The Grand Turk Page 24
Sixtus put the papal fleet under the command of Cardinal Paolo di Campofregosa, who had previously been Doge of Genoa, summoning him to Rome along with the papal legate Cardinal Savelli. On 30 June 1481 the Pope and the College of Cardinals went to the church of San Paolo Fuori le Mura for the blessing of the papal fleet. After vespers the Pope held a consistory at which he addressed Cardinal Campofregosa, telling him of the historic importance of his mission. Then, according to the chronicler Volaterranus, Sixtus ‘gave him his legate’s ring and the banner which he had consecrated for the fleet’. Volaterranus writes of how the captains of the fleet came in, kissed the Pope’s feet and were signed with the cross on their breasts.
The Pope and the cardinals then went down to the Tiber, where the galleys of the papal fleet were moored, and they boarded each of them in turn to bestow the apostolic blessing. The crews stood fully armed on the decks and saluted when the Pope came aboard, whereupon, according to Volaterranus, ‘weapons were brandished, swords drawn and struck upon the shields, and military evolutions executed as in actual battle; hundreds of hoarse voices shouted the Pope’s name amid the thundering of the artillery; it was a feast for both ear and eye’.
On 4 July the papal fleet departed to join forces with the royal navy of King Ferrante of Naples in besieging the Ottoman forces at Otranto, which had been isolated since Gedik Ahmet Pasha had been recalled from Valona by Beyazit. The Ottoman troops in the Otranto garrison fought obstinately, but their shortage of arms and supplies forced them to surrender on 10 September. Ferrante immediately informed the Pope, and Sixtus in turn transmitted the good news to the other Christian princes of Europe.
Sixtus hoped that the recapture of Otranto would be the first step in the reconquest of Christian lands under Ottoman occupation. According to the plan that he had formulated, the papal fleet, joined by the ships of the other Christian powers, would sail across the Strait of Otranto to capture the Ottoman-held port of Valona, and from there the allies would head south to begin the liberation of Greece. The first phase of the Pope’s plan was executed that August, when a Portuguese fleet of twenty-five vessels under the command of the Bishop of Elbora arrived to take part in the crusade, whereupon Sixtus began preparations for the attack on Valona.
An important element of the Pope’s plan was his ward, Andreas Palaeologus. Andreas was the son and heir of Thomas Palaeologus, former Despot of the Morea and brother of Constantine XI, the last Byzantine emperor. When Thomas Palaeologus died in 1465 Andreas became the pretender to the throne of Byzantium, supported first by Pope Paul II and then by Sixtus IV, who now saw a God-given opportunity to use him as the symbolic leader of his crusade.
On 15 September 1481 Sixtus instructed the Bishop of Elbora to assist Andreas Palaeologus in crossing the Ionian Sea to the Morea, so that the pretender could begin the reconquest of his late father’s despotate. Three days later the Pope wrote to all the Christian states of Europe, telling them the glorious news of the recapture of Otranto, ‘which we have been waiting for with all of our heart, and which has been most pleasing to us - today we have learned it from our people!’. He then made an eloquent plea for united action: ‘This is the time of deliverance, of glory, of victory, such as we shall never be able to regain if it is neglected now. With a little effort the war can now be brought to a successful conclusion which later on can be done only at the greatest cost and with the greatest injury to ourselves.’
At the same time, Sixtus sent a messenger to the commander of the Christian fleet, Cardinal Campofregosa, urging him to swift action ‘lest we prove unequal to the chance which heaven has offered us’. But the Pope’s plea came to nothing, for dissension in the Christian army at Otranto, along with an outbreak of plague in the papal fleet, led the allied leaders to postpone their campaign indefinitely. King Ferrante informed Sixtus that Campofregosa was about to return with the fleet to Civitavecchia, near Rome, quoting the cardinal’s statement that he had been instructed to do so by the Pope himself. Writing to Ferrante on 21 September, Sixtus replied that he had, on the contrary, intended that the papal fleet should attack Valona directly after the recapture of Otranto. Sixtus then sent strict orders to Campofregosa to set sail for Valona at once.
