Murad gladly gave his new ally and brother-in-law a strong Ottoman army to co-operate in the attack upon the Hungarians. The Osmanlis helped in driving Louis out of Widin. Sisman, like Cantacuzenos, first guided the Osmanlis through the heart of his country. It was under the leadership of Sisman that they saw the Danube, their river of destiny. When Sisman, even with the help of the Osmanlis and Wallachians, could not gain possession of Stracimir’s inheritance, he returned to Tirnovo. There he learned that Lalashahin was planning an expedition westward, which seemed to be intended against Sofia.
Sisman now realized that his position was critical and that the fate of Bulgaria was at stake. In the early spring of 1371, he hurried into the Rilo Mountains and sent out an appeal to the Serbian kral who was at that time ruling in eastern Macedonia. Then he went to the relief of Ishtiman, which was already menaced by the Osmanlis. Failing in this effort, Sisman fell back to Samakov, where he was joined by the Serbians. Lalashahin led his army from Ishtiman into the valley of the Isker. The two krals joinedbattle with him in the plain of Samakov. The Ottoman victory was decisive.[319]The Serbians and Bulgarians fled into the recesses of Musalla, the highest mountain in the Balkan peninsula, and of Popova Shapka. Sisman disappeared after the battle.[320]The way to Sofia was open. All Bulgaria lay at the feet of the conqueror. It is from the battle of Samakov that we must date the destruction of an independent Bulgaria.
But Murad was not yet ready to follow up this decisive victory. The only immediate result of the battle of Samakov was the submission of Constantine, Bulgarian prince of Kustendil, in the upper valley of the Struma. After the fall of Samakov, his position was untenable. Constantine hurried to Murad’s camp, and did homage to the conqueror. Murad gave back to him as vassal his principality.[321]With the wisdom that marked every successive step of his progress in Europe, Murad refrained from advancing beyond Samakov. He ordered Lalashahin to lead the army into Macedonia, and to join Evrenos in the advance towards the Vardar.
The dramatic death of Stephen Dushan, in 1355, just as he was starting upon the expedition against Constantinople for which his whole life had been a preparation, is recorded in the previous chapter. Stephen’s son was so unfit to inherit the aspirations and carry on the work of his father that he was called in derision by his people Nejaki,the weakling.[322]The nobles and generals of Stephen Nejaki ignored him. Each man seized what territory he could hold and defend against his neighbour. There was anarchy in Macedonia and Serbia. The dissolution of Stephen Dushan’s conquests resulted in a bloody and destructive civil war between cities and factions.[323]The dowager Czarina managed to preserve a semblance of prestige, if not of authority, at Serres. But the ‘empire’ was no more. As local rulers, Serbians stayed in the principal cities of Macedonia. There was undoubtedly a Serbian element in the village population. Many villagers, however, who acknowledged the overlordship of Stephen’s warriors and other Serbian nobles, did not know then,any more than they know now, to what race they themselves belonged. This has always been the Macedonian problem.
The defeat of the crusaders on the banks of the Maritza in 1363 had been a defensive battle on the part of the Osmanlis. There was no attempt to invade Macedonia. While Murad was occupied in the subjugation of Thrace and of southern Bulgaria, several efforts were made by the Byzantines to come to an understanding with the Serbians. In 1364, the patriarch Callixtus went to Serres to see Stephen’s widow, who had retired to a convent. His purpose was to form an alliance. Soon after reaching Serres, Callixtus succumbed to the hardships of the journey.[324]His effort came to nothing. That Stephen’s son still held to the pretensions of his father and had no intention of treating with the Byzantines, is demonstrated by a bull, dated from Pristina in 1365, in which he calls himself ‘emperor of the Servians and of the Greeks’.[325]
Stephen Urosh, the ‘weakling’, died in 1367.[326]Uglesa, who usurped the kralship of Serres and shared the ‘empire’ of Stephen Dushan with his brothers and fellow adventurers, Vukasin and Goiko,[327]sent an embassy to the patriarch Philotheos declaring that he would annul the bull of 1352, by which Dushan had created an autocephalous Serbian Church,[328]and would cause all the Serbians to return to the Orthodox allegiance.[329]After three years of negotiation, precious time wasted with trifling formalities, the reconciliation and union of the Serbian and Greek Churches was effected.[330]But, if we are to believe the authorities of Orbini, Uglesa, while he was negotiating with the Greeks of Constantinople, had levied tribute upon the Greeks of Salonika, and would have made himself master of Salonika, had not his untimely death prevented the consummation of the great Serbian dream.[331]
At the time of the reconciliation with the Orthodox Church, Uglesa had completed a plan of united action with his two brothers to oppose the Ottoman invasion of Macedonia.[332]Uglesa had been informed that a great army was gathered in Adrianople, which awaited the return of Murad from Bulgaria to commence its march. Four weeks after the negotiations with the Byzantines had been successfully concluded, in the early summer of 1371, the Serbian army reached the Maritza at Cernomen,[333]between Adrianople andSvilen.[334]This battle has been confused with the earlier battle of 1363, and it is impossible to separate the accounts of the two actions.[335]The Osmanlis were again victorious. Uglesa and Goiko were drowned in the Maritza. Vukasin escaped from the field of battle only to be killed by his servant for the gold chain he wore around his neck.[336]
The battle of Cernomen lost Macedonia to the Serbians. The three princes were killed. Most of the Serbian adventurers who had been the companions of Stephen Dushan, and who had profited by his Macedonian conquests, disappeared. The Osmanlis had no opposition in penetrating to the valley of the Vardar.
The monk Isaias of Serres has left a graphic contemporary picture of the Ottoman invasion of Macedonia. ‘Like the birds of Heaven, the Ishmaelites spread themselves over the land, and never ceased murdering the inhabitants or carrying them off into slavery. The country was empty of men, of cattle, and of the fruits of the fields. There was no prince or leader: there was no redeemer or saviour among the people. All faded away before the fear of the Ishmaelites, and even the brave hearts of heroic men were transformed into weak hearts of women. Rightly were the dead envied by the living.’[337]
The invasion of Macedonia in 1371-2 was as rapid and decisive a campaign as the invasion of Thrace had been ten years before. Kavalla, Drama and Serres were occupied by Khaïreddin and Evrenos.[338]Drama and Serres were colonized,their churches converted into mosques, and they soon became the residence of the owners of the timarets granted in eastern Macedonia. These two cities have always been the strongholds of the Mohammedan element in Macedonia, and the residence of the great Moslem landowners. The cities and villages in the valleys of the Mesta and the Struma acknowledged Murad as sovereign, and submitted without resistance to Ottoman laws and Ottoman taxation.[339]Where-ever it was safe to do so, Murad seized the lands, and appointed Ottoman governors. In districts where pacification would have proved a difficult task, he allowed Serbian chiefs to rule as his vassals.
