It certainly did. Bayezid, who had been directing the siege of Constantinople, knew no more about the khalif and the sultan and the ‘far-off countries of the miscreants’ than did Froissart. Neither he nor his ancestors had ever had dealings with the Moslem princes of Asia. Persians,‘Saracens’ and Egyptians were lacking in his army. He gathered together his trained warriors, called upon his Christian vassals for their quotas, and set forth over the well-known route to the Danube. From several recent campaigns, he and his soldiers were thoroughly familiar with the country through which they passed, and in which the people were less afraid of him than they were of the Christians who had come to deliver them. When, after two weeks’ march, he pitched his camp near Nicopolis, he was simply returning to a place where twice before the Ottoman arms had been victorious.
Sigismund was dismayed at the prompt appearance of Bayezid with an army which was reported to him in numbers varying from one hundred and twenty thousand to two hundred thousand. In spite of his brave words to the chevaliers, Sigismund knew the worth of the Osmanlis as fighting-men, and that they could not be brushed aside by a few impetuous cavalry charges. So he begged Jean de Nevers and his companions to consult with him, and to formulate a definite plan of action. He suggested, and won over to this opinion the Sieur de Coucy, who was the most experienced warrior among the chevaliers, that a reconnaissance be made first of all to determine Bayezid’s position and intentions. Then, if Bayezid was actually moving to the attack, or on the point of moving, it would be the part of wisdom for the westerners to allow the foot-soldiers of Hungary and the Wallachians to sustain the first attack. The valiant horsemen and western mercenaries should form a second line, whether it be in attack or defence.
The chevaliers were furious at this suggestion. Philippe d’Artois, Comte d’Eu and Grand Constable of France, who knew Sigismund best from longer association with him, suspected him of an attempt to rob the chevaliers of the glory of defeating Bayezid. ‘Yes, yes,’ he cried, ‘the king of Hungary wants to have the flower of the day and the honour.We have the advance-guard, and already has he given it to us. So he wants to take it away from us and have the first battle. Whoever believes in this, I shall not.’ Then turning to the chevalier who carried his banner, he called out, ‘Forward banner, in the name of God and of Saint George, for they will see me to-day a good chevalier’.[531]This action was contagious. Without knowing where the enemy was, without thinking where or how far they were going, without waiting to agree upon a concerted action with the bulk of their army, the French, German, and English noblemen rushed forward to make the last charge of European chivalry against the followers of Mohammed.
The outposts of Bayezid, taken by surprise, were cut down. The Osmanlis who surrendered were massacred without mercy. Imagining that they were winning a great victory, and that they were breaking through the only obstacle between them and the Holy Sepulchre, the chevaliers rode to death and disgrace. In the picturesque language of Rabbi Joseph, ‘they said “Aha! aha!”. But their joy was quickly gone, for the horsemen of Bayezid and his hosts and chariots came against them, in battle array, like the moon when she is new.’[532]
The chevaliers had put all their strength of man and horse into the charge. Their swords ran blood. They thought the day was theirs, when suddenly they found themselves confronting the army of Bayezid. As was his invariable custom, Bayezid had sent out to meet the attack of the chevaliers, when he heard that they had commencedthe battle, his worthless untrained levies to be cut down by the enemy and exhaust their strength. With deliberation he drew his trusted divisions in battle array in an advantageous position, which he had ample time to choose. His soldiers were intact and fresh. The Ottoman bowmen aimed their arrows at the horses of the chevaliers. Unhorsed and quickly surrounded by sixty thousand soldiers, there was nothing for the proudest warriors in Europe to do but surrender to the foe whom they had despised.
As far as the chevaliers were concerned, the battle was over in three hours. Jacques Bourbon, admiral of France, lay on the field with the banner of Notre-Dame clasped tightly in his hands. Guy de la Trémouille, Philippe de Bar, and others of the noblest blood of France, Flanders, Bavaria, and Savoy were killed in the charge. But the greater part of the high-born auxiliaries of Sigismund were prisoners in the camp of Bayezid. So handsomely were they accoutred that the Osmanlis believed them all to be princes of the Occident, and saved them for Bayezid to determine their fate.[533]
When Sigismund learned that the chevaliers had disregarded his advice, and had already ridden forth to find the army of Bayezid, he was greatly worried, for he knew the tactics of Bayezid, and feared the worst. He said to the grand master of Rhodes, ‘We shall lose the day through the great pride and folly of these French: if they had only believed me, we had forces in plenty to fight our enemies’.[534]
From a comparison of the chronicles, one does not get a clear idea of what happened after the failure of the assault of the chevaliers. A battle in which the bulk of the forceson either side were engaged undoubtedly followed. But it is impossible to state whether Sigismund followed up the way opened for him through the Ottoman lines by the French charge, or whether the Hungarians and their auxiliaries were on the defensive. Froissart and Morosini infer that Sigismund did not attempt to fight after the failure of the chevaliers, and it was believed in western Europe that the disaster of Nicopolis was due to the failure of Sigismund to support the chevaliers rather than to their own folly. The Hungarians and their king were bitterly denounced by the French survivors.[535]On the other hand, Schiltberger, who took part in the battle, declares that the king of Hungary was advancing in force, and that Bayezid was preparing to retreat, when the Osmanlis received sudden and substantial support from the krai of Serbia.[536]
The Serbians were so completely under Ottoman control after the battle of Kossova, that they made no attempt to throw off the yoke of Bayezid.[537]In Asia Minor as in the Balkan peninsula, against the Karamanians and Tartars as against the crusaders, at Nicopolis as at Angora, the Serbian auxiliaries were faithful supporters of Bayezid. Nicopolis was certainly won with the aid of the Christians of the Balkan peninsula. It was not only the Serbian reinforcements which won the day for the Osmanlis. As soon asMircea of Wallachia saw how the battle was going, he quickly withdrew from the field, and got his forces across the Danube before the panic started.
