The Grand Turk Page 22
News of the fall of Otranto and rumours of a coming Turkish invasion caused panic throughout Italy. According to Sigismondo de’Conti, the papal secretary, the Pope was so terrified that he contemplated fleeing to Avignon.
In Rome the alarm was as great, as if the enemy had already encamped before her very walls… Terror had taken such hold of all minds that even the Pope meditated flight. I was at the time in the Low Countries, in the suite of the Cardinal Legate Giuliano, and I remembered that he was commissioned to prepare what was necessary at Avignon, for Sixtus IV had decided upon taking refuge with the French, if the state of affairs in Italy should become worse.
But Sixtus regained his nerve and realised that aid had to be given to the Kingdom of Naples, even though Ferrante had recently betrayed him during the Tuscan war. As Sigismondo writes of the Pope’s decision to come to Ferrante’s aid:Sixtus IV would have witnessed with great indifference the misfortunes and losses of his faithless ally, had Ferrante’s enemy been anyone but the Sultan, but it was a very different matter when the common foe of Christendom had actually got a footing on Italian soil, and speedily the Papacy and Rome itself were threatened with utter ruin, unless he were promptly expelled… [The Pope] at once sent all the money he could get together, permitted tithes to be levied from all the clergy in the kingdom, and promised a Plenary Indulgence to all Christians enlisting under the banner of the Cross.
Later in the summer of 1480 Sixtus issued a bull calling for united Christian action against the invaders before they took all of Italy: ‘How perilous it has become for all Christians,’ he wrote, ‘and especially the Italian powers, to hesitate in the assumption of arms against the Turk and how destructive to delay any longer, everyone can see…’ He went on to warn that ‘if the faithful, and especially the Italians, want to keep their lands, homes, wives, children, liberty, and the very faith in which we were baptised and reborn, let them believe us that they must now take up arms and go to war!’.
King Louis XI of France indicated that he would give his support to an anti-Turkish alliance. The Sforza dukes in Milan also offered the Pope their support, but they said that peace had to be established among the Italian states before they sought help from the French kingdom, ‘for we confess that we cannot see how we may expect foreign aid if we make light of our troubles at home’.
The anti-Turkish coalition, known as the League of Naples, came into being on 16 September 1480, its members consisting of the papacy, the King of Naples, the King of Hungary, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, and the Republics of Genoa and Florence. Representatives of the league gathered in Venice at the beginning of October, and the Neapolitan envoys led the pleas for Venetian help against the Turks. The Republic of Venice was exhorted to join the league, but the Signoria immediately declined, saying that for ‘seventeen successive years’ they had fought the Turks almost alone, with an unbearable cost in men and money, and now they could do no more.
Sixtus then began preparations to build a papal fleet in Genoa and Ancona, while at the same time he appealed to England, France and Germany to join the coalition. Emperor Frederick III declined because of internal political problems, as did Edward IV of England, who wrote to the Pope that rather than making war against other Christians, as he was forced to do in order to keep his throne, he would have ‘preferred being associated with the other sovereigns of Christendom in an expedition against the Turk’. Edward had been fearful of a Turkish invasion, and a year earlier he had said that the Pope should have unified Italy, ‘owing to the great perils…for the Christian religion, when the Turk is at the gates of Italy, and so powerful as everyone knows’.
Louis XI assured the Pope that France would participate in the crusade, but only if all the other Christian states shared the burden. The Sforza Dukes of Milan said that aid from northern Europe would be long in coming and that the united Italian states would have to make the effort themselves, even without Venice, ‘because we are prepared to strive beyond our strength for the common safety and to defeat in war the barbarous, butcherly and savage Turks’. The private instructions given to their envoys by the Sforzas began with a statement impressing upon them the grave emergency of the situation. ‘We do not believe that for many centuries a more grave and perilous thing has befallen not only Italy but all Christendom than this…invasion of Calabria by the Turk, both because of the inestimable power and great cruelty of the enemy and because of the utter shame it brings to our religion and the Christian way of life.’
