Cantacuzenos ceased to be a factor in Byzantine affairs in 1355. But the Greeks could not rid themselves as easily of Orkhan. The Osmanlis had come to stay.
It is impossible to establish with any degree of certainty the conquests of Soleiman pasha in the hinterland of the Gulf of Saros and of the Sea of Marmora. But we know that he captured Demotika, and cut off Constantinople from Adrianople by occupying Tchorlu.[235]If these important places were retaken by the Byzantines after the premature death of Soleiman, it was only for a brief time. At the beginning of the reign of Murad the Osmanlis were firmly ensconced along the coasts of Thrace, and had made some permanent progress into the interior.
There was a sudden and full awakening on the part of the Greeks to the knowledge that the Ottoman invasion of 1354 was an irreparable disaster. A year before Soleiman pasha settled his Moslem colonies in the Thracian Chersonese, the inhabitants of Philadelphia had felt themselves so completely abandoned by their emperors that they had appealed directly to the Pope for aid, promising to return to the Roman communion.[236]At the approach of the Osmanlis inThrace, the country population had fled to Constantinople, abandoning everything. Those who had money to emigrate elsewhere did so immediately. They had no hope of a change in the fortunes of their country.[237]
The annalists of the Byzantine Empire record no heroic, bitter resistance to the army of Soleiman pasha. There was no mayor of the palace, no Joan, to revive the confidence of the people in their rulers, or to replace the family that had proved its unfitness. The Greeks had feared Cantacuzenos, and had attributed their hopeless condition to his alliance with the Osmanlis. But they could not have greater confidence in John Palaeologos. For he made no effort, not even in the smallest way, to demonstrate that he was different from his weak and disloyal forbears.
The Byzantines feared also the intrigues of the Genoese, who were as persistent in their efforts to undermine the integrity of the Byzantine Empire, as are the foreigners to-day engaged in commerce in the Levant to weaken and destroy the authority of the Ottoman Empire.[238]The banishment of Cantacuzenos could not save them from the Osmanlis. Palaeologos could not save them. They could not save themselves. The only way which occurred to them of preventing the Ottoman conquest was to give themselves to some Christian power. There were actually plans on foot to offer the remnant of the empire to Venice, to Hungary, even to Serbia![239]
In France, during the fourteenth century, the Turks were not regarded as a permanent factor in the Near East. Western Asia Minor was not called ‘Turquie’ or ‘Turquemanie’,but ‘the land which the Turks hold’.[240]There was no such illusion among the Italians. They accustomed themselves very rapidly to the idea that the Osmanlis, if not the Turkish tribes, were in Asia Minor and the Aegaean to stay.
The immigration across the Hellespont in 1354 was not looked upon by those who were acquainted with the weakness and impotence of the Byzantines as a raid or as a temporary affair. For several years the Genoese had thought it to their advantage to seek the friendship of Orkhan.[241]In 1355 two far-sighted Venetians wrote the whole truth to the Senate. They did not mince matters. Matteo Venier, baily at Constantinople, warned the Senate in the strongest terms about the menace of Ottoman aggrandizement.[242]Marino Falieri went farther. He pointed out that the Byzantine Empire must inevitably become the booty of the Osmanlis, and urged his countrymen to get ahead of them.[243]Prophetic words and daring suggestion. Had Venice at this time had a Dandolo of the stamp of the intrepid blind Doge who diverted the Fourth Crusade to wreak his vengeance upon his mutilators, Islam might have been kept out of Europe.
When John Palaeologos resumed the throne of his fathers, he found himself as much at the mercy of Orkhan as Cantacuzenos had been. His dependence is revealed in the story of Halil. Halil, son of Orkhan and Theodora, was captured by pirates in 1357, and taken to Phocaea. Orkhan held his brother-in-law responsible for this kidnapping, and called upon him to rescue his nephew. In February 1358, while the Osmanlis under Soleiman pasha were advancing in Thrace,we see John V, at the behest of Orkhan, spending what strength and energy he had in the siege of Phocaea. Later, when he went back to Constantinople, Orkhan peremptorily ordered him to return to direct in person the siege. John started out, and met his fleet, which had become anxious about his absence and had given up the siege. He could not persuade the galleys to turn back with him. So he wrote to Orkhan begging to be excused from continuing an undertaking beyond his power to carry through successfully.
Orkhan was inflexible. He had now become the overlord of the Byzantine emperor. In March 1359 the successor of Constantine went as a vassal to meet his Ottoman suzerain at Scutari. He appeased the wrath of Orkhan only by agreeing to pay a half of Halil’s ransom, and by signing a treaty of peace that was a virtual acceptance of the newstatus quoin Thrace. The peace was to be sealed by the betrothal of his ten-year-old daughter to Halil. It was as errand boy of Orkhan that John V made one more trip to Phocaea, paid one hundred thousand pieces of gold for Halil, and brought him to Nicaea. There the betrothal of the Christian princess to her Moslem cousin was celebrated by splendid fêtes.[244]
John Cantacuzenos introduced the Osmanlis into Europe. John Palaeologos accepted their presence in Thrace without a struggle. There is little choice between these two Johns.
Orkhan died at the end of this memorable decade.[245]If to Osman is given the honour of being father of a new people, the greater honour of founding the nation must beascribed to Orkhan.[246]Few men have accomplished a greater work and seen more sweeping changes in two generations. According to popular legend, Orkhan won his spurs as a warrior, and a bride to boot, at the capture of Biledjik, when he was twelve years old. His life was spent in fighting and in making permanent the results of his fighting. He was as simple in his tastes as his father had been. At Nicaea he distributed soup and bread to the poor with his own hands.[247]
There seems to be no basis for the characterization of Orkhan which the early western historians handed down to posterity. He was neither vicious nor cruel nor deceitful. His three striking characteristics were those which mark all men who have accomplished a great work in history, oneness of purpose, inexhaustible energy, and an unlimited capacity for detail. He began life as a village lad of an obscure tribe. After a public career of sixty years he died, the brother-in-law of the emperor of Byzantium, the friend and ally of Genoa, and potentially master of Thrace. The purpose of his life is summed up in the sentence we find upon his coins: ‘May God cause to endure the empire of Orkhan, son of Osman.’
