repeated the same old story of the other Balkan races. Mohammed I was called in to help them against the Hungarians.[445] The Osmanlis came, and they remained.

III

In the second year of his reign, after he had arranged a suitable _status quo_ with the Serbians of upper Macedonia, Bayezid began that policy of aggrandizement in Asia Minor which led finally to his downfall. His first encroachment was against Isa bey of Aïdin. Isa was too weak to oppose Bayezid single-handed. Instead of seeking to ally the independent emirs against the Osmanlis, Isa thought he could save himself with less risk by becoming a vassal of Bayezid. He was compelled to give up Ayasoluk, and make Tyra his capital. Bayezid almost immediately broke faith with Isa, and exiled him to Brusa or Nicaea, where he died.[446] His two sons, Isa and Omar, managed to escape to the court of Timur, who was rapidly becoming the most powerful Moslem ruler in Asia.

The occupation of Ephesus aroused momentarily Bayezid’s ambition to take possession of Smyrna. In 1391, he did in fact make some efforts to overpower the garrison, which was greatly weakened by pestilence.[447] Later he occupied the passes around Smyrna to prevent the entrance of provisions.[448] But Smyrna, like Constantinople, could not be starved out so long as the Osmanlis were not masters of the sea. Bayezid never pressed this mild form of siege to a definite assault. His hands were too full elsewhere. An unsuccessful assault against Smyrna would have destroyed his prestige in the new territory of Aïdin, which was not any too securely his by the suppression of its ruling family. Perhaps, also, he realized that Smyrna, more than any other place in the Levant except Rhodes, had become the city of promise to the Roman Church. He did not want to stir up an active resistance on the part of the chevaliers of Rhodes, for they might easily be induced to lend aid to the emirs whom he was destroying.

Sarukhan and Menteshe, during the reign of Murad, had lost the most virile element of their population in corsair expeditions. The Turks of whom one reads as the roving and raiding adventurers in the Aegaean and Mediterranean during the fourteenth century were largely from these emirates. Decades of outgo without a corresponding income in fighting men so depleted the maritime emirates that they were not in a position to withstand Bayezid as they had done his father and grandfather. Their population was seafaring, and their princes were traders rather than warriors. When the armies of Bayezid invaded Sarukhan and Menteshe, the two emirs attempted no resistance. They took refuge with Bayezid, emir of Kastemuni, and abandoned their emirates to the Osmanlis.[449]

The result of the acquisition of Sarukhan, Aïdin, and Menteshe was the immediate appearance of the Osmanlis upon the Aegaean Sea. This is the beginning of the Ottoman naval power, which did not, however, have any development during the reign of Bayezid. The first Ottoman naval expedition started out in the late autumn of 1390. Sixty vessels made a descent upon Chios, and devastated the island. Negropont (Euboea) and the coast of Attica suffered the ravages of the raiders.[450] Bayezid now forbade the exportation of grain from Asia to Lemnos, Lesbos, Chios, and Rhodes. But he was hardly yet in a position to enforce this embargo.

The Christians of the Aegaean islands and of the eastern Mediterranean soon learned that a new design, which had before been lacking, animated the Turkish expeditions. It was the desire not so much for booty as for the permanent possession of land. Everywhere they went, the Osmanlis went as settlers. They fought for homes and wives.

In the south, Bayezid took Adalia, the last city of the emir of Tekke. It was in 1391 that the Osmanlis won this seaport, their first on the Mediterranean. If we except the southern ports of the Peloponnesus, a whole century passed before they added another on the Mediterranean.

Following up the pretext furnished him by a complaint against Alaeddin from his vassal, the emir of Hamid, Bayezid determined to measure his forces against the Karamanlis. As had been the case in the previous similar expeditions under his father, four years before, Bayezid called out the levies of his European Christian vassals. Among those who responded to the call was Manuel Palaeologos, who passed the winter of 1390-91 in the Ottoman camp at Angora. There he wrote his famous dialogues on the Christian religion, purporting to be discussions with a Moslem professor of theology.[451]

Bayezid invaded Karamania, and laid siege to Konia. Alaeddin, who had fled to the Taurus Mountains to escape being shut up in the city, saw soon that Konia could hold out against Bayezid for an indefinite period. The Ottoman emir was far from his base of supplies, and nervous about what was happening in Europe. So, when Alaeddin asked for terms of peace, Bayezid agreed to withdraw from Konia, if Alaeddin would formally cede to him the north-western corner of his dominions, including the cities of Aksheïr and Akseraï, which were already in the hands of the Osmanlis.[452] Bayezid left Timurtash as governor of the new acquisitions, and returned to Adrianople.

While Bayezid was occupied in Bulgaria, in 1392, in his first defensive campaign against Sigismund, Alaeddin decided upon a supreme effort to wrest from Bayezid the hegemony of Asia Minor. He reoccupied the ceded cities, and attacked by surprise the Ottoman army in Kermian. Timurtash was taken prisoner. One column of the Karamanlis set out for Angora, and the other for Brusa.

Bayezid earned for himself the nickname _yildirim_ (thunderbolt) by the rapidity with which he transported his army into Anatolia.[453] Fresh from a victory over the Hungarians, supported by the trained and hardened soldiery of his Christian vassals, Greeks, Serbians, Bulgarians, and Wallachians, his sudden appearance at Brusa caused Alaeddin to try once more to treat with the rival who was rapidly becoming more powerful than himself. He released Timurtash, and suggested a return to the _status quo_ of the previous year.

Bayezid was not only convinced that a decisive struggle was now advisable: he was also quick to see that for the first time the advantage was all on the side of the Osmanlis. Instead of meeting the enemy in the heart of his own country, after a long journey across wind-swept plateaux where food was scarce, it was the enemy this time who had made the journey and was far from home. Defeated, there would be no retreat possible for Alaeddin.

With characteristic celerity, Bayezid sent forward an army under Timurtash. Battle was joined in the plain of Ak Tchaï (the white river). One cannot determine the exact location, but it was probably in Kermian not far from Kutayia, for that is where the two retreating columns of the Karamanlis would naturally have formed a junction. Alaeddin and his sons Ali and Mahommed were taken prisoners. When Alaeddin was brought before him, Timurtash could not restrain his anger until Bayezid arrived. He remembered only that the one defeat of his long and brilliant career had been administered by Alaeddin. Its disgrace, and his feeling towards the emir of Karamania, was in no way palliated by the fact that Alaeddin had voluntarily released him. Timurtash ordered the prisoner to be hanged. When Bayezid arrived, his brother-in-law was dead. He was overjoyed that his rival had been removed so conveniently, and without any responsibility falling upon himself.

Karamania lay open before the invaders. The Osmanlis occupied Ak Seraï, Konia, and Laranda. There was no organized resistance. But it is a curious disregard of facts to record, as most historians have done,[454] that the result of this campaign was the permanent incorporation of Karamania in the Ottoman Empire.[455] The battle of Ak Tchaï had been decisive only to the extent that thereafter the Osmanlis, and not the Karamanlis, were to be the dominant race in Asia Minor. Konia and other eastern Karamanian cities were occupied by the Osmanlis after the battle because their ruler had been killed and his sons taken into captivity. Had Alaeddin escaped from the field, he might have organized a successful resistance to the Ottoman invaders. Bayezid conquered Karamania by the battle of Ak Tchaï no more than Napoleon conquered Prussia by Jena or von Moltke France by Sedan. To enter and occupy for a while the capital of a country does not mean that the country is ‘incorporated’ in the domains of the successful invader. The immediate restoration of the Karamanian dynasty after the advent of Timur proves how superficial had been the Ottoman occupation. While they were no longer able to be a political factor in western Asia Minor, the Karamanlis continued until after the fall of Constantinople--for seventy years after the battle of Ak Tchaï--to defy successfully the efforts of the Osmanlis to destroy their independence and amalgamate them.[456]

Burhaneddin, who had set up for himself a principality north-east of Karamania along the Halys River, which included Caesarea and Sivas, was the next rival on the east to be attacked. Burhaneddin is reported to have had twenty to thirty thousand followers.[457] This seems to be an exaggeration, for we read that he did not resist the Ottoman invasion. At the approach of Bayezid, he retired into the mountains of Armenia near Kharput. Here he was either killed by Kara Yuluk, founder of the famous White Sheep dynasty, or put to death by order of Bayezid.[458] His emirate was shared by Bayezid and Kara Yuluk, the Ottoman emir taking Tokat, Caesarea, and Sivas. There is no certainty as to the date of this expedition. From the events which followed, it most probably took place in 1395, the year before Nicopolis.[459]

Kastamuni, practically coterminous with the Roman province of Paphlagonia, stood between the Ottoman possessions and the Black Sea. In the campaign of 1393, Samsun and the cities of the interior between Samsun and Angora, were captured by the Osmanlis. When the Ottoman army advanced to attack Kastamuni, Bayezid offered to allow the emir to become his vassal, if he would surrender to him the emirs of Sarukhan and Menteshe. Whether the lesser Bayezid was unwilling to violate the laws of hospitality, or put little faith in the promises of the conqueror after the fate which had overtaken the emir of Aïdin, it is impossible to say. He and his guests fled to the court of Timur. The occupation of Sinope gave the Osmanlis an excellent port on the south coast of the Black Sea.

Bayezid was now master of the greater part of Anatolia, but master only in name. He had not assimilated these conquests. As later events proved, the inhabitants of these territories were still loyal to their former rulers.

IV

After his return from the first Anatolian campaign, Bayezid ordered a general advance along the northern and north-western frontiers. One band invaded Bosnia, but did not make much headway. Three bands entered Hungary, and initiated the system of rapid raiding that in time reached as far as Germany, and made the ‘Turks’ the nightmare of Slavic, Teutonic, and Italian Europe. The first battle on Hungarian soil was fought at Nagy-Olosz, in Syrmia, not far from Karlovitz, where three centuries later the Osmanlis signed the death-warrant of their _Weltpolitik_.

The Danube was crossed also near Silistria. Before the terrible akindjis could penetrate far into his country, the hospodar Mircea surrendered, or was made prisoner. After a short exile at Brusa, he regained his liberty by consenting to the payment of a tribute of three thousand ducats, thirty horses, and twenty falcons.[460] He agreed to help Bayezid against the Hungarians, who had long been asserting a sovereignty over Wallachia, and in return Bayezid promised to settle no Moslems and build no mosques north of the Danube. In the first Hungarian invasion, Bayezid received more valuable aid from the Wallachians than from his janissaries. There were no better fighters in the Balkan peninsula than these descendants of the soldiers of Trajan. The interference of Sigismund prevented an Ottoman invasion of Moldavia, whose hospodars remained altogether independent of the Osmanlis until the reign of Mohammed the Conqueror.[461]

When Louis of Hungary died, he left two daughters. The younger, Hedwig, was chosen as queen of Poland by the Polish nobles. Her marriage with Jagello of Lithuania, who was converted to Christianity and baptized under the name of Ladislas, definitely separated the crowns of Poland and Hungary, and had a far-reaching influence upon the subsequent fortunes of the Osmanlis. The crown of Hungary fell to Mary, whose succession was questioned by Charles of Durazzo, king of Naples, the nearest male heir. His invasion of Dalmatia, in 1385, brought into Hungary Sigismund, second son of Charles IV of Luxemburg, the German Emperor. For Sigismund was betrothed to Mary, but had been slow to take upon himself the rôle of bridegroom, owing to his disappointment over Hedwig’s election by the Poles. Now he entered into the struggle for the Hungarian crown. In 1387, it was placed upon his head. The union between Poland and Hungary was broken, but the fortunes of Hungary and Bohemia, to which throne Sigismund succeeded by blood, were joined in a way that has never been broken to the present time. The outside connexions of the new Hungarian king were a most important factor in the growth of the Ottoman Empire. A strong and vigorous king, whose sole interest lay in the crown of Hungary, might have prevented the spread of the Osmanlis. In fact, after Bayezid’s death, he might easily have destroyed the Ottoman power in Europe. But Sigismund, called in 1411 to the larger rôle of Holy Roman Emperor, became engrossed in the Hussite controversy and the Church councils to end the great schism. While retaining the crown of Hungary, he allowed the Osmanlis to make the preparations which were to end in the Moslem subjugation of that kingdom.

