Part 21

In this rivalry the Servians secured the greatest prizes in the way of territorial expansion. By the end of the thirteenth century they had reached the sea coast, and had occupied the region around the two lakes Ochrida and Prespa. About the same time the movement to expand their frontiers at the expense of the Greek Empire again became marked. Northern Albania was conquered and additional lands were seized in Macedonia. These successes led to a coalition between the Bulgars and the Greeks; but this scheme to block the Servians failed. There was a great battle at Velbouje, at which the Bulgarian army was completely crushed. The plan of the Servians was to secure the alliance of their rivals by a marriage between their leader, Stephen Douchan, and the sister of Tsar Michael, the head of the Bulgars.

Douchan is often called the Charlemagne of Servia, but the title is only true if measured by an unrealized dream. His reign marks the limit of Servian ambition; he looked forward to an imperial position under which the Slavs would become the heirs of the dignities and domains of the Byzantine Empire, a position they deserved because of the inability of the Greeks to defend their lands from the advancing power of the Turk. For a time the dream seemed on the point of realization, as Douchan’s various campaigns against the Greeks were successful. The alliance with the Bulgars was maintained unbroken, and only a very small part of the European possessions of the Emperors at Constantinople remained intact. Thrace and a strip of Asia Minor was all that was left; there was every reason to urge Douchan to proclaim his overlordship in the regular way. Accordingly, on April 16, 1346, Douchan was solemnly anointed Emperor (Tsar) of Servia and Roumania by the Servian Patriarch Joannikos, at Uskup.

The next step was the conquest of the imperial city on the Bosphorus. This could not be effected without a fleet; neither Thessalonika nor Constantinople could be taken as long as their ports were open. Douchan turned to the Venetians for help, but they refused to encourage the formation of a new great power on the Mediterranean. Besides, the Turks now barred the way, for Gallipoli had been garrisoned. The Osmanlis, therefore, held the key to the Dardanelles. Undeterred, however, by these changes, Douchan girded himself for a final attack on Constantinople, when death overtook him suddenly on the 20th of December, 1355.

His successor, Ourach, was only nineteen years old, a young man of mild character, with none of the stern qualities needed to carry out the warlike plans of his father. His vassal lords had not lived long enough under a centralized system to understand its advantages even under a weak ruler. Without the strong personality of Douchan, the empire and the titular dignity of Tsar were only shadows. Less fortunate than the tribe of Osman, where the line from father to son maintained in unbroken succession under strong personal rule the clear-sighted aims of the founder, the Servians could not resist the forces of disintegration. Their country was mountainous, and hence the people were kept apart in small, isolated communities. There was no longer a vigorous leader to resist the centrifugal tendencies imposed by petty ambitions and jealousies; and only for ten years after Douchan’s death did the external form of his empire last. As a barrier against the Turkish conquerors in Europe the Servians proved utterly ineffective.

With the Slavs eliminated the brunt of resistance naturally fell upon the Greeks; but they were now only an emaciated remnant of a great and long enduring empire that had worn out the Arab and Saracen and had held the Slav at bay. After the fall of the Latin rule at Constantinople (1261), the city became the capital of the reconstructed Eastern Empire; but the scale of this restoration was much reduced from its original grandeur. There were four groups of imperial territories: the Asiatic possessions that had been controlled from Nicæa, economically important as trade centers, but not great in extent; in Europe, the capital and Thrace; some towns to the North, such as Adrianople, a part of Macedonia, the peninsula of Gallipoli, Chalcidice, and a part of Thessaly; certain islands in the Ægean, Rhodes, Lesbos, Samothrace, Imbros, and the Peloponnesus in Greece.

These possessions, the feeble remnants of the realm once ruled by Basil the Macedonian, were surrounded by lands inhabited by numerous races. There were the Frankish lands in Greece, the Venetians in the Ægean, an independent Greek sovereignty in Epirus, Catalans in Thessaly, Genoese in the Black and Ægean Seas, and the parts immediately adjacent to Constantinople itself; the Seldjouk sultans at Iconium, and the autonomous empire of Trebizond. There were also the Slavic peoples in the Balkan peninsula, not to mention the more distant Christian kingdoms of Armenia and Georgia.

