EMIRATE OF OSMAN[Largest view.]
EMIRATE OF OSMAN
EMIRATE OF OSMAN
[Largest view.]
[Largest view.]
and conquering the last fragments of the Byzantine possessions along and in the hinterland of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora. Osman’s opponents were all Christians. Had he attacked his Turkish neighbours first, had he gone south and east instead of north and west, in building up his state, there would never have been a new race born to change the history of the world.
It is impossible to state with any degree of certitude the conquests of Osman before 1300. The record of village warfare, with its names of localities which even the most celebrated Ottoman geographer could not, three centuries later, identify,[38]is of no importance whatever. The extent of Osman’s principality, when he and his people first appear in history, was very insignificant. In 1300 he had succeeded in submitting to his authority a part of ancient Phrygia Epictetus and Bithynia, whose four corners were: south-east, Eski Sheïr; south-west, the eastern end of Mount Olympus; north-east, the junction of the Kara Su and the Sangarius; north-west, Yeni Sheïr. In 1299 Osman took up his residence in Yeni Sheïr. This was the outpost of his principality, in a position of extreme importance, about half-way between Brusa and Nicaea.[39]In sixty years the tribe of Osman had advanced sixty miles from Eski Sheïr, the old city, to Yeni Sheïr, the new city.[40]They heldundisputed sway only in the valley of the Kara Su,[41]and their important villages and castles, Biledjik,[42]Itburnu, Inoenu, Sugut, AÏnegoel,[43]Karadja Hissar,[44]Yundhissar, andYar Hissar,[45]were all within a day’s journey of each other.
In 1301, twelve years after Osman began to form his state, he fought his first battle, and came into direct contact with the Byzantine Empire. At Baphaeon,[46]near Nicomedia, the heterarch Muzalon, with 2,000 men, attempted to check a raid the Osmanlis were making into the fertile valley whose products contributed so greatly to the well-being of Nicomedia. It was midsummer, just before the gathering of the harvests.[47]In a pitched battle, the unarmoured horsemen of Osman charged so speedily and so impetuously that they broke through the heavy line of their opponents, and the Greek commander’s retreat was covered only by the opportune arrival of Slavic mercenaries.[48]The Osmanlis were too few in number to follow up this victory. It is hardly probable that they made any attack on Nicomedia.[49]But they laid waste all the districts into which they dared to venture.
At this same time the emirs whose possessions bordered on the Aegaean Sea began to press hard upon the Greek coast cities and those few cities of the interior, such as Magnesia, Philadelphia, and Sardes, which still acknowledged theauthority of Byzantium. In the spring of 1302, Michael IX Palaeologos came to Asia Minor to take command of the Slavic mercenaries. At first the Turks were in consternation, if we can believe Pachymeres, but when they saw the unwillingness of Michael to fight, they grew bold, and compelled the Emperor to take refuge in Magnesia. Michael’s unwillingness was not due to lack of courage, but because he could not rely upon his Slavs. As true mercenaries, they were fighting for pay, and there was no gold to give them. Michael’s father, the old Emperor Andronicus II, had not sent him any money. In Constantinople the Venetians were threatening to depose Andronicus; the almost annual ecclesiastical quarrels, which form so large and wearisome and disastrous a place in the last century and a half of Byzantine history, were embarrassing him; and the treasury was empty. Even if there had been money to send, it would have been a perilous undertaking, for the Turkish pirates were swarming in the Sea of Marmora, and had even seized the Princes’ Islands, which are within sight of the Imperial City.
When they saw that neither pay nor booty was forthcoming, and that they were engaged in a hopeless struggle, the mercenaries forced Michael to allow them to return to Europe. This was the last genuine personal effort on the part of a successor of the Caesars to save the Asiatic themes. It ended in ignominious failure. Not one battle had been fought. The withdrawal of the Slavs was followed by an exodus of Greeks to the Aegaean coast, and from there to Europe. Pachymeres claims that this exodus was general. But we cannot accept the testimony of Pachymeres as altogether trustworthy on this point. Many Greeks, for reasons which are set forth later, remained in the coast districts of Asia Minor, and they did not leave, to any noticeable extent, the territory in which Osman was operating. The Turks, however, made a raid into all the islandsalong the Aegaean littoral, and crossed over into Thrace, where for two years the fields could not be cultivated.[50]
At this critical moment, had there been any united action on the part of the Turkish emirs, Constantinople would probably have fallen an easy prey to their armies and to their fleets. But each emir was acting for himself, and was as much an enemy of his Turkish rivals as he was of the Byzantine emperors. There is no instance in which any two of them joined forces, and acted together. Throughout the fourteenth century the armies defending the Byzantine Empire contained almost as many Turks as those attacking it.
To the east and to the west Andronicus II, utterly unable to defend himself, looked for aid. From this time on to the fall of Constantinople the history of the Byzantine Empire becomes what the history of the Ottoman Empire has been during the last hundred years. It is the story of an uninterrupted succession of bitter internal quarrels, of attacks by former vassals upon the immediate frontiers of its shrunken territory, of subtle undermining by hostile colonies of foreigners whose one thought was commercial gain, and of intermittent, and in almost all cases selfishly inspired, efforts of western Europe to put off the fatal day.