Whether the action of Mircea was actuated by treasonable motives or not is open to debate. He may have honestly believed that it was a case ofsauve qui peut. If so, his action was not more reprehensible than that of Sigismund himself. The future Holy Roman Emperor, who was to play so important a part in the history of Europe during the early decades of the fifteenth century, forgot his bold words of the previous week: ‘And if the Sultan, with all the strength he can muster, comes before us, we shall fight him, and there will be no going away without the battle, in God’s pleasure.’ Sigismund and the grand master of Rhodes hurried to the Danube, got away in a small boat,[538]and boarded one of the galleys of Monicego, the Venetian admiral. Abandoning his army and his allies to their fate, the king of Hungary sailed for home. He had the shame, if he felt it at all, when passing through the Dardanelles, of seeing the chevaliers and other prisoners of Nicopolis paraded before his eyes. One of these prisoners wrote: ‘The Osmanlis took us out of the tower of Gallipoli, and led us to the sea, and one after the other they abused the king of Hungary as he passed, and mocked him, and called to him to come out of the boat and deliver his people: and this they did to make fun of him, and skirmished a long time with each other on the sea. But they did not do him any harm, and so he went away.’[539]
Sigismund went to Modon, and then back to Hungary. This was the king who had boasted that he would not onlyturn the Osmanlis out of Europe, but that he had enough lances to support the sky, should it fall upon his army.[540]Although his manhood had been put to the test, and had been found wanting, he was saved to play a great, if unenviable, part in the closing events of the Middle Ages.[541]
After Sigismund’s escape, his great army, which was to redeem the Holy Sepulchre, fled before the Osmanlis. Those who were not killed, or drowned in the Danube, retreated through Wallachia. Froissart describes graphically the hardships of the French, German, English, Scotch, Bohemian, and Flemish crusaders in their painful march across the Carpathian Mountains. The chevaliers could secure a bare sustenance. Their pages and men-at-arms were stripped of their clothes and beaten by the peasants. It was not until they got into western Hungary that they felt themselves safe.[542]
On the day following the battle of Nicopolis, Bayezid rode from his camp to inspect the battle-field.[543]Orders had been given that the bodies of the nobles who had fallen be put in a place apart from the common dead, so that the identity of those who had lost their lives might be ascertained. An especial search for the body of Sigismund was ordered. The Hungarian king was not among the captives: it did notoccur to Bayezid that he had fled. When Bayezid saw how heavy had been his casualties, and learned the story of the massacre of prisoners by the chevaliers after they had ridden through the Ottoman outposts, he could not control his anger. A general massacre of the prisoners was ordered.
Only because Bayezid hoped for a great ransom for the grandson of the French king was Jean de Nevers saved. There was in the suite of the Comte de Nevers a Picard chevalier who knew a little Turkish. Through him Jean was able to communicate with Bayezid, and to save twenty-four chevaliers who would bring heavy ransom. Among these were the Comte d’Eu, the Comte de la Marche, the Sieur de Coucy, Henri de Bar, and Boucicaut. But they were all forced to stand beside Bayezid and watch the massacre of their companions.
Because of his youth, for none under twenty years was killed, Schiltberger was spared to leave a description of this terrible massacre. ‘Then I saw the lord Hannsen Greiff, who was a noble of Bavaria, and four others, bound with the same cord. When he saw the great revenge that was taking place, he cried with a loud voice, and consoled the horse- and foot-soldiers who were standing there to die. “Stand firm”, he said, “when our blood this day is spilt for the Christian faith, and we by God’s help shall become the children of Heaven.” He knelt, and was beheaded together with his companions. Blood was spilled from morning until vespers, and when the king’s counsellors saw that so much blood was spilled and that still it did not stop, they rose and fell upon their knees before the king, and entreated him for the sake of God that he would forget his rage, that he might not draw down upon himself the vengeance of God, as enough blood was already spilled. He consented, and ordered that they should stop, and that the rest of the people should be brought together, and from them he took his share, and left the rest to his people who had made them prisoners. Thepeople that were killed on that day were reckoned at ten thousand men.’[544]
So ended the last crusade.
