The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (11 page)

Here we have horrible news of the fall of Constantinople - if only it were false… Now we see one of the two lights of Christendom extinguished. We behold the seat of eastern empire overthrown, all the Glory that was Greece blotted out … Now Mohammed reigns among us. Now the Turk hangs over our very head. The Black Sea is closed to us, the Don has become inaccessible. Now the Vlachs must obey the Turk. Next his sword will reach the Hungarians and then the Germans. In the meantime we are beset by internecine strife… Let them make a peace or a truce with their fellow Christians, and with joined forces take up arms against the enemies of salvations.

The Pope issued a bull calling for a crusade, condemning Mehmet as the ‘son of Satan, perdition and death’. But disunity among the Christian rulers kept them from taking action, and when Pope Nicholas died on 24 March 1455 the crusade was abandoned, at least for the time being.

Nicholas was succeeded by the Catalan Alfonso Borgia, who on 20 April 1455 became Pope Calixtus III. On the eve of his coronation Calixtus wrote to the young King Ladislas Posthumus of Bohemia and Hungary, declaring his dedication to a crusade against the Turks, ‘even to the shedding of his own blood’, so ‘that those most hideous enemies of the Christian name should be entirely expelled not only from the city of Constantinople, which they have recently occupied, but also from the confines of Europe’. The Hungarian leaders wrote back to Calixtus from Buda on 21 July, saying: ‘How very much indeed the pitiable condition of Christians now has need of your Holiness’s protection.’

The Venetian Republic was the Christian state most directly involved with the Ottomans, for its maritime empire included commercial concessions in Istanbul as well as possessions in Greece, Albania and the Aegean that were threatened by the Turks. In July 1453 the Senate decided to fortify Negroponte, Greek Chalkis, the town that they controlled on the narrow strait between the Greek mainland and the Aegean island of Euboea. The Venetian fleet under Giacomo Loredan, who had failed to come to the aid of Constantinople, remained on duty in the Aegean, and late in July he captured seventeen Turkish light galleys. The Senate congratulated Loredan on his action, and the following month they voted funds for the construction of fifty new galleys for his fleet.

On 17 July 1453 the Senate sent Bartolomeo Marcello as an envoy to Istanbul, instructing him to negotiate with Mehmet a renewal of the treaty that Venice had signed with Murat II on 10 September 1451. While the negotiations were under way the Peace of Lodi on 9 April 1454 ended war between Venice and Milan. Freed from the enormous expense of the Italian war, the Senate was better able to negotiate with Mehmet, and on 18 April Marcello concluded a treaty with the sultan. This treaty, which reaffirmed the terms of the 1451 pact, gave the Venetians protection for their property and commerce in the Ottoman Empire and free access to Istanbul and other Turkish ports, Mehmet promising that ‘they shall be safe on the sea and on the land as was customary before, in the time of my father’. Another term of the treaty gave the Venetians the right to have a commercial colony in Istanbul headed by a
bailo
, and Marcello was appointed to the post.

One of the Venetian emissaries, Giacomo de’ Languschi, gives a detailed description of Mehmet, adding four years to his age.

The sovereign, the Grand Turk Mehmed Bey, is a young man of twenty-six years of age, well formed and of a stature rather above the average. He is skilled in the use of weapons. His appearance inspires fear rather than respect. He laughs rarely, is cautious in his judgements, and is endowed with great generosity. He shows great tenacity in all his undertakings, and bravery under all conditions. He aspires to equal the glory of Alexander the Great, and every day has histories of Rome and other nations read to him… There is nothing which he studies with greater pleasure and eagerness than the geography of the world, and the art of warfare; he burns with the desire to rule, while being prudent in his investigation of what he undertakes. Such is the man, and so made, with whom we Christians have to deal.

Languschi goes on to write of Mehmet’s desire to put the entire world under his rule, reversing the eastward march of conquest of Western rulers such as Alexander the Great, an imperial ambition for which he seemed perfectly suited by nature.

He is a man continually watchful, able to endure weariness, heat and cold, thirst and hunger, inexorably set upon the destruction of Christians, and would admit to fearing no man. He…says the Caesar and Hannibal were of no account compared with himself, and that Alexander…entered Asia with a far smaller force than his. Now he says, times have changed, and he will march from the East to the West, as the West once marched against the East; now there must be only one empire in the world, one faith for all, and one kingdom. There is no place anywhere for such a union than Constantinople, and with the help of this city, he can make the Christians his subjects. He is not a man given to lustful desires, and of sober habits, not wishing to hear of any drunkenness at the time of Rhamadan. He is not enslaved by any pleasures or delights, but only by the love of glory.

