X
Before the end of the year 1372, it was recognized that the Osmanlis had come into the Balkans to stay. The conquest of Macedonia east of the Vardar, following so closely upon the subjugation of southern Bulgaria and the completion of the Thracian conquest, gave to Murad a preponderant position in the Balkan peninsula. The Byzantine emperor and the Bulgarian and Serbian princes were his tributaries. Wallachia, Bosnia, Albania, Epirus, Thessaly, Attica and the Peloponnesus were now on the confines of the Ottoman Empire, and menaced by Ottoman invasion.
In Europe, Murad was credited with having the intention of invading Hungary. It was reported that he had made an alliance with the Tartars of Russia to attack Hungary. The Tartars were to cross the Carpathians by way of Moldavia into Transylvania, while Murad was to work his way up the valley of the Danube.[344] Murad may have dreamed of such a project, just as he had thought of making a supreme effort to enter Constantinople after his first Thracian campaign. But, if he did, he was deterred by the same well-grounded fear of moving too fast. Ten years before he had refrained from committing a fatal error. He would continue to make haste slowly. The early Osmanlis were not raiders. They were empire-builders. They succeeded because they never forgot that their greatest problem was that of assimilation. When they extended their conquests beyond the area of possible assimilation, the period of decay automatically commenced.
The decade following the Macedonian campaign of 1371-2 was spent in ottomanizing southern Bulgaria and eastern Macedonia, in completing the assimilation of Thrace, in reorganizing the army, and in a rearrangement of the system of distributing the timarets or military fiefs. Royal domains were created, and lands were set aside for the support of the mosques and other religious institutions in the form of inalienable endowments (vakufs).
The only move of Murad against the Hungarians was to send five thousand archers, upon the request of the Senate, to help the Venetians in their war against Louis.[345]
After the Macedonian campaign, Murad turned his attention once more to Byzantium. John, when he returned from his unsuccessful trip to Rome, placated Murad by sending his third son, Theodore, to serve in the Ottoman army. In 1373, John, passing over Andronicus, raised Manuel to the imperial purple as co-emperor. The disloyalty of his eldest son in the question of the emperor’s ransom from his Venetian creditors made it natural that John should have selected Manuel to rule with him.
John was not wrong in his estimate of the character of Andronicus. The disappointed prince entered into a conspiracy with Saoudji, son of Murad, who had been entrusted with the command of the Thracian army while his father was occupied in Anatolia. John and Manuel, according to some accounts, were also in the field with Murad. So the moment was propitious. The two sons raised the standard of revolt against their fathers.[346] Murad, who hated his own son and feared him, crossed immediately into Thrace. The army which was supporting the cause of the young princes abandoned them, and the rebels fled to shut themselves up in Demotika.[347]
Faced with starvation, the inhabitants of Demotika opened the gates of their city to Murad. He exacted a most atrocious vengeance. The garrison were bound hand and foot and thrown into the river. The young Osmanlis and Greeks who had been led astray by the princes, were put to death. Wherever possible Murad compelled fathers to act as executioners of their sons. He set the example by tearing out Saoudji’s eyes, and then cutting off his head.[348]
It has been generally written that Murad intended that the same punishment should be meted out to Andronicus. For the sake of appearances, he did order John Palaeologos to have his son’s eyes put out. But there was no order for execution. John Palaeologos consented to the blinding of Andronicus and of his grandson and namesake, who was only five years old.[349] The operation was not successfully performed. Both Andronicus and his son, even if temporarily blinded, recovered their eyesight. Some have explained this by stating that they were healed by a Genoese physician.[350] There is recorded a beautiful story that Andronicus owed the restoration of his sight to the empress, his mother, who visited him daily in the tower of Anemas and was prodigal in her efforts to heal him. He was in despair for some months, until one day he saw a lizard climbing on a wall.[351]
If Murad had really desired the death or total blindness of Andronicus, he could easily have secured this result. While punishing his own son, however, he saw to it that Andronicus escaped the consequences of the same crime. Here we have a revelation of the far-sightedness and cold-bloodedness of Murad. He killed his own son, because he feared his rivalry. He spared the son of John Palaeologos in order to perpetuate the rivalry between the emperor and his son. To have killed or incapacitated Andronicus would have been from his view-point an act of folly rather than of justice; for Andronicus, brilliant, adventurous, magnetic, was at the same time a worthy exemplar of the name he bore, a name that stood for the acme of unscrupulous conduct and contempt for ties of blood. Murad had only to wait, and history would repeat itself. Internal dissensions in the family of the Palaeologi had made the fortunes of Orkhan. Murad had no intention of getting rid of Andronicus, in whom he saw the means of still further enmeshing the Byzantine emperors.[352]
The Byzantine historians record for the year 1374 another event, which illustrates the power of Murad over John Palaeologos. Manuel, who had resumed the government of Salonika, tried to induce the inhabitants of Serres to recover their liberty by massacring the Ottoman garrison and the Ottoman colonists. Serres, in spite of its prominent place in recent Serbian history, was regarded by the Byzantines (as it still is by the Greeks of to-day) as a city of their compatriots. We have no means of establishing the grounds upon which Manuel believed it possible to restore the Byzantine authority in the country between the Struma and the Vardar. The sequel indicates that it was a wild and unfounded hope of a desperate man, and shows how thoroughly in two years the Osmanlis had become masters of the situation in Macedonia.
