This civil war had not only given to the Turks a dangerous insight and influence in Greek politics, it had also enabled a rival power to extend itself on the western side of the empire. Stephen Dushan, who had become king |Conquests of Stephen Dushan.| of Servia in 1333, took advantage of the anarchy in Constantinople to seize Albania, Epirus, and Thessaly, and thus to extend his dominions to the Adriatic on one side and to the Ægean on the other. He assumed the title of Emperor of Roumania, Slavonia, and Albania. It would probably have been for the ultimate advantage of Europe if he could have extinguished the Greek empire altogether by the conquest of Constantinople. But he was not strong enough to do this, and his territories were divided after his death in 1355. His conquests left the European dominions of Byzantium hardly larger than those in Asia. Besides the capital, with the adjacent part of Thrace, there were Thessalonica and another strip of territory, about a third of the Morea, and a few islands in the Ægean. Even between Constantinople and Thessalonica there was no secure communication except by sea, as the intervening territory was held by Servia.
The treaty of 1347 was not likely to bring about lasting peace in Constantinople, and in 1351 a quarrel between John V. and his father-in-law gives us another illustration of the weakness of the empire. The dispute became mixed up with the standing quarrel between the Venetians and the Genoese. The Genoese maintained that alliance with the Palæologi which had given them their predominance |Renewed disorder in Constantinople.| in the east, and therefore Cantacuzenos tried to overthrow them by obtaining the support of Venice. The two Italian republics fought out their own quarrel in Greek waters, without much regard to the interests of their allies. The Venetians were defeated in 1352 in a great naval battle fought within sight of Constantinople, and Cantacuzenos was compelled to confirm all the privileges of the victors. His authority never recovered from the blow, and in 1354 he was compelled to abdicate and become a monk.
The same year in which John V. became sole emperor witnessed the first permanent establishment of the Turks |The Turks in Europe.| upon European soil. Hitherto they had only appeared either as plunderers or as the auxiliaries of Cantacuzenos. But in 1354 Suleiman, Orchan’s eldest son, took advantage of an earthquake, which had destroyed the walls of many towns in Thrace, to seize and garrison Gallipoli. John V., afraid that the Turks might support Matthew Cantacuzenos, who claimed to take his father’s place as emperor, was unable to attempt their expulsion, and Gallipoli became the basis for later conquests. Suleiman died in 1358, and Orchan in 1359; but the new sultan, Amurath or Murad I., added one city after another to his rule, till in 1361 he made himself master of Adrianople, which became the European capital of the Turks for nearly a century. The fact that these early conquests of Amurath were gained without serious opposition in the districts in which the party of Cantacuzenos had been most numerous seems to show that faction had overpowered all sense of patriotism among the Greeks. The conquest of Adrianople brought the Turks to the northern boundary of the Byzantine empire, and for the next few years they were occupied with wars against the Slavonic states—Bulgaria, Servia, and Bosnia—great parts of which were conquered or compelled to pay tribute.
John V., finding himself surrounded by the growing dominions of the infidel, made desperate efforts to obtain aid from western Europe. In 1369 he |Vassalage of the Empire.| actually went to Rome to meet Urban V., who had just returned to his capital, and agreed to a written profession of faith, in which he accepted the Roman view on all the questions at issue between the two Churches—that the procession of the Holy Ghost is from both Father and Son; that unleavened bread may be used in the Sacrament; and that the Church of Rome is supreme in matters of faith and jurisdiction. But the document was worthless to either side. The emperor could not coerce the faith of his subjects, and the Papacy in the middle of the fourteenth century was powerless to rouse any crusading ardour among the European princes. Discouraged by the failure of this negotiation, the pusillanimous emperor sought a still more humiliating path to safety. He became the vassal of the Turkish sultan, allowed him to occupy Thessalonica; and when his own son Andronicus headed a successful rebellion, it was put down by Turkish aid purchased by a treaty which stipulated for the payment of tribute by the Greek emperor (1381).
