The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]

[1391-1453 A.D.]

MANUEL II (1391-1399 A.D.)

The emperor Manuel was at Brusa[89] when he heard of his father’s death. He was generally esteemed, being neither destitute of talent nor personal courage, while his disposition was mild and conciliatory. Before Bajazet was informed of the death of Joannes V the new emperor had made his escape, and reached Constantinople in safety; but the sultan treated him as a rebellious vassal in consequence of his secret departure. Joannes Palæologus, the son of Andronicus, who had succeeded his father in the appanage of Selymbria, was encouraged to claim the empire in virtue of the treaty of 1381, by which the succession had been secured to his father and himself. A body of Turkish troops was instructed to ravage the Greek territory up to the very walls of Constantinople; but other matters calling for Bajazet’s care, he accepted the submission of Manuel, and the Greek emperor again appeared as a vassal at the Sublime Porte.

The ambition of Bajazet was unbounded, and his love of war was inflamed by an inordinate confidence in his own military talents, and in the power of the Ottoman army. He despised the Christians, and considered it his first duty to reduce them to the condition of subjects, if not of slaves. The position of Manuel was therefore as dangerous as it was degrading; for although the spectacle of a Roman emperor standing as a suppliant before his throne soothed the pride of Bajazet, it was apparent that his vanity would readily yield to his ambition, if an opportunity presented of gaining Constantinople.

[1395-1399 A.D.]

For several years Bajazet was employed consolidating his dominions both in Europe and Asia, and he was compelled to watch the movements of the western powers, which threatened him with a new crusade. At last, when Sigismund, king of Hungary, was about to invade the Ottoman dominions, the sultan convoked an assembly of the Christian princes who were then his vassals, in order to prevent their combining to assist the invaders. Manuel, the Greek emperor, Joannes, despot of Selymbria, Theodore, despot of the Peloponnesus, Stephen, king of Servia, Constantine Dragazes, the son of Tzarco, prince of the valley of the Vardar, and several Greek, Servian, Bulgarian, and Albanian chiefs of less importance, who were already independent, appeared in the Ottoman camp at Serres. Circumstances induced the emperor Manuel and the despot Theodore to believe that their correspondence with the pope was known to the sultan, and that their lives were in danger. They both fled, and gained their own states in safety. Joannes of Selymbria remained to profit by the flight of his uncles; but Bajazet could only attend to the Hungarian war. His brilliant victory at Nicopolis in 1396 taught all Europe that the discipline of the janizaries was more than a match for the valour of the chivalry of France, and left him at liberty to punish the Greek princes for their desertion. He immediately turned his arms against the despot Theodore, and marched in person into Thessaly. The bishop of Phocis was the first traitor who joined the Mussulmans, and urged them to conquer Greece. The Wallachians of Thessaly and the widow of the count of Galona submitted to the terms imposed on them; and the sultan, seeing that no resistance would be offered to his troops by the Greeks in the Peloponnesus, turned back to Thrace. His generals, Yakub and Evrenus, took Corinth and Argos; while Theodore shut himself up within the walls of Misithra, and contemplated the ruin of his subjects without making an effort to save them. The Ottoman army, after ravaging great part of the peninsula, retired, carrying away immense booty and thirty thousand prisoners, whom they sold as slaves.

As Bajazet was not master of a sufficient naval force to attempt blockading Constantinople, he resolved to undermine the power of Manuel in such a way as would be least likely to awaken the jealousy of the commercial republics of Italy. He fanned the flames of family discord, which shed their lurid light on the records of the house of Palæologus by acknowledging Joannes, despot of Selymbria, as the lawful emperor of Constantinople and supplying him with a Turkish army to blockade Manuel by land.

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.