With the same impetuosity that had carried them to the foothills of the Rhodope Mountains after the capture of Adrianople, the Osmanlis crossed the Vardar in 1372, and pushed their arms into Old Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, and even to the mountains of Dalmatia, from which they could see the Adriatic.[340]Other adventurous bands, eager to attract the attention, the commendation, and the rewards of Murad, followed the footsteps of the Catalans, traversed Thessaly, and appeared in the plains of Attica.[341]
Murad destroyed the Macedonian empire of Stephen Dushan without great effort. The Serbians remaining east of the Vardar, nobles and peasants, became Ottoman subjects. In upper Serbia, they rallied round one of theirnumber, Lazar Gresljanovitch, whom they formally elected as successor of the Serbian kings. But Lazar was so weak that he did not take the title of emperor (tzar) or of king (kral), but called himself merely prince (knez).[342]To secure the existence of his kingdom or principality, he sought peace with Murad, and, following the example of the Byzantine and Bulgarian rulers, became vassal and tributary of the Ottoman emir.[343]
Before the end of the year 1372, it was recognized that the Osmanlis had come into the Balkans to stay. The conquest of Macedonia east of the Vardar, following so closely upon the subjugation of southern Bulgaria and the completion of the Thracian conquest, gave to Murad a preponderant position in the Balkan peninsula. The Byzantine emperor and the Bulgarian and Serbian princes were his tributaries. Wallachia, Bosnia, Albania, Epirus, Thessaly, Attica and the Peloponnesus were now on the confines of the Ottoman Empire, and menaced by Ottoman invasion.
In Europe, Murad was credited with having the intention of invading Hungary. It was reported that he had made an alliance with the Tartars of Russia to attack Hungary. The Tartars were to cross the Carpathians by way of Moldavia into Transylvania, while Murad was to work his way up the valley of the Danube.[344]Murad may have dreamed of such a project, just as he had thought of making a supreme effort to enter Constantinople after his first Thracian campaign. But, if he did, he was deterred by the same well-grounded fear of moving too fast. Ten years before he had refrained from committing a fatal error. He would continue to make haste slowly. The early Osmanlis were not raiders.They were empire-builders. They succeeded because they never forgot that their greatest problem was that of assimilation. When they extended their conquests beyond the area of possible assimilation, the period of decay automatically commenced.
The decade following the Macedonian campaign of 1371-2 was spent in ottomanizing southern Bulgaria and eastern Macedonia, in completing the assimilation of Thrace, in reorganizing the army, and in a rearrangement of the system of distributing the timarets or military fiefs. Royal domains were created, and lands were set aside for the support of the mosques and other religious institutions in the form of inalienable endowments (vakufs).
The only move of Murad against the Hungarians was to send five thousand archers, upon the request of the Senate, to help the Venetians in their war against Louis.[345]
After the Macedonian campaign, Murad turned his attention once more to Byzantium. John, when he returned from his unsuccessful trip to Rome, placated Murad by sending his third son, Theodore, to serve in the Ottoman army. In 1373, John, passing over Andronicus, raised Manuel to the imperial purple as co-emperor. The disloyalty of his eldest son in the question of the emperor’s ransom from his Venetian creditors made it natural that John should have selected Manuel to rule with him.
John was not wrong in his estimate of the character of Andronicus. The disappointed prince entered into a conspiracy with Saoudji, son of Murad, who had been entrusted with the command of the Thracian army while his father was occupied in Anatolia. John and Manuel, according to some accounts, were also in the field with Murad. So the moment was propitious. The two sons raised the standard of revolt against their fathers.[346]Murad, who hated his ownson and feared him, crossed immediately into Thrace. The army which was supporting the cause of the young princes abandoned them, and the rebels fled to shut themselves up in Demotika.[347]
Faced with starvation, the inhabitants of Demotika opened the gates of their city to Murad. He exacted a most atrocious vengeance. The garrison were bound hand and foot and thrown into the river. The young Osmanlis and Greeks who had been led astray by the princes, were put to death. Wherever possible Murad compelled fathers to act as executioners of their sons. He set the example by tearing out Saoudji’s eyes, and then cutting off his head.[348]
It has been generally written that Murad intended that the same punishment should be meted out to Andronicus. For the sake of appearances, he did order John Palaeologos to have his son’s eyes put out. But there was no order for execution. John Palaeologos consented to the blinding of Andronicus and of his grandson and namesake, who was only five years old.[349]The operation was not successfully performed. Both Andronicus and his son, even if temporarily blinded, recovered their eyesight. Some have explained this by stating that they were healed by a Genoese physician.[350]There is recorded a beautiful story that Andronicus owed the restoration of his sight to the empress, his mother, who visited him daily in the tower of Anemas and was prodigal in her efforts to heal him. He was in despair for some months, until one day he saw a lizard climbing on a wall.[351]
If Murad had really desired the death or total blindness of Andronicus, he could easily have secured this result. While punishing his own son, however, he saw to it that Andronicus escaped the consequences of the same crime. Here we have a revelation of the far-sightedness and cold-bloodedness of Murad. He killed his own son, because he feared his rivalry. He spared the son of John Palaeologos in order to perpetuate the rivalry between the emperor and his son. To have killed or incapacitated Andronicus would have been from his view-point an act of folly rather than of justice; for Andronicus, brilliant, adventurous, magnetic, was at the same time a worthy exemplar of the name he bore, a name that stood for the acme of unscrupulous conduct and contempt for ties of blood. Murad had only to wait, and history would repeat itself. Internal dissensions in the family of the Palaeologi had made the fortunes of Orkhan. Murad had no intention of getting rid of Andronicus, in whom he saw the means of still further enmeshing the Byzantine emperors.[352]
The Byzantine historians record for the year 1374 another event, which illustrates the power of Murad over John Palaeologos. Manuel, who had resumed the government of Salonika, tried to induce the inhabitants of Serres to recover their liberty by massacring the Ottoman garrison and the Ottoman colonists. Serres, in spite of its prominent place in recent Serbian history, was regarded by the Byzantines (as it still is by the Greeks of to-day) as a city of their compatriots. We have no means of establishing the grounds upon which Manuel believed it possible to restore the Byzantine authority in the country between the Struma and the Vardar. The sequel indicates that it was a wild and unfounded hope of a desperate man, and shows how thoroughly in two years the Osmanlis had become masters of the situation in Macedonia.
