Mohammed’s own reign was closed on the 3d of May, 1481, in Anatolia. For some time, owing to his excessive weight, campaigning had been difficult and painful for him. In the latter years of his life he was often so incapacitated by gout that he was compelled to give up more than one important warlike expedition, and it was to this disease that his death was due. During his reign the Turkish Empire acquired much new territory; Anatolia was occupied as far as the northern reaches of the Euphrates, and in Europe the Balkan peninsula was made subject to his arms as far as the Danube. Many successful expeditions were also made far beyond these limits, both on the east and on the west. But two great obstacles to Turkish advance he failed to overcome: Rhodes and Belgrade, the latter stronghold commanding the Danube, while the former was the key to the Ægean.
VI
SELIM AND SOULIMAN
In the line of succession were two sons, Bajesid and Djem. Bajesid managed, by rapid marching, to reach Scutari before his brother, and was proclaimed Sultan. Djem, who had occupied Broussa, proposed a division of the empire, but Bajesid refused, and defeated Djem in a decisive battle, fought at Yeni-Chchir (1481). The defeated brother took refuge first in Egypt, with the Sultan of the Mamelouks, and afterwards appeared as a suppliant at Rhodes, where the Grand Master, fearing to keep so valuable a hostage, sent him to France, where he remained for several years in captivity. Djem finally ended his life as a victim of the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, who is charged with having murdered him to secure the favor of Bajesid. So long as Djem lived, Bajesid was wary of stirring up the enmity of Occidental Christendom; he feared the effect on the stability of his throne by the return of a pretender, backed up by Christian armies. He even refused to answer the appeal for aid sent him by the last King of Granada, only venturing to show ineffective sympathy by sending a fleet to cruise off the Spanish coast.
Charles VIII of France, encouraged by his successful expedition into Italy, planned a new general crusade against the Turk, and secured promises of coöperation from various Western powers. He kept in touch with the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, and even looked forward to taking the imperial throne of Constantinople by purchasing title deeds to it from the Paleologi family.
After Djem’s death, which was soon followed by that of Charles, the Sultan had a free hand. From 1492 to 1495 he warred with partial success against the Hungarians; then came the turn of Venice, whose Italian dominions again saw a Turkish army. In the Morea, also, the republic lost some of the few cities it still possessed. There Nauplia held out, but Modon, Navarino, and Coron passed into the possession of the Turks. Under Papal leadership, an anti-Ottoman league was formed, and the Christian fleet proved its prowess by destroying two Turkish flotillas and by ravaging the shores of Asia Minor.
Internal troubles in Asia Minor, defeats in Hungary, and a long, troublesome war with the Sultan of Egypt brought the warlike enterprises of Bajesid to an end. The Sultan’s sons through their dissensions darkened the close of his reign; all three rebelled. Of the three, the most successful in opposing his father’s power was Selim, who won the Janitschars over to his side, and through their interference was able to enter Constantinople in triumph, and there enforce his own conditions. Bajesid first offered large sums if Selim would withdraw to the Asiatic province, of which he was governor; finally he consented to accept him as heir and co-regent on the throne; but Selim had secured the influence of the troops, and they demanded the Sultan’s immediate abdication. Bajesid was obliged to accede to their request, and only asked that he might be allowed to withdraw to die at Demotica, the place where he was born. The third day after his abdication he died. Because of its suddenness, his death, as was so often the case in those days, was said to be due to poison.
Selim’s path after his accession was anything but smooth; the troops were not amenable to discipline, and there were a host of brothers and nephews, who were in no mood to accept him as their lord. Besides his own son, Souliman, there were ten princes who stood near the throne. All were taken and murdered. Though Selim affected to explain their executions as due to reasons of state, his acts were severely judged by his contemporaries. The Turks called him “The Inflexible,” while in the West he was entitled “The Savage.” Foscolo, the Venetian, described him as the cruelest of men, “a man who dreams only of conquests and wars.” He was a well-educated man who favored the pursuit of literature, and it was said that the only individual who was ever able to induce him to revoke a death sentence was the grand mufti, Ali Djemali. His viziers felt the implacable nature of their master; seven of them were executed, for whenever the soldiers were restless the vizier was made a victim of the Sultan’s discontent. According to an old report one of them only agreed to accept the dangerous office after Selim had beaten him with his own hands. Intractable at home, Selim, so far as Europe was concerned, proved a pacific prince, his name being recorded only in connection with one expedition against the Christians. His Christian vassals, too, were left undisturbed; all that he exacted from them was the payment of a regular tribute. To the Moslem dissenters in Persia of the Shiite sect, he showed himself an implacable persecutor, all the more because his animosity was excited by the encouragement given to his rebellious brother Ahmed and his three sons by Ismail, the master of Persia. Ismail also negotiated an alliance with the Sultan of Egypt against the Osmanlis. Selim began in his own provinces by organizing a systematic massacre of the schismatics. Then followed a holy war against the Shah, in 1513, in which Selim led an army of 140,000 warriors; and after three campaigns, in one of which a great pitched battle was fought at Tchaldiran (August 24, 1514), he extended the domains of the Ottoman far to the east, bringing to submission Georgia and Kurdistan, and overrunning Mesopotamia and the parts of Syria that were controlled by the Moslem lord of Egypt.
By the expansion of his empire in this direction he soon came into conflict with the Sultan of the Mamelouks. Aleppo was taken, and, when Selim entered the city, he was hailed in the great mosque as the guardian of the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a title which gave the Ottoman Sultan almost the rank of the Khalif of the faithful. Damascus also fell into his hands, and so rapid were the successes of the Ottomans, that early in the year 1517 Selim found himself within sight of Cairo. The Mamelouks made an heroic resistance; protected by their coats of mail they charged into the center of the Turkish position, killing the vizier and ten generals. But here, as so often, the superiority of the Turks in artillery decided the day, and Cairo was taken after a prolonged and desperate struggle. Selim proclaimed an amnesty in favor of the Mamelouks; 500 of them, trusting in the conqueror’s promises, surrendered and were decapitated, and 50,000 of the citizens of Cairo were massacred. Touman, who led the Egyptian forces, was finally taken and hanged.
Egypt was allowed to retain its ancient organization, with its irregular force, the Mamelouks, and its twenty-four Begs as military commanderies; but the direction of the government was placed in the hands of the Ottoman Pasha. With the possession of Egypt Selim became lord of Yemen, its dependency, and so exercised actual control over the holy places of the Moslem faith. At Cairo he had found a sheik, an obscure and neglected personage, called Elmo-stansir-bi-illah, who was reputed to be in the direct line of descent from the second branch of the Abbasides Khalifs. Selim kept him in confinement until, on the promise of securing his liberty, and for a small money payment and a pension, he agreed to transfer to the Turkish ruler all his claims to the Khalifate.
Selim’s victories made a great impression. Venice, whose commercial interests were affected, sent ambassadors to Cairo to arrange for paying the tribute that was due to the Sultan of Egypt for the island of Cyprus. Hungary asked to have the truce prolonged between the two powers, and the Shah of Persia sent gifts and congratulations. Selim died on September 22, 1520, while he was preparing for an expedition against the island of Rhodes. He was succeeded by his only son, Souliman, a ruler whose long reign, from 1520 to 1566, makes him a contemporary of the great European leaders of the sixteenth century, a fact which Paul Veronese recognized when he placed him in his celebrated painting, “The Marriage at Cana,” along with the chief sovereigns of the day.