Immediately after the battle, Bayezid sent part of his army across the Danube to hunt down the fugitives and to punish Mircea. This force was defeated by the Wallachians in the plain of Rovine, and withdrew into Bulgaria.[545]
Other columns mounted the Danube through the Iron Gates, retaking on the way the fortresses captured by the crusaders, and made a raid into Styria. Everywhere the akindjis carried fire and death. The country was laid waste. Peterwardein was burned, and sixteen thousand Styrians were carried off into slavery in Macedonia and Anatolia.[546]
This invasion of Hungary made a deep impression upon the Slavic and Teutonic races, who believed that it was the beginning of a Moslem conquest of central Europe. The flagellants and the dancing processions of the plague days of 1348 and 1359 were revived. For a moment, even the Venetian Senate feared that Bayezid had led in person his army into Hungary, and was engaged in an aggressive movement that might bring the Osmanlis to the head of the Adriatic.[547]
But Bayezid was not carried away by the ease of his victory. He let well enough alone. For the moment, he had absorbing interests in the ransom of his prisoners, the developments in the Greek peninsula, the question of Constantinople, and the temptation to licentious pleasures that had come to him with success.
Bayezid announced his victory from the battle-field to the Kadi of Brusa, and later, from Adrianople, to the Moslem princes of Asia.[548]To the Sultan of Egypt and other rulers he sent gifts of prisoners to corroborate his letters.[549]
The intercession of Jean de Nevers had saved the more illustrious of the surviving French chevaliers. They were taken to Brusa. While not treated royally, they were allowed to hunt, and were given opportunities to see the grandeur of Bayezid.[550]But they were not kept together long. For some months, the heir to the Duchy of Burgundy was separated from his companions, and could talk with them only by the special permission of Bayezid. Some of them were sent to Mikhalitch, where Philippe d’Artois, grand marshal of France, died.[551]Enguerran de Coucy, worn out with anxiety for his family and the disgrace that had cometo him at the close of his brilliant career, soon followed the Comte d’Artois to the grave.
In the meantime, Jacques Helly was sent by Bayezid to Paris to communicate to the Duke of Burgundy and the other relatives of the captives the conditions for their ransom—two hundred thousand pieces of gold, delivered to Bayezid at Brusa. Froissart describes the feeling aroused at Paris by the first news of the disaster. The stories of the survivors were not believed, and the bearers of bad news narrowly escaped hanging or drowning. An order of the king’s council forbade any man to mention Nicopolis. The anxiety of the families of the chevaliers was not set at rest until Jacques Helly reached Paris on Christmas night, three months after the battle. Only then was it known who had been saved for ransom. What was joy to some was a crushing blow to others. Not since the battle of Poitiers had such a calamity come to the noble families of France. There was great lamentation throughout the kingdom. Chief among the mourners was the Duchess of Burgundy, who had lost her three brothers, and whose son was in the hands of Bayezid.[552]
While Jacques Helly was in France, Marshal Boucicaut was given permission to go to Constantinople to try to raise the ransom. He spent the Lenten season of 1397 there without success.[553]The Duke of Burgundy resorted to every expedient to raise the enormous sum demanded by Bayezid. For the ransom of his son ‘great taxes were laid upon all the kingdom, and a large amount of money was gathered and transported to Turkey, which was a great and irreparable loss’.[554]It was not forgotten for many years. A decade later it was used as one of the indictments against the Duc d’Orléans,who met his death through the man he had helped to ransom.[555]
When, a year after the battle of Nicopolis, the money was at last delivered to Bayezid through the intermediation of Gattilusio of Mytilene and the Genoese, Venetian, and Cypriote merchants who traded with the Osmanlis, Bayezid gave the chevaliers their liberty. To the Comte de Nevers, he said: ‘John, I know well and am informed that you are in your country a great lord. You are young, and, in the future, I hope you will be able to recover, with your courage, from the shame of this misfortune which has come to you in your first knightly enterprise, and that, in the desire of getting rid of the reproach and recovering your honour, you will assemble your power to come against me and give me battle. If I were afraid of that, and wanted to, before your release I would make you swear upon your faith and religion that you would never bear arms against me, nor those who are in your company here. But no: neither upon you nor any other of those here will I impose this oath, because I desire, when you will have returned to your home and will have leisure, that you assemble your power and come against me. You will find me always ready to meet you and your people on the field of battle. And what I say to you, you can say in like manner to those to whom you will have the pleasure of speaking about it, because for this purpose was I born, to carry arms and always to conquer what is ahead of me.’[556]
It is not true, however, as one would suppose and as Froissart records, that ‘these lofty words were alwaysremembered by Jean de Nevers and his companions so long as they lived’. The French chevaliers went to Rhodes, and then home by way of the Adriatic. The Comte de Nevers took to himself a title which he had not earned, unless one confuses folly with valour. To the end of his days, he was known asJean sans Peur. He never burned with a desire to wipe out the disgrace of Nicopolis, but spent his whole life as a factional leader in the civil wars of France. After a career which continued as ingloriously as it had begun, he was stabbed to death on the Bridge of Montereau in 1420—tardy vengeance for his own openly acknowledged instigation of the murder of the Duc d’Orléans.
