THE FOUNDATION OF THE
OTTOMAN EMPIRE

CONQUESTS OF MURAD & BAYEZID

IN THE BALKAN PENINSULA & OF BAYEZID IN ASIA MINOR

[[Largest view.]]

THE FOUNDATION
OF
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

A HISTORY OF THE OSMANLIS UP TO THE DEATH OF BAYEZID I
(1300-1403)
BY
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS, Ph.D.
SOMETIME FELLOW OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916

PREFACE

Four years of residence in the Ottoman Empire, chiefly in Constantinople, during the most disastrous period of its decline, have led me to investigate its origin. This book is written because I feel that the result of my research brings a new point of view to the student of the twentieth-century problems of the Near East, as well as to those who are interested in fourteenth-century Europe. If we study the past, it is to understand the present and to prepare for the future.

I plead guilty to many footnotes. Much of my text is controversial in character, and the subject-matter is so little known that the general reader would hardly be able to form judgements without a constant—but I trust not wearisome—reference to authorities.

The risk that I run of incurring criticism from Oriental philologists on the ground of nomenclature is very great. I ask their indulgence. Will they not take into consideration the fact that there is no accepted standard among English-speaking scholars for the transliteration of Turkish and Slavic names? Wherever possible, I have adopted the spelling in general usage in the Near East, and in English standard lexicons and encyclopaedias. When a general usage cannot be determined, I have frequently been at a loss.

There was the effort to be as consistent in spelling as sources and authorities would permit. But where consistency was lacking in originals, a consistent transliteration sometimes presented difficulties with which I was incompetent to cope. Even a philologist, with a system, would be puzzled when he found his sources conflicting with each other in spelling, and—as is often the case—with themselves. And if a philologist thinks that he can establish his system by transliterating the spoken word, let him travel from Constantinople to Cairo overland, and he will have a bewildering collection of variants before he reaches his journey’s end. I was not long in Turkey before I learned that Osman and Othman were both correct. It depended merely upon whether you were in Constantinople or Konia! After you had decided to accept the pronunciation of the capital, you were told that Konia is the Tours of Turkey.

My acknowledgements to kind friends are many. I am grateful for the year-in and year-out patience and willingness of the officials of the Bibliothèque Nationale during long periods of constant demand upon their time and attention. Professors John De Witt, D.D., LL.D., of Princeton Theological Seminary, Duncan B. Macdonald, Ph.D., of Hartford Theological Seminary, and Edward P. Cheyney, Ph.D., LL.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, have read portions of the manuscript, and have made important and helpful suggestions. The whole manuscript has been read by Professors Talcott Williams, LL.D., of Columbia University, and R. M. McElroy, Ph.D., of Princeton University, who have not hesitated to give many hours to discussion and criticism of the theory that the book presents.

Above all, I am indebted for practical aid and encouragement in research and in writing, from the inception of the idea of the book until the manuscript went to press, to my wife, with her Bryn Mawr insistence upon accuracy of detail and care for form of narrative, and to Alexander Souter, D.Litt., Regius Professor of Humanity in Aberdeen University, my two comrades in research through a succession of happy years in the rue de Richelieu, rue Servandoni, and rue du Montparnasse of the queen city of the world.

H. A. G.

Paris,
September 1, 1915.

CONTENTS

MAPS

CHAPTER I
OSMAN
A NEW RACE APPEARS IN HISTORY

I

The traveller who desires to penetrate Asia Minor by railway may start either from Smyrna or from Constantinople. The Constantinople terminus of the Anatolian Railway is at Haïdar Pasha, on the Asiatic shore, where the Bosphorus opens into the Sea of Marmora. Three hours along the Gulf of Ismidt, past the Princes’ Islands, brings one to Ismidt, the ancient Nicomedia, eastern capital of the Roman Empire under Diocletian. It is at the very end of the gulf. From Ismidt, the railway crosses a fertile plain, coasts the western shore of Lake Sabandja, and enters the valley of the Sangarius as far as Lefké. Here it turns southward, and mounts rapidly the course of the Kara Su, a tributary of the Sangarius, through the picturesque town of Biledjik, to a plateau, at the north-western end of which is Eski Sheïr, seven hours distant from Ismidt. Eski Sheïr is the ancient Dorylaeum. It was here that Godfrey de Bouillon in 1097 won from the Turks the victory that opened for his Crusaders the way through Asia Minor.

From Eski Sheïr there are two railway lines. One, running eastward, has its terminus at Angora, the ancient Ancyra, after thirteen hours of rather slow running. The other, the main line, runs south to Afion Kara Hissar, where the line from Smyrna joins it, and then south-west to Konia, the ancient Iconium, which is the western terminus of the new Bagdad Railway. The time from Eski Sheïr to Konia is fifteen hours.

From Lefké or from Mekedjé, near the junction of the Kara Su and the Sangarius, one can drive in four hours west to Isnik (ancient Nicaea), or in twelve hours to Brusa, which lies at the foot of Keshish Dagh (Mount Olympus). Between Lefké and Eski Sheïr, where the railway begins to mount above the river-bed of the Kara Su, is Biledjik. Between Eski Sheïr and Biledjik is Sugut. West from Eski Sheïr, six hours on horse across one low mountain range, lies Inoenu. South from Eski Sheïr, a day by carriage, is Kutayia. There is a short branch line of the Anatolian Railway to Kutayia from Alayund, two and a half hours beyond Eski Sheïr on the way to Konia.

If one will read the above paragraphs with a map before him, he will readily see that this country, the extreme north-western corner of Asia Minor, corresponds roughly to the borderland between the Roman provinces of Phrygia Epictetus and Bithynia, and is near to Constantinople. Eski Sheïr, Sugut, and Biledjik are close to Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia. Owing to the convenient waterways furnished by the Gulfs of Mudania and Ismidt, Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia have always been within a day’s sail of Constantinople, even in the periods of primitive navigation. From the hills behind Eski Sheïr, Mount Olympus is the commanding landmark of the western horizon. From Constantinople, Mount Olympus is easily distinguishable even in dull weather.

It was this country, adjacent to Constantinople, and separated from the rest of Asia Minor by rugged mountain ranges and the dreary, treeless plateau stretching eastward towards the Salt Desert, which gave birth to the people who, a century after their appearance, were to inherit the Byzantine Empire and to place their sovereigns upon the throne of the Caesars.

II

At the end of the thirteenth century, Asia Minor, so long the battleground between the Khalifs and the Byzantines, almost entirely abandoned by the latter for a brief time to the Seljuk emperors of Rum, who had their seat at Konia, then again disturbed by the invasion of the Crusaders from the west and the Mongols from the east, was left to itself. The Byzantines, despite (or perhaps because of!) their re-establishment at Constantinople, were too weak to make any serious attempt to recover what they had lost to the Seljuk Turks. The Mongols of the horde of Djenghiz Khan had destroyed the independence of the Sultanate of Konia, and had established their authority in that city. But they made no real effort to bring under their dominion the districts north-west and west of Konia to which they had logically fallen heir.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, we find two Christian kingdoms, Trebizond and Little Armenia, or Cilicia, at the north-eastern and south-eastern extremities of the peninsula. In the north-western corner, the Byzantines retained Philadelphia, Brusa, Nicaea, Nicomedia, and the districts in which these cities were located—a narrow strip along the Hellespont, the Sea of Marmora, and the Bosphorus. Asia Minor, without even a semblance of centralized authority, was to him who could gain and who could hold.

Had there been in Asia Minor in the latter half of the thirteenth century a predominant element, with an historical past and with a strong leader, we might have seen a revival of the sultanate of Konia. Or we might have seen a revival of Hellenism, a grafting, perhaps, on fresh stock, which would have put new foundations under the Byzantine Empire by a reconquest of the Asiatic themes. But the Mongols and the Crusaders had done their work too well. The Latins at Constantinople, and the Mongols in Persia and Mesopotamia, had removed any possibility of a revival of either Arab Moslem or Greek Christian traditions.

Sixty years of Latin rule at Constantinople, and in the lower portion of the Balkan peninsula, had demonstrated the futility of any further effort on the part of western Europe to inherit the Eastern Roman Empire. The Mongols, the strongest cohesive military power at that time in the world, had not been won to Christianity, and thus inspired with a desire to re-establish for themselves the succession of the Caesars in the Levant.[1] The Italians, imbued with the city ideal which had been so fatal to the ancient Greeks, and divided into factions in their cities, were beginning a bitter struggle for commercial supremacy in the East that was to lose its vital importance from the discoveries of Vasco da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan, and to render them impotent before the Osmanlis after centuries of misdirected energy and useless sacrifice. The last great crusade had passed by Asia Minor to spend itself in a losing fight against the one remaining Moslem power.

As in other critical periods of history, then, an entirely new people, with an entirely new line of sovereigns, must work out its destiny in this abandoned country, or—to state what actually did happen—must come, with a strength and prestige gained in Europe, to subdue it and to possess it.

From the eighth to the thirteenth centuries a number of new ethnic elements had entered Asia Minor. Except along the range of the Taurus and in the valleys of rivers which emptied into the Aegaean Sea, the Greek element, or more specifically, the Hellenic organization of imperial institutions, had gone back to the coast cities from which it had originally come. The progress of Moslem conquest, after driving before it into Asia Minor the more zealous and militant Armenian and Syrian Christians, had brought a considerable immigration, partly Syrian, partly Arab, and varying in faith. The earlier Turks, who came largely by way of Persia, with a period of settlement in that country, belonged to the great Seljuk movement. They were nominally Moslems, and very quickly became an indigenous element, because they had settled themselves permanently in every place that had been opened up to Turkish immigration by the Seljuk armies. So firmly rooted did they become that, when the fortunes of war allotted again temporarily some of the places which they inhabited to the Crusaders and to the Nicaean Byzantines, they did not dream of moving out. This was the best country they had ever seen and they had no intention of leaving it. When the Osmanlis captured Brusa and Nicaea, they found many Moslems who had been there for three generations. Simple-minded, tolerant of others, totally unconscious of the privileges as well as of the obligations of an organized society, the Turks of the earlier immigration neither opposed nor aided in the political changes which have so frequently been the lot of Asia Minor since their coming. This holds true of the Anatolian Turks of the present day, and will be so as long as they remain illiterate and uninstructed.

In the first quarter of the thirteenth century there was another great migration towards Asia Minor, towards rather than into the peninsula, because it partly scattered itself in the mountains of Armenia and partly turned southward, going over the Taurus and Amanus ranges into Cilicia and Syria. Some got as far as Egypt. The earlier Seljuk invasion had been that of settlers following a victorious army. This invasion was that of refugees fleeing before a terrible foe. For Djenghiz Khan and his Mongol horde had come out of central Asia, and all who could, even the bravest, fled before him. The lesson had been quickly learned that to resist him meant certain death. Because it was a migration of families, with all their worldly possessions, and because they had to hurry and did not know where they were going, the great bulk of them did not advance far.[2]

Most of the bands, after settling for some years in the mountains of Armenia and in the upper valley of the Euphrates, were tempted by the death of Djenghiz Khan to return home. The steep mountains and narrow valleys of Rum had dissuaded them from trying for better luck farther west. It was too much up hill and down dale for their cattle.[3] The resolute and adventurous pushed on into Asia Minor, although in doing so they must have lost or have left behind most of their women and children and flocks. For they were small warrior bands, bent upon enlisting in the army of Alaeddin Kaï Kobad, the last illustrious sultan of the Konia Seljuk line—illustrious because he had not yet met the Mongols and was looked upon by the fugitives as a possible saviour and avenger. Even if they had not the intention of putting themselves under the protection of Alaeddin when they set their faces westward, they must needs have come into contact with him. For of the two roads into Asia Minor from Armenia, the upper one lay through Sivas and Angora, and the lower through Caesarea, Akseraï, and Konia. Whichever route they took would lead them through the Seljuk dominions.

It is doubtful if Alaeddin viewed the appearance of these fighting bands with any other emotion than that of alarm. In spite of their undoubted skill as fighters, the Seljuk Sultan did not dare to enroll many of them in his army. If he were defeated in battle, or if he should die, he knew well that such vigorous mercenaries might upset his line. He could rely upon their fidelity neither against the Kharesmians with whom he was at that time fighting (many of them were from that Sultan’s country), nor against the Mongols with whom he must soon measure his strength. So he followed the policy dictated by prudence. Resisting the temptation of using them in his own army, he granted to their leaders as fiefs districts on the frontiers of his rapidly diminishing empire which were hardly his own to give, where they would have to work out their own salvation by mastering local anarchy in their respective ‘grants’, or, like the Israelites of Canaan, fight for what had been allotted to them, against the Byzantine Emperors of Nicaea.

Under these circumstances, the tribe of destiny would be that which occupied the grant nearest Constantinople and the remnant of the Byzantine Empire. The Turkish tribe which settled on the borders of Bithynia, either by the direction and with the permission of Alaeddin Kaï Kobad,[4] or independently of the Seljuks of Konia,[5] was that whose first historic chief was Osman, the father of the Osmanlis.

With the other Turkish tribes, which succeeded in establishing independent emirates, the Osmanlis did not come into contact until the reign of Orkhan. So it is unnecessary to trace their fortunes here.[6]

III

There are no Ottoman sources to which the historian may go for the origin of the Ottoman people and royal house, or for their history during the fourteenth century. They have no written records of the period before the capture of Constantinople.[7] Their earliest historians date from the end of the fifteenth century, and the two writers to whom they give greatest weight wrote at the end of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth century.[8] From the point of view, then, of recording historical facts, one hesitates in our day to follow the example of von Hammer, by setting forth at length, after a scientific collation, the legends which the simple-minded Osmanlis have always accepted without question. The Byzantines give us nothing worthy of credence about the origin of the Osmanlis, for the reason that they had no means of getting authoritative information. As for the early European writers, their testimony is valuable only as a reflection of the idea which Christendom had of the Osmanlis when they were becoming a menace to European civilization.[9]

On the other hand, these legends are not to be ignored, as they have been by the latest authoritative writer on Ottoman history.[10] Where authenticated facts are lacking, traditions must be examined and carefully weighed. This is essential when we are considering the origins of a people. For no race has ever recorded its birth. The beginnings of a people are so insignificant that they remain unnoticed in general history until the attention of others is attracted to them by their own achievements.

Who were the people that took upon themselves the name of Osman, their chief, and whom we must, from the moment of their very first encounters with the Byzantines, clearly distinguish from the other groups of Anatolian Turks that had gathered around other leaders? Did they, at the beginning of Osman’s career, have any distinct national consciousness? Did they have any past? Did they start the foundation of a state with a definite goal before them? Was there any other cause for their amazing growth and success than the mere fact that they had the most fortunate geographical position, on the confines of a decaying empire?

With the purpose, then, of suggesting an answer to some of these questions, and paving the way for an answer to the others later on, what the Osmanlis accept concerning their origin and their history before 1300 must be set forth and examined.[11]

In the year of the Hegira 616,[12] ‘because there was no more rest to be found in all Persia’ for the Turks who had been forced out of the Khorassan[13] by the approach of Djenghiz Khan, ‘all the wandering Turks, fifty thousand families, followed their leader, Soleiman Shah,[14] and set out for Rum. Then was Alaeddin I, son of Kaï Kosrew, the builder of Konia, entered upon the rule of Rum. These fifty thousand nomad families journeyed several years in the neighbourhood of Erzerum and Erzindjian, changing from winter to summer quarters and plundering the unbelievers who lived there. But ... finally ... Soleiman Shah marched again towards his homeland, with the intention of passing through the district of Aleppo. As they came to the neighbourhood of Djaber, they wanted to venture across the Euphrates. Soleiman Shah drove his horse into the river to seek a ford. The bank was rocky, so the horse slipped and fell into the river with Soleiman Shah. His end was regarded as a warning (decision) of destiny: it appeared to be the command of God.... A part of these Turks remained to dwell there.... There was a division among the followers of Soleiman Shah. Some of them, who now carry the name of Turcomans of Syria, went into the wilderness. Others went towards Rum, and became ancestors of the nomad tribes who still wander in Rum.

‘Soleiman Shah at his death left four sons: Sonkur tigin, Gundogdu, Ertogrul, the champion of the faith,[15] and Dundar. Some of the Turks followed these four brothers, turned themselves again in the direction of Rum, and came to the ... source of the Euphrates. While Ertogrul and Dundar remained there with about four hundred nomad families, the two other brothers turned back again to their home.’ Ertogrul marched farther into Rum, and settled near Angora at the foot of Karadjadagh. From there he wandered to Sultan Oejoenu.[16]

Neshri now tells a story which is repeated by later Ottoman historians as a fact. Neshri says that he heard this story from a ‘trustworthy’ man, who had heard it from the stirrup-holder of Orkhan, who, in turn, had heard it from his father and his grandfather. This is worthy of mention, for it is one of the very few instances where an Oriental historian has taken the trouble to connect his facts with what might be termed an original source:

‘As Ertogrul, with about four hundred men, was marching into Rum, Sultan Alaeddin[17] was engaged in a fight with some of his enemies. As they came near, they found that the Tartars were on the point of beating Sultan Alaeddin. Now Ertogrul had several hundred excellent companions with him. He spoke to them: “Friends, we come straight upon a battle. We carry swords at our side. To flee like women and resume our journey is not manly. We must help one of the two. Shall we aid those who are winning or those who are losing?” Then they said unto him, “It will be difficult to aid the losers. Our people are weak in number, and the victors are strong!” Ertogrul replied, “This is not the speech of bold men. The manly part is to aid the vanquished. The prophet says that he shall come to the helpless in time of need. Were man to make a thousand pilgrimages, he finds not the reward that comes to him when at the right moment he turns aside affliction from the helpless!” Thereupon Ertogrul and his followers immediately grasped their swords, and fell upon the Tartars ... and drove them in flight. When the Sultan saw this he came to meet Ertogrul, who dismounted, and kissed the Sultan’s hand. Whereupon Alaeddin gave him a splendid robe of honour and many gifts for his companions. Then gave he to the people of Ertogrul a country by name Sugut for winter and the mountain range of Dumanij[18] for summer residence. From this decides one rightly that the champion of the faith, Osman, was born at Sugut. Then was Karadja Hissar, like Biledjik, not yet captured, but was subject to Sultan Alaeddin. These were three districts.’