Theuse of Ottoman mercenaries in the Byzantine civil wars was fatal to the Empire. From the very fact that they were Osmanlis and mercenaries, the auxiliaries of Cantacuzenos were dangerous allies for a man who claimed to be fighting for his fatherland. The fertile valleys which Bulgarian and Serbian had so long disputed with Greek fired the imagination of these ambitious adventurers. The conquest of Macedonia and Thrace seemed to them as feasible as it was worth while. For they had a revelation of the weakness of the Balkan peoples that could have come to them in no other way. It was as if Cantacuzenos had said to Orkhan and his followers: Here is our country. You see how rich it is. You see how we hate each other, race striving with race, faction with faction. We have no patriotism. We have no rulers or leaders actuated by other than purely selfish motives. Our religion means no more to us than does our fatherland. Here are our military roads. We give you the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the easiest routes, of learning the best methods of provisioning. We initiate you into the art of besieging our cities and our strongholds. Under our guidance, you discover the vulnerable places in the walls of our fortresses.
Murad had not enjoyed training in leadership and responsibility to fit him for his sudden accession to the chieftainship of the Osmanlis. He had been overshadowed by the heir apparent, and never dreamed of ruling. Soleimanpasha, brilliant captain and idol of the army, would not have brooked a rival in popular favour. When Orkhan died, two months after the fatal fall of his eldest son at Bulaïr, Murad was elevated to the emirship before he had had time to adjust himself to his new fortunes. But he could not pause to get his bearings. The army was on the march. The conquest of Thrace had already been started.
Osman and Orkhan were able to build up a race and a nation without notice and, consequently, without hindrance. For their little corner of Asia Minor had been abandoned by the Byzantines. Since the days when Nicaea became the capital of the empire, after the Latin conquest of Constantinople, its commercial relations with Europe were interrupted. None knew or cared about the rise of the Osmanlis until they appeared in Thrace. Orkhan had assured himself of his inheritance by patient waiting. Of Murad immediate action was demanded.
The actual European conquests of Orkhan, outside of the Thracian Chersonese, had been negligible. But Europe was excited over the capture of Gallipoli. Murad had little to fear from a union of the indigenous Balkan elements. Greek and Serbian and Bulgarian hate each other far worse than they hate the Osmanli. This fact of history, demonstrated so forcibly by the events of the year 1913, was known and appreciated at its full value by the earliest of the Ottoman conquerors. There was, however, just cause for apprehension of the intervention of Hungary in conjunction with the Serbians, or of Venice in conjunction with the Byzantines. Murad’s success depended upon his ability to gain an immediate and vital foothold in the Balkan peninsula.
This foothold was obtained in the epoch-making campaign of 1360-1. Astounding success attended the initial efforts of Murad. If he were not himself a trained and seasoned warrior, he had a precious legacy of generals in whom he could put implicit trust. Realizing his owninexperience, he created Kara Khalil Tchenderli vizier, and allowed himself to be guided by the judgement of this tried friend and servant of his grandfather and his father. To Lalashahin, companion of Soleiman in the capture of Tzympe, was given the title of beylerbey, and chief command of the army in Thrace. Adrianople was the goal. To Evrenos bey Murad entrusted a second army, whose mission was to prevent an attack from the Serbians in the west.[248]
Tchorlu was the first objective point, because its capture would protect the rear of the army operating against Adrianople. This city, only forty-six miles from Constantinople, offered a stubborn resistance, and had to be taken by assault. The commandant was decapitated, the garrison massacred, and the walls razed.[249]The Osmanlis saw to it that the fate of the defenders of Tchorlu was heralded far and wide, so that it might serve as a lesson to other cities before which their armies appeared. Evrenos bey, pushing forward on the left, occupied Demotika,[250]and then Gumuldjina. This operation gave to the Osmanlis control of the basin of the Maritza River, and removed the danger of a Serbian attack. A column on the right moved up the coast of the Black Sea and captured Kirk Kilisse, a position of extreme strategic importance in preventing a possible Bulgarian attempt to relieve Adrianople by bringing an army through the mountainous country between the river and the sea.[251]
After the capture of Tchorlu, Murad advanced to Lule Burgas on the north bank of the Ergene, where he effected a junction with the armies of Evrenos and Lalashahin. The decisive battle was fought between Bunar Hissar and Eski Baba, to which point the defenders of Adrianople had
THE EMIRATE OF MURAD[Largest view.]
THE EMIRATE OF MURAD
THE EMIRATE OF MURAD
[Largest view.]
[Largest view.]
advanced.[252]The Byzantines and Bulgarians were defeated. The Greek commandant of Adrianople, with a portion of his army, managed to flee down the Maritza to Enos.[253]it is one of the remarkable coincidences of history that the Osmanlis should have won the first battle which opened up to them their glorious future in Europe in exactly the same place that was to witness five hundred and fifty years later their last desperate stand in the Balkan peninsula.
Deserted by their commandant, and overwhelmed by the disaster of Eski Baba, the inhabitants of Adrianople opened their gates to the Osmanlis.[254]Murad installed Lalashahin in Adrianople, and took up his own head-quarters in Demotika,[255]where he built a palace and a mosque. Lalashahin, before settling down in Adrianople, carried his victorious arms up the valley of the Maritza as far as Philippopolis, which he fortified strongly. A stone bridge was built across the river.[256]The occupation of Philippopolis not only gave to the Osmanlis an advantageous base of operations against the Bulgarians, but also brought them the most fruitful source of revenue they had yet enjoyed. It enabled them to levy taxes upon the rice-growing industry. Bulgarians and Serbians were both dependent upon the harvests of the rice fields around Philippopolis.
In fifteen months the Osmanlis had become masters of the principal strategic points in Thrace. This great campaign, undertaken and carried through under the spur of necessity, was an auspicious beginning for the reign of Murad and forthe supremacy of the Osmanlis in the Balkan peninsula. Europe was suffering from another visitation of the Black Death.[257]The Balkan nations were completely demoralized. So unpopular was John Palaeologos in his own capital that Murad contemplated entering into a conspiracy with some Byzantine traitors to have John assassinated and complete the conquest of the empire.[258]If he did enter fully into this plot, it was as fortunate for him that the undertaking failed as it was for the Bulgarians in 1912 that their columns did not pierce the lines of Ottoman defence at Tchataldja. For the disaster that follows a too extended and too rapid subjugation of unassimilated masses is as sudden as it is irreparable. Durable empire-building is governed by a law of homogeneity.
