Bajazed, as soon as he had learned the presence of the combined Christian armies, marched through Philippopolis, crossed the Balkans, made for the Danube, and then waited for attack. In the battle which ensued (1396), Europe received its first lesson on the prowess of the Turks, and especially of the Janissaries. The Christian army, with rash daring, broke through the line of its enemies, cut down all who resisted them, and rushed on irresistible to the very rearguard of the Turks, many of whom either retreated or sought refuge in flight. When the French knights saw that the Turks ran, they followed, and filled the battlefield with dead and dying. But they made the old military blunder, and it led to the same old result. The archers, who always constituted the most effective Turkish arm, employed the stratagem of running away in order to throw their pursuers into disorder. Then they turned and made a stand. As they did so, the Janissaries, ‘Christians of origin, from many Christian nations,’ as Ducas bewails, came out of the place where they had been concealed, surprised and cut to pieces Frenchmen, Italians, and Hungarians. The pursuers were soon the pursued. The Turks chased them to the Danube, into which many of the fugitives threw themselves. The defeat was complete. Sigismund saved himself in a small boat, with which he crossed the river, and found his way, after long wandering, to Constantinople. The duke of Burgundy and twenty-four noblemen who were captured were sent to Brousa to be held for ransom. The remaining Burgundians, to the number of three hundred, who escaped massacre, and refused to save their lives by abjuring Christianity, had their throats cut by order of the sultan.[114]
The battle at Nicopolis gave back to Bajazed almost at once all that the allies had been able to take from him. The defeat of Sigismund, with his band of French, German, and Italian knights, sent dismay to their countrymen and the princes of the West.
In the same year, Bajazed gained successes over the Moslem prince of Caramania and a Turkish pretender at Sinope, rebels who had been induced to rise in the hope that they might take advantage of the attack of Sigismund and his allies.
The sultan’s great object, however, was to complete his triumphs by the capture of Constantinople. His grand vizier had, in 1396, while blockading the city, urged the inhabitants to declare for the young Prince John, who was the Turkish protégé. On refusal, Bajazed sat down to besiege the city, and only abandoned the idea of an assault when it was pointed out that to do so would make enemies of all the Christian powers.
In 1396, apparently immediately after the battle of Nicopolis, and as an essential step towards the capture of the city, he built on the Bosporus the castle still remaining at Anatolia-Hissar, about six miles from the city. It served at once, and continued to serve until 1453, as a useful base of operations. After having completed it, says Chalcondylas, he went to besiege Byzance, and summoned Manuel to surrender the city.[115] The emperor, who had just welcomed six hundred French knights, sent by Charles the Sixth of France, did not deign to reply. Two years later, in 1398, in order to avoid an attack by the Turks, who were drawing near the capital with an army numbering ten thousand, nominally to support John, Manuel consented, as we have seen, to share the throne with his nephew, and thereupon went to Western Europe to endeavour to secure help.
The aid sent to Sigismund from the West and that now sent to the Bosporus under Boucicaut show that many statesmen had awakened to the need of checking Turkish progress. The empire was able for a while to hold its own against the attacks made by the sultan.
Bajazed, whose life was alternately one of great activity in warfare and of indescribable debauchery in the intervals between his campaigns, had kept the capital under terror of sieges during six weary years. In 1402, he summoned John to surrender the city, and swore by God and the Prophet that if he refused he would not leave in it a soul alive. John gave a refusal. Chateaumorand, the lieutenant of Boucicaut, who, as we have seen, had gone west to endeavour to obtain aid, took charge of the defence, and waited for an attack.
At this time, remarks Ducas, the empire was circumscribed by the walls of Constantinople, for even Silivria was in the hands of the Turks.[116] Bajazed had gained a firm hold of Gallipoli and thus commanded the Dardanelles. The long tradition of the Roman empire in the East, save for the capture of the city itself, seemed on the eve of coming to an end. No soldier of conspicuous ability had been produced by the empire for upwards of half a century: none who was capable of inflicting a sufficient defeat, or series of defeats, on the Turks to break or seriously check their power. The empire had fought on for three generations against an ever increasing number of Turks, but without confidence and almost without hope. It was now lacking in sufficiency of men and money. The often promised aid from the West had so far proved of little avail. The armies defeated by the empire, either alone or aided by Italians, were renewed by the constant stream of immigrants from Asia. The power of Serbia had been almost destroyed. Bulgaria had perished. The two states had been alternately at the mercy of hordes of infidels from the north or those under the Turkish sultan. From Dalmatia to the Morea the enemy was triumphant. The men of Macedonia had everywhere fallen before Bajazed’s armies. Constantinople was between the hammer and anvil: Asia Minor, on the one side, was nearly all under Turkish rule; the European part of the empire, on the other, contained as many Turks as there were in Asia Minor itself. The insolent tyrant passed in safety between his two capitals—one at Brousa, the other at Adrianople—and repeated his proud boasts of what he would do beyond the limits of the empire. It seemed as if, with his overwhelming force, he had only to succeed once more in a task which, in comparison with what he and his predecessors had done, was easy, and his success would be complete. He would occupy the throne of Constantine, would achieve that which had been the desire of the Arab followers of Mahomet, and for which they had sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives, and would win for himself and his followers the reward of heaven promised to those who should take part in the capture of New Rome. The road to the Elder Rome would be open, and he would yet feed his horse on the altar of St. Peter.
We have seen what was the insolent message he sent in his arrogance, in 1402, to John. The answer given would have completed a dramatic story if it had seemed well to the gods. ‘Tell your master we are weak, but that in our weakness we trust in God, who can give us strength and can put down the mightiest from their seats. Let your master do what he likes.’ Thereupon Bajazed had laid siege to Constantinople.
Suddenly, in the blackness of darkness with which the fortunes of the city were surrounded, there came a ray of light. Had there been an interpreter there as of old time, Bajazed might have learned the significance of the handwriting on the wall. All thought of the siege was abandoned for the time, and Constantinople breathed again freely.