Murad, warned in time of the project, sent Khaïreddin pasha with a large army to Serres. The Greeks implicated in the plot were promptly executed, and Khaïreddin moved against Salonika. At the approach of the army, Manuel fled by sea to Constantinople. John Palaeologos was so frightened that he did not dare to receive in the imperial city the beloved son whom he had raised to the dignity of co-emperorship. Manuel then went to Lesbos, whose Genoese lord was his uncle by marriage. But the fear of Murad had reached the Aegaean Sea. The fugitive was turned away. Staking all upon the issue, Manuel went to Brusa and threw himself at Murad’s feet. The time was not yet ripe to destroy the Palaeologi. Murad pardoned Manuel, and sent him back to Constantinople. It was only after Manuel had presented a letter from Murad, confirming the fact that forgiveness had been granted, that the emperor of Byzantium dared to receive his son and heir within the walls of Constantinople.[353]
Pressed by the Venetians, John made in 1375 the mistake of giving them, in exchange for three thousand ducats and the jewels which had been pledged for his debts after the visit to Rome, the island of Tenedos.[354] The strategic importance of Tenedos was so vital that the Genoese could not allow this island to fall into the hands of their rivals. It is an axiom as old as history that who holds Tenedos controls the entrance and exit to the Dardanelles. Until the Black Sea dries up and the wheat-fields of Russia fail to yield, there will be a ‘question of the Straits’.
The news of this grant to Venice meant but one thing to the Genoese. There was feverish activity at Genoa. A fleet was manned, ostensibly for the purpose of maintaining the Levant colonies against the Turks.[355] Pope Gregory XI allowed the archbishop of Genoa to raise enormous sums by questionable means for equipping and increasing the fleet.[356] Instead of using this fleet to free the Aegaean and the Black Sea from the ever-increasing Turkish pirates, or to attack the Osmanlis, the Genoese admiral sailed to Constantinople. Aided by the Genoese of Galata and by Bayezid, Andronicus had escaped from the tower of Anemas. When the fleet arrived from Genoa, he gave to its admiral a golden bull, awarding Tenedos to Genoa.[357] To Murad he offered his sister in exchange for help.[358] The old story was repeated. After a month’s siege, Andronicus, by the aid of his Ottoman and Genoese supporters, entered Constantinople. His father and his two brothers, Manuel and Theodore, were imprisoned in the Tower of Anemas, where he and his son had been shut up for two years.[359] The foresight of Murad in regard to Andronicus was justified.
While Andronicus was besieging Constantinople, John V managed to send word to the inhabitants of Tenedos to resist the Genoese and give themselves to the Venetians. If this were not possible, they were to abandon the island to the Turks rather than allow the Genoese to occupy it.[360]
After a year’s imprisonment, the emperor, through the wife of his jailer, succeeded in perfecting with Venetians residing in Constantinople a plan of escape. But its execution was deferred when John discovered that his sons, who were confined to separate rooms, could not be included in the rescue. Later, the efforts of the Venetians were renewed upon the solemn promise that Tenedos should revert to Venice. The plot was discovered. The Venetians, availing themselves of the lucky chance that a Venetian fleet had just arrived in the Golden Horn from the Black Sea, fled from Constantinople, abandoning John Palaeologos to his fate.[361] Andronicus IV was solemnly crowned in St. Sophia sole emperor of Byzantium.
After two more years of imprisonment,[362] John and his sons succeeded in escaping in June 1379. They got across the Bosphorus, and took refuge with Bayezid, who was again watching the course of events at Scutari. Murad, still playing the game of pitting father against son, drove a hard bargain. Andronicus must be pardoned once more, and given the government of several cities, probably including Salonika.[363] John and Manuel, as a price for freedom and restoration to the imperial throne, agreed to pay an annual tribute of thirty thousand pieces of gold, furnish a contingent of twelve thousand soldiers to the Ottoman army, and surrender to the Osmanlis Philadelphia, the last Byzantine possession in Asia.[364] When the Philadelphians refused to assent to this shameful transaction, John and Manuel joined the Ottoman army and fought against their last Christian subjects in Asia to force upon them the Moslem yoke.[365]
Thus did Murad hold to the lips of John Palaeologos the cup of humiliation, nay, more, of degradation, until he drained the last bitter dregs. We do not need to pass judgement upon John and Manuel. It is sufficient to say that they drank and did not die!
The question of Tenedos brought Venice and Genoa into their most bitter conflict of the century. The Visconti of Milan were allied to the Venetians, while the Hungarians attacked them by land.[366] After initial successes, the great Venetian admiral Pisani was beaten decisively in 1379. The Genoese captured Chioggia, and held Venice at bay in her own lagoons. It was the timely arrival of Charles Zeno and the fleet from the Levant that saved the Adriatic republic.[367] In 1381, peace was made through the intermediary of Count Amadeo of Savoy, on condition that the Senate surrendered Tenedos to Amadeo, who guaranteed to demolish the fortress within two years. It was also a stipulation of the treaty of Turin that Andronicus IV be recognized as heir to John V.[368] Did the influence of Murad reach as far as the peace negotiations in the capital of far-off Savoy? The Count of Savoy fulfilled his promise. In 1383, the fortifications of Tenedos were rased, and the inhabitants of the island removed to Crete and Negropont.[369]
The war over Tenedos had kept open the Straits, but it helped Murad in an inestimable degree to tighten the grip of the Osmanlis upon Thrace and Macedonia. The Italian republics thought no more of driving the Osmanlis out of Europe. From now on until they themselves see their possessions wrested from them and their commerce in the Levant ruined by the successors of Murad, the Venetians and Genoese are suitors for favours at the door of the tent of the Moslem conqueror.