The Turkish Empire, its Growth and Decay. Eversley George Shaw-Lefevre

The Turkish Empire, its Growth and Decay

State under his predecessors, but was now again invaded. It was finally incorporated as a province of the Empire. There were also many years of desultory war with Hungary, in which frequent raids were made by the two Powers upon one another’s territories, and where each vied with the other in atrocious cruelties. Everywhere children were impaled, young women were violated in presence of their parents, wives in presence of their husbands, and thousands of captives were carried off and sold into slavery. But there were no other results, and peace was eventually established between the two Powers.

In Asia there was war for five years with the Mameluke government of Egypt and Syria. The Mamelukes had sent an army in support of an insurrection in Karamania. The outbreak was put down, and the Karamanians were finally subjected, but the Mamelukes defeated the Turkish armies in three great battles. Peace was eventually made, but only on concession by the Turks of three important fortresses in Asia Minor.

There was also war with the Republic of Venice, in the course of which the Turks succeeded in capturing the three remaining Venetian fortresses in the Morea – Navarino, Modon, and Coron – an important success which extinguished the influence of Venice on the coasts of Greece. The success was largely due to a great increase of the Turkish navy, which in Mahomet’s reign had achieved a supremacy in the Mediterranean over any other single naval Power. It now defeated the Venetian fleet in a desperate battle off Lepanto in 1499, and met on equal terms the combined fleets of Venice, Austria, and the Pope in 1500. It also went farther afield, and at the entreaty of the Moors of Grenada, who were severely pressed by the Christian army in Spain, ravaged the coasts of that country.

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1

Von Hammer, i. p. 28 (French translation).

2

Cantemir, p. 20.

3

Mr. Gibbons refuses credence to this interesting story on the ground mainly of its inherent improbability. His argument does not convince me. The succession of the younger brother to the Emirate without a fight for it, on the part of the elder one, was an event so remarkable, and so contrary to all experience in Ottoman history, as to make the explanation given a reasonable one. The probabilities seem to me to be all in its favour. Alaeddin died in 1337. It is admitted that for seven years he acted as the first Gran

1

Von Hammer, i. p. 28 (French translation).

2

Cantemir, p. 20.

3

4

This was not the corps of Janissaries, which, as Mr. Gibbons has shown, was created not by Orchan but by his son Murad.

5

Mr. Gibbons in his account of the origin of this corps disputes the figures as reported above from previous writers, and also the alleged motives for its constitution. After careful consideration of the question, I have preferred to adhere to the version given by Sir Edwin Pears, who has investigated the subject with great care in the early Greek and Turkish histories. I have, however, followed Mr. Gibbons in one point, namely, in attributing the constitution of the force to Murad I rather than to Orchan. Mr. Gibbons’s account of the corps of Janissaries is to be found on pp. 118-20 of the Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, and that of Sir Edwin Pears in his work on the Destruction of the Greek Empire, pp. 223-30.

6

Pears, p. 228.

7

Knolles, i. p. 139.

8

Gibbons, p. 221.

9

Froissart, xvi. 47.

10

Boucicaut in 1399, with four ships and two armed galleys and twelve hundred knights and foot soldiers, after defeating an Ottoman fleet in the Dardanelles, arrived at Constantinople and gave assistance to the Emperor in defence of the city.

11

Gibbon, viii. p. 114.

12

This story of the cage, which forms the subject of a scene in Marlowe’s play of Tamerlane, has been discredited by some historians of late years. But Mr. Gibbons, after a full and careful examination of all the records of the time, has re-established its veracity.

13

Gibbon, viii. p. 242.

14

Von Hammer, ii. p. 379.

15

Sir Edwin Pears, Destruction of the Greek Empire, p. 217.

16

The four pages which Gibbon devotes to a description of this attempted union of the two Churches are masterpieces of irony and scorn (Gibbon, viii. pp. 287-91).

17

The writer, in 1890, had the advantage of viewing what remained of these walls in the company of Sir Edwin Pears, who has fully described them in his admirable account of the great siege.

18

Stone balls of considerable size were used by the Turks to defend the Dardanelles up to a late date. When in 1855 the writer visited the forts there, he observed that they were still provided for some of the guns.

19

Speech of Mahomet recorded by the historian Christobulus, quoted by Sir Edwin Pears, pp. 323-4.

20

Quoted by Pears, p. 303.

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