The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (21 page)

Meanwhile, Mahmut Pasha took the Ottoman armada back to Gelibolu in the Dardanelles, shadowed the whole way by the Venetian fleet under Niccolo da Canale. According to the seventeenth-century French historian Guillet de Saint-Georges, writing of Mahmut Pasha’s reaction to his Venetian escort, ‘It is related that the Vezir, seeing the Christian fleet finally retiring peacefully, said laughing that the Venetians were treating him like one of their good friends, and that in order to keep exactly the rules of civility, they had escorted him from their place to his.’ Mahmut Pasha also sent a cynical message to Doge Cristoforo Moro via the Venetian
bailo
in Istanbul. Referring to the annual ceremony celebrating the symbolic maritime marriage of Venice, the ‘Bride of the Sea,’ he said, ‘You can tell the Doge that he can leave off marrying the sea; it is our turn now.’

After the Turkish fleet left the Aegean, Niccolo da Canale made an attempt to recapture Negroponte, landing troops on Euboea to attack the fortress. But his troops were virtually annihilated by Turkish cavalry. The Venetian chronicler Domenico Malipiero noted that the failure was inevitable because ‘no one in the armada gave them any help’.

Soon afterwards an Ottoman army under Hass Murat Pasha swept through the Morea, capturing the Venetian fortress at Vostitsa [Aegeion] on the Gulf of Corinth and other places. According to Malipiero, this led to the surrender of the Venetian fortresses at Belvedere, Chilidoni and Kalamata.

The Venetians reacted with shock and consternation when news of the fall of Negroponte, the ‘glory and splendor of Venice’, reached the lagoon on 27 July, as the Milanese ambassador reported to his duke: ‘All Venice is in the grip of horror; the inhabitants, half dead with fear, are saying that to give up all their possessions on the mainland would have been a lesser evil.’ But the republic was determined to fight on against the Turks, as the Senate declared in a letter sent on 31 July to all the Christian princes of Europe.

Today the report has been brought to us from Naupactus, our city in Aetolia, that Christ’s monstrous enemy the Turk has finally taken by storm the city of Negroponte, to which he had laid siege with an army of incredible size, and that he visited every form of cruelty upon his victims, in keeping with his foul and fearsome character. Nevertheless, we are neither shattered by this loss nor broken in spirit, but rather we have become the more aroused and are [now] determined with the advent of these greater dangers to augment our fleet and to send out fresh garrisons in order to strengthen our hold on our other possessions in the East as well as to render assistance to the other Christian peoples, whose lives are threatened by the implacable foe.

Writing of the fall of Negroponte, Malipiero observed: ‘Now it does indeed seem that the greatness of Venice has been brought down, and our pride has been swept away… The fall of Negroponte had terrified all the princes of Italy, but especially the King [Ferrante of Naples], because he possessed the coast of Apulia, exposed to all the Sultan’s force.’

A letter sent by the commune of Florence to the Pope on 8 August 1470 warned of the extent of Mehmet’s imperial ambitions, saying that what interested the sultan was ‘dominion over the globe and not only Italy and the Urbs [Rome]’.

Meanwhile, Venice had been using its network of informers, some of them in contact with members of Mehmet’s court, to try and stop the relentless Ottoman advance. Franz Babinger, Mehmet’s modern biographer, writes of two such episodes dating from soon after the fall of Negroponte, when the Venetians tried to bribe high Ottoman officials to betray the sultan.

The first episode involved Mesih Pasha, who at the time was in command of the Ottoman fleet at Gelibolu in the Dardanelles. According to Babinger, Mesih sent word to the Venetians through one of their agents that he was prepared to surrender his fleet to them, provided that he received 40,000 ducats and was made ruler of the Morea. But the Council of Ten answered that 10,000 ducats should be enough, making no mention of the Morea, and the plot came to nothing. It would appear that Mesih Pasha’s offer was an Ottoman subterfuge, for he retained high office throughout the Conqueror’s reign, and was thrice grand vezir under Mehmet’s son and successor Beyazit II.

The second episode involved Maestro Iacopo of Gaeta, an Italian Jew who was Mehmet’s personal physician and constant companion. The Venetians conspired with Iacopo to poison the sultan, offering him a huge bribe and Venetian citizenship for him and his descendants. But nothing came of the supposed plot, which may also have been an Ottoman scheme, for Maestro Iacopo continued as the sultan’s physician and companion through the remainder of Mehmet’s reign.

