Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

Once established in Greece, however, the Catalans proved so arrogant and lawless that the Greeks complained that they were a far worse infliction than the Mahometans. Quarrels ensued, and finally, in the course of a bitter dispute between Roger de Flor and Andronicus, the Spanish general was murdered as he stood talking to his master. This act of treachery, added to growing indignation at the limited supplies of money the Emperor had grudgingly disbursed for his foreign army, turned the Catalans from pretence allies into a horde of raging enemies. From the walls of Constantinople itself they were driven back, but elsewhere they burned and slew and laid waste the country, until at last, reaching Athens, they stormed the walls of that city, killed its Latin Duke, and established themselves as an independent republic.

By the time they had ceased to rove the Catalans had also ceased to be dangerous, but in their savage wanderings they had inflicted incalculable harm upon the Byzantine Empire. The Andronicus who could barely hold them at bay before the gates of his capital was an Andronicus who could not hope to withstand invasion in Asia Minor; and over his Eastern boundaries, left weakly garrisoned since the days of Michael Paleologus, poured the Turks in irresistible numbers. Soon there remained to the Greek Empire, of all their provinces across the Bosporus, merely a strip of coast-line to the north of the Dardanelles, and finally this also was whittled away, and the Turks crossed the Straits and captured Gallipoli as a base for future operations in Europe.

The chief Mahometan Emir during this period of conquest was a certain Orkhan, the son of Othman, whose name in the form ‘Ottoman’ is still borne by his branch of the Turkish race. This Orkhan was quite as cruel and unscrupulous as the Paleologi, but far more statesmanlike; for as he conquered the territory of Greek Emperors and rival Emirs in Asia Minor he consolidated his rule over them by a just and careful government that gradually welded them into a compact state.

When a civil war broke out between John V, the grandson of Andronicus II, and his guardian and co-ruler, a wily schemer of the Michael Paleologus type called John Cantacuzenus, the latter, with utter lack of patriotism, appealed to Orkhan for aid. He even offered him his daughter in marriage, an alliance to which the Turk eagerly agreed, dispatching a large force of auxiliaries to Thrace as token of his friendly intentions towards his future father-in-law. These troops he determined should remain, and difficult indeed the Christians found it to dislodge them in later years, for the Turkish legions had been stiffened by a device of Orkhan which has done more to keep his name in men’s minds perhaps than any of his victories.

It was the Emir’s custom on a march of conquest not to oppress the conquered, but to exact from them a tribute both in money and in child life. From every village that passed under the rule of Orkhan his soldiers carried away from their homes a fixed number of young boys, chosen because of their health and sturdy, well-developed limbs. These children were placed in barracks, where they were educated without any knowledge of their former life to become soldiers of the Prophet—fanatical, highly disciplined, skilled with the bow and sabre, inculcated with but one ideal and ambition—to excel in statecraft or on the battle-field.

Because of their excessive loyalty emirs would choose from among the ranks of these ‘tribute children’ their viziers and other chief officials, while the majority would enter the infantry corps of ‘Janissaries’, or ‘new soldiers’, whose ferocity and endurance in attacking or holding apparently impossible positions became the terror of Europe. In the words of a modern historian, ‘With diabolical ingenuity the Turks secured the victory of the Crescent by the Children of the Cross, and trained up Christian boys to destroy the independence and authority of their country and their Church.’

In 1361, some years after Orkhan’s death, the Turks captured Adrianople, and thus came into contact with other Christian nations besides the Greeks, namely, the Serbians and Hungarians.

The Serbians were the principal Slav race in the Balkans, and under their great ruler Stephen Dushan it had seemed likely that they might become the predominant power in Eastern Europe. The Kings of Bulgaria and Bosnia were their vassals; they had made conquests both in Albania and Greece, thus opening up a way to the Adriatic and Aegean Seas. It would have been well for Christendom if this energetic race of fighters could have subdued the feeble Greeks, and so presented to the Turks, when they crossed the Bosporus, a foe worthy to match the Janissaries in stubborn courage. Unfortunately Stephen Dushan died before the years of Turkish invasion, leaving his throne to a young son, ‘a youth of great parts,’ as a Serbian chronicler describes him, ‘quiet and gracious, but without experience.’

Only experience or an iron will could have held together in those rough times a kingdom relying for its protection on the swords of a quarrelsome nobility; and Serbia broke up into a number of small principalities, her disintegration assisted by the ambitious jealousy of Louis the Great of Hungary, who lost no opportunity of dismembering and weakening this sister kingdom that might otherwise prove a hindrance to his own imperial projects.

With the career of Louis we have dealt in other chapters, and have seen him humbling the Venetians, driving Joanna I out of Naples, acquiring the throne of Poland, fighting against the Turks and the Emperor Charles IV. Because he spent his energy recklessly on all these projects, Louis remains for posterity, apart from the civilizing influence of his court life, one of the arch-destroyers of the Middle Ages, the sovereign who more than any other exposed Eastern Europe to Mahometan conquest. Had he either refrained from his constant policy of aggression towards Serbia, thus allowing her to unite her subject princes in the face of the invading Turks, or had he even been powerful enough to found an Empire of Hungary that would absorb both Serbia and Constantinople and act as a bulwark in the East, mediaeval history would have closed on a different scene. Instead, the famous victories of Louis over the Turks, that made his name honoured by Christendom, were rendered of no avail by other partial victories over Christian nations who should have been his allies.