In the east, Andronicus expected much of Ghazan Khan. Were not the Turks of Asia Minor vassals of the Mongol overlord? Andronicus sent envoys to Ghazan to offer him the hand of a young princess who passed at Constantinople as his natural daughter. Ghazan received them cordially, accepted the proffered marriage alliance, and promised to exercise a pressure upon the Turks of western Asia Minor.[51]This promise, however, was not followed by any serious action. The Mongols were never more than mere raiders in Asia Minor.[52]Before this marriage could be consummated, Ghazan Khan died. The young princess was offered to and accepted by his successor. It was a useless sacrifice. For in this first decade of the fourteenth century the long struggle between Christian and Moslem to win the Mongols ended, temporarily at least, in the conversion of the Khans to Islam.[53]
From the west, Andronicus received aid of the most disastrous sort. When Ferdinand of Aragon made peace with Charles d’Anjou, King of Sicily, in 1302, he got rid of his troublesome mercenaries by sending them to serve the Byzantine Empire. Roger de Flor, typical soldier of fortune, who could not be matched in his generation for daring, insolence, rapacity, cruelty, and Achillean belief in his own invulnerability, arrived at Constantinople with eight thousand Catalans and Almogavares, the former heavy-armed plainsmen and mariners, the latter light-armed mountaineers of northern Spain. They were true prototypes of the soldiers of Alva and Cortes. Roger was made Grand Duke, and married to Princess Marie, niece of Andronicus.
Almost immediately after their arrival, the Catalans became engaged in such bloody conflicts with the Genoese of Galata, and robbed and murdered the Greeks with such alacrity, that Andronicus hastened to turn them loose in Asia. Roger established himself in the peninsula of Cyzicus. Here his Catalans fell immediately to plundering the inhabitants of the country, who soon found that they had passed from Scylla to Charybdis, and carried heartrending tales of lust and greed and massacre to Constantinople.[54]The oneGreek general who was doing anything noteworthy against the Turks was relieved of his spoils of war by Roger.
In 1305, by a swift march to the relief of Philadelphia, which was being besieged by Alisur, prince of Karamania, Roger and his Catalans showed what they could do, if they would. The Turks were compelled to raise the siege. Roger pursued them to the source of the Sangarius.[55]But, on the way, the Catalans deprived their Greek allies of any portion of the rich spoils, and massacred the Slavic mercenaries who dared to argue with them.[56]Gregoras says, probably with reason, that Roger could have reconquered the whole of Asia Minor for the Byzantines.[57]But that country seemed to attract him as little as it had attracted the Mongols. He was no Crusader, glad and eager to undergo the terrible hardships which military operations among mountains and on arid plateaus demanded. There was no motive to make the effort worth while. So he left the Turks to themselves and went to Gallipoli, where he let it be known that the Catalans were preparing an expedition to repeat the Fourth Crusade.
In fear for his life as well as for his throne, Andronicus sent an envoy to offer Roger the ‘government of the Orient’, general command of all the troops in Asia, and twenty thousand pieces of gold. For full measure he added enough wheat to nourish the Catalans for a year. The ‘government of the Orient’ was as empty and meaningless a gift as the supposed ‘grants’ of the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin to the Turkish nomad chieftains. The only troops who could go into Asia and accomplish anything were already under Roger’s command. But the gold, which might have worked a charm, was left behind, as the envoy was afraid to bring it. Roger scorned the emperor’s offer. Ten days later he repented, and accepted from Emperor Andronicus thirtythousand pieces of gold, one hundred thousand measures of wheat, and the title of Caesar. In return for these princely gifts he had only to promise to lead three thousand men against the Turks.
But a host of Spaniards, long before the discovery of America, were already in search of ‘El Dorado’. They poured into Gallipoli on every merchant ship from the West, and made the Byzantines begin to fear Roger more than they feared the Turks. The remedy was getting to be worse than the evil! Before leaving for his campaign, Roger rashly went to Adrianople to pay his respects to the young Emperor Michael IX, who was holding his court there. On the threshold of Michael’s bedchamber, like the Duke of Guise at Blois, he was stabbed to death. A massacre of his attendants followed.
A train of evils fell upon Macedonia and Thrace as a result of the assassination of Roger de Flor. Michael soon had reason to regret this ill-advised deed. Not only did the Catalans, in their first access of fury, avenge the death of their great leader and their comrades by unspeakable cruelties and by the destruction of every village which they came upon, not only did they defeat the young emperor in open battle and almost capture him as he fled from the field, but they invited over from Asia Minor into Macedonia all the Turks who could be induced to come.
At Gallipoli the Catalans tried to form a state. It failed owing to dissensions among their leaders. Their raids into Thrace had so ruined that country that they themselves began to starve. So they started upon an odyssey into Macedonia, where the common soldiers, wearied of the civil strife engendered by their leaders, who were continually ordering them to cut each other’s throats, decided to make an end of these costly personal jealousies. They killed the nobles who led them, and marched south into Thessaly. Gauthier de la Brienne committed the imprudence of seekingtheir aid in Athens. In 1310 they killed Brienne, set up in Athens a military democracy, and started to revive the Peloponnesian Wars.[58]
The further fortunes of the Grand Catalan Company do not come within the limits of our work. Roger and the Catalans, for that matter, were never in direct contact with the Osmanlis. But it was necessary to give a brief statement of their services to the Byzantine Empire in order that we might have a proper appreciation of their services to the Ottoman Empire. When they withdrew into Thessaly they had left the Turks behind them in Thrace and Macedonia. To the unhappy emperor who had received them nine years before as saviours of the Empire, this was their legacy.