After establishing his capital in Istanbul, Mehmet launched a campaign into Serbia in the spring of 1454, his objective being to reclaim the territory his father had returned to the despot George Brancović by the Treaty of Edirne in 1444.

Mehmet and Ishak Pasha captured two Serbian fortresses, but they were forced to abandon their conquests when John Hunyadi appeared with a Hungarian army. Mehmet launched another campaign into Serbia the following year, when he captured the town of Novo Brdo, noted for its gold and silver mines. Among those captured by the Turks was a young Serb named Constantine Mihailović, who was enrolled in the janissaries and later wrote a memoir of his experiences, including his capture at Novo Brdo.

All those among the men who were the most important and distinguished he [Mehmet] ordered decapitated. The remainder he ordered released to the city. As for their possessions, nothing of theirs was harmed. The boys were 320 in number and the females 74. The females he distributed among the heathens [Turks], but he took the boys for himself into the Janissaries, and sent them beyond the sea to Anatolia, where their preserve is. I was also taken in that city with my two brothers…

The sixteenth-century chronicler Mustafa Ali notes that, on the sultan’s return from campaign in 1454, ‘Mehmet spent many nights in debauchery with lovely-eyed, fairylike slave girls, and his days drinking with pages who looked like angels. But he was only seemingly engaged in debauchery and wantonness, in reality he was working, guided by the love of justice, to relieve the oppression of his subjects in the land.’

During the years 1454-5 Mehmet also sent his navy into the Aegean under the command of Hamza Bey, who attacked the islands of Nisyros, Kalymnos, Kos and Chios. One of the Turkish galleys was sunk at Chios, which led Mehmet to dismiss Hamza Bey and replace him with Yunus Bey. At the beginning of November 1455 Yunus captured the Genoese colony of Nea Phokaia on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor north of Izmir. Six weeks later another Turkish force seized the Genoese colony at Palaeo Phokaia, a short way to the south of Nea Phokaia. This gave Mehmet control of the lucrative alum mines that the Genoese had developed through the two Phokaias, their principal commercial colonies on the Aegean coast Asia Minor, now permanently lost to them.

The two ports and the mines had been the property of Dorino II Gattilusio, the Genoese lord of Lesbos and the islands of Samothrace and Imbros as well as the port of Enez (Aenos) north of the Gallipoli peninsula. Early in 1456 Mehmet himself led a force of janissaries against Enez, which surrendered without a struggle, while at the same time Yunus Bey captured the islands of Imbros and Samothrace, where he took Dorino Gattilusio prisoner. Gattilusio was forced to give up all his possessions to Mehmet, who in compensation gave him a small fief in Macedonia. Mehmet then appointed Kritoboulos, his biographer, to be the Ottoman governor of his native Imbros.

Mehmet spent the winter of 1455-6 preparing a major campaign against Serbia and Hungary, which he regarded as his major enemies in Europe now that he had made peace with Venice. His major objective in this campaign was Belgrade, the great fortress city at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava, for its capture would open the way to Buda, the capital of Hungary. Mehmet’s plan was to send his fleet up the Danube to meet his army when he began the siege of Belgrade.

Meanwhile, Pope Calixtus had renewed his predecessor’s call for a crusade against the Turks, setting 1 March 1456 as the date for the departure of ‘all the Christian princes and peoples’ for the holy war. A great diet convened at Buda on 6 February 1456, when the Franciscan monk Fra Giovanni da Capistrano presented the Pope’s appeal for a crusade, with King Ladislas in attendance. On 6 April the assembly finally decided that they would march against the Turks, but on the following day a messenger arrived with word that Mehmet’s army was already marching north towards the Danube.

John Hunyadi, who had served as regent of King Ladislas Posthumus in 1452, though still considered by the Hungarians as their true leader, commanded the defence of Belgrade, which began on 14 July 1456 with a terrific bombardment by the Turkish artillery. A week later Mehmet ordered in his janissaries, who penetrated the defences and made their way into the city, only to be virtually annihilated there by the defenders. Fra Capistrano then led a force of some 2,000 defenders out of the city to charge the surrounding Turks, whom they routed after a furious five-hour battle in which Mehmet himself was wounded in his left thigh by a javelin. The following day Mehmet lifted the siege, abandoning his artillery as he hurriedly withdrew his forces and began the long march back to Edirne.