In the early days, when Sigismund’s interests lay in his newly-acquired Hungarian crown, he was alive to the menace of the Osmanlis. He sent a message to Bayezid, demanding by what right he was interfering with Bulgaria, which was a country under Hungarian protection. Bayezid made no response to the address of the king’s ambassador. He merely pointed to the weapons hanging in his tent, and gave a sign that the audience was over.

Sigismund understood, and accepted the challenge. In 1392, he invaded Bulgaria, won an initial battle from the Osmanlis, who would have been annihilated had it not been for their new allies, the Wallachians, and, after a long siege, took Nicopolis on the Danube.[462] By this time Bayezid was able to send a large army into Bulgaria. When Sigismund realized how numerous were the forces coming against him, he saw that his victory bade fair to be nothing more than the acquisition of a prison. Before the Osmanlis could surround him, he wisely abandoned Nicopolis. The retreat became a rout.[463] It was on the return from this expedition that Sigismund met Elisabeth Morsinay, in the county of Hunyadi. From their union was born the great champion, who, while his imperial father was engrossed in theological disputes and the complex interests of the empire, battled bravely against Mohammed I and Murad II.

The expedition of 1392 demonstrated to Sigismund that Bayezid was a foe worthy of a European ruler, that he must be checked if Hungary were to be saved, and that the Hungarians could not again take the offensive against the Osmanlis without aid from western Europe. For the pretensions of Louis to the overlordship of the Balkan States, and the heartless propaganda of the Catholic faith, thinly disguising Louis’s inordinate ambitions, had turned the Balkan peoples against Hungary and ‘crusaders’ from the west. They chose rather to stand on the side of their Moslem enslavers.

Sigismund’s invasion of Bulgaria determined Bayezid to put an end to the arrangement concluded just before Kossova between Murad and Sisman. Bulgaria, like Thrace and Macedonia, was to be an integral part of the empire, and to become converted to Islam and ottomanized, in so far as that was possible. For Sisman, who had re-established himself in his old capital, was too uncertain an ally to be trusted in the event of another Hungarian invasion. In the spring of 1393, an army under Soleiman Tchelebi, Bayezid’s oldest son, to whom this was the first command, surrounded Tirnovo. The bulk of Soleiman’s army was composed of Macedonian Christians and renegades of the first generation. In midsummer,[464] after a three months’ siege, Tirnovo was taken by storm from the side of the old castle, which is still, in part, standing.[465] The inhabitants who escaped fire and sword were carried into captivity in Anatolia. Among them was the patriarch Euthymius.[466]

This was the end of the independence of Bulgaria and of the national church. The loss of the church was a more serious blow than the loss of independence. For the Bulgarian nationality suffered an eclipse of centuries. Under the laws of Mohammed the Conqueror for the ‘self-government’ of the Christian elements of the empire, the Bulgarians were included in the Greek _millet_ (nation). Enemy to every influence, every movement that tended to lessen its temporal power, the Greek patriarchate of Phanar never wearied in its endeavours, and never withheld its approval of the foulest means, to stamp out the Bulgarian national spirit. One cannot visit the old monastery of Rilo without realizing that the Bulgarian sufferings have been more acute from Christian priests than from Moslem governors. One cannot follow the trail of unending persecution in the mute witness of unchurched communities from Monastir to the Black Sea through Macedonia and Eastern Rumelia, and to the Danube, through Bulgarian Serbia and trans-Rhodopian Moesia, without sympathizing with the Bulgarian aspirations of 1913, and without comprehending the wild rage and hatred that drove an ordinarily clear-headed and impassive people into the second Balkan war.[467]

When Tirnovo fell, Sisman was not found in his palace. His fate was a mystery even when Schiltberger went through Bulgaria with the crusaders three years later. Schiltberger believed that he died in captivity.[468] His son, Alexander, became a Moslem to save his life, and was given the governorship of Samsun.[469] He was killed fighting under the Ottoman flag, in 1420, in the rebellion of Dédé-Sultan. The royal family of Bulgaria had no other heirs.

Silistria, Nicopolis, Widin, and the other Danube fortresses were strongly garrisoned and fortified.[470] By conversion and immigration the Moslem population was cultivated, and grew rapidly on this northern frontier of the empire.

V

The battle of Kossova did not immediately affect Constantinople. Bayezid was intent upon arranging the new _status quo_ in Serbia. After he had assured himself that Sigismund was not ready to attack him, he passed over into Asia Minor. There he devoted all his energies to the destruction of the Turkish emirates.

The old family feud of the Palaeologi continued.[471] In April 1390, John, the son of Andronicus, entered Constantinople, and set himself up as emperor in opposition to his grandfather and uncle. But upon Manuel’s return from Asia in September, he was compelled to flee.[472] The obligations of Manuel as Ottoman vassal were stronger than the exigencies of his precarious position at Constantinople. Although his father was in an enfeebled condition and the danger of a return of his nephew was very real, Manuel left again in November to follow Bayezid in the war against Karamania.

We have a striking record from Manuel’s own pen of his humiliation. Proper food was too dear for the purse of the heir of Constantine the Great. He was on the verge of starvation. In sharp contrast to his own wretchedness, he describes the barbaric splendour of the court of Bayezid, and the feasting in which he was too insignificant to have a share. The Osmanlis treated him with studied insolence and contempt.[473]

While Bayezid was in Karamania, the old emperor repaired the walls of his capital. Churches were torn down in order to rebuild the towers on either side of the Golden Gate. They were given an ornate appearance to disguise the purpose of their having been repaired. Bayezid, informed through his couriers, sent word to John that the towers must be rased without delay, or Manuel would lose his eyes. The old emperor made haste to obey. Before the demolition was finished, he died in the arms of Eudoxia Comnena, whom he had taken for his mistress after having asked her hand for his son. Gout and debauchery rather than grief and humiliation ended his ignoble life; for he was only sixty-one, and, like his father and grandfather, had never opposed the Osmanlis with enough energy to undermine his constitution.[474]

When Manuel, in the spring of 1391, returned to Brusa, he learned of his father’s death, and of the threat that had been made concerning himself. Escaping in the night, he fled to Constantinople.

An ultimatum soon followed from Bayezid. Beyond the acknowledgement of vassalage and the payment of an increased tribute, Bayezid demanded the establishment of a kadi in Constantinople to judge the Moslem inhabitants. Upon the heels of his messenger came the Ottoman army. The Greeks of southern Thrace who had remained Christian were exterminated or carried off into slavery in Asia. Like locusts, the Osmanlis swarmed in all directions, and no village missed their notice up to the very walls of Constantinople.[475] The first Ottoman siege of Constantinople began.

The close investment of the city ended after seven months. Bayezid, needing his army in Bulgaria to oppose Sigismund, consented to lift the siege on still harder conditions than had first been imposed. Manuel authorized the establishment of a Mohammedan tribunal in the Sirkedji quarter, and to give seven hundred houses within the city walls to Moslem settlers. Half of Galata, from the Genoese Tower to the Sweet Waters, was ceded to Bayezid, who placed there a garrison of six thousand. The tribute was once more increased, and the Ottoman treasury was allowed a tithe on the vineyards and vegetable gardens outside of the city.[476] From the minarets of two mosques, the call to prayer echoed over the imperial city, which, from this time, began to be called by the Osmanlis Istambul.[477] This was the city of promise.

From 1391 until the advent of Timur, Constantinople was blockaded on the land side.[478] The Galata garrison and the posts at Kutchuk and Buyuk Tchekmedje were always alert to bully and harass travellers and provision sellers.

The Grand Vizier, Ali pasha, used the grandson and namesake of John V Palaeologos to make trouble for Manuel. It was in his blood to become the willing tool of the Osmanlis. In 1393, Ali pasha tried to get the inhabitants of the city to depose Manuel in order that John, as heir of the older son of the late emperor, might take the place which was rightfully his.[479] Two years later John actually attacked the city with Ottoman troops, but was repulsed.[480]

The overtures of Manuel for aid and money from Christian princes were received with little enthusiasm. On account of the schism in the Latin Church, Manuel could look for no papal support. Venice refused his offer to sell Lemnos.[481] The time had passed when the Senate set even the slightest monetary value upon a Byzantine deed of sale to an Aegaean island.

In 1395, at Serres, Bayezid held his first court as heir of the Caesars. He summoned before him Manuel and Theodore and John, the son of Andronicus. Theodore, who had been ruling in the Morea (Peloponnesus), sole remaining Byzantine theme, was charged with having encroached upon the rights of the lord of Monembasia. The few remaining Serbian princes were also present. Bayezid contemplated ridding himself altogether of the Byzantine imperial family. In fact, he ordered the death of all the Palaeologi. Ali pasha succeeded in putting off the execution long enough for Bayezid to change his mind. The sentence was revoked, but warning was given by cutting off the hands and putting out the eyes of several Byzantine dignitaries. The Palaeologi, and Constantinople, had been saved only by the intervention of a creature of Bayezid’s, who did not want to see the imperial family perish and the imperial city fall because these ghosts of princes were a source of revenue to him!

The peril at Serres had been so real that the Byzantine and Serbian princes plotted immediately to throw off the Ottoman yoke, and swore to each other that they would never again answer a summons from Bayezid. The compact was sealed by the marriage of Irene, daughter of Constantine Dragash, to Manuel.[482] But Dragash died shortly after the marriage,[483] and Vuk Brankovitch died three years later.[484] They were the last of the Serbians of Dushan’s following in Macedonia. The disaster of Nicopolis soon crushed the hopes of the conspirators.

VI

Urban VI, the first Roman pope of the Great Schism, did practically nothing against the Osmanlis. He sent, in 1388, two armed galleys for the defence of Constantinople, and issued letters broadcast promising indulgences to all who would take part in a crusade.[485] But he did not work for a league of the states which recognized him. His successor, Boniface IX, whose reign covered the same period as that of Bayezid, was too occupied in combating the Angevin party in Naples, and in trying to preserve intact the papal states and cities, to pay much attention to the Ottoman menace.

In 1391, Boniface urged George Stracimir, who called himself king of Rascia (Serbia), to conquer Durazzo from the ‘schismatics’, and commanded the Catholic archbishop of Antivari to prevent the Christians of Macedonia and Dalmatia from allying themselves with the Osmanlis.[486] Idle words these were, revealing at once the short-sighted policy of Boniface and his bigotry. For the Osmanlis, in the spring of 1393, were threatening Durazzo.[487] With warring Christian sects, their success was certain.

In Greece the interference of the Latin popes was becoming more and more bitterly resented. Ecclesiastics and laymen alike resented proselytizing and the invariable introduction of a bargaining clause in every appeal for western aid. In March 1393, Dorotheus, metropolitan of Athens and exarch of Greece, who had been justly charged by the Duke of Athens with wanting to introduce into his duchy the Osmanlis, was a fugitive at Constantinople. Tried on the charge brought against him by the Duke, a synod of eight bishops acquitted him.[488] This action was indicative of the feeling throughout the Eastern Church,--better the Osmanlis than the Franks with their Catholic missionaries. Even the changed attitude of Bayezid towards Christianity did little to modify this sentiment.

Although France was supporting the Avignon papacy, Boniface wrote in 1394 to Charles VI, asking him to help Sigismund or at least to allow his subjects to fight under the Hungarian standards.[489] In the course of the same year he twice ordered a crusade to be preached.[490] This was, however, rather an attempt to take under his wing, and give sanction to, a secular movement to help Hungary than an initiative which had originated the movement. For most of Sigismund’s allies were adherents of the other papacy.

At Avignon, Benedict XIII, a Spaniard, mounted the throne in 1394. His influence with the Duke of Burgundy, who dominated the insane French king, was almost as negligible as that of his Roman rival.

Philippe de Mézières, who had taken up the work of Marino Sanudo, and gave his life to the promotion of a crusade, left Cyprus in 1378, and settled in Paris, where he preached and wrote impassioned appeals to Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. His ‘Order of the Passion’, which was to furnish a race of fighters against the Moslem holders of Jerusalem, had replaced the celibate vow of the earlier orders by a vow of marital fidelity, so that ‘defenders of the Holy Sepulchre’ might be propagated, and trained from infancy for their mission. The whole idea of Philippe de Mézières was an anachronism. The age of the crusades had passed. After 1390 the new order fell into oblivion.[491] Like Marino Sanudo, Philippe de Mézières had actually contributed to the aggrandizement of the Osmanlis; for he turned the minds of those who were moved by his appeals from the real menace of Islam to a quixotic and wholly useless dream. The crusades had only emphasized the axiom of history that Syria, including Palestine, must be held either through Mesopotamia or through Egypt.