Murad, warned in time of the project, sent Khaïreddin pasha with a large army to Serres. The Greeks implicated in the plot were promptly executed, and Khaïreddin moved against Salonika. At the approach of the army, Manuel fled by sea to Constantinople. John Palaeologos was so frightened that he did not dare to receive in the imperial city the beloved son whom he had raised to the dignity of co-emperorship. Manuel then went to Lesbos, whose Genoese lord was his uncle by marriage. But the fear of Murad had reached the Aegaean Sea. The fugitive was turned away. Staking all upon the issue, Manuel went to Brusa and threw himself at Murad’s feet. The time was not yet ripe to destroy the Palaeologi. Murad pardoned Manuel, and sent him back to Constantinople. It was only after Manuel had presented a letter from Murad, confirming the fact that forgiveness had been granted, that the emperor of Byzantium dared to receive his son and heir within the walls of Constantinople.[353]
Pressed by the Venetians, John made in 1375 the mistake of giving them, in exchange for three thousand ducats and the jewels which had been pledged for his debts after the visit to Rome, the island of Tenedos.[354]The strategic importance of Tenedos was so vital that the Genoese could not allow this island to fall into the hands of their rivals. It is an axiom as old as history that who holds Tenedos controls the entrance and exit to the Dardanelles. Until the Black Sea dries up and the wheat-fields of Russia fail to yield, there will be a ‘question of the Straits’.
The news of this grant to Venice meant but one thing to the Genoese. There was feverish activity at Genoa. A fleet was manned, ostensibly for the purpose of maintainingthe Levant colonies against the Turks.[355]Pope Gregory XI allowed the archbishop of Genoa to raise enormous sums by questionable means for equipping and increasing the fleet.[356]Instead of using this fleet to free the Aegaean and the Black Sea from the ever-increasing Turkish pirates, or to attack the Osmanlis, the Genoese admiral sailed to Constantinople. Aided by the Genoese of Galata and by Bayezid, Andronicus had escaped from the tower of Anemas. When the fleet arrived from Genoa, he gave to its admiral a golden bull, awarding Tenedos to Genoa.[357]To Murad he offered his sister in exchange for help.[358]The old story was repeated. After a month’s siege, Andronicus, by the aid of his Ottoman and Genoese supporters, entered Constantinople. His father and his two brothers, Manuel and Theodore, were imprisoned in the Tower of Anemas, where he and his son had been shut up for two years.[359]The foresight of Murad in regard to Andronicus was justified.
While Andronicus was besieging Constantinople, John V managed to send word to the inhabitants of Tenedos to resist the Genoese and give themselves to the Venetians. If this were not possible, they were to abandon the island to the Turks rather than allow the Genoese to occupy it.[360]
After a year’s imprisonment, the emperor, through the wife of his jailer, succeeded in perfecting with Venetians residing in Constantinople a plan of escape. But its execution was deferred when John discovered that his sons, who were confined to separate rooms, could not be included in the rescue. Later, the efforts of the Venetians were renewed upon the solemn promise that Tenedos should revert to Venice. The plot was discovered. The Venetians, availing themselves of the lucky chance that a Venetian fleet hadjust arrived in the Golden Horn from the Black Sea, fled from Constantinople, abandoning John Palaeologos to his fate.[361]Andronicus IV was solemnly crowned in St. Sophia sole emperor of Byzantium.
After two more years of imprisonment,[362]John and his sons succeeded in escaping in June 1379. They got across the Bosphorus, and took refuge with Bayezid, who was again watching the course of events at Scutari. Murad, still playing the game of pitting father against son, drove a hard bargain. Andronicus must be pardoned once more, and given the government of several cities, probably including Salonika.[363]John and Manuel, as a price for freedom and restoration to the imperial throne, agreed to pay an annual tribute of thirty thousand pieces of gold, furnish a contingent of twelve thousand soldiers to the Ottoman army, and surrender to the Osmanlis Philadelphia, the last Byzantine possession in Asia.[364]When the Philadelphians refused to assent to this shameful transaction, John and Manuel joined the Ottoman army and fought against their last Christian subjects in Asia to force upon them the Moslem yoke.[365]
Thus did Murad hold to the lips of John Palaeologos the cup of humiliation, nay, more, of degradation, until he drained the last bitter dregs. We do not need to pass judgement upon John and Manuel. It is sufficient to say that they drank and did not die!
The question of Tenedos brought Venice and Genoa into their most bitter conflict of the century. The Visconti of Milan were allied to the Venetians, while the Hungarians attacked them by land.[366]After initial successes, the greatVenetian admiral Pisani was beaten decisively in 1379. The Genoese captured Chioggia, and held Venice at bay in her own lagoons. It was the timely arrival of Charles Zeno and the fleet from the Levant that saved the Adriatic republic.[367]In 1381, peace was made through the intermediary of Count Amadeo of Savoy, on condition that the Senate surrendered Tenedos to Amadeo, who guaranteed to demolish the fortress within two years. It was also a stipulation of the treaty of Turin that Andronicus IV be recognized as heir to John V.[368]Did the influence of Murad reach as far as the peace negotiations in the capital of far-off Savoy? The Count of Savoy fulfilled his promise. In 1383, the fortifications of Tenedos were rased, and the inhabitants of the island removed to Crete and Negropont.[369]
The war over Tenedos had kept open the Straits, but it helped Murad in an inestimable degree to tighten the grip of the Osmanlis upon Thrace and Macedonia. The Italian republics thought no more of driving the Osmanlis out of Europe. From now on until they themselves see their possessions wrested from them and their commerce in the Levant ruined by the successors of Murad, the Venetians and Genoese are suitors for favours at the door of the tent of the Moslem conqueror.
