Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (62 page)

All these events made a deep impression in the West. Sigismund, whose Kingdom was the most immediately affected, made a general appeal to the princes of Christendom; and this time the princes responded. So also did the two rival Popes, Boniface IX in Rome and Benedict XIII in Avignon. The knighthood of France was particularly inspired by the prospect of what had now, thanks to the Popes, become a Crusade; no fewer than ten thousand, together with another six thousand from Germany, joined Sigismund's sixty thousand Hungarians and the ten thousand Wallachians raised by Mircea. Another fifteen thousand came from Italy, Spain, England, Poland and Bohemia. Manuel himself — though he had concluded a formal agreement with Sigismund in February 1396 and had promised to arm ten galleys - was prevented by the blockade from making any strategic contribution; but the Genoese in Lesbos and Chios took responsibility for the mouth of the Danube and the Black Sea coast, as did the K
nights of Rhodes. Even Venice -
after long hesitation, waiting as always to see how her own best interests were most likely to be served - sent a small fleet to patrol the Hellespont and keep open the vital lines of communication between the crusading army and Constantinople.

This immense force - it almost certainly numbered over a hundred thousand men - gathered in Buda and set off in August 1396 down the valley of the Danube. By definition, Crusades are hampered from the outset by an excess of religious enthusiasm: the ardent young knights saw themselves as heroes of an earlier age of chivalry, driving all before them to the very doors of the Holy Sepulchre. Were heaven itself to fall, they boasted, they could support it on the points of their lances. Sigismund's continued efforts to impose discipline and caution were in vain. The expedition began well enough, when the Bulgar Prince Stracimir, ignoring his oath of vassalage to the Sultan, opened the gates of Vidin; but further downstream at Rahova a pointless massacre of the local inhabitants boded ill for the future. A month or so after their departure the Crusaders reached Nicopolis, to which they immediately laid siege; and it was there that the Sultan — living up once again to his nickname of the Thunderbolt - caught up with them.

On the morning of Monday, 25 September a group of French knights, spotting what appeared to be a small detachment of Turkish cavalry at the top of a nearby hill, galloped forward to the attack. Unfortunately for them, Bayezit's army was drawn up out of sight in the valley behind. Suddenly the Frenchmen saw that they were surrounded. The Turks made short work of them, then charged down the hill and fell upon the rest of the Crusader army, which was taken completely by surprise. What followed was a massacre. Among those captured the French leader, Count John of Nevers, was spared because of his rank: being the son of the Duke of Burgundy, he could be trusted to fetch a good ransom. A number of other prisoners were equally lucky. The rest -some ten thousand of them - were beheaded in the Sultan's presence. Those who escaped - they included Sigismund himself and Philibert de Naillac, Grand Master elect of the Knights of St John - managed to find Venetian ships to take them back to the West; a German eye-witness, who had been taken captive but whose extreme youth had somehow saved him from execution, tells of how, as these vessels passed through the Dardanelles, he and three hundred other surviving prisoners were drawn up on the banks and made to jeer at the conquered King.
1

1 Johann Schiltberge
r, Hakluyt Society, Vol. lviii, 1
879.

In its own curious way, the depressing expedition known to history as the Crusade of Nicopolis proved to be something of a milestone. Not only was it the last of the great international Crusades;
1
it was the first trial of strength between the Catholic nations of the West and the Ottoman Sultan. As such, it hardly augured well for the future.