But by the beginning of October Sixtus learned that the papal fleet had docked at Civitavecchia. The Pope hurried there at once in an attempt to persuade Campofregosa, the Neapolitan ambassador and the ships’ captains to turn the fleet around. Campofregosa reluctantly informed Sixtus that the planned invasion of Greece was for the moment impossible for several reasons, namely the outbreak of the plague, an increasingly mutinous mood among the troops and the ships’ crews, the advanced season of the year and the escalating cost of the expedition. Sixtus declared himself still resolute and prepared to make every sacrifice, according to Volaterranus, who wrote that, though the Pope ‘would, like Eugenius IV, pawn his mitre and sell the rest of his silver plate, all was in vain’.
And so Sixtus admitted defeat for the time being. He returned to Rome on 17 October 1481, bitterly disappointed but consoled by the fact that the Turks were not in a position to invade Italy while the two sons of Mehmet the Conqueror were embroiled in a civil war. But his mood would soon change when he learned that Beyazit had emerged victorious in the war of succession and that Jem was now in exile in Cairo.
Meanwhile, Mehmet’s tomb at Fatih Camii had become a place of pilgrimage, where a constant stream of pious Muslims came to offer their prayers at the foot of the sultan’s catafalque, a custom that continues to the present day: a form of emperor worship dating back to the earliest Turkish times. Turks still refer to Mehmet as Fatih, the Conqueror, and honour him as the ‘Sultan of Sultans’, for in their view none of his predecessors or successors in the House of Osman equalled his accomplishments, most notably the conquest of the city that remained the capital of the Ottoman Empire for the remainder of its history.
The view of Mehmet as ‘the present terror of the world’ endured in the West, where he became the personification of the cruel oriental despot, as Richard Knolles portrays him in the Generall Historie of the Turkes, published in 1609-10:The death of this mighty man (who living troubled a great part of the world) was not much lamented by those who were nearest to him (who ever living in feare of his crueltie, hated him deadly) than of his enemies, who ever in doubt of his greatness were glad to hear of his end. He was of stature but low, and nothing answerable to the height of his mind, square set and strong limmed, not inferior in strength (when he was young) unto anyone in his father’s court, but to Skanderbeg onely; his complexion was Tartarlike, sallow and melancholy, as were most of his ancestors, the Othoman kings; his looke and countenance sterne, with his eyes hollow and little, sunke as it were in his head, and his nose so high and crooked that it almost touched his upper lip. To be briefe, his countenance was altogether such, as if nature had with most cunning hand depainted and most curiously set forth to view the most inward disposition and qualities of his mind: which were in most parts notable… In his love was no assurance, and his least displeasure was death: so that hee lived feared of all men, and died lamented of none.
15
The Sons of the Conqueror
After remaining in Cairo for nearly six months Jem made a second attempt to take the Ottoman throne from his brother Beyazit in the spring of 1482. He was encouraged to do so by Kasım Bey, former emir of the Karamanid Türkmen, who wanted to regain his emirate from the Ottomans, and offered to help Jem in a renewed war of succession against Beyazit. Jem also received help from the Mamluk Sultan Kaitbey, who had given him refuge after he was defeated in his first war of succession against Beyazit the previous year.
But Beyazit, whose army was commanded by Gedik Ahmet Pasha, easily defeated Jem’s forces. Jem and Kasım were forced to flee before the advancing imperial army, taking refuge in the Taurus Mountains above the Mediterranean coast with a small band of loyal followers. Beyazit sent Iskender Pasha to pursue the fugitives with his cavalry, but the imperial
troops lost their way in the trackless mountains and soon gave up the chase. For Jem and Kasım had been taken by their Türkmen nomad guides into the highlands of Pisidia, which even Alexander the Great had failed to penetrate when he conquered Asia Minor in 334 BC. There they went to ground early in the summer of 1482, while Beyazit fumed at his inability to find Jem and end the war of succession that had troubled the whole first year of his reign.
Jem at first considered fleeing to Persia, but Kasım persuaded him to seek refuge in western Europe, where the Christian princes would help him regain his throne. Kasım had his own interests at heart in giving this advice, for he knew that if Jem led a European army against the Ottomans then Beyazit would leave Karamania undefended, whereupon he could regain control of his emirate.