Owing to the adroit leadership of their chief, Halil, and to the impotence of Michael, whose Slavic mercenaries had deserted him and withdrawn into Bulgaria, these Turks were soon able to throw Macedonia and Thrace into so great anarchy that communication by land between Salonika and the capital was no longer safe.[59]And yet Halil had only eighteen hundred men under his command! In 1311, shortly after the Catalans had left, Halil concluded with Andronicus and Michael an agreement by which he and his companions in arms were to have a safe-conduct and free passage across the Hellespont. But the Greeks, in violation of one of the most important points of this arrangement, attempted to take from the Turks their booty. Halil, instead of quitting European soil, sent for reinforcements. The imperial army suffered a decisive defeat, and Michael fled, having abandoned his personal baggage. In insolenttriumph, Halil adorned himself with the imperial insignia.[60]All the region around the Hellespont and the Gulf of Saros remained for three years without cultivation. So desperate did the situation become that Michael was compelled to seek aid of the Genoese and the Serbians. In 1314 the Turks of Halil were entrapped near Gallipoli and massacred. But at what a price! The Serbians, whose co-operation had won the day for the Greeks, saw eastern Macedonia and the open sea. They liked it. New troubles began to brew for the Byzantines.
There were other long-standing troubles threatening from abroad. In the East, the Mongols had overrun southern Russia, and were as great a nightmare to Andronicus as the Goths had formerly been to Valens. The rulers of Constantinople did not hesitate to purchase security on the Black Sea by truces, which were sealed with the sacrifice of purple-born princesses to pagan harems, and by humble protestations of friendship to khans who treated the imperial ambassadors as the envoys of a vassal.[61]
In the West, another sword of Damocles was hanging over the emperors of Byzantium. We must remember that the Greeks had been in possession of their capital again only since 1260, and that the heirs of the Frankish emperors still cherished the dream of a Latin re-establishment at Constantinople. In 1305, on the very day Clement V mounted the papal throne, Philippe le Bel of France discussed with Charles de Valois the question of retaking Constantinople.[62]The following year Clement V exhorted the Venetians to co-operate in the conquest of the Byzantine Empire.[63]Because they had grievances against Andronicus which had already almost brought them to an open rupture,[64]the Venetians readily lent ear to the Pope’s project. A treaty of alliance was concluded between Venice and Charles de Valois, who had the powerful backing of the King of France.[65]In 1307 Clement V wrote to Charles II of Naples urging him to reconquer Constantinople.[66]But the Pope’s interest was soon diverted by the project of a crusade to support Armenia and Cyprus against the Egyptians.[67]Philippe le Bel turned his attention to the spoliation of the Knights Templars and to the important ecclesiastical questions arising out of the movement to rehabilitate the memory of the unfortunate Boniface VIII.
Until the death of Philippe le Bel, in 1314, however, Andronicus and Michael always felt that there might at any moment be a repetition of the Fourth Crusade. In seeking the reasons for the almost unhampered progress of Osman against Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Brusa, it must not be forgotten that the Byzantine emperors did not have even the moral support of Christendom in their losing fight.
During this first decade of the fourteenth century, the Byzantines had lost control of practically all the AegaeanSea, and had to struggle for a passage through the Sea of Marmora. After the recent Balkan War, the Sublime Porte presented a memorandum to the Powers, in which it was stated that the possession of Rhodes, Lesbos, and Chios was absolutely essential to a maintenance of Ottoman power in Asia Minor. History, from the time of the ancient Persian wars to the present day, confirms this point of view. So, before taking up the progress of Osman’s conquests, it is important to note that during the years of Osman’s conflict with the Byzantines Chios and Rhodes passed out of their hands.
In 1303 Roger de Flor had prepared the way for the Turks in Chios by sacking the island. What he did not destroy or carry off fell to the Turks when they raided the island the following year. ‘Andronicus saw that he was no longer able to defend Chios against the Turks because of the cowardice of his governors. The Turks already considered themselves masters of Asia Minor and the majority of the islands.’[68]So he made Benedetto of Phocaea lord of Chios, and the island was lost to the Byzantines. The Giustiniani family kept Chios until the Ottoman conquest.
The emir of Menteshe invaded Rhodes about 1300.[69]But he did not succeed in entirely conquering it. For ten years Greek and Turk struggled for the mastery of this gateway to the Aegaean Sea. Then suddenly an outside foe arrived and made the double conquest of Christian and Moslem alike. The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, driven from the Holy Land by the Egyptian conquest, had tired of their refuge in Cyprus.[70]After vainly endeavouring to negotiate with Constantinople for the transfer of the proprietary rights of the island to their order, they attacked and conqueredRhodes with the encouragement of Philippe le Bel and the Pope. This great event, equally disastrous to Turk and Greek, happened on August 15, 1310. For more than two centuries they were able to maintain at Rhodes a citadel and outpost of Christianity in a part of the world which was rapidly becomingin partibus infidelium.[71]
The emir of Menteshe made a strenuous effort to recapture Rhodes. The Hospitallers, attacked before they had time to repair and strengthen the fortifications of the island, were saved only by the timely arrival and heroism of Amadeus of Savoy. This is said to be the origin of the arms of Savoy, which are perpetuated on the flag of modern Italy, and of the motto of the sovereigns of Piedmont—F E R T,Fortitudo Eius Rhodum Tenuit.[72]The historians of Rhodes, as well as the chroniclers of the House of Savoy, declare that Osman was the leader of the Turks who attacked Rhodes in 1310 or 1311,[73]and that he was instigated by the Genoese.[74]
But while Osman was, in the minds of these and other later historians, supposed to be attacking Rhodes andmaking himself master of Asia Minor, he stayed within the narrow limits of his little principality, from which he never issued forth, as far as we know, during his circumscribed career. For he had, within a day’s journey of his residence, the imperial cities of Brusa and Nicaea, whose walls were far too strong for the infant Osmanlis. A little more to the north-west, in a position of unrivalled strategic importance, defending the logical[75]waterway to Constantinople from the valley of the Sangarius, lay Nicomedia.
