The Grand Turk Read online

  The final conquest of Karaman freed Mehmet to resume his march of conquest in southern Europe. There the sultan’s principal foe was still Venice, whose fortresses in Albania and elsewhere along the eastern coast of the Adriatic were preventing him from advancing deeper into Europe.

  King Matthias Corvinus was also a foe to be reckoned with, and in the autumn of 1473 Mehmet sent Mihailoğlu Ali on a raid into Hungary. The raiders met no opposition and returned with some 16,000 captives, according to the Turkish chronicler Oruç.

  Early in the spring of 1474 Mehmet launched an expedition into Albania under the command of Hadım Süleyman Pasha, the beylerbey of Rumelia. A Bosnian by birth, Süleyman had been captured as a youth and castrated, becoming a hadım, or eunuch, serving in the harem of Topkapı Sarayı, where he became a favourite of Sultan Mehmet and quickly advanced to the highest levels in the Ottoman bureaucracy.

  The goal of the expedition was the fortress of Shkoder (Scutari, Albanian Scodra), on the lake of the same name in northern Albania, which flows into the sea through the river Bojana. The Venetians were expecting an attack on Shkoder, and had garrisoned the mighty fortress there with 2,500 troops under the command of the valiant Antonio Loredano.

  Süleyman Pasha set out with an army of 80,000 troops, including 8,000 janissaries, whom he marched across Serbia and Macedonia to northern Albania. His advance guard of 10,000 arrived before Shkoder on 17 May 1474 and immediately attacked the town, hoping to catch the defenders unprepared. But Loredano sent out his garrison and they were able to drive back the attackers, with heavy casualties on both sides.

  When news of the attack reached Venice the Senate sent a fleet under the joint command of Triadan Gritti and Piero Mocenigo, who sailed seven of their galleys up the Bojana to Shkoder, leaving the rest on patrol off the Albanian coast. Leonardo Boldu, the Venetian provveditore of Albania, also enlisted the local Montenegrin warlord John Chernojevich to aid in the defence of Shkoder with his Albanian warriors, some 8,000 of whom were ferried south across the lake to the fortress.

  When Süleyman arrived with the main army on 15 July he surrounded Shkoder and put it under siege, bombarding the fortress with his heavy artillery. At the beginning of the siege he set out to built a barricade across the mouth of the Bojana to trap the Venetian ships upriver. But the Venetian commanders sailed their galleys down the Bojana, and after a battle with the Ottoman troops defending the barricade they broke through into the Adriatic and joined the fleet cruising off the coast.

  When the Ottoman bombardment and infantry attacks failed to take the fortress Süleyman offered generous terms of surrender to Loredano, who contemptuously refused them. Süleyman then ordered another infantry attack, which was turned back after an eight-hour battle in which some 3,000 to 6,000 Ottoman troops were killed, according to the various sources. This led Süleyman to abandon the siege, and on 28 August he withdrew his army and began the long march back to Istanbul.

  The victory over the Ottomans at Shkoder was marked with a gala celebration in Venice. But the Signoria knew that it was just a matter of time before Mehmet launched another expedition against Albania. Reports soon reached Venice that Mehmet was preparing a huge fleet, and so the Signoria decided to increase the Venetian fleet to 100 galleys.

  On 2 November 1474 Venice agreed with Florence and Milan to ally themselves for twenty-five years in a war against the Turks, with Ferrara subsequently joining the pact. Pope Sixtus refused to join the league, which he saw as an attempt to limit his freedom of action, and instead he formed a separate alliance with King Ferrante of Naples. Venice was angered by this and withdrew its ambassador from Rome, so ‘that the world may know what manner of shepherd it is who looks calmly on as his flock is being devoured and does not come to its help’.

  After Süleyman Pasha returned from Shkoder to Istanbul he disbanded his army, but then Sultan Mehmet ordered him to prepare for another campaign early the following year, this time against Count Stephen the Great, voyvoda of Moldavia.