As a military power the revived Greek Empire was pathetically feeble. Its last great leader in war was Michael VIII, who had retaken Constantinople from the Latins, a conquest on a slight scale, since the Latins were even weaker than their opponents. The measure of Greek offensive is attested by the inability of any Greek Emperor to retake the Asiatic provinces from the Turk, to annex the Empire of Trebizond, to resist the Slavs in the Balkans, or to reoccupy the islands of the Ægean and drive the Franks from Greece. Even in the interior there was no effective administration. In every Greek city there were colonies of Italian merchants, either Genoese or Venetian, who formed independent communities under their own podestà. The army was filled with foreign contingents, who were not even mercenary troops, because the Empire could not afford to hire soldiers. They were auxiliary forces, organized as complete military units under their own natural chief, and were a constant menace. When they saw fit, they pillaged the country and sometimes fought among themselves. They were under no kind of control from the central or local authorities; within their own camps on the frontiers, in the provinces, even under the walls of the capital itself, they obeyed their own commanders and not the Emperor.

One of the most radical changes for the worse in the revived Greek Empire, a change that marked the contrast with the heroic period of Byzantine military enterprise, was the lack of a fleet. For his naval operations the Emperor depended on the Venetians or Genoese, a most unsatisfactory arrangement, for, owing to the jealousy of these two commercial states, if one were the ally of Constantinople, the other was certain to be on the opposite side. In 1296 the Venetians, after defeating their rivals at sea, laid siege to the Pera and Galata sections of Constantinople, the seat of the Genoese colony, and in setting fire to the quarter destroyed many Greek houses. Later on, the Genoese revenged themselves by massacring the Venetian residents of Constantinople.

The anarchy was increased when, owing to rival claimants to the throne, open civil war broke out, as it did frequently in the course of the fourteenth century. Cantacuzene, an official in the imperial palace, who became rival Emperor, while Anna of Saxony was regent during the minority of her son, John V, after the death of his father, Andronicus III, allied himself with the Servians and with the Seldjouk emir of Konia. Anna tried to strengthen her side by calling upon Ourkhan, the Osmanli Sultan. In the war that followed the Turks were authorized to seize the citizens of the empire, and the rival governments placed at the disposition of their Mohammedan allies seaports and vessels. The captives taken were sent to Asia and sold as slaves in the Turkish emirates.

The various enemies of the Empire used this time of civil strife as a favorable opportunity for seizing its territory. Stephen Douchan conquered and annexed most of Macedonia, and, as their part of the spoil, the Genoese acquired Chios and commenced a blockade of Constantinople, the defense of which was intrusted to other Italians under the command of Facciolati. This leader deserted the cause of the regent Anna, and admitted Cantacuzene into the capital. An arrangement was now patched up by which Cantacuzene was to be Emperor until John V reached the age of twenty-five years.

Even now Cantacuzene’s troubles as ruler were not over; his plan to form an independent navy recruited from his own subjects and his desire to do away with the commercial monopoly of the Genoese led to a war of five years, 1348-1352. Cantacuzene’s Venetian allies were defeated under the walls of Constantinople, with the result that the Greek Emperor was obliged to make peace under most disadvantageous terms. Not long after this disaster civil war broke out again. Souliman, Ourkhan’s son, was a subsidized ally of Cantacuzene, and thousands of the inhabitants of the Empire were deported by the Turks to be sold as slaves.

The lessons of these wars were not lost upon the Turkish auxiliaries who were allowed to play such a conspicuous and decisive rôle by both sides; they became acquainted with the country in which they had served, knew its roads, cities, and inhabitants. All this information was put to good use by them when they crossed the Bosphorus to fight for their own interests and to dispossess their former employers at Constantinople.

From the point of view of its economic status the Empire was in no condition to withstand an invasion. As territory was lost the proceeds of direct taxation fell off; increases in the customs duties were opposed and blocked by the Genoese and Venetians; the government lived from hand to mouth. In 1306 when the Catalan mercenaries had to be paid, Andronicus II put an end to the wheat monopoly exercised by the Italians. Another characteristic expedient of this weak government was the debasement of the coinage. But all the ordinary schemes for raising money must have failed by the middle of the century, for we find Anna of Saxony using the treasures of churches to pay for the war against Cantacuzene. Indeed, her court had reached a condition of extreme penury in 1347, when, at a coronation it was found that the imperial jewels had disappeared. The splendid buildings of the city were fast going to pieces. In Santa Sophia there were large cracks, which necessitated the erection of two of the existing great supporting buttresses that have enabled it to survive to our time the frequent earthquakes that disturb the city. In the absence of a centralized government the local administration lost all resemblance to the admirably constructed system of the earlier period of Byzantine rule when, as contrasted with Western Europe, it still preserved the efficiency and smoothness of Roman governmental traditions. The local authorities lived on the country, uncontrolled from Constantinople, except irregularly and ineffectively.