After the battle of Kuyun Hissar (Baphaeon) we hear nothing of Osman until 1308. This year is memorable for several events of great importance. The first of these is the capture of Ak Hissar, the fortress guarding the place where the Sangarius finishes its descent and enters the plain behind Nicomedia. This was the last barrier opposing the progress of the Osmanlis through the narrow peninsula which stretches out between the Gulf of Nicomedia and the Black Sea to form the extreme north-western corner of Asia. Owing to the terrible misfortunes which had fallen upon the Byzantines through the Catalans, no effort seems to have been made to use Nicomedia as a base of operations for defending this peninsula. So before the year was out the Osmanlis appeared for the first time on the Bosphorus. In the years following the fall of Ak Hissar the Osmanlis slowly but thoroughly extended their authority until they were in possession of the harbours and fortresses of the Black Sea littoral between the mouth of the Sangarius and the Bosphorus.
In the same year Kalolimni, an island of the Marmora, which lies near the mouth of the Gulf of Mudania, wasoccupied by Kara Ali.[76]By this the water-route from Brusa to Constantinople, and one of the two routes from Nicaea to Constantinople, were obstructed.[77]Kalolimni has the honour of being the first Ottoman island and the only one captured during the chieftainship of Osman. The investment of Brusa from the land side now began. So alarmed was the commandant that he sent Osman a ‘gift’ of money to purchase peace,[78]thus inaugurating the humiliating precedent which the mightiest emperors and kings of Christendom came in time to follow.
It was in 1308, also, that Osman captured Tricocca,[79]which cut off the communication by land between Nicaea and Nicomedia. While he was engaged in dealing with Nicaea and Brusa, a danger threatened Osman from the east. A horde of Tartars was hovering along the confines of his state.[80]Some of them sacked Karadja Hissar at the time of the fair, and were prevented from marching on Eski Sheïr only by the timely arrival of Orkhan, who defeated them through the superiority of his cavalry. Instead of massacring his prisoners, Orkhan, as was the invariable custom of his father with the Greeks, offered the raiders Islam and Ottoman nationality.[81]It was in this way that the Osmanlis increased in numbers.
After 1308 the energies of the Osmanlis seem to have been directed against Nicaea and Brusa. The fall of Brusa is the only other event recorded during the lifetime ofOsman. Just when and how Brusa fell cannot be stated with precision. We shall find the same difficulty later in connexion with the fall of Nicaea and Nicomedia. The Turkish traditions, as Seadeddin gathered them, state that Osman besieged Brusa with a great army in 1317. He erected a fortress near Kaplidja, and put his nephew, Ak Timur, in charge of it. A second fortress, either erected by Osman or captured by him, was put in care of Balaban, ‘his most faithful follower.’ Kaplidja, now known as Tchekirdje, celebrated for its hot baths,[82]is on a ridge not more than a mile from the citadel of Brusa. It commands the approach from the port of Brusa, not far from where the road must cross the river. Traditional remains of the second fortress are still to be seen on a foothill of Mount Olympus, about two miles south-east of the citadel.
Of the actual fall of Brusa there is no definite statement in Seadeddin except that the city surrendered to Orkhan, who brought the news to his dying father. As Osman died in 1326, there is a gap of nine years to be accounted for between the investment of the city and its capture. To one who has studied the contour of this country and the nearness of the two fortresses to the citadel of Brusa it is clear either that Brusa was surrounded or fell very soon after the Osmanlis settled garrisons at the gates of the city, or that somemodus vivendiwas arranged between the Osmanlis and the local garrison during those years. A decade has been the conventional period for legendary sieges since Homer sang of Troy.
From the Byzantine contemporary writers one gains the impression, which is probably a correct one, that Brusa was simply abandoned to the Osmanlis. There was no assault,and no bitter struggle outside the walls of the city.[83]The Greek commander, discouraged by the apparent inability or unwillingness[84]of the emperors to come to his relief, surrendered the city. Deeply disgusted, as he had every reason to be, Evrenos became a Moslem, and cast his fortunes with the Osmanlis. Many of the leading Greeks followed his example. For, while the people of Brusa through long years were straining every nerve to preserve their city and to maintain the honour of Byzantium in Asia, the elder Andronicus and his grandson, Andronicus III, were engaged in trying to destroy each other. It was a sordid civil strife with no redeeming feature. Neither emperor had the slightest conception of patriotism or of personal honour or of the sacredness of family ties. From this time onward the Palaeologi put themselves on record as one of the most iniquitous families that have ever disgraced the kingly office. When Constantine, one hundred and twenty-seven years later, fell with the walls of his city, his death was a striking illustration of the wrath of God upon the fourth generation of those who had hated and despised Him.
