The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (13 page)

Thus Mehmet, who had now added nearly the whole Black Sea coast of Anatolia to his realm, extinguished the last embers of Byzantium in Trebizond, having previously dispossessed the branch of the imperial line that had ruled in the Peloponnesos. Byzantium had passed away and its former dominions in Europe and Asia from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea were now ruled by Mehmet the Conqueror, who could thus style himself ‘Sultan of the two Continents and Emperor of the two Seas’.

6

War with Venice

News of the fall of Trebizond reached Rome early in the fall of 1461, stirring Pope Pius II to reflect on what could be done to stop the Turks. He himself had achieved nothing in this regard since his declaration of a crusade at the Congress of Mantua, as he remarked in a meeting with a small group of cardinals early in March 1462. ‘We have done nothing against the enemies of the Cross; that is evident. But the reason for our silence was not indifference but a kind of despair. Power, not will, was lacking…’

During the interim Pius had been writing an extraordinary document entitled
Epistola ad Mahumetan,
or
Letter to Mehmet
, the original text of which has only recently been rediscovered, though the contents have been known for centuries.

This letter, which almost certainly was never sent to Istanbul, assures Mehmet that Pius does not hate him, since the teachings of Christ made the Pope love his enemy. Pius goes on to tell Mehmet that continued warfare with the Christian world would lead the Turks only to disaster, and that if the sultan wanted to extend his domains into western Europe he need only allow himself to be baptised and convert to Christianity.

Once you have done this there will be no prince on earth to outdo you in fame or equal you in power. We shall appoint you emperor of the Greeks and the Orient, and what you have now obtained by violence, and hold unjustly, will be your possession by right. All Christians will honor you and make you arbiter of their quarrels. All the oppressed will take refuge in you as in their common protector; men will turn to you from nearly all the countries on earth. Men will submit to you voluntarily, appear before your judgment seat, and pay taxes to you. It will be given to you to quell tyrants, to support the good and combat the wicked. And the Roman Church will not oppose you if you walk in the right path…

After his conquest of Trebizond Mehmet returned to Istanbul on 6 October 1461, and then soon afterwards he went to Edirne, where he spent the ensuing winter at Edirne Sarayı. Then in the spring of 1462 Mehmet prepared to set off on another campaign, this one brought on by a revolt in the trans-Danubian principality of Wallachia.

Wallachia had been a vassal of the Ottomans under the reign of the voyvoda Vlad II Dracul, whose last name means the ‘Dragon’ or ‘Devil’. The voyvoda had two sons, Vlad and Radu, who were kept in the Ottoman court as hostages. When the voyvoda died in 1456 Mehmet sent Vlad, the eldest, to Wallachia, where he ruled as Vlad III, while Radu remained a hostage in Istanbul. Vlad paid tribute to the Ottomans until 1459, and then the following year he formed an alliance with King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. Mehmet sent an embassy to deal with Vlad led by his chief falconer Hamza Bey, who was then governing the Danubian provinces. Vlad had Hamza Bey and his party impaled and then led his army across the frozen Danube in mid-winter to attack Ottoman territory south of Nicopolis. Vlad thenceforth was known to the Turks as Tepeş, or the Impaler, whose bloodthirstiness made him the historical prototype for Count Dracula, the fictional vampire lord of Bram Stoker’s novel.

Mehmet was enraged by this and decided to invade Wallachia. The sultan mustered his forces at Edirne and sent Mahmut Pasha on ahead with the advance guard, while he himself followed with the rest of the army. Tursun Beg says that the entire army numbered 300,000, but modern estimates put it at about 80,000. Mahmut was accompanied by Vlad’s younger brother Radu, whom Mehmet intended to set up as his puppet after Tepeş was overthrown.

Mehmet defeated Vlad in a hard-fought battle immediately after the Turkish forces crossed the Danube. Vlad was then forced to flee and take refuge with King Matthias Corvinus, who imprisoned him. Corvinus eventually released Vlad, whom he hoped to restore as a Hungarian puppet in Wallachia, giving him his young cousin as a bride. Meanwhile, Mehmet appointed Vlad’s younger brother Radu as voyvoda of Wallachia, which was now totally under Ottoman control. Mehmet then returned to Edirne in mid-July 1462, having now conquered lands on both the north and south of the Black Sea.