The years 1395 and 1396 had provided the people of Constantinople with a period of relief. Bayezit had had other things on his mind; his blockade had been distinctly half-hearted, and it had been possible to bring substantial quantities of food and other supplies into the beleaguered city. By the first weeks of 1397, however, he was back -determined, if it refused to surrender, to take it by assault. Fortunately Manuel's faith in the Land Walls proved fully justified - so much so indeed that at one moment the Sultan seems to have cast an appraising eye on the far less impressive fortifications to the east of Galata; but here the Genoese and the Byzantines together, for once putting up a united front, successfully held the battlements against every attack. Refusing to give up his enterprise, Bayezit then turned his attention to the Bosphorus; and the defenders of Galata watched with consternation as a great castle rose on the opposite side - a castle that still in part survives and is nowadays known as Anadolu Hisar.
2

More worrying for Manuel than any considerations of physical defence, however, was the state of morale within Constantinople. The city was once again sealed; supplies were fast diminishing, and reports of deaths from starvation increasingly common. Many of the poorer citizens in their desperation were slipping out of the city at night and making their way across the Bosphorus to the Asian shore, where they could expect food, shelter and a warm welcome from the Turks. It was an open secret, too, that the Sultan had repeatedly offered to raise both siege and blockade together if the people would agree to accept John VII as their rightful ruler. John had always had a body of supporters within the city, and there were probably many others too who felt, after nearly three years of hardship and deprivation, that the substitution of the nephew for the uncle would be a small price to pay for peace.

By the spring, the Emperor was becoming seriously alarmed. King

1
Unless we count the equally unsuccessful 'Crusade of Varna' of 1444; but that was on a far smaller scale. See pp. 404
-6.

2
The ruined fortress that we see today
includes extensions added by Me
hmet II in 1452, when he
was building the castle of Rume
li Hisar opposite.

Sigismund had promised another expedition, but it seemed increasingly-unlikely that he would keep his word; and by March Manuel was making arrangements to entrust Constantinople to Venice if he were obliged to leave in a hurry. The Venetians for their part, on 7 April, dispatched three galleys to the city 'for the comfort of the Lord Emperor and' - a rare expression of consideration - 'of the Genoese of Pera [Galata]', indicating that they would be sending several more as soon as these could be prepared. In fact, however, such emergency measures were to prove unnecessary: the Emperor kept his nerve, and not long afterwards Bayezit, obliged at last to face the fact that the defences of Constantinople were indeed too strong for him, once again lost interest in the siege. But he did not abandon it altogether; though food supplies became a little easier, the people continued to suffer. A year and a half later, moreover, in September 1398, we find the Venetian Senate ordering its Captain of the Gulf to be ready to defend the city from a possible Turkish attack by sea from Gallipoli. As for Manuel himself, he remained under heavy pressure. Every hour of every day, Ducas tells us, he would murmur the same prayer:

O Lord Jesus Christ, let it not come about that the great multitude of Christian peoples should hear it said that it was during the days of the Emperor Manuel that the City, with all its holy and venerable monuments of the Faith, was delivered to the infidel.

Meanwhile, following the constantly-repeated advice of the Venetians, the Emperor redoubled his efforts to obtain aid from abroad. It was not an easy task; whatever Crusading flame might once have flickered among the rulers of Western Europe had been effectively snuffed out at Nicopolis. Manuel, however, saw things in a different light. For him the recent expedition, disastrous as it had been, had shown just what Christendom could achieve if only it was prepared to make the effort. Any new Crusade would obviously learn from past mistakes, and might well succeed where its predecessor had failed. In that event the Turks would be driven back into Asia, and the shadow that had hung for so long over eastern Europe might be lifted for ever. And so, in 1397 and 1398, imperial embassies set forth once again - to the Pope, to the Kings of England, France and Aragon and to to the Grand Duke of Muscovy, while similar delegations were sent by Patriarch Antonius to the King of Poland and the Metropolitan of Kiev.