In the same year that Brusa fell, and with the same fate imminent for Nicaea and Nicomedia, young Andronicus celebrated with great pomp his wedding. The Hippodrome, in sight of Mount Olympus, was the scene of a gay tournament in which young Andronicus distinguished himself by breaking more lances than any of his courtiers. From his imperial throne, the elder Andronicus looked on, and turned over in his head various schemes for making his grandson’s bride a widow. After the wedding festivities, while Andronicus was taking his bride to Demotika, he was set upon by a band of roving Turks, at whose hands he and Cantacuzenos both received wounds. When he reached Demotika, he learned that his grandfather was preparinganother war against him.[85]Is it any wonder that the Greeks of Asia Minor were not averse to becoming Moslems and helping in the founding of a new nation to inherit Constantinople? There is one more charge which must be recorded against the elder Andronicus. When a crusade for the stemming of the Moslem invasion was planned by Marino Sanudo, Andronicus not only refused to co-operate, but he would not even consent to interrupt his friendly relations with the Sultan of Egypt.[86]
Osman spent his life in endeavouring to capture the three Byzantine cities which were all within a day’s journey of his birthplace. When we consider how near he was at the very beginning of the struggle, and how weak and demoralized the Byzantines had become, we realize that we have to do with no impetuous invasion of an Asiatic race, sweeping before it and destroying an effete civilization. It is the birth of a new race that we are recording—a race formed by the fusion of elements already existing at the place of birth. The political unity of the Byzantine Empire had been destroyed by enemies from without and from within. The social unity, which had been secured by the one bond of a common religion that imposed upon the people its standards and dominated every phase of their life, was disappearing. For when the Eastern Church lost its spiritual life, it lost its hold on the Levantine Christians, who were centuries ahead of the West in intellectual development. The time for its reformation had come and passed without a Savonarola, a Luther, or a Calvin. Nor was there anyLoyola to fight for the ancient faith. The Church was unable to absorb the pagan invaders, as primitive Latin Christianity had done, by an irresistible moral superiority.[87]The appeal of Islam was greater than that of Christianity. Pagan and Christian alike, then, in their conversion to a new, fresh faith, joined in the formation of a new race. This is the story of Osman and of the people who took his name.[88]
The legends which inevitably surround the founders of nations have buried the personality of Osman, and make an estimate of his character difficult. We must reject entirely the appreciations of the Ottoman historians. None has yet arisen of his own people who has attempted to separate the small measure of truth from the mass of fiction that obscures the real man in the founder of the Ottoman Empire. He is represented by the same writers as a powerful prince and as a simple peasant; as the master of Asia Minor and as the village chieftain fighting for very existence with his neighbours a few miles away; as reading the Koran and as illiterate; as the cruel and imperious murderer of his uncle Dundar for opposing a plan of campaign in his council of war and as the merciful, clement conqueror; as the Moslem fanatic who ordered the mutilation of dying infidels on the battlefield and as the wise ruler who dispensed justice to Moslem and Christian with no distinction of creed; asdepositing his treasures of gold and silver in the castle of a neighbour and as leaving at his death only a robe, a salt-cellar, a spoon, and a few sheep.
In the absence of contemporary evidence and of unconflicting tradition, we must form our judgement of Osman wholly upon what he accomplished. He certainly was not the son of a prince. He did not become in his day more than the ruler of a very small domain. He did not compass within his lifetime the task at his very threshold—the subjection of the three imperial cities. It was certainly not by astounding successes on the battlefield that he made people flock to him and form around him the nucleus of a state. And this state, although it did not come enough in contact with the outside world to have money of its own,[89]grew steadily year after year. The way his state was formed was the assurance of its permanence and of its great future. It is also an indication of the real greatness of the man who formed it.
Osman was founder of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known, of a people unique in history through the blending of wild Asiatic blood with the oldest as well as the newest European stock, of a royal family which claims the distinction of six hundred years of uninterrupted male succession. When we place these results over against the limited field in which he worked, and acknowledge our lack of any outstanding deeds in Osman’s life by which these results can be explained, we find ourselves in thepresence of a combination of a character and a cause which reminds us of William of Orange and England.
Osman was a man of compelling personality, whom men loved to serve, even when their own ability matched or was superior to his. The families of the Michaelogli and Marcozogli were founded by Christian companions of Osman, who became Moslem only after long association with him. Michael, Marco, and other leaders, including Osman’s own son, made for themselves more distinguished military careers than Osman. But they always worked for their leader. Their harmony and loyalty is in striking contrast to that of the Byzantine and Catalan captains. Osman was great enough to use masterful men. He never needed to assert his superiority, as mediocre men always love to do, by getting rid of possible rivals and surrounding himself with lesser stars. He was able to hold himself, as well as others, in check. He was patient and he was thorough. We know the founder by his foundation.
Then there was the cause. The giants of the forward march of Islam were dead. The tide had seemed to turn. Pagans ruled in Asia. Africa was asleep. In 1309 the Faithful in Spain were receiving their first serious reverse. Osman brought to his new religion the simple faith and the fresh enthusiasm of the neophyte. He was a reincarnation of his great namesake and the other early Khalifs. The prayer which Seadeddin puts in Osman’s mouth illustrates his character:
O Lord, make upright my thoughts and just my designs.Exalt the faith and the Religion, and destroy those who rise up against it.Scatter the hosts of the enemy, and bring to confusion evil men.Make my sword the lantern of Thy holy faith, and the guiding torch of my warriors.Give unto me a glorious name, and victory against mine adversaries.Watch me with Thine eyes, and show me the way of Thy holy will.Make me a true observer of the laws of Mohammed, and sustain me in the shock of battle.
O Lord, make upright my thoughts and just my designs.
Exalt the faith and the Religion, and destroy those who rise up against it.
Scatter the hosts of the enemy, and bring to confusion evil men.
Make my sword the lantern of Thy holy faith, and the guiding torch of my warriors.
Give unto me a glorious name, and victory against mine adversaries.
Watch me with Thine eyes, and show me the way of Thy holy will.
Make me a true observer of the laws of Mohammed, and sustain me in the shock of battle.
Osman was a fanatic, if by fanatic is meant one who is stirred with religious zeal and makes his religion the first and prime object in his life. But he was not intolerant, nor were his immediate successors. Had he started to persecute Christians, the Greek Church would have taken a new lease of life, and Osman could not have gained the converts who made possible the Ottoman race.
Attila, Djenghiz Khan, Timur, the greatest conquerors of the stock from which Osman came, utilized a race already made. They were leaders of a united people. In spite of their dazzling exploits, they were mere raiders, and their empires were the territories of an unassimilated path of conquest. Osman’s work was more enduring than theirs, more far-reaching in its results. For he was building in silence while they were destroying with a blast of trumpets. We may place him with them, perhaps above them, for which of them gave his name to a people?