Against the Osmanlis as against the Moslems of the Holy Land, the Church was no longer able to move Europe. The Nicopolis crusade was undertaken and carried through by secular agencies. It had neither religious motive nor religious backing.

The interest of Hungary in checking the progress of Ottoman conquest was hardly second to that of Venice and Genoa. To the two Italian republics, who had not hesitated to stake their very existence a decade before upon the mastery of the Aegaean Sea and the free passage of the Dardanelles, one would suppose that the battle of Kossova would have been a salutary warning, and that they would have seen the necessity of opposing the Osmanlis to the full extent of their resources. The archives of these cities, however, during the entire reign of Bayezid, reveal a record of double-dealing and insincere diplomacy which was as futile and disastrous as it was shameful.

Immediately upon hearing the news of Kossova, the Venetian Senate sent to Andrea Bembo, who had been negotiating with Murad, a letter instructing him as to the course he should follow in view of the death of Murad. He was to seek out the son who had survived, or, if both sons were alive, to be very cautious until one son had killed or defeated the other. In the meantime, he was to make overtures to both, telling each one, without letting the other know, that the Senate ‘had heard of the death of his father, and on that account had great sorrow. For we have always regarded him as a most particular friend, and we loved him and his state. Likewise we have heard of his happy elevation to the power and lordship of his country, concerning which we have been very happy, because, in like manner as we have sincerely loved the father, we love and are disposed to love the son and his dominion, and to regard him as a particular friend.’ Then Bembo was to speak of the commercial privileges desired by the Senate, and to disclaim the action of the Venetian admiral, Pietro Zeno, who had attacked the galleys of Murad.[492]

Immediately upon hearing which son had become the successor of Murad, the Senate sent Francesco Quirini to Bayezid with gifts to secure the renewal of the commercial treaty concluded several years before with Murad. Bayezid readily offered to protect Venetian commerce, but he gave no guarantee.[493]

The appearance of the Osmanlis on the Aegaean Sea, and their sacking of Chios, Negropont,[494] and Attica, greatly alarmed the Senate. Fear was expressed for the safety of the Venetian fortresses in Negropont and Crete.[495] All garrisons were ordered, provisioned, and reinforced.[496] In 1393, forgetting their sincere love for Bayezid, the Senate decided to treat with Sigismund for an offensive alliance against the Osmanlis.[497] So it cannot be believed that the Venetians did not see the growing danger.

In September of the next year they responded favourably, although vaguely, to a letter in which Sigismund notified them that in the coming springtime he would ‘go against the Turks to their loss and destruction’.[498] But when, in May 1396, a Hungarian embassy arrived in Venice to announce the readiness for a forward movement, and to secure the promised aid, Venice pledged herself only to the extent of four galleys, and that on condition that Rhodes, Chios, and Mytilene would co-operate with the Venetians.[499] A high-sounding letter was sent to Tommaso Monicego, ordering him to move against the Osmanlis ‘for the preservation of the city of Constantinople and for the honour of the republic’.[500] Too weak and too inexperienced to withstand the hardened mariners of Italy, the Osmanlis disappeared from the sea for the moment. Their navy was only six years old, and could not yet match itself against the _ghiaours_. Monicego fought no battle, for there was no enemy to oppose him. But he made no effort to hinder the passage of the Osmanlis from Asia to Europe and from Europe to Asia. The sincerity of the naval co-operation in the Nicopolis crusade is open to the gravest suspicion.[501]

While the Senate was putting off Sigismund with assurances and promises that never materialized, they continued to treat with Bayezid and Manuel. In September 1394, the Osmanlis appeared in the Adriatic at the mouth of the Boyana, and seized Venetian subjects there. The danger to Durazzo was imminent, for the Osmanlis were now masters of the valley of the Drin. When the Senate deliberated on measures for securing the release of the prisoners and for the defence of Durazzo, they decided to make representations rather than threats to Bayezid.[502] He naturally paid no attention to the Venetians. They did not intend to apply force, so he continued the subjugation of Albania and Greece.

To Manuel the Senate wrote a letter in 1394, recommending him ‘to trust in God, to trust in the measures which the Christian princes would know how to take, to write to the pope and to these (the Christian princes), promoting a general alliance’.[503] But one finds in the deliberations of the Senate no speech or motion or letter from which one could infer that they themselves had any hope whatever of the efficacy of the procedure suggested to Manuel. In fact, within six months, in spite of the imminence of the Hungarian offensive campaign that was to ‘drive the Turks out of Europe’, the Senate actually decided to send ambassadors to Bayezid to urge upon him the advisability of an accord with the Byzantine emperor.[504] It was only because the crusade of Sigismund was already launched, and they realized the uselessness of it, that they gave up this questionable _démarche_, and discussed measures for the safety of the Venetian fleet, and for preventing Constantinople from falling into Bayezid’s hands without coming into any open rupture with the Osmanlis.[505] Did Venice, while ostensibly co-operating with the crusaders, fear that a victory at Nicopolis would bring about the hegemony of Hungary in the Balkan peninsula, and secretly wish for the success of the Osmanlis?

As for Genoa, no other policy was considered than that of outbidding Venice for Bayezid’s favour. Fulsome congratulations upon his succession were sent to Bayezid. In the autumn of 1390, a Genoese embassy appeared at Adrianople to remind Bayezid of the traditional friendship of the Consulta for his father and grandfather. Their assurances were backed up by valuable gifts.[506] While cultivating the friendship of the Osmanlis, the Consulta levied a compulsory tax upon all the communes where they could enforce their authority for the purpose of increasing the Genoese fleets in the Aegaean Sea and at Constantinople.[507] A watchful eye was kept on the Venetians and the Osmanlis. Neither Sigismund nor Manuel received real aid from Genoa.

For the necessary outside support and assistance in the crusade which appeared to him indispensable for the safety of Hungary, Sigismund had to look elsewhere than to the divided papacy, and to the republics of Venice and Genoa. Whether Sigismund’s fears of the ability of the Osmanlis to destroy Hungary were well founded is open to question. But there is no doubt that his activity prevented the capture of Constantinople in the early years of the reign of Bayezid.

VII

As early as 1384, the French Court was aware of the remarkable progress of the Ottoman conquest. The character and ambitions of Murad were presented to the boy-king Charles VI in a striking way. He was told that Murad, in a dream, had seen Apollon, one of his false gods, who offered him a crown of gold before which were prostrated thirteen princes of the Occident.[508] This childhood impression was revived in 1391, when Charles was at the zenith of his emancipation under the Marmousets. He received an embassy of pilgrims from the Holy Land, who brought news of a defeat they had experienced while fighting with the King of Hungary ‘against the Turks of Lamorat Baxin’. When Charles asked them about the genealogy and antecedents of the prince, whose name they confused with that of his father, they knew nothing of him except that he was ‘a vassal of the King of Persia’.

But of his character and ambitions they made a statement which we are justified in quoting, because it throws light upon the notions prevailing in the minds of the French aristocracy who went to their death at Nicopolis. ‘He was’, said the pilgrims, ‘a man of wisdom and discretion, who feared God according to the superstitious traditions of the Turks ... humane towards the conquered, because he oppressed them very little with exactions, and did not expel them from their lands so long as they were willing to promise allegiance under an annual tribute, however small. He kept his promises, and permitted them to live under their own laws.... His seal was so respected in his army that whoever saw it fell upon his knees. He had interpreters and spies in Europe to instruct him about the kings and their policies. _He told the pilgrims that he would come to France after he had finished with Austria._’[509]

The chronicler from whom this report is taken added that Charles was much excited by this threat. He was anxious to make peace with England, in order that he could accept the challenge of Bayezid, and go to fight him in single combat at the head of his army. But Charles, in the following year, so completely lost his mental balance that he could no longer maintain any personal power, and fell under the influence of the princes of the lilies. But his sympathies remained steadfastly attached to every scheme for fighting the Osmanlis.

In the spring of 1395, the Dukes of Berry and Burgundy, uncles of the king, who had for the moment all the power of the French crown in their hands, received at Lyons ambassadors from Sigismund, who came to demand aid against the Osmanlis. Philip of Burgundy was greatly interested in this mission. It is extremely improbable that he had any interest whatever in the Christians of the Balkan peninsula, the aggrandizement of Hungary, or even the preservation of Constantinople from Moslem sacrilege. But, since Flanders, Artois, and the county of Burgundy had come to him through his wife on the death of Louis le Mâle, Philip had begun to dream of establishing a new kingdom in Europe. It was the dream which was to plunge France into the most bitter of her civil wars, to call forth Jeanne d’Arc from the seclusion of Domrémy, and end in the death of his great-grandson under the walls of Nancy.

Philip had every reason in the world to aid the project of Sigismund. Apart from the fact that his immediate hold over the insane king, Charles VI, would be strengthened by the absence from France of the energetic scions of noble families, who, if successful in the struggle against Bayezid, might push on to the Holy Land and find permanent interests--or a grave--there, Sigismund was well worth cultivating. The elder brother of the king of Hungary, Wenceslaus, was Roman emperor, but insecure in his position. At that very moment, Wenceslaus was negotiating with Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti to create him Duke of Milan in exchange for his support.[510] Galeazzo was the father-in-law of Louis of Orleans, younger brother of the French king, and Philip’s formidable rival. The future of the Valois of Burgundy demanded an _entente_ with the German imperial family. As this could not be concluded with Wenceslaus, and as Wenceslaus might at any moment be deposed, it was policy for Philip of Burgundy to come into close contact with Sigismund, whose future in Bohemia and in the empire Philip foresaw. At the very least, by lending aid to Sigismund, Philip had an excellent chance of getting Luxemburg, which was essential to the consolidation of the new Burgundy in the Netherlands.

As earnest of the aid which would be forthcoming the following year, the Duke of Burgundy allowed the Comte d’Eu to proceed immediately to Hungary with some nobles and six hundred horsemen.[511] After the Hungarian envoys had gone through the formality of an audience with the king at Paris, they returned to Sigismund bearing a letter in which Philip promised substantial aid in cavaliers and mercenaries, under the command of his own elder son, Jean Valois, Comte de Nevers.

From England, the Netherlands, Savoy, Lombardy, and all parts of Germany, Sigismund received assurances that the cream of chivalry would flock to his standards, and that he could rely upon Europe to back him in the expedition which was to drive Bayezid out of Europe.

VIII

The crusade which ended in the disaster of Nicopolis is one of the most interesting events of the close of the Middle Ages, not only by reason of the historical importance of those who took part in it, but also because it was the last great international enterprise of feudal chivalry. It is the end of an epoch in the history of Europe. So widespread was the interest in Sigismund’s call to arms against the Osmanlis that there came to meet him at Buda in the spring of 1396 not only the French volunteers, but also scions of noble families from England, Scotland, Flanders, Lombardy, Savoy, Bohemia, and all parts of Germany and Austria. The English war in Normandy had ceased, Milan was supreme in northern Italy, and for the moment there was peace in the Holy Roman Empire. It was a favourable time to attract adventurers to unknown lands.