Some time later, Ertogrul, acting as commander of the advance-guard of Alaeddin’s army, defeated a force of Greeks and their Tartar mercenaries, in a three days’ battle, and pursued them as far as the Hellespont. Ertogrul’s force consisted of four hundred and forty-four horsemen, which he commanded in person. After this battle Alaeddin bestowed upon Ertogrul as fief the district of Eski Sheïr, comprising Sugut on the north, and Karadja Hissar on the south, of Eski Sheïr. Karadja Hissar was reported captured after an elaborate siege and assault by Ertogrul when he first came into the country. But it is again mentioned as one of the first conquests of Osman from the Christians after his father’s death.[19] None of the Ottoman historians records any progress of conquest during the long years of Ertogrul’s peaceable existence. When he died, in 1288, Osman was thirty years old. He gave to his son less than the Ottoman historians claim was his actual grant from Alaeddin I. If their own records of Osman’s conquests after 1289 are correct, we must believe that his tribe possessed only Sugut and a portion of the mountain range lying directly west. When Ertogrul died, they had no other village—not even a small mountain castle.

IV

After Ertogrul’s death there was an amazing change. Osman and his villagers began to attack their neighbours, extend their boundaries, and form a state. We cannot go on to a consideration of these events without mentioning some traditions of this period which furnish us with a clue to the explanation of this sudden change of a very small pastoral tribe, leading a harmless sleepy existence in the valley of the Kara Su, into a warlike, aggressive, fighting people.

Osman once passed the night in the home of a pious Moslem. Before he went to sleep his host entered the room, and placed on a shelf a book, of which Osman asked the title. ‘It is the Koran,’ he responded. ‘What is its object?’ again asked Osman. ‘The Koran’, his host explained, ‘is the word of God, given to the world through his prophet Mohammed.’ Osman took the book and began to read. He remained standing, and read all night. Towards morning he fell asleep exhausted. An angel appeared to him, and said, ‘Since thou hast read my eternal word with so great respect, thy children and the children of thy children shall be honoured from generation to generation.’[20]

In Itburnu, a village not far from Eski Sheïr, and also not far from Sugut, lived a Moslem cadi, who dispensed justice and legal advice to those of his faith in that neighbourhood. He had a daughter, Malkhatun, whose hand was demanded in marriage by Osman. But the sheik Edebali, for a period of two years, persisted in refusing his consent to this union.[21] Finally, Osman, when sleeping one night in the home of Edebali, had a dream.

He saw himself lying beside the sheik. A moon arose out of the breast of Edebali, and, when it had become full, descended and hid itself in his breast. Then from his own loins there began to arise a tree which, as it grew, became greener and more beautiful, and covered with the shadow of its branches the whole world. Beneath the tree he saw four mountain ranges, the Caucasus, the Atlas, the Taurus, and the Balkans. From the roots of the tree issued forth the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Danube, covered with vessels like the sea. The fields were full of harvests, and the mountains were crowned with thick forests. In the valleys everywhere were cities, whose golden domes were invariably surmounted by a crescent, and from whose countless minarets sounded forth the call to prayer, that mingled itself with the chattering of birds upon the branches of the tree. The leaves of the tree began to lengthen out into swordblades. Then came a wind that pointed the leaves towards the city of Constantinople, which, ‘situated at the junction of two seas and of two continents, seemed like a diamond mounted between two sapphires and two emeralds, and appeared thus to form the precious stone of the ring of a vast dominion which embraced the entire world.’ As Osman was putting on the ring he awoke.[22]

When this dream was told to Edebali, he interpreted it as a sign from God that he should give his daughter to Osman in order that these wonderful things might be brought about for the glory of the true faith. So the marriage was arranged.[23]

That Osman and his people were good Moslems themselves, and of Moslem ancestry, is not questioned by the Ottoman and Byzantine writers, and seems to have been accepted as a matter of fact by the European historians who have written upon the history of the Ottoman Empire.[24] But it seems very clear that Osman and his tribe, when they settled at Sugut, must have been pagans. There is no direct mention, in any historical record, of the conversion to Islam of the tribes from the Khorassan and other transoxanian regions which, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, appeared on the confines of Asia Minor. The earlier Turkish invaders entered the country only after they had already for generations been in contact with Arabic Islam. Although they displayed no great knowledge of or zeal for their religion and were free from the fanaticism of the Saracens, the Seljuks were certainly Moslems.

But the Turks of the later immigration, from whom Osman sprang, had never come to any great extent under the influence of Islam, even though they had settled for some generations on the frontiers of Persia. If we accept the testimony of the Osmanlis themselves concerning their descent from Soleiman Shah, who had left Mahan with fifty thousand families, we have a clear indication of their being non-Moslems from Neshri’s account of the dispersion of this horde after the death of Soleiman Shah. He says that some were ancestors of the Syrian Turcomans and others of all the wandering tribes in Rum—the habitual nomads of his own day. The testimony of travellers from the twelfth century onwards is overwhelming in support of the pagan character of these tribes.[25]

The various Turkish tribes which entered Asia Minor at the same time as that of Osman, and had penetrated into the western part of the peninsula, soon found themselves in a Moslem atmosphere. They were few in number. Nothing was more natural for them than to adopt the faith of their Seljuk kinsmen. This they did, for exactly the same reason that the Bulgarians, although they had originally a tendency towards Islam, adopted Christianity.[26] It was so natural that it passed without comment. These Turks were primarily warriors, indifferent to deep religious feeling and conviction. So they could take on a new faith—if we can say that they ever had a faith before—without any trouble or without any noise being made over it. Between 800 and 1000 the Seljuks changed their religion three times.[27] At the sack of Mosul, in 1286, the Turks and Turcomans made no distinction between Moslem and Christian, massacring the men and carrying off the women of both sects alike.[28]

The tractability of the Turks, as of the Tartars and Mongols, in the matter of religion was noted by every traveller, and was so well known in western Europe that strenuous efforts were made by the popes at various times from Djenghiz Khan to Gazan Khan to bring these Asiatic hordes into the Christian fold. A united Christendom, even a united Rome, might have seen its missionary work crowned with success.

Of the village and castle chieftains with whom Osman at the beginning of his career lived on friendly terms, almost every one was a Christian. His lot was cast with them. He was cut off from the decaying Seljuk dominion of Konia. He had practically no intercourse with the other Turkish emirs of Asia Minor.[29] His only serious foes were the Mongols, pagans like himself, who had, at the very year of his birth, given what seemed a death-blow to Islam in destroying the Khalifate at Bagdad in 1258, and who were, when Osman began his active career, plotting with the Franks of the Holy Land to aid them against the Egyptian sultanate—the last strong bulwark of Islam.

We see, then, the tremendous importance of these dreams of Osman, of his meeting with Edebali, and of his marriage with Malkhatun. We cannot regard these events in any other light than as recording, in a truly Oriental way, his conversion to Islam. The interpretation of the dream of the Holy Book strikes one immediately. Except in Seadeddin, the religious significance of the moon and tree dream is overshadowed by the romance of Osman and Malkhatun. Let us give to sheik Edebali his proper place in history as the great missionary of Islam, who found for his faith in its hour of dire need a race of swordbearers worthy of the task of reconstituting the Khalifate and of spreading once more the name of Mohammed in three continents.

It was the conversion of Osman and his tribe which gave birth to the Osmanli people, because it welded into one race the various elements living in the north-western corner of Asia Minor. The new faith gave them a raison d’être. This conversion, and not the disappearance of the Seljuks of Konia,[30] is the explanation of the activity of Osman after 1290, as in sharp contrast with the preceding fifty years[31] of easy, slothful existence at Sugut.

Ertogrul and Osman, village chieftain at Sugut, had lived the life of a simple, pastoral folk, with no ambition beyond the horizon of their little village. No record exists of any battle fought, of any conquest made. Turks had already made their appearance in raids against the coast cities of Asia Minor, upon the islands of the Aegaean Sea, and even in the Balkan peninsula. But they were not the Turks of Osman. Until the students of the later Byzantine Empire, and of the Italian commercial cities in their relations with the Levant, make a clear distinction between Turk and Osmanli, there will always be confusion upon this point. Ertogrul had about four hundred fighting men.[32] There is no reason to believe that Osman had more. His relations with his neighbours were those of perfect amity.[33] There is no question of believer and unbeliever.

Suddenly we find Osman attacking his neighbours and capturing their castles. During the decade from 1290 to 1300 he extends his boundaries until he comes into contact with the Byzantines. His four hundred warriors grow to four thousand. We begin to hear of a people called, not Turks, but Osmanlis, after a leader whose own name first appears at the same time as that of his people.[34] They are foes of Greeks and Tartars alike. They are definitely allied to Islam. They possess a missionary spirit and a desire to proselytize such as one always finds in new converts. Their unity among themselves, and their distinctively different character from that of the other Turks of Asia Minor, becomes, during the first sixty years of the fourteenth century, so marked that Europe is forced to recognize them as a nation. Being more in the presence of Europe than the other groups of Asia Minor, the Europeans begin to call them simply Turks, and to take them as representing all the Turks of Anatolia.

But they had never called themselves Turks until they got the habit of doing so through the influence of European education upon their higher classes, and because of the awakening since 1789 of the sentiment of nationality among the subject Christian races. Mouradjea d’Ohsson, who understood the Osmanlis better than any other European writer of his day, wrote in 1785: ‘The Osmanlis employ the term “Turk” in referring to a coarse and brutal man. According to the Osmanlis, the word Turk belongs only to the peoples of the Turkestan and to those vagabond hordes who lead a stagnant life in the deserts of the Khorassan. All the peoples submitted to the Empire are designated under the name “Osmanlis”, and they do not understand why they are called Turks by Europeans. As they attach to this word the idea of the most marked insult, no foreigner in the Empire ever allows himself to use it in speaking to them.’[35]

V

Nor were the Osmanlis, until the reign of Bayezid, one hundred years later, the strongest military and political factor in Asia Minor. The Turkish emirates of Sarukhan, of Kermian, and especially of Karaman, could match the Osmanlis in extent of territory and ability to defend it.[36] We shall see later how the Osmanlis conquered their Anatolian neighbours by a prestige won in Europe and by soldiers gathered in Europe. One of the principal tasks of this book is to correct the fundamental misconception of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire, which has persisted to this day.[37] It seems to be a pretty generally accepted idea that the Osmanlis were a Turkish Moslem race, who invaded Asia Minor, and, having established themselves there, pushed on into Europe and overthrew the Byzantine Empire. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Osmanlis were masters of the whole Balkan peninsula before they had subjugated Asia Minor as far as Konia!

Osman and his people have no history until they come in contact with the Byzantines. The Ottoman chroniclers, and the Byzantine and European historians who have followed them, give at some length the early conquests of Osman. But the accounts are fantastical, obscure, and frequently contradictory. It is the story of a village chieftain, who succeeded in imposing his authority upon his neighbours over an increasingly wider area, until a small state was formed. But it is not the same story as that of the other emirs who built up independent states in the old Seljuk provinces. For Osman founded his principality in territory contiguous to Constantinople, and by attacking

EMIRATE OF OSMAN

[[Largest view.]]

and conquering the last fragments of the Byzantine possessions along and in the hinterland of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora. Osman’s opponents were all Christians. Had he attacked his Turkish neighbours first, had he gone south and east instead of north and west, in building up his state, there would never have been a new race born to change the history of the world.

It is impossible to state with any degree of certitude the conquests of Osman before 1300. The record of village warfare, with its names of localities which even the most celebrated Ottoman geographer could not, three centuries later, identify,[38] is of no importance whatever. The extent of Osman’s principality, when he and his people first appear in history, was very insignificant. In 1300 he had succeeded in submitting to his authority a part of ancient Phrygia Epictetus and Bithynia, whose four corners were: south-east, Eski Sheïr; south-west, the eastern end of Mount Olympus; north-east, the junction of the Kara Su and the Sangarius; north-west, Yeni Sheïr. In 1299 Osman took up his residence in Yeni Sheïr. This was the outpost of his principality, in a position of extreme importance, about half-way between Brusa and Nicaea.[39] In sixty years the tribe of Osman had advanced sixty miles from Eski Sheïr, the old city, to Yeni Sheïr, the new city.[40] They held undisputed sway only in the valley of the Kara Su,[41] and their important villages and castles, Biledjik,[42] Itburnu, Inoenu, Sugut, AÏnegoel,[43] Karadja Hissar,[44] Yundhissar, and Yar Hissar,[45] were all within a day’s journey of each other.

In 1301, twelve years after Osman began to form his state, he fought his first battle, and came into direct contact with the Byzantine Empire. At Baphaeon,[46] near Nicomedia, the heterarch Muzalon, with 2,000 men, attempted to check a raid the Osmanlis were making into the fertile valley whose products contributed so greatly to the well-being of Nicomedia. It was midsummer, just before the gathering of the harvests.[47] In a pitched battle, the unarmoured horsemen of Osman charged so speedily and so impetuously that they broke through the heavy line of their opponents, and the Greek commander’s retreat was covered only by the opportune arrival of Slavic mercenaries.[48] The Osmanlis were too few in number to follow up this victory. It is hardly probable that they made any attack on Nicomedia.[49] But they laid waste all the districts into which they dared to venture.

VI

At this same time the emirs whose possessions bordered on the Aegaean Sea began to press hard upon the Greek coast cities and those few cities of the interior, such as Magnesia, Philadelphia, and Sardes, which still acknowledged the authority of Byzantium. In the spring of 1302, Michael IX Palaeologos came to Asia Minor to take command of the Slavic mercenaries. At first the Turks were in consternation, if we can believe Pachymeres, but when they saw the unwillingness of Michael to fight, they grew bold, and compelled the Emperor to take refuge in Magnesia. Michael’s unwillingness was not due to lack of courage, but because he could not rely upon his Slavs. As true mercenaries, they were fighting for pay, and there was no gold to give them. Michael’s father, the old Emperor Andronicus II, had not sent him any money. In Constantinople the Venetians were threatening to depose Andronicus; the almost annual ecclesiastical quarrels, which form so large and wearisome and disastrous a place in the last century and a half of Byzantine history, were embarrassing him; and the treasury was empty. Even if there had been money to send, it would have been a perilous undertaking, for the Turkish pirates were swarming in the Sea of Marmora, and had even seized the Princes’ Islands, which are within sight of the Imperial City.

When they saw that neither pay nor booty was forthcoming, and that they were engaged in a hopeless struggle, the mercenaries forced Michael to allow them to return to Europe. This was the last genuine personal effort on the part of a successor of the Caesars to save the Asiatic themes. It ended in ignominious failure. Not one battle had been fought. The withdrawal of the Slavs was followed by an exodus of Greeks to the Aegaean coast, and from there to Europe. Pachymeres claims that this exodus was general. But we cannot accept the testimony of Pachymeres as altogether trustworthy on this point. Many Greeks, for reasons which are set forth later, remained in the coast districts of Asia Minor, and they did not leave, to any noticeable extent, the territory in which Osman was operating. The Turks, however, made a raid into all the islands along the Aegaean littoral, and crossed over into Thrace, where for two years the fields could not be cultivated.[50]

At this critical moment, had there been any united action on the part of the Turkish emirs, Constantinople would probably have fallen an easy prey to their armies and to their fleets. But each emir was acting for himself, and was as much an enemy of his Turkish rivals as he was of the Byzantine emperors. There is no instance in which any two of them joined forces, and acted together. Throughout the fourteenth century the armies defending the Byzantine Empire contained almost as many Turks as those attacking it.

To the east and to the west Andronicus II, utterly unable to defend himself, looked for aid. From this time on to the fall of Constantinople the history of the Byzantine Empire becomes what the history of the Ottoman Empire has been during the last hundred years. It is the story of an uninterrupted succession of bitter internal quarrels, of attacks by former vassals upon the immediate frontiers of its shrunken territory, of subtle undermining by hostile colonies of foreigners whose one thought was commercial gain, and of intermittent, and in almost all cases selfishly inspired, efforts of western Europe to put off the fatal day.