Thegreatest inheritance that a father can leave to his son is uncompleted work, especially if the work present difficulties of a formidable character, which must be met and overcome immediately. No man is born great. No man has greatness thrust upon him. History recognizes only the category of achievement. Facing an unfinished task is the best spur.
Osman died at the moment of the surrender of Brusa. He left to Orkhan the inheritance of Nicaea and Nicomedia unconquered; a state without laws, coinage, and definite boundaries; a people just beginning to awaken to a national consciousness; and hostile neighbours far more powerful than himself.[90]Orkhan found himself without seaport, ships, or sailors. His fighting men were regarded among his Turkish rivals as poor material for an army.[91]Even the chieftainship of the Osmanlis had not come to him by mere right of birth.[92]He had been chosen because of his abilityto lead and to attract men. Now that Brusa had fallen into the hands of the Osmanlis, more was demanded in their emir than personal charm and daring in battle. He must establish his right to the chieftainship by making a viable state. This could be done only by the addition of Nicaea and Nicomedia to his dominions, and by the transformation of his followers into a nation.
Nowhere are the Ottoman historians more unsatisfactory than in their accounts of the reign of Orkhan. They fail to describe—much less to explain—the evolution of their race during these thirty-five years from a heterogeneous band of adventurers into a nation. Several of the Ottoman historians write so admirably of later periods that we must attribute this failure as much to their lack of sources of information as to their inability to measure up to the demands of the modern mind which never asks how without adding why. The re-writing of history in the twentieth century is not actuated by belief in superior ability. Our new and wider point of view is gained from the advantage we have had in securing and comparing sources which were inaccessible to those who have gone before us. If, in this chapter, Byzantine sources are largely used, it is because we are writing the history of a people who built their nation directly upon the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, and because the Byzantine sources are contemporary; while the earliest Ottoman historians wrote more than a century later than this period.[93]
The reign of Orkhan is divided into two parts by the events of the year 1344. From 1326 to 1344 he was occupied in subduing the territory of which he had been tentativemaster at the death of Osman, in forming his nation, and in organizing his army. From 1344 until his death in 1360, his energies were bent chiefly upon getting a foothold in Macedonia and Thrace.
The first task which imposed itself upon Orkhan was the subjection of Nicaea and Nicomedia. Just as the walls of Brusa had defied him to the end, those of Nicomedia and Nicaea were equally impregnable to the kind of army he could assemble. Whether it was that neither Byzantine nor Turk nor Slav nor Bulgarian were of the stock who would spend themselves scaling walls and battering down gates, or that the weapons of those days were more favourable for the purpose of defence than of assault, cannot be determined. But the curious fact remains that during this century there are few instances of cities taken by storm. Captures were effected for the most part by capitulation or by treachery.
Complete investment and consequent threatened starvation did not occur in the case of Brusa. Nor did Nicaea and Nicomedia surrender from starvation. This is the place, rather than at the end of the last chapter, to give two of the long list of reasons for surrender which Neshri puts into the mouth of the commandant and the leading citizens of Brusa.[94]For they state equally plainly and convincingly the case of Nicaea and Nicomedia.
The economic reason was that the inhabitants saw the Osmanlis settling themselves in all the country round about the three cities, and undisturbed in their permanent occupation of these regions by any aggressive movement from Constantinople. Nicomedia, although advantageously located for commerce, was not a port of call on the great traderoute. It depended for its well-being upon an unrestricted communication with the interior. Brusa and Nicaea were manufacturing cities, whose prosperity was due to the use of raw materials produced in the vicinity, and to the ability to market the manufactured products. While food was still procurable, trade and business languished. When the Greeks saw that the Osmanlis had come in their midst to remain, and were not mere raiders like the Seljuk Turks, they realized that the alternative to submission was ruin.
The moral reason I have already touched upon in relation to Brusa. If there had been any hope of relief from the intolerable economic conditions under which they were living, the Nicaeans and Nicomedians might have resisted indefinitely, and maintained a gallant struggle for love of God and country. Their successful resistance, continued through many weary years, is a remarkable testimony to their religious zeal and to their patriotism. It was not until they felt themselves deserted by their brothers of blood and religion that they finally yielded. The Osmanlis did not prevail over them in battle. Their walls were not stormed. Their gates held fast. They were not starved out. They were abandoned by the Byzantines. So they became Osmanlis.
To understand the how and why of the fall of these cities and of the mingling of victor and vanquished in one race, we must review the history of the Byzantines during the years immediately following the death of Osman.
The loss of Brusa did not cause any cessation in the suicidal strife between Andronicus and his grandson. After the brilliant marriage festivities of which we have already spoken, young Andronicus took his bride to Demotika, where, in the summer of 1327, he planned to surprise andoust his grandfather.[95]He was not content to wait for the old man’s death. Nor was he deterred from reopening the civil war by the thought of the imminent danger of the Byzantine cities in Bithynia. Old Andronicus, informed of his grandson’s intention, forbade his entrance to the capital, and negotiated with the Serbians to attack him from the rear.[96]This was a deliberate invitation to the Serbians, who were rapidly becoming dangerous enemies of the Empire, to enter Byzantine territory.