In Rome Pope Boniface IX, still smarting from the humiliation of Nicopolis, was only too ready to do anything he could to eradicate what he saw as a serious stain on his reputation. With the possibility of Church union also ever-present in his mind, he promulgated two bulls -in April 1398 and March 1399 - calling upon the nations of the West to participate in a new Crusade or, failing that, to send financial contributions for the defence of Constantinople. Full indulgences were offered to those who answered the call; collecting boxes would be set up in all the churches. The response of King Charles VI of France, when an embassy led by the Emperor's uncle, Theodore Palaeologus Cantacuzenus, reached him in October 1397, was even more satisfactory. Only the year before, Charles had become overlord of Genoa
1
and its colonies — John VII had even tried to sell him his title to the Byzantine crown in return for 25,000 gold florins and a chateau in France - and he was consequently far from indifferent to the fate of the threatened city. Though unable to provide any immediate military assistance, he promised Theodore that he would do so at the earliest possible moment, giving him as an earnest of his good intentions the sum of 12,000 gold francs to take back to the Emperor.

The Byzantine delegation, reaching England in the summer of 1399, could hardly have arrived at a worse moment. Richard II was in Ireland through most of June and July, and returned to England to find the country up in arms against him. He was captured by Henry Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV) in August, formally deposed in September and almost certainly murdered - though it is just possible that he died of grief - the following February. His predicament was consequently a good deal graver even than Manuel's; yet somehow he found time to receive the Byzantine emissaries and to express his concern, giving his full approval for the proposed collection of funds - a contribution box was placed in St Paul's Cathedral - and ordering the immediate payment on account of 3,000 marks, or £2,000 sterling. (The entire sum was subsequently embezzled by a Genoese broker, but Richard can scarcely be blamed for that.)

Charles VI, on the other hand, proved as good as his word: he had undertaken to send a military force to the East, and in 1399 he did. It was led by the greatest French soldier of his day, Jean le Maingre, better known as Marshal Boucicault. The Marshal had fought three years

1 Soon after the peace of Turin, the governmental system of Genoa had begun to crumble. Torn asunder by factional strife, the Republic was to elect and depose ten Doges in five years, until in 1396 the Genoese voluntarily surrendered to a French domination which was to continue until 1409.

before at Nicopolis, where he had been captured and - nearly a year later - ransomed; and he longed for vengeance. Leaving Aigues-Mortes at the end of June with six vessels carrying some twelve hundred men, he made many stops along the way to do further recruiting and eventually, having smashed his way through the Turkish blockade of the Hellespont, reached Constantinople in September. Manuel gave him an enthusiastic welcome and named him Grand Constable, and together they took part in several minor operations on both si
des of the Bosphorus. But Bouci
cault saw at once that none of this was of any real importance. An army that was to achieve anything worth while against the Turks would have to be on a far larger scale and could be obtained in one way only: the Emperor must himself make the journey to Paris and plead his cause in person before the French King.

Manuel asked nothing better, but there was a problem: who would look after the Empire in his absence? The obvious candidate was John VII, if only because if he selected anyone else John would be sure to reassert his claim to the throne; but uncle and nephew had not been on speaking terms for years. At this point Boucicault came into his own. He went straight to John at Selymbria and persuaded him to agree to a reconciliation. The two then returned together to Constantinople, where the family quarrel which had poisoned relations between the Palaeologi for twenty-five years was quickly healed. According to the terms of their agreement, John would act as Regent in Manuel's absence, and on his return would be granted Thessalonica. True, the city was then under Turkish occupation; but this state of affairs, it was confidently hoped, would prove to be only temporary.

And so, on 10 December 1399, the Emperor left Constantinople for the West, accompanied by Boucicault, the Empress Helena and their two small sons, the seven-year-old John and his brother Theodore, who was probably not more than four or five. The fact that he did not take them with him to France but settled them with his own brother in the Morea is a clear enough indication of his true feelings towards John VII; the reconciliation was all very well, but if the Regent did decide to make trouble there was at least no risk of his taking the imperial family hostage. And even then Manuel's mind was not entirely at rest: what if Bayezit should launch a sudden attack on the Peloponnese? The first weeks of 1400 were taken up with planning for the possible escape of his wife and children and their refuge in the Venetian ports of Modone and Corone. Only after their future was absolutely assured did he set sail for Venice, where he and Boucicault arrived in April.