In the east, Andronicus expected much of Ghazan Khan. Were not the Turks of Asia Minor vassals of the Mongol overlord? Andronicus sent envoys to Ghazan to offer him the hand of a young princess who passed at Constantinople as his natural daughter. Ghazan received them cordially, accepted the proffered marriage alliance, and promised to exercise a pressure upon the Turks of western Asia Minor.[51] This promise, however, was not followed by any serious action. The Mongols were never more than mere raiders in Asia Minor.[52] Before this marriage could be consummated, Ghazan Khan died. The young princess was offered to and accepted by his successor. It was a useless sacrifice. For in this first decade of the fourteenth century the long struggle between Christian and Moslem to win the Mongols ended, temporarily at least, in the conversion of the Khans to Islam.[53]

From the west, Andronicus received aid of the most disastrous sort. When Ferdinand of Aragon made peace with Charles d’Anjou, King of Sicily, in 1302, he got rid of his troublesome mercenaries by sending them to serve the Byzantine Empire. Roger de Flor, typical soldier of fortune, who could not be matched in his generation for daring, insolence, rapacity, cruelty, and Achillean belief in his own invulnerability, arrived at Constantinople with eight thousand Catalans and Almogavares, the former heavy-armed plainsmen and mariners, the latter light-armed mountaineers of northern Spain. They were true prototypes of the soldiers of Alva and Cortes. Roger was made Grand Duke, and married to Princess Marie, niece of Andronicus.

Almost immediately after their arrival, the Catalans became engaged in such bloody conflicts with the Genoese of Galata, and robbed and murdered the Greeks with such alacrity, that Andronicus hastened to turn them loose in Asia. Roger established himself in the peninsula of Cyzicus. Here his Catalans fell immediately to plundering the inhabitants of the country, who soon found that they had passed from Scylla to Charybdis, and carried heartrending tales of lust and greed and massacre to Constantinople.[54] The one Greek general who was doing anything noteworthy against the Turks was relieved of his spoils of war by Roger.

In 1305, by a swift march to the relief of Philadelphia, which was being besieged by Alisur, prince of Karamania, Roger and his Catalans showed what they could do, if they would. The Turks were compelled to raise the siege. Roger pursued them to the source of the Sangarius.[55] But, on the way, the Catalans deprived their Greek allies of any portion of the rich spoils, and massacred the Slavic mercenaries who dared to argue with them.[56] Gregoras says, probably with reason, that Roger could have reconquered the whole of Asia Minor for the Byzantines.[57] But that country seemed to attract him as little as it had attracted the Mongols. He was no Crusader, glad and eager to undergo the terrible hardships which military operations among mountains and on arid plateaus demanded. There was no motive to make the effort worth while. So he left the Turks to themselves and went to Gallipoli, where he let it be known that the Catalans were preparing an expedition to repeat the Fourth Crusade.

In fear for his life as well as for his throne, Andronicus sent an envoy to offer Roger the ‘government of the Orient’, general command of all the troops in Asia, and twenty thousand pieces of gold. For full measure he added enough wheat to nourish the Catalans for a year. The ‘government of the Orient’ was as empty and meaningless a gift as the supposed ‘grants’ of the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin to the Turkish nomad chieftains. The only troops who could go into Asia and accomplish anything were already under Roger’s command. But the gold, which might have worked a charm, was left behind, as the envoy was afraid to bring it. Roger scorned the emperor’s offer. Ten days later he repented, and accepted from Emperor Andronicus thirty thousand pieces of gold, one hundred thousand measures of wheat, and the title of Caesar. In return for these princely gifts he had only to promise to lead three thousand men against the Turks.

But a host of Spaniards, long before the discovery of America, were already in search of ‘El Dorado’. They poured into Gallipoli on every merchant ship from the West, and made the Byzantines begin to fear Roger more than they feared the Turks. The remedy was getting to be worse than the evil! Before leaving for his campaign, Roger rashly went to Adrianople to pay his respects to the young Emperor Michael IX, who was holding his court there. On the threshold of Michael’s bedchamber, like the Duke of Guise at Blois, he was stabbed to death. A massacre of his attendants followed.

A train of evils fell upon Macedonia and Thrace as a result of the assassination of Roger de Flor. Michael soon had reason to regret this ill-advised deed. Not only did the Catalans, in their first access of fury, avenge the death of their great leader and their comrades by unspeakable cruelties and by the destruction of every village which they came upon, not only did they defeat the young emperor in open battle and almost capture him as he fled from the field, but they invited over from Asia Minor into Macedonia all the Turks who could be induced to come.

At Gallipoli the Catalans tried to form a state. It failed owing to dissensions among their leaders. Their raids into Thrace had so ruined that country that they themselves began to starve. So they started upon an odyssey into Macedonia, where the common soldiers, wearied of the civil strife engendered by their leaders, who were continually ordering them to cut each other’s throats, decided to make an end of these costly personal jealousies. They killed the nobles who led them, and marched south into Thessaly. Gauthier de la Brienne committed the imprudence of seeking their aid in Athens. In 1310 they killed Brienne, set up in Athens a military democracy, and started to revive the Peloponnesian Wars.[58]

The further fortunes of the Grand Catalan Company do not come within the limits of our work. Roger and the Catalans, for that matter, were never in direct contact with the Osmanlis. But it was necessary to give a brief statement of their services to the Byzantine Empire in order that we might have a proper appreciation of their services to the Ottoman Empire. When they withdrew into Thessaly they had left the Turks behind them in Thrace and Macedonia. To the unhappy emperor who had received them nine years before as saviours of the Empire, this was their legacy.

Owing to the adroit leadership of their chief, Halil, and to the impotence of Michael, whose Slavic mercenaries had deserted him and withdrawn into Bulgaria, these Turks were soon able to throw Macedonia and Thrace into so great anarchy that communication by land between Salonika and the capital was no longer safe.[59] And yet Halil had only eighteen hundred men under his command! In 1311, shortly after the Catalans had left, Halil concluded with Andronicus and Michael an agreement by which he and his companions in arms were to have a safe-conduct and free passage across the Hellespont. But the Greeks, in violation of one of the most important points of this arrangement, attempted to take from the Turks their booty. Halil, instead of quitting European soil, sent for reinforcements. The imperial army suffered a decisive defeat, and Michael fled, having abandoned his personal baggage. In insolent triumph, Halil adorned himself with the imperial insignia.[60] All the region around the Hellespont and the Gulf of Saros remained for three years without cultivation. So desperate did the situation become that Michael was compelled to seek aid of the Genoese and the Serbians. In 1314 the Turks of Halil were entrapped near Gallipoli and massacred. But at what a price! The Serbians, whose co-operation had won the day for the Greeks, saw eastern Macedonia and the open sea. They liked it. New troubles began to brew for the Byzantines.

There were other long-standing troubles threatening from abroad. In the East, the Mongols had overrun southern Russia, and were as great a nightmare to Andronicus as the Goths had formerly been to Valens. The rulers of Constantinople did not hesitate to purchase security on the Black Sea by truces, which were sealed with the sacrifice of purple-born princesses to pagan harems, and by humble protestations of friendship to khans who treated the imperial ambassadors as the envoys of a vassal.[61]

In the West, another sword of Damocles was hanging over the emperors of Byzantium. We must remember that the Greeks had been in possession of their capital again only since 1260, and that the heirs of the Frankish emperors still cherished the dream of a Latin re-establishment at Constantinople. In 1305, on the very day Clement V mounted the papal throne, Philippe le Bel of France discussed with Charles de Valois the question of retaking Constantinople.[62] The following year Clement V exhorted the Venetians to co-operate in the conquest of the Byzantine Empire.[63] Because they had grievances against Andronicus which had already almost brought them to an open rupture,[64] the Venetians readily lent ear to the Pope’s project. A treaty of alliance was concluded between Venice and Charles de Valois, who had the powerful backing of the King of France.[65] In 1307 Clement V wrote to Charles II of Naples urging him to reconquer Constantinople.[66] But the Pope’s interest was soon diverted by the project of a crusade to support Armenia and Cyprus against the Egyptians.[67] Philippe le Bel turned his attention to the spoliation of the Knights Templars and to the important ecclesiastical questions arising out of the movement to rehabilitate the memory of the unfortunate Boniface VIII.

Until the death of Philippe le Bel, in 1314, however, Andronicus and Michael always felt that there might at any moment be a repetition of the Fourth Crusade. In seeking the reasons for the almost unhampered progress of Osman against Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Brusa, it must not be forgotten that the Byzantine emperors did not have even the moral support of Christendom in their losing fight.

VII

During this first decade of the fourteenth century, the Byzantines had lost control of practically all the Aegaean Sea, and had to struggle for a passage through the Sea of Marmora. After the recent Balkan War, the Sublime Porte presented a memorandum to the Powers, in which it was stated that the possession of Rhodes, Lesbos, and Chios was absolutely essential to a maintenance of Ottoman power in Asia Minor. History, from the time of the ancient Persian wars to the present day, confirms this point of view. So, before taking up the progress of Osman’s conquests, it is important to note that during the years of Osman’s conflict with the Byzantines Chios and Rhodes passed out of their hands.

In 1303 Roger de Flor had prepared the way for the Turks in Chios by sacking the island. What he did not destroy or carry off fell to the Turks when they raided the island the following year. ‘Andronicus saw that he was no longer able to defend Chios against the Turks because of the cowardice of his governors. The Turks already considered themselves masters of Asia Minor and the majority of the islands.’[68] So he made Benedetto of Phocaea lord of Chios, and the island was lost to the Byzantines. The Giustiniani family kept Chios until the Ottoman conquest.

The emir of Menteshe invaded Rhodes about 1300.[69] But he did not succeed in entirely conquering it. For ten years Greek and Turk struggled for the mastery of this gateway to the Aegaean Sea. Then suddenly an outside foe arrived and made the double conquest of Christian and Moslem alike. The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, driven from the Holy Land by the Egyptian conquest, had tired of their refuge in Cyprus.[70] After vainly endeavouring to negotiate with Constantinople for the transfer of the proprietary rights of the island to their order, they attacked and conquered Rhodes with the encouragement of Philippe le Bel and the Pope. This great event, equally disastrous to Turk and Greek, happened on August 15, 1310. For more than two centuries they were able to maintain at Rhodes a citadel and outpost of Christianity in a part of the world which was rapidly becoming in partibus infidelium.[71]

The emir of Menteshe made a strenuous effort to recapture Rhodes. The Hospitallers, attacked before they had time to repair and strengthen the fortifications of the island, were saved only by the timely arrival and heroism of Amadeus of Savoy. This is said to be the origin of the arms of Savoy, which are perpetuated on the flag of modern Italy, and of the motto of the sovereigns of Piedmont—F E R T, Fortitudo Eius Rhodum Tenuit.[72] The historians of Rhodes, as well as the chroniclers of the House of Savoy, declare that Osman was the leader of the Turks who attacked Rhodes in 1310 or 1311,[73] and that he was instigated by the Genoese.[74]

VIII

But while Osman was, in the minds of these and other later historians, supposed to be attacking Rhodes and making himself master of Asia Minor, he stayed within the narrow limits of his little principality, from which he never issued forth, as far as we know, during his circumscribed career. For he had, within a day’s journey of his residence, the imperial cities of Brusa and Nicaea, whose walls were far too strong for the infant Osmanlis. A little more to the north-west, in a position of unrivalled strategic importance, defending the logical[75] waterway to Constantinople from the valley of the Sangarius, lay Nicomedia.

After the battle of Kuyun Hissar (Baphaeon) we hear nothing of Osman until 1308. This year is memorable for several events of great importance. The first of these is the capture of Ak Hissar, the fortress guarding the place where the Sangarius finishes its descent and enters the plain behind Nicomedia. This was the last barrier opposing the progress of the Osmanlis through the narrow peninsula which stretches out between the Gulf of Nicomedia and the Black Sea to form the extreme north-western corner of Asia. Owing to the terrible misfortunes which had fallen upon the Byzantines through the Catalans, no effort seems to have been made to use Nicomedia as a base of operations for defending this peninsula. So before the year was out the Osmanlis appeared for the first time on the Bosphorus. In the years following the fall of Ak Hissar the Osmanlis slowly but thoroughly extended their authority until they were in possession of the harbours and fortresses of the Black Sea littoral between the mouth of the Sangarius and the Bosphorus.

In the same year Kalolimni, an island of the Marmora, which lies near the mouth of the Gulf of Mudania, was occupied by Kara Ali.[76] By this the water-route from Brusa to Constantinople, and one of the two routes from Nicaea to Constantinople, were obstructed.[77] Kalolimni has the honour of being the first Ottoman island and the only one captured during the chieftainship of Osman. The investment of Brusa from the land side now began. So alarmed was the commandant that he sent Osman a ‘gift’ of money to purchase peace,[78] thus inaugurating the humiliating precedent which the mightiest emperors and kings of Christendom came in time to follow.

It was in 1308, also, that Osman captured Tricocca,[79] which cut off the communication by land between Nicaea and Nicomedia. While he was engaged in dealing with Nicaea and Brusa, a danger threatened Osman from the east. A horde of Tartars was hovering along the confines of his state.[80] Some of them sacked Karadja Hissar at the time of the fair, and were prevented from marching on Eski Sheïr only by the timely arrival of Orkhan, who defeated them through the superiority of his cavalry. Instead of massacring his prisoners, Orkhan, as was the invariable custom of his father with the Greeks, offered the raiders Islam and Ottoman nationality.[81] It was in this way that the Osmanlis increased in numbers.

After 1308 the energies of the Osmanlis seem to have been directed against Nicaea and Brusa. The fall of Brusa is the only other event recorded during the lifetime of Osman. Just when and how Brusa fell cannot be stated with precision. We shall find the same difficulty later in connexion with the fall of Nicaea and Nicomedia. The Turkish traditions, as Seadeddin gathered them, state that Osman besieged Brusa with a great army in 1317. He erected a fortress near Kaplidja, and put his nephew, Ak Timur, in charge of it. A second fortress, either erected by Osman or captured by him, was put in care of Balaban, ‘his most faithful follower.’ Kaplidja, now known as Tchekirdje, celebrated for its hot baths,[82] is on a ridge not more than a mile from the citadel of Brusa. It commands the approach from the port of Brusa, not far from where the road must cross the river. Traditional remains of the second fortress are still to be seen on a foothill of Mount Olympus, about two miles south-east of the citadel.

Of the actual fall of Brusa there is no definite statement in Seadeddin except that the city surrendered to Orkhan, who brought the news to his dying father. As Osman died in 1326, there is a gap of nine years to be accounted for between the investment of the city and its capture. To one who has studied the contour of this country and the nearness of the two fortresses to the citadel of Brusa it is clear either that Brusa was surrounded or fell very soon after the Osmanlis settled garrisons at the gates of the city, or that some modus vivendi was arranged between the Osmanlis and the local garrison during those years. A decade has been the conventional period for legendary sieges since Homer sang of Troy.

From the Byzantine contemporary writers one gains the impression, which is probably a correct one, that Brusa was simply abandoned to the Osmanlis. There was no assault, and no bitter struggle outside the walls of the city.[83] The Greek commander, discouraged by the apparent inability or unwillingness[84] of the emperors to come to his relief, surrendered the city. Deeply disgusted, as he had every reason to be, Evrenos became a Moslem, and cast his fortunes with the Osmanlis. Many of the leading Greeks followed his example. For, while the people of Brusa through long years were straining every nerve to preserve their city and to maintain the honour of Byzantium in Asia, the elder Andronicus and his grandson, Andronicus III, were engaged in trying to destroy each other. It was a sordid civil strife with no redeeming feature. Neither emperor had the slightest conception of patriotism or of personal honour or of the sacredness of family ties. From this time onward the Palaeologi put themselves on record as one of the most iniquitous families that have ever disgraced the kingly office. When Constantine, one hundred and twenty-seven years later, fell with the walls of his city, his death was a striking illustration of the wrath of God upon the fourth generation of those who had hated and despised Him.

In the same year that Brusa fell, and with the same fate imminent for Nicaea and Nicomedia, young Andronicus celebrated with great pomp his wedding. The Hippodrome, in sight of Mount Olympus, was the scene of a gay tournament in which young Andronicus distinguished himself by breaking more lances than any of his courtiers. From his imperial throne, the elder Andronicus looked on, and turned over in his head various schemes for making his grandson’s bride a widow. After the wedding festivities, while Andronicus was taking his bride to Demotika, he was set upon by a band of roving Turks, at whose hands he and Cantacuzenos both received wounds. When he reached Demotika, he learned that his grandfather was preparing another war against him.[85] Is it any wonder that the Greeks of Asia Minor were not averse to becoming Moslems and helping in the founding of a new nation to inherit Constantinople? There is one more charge which must be recorded against the elder Andronicus. When a crusade for the stemming of the Moslem invasion was planned by Marino Sanudo, Andronicus not only refused to co-operate, but he would not even consent to interrupt his friendly relations with the Sultan of Egypt.[86]

IX

Osman spent his life in endeavouring to capture the three Byzantine cities which were all within a day’s journey of his birthplace. When we consider how near he was at the very beginning of the struggle, and how weak and demoralized the Byzantines had become, we realize that we have to do with no impetuous invasion of an Asiatic race, sweeping before it and destroying an effete civilization. It is the birth of a new race that we are recording—a race formed by the fusion of elements already existing at the place of birth. The political unity of the Byzantine Empire had been destroyed by enemies from without and from within. The social unity, which had been secured by the one bond of a common religion that imposed upon the people its standards and dominated every phase of their life, was disappearing. For when the Eastern Church lost its spiritual life, it lost its hold on the Levantine Christians, who were centuries ahead of the West in intellectual development. The time for its reformation had come and passed without a Savonarola, a Luther, or a Calvin. Nor was there any Loyola to fight for the ancient faith. The Church was unable to absorb the pagan invaders, as primitive Latin Christianity had done, by an irresistible moral superiority.[87] The appeal of Islam was greater than that of Christianity. Pagan and Christian alike, then, in their conversion to a new, fresh faith, joined in the formation of a new race. This is the story of Osman and of the people who took his name.[88]

The legends which inevitably surround the founders of nations have buried the personality of Osman, and make an estimate of his character difficult. We must reject entirely the appreciations of the Ottoman historians. None has yet arisen of his own people who has attempted to separate the small measure of truth from the mass of fiction that obscures the real man in the founder of the Ottoman Empire. He is represented by the same writers as a powerful prince and as a simple peasant; as the master of Asia Minor and as the village chieftain fighting for very existence with his neighbours a few miles away; as reading the Koran and as illiterate; as the cruel and imperious murderer of his uncle Dundar for opposing a plan of campaign in his council of war and as the merciful, clement conqueror; as the Moslem fanatic who ordered the mutilation of dying infidels on the battlefield and as the wise ruler who dispensed justice to Moslem and Christian with no distinction of creed; as depositing his treasures of gold and silver in the castle of a neighbour and as leaving at his death only a robe, a salt-cellar, a spoon, and a few sheep.

