Bayezid I

“ The right wing was under Stephen Lazarevitch, brother-in-law and faithful friend of Bayezid. In addition to Serbian horsemen, Stephen’s command contained the other European contingents, Moslem as well as Christian. [627] In the left wing were the troops of Anatolia, led by Soleiman Tchelebi, Bayezid’s eldest son. The emir himself was in the centre, surrounded by his janissaries and his three sons, Mustafa, Isa, and Musa. To Mohammed, whose reliability and judgement Bayezid esteemed second only to Soleiman’s among his sons, was entrusted the rear guard. [628]
Elephants were used on both sides. ”

“ Von Hammer and other historians, who have founded their narratives on his great work, write of Bayezid in terms of disparagement because, unlike other early Sultans of the Othman race, he did not signalize his reign by any great additions to his Empire. If success as a ruler is only to be measured by territorial expansion, Bayezid must take rank in history below the other nine Sultans who created the Ottoman Empire and raised it to its zenith. A great Empire, however, such as that which the Ottomans had already achieved, may be better served by peace than by war for further conquests. ”

“ As for Europe, Bayezid had advanced the border of his empire into Hungary; Constantinople, glittering with the last splendor of the Byzantines, was tottering; Venice and Genoa paid tribute for permission to use the trade routes into the Orient.
Bayezid glanced curiously at the group of Frankish slaves whose duty it was to run beside his horse. They were panting, and sweat streaked the sand that coated their blackened faces. Fragments of cloth were wrapped about their bleeding feet.
Five of the six captives bent their heads in the salaam that had been taught them. ”

“ Timur spent the rest of the winter in Ephesus. He destroyed the work of Bayezid in Asia Minor by restoring to the deposed emirs or their heirs the emirates of Karamania, Tekke, Menteshe, Sarukhan, Aïdin, Kastemuni, and Erzindjian. When he saw that the sons of Bayezid were ready to quarrel about the succession of their father, he began to treat with Isa, Musa and Mohammed, encouraging in each the hope of recognition as sole heir. To Soleiman he sent a diploma, investing him with the Ottoman possessions in Europe as Tartar vassal. ”

“ One reads in Froissart that Bayezid was ‘in Cairo in Babylonia [sic] with the sultan to get men’, that he left the sultan there and rallied his forces at Alexandria and Damascus, that ‘under the command and prayers of the khalif of Bagdad and Asia Minor’, whose mandate went forth ‘to Persia, to Media, and to Tarsus’, Bayezid received a ‘mass of Saracens and miscreants’, and that in his army were ‘people of Tartary, Persia, Media, Syria, Alexandria, and of many far-off countries of the miscreants’. ”

“ This was part of the general plan of Bayezid after Nicopolis. His successes in{231} Asia Minor had made possible, for the first time, a movement of an unmixed Turkish element from Anatolia into the Balkan peninsula. While these colonists were arriving in Argos, there was a similar immigration to Adrianople, Eski Zagora, Philippopolis, and Sofia. [566]
Bayezid is credited by the Ottoman chroniclers with the capture of the two great cities of Hellenism, Athens and Salonika. Nowhere else than in the Ottoman historians can one find a record of the acquisition of Athens in 1397 by the Osmanlis. ”

“ News has come to me that he advances with his power upon the Khabur.”
They nodded assent—sheikh, malik and caliph.
“When he comes to the Khabur,” went on Bayezid, “I will have a hunt declared. My troops will aid me in the pursuit of game. That will show the Tatar how much we esteem him.”
Some of the councilors looked more than a little startled. It was no light thing to hunt game in the presence of Tamerlane's army. And Bayezid had ordered the Mongol envoys slain, wantonly, as it seemed. ”

“ A swift death was better than months of running beside the horse or litter of a Turkish master.
“Shall a dog be given a sword?” growled the aged sheik, quenching Michael’s new hope. This time Bayezid glanced at his follower approvingly.
“Bring this man,” he ordered, “with the five caphars, his comrades, before my tent. Bring a sword, and”—he nodded thoughtfully—“the iron sleeve.”
⁠AT MENTION of this instrument of torture which broke the bones of a man’s arm as easily as glass, the slaves who understood Bayezid’s words shivered and stared at Michael. ”

“ Though frequently compelled to engage in defensive wars, Bayezid was of a peace-loving and unambitious disposition, and a few towns in the Morea were all the additions made to the empire while he was on the throne. It was during his reign, however, that the Ottoman fleet began to be formidable to Christendom, the desperate battle off Sapienza, won by Kemal Re is against the Venetians, being the first of the Turkish naval victories over the Mediterranean powers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Timur could not have left Angora uncaptured behind him, or have moved westward in pursuit of the Osmanlis without waiting to replenish his food supply. But Bayezid, eager and lacking in self-control, as men sometimes are from the presentiment of disaster rather than the confidence of success, decided upon an immediate battle. ”

