All Things Medieval

The last siege of Constantinople took 57 days. The old core city had been built at the point where the Bosphorus met the Mediterranean and some smaller rivers fed into it with a long inlet, shaping the city’s site into a horn. The smaller inlet was known as the Golden Horn; it was a major part of the city’s defenses. The Emperor had strung an iron chain across it, to keep ships out, which meant the walls along that stretch of water did not need to be manned as heavily.

Mehmet’s gigantic bombard was firing at the main gate that faced his Bulgarian territories. His navy surrounded the city by sea and river. The city appeared able to hold out until Mehmet did one last thing: he moved a fleet of light warships across land and into the Golden Horn, so that they suddenly appeared upriver of the iron chain. Constantinople’s last hope was that Venice, by now a major sea power, would send a large relief fleet since it technically owned part of the city. It didn’t. Smaller Venetian and Genoese fleets were already part of the failing defense.

On May 28, 1453, everyone knew the end was near. The Turks prepared for a huge push in places where the wall had been breached. The Emperor attended one last mass at Hagia Sophia, and on this occasion, the Greeks and Latins worshiped together. The offensive began a few hours later, after midnight.

Mehmet II sent in his Bulgarian and Serbian troops first, so that when the defenders were able to throw them back, his Turks and Janissaries did not suffer the casualties. When the Janissaries finally rushed in against the exhausted defenders, the resistance crumbled. Greeks and Italians surrendered or leaped off walls to end their lives. The Emperor died in the fighting; one legend says he led a sortie, while another says he hanged himself.

The city’s sacking had a few interesting details. Mehmet was planning to rebuild the city on a grand scale, and he already knew he wanted to preserve the biggest churches. So his advance guard already protected Hagia Sophia and other historic churches as his army began to loot. The city’s wealth was so famous that the Turkish army did not focus on hunting down and killing the remaining resistance, as they were searching buildings for gold and other loot. Many of the city’s Genoese and Venetians escaped to the harbor, where their ships fled the scene.

It was sheer misery in the city itself, for those who did not have ships to flee. The Turkish army had been promised three days of free looting. It was chaotic and bloody, as you can imagine. In fact, it went way beyond anything Mehmet had intended. The city was left utterly despoiled with ruined buildings and whole deserted sectors: the people had been raped, killed, enslaved, or (in lucky cases) fled or deported. Shops and houses were empty.

After three days, the Sultan proclaimed an end to the looting. From that day forward, he declared, any Greek survivors were welcome in the city and they would be protected. They could go home; perhaps some did, but in most cases the homes were uninhabitable. He turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque, but other churches remained in operation and he confirmed that the Greek Patriarch was in office. The Sultan located the Emperor’s heirs, his nephews. He took them into his care and they lived out their lives as Ottoman officials.

Europe did not trust the new ruler of Constantinople at all, with good reason. Every nearby city was afraid he was coming for them next (and in some cases he was). Greek survivors did not trust Ottoman rule; it was in the years just after 1453 that scholars began to arrive in Italy with whatever books they could carry. Many had existing ties to Italian universities and took up lecturer posts there. The Greek language and books they brought were the sea change that shifted Italy and the rest of Europe—-at least from our point of view—-from Medieval to Renaissance. The “rebirth” part of the Renaissance was this return of Europe’s past legacy that had sheltered at its eastern margin during the barbarian years.

During the 1440s, the Ottoman Sultans continued to push back their frontier in Europe. Murad II made his 12 year old son Mehmet king, but he had to be called back in 1444 to confront the Hungarian-Wallachian army at Varna (more about them later). In the Battle of Varna, Murad II won a decisive victory that included the death of the young King of Poland. But the most lasting effect on world history was that, in these battles against Hungary, the Turks observed their first gunpowder firearms in operation.

Gunpowder had been used for very simple cannons, if they can even be called that, as early as the mid 1300s. By the 1440s, soldiers could use the arquebus, a simple gun that we can recognize: wooden stock, long metal barrel. The matchlock trigger wasn’t added until about 1475, but the basic arquebus was an effective personal weapon even without it, as long as the soldier didn’t blow himself up with it.