Mehmet in the meanwhile rested on his laurels in Istanbul, sending two of his generals on campaign in Anatolia, while he received ambassadors from the powers of both Europe and Asia, as Tursun Beg writes in describing the sultan’s activities after his conquest of Negroponte: ‘The Sultan did not accompany the army on campaign in 875 (1470-1). First Rum Mehmet Pasha and then Ishak Pasha were sent to complete the conquest of Karaman. In that year ambassadors came from far and near, from Iran, Bohemia, Hungary and other places, and great festivities were held.’

10

Victory over the White Sheep

The two expeditions that Mehmet sent into Anatolia in 1470-1 were due to uprisings in Karaman, first by Pir Ahmet and then by his brother Kasım Bey, both of whom tried to take advantage of the sultan’s preoccupation with the siege of Negroponte.

Pir Ahmet, who had taken refuge with Uzun Hasan, tried to regain the territory in Karaman he had lost to the Ottomans. At the same time Kasım Bey, acting independently of his brother, attacked Ankara with some 5,000 troops and laid waste the surrounding countryside. The local Ottoman commanders mustered a force of 5,000 cavalry to drive off the attackers, but they were ambushed by Kasım and lost several hundred men.

When news of this defeat reached Mehmet he appointed Daud Pasha as
sancakbey
in Ankara and sent an army from Istanbul under Rum Mehmet Pasha to put down the rebellion. At the beginning of the campaign Rum Mehmet retook all of Karaman north of the Taurus Mountains, after which he headed south to attack the Varsak Türkmen tribe led by Uyuz Bey. But the Türkmen warriors ambushed the Ottomans and forced Rum Mehmet to retreat and abandon the campaign for the rest of the year.

The following spring Mehmet sent an army under Ishak Pasha to resume the campaign in Karaman against Pir Ahmet and Kasım Bey. Pir Ahmet was forced to flee and take refuge with Uzun Hasan, but Kasım, although defeated by Ishak Pasha’s army, eluded capture and continued his rebellion.

Then in the summer of 1471 Mehmet launched another campaign into southern Anatolia by both land and sea to attack the Mediterranean port of Alanya, which was held by the Türkmen emir Kılıç Arslan. Rum Mehmet Pasha led an army across Anatolia to besiege Alanya, while the Ottoman fleet sailed around the Mediterranean coast to attack it from the sea, forcing Kılıç Arslan to surrender.

The capture of Alanya gave the Ottomans control of the Mediterranean shore as far east as Silifke, which was still in the hands of the Karamanid dynasty, along with the fortified coastal towns to its east. Mehmet mounted an expedition to this region in the summer of 1472 under his son Prince Mustafa and Gedik Ahmet Pasha, who took Silifke and the other Karamanid strongholds to its east without resistance.

A Turkish chronicler reports that the Ottoman victory had left Kasım Bey ‘fleeing like a bandit from mountain to mountain’. But after the Ottoman army withdrew Kasım persuaded the Varsak Türkmen to recapture Silifke and another stronghold to its east. When Mehmet learned of this he ordered Prince Mustafa and Gedik Ahmet Pasha to march back to Silifke, which they recaptured only after stiff resistance.

Meanwhile, Venice and other European powers were trying to regroup their forces after the fall of Negroponte. Two months after its fall, in mid-September 1470, Pope Paul II wrote to the princes of Italy in an effort to form an anti-Turkish league. ‘Beloved sons, there must be no delay, because our enemy, who seems to desire nothing more than the bloody extermination of all Christendon, [is] already at our throats, grows stronger every day, and fresh from the victory he has, he is strengthened in his resolve, so that every slightest delay affords him the opportunity for our common destruction.’

Meanwhile, the Venetian Senate learned of a diplomatic initiative that had been made by Mara Branković, Mehmet’s stepmother, and her sister Catherine. The sisters had contacted Sultan Mehmet, who was devoted to Mara, and he indicated to them that he would be receptive to a Venetian embassy to discuss peace terms. On 16 October 1470 the Senate sent a note to the Venetian ambassador in Rome about this development so that he could inform the Pope, concluding with a note of caution. ‘Add also that we understand very well that this is one of the usual cunning stunts of the Turk, in whom we believe that absolutely no trust should be placed, for he yearns for the destruction of our faith and religion. Considering the present state of affairs, however, it has seemed best to us to play his own game of pretense and to go along with him.’