This expedition furnishes the most absorbing pages in the last portion of Froissart;[512] it is mentioned in more or less detail in a number of other French, Italian, German, and Latin chronicles. Several

## participants have left graphic accounts of the gathering of the

chevaliers, the march down the Danube, the battle and its aftermath of massacre, the captivity and ransom of the prisoners. The archives of Dijon and Lille tell the cost of the fitting out of the French contingent and of the ransom of the prisoners. For this crowning event in Bayezid’s career, we have more source material than for any episode of Ottoman history until the fall of Constantinople.[513]

The French chevaliers numbered about a thousand. They were accompanied by six or seven thousand attendants and mercenaries. They gathered at Dijon, under the command of Jean de Nevers, the oldest son of Duke Philip of Burgundy, and grandson of King John, who had been captured in the battle of Poitiers. He was only twenty-two, and had just won his knighthood. The fact, though, that he was heir to Burgundy, and a prince of the royal blood, gave him the command. Philip charged the Sieur de Coucy, one of the boldest and most experienced warriors in France, to have an eye on the boy, and to guide the expedition with his counsel.[514]

Prominent among the French chevaliers were Philippe d’Artois, Constable of France, Henri and Philippe de Bar, cousins of the king, the Sieur de Coucy, Guillaume de la Trémouille, Jacques Bourbon de Vienne, admiral of France and prince of the royal blood, Boucicaut, marshal of France, the Sieur de Saint-Pol, and three Flemish princes who were the brothers of Jean de Nevers’s mother. The heir to the duchy of Bavaria was anxious to join the French chevaliers, but was restrained by the wise words of Duke Albert: ‘William, since you have the desire to travel and go to Hungary and Turkey, and carry arms against people and countries which have never done anything to us, and you have no reason for going there, except the vainglory of this world, let John of Burgundy and our cousins of France do their enterprises, and you do yours, and go into Friesland and conquer our inheritance ... and in doing this I shall help you.’[515]

The chevaliers travelled through Germany and Bohemia, and were hospitably received by the Duke of Austria. ‘On the way they spoke of Amorath-Bacquin[516] and admired little his power.’ When they reached ‘a city called Buda, the king made them a great reception and good cheer, and indeed he ought to have done so, for they had come far to see him and bear arms for him’.[517] At Buda they found the other chevaliers who had responded to the invitation of Sigismund, among whom were the Bastard of Savoy,[518] Frederick of Hohenzollern, grand prior of the Teutonic Order, Philibert de Naillac, grand master of Rhodes, with a contingent of chevaliers of Saint-John, the Elector Palatine, and John, Burgrave of Nürnberg, ancestor of the House of Brandenburg.[519] A scholarly biographer of Henry IV of England has recorded that he, as Count of Lancaster, was one of the participants in the Nicopolis expedition.[520] This error has found its way into one, at least, of our most reliable modern historians.[521] Although the successor of Richard II was not, as a matter of fact, at Nicopolis,[522] the blood of the Nicopolis crusaders is in the veins of the British royal house, as in that of practically every ruling family of Europe.

Sigismund claimed to have been assured by Bayezid that the Osmanlis would invade Hungary in the spring of 1396. When there were no signs of an Ottoman invasion, the crusaders decided that, as Bayezid did not come to seek them, they had best take advantage of the summer months to go and find the arch-enemy of Christendom.[523] Arrangements had been made with Mircea, voïevode of Wallachia, to break with the Osmanlis and join the coalition. Manuel, who had been invited to co-operate with the invaders, prepared secretly to declare against Bayezid.[524]

According to the chronicles, the invasion of Bulgaria was rather a picnic than a serious military operation. This was true, at least, for the western chevaliers, who had brought with them wine and women in plenty. Their baggage contained all the luxuries to which they were accustomed at home. The French auxiliaries travelled from Buda to the Danube by way of Transylvania and Wallachia, crossing the Carpathians through the pass between Brassó (Karlstadt) and Sinaia.

The Hungarians, following the Danube, spread out into Serbia, pillaging and murdering the inoffensive Christian population more thoroughly than Ottoman akindjis would have done.[525] In spite of a lack of opposition, they persisted in acting as if they were in the enemy’s country. Widin surrendered without a struggle, and Orsova after five days.[526] In September, the armies joined before the fortress of Nicopolis, whose surrender to the Osmanlis three years before had marked the disappearance of Bulgarian independence. They were destined to go no farther.[527]

For sixteen days Sigismund and his allies encamped in front of Nicopolis without giving assault.[528] They had no idea of the whereabouts of Bayezid. It was believed among the French (whose ignorance of geography and of distances equalled ours of modern times) that Bayezid was in Egypt, gathering a great army of all the Moslem world to oppose the triumphant march of the crusaders. One reads in Froissart that Bayezid was ‘in Cairo in Babylonia [_sic_] with the sultan to get men’, that he left the sultan there and rallied his forces at Alexandria and Damascus, that ‘under the command and prayers of the khalif of Bagdad and Asia Minor’, whose mandate went forth ‘to Persia, to Media, and to Tarsus’, Bayezid received a ‘mass of Saracens and miscreants’, and that in his army were ‘people of Tartary, Persia, Media, Syria, Alexandria, and of many far-off countries of the miscreants’.[529]

Sigismund made a speech to the chevaliers from western and central Europe, in which he declared: ‘Let him come or not come, in the summer which will return, if it pleases God, we shall get through the kingdom of Armenia and shall pass the Bras Saint-George and shall go into Syria and shall get from the Saracens the gates of Jaffa and Beirut and several other [cities] to go down into Syria, and we shall go to conquer the city of Jerusalem and all the Holy Land. And if the Sultan, with all the strength he can muster, comes before us, we shall fight him, and there will be no going away without the battle, in God’s pleasure.’ Froissart naïvely adds immediately after his report of this speech: ‘But it turned out very much in another way.’[530]

It certainly did. Bayezid, who had been directing the siege of Constantinople, knew no more about the khalif and the sultan and the ‘far-off countries of the miscreants’ than did Froissart. Neither he nor his ancestors had ever had dealings with the Moslem princes of Asia. Persians, ‘Saracens’ and Egyptians were lacking in his army. He gathered together his trained warriors, called upon his Christian vassals for their quotas, and set forth over the well-known route to the Danube. From several recent campaigns, he and his soldiers were thoroughly familiar with the country through which they passed, and in which the people were less afraid of him than they were of the Christians who had come to deliver them. When, after two weeks’ march, he pitched his camp near Nicopolis, he was simply returning to a place where twice before the Ottoman arms had been victorious.

Sigismund was dismayed at the prompt appearance of Bayezid with an army which was reported to him in numbers varying from one hundred and twenty thousand to two hundred thousand. In spite of his brave words to the chevaliers, Sigismund knew the worth of the Osmanlis as fighting-men, and that they could not be brushed aside by a few impetuous cavalry charges. So he begged Jean de Nevers and his companions to consult with him, and to formulate a definite plan of action. He suggested, and won over to this opinion the Sieur de Coucy, who was the most experienced warrior among the chevaliers, that a reconnaissance be made first of all to determine Bayezid’s position and intentions. Then, if Bayezid was actually moving to the attack, or on the point of moving, it would be the part of wisdom for the westerners to allow the foot-soldiers of Hungary and the Wallachians to sustain the first attack. The valiant horsemen and western mercenaries should form a second line, whether it be in attack or defence.

The chevaliers were furious at this suggestion. Philippe d’Artois, Comte d’Eu and Grand Constable of France, who knew Sigismund best from longer association with him, suspected him of an attempt to rob the chevaliers of the glory of defeating Bayezid. ‘Yes, yes,’ he cried, ‘the king of Hungary wants to have the flower of the day and the honour. We have the advance-guard, and already has he given it to us. So he wants to take it away from us and have the first battle. Whoever believes in this, I shall not.’ Then turning to the chevalier who carried his banner, he called out, ‘Forward banner, in the name of God and of Saint George, for they will see me to-day a good chevalier’.[531] This action was contagious. Without knowing where the enemy was, without thinking where or how far they were going, without waiting to agree upon a concerted

## action with the bulk of their army, the French, German, and English

noblemen rushed forward to make the last charge of European chivalry against the followers of Mohammed.

The outposts of Bayezid, taken by surprise, were cut down. The Osmanlis who surrendered were massacred without mercy. Imagining that they were winning a great victory, and that they were breaking through the only obstacle between them and the Holy Sepulchre, the chevaliers rode to death and disgrace. In the picturesque language of Rabbi Joseph, ‘they said “Aha! aha!”. But their joy was quickly gone, for the horsemen of Bayezid and his hosts and chariots came against them, in battle array, like the moon when she is new.’[532]

The chevaliers had put all their strength of man and horse into the charge. Their swords ran blood. They thought the day was theirs, when suddenly they found themselves confronting the army of Bayezid. As was his invariable custom, Bayezid had sent out to meet the attack of the chevaliers, when he heard that they had commenced the battle, his worthless untrained levies to be cut down by the enemy and exhaust their strength. With deliberation he drew his trusted divisions in battle array in an advantageous position, which he had ample time to choose. His soldiers were intact and fresh. The Ottoman bowmen aimed their arrows at the horses of the chevaliers. Unhorsed and quickly surrounded by sixty thousand soldiers, there was nothing for the proudest warriors in Europe to do but surrender to the foe whom they had despised.

As far as the chevaliers were concerned, the battle was over in three hours. Jacques Bourbon, admiral of France, lay on the field with the banner of Notre-Dame clasped tightly in his hands. Guy de la Trémouille, Philippe de Bar, and others of the noblest blood of France, Flanders, Bavaria, and Savoy were killed in the charge. But the greater part of the high-born auxiliaries of Sigismund were prisoners in the camp of Bayezid. So handsomely were they accoutred that the Osmanlis believed them all to be princes of the Occident, and saved them for Bayezid to determine their fate.[533]

When Sigismund learned that the chevaliers had disregarded his advice, and had already ridden forth to find the army of Bayezid, he was greatly worried, for he knew the tactics of Bayezid, and feared the worst. He said to the grand master of Rhodes, ‘We shall lose the day through the great pride and folly of these French: if they had only believed me, we had forces in plenty to fight our enemies’.[534]

From a comparison of the chronicles, one does not get a clear idea of what happened after the failure of the assault of the chevaliers. A battle in which the bulk of the forces on either side were engaged undoubtedly followed. But it is impossible to state whether Sigismund followed up the way opened for him through the Ottoman lines by the French charge, or whether the Hungarians and their auxiliaries were on the defensive. Froissart and Morosini infer that Sigismund did not attempt to fight after the failure of the chevaliers, and it was believed in western Europe that the disaster of Nicopolis was due to the failure of Sigismund to support the chevaliers rather than to their own folly. The Hungarians and their king were bitterly denounced by the French survivors.[535] On the other hand, Schiltberger, who took part in the battle, declares that the king of Hungary was advancing in force, and that Bayezid was preparing to retreat, when the Osmanlis received sudden and substantial support from the krai of Serbia.[536]

The Serbians were so completely under Ottoman control after the battle of Kossova, that they made no attempt to throw off the yoke of Bayezid.[537] In Asia Minor as in the Balkan peninsula, against the Karamanians and Tartars as against the crusaders, at Nicopolis as at Angora, the Serbian auxiliaries were faithful supporters of Bayezid. Nicopolis was certainly won with the aid of the Christians of the Balkan peninsula. It was not only the Serbian reinforcements which won the day for the Osmanlis. As soon as Mircea of Wallachia saw how the battle was going, he quickly withdrew from the field, and got his forces across the Danube before the panic started.

Whether the action of Mircea was actuated by treasonable motives or not is open to debate. He may have honestly believed that it was a case of _sauve qui peut_. If so, his action was not more reprehensible than that of Sigismund himself. The future Holy Roman Emperor, who was to play so important a part in the history of Europe during the early decades of the fifteenth century, forgot his bold words of the previous week: ‘And if the Sultan, with all the strength he can muster, comes before us, we shall fight him, and there will be no going away without the battle, in God’s pleasure.’ Sigismund and the grand master of Rhodes hurried to the Danube, got away in a small boat,[538] and boarded one of the galleys of Monicego, the Venetian admiral. Abandoning his army and his allies to their fate, the king of Hungary sailed for home. He had the shame, if he felt it at all, when passing through the Dardanelles, of seeing the chevaliers and other prisoners of Nicopolis paraded before his eyes. One of these prisoners wrote: ‘The Osmanlis took us out of the tower of Gallipoli, and led us to the sea, and one after the other they abused the king of Hungary as he passed, and mocked him, and called to him to come out of the boat and deliver his people: and this they did to make fun of him, and skirmished a long time with each other on the sea. But they did not do him any harm, and so he went away.’[539]

Sigismund went to Modon, and then back to Hungary. This was the king who had boasted that he would not only turn the Osmanlis out of Europe, but that he had enough lances to support the sky, should it fall upon his army.[540] Although his manhood had been put to the test, and had been found wanting, he was saved to play a great, if unenviable, part in the closing events of the Middle Ages.[541]

After Sigismund’s escape, his great army, which was to redeem the Holy Sepulchre, fled before the Osmanlis. Those who were not killed, or drowned in the Danube, retreated through Wallachia. Froissart describes graphically the hardships of the French, German, English, Scotch, Bohemian, and Flemish crusaders in their painful march across the Carpathian Mountains. The chevaliers could secure a bare sustenance. Their pages and men-at-arms were stripped of their clothes and beaten by the peasants. It was not until they got into western Hungary that they felt themselves safe.[542]

On the day following the battle of Nicopolis, Bayezid rode from his camp to inspect the battle-field.[543] Orders had been given that the bodies of the nobles who had fallen be put in a place apart from the common dead, so that the identity of those who had lost their lives might be ascertained. An especial search for the body of Sigismund was ordered. The Hungarian king was not among the captives: it did not occur to Bayezid that he had fled. When Bayezid saw how heavy had been his casualties, and learned the story of the massacre of prisoners by the chevaliers after they had ridden through the Ottoman outposts, he could not control his anger. A general massacre of the prisoners was ordered.