There is recorded the capture of Thebes by the Turks in 1363,[557]and the surrender of Patras in Thessaly to the Osmanlis in 1381.[558]The first Ottoman army, however, to enter Greece went to the Morea in 1388, upon the invitation of Theodore Palaeologos, to support his waning power as despot against the indigenous Greeks and the Frankish lords. The Osmanlis under Evrenos carried devastation everywhere they went, and did little to help Theodore.[559]They were soon recalled by Murad to co-operate in the Kossova campaign. When Theodore was hard pressed, in 1391, by Amadeo of Savoy and the Venetians, he turned again to the Osmanlis. Once more Evrenos came to the Morea, and helped to destroy the coast towns.[560]
After the famous council of Ottoman vassals at Serres, in 1395, Theodore, who was one of the princes summoned by Bayezid to Serres, was compelled to sign the cession of Argos and Monembasia to the Osmanlis. He was then thrown into prison, and Bayezid contemplated having him assassinated. But before the cities could be delivered to the Ottoman emissaries, Theodore escaped, and declared the cession null and void.[561]The first impulse of Bayezid was to send an army upon the heels of Theodore. This punitive expedition was postponed on account of the activity of Sigismund, and the necessity of defending the northern frontiers against the Hungarians.[562]
In the spring of 1397, while Bayezid was superintending the construction of a mosque at Karaferia in Macedonia, he received a visit from the Greek bishop of Salona, who laid before him a formal accusation of adultery, sorcery, and oppression against Helena Cantacuzenos, who had been ruling the Duchy of Salona with her paramour after the death of her husband, Louis Fadrique. The bishop invited Bayezid to enter Greece, depicting to him the wonderful hunting he would have in a country full of game.[563]
The promise of good sport with the falcon was not needed. It had long been Bayezid’s intention to extend his sovereignty into the Greek peninsula. He had against Theodore not only the old count from Serres, but also the complicity of the Morean despot in the Nicopolis crusade. At the head of his army, he set out upon the first Ottoman invasion of Greece. In Thessaly, Larissa, Pharsala, and other strongholds surrendered without striking a blow. For thirty years the Greeks of Thessaly had felt that the Ottoman conquestwas inevitable. When Bayezid crossed the pass of Thermopylae without opposition, Helena hurried to meet him. She offered her principality, her daughter, and herself to the conqueror. Bayezid did not want the duchess. She was set at liberty immediately. But the beautiful grand-daughter of John Cantacuzenos was sent to his harem. The duchy of Salona, in which was the shrine of Apollo, with all of Phocis, Doris, and Locris, was added to Thessaly, and made an Ottoman province.[564]
Bayezid by this time had tired of the campaign. He felt an irresistible call to return to the pleasures of the court. His military interests were beginning more and more to be centred upon an extension of his power in Asia Minor—the policy that was soon to prove his undoing. But there remained Theodore and the Morea to be dealt with. He left Yakub and Evrenos, with an army of fifty thousand, in charge of the invasion of the Peloponnesus.
Yakub struck south to Coron and Modon. The environs of Modon were pillaged and burned. He defeated Theodore at Megalopolis, and forced him to become a tributary of the Osmanlis. In the meantime, Evrenos had held in check the papal mercenaries at Corinth, and had then taken Argos by assault, with a terrible loss of life, and a booty of fourteen thousand male captives. Because the Venetians could so easily reinforce and reprovision it from the sea, the siege of Nauplia was abandoned. The two commanders, when October came, gave their soldiers licence to pillage wherever they could as a reward for their services, and afterwards withdrew to Macedonia.[565]
The population of the historic city of Argos was deported into Anatolia, and Moslem colonies settled in the north-eastern corner of the Peloponnesus. This was part of the general plan of Bayezid after Nicopolis. His successes inAsia Minor had made possible, for the first time, a movement of an unmixed Turkish element from Anatolia into the Balkan peninsula. While these colonists were arriving in Argos, there was a similar immigration to Adrianople, Eski Zagora, Philippopolis, and Sofia.[566]
Bayezid is credited by the Ottoman chroniclers with the capture of the two great cities of Hellenism, Athens and Salonika. Nowhere else than in the Ottoman historians can one find a record of the acquisition of Athens in 1397 by the Osmanlis. If it were true, one would certainly find this event in the Venetian archives, for Venice was particularly interested in Athens at this time.[567]Had the Osmanlis entered Athens, would they have restored it to the Acciajoli family? The fate of Argos in the same campaign makes this unlikely. Athens remained in Christian hands until after the fall of Constantinople.[568]
As for Salonika, one finds authority for its capture by the Osmanlis after the attempt of Manuel to retake Serres,[569]after a four years’ siege, in 1387,[570]and in 1391 by Bayezid himself.[571]But since there is neither record nor explanation of how the city returned to the Byzantines, even the temporary occupation of so rich and important a maritime city, and so strongly defended,[572]during the reigns of Murad and of Bayezid, is hardly possible. For in 1403 Salonika was sold by the Byzantines to the Venetians,[573]and was not captured by the Osmanlis until 1430.
