Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (64 page)

Byzantium still had strength enough for a spirited reply to the Turkish envoys:

Go, report to your Lord: we are in poverty and distress and there is no great power to whom we may have recourse, except to God Himself, who gives succour to the powerless and who overcomes the powerful. And so, if you wish to do anything, do it.

But the city could not hold out for ever. By the summer of
1402,
when John heard from his uncle that no appreciable help could be expected from the West, he knew that he would have to come to terms. According to Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, Spanish ambassador to the Mongol court at Samarkand, he actually reached an agreement with the Sultan by the terms of which he undertook to surrender the city once the latter had overcome the Mongol invaders; a Greek chronicle in the Vatican Library goes even further, maintaining that ambassadors from Constantinople bearing the keys to the city were already on their way to the Ottoman camp. Be that as it may, it seems clear that Bayezit's defeat came, for Byzantium, not a moment too soon; and that the deliverer of the city was not Manuel, or John, or even Boucicault or Chateaumorand. It was Tamburlaine himself.

Timur-lenk, or Timur the Lame, otherwise known as Tamerlane or Tamburlaine, had been born in
1336.
Claiming descent from Genghis Khan, he had seized the throne at Samarkand in
1369,
and thirty years later his dominions extended from Afghanistan and northern India to the borders of Anatolia. His name was feared the length and breadth of Asia - the Mongol army was known to destroy everything in its path and to leave nothing but death and devastation in its wake - and though now in his middle sixties he had lost none of his energy or his ambition. A campaign in
1400
culminating in the capture of Sebasteia — which he predictably levelled to the ground, massacring the entire population -was not immediately followed up, since he had work to do in Mesopotamia; but in the spring of
1402
he was back once more in Asia Minor, ready for the ultimate trial of strength with the Ottoman Sultan.

It occurred on Friday,
28
July, on the Chubuk plain just to the north of Ancyra. The immense Turkish army was commanded by the Sultan in person, who took his place in the centre with his crack regiment of ten thousand Janissaries. The left wing he e
ntrusted to one of his sons, Su
leyman; the right, which was composed largely of European contingents, to his Serbian vassal Stephen Lazarevich. The Christians fought heroically, the Muslims less so. Bayezit had made the cardinal mistake of placing his Anatolian Tartar cavalry in the front line. Unwilling to fight men of their own race, they deserted almost at once and went over to the enemy. An hour or two later, fifteen thousand of the Ottoman army, Christian and Muslim alike, lay dead on the battlefield. But Bayezit refused to surrender; he was not used to losing battles. Withdrawing to a small hill-top, he and his sons, together with his bodyguard and the remaining Janissaries, fought on late into t
he night until at last they too
recognized that the situation was hopeless. The fate of the eldest of the Princes, Mustafa, is uncertain; he disappeared and was presumed dead. Another, Musa, was captured. The others managed to escape, but their father could not move so fast: overtaken by the Mongol archers, he too was taken prisoner and led in chains to Tamburlaine's tent, where the great conqueror was playing chess with his son.

Tamburlaine at first accorded Bayezit all the honour due to a captive sovereign; soon, however, his attitude changed. Thenceforth, as he advanced through Anatolia, he is said to have had the Sultan carried before him in an iron cage.
1
Occasionally he imposed still greater humiliations upon his captive, using him as a footstool and a mounting-block. Soon he took over Bayezit's harem for his own personal use and forced the Sultan's Serbian wife Despina to serve, naked, at his table. After eight months of such treatment, even Bayezit's spirit was broken. In March
1403
he suffered a sudden apoplexy, and a few days later he was dead - probably as a direct consequence of the stroke, but quite possibly by his own hand.
2

Tamburlaine, on the other hand, was i
n his element. Descending on Bur
sa, the Ottoman capital, his hordes burned, pillaged and raped their way through the city; they then turned against Smyrna, which had been in Latin hands - principally those of the Knights of St John — since
1344.
The Knights fought valiantly, but the walls finally gave way and in December
1402
the last Christian enclave in Asia Minor was left a smouldering, deserted ruin. Meanwhile all the non-Ottoman Emirs - of Aydin, Karaman, Saruchan and the rest — who had been driven out by Orhan and Murad and many of whom had taken refuge with the Mongols - were returned to their former territories. Tamburlaine was now well on the way to achieving his long-term object, the total elimination of Ottoman power in Anatolia. The four sons of Bayezit admittedly constituted something of an obstacle; but they were already at loggerheads over the succession, and by judiciously encouraging one against the other he was able to ensure that none became a serious threat.

Had he lingered in the region for very much longer, he might well

1
And what wouldst thou have done to me (said Tamerlane) had it been my fortune to have fallen into thy Hands, as thou art n
ow in mine? I would (said Bajaze
t) have inclosed thee in a Cage of Iron, and so in triumph have carried thee up and down my Kingdom. Even so (said Tamerlane) shalt thou be served.' (Richard Knolles,
Turkish History,
London,
1687-1700.)

2
Christopher Marlowe, in
Tamburlaine the Great,
has him dash out his brains against the bars of the cage.

have dealt a fatal blow to the house of Othman. But Tamburlaine, like all his race, was a nomad: he could never stay in the same place for long. In the spring of
1403,
looking once again for new worlds to conquer, he left Asia Minor and led his horde back to Samarkand. Two years later he set off across the steppe to attack China, but fortunately for the Chinese he died on the journey - the victim, so Gibbon informs us, of a fever accelerated by 'the indiscreet use of iced water'. He left behind him no Empire, no properly constituted system of government; nothing but devastation and chaos. It would be some years before the sons of Bayezit were able to re-establish themselves in their Anatolian heartland.