In the absence of contemporary evidence and of unconflicting tradition, we must form our judgement of Osman wholly upon what he accomplished. He certainly was not the son of a prince. He did not become in his day more than the ruler of a very small domain. He did not compass within his lifetime the task at his very threshold—the subjection of the three imperial cities. It was certainly not by astounding successes on the battlefield that he made people flock to him and form around him the nucleus of a state. And this state, although it did not come enough in contact with the outside world to have money of its own,[89] grew steadily year after year. The way his state was formed was the assurance of its permanence and of its great future. It is also an indication of the real greatness of the man who formed it.

Osman was founder of one of the greatest empires the world has ever known, of a people unique in history through the blending of wild Asiatic blood with the oldest as well as the newest European stock, of a royal family which claims the distinction of six hundred years of uninterrupted male succession. When we place these results over against the limited field in which he worked, and acknowledge our lack of any outstanding deeds in Osman’s life by which these results can be explained, we find ourselves in the presence of a combination of a character and a cause which reminds us of William of Orange and England.

Osman was a man of compelling personality, whom men loved to serve, even when their own ability matched or was superior to his. The families of the Michaelogli and Marcozogli were founded by Christian companions of Osman, who became Moslem only after long association with him. Michael, Marco, and other leaders, including Osman’s own son, made for themselves more distinguished military careers than Osman. But they always worked for their leader. Their harmony and loyalty is in striking contrast to that of the Byzantine and Catalan captains. Osman was great enough to use masterful men. He never needed to assert his superiority, as mediocre men always love to do, by getting rid of possible rivals and surrounding himself with lesser stars. He was able to hold himself, as well as others, in check. He was patient and he was thorough. We know the founder by his foundation.

Then there was the cause. The giants of the forward march of Islam were dead. The tide had seemed to turn. Pagans ruled in Asia. Africa was asleep. In 1309 the Faithful in Spain were receiving their first serious reverse. Osman brought to his new religion the simple faith and the fresh enthusiasm of the neophyte. He was a reincarnation of his great namesake and the other early Khalifs. The prayer which Seadeddin puts in Osman’s mouth illustrates his character:

O Lord, make upright my thoughts and just my designs.

Exalt the faith and the Religion, and destroy those who rise up against it.

Scatter the hosts of the enemy, and bring to confusion evil men.

Make my sword the lantern of Thy holy faith, and the guiding torch of my warriors.

Give unto me a glorious name, and victory against mine adversaries.

Watch me with Thine eyes, and show me the way of Thy holy will.

Make me a true observer of the laws of Mohammed, and sustain me in the shock of battle.

Osman was a fanatic, if by fanatic is meant one who is stirred with religious zeal and makes his religion the first and prime object in his life. But he was not intolerant, nor were his immediate successors. Had he started to persecute Christians, the Greek Church would have taken a new lease of life, and Osman could not have gained the converts who made possible the Ottoman race.

Attila, Djenghiz Khan, Timur, the greatest conquerors of the stock from which Osman came, utilized a race already made. They were leaders of a united people. In spite of their dazzling exploits, they were mere raiders, and their empires were the territories of an unassimilated path of conquest. Osman’s work was more enduring than theirs, more far-reaching in its results. For he was building in silence while they were destroying with a blast of trumpets. We may place him with them, perhaps above them, for which of them gave his name to a people?

CHAPTER II
ORKHAN
A NEW NATION IS FORMED AND COMES INTO CONTACT WITH THE WESTERN WORLD

I

The greatest inheritance that a father can leave to his son is uncompleted work, especially if the work present difficulties of a formidable character, which must be met and overcome immediately. No man is born great. No man has greatness thrust upon him. History recognizes only the category of achievement. Facing an unfinished task is the best spur.

Osman died at the moment of the surrender of Brusa. He left to Orkhan the inheritance of Nicaea and Nicomedia unconquered; a state without laws, coinage, and definite boundaries; a people just beginning to awaken to a national consciousness; and hostile neighbours far more powerful than himself.[90] Orkhan found himself without seaport, ships, or sailors. His fighting men were regarded among his Turkish rivals as poor material for an army.[91] Even the chieftainship of the Osmanlis had not come to him by mere right of birth.[92] He had been chosen because of his ability to lead and to attract men. Now that Brusa had fallen into the hands of the Osmanlis, more was demanded in their emir than personal charm and daring in battle. He must establish his right to the chieftainship by making a viable state. This could be done only by the addition of Nicaea and Nicomedia to his dominions, and by the transformation of his followers into a nation.

Nowhere are the Ottoman historians more unsatisfactory than in their accounts of the reign of Orkhan. They fail to describe—much less to explain—the evolution of their race during these thirty-five years from a heterogeneous band of adventurers into a nation. Several of the Ottoman historians write so admirably of later periods that we must attribute this failure as much to their lack of sources of information as to their inability to measure up to the demands of the modern mind which never asks how without adding why. The re-writing of history in the twentieth century is not actuated by belief in superior ability. Our new and wider point of view is gained from the advantage we have had in securing and comparing sources which were inaccessible to those who have gone before us. If, in this chapter, Byzantine sources are largely used, it is because we are writing the history of a people who built their nation directly upon the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, and because the Byzantine sources are contemporary; while the earliest Ottoman historians wrote more than a century later than this period.[93]

The reign of Orkhan is divided into two parts by the events of the year 1344. From 1326 to 1344 he was occupied in subduing the territory of which he had been tentative master at the death of Osman, in forming his nation, and in organizing his army. From 1344 until his death in 1360, his energies were bent chiefly upon getting a foothold in Macedonia and Thrace.

II

The first task which imposed itself upon Orkhan was the subjection of Nicaea and Nicomedia. Just as the walls of Brusa had defied him to the end, those of Nicomedia and Nicaea were equally impregnable to the kind of army he could assemble. Whether it was that neither Byzantine nor Turk nor Slav nor Bulgarian were of the stock who would spend themselves scaling walls and battering down gates, or that the weapons of those days were more favourable for the purpose of defence than of assault, cannot be determined. But the curious fact remains that during this century there are few instances of cities taken by storm. Captures were effected for the most part by capitulation or by treachery.

Complete investment and consequent threatened starvation did not occur in the case of Brusa. Nor did Nicaea and Nicomedia surrender from starvation. This is the place, rather than at the end of the last chapter, to give two of the long list of reasons for surrender which Neshri puts into the mouth of the commandant and the leading citizens of Brusa.[94] For they state equally plainly and convincingly the case of Nicaea and Nicomedia.

The economic reason was that the inhabitants saw the Osmanlis settling themselves in all the country round about the three cities, and undisturbed in their permanent occupation of these regions by any aggressive movement from Constantinople. Nicomedia, although advantageously located for commerce, was not a port of call on the great trade route. It depended for its well-being upon an unrestricted communication with the interior. Brusa and Nicaea were manufacturing cities, whose prosperity was due to the use of raw materials produced in the vicinity, and to the ability to market the manufactured products. While food was still procurable, trade and business languished. When the Greeks saw that the Osmanlis had come in their midst to remain, and were not mere raiders like the Seljuk Turks, they realized that the alternative to submission was ruin.

The moral reason I have already touched upon in relation to Brusa. If there had been any hope of relief from the intolerable economic conditions under which they were living, the Nicaeans and Nicomedians might have resisted indefinitely, and maintained a gallant struggle for love of God and country. Their successful resistance, continued through many weary years, is a remarkable testimony to their religious zeal and to their patriotism. It was not until they felt themselves deserted by their brothers of blood and religion that they finally yielded. The Osmanlis did not prevail over them in battle. Their walls were not stormed. Their gates held fast. They were not starved out. They were abandoned by the Byzantines. So they became Osmanlis.

III

To understand the how and why of the fall of these cities and of the mingling of victor and vanquished in one race, we must review the history of the Byzantines during the years immediately following the death of Osman.

The loss of Brusa did not cause any cessation in the suicidal strife between Andronicus and his grandson. After the brilliant marriage festivities of which we have already spoken, young Andronicus took his bride to Demotika, where, in the summer of 1327, he planned to surprise and oust his grandfather.[95] He was not content to wait for the old man’s death. Nor was he deterred from reopening the civil war by the thought of the imminent danger of the Byzantine cities in Bithynia. Old Andronicus, informed of his grandson’s intention, forbade his entrance to the capital, and negotiated with the Serbians to attack him from the rear.[96] This was a deliberate invitation to the Serbians, who were rapidly becoming dangerous enemies of the Empire, to enter Byzantine territory.

The appeal of young Andronicus to be allowed to come to Constantinople to justify himself was answered by an imperial rescript ordering the Patriarch to ‘strike out the rebel’s name from public prayers’. The Patriarch refused.[97] More than that, His Holiness threatened to unfrock any priest who would obey the imperial command. Old Andronicus had the Patriarch deposed by a packed synod of his creatures, and thrown into prison.[98]

War broke out. After an unsuccessful attempt to surprise Constantinople,[99] young Andronicus besieged the army of his grandfather and the Serbians in Serres. They did not care to risk a battle, so he marched on Salonika, which he captured through the connivance of its inhabitants.[100] Macedonia and Thrace, with the exception of two or three fortresses, fell into his hands without a struggle.[101]

Stephen, Kral of Serbia, now turned a deaf ear to the old emperor’s reiterated appeals for further aid. In his desperation, old Andronicus called in the Bulgarians, to whom he would have betrayed Constantinople, had not young Andronicus appeared in time to anticipate this culminating infamy of the older Palaeologos. A Venetian fleet, which was besieging the city, retired, because its commander did not want to appear to take sides either for or against the younger emperor. Friends inside left a gate open. Young Andronicus entered and appeared suddenly at the palace. The Patriarch was re-established. Old Andronicus was deposed and imprisoned.[102]

The old man, after having become, as Gregoras charitably puts it, ‘blind through tears’,[103] retired to a monastery, and died there in great poverty.[104] Like many others of the Palaeologi, Andronicus II had no redeeming trait of character, no single good deed to his credit. Stranger to every natural affection, he died as he had lived, hating his own flesh and blood, striving to ruin his country, mocking God by the very monk’s garb that he wore.

The first care of young Andronicus, after ridding himself of his grandfather and rival, was to march on Adrianople, where, according to Cantacuzenos, he forced Michael Asan of Bulgaria to make peace by the display of his ‘fine army’.[105] Either the Bulgarians were very weak at this time, or the ‘fine army’ of Andronicus III melted away quickly. For in the spring of the following year, 1329, Andronicus had to ‘gather hastily’[106] an army, when for the first time he felt it his duty to go to the aid of beleaguered Nicaea. He crossed the Bosphorus, and joined the battle with the Osmanlis at Pelecanon, now Maltepé, on the north shore of the gulf of Nicomedia, a few miles from Chalcedon, the modern Haïdar Pasha.

The battle of Pelecanon is passed over in silence by the Ottoman historians as too insignificant to mention. But it is of the utmost importance in showing why the Nicaeans surrendered their city to Orkhan. Cantacuzenos, who took part in this battle, gives a long story in which the result of the battle he is compelled to record belies all that goes before it. The Byzantines, according to Cantacuzenos, were eminently successful in repelling the attacks of the Osmanlis. On all sides the Greeks won, and killed hundreds of their opponents, while their own losses were slight. After inflicting this defeat upon Orkhan, Andronicus proposed, at nightfall, that the army withdraw to Constantinople! Some of his ardent warriors continued, however, to engage the enemy. Andronicus, surprised with only a few followers around him, was wounded, and escaped capture only by a hasty retreat. He was carried in a litter to Scutari, where he did not wait for news of his army. A caïque conveyed him safely home. Thus the successors of the Caesars abandoned Asia for ever.

Old Andronicus, in his hour of humiliation, did not hesitate to strike one more blow against his country. Spies of his in the army spread the rumour that the young emperor was dead. The imperial troops fled. They abandoned all their baggage, and were massacred by the Osmanlis, who hunted them down in the hills from which the fugitives could see the dome of St. Sophia.[107]

When we contrast the long story of the civil war between Andronicus and his grandfather, the armies gathered, the money expended, the energy displayed with this one pitiful attempt to aid the three great cities of Bithynia, there is no need for further speculation as to why these cities fell into the hands of the Osmanlis. No wearers of the imperial purple had ever made a more dismal showing: old Andronicus plotting to demoralize the army of his country by false rumours, and young Andronicus making such rumours possible by being the first to flee from the field after receiving a slight wound. It is no wonder that Cantacuzenos records that after this battle Nicaea fell into the hands of the Osmanlis.[108] It is altogether natural, too, that the inhabitants of Nicaea should refuse, as those of Brusa had done, to profit by the terms of the capitulation, and leave for Constantinople.[109] Their trades, silk-weaving and pottery, were dependent upon local materials, which they could not get elsewhere. There had been nothing to inspire in them that devotion to a faith which made the Huguenots long afterwards leave all without hesitation after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Hadji Khalfa says that in the seventeenth century the walls of Nicaea were entirely ruined.[110] The condition of these walls to-day (for they have not been repaired in modern times) contradicts this statement. It has been the claim of the Osmanlis that Nicaea was reduced by fighting. If this were true the walls must have suffered. It is also the common belief[111] that Nicaea, at the time of the Ottoman conquest, and for some time after, was a prosperous city.[112] But Ibn Batutah, who visited Nicaea within five or six years after its change of ownership, wrote that its walls were intact, that the sole entrance to the city was by a road built up like a bridge and so narrow that horsemen could not pass on it, and that the walls were surrounded by a wide deep moat filled with water. One had to reach the gate by a pont-levis, which was in working order and used at the time of his visit. The city itself was in ruins and occupied only by a small number of men in the service of Orkhan. He was told that Orkhan had besieged the city ten years, and Osman before him twenty years. As the famous traveller was an honoured guest in the palace of Orkhan, where Orkhan’s wife was living at the time, and where the emir himself came for a few days during the forty days which Ibn Batutah spent in Nicaea, his testimony is certainly worthy of credence.[113]

That Nicaea, while preserving its admirable fortifications, should have decreased so rapidly in importance and population during the seventy years between the return of the Byzantine emperors to Constantinople and the Ottoman occupation, is explainable only by three suppositions: that a majority of the inhabitants had died off, that they had emigrated, or that they had gradually joined their fortunes with the people of Osman. We find in Byzantine annals no record of a disastrous plague or of a large emigration of potters and porcelain workers and weavers to the capital or elsewhere from Nicaea. There was little fighting. The Osmanlis had not yet learned to massacre. What are we to believe, then, concerning the large population of this so recently flourishing city?

It is hardly a conjecture to affirm that the Nicaeans must have cast their fortunes with that steadily growing band whose firm conviction, forced upon them against their will and in violence to centuries-old traditions and sentiments, was that the old structure of society could not be repaired, and that there must be an entirely new building upon the old foundation. This conviction did not come suddenly or to all at once. It was a gradual dawning and awakening which caused the ranks of the Osmanlis to become greater every year. Before the end of Orkhan’s reign the nucleus of Asiatic adventurers which had gathered around Osman in the little village of Sugut had grown to half a million. It could not have been by natural increase. It could not have been by the flocking in of nomads from the East. Orkhan was cut off from contact with the Asiatic hinterland. His rivals of Karaman, Satalia, Aïdin, and Sarukhan would have attracted adventurers from the outside before himself. Orkhan formed his nation out of the elements on the ground. These were mostly Greek. Nicaea is but an illustration of the way in which the new race was born and the new nation formed.

This conviction that no good could come from Constantinople went farther than a transference of allegiance from the Palaeologi to the family of Osman. Mohammed was substituted for Christ. What a momentous significance there is in the records of the Greek Orthodox Church that in 1339 and again in 1340 the Patriarch sent an impassioned appeal to the Nicaeans that they should not abjure the Christian faith![114] At that very moment when the ecclesiastics of Constantinople were espousing the rival claims of unworthy aspirants to the imperial purple and were anathematizing each other in supporting trivial theological arguments, Christians were adopting the new Credo: ‘I believe in one God, and Mohammed is his prophet!’ in the city of the Nicene Creed.