The Osmanlis were still a race of limited numbers, and at the beginning of their existence as a nation. The process of assimilating the racial elements in conquered territories, begun by Osman when he first left the village of Sugut, could not be arrested; for the existence of the Ottoman state depended upon its continuance. The Greek of Bithynia had lived with Turk and Moslem for two centuries, and had found him a good neighbour. There was neither racial antipathy nor abhorrence of the religion of Mohammed to overcome. Nor had there been the hatred and dread of the conquered on the one side and the arrogance of the conqueror on the other. The Anatolian Greeks had been accustomed for generations to the economic and political conditions that finally caused the majority of them to cast their fortunes with the rising star of the Osmanlis.
The problem of assimilating the Christians, who formed the total population of the Balkan peninsula, was a new one.Here were huge and compact masses of Christians, who had come suddenly under the yoke of the Osmanlis in the first two years of Murad’s reign. They did not know their new masters. They did not know Islam. Benevolent assimilation by voluntary conversion seemed no longer possible. A radical change in the attitude of the Osmanlis towards the question of religion was demanded. Wholesale massacre was impracticable, for the Osmanlis had no reserve of colonists to call upon to replace the indigenous elements. Their position was still too precarious to allow them to draw freely from their adherents in the corner of Asia Minor under their dominion. To win the Macedonians and Thracians by forcible conversion was not feasible. It required the expenditure of all his military resources for Murad to hold what he had conquered. He could not add police duty to his already superhuman burden. Even had he thought of this method of conversion, he would have been deterred by the nightmare of a crusade.
Murad and his counsellors solved the problem of assimilation by sanctioning the reduction of captives to slavery, and by creating the corps of janissaries.
A law was promulgated which gave to the Osmanli soldier absolute right to the possession of prisoners, unless they consented to profess and practise Islam. Prisoners were regarded as booty. They could be kept for domestic or agricultural labour, or sold in the open market, subject to the government’s equity of one in five. The disgrace, even more than the hardships, of slavery was so keenly felt by the Greeks[259]that many for whom there was no other way preferred a change of religion to loss of freedom. The right to make slaves of prisoners was efficacious in providing wives and concubines for the conquerors, who were practically without women of their own. The widows of the fallen, and the daughters of Greeks, Serbians, and Bulgarians,became the instruments of increasing the Ottoman race. In the hundred years from Murad I to Mohammed II, the Osmanlis became in blood the most cosmopolitan and vigorous race the world had known since the days of the Greeks and Romans. Greek, Turkish, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Armenian, Wallachian, Hungarian, German, Italian, Russian, Tartar, Mongol, Circassian, Georgian, Persian, Syrian, and Arabian—this was the ancestry of the Osmanlis who, under Soleiman the Magnificent, made the whole world tremble. In richness of blood the only parallel to the Osmanlis in modern times is the present population of the United States and Canada.
But this indirect method of conversion as an alternative to slavery did not immediately increase the masculine element among the Osmanlis. In a city taken by assault the more virile portion of the male population was killed off, and those who remained were able to buy life and freedom. Male slaves were an embarrassment to the ever-moving armies of Murad. Ransom money was welcomed by the captors. In many cities the inhabitants surrendered without a struggle, and were secured in their freedom by the terms of capitulation. In rural districts the threat of slavery was little felt. The Osmanlis had neither time nor strength to put out the drag-net. Everywhere in the Balkans refuge in the mountains is easy. Then, too, the loss of cultivators would have made the highly prized timarets worthless, and would have caused a famine in foodstuffs or a diminution of taxes on harvests. Another means of bringing pressure to bear upon the Christians had to be devised.
The famous corps of the janissaries was, according to the Ottoman historians, a creation of Orkhan.[260]As a bodyguardof slaves, cut off from their families and educated and trained to serve nearest the person of the sovereign, the janissaries may have originated with Orkhan. If so, it was but the adoption of the idea already put into practice by the sovereigns of Egypt in the organization of the Mamelukes.[261]But as an agency of forcible conversion by the incorporation of Christian youths in the Ottoman army, there is no evidence of its existence before Murad. In fact, historians are agreed that the janissaries were recruited only from the Christian population in Europe.[262]So Orkhan could hardly have conceived this scheme. The problem of which it was a solution did not arise until after Orkhan’s death.
That the corps of the janissaries was an agency for forcible conversion, and was not created in order to increase the strength and efficiency of the Ottoman army, is proved by the records we have of the number of janissaries in the early days of Ottoman history. Murad and Bayezid are represented as having a thousand or less janissaries. In theconfusion of the ten years of civil strife among the sons of Bayezid, the janissaries played no part. There were only twelve hundred janissaries in the time of Mohammed the Conqueror,[263]and twelve thousand when the Ottoman Empire was at its zenith under Soleiman the Magnificent.[264]But Mahmud II counted one hundred and forty thousand in his army.[265]These figures show that this most celebrated of Ottoman military organizations did not become a powerful factor until the period of decadence. The janissaries were not, as has been commonly represented, the principal element of the Osmanlis’ fighting strength in the wars of conquest of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Their great rôle in Ottoman history was that of maintainers and defenders of conquests already made. In organizing the janissaries, Murad was certainly influenced by the desire of forming a bodyguard on whose loyalty and devotion he could rely implicitly. But his principal purpose was to emasculate the Christian elements in Macedonia and Thrace, which were too fanatical or too ignorant to see of their own accord that self-interest should lead them to renounce their nationality and their religion.
Murad’s law of drafting (devchurmé) provided that in each conquered district in Europe the privilege of exemption from military service through the payment of the capitation tax (kharadj) should be denied to Christian youths. The Osmanlis reserved the right to select at discretion Christian boys, who were taken from home and kindred and brought up in the Mohammedan religion. They were trained for service as the Sultan’s bodyguard. They depended directly upon the sovereign, who paid them according to a definite scale. Their insignia were the pot and the spoon, and their officers received names which symbolized the functions of the camp kitchen.[266]
One is compelled to dissent from the consensus of opinion of European historians on the organization of the janissaries. Their scathing criticisms are best summed up in the words of a French historian: ‘It is the most fearful tribute of human flesh that has ever been levied by victors upon the vanquished.... It justifies the execration of which the Osmanlis have been the object on the part of Europeans during centuries. Let us add that, by this strange mode of recruiting, the Osmanlis have found, at the same time, the means of taking away from the Christian populations their most virile element, and of doubling their troops without putting arms into the hands of the conquered.’[267]
The actual number of janissaries under arms refutes the latter part of this criticism, when it is applied to any one of the Ottoman sovereigns of the period of conquest. As for putting arms into the hands of the conquered, we shall see that both Murad and Bayezid availed themselves of the services in war of their Christian subjects, led by their own princes. The tearing away of boys from their homes, and the loss of their Christian heritage, is a shock to humanitarian and religious sensibilities. But we must judge the Osmanlis of Murad and Bayezid by the Christians of their own century. When we compare the methods of conquest of the Osmanlis with those of the Spaniards against the Moors, of the English against the French and Scotch, of the Italians against each other, we must concede that Murad devised a humane, clever, and highly successful scheme in the institution of the janissaries.