The appeal of young Andronicus to be allowed to come to Constantinople to justify himself was answered by an imperial rescript ordering the Patriarch to ‘strike out the rebel’s name from public prayers’. The Patriarch refused.[97]More than that, His Holiness threatened to unfrock any priest who would obey the imperial command. Old Andronicus had the Patriarch deposed by a packed synod of his creatures, and thrown into prison.[98]
War broke out. After an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Constantinople,[99]young Andronicus besieged the army of his grandfather and the Serbians in Serres. They did not care to risk a battle, so he marched on Salonika, which he captured through the connivance of its inhabitants.[100]Macedonia and Thrace, with the exception of two or three fortresses, fell into his hands without a struggle.[101]
Stephen, Kral of Serbia, now turned a deaf ear to the old emperor’s reiterated appeals for further aid. In his desperation, old Andronicus called in the Bulgarians, towhom he would have betrayed Constantinople, had not young Andronicus appeared in time to anticipate this culminating infamy of the older Palaeologos. A Venetian fleet, which was besieging the city, retired, because its commander did not want to appear to take sides either for or against the younger emperor. Friends inside left a gate open. Young Andronicus entered and appeared suddenly at the palace. The Patriarch was re-established. Old Andronicus was deposed and imprisoned.[102]
The old man, after having become, as Gregoras charitably puts it, ‘blind through tears’,[103]retired to a monastery, and died there in great poverty.[104]Like many others of the Palaeologi, Andronicus II had no redeeming trait of character, no single good deed to his credit. Stranger to every natural affection, he died as he had lived, hating his own flesh and blood, striving to ruin his country, mocking God by the very monk’s garb that he wore.
The first care of young Andronicus, after ridding himself of his grandfather and rival, was to march on Adrianople, where, according to Cantacuzenos, he forced Michael Asan of Bulgaria to make peace by the display of his ‘fine army’.[105]Either the Bulgarians were very weak at this time, or the ‘fine army’ of Andronicus III melted away quickly. For in the spring of the following year, 1329, Andronicus had to ‘gather hastily’[106]an army, when for the first time he felt it his duty to go to the aid of beleaguered Nicaea. He crossed the Bosphorus, and joined the battle with the Osmanlis at Pelecanon, now Maltepé, on the northshore of the gulf of Nicomedia, a few miles from Chalcedon, the modern Haïdar Pasha.
The battle of Pelecanon is passed over in silence by the Ottoman historians as too insignificant to mention. But it is of the utmost importance in showing why the Nicaeans surrendered their city to Orkhan. Cantacuzenos, who took part in this battle, gives a long story in which the result of the battle he is compelled to record belies all that goes before it. The Byzantines, according to Cantacuzenos, were eminently successful in repelling the attacks of the Osmanlis. On all sides the Greeks won, and killed hundreds of their opponents, while their own losses were slight. After inflicting this defeat upon Orkhan, Andronicus proposed, at nightfall, that the army withdraw to Constantinople! Some of his ardent warriors continued, however, to engage the enemy. Andronicus, surprised with only a few followers around him, was wounded, and escaped capture only by a hasty retreat. He was carried in a litter to Scutari, where he did not wait for news of his army. A caïque conveyed him safely home. Thus the successors of the Caesars abandoned Asia for ever.
Old Andronicus, in his hour of humiliation, did not hesitate to strike one more blow against his country. Spies of his in the army spread the rumour that the young emperor was dead. The imperial troops fled. They abandoned all their baggage, and were massacred by the Osmanlis, who hunted them down in the hills from which the fugitives could see the dome of St. Sophia.[107]
When we contrast the long story of the civil war between Andronicus and his grandfather, the armies gathered, the money expended, the energy displayed with this one pitifulattempt to aid the three great cities of Bithynia, there is no need for further speculation as to why these cities fell into the hands of the Osmanlis. No wearers of the imperial purple had ever made a more dismal showing: old Andronicus plotting to demoralize the army of his country by false rumours, and young Andronicus making such rumours possible by being the first to flee from the field after receiving a slight wound. It is no wonder that Cantacuzenos records that after this battle Nicaea fell into the hands of the Osmanlis.[108]It is altogether natural, too, that the inhabitants of Nicaea should refuse, as those of Brusa had done, to profit by the terms of the capitulation, and leave for Constantinople.[109]Their trades, silk-weaving and pottery, were dependent upon local materials, which they could not get elsewhere. There had been nothing to inspire in them that devotion to a faith which made the Huguenots long afterwards leave all without hesitation after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Hadji Khalfa says that in the seventeenth century the walls of Nicaea were entirely ruined.[110]The condition of these walls to-day (for they have not been repaired in modern times) contradicts this statement. It has been the claim of the Osmanlis that Nicaea was reduced by fighting. If this were true the walls must have suffered. It is also the common belief[111]that Nicaea, at the time of the Ottoman conquest, and for some time after, was a prosperous city.[112]But Ibn Batutah, who visited Nicaea within five or six years after its change of ownership, wrote that its walls were intact, that the sole entrance to the city was by a road built up like a bridge and so narrow that horsemen could not pass on it, and that the walls were surrounded by a wide deep moat filled with water. One had to reach the gate by a pont-levis, which was in working order and used at the time of his visit. The city itself was in ruins and occupied only by a small number of men in the service of Orkhan. He was told that Orkhan had besieged the city ten years, and Osman before him twenty years. As the famous traveller was an honoured guest in the palace of Orkhan, where Orkhan’s wife was living at the time, and where the emir himself came for a few days during the forty days which Ibn Batutah spent in Nicaea, his testimony is certainly worthy of credence.[113]
That Nicaea, while preserving its admirable fortifications, should have decreased so rapidly in importance and population during the seventy years between the return of the Byzantine emperors to Constantinople and the Ottoman occupation, is explainable only by three suppositions: that a majority of the inhabitants had died off, that they had emigrated, or that they had gradually joined their fortunes with the people of Osman. We find in Byzantine annals no record of a disastrous plague or of a large emigration of potters and porcelain workers and weavers to the capital or elsewhere from Nicaea. There was little fighting. The Osmanlis had not yet learned to massacre. What are we to believe, then, concerning the large population of this so recently flourishing city?