Even if we cannot give to Bayezid the honour of the acquisition of Athens and Salonika, or of the conquest of the Morea, his campaign of 1397 was the beginning of the subjugation of Greece. Important districts had been added to the empire, and a permanent foothold gained in the Morea. The maritime character of the peninsula, however, made impracticable its complete conquest, until the Osmanlis were able to hold their own against the Italians and Greeks upon the sea.
The blockade of Constantinople, in spite of all the concessions that Manuel had made to Bayezid,[574]had become an active and pressing siege before the Nicopolis expedition. In 1394, Bayezid had given orders from Adrianople to pursue the siege vigorously.[575]But it was not until the spring of 1396 that Bayezid contemplated seriously the taking of the city by assault. He was diverted by the coming of the crusaders to Nicopolis. After Sigismund and his allies had been defeated, Bayezid returned to Constantinople and called upon Manuel to surrender the city.
The Constantinopolitans, stunned by the disaster which had attended the Christian arms on the Danube, urged Manuel to yield, in order that they might be free from the calamities that would follow a successful assault. But Manuel had been cheered by the arrival of six hundred chevaliers and a small gift of money from France. He resisted his people, and gave no answer to Bayezid.[576]He married his eldest son John to the daughter of the Russian prince Vassili, whose dowry was in gold pieces.[577]An inventorywas made of the treasures of St. Sophia.[578]Through the Patriarch, Manuel tried to get the Russian and Polish Christians interested in the fate of the seat of orthodoxy.[579]
From Europe came the usual promises of aid. It is a merciful dispensation of Providence that men ground their hopes upon desires rather than upon realities. Manuel was merely human when he continued to receive strength and inspiration from what experience should have taught him were will-o’-the-wisps. Henry of Lancaster was projecting a new crusade;[580]but his energies were very soon directed towards a crown rather than a cross. The Duc d’Orléans, in response to a letter from Manuel to King Charles VI, answered for his insane brother by promising to come in person to the relief of Constantinople. Almost immediately afterwards he accepted rich presents from Bayezid.[581]
Venice, in 1397, urged Manuel and the Genoese of Pera, ‘for the honour of Christianity’ and because the alternative ‘would be to the peril and shame of Christianity’, not to treat with Bayezid. This advice was weakened by a saving clause at the end of the letter to the effect that, if the Constantinopolitans and Perotes did treat with Bayezid, they should include Venice, for ‘it would be too risky for the Venetians to be at war alone with the Turks’.[582]Although Venice sent ten galleys to Constantinople, and Genoa five galleys,[583]the republics followed consistently their policy of flattering Bayezid, and trying to make him believe that their dispositions towards him were altogether friendly.[584]
At the time that he summoned Manuel to deliver Constantinople, Bayezid fortified the gulf of Nicomedia, and builtat Scutari the castle called Guzel Hissar.[585]About the same time, the castle of Anatoli Hissar was built at the mouth of the Sweet Waters of Asia, the narrowest point on the Bosphorus. When Clavijo passed through the Bosphorus, in 1403, he spoke of this castle as strongly built and strongly fortified, in prophetic contrast to the ruined Byzantine fortress directly opposite on the European shore.[586]
Perhaps it was because of the advice of Ali Pasha, who told him that the taking of Constantinople would bring upon him a really effective European intervention, or because he preferred to expend his energies in the Greek peninsula and in Asia Minor, that Bayezid did not carry out his threat to Manuel. These are the common explanations of the failure to follow up the victory of Nicopolis with the extinction of the Byzantine Empire.[587]As far as the Greeks were concerned, the inheritance of the Caesars was his. He had successfully defended against Europe what he had won. Constantinople could have been taken by assault. In fact, from his spies within the city, Bayezid knew that the inhabitants were favourable to surrender, and would probably force the hand of Manuel, if the Osmanlis made a show of beginning the assault. Bayezid must have been deterred from this enterprise, however, by the realization of his inability to hold the city without having the mastery of the sea.
One of Bayezid’s chief claims to greatness as a statesman is the way in which he handled Venice and Genoa. At any time during his reign, the Italian republics could have cut him off from Asia if he were in Europe, or from Europe if he were in Asia. Bayezid was master of most of the Balkan peninsula and of half of Anatolia; but he did not control the path from one portion of his empire to the other. Since he had come to the throne, Genoa had fallen under the influence of France. There was a strong anti-Ottoman sentiment in the Venetian Senate, which at any instant might crystallize into open hostility.[588]Europe was for the moment stirred over the fate of the Nicopolis crusaders. Bayezid knew that this was not the time to take Constantinople.
Then, too, after the great victories of Kossova and Nicopolis, and his successful campaign against Karamania, Bayezid allowed himself to succumb to the insidious temptations that assail the warrior when he passes from the tent to the palace. It was not astonishing that the pleasures of the table and of the harem proved irresistible to him. Bayezid, who had the best qualities of his age, allowed himself to become debauched by indulgence in shameful and unspeakable vices. His brilliant mental and physical qualities began to suffer the inevitable eclipse. His example was contagious. For, as the Osmanlis say, ‘the fish begins to corrupt at the head’.