The ignorant Balkan peasantry—especially the Slavic elements—prized their sons far more highly than their daughters. Recruiting for the army was a greater blow to them than recruiting for the harem. It was the strong, sturdy son who was chosen. This touched the pocket-book as well as the heart-strings. The Anatolian Greek, especiallyof the cities, had been deterred from becoming a Moslem more by a lack of eagerness to assume military obligations than by a zeal for his ancestral faith. The Macedonian Greek, the Bulgarian, and the Serbian regarded the bearing of arms as a natural obligation. Fighting was a part of living. Better the faith of Mohammed, then, than the loss of the son’s help with the harvest. That there were wholesale conversions to Islam as a result of the threat to apply the law ofdevchurméis a logical inference from the fact that Murad never mustered more than a thousand janissaries.
The Byzantine Empire did not recover, even temporarily, from the effect of Murad’s first campaign in Europe. The fall of Demotika and Adrianople, followed so closely by that of Philippopolis, removed within eighteen months the last hope of retrieving the fortunes of the empire. There were still many places remaining to the Byzantines in Thrace. But the surrender of the fortresses in the valleys of the Ergene and the Maritza had destroyed the military prestige of the Byzantines, and foreshadowed the speedy subjugation of the whole country. The loss of the revenues of Thrace and of the great plain south of the main Balkan range reduced the imperial treasury to dependence upon the port duties and city taxes of Salonika and Constantinople. For ninety years the shadow of the empire remained. But whatever power, whatever influence was left to the successors of Constantine, it was rather in western Europe than in the Balkan peninsula. The impress of one thousand and thirty years of continuous existence from the renaming of old Byzantium to the fall of Adrianople was too deep to vanish in a few years. The decay had been going on for centuries. The final extinction would of necessity take several generations.
The complete abasement of the Byzantines is revealedin the treaty that John V Palacologos was compelled to conclude with Murad shortly after the capture of Philippopolis. In the fall of 1362 or the spring of 1363, John bound himself to refrain from any attempt to win back what he had lost in Thrace, either by a separate attack or by joining the Serbians or other enemies of the Osmanlis. In addition he promised to aid Murad against his Anatolian enemies, the Turkish emirs.[268]
After this treaty was signed, Murad withdrew to Brusa in order to provide for the organization of the new possessions that had come to him by a successful expedition against Angora. His letters, written at this time to announce to his Anatolian neighbours and to the Moslem princes of Asia the victories in Thrace, show clearly that he did not yet feel himself strong enough to assume the position of overlord to the other great emirs of Asia Minor. While he was in Brusa, in the spring of 1363, an event happened which led Murad to make the momentous decision that shaped the destinies of the Ottoman Empire. The first coalition against the Osmanlis was formed in Europe.
After the fall of Philippopolis, the Greek commandant had succeeded in escaping, and took refuge with Kral Urosh V of Serbia.[269]He pointed out to Urosh most eloquently the paucity of numbers of the Osmanlis, their insecure position, and the danger that would overwhelm the Serbians if they waited until the Osmanlis were firmly grounded in Thrace. Urged by Pope Urban V, the princes of Wallachia and Bosnia, together with King Louis of Hungary, joined the Serbians in upper Macedonia. Under the guidance of the Greek refugee, they started on a swiftmarch to win back Adrianople. It was an expedition undertaken as a crusade. The allies mustered at least twenty thousand.
Lalashahin had hardly more than twelve thousand men under his command, and a portion of these were scattered in the captured cities. Murad, who had started to return to Thrace as soon as he had heard the news, was detained by the necessity of capturing a fortress on the Sea of Marmora, near Cyzicus, which was in the hands of a turbulent band of second-generation Catalans, whom he feared to leave behind him.[270]They were suspected of plotting with his southern rivals to organize a movement against his Anatolian possessions.
If the Greeks had had the power or the will to co-operate with the crusaders, the Ottoman domination in Thrace would have ended even more suddenly than it had begun. But they made no move. In fact, one of the Byzantine historians charges John Palaeologos with aiding the Osmanlis![271]Lalashahin was able to draw from the garrisons of the recently occupied cities, and to send forward to meet the crusaders some ten thousand men under Hadji Ilbeki. It was the intention of Lalashahin to have this army act wholly on the defensive. If only Hadji Ilbeki could prevent their passing the Maritza, they would be turned southward towards Enos. By that time he felt sure that he could rely upon one of three things happening: dissensions would arise among the crusaders, the Greeks would be alarmed by the Serbian approach to Enos and the sea and attack the crusaders, or Murad would have time to bring his army across the Dardanelles. The one purpose of Lalashahin was to prevent the invasion of Thrace and the investment of Adrianople.
But Hadji Ilbeki did better than keep the crusaders fromcrossing the river. They had already crossed, and had celebrated the unopposed passage of the Maritza by an evening of feasting. Hadji Ilbeki surprised them as they were sleeping in a drunken stupor.[272]Without hesitation he fell upon them like a Gideon. Seized with panic, the crusaders were driven back into the river. Those who escaped massacre and drowning fled precipitately. There was no attempt to rally. In the little town of Mariazell, on the northern frontier of Styria near the foot of the Semmering Alps, there stands a votive church built by Louis out of gratitude to the Virgin for having saved him from death in this battle.[273]
Lalashahin, instead of rewarding the daring of his lieutenant, which had saved the Osmanlis from an irreparable disaster, was consumed with jealous fury. His only thought when he received the news was that Hadji Ilbeki had robbed him of the glory of so great a victory. He had his too successful subordinate poisoned.[274]
The sudden and complete collapse of the first crusade organized against the Osmanlis did not give to Murad any false sense of security. He saw in the successful meeting of this danger, which had threatened to destroy him, not the opportunity for exultation and for the relaxation of effort, but the spur for straining still further every nerve to learn and profit by the lesson. The battle of the Maritza was a warning to Murad. The danger would be renewed, and renewed soon. It was now for him to make the choicebetween remaining an Asiatic emir and becoming a European sovereign, between endeavouring to impose first his authority on the other emirs of Asia Minor and the conquest of the Balkan peninsula. Were the Osmanlis to be on the offensive in Europe or in Asia?