We may place the surrender of Nicomedia in 1337 or 1338.[115] This was the last Byzantine possession in the Ottoman corner of Asia Minor. The fall of Aïdos and Semendria on the hills behind Scutari had opened the way to the Bosphorus. Yalova, renowned for its baths, and Hereké, where Constantine the Great died, gave the Osmanlis undisputed control of the entrance to the Gulf of Nicomedia and secure possession of the city where Diocletian had made a new capital for the Roman Empire.

IV

Orkhan had now accomplished the first part of the great task left unfinished by Osman. But, before he could proceed to the establishment of laws for his new state, it was necessary for him to consolidate and strengthen his position in relation to his formidable neighbours. Dangers threatened from the east and from the south. In 1327 Timurtash, a son of Choban, who was Mongol governor of Rum, pushed his raids as far as the Mediterranean, which the Mongol arms had not hitherto reached. He fought in turn Greeks and Turks.[116] Fortunately for Orkhan, the emir of Kermian, whose capital was Kutayia, had appeared so unpromising to the eyes of Timurtash that the Mongols had not come northward. But they were an ever imminent source of danger to the emirs of Asia Minor, and to Orkhan among them, until 1335, when the death of Bahadur Khan, just the year before the birth of Timur, caused the disintegration of the Mongol power in western Asia.[117]

The Mongol menace had contributed to the undisturbed operations of Orkhan against the Byzantines. Immediately upon its removal he was threatened by the other Turkish emirs. It was a critical moment for Orkhan, whose territories had not yet reached the proportions of a large state, like those of Omar of Aïdin and Mohammed of Sarukhan. Singly they might have crushed Orkhan. United they certainly would have done so. But here again the Byzantines contributed to their own downfall.

In 1329, at Phocaea, Andronicus had conducted his first negotiations with the emirs of Aïdin and Sarukhan.[118] This unsuccessful attempt to embroil the Anatolian emirs with each other was a pitiful confession of weakness on the part of Andronicus. It did no harm to Orkhan. But it called the attention of these emirs to the impotence of Andronicus, and led to a series of petty raids in Macedonia and Thrace. Emboldened by the ease of initial successes, Mohammed of Sarukhan in 1333 led in person an expedition of seventy-five ships against the Macedonian coast. Andronicus was too weak to oppose his landing.[119] In the same year Turkish pirates seized for a short time Rodosto, on the Sea of Marmora, only a few hours’ sail from Constantinople.[120] The following year the emperor was compelled to put an army in the field to save Salonika from the Turks.[121]

These attentions from his proposed allies did not prevent Andronicus from seeking aid in the same quarters in 1336 when he was besieging the Genoese of Phocaea. Mohammed sent twenty-four ships, numerous troops, and all the provisions necessary to sustain the imperial army. The net gain to Andronicus from this expedition was the empty acknowledgement from Cattaneo of Phocaea, who was not afraid of Andronicus but did not want to be bothered by him and his Turkish allies, that he would hold as a ‘fief of the empire’ what Andronicus, even with the help of the Turks, could not take from him![122]

This momentary diversion of the attention and energies of his neighbours was most propitious for Orkhan. Andronicus had rendered him good service. It gave to Orkhan an opportunity of enlarging and rounding out his dominions without incurring opposition that would not only have prevented him from carrying out his schemes but might also have destroyed him. Orkhan had been waiting for this moment. In 1333, the Turcoman emir of Mysia had died. His younger son had taken refuge with Orkhan, and promised in return for aid in dispossessing his brother to surrender to the Osmanlis Balikesri and three other border cities. Orkhan could not act immediately. He contented himself with advising the elder brother to divide his dominions with Tursun. Tursun went to negotiate in person, and was killed by his brother. This was shortly before the expedition to Phocaea. Orkhan was now ready. He put in the field an expedition, ostensibly to punish the assassination of his protégé Tursun, and was so successful that he forced the emir of Karasi to give up Pergamos and go into exile in Brusa.[123] In another expedition, which probably occurred in

THE EMIRATES of OSMAN and ORKHAN

[[Largest view.]]

1337 at the earliest,[124] Orkhan added Mikhalitsch, Ulubad, and Kermasti to his dominions. He was now virtually master of Mysia.

This was the extent of Orkhan’s conquests in Asia Minor. It is necessary to emphasize this point, owing to the erroneous idea which has so long been accepted and which has found its way into many modern writers.[125] No corroboration can be found for the statement of Cantacuzenos that Soleiman captured Angora from the Tartars in 1354.[126] Aside from this, neither Byzantines nor Osmanlis report any further conquests of Orkhan in Asia Minor. From the fact that there is a complete silence as to their fate, it is reasonable to suppose that the Osmanlis during the last decade of Orkhan’s reign destroyed the independence of several little states of which Ibn Batutah and Shehabeddin report the existence between 1334 and 1349.[127] But these were all in a general sense either included in Mysia (Karasi) or in the territory which Orkhan is popularly supposed to have inherited from Osman.[128]

After the Mysian expedition and the fall of Nicomedia, Orkhan may be regarded as the acknowledged sovereign of a definite state. We have good contemporary testimony to his character, his power and his reputation at this period just before he became an active factor in deciding the destinies of the Byzantine Empire.

Ibn Batutah calls him the ‘lord of Brusa, son of Osman the Little, powerful and rich among the Turcoman kings, in treasures, cities and soldiers’. He never ceased making the tour of the hundred castles he possessed. In each of these he would pass several days to repair them and inspect their situation. It was common report that he never spent a whole month in a city, not even in Brusa. He was all the time fighting and besieging the infidels. It was his indomitable energy which seems to have impressed the traveller from Morocco. The absolute lack of slothful, indifferent acquiescence in the will of God of these latter-day Turkish converts was naturally a source of continual surprise to this doctor of Islam, fresh from his observation of races who had been for hundreds of years in the faith of Mohammed.[129]

Shehabeddin is less complimentary. He says: ‘Orkhan has under his domination fifty cities and a still larger number of castles. His army consists of 40,000 horsemen, and an almost innumerable host of foot-soldiers. But these troops are not warlike, and their number is more formidable in appearance than in reality. This prince shows himself very pacific in regard to his neighbours, and always ready to help his allies. However, he is engaged in continual wars and is always at odds with many enemies. If he gains little from these struggles, it is because his soldiers do not serve him well, his subjects are not well disposed towards him, and several of his neighbours live in open hostility to him. I am told that the Osmanlis are treacherous men, whose hearts know only hatred and whose heads are filled with base thoughts.’[130] In another place Shehabeddin records that Orkhan has in the field 25,000 horsemen who are fighting daily the prince of Constantinople. ‘The Greek emperor is eager to buy the goodwill of Orkhan by paying him a monthly tribute.’ Orkhan sends expeditions into Europe, ‘where waves of blood flow’.[131]

V

The first Ottoman legislation, and the organization of the army, is attributed by tradition to Orkhan’s brother, Alaeddin, rather than to the emir himself. The story goes that Alaeddin was a man of peace, and did not engage in war.[132] He refused to accept the generous offer of Orkhan to share the states of Osman, when their father died. Not only would he not accept a division of the chieftainship, but he also refused to share the personal possessions of Osman. Then Orkhan said, ‘Since you will not rule, be my vizier, and bear the burdens of the organization of the state.’ Thus was created the office of Grand Vizier, which has played so important a part in Ottoman history.[133]

In the various lists, which were compiled at a much later date, Alaeddin is given as the first Grand Vizier. That this office, in its accepted form, was created during the reign of Orkhan is altogether improbable. The story of the affectionate relationship between Orkhan and Alaeddin, and the sharing of duties by them, is, like the story of Ertogrul’s receiving the promise after reading the Koran, a reminiscence of patriarchal days. The dream with its promise harks back to Jacob and the ladder.[134] The relation between Orkhan and Alaeddin reminds one too strongly of Moses and Aaron to be accepted without reserve. One has only to turn to the twentieth Sura of the Koran to find the connexion and the suggestion: ‘And Moses answered, Lord, give me a vizier of my family, Aaron, my brother. Gird up my loins by him, and make him my colleague in the business: that we may praise thee greatly, and remember thee often; for thou regardest us.’[135]

What a contrast between this idyllic story of Orkhan and Alaeddin, and the killing of Yakub by Bayezid on the battlefield of Kossova fifty years later!

Alaeddin was also the first Osmanli to receive the title of pasha. He is always spoken of as Alaeddin pasha. This same title was conferred on Soleiman, the eldest son of Orkhan. The oldest son of Murad proving a traitor, and there being no other son mature enough, Murad transferred the title to Kara Khalil. This word, which came from the Persian, was thus early deflected by the Ottoman sovereigns from its original significance, the title of the eldest son of the ruler.[136] It soon came to be bestowed upon high military and civil dignitaries. Similarly, the rank of vizier passed immediately out of the imperial family.

That Alaeddin could have accomplished the work attributed to him by the Ottoman historians, the making of laws and the organization of the army, is impossible for three reasons. The time for this great work was too short and not a propitious period: Alaeddin died seven years after his father, in 1333,[137] before Orkhan was firmly established in his sovereignty; the statement is incompatible with what we know of the character of Orkhan; finally, the organization of the state and of the army must have been the result of a slow development through many years, and its perfection belongs to the middle or latter part of Orkhan’s career, years after Alaeddin pasha’s death.

The whole scheme of an Islamic state is theocratic. Its laws, its customs are founded directly upon the Koran and the interpretation of the Koran by the early ‘fathers’ of Mohammedanism. There is no civil law as distinct from ecclesiastical law.[138] The judges and the lawyers belong to the clergy. Orkhan’s problem was exceedingly difficult. Whether they were Turkish converts or Greek renegades, the Osmanlis were all on common ground in their entire ignorance of the art of building a Moslem state. It is idle to speculate upon the early legislation of the Osmanlis, for there are no records. But it is probable that the Osmanlis did not at this early time make any attempt to establish a body of laws in conformity with the Koran. Where the Sheri’at (the sacred law) was understood, and where it was applicable to local conditions, it was naturally used. But, side by side with the sacred Moslem law, existed the old Byzantine code. This was used by the Osmanlis until they were firmly seated in Constantinople. Only then did they acquire a complete system of Moslem canon law. It is within the scope of a work covering a later period than that included in this volume to point out the strong Byzantine and moderate Turkish influences in the Kanunnamé of Mohammed the Conqueror.

VI

For dealing with Ottoman subjects and with those who might be conquered in war, certain principles were, however, adopted by the Osmanlis in the time of Orkhan. The foremost of these was complete religious toleration. This made possible, to a large measure it explains, the development of the Osmanlis into a powerful empire.

The propagation of Islam by the sword under the early Khalifs, the sudden and unparalleled spread of the new religion from the Arabian desert to Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain, until the hordes of the invaders were stopped by Charles Martel at Tours, the terrible ravages of the Moslem corsairs in the Mediterranean—here were the sources of the deep impression of fanaticism and cruelty that the rise of Islam and the followers of Mohammed had made upon an equally fanatical and cruel Europe. That the recrudescence of the Islamic movement under the Osmanlis was represented in the same colours by the early European writers is explicable when we consider their lack of unbiased information and their confusion of the Osmanlis with the Asiatic conquerors, such as Attila and the Huns, Djenghiz Khan and the Mongols, Timur and the Tartars. We must take into account, too, the fact that these historians wrote at a time when the Osmanlis were beginning to be perverted by fanatical Arab influences, and were a real menace to the peace of Europe. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, ‘the Turk’ was a monster of iniquity and cruelty, from whom even the distant English in the security of their island home prayed to be delivered.[139] The recent history of the Ottoman Empire has unfortunately contributed much to keep alive this impression.

In spite of the accumulated evidence which on the surface points to a contrary conclusion, the Osmanli is not and never has been a religious fanatic like the Arab Moslem.[140] He is not by nature zealous or enthusiastic, nor is he by nature cruel. Docile, tractable, gentle, in a word, lovable—this is the verdict of the traveller who has had an opportunity of knowing that portion of the Moslem population of the Ottoman Empire which is popularly called Turkish. Other influences of their religion than hatred for the Christian have prevented the Osmanlis from winning and keeping a place among the civilized peoples of the world. Whatever one may claim in abstract theory for the Koran and the whole body of Moslem teaching, its practical concrete results have been ignorance, stagnation, immorality, subserviency of womanhood, indifference, paralysis of the will, absence of incentive to altruism. These are the causes of the irremediable decay of every Mohammedan empire, of every Mohammedan people.

The government and the ruling classes of the Ottoman Empire are negatively rather than positively evil. There is nothing inherently bad about the Osmanli. He is inert, and has thus failed to reach the standards set by the progress of civilization. He lacks ideals, and has thus shocked the enlightened conscience of the modern world. By the law of the survival of the fittest, he has been cast aside.

But when we compare the early Osmanlis with the Byzantines and with the other elements in the Balkan peninsula, it is the Osmanlis who must be pronounced the fittest. They were fresh, enthusiastic, uncontaminated, energetic. They had ideals: they had a goal. As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. Ideals are lost when the goal is reached. Decay sets in when the struggle for existence ceases.

Pressed on the one side by his Turkish neighbours and on the other by the danger of including in his dominions a large and unassimilated mass of Christians, Orkhan was wise enough to desist from any attempt at forcible conversion. But some modus vivendi had to be arranged. A mere raider would have massacred and destroyed, and the empire he built would not have outlived the century of its birth. Orkhan was neither raider nor invader. He lived in the country of his father and of his grandfather. Many of his lieutenants—certainly his ablest ones[141]—were descendants of the oldest stock in Asia Minor. His nation, if it was to be a nation, depended upon at least a partial assimilation of the Byzantines. As his dominions increased, it became clear that there had to be some distinction between Moslem and Christian other than a profession of faith. He must devise some reward, which would be so attractive that the Christians, especially the higher classes among them, would change their faith in order to secure its benefits. This was the problem.

Orkhan solved this problem by establishing a system of rewards for military service, and then by restricting military service to Moslems. He divided the land he had conquered among his faithful warriors, and let it be known that in future conquests a large portion of the territory won, outside of the cities, would be bestowed upon soldiers who took part in his campaigns. These lands were to be held as military fiefs. The only obligation was that of military service, which could be performed either by actually putting into the field a number of men in proportion to the land held or by paying a sum sufficient to replace the quota by hired troops. So far this was but an adaptation of the European feudal system. But it was superior to the European system in that the holdings were small and that there was through two centuries an ever-present opportunity of winning new holdings.

Except in Albania and Bosnia, where the old nobility were to preserve their lands by conversion to Islam, there were no local traditions to prevent such a scheme by necessitating the dispossession of former great landowners. The Seljuks, the Crusaders, and the Mongols in Asia Minor, the Catalans, the Bulgarians, the Serbians and the civil wars between the emperors in Macedonia and Thrace, the hangers-on of the Fourth Crusade in Thessaly, Greece, and the Aegaean Islands, had made so clean a sweep of the old aristocracy, attached to the soil, that Orkhan’s idea was feasible. Through these small holdings and through the rapid increase of conquered territory, the Ottoman sultans were able, almost from the beginning, to exercise an absolute sovereignty over their expanding dominions, and to prevent the rise of a class of nobles. The Ottoman Empire has never known an hereditary nobility. In the later conquests, the Sublime Porte sometimes granted life rights of governorship, with a tacit understanding that the succession should go to the son, to local chieftains or to large landowners. But these concessions were in regions never fully conquered, and remote from Constantinople. Those to whom these privileges were given had no part in the central government and no rank outside of their immediate locality.

In place of military service, every adult Christian paid a special head-tax, to be used for the support of the army. The Christian was exempt from military service; the Mussulman was exempt from taxes.[142] This head-tax was heavy, and so gauged as to keep the Christian, unless he lived in a city, in economic dependence upon the Moslem landowner. As a general rule, during the first century and a half of Ottoman conquest, those who held to the old faith went to the cities and large towns. The Moslem thus became, without any attempt at forcible conversion or need to massacre, the undisputed possessor of the country districts.

Aside from the onerous head-tax, there were grave inequalities for the Christian in matters of law and in intermarriage. After the fall of Constantinople, Mohammed the Conqueror gave the Christians a large measure of self-government by putting them in millets (nations) under the headship of the ecclesiastical authorities. But the inequality in the matter of intermarriage has never been done away with. A Moslem may marry a Christian woman, but a Christian is forbidden to marry a Mohammedan woman. In the earliest days, when there was neither racial nor religious antipathy and Christian and Moslem lived in close social intercourse, this law was a powerful proselytizing agency. It furnished a temptation to a change of faith which, whenever it arose, was far stronger than the temptation of lands, of power, of economic independence, or of civil equality.

The moment one professed Islam he became an Osmanli. Religion has always been the test of nationality in the Ottoman Empire.[143] The Osmanlis increased from the thousands to the millions, in Macedonia, in Thrace, and in Asia Minor. Ancestry was quickly forgotten in the midst of ever-changing conditions and the founding of a new social order. It is still a characteristic of the Osmanli that he has no surname. The most widely-read English writer of the seventeenth century on the ‘Turks’ emphasized the mixture of blood in the Osmanli, when he wrote: ‘At present the blood of the Turks is so mixed with that of all sorts of Languages and Nations, that none of them can derive his Lineage from the ancient blood of the Saracens.’[144]

A majority of the Byzantines whom Orkhan, Murad, and Bayezid conquered must have become Osmanlis. Once the change of religion was made, the development of the new race was not difficult. There was much in common between the Turk of Asia Minor and the Byzantine. An Armenian contemporary wrote of them as if they were alike.[145] The Greeks did not take to heart the new régime,[146] for the fiscal evils of the Byzantine system reconciled them in advance to a change. Nothing could be worse than that which they had suffered.[147]

Of course, the love of woman, the desire for adventure, hope of economic independence through rewards of land and removal of onerous taxes, disgust with the Byzantine administration and with the lack of support from their rulers and ecclesiastical authorities—these influences did not cause the conversion of all the Christians. In the cities, where the inequality and the inconvenience of remaining true to the old faith was minimized, and where Christianity has always been able to make itself felt and heard,[148] there was no great temptation to a change of religion. After the Osmanlis became stronger, and entered into the aggressive period of conquest, they resorted to other means to swell their numbers. The institution of the Janissaries, and the permission to enslave those whom they conquered, gave the Osmanlis more potent and immediately pressing arguments.

