The accounts of the duke de Nevers and his companions awakened, however, the emulation of the warriors, and their misfortunes in Asia inspired less compassion than a desire to avenge their defeat. A new expedition against the Turks was soon announced in France, and a crowd of young nobles and knights eagerly took up arms. The duke of Orleans, the brother of the king, was inconsolable at not being able to obtain permission to place himself at their head, and go with them to combat the infidels. It was the Marshal Boucicault, scarcely returned from captivity, who led these new Crusaders into the East. Their arrival on the shores of the Bosphorus delivered Byzantium, which was then besieged by Bajazet. Their exploits raised the courage of the Greeks, and redeemed the honour of the soldiers of the West among the Turks. When, after a year of labours and glorious combats, they returned to their own country, the Greek emperor Manuel believed he saw fresh evils ready to overwhelm him, and he resolved to follow Marshal Boucicault and solicit more assistance from Charles VI.; thus placing all the hopes of his empire in the French warriors. He was received with great honours on his passage through Italy; when he had crossed the Alps, brilliant festivities awaited him in all the great cities. At two leagues from Paris he found Charles VI., who, with all his nobles, had come out to meet him. He made his public entry into the capital, clothed in a robe of white silk, and mounted on a white horse, marks of supreme rank among the Franks. It was gratifying to see a successor of the Cæsars imploring the arms of chivalry; and the confidence which he placed in the bravery of the French, flattered the pride of the nation; but in the condition of France at that period, it was much more easy to offer Manuel the spectacle of tournaments, and the brilliant ceremonies of courts, than to furnish him with the treasures and armies of which he stood in need. Charles VI. began to feel the approach of that fatal malady which left the field open to factions, and threw the kingdom into the greatest misfortunes. England, whose assistance the emperor of Constantinople likewise solicited, was disturbed by the usurpation of Henry of Lancaster; and if the English monarch then took the cross, it was less with the intention of succouring the Greeks than to divert attention from his own injustice, and to have a pretext for levying imposts upon his people. At the same time, the deposition of Winceslaus set the whole German empire in motion; and the nascent heresy of John Huss already gave the signal for the disorders that were destined to trouble Bohemia during the fifteenth century. Amidst all these agitations in Christendom, the only power that could have reëstablished harmony was itself divided, and the Catholic Church, still a prey to the rival pretensions of two pontiffs, could neither give its attention to promote peace among the Christians, nor war against the Turks.
This state of France and Europe completely destroyed all the hopes of the Greek emperor. After passing two years in Paris, without obtaining anything, he determined to leave the West, and having embarked at Venice, he stopped in the Peloponnesus, where he waited patiently till Fortune should herself take charge of the entire ruin or the deliverance of his empire.
This deliverance, which could no longer be expected from the Christian powers, arrived all at once by means of a people still more barbarous than the Turks, whose conquests made the entire East tremble. Tamerlane, or Timour, from the bosom of civil wars, had been elevated to the throne of the Moguls, and revived in the north of Asia the formidable empire of Gengishan. History is scarcely able to follow this new conqueror in his gigantic expeditions. The imagination is terrified at the rapidity with which, to make use of an expression of Timour himself, he carried “the destroying wind of desolation” from Zagathaï to the Indus, and from the Indus to the icy deserts of Siberia. Such was the scourge that Heaven sent to destroy the menacing pride of Bajazet. The historians of the times are not agreed as to the motives which armed the leader of the Moguls against the Ottoman emperor; some attribute Tamerlane’s determination to the complaints of the Mussulman princes of Asia Minor, whom the sultan of the Turks had driven from their states; others, faithful to the spirit of their age, and seeking the causes of great events in celestial phenomena, explain the invasion of the Tartars by the appearance of a comet, which was visible during two months to affrighted Asia. Disdaining marvellous explanations, we will confine ourselves to saying that peace could not last between two men urged on by the same ambition, and who were not likely to pardon each other for having at the same time entertained the thought of conquering the world. Their character, as well as their policy, is plainly enough indicated in the violent threats they reciprocally addressed to each other before hostilities, and which became the signal for the most sanguinary catastrophes.