In April 1398, and again in March 1399, Boniface IX ordered to be preached throughout Christendom a crusade for the defence of Constantinople.[589]His appeals fell on deaf ears. Wenceslaus was approaching the end of his power in the empire, Richard of England was fighting for histhrone, Florence was in a struggle with the Visconti, the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Orleans were disputing the regency in France. Only Venice and Genoa were vitally interested in the fate of Constantinople.
Because Genoa had put itself under the guardianship of the Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI of France, and son-in-law of Duke Giovanni Visconti of Milan, the interests of her Pera colony demanded some attention from the powerful Valois and Visconti families. This made possible the sole response to the appeals of Manuel and the Pope, the expedition of Marshal Boucicaut.
In the summer of 1399, a force of ten thousand Osmanlis, after coming into more or less open conflict with the Genoese of Galata, attempted to enter Constantinople. The defenders were few; for the inhabitants, as at the time of the final siege in 1453, were more likely to be found in the bazaars than on the city walls. They had little desire to prolong a condition which was paralysing their business activities. Clavijo, who visited Constantinople four years later, was informed that the attack failed only because of the lack of skill and energy shown by the Osmanlis.[590]Until they had cannon to help them, the Osmanlis never displayed fighting ability in an assault upon fortifications. At this critical moment, aid arrived from Europe.
Boucicaut was the only one of the prisoners of Nicopolis that accepted the challenge of Bayezid. He did not forget the biting words of the audience at Brusa at the time of their release. On June 26, 1399, with four ships and two armed galleys, he set sail from Aiguesmortes. His force of twelve hundred chevaliers and foot-soldiers had much more cohesion and experience than the volunteers who gathered round Jean de Nevers at Dijon three years before. He was joined at Tenedos by several Genoese and Venetian galleys. After avictory in the Dardanelles over seventeen Ottoman galleys, the first recorded naval combat of the Osmanlis, Boucicaut reached Constantinople ‘just in time to save the city’. He was received with great joy by Manuel, and given the rank of Grand Constable.[591]
For several weeks, Boucicaut and his followers spread terror among the Osmanlis in the Gulf of Nicomedia and the Bosphorus. The Ottoman sailors, no match for the Provençals and Italians, took to cover. An assault on Nicomedia failed, but the fearless marshal made several raids into the interior,[592]and against the Ottoman settlements on the shores of the Marmora and gulfs of Nicomedia and Mudania. His one notable success was against Riva, near the Black Sea entrance of the Bosphorus, on the Asiatic shore.[593]After the castle had been stormed, and the garrison put to the sword, Boucicaut attained the objective of his raid. In the mouth of the river Riva, from which the town takes its name, were hidden the Ottoman galleys and smaller vessels, which had taken refuge there when Boucicaut first appeared in the Golden Horn. All the Ottoman shipping was destroyed by fire.
In order to remove the danger to which Constantinople was subjected by the presence of John Palaeologos, son of Andronicus, at Silivria, constantly intriguing with the Osmanlis, Boucicaut urged Manuel to become reconciledwith his nephew. He went, himself—it was less than a day’s sail—to fetch John to Constantinople.[594]
This intervention of Boucicaut in the quarrels of the Palaeologi was more helpful than his military aid. The expeditions in the neighbourhood accomplished little against Bayezid. The chronicler of Boucicaut would have been astonished had he known that Bayezid considered the exploits of Boucicaut’s chevaliers and sailors of too little importance to notice. Bayezid cared only that the Italian republics did not come out openly against him, and lend to the crusaders the powerful and decisive aid which they could have given. The enterprise of Boucicaut demonstrated, however, the impotence of the Osmanlis on sea, and how easily a united effort of Christendom, or of Venice and Genoa alone, could have limited the activities of Bayezid to either Europe or Asia.
When John had been installed as co-emperor, Boucicaut pointed out to Manuel that his force was exhausted, and that he would have to return to France to find recruits. According to some authorities, this action was due to the inability or unwillingness of Manuel to pay the adventurers of Boucicaut for their services in his behalf.[595]Men of their kidney were not fighting for fun or for a cause, and there was no booty to be had from Ottoman sailors and fishermen. Before he left Constantinople, Boucicaut secured the consent of Venice, Genoa, and the chevaliers of Rhodes to his suggestion that Manuel do homage to Charles VI for his empire. This honourthe advisers of the French monarch refused to accept. They did not want the king of France bound by the obligation of protecting a vassal whose position was so precarious.
Boucicaut did not return. His restless energy found outlet later in Cyprus, where, as French governor of Genoa, he forced the Cypriotes to raise the siege of Famagusta,[596]and in pillaging the Syrian ports, where his adventurers did far more damage to the Italian merchants than to the Saracens.[597]Even had he returned to Constantinople, and with the highest motives personally, his followers would certainly have done the Constantinopolitans more harm than good, as had been the case with the Catalans, and, when money was not forthcoming, have ended by being in open conflict with those of whom they were posing as the defenders.
