The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (22 page)

At the end of August a Türkmen envoy named Hacı Muhammed arrived in Venice, where he delivered a letter from Uzun Hasan asking for artillery, for the Akkoyunlu had no cannon to face the heavy guns of the Ottoman army. Soon afterwards another Türkmen envoy arrived, an unidentified Sephardic Jew, who delivered a message from Uzun Hasan saying that he was marching westward into Anatolia and would not cease until he had defeated Sultan Mehmet. The envoy then went on to deliver the same message to the Pope and King Ferrante of Naples, and while in Rome he was baptised and converted to Christianity.

Zeno’s arrival in Tabriz encouraged a nephew of the late Emperor John IV Comnenus who had taken refuge with Uzun Hasan to recapture Trebizond. Aided by Uzun Hasan and the Georgians, the prince mounted an expedition and besieged Trebizond, but the fierce resistance of the Turkish garrison and the arrival of an Ottoman flotilla of eight galleys forced him to abandon his campaign, the very last attempt to restore a fragment of Byzantium.

After the loss of Negroponte Pietro Mocenigo replaced Niccolo da Canale as Captain-General of the Sea and began rebuiding the battered Venetian navy, which he led on a few minor raids on Ottoman possessions. Then early in 1472 he was approached by a Sicilian named Antonello, who had been captured by the Turks at Negroponte and taken to the headquarters of the Ottoman fleet at Gelibolu on the Dardanelles, where he escaped and made his way back to Italy. Antonello told Mocenigo that he was willing and able to blow up the Turkish arsenal at Gelibolu, which contained arms and ammunition for more than 300 galleys. Mocenigo provided a small ship for Antonello and six of his companions, who landed at Gelibolu on 13 February 1472. That night they made their way into the arsenal and set it on fire, destroying it completely. Antonello and his companions were caught and brought before Sultan Mehmet, who was prepared to torture them in order to find out who was behind them, for he was sure that it was the Venetians. According to Domenico Malipiero, Antonello said that it was his own idea.

And with great courage he added that he, the sultan, was the plague of the world, that he had plundered all his neighbor princes, that he had kept faith with no one, and that he was trying to eradicate the name of Christ. And that was why he [Antonello] had taken into his head to do what he had done… The Grand Turk listened to him with great patience and admiration. But then he gave orders to behead him and his companions.

Meanwhile, the crusader fleet had been launched and sailed to Rhodes, where the various contingents assembled in June 1472. The fleet comprised eighty-five galleys and fifteen transports, commanded by Cardinal Carafa and two Venetian
provveditori
, Luigi Bembo and Marin Malipiero, with Pietro Mocenigo commanding the Venetian contingent. The galleys included thirty-six from Venice, twelve from the Venetian-controlled cities on the Dalmatian coast, eighteen from the papacy, seventeen from Naples, and two from the Knights of St John on Rhodes. Mocenigo received a letter on Rhodes that Caterino Zeno had written from Tabriz, recommending that the Christian armada attack the fortresses held by the Ottomans on the Mediterranean coast of Anatolia, so as to divert Mehmet when Uzun Hasan began his offensive against the sultan.

Mocenigo thereupon attacked and took Silifke and two other fortresses to its east, which he handed over to Kasım Bey. The entire crusader fleet then sailed to Antalya in August 1472, breaking through the chain that blocked the entrance to the fortified port and landing troops, who laid waste the environs of the city. But the crusaders were unable to break through the powerful Roman walls of the fortified city, and so after a brief siege the fleet sailed back to Rhodes.

At that point the Neapolitan leaders, who had been in continual disagreement with Mocenigo and the other Venetian commanders, withdrew their contingent from the armada and sailed back to Naples. The rest of the crusader fleet attacked Izmir (Smyrna) on 13 September 1472, and after a bloody battle with the Ottoman defenders the city was sacked and burned to the ground.

Uzun Hasan sent an army into Anatolia in the late summer of 1472 under the command of his
beylerbey
Emir Bey and his nephew Yusuf Mirza, who took with them the Karamanid princes Pir Ahmet and Kasım Bey, as well as Kızıl Ahmet, the son of the dispossessed Türkmen emir of Sinop. Caterino Zeno, the Venetian ambassador in Tabriz, also accompanied the expedition with a force of 500 Croatian cavalrymen. Zeno estimated the size of the Akkoyunlu army to be 50,000 men, while other estimates range up to 100,000.