Murad decided to build his empire in the Balkan peninsula. It was not that he coveted less the mountains and valleys of Asia Minor. It was not that his ambitions failed to extend to the Taurus. But he had the vision to realize that the Ottoman race could not subjugate the Turkish elements in Asia Minor by a gradual assimilation of those elements alone. The race had to grow, as it began, by the incorporation of the various Christian elements, which alone possessed the finesse, the knowledge of government, the organizing capacity necessary to cope with the problems of facing Europe and inheriting the Byzantine Empire. From Europe, Asia Minor and more could be conquered: from Asia, no portion of Europe could be conquered.
The Osmanlis do not possess written records of the reign of Murad. There is no source to which we can go to read what Murad thought or what others of his day thought or said that he thought. But we know his mind from his actions. There is no cause for doubt on this point. After the first campaign in Thrace, Murad had returned to Brusa, and dated his letters from there. He began to plan an aggressive campaign against his neighbours. But after the battle of the Maritza, he abandoned Brusa for Demotika, and three years later, in 1366, Adrianople became the first real capital of the Ottoman Empire.
In spite of all that has been written about the unique position of Brusa in Ottoman history, it is no more to the Osmanlis than is Saint-Denis to the French or Winchester to the English. The Osmanlis have never really been at home in Constantinople. Historically and architecturally speaking, they have been under the shadow of a greater past.Adrianople, although always a city of importance since the days of Hadrian, reached its greatest splendour and glory under the Ottoman sultans. Here were planned, and from here started, the expeditions westward and eastward, which increased in strength, in efficiency, and in inspiring terror as the circle gradually widened, until the star and crescent appeared under the walls of Vienna and Cairo, on the shores of Italy and in the heart of Persia. No student of Ottoman annals can fail to support the contention of the Sublime Porte after the last Balkan war, that Adrianople is to the Osmanlis their sacred city. From Lalashahin to Shukri pasha, the proudest and most precious memories of the Osmanlis are in Adrianople, whose great mosque, still awe-inspiring and altogether admirable in its decay, is typical both of what has been and what is.
The decision of Murad was accepted by his successors. Even after the capture of Constantinople, many an Ottoman sultan felt more at home in Adrianople than in the imperial city. For more than a century the Osmanlis directed their energies almost exclusively to European conquests. Whatever they accomplished in Asia was the indirect result of their stupendous successes in Europe. From first to last, the extension of Ottoman sovereignty over the Moslems of Asia was by means of a soldiery gathered and war-hardened in Europe, themselves Christian or of Christian ancestry, in whose veins ran the blood of Greek and Roman, of Goth and Hun, of Albanian and Slav.
In 1365, Murad received from the outside world the first acknowledgement of his commanding position as heir apparent of the Byzantine Empire. It was an overture from the flourishing republic of Ragusa, on the Dalmatian coast, for a treaty guaranteeing freedom of trade in the Ottoman dominions to the merchants of Ragusa. In return forunrestricted commercial privileges, the republic offered to pay a large sum annually, which the givers called a grant, but which was invariably accepted by the recipients as tribute.[275]However it may have been at the beginning, the grant soon became tribute, for after some years the existence of Ragusa depended upon purchasing the benevolence of the Ottoman sultans. As the helplessness of the Ragusans increased, the tribute became larger. If we except the convention between the Genoese and Orkhan, of whose provisions and character we know nothing, the Ragusan commercial treaty is the first of the long series of treaties by which European cities and nations purchased the right to trade in the Ottoman Empire and to sail the high seas. Since in most cases the Osmanlis pledged themselves to nothing except to refrain from robbing merchants or from preventing their trading, the gifts exacted were nothing less than blackmail. After the sea-power of the Osmanlis had been broken, the Barbary corsairs inherited the privileges of this system which had been started in so small a way by the Ragusans.
Murad could not write. When the treaty with Ragusa was brought for his signature, he put his hand in the ink and made the impression of his fingers upon the paper. This is the origin of thetughra, which has ever since been the official signature of the house of Osman.[276]
When Murad was settling himself in Adrianople, and laying plans for the conquest of Macedonia and Bulgaria,he was menaced by a new crusade. Despite its futile ending, or better, for that very reason, the expedition of Amadeo of Savoy in 1366 commands our attention. For it furnishes, as does the expedition of Admiral Boucicaut from Genoa in 1399, a striking illustration of how easily the growing Ottoman power might have been crushed by a resolute body of crusaders with a single aim, and of how impossible it was to secure that oneness of purpose, owing to the ingrained animosity of the East and West, of the Greek and Catholic Churches.
In 1361, when Lorenzo Celsi was elevated to the dogeship of Venice, the Senate had made overtures to John Palaeologos for an alliance against Murad.[277]This plan was frustrated by the successes of the Osmanlis in Thrace. The Venetians held back, and allowed John to suffer the humiliation of signing the treaty that made him a vassal of Murad. In the crusade that ended in the disaster of the Maritza, the Venetian participation was half-hearted, and it proved valueless. The Venetians were not even on hand to prevent Murad from crossing the Dardanelles. In fact, there is every reason to believe that they now began to look upon the Osmanlis as a valuable tool in checkmating the ambition of Louis of Hungary to inherit the shortlived empire of Stephen Dushan.[278]
When he saw that Murad had come into Thrace to stay, and that there was no hope from the Venetians, John Palaeologos turned to the Hungarians. He made a secret visit to Buda to enlist the aid of Louis, and made the usual promise that the Byzantines would return to the Roman fold.[279]On his return he passed through the principality of Sisman, who had just inherited the lower portion of Bulgaria. Sisman, either at the suggestion of Andronicus Palaeologos, who wanted to succeed his father, or in the hope of winningfavour with Murad, detained the emperor in the fortress of Nicopolis on the Danube.[280]
Amadeo VI of Savoy was one of the princes who had taken the cross from Pope Urban V at Avignon on Holy Friday, 1363, for the crusade that never materialized. The receipt of a letter from Louis of Hungary, informing him of the imprisonment of his cousin (John’s mother was a princess of Savoy), and pointing out the rapid spread of Ottoman power, caused Amadeo to yield to the Pope’s continued and urgent solicitations.[281]With some fifteen hundred soldiers, he embarked for the East on fifteen galleys. After a stop at Negropont and Mitylene to get reinforcements, Amadeo entered the Hellespont, and captured Gallipoli without difficulty. The Osmanlis fled by night, abandoning the fortress.[282]
But the Savoyards made no attempt to follow up this victory, or even to keep Gallipoli. Instead of attacking the infidels, they sailed into the Black Sea, and started a vigorous campaign against the Bulgarians. Sozopolis and Burgas were captured, and several other important fortresses to the north. The bravery of the crusaders was rivalled only by their cruelty. Their bloodlust made such an impression upon the Bulgarians that they wanted nothing to do with Franks bearing the cross. When the Savoyards laid siege to Varna, Sisman gave up his prisoner to save the city.
