Murad, the eldest son and successor of Mahomet, who became sultan in 1420, proposed a renewal of the alliance with Manuel. The latter would probably have consented. He was overruled, however, by the senate, which was in favour of a policy of war and decided that John should be associated with his father. A demand was made to Murad to send his two younger brothers to Constantinople, and the grand vizier returned the answer which might have been expected, that the education of two Mussulmans could not be entrusted to the enemies of their faith—believers to be educated by infidels.[100] War followed, and the Greeks supported a pretender to the Turkish throne, who was soon defeated and hanged by Murad.
Siege of Constantinople by Murad, 1422.
Thereupon, in 1422, siege was laid to Constantinople. The walls had largely fallen out of repair and the three thousand men who were sent as a first detachment sat down before it in hope of an easy capture. A few days later Murad himself appeared, bringing with him in chains the Greek ambassadors who had been sent to treat of peace. A large army of two hundred thousand men, together with a great crowd of bashi-bazouks, encamped before the landward walls and built an earthwork for their protection from the Golden Gate to the Xyloporta at the end of the walls on the Golden Horn. Among them, or arriving shortly afterwards, was a certain Mersaite, a Madhi, a half-mad fanatic at the head of five hundred dervishes. He claimed to be of the blood of Mahomet and to possess prophetic powers. He foretold that the capture of the city would happen when he gave the signal, for which all were to be ready. The sultan had sat down before the walls in the middle of June, but his primitive bombs, his wooden towers, and his attempts to undermine the walls were of no avail. Mersaite prophesied a capture on August 24. On that day the defenders of the foss were rained upon with showers of arrows and a general assault was made, but the two Theodosian walls, which were defended by crowds of citizens, were far too strong to be captured by the simple fanatical onslaught of dervishes. The Greeks fought valiantly, the young Emperor John being at their head and on horseback, in the peribolos outside the Romanus Military Gate, formerly knowm as the Pempton. Upon the failure of the attack by the dervishes, Murad suddenly raised the siege and the Greeks pursued the retreating army and captured some of their rude guns.[101] The immediate cause of the raising of the siege of Constantinople is variously stated. Manuel had sent aid to the adherents of Mustafa, the younger brother of Murad, aged only six years, and had thus strengthened the revolt which had been raised in his favour in Asia Minor. It was of more importance to Murad to put an end to this Turkish rising than to persist in his attempt to capture the city.[102]
Death of Manuel, 1425.
In 1425 Manuel, whom Ducas describes not incorrectly as a wise and moderate prince, died, after a reign of thirty-four years.
John, 1425–1448.
John, sometimes called the Fifth and sometimes the Seventh of that name, now became sole emperor, and reigned from 1425 to 1448. The two features of his reign which make all incidents in it that are not connected with them of comparative insignificance, are, first, the steady almost unchecked progress of the Turks in south-eastern Europe and in Asia Minor: the encroachment of an overwhelming flood, now apparently receding in one direction, but again sweeping over every obstacle in another, and in reality always steadily advancing and submerging all the Christian populations in the Balkan peninsula: and, second, the efforts of the emperor and those about him to save the remnant of the empire by obtaining the help of Europe.
John’s reign was spent in one continuous effort to obtain assistance from the West to save the city and to check the progress of the Turks. Like his predecessors, he addressed himself to successive popes. Perhaps nothing brings more vividly before the reader of European history the power of the occupants of the pontifical chair than the fact that it was taken for granted that from the pope, and the pope alone, that Western aid could be obtained. We have seen that former emperors had looked to the kings of France and England and to other princes, but their aid was sought only on the advice and with the support of Rome. In justice also it must be admitted that no princes recognised so completely as did a long series of popes the expediency and duty of defending Constantinople as the first outwork of the defences of Europe against the forces of Asia, and of aiding its emperors in their efforts to check the Turkish invasion. They were the prime ministers of Western Europe and almost the only persons who regarded the Eastern question as statesmen.
Unfortunately, while the popes saw the necessity of preventing the progress of the barbarians, they attached conditions to their offers of help which made them unacceptable and which indeed were impossible: namely, that the Greeks should accept the Union of the Churches, with which Union was associated the supremacy of the pope.
A succession of pontiffs during the two hundred years preceding the Moslem conquest of the city worked for Union with marvellous persistency. The same passionate desire for reunion is not less manifest now in the occupant of the chair of St. Peter; but modern efforts are made with this essential difference, that while in the period which concerns us it was believed that reunion could be imposed, every one now recognises that if it is to be brought about, it must be by voluntary and full consent.