The Türkmen troops commanded by Emir Bey and Yusuf Mirza captured and sacked Tokat. Uzun Hasan then reinstated Pir Ahmet as emir of Karaman, where Prince Mustafa was provincial governor. Prince Mustafa, who at the time was with Gedik Ahmet Pasha on campaign in southern Karaman, received instructions from his father not to engage the Akkoyunlu forces until he had joined forces with Daud Pasha. Mehmet then personally led the main Ottoman army into Anatolia, whereupon he ordered Prince Mustafa and Daud Pasha, who now commanded an army estimated to comprise 60,000 troops and cavalry, to attack the Akkoyunlu. The two forces met near Carallia on the south shore of Lake Beyşehir, a battle described by Tursun Beg.

The Ottoman prince Mustafa, who was at the time in charge of the province of Karaman, advanced against them with a contingent of the Anatolian forces and subjected them to a defeat, taking Mirza Yusuf and two hundred other influential
begs
prisoner. Some of those who attempted to escape were put to the sword while others who managed to escape the Ottomans were taken prisoner by the Varsak tribe. Out of an army of twenty thousand men, scarcely a thousand escaped with their lives. The captured
begs
were sent to Fatih [Sultan Mehmet]. The Sultan threw Mirza Yusuf, the son of Uzun Hasan’s sister, into jail, and the others were put to the sword.

Uzun Hasan was undeterred by this defeat, and in the autumn of 1472 he widened the conflict by sending an army to invade the territory of the Mamluk sultan Kaitbey in south-eastern Anatolia. The Akkoyunlu army captured Malatya and then went on to attack Aleppo, where it was defeated by the Mamluk emir Yashbak and forced to withdraw, ending the invasion.

Mehmet took advantage of the invasion to send an envoy to Yashbak, offering to form an alliance against Uzun Hasan. The Egyptian chronicler Ibn Iyas records that the emir Yashbak responded by sending an embassy to Istanbul ‘bearing copious gifts and letters, so that friendship should be established between the Ottoman and Mamluk Sultans, on account of Uzun Hasan’.

Mehmet was now determined to crush Uzun Hasan once and for all, and so early in September 1472 he restored Mahmut Pasha as grand vezir, realising that he ‘was the most valiant and practical man that he had in his court’. At the same time, Mehmet summoned the Ottoman troops of Rumelia to muster in Edirne on 20 September, and then on 12 October the sultan and his pashas led the army across the Bosphorus to Üsküdar, ready to march eastward to attack Uzun Hasan. But at the last moment Mahmut Pasha persuaded Mehmet to postpone the expedition till the following spring. The Turkish chronicler Hoca Sadeddin paraphrases the arguments that Mahmut Pasha presented to the sultan: ‘The violent winter season of the land of Karaman is approaching… The victorious army is not prepared. What is fitting to do is to wait until spring and prepare the victorious army and the equipment for the campaign, and now send to the
beylerbeyi
of Anatolia an order to hurry for the annulment and extinguishing of the fire of the disorders of these villains.’

The Ottoman campaign against Uzun Hasan finally got under way the following spring, when Mehmet crossed over into Anatolia with his army. Mehmet’s youngest son, Prince Jem, who was then only fourteen, was left with a small force to defend Edirne in case of a European incursion.

A letter written by an Italian diplomat on 15 May 1473 notes: ‘The
beylerbeyi
of Rumeli [Hass Murat Pasha] crossed from Istanbul to Gelibolu with all the host of the Grand Turk, and on Palm Sunday, the Grand Turk, with all his court crossed from Istanbul to a place called Anichvari.’ Mehmet had entrusted overall command of the expedition against Uzun Hasan to his young favourite, Hass Murat Pasha, with the grand vezir Mahmut Pasha serving as his adviser.

The various contingents of the Ottoman army assembled near Amasya, the total force numbering more than 260,000, according to the Turkish chronicler Kemalpaşazade. Hass Murat Pasha was in the vanguard with the Rumelian army, Prince Beyazit on the right wing with the troops from the province of Sivas and Amasya, Prince Mustafa on the left with those from Karaman, and Daud Pasha in the rear with the Anatolian army, while Mehmet himself, with some 30,000 troops, was in the centre.

The situation in Uzun Hasan’s camp is known from a letter written by Caterino Zeno to the Doge of Venice on 12 July 1473, in which he writes that ‘at present we are in the district of Erzincan. According to the most recent roll-call, there are 300,000 in the field…and the lord intends to have 500,000 by the end of the month.’ He goes on to write that ‘forty camels laden with money’ had arrived from Tabriz, ‘wages were paid…and all are in good spirits to go against the common enemy’. The numbers seem to have been inflated, for when Uzun Hasan first caught sight of the Ottoman army, on the opposite bank of the Euphrates, he saw that it was as large as his own, and Zeno heard him exclaim: ‘Son of a whore, what an ocean!’