That same summer Mehmet accompanied Mahmut Pasha on a campaign against Niccolo Gattilusio of Lesbos, who surrendered his fortress at Mytilene after a siege of fifteen days. After the surrender of Mytilene, Mahmut Pasha, on Mehmet’s orders, divided the populace into three parts, one of which he allowed to remain in the city as the sultan’s subjects, the second group to be resettled in Istanbul, and the third to be given as slaves to the janissaries who had captured the fortress. The Italian mercenaries who had defended the fortress were executed. Niccolo Gattilusio was taken as a prisoner to Istanbul, where he tried to save himself by converting to Islam, but soon afterwards he too was executed.

At the beginning of the Mytilene campaign Mehmet had visited the site of ancient Troy, on the Asian shore of the Dardenelles where the strait enters the Aegean. Kritoboulos says the Mehmet ‘inquired about the tombs of the heroes - Achilles and Ajax and the rest. And he praised and congratulated them, their memory and their deeds, and on having a person like the poet Homer to extol them.’ He said proudly that he had settled the score with the ancient Greeks for their victory over the ‘Asiatics’ at Troy, where he was referring to the Mysian people who inhabited the Troad in antiquity.

He is reported to have said, shaking his head a little, ‘God has reserved for me, through so long a period of years, the right to avenge this city and its inhabitants. For I have subdued their enemies and have plundered their city and made them the spoils of the Mysians. It was the Greeks and Macedonians and Thessalians and Peloponnesians who ravaged this place in the past, and whose descendants have now through my efforts paid the just penalty, after a long period of years, for their injustice to us Asiatics at that time and so often in subsequent times.

Mehmet’s campaign in Mytilene seems to have convinced him, as Kritoboulos writes, that he had to ‘build a great navy and have control of the sea’.

Then he gave orders that, in addition to the existing ships, a large number of others should speedily be built and many sailors selected from all his domains for this purpose and set aside for this work alone. He did this because he saw that sea-power was a great thing, that the navy of the Italians was large and that they dominated the sea and ruled all the islands in the Aegean, and that to no small extent they injured his own coastlands, both Asiatic and European - especially the navy of the Venetians… For this purpose he got together as quickly as possible a great fleet, and began to gain control of the sea.

Kritoboulos goes on to say that Mehmet also decided he should build a pair of fortresses on the European and Asian shores of the Dardanelles, which would control the maritime approach to Istanbul from the Aegean, just as Rumeli Hisarı and Anadolu Hisarı controlled the approach to the city from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus. That same summer Mehmet began construction of a pair of fortresses on either side of the Dardanelles near its Aegean end. The project was directed by Yakup Pasha, admiral and governor of Gelibolu, who completed the two fortresses in the spring of 1463. The fortress on the European side was called Kılıt ül-Bahriye (Key of the Sea) and the one on the Asian shore Kalei Sultaniye (Sultan’s Castle). A new and larger harbour for galleys was also completed at Gelibolu, while an intensive programme of shipbuilding went on at the Tershane, or naval arsenal, in Istanbul on the Golden Horn.

The following year Mehmet led a campaign into Bosnia together with Mahmut Pasha. The pretext for the campaign was that the Bosnian king, Stephen VII Tomasević, had refused to pay tribute to the sultan as had his father, feeling secure that his alliance with Hungary would protect him from the Ottomans. The Hungarian alliance had been facilitated by Pope Pius II, who had persuaded King Matthias Corvinus to end his quarrel with Stephen. The Pope had been led to intervene after receiving a letter from Stephen explaining his perilous situation and the threat that Mehmet posed to Christendom.

If Mehmet only demanded my kingdom and would go no further, it would be possible to leave Bosnia to its fate and there would be no need for you to disturb the rest of Christendom in my defence. But his insatiable lust for power knows no bounds. After me he will attack Hungary and the Venetian province of Dalmatia. By way of Krain and Istria he will go to Italy, which he wishes to subjugate. He often speaks of Rome and longs to go there. If he conquers my kingdom thanks to the indifference of the Christians, he will find here the right country to fulfill his desires. I shall be the first victim. But after me the Hungarians and the Venetians and other peoples will suffer the same fate.