In reality, under the name of empire, all varieties of local organizations existed side by side; some places were ruled by petty tyrants, while others were municipal republics. In the important port of Thessalonika, Italian precedents were closely followed. Here there were four classes of citizens, the notables, the clergy, the bourgeois, and in the lowest class the “populari.” Each class enjoyed complete autonomy. They were organized in trade corporations, had their own system of justice, and finally got supreme control of the town, turning it into a democracy under the presidency of their metropolitan. When Cantacuzene undertook to bring the rebels to reason, the archbishop, in pleading the cause of the city-state, declared that his republic was based on equality and justice, and said that its laws were better than those of the Republic of Plato.

There was another factor in this state of anarchy, to wit, the religious dissensions, due to the willingness of some of the clergy to accept union with the Papacy and to introduce Latin customs, an attitude dating from the time of the Latin Empire. Apart from these questions of ecclesiastical policy, there was much discussion of theological subtilties concerning the existence of a supernatural illumination in the soul, a controversy which divided the Church and the imperial court. This trouble was settled by a synod, which decreed that those espousing the new doctrine should be imprisoned.

In a land so situated and so far fallen from its earlier estate, the rapid conquests of the Osmanlis appear as due not so much to the valor and intelligence of the adherents of Islam as to the inability of the Christians to act or work together. The one security of the Empire was the comparative weakness of the Turkish sea power. The Ottoman ships were good enough for piratical expeditions, but there was no Turkish fleet at all able to cope with the navies of Genoa or Venice.

At the very beginning of Murad’s accession, a consistent plan of attack was inaugurated, designed to cut off Constantinople from its “hinterland”; the objective being the trade road between the capital and Adrianople. Several of the important points on this line were taken, Murad making his residence temporarily near Demotika. According to Turkish custom, each spring brought a new expedition and a further enlargement of the existing boundaries. The siege of Adrianople itself soon began. (1360.) The Greek chronicles speak of its fall being due to a betrayal of a secret path used by peasants inside the walls to get to their fields. But the Turkish annals tell of an engagement between the garrison and the Osmanli soldiers. In the city Murad took up his residence, being attracted to it by its importance as a trading place frequented by Venetians, Genoese, Florentines, and Catalans, as well as by Turks and Greeks.

Following soon the course of the river Maritza, on which Adrianople stands, the Turkish invaders moved farther into the land until they came to Philippopolis, which had been taken by the Bulgars not long before. But the Slavs showed no greater capacity than the Greeks for united action, and the town was taken from them without difficulty. Other places were added, including Berrhœa on the Hæmus, and this whole section of country for some time made up the northermost borders of Ottoman dominion in Europe.

In the south the same kind of successes took place; again a trade route was selected, this time the road to Thessalonika, and a considerable stretch of the territory through which it passed was annexed. In one place the sea coast was reached at a point opposite the Island of Samothrace. Murad returned now to Broussa, interrupting a farther advance towards Trnova and Sofia, places in the hands of the Servians, whose power in war he respected and feared more than that of their allied race, the Bulgars.

The menace caused by the Ottoman conquests was now being appreciated in Western Europe, where, through the preaching of a crusade by Urban V, a league was formed between Louis of Anjou, King of Hungary, and several of the most powerful princes of the Balkan peninsula, both Roumanian and Slav, for the purpose of driving out the Turks from their newly acquired European possessions. With an army of 60,000 men the Christian leaders reached the river Maritza, two days’ journey from Adrianople. Murad was in Asia, besieging a Greek city on the Propontis, but he was not needed, since a small detachment of the army of his general, Lala-Schahin, came in contact with the Christians near Kermianon, and put them to flight in a panic, in which the two Servian leaders lost their lives. (1371.)

This victory is set down in the Servian records as a great national disaster, and deservedly so. It ended their resistance, and it handed over to the Turks the rest of Thrace, Bulgaria, and a part of Servia. Significant of the impression made by the conquest was the action of the people of Ragusa, who signed a treaty of peace, inspired by a desire to gain commercial advantages from the new Turkish conquests. They agreed to pay an annual tribute of 500 golden ducats, and thus they inaugurated a policy imitated by many of their stronger neighbors, who preferred to make a good bargain with the Ottomans rather than try the fortunes of war under the auspices of rival Christian states, whose political aggrandizement, in case a victory were won over the infidel, was dreaded even more than the expansion of an alien race.