Tursun Beg describes the first battle of the campaign, which took place near Tercan on 4 August 1473, when Hass Murat impetuously crossed the Euphrates with the vanguard of the Ottoman army, only to be ambushed by Uzun Hasan.

Mahmud Pasha asked Hass Murad Pasha to gather his forces at a given place and wait. He himself decided to attack the enemy in their hiding place. Hass Murad’s soldiers, complaining that, should the enemy attack be turned back, Mahmud Pasha would get all the credit, broke ranks again and charged their horses against the enemy. Thereupon Uzun Hasan suddenly attacked Mahmud Pasha from his hiding place. A fierce and closely fought battle began. Mahmud managed to withdraw with great difficulty to the place where Hass Murad’s troops had been but was unable to join up with them again. Hass Murad had fallen on the battlefield; and Fenarıoğlu Ahmed, Turahanoğlu Ömer and Aydın Beyoğlu Hacı Beg were all taken prisoners.

The news of Uzun Hasan’s victory reached Venice through two letters written in October 1473, one from Ragusa and the other from Lepanto, both of which exaggerated the extent of the Ottoman defeat, the former even saying that Mehmet himself had been killed. The letter from Ragusa says: ‘At this time came a man from Edirne, who secretly told me about the Grand Signor, how he was defeated and about his death. It is not known for certain about the Pasha [Mahmut], and very bad things are said about the
Sancakbeys
. I believe that maybe it was worse for them than we think.’ The letter from Lepanto states: ‘It is said that the son of the Turk was routed and several
Sancakbeys
, the
Beylerbeyi
of Rumeli and Ömer Bey were killed, and fifty thousand men died, all the flower of the camp of the Turk. And all these bands of Turkey were in great terror, may God, in his mercy, confound them totally.’

The two armies met a week later at Otluk Belli, in the mountains north of Erzincan. The Ottoman army, led by Mehmet himself along with Mahmut Pasha and Daud Pasha, utterly defeated the Akkoyunlu, commanded by Uzun Hasan’s sons Ughurlu Mehmet and Zeynel, forcing Uzun Hasan to flee for his life. The Akkoyunlu are estimated to have lost some 10,000 men, the Ottomans only about 1,000. Both Turkish and Venetian chroniclers agree that the Akkoyunlu lost because of their lack of artillery, which they had never before encountered.

Meanwhile, Prince Jem had been holding the fort in Edirne, under the supervision of his advisers Nasuh Bey and Karıştıranlı Süleyman Bey. At one point during the campaign against the Akkoyunlu there was no word from Sultan Mehmet for forty days, and the rumour spread that he had been defeated and killed by Uzun Hasan. When Jem heard this he decided to usurp the throne, but then when he learned that his father was alive and had defeated Uzun Hasan he fled from Edirne. When Mehmet returned to Istanbul he forgave Jem for his rash action, probably because he saw in him something of the impetuosity that he himself had often exhibited in his youth. He put the blame on his son’s advisers, severely punishing Nasuh Bey and Karıştıranlı Süleyman Bey, while Jem himself was sent to Kastamonu as provincial governor.

Mehmet also dismissed Mahmut Pasha as grand vezir, replacing him with Gedik Ahmet Pasha. Mahmut Pasha then retired to his estate at Hasköy, a place that Hoca Sadeddin says ‘he made the envy of towns, having built a mosque and
medrese
there’. The sources give various reasons for Mahmut Pasha’s dismissal, one being that Mehmet blamed him for the death of Hass Murat. According to Angiolello: ‘The Turkish
Signor
was angry that Mahmut Pasha withdrew…and did not give help to Murat, and it was suspected that he had done that on purpose, because he was not his friend.’ Another possible reason is that that he had advised the sultan not to pursue Uzun Hasan after the Battle of Otluk Belli, which allowed Mahmut Pasha’s enemies to accuse him of being in league with the enemy.

Uzun Hasan, despite his defeat at Otluk Belli, had lost little territory, and he sent an envoy to tell the Venetians that he fully intended to continue his war against the Ottomans. He also sent an emissary to Pope Sixtus IV, with a message asking ‘that the Christians attack the Turks with a land army, and promises, if this is done, that he will again descend upon the Turk with a powerful army, and that he will not give up the war until the Turk is destroyed’.

The Pope wrote to Lodovico II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, on 2 October 1474, appealing to him to send an envoy to confer in Rome with representatives of the other Italian states, to whom he had sent a similar message concerning the financing of another expedition against the Turks. Sixtus said: ‘And would that we could bear this weight alone, because we would burden no one. Our resources are not sufficient however, and therefore it is necessary that we have recourse to your Excellency and other Italian powers.’ He urged that plans should be made quickly, ‘so that we may know how to give a definite reply to the [Türkmen] envoy and his prince’.