Once again Mahmut Pasha led the advance guard and Mehmet followed with the rest of the army. The first place in Bosnia that they attacked was Bobovac, a day’s march north-west of Sarajevo, which they took after a three-day siege. Mehmet then ordered Mahmut Pasha to march the Rumelian troops westward to Jajce, the capital of Bosnia, hoping to capture King Stephen. When Mahmut reached Jajce he found that Stephen had fled to Ključ, a day’s march to the north-west. Mahmut put Ključ under siege and then sent a messenger to negotiate with Stephen, who agreed to surrender on a written promise that he would be given safe conduct. Mehmet was angered when he learned of the safe conduct that Mahmut Pasha had given Stephen. When Mehmet reached Jajce he had Stephen brought before him in the presence of Şeyh Ali Bistami, the chief Ottoman cleric. When Stephen produced his safe conduct the Bistami declared that the document was invalid, since it had been issued by one of the sultan’s servants without Mehmet’s permission, adding that ‘The killing of such infidels is holy war.’ Mehmet then ordered that Stephen be executed, and most Turkish sources say that Şeyh Ali Bistami beheaded the king with his own hands in front of the sultan.

Stephen’s death marked the end of the Kingdom of Bosnia. Mahmut Pasha went on to conquer most of Hercegovina, which was ruled by Duke Stephen Vukčić, who fled to Hungary.

Mehmet’s conquest of Bosnia exposed Venetian-held Dalmatia, the independent city of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and ports in southern Italy to Turkish attacks. Cristoforo Moro, the Doge of Venice, wrote to the government in Florence on 14 June 1463, appealing for their help against the Grand Turk.

Impelled by his lusts and his inexorable hatred of the Catholic faith, the bitterest and fiercest enemy of the Christian name, the prince of the Turks has carried his audacity so far that among the princes of Christendom there is virtually none willing to oppose his designs… Not content with such a triumph [in Bosnia], he, as one demanding more and hoping for still greater conquests, has not hesitated to advance, arrogantly and with arms in readiness, to the coast of Segno [Senj, in Croatia], that is almost to the gate and entrance of Italy.

Ömer Bey, the Ottoman commander in Athens, launched an attack in November 1462 on the Venetian fortress at Naupactos, on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, and nearly captured it. Then the following spring Isa Bey, the Turkish commander in the Peloponnesos, besieged the Venetian fortress at Argos, which he captured on 3 April 1463.

After the fall of Argos the Venetian Senate began preparing for war against the Turks, and on 17 May 1463 they reached an agreement to support King Matthias Corvinus, who had sent a plea ‘setting forth the power and greatness of the Turk and the dangers threatening the kingdom of Hungary and Christianity’. Then on 28 July 1463, after an impassioned speech by Vettore Capello, who said that the republic would be lost if it did not fight back against the Turks, the Senate formally declared war against the Ottoman government.

The Venetians, whatever their attitude might have been earlier, now saw the benefit of supporting the Pope’s crusade as part of their own war effort, in which they hoped to reconquer the whole of the Morea. Pius looked upon the Turco-Venetian war as part of the crusade that he had preached at Mantua. At a public consistory in Rome on 22 October 1463 Pius declared war on the Turks in the bull entitled
Ezechielis prophetae
, vowing: ‘We shall do battle with the power of speech, not the sword. We shall aid warriors with our prayers. We shall take our stand on the tall deck of a ship or on some nearby height of land, bless our soldiers, and render the enemy accursed…this we can do and this we shall do in the fullness of our strength. The Lord will not despise the contrite and humble heart!’ Then he urged the princes of western Europe to put aside their differences, reminding them of what had had happened to their fellow Christian rulers in the Balkans and Asia Minor at the hands of Mehmet.

You Germans who do not help the Hungarians, do not hope for the help of the French! And you Frenchmen, do not hope for the assistance of the Spaniards unless you help the Germans. With what measures ye mete, it shall be measured to you. What is to be gained by looking on and waiting has been learned by the emperors of Constantinople and Trebizond, the kings of Bosnia and Serbia, and other princes, who have all, one after another, been overpowered and have perished. Now that Mehmet has conquered the Orient, he wishes to conquer the West.

The first action of the war began on 12 August 1463, when Alvise Loredan, the Venetian Admiral of the Sea, sent a force that captured the fortress at Argos. On 3 September another Venetian force attacked the citadel at Corinth under the command of Bertoldo d’Este, who was killed in action while trying to breach the walls. A Turkish relief force under Mahmut Pasha forced the Venetians to lift the siege and flee aboard Loredan’s ships.