It was a bitter humiliation for Manuel to share the imperial throne with the nephew whom he hated and distrusted. With him, the case of John was one of ‘like father, like son’, and certainly John had never given the emperor any cause to think that he was more patriotic, more loyal than Andronicus. But there was a strong party in the city in favour of John, and his association in governing Constantinople would remove the pretext of righting a wrong, which Bayezid had so skilfully used to interfere in the politics of what was now no more than a city empire.
When France refused to receive him as a vassal, Manuel decided upon a voyage in person to solicit the intervention of Europe. In spite of his misgivings, he felt that this was the only way of salvation left. His own sons were too young to raise to the purple, and Theodore had his hands full in the Morea. There was nothing to do but to leave the government in John’s care.
On December 10, 1399, Manuel embarked on a Venetian galley to make his supreme appeal to Europe. He stopped at Modon to leave the empress and his sons with Theodore. The despot of the Morea was opposed to the project. He told the emperor how the chevaliers of Rhodes, in conjunction with the Pope, were trying to get possession of the last theme of the empire, and that this scheme would have been successful had it not been for the Greek hatred and fear of the Catholic Church. He declared that Manuel, like their father, was embarking upon a hopeless voyage. Not only that, but he would run a risk of losing his empire entirely by leaving it in charge of John, who was more friendly to Bayezid and the Osmanlis than to his own family and race.[598]
Manuel would listen to no remonstrances, to no arguments. He said that his position was like that of Esther before she went in to the king: ‘If I perish, I perish.’ With that optimism which was one of his most redeeming traits, Manuel bade farewell to his family, and set out for Venice.
In the only city of Europe that could rival his own capital in splendour, he received a reception worthy of the cause for which he had come. The Senate, as usual, promised much. But they had by this time become thoroughly won over to the policy ofquod vi armorum potest fieri, fiat arte et sagacitate, to quote the words of a contemporary record in their archives.[599]At Padua, Vicenza, and Milan, Manuel received an imperial ovation. Giovanni Visconti, shocked at the wretched appearance of the emperor’s suite, gave him money to be used for apparel fitting to the successor of Constantine and his companions.[600]
There was no attempt to arrange a conference withBoniface IX. Manuel, at this stage of his career, could not play the hypocrite so easily as his father had done. In fact, his orthodoxy was beyond suspicion. He did not hesitate in Paris to celebrate high mass according to the eastern rite, and never allowed the reunion of the churches to be the basis of his solicitations. In 1399, Boniface IX wrote a long burning letter to the Bishop of Chalcedon, his nuncio in Hungary, ordering him to preach and cause to be preached a crusade against the Osmanlis for the relief of Constantinople.[601]In 1400, he had ordered a crusade, with increase of indulgences.[602]But, when the Byzantine Emperor came to Italy, Boniface seemed to be more interested in the Kingdom of Naples than in the Kingdom of God.
From contemporary records, the reception of Manuel Palaeologos in France and in England was all that the proudest and most important sovereign of Christendom could wish for. This shadow of an emperor, who ten years before had been a retainer at the court of Bayezid too insignificant to be bidden to the emir’s table, and who was not even undisputed ruler of a single city, was treated by Charles VI and Henry IV as if he actually held the dominions entrusted by Constantine to his successors. This was especially true in England, where barons and peasants, in spite of the crusades, were still uncouth and ignorant. To them the East stood for a superior civilization, to which they must bow. There was a glamour in the name of Constantinople and in Manuel’s imperial title. Perhaps, even if they had realized the straits to which Manuel was reduced, it would have been the same; for it was not to the intrinsic worth or power of the man, but to the ten centuries of glory which he represented, that they did homage. The cry ofAVE IMPERATORhad outlived the empire.
Manuel did not appreciate this. Because his optimismcould not grasp the difference between what costs and what does not cost, he allowed himself to be cradled with false hopes for two years.
Henry IV had personally great sympathy with the mission of Manuel; for in Africa he had borne arms against the Moslems with the cross upon his breast, and, until he succeeded Richard II, it had always been his dream to lead a crusade. He understood the peril of Constantinople, and in a letter from Westminster, in January, 1401, he called the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the necessity of helping Manuel, in order that Constantinople might not be lost, and authorized a collection in all the churches of his realm.[603]But Henry was not secure upon his throne. In France, the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans were still struggling for the power that the insane king was unable to wield.
Manuel waited two years in western Europe. While he was making his heart sick with deferred hope, the great events that were to change the personal fortune of Bayezid, if not that of his family and his race, were shaping themselves in the East. It was a Moslem prince who was to afford a respite to Constantinople.
After Manuel left for the west, only the small force of chevaliers under Châteaumorand, who had remained behind from the crusaders of Boucicaut, saved Constantinople. The inhabitants of the city were so hungry that they slipped over the walls by cords, and surrendered themselves to the Osmanlis. John did nothing. There was no money in the imperial treasury. The crusaders got theirown provisions by raids on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, and by intercepting galleys. After the shock of the fall of Sivas, Bayezid realized that he must expend the best of his force and energy in solidifying his conquests in Europe and Asia, and in raising a larger army to combat Timur, if he threatened again to invade Anatolia.