  Two years earlier, during the Ottoman campaign against Uzun Hasan, Stephen had taken advantage of Mehmet’s absence in Anatolia to invade Wallachia, which at the time was ruled by the sultan’s vassal Radu, brother and successor of Vlad the Impaler. Stephen defeated Radu at Cursul Apei (Rimnicu Sarat) in a three-day battle on 18-20 November 1473. Stephen then deposed Radu as voyvoda of Wallachia and replaced him with his own man, Laiot Basaraba, who subsequently went over to the Ottomans after he was defeated by them. This led to a confused two-year struggle, which Mehmet sought to end by sending an expedition into Moldavia against Stephen and restoring Laiot Basaraba as voyvoda of Wallachia.

  Süleyman Pasha’s army crossed the Danube into Wallachia early in January 1475. On 10 January they were ambushed by Stephen’s army and totally routed, with some 40,000 killed out of a total force of 90,000, according to the Venetian Paolo Ogniben.

  Another Venetian source, Domenico Malipiero, writes that Mara Branković, Mehmet’s stepmother, told Geronimo Zorzi, the Venetian ambassador to Istanbul, ‘that the Turks had never suffered a greater defeat and had exhorted him to continue his journey in good spirit, because the Turk had good reason to make peace, and he would never have a better opportunity to negotiate’. But when Zorzi reached Istanbul, where he had an audience with an unidentified pasha, he found that peace terms offered by the Ottoman government were unacceptable.

  Raiders under Malkoçoğlu Bali Bey, the Ottoman commander at Smederova in northern Serbia, crossed the Danube on 6 February 1474 and penetrated deep into Hungary, plundering and killing before they withdrew with all the captives they could handle. At the beginning of June a horde of Turkish horsemen from Bosnia raided into Croatia and penetrated as far as southern Austria, before withdrawing with their captives. On 22 June a force of 20,000 Turks made their way into Venetian territory in Friuli, at the head of the Adriatic, plundering and killing before they departed. The Venetians were forced to raise a militia of 60,000 together with 500 cavalrymen to defend Friuli against future Turkish incursions.

  Another mounted Turkish horde crossed the Danube from Serbia into Hungary in August and penetrated as far as the river Koros in Transylvania before they were driven back by a Hungarian force. The constant Turkish threat forced King Matthias Corvinus to conclude a truce with King Casimir IV of Poland and to interrupt his war with Bohemia.

  The Ottoman fleet whose construction had been reported to the Signoria was not directed towards Venice, as they expected, but against the Genoese colony of Kaffa (Feodosiya) in the Crimea, where a struggle for succession in the Tatar khanate gave Mehmet an opportunity to intervene.

  The Tatars were Ottoman vassals, but had special status because their ruling dynasty claimed direct descent from Genghis Khan. The Tatars living in and around Kaffa were governed by an official of their own race known as a tudun, who the Khan of the Crimea appointed after consultation with the Genoese Ufficio della Campagna. When the tudun Marmak died in 1473 he was succeeded by his brother Eminek. But Marmak’s widow tried to have her son Sertak appointed as his father’s successor, and a bitter dispute ensued. The Genoese committee consulted Mengli Giray, Khan of the Crimean Turks, who at first agreed to accept Sertak, but then changed his mind to name his own favourite, Kirai Mirza.

  1. Mehmet II, portrait attributed to Sinan Bey, c. 1480

  2a. Mehmet II and a youth who may be Prince Jem, portrait attributed to Gentile Bellini

  2b. Mehmet II, portrait attributed to Constanza da’Ferrara

  3a. Rumelι Hisarι (right) and Anadolu Hisarι (left) on the Bosphorus

  3b. The Theodosian walls leading down to the Golden Horn

  4a. The original Mosque of the Conqueror dominating the skyline above the Golden Horn

  4b. Topkapι Sarayι above the point at the confluence of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn

  5. Kapalι Çarşι, the Covered Bazaar

  6a. The Golden Horn viewed from the cemetery of Eyüp

  6b. Yedikule, the Castle of the Seven
Towers

  7. Interior of Haghia Sophia as a mosque

  8a. Court and fountain of Haghia Sophia

  8b. Third Court of Topkapι Sarayι

  When Mengli Giray tried to install Kirai Mirza as tudun in Kaffa there was strong resistance, particularly from Sertak’s mother, who bribed one of the Genoese committee, Oberto Squarciaficio, to support her son. Oberto put pressure on Mengli Giray by threatening to release his rebellious brothers, who had been imprisoned by the Genoese after they contested the khanate with him when their father Hacı Giray Khan died. Mengli Giray gave in and named Sertak as tudun, but most of the Tatar notables supported Eminek, and they sent an emissary to Sultan Mehmet asking him to intervene.