While the struggle between the Palaeologi and the Venetian war with Genoa and Hungary were strengthening Murad’s position in Europe, he began to turn his attention, for the first time since the expedition against Angora at the beginning of his reign, to the expansion of Ottoman authority in Asia Minor. The antipathy of the South Slavs for the Hungarians,the anarchy among the Serbians, the lack of leadership among the Bulgarians, and the civil strife in the Byzantine imperial family made the period from 1376 to 1381 peculiarly appropriate for initiating a movement against the emirates on the confines of his own state. Murad felt for the moment secure in Macedonia and Thrace. The inhabitants of the conquered countries could do nothing. There were no prospects of a crusade. Through the rapid increase of the Ottoman race during the first fifteen years in Europe, and through the vassalage of the Christian princes, which compelled them to furnish contingents for war, Murad now had money and soldiers to confront his nearer Anatolian rivals.
In 1360, after the capture of Angora and the defeat of the Galatian village chiefs,[370]Murad did not lose his head. He was wise enough to fear an attack on Kermian. Now he had only to threaten, thanks to the prestige and actual power he had gained in Europe. The emir of Kermian was too prudent to risk a war with the son of the rival whom he had despised. In order to preserve his independence and at the same time his pride, he agreed to give his daughter in marriage to Bayezid. The territories which Murad coveted, and was ready to try to take by force, went with her as her marriage portion. It was a munificent dot. The western and northern part of Kermian became Ottoman. The most important city in the new territory was Kutayia, the ancient Cotýaeum, a strategic point of great value. Its remarkable citadel of countless towers is still standing.
The marriage of the emir of Kermian’s daughter to Bayezid was celebrated at Brusa with much splendour. For the first time we hear of the Osmanlis interested in matters of court and luxury. The simple warriors, who had known nothing but the village council and the camp fire, were becoming accustomed to the more formal and more complex life of the Greek cities. With every victory and everyextension of sovereignty, with every addition to the army and to the body of civilian officials, the distance between the sovereign and his people was widened. The ceremonial evolved by the Ottoman court was that of Byzantium; the customs of the higher classes, who were just beginning to realize their self-made rank, were Byzantine, even to the veiling of women.[371]The Osmanlis had not yet come into touch with the Arabs or Egyptians. If they received anything from the Persians, it was by way of Constantinople.
The Ottoman occupation of Kutayia was a grave blow to the security of the emirates of Tekke and Hamid. The emir of Hamid saw the hopelessness of a struggle. He compounded with his pride by ‘selling’ to Murad, in 1377, the territory between Tekke, Kermian, and Karamania. Several cities, including Sparta and Kara-Agatch, became Ottoman, but most important of all, Ak Sheïr, which brought the Osmanlis to the frontier of Karamania.
The purchase of this important territory extended the Ottoman state south to the border of Tekke. In 1378, Murad made his only conquest by arms from a rival emir in Asia. He invaded Tekke, and annexed the districts at the south and south-west of the lake region. But he did not cross the mountains to the Mediterranean, so the emir of Tekke still retained Adalia, and Alaya was undisturbed.
For three years Murad devoted his energies to the pacification and assimilation of these slices of Kermian, Hamid and Tekke. But none of the three principalities had been extinguished. And Sarukhan, Aïdin and Menteshe were untouched. There was still much to be accomplished in western Asia Minor. But Murad preferred to return to Adrianople. He would increase his power and prestige in Europe, recruit his armies in the Balkans, and then come once more into Anatolia.
To assure to the Osmanlis their preponderant position in the Balkan peninsula, the possession of three cities was necessary. The capture of Sofia meant the extension of Ottoman sovereignty over Bulgaria to the Danube. Nish was the key to Serbia. Monastir was indispensable, if the Osmanlis intended to be more than raiders west of the Vardar.
In 1380, Murad ordered the advance to the Vardar. Istip was captured, and colonized in the same thorough way as had been done at Drama and Serres. A large army under Timurtash crossed the Vardar, took Monastir by assault through the marshes, and pushed north to Prilep.[372]Monastir and Prilep became frontier fortresses of the empire. The conquest of Macedonia was now complete. These cities were excellent bases of operation against the Albanians to the west and the Epirotes to the south-west.
During the reign of Murad, the Osmanlis did not attempta subjugation of Albania and Epirus. They were, however, invited into these countries by native princes.
Thomas, despot of Janina, used Ottoman mercenaries against the Souliotes in 1382.[373]Two years later, after the assassination of Thomas, the Albanians besieged Janina with Ottoman aid.[374]The civil war that arose around the widow of Thomas prepared the way for the Osmanlis to extend their rule to the Gulf of Arta.
In 1385, Khaïreddin pasha, who had occupied Okrida, the ancient ecclesiastical seat of the Bulgarians, a day’s journey west of Monastir, was invited by Charles Thopia, lord of Durazzo, to aid him in his war against Balsa, the most powerful Frankish prince of Albania. Khaïreddin was glad of the opportunity afforded by this overture. He crossed the mountains to Elbasan, and then turned southward to meet Balsa. The first battle of the Osmanlis in Albania was fought in the salt-wastes of Savra, on the left bank of the river Devol. The Osmanlis faced fighting men who were fully their equals in courage, in resourcefulness, in strength, and in willingness to engage in a hand-to-hand struggle to death. The issue was long in doubt, and the victory costly. Balsa and his ally and guest, Ivanitch, son of krai Vukasin, were killed.[375]The Osmanlis gained one important result from this battle. Albanian renegades joined their army in great numbers.[376]From that day to this the Albanian element in the Ottoman army, especially among its officers, has been a source of strength which cannot be over-estimated.
It is doubtful if the Osmanlis withdrew from Albania, even temporarily, after the battle of Savra; for in 1388 the princess of Valona (Avlona) was so hard pressed by the Osmanlis that she put her domains under the protection of Venice.[377]
In northern Albania, the invaders captured Croia and Scutari in 1386. Scutari was given back by Murad in exchange for the addition of a member of the ruling family of Zenta to his harem. From Croia, also, the Osmanlis withdrew. Murad did not want to excite and alarm Venice at the moment when Philippe de Mézières was preaching so vigorously and successfully a new crusade.[378]
The plain in which four tributaries join the Isker is the very heart of the Balkan peninsula, almost equidistant from the Adriatic, the Aegaean, and the Black Sea. Here the three great ranges of the West Balkan, the Central Balkan, and the Rhodope Mountains converge, and three important rivers find their source. The Struma flows south through Macedonia, the Isker north-east through a canyon of the Balkans into the Danube, and the Nisava north-west into the Morava. In the middle of the southern border of this plain, under the shadow of a lofty mountain, lies Sofia.
