The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (5 page)

Meanwhile, Murat had been extending his domains in western Greece, where in 1449 he captured Arta. Then, accompanied by Mehmet, he led a successful expedition against the Albanian leader Skanderbeg, who was forced to give up most of his dominions to the sultan. Skanderbeg managed to hold on to the fortified mountain town of Kruje, which Murat, again accompanied by Mehmet, attacked in mid-May 1450. But Skanderbeg put up such a tenacious defence that Murat was forced to lift the siege at the end of October and withdraw his forces to Edirne. This made Skanderbeg a hero throughout Europe; ambassadors and assistance were sent to Kruje from the Pope, King Alfonso of Aragon and Naples, the regent John Hunyadi of Hungary, and Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy. For Skanderbeg had given Christians hope that they could, as he wrote, defend themselves ‘from the oppression and cruel hands of the Turks, our enemies and those of the Catholic faith’.

Early the following year Murat commenced work on several new pavilions in Edirne Sarayı. But the project had barely begun when he died on 8 February 1451, stricken by apoplexy after a drinking bout. He was forty-seven years old and had ruled for three decades, most of which he had spent at war.

Murat’s death was kept secret by the grand vezir Halil Pasha so that Mehmet could be summoned from Manisa, where he was serving as provincial governor. The secrecy may have been occasioned by Mehmet’s unpopularity with both the army and the populace of Edirne, who might have revolted to prevent his accession. But all went well, and after Mehmet had crossed the Dardanelles to Gallipoli he was met by the Ottoman court and all the people of the surrounding area, who accompanied him to Edirne Sarayı, lamenting the death of Sultan Murat, according to Doukas. ‘Proceeding for about half a mile in dead silence, they stopped and, standing together in a body, raised their voices in loud lamentations, shedding tears all the while. Then Mehmet and his subordinates, dismounted and followed suit by rending the air with wailing. The mournful cries heard that day on both sides were a spectacle indeed!’

The following day, 18 February 1451, Mehmet was acclaimed as sultan, one month before his nineteenth birthday. Kritoboulos of Imbros, Mehmet’s contemporary Greek biographer, writes: ‘When he became heir to a great realm and master of many soldiers and enlisted men, and had under his power already the largest and best parts of both Asia and Europe, he did not believe that these were enough for him nor was he content with what he had: instead he immediately overran the whole world in his calculations and resolved to rule it in emulation of the Alexanders and Pompeys and Caesars and kings and generals of their sort.’ Kritoboulous believed that the young sultan was in every way qualified to realise his soaring imperial ambitions. ‘His physical powers helped him well. His energies were keen for everything, and the power of his spirit gave him ability to rule and be kingly. To this end also his wisdom aided, as well as his fine knowledge of all the doings of the ancients.’

That same day Mehmet was girded with the sword of his ancestor Osman Gazi - the Ottoman equivalent of coronation - in the presence of the vezirs and other officers of his court. After the ceremony Mehmet appointed Halil as grand vezir, although he loathed his father’s old adviser. Mehmet felt that Halil had undermined his first attempt to rule as sultan, and he suspected that the grand vezir had been taking bribes from the Byzantines. Nevertheless, he allowed Halil to continue as grand vezir for the time being, while he waited for the right moment to eliminate him. Halil had just as deep a hatred for Mehmet, whose ‘insolence, savagery and violence’ he speaks of in a quote by Doukas.

Mehmet also retained another of his father’s old vezirs, Ishak Pasha, whom he appointed as
beylerbey
, or governor, of Anatolia. He then ordered Ishak to conduct Murat’s remains to Bursa for burial in the Muradiye, the mosque complex that his father had erected early in his reign. There Murat was buried in the
türbe
, or mausoleum, that he had erected for himself beside the mosque, the last sultan to be laid to rest in the first capital of the Osmanlı. Murat’s tomb was left open to the elements because of the request he had made in his will: ‘Bury me in Bursa near my son Alaeddin. Do not raise a sumptuous mausoleum over my grave…but bury me directly in the ground. May the rain, sign of the benediction of God, fall on me.’