Only because Bayezid hoped for a great ransom for the grandson of the French king was Jean de Nevers saved. There was in the suite of the Comte de Nevers a Picard chevalier who knew a little Turkish. Through him Jean was able to communicate with Bayezid, and to save twenty-four chevaliers who would bring heavy ransom. Among these were the Comte d’Eu, the Comte de la Marche, the Sieur de Coucy, Henri de Bar, and Boucicaut. But they were all forced to stand beside Bayezid and watch the massacre of their companions.

Because of his youth, for none under twenty years was killed, Schiltberger was spared to leave a description of this terrible massacre. ‘Then I saw the lord Hannsen Greiff, who was a noble of Bavaria, and four others, bound with the same cord. When he saw the great revenge that was taking place, he cried with a loud voice, and consoled the horse- and foot-soldiers who were standing there to die. “Stand firm”, he said, “when our blood this day is spilt for the Christian faith, and we by God’s help shall become the children of Heaven.” He knelt, and was beheaded together with his companions. Blood was spilled from morning until vespers, and when the king’s counsellors saw that so much blood was spilled and that still it did not stop, they rose and fell upon their knees before the king, and entreated him for the sake of God that he would forget his rage, that he might not draw down upon himself the vengeance of God, as enough blood was already spilled. He consented, and ordered that they should stop, and that the rest of the people should be brought together, and from them he took his share, and left the rest to his people who had made them prisoners. The people that were killed on that day were reckoned at ten thousand men.’[544]

So ended the last crusade.

IX

Immediately after the battle, Bayezid sent part of his army across the Danube to hunt down the fugitives and to punish Mircea. This force was defeated by the Wallachians in the plain of Rovine, and withdrew into Bulgaria.[545]

Other columns mounted the Danube through the Iron Gates, retaking on the way the fortresses captured by the crusaders, and made a raid into Styria. Everywhere the akindjis carried fire and death. The country was laid waste. Peterwardein was burned, and sixteen thousand Styrians were carried off into slavery in Macedonia and Anatolia.[546]

This invasion of Hungary made a deep impression upon the Slavic and Teutonic races, who believed that it was the beginning of a Moslem conquest of central Europe. The flagellants and the dancing processions of the plague days of 1348 and 1359 were revived. For a moment, even the Venetian Senate feared that Bayezid had led in person his army into Hungary, and was engaged in an aggressive movement that might bring the Osmanlis to the head of the Adriatic.[547]

But Bayezid was not carried away by the ease of his victory. He let well enough alone. For the moment, he had absorbing interests in the ransom of his prisoners, the developments in the Greek peninsula, the question of Constantinople, and the temptation to licentious pleasures that had come to him with success.

X

Bayezid announced his victory from the battle-field to the Kadi of Brusa, and later, from Adrianople, to the Moslem princes of Asia.[548] To the Sultan of Egypt and other rulers he sent gifts of prisoners to corroborate his letters.[549]

The intercession of Jean de Nevers had saved the more illustrious of the surviving French chevaliers. They were taken to Brusa. While not treated royally, they were allowed to hunt, and were given opportunities to see the grandeur of Bayezid.[550] But they were not kept together long. For some months, the heir to the Duchy of Burgundy was separated from his companions, and could talk with them only by the special permission of Bayezid. Some of them were sent to Mikhalitch, where Philippe d’Artois, grand marshal of France, died.[551] Enguerran de Coucy, worn out with anxiety for his family and the disgrace that had come to him at the close of his brilliant career, soon followed the Comte d’Artois to the grave.

In the meantime, Jacques Helly was sent by Bayezid to Paris to communicate to the Duke of Burgundy and the other relatives of the captives the conditions for their ransom--two hundred thousand pieces of gold, delivered to Bayezid at Brusa. Froissart describes the feeling aroused at Paris by the first news of the disaster. The stories of the survivors were not believed, and the bearers of bad news narrowly escaped hanging or drowning. An order of the king’s council forbade any man to mention Nicopolis. The anxiety of the families of the chevaliers was not set at rest until Jacques Helly reached Paris on Christmas night, three months after the battle. Only then was it known who had been saved for ransom. What was joy to some was a crushing blow to others. Not since the battle of Poitiers had such a calamity come to the noble families of France. There was great lamentation throughout the kingdom. Chief among the mourners was the Duchess of Burgundy, who had lost her three brothers, and whose son was in the hands of Bayezid.[552]

While Jacques Helly was in France, Marshal Boucicaut was given permission to go to Constantinople to try to raise the ransom. He spent the Lenten season of 1397 there without success.[553] The Duke of Burgundy resorted to every expedient to raise the enormous sum demanded by Bayezid. For the ransom of his son ‘great taxes were laid upon all the kingdom, and a large amount of money was gathered and transported to Turkey, which was a great and irreparable loss’.[554] It was not forgotten for many years. A decade later it was used as one of the indictments against the Duc d’Orléans, who met his death through the man he had helped to ransom.[555]

When, a year after the battle of Nicopolis, the money was at last delivered to Bayezid through the intermediation of Gattilusio of Mytilene and the Genoese, Venetian, and Cypriote merchants who traded with the Osmanlis, Bayezid gave the chevaliers their liberty. To the Comte de Nevers, he said: ‘John, I know well and am informed that you are in your country a great lord. You are young, and, in the future, I hope you will be able to recover, with your courage, from the shame of this misfortune which has come to you in your first knightly enterprise, and that, in the desire of getting rid of the reproach and recovering your honour, you will assemble your power to come against me and give me battle. If I were afraid of that, and wanted to, before your release I would make you swear upon your faith and religion that you would never bear arms against me, nor those who are in your company here. But no: neither upon you nor any other of those here will I impose this oath, because I desire, when you will have returned to your home and will have leisure, that you assemble your power and come against me. You will find me always ready to meet you and your people on the field of battle. And what I say to you, you can say in like manner to those to whom you will have the pleasure of speaking about it, because for this purpose was I born, to carry arms and always to conquer what is ahead of me.’[556]

It is not true, however, as one would suppose and as Froissart records, that ‘these lofty words were always remembered by Jean de Nevers and his companions so long as they lived’. The French chevaliers went to Rhodes, and then home by way of the Adriatic. The Comte de Nevers took to himself a title which he had not earned, unless one confuses folly with valour. To the end of his days, he was known as _Jean sans Peur_. He never burned with a desire to wipe out the disgrace of Nicopolis, but spent his whole life as a factional leader in the civil wars of France. After a career which continued as ingloriously as it had begun, he was stabbed to death on the Bridge of Montereau in 1420--tardy vengeance for his own openly acknowledged instigation of the murder of the Duc d’Orléans.

XI

There is recorded the capture of Thebes by the Turks in 1363,[557] and the surrender of Patras in Thessaly to the Osmanlis in 1381.[558] The first Ottoman army, however, to enter Greece went to the Morea in 1388, upon the invitation of Theodore Palaeologos, to support his waning power as despot against the indigenous Greeks and the Frankish lords. The Osmanlis under Evrenos carried devastation everywhere they went, and did little to help Theodore.[559] They were soon recalled by Murad to co-operate in the Kossova campaign. When Theodore was hard pressed, in 1391, by Amadeo of Savoy and the Venetians, he turned again to the Osmanlis. Once more Evrenos came to the Morea, and helped to destroy the coast towns.[560]

After the famous council of Ottoman vassals at Serres, in 1395, Theodore, who was one of the princes summoned by Bayezid to Serres, was compelled to sign the cession of Argos and Monembasia to the Osmanlis. He was then thrown into prison, and Bayezid contemplated having him assassinated. But before the cities could be delivered to the Ottoman emissaries, Theodore escaped, and declared the cession null and void.[561] The first impulse of Bayezid was to send an army upon the heels of Theodore. This punitive expedition was postponed on account of the activity of Sigismund, and the necessity of defending the northern frontiers against the Hungarians.[562]

In the spring of 1397, while Bayezid was superintending the construction of a mosque at Karaferia in Macedonia, he received a visit from the Greek bishop of Salona, who laid before him a formal accusation of adultery, sorcery, and oppression against Helena Cantacuzenos, who had been ruling the Duchy of Salona with her paramour after the death of her husband, Louis Fadrique. The bishop invited Bayezid to enter Greece, depicting to him the wonderful hunting he would have in a country full of game.[563]

The promise of good sport with the falcon was not needed. It had long been Bayezid’s intention to extend his sovereignty into the Greek peninsula. He had against Theodore not only the old count from Serres, but also the complicity of the Morean despot in the Nicopolis crusade. At the head of his army, he set out upon the first Ottoman invasion of Greece. In Thessaly, Larissa, Pharsala, and other strongholds surrendered without striking a blow. For thirty years the Greeks of Thessaly had felt that the Ottoman conquest was inevitable. When Bayezid crossed the pass of Thermopylae without opposition, Helena hurried to meet him. She offered her principality, her daughter, and herself to the conqueror. Bayezid did not want the duchess. She was set at liberty immediately. But the beautiful grand-daughter of John Cantacuzenos was sent to his harem. The duchy of Salona, in which was the shrine of Apollo, with all of Phocis, Doris, and Locris, was added to Thessaly, and made an Ottoman province.[564]

Bayezid by this time had tired of the campaign. He felt an irresistible call to return to the pleasures of the court. His military interests were beginning more and more to be centred upon an extension of his power in Asia Minor--the policy that was soon to prove his undoing. But there remained Theodore and the Morea to be dealt with. He left Yakub and Evrenos, with an army of fifty thousand, in charge of the invasion of the Peloponnesus.

Yakub struck south to Coron and Modon. The environs of Modon were pillaged and burned. He defeated Theodore at Megalopolis, and forced him to become a tributary of the Osmanlis. In the meantime, Evrenos had held in check the papal mercenaries at Corinth, and had then taken Argos by assault, with a terrible loss of life, and a booty of fourteen thousand male captives. Because the Venetians could so easily reinforce and reprovision it from the sea, the siege of Nauplia was abandoned. The two commanders, when October came, gave their soldiers licence to pillage wherever they could as a reward for their services, and afterwards withdrew to Macedonia.[565]

The population of the historic city of Argos was deported into Anatolia, and Moslem colonies settled in the north-eastern corner of the Peloponnesus. This was part of the general plan of Bayezid after Nicopolis. His successes in Asia Minor had made possible, for the first time, a movement of an unmixed Turkish element from Anatolia into the Balkan peninsula. While these colonists were arriving in Argos, there was a similar immigration to Adrianople, Eski Zagora, Philippopolis, and Sofia.[566]

Bayezid is credited by the Ottoman chroniclers with the capture of the two great cities of Hellenism, Athens and Salonika. Nowhere else than in the Ottoman historians can one find a record of the acquisition of Athens in 1397 by the Osmanlis. If it were true, one would certainly find this event in the Venetian archives, for Venice was particularly interested in Athens at this time.[567] Had the Osmanlis entered Athens, would they have restored it to the Acciajoli family? The fate of Argos in the same campaign makes this unlikely. Athens remained in Christian hands until after the fall of Constantinople.[568]

As for Salonika, one finds authority for its capture by the Osmanlis after the attempt of Manuel to retake Serres,[569] after a four years’ siege, in 1387,[570] and in 1391 by Bayezid himself.[571] But since there is neither record nor explanation of how the city returned to the Byzantines, even the temporary occupation of so rich and important a maritime city, and so strongly defended,[572] during the reigns of Murad and of Bayezid, is hardly possible. For in 1403 Salonika was sold by the Byzantines to the Venetians,[573] and was not captured by the Osmanlis until 1430.

Even if we cannot give to Bayezid the honour of the acquisition of Athens and Salonika, or of the conquest of the Morea, his campaign of 1397 was the beginning of the subjugation of Greece. Important districts had been added to the empire, and a permanent foothold gained in the Morea. The maritime character of the peninsula, however, made impracticable its complete conquest, until the Osmanlis were able to hold their own against the Italians and Greeks upon the sea.