The way to Sofia had been opened by the battle of Samakov. But its occupation was not the next logical step to Murad until the valleys of the Vardar and the Struma had been conquered. The occupation of Sofia was a temptation splendidly resisted in 1371. In 1381 it was a necessity. For it opened the path to trans-Balkan Bulgaria and to Serbia, and Murad was now ready to extend his conquest to the Danube by way of the Isker and the Morava.
The Slavic chronicles are silent concerning the fall of Sofia. From the late Ottoman accounts, it would seem that the city was intermittently besieged for several years. Then a young Osmanli, who had entered the city as refugee, and had become the confidant and falconer of its commandant, betrayed him. He urged his master in a chase some distance in front of his followers, and fell upon him in a mountain gorge. The commandant was bound to his horse, and taken a prisoner to Ishtiman. Indje Balaban, son of the general ofOsman who had besieged Brusa for ten years, brought his army from Philippopolis, and paraded the commandant, garrotted, under the walls of Sofia. The Bulgarians, discouraged and despairing of aid, surrendered.[379]We can be certain neither of the name of the Bulgarian commandant nor of the date of the surrender. But it was probably in 1385.[380]Bulgaria up to the main Balkan range was now Ottoman territory.
The fall of Nish, in the summer of 1386, marked the next extension of Murad’s empire.[381]The Serbians did not yieldwithout a struggle, as the Bulgarians had done. Nish was taken by assault. Lazar secured peace only by increasing the amount of his tribute and adding one thousand cavaliers to his contingent in the Ottoman army.[382]
Nish was sixteen days by carriage from Constantinople. Murad was now master of four-fifths of the great Roman highway from Belgrade to the Bosphorus; for Tchorlu, Demotika, Adrianople, Philippopolis, Ishtiman, Sofia, and Nish were in his hands. Nish was also the point where the road from Belgrade to Salonika turned southward. Practically all but the last day’s journey of the road across the Balkan peninsula from Constantinople to Durazzo on the Adriatic was Ottoman territory. In Asia Minor, Murad held the ancient highway from Constantinople to Trebizond as far as Angora, and the road which the pilgrims and Crusaders, Jerusalem-bent, had travelled as far as Ak Sheïr. From Angora to Nish took twenty-five days; from Constantinople to Durazzo seventeen days.[383]Twenty-five years before, when Murad came to the chieftainship of the Osmanlis, the Ottoman dominions could have been traversed in any direction in three days.
The treaty concluded between the Byzantines and Genoese in 1386 affords a striking illustration of Murad’s power after the Nish campaign. This treaty, whose text has been preserved, was signed by John and Andronicus Palaeologos, the podesta of Pera, and the Genoese ambassador. John Palaeologosbound himself to live in peace with his son Andronicus, and to move his army against all the enemies of Genoa ‘except Morat bey and his Turks’. The Genoese in turn promised to defend Constantinople ‘against all enemies of whatever nationality except the said Morat bey and his Turks, who acted according to the will of the said Morat bey’! Throughout the treaty, Murad is carefully excepted on both sides.[384]
Genoa made a formal treaty with Murad in 1385. Favours were granted to the Osmanlis who did business in Pera, in return for liberty to Genoese merchants to reside and conduct business in the states of Murad. The treaty recalls the friendship of the Genoese for Orkhan, and speaks of Murad as ‘the magnificent and powerful lord of lords, Moratibei, grand admiral[385]and lord of the admirals of Turchie’.[386]But in the very next year Genoa secretly joined an offensive league with Cyprus, Scio (Chios) and Mytilene ‘against that Turk, son of unrighteousness and evil, and also of the Holy Cross Morat bey, and his sect, who are attempting so grievously to attack the Christian race’.[387]
In the first year of Murad’s reign, the Venetian energy had become so sapped by prosperity and luxury that the Senate passed a sumptuary law.[388]The recent triumph overGenoa had given them a belief in their invincibility. Their self-sufficiency, and the growing disinclination to lay aside the pen and ledger for the sword and shield, were alarming symptoms of decay. The lesson of the Genoese at Chioggia was needed to teach the Venetians that the struggle for existence never ceases.
In spite of their vital interest in the development of the Levant, and the power that their wealth gave them in a generation when fighting strength could be purchased so easily, Venice made no effort to oppose the progress of Ottoman conquest. On the contrary, in 1368, long before an invasion of Albania was imminent, the Senate negotiated with the Osmanlis for the reddition of Scutari. This project was again taken up in 1384, in a tentative way, during negotiations to fix the customs-duties of Venetian merchant-vessels.[389]Following the example of Ragusa and Genoa, Venice concluded, in 1388, a commercial treaty with Murad.[390]
The traffic of the Italian republics with the Moslems had been denounced by Gregory X in 1272, by Boniface VIII in 1299, by Urban V in 1366, and by Gregory XI in 1372.[391]In vain the popes exhorted; in vain they threatened interdict and excommunication; in vain they held up to execration the abominable slave traffic. Trade interests alone decided the policies of the maritime cities. Their citizens never hesitated to cut each other’s throats for the opportunity of selling goods. To them the crusades were a purely commercial proposition. More than once the archives of Venice reveal the approval of the Senate upon the action of merchants who warned Moslem princes of the crusaders’intentions. Guillaume d’Adam declared with reason that the Saracens maintained their supremacy in the Holy Land and Egypt through the support of the traders, who furnished them with Christian slaves to keep up their armies.[392]Genoa passed laws in 1315 and in 1340 against the slave traffic of the Black Sea,[393]but these laws were never enforced.[394]
Venice and Genoa turned a deaf ear to papal remonstrances and to papal appeals for aid in crusades against the Osmanlis. For the sake of preserving their commerce, they flattered Murad, and aided him, indirectly at least, to subjugate the Christians of the Levant. Their children of the third and fourth generation paid to the descendants of Murad the penalty of their greed. They lost their commerce in trying to save it.
