With characteristic celerity, Bayezid sent forward an army under Timurtash. Battle was joined in the plain of Ak Tchaï (the white river). One cannot determine the exact location, but it was probably in Kermian not far from Kutayia, for that is where the two retreating columns of the Karamanlis would naturally have formed a junction. Alaeddin and his sons Ali and Mahommed were taken prisoners. When Alaeddin was brought before him, Timurtash could not restrain his anger until Bayezid arrived. He remembered only that the one defeat of his long and brilliant career had been administered by Alaeddin. Its disgrace, and his feeling towards the emir of Karamania, was in no way palliated by the fact that Alaeddin had voluntarily released him. Timurtash ordered the prisoner to be hanged. When Bayezid arrived, his brother-in-law was dead. He was overjoyed that his rival had been removed so conveniently, and without any responsibility falling upon himself.
Karamania lay open before the invaders. The Osmanlis occupied Ak Seraï, Konia, and Laranda. There was no organized resistance. But it is a curious disregard of facts to record, as most historians have done,[454] that the result of this campaign was the permanent incorporation of Karamania in the Ottoman Empire.[455] The battle of Ak Tchaï had been decisive only to the extent that thereafter the Osmanlis, and not the Karamanlis, were to be the dominant race in Asia Minor. Konia and other eastern Karamanian cities were occupied by the Osmanlis after the battle because their ruler had been killed and his sons taken into captivity. Had Alaeddin escaped from the field, he might have organized a successful resistance to the Ottoman invaders. Bayezid conquered Karamania by the battle of Ak Tchaï no more than Napoleon conquered Prussia by Jena or von Moltke France by Sedan. To enter and occupy for a while the capital of a country does not mean that the country is ‘incorporated’ in the domains of the successful invader. The immediate restoration of the Karamanian dynasty after the advent of Timur proves how superficial had been the Ottoman occupation. While they were no longer able to be a political factor in western Asia Minor, the Karamanlis continued until after the fall of Constantinople—for seventy years after the battle of Ak Tchaï—to defy successfully the efforts of the Osmanlis to destroy their independence and amalgamate them.[456]
Burhaneddin, who had set up for himself a principality north-east of Karamania along the Halys River, which included Caesarea and Sivas, was the next rival on the east to be attacked. Burhaneddin is reported to have had twenty to thirty thousand followers.[457] This seems to be an exaggeration, for we read that he did not resist the Ottoman invasion. At the approach of Bayezid, he retired into the mountains of Armenia near Kharput. Here he was either killed by Kara Yuluk, founder of the famous White Sheep dynasty, or put to death by order of Bayezid.[458] His emirate was shared by Bayezid and Kara Yuluk, the Ottoman emir taking Tokat, Caesarea, and Sivas. There is no certainty as to the date of this expedition. From the events which followed, it most probably took place in 1395, the year before Nicopolis.[459]
Kastamuni, practically coterminous with the Roman province of Paphlagonia, stood between the Ottoman possessions and the Black Sea. In the campaign of 1393, Samsun and the cities of the interior between Samsun and Angora, were captured by the Osmanlis. When the Ottoman army advanced to attack Kastamuni, Bayezid offered to allow the emir to become his vassal, if he would surrender to him the emirs of Sarukhan and Menteshe. Whether the lesser Bayezid was unwilling to violate the laws of hospitality, or put little faith in the promises of the conqueror after the fate which had overtaken the emir of Aïdin, it is impossible to say. He and his guests fled to the court of Timur. The occupation of Sinope gave the Osmanlis an excellent port on the south coast of the Black Sea.
Bayezid was now master of the greater part of Anatolia, but master only in name. He had not assimilated these conquests. As later events proved, the inhabitants of these territories were still loyal to their former rulers.
IV
After his return from the first Anatolian campaign, Bayezid ordered a general advance along the northern and north-western frontiers. One band invaded Bosnia, but did not make much headway. Three bands entered Hungary, and initiated the system of rapid raiding that in time reached as far as Germany, and made the ‘Turks’ the nightmare of Slavic, Teutonic, and Italian Europe. The first battle on Hungarian soil was fought at Nagy-Olosz, in Syrmia, not far from Karlovitz, where three centuries later the Osmanlis signed the death-warrant of their Weltpolitik.
The Danube was crossed also near Silistria. Before the terrible akindjis could penetrate far into his country, the hospodar Mircea surrendered, or was made prisoner. After a short exile at Brusa, he regained his liberty by consenting to the payment of a tribute of three thousand ducats, thirty horses, and twenty falcons.[460] He agreed to help Bayezid against the Hungarians, who had long been asserting a sovereignty over Wallachia, and in return Bayezid promised to settle no Moslems and build no mosques north of the Danube. In the first Hungarian invasion, Bayezid received more valuable aid from the Wallachians than from his janissaries. There were no better fighters in the Balkan peninsula than these descendants of the soldiers of Trajan. The interference of Sigismund prevented an Ottoman invasion of Moldavia, whose hospodars remained altogether independent of the Osmanlis until the reign of Mohammed the Conqueror.[461]
When Louis of Hungary died, he left two daughters. The younger, Hedwig, was chosen as queen of Poland by the Polish nobles. Her marriage with Jagello of Lithuania, who was converted to Christianity and baptized under the name of Ladislas, definitely separated the crowns of Poland and Hungary, and had a far-reaching influence upon the subsequent fortunes of the Osmanlis. The crown of Hungary fell to Mary, whose succession was questioned by Charles of Durazzo, king of Naples, the nearest male heir. His invasion of Dalmatia, in 1385, brought into Hungary Sigismund, second son of Charles IV of Luxemburg, the German Emperor. For Sigismund was betrothed to Mary, but had been slow to take upon himself the rôle of bridegroom, owing to his disappointment over Hedwig’s election by the Poles. Now he entered into the struggle for the Hungarian crown. In 1387, it was placed upon his head. The union between Poland and Hungary was broken, but the fortunes of Hungary and Bohemia, to which throne Sigismund succeeded by blood, were joined in a way that has never been broken to the present time. The outside connexions of the new Hungarian king were a most important factor in the growth of the Ottoman Empire. A strong and vigorous king, whose sole interest lay in the crown of Hungary, might have prevented the spread of the Osmanlis. In fact, after Bayezid’s death, he might easily have destroyed the Ottoman power in Europe. But Sigismund, called in 1411 to the larger rôle of Holy Roman Emperor, became engrossed in the Hussite controversy and the Church councils to end the great schism. While retaining the crown of Hungary, he allowed the Osmanlis to make the preparations which were to end in the Moslem subjugation of that kingdom.
In the early days, when Sigismund’s interests lay in his newly-acquired Hungarian crown, he was alive to the menace of the Osmanlis. He sent a message to Bayezid, demanding by what right he was interfering with Bulgaria, which was a country under Hungarian protection. Bayezid made no response to the address of the king’s ambassador. He merely pointed to the weapons hanging in his tent, and gave a sign that the audience was over.