Herbert Adams Gibbons

“ A train of evils fell upon Macedonia and Thrace as a result of the assassination of Roger de Flor. Michael soon had reason to regret this ill-advised deed. Not only did the Catalans, in their first access of fury, avenge the death of their great leader and their comrades by unspeakable cruelties and by the destruction of every village which they came upon, not only did they defeat the young emperor in open battle and almost capture him as he fled from the field, but they invited over from Asia Minor into Macedonia all the Turks who could be induced to come. ”

“ None has yet arisen of his own people who has attempted to separate the small measure of truth from the mass of fiction that obscures the real man in the founder of the Ottoman Empire. He is represented by the same writers as a powerful prince and as a simple peasant; as the master of Asia Minor and as the village chieftain fighting for very existence with his neighbours a few miles away; as reading the Koran and as illiterate; as the cruel and imperious murderer of his uncle Dundar for opposing a plan of campaign in his council of war and as the merciful, clement conqueror ”

“ For thirty years Murad had guided the destinies of the Osmanlis with a political sagacity surpassed by no statesman of his age. It is only because we know so much more of Mohammed the Conqueror and of Soleiman the Magnificent that Murad has never received his proper place as the most remarkable and most successful statesman and warrior of the house of Osman. When we measure the difficulties which confronted him, the problems which he solved,{179} and the results of his reign, against the deeds of his more dazzling successors, we see how easily he stands with them, if not above them. ”

“ After the bloodthirst of Kossova had been satisfied and his father’s death avenged, Bayezid was eager to enter into friendly relations with Stephen Bulcovitz, son and heir of Lazar. He felt that the Serbians had learned their lesson, and that they would be more helpful to him as allies than as crushed and sullen foes. He needed their aid in the Anatolian campaign which he was contemplating, and they were essential to the safety of his European possessions as a buffer against the Hungarians, who he knew would take the opportunity of his absence in Asia to move down the Danube. ”

“ The chronicler of Boucicaut would have been astonished had he known that Bayezid considered the exploits of Boucicaut’s chevaliers and sailors of too little importance to notice. Bayezid cared only that the Italian republics did not come out openly against him, and lend to the crusaders the powerful and decisive aid which they could have given. The enterprise of Boucicaut demonstrated, however, the impotence of the Osmanlis on sea, and how easily a united effort of Christendom, or of Venice and Genoa alone, could have limited the activities of Bayezid to either Europe or Asia. ”

“ There seems to be no basis for the characterization of Orkhan which the early western historians handed down to posterity. He was neither vicious nor cruel nor deceitful. His three striking characteristics were those which mark all men who have accomplished a great work in history, oneness of purpose, inexhaustible energy, and an unlimited capacity for detail. He began life as a village lad of an obscure tribe. After a public career of sixty years he died, the brother-in-law of the emperor of Byzantium, the friend and ally of Genoa, and potentially master of Thrace. ”

“ The sources of information for the movements from the outside for the relief of the Balkan Christians, and for the religious and political quarrels of the Byzantines, are so numerous and so detailed that one is embarrassed by too much material. Many interesting facts cannot even be mentioned. But when we come to the beginning of the Ottoman conquest in Europe under Murad and Bayezid, we find ourselves in the midst of what an eminent Slavic historian has called ‘the most obscure and difficult period of South-Slavic history’. ”

“ The only result recorded by the Ottoman historians is that Alaeddin kissed Murad’s hands! Murad withdrew to Kutayia without annexing any portion of the Karamanian emirate, without booty, and without promise either of tribute or military contingents for the European wars. Had Murad actually accomplished more than merely holding his own in the battle of Konia, the campaign would not have ended so profitlessly. Granting the Ottoman victory, Murad’s conduct after the battle is inconsistent with his whole life and character. We are compelled to discard the story of a decisive victory. ”

“ The last great crusade had passed by Asia Minor to spend itself in a losing fight against the one remaining Moslem power.
As in other critical periods of history, then, an entirely new people, with an entirely new line of sovereigns, must work out its destiny in this abandoned country, or—to state what actually did happen—must come, with a strength and prestige gained in Europe, to subdue it and to possess it. ”

“ But the surrender of the fortresses in the valleys of the Ergene and the Maritza had destroyed the military prestige of the Byzantines, and foreshadowed the speedy subjugation of the whole country. The loss of the revenues of Thrace and of the great plain south of the main Balkan range reduced the imperial treasury to dependence upon the port duties and city taxes of Salonika and Constantinople. For ninety years the shadow of the empire remained. But whatever power, whatever influence was left to the successors of Constantine, it was rather in western Europe than in the Balkan peninsula. ”

“ One cannot follow the trail of unending persecution in the mute witness of unchurched communities from Monastir to the Black Sea through Macedonia and Eastern Rumelia, and to the Danube, through Bulgarian Serbia and trans-Rhodopian Moesia, without sympathizing with the Bulgarian aspirations of 1913, and without comprehending the wild rage{196} and hatred that drove an ordinarily clear-headed and impassive people into the second Balkan war. ”

“ When we consider how near he was at the very beginning of the struggle, and how weak and demoralized the Byzantines had become, we realize that we have to do with no impetuous invasion of an Asiatic race, sweeping before it and destroying an effete civilization. It is the birth of a new race that we are recording—a race formed by the fusion of elements already existing at the place of birth. The political unity of the Byzantine Empire had been destroyed by enemies from without and from within. ”

“ Orkhan had one rival whose goal was similar to his own. Stephen Dushan, kral of Serbia, was openly aspiring to the imperial throne. Byzantium had no more formidable enemy than this warrior king, who in twenty-five years led thirteen campaigns against the Greeks. [167] The memory of his ephemeral empire has been cherished by the Serbians to this day. In their folk-lore Stephen Dushan and his deeds are immortalized. The halo of romance still surrounds the man and his conquests. It is in vain that historical science has demonstrated the purely temporary character of Stephen’s conquests. ”