It was not until 1387 that Murad believed himself strong enough to measure arms with Karamania. His son-in-law, Alaeddin, whose name is reminiscent of the earlier glory of Konia, was emir of the most powerful state in Anatolia. The Ottoman historians have represented Alaeddin’s resistance of the encroachment of the Osmanlis, and his defiance of Murad, as rebellion, and have been blindly followed in this by most of the European historians. Such a conception of the conflict between the Osmanlis and the Karamanlis is far from the truth. There is no record of when and how Karamania had become subject to Murad. In fact, up to 1387, Murad had not yet extended his sovereignty over all of Tekke and Hamid, the states which bordered Karamania on the west.
Neither Alaeddin himself nor his predecessors had ever acknowledged the suzerainty of the house of Osman. From the standpoint of the Karamanians, the Ottoman emir was not evenprimus inter paresof the Turkish princes in Anatolia. Osman had probably not been known by name to the founder of the house of Karaman. Orkhan never came into direct contact with the Karamanlis. Murad, at the beginning of his reign, had indirectly gained an advantage over the emir of Karaman in the successful issue of his expedition against the Phrygian chiefs and the capture of Angora. Fifteen years later his accessions of territory in Kermian, Hamid, and Tekke brought him into rivalry with Alaeddin. But it was the prestige and power gained by Murad in European conquests that made him a rival to be reckoned with. The first acknowledgement of his growing strength was the marriage alliance between the houses of these two emirs. Alaeddin, however, did not by this marriage constitute himself a vassal of his father-in-law. The letters of Murad to Alaeddin in the collection of Feridun are couched in terms of equality.
Murad rallied his army at Kutayia for the first great Ottoman campaign in Asia. He could not muster enough Osmanlis to undertake so formidable a feat as the invasion of Karamania, and had to rely upon large contingents of Greeks and Serbians, who were sent to him, in accordance with their conventions, by his vassals, the emperor John and the kral Lazar.[395]The Balkan soldiers, under the command of Bayezid, formed the left wing of the Ottoman army.
Battle was joined in the great plain before Konia, which has so often been the scene of Ottoman triumphs and reverses. The Ottoman historians declare that Alaeddin was defeated, largely through the bravery of Timurtash, and represent the battle of Konia as a decisive victory, which ‘put down the rebellion’. According to them, Alaeddin‘sued for peace’. Murad ‘forgave’ him, because he was moved by the tearful pleadings of his daughter, Alaeddin’s wife.[396]
But the net result of the costly expedition was the reconciliation of the two emirs. The only result recorded by the Ottoman historians is that Alaeddin kissed Murad’s hands! Murad withdrew to Kutayia without annexing any portion of the Karamanian emirate, without booty, and without promise either of tribute or military contingents for the European wars. Had Murad actually accomplished more than merely holding his own in the battle of Konia, the campaign would not have ended so profitlessly. Granting the Ottoman victory, Murad’s conduct after the battle is inconsistent with his whole life and character. We are compelled to discard the story of a decisive victory. It must be that Murad, who had been able to reduce to vassalage the Byzantines, the Bulgarians, and the Serbians, found himself unable, even with the help of his European allies, to break the power of this rival Anatolian emir.
During the Karamanian campaign, Murad adopted the policy of treating non-combatants in a friendly fashion. Strict orders were given to refrain from violence and looting. Murad hoped to win the Karamanlis by kindness, and to pave the way for a later assimilation. It was the first campaign undertaken against fellow Moslems. The Serbian contingent, who cared nothing for the success of this policy, and who claimed that they had been promised booty in return for their services, did not obey the order. A number of them were summarily executed.[397]
When the survivors returned to their homes in the spring of 1388, they complained bitterly of the way they had been treated, and declared that service in the Ottoman army, for the Christian all risk and no gain, was nothing less than a slavery leading to death. This discontent gave Lazar the opportunity for which he had long been looking. He decided to profit by the resentment of the Serbians against Murad,[398]and make a supreme effort to free Serbia from the menace of the Ottoman yoke, which had grown very real since the capture of Nish.
The Slavs of upper Serbia and of Bosnia realized the imminence of an Ottoman invasion, and they were now ready—or at least they appeared to be ready—to rally around Lazar. Up to this time the Serbians had never recognized Lazar as the leader of the race.
The pan-Serbian alliance was made possible by the adhesion of Tvrtko, kral of Bosnia. He had come into prominence after the battle of Cernomen as a supporter of Lazar against the sons of Vukasin and other Serbian chieftains who were dissatisfied with the election of Lazar. But in return for his aid, he got under his control a large part of upper Serbia, including Milesevo, which was the burial-place of St. Sava, apostle to the Serbians. In 1376, he crowned himself ‘king of Bosnia and Serbia’ on the tomb of St. Sava, placing upon his head the two crowns, and changing his name to Stephen. Neither Louis of Hungary nor Lazar was consulted by Tvrtko, and he took no measures to secure their assent to his pretensions. After his coronation, he conquered Cattaro, and fought successfully with Balza of Albania.[399]
In 1383 Tvrtko had become so powerful on the Dalmatian coast that the Senate recognized him as ‘king of Serbia,Bosnia and the Riviera’, and bestowed upon him the privilege of Venetian citizenship.[400]It was evidently the intention of Venice to favour Tvrtko as an opponent to Louis of Hungary, who had himself taken in 1382 the title of ‘king of Serbia, Dalmatia and Bulgaria’.[401]Venice lost her grip upon or interest in the east coast of the Adriatic for a few years immediately following the treaty of Turin. We have already seen how in 1384 the Senate professed a willingness to treat with the Osmanlis on the basis of giving up Scutari. In 1385 they became indifferent to currying further the favour of Tvrtko, and sent an embassy to press him for the payment of money due to Venice.[402]Tvrtko continued to consolidate his position on the Dalmatian coast, until the capture of Nish influenced him to aid Lazar against the Osmanlis.