The Janissary Corps (or Ocak, in Turkish) had been rebuilt after some years of Ottoman civil war. The devşirme resumed once the government was stable again in 1413, so by this time it even had men growing old in its service. Mehmet II had several Grand Viziers who had been devşirme children in the elite Palace school. Until the Turks saw guns in action, their best warriors were still using bows, but they became early adopters in spite of how messy the black powder could make the Janissary’s sharp red uniform.

When young Mehmet II resumed control, he felt a great religious duty to overthrow the Greek Christians of Constantinople. The city was still a very sad place, suffering from low population and depressed economy. It had been paying tribute, but Mehmet decided to make it his new capital. The last Emperor tried to make another tribute-peace deal, but Mehmet rejected it. And through his father’s attempts to conquer the city, he had learned what needed to be done.

Just north of the city, the Turks built a fortress on the European side of the Bosphorus Strait, which is effectively a river, with wooded hills on both sides, leading to the Black Sea. There was an ancient fortress on the Anatolian side, which they seized and rebuilt. Its new twin on the European side went up in record time, less than six months. They called it the Rumeli fortress, since Rum still signified Europe to them. The two fortresses, the Anadolu and the Rumeli, effectively cut the neck of the Strait. The official name of the new fortress, in fact, was the Throat-Cutter.

The fortresses were both armed with the largest cannons Mehmet II could buy. Any ship that did not stop when commanded was shot and sunk. A Venetian ship took the dare soon after the fortress was in operation, and yep, it was sunk. Surviving sailors were beheaded, and the captain’s body set up as a warning scarecrow. With the twin fortresses and cannons, the Turks controlled the Black Sea and could put Constantinople in an effective chokehold.

With the fortresses complete, Mehmet II’s siege of Constantinople began in 1452. The Byzantine Emperor had repaired his formidable walls as well as he could, and even in their decayed state they were able to turn back the Turkish army. Then a rogue Hungarian armorer showed up.

Orban first offered the Emperor that he could cast the largest cannon known to the world. He named his fee and explained how much metal it would require. But the city of Constantinople could no longer afford the best defenses. The Emperor turned him away, probably not realizing that Orban’s loyalties were not strong enough to send him back to serve his European homeland. Instead, Orban crossed over to the Turks.

The bombard technology of the time had been developed in Germany’s iron-working regions. It involved welding long iron bars to iron rings, with the goal of creating one solid round barrel of iron. When it didn’t work, the explosion inside burst the barrel, killing everyone nearby. They could also cast bronze, probably using lost-wax technique also used for bells. Bronze was not as strong, though.

We no longer have the bombard Orban made for Mehmet, but there are surviving bombards from the same period. They are quite different, as you’d expect in a time when each one was its own invention and no standard had emerged. They have names, like ships: Pumhart von Steyr is short and broad, Dulle Griet looks a bit like a spyglass, and the cast-bronze Faule Gret is even shorter and broader. But we do still have an Ottoman bombard made not long after Orban’s work, and based on it. The Dardanelles Gun looks like a very long set of barrels.

Orban’s bombard was manufactured at Edirne, the Ottoman capital on the European side, and transported by a massive oxen train to its position in the siege. It shot large stones at the ancient walls; it could shoot really large stones harder and faster, from out of reach of any defenders’ crossbow bolts. Once it began to bombard the walls, it was only a matter of time.

A threat to the young Ottoman state even more serious than Timur’s invasion came in the form of Bedreddin, a Turkish sheikh, judge, and mystic. It was important to the Ottomans to create a unified state by enforcing Sunni Islam as the official religion, even in areas that had traditionally been Christian. Those places could remain Christian, of course, by paying the jizya tribute-tax and sending boys to the devşirme levy for the Janissaries. But it mattered a lot to their strategy and identity that all religions were not equal. We know that this strategy prevailed, and we’ve seen the Middle East as Ottoman strategy shaped it. It’s worth looking at the philosophy that almost derailed it.

Bedreddin was born near Edirne, around the time when the Ottomans began to rule on both sides of the Aegean Sea. His father was the Turkish ghazi, or independent military commander, while his mother was the Greek daughter of the local Byzantine fort commander. Bedreddin’s formative years were the same years when the Ottomans really began to be a small Empire, not just another beylik. It’s interesting that he was equal parts Turkish Muslim and European/Greek, though his own religion was always officially Islam. It clearly shaped his view of the world, which was much less black and white than most of the Muslims he was around.