John Palaeologos was borne back triumphantly to Constantinople. But friction soon arose. When Amadeo urgedupon his kinsman the necessity of paying the price of his rescue and of the continued support of the crusaders by fulfilling his promise to return to the Roman Church, he met with stubborn refusal on the part of emperor and patriarch alike. In wild rage, Amadeo withdrew to Pera, and began to fight the Greeks by sea and land. The Constantinopolitans were so frightened that ‘they did not dare to show their head out of doors’. Pressed on all sides by Osmanli and Bulgarian, as well as by his deliverers, the wretched John saw no other way out than to promise openly to abjure his errors and swear allegiance to the Pope.
Having wrung this promise from those whom he had come to defend, Amadeo sailed away to Rome, where he reported to the Pope in full consistory ‘how at his request the emperor of Constantinople and his people desired to submit to the obedience and belief of the Holy Roman Church in hope that the Church would aid them against the infidels who were too strongly oppressing them’.
Urban and the cardinals listened without great interest to the Count of Savoy’s recital of his success in preparing the ground for a reunion of the churches. The story was getting to be an old one. John’s overture was received with suspicion. Urban had got the same promise in the spring of 1366 in a letter from Louis, which reported the interview John had sought at Buda.[283]To the envoy of Louis, who had arrived in Avignon just as Urban was starting for Rome, the Pope gave a letter commanding the King of Hungary to put off his crusade until the union of the churches was actually accomplished.[284]
What lay behind the eagerness of Urban, at the beginning of his reign, to revive the crusades? Was he burning with holy zeal to recover the sepulchre of Christ from the handsof the Moslems? Was his heart set on protecting Cyprus and Rhodes? Had he determined to leave no stone unturned to protect the Byzantines and other eastern Christians from the encroachment and persecution of Murad? His letters indicate that his chief interest was the recovery of the lost power and glory of the papacy. There is the same revelation in the letters of his immediate successor, Gregory XI. These two popes had no catholic vision. They tried to keep their position as arbiters between France and England and Spain at Avignon, and at the same time to inherit the temporal power of the decaying Holy Roman Empire by circumventing the Visconti of Milan. The great schism in the Western Church, which so aided Murad and Bayezid in laying solidly the foundations of an empire in Europe, was the outcome of the short-sighted and purely selfish policy of these two popes. How far from the truth it is to represent them as courageously, whole-heartedly, and persistently endeavouring to awaken the interest and attention of Europe in the peril from the East!
The fall of Adrianople and of Philippopolis should have been a warning to Urban. He read in it, however, not a glorious opportunity to demonstrate the solidarity of Christendom by driving the Moslems out of Europe and rescuing fellow Christians from apostasy, slavery, and death, but an occasion to force the schismatic Greeks to return to the Roman communion. Of the popes of the fourteenth century, Urban had the greatest chance to prove himself a worthy champion of Christ and civilization. For it was during his reign that the Osmanlis began their conquests and their proselytizing in Europe. At the beginning they could easily have been checked. But it never occurred to Urban that there was a common interest of Christendom higher than and outside of the Roman Church.
The fault lay not wholly with Urban and with Gregory. They reflected the spirit of their age. But it does no creditto their personal character nor to the high position which they held to say that they were the victims, rather than the masters, of the prevailing bigotry and ignorance of their generation. In the fourteenth century, the West had already begun to try to impose its commerce, its customs, its laws, and its religion upon the East. There was not, nor has there ever been since, a sympathetic ‘give and take’ between Occident and Orient. In a mint, if the coin when stamped does not correspond exactly to the mould, it is rejected. Similarly the West, when it tries to put every eastern people through its mould and finds no exact correspondence, rejects. Hence, on the one side, the scorn of the ‘I am better than thou’: on the other side, a hatred born not only of fear and of conviction of inferiority, but of a sense of injustice which is none the less vital from a knowledge that the wrong is not, and will not be, righted.
Amadeo of Savoy, uncivilized, fanatical through ignorance, the fertile breeding-ground of fanaticism, true and unchanged descendant of the Fourth Crusaders, was a prophetic figure at Constantinople in 1366. He represented the only possible type of deliverer for Byzantium. But deliverance on his terms the Greeks would not accept. Death or Islam were preferable. And who can blame them? Two years before Amadeo’s expedition, the Greeks of Crete had risen in rebellion against their Venetian overlords because an attempt had been made to impose upon them the Latin faith and rites.[285]When they were hunted down and massacred for refusing to worship after the western fashion, not only Pope Urban, but also Petrarch, wrote to the Doge congratulating him upon his valiant and successful efforts to save the Church of Christ in Crete![286]
In a letter to Pope Urban, Petrarch spoke with approval of the policy of using the Ottoman menace to stamp out theEastern heresy. ‘The Osmanlis are merely enemies,’ he wrote, ‘but the schismatic Greeks are worse than enemies. The Osmanlis hate us less, for they fear us less. The Greeks, however, both fear and hate us with all their soul.’[287]These words of Petrarch epitomize the feeling between the Eastern and Western Churches during his own day, and, if what one can see with his own eyes in Jerusalem and elsewhere is a fair example, up to the twentieth century.[288]
If the European nations regarded the adherents of the Orthodox Church (the term Greek in its religious sense must be taken to include all the Balkan races) as ‘worse than enemies’, that is, than the Osmanlis, it is equally true that the Osmanlis found from 1350 to 1500 that the hatred of the Balkan races for the Latin Church was their most potent ally, not only in the actual conquest, but in reconciling the conquered to their fate. One does not want to detract from the genius of the early Ottoman sovereigns and from the reputation for superb fighting ability so honestly won by the Ottoman armies. But it must not be forgotten that each separate race in the Balkans preferred the rule of the Osmanlis to that of their neighbours, and that the one point in which the Balkan races were of the same mind was that Ottoman domination was preferable to that of the Hungarians and the Italians. For every crusade was a scheme for religious propaganda and territorial aggrandizement, injust the same spirit as in modern times the nations of Europe have exploited the misery of Ottoman Christians for the purpose of securing concessions.