Directly after his coronation Mehmet went to the harem of Edirne Sarayı, where he received the congratulations of all the women there, who also gave him their condolences on the death of his father. The highest-ranking of the deceased sultan’s wives at the time of his death was Halima Hatun, who fifteen months before had given birth to Murat’s last son, Küçük Ahmet. Succession had often been a matter of contention in the Ottoman dynasty, and had led to two civil wars. So Mehmet decided that in this case he would settle the matter at once by ordering the execution of Küçük Ahmet. While Mehmet was talking with Halima Hatun, one of his men was strangling her baby son in his bath. Mehmet justified the murder of his half-brother as being in accordance with the Ottoman code of fratricide, which on several occasions had been practised by his ancestors to prevent wars of succession. Mehmet later had the code enacted into law, as stated in his imperial edict: ‘And to whomsoever of my sons the Sultanate shall pass, it is fitting that for the order of the world that he shall kill his brothers. Most of the Ulema allow it. So let them act on this.’

Mehmet then married off Halima Hatun to Ishak Pasha, the new
beylerbey
of Anatolia. Another of Murat’s high-born wives, Mara, the daughter of George Branković, was sent back to her home with rich presents, and afterwards maintained cordial relations with Mehmet. Mehmet took advantage of this to renew a peace treaty with Branković later in 1451.

The treaty with Serbia was one of a number of diplomatic agreements that Mehmet made in the late summer of 1451, as news of his accession spread through Europe and prompted the Christian powers to send embassies to Edirne to see the young sultan.

The first to arrive was an ambassador from Emperor Constantine XI, who negotiated a peace treaty with Mehmet. One of the terms in this treaty concerned Mehmet’s cousin Orhan, a grandson of Beyazit I. Orhan was a hostage in Constantinople, having been used by the Byzantines as a possible pretender to destabilise the Ottoman regime. Mehmet agreed to pay for his cousin’s upkeep by giving the emperor the revenues of villages in the Struma valley in Greece.

Mehmet also exchanged emissaries with John IV Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor of Trebizond. The Greek chronicler George Sphrantzes, who was serving as ambassador from Constantine XI to Trebizond, tells of how he warned John IV about Mehmet. ‘This man, who just became sultan, is young and an enemy of the Christians since childhood, he threatens with proud spirit that he will put into operations certain plans against the Christians. If God should grant that the young sultan be overcome by his youth and evil nature and march against our City, I know not what will happen.’

Sphrantzes also learned that Mehmet had sent Murat’s widow Mara back to her father George Branković, the Despot of Serbia. This led him to write to Constantine XI, suggesting that the emperor, who was a widower, marry Princess Mara. Sphrantzes, in discussing possible objections to the marriage, one of which was that Mara had been wed to Sultan Murat, remarked: ‘Your potential bride…was the wife of a very powerful monarch, and she, it is generally believed, did not sleep with him.’

Constantine took the suggestion seriously and sent an envoy to Despot George Branković to propose marriage to the princess. According to Sphrantzes, Mara’s parents listened to the proposal ‘with delight and were ready to settle the final details’. But Mara herself rejected the proposal, for she ‘had made a vow to God that if He freed her from the house of her late husband she would not marry for the rest of her life, but would remain in His service, as far as possible. Thus the proposed match failed.’

On 10 September Mehmet received an embassy from Venice and renewed a peace treaty with the Serene Republic that his father had signed five years earlier.

Ten days later representatives of John Hunyadi arrived, and Mehmet signed an agreement for a three-year truce with Hungary. The next embassy to arrive was from the city state of Ragusa, which offered to increase the amount of tribute it paid to the sultan. This was followed by missions from the Grand Master of the Knights of St John at Rhodes, the Prince of Wallachia, and the Genoese lords of Chios and Lesbos, all of whom brought rich gifts for the sultan, receiving from him expressions of goodwill.

Kritoboulos says that, after Mehmet had concluded his meetings with foreign emissaries and signed treaties with them, ‘he gave himself over to an examination of his whole realm’. This led him to ‘depose some of the governors and substitute others who he deemed to be superior to the former in strategy and justice’. He examined ‘the registers and battle order of the troops, cavalry and infantry, which were paid from the royal treasury. He also made the royal palace subject of considerable thought and increased the pay of its troops’, particularly that of the janissaries. ‘In addition to this, he collected a supply of arms and arrows and other things needful and useful in preparation for war. Then he examined his family treasury, looking especially closely into its overseers. He carefully questioned the officials in charge of the annual taxes and obliged them to render their accounts.’

To Kritoboulos, Mehmet’s study of the empire’s finances indicated that ‘much of the public and royal revenue was being badly spent and wasted to no good purpose, about one-third of the yearly revenues which were recovered for the royal treasury. So he set the keeping of this in good order.’ At the conclusion of his account of Mehmet’s reorganisation of the government, Kritoboulos writes: ‘He greatly increased the annual revenue. He brought many of the tax officials to reason through fear, and for them substituted trustworthy and wise men to collect and safe-keep the funds. His father had dealt with such matters in a much more hit-or-miss manner, but he made short work of them.’