The Pope and the College of Cardinals agreed to contribute 150,000 ducats towards the crusade, 100,000 of which would be spent equipping twenty-five galleys for the papal fleet, the remainder to be sent to King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, who was expected to divert Mehmet’s attention from Italy to central Europe. In addition, Sixtus was recruiting a force of 3,000 infantry. The ambassadors who convened in Rome agreed that a fleet of 100 galleys should be launched for the crusade, and that 200,000 ducats should be sent annually to Corvinus to support his offensive against the Turks. Since the papacy was assuming such a large financial obligation, it expected the other Christian powers to shoulder their share of the burden and sent briefs informing each of them of their assessment. King Ferrante was to provide forty galleys for the Christian fleet and was to send Corvinus 100,000 ducats; Milan was to contribute 30,000 ducats; Florence, 20,000 ducats; Genoa, five galleys; Ferrara and Siena, four galleys each; Bologna, two galleys; Lucca, Mantua and Montferrat, one galley each.
Louis XI sent envoys to Rome to discuss the situation with Pope Sixtus. The king offered to contribute 200,000 ducats a year for the crusade, and if the Pope permitted him to tax the benifices of the clergy in France ‘he would add another 100,000 ducats’. Louis estimated that Italy could easily contribute 40,000 ducats annually for the crusade; Germany, 200,000; ‘all the Spains’, an additional 200,000; ‘and the king of England, who is so powerful and has such rich benifices, 100,000 ducats’. He had been informed ‘that the Venetians are willing to declare themselves against the Turks, provided that they are assured that all Italy is going to join in and will not leave them in the lurch’. His envoys were authorised to commit their king to his pledge of 300,000 ducats annually, provided that he was allowed to tax the clergy, and that the other states of Europe support the crusade to the amounts ‘of which mention is made above’. Louis also noted his desire for assurances of peace from his neighbours to the east, ‘and in making the aforesaid offer he does not discount the fact that he must be safe from the king of England through the duration of the war [against the Turks] and for one year thereafter’. He said that the King of England was ‘as good a friend as he had in the world’, but the Pope had to realise the responsibilities that Louis had to maintain the security of his own kingdom.
Meanwhile, Emperor Frederick III and King Matthias Corvinus were waging war on one another in Austria. At the same time Turkish akincis were raiding in Croatia, Carniola, Carinthia and Styria, some of them even penetrating into Friuli, despite the peace treaty between the Ottomans and Venice.
The Neapolitan army finally went on the offensive during the winter of 1480-1, putting Otranto under siege and containing the Ottoman forces within their beachhead in Apulia. Then in March 1481 the Neapolitan fleet defeated an Ottoman naval force in the Adriatic, cutting off the Turkish garrison in Otranto from the sea and thus intensifying the siege.
On 8 April 1481 Pope Sixtus issued a bull proclaiming a new crusade, summoning all the princes of Europe to arms against the Turks. He imposed a three-year peace on Christendom, beginning on 1 June 1481, lest ‘western Europe go the way of Constantinople and the Morea, Serbia and Bosnia, and the empire of Trebizond, whose rulers (and peoples) had all come to grief’.
But a general fear prevailed that, once again, nothing would come of this effort. The classical scholar Peter Schott, canon of Strasbourg, wrote later that month from Bologna that he had gone to take a last look at Rome ‘before the Eternal City was taken by the Turks’.
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Death of the Conqueror
Sultan Mehmet spent the winter of 1480-1 sequestered in Topkapı Sarayı, from where rumours leaked into Istanbul that he was in poor health. Then early in the spring of 1481 he began mustering his army on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus in Üsküdar. He had told no one of the goal of the expedition that had taken him out of his sick bed: some thought it would be another attempt to take Rhodes, while others believed that Mehmet intended to conquer the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
On 25 April Mehmet crossed the Bosphorus in his imperial caique to the Asian shore at Üsküdar, after which the grand vezir Karamanı Mehmet Pasha ordered his troops to get under way. The army marched slowly down the eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara, gathering additional forces as it proceeded. By 1 May the army had only reached Gebze, at the head of the Gulf of Nicomedeia (Iznik), where a halt was made at a place called Hünkâr Çayı, or Emperor’s Meadow. This was where Hannibal had taken his own life in 183 BC when he was trapped by the Romans, and where the emperor Constantine the Great had died in AD 338, though Mehmet, despite his deep interest in the lives of great conquerors, would hardly have been aware of the historical significance of his campsite.