Jem first sent a letter to Venice requesting asylum, but the Signoria refused, not wishing to provoke Beyzazit into making war on them. Beyazit learned from his spies of Jem’s approach to the Venetians, and he wrote to the Senate reaffirming the peace treaty that had been signed between the Ottomans and the Serenissima, adding that he assumed Venice wished to preserve ‘the good and sincere and faithful peace and friendship which we have between us’. The Senate responded by congratulating Beyazit on his ‘glorious victory’ in the civil war he had been forced to fight against his brother Jem, now a fugitive.
After his rejection by the Venetians Jem sent a similar letter to the Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson, with whom he had established cordial relations three years beforehand, during the negotiations between Sultan Mehmet and the Knights of St John on Rhodes. D’Aubusson and his council agreed to give Jem refuge, whereupon he and his followers boarded a Rhodian ship at Anamur on the Mediterranean coast of Anatolia. On 22 July 1482 they entered the harbour of Rhodes, where d’Aubusson and his knights gave Jem a royal welcome, showing him around the walled city that his father had failed to conquer less than a year earlier.
D’Aubusson knew that it was just a matter of time before the Ottomans made another attempt to take Rhodes. This was why he had agreed to give Jem asylum, for he wanted to use him as a pawn to keep Beyazit at bay, playing on the sultan’s fear that his brother would be used as a figurehead in a war against the Turks.
When d’Aubusson first announced Jem’s arival on Rhodes to the Christian princes of Europe Pope Sixtus responded by saying that Christendom would gain much from possession of the pretender, and that they could possibly use him in a crusade to ‘rid the world of Mohammed’s descendants’. But, privately, d’Aubusson had little confidence that the Christian powers would manage to unite in peace and use Jem in a crusade. So in the meantime he saw no reason why he should not use the pretender to his own advantage.
As soon as Beyazit learned that Jem had taken refuge on Rhodes he began negotiating with the Grand Master about his brother’s custody, for he wanted him safely out of the way so as to prevent another war of succession. Eventually their representatives concluded a peace treaty, which contemporary sources refer to as the most favourable ever granted by the Ottomans to the Christians up to that time. As part of the agreement the sultan was to send the knights on 1 August of each year a payment for Jem’s upkeep of 40,000 ducats (of which d’Aubusson apparently kept 10,000), and for the present year the same amount was to be paid in forty days.
Soon after the treaty was signed Beyazit attended to some unfinished business, the elimination of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, who had been one of his two principal envoys in the negotiations with the knights, along with Mesih Pasha. Beyazit had Gedik Ahmet executed, ending the career of the greatest Ottoman commander of his time. Beyazit also took the opportunity to order the execution of Jem’s two-year-old son Oğuzhan, who had been held hostage in the Ottoman court.
Meanwhile, the Council of Knights had been deliberating about what to do with Jem, and they decided that he could be held more securely in one of their commanderies in France. On 18 August D’Aubusson met with Jem and informed him of the council’s decision. Jem readily agreed, and the council decided to inform the Pope and all other Christian princes of this decision. As Caoursin writes, referring to Jem as ‘the King’: ‘He was a gift sent by God for the good of Christendom, and it seems best to bring the King to the West under the protection of the Grand Master and the knights of Rhodes.’ Ten days later d’Aubusson and the council sent an envoy to Beyazit, informing him of their plan to sent Jem to France.
On 1 September 1482 Jem and his companions boarded a magnificent galley called the Grand Nef de Tresor, the flagship of the Rhodian fleet, commanded by the knight Guy de Blanchefort, nephew of Pierre d’Aubusson. The galley brought Jem and his party to Nice, from where they were eventually taken in turn by Blanchefort to a number of the Order’s commanderies in France, ending at Bourgeneuf in the Auvergene.
King Matthias Corvinus was also interested in obtaining custody of Jem, whom he wanted to use as a figurehead in a war against the Turks. He raised the subject in discussions with an envoy of Pope Sixtus, but nothing came of the matter. Corvinus realised that Sixtus had no intention of helping him gain control of Jem, and thenceforth his relations with the Pope were embittered. This led Corvinus to agree to terms with Beyazit, and in the autumn of 1483 a five-year peace treaty was concluded between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.