It was not a moment too soon. An Ottoman army had already crossed the Vardar and was marching forward for the invasion of Bosnia. Thirty thousand Serbians and Bosnians under the command of Tvrtko and Lazar met the invading army at Plochnik, in the valley of the Toplika. Of twenty thousand Osmanlis scarcely one-fifth escaped death or captivity.[403]The Bosnians successfully opposed two other Ottoman armies at Rudnik and Biletchia.[404]
A delirium of joy spread through the Slavic population of the Balkans at the news of the battle of Plochnik. The uninterrupted chain of thirty years of Ottoman victories had been broken. The slavery and horror of military service with the Osmanlis, price of their vassalage, so vividly depicted by the survivors of the Karamanian campaign, had made the Slavs desperate. This victory, following closely upon the moral revolt against the Osmanlis, gave them hope.The South Slavs are like children in the extremes of their emotions. Tears to laughter—laughter to tears: easily despairing, as easily hopeful, and from as little cause. The slightest reverse brings distrust in their ability to cope with forces that have once successfully opposed them. Slight success brings overwhelming confidence, and leads to colossal mistakes of judgement. With this trait of character is coupled an intuitive distrust of one’s neighbour, of the disinterestedness of his motives, and an intuitive resentment of ‘the other fellow’ doing something better than you do it. This makes impossible solidarity andesprit de corps. The South Slavic character explains the series of events which brought the Serbians to their final and irretrievable disaster.
Around Lazar the Serbian nobles rallied as they had never rallied before. Kral Tvrtko of Bosnia, George Kastriota of Albania, and the minor princes of Albania and Serbia joined in an alliance against the Osmanlis. The two remaining successors of Alexander of Bulgaria, Sisman and Ivanko, son of Dobrotich, threw off their allegiance to Murad, and promised contingents for the common struggle. The prince of Wallachia assured Lazar of the co-operation of the Rumanians.
Venice, fearing lest Murad fall upon the Peloponnesus to seek vengeance for the defeat of Plochnik, tried to form a league of all the Greek and Frankish lords in the Morea and central Greece.[405]As far as one can judge from the records, the effort of Venice was an intention rather than an action. It did not get beyond the paper stage. The Senate gave to the Slavic alliance no encouragement more substantial than words. On the other hand, some of the border nobles of the Hungarian banats, of their own volition, informed Lazar of their intention to co-operate in an offensive movement against the Osmanlis.
Murad did not set his army in motion against the Serbians immediately after the disaster at Plochnik. There was none of that feverish haste which had characterized his movements when he received the news of the Serbian and Hungarian crusade in 1363. For while the victory had aroused in the Balkan Christians a determination that they must drive the Osmanlis out of Europe, and a feeling that they could accomplish this end, its immediate result had been merely to repel the projected Ottoman invasion of Bosnia. Ali pasha disposed of sufficient forces to hold the conquests that had already been made. Murad had come to know the people with whom he was dealing. It was not so much to recruit his own army as to give the allies time to fall out with each other that Murad remained in Asia during the early months of 1388. To strike in the first flush of enthusiasm and buoyant hope would have brought him face to face with a united enemy. If he waited, he knew from past experience with the Balkan princes that the poison of jealousy would permeate the ranks of his ostensibly united enemies. The Osmanlis never made a mistake of judgement in dealing with Balkan alliances until the autumn of 1912.
Far from planning an offensive movement against the Serbians, Murad allowed Evrenos of Yanitza to lead a band of Ottoman mercenaries into the Morea, at the invitation of Theodore Palaeologos, to support the authority of the Byzantine Empire against the Frankish barons.[406]At the same time he ordered Ali pasha to cross the Balkans into northern Bulgaria.
Ali pasha started from Adrianople in the spring of 1388 with thirty thousand men to complete the conquest ofBulgaria. He crossed the Balkans by the pass north of Aïtos, which has ever since been called by the Osmanlis Nadir Derbend from the neighbouring town of Nadirkeuy.[407]Provadia was taken by surprise in the night. Shuman and the villages around it were next conquered. After an unsuccessful attack upon Varna, the Osmanlis retraced their steps through Provadia and Shuman, following the line of the modern railway from Varna to Sofia. Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria, capitulated after a short struggle.
Sisman withdrew to the Danube through the valley of the Osma, and shut himself up in the fortress of Nicopolis. Owing to the ease of provisioning from the river side, it was impossible to starve him out. Ali pasha was compelled to call upon Murad, who had just crossed over from Asia to Thrace. When Murad arrived before Nicopolis, Sisman sued for peace. The conditions of Murad, that he pay the tribute due from the previous year and allow an Ottoman garrison to occupy the fortress of Drster as gage of future good conduct, were gladly accepted.
No sooner had Murad started southward than Sisman decided upon a final desperate resistance. He refused to give up Drster. But he had forgotten that Ali pasha was master of Shuman and the route to Varna. The Osmanlis took Drster by storm. Many villages along the Danube between Rustuk and Nicopolis fell into the hands of the Osmanlis. Ali pasha besieged Sisman for a second time in Nicopolis. The revelation of his own weakness and of the strength of the Osmanlis was a crushing blow to Sisman. He surrendered without conditions, and was taken, with his wife and children, to Murad’s camp. For reasons which the chroniclers do not indicate, Sisman was able to secure forgiveness and restoration to his former position as vassal prince of Bulgaria. But the Osmanlis were now installed in north-central Bulgaria up to the Danube River. Shumanand Nicopolis were Ottoman fortresses. Sisman had been rendered impotent to give effective aid in the great alliance.[408]
Not all the Christians were loyal to the cause of Balkan freedom. In their conquest of the Balkan peninsula, it is remarkable that the Osmanlis never fought a battle without the help of allies of the faith and blood of those whom they were putting under the Moslem yoke. At the beginning of this chapter, it has been shown that there is no historical basis for the assertion that the Osmanlis conquered the Balkan states by the use of the janissaries. But they did have Christian aid of a far more powerful kind than the janissaries could have given them. The old fiction of the janissaries won for the Balkan people the sympathies of western Europe. The truth concerning the Christian aid which the Moslem conquerors received alienates rather than wins our sympathies.