Bedreddin served as a sort of chaplain/judge, a marching Qadi, to an Ottoman contingent, then studied theology formally in Konya—-you’ll recall that Konya was Rumi’s hometown and had become the center of “whirling dervish” practice. Doubtless, Bedreddin picked up a strongly mystical tone in Konya. After some years of study in Cairo, he went east to Iran, to an area ruled by Timur. In Ardabil, he learned a type of Sufi mysticism and probably unlearned some Ottoman loyalty.

Bedreddin seems to have reconnected with Ottoman politics through one of Bayezid’s warring sons, Musa, the one who was carried off as a prisoner by Timur. Bedreddin may have been his personal sheikh during the years Musa was at times a ruling co-Sultan of southern Turkey, and at other times, a guerrilla war leader. The other guerrillas in the network were ghazis, like Bedreddin’s father, so he was well suited to fit in. As the Qadi, he had some power to distribute land to these ghazi soldiers. Musa’s strategy may have been to gain support of the ghazi network by undoing some of the centralization installed by his father. Bedreddin was a key figure in his efforts.

Bedreddin’s rogue theology had developed in Ardabil to where he was a universalist; he believed that Allah was manifest in nature and all religions could save. A believer just needed to clear away all obstacles to becoming one with God. Social hierarchy and land-based wealth were among the obstacles; Bedreddin was a radical egalitarian and land redistributionist.

When Sultan Mehmet defeated his brother Musa in 1413, Bedreddin was exiled and all of his land gifts were undone. For three years, he lived at the margins of the Ottoman Empire, taught his disciples, and gathered strength within the ghazi independent-military network. In 1416, he and his disciples began preaching a radical doctrine of communal land ownership and equality of Muslims and Christians. Turkish nomads, Christian peasants, dispossessed ghazis, and interested madrasa students joined him.

Bedreddin himself was in Bulgaria, in the region of Dobruja, when the revolt began. His two top disciples were in Turkish cities. They went beyond preaching, to start coordinated attacks on Ottoman government buildings. Sultan Mehmet and his leading pashas had to act quickly. One Turkish revolt was ended fairly easily, with Bedreddin’s disciple killed, but the other put up a lot of resistance. To end Bedreddin’s revolt, the Ottomans had to choose a policy of merciless slaughter. Thousands of peasants and nomads died with Bedreddin and his disciples. In the underground, however, Bedreddin’s ideas were kept alive in Dobruja until at least the 1500s.

After that, the Ottoman strategy of strict Sunni Islam with suppression of dissent had been proven necessary. Mehmet and his successors made no apology about keeping non-Muslims in subjection, and probably the devşirme policy, which allowed officials to track non-Muslim children while removing the strongest ones, became more acceptable. The Ottomans developed the old Arabic idea of the dhimmi, the conquered person living under Muslim protection, into a full legal system. Non-Muslim religious sects declined under Ottoman rule, of course.

The Ottoman Empire was growing east and south of Constantinople. It pushed against other Turkish beyliks, absorbing land as they were conquered. Orhan, son of Osman, defeated the Karası beylik and his son Murad married one of the captured widows. Her name was Gülçiçek, which means Rose Flower, though she had been born a Greek-speaking Maria. She bore him two sons, and although he had other wives, her son Bayezid became Murad’s heir. During the reigns of Murad and Bayezid, the Ottomans began a key practice that characterized the Empire for several centuries: a slave army with a few differences.

Murad’s reign began in 1362 with a bang: he crossed into Europe, where his father had taken the Gallipoli Peninsula south of Constantinople. He began campaigns against Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Greeks and Hungarians. His first big win was the capture of Adrianople, the city that now sits on the border of modern Turkey and Bulgaria. He renamed it Edirne, which probably to his Turkish ear sounded just like “Adrian.” It became his European capital.

Murad’s army grew as it captured soldiers to use as slaves and incorporated other Turkish armies. He directly held much of modern Bulgaria and Serbia, while some princes chose to pay him tribute to remain nominally independent. The Greek Emperor of Constantinople (a sad shadow of its former self, and now gutted by the plague) also paid him tribute to stay away.

