The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire (33 page)

Soon after the treaty was signed Beyazit attended to some unfinished business, the elimination of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, who had been one of his two principal envoys in the negotiations with the knights, along with Mesih Pasha. Beyazit had Gedik Ahmet executed, ending the career of the greatest Ottoman commander of his time. Beyazit also took the opportunity to order the execution of Jem’s two-year-old son Oğuzhan, who had been held hostage in the Ottoman court.

Meanwhile, the Council of Knights had been deliberating about what to do with Jem, and they decided that he could be held more securely in one of their commanderies in France. On 18 August D’Aubusson met with Jem and informed him of the council’s decision. Jem readily agreed, and the council decided to inform the Pope and all other Christian princes of this decision. As Caoursin writes, referring to Jem as ‘the King’: ‘He was a gift sent by God for the good of Christendom, and it seems best to bring the King to the West under the protection of the Grand Master and the knights of Rhodes.’ Ten days later d’Aubusson and the council sent an envoy to Beyazit, informing him of their plan to sent Jem to France.

On 1 September 1482 Jem and his companions boarded a magnificent galley called the
Grand Nef de Tresor
, the flagship of the Rhodian fleet, commanded by the knight Guy de Blanchefort, nephew of Pierre d’Aubusson. The galley brought Jem and his party to Nice, from where they were eventually taken in turn by Blanchefort to a number of the Order’s commanderies in France, ending at Bourgeneuf in the Auvergene.

King Matthias Corvinus was also interested in obtaining custody of Jem, whom he wanted to use as a figurehead in a war against the Turks. He raised the subject in discussions with an envoy of Pope Sixtus, but nothing came of the matter. Corvinus realised that Sixtus had no intention of helping him gain control of Jem, and thenceforth his relations with the Pope were embittered. This led Corvinus to agree to terms with Beyazit, and in the autumn of 1483 a five-year peace treaty was concluded between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

Beyazit’s peace treaty with Corvinus left him free to invade Moldavia and Wallachia, and in the summer of 1484 he personally led his forces across the Danube, capturing Kilia and Akkerman on the Black Sea coast. Moldavia and Wallachia thus became trans-Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, remaining under Turkish rule for nearly four centuries. Beyazit himself is said to have remarked that he had ‘won the key of the door to all Moldavia and Hungary, the whole region of the Danube, Poland and Tartary, and the entire coast of the Black Sea’.

Pope Sixtus IV died on 12 August 1484 and was succeeded by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cibo of Genoa, who became Pope Innocent VIII. Among the embassies that came to congratulate the new Pope on his accession was that of the Knights of St John on Rhodes, who were represented by Guillaume Caoursin and the English knight John Kendal. At the end of January 1485 Caoursin and Kendal were received by the Pope in a private audience to discuss the affairs of the Order. Innocent expressed his strong desire to have Jem brought from France and held in a fortress of the papacy, though remaining in the custody of the knights. The envoys demurred, saying that they had no authority to deal with this request, whereupon Innocent asked them to discuss the matter with d’Aubusson when they returned to Rhodes.

Innocent soon began secret negotiations with d’Aubusson to obtain custody of Jem, for he thought he could use the Turkish pretender as a symbolic leader in his crusade. They finally concluded an agreement on 13 February 1486, in the first part of which d’Aubusson agreed to allow Jem to be transferred to the custody of the Pope in Rome, where he would be guarded by knights of the Order of St John. The Grand Master would retain legal rights to Jem, along with 10,000 ducats of the yearly payment of 40,000 ducats from Beyazit. The second part of the agreement stated that the Pope would appoint d’Aubusson as a cardinal, while allowing him to continue serving as Grand Master of the Knights of St John. But it remained to be seen whether the transfer of Jem to the papacy could actually be carried out, since the French would have to agree. Charles VIII was only thirteen when he succeeded his father Louis XI on 30 August 1483; his older sister Anne de Beaujeu served as regent, and her approval was needed to take Jem to Rome.

The negotiations concerning Jem were complicated by the fact that several different powers were trying to obtain custody of him, some of them making extravagant offers to the French court to decide in their favour, including Pope Innocent, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, Sultan Beyazit and Sultan Kaitbey. The Venetians and the Knights of St John were also involved, with their envoys trying to persuade Madame de Beaujeu to allow Jem to be taken to Rome. The French finally agreed to give custody of Jem to the Pope, on condition that Innocent give a cardinal’s hat to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, André d’Epinay.