It is hardly a conjecture to affirm that the Nicaeans must have cast their fortunes with that steadily growing band whose firm conviction, forced upon them against their willand in violence to centuries-old traditions and sentiments, was that the old structure of society could not be repaired, and that there must be an entirely new building upon the old foundation. This conviction did not come suddenly or to all at once. It was a gradual dawning and awakening which caused the ranks of the Osmanlis to become greater every year. Before the end of Orkhan’s reign the nucleus of Asiatic adventurers which had gathered around Osman in the little village of Sugut had grown to half a million. It could not have been by natural increase. It could not have been by the flocking in of nomads from the East. Orkhan was cut off from contact with the Asiatic hinterland. His rivals of Karaman, Satalia, Aïdin, and Sarukhan would have attracted adventurers from the outside before himself. Orkhan formed his nation out of the elements on the ground. These were mostly Greek. Nicaea is but an illustration of the way in which the new race was born and the new nation formed.
This conviction that no good could come from Constantinople went farther than a transference of allegiance from the Palaeologi to the family of Osman. Mohammed was substituted for Christ. What a momentous significance there is in the records of the Greek Orthodox Church that in 1339 and again in 1340 the Patriarch sent an impassioned appeal to the Nicaeans that they should not abjure the Christian faith![114]At that very moment when the ecclesiastics of Constantinople were espousing the rival claims of unworthy aspirants to the imperial purple and were anathematizing each other in supporting trivial theological arguments, Christians were adopting the new Credo: ‘I believe in one God, and Mohammed is his prophet!’ in the city of the Nicene Creed.
We may place the surrender of Nicomedia in 1337 or1338.[115]This was the last Byzantine possession in the Ottoman corner of Asia Minor. The fall of Aïdos and Semendria on the hills behind Scutari had opened the way to the Bosphorus. Yalova, renowned for its baths, and Hereké, where Constantine the Great died, gave the Osmanlis undisputed control of the entrance to the Gulf of Nicomedia and secure possession of the city where Diocletian had made a new capital for the Roman Empire.
Orkhan had now accomplished the first part of the great task left unfinished by Osman. But, before he could proceed to the establishment of laws for his new state, it was necessary for him to consolidate and strengthen his position in relation to his formidable neighbours. Dangers threatened from the east and from the south. In 1327 Timurtash, a son of Choban, who was Mongol governor of Rum, pushed his raids as far as the Mediterranean, which the Mongol arms had not hitherto reached. He fought in turn Greeks and Turks.[116]Fortunately for Orkhan, the emir of Kermian, whose capital was Kutayia, had appeared so unpromising to the eyes of Timurtash that the Mongols had not comenorthward. But they were an ever imminent source of danger to the emirs of Asia Minor, and to Orkhan among them, until 1335, when the death of Bahadur Khan, just the year before the birth of Timur, caused the disintegration of the Mongol power in western Asia.[117]
The Mongol menace had contributed to the undisturbed operations of Orkhan against the Byzantines. Immediately upon its removal he was threatened by the other Turkish emirs. It was a critical moment for Orkhan, whose territories had not yet reached the proportions of a large state, like those of Omar of Aïdin and Mohammed of Sarukhan. Singly they might have crushed Orkhan. United they certainly would have done so. But here again the Byzantines contributed to their own downfall.
In 1329, at Phocaea, Andronicus had conducted his first negotiations with the emirs of Aïdin and Sarukhan.[118]This unsuccessful attempt to embroil the Anatolian emirs with each other was a pitiful confession of weakness on the part of Andronicus. It did no harm to Orkhan. But it called the attention of these emirs to the impotence of Andronicus, and led to a series of petty raids in Macedonia and Thrace. Emboldened by the ease of initial successes, Mohammed of Sarukhan in 1333 led in person an expedition of seventy-five ships against the Macedonian coast. Andronicus was too weak to oppose his landing.[119]In the same year Turkish pirates seized for a short time Rodosto, on the Sea of Marmora, only a few hours’ sail from Constantinople.[120]The following year the emperor was compelled to put an army in the field to save Salonika from the Turks.[121]
These attentions from his proposed allies did not prevent Andronicus from seeking aid in the same quarters in 1336 when he was besieging the Genoese of Phocaea. Mohammed sent twenty-four ships, numerous troops, and all the provisions necessary to sustain the imperial army. The net gain to Andronicus from this expedition was the empty acknowledgement from Cattaneo of Phocaea, who was not afraid of Andronicus but did not want to be bothered by him and his Turkish allies, that he would hold as a ‘fief of the empire’ what Andronicus, even with the help of the Turks, could not take from him![122]
This momentary diversion of the attention and energies of his neighbours was most propitious for Orkhan. Andronicus had rendered him good service. It gave to Orkhan an opportunity of enlarging and rounding out his dominions without incurring opposition that would not only have prevented him from carrying out his schemes but might also have destroyed him. Orkhan had been waiting for this moment. In 1333, the Turcoman emir of Mysia had died. His younger son had taken refuge with Orkhan, and promised in return for aid in dispossessing his brother to surrender to the Osmanlis Balikesri and three other border cities. Orkhan could not act immediately. He contented himself with advising the elder brother to divide his dominions with Tursun. Tursun went to negotiate in person, and was killed by his brother. This was shortly before the expedition to Phocaea. Orkhan was now ready. He put in the field an expedition, ostensibly to punish the assassination of his protégé Tursun, and was so successful that he forced the emir of Karasi to give up Pergamos and go into exile in Brusa.[123]In another expedition, which probably occurred in