The treaties signed by Mehmet secured his borders in Europe. This left him free to lead an expedition into Anatolia, where his vassal, the Karamanid emir Ibrahim, had rebelled and seized three Ottoman fortresses: Akşehir, Beyşehir and Seydişehir. According to the contemporary Turkish chronicler Tursun Beg, in the spring of 1451 Dayı Karaca Pasha, the
beylerbey
of Rumelia, the European part of the Ottoman realm, was left with his troops at Sofia to guard against the possibility of an attack from Hungary, while Mehmet himself set out against Ibrahim with the standing army and troops from Anatolia. When the Ottoman army reached central Anatolia, Ibrahim fled and sent his vezir Mewlan Weli to negotiate peace terms. According to Tursun Beg, Ibrahim ‘agreed to give up Akşehir, Beyşehir and Seydişehir, including the territories around them. In addition, he agreed to send every year a certain number of soldiers to serve in the Ottoman army.’

While Mehmet was on his way back to Europe from this campaign he had to deal with another insurrection by the janissaries, whom he once again appeased by raising their pay, though much against his will. Mehmet vented his rage on the commander of the corps, Kazancı Doğan, having him savagely whipped and then dismissing him from his post. Mehmet then reorganised the janissaries in such a way as to take more direct control of the corps, which he was to use with great effectiveness in his subsequent campaigns.

Around the same time the emperor Constantine sent envoys to renegotiate a point in the peace treaty he had signed with Mehmet, the one concerning the upkeep of the Turkish pretender Orhan. When the embassy reached Mehmet, probably in Bursa, he delegated Halil Pasha to deal with them. The envoys said that the payment for Orhan’s upkeep was not sufficient, and he implied that unless it was increased Constantine would allow the pretender to contest the throne with Mehmet. Halil was furious, according to Doukas, and he told the envoys, whom he called ‘stupid and foolish Romans’, that they were making a fatal mistake in threatening Mehmet, for he was a far more dangerous foe than his father, who had been ‘a sincere friend’ of the Byzantines.

Mehmet informed the envoys that he would deal with the matter when he returned to Edirne. He then prepared to lead his army back to Europe across the Dardanelles. But when he learned that Italian warships were on patrol there he changed his route and had his troops ferried across the Bosphorus, embarking from Anadolu Hisarı, the fortress that Beyazit I had built in 1394 on the Asian shore at the narrowest stretch of the strait. As soon as Mehmet returned to Edirne he repudiated the treaty he had made with Constantine. His anger at Constantine’s threat to support the pretender Orhan was such that he immediately began preparations for a siege of Constantinople, which he had been prevented from doing when he first came to the throne. Kritoboulos writes: Mehmet ‘resolved to carry into execution immediately the plan which he had long since studied and elaborated in his mind and toward which he had bent every purpose from the start, and to wait no longer or delay. The plan was to make war against the Romans [Byzantines] and their Emperor Constantine and to besiege the city.’

Thus determined, at the beginning of the second year of his reign Mehmet took the first step in the plan that he had made to attack and conquer Constantinople. According to Kritoboulos, Mehmet decided ‘to build a strong fortress on the Bosphorus on the European side, opposite to the Asiatic fortress on the other side, at the point where it is narrowest and swiftest, and so to control the strait’. Kritoboulos goes on to say that in the winter of 1451-2 Mehmet ‘ordered all the materials to be prepared for building, namely stone and timbers and iron and whatever else would be of use for this purpose. He set the best and most experienced officers over the work, instructing them to put everything speedily in the best order, so that when spring came he could undertake the task.’

The site that Mehmet chose for the fortress was eight miles north of Constantinople. Originally known in Turkish as Boğaz Kesen, or ‘Cut Throat’, and later called Rumeli Hisarı, the ‘Castle of Europe’, it was built directly across the strait from the fortress built ın 1394 by Beyazit I, known as Anadolu Hisarı, the ‘Castle of Asia’. Constantine sent an embassy to Mehmet complaining that the sultan was violating their treaty by building a fortress on Byzantine territory. Mehmet replied, according to Doukas, ‘I take nothing from the City. Beyond the fosse she owns nothing. If I desire to build a fortress…the emperor has no right to stop me.’