“ Calling the Osmanlis Turks, and regarding them as invaders upon the soil of Europe, is an historical error which has persisted so long that the Osmanlis themselves have fallen into it! They have always distinguished themselves from the Turks. This is proved by their own use of that word to describe a people as different from themselves as were the Greeks. ”

“ The actual number of janissaries under arms refutes the latter part of this criticism, when it is applied to any one of the Ottoman sovereigns of the period of conquest. As for putting arms into the hands of the conquered, we shall see that both Murad and Bayezid availed themselves of the services in war of their Christian subjects, led by their own princes. The tearing away of boys from their homes, and the loss of their Christian heritage, is a shock to humanitarian and religious sensibilities. But we must judge the Osmanlis of Murad and Bayezid by the Christians of their own century. ”

“ The expedition of 1392 demonstrated to Sigismund that Bayezid was a foe worthy of a European ruler, that he must be checked if Hungary were to be saved, and that the Hungarians could not again take the offensive against the Osmanlis without aid from western Europe. For the pretensions of Louis to the overlordship of the Balkan States, and the heartless propaganda of the Catholic faith, thinly disguising Louis’s inordinate ambitions, had turned the Balkan peoples against Hungary and ‘crusaders’ from the west. They chose rather to stand on the side of their Moslem enslavers. ”

“ Bayezid died a victim not ‘to his destiny’, as the Ottoman historians put it, but to his vices, and to his abandonment of the policy of his predecessors, that assimilation should keep pace with territorial aggrandizement. There never need have been an Angora. Timur had no inclination to invade the Ottoman dominions. Bayezid goaded him into it. Even if the test of an Angora had been necessary, Bayezid would have sustained it and weathered the Tartar storm, had he been the same man he was at Nicopolis. In facing a Tartar invasion, the advantage was all on Bayezid’s side. ”

“ Amadeo of Savoy, uncivilized, fanatical through ignorance, the fertile breeding-ground of fanaticism, true and unchanged descendant of the Fourth Crusaders, was a prophetic figure at Constantinople in 1366. He represented the only possible type of deliverer for Byzantium. But deliverance on his terms the Greeks would not accept. Death or Islam were preferable. And who can blame them? Two years before Amadeo’s expedition, the Greeks of Crete had risen in rebellion against their Venetian overlords because an attempt had been made to impose upon them the Latin faith and rites. ”

“ He was fighting for the possession of this country, for the wealth and the prestige that it would give him. He had no intention of destroying what he knew would be his to enjoy, nor did he desire to alienate the Serbian peasantry by unnecessary harshness. Here, as elsewhere, new Osmanlis rather than Ottoman subjects were the desiderata: they could be won only by kindness. Since the clemency of the Osmanlis in dealing with the vanquished after the battle is frankly recorded by the Serbians themselves, we cannot doubt that the wise and far-seeing provisions of the conqueror were carried out. ”

“ The conquest of Bulgaria up to the main Balkan range imposed itself upon Murad as a corollary to the Ottoman dominion in Thrace, and the undisturbed possession of Adrianople and Philippopolis. For the Bulgarians, through centuries of varying fortunes, had grown accustomed to fighting for the right to live in Thrace. Often had they been beaten back to the Balkans, and as often pressed forward again to the Ergene. To win and lose Adrianople and other Thracian cities was old history with them. They always came back. ”

“ One does not want to detract from the genius of the early Ottoman sovereigns and from the reputation for superb fighting ability so honestly won by the Ottoman armies. But it must not be forgotten that each separate race in the Balkans preferred the rule of the Osmanlis to that of their neighbours, and that the one point in which the Balkan races were of the same mind was that Ottoman domination was preferable to that of the Hungarians and the Italians. ”

“ From the character of Bayezid, one would infer that the humiliation of being shut up like a lion in a cage would have been less than that of being put into a harem litter like a woman, for whom the conqueror had contempt rather than fear. There is no mention of the iron cage in Schiltberger, Clavijo, and the Dominican Friar. But their silence signifies nothing. They are excellent witnesses for the battle of Angora itself, but knew little or nothing of what happened in Asia Minor after Angora. One might just as well argue from Schiltberger’s silence that Timur did not capture Smyrna! ”

“ The Serbians were faithful allies to the Osmanlis, and fought with them at Nicopolis and Angora. On his side, Bayezid kept the allegiance of the Serbians by giving them opportunities for winning booty in the raids against the Albanians, Dalmatians, and Hungarians, and by favouring the Orthodox Church. When we see how complacently and cheerfully the Serbians—except the poets—took upon themselves the Ottoman yoke, we must believe that Kossova was regarded as a terrible calamity only by the generations of after centuries, who found the Ottoman rule harder than it had been for their ancestors. ”

“ From the beginning of the fifteenth century on to the present day, we have a wealth of sources for the history of Asia Minor in the writings of European travellers, which are valuable not only for their geographical indications and their observations on the life of the people, but also for their testimony in corroborating or disproving the statements of Oriental historians, who are so often lacking in precision and verisimilitude. For the fourteenth century, however, reliable European sources are lacking. ”

“ The fall of Adrianople and of Philippopolis should have been a warning to Urban. He read in it, however, not a glorious opportunity to demonstrate the solidarity of Christendom by driving the Moslems out of Europe and rescuing fellow Christians from apostasy, slavery, and death, but an occasion to force the schismatic Greeks to return to the Roman communion. Of the popes of the fourteenth century, Urban had the greatest chance to prove himself a worthy champion of Christ and civilization. For it was during his reign that the Osmanlis began their conquests and their proselytizing in Europe. ”