Mehmet had called a halt here because he had been stricken by severe abdominal pains. His Persian physician, Hamiduddin al-Lari, administered medicine that only made matters worse, and so Mehmet’s old Jewish doctor Master Iacopo was called in. Iacopo concluded that the pain was caused by blockage of the intestines, but despite his frantic efforts he was unable to do anything more than alleviate the sultan’s agony with powerful doses of opium.
Mehmet lingered on until late in the evening of 3 May 1481, when he passed away at ‘the twenty-second hour’, according to Giovanni-Maria Angiolello. The sultan was forty-nine when he died, having reigned for more than thirty years, most of which he had spent in war. As Tursun Beg wrote of Mehmet: ‘Besides the gracious gift of the conquest of Constantinople, Fatih wrested twenty or more independent lands from the enemies of His High Estate.’
The grand vezir Karamanı Mehmet Pasha tried to keep the sultan’s death a secret, and he warned the doctors and all others in attendance to say nothing about it under pain of death. Others outside the imperial tent were told that the sultan was ill and was being taken back to Istanbul for treatment, and so the royal carriage was readied and the horses saddled for the grand vezir and others in his party. Mehmet’s body was bundled up and placed in the carriage, and the small caravan headed back to Istanbul in the dead of night surrounded by the sultan’s bodyguard.
The Turkish chronicler Nesri was with Mehmet’s army when they stopped at Hünkâr Çayı, and after evening prayers he had bedded down near the imperial tent and fallen asleep. But in the middle of the night he was awakened by the sound of wagon wheels and neighing horses, only to find ‘the wind whistling where the sultan’s tent had been pitched’.
Mehmet’s death left Prince Beyazit, the older of the sultan’s two surviving sons, as his obvious successor, though there were some who favoured Prince Jem. At the time Beyazit was thirty-three and serving as provincial governor in Amasya, while Jem, who was twenty-one, was governing in Konya, the capital of Karaman. Karamanı Mehmet was one of the few in the uppermost level of the Ottoman government who supported Jem as the successor to the throne. Gedik Ahmet, now the captain-pasha of the Ottoman navy, was sympathetic to Jem and despised Beyazit, but he was at Valona in Albania with the Turkish forces that had captured Otranto. Most others in the government were on the side of Beyazit, including the vezirs Ishak Pasha and Daud Pasha, the beylerbey of Anatolia, Sinan Pasha, the beylerbey of Rumelia, Hersekzade Ahmet Pasha, and the commander of the janissaries, Kasım Ağa.
Before starting back to Istanbul, Karamanı Mehmet sent three of his slaves on fast horses to Konya with instructions to inform Jem of his father’s death, and to urge him to rush back to Istanbul to claim the throne before his brother Beyazit. But Sinan Pasha had ordered checkpoints to be set up on all the roads leading into Konya, and the grand vezir’s couriers were intercepted before they could reach Jem. At first the couriers would say nothing, but after Sinan Pasha had one of them impaled the other two revealed the message they were carrying. Sinan Pasha then sent his own courier to inform Beyazit in Amasya, advising him to hasten back to Istanbul to seize the throne before Jem.
By that time Karamanı Mehmet had brought Mehmet’s body to Topkapı Sarayı in Istanbul, where he had it packed in ice in a meat locker in the palace kitchens. The army had returned to Üsküdar, where some janissaries seized rafts and crossed over to Istanbul and stormed the palace. After they discovered the sultan’s body they beheaded the grand vezir and paraded through the streets of Istanbul with his head on a pike, shouting ‘Long live Beyazit!’. The janissaries then took advantage of the absence of authority to sack the Christian and Jewish quarters of Istanbul, before they were finally subdued by Ishak Pasha, who had been left in charge of the city.