The Slavonic states to the north and west of Constantinople offered a more resolute, though not in the end a more successful resistance than the Greeks. In 1387 a great |Turkish conquests in the north.| league was formed for mutual protection, under the leadership of the king of Bosnia. For a time this checked the Ottoman advance; but in 1389 Amurath won a complete victory over the allied forces at Kossova, where the Servian king was slain. Amurath himself was killed after the battle by a Servian noble who pretended to be a deserter. But the murder brought no gain to the Slavonic cause, as Bajazet I. succeeded at once to his father’s position and reaped all the fruits of the victory. The new king of Servia had to give his sister in marriage to the sultan, and to promise both tribute and military service. Wallachia was also made to pay tribute, and Bulgaria was annexed to the Ottoman dominions, which were thus extended to the Danube. The most vigorous effort made by a European combination against the infidel, when Sigismund of Hungary was joined by a band of French nobles under John of Nevers, heir to the duchy of Burgundy, only served to give another still more brilliant victory to Bajazet under the walls of Nicopolis (1396). Sigismund narrowly escaped captivity; and John the Fearless, as he was afterwards called, was only allowed to save the lives of twenty-four of his fellow-prisoners, who were to carry back to Europe the tale of the prowess and the fantastic mixture of cruelty and magnanimity displayed by their conqueror.
Meanwhile John V. had died in 1391, and was succeeded by his second son, Manuel II., the elder brother, Andronicus, having died in 1381. Manuel had been compelled |First Turkish siege of Constantinople.| to lead a Greek contingent into Asia to aid Bajazet in taking Philadelphia, one of the last cities in Asia Minor which retained its independence, and was still at Brusa when the news arrived of his father’s death. He succeeded in escaping to Constantinople, but it was lucky for him that the sultan was engaged in reducing to obedience the Seljuk emirates which had not yet recognised the supremacy of the Ottoman dynasty. This enabled Manuel to make good his position, but he had to accept the same subjection as had been imposed upon his father. When, however, the great coalition was formed under Sigismund to resist the Turks, Manuel had welcomed the prospect of regaining his freedom, and Bajazet had learned how little he could trust the fidelity of his imperial vassal. After his victory at Nicopolis the sultan determined to inflict a signal punishment on all those tributary princes who had ventured to oppose him. In 1397 he reduced Epirus and Thessaly, while Manuel was harassed by the recognition of his nephew John, the son of Andronicus, as emperor. Recognising the futility of relying upon his own strength to resist the sultan, Manuel came to terms with his nephew, admitted him as a colleague, and left the administration in his hands, while he himself set out on a tour through western Europe to implore assistance. During his absence Bajazet laid regular siege to Constantinople, and would probably have completed its conquest if he had not been called away to Asia to resist the attack of the great Tartar leader, Timour, or Tamerlane, who had already marched victoriously over the greater part of Asia. In the famous |Battle of Angora, 1402.| battle of Angora, the Ottoman Turks met with a crushing defeat (1402). Bajazet himself fell into the conqueror’s hands, and was still a captive when he died in 1403.
The battle of Angora gave Constantinople a reprieve for fifty years. Manuel, whose western journey had given him little beyond experience and discouragement, was unexpectedly able to return to his capital and to banish the nephew whom necessity rather than affection had compelled him to admit as a colleague. It is true that he had to pacify Timour by paying to him the same tribute as he had owed to Bajazet. But the Tartar had too much to do in the east to undertake the conquest of Europe, and his destructive career came to an end in 1405 as he was on his way to attempt the subjugation of China. The Ottoman power seemed to be annihilated. Not only did the Seljuk emirs in Asia recover their independence, but for ten years after Bajazet’s death his four sons carried on a fratricidal struggle for the succession. Yet all that the Emperor Manuel could gain from such extraordinary good fortune was the recovery of Thessalonica and a few districts in Thessaly and Epirus. When in 1413 Mohammed I. succeeded in reuniting his |Revival of the Ottoman power.| father’s dominions, the Greek emperor with the other European vassals hastened to renew their submission; and the sultan met with so little difficulty in Europe, that he was able to devote the remaining eight years of his reign to the reduction of the princes of Caramania and other opponents in Asia. The extraordinary rapidity with which the Ottomans recovered their power after the apparently shattering blow of 1402 proves that their authority, thanks to the wisdom and ingenuity of Orchan, rested upon far stronger foundations than that of any other Asiatic conquerors.