XII

The blockade of Constantinople, in spite of all the concessions that Manuel had made to Bayezid,[574] had become an active and pressing siege before the Nicopolis expedition. In 1394, Bayezid had given orders from Adrianople to pursue the siege vigorously.[575] But it was not until the spring of 1396 that Bayezid contemplated seriously the taking of the city by assault. He was diverted by the coming of the crusaders to Nicopolis. After Sigismund and his allies had been defeated, Bayezid returned to Constantinople and called upon Manuel to surrender the city.

The Constantinopolitans, stunned by the disaster which had attended the Christian arms on the Danube, urged Manuel to yield, in order that they might be free from the calamities that would follow a successful assault. But Manuel had been cheered by the arrival of six hundred chevaliers and a small gift of money from France. He resisted his people, and gave no answer to Bayezid.[576] He married his eldest son John to the daughter of the Russian prince Vassili, whose dowry was in gold pieces.[577] An inventory was made of the treasures of St. Sophia.[578] Through the Patriarch, Manuel tried to get the Russian and Polish Christians interested in the fate of the seat of orthodoxy.[579]

From Europe came the usual promises of aid. It is a merciful dispensation of Providence that men ground their hopes upon desires rather than upon realities. Manuel was merely human when he continued to receive strength and inspiration from what experience should have taught him were will-o’-the-wisps. Henry of Lancaster was projecting a new crusade;[580] but his energies were very soon directed towards a crown rather than a cross. The Duc d’Orléans, in response to a letter from Manuel to King Charles VI, answered for his insane brother by promising to come in person to the relief of Constantinople. Almost immediately afterwards he accepted rich presents from Bayezid.[581]

Venice, in 1397, urged Manuel and the Genoese of Pera, ‘for the honour of Christianity’ and because the alternative ‘would be to the peril and shame of Christianity’, not to treat with Bayezid. This advice was weakened by a saving clause at the end of the letter to the effect that, if the Constantinopolitans and Perotes did treat with Bayezid, they should include Venice, for ‘it would be too risky for the Venetians to be at war alone with the Turks’.[582] Although Venice sent ten galleys to Constantinople, and Genoa five galleys,[583] the republics followed consistently their policy of flattering Bayezid, and trying to make him believe that their dispositions towards him were altogether friendly.[584]

At the time that he summoned Manuel to deliver Constantinople, Bayezid fortified the gulf of Nicomedia, and built at Scutari the castle called Guzel Hissar.[585] About the same time, the castle of Anatoli Hissar was built at the mouth of the Sweet Waters of Asia, the narrowest point on the Bosphorus. When Clavijo passed through the Bosphorus, in 1403, he spoke of this castle as strongly built and strongly fortified, in prophetic contrast to the ruined Byzantine fortress directly opposite on the European shore.[586]

Perhaps it was because of the advice of Ali Pasha, who told him that the taking of Constantinople would bring upon him a really effective European intervention, or because he preferred to expend his energies in the Greek peninsula and in Asia Minor, that Bayezid did not carry out his threat to Manuel. These are the common explanations of the failure to follow up the victory of Nicopolis with the extinction of the Byzantine Empire.[587] As far as the Greeks were concerned, the inheritance of the Caesars was his. He had successfully defended against Europe what he had won. Constantinople could have been taken by assault. In fact, from his spies within the city, Bayezid knew that the inhabitants were favourable to surrender, and would probably force the hand of Manuel, if the Osmanlis made a show of beginning the assault. Bayezid must have been deterred from this enterprise, however, by the realization of his inability to hold the city without having the mastery of the sea.

One of Bayezid’s chief claims to greatness as a statesman is the way in which he handled Venice and Genoa. At any time during his reign, the Italian republics could have cut him off from Asia if he were in Europe, or from Europe if he were in Asia. Bayezid was master of most of the Balkan peninsula and of half of Anatolia; but he did not control the path from one portion of his empire to the other. Since he had come to the throne, Genoa had fallen under the influence of France. There was a strong anti-Ottoman sentiment in the Venetian Senate, which at any instant might crystallize into open hostility.[588] Europe was for the moment stirred over the fate of the Nicopolis crusaders. Bayezid knew that this was not the time to take Constantinople.

Then, too, after the great victories of Kossova and Nicopolis, and his successful campaign against Karamania, Bayezid allowed himself to succumb to the insidious temptations that assail the warrior when he passes from the tent to the palace. It was not astonishing that the pleasures of the table and of the harem proved irresistible to him. Bayezid, who had the best qualities of his age, allowed himself to become debauched by indulgence in shameful and unspeakable vices. His brilliant mental and physical qualities began to suffer the inevitable eclipse. His example was contagious. For, as the Osmanlis say, ‘the fish begins to corrupt at the head’.

XIII

In April 1398, and again in March 1399, Boniface IX ordered to be preached throughout Christendom a crusade for the defence of Constantinople.[589] His appeals fell on deaf ears. Wenceslaus was approaching the end of his power in the empire, Richard of England was fighting for his throne, Florence was in a struggle with the Visconti, the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Orleans were disputing the regency in France. Only Venice and Genoa were vitally interested in the fate of Constantinople.

Because Genoa had put itself under the guardianship of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI of France, and son-in-law of Duke Giovanni Visconti of Milan, the interests of her Pera colony demanded some attention from the powerful Valois and Visconti families. This made possible the sole response to the appeals of Manuel and the Pope, the expedition of Marshal Boucicaut.

In the summer of 1399, a force of ten thousand Osmanlis, after coming into more or less open conflict with the Genoese of Galata, attempted to enter Constantinople. The defenders were few; for the inhabitants, as at the time of the final siege in 1453, were more likely to be found in the bazaars than on the city walls. They had little desire to prolong a condition which was paralysing their business activities. Clavijo, who visited Constantinople four years later, was informed that the attack failed only because of the lack of skill and energy shown by the Osmanlis.[590] Until they had cannon to help them, the Osmanlis never displayed fighting ability in an assault upon fortifications. At this critical moment, aid arrived from Europe.

Boucicaut was the only one of the prisoners of Nicopolis that accepted the challenge of Bayezid. He did not forget the biting words of the audience at Brusa at the time of their release. On June 26, 1399, with four ships and two armed galleys, he set sail from Aiguesmortes. His force of twelve hundred chevaliers and foot-soldiers had much more cohesion and experience than the volunteers who gathered round Jean de Nevers at Dijon three years before. He was joined at Tenedos by several Genoese and Venetian galleys. After a victory in the Dardanelles over seventeen Ottoman galleys, the first recorded naval combat of the Osmanlis, Boucicaut reached Constantinople ‘just in time to save the city’. He was received with great joy by Manuel, and given the rank of Grand Constable.[591]

For several weeks, Boucicaut and his followers spread terror among the Osmanlis in the Gulf of Nicomedia and the Bosphorus. The Ottoman sailors, no match for the Provençals and Italians, took to cover. An assault on Nicomedia failed, but the fearless marshal made several raids into the interior,[592] and against the Ottoman settlements on the shores of the Marmora and gulfs of Nicomedia and Mudania. His one notable success was against Riva, near the Black Sea entrance of the Bosphorus, on the Asiatic shore.[593] After the castle had been stormed, and the garrison put to the sword, Boucicaut attained the objective of his raid. In the mouth of the river Riva, from which the town takes its name, were hidden the Ottoman galleys and smaller vessels, which had taken refuge there when Boucicaut first appeared in the Golden Horn. All the Ottoman shipping was destroyed by fire.

In order to remove the danger to which Constantinople was subjected by the presence of John Palaeologos, son of Andronicus, at Silivria, constantly intriguing with the Osmanlis, Boucicaut urged Manuel to become reconciled with his nephew. He went, himself--it was less than a day’s sail--to fetch John to Constantinople.[594]

This intervention of Boucicaut in the quarrels of the Palaeologi was more helpful than his military aid. The expeditions in the neighbourhood accomplished little against Bayezid. The chronicler of Boucicaut would have been astonished had he known that Bayezid considered the exploits of Boucicaut’s chevaliers and sailors of too little importance to notice. Bayezid cared only that the Italian republics did not come out openly against him, and lend to the crusaders the powerful and decisive aid which they could have given. The enterprise of Boucicaut demonstrated, however, the impotence of the Osmanlis on sea, and how easily a united effort of Christendom, or of Venice and Genoa alone, could have limited the activities of Bayezid to either Europe or Asia.

When John had been installed as co-emperor, Boucicaut pointed out to Manuel that his force was exhausted, and that he would have to return to France to find recruits. According to some authorities, this action was due to the inability or unwillingness of Manuel to pay the adventurers of Boucicaut for their services in his behalf.[595] Men of their kidney were not fighting for fun or for a cause, and there was no booty to be had from Ottoman sailors and fishermen. Before he left Constantinople, Boucicaut secured the consent of Venice, Genoa, and the chevaliers of Rhodes to his suggestion that Manuel do homage to Charles VI for his empire. This honour the advisers of the French monarch refused to accept. They did not want the king of France bound by the obligation of protecting a vassal whose position was so precarious.

Boucicaut did not return. His restless energy found outlet later in Cyprus, where, as French governor of Genoa, he forced the Cypriotes to raise the siege of Famagusta,[596] and in pillaging the Syrian ports, where his adventurers did far more damage to the Italian merchants than to the Saracens.[597] Even had he returned to Constantinople, and with the highest motives personally, his followers would certainly have done the Constantinopolitans more harm than good, as had been the case with the Catalans, and, when money was not forthcoming, have ended by being in open conflict with those of whom they were posing as the defenders.

XIV

It was a bitter humiliation for Manuel to share the imperial throne with the nephew whom he hated and distrusted. With him, the case of John was one of ‘like father, like son’, and certainly John had never given the emperor any cause to think that he was more patriotic, more loyal than Andronicus. But there was a strong party in the city in favour of John, and his association in governing Constantinople would remove the pretext of righting a wrong, which Bayezid had so skilfully used to interfere in the politics of what was now no more than a city empire.

When France refused to receive him as a vassal, Manuel decided upon a voyage in person to solicit the intervention of Europe. In spite of his misgivings, he felt that this was the only way of salvation left. His own sons were too young to raise to the purple, and Theodore had his hands full in the Morea. There was nothing to do but to leave the government in John’s care.

On December 10, 1399, Manuel embarked on a Venetian galley to make his supreme appeal to Europe. He stopped at Modon to leave the empress and his sons with Theodore. The despot of the Morea was opposed to the project. He told the emperor how the chevaliers of Rhodes, in conjunction with the Pope, were trying to get possession of the last theme of the empire, and that this scheme would have been successful had it not been for the Greek hatred and fear of the Catholic Church. He declared that Manuel, like their father, was embarking upon a hopeless voyage. Not only that, but he would run a risk of losing his empire entirely by leaving it in charge of John, who was more friendly to Bayezid and the Osmanlis than to his own family and race.[598]

Manuel would listen to no remonstrances, to no arguments. He said that his position was like that of Esther before she went in to the king: ‘If I perish, I perish.’ With that optimism which was one of his most redeeming traits, Manuel bade farewell to his family, and set out for Venice.

In the only city of Europe that could rival his own capital in splendour, he received a reception worthy of the cause for which he had come. The Senate, as usual, promised much. But they had by this time become thoroughly won over to the policy of _quod vi armorum potest fieri, fiat arte et sagacitate_, to quote the words of a contemporary record in their archives.[599] At Padua, Vicenza, and Milan, Manuel received an imperial ovation. Giovanni Visconti, shocked at the wretched appearance of the emperor’s suite, gave him money to be used for apparel fitting to the successor of Constantine and his companions.[600]

There was no attempt to arrange a conference with Boniface IX. Manuel, at this stage of his career, could not play the hypocrite so easily as his father had done. In fact, his orthodoxy was beyond suspicion. He did not hesitate in Paris to celebrate high mass according to the eastern rite, and never allowed the reunion of the churches to be the basis of his solicitations. In 1399, Boniface IX wrote a long burning letter to the Bishop of Chalcedon, his nuncio in Hungary, ordering him to preach and cause to be preached a crusade against the Osmanlis for the relief of Constantinople.[601] In 1400, he had ordered a crusade, with increase of indulgences.[602] But, when the Byzantine Emperor came to Italy, Boniface seemed to be more interested in the Kingdom of Naples than in the Kingdom of God.