Yet the theory of a united Christendom was maintained despite its pitiable outcome in the Balkans. Elsewhere there were brilliant feats of arms, but they were isolated, and being directed by no consistent plan, proved of no lasting advantage. Peter of Cyprus, a representative of the Latin dynasty which had held the island since the days of the earlier Crusades, regarded himself as the guardian of Christian hopes in the Orient because of his titular dignity of King of Jerusalem. He took Alexandria in 1365, and helped by Rhodes, Genoa, and contingents sent by the Pope, he later took Satalieh (Attalia), a place situated in one of the Seldjouk emirates. Some advantages were gained, too, on the coast of Syria.

There was little chance of permanent success so long as the princes and states of the West with their divergent interests, dynastic or commercial, confronted such a solidly compacted power as that raised up by Osman. The Turks had a single aim, simple and direct, and they kept hammering away at their enemies, putting in telling blows at the right moment and the right place. On the other hand, the Christian cause suffered both from the leadership of the Papacy, with its rigid insistence on establishing Western ecclesiastical rule in the East, and from the sordid self-seeking of the Genoese and Venetians. From both points of view the conquest of the Greek Empire was generally regarded as a necessary preliminary for making headway in the restoration of Christian control over the Holy Land.

The hard case of the Eastern Emperor, whose few remaining possessions were in the fast-closing grip of the Ottoman Sultan, is sketched indelibly in the narrative of the Western journey of John V, who, while the Turks were absorbing the Slavic lands about his empire, visited Rome to ask the Pope’s aid. In the desperate state of his resources he had borrowed at Venice, at exorbitant rates of interest, money to pay the expenses of his trip. On his return empty-handed he was stayed at Venice by his creditors, and the republic put him in prison. His son, Andronicus, associated with his father in the Empire, had been left behind at Constantinople. When the Emperor appealed to him for aid, the reply came that the treasury was empty. The unfortunate sovereign appealed with more success to a younger son, Manuel, who mortgaged his estates and enabled his father to return home.

In May, 1372, the Pope again took the initiative in organizing an anti-Ottoman league by writing to the Republic of Venice and the King of Hungary a letter which described the achievements of the “Saracens” in Thrace, their defeat of the “Servian lords in Greek lands,” and the prospects of a farther advance of the infidel towards the Adriatic. Bad news had come from Greece, too, of the possibility of the Turkish invaders penetrating towards the south. A congress of the Balkan states was called to meet at Thebes, a place under Frankish and Roman Catholic rule; and it was a significant fact that no member of the Eastern Church was asked to be present. A gathering of such a restricted character could do nothing. There were at Thebes only a few representatives of the small Latin principalities in Continental Greece and the islands. Immediately after this gathering the Byzantine clergy put forth in Constantinople a formal protest against the See of Rome and appealed for help to the Knights of Rhodes.

Peter of Cyprus had been murdered by his barons in 1369, and the island had fallen into the hands of the Genoese. In 1374 the small Frankish kingdom of Armenia, an enclave between the Turkish and Mongol lands in Asia, had come to an end with the capture of Sis. In 1378 the great church schism in the West brought about a situation that prevented the Papacy from taking further thought for what was now left of the Christian East. Four years later Louis of Hungary died, leaving his kingdom, a land especially interested in preventing the extension of Turkish power in Europe, a prey to a civil war induced by the division he had made of his dominions between his two daughters. There was no longer even the semblance of a chance that European forces would unite on a large scale to resist the Turks. The contest was left to the weak and divided efforts of the small Frankish states in Greece; to the Bulgars and Servians in the Balkans, who followed only desultory, haphazard methods, and to the Greeks of the Empire, who were living on the traditions of a great past.

Meanwhile, the Osmanlis were not disturbed by questions of religious orthodoxy, and they were also spared the necessity of calling congresses to decide the next step in their stealthy progress. In 1372, under the personal supervision of Murad, expeditions were made by which the whole of Roumelia to the Black Sea was not only made subject to his rule, but Moslem families were settled in the conquered lands and a regularly ordered system of local military government provided. Then came the turn of the few remaining provinces still held by the Greek Emperor. When Vizya (in Turkish, Wissa), an important city, fell into Murad’s hands, John, whose bitter necessities had forced him to pay tribute to the Turk and even to furnish a contingent for military service, tried to recover his lost city. A punitive expedition appeared in consequence near Constantinople, and some strong castles were annexed; but nothing near the sea coast was taken, for the Sultan had no desire to bring down upon himself the ill will of the Venetians and other Italians, who would not tolerate any interference in their control of the important waterways near Constantinople. For the same reason, though constant additions were being made to Turkish territory close to Thessalonika, no attempt was made to close in on the city for fear of complications with the Latin powers, complications which might excite such an outbreak of the crusading ardor that the Italian navies might be used.