Tamerlane, having set out from Samarcand, first reduced Seborto, and as if he wished to give Bajazet, before he attacked him, the spectacle of the ravages which accompanied his arms everywhere, he all at once directed the course of his Tartar hordes towards Syria and the provinces governed by the Mamelukes of Egypt. The valour of his soldiers, the discords of his enemies, the treachery and perfidy which he never disdained to call in to the assistance of his power, opened for him the gates of Aleppo, Damascus, and Tripoli. Torrents of blood and pyramids of human heads marked the passage of the Mogul conqueror. His approach spread terror everywhere, as well among the Christians as among the Mussulmans; and although he boasted in his discourses of avenging the cause of the oppressed, Jerusalem might, on this occasion, be grateful that he did not think of delivering her.
At length the Tartars advanced towards Asia Minor. Timour traversed Anatolia with an army of eight hundred thousand men. Bajazet, who raised the siege of Constantinople to come to meet his redoubtable adversary, encountered him in the plains of Ancyra. At the end of a battle which lasted three days, the Ottoman emperor lost at once his empire and his liberty. The Greeks, to whom fame soon brought the news of this victory, tremblingly returned thanks to their fierce liberator; but the indifference with which he received their embassy, proved that he had had no intention of meriting their gratitude. Arrived on the shores of the Bosphorus, the conqueror of Bajazet directed his looks and his projects towards the West; but the master of the vast kingdoms of Asia had not a single barque in which to transport himself to the other side of the canal. Thus Constantinople, after having escaped the yoke of the Ottomans, had the good fortune to escape also the presence of the Tartars, and Europe saw this violent tempest dissipate itself at a distance from her.
The conqueror vented his anger upon the city of Smyrna, which was defended by the Knights of Rhodes. This city was carried by assault, delivered up to pillage, and reduced to ashes; the Mogul emperor returned to Samarcand in triumph, dragging the sultan Bajazet in his train, and meditating by turns the conquest of Africa, the invasion of the West, and a war against China.
After the battle of Ancyra, several princes of the family of Bajazet disputed the ravaged provinces of the Ottoman empire. If the Franks had then appeared in the Strait of Galliopoli and in Thrace, they might have profited by the defeat and discords of the Turks, and have driven them back beyond the Taurus; but the indifference of the Christian states, with the perfidy and cupidity of some of the maritime nations of Europe, allowed the Ottoman dynasty time and means to renovate its depressed power.
The Greeks derived no more advantage from the victory of Tamerlane than the Latins. Twenty years after the battle of Ancyra, the Ottomans had retaken all their provinces; their armies again environed Constantinople, and it is at this point we may apply to the power of the Turks the oriental comparison of that serpent of the desert which an elephant had crushed in its passage, which joins its dispersed rings together again, raises its head by degrees, reseizes the prey it had abandoned, and clasps it within its monstrous folds.
As long as the Greek emperors were in no fear for the safety of their capital, they kept up very little intercourse with the Christian princes of Europe; but upon the appearance of danger, the court of Byzantium renewed its supplications and its promises of obedience to the Church of Rome. A conversation of Manuel, reported by Phrantza, throws a light upon the situation of the Greeks, and upon the policy of the timid successors of Constantine. “The only resource we have left against the Turks,” said this prince to his son, “is their fear of our union with the Latins, and the terror with which the warlike nations of the West inspire them. Whenever you are pressed by the infidels, send to the court of Rome, and prolong the negotiations, without ever taking a decisive part.” Manuel added, that the vanity of the Latins and the obstinacy of the Greeks would always prevent any real or durable harmony; and that a union of any kind with the pope, by arousing the passions of both parties, would only give Byzantium up to the mercy of the barbarians.
Such counsels, which announce but little frankness in the policy of the Greeks, could not be long followed up with success. The dangers became more pressing, the circumstances more imperative; as Christendom only replied to vain negotiations by vain promises, the successor of Manuel found himself obliged to give pledges of his faith and sincerity. The idea of a council was at length adopted, in which the two churches should come to an understanding, and should approximate. The emperor John Palæologus and the doctors of the Greek Church repaired to Ferrara, and afterwards to Florence. After long debates, the union was sworn to on both sides, and solemnly proclaimed. In the West this event was celebrated as a victory; at Constantinople it raised cries of blasphemy, apostasy, and impiety. Thus was the prediction of Manuel accomplished; all the efforts employed to unite opinions, only served to raise a new barrier between the Greeks and the Latins.