News of the Christian victory at Belgrade reached Rome on 6 August, sparking a celebration that echoed throughout western Europe as word spread through the Christian world that the Grand Turk had at last met his match. The two heroes of the siege died not long afterwards, Hunyadi succumbing to the plague on 11 August and Fra Capistrano dying on 23 October, supposedly of exhaustion.

Meanwhile, a new pretender to the Ottoman throne appeared in Rome early in 1456, when an eight-year-old boy named Beyazit Osman was brought to the Vatican by an Italian from Istanbul, Giovanni Torcello. Torcello claimed that the boy, who had been born in 1448, was the son of Sultan Murat II, and thus a half-brother of Mehmet. When Mehmet became sultan the boy was smuggled out of Edirne Sarayı so that he would not be killed like Küçük Ahmet, after which he was taken to Istanbul and raised by Torcello - or so he said. After the capture of Constantinople Torcello and the boy were sold as slaves, and eventually they were redeemed by Pope Calixtus, who had been convinced that ‘Beyazit Osman’ was in fact a son of Murat II. The boy was baptised in Rome on 8 March 1456, taking the name Calixtus Ottomanus, becoming a ward of the Pope, who thought to use him as a pretender to the Ottoman throne in a crusade against the Turks.

After his retreat from Belgrade, Mehmet spent a year at Edirne Sarayı, recovering from his wound and rebuilding his shattered army. The following spring he sent messengers throughout his empire and abroad to announce the coming circumcision of his two sons Beyazit and Mustafa, the invited guests including the Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari, who sent his regrets.

The circumcision feast is described by the Turkish chronicler Aşıkpaşazade, who writes that for four days there were continuous festivities at Edirne Sarayı, on its island in the river Tunca. The island was covered with the tents of the notables who had come from all over the empire and beyond at the sultan’s bidding. Mehmet sat enthroned in his imperial tent at the centre of the assemblage, flanked by four distinguished clerics. On the first day there were readings from the Kuran that were commented upon by the scholars present, followed by the recitation of poems composed for the occasion by the court poets. The scholars and poets were rewarded with gifts of money and robes of honour, after which everyone sat down to an abundant feast. The next day the poor of Edirne were lavishly entertained, and on the following day there was a feast for the nobles of the empire and honoured guests, with a display of martial exercises, horse races and an archery contest. Then on the final day the dignitaries presented gifts to the sultan, after which he cast handfuls of coins among the poor of the city. Throughout the festivities Mehmet remained in the highest humour, showing no sign that he had endured the worst defeat of his life thus far less than a year before.

Meanwhile, Pope Calixtus had launched a fleet of sixteen galleys under the command of Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan, who set sail from Naples on 6 August 1456, bound for the Aegean. The Pope, in a letter to Ludovico, expressed the extravagant hope that this would be the first step in a campaign that would lead to the recapture of Constantinople, the recovery of the Holy Land, and even the extermination of Islam. Ludovico captured the northern Aegean islands of Lemnos, Samothrace and Thasos, garrisoning them with papal troops, and in August 1457 he defeated an Ottoman fleet off Lesbos, capturing twenty-five Turkish vessels. That would be the extent of his victories, which did little more than provoke the wrath of Sultan Mehmet, who soon set out to reconquer the islands that Ludovico had taken.

Despite their humiliating defeat at Belgrade, Mehmet’s forces continued their march of conquest, and in the summer of 1456 an Ottoman army under Ömer Bey, son of Turahan Bey, besieged Athens, which since 1385 had been held by the Florentine dynasty of the Acciajuoli. Ömer Bey’s forces occupied the lower city while the defenders retreated to the Acropolis, where they held out until they finally surrendered in June 1458.

Mehmet himself led a major expedition into the Peloponnesos in the spring of 1458, his pretext being that the two surviving brothers of the deceased Emperor Constantine, Demetrius and Thomas Palaeologus, the Despots of the Morea, were three years in arrears with the tribute that had been levied upon them. Thomas paid part of the tribute he owed in an attempt to appease Mehmet, who took the money and went on with his invasion, crossing the isthmus of Corinth on 15 May 1458. He left a force to besiege the citadel of Corinth while he went on into the interior of the Peloponnesos. According to Sphrantzes, ‘The Sultan invaded the central regions of the Peloponnesos, and all places suffered. Some were enslaved and razed, especially Akova, Aitos and Pentachoria.’