The Senate appointed two envoys - Niccolo Cocco and Francesco Capello - and sent them to Istanbul in the hope of negotiating peace terms with Sultan Mehmet. They were instructed to tell the sultan ‘that although fortune, in whose grasp lies the determination of all human affairs, has allowed that we should have been drawn into war with his Excellency, nevertheless our intention always has been and is sincerely to live at peace with his Excellency, as we have done for many generations with his most illustrious forebears’. The basic principle for peace could be ‘that each should hold and possess what he holds and possesses at present … ’, and the peace should include ‘all the lords of the Aegean archipelago as well as the most serene king of Cyprus; the most reverend lord, the grand master of Rhodes, with the Order [of the Hospitallers]; and the most illustrious lord of S. Maura’.

Then on 22 December 1470 a general defensive alliance of the states of Italy against the Turks was agreed upon, reviving the so-called Italian League that had been created after the Peace of Lodi in 1454. Two days later Pope Paul wrote to the papal governor of Bologna to inform him that ‘we have concluded, renewed, blessed, and entered into a league of all the powers in Italy, placing our hope in the Lord that from this confederation, union and league there will come an expedition against [the Turk], the monstrous common enemy of the Christian faith, so that this great peril and crisis may be met by combining our strength’.

But then on 26 July 1471 Pope Paul quite unexpectedly passed away. Eight days later he was succeeded by Cardinal Francesco della Rovere, who became Pope Sixtus IV. The new Pope was very much aware of the imminent danger posed by the Ottomans, and on 23 December he despatched four cardinals as envoys to enlist the various Christian rulers of Europe in an anti-Turkish crusade. Bessarion was sent to France, Burgundy and England, Rodrigo Borgia (the future Pope Alexander VI) to Spain, Marco Barbo to Germany, Hungary and Poland, and Oliverio Carafa to the Kingdom of Naples. Pius reached agreements with both Naples and Venice, giving each of them 72,000 florins annually for two years to launch a papal fleet to be commanded by Cardinal Carafa.

Eight days later Sixtus published an encyclical calling for the united action of Christendom against the common enemy, expressing his deep regret that the ‘most truculent race of the Turks, followers of the impious dog Mohammed, had risen rapidly against the Christian faith’, capturing Constantinople and other cities and regions of the Byzantine Empire.

The Venetian peace mission was a failure, for the Senate was not willing to accept the terms offered by Mehmet, who for his part had turned down all their proposals. The Venetian envoys were then recalled, but Francesco Capello died in Istanbul, whereupon Niccolo Cocco proceeded homeward via Corfu. There Cocco conferred with another Venetian envoy, Marco Aurelio, who was being sent to Istanbul for further negotiations with the sultan.

But at that point the Senate also recalled Aurelio, for they had learned that Mehmet was preparing a great expedition against Uzun Hasan, chieftain of the Akkoyunlu, or White Sheep, whom the Venetians had long sought as an ally in their struggle with the Ottomans. Instead, the Senate sent Caterino Zeno as an envoy to Uzun Hasan, proposing that a Venetian fleet should attack the Ottomans in the Aegean while the Akkoyunlu fought them in Anatolia.

The Senate had first contacted Uzun Hasan at the beginning of the Venetians’ war against the Ottomans. On 2 December 1463 the Senate agreed to seek an alliance with the Akkoyunlu, and soon afterwards the Venetians sent Lazzaro Querini as their envoy to Uzun Hasan’s court in Tabriz. Querini returned from Persia to Venice in February 1471, bringing with him an envoy named Murad from Uzun Hasan. Two years earlier Uzun Hasan had defeated Jihanshah, chieftain of the Karakoyunlu, or Black Sheep, thus adding Persia to the domain of the Akkoyunlu, which already comprised eastern Anatolia, Iraq and Syria. Murad Beg delivered a message from Uzun Hasan declaring that he had ‘eradicated and expelled Jihanshah, the lord of Persia…and acquired the great dominions of the lord Abu Said…which occupied the greater part of Persia, as far as Baghdad… Now no other obstacle remains, save the son of the Ottoman Turk, Mehmed Bey, and it is an easy thing to abase and eradicate his dominion and lordship.’

Caterino Zeno was chosen as the Venetian envoy to the Akkoyunlu court because of his familiarity with the East and his family links with Uzun Hasan. Caterino had spent years in Damascus with his father Dracone, while his wife Violante was a niece of Uzun Hasan’s wife Despina Hatun, originally known as Theodora Comnena, an illegitimate daughter of the late Emperor John IV Comnenus of Trebizond.

Zeno left Venice in the autumn of 1471 in the company of Murad Bey, and after spending several months on Rhodes he crossed over to Anatolia, finally arriving at Tabriz on 30 April 1472. There he was presented to Despina Hatun, to whom he gave rich presents from Venice, after which he was lodged in the royal palace and dined with Uzun Hasan.