“ One of Bayezid’s chief claims to greatness as a statesman is the way in which he handled Venice and Genoa. At any time during his reign, the Italian republics could have cut him off from Asia if he were in Europe, or from Europe if he were in Asia. Bayezid was master of most of the Balkan peninsula and of half of Anatolia; but he did not control the path from one portion of his empire to the other. Since he had come to the throne, Genoa had fallen under the influence of France. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the spring of 1396 he took arms for Hungary against the Turks and on the 28th of September was taken prisoner by the Sultan Bayezid I. at the bloody battle of Nicopolis, where he earned his surname of “the Fearless.” ”

“ Bayezid succeeded his father, Murad, at the age of thirty-four. He reigned as Sultan for only fourteen years, the last of which was spent in captivity. No one of the Othman race passed through such vicissitudes, with such a brilliant career of victory during nearly the whole of his reign, but ending with overwhelming and crushing defeat. He had all the courage and military capacity of his three predecessors. He excelled them greatly in cruelty and brutality. In his private life he descended to depths of sensuality and unmentionable and degrading vice which were unknown to them. ”

“ The intercession of Jean de Nevers had saved the more illustrious of the surviving French chevaliers. They were taken to Brusa. While not treated royally, they were allowed to hunt, and were given opportunities to see the grandeur of Bayezid. [550] But they were not kept together long. For some months, the heir to the Duchy of Burgundy was separated from his companions, and could talk with them only by the special permission of Bayezid. Some of them were sent to Mikhalitch, where Philippe d’Artois, grand marshal of France, died. ”

“ One of the two earliest extant Ottoman histories. Written in Persian for Bayezid II about 1500. There is no translation, and complete MSS. are rare. But one has access, not only to the facts recorded and opinions of Idris, but also to his wonderful imagery, for Seadeddin has copied him copiously and, in fact, embodied many literal translations of Idris in his ‘Crown of Histories’. ”

“ See above, p. 119. In oriental historians numbers are almost invariably exaggerated at least tenfold.
[632] Solak-zadé, p. 63. Sherefeddin and Arabshah bear witness to Bayezid’s personal courage.
[633] The Ottoman historians explain the capture of Bayezid by the fact that he was unhorsed. Some say that he was mounted on an inexperienced horse. A great deal was written about the battle of Angora at a much later date, but, as in describing the battles of Kossova and Nicopolis, I have limited myself to contemporary sources. ”

“ At the battle of Nicopolis (Sept. 28th, 1396) he was wounded and taken prisoner: when he had recovered the use of his feet, Sultan Bayezid I. (Ilderim) took him into his service as a runner (1396–1402) . ”

“ From Nicopolis to Plevna, Tchataldja and Gallipoli, the Osmanlis have always shown their fighting qualities best in a defensive action.
There was nothing the matter with Bayezid’s army. Like the empire he had been building, it was composed of all the Moslem and Christian elements of Asia Minor and the Balkan peninsula. With the exception of the Tartars, they were loyal to Bayezid, and had become accustomed to fighting together with a discipline and bravery fully equal to, if not superior to, that of Timur’s veteran warriors from central Asia. ”

“ Although several of the emirates that have been given above were ephemeral, and some of them duplicated practically the same territory at different periods in the fourteenth century, others, such as Aïdin, Kermian, Karamania, Sarukhan, and Tekke, were far more powerful in Asia Minor than Orkhan or than Murad. That Bayezid had not crushed the life out of the larger emirates is proved by the ease with which they were revived by Timur, and by their survival during the first half of the fifteenth century. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In his memoirs, Timur records that he tried first to bring Bayezid to reason. ‘I wrote to him a letter of which this is the substance: Praise to God, master of heaven and earth, who has submitted to my authority several of the seven climates and who has allowed the potentates and masters of the world to bend their neck under my yoke. God have mercy upon his humble servant, who knows the limits which are prescribed for him and who does not cross them by a single step. All the world knows your origin, and it is not fitting for a man of your extraction to advance the foot of pride ”

“ In Asia he annexed the remaining Turkish principalities, and pushed his conquests as far as CaBsarea and Sivas. The Christians made another great effort to free themselves from their Eastern foes : whilst Bayezid was absent in Asia, the king of Hungary led a powerful army, in the ranks of which were many knights of France and Germany, into the Ottoman domin ions and laid siege to Nicopolis. Bayezid sped to the rescue, and inflicted an overwhelming defeat on the Chris tians. ”

“ Bayezid consented; later on John Palaeologus offered an equivalent sum and, since he engaged to furnish an auxiliary force of 12,000 men into the bargain, Bayezid replaced him on the throne. By the aid of these auxiliaries the fort of Ala Shehr was captured (1392) , Manuel Palaeologus, son of the emperor, being allowed, in common with many other princes, the privilege of serving in the Turkish army, then the best organized and disciplined force extant. ”

“ He entered the Venetian service, and thence emigrated to Croatia, where he died. The second brother, Vlatko, assuming the title of Duke of St Sava re-united for a time the remains of the Duchy under his sole rule, relying now on Venetian, now on Neapolitan aid, but only secure as long as Mohammed II allowed him to linger on as a tributary of Turkey. In 1481 he ventured to invade Bosnia, but was driven back to seek shelter in his stronghold of Castelnuovo. Two years later Bayezid II annexed the Herzegovina, whose last reigning Duke died on the island of Arbe. ”

“ 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. ”