The emperor Manuel, as soon as he saw that war with Bajazet was inevitable, had sent an ambassador to solicit assistance from Charles VI king of France. The marshal de Boucicault, who had already served with distinction in the East, and had been taken prisoner by Bajazet at Nicopolis, was appointed to command the forces which Charles VI sent to assist the Greek emperor. Boucicault sailed from Aigues-Mortes, and after some delay effected his junction with a fleet composed of eight Genoese, eight Venetian, two Rhodian galleys, and one of Mytilene, and proceeded to Constantinople, where he arrived in 1398. The arrival of Boucicault and his little army, which consisted of six hundred men-at-arms, without horses, six hundred infantry soldiers, and one thousand archers and cross-bowmen, revived the courage of the Greeks. The Genoese and Venetians were well acquainted with the Ottoman coast, and all under the direction of Constantinople carried on a succession of plundering incursions along the Asiatic coast, from the gulfs of Nicomedia and Mudania to the shores of the Black Sea. It was evident that this system of warfare could not long uphold the empire, and Boucicault, finding the Greeks incapable of making any exertions in their own defence, advised Manuel to seek assistance from the western nations. This advice would have in all probability arrived too late, had not the Ottoman power at this moment been threatened by the great Tatar conqueror, Timur. The sultan was therefore as much inclined to conclude a temporary peace as the emperor. The pretensions of Joannes of Selymbria were the only obstacle, and Manuel overcame this difficulty by a generous resolution. He opened communications with his nephew, whom he easily convinced that, if he entered Constantinople with Turkish troops, his reign would prove of short duration. He then offered to receive Joannes as his colleague, and invest him with the government, while he himself visited western Europe. The marshal Boucicault guaranteed these arrangements, and a French force remained in the capital to protect the interests of Manuel during his absence. On the 4th of December, 1399, Joannes entered Constantinople, and was proclaimed emperor, and on the 10th, Manuel quitted his capital with Boucicault to present himself as a suppliant at the European courts.
[1399-1410 A.D.]
Manuel II gained very little by his mendicant pilgrimage to Italy, France, and England. Some valuable presents were bestowed upon him by Visconti, the magnificent duke of Milan, and Charles VI of France granted him a pension of thirty thousand crowns; but he was compelled to return to Constantinople at the end of two years, with a little money and a few volunteers collected from people poorer and not more numerous than the Greeks. He learned on his way home that his enemy Bajazet had been defeated by Timur at Angora, and that the Ottoman Empire was utterly ruined. On reaching Constantinople he deprived his nephew Joannes, who had ruled during his absence, of the imperial title, and banished him to Lemnos. Joannes had already placed the Greek Empire in a state of vassalage to the Tatar conqueror; Manuel ratified the treaty, and paid to Timur the tribute which he had formerly paid to Bajazet. Rarely has the world seen a more total defeat than that sustained by the Ottoman army. Bajazet died a captive in the hands of Timur.
Rarely has so great a victory produced so little effect on the fate of the vanquished. For a moment, indeed, the Ottoman power was humbled, and an opening formed for the revival of the Greek Empire; but no energy remained in the political organisation of the Hellenic race beyond the confined sphere of local and individual interests; while the institutions of Orkhan, surviving the defeats and civil wars of the Ottomans, soon restored power to their central government, and rendered the sultan again the arbiter of the fate of Greece.
The civil wars among the sons of Bajazet had no small influence in prolonging the existence of the Greek Empire. The Ottoman historians reckon an interregnum of ten years after the battle of Angora, during which four of the sons of Bajazet contended for the sovereignty. Suleiman, Isa, and Mousa successively perished, and the youngest of the family, Muhammed I, at last reunited all his father’s dominions, and was regarded as his legitimate successor and the fifth sultan of the Ottomans, including Osman, the founder of the dynasty.
After the battle of Angora, Suleiman sought safety in Constantinople, where he concluded a treaty with the emperor Manuel in the year 1403, by which he yielded up Thessalonica, the valley of the Strymon, Thessaly, and the coast of the Black Sea, as far as Varna, to the Greeks. Joannes of Selymbria was recalled from Lemnos, and established at Thessalonica with the title of emperor; but the control of the government was vested by Manuel in the hands of Demetrius Leontaris, a Byzantine noble. In return for the cession of these provinces, the emperor furnished Suleiman with money to collect an army and to establish his authority over the remainder of the Ottoman dominions in Europe.
[1410-1421 A.D.]
But the debauchery of Suleiman at last induced the janizaries to join Mousa, and Suleiman was slain in attempting to escape to Constantinople, 1410 A.D. The close alliance which had existed between Suleiman and Manuel induced Mousa to turn his arms against the Greek Empire. He reconquered all the towns in Macedonia and Thessaly which his brother had ceded to Manuel, with the exception of Thessalonica and Zeitounion. Mousa then laid siege to Constantinople; but his operations were paralysed by the destruction of a naval armament he had fitted out. The emperor had strengthened the imperial fleet, the command of which he had entrusted to his natural brother, named also Manuel, a man of courage and military talents. The admiral gained a complete victory over the Ottoman fleet; but his brilliant success excited the jealousy of his imperial brother. On returning to receive the thanks of his country, he was thrown into prison on an accusation of treason, and remained a prisoner during the life of his brother. The siege of Constantinople was merely a succession of skirmishes under its walls, in which several Greek nobles were slain; and the attention of Mousa was soon exclusively occupied by the attacks of his brother Muhammed.
Mousa rendered his government as unpopular by his severity as Suleiman by his debauchery, and many of the Ottoman officers in Europe invited Muhammed to seize the throne. The emperor Manuel agreed to furnish transports to convey the Asiatic troops over the Bosporus; but he refused to admit them into Constantinople, though he allowed them to form their camp under its walls. The first operations of Muhammed were unsuccessful: but at last he forced Mousa to retire to Hadrianopolis, who, in the end, was deserted by all his followers and slain, 1413 A.D. Little more than ten years had elapsed from the day that Muhammed, then a mere youth, fled from the field of Angora with only one faithful companion, until he reunited under his sway nearly all the extensive dominions which had been ruled by his father. Timur had not perceived the fact that, the tribute of Christian children being the keystone on which the whole fabric of the Ottoman power rested, its resources were really much greater in Europe than in Asia.