In Europe, however, it was a very different story. Tamburlaine never crossed the straits, and Rumelia - the Sultan's European dominions -remained as firmly as ever in the Ottoman grip. To make matters worse, the vast numbers of Turkish soldiers already there were now joined by many thousands more, fleeing from the Mongol menace. For the first few months, these refugees were not unwelcome, even to the Byzantines. Since the battle of Ancyra it was the Mongols, not the Turks, before whom Europe trembled; if, as seemed more than likely, they were suddenly to stream across the Hellespont, then the more men available to resist them the better. Only when it became clear that there would be no such invasion did the Christian peoples of eastern Europe look around them and wonder whether they were not, if anything, worse off than before.

In fact, as they soon realized, the great battle had altered the situation very much for the better. First, it had divided the Ottoman Empire into two; no longer was there any regular communication between the European and the Asiatic provinces. Secondly - and of far greater immediate importance to the average Byzantine — the blockade of Constantinople was lifted: after eight years, normal food supplies were restored and the people could go about their lawful occasions without wondering where they might find their next meal. Finally there was the effect on the national morale. Byzantium might still be in desperate danger; but the Sultan had shown that he too was human, and by no means invincible. His army had been beaten once. It could be beaten again.

Even after the news of Bayezit's defeat had been brought to him in France, Manuel Palaeologus seemed to be in no particular hurry to return to Constantinople. He did not leave Paris until
21
November. Then, with an escort of two hund
red men under Chateaumorand, he
travelled by easy stages to Genoa - where his old friend Marshal Boucicault awaited him and, on
22
January
1403,
gave a magnificent banquet in his honour. Having left the city on
10
February, he reached Venice only on
14
March. Where he was in the interval is not recorded; we know, however, that while in Genoa he had tried - albeit unsuccessfully - to arrange for tripartite talks with the Genoese and the Venetians, and it seems likely that he had decided to take advantage of his passage through Italy to hold discussions with as many as possible of the Italian states on the subject of assistance against the Turks. His attempts to date had been admittedly disappointing; but the defeat of Bayezit had convinced him that there would never be a more appropriate time for a concerted onslaught by the European powers, and he had no intention of giving up his efforts to bring this about.

Venice also gave Manuel a warm welcome, tempered only by her eagerness to get him back to Constantinople as soon as possible. The changed situation in the East would obviously have important diplomatic consequences, in which the Serenissima was determined to play her full part; and she greatly preferred to negotiate with Manuel than with John VII, who made no secret of his pro-Genoese sympathies. She therefore fitted out three warships for the Emperor and his suite of forty, and eventually persuaded him to sail on
5
April. Even then he insisted on stopping in the Morea, to pick up his wife and family and to hold discussions with his brother Theodore.
1
Only on
9
June
1403
did he finally step ashore in his capital, accompanied by John VII, who had ridden out to Gallipoli to meet him. He had been absent almost exactly three and a half years.

There was more good news awaiting him. In August of the previous year Prince Suleyman, Bayezit's eldest surviving son, had appeared in Gallipoli with the intention of taking over the European provinces. His was a character very different from that of his father. Tolerant and easy
-
going, his instinct was always towards compromise; he preferred the conference table to the battlefield, and a life of luxurious self-indulgence to either of them. After some weeks of preliminary discussions, formal negotiations had been opened towards the end of the year, attended by Suleyman himself and a Christian League represented by envoys from

1
Theodore had sold Corinth to the Knights of St John in i
396,
after which the Knights had made a determined attempt to establ
ish themselves throughout the Pe
loponnese. This had however aroused the fury of the local inhabitants, and the Despotate was rapidly relapsing into chaos. The hard-pressed Despot was now engaged in negotiations to buy the Knights out again - which in
1404
he finally managed to do.

Venice, Genoa and the Knights of Rhodes, Stephen Lazarevich and the Latin Duke of Naxos. These had soon led to a treaty, which had been signed early in
1403.

When the terms of this treaty were reported to Manuel on his arrival in Venice, he was scarcely able to believe what he heard. The Byzantines were released alike from their vassalage to the Sultan and from all obligation of
paying him tribute. Instead, Su
leyman had freely undertaken to accept the Byzantine Emperor as his suzerain. In token of his good faith he had returned to the Empire the city of Thessalonica and its surrounding district, including the Thracian Chalcidice with Mount Athos; a considerable length of the Black Sea coast, from the mouth of the Bosphorus up as far as Mesembria or even Varna; and the Aegean islands of Skyros, Skiathos and Skopelos. All Byzantine prisoners, and those of the other signatories, were to be released. Finally -
and still more incredibly - Su
leyman undertook that Turkish vessels would not enter either the Hellespont or the Bosphorus without prior permission of the Emperor and the rest of the League. In return he asked only that he should be allowed to rule over Thrace from the palace at Adrianople.

Manuel's first action on his return to the capital was to confirm the treaty with his own signature. Almost immediately, however, his old antipathy to his nephew flared up again: he banished him to Lemnos and quite possibly - though we cannot be sure - also deprived him of the appanage of Thessalonica, which he had formally promised him before his departure. Whatever its reason, John VII did not take kindly to his new exile. Within a few weeks of his arrival in Lemnos he made contact with his Genoese
father-in-law Francesco II Gatti
lusio, lord of the neighbouring island of Lesbos, some fifty miles away to the north-west; and in mid-September the two set out with a small flotilla of seven ships with the apparent intention of seizing Thessalonica by force. Whether they ever reached the city we do not know; perhaps the news of their departure was alone enough to bring Manuel to his senses. Some time in October agreement was reached between the two Emperors, and John was installed in Thessalonica with the tide of
'Basileus
of all Thessaly'.