From the completion of the conquest of Bithynia by Orkhan, the Osmanlis can be called a distinct race with a national consciousness and a desire for expansion. They can be distinguished from the Turks of the emirates of Asia Minor and from the Byzantines. The Turk did not absorb the Greek, nor did the Greek absorb the Turk. Both had taken a new religion, and if the Turkish language was adopted, it was rather the customs and laws of the Byzantines which prevailed until the influence of the Arabs, enhanced as it was with the prestige of centuries of Islam, gained the ascendancy over Turkish and Byzantine tradition alike. But this did not occur until the Osmanlis invaded Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

It must be remembered that the Greeks were not the only element added to the Turkish stock. The adoption of the Turkish language by the Osmanlis was due not only to the fact that from the beginning it was the military and governmental language, but to its being the simplest and most vigorous medium of communication for the different peoples who became Osmanlis.

Calling the Osmanlis Turks, and regarding them as invaders upon the soil of Europe, is an historical error which has persisted so long that the Osmanlis themselves have fallen into it! They have always distinguished themselves from the Turks. This is proved by their own use of that word to describe a people as different from themselves as were the Greeks. Evliya effendi spoke of the ‘harsh language of the Turks’, and said of Turbeli Koïlik, which was conquered by Osman in 1312, ‘Though its inhabitants are Turks, it is a sweet town.’[149] Hadji Khalfa regarded the Turks as synonymous with the Tartars, and an altogether foreign race.[150]

Whether their tolerance was actuated by policy, by genuine kindly feeling, or by indifference,[151] the fact cannot be gainsaid that the Osmanlis were the first nation in modern history to lay down the principle of religious freedom as the corner-stone in the building up of their nation. During the centuries that bear the stain of unremitting persecution of the Jew and the responsibility for official support of the Inquisition, Christian and Moslem lived together in harmony under the rule of the Osmanlis. This was generally, though not universally, the case throughout the fourteenth century in the Turkish emirates of Asia Minor.[152]

VII

The army of Osman consisted entirely of volunteer horsemen, who were called akindjis. They wore no specified uniform. But they were superb riders and moved together ‘like a wall’—an expression that has come down to the present day in Ottoman military drills.[153] When Osman planned a campaign, he sent criers into the villages to proclaim that ‘whoever wanted to fight’ should be at a certain place on a certain day.

Orkhan was the organizer of the Ottoman army. He and his successor Murad laid the foundations of a military power which was without rival for two centuries. Although there is no ground for the claim of many historians that the Osmanlis were a hundred years ahead of Europe in organizing a standing army,[154] they were certainly pioneers in the complete organization of an army on a permanent war footing. Orkhan understood well the principle qui se laisse payer se laisse commander thirty years before Charles V of France.

His irregular infantry (azabs) were placed in the front when battle was engaged.[155] It made little difference how many of these were killed, or whether they made a good show. They served to draw the first fire of the enemy. When the enemy’s energy was exhausted or when he was led to pursue the fleeing azabs, thinking the victory his, he came upon the second line, which consisted of paid, disciplined troops. These were accustomed to fighting together, were acquainted with their leaders’ commands and strategy, and had a tremendous advantage over the usual mercenaries of the period in that they served a cause to which their lives were devoted and a sovereign whose interests were identical with their own. Whether this were due to training begun in the days of adolescence, or to the knowledge that bravery would be rewarded not by booty alone (always an uncertain quantity which the ordinary mercenary invariably begins to think of securing before his fighting work is really accomplished), but by promotion in the service and substantial gifts of land, the result was the same.

The corps of salaried soldiers were called Kapu-Kali Odjaks, and their service was centred in the person of their sovereign. They were supposed to be continually ‘at the door of the Sultan’s tent’. The Sultan paid them regularly and personally. They served him regularly and personally. When they went into the field with a commander other than the Sultan, the commander was regarded, during the term of his commission, as in the place of the Sultan.[156] There came to be seven of these odjaks: the janissaries, the adjami-oghlular (novices), the topjis (field-artillerymen), the djebedjis (smiths), the toparabadjis (artillery and munition drivers), the khumbaradjis (siege-artillerymen), and the sakkas (water-carriers).[157] It is impossible to state just when these distinctive corps arose, but they are the logical development of Orkhan’s Eulufeli, the year-in and year-out soldiery who followed arms as a definite profession and enjoyed a regular salary fixed by law.

The akindjis, cavalry scouts and yet more than that, served as an advance-guard, and opened up the country to be conquered. The greatest dangers and the richest rewards fell to them. They were recruited from among the holders of military fiefs (timarets). Guides (tchaousches) and regular paid corps of cavalry (spahis) completed the organization.

It may be that Orkhan had learned a valuable lesson from his observation of the Catalans and of the early Turkish invaders in Europe. For he arranged his organization in such a way that the army would depend directly upon him, and not upon subordinates who might be led to put their personal interests above those of their chief. With the exception of the akindjis, whose loyalty was secured by their fiefs, there were no irregular bands raised and led by adventurers. Unity was the first striking characteristic of the Ottoman army.

The second characteristic was readiness. We have already seen how Andronicus III ‘gathered in haste’ the army which he tried to oppose to the Osmanlis. Lack of time for preparation is the excuse for many a Byzantine disaster. An early and competent traveller wrote that the Osmanlis knew beforehand just when the Christian armies were coming and where they could be met to the best advantage. For they were always on a war footing, and their tchaousches and spies knew how and where to lead. ‘They can start suddenly, and a hundred Christian soldiers would make more noise than ten thousand Osmanlis. When the drum is sounded they put themselves immediately in march, never breaking step, never stopping till the word is given. Lightly armed, in one night they travel as far as their Christian adversaries in three days.’[158]

VIII

The fall of Brusa, Nicaea, and Nicomedia did not cause alarm in Europe. The rise of the Osmanlis had scarcely been noticed, even by the Byzantines! The Turkish pirates in the Aegaean, who had no connexion whatever with the Osmanlis,[159] were becoming, however, a menace to the commerce of the Venetians and Genoese and to the sovereignty of the remaining Latin princes of Achaia and of the islands. In one of Marino Sanudo’s letters we find the following significant passage: ‘Marco Gradenigo, writing to me from Negropont (Euboea) on September eighteenth, 1328, declares that unless some remedy be found against the Turks, who have marvellously increased in numbers, Negropont and all the islands of the Archipelago will be infallibly lost.’[160]

In 1327 Andronicus II wrote to Pope John XXII, calling his attention to the Turks as a danger to Christendom, and appealing for aid.[161] Nothing was done at this time. The Byzantines were schismatics, and France at least was more intent upon a recovery of the Holy Land than upon checking the advance of the Moslem corsairs.[162]

Andronicus III, in 1333, followed the example of his grandfather by making another overture to John XXII. He did not scruple to dangle before the Pope the bait of a reunion of the Churches.[163] The same year Venice urged Cyprus and Rhodes to join in a coalition against the Turks.[164] The only practical outcome of the efforts of the popes, the Venetian senate, and the Byzantine emperors to raise a crusade during the reign of Orkhan was the capture of Smyrna, in October 1344. Omar bey, emir of Aïdin, had been caught napping.[165] Smyrna remained in possession of the Knights of Rhodes until it was taken by Timur in 1403.[166]

The futile agitation in Europe against the reawakening of Islam did not in any way hurt Orkhan. On the contrary it helped him greatly. Just as the petty conflict of Andronicus III with Phocaea in 1336 had diverted Orkhan’s powerful southern neighbours, this interference of the Pope, and the activity of Rhodes and Venice, contributed to the prosperity and growth of the Osmanlis by striking a blow at his most dangerous rivals, the Emirs of Sarukhan, Aïdin, and Hamid. After 1340 Orkhan was ready to extend his dominion into Europe. He did not have long to wait.

IX

Orkhan had one rival whose goal was similar to his own. Stephen Dushan, kral of Serbia, was openly aspiring to the imperial throne. Byzantium had no more formidable enemy than this warrior king, who in twenty-five years led thirteen campaigns against the Greeks.[167] The memory of his ephemeral empire has been cherished by the Serbians to this day. In their folk-lore Stephen Dushan and his deeds are immortalized. The halo of romance still surrounds the man and his conquests. It is in vain that historical science has demonstrated the purely temporary character of Stephen’s conquests. It is in vain that he has been divested of the glamour of the chronicles and songs, and pictured in conformity with fact. To the Serbian peasant he is Saint Stephen, the glorious Czar, who brought the Serbian Empire to its zenith. All the cities in which this adventurer and raider set foot are claimed in the twentieth century as a legitimate part of ‘Greater Serbia’. Men have engaged in a bloody war and have died for this fiction.[168]

Stephen Dushan demands our attention because he is the one man who could have anticipated the Osmanlis in winning the inheritance of the Caesars. A statement of his career is necessary before we take up the narration of the events which led to the invasion of the Balkan peninsula by the Osmanlis.

Stephen came into prominence in 1330 during the war which his father, Urosh, made upon Bulgaria. Czar Michael had repudiated the Serbian princess Anna in order to marry a sister of Andronicus III. The Bulgarians were badly beaten. Stephen received for his brilliant part in the campaign the province of Zenta. Although he was only twenty-three, his ambition to rule was already awakened. Dissatisfied, he demanded a half of his father’s possessions. Urosh refused. Stephen marched against him, dethroned him, and imprisoned him. According to some authorities, he had Urosh killed.[169] Whether he actually ordered the assassination or not, he profited by the crime.

During the first decade of his reign, Stephen gathered a majority of the Serbian-speaking peoples under his rule, pushed down to the Dalmatian coast, and asserted Serbian supremacy over a large portion of the territory which his race had hitherto contested with the Bulgarians. His appearance on the Adriatic led to a nominal alliance with Venice.[170] In 1340 he began the invasion of lower Macedonia. When the valley of the Vardar was conquered, he attacked Serres. This city fell into his possession. He now considered himself ready for the advance on Constantinople. Drunk with success, he crowned himself at Serres[171] ‘King by the grace of God of Serbia, of Albania, and of the maritime region, prince of the Bulgarian empire, and master of almost all the Roman empire’.[172] A few months later he changed the title to ‘emperor and autocrat of Serbia and Romania’.[173]

The relations between Stephen and Venice during the period between 1345 and 1350 show how easily an alliance between the Serbians and the Venetians might have been concluded. It was a critical time for Orkhan. Had Stephen Dushan, with the help of the Venetians, attacked Constantinople before 1350, the Osmanlis would have lost their goal. After his coronation, the ‘Roman emperor’ sent an embassy to Venice to secure the Senate’s aid for the definite purpose of acquiring Constantinople.[174] In 1347 the Senate, in response to a second overture, congratulated Stephen on having been crowned ‘emperor of Constantinople’, but regretted the impossibility of aiding him. There was a truce between Venice and the Byzantine Empire, and they were at that moment engaged in a war with Zara.[175] However, like typical merchants, they consented to sell arms to Stephen.[176]

In January 1348 the Senate congratulated Stephen upon his exploits,[177] and later in the same year granted him three, then four, galleys.[178] This seems to be the extent of the help rendered by Venice to Stephen Dushan. The success of Stephen in subjugating Thessaly, and his progress farther south until, in 1349, the Serbian flags waved on the mainland opposite the Venetian castle of Ptelion in Euboea, alarmed the Venetians. The Senate complained of the piracy of the Serbians in the Aegaean, and tried to re-establish peace between Serbians and Greeks.[179] Stephen became more insistent and the Senate more reluctant. On April 13, 1350, the Senate considered several demands made upon them by an envoy of ‘Stephen Dushan, emperor of Serbia and Romania, despot of Arta and count of Wallachia’. Among them were Venetian citizenship for himself, his wife and his son, a conference with the Doge at Ragusa, and substantial aid for the attack upon Constantinople, ‘when he shall have conquered the ten parts of Romania outside of Constantinople.’[180] The chart of citizenship was accorded. But he was informed that the Doge never left Venice during his tenure of office, and that there was a treaty of friendship with the Byzantines which prevented Venice from joining in an attempt to capture the imperial city.[181]

Convinced that he could expect no substantial assistance from Venice, Stephen planned to work the old trick of the Byzantine emperors. The Serbians were already excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church. Stephen negotiated with the Pope for the return of the Serbians into the Roman fold.[182]

When war arose between Venice and Genoa, Stephen sent envoys to Orkhan to propose a union of the Serbian and Ottoman armies for a campaign against Constantinople. The marriage of his daughter to Orkhan’s son was to seal the alliance. Orkhan accepted this proposal. An embassy was immediately sent to Stephen to arrange the details of the alliance. But Cantacuzenos determined to prevent this change of Orkhan’s allegiance by a most drastic measure. He did not fear the anger of Orkhan as greatly as he feared a union between Orkhan and Dushan. The Ottoman envoys were ambushed. Some were killed. Those who escaped, together with the presents destined for Stephen, were taken to Demotika.[183]

Neither Stephen nor Orkhan tried to reopen the negotiations. They realized that their ambitions were too nearly identical to permit a harmonious agreement as to a division of the spoils. Macedonia was as hard to divide in the fourteenth century as it is in the twentieth. After 1351 Stephen watched to see what effect the war between Venice and Genoa was going to have upon his fortunes. He also intrigued, as Orkhan was doing, in the civil war of the Byzantines. These were his Capuan days. They were fatal to the fame of Stephen—outside of the Serbian folk-lore! The first expedition of Orkhan’s son Soleiman, in 1353, so alarmed Stephen that he tried to become reconciled to the Orthodox Church. He sent an embassy to Constantinople, but the patriarch refused his blessing until Stephen had renounced the title of emperor and his conquests east of the Vardar.[184] Stephen could not do this. Nor could he wait longer. If he did not strike quickly, the Osmanlis would be in his path. He took what was now a gambler’s chance. With eighty thousand men he started for Constantinople. Death claimed him on the second day of the march.[185] The Serbian Empire did not outlive its founder.

X

The public life of John Cantacuzenos was contemporary almost to the year with that of Stephen Dushan. He was associated with Andronicus III in the capacity of grand chancellor and confidential adviser throughout the decade which saw the loss of Nicaea and Nicomedia. Shortly after he had succeeded in deposing his grandfather, Andronicus III was taken with a violent fever. His crime-stained mind could not rid itself of the idea that he was going to die, even after he had become convalescent. He solicited Cantacuzenos to assume the imperial purple. He wanted to abdicate and take monk’s orders. A drink from a miraculous spring gave him a new grip on life.[186] For eleven years he lived on, in every crisis irresolute, in every disaster unkingly, bending always before the stronger will of Cantacuzenos. In 1341, at the early age of forty-five, his worthless life ended. His legacy to the Empress Anna and his child heir was the guardianship of his ‘friend and counsellor, John Cantacuzenos’. The grand chancellor accepted the regency with alacrity.[187]

Three months after the death of Andronicus III, Cantacuzenos crowned himself emperor at Demotika. He put the imperial crown also upon the head of his wife Irene, a Bulgarian princess. Neither in Constantinople nor in Adrianople were the pretensions of Cantacuzenos admitted. The widow of Andronicus, Anna of Savoy, refused to acknowledge the usurper. In Adrianople the inhabitants called in both Bulgarians and Turks to defend them against Cantacuzenos.[188] The Bulgarian Czar took sides secretly against his son-in-law.

The year 1342 saw the Byzantines engaged in another terrible civil war. The self-appointed emperor did not hesitate to go to Pristina and offer to Stephen Dushan Macedonia as far as Serres in exchange for Serbian aid against the Palaeologi.[189]

When the Serbian assistance proved unsatisfactory, Cantacuzenos called in the Turks of Aïdin. Omar, with 83 ships and 29,000 soldiers, came to his aid, but, because of the severe cold, returned to Asia before anything could be accomplished.[190] He came back in the spring of 1343 with 290 vessels and helped Cantacuzenos to enter Salonika. In the fall of this year Cantacuzenos led his Turkish mercenaries into Thrace. Anna appealed in vain to Venice to exercise a pressure upon the Turks and Serbians, so that they would no longer support her rival.[191] In desperation she gave Alexander of Bulgaria nine strongholds in the Rhodope Mountains in exchange for a few thousand soldiers. She resorted also to bribing the Turks in Cantacuzenos’s service, and made overtures to Orkhan.

The crusade of 1344 against the Turks of Aïdin, which resulted in the capture of Smyrna, prevented Cantacuzenos from continuing to receive substantial aid from Omar, who died four years later in an attempt to win back Smyrna.[192] Stephen Dushan, as we have already seen, was laying claim to the Byzantine throne himself. Cantacuzenos could turn only to the Osmanlis.