  The Ottoman fleet left Istanbul on 20 May 1475 under the command of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, comprising 280 galleys, three galleons, 170 freighters and 120 ships carrying horses for his cavalry. The fleet reached Kaffa on 1 June, and on the following day it began bombarding the city. The defenders, most of whom were supporters of Eminek and favoured Turkish intervention, surrendered on 6 June, while Mengli Giray fled to his capital at Kekri with 1,500 loyal cavalry.

  Gedik Ahmet had promised the townspeople that he would spare their lives if they paid the customary Ottoman haraç, or head tax. But in the next six days the conquerors seized all the wealth of the locals and plundered Kaffa, capturing some 3,000 of the townspeople as slaves. On 8 July Gedik ordered all the Italians in Kaffa, most of them Genoese, to board his fleet under pain of execution. The Italians were then resettled in Istanbul around the Seventh Hill of the city, where the census of 1477 recorded that they occupied 277 houses and had two churches.

  Mengli Giray was captured and taken to Istanbul, where Mehmet pardoned him and sent him back to the Crimea as his vassal Eminek was installed as tudun in Kaffa, but now under Ottoman rather than Genoese rule. The Ottoman fleet then went on to capture all the other Genoese possessions in the Crimea, as well as the Venetian colony of Tana (now Azov) in the Sea of Azov. This ended the long Latin presence in the Crimea and its vicinity, which for the next four centuries remained under the control of the Ottomans, extending their dominions around most of the Black Sea.

  That same year Malkoçoğlu Bali Bey led another Turkish raid from Serbia into Hungary, again plundering the countryside and killing or enslaving the local populace. A Hungarian force tried to cut the raiders off on their way back to Serbia, but Bali’s men virtually annihilated them, taking back several hundred severed heads that were sent to Sultan Mehmet in token of their victory. This seems to have provoked King Matthias Corvinus into mounting an expedition against the Ottomans, and on 15 February 1476 he took their fortress at Shabats in Serbia, capturing 1,200 janissaries, then advanced as far as Smederova, where he built three fortresses to blockade the city before he withdrew.

  Mehmet himself led an expedition against Count Stephen of Moldavia in the spring of 1476. Hadım Süleyman Pasha led the advance guard, while the main army was commanded by Mehmet, a total of 150,000 troops, including a contingent of 12,000 Vlachs under Laiot Basaraba, whom the sultan intended to restore as voyvoda of Wallacha. Stephen commanded an army of 20,000 men, whom he positioned in a fortified wooded area on the expected Ottoman line of march, so that he could ambush them.

  The two armies met on 26 July 1476 at the Battle of Rasboieni, during the first phase of which Stephen attacked the Ottoman vanguard under Süleyman Pasha. According to Angiolello, who was with the Ottoman army, Stephen’s troops charged out of the forest where they were hiding ‘and put Süleyman Pasha’s guards to flight… The Pasha mounted his horse and attacked. Some were killed on both sides but, because Süleyman Pasha had more men…, Count Stephen was forced to retire within his fortified wood, where he stood firm and defended himself with artillery, damaging the Turks, who withdrew to the outside.’

  When Mehmet heard of this engagement he led the main army to attack Stephen, who tried to stop them with his artillery, but to no avail, as Angiolello writes in describing the course of the battle that ensued. ‘We put Count Stephen to flight, seized the artillery, and followed him into the wood. About two hundred were killed and eight hundred taken prisoner. If the wood had not been so dense and dark because of the height of the trees, few would have escaped.’

  That effectively ended the campaign, as Tursun Beg notes in describing the aftermath of the battle. ‘The Prince [Stephen] fled and his camp was plundered by the Ottoman attackers. The Sultan pursued the fleeing Prince, pillaging and plundering his country and capital. Raids were carried out against Hungary, and then the army returned to Edirne laden with booty.’

