Upon the assassination of Murad at Cossovo-pol, his son Bajazed became sultan. He had already acquired, or acquired shortly after his accession, the nickname of Ilderim or the Thunderbolt.
He commenced his reign by strangling his elder brother, Jacoub. Ducas declares that he was an irreconcilable enemy of the Christian name and a passionate follower of Mahomet. During the reign of his predecessor, the struggle between the empire and the Turks had taken a theological character, and it is beyond reasonable doubt that religious animosity of a kind which had not shown itself among the first armies of the Turks had now diffused its baneful influence among the Ottoman armies. Under Bajazed, this fanaticism was intensified to such an extent that it led to cruelties of which it may be said that it is hardly possible to believe that even Mongol barbarity was ever greater than that exercised by the followers of the successor of Murad against Christians.
The commencement of his reign was marked by a series of rapid movements which were crowned with success. He stands out in Turkish history as the maker of swift marches and as the striker of sudden and effective blows. It was on this account that he received the name of ‘Ilderim.’ He forced Stephen of Serbia, the son of Lazarus (whom he had caused to be hewn in pieces upon the assassination of Murad), to become his vassal and to give him his sister in marriage. Bulgaria, Wallachia, Albania, and Macedonia with Salonica as its capital acknowledged his rule. His fleet plundered the islands of the Archipelago and burnt the town of Chios.[113]
Reign of Manuel.
The last message the emperor John had received before his death, in 1391, from Murad was that unless he destroyed the work he had executed in repairing the towers of the Golden Gate, he would put out the eyes of his son Manuel, who was then at Brousa. Happily, his threat came to naught. On learning of the death of his father, Manuel, as we have seen, escaped to the capital. Thereupon Bajazed, upon the rejection of his impossible demands, commenced a series of attacks upon the empire.
Bajazed carried war into every part of the Balkan peninsula. Durazzo was threatened by a Turkish army, and the Venetian senate was compelled to send aid to the relief of its signor. His armies employed themselves in
Thrace in raiding cattle and in capturing the Christian inhabitants, thousands of whom were either killed or sold into slavery. Tirnovo was taken, and Shishman, the king of End of Bulgarian kingdom. Bulgaria, made prisoner in 1393. With his death, in the same year, the kingdom of Bulgaria came to an end. Ali Pasha, the grand vizier of Bajazed, blockaded Manuel in Constantinople, and urged the citizens to dethrone him and declare for John, the son of Andronicus, the elder son of the late emperor John. But after the Turks had continued near the capital for upwards of a year, Manuel attacked and defeated both them and his nephew John.
The greater part of the Morea was still under the rule of the empire. Bajazed organised a great expedition of fifty thousand men for its conquest. He captured Argos, plundered the country nearly as far as Coronea and Methone, in the Morea, and exterminated or brought away thirty thousand captives.
In consequence of the success of these various expeditions, the pope and the other princes of the West became thoroughly alive to the necessity of putting forward all their strength to check the Thunderbolt’s progress. Their hopes centred in the leadership of Sigismund, king of Hungary and brother of the emperor in the West. The Venetian senate decided to treat with him for an alliance. The pope and the chief of the Holy Roman Empire did their best to engage the Christian powers to place themselves under his leadership. In 1393, Sigismund had beaten the Turks at Little Nicopolis, and hope rose high of greater successes. In the spring of 1396, the duke of Burgundy, at the head of a thousand knights and nine thousand soldiers—French, English, and Italians—arrived in Hungary and joined his forces. German knights also came in considerable numbers. The Christian armies defeated the Turks in Hungary, and gained victory in several engagements. The emperor Manuel was secretly preparing to join them. Then the allies prepared to strike a decisive blow. They gathered on the banks of the Danube an army of at least fifty-two thousand—and possibly a hundred thousand—men, and encamped Battle of Nicopolis 1396. at Nicopolis. The élite of several nations were present, but those of the highest rank were the French knights. When they heard of the approach of the enemy, they refused to listen to the prudent counsels of the Hungarians and, with the contempt which so often characterised the Western knights for the Turkish foe, they joined battle confident of success.