It was in January 1345 that Cantacuzenos made his infamous proposal to Orkhan. In exchange for six thousand soldiers he was to give his daughter Theodora to the Ottoman emir.[193] Orkhan now turned a deaf ear to the appeals of Anna. This was a better offer. The Osmanlis crossed into Europe. With their help Cantacuzenos got possession of all the coast cities of the Black Sea except Sozopolis, besieged Constantinople, ravaged the neighbourhood of the capital, and won Adrianople.[194]

It was only by threatening to change to the side of the Palaeologi that Orkhan secured the fulfilment of the bargain. In May 1346 Theodora became his bride.[195] A few days later, while Cantacuzenos was besieging the capital with the soldiers for whom he had paid so dearly, the beleaguered city was awakened by an ominous event. The eastern portion of the Church of St. Sophia had fallen.[196]

Throughout the year 1346 Constantinople was invested by Cantacuzenos and his mercenaries. The aristocratic party was almost openly championing the cause of the usurper, while Anna relied upon the democratic party and the Genoese. As for the clergy, they and the bulk of the population were more interested in the ecclesiastical trial of Barlaam for the Bogomile heresy[197] than in the civil war. In February 1347, while the Synod was in the act of condemning Barlaam, and Anna was confined to her bed with a serious illness, partisans of Cantacuzenos left the Golden Gate open. The ‘faithful friend and counsellor’ of Andronicus III entered without opposition. The garrison had been bribed, and prevented the Genoese from coming to the rescue of the empress. She yielded only when the palace of the Blachernae was attacked.

Anna agreed to recognize Cantacuzenos and Irene as co-rulers, and to a union of the families by the betrothal of Helen, daughter of Cantacuzenos, to the young John Palaeologos. John, who was fifteen, protested against marrying the thirteen-year-old Helen. His mother overruled his objections. In May the marriage took place in the church of the Blachernae, as St. Sophia was still in ruins. This ceremony was followed by the coronation of the two emperors, John Cantacuzenos and John Palaeologos, and the three empresses, Anna, Irene, and Helen.[198] Five rulers for the remnant of the Byzantine Empire! At that very moment in France, the Marquis de Montferrat, heir to the Latin emperors of Constantinople, was planning with the Pope to drive out both Cantacuzenos and Palaeologos.[199]

Orkhan was well satisfied with this entering wedge. He was now son-in-law of one emperor and brother-in-law of the other. His wife Theodora was granddaughter of the Bulgarian Czar. He had open to him also a marriage alliance with Stephen Dushan. The gods were first making mad.

Cantacuzenos was compelled immediately to seek aid again of Orkhan. While he had been expending his energies against Constantinople, Stephen Dushan had made great strides in Macedonia. At Scutari, where Orkhan had come to congratulate his father-in-law upon the happy issue of the struggle for the imperial purple, Cantacuzenos asked for six thousand Osmanlis to dislodge the Serbians from the coast cities of Macedonia. Orkhan sent the soldiers willingly. He must, however, have given them secret instructions, for after having taken immense booty they returned to Nicomedia without having captured for Cantacuzenos a single one of the cities held by Stephen.[200]

XI

It is impossible to believe that Cantacuzenos from this time onwards did not realize the danger to which he had exposed the state and the noose into which he had put his neck. The papal archives and the writings of Cantacuzenos himself reveal the fact that as early as 1347 Cantacuzenos had appealed to the Pope to unite the western princes in a crusade against the Osmanlis,[201] that these negotiations were renewed in 1349[202] and 1350,[203] and that in 1353 a last definite appeal was made to Clement by Cantacuzenos for relief against those whom he had invited into Europe to fight his battles.[204]

The five years between 1348 and 1353 gave rise to three events which were fatal to the Byzantine Empire. They made possible the permanent foothold of the Osmanlis in Europe. A man’s own efforts and a man’s ability are not the sole factors in his success. Work and genius avail nothing where opportunity is lacking. Circumstances over which he has no control contribute largely to the making of a man. Orkhan, at this culminating stage of his career, when he was ready to lead his people into the promised land, was aided by the ‘black death’, the war between Venice and Genoa, and the conflict between John Cantacuzenos and John Palaeologos.

The ‘black death’ was first heard of in the Euxine ports. It reached Constantinople in 1347, and spread to Europe the following year. In Italy it was universal, and lasted three years. From 15 to 20 per cent. of the total population died.[205] In the maritime cities that had been in close contact with the East, the duration of the epidemic was longer and the mortality higher. The moral and economic effect was great throughout Europe. Men looked with horror upon this inexplicable malady, which struck down every fifth person. It gave no warning. There were few recoveries. For years after the last case was recorded there was nervous fear of its return. Communications with the Levant had been partially cut off.[206] Full intercourse was not resumed until after Orkhan and the Osmanlis were rooted in Macedonia and Thrace. Orkhan had no crusade to fear as long as there lingered in the minds of the European peoples the memory of this scourge. The bravest and most adventurous were unwilling to fight the angel of death.

Plagues continued to visit the coast cities of the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor from time to time during the rest of the fourteenth and the first thirty years of the fifteenth century. Between 1348 and 1431, nine great plagues are recorded.[207] These dates coincide with the most aggressive period of Ottoman conquest. As the city population was very largely Greek and Christian, we cannot over-estimate the importance of these epidemics. They were a valuable auxiliary in enabling the Osmanlis to advance and assimilate without formidable opposition.

The ‘black death’ had hardly run its course in Italy when the commercial rivalries of Genoa and Venice culminated in a bitter war, that lasted for two years, with varying fortunes, until the battle of Lojera in 1353 broke the sea-power of Genoa. After five centuries of independence the Genoese were compelled to put themselves under the protection of Milan. The hatred engendered by this struggle is revealed in the archives of the two republics. They left unturned no stone to destroy each other. The history of Venice and Genoa during the fourteenth century reads like that of Sparta and Athens. The scene of the conflict is the same: the motive, the spirit, and the result are identical. Venice gained no material advantage from the war. She had long been alive to the menace of the Osmanlis.[208] She had been warned by Petrarch of the certain danger which a war with Genoa would entail, whether its outcome were favourable or unfavourable.[209]

The Ottoman and Byzantine historians are silent concerning the relations of the Osmanlis with the Genoese during this war. That the Genoese asked for and received aid from Orkhan is certain. There had been a convention beforehand between the Osmanlis and the Genoese of Pera.[210] Both against the Greeks and against the Venetians the assistance of Orkhan must have been substantial.[211] It was remembered with gratitude forty years later.[212]

The triumphal entry into Constantinople and the sanction of the Church upon his imperial office did not end the troubles of Cantacuzenos. The first to turn against him was his own son Matthew, who also wanted to be emperor. Cantacuzenos appeased him for a time by giving him a portion of Thrace. Then the Genoese of Pera, dissatisfied with the lowering of the customs tariff to other nations, burned the Greek galleys and arsenals, and attacked Constantinople. Cantacuzenos had to leave a sick-bed at Demotika to hurry to save the city. The Greek fleet was destroyed by the Genoese. The army of Cantacuzenos failed in an attack upon Galata. Peace was concluded only when the unhappy emperor agreed to sell more land on the Golden Horn to the Genoese, and restore them in the customs tariffs to their former place as ‘most favoured nation’.[213]

In 1349 Cantacuzenos called again upon Orkhan to send soldiers to him in Europe. Twenty thousand Ottoman cavaliers, under the command of Matthew, marched against Salonika, which was on the point of giving itself to Stephen Dushan. Cantacuzenos, with the young emperor John, went by sea. Orkhan, as on the last occasion, secretly worked against his father-in-law. After Cantacuzenos had already sailed, he recalled the horsemen who were with Matthew. It was fortunate for Cantacuzenos that he met at Amphipolis a Turkish fleet which was about to land a force of raiders to ravage the country, and persuaded the commander to join with him in a demonstration against Salonika. Otherwise the expedition would have been a fiasco. As it was, Salonika surrendered. The army of Cantacuzenos ascended the Vardar as far as Uskub, which was reoccupied.[214]

It would be too wearisome to go into all the details of the civil war between Cantacuzenos and John Palaeologos. Involved in it are the intrigues of Stephen Dushan of Serbia and Alexander of Bulgaria, and the attitude of Venice and Genoa. At first it seemed as if Cantacuzenos would be crushed. The partisans of Palaeologos besieged Matthew in the citadel of Adrianople. The Genoese of Galata, in spite of the strong Venetian fleet whose co-operation, however, with the Greeks was lukewarm,[215] compelled Cantacuzenos to cede Silivria and Heraclea, besides increasing their Galata lands.[216] In the fall of 1352 the Venetians and Bulgarians declared openly for Palaeologos.[217]

In desperation Cantacuzenos fell back for the last time upon the Osmanlis. He robbed the churches of the capital to pay Orkhan for twenty thousand soldiers, and promised him a fortress in the Thracian Chersonese.[218] With this help he recaptured Adrianople, and relieved Matthew, who was still holding the citadel. The Serbians were beaten by Orkhan’s eldest son, Soleiman, near Demotika. All of Thrace and most of Macedonia returned to the allegiance of Cantacuzenos.[219]

In 1353 Cantacuzenos seemed to have recovered all the lost ground, and to be at the height of his fortunes. John Palaeologos, abandoned by his partisans, was in exile at Tenedos. An attempt to win back Constantinople by intrigue failed. Cantacuzenos, now practically sole ruler, felt that it was time to establish a new imperial line. He had Matthew proclaimed co-emperor.[220] In his prosperity he forgot about Orkhan, who had put him where he was, he forgot that he had invited the Osmanlis into Europe and had shown them the fertile valleys of Macedonia and Thrace, that their fighting men had passed along the military roads of the empire under the command of himself and his son, that he had mustered Ottoman armies under the walls of Salonika, of Adrianople, of Demotika, and even of Constantinople.

XII

The Ottoman historians place the first invasion of European territory by the Osmanlis in the year of the Hegira 758 (1356), and state that Soleiman crossed the Hellespont one moonlight night with three hundred warriors, and seized the castle of Tzympe, between Gallipoli and the Aegaean Sea end of the strait.[221] It is represented as a romantic adventure, prompted by a dream in which Soleiman saw the moonbeams make a tempting path for him from Asia into Europe.[222] The earlier western historians give a variety of dates. Some ascribe the first crossing to Murad.[223] Several claim that the Osmanlis were transported by two small Genoese merchant ships, and that there were sixty thousand of them! The Genoese received a ducat per head. All the calamities of the ‘Turks’ were brought upon Europe by the avarice of the Genoese.[224]

We can reject these stories without hesitation, just as we can reject the date which the Ottoman historians give.[225] The Osmanlis had been fighting in Europe since 1345. They had come over in large numbers on different occasions. There is nothing mysterious or romantic about their first foothold in Europe. In 1352 Cantacuzenos had promised to Orkhan a fortress in the Thracian Chersonese. Tzympe may have been given to Soleiman, or it was taken by him when the promise of Cantacuzenos was not fulfilled. He did not have to cross secretly from Asia. The Ottoman soldiers were already at home in Europe, and Soleiman had been their leader in several expeditions.

Shortly after the occupation of Tzympe, one of those earthquakes which occur so often in the Thracian Chersonese destroyed a portion of the walls of Gallipoli. This was Soleiman’s opportunity. He occupied the city, repaired the breaches, and called over from Bithynia the first colony of Osmanlis. Other colonies followed rapidly, as the soldiers of Soleiman took Malgara, Bulaïr (the key of the peninsula),[226] and the European littoral of the Sea of Marmora as far as Rodosto. The advance-guard of the Osmanlis appeared within a few miles of Constantinople; and ‘conducted themselves as masters’.[227] This colonization was so quickly and easily effected that one is led to believe that these colonists were for the most part renegade Greeks returning to their former homes.

Cantacuzenos now reaped the full harvest of his policy. The patriarch Callixtus refused to consecrate Matthew. He reproached Cantacuzenos for having delivered Christians into the hands of the infidels, and accused him of having given to Orkhan the money sent by a Russian prince for the restoration of St. Sophia.[228] Compelled to flee for his life to the Genoese in Galata, the patriarch decided to declare for Palaeologos. When Cantacuzenos chose a new patriarch, Philotheus, who consented as price of office to consecrate Matthew, Callixtus excommunicated him. Philotheus returned the compliment. Then Callixtus sailed for Tenedos to join John Palaeologos.[229]

Cantacuzenos, feeling the precariousness of his position at Constantinople just at the moment when he thought he had triumphed over every obstacle to his ambition, bitterly reproached Orkhan for not having kept faith with him. He offered to buy back Tzympe for ten thousand ducats, and asked Orkhan to order the Osmanlis to leave Gallipoli. Orkhan accepted the ransom for Tzympe, knowing well that he could reoccupy this fortress when he wanted to.[230] As for Gallipoli, he declared that he could not give back what God had given him. Was it not the will of God rather than force of arms that had opened the gates of Gallipoli to him? Cantacuzenos sought an interview with his son-in-law, for he thought that gold might induce the Osmanlis to withdraw. A meeting was arranged in the Gulf of Nicomedia. When the emperor arrived at the rendezvous, a messenger from Orkhan reported that his master was ill and could not come.[231] No way was left open for further negotiations. The rupture was complete.

After his return to Constantinople, Cantacuzenos sent envoys to the Serbians and to the Bulgarians to urge a defensive alliance of the Balkan Christians. They answered, ‘Defend yourself as best you can.’ A second embassy met with the response from Czar Alexander: ‘Three years ago I remonstrated with you for your unholy alliances with the Turks. Now that the storm has broken, let the Byzantines weather it. If the Turks come against us, we shall know how to defend ourselves.’[232]

The indignation of the Greeks against the man who had sacrificed them to his inordinate ambition reached the breaking-point in November 1354. The inhabitants of Constantinople declared for John Palaeologos. Cantacuzenos was forced to barricade himself in his palace. Protected by Catalans and other mercenaries, he tried to temporize. He offered to abdicate if Matthew were allowed to retain the title of emperor with the governorship of Adrianople and the Rhodope district. Encouraged by a lull in the storm of popular feeling, he had the audacity to make an ‘appeal to patriotism’, as he himself put it. He urged the people to support him in an expedition to retake the provinces conquered by the Serbians and the Osmanlis. This exhibition of effrontery was greeted with cries of scorn. Cantacuzenos was publicly accused of wishing to deliver Constantinople to Orkhan. A second revolution forced his abdication. He became a monk. Irene took the veil.[233]

John Palaeologos returned from exile, and restored Callixtus to the patriarchal throne. It took several years of fighting and negotiating to compel Matthew’s abdication. Not until 1358 did John V become undisputed ruler of the remnant of the empire in Macedonia and Thrace.[234] But the mischief was done. The Osmanlis had put their foot as settlers on European soil.

Cantacuzenos lived for thirty years in the monastery of Mistra, near old Sparta. It was long enough for him to see the irreparable injury that his ambition had caused to his country, and to realize how he had destroyed the people to rule over whom he had sacrificed every higher and nobler instinct. Cantacuzenos has had a fair trial before the bar of posterity. For many long years, far removed from the turmoil of the world, were spent in the building up of his brief of justification. He left a history of his life and times. So he pleads for himself. But even if we did not have the testimony of Gregoras, and of the archives of the Italian cities and of the Vatican, to supplement the story of Cantacuzenos, he would stand condemned by his own record of facts.

Cantacuzenos had far more natural ability than Andronicus II and Andronicus III. During the long and arduous struggle to satisfy his personal ambition, he showed himself a keen, courageous, resourceful leader. At the beginning of his career he was in a position of commanding influence. His country was facing a crisis which would have called forth the best and noblest in one who loved his race, his religion, and his fatherland. But John Cantacuzenos loved only himself. The legacy of the widow and helpless child of the friend who had trusted and honoured him gave to Cantacuzenos the opportunity for developing true greatness in the fulfilment of that highest of missions—a sacred trust. But Cantacuzenos saw only the opportunity for taking advantage of a dead man’s faith.

To say that Cantacuzenos was the cause of the downfall of the Byzantine Empire would be to ignore other forces working to the same end, and to put too great an emphasis upon the power of an individual human will to shape the destinies of the world. However, in the stage of world history, leaders of men are the personification of causes. We group everything around them. The character and acts of Cantacuzenos reveal the fatal weakness in the Balkan peninsula of his day. The Ottoman conquest was possible because there was no consciousness of religious or racial commonweal. How could this larger devotion, this larger sense of duty and obligation, be expected in men who were not influenced, much less constrained, by ties of blood and personal friendship?

XIII

Cantacuzenos ceased to be a factor in Byzantine affairs in 1355. But the Greeks could not rid themselves as easily of Orkhan. The Osmanlis had come to stay.

It is impossible to establish with any degree of certainty the conquests of Soleiman pasha in the hinterland of the Gulf of Saros and of the Sea of Marmora. But we know that he captured Demotika, and cut off Constantinople from Adrianople by occupying Tchorlu.[235] If these important places were retaken by the Byzantines after the premature death of Soleiman, it was only for a brief time. At the beginning of the reign of Murad the Osmanlis were firmly ensconced along the coasts of Thrace, and had made some permanent progress into the interior.