Beyazit’s peace treaty with Corvinus left him free to invade Moldavia and Wallachia, and in the summer of 1484 he personally led his forces across the Danube, capturing Kilia and Akkerman on the Black Sea coast. Moldavia and Wallachia thus became trans-Danubian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, remaining under Turkish rule for nearly four centuries. Beyazit himself is said to have remarked that he had ‘won the key of the door to all Moldavia and Hungary, the whole region of the Danube, Poland and Tartary, and the entire coast of the Black Sea’.
Pope Sixtus IV died on 12 August 1484 and was succeeded by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cibo of Genoa, who became Pope Innocent VIII. Among the embassies that came to congratulate the new Pope on his accession was that of the Knights of St John on Rhodes, who were represented by Guillaume Caoursin and the English knight John Kendal. At the end of January 1485 Caoursin and Kendal were received by the Pope in a private audience to discuss the affairs of the Order. Innocent expressed his strong desire to have Jem brought from France and held in a fortress of the papacy, though remaining in the custody of the knights. The envoys demurred, saying that they had no authority to deal with this request, whereupon Innocent asked them to discuss the matter with d’Aubusson when they returned to Rhodes.
Innocent soon began secret negotiations with d’Aubusson to obtain custody of Jem, for he thought he could use the Turkish pretender as a symbolic leader in his crusade. They finally concluded an agreement on 13 February 1486, in the first part of which d’Aubusson agreed to allow Jem to be transferred to the custody of the Pope in Rome, where he would be guarded by knights of the Order of St John. The Grand Master would retain legal rights to Jem, along with 10,000 ducats of the yearly payment of 40,000 ducats from Beyazit. The second part of the agreement stated that the Pope would appoint d’Aubusson as a cardinal, while allowing him to continue serving as Grand Master of the Knights of St John. But it remained to be seen whether the transfer of Jem to the papacy could actually be carried out, since the French would have to agree. Charles VIII was only thirteen when he succeeded his father Louis XI on 30 August 1483; his older sister Anne de Beaujeu served as regent, and her approval was needed to take Jem to Rome.
The negotiations concerning Jem were complicated by the fact that several different powers were trying to obtain custody of him, some of them making extravagant offers to the French court to decide in their favour, including Pope Innocent, King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, Sultan Beyazit and Sultan Kaitbey. The Venetians and the Knights of St John were also involved, with their envoys trying to persuade Madame de Beaujeu to allow Jem to be taken to Rome. The French finally agreed to give custody of Jem to the Pope, on condition that Innocent give a cardinal’s hat to the Archbishop of Bordeaux,
André d’Epinay.
The agreement was signed on 5 October 1488, whereupon the knights immediately began making arrangements to have Jem taken to Rome, where he arrived on 13 March 1489. Jem was confined to a luxurious suite in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, while the Pope began thinking of how he could use him in furthering his plans for a crusade. On 8 May 1489 Innocent issued a brief requesting representatives of all the Christian powers to meet in Rome to make plans for united action against the Turks. His nuncios explained to the various Christian rulers that the Pope’s possession of the Turkish pretender offered an extraordinary opportunity, for Jem had promised that if he regained his throne through their help he would withdraw all Ottoman forces from Europe and even give up Constantinople.
The congress called for by Innocent convened in Rome on 25 March 1490, its announced purpose being to organise an expedition ‘contra Turcum’. All the European powers sent representatives except Venice, which stayed away so as not to upset its peaceful relationship with Sultan Beyazit. The delegates had already prepared detailed plans for the military and naval forces required for the campaign, as well as the organisation of the various national contingents involved. But early in April the activities of the congress were brought to an abrupt halt by the news of the death of Matthias Corvinus, who had died of a stroke, aged forty-seven.
The death of Corvinus upset the delicate balance of power in central Europe, destroying the stability that Innocent needed to promote his crusade, and so the congress was adjourned until 3 June. When it reconvened, the delegates completed their detailed plans for the crusade, which they presented to the Pope and the College of Cardinals. They thanked Innocent for his exertions in obtaining custody of Jem, ‘who was most valuable as a standing menace to the sultan, and as a means of breaking up his empire’. ‘He should,’ they said, ‘be carefully guarded in Rome for the time being, and, later on, counsel should be taken on how he would be most advantageously employed in the campaign.’ The congress was officially closed by Innocent on 30 July 1490, to be reconvened when the delegates had received the requisite full powers to make binding agreements on the part of their governments.