Mohammed I. was succeeded in 1421 by his son Amurath II. Manuel Palæologus, rendered confident by the unbroken peace of the last few years, was bold enough to stir up opposition against the new sultan by supporting a pretender who claimed to be a son of Bajazet. Amurath had no difficulty in defeating and putting to death the rival claimant, and in 1422 he undertook another siege of Constantinople in order to punish the emperor’s insolence. An attempt to carry the walls by storm was repulsed with heavy loss to the assailants, but the raising of the siege was due to a rebellion in Asia in favour of a brother of the sultan. When in 1424 Amurath returned to Europe after putting down disorder in the east, Manuel hastened to appease his wrath by the payment of increased tribute and by the cession of several cities in Thrace.
John VI., who succeeded his father, Manuel II., in 1425, was perhaps the feeblest of all the Palæologi. His whole reign was spent in endeavouring to evade dangers |Reign of John VI.| which he was incapable of confronting. The best known event of his reign is the Council which was held in 1438 and 1439, first at Ferrara, and then at Florence, to negotiate for the union of the eastern and western Churches (see p. [236]). As far as the powers of the Council went, the treaty of union was fully and finally ratified. But the Greeks could resist their own ruler with more courage and confidence than they could face the infidel assailant, and such a storm of reprobation greeted the return of the emperor and the envoys that they hastened to disavow their formal acts. The decrees of the Council of Florence remained a dead letter. It was fortunate for John that he had no occasion to rely either upon western aid or upon the loyalty of his subjects. His very weakness and pliancy disarmed hostility and avoided all occasions of rupture. His reign was a period of almost complete peace. Thessalonica, which had repudiated the rule of Constantinople and put itself under the protection of Venice, was conquered by Amurath in 1430. But with this exception the Sultan paid little attention to the Byzantine empire, and devoted all his energies to war with more formidable enemies in the north and west.
In 1427 a new king came to the throne of Servia, and set himself from the first to repudiate the vassalage to which his predecessors had been subjected since the great battle of Kossova. The Wallachians and Bosnians were inspired by the same sentiments, and George |Amurath II.’s wars with Hungary.| of Servia purchased the aid of Sigismund of Hungary by ceding the great border fortress of Belgrade. Against this powerful confederacy Amurath waged a successful war for several years. In 1438 he had advanced as far as Semendria; and Albert of Austria, who had succeeded Sigismund on the throne of Hungary, vainly endeavoured to compel the sultan to raise the siege. Semendria fell, but the war was checked for a time by an outbreak of dysentery in both armies, and Albert perished of the disease. This was followed by an event which for a moment turned the balance in favour of the Christians. In 1440 Hungarians offered their vacant crown to Ladislas of Poland in order to enlist the aid of the great house of Jagellon. For four years the combined Slavs and Magyars not only held their own against the dreaded Janissaries, but even gained some notable successes. Under the leadership of John Hunyadi the allies repulsed the Turks from the walls of Hermanstadt and defeated them in the open field (1442). In the next year Hunyadi crossed the Danube, routed a Turkish army near Nissa, and pursued the fugitives in a brilliant march across the Balkans. These successes extorted from Amurath the treaty of Szegedin (July 12, 1444), by which he abandoned his suzerainty over Servia and Bosnia, and allowed Wallachia to be annexed to Hungary. So chagrined was the sultan at this unexpected reverse, that he resigned the government to his son, Mohammed, and retired to seclusion at Magnesia. This news inspired the Christian princes and prelates with the belief that the Ottoman power was on the verge of ruin, and that another effort would suffice to bring about its complete overthrow. The representations of Pope Eugenius IV. and his legate persuaded Ladislas, against the advice of Hunyadi, to repudiate the treaty of Szegedin and to renew the war. The Hungarian army crossed the Danube into Bulgaria, marched to the coast of the Black Sea, and captured the important town of Varna. But Amurath had been roused from his retirement by the news of this act of Christian treachery. Hastily collecting his troops, he advanced to Varna. In the battle which ensued the invaders were scattered to the winds, and Ladislas was slain (November 10, 1444). Servia and Bosnia were once more reduced to submission; and although Hunyadi tried to renew the struggle in 1448, he was defeated and taken prisoner in the second battle of Kossova.