From contemporary records, the reception of Manuel Palaeologos in France and in England was all that the proudest and most important sovereign of Christendom could wish for. This shadow of an emperor, who ten years before had been a retainer at the court of Bayezid too insignificant to be bidden to the emir’s table, and who was not even undisputed ruler of a single city, was treated by Charles VI and Henry IV as if he actually held the dominions entrusted by Constantine to his successors. This was especially true in England, where barons and peasants, in spite of the crusades, were still uncouth and ignorant. To them the East stood for a superior civilization, to which they must bow. There was a glamour in the name of Constantinople and in Manuel’s imperial title. Perhaps, even if they had realized the straits to which Manuel was reduced, it would have been the same; for it was not to the intrinsic worth or power of the man, but to the ten centuries of glory which he represented, that they did homage. The cry of AVE IMPERATOR had outlived the empire.

Manuel did not appreciate this. Because his optimism could not grasp the difference between what costs and what does not cost, he allowed himself to be cradled with false hopes for two years.

Henry IV had personally great sympathy with the mission of Manuel; for in Africa he had borne arms against the Moslems with the cross upon his breast, and, until he succeeded Richard II, it had always been his dream to lead a crusade. He understood the peril of Constantinople, and in a letter from Westminster, in January, 1401, he called the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the necessity of helping Manuel, in order that Constantinople might not be lost, and authorized a collection in all the churches of his realm.[603] But Henry was not secure upon his throne. In France, the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans were still struggling for the power that the insane king was unable to wield.

Manuel waited two years in western Europe. While he was making his heart sick with deferred hope, the great events that were to change the personal fortune of Bayezid, if not that of his family and his race, were shaping themselves in the East. It was a Moslem prince who was to afford a respite to Constantinople.

After Manuel left for the west, only the small force of chevaliers under Châteaumorand, who had remained behind from the crusaders of Boucicaut, saved Constantinople. The inhabitants of the city were so hungry that they slipped over the walls by cords, and surrendered themselves to the Osmanlis. John did nothing. There was no money in the imperial treasury. The crusaders got their own provisions by raids on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, and by intercepting galleys. After the shock of the fall of Sivas, Bayezid realized that he must expend the best of his force and energy in solidifying his conquests in Europe and Asia, and in raising a larger army to combat Timur, if he threatened again to invade Anatolia.

Although the siege was not pushed with vigour, the city was on the point of yielding. The miserable John made a treaty to give up the city, should Bayezid beat Timur.[604] Even the patriarch Matthew was supposed to have an understanding with Bayezid to retain his position if the city were taken. In a proclamation, which vividly depicted the misery of the city, afflicted by six years of siege and famine, Matthew urged the inhabitants to repent of their crimes, and defended himself from the charge of having treated with Bayezid.[605]

Not only against Constantinople was Bayezid preparing the final blow. In the Morea, the Greeks feared for the safety of Modon, where Manuel had left his family.[606] Since 1399, the Venetian Senate had been alarmed by the gradual Ottoman conquest of Albania, and finally for the safety of Corfu, because the Osmanlis had appeared in force in the Adriatic.[607]

In the early spring of 1402, Ottoman activities ceased in the Balkan peninsula, and every soldier that could be mustered--Christian as well as Moslem--was hurried into Asia Minor; for a greater than Djenghiz Khan was marching westward.

XV

When the Tartars first saw iron, and their strongest warriors failed to bend it, they thought there must be a substance under the surface. So they called it _timur_, which means something stuffed or filled.[608] It soon became a custom to name their great leaders Timur. But even among primitive peoples the qualities of leadership have not necessarily included purely physical strength. Many Samsons among the Tartars received the distinction of being called Iron. None of them made an indelible mark upon the history of the world, save the great Timur, who had his left arm and left leg partially paralysed.[609] At the height of his career, when his hordes marched against Bagdad, he was too weak to sit upon a horse, and was carried in a litter.[610]

Timur claimed descent from the grand vizier of Djagataï, son and successor of Djenghiz Khan. He came to the throne of Khorassan, with residence at Samarkand, in 1369. In thirty years, while Murad and Bayezid were winning an empire in the Balkan peninsula, Timur became master of the greater part of the Moslem world. Persia, Armenia, the upper valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, the steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas, Russia from the Volga to the Don and Dnieper, Mesopotamia, the coasts of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, and western and northern India was his path of conquest.

After he had captured Sivas, Bayezid had not been able to curb the altogether natural impulse that led him into the valley of the Euphrates. In his way stood Kara-Yussuf, a Turcoman prince of Kharput, who was to be, after Timur’s death, the founder of the famous dynasty of the Black Sheep.[611] In 1399, Bayezid had put his son Soleiman, assisted by several of his ablest generals, in charge of an advance movement to the east. Sivas was the base of operations.

Kara-Yussuf, who had a claim upon Timur’s protection because he had guided him on his first expedition into Armenia, appealed to the Tartar court. Before Timur could remonstrate, Kara-Yussuf was captured by the Osmanlis. When Timur learned this, his anger was for the first time directed specifically against Bayezid. There were old complaints against Bayezid. The refugee emirs had not lived at his court for years without impressing upon Timur their woes and the injustice that had been done to them. But Timur was busy with other plans and other conquests. Bayezid’s former activities had not directly touched him.

In his memoirs, Timur records that he tried first to bring Bayezid to reason. ‘I wrote to him a letter of which this is the substance: Praise to God, master of heaven and earth, who has submitted to my authority several of the seven climates and who has allowed the potentates and masters of the world to bend their neck under my yoke. God have mercy upon his humble servant, who knows the limits which are prescribed for him and who does not cross them by a single step. All the world knows your origin, and it is not fitting for a man of your extraction to advance the foot of pride; for you will be able to throw yourself into the abyss of affliction and of misfortune: resist the suggestions of miserable counsellors.... Refrain from opening to confusion and to evils the door of your empire. Send me Kara-Yussuf: if not, by the coming together of our two armies all that is hidden under the veil of destiny will be uncovered to you.’[612]

Instead of paying attention to this letter, Bayezid deliberately committed another overt act by summoning Taharten, emir of Erzindjian, whom he knew to be a vassal of Timur, to appear at the Ottoman court, bringing his treasures with him! When Timur again remonstrated with Bayezid and reminded him of his duty ‘gently and like a friend’, Bayezid responded by summoning Timur to appear before him, and threatening to deprive him of his harem if he refused to come. In order to express his contempt for the Tartar conqueror, Bayezid placed his own name first in letters of gold, and Timur’s name underneath in small black letters.[613]

Why Bayezid took this tack in dealing with Timur is inexplicable. It is impossible to believe that he underrated the power of Timur. One can only suppose that his informants and advisers, to whom Timur alluded in the first warning to Bayezid, urged upon the Ottoman emir the improbability of a Tartar invasion of Asia Minor; for, even after the terrible lesson of 1400, when Bayezid had two years of respite, he took no steps to placate Timur or to prepare adequately against an invasion. He went on blindly to his doom, and displayed none of the consummate diplomatic and military skill that had made the first eight years of his reign among the most brilliant of all Ottoman history.

When Timur saw that Bayezid would not even treat with him, he took the field immediately. Soleiman sent an appeal to Bayezid, who was in Thessaly.[614] There was no response. With feverish haste, Soleiman attempted to put into condition the defences of Sivas, whose strong walls had been admirably constructed by the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin Kaïkobad

[Illustration: TIMUR’S INVASION OF ASIA MINOR]

one hundred and sixty years before.[615] He then went boldly forth to meet the Tartars, but, when he realized that his twenty thousand horsemen could not hold their own against Timur, he withdrew to the north-west, abandoning the city to its fate.[616]

It took Timur eighteen days of incessant attack to weaken the defences of Sivas. The walls were sapped, and piles driven under them, which were smeared with pitch and set on fire. Only after several of the towers had fallen did the garrison agree to surrender upon Timur’s promise that their lives should be spared and the whole city preserved. As far as the Moslems were concerned, this promise was partially fulfilled. They were allowed to pay for their freedom. The city, however, was pillaged and burned, and its Christian inhabitants were sold into slavery. Three or four thousand Armenian horsemen, who had been bravest and most stubborn in the defence, were buried alive in the moats.[617]

The destruction of Sivas was in August, 1400.[618] The conduct of Timur after this victory lends colour to the supposition that it was not at all in his mind to subdue Asia Minor and overthrow the Ottoman Empire. He had come not to conquer, but merely to give Bayezid a salutary lesson. Instead of continuing his westward march, Timur withdrew to the Euphrates, and spent the next eighteen months in the famous campaigns that ended in the destruction of Damascus and Bagdad.

XVI

In the winter of 1401-2, fresh from his triumphs in Syria and Mesopotamia, Timur paused for several months on the confines of Asia Minor. He had not yet made up his mind to attack Bayezid.

Through a Dominican friar, who had been trying to convert him, he wrote to Charles VI of France, whom he believed to be the most powerful king of the Occident, making to him a proposal for sharing the world, such as no European sovereign had put before him again until Alexander met Napoleon on the raft at Tilsit.[619] There was also an exchange of gifts and embassies with Genoa. The Genoese ambassador pointed out to Timur the necessity of destroying Bayezid. When the Tartar embassy went to Pera, the standard of Timur was flown in its honour from the Galata tower.[620] Even the distant king of Castile had two ambassadors in the camp of Timur, who were privileged to witness the battle of Angora from the Tartar side.[621]

The fall of Sivas was the first set-back of Bayezid’s career. It came to him as a heavy blow, if we are to believe the Ottoman chroniclers. But it did not result in spurring him on to immediate military and diplomatic effort, as such a calamity would certainly have done in the early days of his reign. He had become a voluptuary, debauched mentally and physically. His pride and self-confidence had increased in inverse ratio to his ability to make good his arrogant assumptions.

Negotiations were reopened between the two great sovereigns of Islam. The letters became more menacing on the part of Timur and more insulting on the part of Bayezid.[622] Timur’s earlier admiration for Bayezid as champion of the Prophet against the infidels, and his earlier reluctance to make war against a nation of his own faith, had disappeared in the course of his last conquests. The fire at Damascus was one indication of Timur’s religious indifference: his willingness to treat with Christian Europe was another. At last determined to humble Bayezid, Timur brought his huge army into camp near Sivas. He did not, however, definitely decide upon the invasion of Ottoman territory until he heard that Bayezid was starting for Tokat.

To strike at Bayezid directly was impracticable, owing to the hardships that his large army would encounter in traversing the thickly wooded and mountainous country between him and the region in which his spies reported the Ottoman army to be. He followed the valley of the Halys to Caesarea. By keeping to the water-courses his army was enabled to live off the land. It was just harvest time, and the soldiers gathered in all the grain in the valley of the Halys and its tributaries. It took six days to get to Caesarea, and four days more to reach Kirsheïr. In the meantime, the advance guard of the Osmanlis had fallen back from Tokat and Amassia to Angora. By a reconnaissance from Kirsheïr, Timur learned that the bulk of the Ottoman forces were at Angora. Three days more brought him to the Ottoman outposts.[623]

There was no further parley. Timur saw in Bayezid an enemy that must be crushed. He had every confidence in his star. Bayezid had hardly recovered from the awakening which came when he realized that Timur was actually marching against him. His resourcefulness, his coolness, his marvellous judgement had left him. His soldiers were exhausted by forced marches in the hot midsummer sun, for it was the last week of July.[624] He could have withdrawn for several days to the mountains to recuperate, and let Timur do the seeking. Then Timur would have expended his strength in an attack upon Angora under the broiling sun. Timur could not have left Angora uncaptured behind him, or have moved westward in pursuit of the Osmanlis without waiting to replenish his food supply. But Bayezid, eager and lacking in self-control, as men sometimes are from the presentiment of disaster rather than the confidence of success, decided upon an immediate battle. This was just what Timur wanted.

Bayezid’s second mistake was in putting his Tartar allies in the first line. He did this in accordance with the established Ottoman tactics, that the enemy be allowed to expend his strength upon the untrained rabble, and to reach the second line exhausted. But he had not taken into consideration the fact that these Tartars were kin to his enemy, and could easiest desert when placed in front.[625] A third mistake was in taking the offensive rather than waiting for Timur to attack;[626] for Bayezid had the advantage in being able to choose his position. From Nicopolis to Plevna, Tchataldja and Gallipoli, the Osmanlis have always shown their fighting qualities best in a defensive action.