Although the siege was not pushed with vigour, the city was on the point of yielding. The miserable John made a treaty to give up the city, should Bayezid beat Timur.[604]Even the patriarch Matthew was supposed to have an understanding with Bayezid to retain his position if the city were taken. In a proclamation, which vividly depicted the misery of the city, afflicted by six years of siege and famine, Matthew urged the inhabitants to repent of their crimes, and defended himself from the charge of having treated with Bayezid.[605]
Not only against Constantinople was Bayezid preparing the final blow. In the Morea, the Greeks feared for the safety of Modon, where Manuel had left his family.[606]Since 1399, the Venetian Senate had been alarmed by the gradual Ottoman conquest of Albania, and finally for the safety of Corfu, because the Osmanlis had appeared in force in the Adriatic.[607]
In the early spring of 1402, Ottoman activities ceased in the Balkan peninsula, and every soldier that could be mustered—Christian as well as Moslem—was hurried into Asia Minor; for a greater than Djenghiz Khan was marching westward.
When the Tartars first saw iron, and their strongest warriors failed to bend it, they thought there must be asubstance under the surface. So they called ittimur, which means something stuffed or filled.[608]It soon became a custom to name their great leaders Timur. But even among primitive peoples the qualities of leadership have not necessarily included purely physical strength. Many Samsons among the Tartars received the distinction of being called Iron. None of them made an indelible mark upon the history of the world, save the great Timur, who had his left arm and left leg partially paralysed.[609]At the height of his career, when his hordes marched against Bagdad, he was too weak to sit upon a horse, and was carried in a litter.[610]
Timur claimed descent from the grand vizier of Djagataï, son and successor of Djenghiz Khan. He came to the throne of Khorassan, with residence at Samarkand, in 1369. In thirty years, while Murad and Bayezid were winning an empire in the Balkan peninsula, Timur became master of the greater part of the Moslem world. Persia, Armenia, the upper valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, the steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas, Russia from the Volga to the Don and Dnieper, Mesopotamia, the coasts of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, and western and northern India was his path of conquest.
After he had captured Sivas, Bayezid had not been able to curb the altogether natural impulse that led him into the valley of the Euphrates. In his way stood Kara-Yussuf, a Turcoman prince of Kharput, who was to be, after Timur’s death, the founder of the famous dynasty of the BlackSheep.[611]In 1399, Bayezid had put his son Soleiman, assisted by several of his ablest generals, in charge of an advance movement to the east. Sivas was the base of operations.
Kara-Yussuf, who had a claim upon Timur’s protection because he had guided him on his first expedition into Armenia, appealed to the Tartar court. Before Timur could remonstrate, Kara-Yussuf was captured by the Osmanlis. When Timur learned this, his anger was for the first time directed specifically against Bayezid. There were old complaints against Bayezid. The refugee emirs had not lived at his court for years without impressing upon Timur their woes and the injustice that had been done to them. But Timur was busy with other plans and other conquests. Bayezid’s former activities had not directly touched him.
In his memoirs, Timur records that he tried first to bring Bayezid to reason. ‘I wrote to him a letter of which this is the substance: Praise to God, master of heaven and earth, who has submitted to my authority several of the seven climates and who has allowed the potentates and masters of the world to bend their neck under my yoke. God have mercy upon his humble servant, who knows the limits which are prescribed for him and who does not cross them by a single step. All the world knows your origin, and it is not fitting for a man of your extraction to advance the foot of pride; for you will be able to throw yourself into the abyss of affliction and of misfortune: resist the suggestions of miserable counsellors.... Refrain from opening to confusion and to evils the door of your empire. Send me Kara-Yussuf: if not, by the coming together of our two armies all that is hidden under the veil of destiny will be uncovered to you.’[612]
Instead of paying attention to this letter, Bayezid deliberately committed another overt act by summoning Taharten, emir of Erzindjian, whom he knew to be a vassal of Timur, to appear at the Ottoman court, bringing his treasures with him! When Timur again remonstrated with Bayezid and reminded him of his duty ‘gently and like a friend’, Bayezid responded by summoning Timur to appear before him, and threatening to deprive him of his harem if he refused to come. In order to express his contempt for the Tartar conqueror, Bayezid placed his own name first in letters of gold, and Timur’s name underneath in small black letters.[613]
Why Bayezid took this tack in dealing with Timur is inexplicable. It is impossible to believe that he underrated the power of Timur. One can only suppose that his informants and advisers, to whom Timur alluded in the first warning to Bayezid, urged upon the Ottoman emir the improbability of a Tartar invasion of Asia Minor; for, even after the terrible lesson of 1400, when Bayezid had two years of respite, he took no steps to placate Timur or to prepare adequately against an invasion. He went on blindly to his doom, and displayed none of the consummate diplomatic and military skill that had made the first eight years of his reign among the most brilliant of all Ottoman history.
When Timur saw that Bayezid would not even treat with him, he took the field immediately. Soleiman sent an appeal to Bayezid, who was in Thessaly.[614]There was no response. With feverish haste, Soleiman attempted to put into condition the defences of Sivas, whose strong walls had been admirably constructed by the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin Kaïkobad