There was a sudden and full awakening on the part of the Greeks to the knowledge that the Ottoman invasion of 1354 was an irreparable disaster. A year before Soleiman pasha settled his Moslem colonies in the Thracian Chersonese, the inhabitants of Philadelphia had felt themselves so completely abandoned by their emperors that they had appealed directly to the Pope for aid, promising to return to the Roman communion.[236] At the approach of the Osmanlis in Thrace, the country population had fled to Constantinople, abandoning everything. Those who had money to emigrate elsewhere did so immediately. They had no hope of a change in the fortunes of their country.[237]

The annalists of the Byzantine Empire record no heroic, bitter resistance to the army of Soleiman pasha. There was no mayor of the palace, no Joan, to revive the confidence of the people in their rulers, or to replace the family that had proved its unfitness. The Greeks had feared Cantacuzenos, and had attributed their hopeless condition to his alliance with the Osmanlis. But they could not have greater confidence in John Palaeologos. For he made no effort, not even in the smallest way, to demonstrate that he was different from his weak and disloyal forbears.

The Byzantines feared also the intrigues of the Genoese, who were as persistent in their efforts to undermine the integrity of the Byzantine Empire, as are the foreigners to-day engaged in commerce in the Levant to weaken and destroy the authority of the Ottoman Empire.[238] The banishment of Cantacuzenos could not save them from the Osmanlis. Palaeologos could not save them. They could not save themselves. The only way which occurred to them of preventing the Ottoman conquest was to give themselves to some Christian power. There were actually plans on foot to offer the remnant of the empire to Venice, to Hungary, even to Serbia![239]

In France, during the fourteenth century, the Turks were not regarded as a permanent factor in the Near East. Western Asia Minor was not called ‘Turquie’ or ‘Turquemanie’, but ‘the land which the Turks hold’.[240] There was no such illusion among the Italians. They accustomed themselves very rapidly to the idea that the Osmanlis, if not the Turkish tribes, were in Asia Minor and the Aegaean to stay.

The immigration across the Hellespont in 1354 was not looked upon by those who were acquainted with the weakness and impotence of the Byzantines as a raid or as a temporary affair. For several years the Genoese had thought it to their advantage to seek the friendship of Orkhan.[241] In 1355 two far-sighted Venetians wrote the whole truth to the Senate. They did not mince matters. Matteo Venier, baily at Constantinople, warned the Senate in the strongest terms about the menace of Ottoman aggrandizement.[242] Marino Falieri went farther. He pointed out that the Byzantine Empire must inevitably become the booty of the Osmanlis, and urged his countrymen to get ahead of them.[243] Prophetic words and daring suggestion. Had Venice at this time had a Dandolo of the stamp of the intrepid blind Doge who diverted the Fourth Crusade to wreak his vengeance upon his mutilators, Islam might have been kept out of Europe.

When John Palaeologos resumed the throne of his fathers, he found himself as much at the mercy of Orkhan as Cantacuzenos had been. His dependence is revealed in the story of Halil. Halil, son of Orkhan and Theodora, was captured by pirates in 1357, and taken to Phocaea. Orkhan held his brother-in-law responsible for this kidnapping, and called upon him to rescue his nephew. In February 1358, while the Osmanlis under Soleiman pasha were advancing in Thrace, we see John V, at the behest of Orkhan, spending what strength and energy he had in the siege of Phocaea. Later, when he went back to Constantinople, Orkhan peremptorily ordered him to return to direct in person the siege. John started out, and met his fleet, which had become anxious about his absence and had given up the siege. He could not persuade the galleys to turn back with him. So he wrote to Orkhan begging to be excused from continuing an undertaking beyond his power to carry through successfully.

Orkhan was inflexible. He had now become the overlord of the Byzantine emperor. In March 1359 the successor of Constantine went as a vassal to meet his Ottoman suzerain at Scutari. He appeased the wrath of Orkhan only by agreeing to pay a half of Halil’s ransom, and by signing a treaty of peace that was a virtual acceptance of the new status quo in Thrace. The peace was to be sealed by the betrothal of his ten-year-old daughter to Halil. It was as errand boy of Orkhan that John V made one more trip to Phocaea, paid one hundred thousand pieces of gold for Halil, and brought him to Nicaea. There the betrothal of the Christian princess to her Moslem cousin was celebrated by splendid fêtes.[244]

John Cantacuzenos introduced the Osmanlis into Europe. John Palaeologos accepted their presence in Thrace without a struggle. There is little choice between these two Johns.

XIV

Orkhan died at the end of this memorable decade.[245] If to Osman is given the honour of being father of a new people, the greater honour of founding the nation must be ascribed to Orkhan.[246] Few men have accomplished a greater work and seen more sweeping changes in two generations. According to popular legend, Orkhan won his spurs as a warrior, and a bride to boot, at the capture of Biledjik, when he was twelve years old. His life was spent in fighting and in making permanent the results of his fighting. He was as simple in his tastes as his father had been. At Nicaea he distributed soup and bread to the poor with his own hands.[247]

There seems to be no basis for the characterization of Orkhan which the early western historians handed down to posterity. He was neither vicious nor cruel nor deceitful. His three striking characteristics were those which mark all men who have accomplished a great work in history, oneness of purpose, inexhaustible energy, and an unlimited capacity for detail. He began life as a village lad of an obscure tribe. After a public career of sixty years he died, the brother-in-law of the emperor of Byzantium, the friend and ally of Genoa, and potentially master of Thrace. The purpose of his life is summed up in the sentence we find upon his coins: ‘May God cause to endure the empire of Orkhan, son of Osman.’

CHAPTER III
MURAD
THE OSMANLIS LAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF AN EMPIRE IN EUROPE

The use of Ottoman mercenaries in the Byzantine civil wars was fatal to the Empire. From the very fact that they were Osmanlis and mercenaries, the auxiliaries of Cantacuzenos were dangerous allies for a man who claimed to be fighting for his fatherland. The fertile valleys which Bulgarian and Serbian had so long disputed with Greek fired the imagination of these ambitious adventurers. The conquest of Macedonia and Thrace seemed to them as feasible as it was worth while. For they had a revelation of the weakness of the Balkan peoples that could have come to them in no other way. It was as if Cantacuzenos had said to Orkhan and his followers: Here is our country. You see how rich it is. You see how we hate each other, race striving with race, faction with faction. We have no patriotism. We have no rulers or leaders actuated by other than purely selfish motives. Our religion means no more to us than does our fatherland. Here are our military roads. We give you the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the easiest routes, of learning the best methods of provisioning. We initiate you into the art of besieging our cities and our strongholds. Under our guidance, you discover the vulnerable places in the walls of our fortresses.

Murad had not enjoyed training in leadership and responsibility to fit him for his sudden accession to the chieftainship of the Osmanlis. He had been overshadowed by the heir apparent, and never dreamed of ruling. Soleiman pasha, brilliant captain and idol of the army, would not have brooked a rival in popular favour. When Orkhan died, two months after the fatal fall of his eldest son at Bulaïr, Murad was elevated to the emirship before he had had time to adjust himself to his new fortunes. But he could not pause to get his bearings. The army was on the march. The conquest of Thrace had already been started.

Osman and Orkhan were able to build up a race and a nation without notice and, consequently, without hindrance. For their little corner of Asia Minor had been abandoned by the Byzantines. Since the days when Nicaea became the capital of the empire, after the Latin conquest of Constantinople, its commercial relations with Europe were interrupted. None knew or cared about the rise of the Osmanlis until they appeared in Thrace. Orkhan had assured himself of his inheritance by patient waiting. Of Murad immediate action was demanded.

The actual European conquests of Orkhan, outside of the Thracian Chersonese, had been negligible. But Europe was excited over the capture of Gallipoli. Murad had little to fear from a union of the indigenous Balkan elements. Greek and Serbian and Bulgarian hate each other far worse than they hate the Osmanli. This fact of history, demonstrated so forcibly by the events of the year 1913, was known and appreciated at its full value by the earliest of the Ottoman conquerors. There was, however, just cause for apprehension of the intervention of Hungary in conjunction with the Serbians, or of Venice in conjunction with the Byzantines. Murad’s success depended upon his ability to gain an immediate and vital foothold in the Balkan peninsula.

This foothold was obtained in the epoch-making campaign of 1360-1. Astounding success attended the initial efforts of Murad. If he were not himself a trained and seasoned warrior, he had a precious legacy of generals in whom he could put implicit trust. Realizing his own inexperience, he created Kara Khalil Tchenderli vizier, and allowed himself to be guided by the judgement of this tried friend and servant of his grandfather and his father. To Lalashahin, companion of Soleiman in the capture of Tzympe, was given the title of beylerbey, and chief command of the army in Thrace. Adrianople was the goal. To Evrenos bey Murad entrusted a second army, whose mission was to prevent an attack from the Serbians in the west.[248]

Tchorlu was the first objective point, because its capture would protect the rear of the army operating against Adrianople. This city, only forty-six miles from Constantinople, offered a stubborn resistance, and had to be taken by assault. The commandant was decapitated, the garrison massacred, and the walls razed.[249] The Osmanlis saw to it that the fate of the defenders of Tchorlu was heralded far and wide, so that it might serve as a lesson to other cities before which their armies appeared. Evrenos bey, pushing forward on the left, occupied Demotika,[250] and then Gumuldjina. This operation gave to the Osmanlis control of the basin of the Maritza River, and removed the danger of a Serbian attack. A column on the right moved up the coast of the Black Sea and captured Kirk Kilisse, a position of extreme strategic importance in preventing a possible Bulgarian attempt to relieve Adrianople by bringing an army through the mountainous country between the river and the sea.[251]

After the capture of Tchorlu, Murad advanced to Lule Burgas on the north bank of the Ergene, where he effected a junction with the armies of Evrenos and Lalashahin. The decisive battle was fought between Bunar Hissar and Eski Baba, to which point the defenders of Adrianople had

THE EMIRATE OF MURAD

[[Largest view.]]

advanced.[252] The Byzantines and Bulgarians were defeated. The Greek commandant of Adrianople, with a portion of his army, managed to flee down the Maritza to Enos.[253] it is one of the remarkable coincidences of history that the Osmanlis should have won the first battle which opened up to them their glorious future in Europe in exactly the same place that was to witness five hundred and fifty years later their last desperate stand in the Balkan peninsula.

Deserted by their commandant, and overwhelmed by the disaster of Eski Baba, the inhabitants of Adrianople opened their gates to the Osmanlis.[254] Murad installed Lalashahin in Adrianople, and took up his own head-quarters in Demotika,[255] where he built a palace and a mosque. Lalashahin, before settling down in Adrianople, carried his victorious arms up the valley of the Maritza as far as Philippopolis, which he fortified strongly. A stone bridge was built across the river.[256] The occupation of Philippopolis not only gave to the Osmanlis an advantageous base of operations against the Bulgarians, but also brought them the most fruitful source of revenue they had yet enjoyed. It enabled them to levy taxes upon the rice-growing industry. Bulgarians and Serbians were both dependent upon the harvests of the rice fields around Philippopolis.

II

In fifteen months the Osmanlis had become masters of the principal strategic points in Thrace. This great campaign, undertaken and carried through under the spur of necessity, was an auspicious beginning for the reign of Murad and for the supremacy of the Osmanlis in the Balkan peninsula. Europe was suffering from another visitation of the Black Death.[257] The Balkan nations were completely demoralized. So unpopular was John Palaeologos in his own capital that Murad contemplated entering into a conspiracy with some Byzantine traitors to have John assassinated and complete the conquest of the empire.[258] If he did enter fully into this plot, it was as fortunate for him that the undertaking failed as it was for the Bulgarians in 1912 that their columns did not pierce the lines of Ottoman defence at Tchataldja. For the disaster that follows a too extended and too rapid subjugation of unassimilated masses is as sudden as it is irreparable. Durable empire-building is governed by a law of homogeneity.

The Osmanlis were still a race of limited numbers, and at the beginning of their existence as a nation. The process of assimilating the racial elements in conquered territories, begun by Osman when he first left the village of Sugut, could not be arrested; for the existence of the Ottoman state depended upon its continuance. The Greek of Bithynia had lived with Turk and Moslem for two centuries, and had found him a good neighbour. There was neither racial antipathy nor abhorrence of the religion of Mohammed to overcome. Nor had there been the hatred and dread of the conquered on the one side and the arrogance of the conqueror on the other. The Anatolian Greeks had been accustomed for generations to the economic and political conditions that finally caused the majority of them to cast their fortunes with the rising star of the Osmanlis.

The problem of assimilating the Christians, who formed the total population of the Balkan peninsula, was a new one. Here were huge and compact masses of Christians, who had come suddenly under the yoke of the Osmanlis in the first two years of Murad’s reign. They did not know their new masters. They did not know Islam. Benevolent assimilation by voluntary conversion seemed no longer possible. A radical change in the attitude of the Osmanlis towards the question of religion was demanded. Wholesale massacre was impracticable, for the Osmanlis had no reserve of colonists to call upon to replace the indigenous elements. Their position was still too precarious to allow them to draw freely from their adherents in the corner of Asia Minor under their dominion. To win the Macedonians and Thracians by forcible conversion was not feasible. It required the expenditure of all his military resources for Murad to hold what he had conquered. He could not add police duty to his already superhuman burden. Even had he thought of this method of conversion, he would have been deterred by the nightmare of a crusade.

Murad and his counsellors solved the problem of assimilation by sanctioning the reduction of captives to slavery, and by creating the corps of janissaries.

A law was promulgated which gave to the Osmanli soldier absolute right to the possession of prisoners, unless they consented to profess and practise Islam. Prisoners were regarded as booty. They could be kept for domestic or agricultural labour, or sold in the open market, subject to the government’s equity of one in five. The disgrace, even more than the hardships, of slavery was so keenly felt by the Greeks[259] that many for whom there was no other way preferred a change of religion to loss of freedom. The right to make slaves of prisoners was efficacious in providing wives and concubines for the conquerors, who were practically without women of their own. The widows of the fallen, and the daughters of Greeks, Serbians, and Bulgarians, became the instruments of increasing the Ottoman race. In the hundred years from Murad I to Mohammed II, the Osmanlis became in blood the most cosmopolitan and vigorous race the world had known since the days of the Greeks and Romans. Greek, Turkish, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Armenian, Wallachian, Hungarian, German, Italian, Russian, Tartar, Mongol, Circassian, Georgian, Persian, Syrian, and Arabian—this was the ancestry of the Osmanlis who, under Soleiman the Magnificent, made the whole world tremble. In richness of blood the only parallel to the Osmanlis in modern times is the present population of the United States and Canada.

But this indirect method of conversion as an alternative to slavery did not immediately increase the masculine element among the Osmanlis. In a city taken by assault the more virile portion of the male population was killed off, and those who remained were able to buy life and freedom. Male slaves were an embarrassment to the ever-moving armies of Murad. Ransom money was welcomed by the captors. In many cities the inhabitants surrendered without a struggle, and were secured in their freedom by the terms of capitulation. In rural districts the threat of slavery was little felt. The Osmanlis had neither time nor strength to put out the drag-net. Everywhere in the Balkans refuge in the mountains is easy. Then, too, the loss of cultivators would have made the highly prized timarets worthless, and would have caused a famine in foodstuffs or a diminution of taxes on harvests. Another means of bringing pressure to bear upon the Christians had to be devised.

The famous corps of the janissaries was, according to the Ottoman historians, a creation of Orkhan.[260] As a bodyguard of slaves, cut off from their families and educated and trained to serve nearest the person of the sovereign, the janissaries may have originated with Orkhan. If so, it was but the adoption of the idea already put into practice by the sovereigns of Egypt in the organization of the Mamelukes.[261] But as an agency of forcible conversion by the incorporation of Christian youths in the Ottoman army, there is no evidence of its existence before Murad. In fact, historians are agreed that the janissaries were recruited only from the Christian population in Europe.[262] So Orkhan could hardly have conceived this scheme. The problem of which it was a solution did not arise until after Orkhan’s death.

That the corps of the janissaries was an agency for forcible conversion, and was not created in order to increase the strength and efficiency of the Ottoman army, is proved by the records we have of the number of janissaries in the early days of Ottoman history. Murad and Bayezid are represented as having a thousand or less janissaries. In the confusion of the ten years of civil strife among the sons of Bayezid, the janissaries played no part. There were only twelve hundred janissaries in the time of Mohammed the Conqueror,[263] and twelve thousand when the Ottoman Empire was at its zenith under Soleiman the Magnificent.[264] But Mahmud II counted one hundred and forty thousand in his army.[265] These figures show that this most celebrated of Ottoman military organizations did not become a powerful factor until the period of decadence. The janissaries were not, as has been commonly represented, the principal element of the Osmanlis’ fighting strength in the wars of conquest of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Their great rôle in Ottoman history was that of maintainers and defenders of conquests already made. In organizing the janissaries, Murad was certainly influenced by the desire of forming a bodyguard on whose loyalty and devotion he could rely implicitly. But his principal purpose was to emasculate the Christian elements in Macedonia and Thrace, which were too fanatical or too ignorant to see of their own accord that self-interest should lead them to renounce their nationality and their religion.

Murad’s law of drafting (devchurmé) provided that in each conquered district in Europe the privilege of exemption from military service through the payment of the capitation tax (kharadj) should be denied to Christian youths. The Osmanlis reserved the right to select at discretion Christian boys, who were taken from home and kindred and brought up in the Mohammedan religion. They were trained for service as the Sultan’s bodyguard. They depended directly upon the sovereign, who paid them according to a definite scale. Their insignia were the pot and the spoon, and their officers received names which symbolized the functions of the camp kitchen.[266]