  Mehmet restored Laiot Basaraba as voyvoda of Wallachia, leaving him behind with his 12,000 Vlach troops. Matthias Corvinus sent an army into Wallachia after the Ottomans withdrew, and on 16 November 1476 the Hungarians deposed Laiot Basaraba and replaced him as voyvoda with the infamous Vlad III, the Impaler.

  When Mehmet returned to Edirne he learned that Matthias Corvinus had invaded Serbia and blockaded Smederova by building three fortresses around the city. He realised the danger posed by the Hungarian incursion, and within ten days he turned his army around and headed for Serbia, ‘disregarding the fact that the soldiers and horses were exhausted by the journey and the hunger’, according to Angiolello.

  When the Ottoman army arrived at Smederova the garrisons of two of the Hungarian fortresses around the city fled. But those in the third fort stood firm, and when the Ottomans attacked it they lost around 500 men. Mehmet then put the fortress under siege, which he knew he could not keep up for long because of the bitter winter weather. According to Angiolello, Mehmet had his troops cut down trees and throw them into the moat of the fortress until they were piled higher than its walls. He then prepared to set fire to the timber so as to burn down the fortress, but at that point the garrison agreed to surrender on promise of a safe conduct. Mehmet agreed, and for once he kept his word, allowing the 600 men of the garrison and their commander to leave the fort and set out on the road to Belgrade. Mehmet destroyed all three forts and then set his army back on the road to Istanbul.

  Thus ended what came to be known as ‘the Winter War with Hungary’. Tursun Beg, after describing this difficult expedition, writes: ‘Out of consideration for the hardships to which his soldiers had been subjected during this winter campaign, in the following year, 882 [1477], Fatih did not go out on campaign.’

  But, although Mehmet did not go to war himself in 1477, at the beginning of spring that year he sent Hadım Süleyman Pasha off on a campaign in Greece, his goal being to capture the Venetian fortress at Naupactos on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth. Süleyman’s forces besieged Naupactos for three months, during which time a Venetian fleet of twelve galleys under Antonio Loredano kept the city supplied with food and ammunition. Finally, after informing the sultan that he was unable to take the fortress, Süleyman lifted the siege on 20 June 1477, after which he returned to Istanbul. Mehmet then dismissed him as beylerbey of Rumelia, replacing him with Daud Pasha, who had been beylerbey of Anatolia, a post that was then given to Süleyman Pasha.

  That same year Mehmet also sent an army of 12,000 men under Evrenosoğlu Ahmet to besiege the Albanian fortress city of Kruje, Skanderbeg’s old stronghold. The defenders were on the point of accepting surrender terms when a Venetian relief force arrived, forcing the Ottoman army to withdraw. The Venetians began plundering the enemy camp, but then the Ottoman army counter-attacked and defeated them, forcing them to take refuge within the fortress, which continued to hold out against the besiegers.

  Meanwhile, a large force of Turkish akincis under Iskender Bey, the Ottoman sancakbey, or provincial governor, of Bosnia penetrated into Friuli beyond the river Tagliomento, which took them to within forty miles of Venice. The Venetian commander in Friuli, Geronimo Novello, gave battle to the akincis at the Tagliomento, but he and most of his men were killed. The Venetian chronicler Domenico Malipiero writes of the terror that gripped all of Friuli before the raiders suddenly withdrew.<
br />
  There was great fear in the country. All the towns between the Isonzo and the Tagliomento were burned by the Turks. Three days after the battle, when they had collected the booty, the Turks pretended to leave. Then suddenly they turned round and put all the land on both sides of the river to fire and sword. Then, because there was a rumour that great preparations against them were in hand by land and sea, they collected their baggage and hastily left Italy.

  The Venetian Senate decided to send 2,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry to Friuli, as well as arming an additional force of 20,000 troops to defend Venetian territory against Turkish raids. But the Turkish attacks continued nonetheless, one akinci force penetrating as far as Pordenone, pillaging and destroying everything in its path, the smoke of burning villages clearly visible to observers atop the campanile of the basilica of San Marco in Venice. According to Malipiero, the Venetian nobleman Celso Maffei cried out in despair to Doge Andrea Vendramin, ‘The enemy is at our gate! The axe is at the root. Unless divine help comes, the doom of the Christian name is sealed.’