Ishak and Davud Pasha then summoned the other members of the government and met at the palace with Beyazit’s young son Korkut, who had been living with his mother in the harem of Topkapı Sarayı. Korkut, who was then eleven years old, was raised to the throne as regent for his father, who was expected to arrive in Istanbul soon; meanwhile, the pashas secured the loyalty of the janissaries and other elements of the army by promising them higher pay.
Beyazit was indeed en route, riding westward from Amasya at top speed with a bodyguard of 4,000 sipahis. At Izmit he paused in his journey and sent a trusted slave ahead to Istanbul, fearing that he might be riding into a trap. The slave reported that he had seen the sultan’s remains, and that Beyazit’s son Korkut had been made regent and was waiting to turn the throne over to his father.
Thus reassured, Beyazit proceeded on to Üsküdar, where he arrived on 20 May, having donned a black robe as a sign of mourning for his father. At Üsküdar Beyazit was formally greeted by the pashas and conducted across the Bosphorus in the imperial caique, escorted by a flotilla of galleys and barges. But when he reached the European shore he was confronted by a mob of janissaries and sipahis, who demanded that he confirm the promises made to them by the pashas in the name of his son Korkut. Beyazit placated the soldiers by promising them bahşiş, or a bribe, as well as a permanent raise in pay, an increase that he had to give to all other units of the army as a result of a second confrontation with a mob of troops near the palace. He was also asked to promise that in the future he would appoint his vezirs only from among the janissaries, sipahis and içoğlan, the imperial pages, for the soldiers wanted to prevent the rise to power of palace favourites such as Karamanı Mehmet Pasha from the ulema, or learned class. Again Beyazit agreed, but when the soldiers made still another demand, that they be given amnesty for their recent sack of the Christian and Jewish quarters, he remained silent and continued on his way to the palace.
The following day Beyazit took turns with the pashas and ağas and other dignitaries in carrying the coffin of his father to Fatih Camii, the Mosque of the Conqueror. There Mehmet was laid to rest in the splendid tomb that he had built for himself behind his mosque, the turban that he had worn to his last day placed at the head of his catafalque. The noted cleric Şeyh Vefa then led Beyazit and a crowd of 20,000 mourners in prayer for the repose of Mehmet’s soul, many of them continuing their devotions until dawn.
The following day the Ottoman court assembled at Topkapı Sarayı, where the regent Prince Korkut handed over power to his father, who ascended the throne as Beyazit II, the eighth sultan of the Osmanlı dynasty. Beyazit sat enthroned just outside Bab-üs Saadet, the Gate of Felicity, the entryway to the Inner Palace. There he received the homage of the court in the ceremony known as Biat, or Allegiance, during which all the notables and functionaries of the empire filed past to kiss the hem of the sultan’s robe and swear fealty to him. This was followed by a meeting of the Divan, the Imperial Council, at which Beyazit announced the appointment of Ishak Pasha as grand vezir and of Daud Pasha
and Hersekzade Ahmet Pasha as first vezirs. Messengers were sent to governors and other officials throughout the empire to inform them of the new appointments, and all judges were ordered to publish the news of Beyazit’s accession.
Some days later Beyazit proceeded to the suburb of Eyüp on the upper reaches of the Golden Horn, where Mehmet had built a mosque and shrine around the tomb of Eba Eyüp, Companion of the Prophet Mohammed. There Beyazit was girded with the sword of his ancestor Osman Gazi, in a ceremony equivalent to a coronation, performed by the Nakib-ül Eşraf, Chief of the Descendants of the Prophet. Following this he visited Mehmet’s tomb to offer up his prayers, a pilgrimage that thenceforth became customary for all new sultans upon their accession. He then returned to the palace in a procession lined with the entire populace of Istanbul, who cheered their new ruler with shouts of ‘Long live Sultan Beyazit’, while he distributed largesse to the crowd as he passed by. When the procession reached Topkapı Sarayı, Beyazit announced an additional increase in pay for the janissaries, the bahşiş known as Cülus Akçası, or Accession Money, which was now customary for a new sultan to pay to his elite troops before they would agree to serve him. Only then did Beyazit retire to the Inner Palace to receive the congratulations of the women in his harem, which was now headed by his mother Gülbahar, who had become the valide sultan, or queen mother.