The agreement was signed on 5 October 1488, whereupon the knights immediately began making arrangements to have Jem taken to Rome, where he arrived on 13 March 1489. Jem was confined to a luxurious suite in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, while the Pope began thinking of how he could use him in furthering his plans for a crusade. On 8 May 1489 Innocent issued a brief requesting representatives of all the Christian powers to meet in Rome to make plans for united action against the Turks. His nuncios explained to the various Christian rulers that the Pope’s possession of the Turkish pretender offered an extraordinary opportunity, for Jem had promised that if he regained his throne through their help he would withdraw all Ottoman forces from Europe and even give up Constantinople.

The congress called for by Innocent convened in Rome on 25 March 1490, its announced purpose being to organise an expedition ‘
contra Turcum
’. All the European powers sent representatives except Venice, which stayed away so as not to upset its peaceful relationship with Sultan Beyazit. The delegates had already prepared detailed plans for the military and naval forces required for the campaign, as well as the organisation of the various national contingents involved. But early in April the activities of the congress were brought to an abrupt halt by the news of the death of Matthias Corvinus, who had died of a stroke, aged forty-seven.

The death of Corvinus upset the delicate balance of power in central Europe, destroying the stability that Innocent needed to promote his crusade, and so the congress was adjourned until 3 June. When it reconvened, the delegates completed their detailed plans for the crusade, which they presented to the Pope and the College of Cardinals. They thanked Innocent for his exertions in obtaining custody of Jem, ‘who was most valuable as a standing menace to the sultan, and as a means of breaking up his empire’. ‘He should,’ they said, ‘be carefully guarded in Rome for the time being, and, later on, counsel should be taken on how he would be most advantageously employed in the campaign.’ The congress was officially closed by Innocent on 30 July 1490, to be reconvened when the delegates had received the requisite full powers to make binding agreements on the part of their governments.

But the congress never reconvened, leaving Innocent’s dream of a crusade against the Turks unfulfilled. Sigismondo de’Conti was of the opinion that the crusade would have been carried through had it not been for the untimely death of Matthias Corvinus. The Hungarian king had endured years of land warfare against the Ottomans, experience that would have been invaluable in Innocent’s crusade. His death cost eastern Europe its strongest leader, and, with the accession of the weak Ladislas II of Bohemia to the Hungarian throne, the Magyar nobles took control and the kingdom reverted to medieval anarchy, destroying the principal bulwark that had protected central Europe from the Turks.

Innocent died on 25 July 1492, and on 26 August he was succeeded by the Catalan Cardinal Roderigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI. Among the messages of congratulation that the new Pope received upon his coronation was one from Pierre d’Aubusson, who hoped that under the wise leadership of Alexander Christendom might see the East freed from Turkish tyranny. He added that Alexander was fortunate ‘in having next to him the illustrious Jem Sultan, the terror, the exterminator of the Turks’.

By the time of Alexander’s election he had fathered six children, and he was credited with siring two or three more during the years of his papacy, despite the fact that he was over sixty when he became Pope. His first son, Pedro Luis, became Duke of Gandia, and when he died in 1488 the title passed to his younger brother, Juan. The year after Alexander became Pope he gave cardinal’s hats to his son Cesare as well as to Alessandro Farnese, brother of Giulia Farnese, the Pope’s youngest mistress. Alexander’s favourite among his children was his daughter Lucrezia, who, unlike her notorious brother Cesare, did not deserve her lurid reputation. Prince Jem was well known to Lucrezia and the Pope’s other children, particularly his sons Cesare and Juan.

During the first months of his reign Alexander worked on creating a triple alliance of the Holy See with Milan and Venice, which, by excluding King Ferrante of Naples, would tilt the balance of power in favour of the papacy and its allies. The new league, in which Siena, Ferrara and Mantua were also included, was announced in Rome on 25 April 1493. Two weeks earlier the Venetians had asked the Pope to include specific mention of Jem in the articles of the proposed alliance. Innocent concurred, and an article was included in the final treaty in which the Pope agreed to turn over Jem to the Venetians if they were attacked by the Turks, so that they could use the prince against Beyazit. The Turks learned of the new league and expelled the Venetian
bailo
in Istanbul ‘when some of his letters in cypher’ were intercepted. Fearing Beyazit’s wrath, the Venetians sent Domenico Trevisan as an envoy to Istanbul, hoping that he could convince the sultan that the new league was not directed against him, but was for purely defensive purposes in Italy. But Beyazit was not convinced, and he let it be known that he was no longer willing to pay for Jem’s custody, and that the formation of the new league had provoked him into building ships for a naval expedition against Italy.

