The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire Read Free Page A

then renewed his siege of Constantinople, where the Greeks had been reinforced by 1,200 troops sent by Charles VI of France under Marshal Boucicault, a survivor of the Battle of Nicopolis. The marshal realised that his force was far too small, and so he persuaded the emperor Manuel II to go with him to France so that he could present his case to King Charles. Manuel went on to England, where on 21 December 1400 he was escorted into London by King Henry IV, though he received nothing but pity, returning to Constantinople empty-handed early in 1403.
    But by then the situation had completely changed, for the previous spring Beyazit had lifted his siege of the city and rushed his forces back to Anatolia, which had been invaded by a Mongol horde led by Tamerlane. The two armies collided on 28 July 1402 near Ankara, where the Mongols routed the Turks, many of whom deserted at the outset of the battle. Beyazit himself was taken prisoner, and soon afterwards he died in captivity, tradition holding that he had been penned up in a cage by Tamerlane.
    Five of Beyazit’s sons - Süleyman, Mustafa, Musa, Isa and Mehmet - also fought in the battle. Mustafa and Musa were captured by Tamerlane, while the other three escaped. Musa was eventually freed by Tamerlane, while Mustafa apparently died in captivity, though a pretender known as Düzme (False) Mustafa later appeared to claim the throne. Beyazit’s youngest son, Yusuf, escaped to Constantinople, where he converted to Christianity before he died of the plague in 1417.
    The Ottoman state was almost destroyed by the catastrophe at Ankara. After his victory Tamerlane reinstated the emirs of the Anatolian beyliks that had fallen to the Ottomans, while in the Balkans the Christian rulers who had been Beyazit’s vassals regained their independence. The next eleven years were a period of chaos, as Beyazit’s surviving sons fought one another in a war of succession, at the same time doing battle with their Turkish and Christian opponents. The struggle was finally won by Mehmet, who on 5 July 1413 defeated and killed his brother Musa at a battle in Bulgaria, their brothers Süleyman and Isa having died earlier in the war of succession.
    Mehmet ruled for eight years, virtually all of which he spent in war, striving to re-establish Ottoman rule in Anatolia and the Balkans. His last campaign was a raid across the Danube into Wallachia in 1421, shortly after which he died following a fall from his horse. He was succeeded by his son Murat II, who although only seventeen was already a seasoned warrior, having fought in at least two battles during his father’s war of succession.
    At the outset of Murat’s reign he had to fight two wars of succession, first against the pretender Düzme Mustafa and then against his own younger brother, also named Mustafa, both of whom he defeated and killed. Both of the pretenders had been supported by the emperor Manuel II, and so after Murat put them down he sought to take his revenge on the emperor, putting Constantinople under siege on 20 June 1422. But the Byzantine capital was too strongly fortified for him to conquer, and at the end of the summer he decided to abandon the siege and withdraw.
    Manuel suffered a critical stroke during the siege, whereupon his son John was made regent. Manuel died on 21 July 1425, and on that same day his son succeeded him as John VIII.
    Murat’s two wars of succession had cost him territory in both Anatolia and Europe, and now he set out to recover his losses. In 1423 he launched a campaign against the Isfendiyarid emir of Sinop on the Black Sea, forcing him to return the territory he had taken and to resume his status as an Ottoman vassal.
    Immediately afterwards, Murat returned to Europe and marched against the ruler of Wallachia, Vlad II Dracul, and he too was made to give up the land he had seized and to become a vassal of the sultan. Vlad was later forced to give up two of his sons to Murat as hostages. The older of the