Using his traditional one-fifth portion of captured men in Bulgaria and Serbia, Murad commissioned a new military corps; “New Soldier” in Old Turkish was Yeni Çeri. When the term became important to Europeans, they transliterated it in Latin letters as “Janissaries.” The Janissaries were to be the Sultan’s Mamluks, loyal only to him; they were known as “servants of the door” (kapıkulları). (The door or gate was the arch where the Sultan’s pronouncements were announced, which came to stand for the whole government. In later times, the Ottoman Empire is often referred to as “the Porte,” which was that symbolic gate.) They were not working for him voluntarily, they were actually slaves. But the Janissaries were to have high status: they were paid salaries. He began with 500 or 1000 as his personal guard.

Murad’s last battle came in Kosovo, where a band of Serbian knights pushed and slashed their way straight to his tent. Some number of them descended on him with sword and knife. One knight, Miloš Obilić, later got the credit. Murad’s heart was buried at the battlefield where he fell, with a tomb shrine raised around it, while his bones went back to Bursa. Bayezid, his son, was on hand to take over and so there was a seamless transfer of power.

During Bayezid’s years, the Janissary Corps grew to several thousand. They were distinctly different from other soldiers; for one thing, they were required to shave all beards. Beards were a sign of devout Islam, so these Christians had to look different. I don’t want to suggest that they remained practicing Christians; most or all of them converted to Islam. But their origin among Christians was the underpinning of the justification for enslaving them in the first place, so they were kept in a special bracket. They also wore metal helmets that were shaped like turbans, with ring-mail shirts under a red coat called the dolama. Their chief weapon was the bow, but with short arrows (crossbow darts were even shorter) and devices to help guide accuracy.

Bayezid seems to have started a new method to recruit Janissaries. Where Murad had captured children in Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania after battles, Bayezid now ruled those same lands. No battles. So he imposed a tax on Christians: the devşirme, the tax on children. Historians estimate that about one in 40 households had a child taken for the corps, several thousand per year. Recruiters preferred simple peasant boys, not street-smart city kids. They took them anywhere between age 8 and age 20, but in earlier years, the children were younger because bow training was much harder than later gun use.

The children were divided into two groups by aptitude. The elite ones began a course of study attached to the Palace, while the common ones were fostered in Turkish farm families to learn the language and culture. The common ones were trained in crafts and general military discipline; they were the infantry. The elite ones, of course, became the officers and could rise very high in government. They were educated in Turkish, Persian and Arabic literature; archery, wrestling and horseback combat; and even music. The best of their class became Palace officials, while the average students were cavalry officers, still elite among the Corps.

At first, the devşirme was levied only in the Balkans, mostly on Bulgarians, Serbs, Armenians and Albanians. Greeks tended to live in cities, so their kids were less often taken. Some places surrendered to the Ottomans with explicit exemptions in their terms, so the devşirme did not take place in Constantinople or Rhodes. Later, the levy extended eastward, too. With that said, apparently the Muslim religious establishment didn’t approve of the child-taking method of raising an army. Naturally, the Eastern Orthodox clergy were very much against it. But it’s surprising that there was opposition from within Islam. I can think of three reasons; the first is the most optimistic: that there was an emerging discomfort with slavery itself. The other two reasons would be that a minority sect of dervishes acted as chaplains to the Janissaries, which gave them more power; and that officials sometimes levied more children than their quotas actually required so that they could ransom them back to their families, which was certainly a pretty bad sort of corruption.

There’s an odd quirk in the Janissary nomenclature, stemming from an early pragmatic plan for how the Palace would feed their new soldiers. The Corps was known as the Ocak (ojak), which means “oven” in Turkish, while its commanding officers were the Soup Masters. Units had brass cooking pots that were displayed in parades, and some Janissaries had wooden spoons on their hats as decoration.

In 1402, the existing Janissaries were killed defending the town of Ankara against the new Mongol invasion. The devşirme child-tax was suspended as the Ottoman kingdom went into defensive confusion. When it picked up again later, the Janissaries grew larger than ever, and from the early 1400s they became masters of artillery and gunpowder. The devşirme system ran until the 1600s, but as the Janissary Ocak turned into a really enviable career path, Muslims were clamoring to have their sons admitted on a voluntary basis. Even Christian families were grooming sons to be chosen by the devşirme officers. So once again, the professional “slave” army turned into a governing class, just as it had in Cairo.