Beyazit soon relented, sending an envoy named Kasım Bey, who arrived in Rome on 9 June 1493, bearing rich presents for the Pope as well as 80,000 ducats as payment for Jem’s custody for the past two years. Alexander conveyed his thanks to Beyazit, and said that the sultan could show his friendship for Christendom by refraining from the attacks he had been making on Christians in the Balkans and the Aegean.

But Beyazit persisted in his attacks, launching an invasion of Croatia in the autumn of 1493. Alexander wrote a circular letter to the Christian states of Europe on 2 October, appealing to them to take common action for ‘Italy and the Christian religion are in peril’. At the same time he sent an envoy to Beyazit, warning him to cease his invasion of Croatia, otherwise his brother Jem would be turned over to the Christian princes to lead a crusade against the Ottomans.

Before long, however, Alexander faced a new threat from a wholly unexpected quarter. The young King Charles VIII of France had become set upon the idea of pursuing an extravagant claim to the Neapolitan throne, which he envisaged as the first step in a crusade to recapture Constantinople and Jerusalem from the Muslims, using Prince Jem as a figurehead. Charles was greatly encouraged when he learned that King Ferrante of Naples had died on 25 January 1494. He sent two envoys to Rome to warn the Pope not to invest Ferrante’s son Alfonso with the Kingdom of Naples, implying that if Alexander went ahead with this there would be serious trouble. Alexander took this as a threat that France would go to war if Alfonso were made King of Naples, and on 20 March 1494 he wrote to Charles pleading with him to desist for the good of Christianity.

On 29 August 1494 Charles took leave of his queen, departing to lead the expedition that he believed would immortalise his name. His army probably numbered some 40,000, 10,000 of whom were aboard the French fleet, commanded by the Duke of Orleans, while the rest marched across the French Alps.

The plan of defence against the French invasion had already been drawn up by the late King Ferrante, and his son King Alfonso now put it into operation in alliance with the Pope. To prevent the advance of the French, Alfonso sent his son Ferrantino with an army to the Romagna, whence he was to threaten Lombardy, while Piero de’Medici, the Florentine ruler, defended the frontiers of Tuscany. At the same time a Neapolitan fleet assembled at Leghorn under Don Federigo, Alfonso’s brother. Federigo was to attack Genoa, since it was controlled by the Milanese, who were allied with the French. The Pope was to protect the papal states with troops stationed in Tuscany.

Pope Alexander and King Alfonso of Naples were joined in an anti-French league by Florence, Siena, Bologna, Pesaro, Urbino and Imola, while Venice declined to join because of its fear of violating its peace treaty with the Ottomans. Beyazit had sent an envoy to Naples to offer Alfonso military aid against the French, with the message that the sultan ‘did not want them in Italy’.

Meanwhile, the French fleet commanded by the Duke of Orleans defeated the Neapolitan navy under Don Federigo at Rapello on 5 September. Two weeks later Fabrizio Colonna’s troops, acting as allies of the French, captured the papal fortress of Ostia, which had been abandoned by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. Charles sent part of his fleet to the Tiber, and on 16 October a French garrison was set up in Ostia, thus controlling the maritime approach to Rome.

Charles led the French army into Pavia on 14 October and four days later he took Piacenza. The French troops crossed the Apennines, causing consternation in Rome, where the alarm was aggravated by the revolt of the Colonna and Savelli clans, instigated by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. French galleys soon began to appear at the mouth of the Tiber, which made the enemy occupation of Ostia still more serious for Alexander.

The French occupied Tuscany and encountered little resistance. Piero de’Medici presented himself at the French camp on 26 October and surrendered all the cities under his control. Eight days later the people of Florence rose in revolt, forcing the Medicis to flee, leaving their palace to be looted by the rebel mob.