When, in the spring of 1389, Murad found himself ready to exact vengeance for Plochnik, and started from Bulgaria on his punitive expedition, he was joined by Constantine of Kustendil, by the Serbian Dragash, to whom he had given Serres as fief, and even by the sons of Vukasin, the Serbian kral who had been killed in 1371 at Cernomen.[409]Balsa, prince of Zenta (upper Albania), postponed his march to join the allies, and entered secretly into correspondence with Murad through a Serbian nobleman in the Ottoman camp. Lazar knew of this treachery. He knew also that some of his own lieutenants had in all probability arranged to sell him out to the Ottoman emir.[410]
Kossovapol, the plain of the blackbirds, is the name given to the valley of the Sitnika River (an upper tributary of the Morava) west of Pristina and south of Mitrovitza.[411]Here the decisive battle for Serbian independence was fought on June 20, 1389.[412]
Serbian chronicles state that Murad had enjoined upon his soldiers that they should neither destroy nor sack the rich castles, villages, and cities of this region after the battle. Only four castles in all were destroyed.[413]This command shows that Murad was confident of the outcome. He was fighting for the possession of this country, for the wealth and the prestige that it would give him. He had no intention of destroying what he knew would be his to enjoy, nor did he desire to alienate the Serbian peasantry by unnecessary harshness. Here, as elsewhere, new Osmanlis rather than Ottoman subjects were thedesiderata: they could be won only by kindness. Since the clemency of the Osmanlis in dealing with the vanquished after the battle is frankly recorded by the Serbians themselves, we cannot doubt that the wise and far-seeing provisions of the conqueror were carried out.
Of Kossova much has been written. It was the culminating event in that legendary period of Serbian history which had begun fifty years before with the exploits of Stephen Dushan. Lazar, Serbian chieftain with no long line ofroyal ancestors behind him, with no great weight of authority among his contemporaries, who began his career by craven submission to Murad and, after eighteen years in which no deed to his credit is recorded, survived a crushing defeat to be executed on the field of battle—this is the Charlemagne of Serbian poetry. On the anniversary of Kossova, the Serbians pray for his soul. As a saint, he gets many more candles at his shrine than his namesake of Bethany who was raised from the dead. Such is legend in history. But what amazes one is the curious fact that the very folksongs that glorify Saint Lazar and lament Kossova reveal a frank and true picture of the events, and prove how little warrant there is for the legend!
The Serbians despaired of their cause before the battle. The enormous number of the enemy dismayed them.[414]Rumours of treachery were current in the allied camp. Their lack of courage, and the spirit of distrust of each other’s good faith, is strikingly voiced in the oration of Lazar at a banquet the evening before the battle. He pleaded for a courage and confidence which he himself did not feel. He openly accused his son-in-law, Milosh Obravitch, of treason. Gloom and hopelessness had settled over the Serbian camp, reflected from leaders to the common soldiery. The battle was already lost. For victory is never won by those who feel that they are going to lose.[415]
The battle was begun by the Osmanlis. Murad sent forward an advance guard of two thousand archers.[416]The allies responded with a charge in which the left wing of theOttoman army was broken through by Lazar. For a while the issue seemed in doubt. Bayezid held out against the impetuosity of the Serbians, but the Osmanlis made no attempt to take the offensive. At this critical juncture, when the battle was by no means decided, Vuk Brankovitch, another son-in-law of Lazar, quietly withdrew from the field with twelve thousand men. This desertion, which had probably been arranged for with Murad, so weakened the Serbians that they broke and fled. Lazar and many of his leading noblemen, and thousands of his soldiers, were taken prisoners. It was not a fight to the bitter end.[417]
Murad won the battle of Kossova at the cost of his own life. From the story which Clavijo de Gonzáles heard fifteen years later, one might infer that Murad was killed in the course of the battle, and that the fighting was renewed around his body.[418]It was then that Bayezid cut down Lazar with his own sword. Pray declared that the two sovereigns were mortally wounded in a personal combat.[419]The Ottoman historians believed that Murad met his death when walking across the field after the battle. A wounded Serbian soldier, who was believed to be dead, rose with a supreme effort to his knees and thrust his sword into Murad as he passed.
According to the Serbian songs, whose testimony the Byzantine historians corroborate, and whose story has been followed by some Osmanlis as well, Murad was assassinated after the battle, or perhaps while the battle was in progress, by Milosh Obravitch. Stung by the unjust accusation of treason in the speech of Lazar on the eve of the battle,[420]Milosh determined to prove his loyalty beyond any question. He got through the Ottoman ranks as a deserter, of whom there must have been many on that fatal day. His claim of high rank, which was attested by his princely bearing, secured for him an audience with Murad. When he was face to face with the emir, he plunged his dagger into the destroyer of his country’s liberties. It is a commentary on the Serbian character that this questionable act has been held up to posterity as the most saintly and heroic deed of national history.
In the seventeenth century it was believed, and this belief has been reproduced as a fact by some modern writers on the Ottoman Empire, that the custom of holding a foreign ambassador’s arms when he entered the presence of the sultan, originated from a regulation to prevent the recurrence of such a crime.[421]Like many other Ottoman customs, however, this consistorial ceremony is found among the usages of the Byzantine court,[422]and has persisted in some oriental courts to the present day. It has been explained on the ground that ‘a stranger before the sovereign is so overwhelmed by the effulgence of his rays that he cannot stand without support’.[423]
The statements of the numbers engaged in the battle of Kossova are so conflicting that it is impossible to determine how many men took part in the action, or which side was the stronger. The Serbian folksongs dwell upon the tremendous number of the enemy, while the Ottoman historians report that the Osmanlis mustered so few in comparison with the reported strength of the Serbians that there was serious question before the battle of the advisability of taking so great a risk as to engage a foe whose numerical advantagewas so marked. Including the prisoners, who were massacred when Murad’s death was learned by the soldiers, the Serbians calculated their loss at seventy-seven thousand killed, while only twelve thousand of the Osmanlis fell. One important fact we do know. The loss of life during the battle and subsequent massacre on the part of the Serbian nobility was so great that the nation, for the third time within thirty years, found itself without leaders.
Tvrtko hurried away from Kossova so fast that he did not realize how overwhelming had been the defeat. In fact, when he learned of the death of Murad, he wrote to Florence announcing the glorious victory won under his leadership, and the death of the arch enemy of Christendom.[424]The Florentines, therefore, celebrated the news of Kossova with aTe Deumin the cathedral. Either this perverted account also reached France, or too great significance was placed upon the death of Murad, for Charles VI went to Notre Dame to render thanks to God in all solemnity for what had happened at Kossova![425]The Serbians themselves were not deceived. To them, Kossova was the death-knell to independence. The Hungarians, also, awoke immediately to a sense of the danger that threatened them.