In spite of the fact that John Palaeologos was informed by the Patriarch Philotheus that a mixed council of clergy and government officials, presided over by the empress, had been held in June 1376, and had decided against the reunion of the churches,[289]John persisted in his negotiations with the Pope. Urban did all that he could to facilitate the visit of the Byzantine emperor to Rome.[290]But at the same time he was writing to the Venetians and to the Dalmatian cities to protect the Catholics of Cattaro against the Serbian and Albanian heretics,[291]and was encouraging Louis in his suicidal campaign against the Bulgarians.
In 1369, John Palaeologos left the government of Constantinople to his elder son Andronicus, and set out for Rome, where, on October eighteenth, he made his profession of faith in the presence of four cardinals, and confirmed it by a golden bull. The next morning, at St. Peter’s, he formally abjured the errors of the Orthodox Church before the high altar, with his hands in those of the Pope.[292]The Pope accepted him as a ‘son of the Church’, promised that he should be relieved of the Turk, and gave him letters earnestly recommending his cause to the princes of Christendom.[293]
Urban V was quick to use the prestige which he believed the adhesion of John Palaeologos had given him. Heannounced broadcast the happy consummation of his efforts, stating that the Byzantine emperor had done homage to the Vicar of Christ in St. Peter’s.[294]But letters sent during the same winter to the Greek clergy, urging them to accept the action of their emperor,[295]and other letters from his secret correspondence of this year, indicate how little faith he had in the Emperor’s sincerity or ability to fulfil his promises. Was the abjuration in St. Peter’s a farce, in which Emperor and Pope allowed themselves to trifle with holy things, each for the sake of his immediate advantage?
John had hoped that his adhesion to the Roman Church would bring to him grants of money, ships, and men from the Latin princes, and that an army would rally around him to fight the Osmanlis. But not only did he return from France ‘with empty hands’, but he was detained at Venice because of debts owing to merchants. In vain he begged Andronicus to send the money for his release. The son who had four years before been charged with being party to his father’s imprisonment in Bulgaria was no more filial at this humiliating crisis. He answered that there was no money in the treasury, and that he could get nothing from the clergy. But his younger son, Manuel, brought from Salonika the ransom.[296]
John Palaeologos returned to his capital poorer than when he left. He brought no help from Europe, and he had bound himself publicly by oath to an obligation which he had known he could not fulfil. He had broken faith with Murad, who during these years had been growing more and more powerful. There was nothing for him to do but to make himself tributary to Murad in order that he might enjoy ‘up to theend of his life’ his last possessions in peace.[297]Three years later, in 1373, when his ambassador John Lascaris failed in a second attempt to get aid from the Western princes,[298]the Byzantine emperor recognized Murad as his suzerain, promised to do military service in person in Murad’s army, and gave to him his son Manuel as hostage.[299]
Urban died a few months after John’s visit to Rome. Gregory XI, who succeeded him in December 1370, had little hope of carrying on further negotiations with the Eastern Church; for the Greek ecclesiastics were stubborn in their determination to maintain the absolute independence of the patriarchate. The Genoese and Venetians were fighting bitterly in Cyprus. In 1371, Gregory made a strong appeal to France, England, Venice, and Flanders to co-operate with Genoa in saving the last Christians of the Holy Land.[300]There was no response.
That Gregory realized clearly the peril to Christendom in the advance of Murad’s armies is shown in two remarkable letters written to Louis of Hungary in May and November 1372. His words were prophetic. He urged Louis to resist the Osmanlis before they advanced farther into Europe. They had already entered Serbia. He trembled to think what would happen if they pushed through Albania and secured a port on the Adriatic. Unless Louis entered without delay into an alliance with his Christian neighbours, how could he protect his own kingdom and all Christendom from the Mohammedan peril.[301]Seconding this warning to the King of Hungary, the Pope commanded the Hungarian and Slavic archbishops to preach the crusade in Hungary, Poland, and the Dalmatian cities. Everywhere special boxeswere placed in the churches for collecting funds. A tithe was levied on the monasteries and abbeys of Hungary and Dalmatia. Louis, with five of his most powerful nobles, took the cross, and swore to the Pope that he would put an army in the field within a year.[302]Louis asked Venice for triremes, but when the Venetians found that he intended them to be a donation for ‘the common cause’, they found that they could not build them.[303]Padua declined an invitation to guarantee the cost of construction. The Hungarians did not fulfil their promises. In fact, there is no evidence that they made any effort to acquit themselves of their oath.
When John Palaeologos made a last desperate appeal to the Pope, before he entered into his third and final compact with Murad, Gregory, in receiving the imperial envoy, burst into tears, and promised that he would save Constantinople, if only the Byzantine emperor would cause his people to renounce their heresies and return to the Roman Church. In 1375, he wrote once more to Louis to inform him that Constantinople was in danger of capture from Murad.[304]Letters in the same year to Edward of England pictured the Ottoman advance and the peril of Christendom, urged a general war against the Osmanlis, and asked for a subsidy to provide galleys ‘to prevent the crossing into Europe of more Turks, because Constantinople is in imminent danger’.[305]The letters of Gregory XI to the Christian princes prove conclusively that the full import of Murad’s early successes was understood by the Pope and was impressed upon both secular and ecclesiastical authorities throughout Europe.
But both John and Gregory lost heart. Neither was able to fulfil the compact made in Rome. Gregory could not unite Christendom to relieve the Byzantines. John could not persuade the Byzantines to renounce, as he had done, the ‘Greek heresies’. So, as we have seen, he becameMurad’s vassal.[306]The Pope, involved in the quarrel of Emperor Charles IV and the Duke of Bavaria with the Marquis of Brandenburg, and anxious over the outcome, for the papacy, of the continual unrest in the Italian cities, returned from Avignon to Rome in 1378. He died a few months later.[307]The struggle arising from the election of Gregory’s successor gave birth to the ‘Great Schism’. This left Murad a free hand in subjugating the Balkan peninsula.