There was nothing the matter with Bayezid’s army. Like the empire he had been building, it was composed of all the Moslem and Christian elements of Asia Minor and the Balkan peninsula. With the exception of the Tartars, they were loyal to Bayezid, and had become accustomed to fighting together with a discipline and bravery fully equal to, if not superior to, that of Timur’s veteran warriors from central Asia. The right wing was under Stephen Lazarevitch, brother-in-law and faithful friend of Bayezid. In addition to Serbian horsemen, Stephen’s command contained the other European contingents, Moslem as well as Christian.[627] In the left wing were the troops of Anatolia, led by Soleiman Tchelebi, Bayezid’s eldest son. The emir himself was in the centre, surrounded by his janissaries and his three sons, Mustafa, Isa, and Musa. To Mohammed, whose reliability and judgement Bayezid esteemed second only to Soleiman’s among his sons, was entrusted the rear guard.[628]

Elephants were used on both sides. Timur’s first line threw balls of Greek fire into the midst of the archers who were covering the Ottoman advance. The desertion of the Tartar auxiliaries, who formed a quarter or more of Bayezid’s total strength, decided the battle before the fighting really started.[629] When Bayezid saw that he could not prevent the Tartars from going over to Timur, he ordered the left wing to advance to the attack.

Fifteen thousand men fell in a vain effort to pierce the Tartar lines. The slaughter was so great that Soleiman was unable to rally his forces.[630] When they broke and fled, the offensive movement of the Osmanlis was at an end. Bayezid, now on the defensive, was driven back step by step. His retreat was cut off. With his bodyguard and the refugees from other battalions, he made a gallant fight upon a small hill, holding off the enemy for hours.[631] Long after nightfall, when the main forces of Timur’s army, who had been pursuing the Osmanlis, returned to the scene of victory, they learned that the Ottoman sovereign was still fighting on the hill. There was no more hope for Bayezid. The last of the defenders were overwhelmed. ‘The Thunderbolt continued to wield a heavy battle-ax. As a starving wolf scatters a flock of sheep, he scattered the enemy. Each blow of his redoubtable ax struck in such a way that there was no need of a second blow.’[632] At last, as he tried to withdraw over the hill, he was overpowered,[633] his hands were bound behind his back, and he was sent to Timur’s tent.

With Bayezid, his son Musa and several of his highest officials, one of whom was Timurtash, were taken prisoners. Mustafa disappeared. Soleiman, Mohammed, and Isa succeeded in escaping.[634]

The battle of Angora is memorable in Ottoman annals as the only crushing defeat experienced by the Osmanlis in the first three centuries of their history, and as the one instance where a sovereign of the house of Osman has been captured. But it cannot be placed among the memorable conflicts that have changed the course of history; for it did not affect the fortunes of the nation that won or of the nation that lost. It was not like Kossova and Nicopolis.

XVII

Bayezid was brought before his conqueror at midnight, when Timur was seeking relaxation from the strain of the combat in his favourite game of chess with his son, Shah-Rokh. Bayezid had lost nothing of his haughty spirit, and did not try to win the good graces of Timur. He was never more the sovereign than in this moment of humiliation. So impressed was Timur with the manner and bearing of his prisoner, that he accorded him every honour due to his rank.

But this spirit of generosity quickly passed. Whether it was because Bayezid tried to escape or that Timur feared an attempt at rescue as he marched farther into Ottoman territory, Timur’s attitude soon changed. To break Bayezid’s spirit he began to mock him and treat him with contempt. He ordered him to be put in chains at night, and to be carried on the march in a litter with bars, which was nothing less than a cage.[635] At Brusa, Bayezid’s harem was taken from him. It has been recorded that Timur went so far as to use his unfortunate rival as a footstool for mounting his horse and at the table, and that Bayezid was compelled to witness the degradation of his wife, the Serbian princess Despina, who in a state of nudity served the Tartar conqueror with wine at his feasts.[636]

This disgraceful treatment, coupled with the fact that his sons made no attempt to bring another army to fight for their father’s freedom or even to ransom him, at last broke the spirit of Bayezid. For nine months he had been held up to ridicule in the Tartar army. He had seen his harem violated. He had seen Timur pass with ease from one portion of the Ottoman possessions in Asia to another. Smyrna, which he had never been able to attack, fell before the Tartars. The Turkish emirs whom he had dispossessed were settled again in their states. When Bayezid learned that he was to be taken to Konia, and then to Samarkand, his mind gave way. He died of apoplexy at Ak Sheïr.[637] Timur allowed Musa to take his father’s body to Brusa for burial.[638] He had by this time lost interest in the Osmanlis and Asia Minor, and was dreaming of new fields of conquest.

Bayezid died a victim not ‘to his destiny’, as the Ottoman historians put it, but to his vices, and to his abandonment of the policy of his predecessors, that assimilation should keep pace with territorial aggrandizement. There never need have been an Angora. Timur had no inclination to invade the Ottoman dominions. Bayezid goaded him into it. Even if the test of an Angora had been necessary, Bayezid would have sustained it and weathered the Tartar storm, had he been the same man he was at Nicopolis. In facing a Tartar invasion, the advantage was all on Bayezid’s side. He failed because his mental and physical faculties, which rivalled, if they did not surpass, those of any man of his age, had become impaired by a life of debauchery.

XVIII

After the victory at Angora, the Tartar hordes swept across Asia Minor. Timur sent his grandson, Mohammed-Sultan, in pursuit of Soleiman, who succeeded in escaping from Brusa just as the Tartar horsemen arrived at the gates of the city. The Tartars stabled their horses in the mosques, while the city was ransacked for its treasures and its young girls. Fire followed pillage.[639] The sons of Alaeddin of Karamania were set free, and Bayezid’s wives and daughters, with one exception, were sent to Timur, who had established his residence at Kutayia.

In the search for Soleiman, of whose movements he was in ignorance, Mohammed-Sultan sent soldiers north to Gemlik and Nicaea, and west to Mikhalitch and Karasi. These cities were pillaged, and their inhabitants reduced to slavery. When Mohammed-Sultan learned that Soleiman had escaped to Europe, he sent an embassy to him demanding unconditional surrender. There was no reply. The question of invading Europe was referred to Timur. In the meantime, the advance guard of the Tartars devastated the country which was the cradle of the Ottoman race, while their commander celebrated at Yeni Sheïr his marriage to the eldest daughter of Bayezid. Thus were united the families of Timur and his vanquished foe.[640]

Mohammed-Sultan went into winter quarters at Magnesia.[641] Timur left Kutayia in charge of Shah-Rokh, and moved on to Ephesus. He recalled the columns which had been devastating western Asia Minor, and concentrated his forces against Smyrna. What Bayezid had been unable to accomplish in seven years, Timur did in two weeks.[642] The assault of Smyrna was carried on with unceasing energy, and every possible measure was taken to bring it to a speedy conclusion. The walls were undermined, and bridges built out over the water in order that an attack might be made from the side of the sea. When the fortress which crowns the hill behind the city was entered from the land side, the chevaliers of Rhodes fought their way down to their galleys. With lance and sword and oar they beat off the despairing inhabitants who would have swamped their boats. All except a thousand succeeded in escaping. These were decapitated, and of their heads Timur built a pyramid to commemorate his victory.[643]

Timur returned to Ephesus. As he approached the city, children came out to meet him, singing songs to appease his wrath. ‘What is this noise?’ he asked. When his attendants told him, he ordered his horsemen to ride over the children. They were trampled to death.[644]

Smyrna fell in December, 1402. Timur spent the rest of the winter in Ephesus. He destroyed the work of Bayezid in Asia Minor by restoring to the deposed emirs or their heirs the emirates of Karamania, Tekke, Menteshe, Sarukhan, Aïdin, Kastemuni, and Erzindjian. When he saw that the sons of Bayezid were ready to quarrel about the succession of their father, he began to treat with Isa, Musa and Mohammed, encouraging in each the hope of recognition as sole heir. To Soleiman he sent a diploma, investing him with the Ottoman possessions in Europe as Tartar vassal.[645]

Timur enjoyed the position he had won of arbiter of the destinies of the Ottoman Empire. The princes of Europe were now seeking his favour more insistently than before Angora. Henry IV of England wrote to him most cordially, and expressed the hope that he would be converted and become the champion of Christianity.[646]

Manuel Palaeologos, who had learned from the Venetian Senate the news of Bayezid’s defeat at Angora, hurried home from Europe.[647] He banished John to Lemnos, expelled the Ottoman colonists from Constantinople, and closed their tribunal.[648] To Timur he sent an embassy offering to acknowledge his suzerainty, and expressing his willingness to pay to him the tribute that had been given to Bayezid. But when Timur responded with an order to prepare a fleet to help the Tartar hordes to pass into Europe, Manuel was seized with panic. Smyrna had just fallen, and he felt that a similar fate was now reserved for Constantinople. An ambassador was sent to Rome and Venice to implore the immediate aid of the Vatican and the Senate.[649]

Timur, however, had become tired of Asia Minor and the western campaign. He had no constructive policy. He never attempted to organize his conquests into a world empire. Like the earlier conquerors of his race, Timur was a raider. Satiety came with destruction and victory, that is, satiety for the particular conquest in which he was engaged. So he turned his back on Constantinople and the glittering possibilities of a European invasion. He wanted to return to Samarkand to enjoy the fruits of his victories. Perhaps his character was only the reflection of that of his followers.

The march had hardly started when Bayezid died at Ak Sheïr, in March, 1403. From this moment Timur forgot all about the Osmanlis. After a brief sojourn at Konia, he left Asia Minor. Within two years he died of fever while on his way to conquer China.[650]

XIX

After Angora the Ottoman army could have been annihilated; for Timur sent his victorious Tartars hot upon the heels of the refugees. Not only did they follow Soleiman to the Sea of Marmora, and the divisions which had retreated to the Bosphorus, but they pursued closely the main body of the army, which, to the number of possibly forty thousand, had fled along the customary line of march to the Dardanelles.[651] There Greeks and Latins vied in helping the refugees to cross.[652] A Venetian eye-witness of the crossing of the Bosphorus wrote that the Venetians in good faith offered to join with the Genoese in refusing to transport the Osmanlis who were crowded upon the Asiatic shore. But the Genoese started secretly to ferry them over to Europe, with the aid of the Greeks. Then the Venetians, fearing to lose favour with the Osmanlis, started in to help.[653] This testimony is corroborated by Clavijo, who visited Constantinople in the following year. He adds that Timur was disgusted with the way the Greeks and Latins failed to co-operate with him in destroying the Ottoman army.[654]

The astonishing fact is then clearly demonstrated that Greeks, Venetians, and Genoese made no effort to take advantage of their great opportunity. Nor did they, during the ten years of civil war that followed the death of Bayezid, make any move, in concert or separately, to drive the Osmanlis out of Europe. When it was not yet certain what Timur would do in regard to Asia Minor, or even whether he would invade Europe,[655] the Venetians and Genoese established with Soleiman at Adrianople the same friendly relations that they had been so careful to maintain with his father, and fought each other in the Bosphorus. Pope Boniface was straining every nerve to help Ladislas of Sicily to win the crown of Hungary against Sigismund,[656] who, alone of the princes of Europe, had his hands been free, might have contested the Balkan peninsula with the warring factions of the Osmanlis.

The decade of civil war among the sons of Bayezid passed without interference from the outside world, and without a single uprising on the part of the subjugated Balkan Christians. The house of Osman, although divided against itself, did stand. In 1413, Mohammed I, triumphing over his brothers, became sole sovereign of the Osmanlis. The crisis was over, and the career of conquest, interrupted for the moment by Timur, was resumed.

Nicopolis had proved that the Osmanlis could hold against Europe what they had won. Angora had proved that they were too firmly rooted in the Balkan peninsula and in north-western Asia Minor, as an indigenous race and as a nation, to be destroyed by the misfortunes of their dynasty. Since the test of possession is ability to hold, in foul weather as well as in fair, who can deny that the Osmanlis under Bayezid had inherited the Byzantine Empire?

APPENDIX A

TRADITIONAL MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE OSMANLIS AND THEIR EMPIRE

What has been said in this book on the origin of Ottoman power and the foundation of the empire is so different from statements which have found acceptance up to this time, that I am under the obligation to justify my position by a more technical discussion, and by a fuller citation of authorities, than has been given in