The sources of information for the movements from the outside for the relief of the Balkan Christians, and for the religious and political quarrels of the Byzantines, are so numerous and so detailed that one is embarrassed by too much material. Many interesting facts cannot even be mentioned. But when we come to the beginning of the Ottoman conquest in Europe under Murad and Bayezid, we find ourselves in the midst of what an eminent Slavic historian has called ‘the most obscure and difficult period of South-Slavic history’.[308]The chroniclers, whether they be Slavic, Rumanian, or Ottoman, are so contradictory and so lacking in explicit statement that we cannot speak with certainty of the sequence of events. The Byzantine chroniclers, verbose to the point of weariness in detailing petty and trifling quarrels and happenings, are almost silent concerning the momentous events that marked the ruin of their empire. It is difficult to unravel the twisted skeins, and find a thread to carry the story of the conquest from 1366 to 1389. When it is impossible to choose between contradictory records, the geography of the field of action,with which one can gain a first-hand knowledge, must be the final factor in determining the sequence of conquest between the adoption of Adrianople by Murad as his capital and the downfall of the Serbians at Kossova.
The occupation of Adrianople and Philippopolis was as severe a blow to the Bulgarians as to the Byzantines. In spite of the fact, however, that Greek and Bulgarian had a common interest in driving the Osmanli from Thrace, or at the very least in checking his advance, there was no move made at this time for an alliance. On the contrary, even when the Osmanlis were engaged in the Thracian campaign, war arose between John V and Alexander. The Byzantines captured Anchiale, and tried desperately to take Mesembria by assault.[309]The Greek patriarch wrote to Czar Alexander, reminding him of the sacredness of harmony and the necessity of accord at that critical moment, but the letter was not backed by the good faith and good will of the Byzantine emperor. Neither John nor Alexander attempted to give assistance to the Serbian and Hungarian crusade that ended so disastrously on the banks of the Maritza.
The conquest of Bulgaria up to the main Balkan range imposed itself upon Murad as a corollary to the Ottoman dominion in Thrace, and the undisturbed possession of Adrianople and Philippopolis. For the Bulgarians, through centuries of varying fortunes, had grown accustomed to fighting for the right to live in Thrace. Often had they been beaten back to the Balkans, and as often pressed forward again to the Ergene. To win and lose Adrianople and other Thracian cities was old history with them. They always came back. Between 1362 and 1365, Murad had experience with Bulgarian persistence and tenacity of purpose. They were masters again of Kirk Kilisse, Midia, Bunar Hissar, and Viza when Murad made his change ofcapital from Brusa to Adrianople. Yamboli had been strongly fortified by Alexander. Bulgaria seemed as formidable and as forbidding to Murad’s dream of empire as the emirates of Asia Minor.
Fortune again favoured the Osmanlis. Czar Alexander died in 1365,[310]leaving three heirs. To John Sisman fell middle and southern Bulgaria from the Danube to the Rhodope Mountains and the Bulgarian pretensions in Thrace. Old Tirnovo was his capital. Stracimir inherited western Bulgaria, with Widin for capital, and the Bulgarian pretensions to the valley of the Vardar and western Macedonia. (The Bulgarian remnant of eastern Macedonia was in the hands of an independent Bulgarian prince, Constantine, whose stronghold was Kustendil.) Dobrotich became master of the Dobrudja and the upper Black Sea coast, where Bulgarian, Cuman and Alan lived together with hardly any distinguishing characteristics.
The division of Bulgaria, at the moment when union was essential, proved fatal. The sons of Alexander never joined to face the common danger. So marked was the division of Alexander’s kingdom that thirty years after the conquest the conquered territories were known as ‘the three Bulgarias’.[311]
Stracimir, jealous because Sisman seemed to have received the lion’s share of Alexander’s inheritance, did not hesitate to make overtures to Murad, offering to co-operate with the Osmanlis against his brother and to share the portion of Sisman with them.[312]Before any agreement could be made, however, Stracimir found himself face to face with a terrible danger in the west, which soon caused him to forget both Sisman and Murad. Louis of Hungary had interpreted hiscrusader’s commission as an authorization to ‘make war against the heretics’. It was a pretext to get possession of Widin, which was essential to his ambitious project of adding Serbia to his kingdom. He attacked the Bulgarians on the ground that they were enemies of the Church and must be forced to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. Widin was captured and Stracimir imprisoned.[313]Stracimir’s dominions were flooded with Franciscan missionaries, who were backed by a brutal soldiery in their proselytizing efforts.[314]Two hundred thousand Bulgarians abjured the orthodox heresy, and were re-baptized in the Latin rite. This forcible conversion, which was purely a political matter, was as objectionable to the Bulgarians as to the Cretans. They hated ‘with a perfect hatred’ the Franciscans whom Pope Urban had sent, and the cause for which they stood.
At the first opportunity, the Bulgarians of the west called in Sisman and Vadislav of Wallachia. The Hungarians were driven out of Widin and the Franciscans in the city massacred.[315]Louis was powerful enough to wreak terrible vengeance. In 1370, Widin fell once more into his hands. The Bulgarians of the western Balkans were subjected to such a relentless persecution that they welcomed the Moslem conquest to secure freedom of worship. Urban had incited Louis to this war, and had congratulated him upon his laudable zeal in converting the heretics.[316]
We have already spoken of the punishment that came to Sisman as a result of the detention of John Palaeologos. The Italian crusaders on the Black Sea coast were as powerful an aid to Murad’s empire-building as were the Hungarian crusaders on the western frontier. The successors of Louis reaped the bitter fruits of his insane policy. Louis and Amadeo of Savoy contributed in no little measure tomake possible the conquests of Murad. When Amadeo withdrew from Bulgaria, he left the cities he had captured to the Greeks. Sisman was compelled to expend his energy in recapturing them. But Murad had already anticipated him in the important fortress of Sozopolis, which commanded the entrance to the port of Burgas.[317]
Shortly after the Ottoman occupation of Sozopolis, the Bulgarians were everywhere dispossessed in Thrace, and the capture of Yamboli[318]forced Sisman to follow the example of John Palaeologos. He became a vassal of Murad. His sister Mara entered Murad’s harem, but with the stipulation that she be allowed to retain her Christian faith.