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The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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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 unsuccessfuclass="underline" 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.
A Fourteenth Century Knight
The Greek Empire enjoyed an uninterrupted peace during the reign of Muhammed I, which lasted until the year 1421; and Manuel devoted his attention during this period to restoring some order in the public administration, and to re-establishing the sway of the central authority in the distant provinces of the empire. After completing his reforms in the civil, financial, military, and ecclesiastical departments of Constantinople, he found it necessary to visit the provinces in person, in order to reduce the local power of the Greek archons within reasonable bounds. He quitted Constantinople in the month of July, 1413, and commenced his operations by reducing the island of Thasos, the citadel of which resisted his little army for two months. The emperor then visited Thessalonica, where it appears that he remained more than a year. His nephew Joannes, who was governor of the city, assumed the monastic habit; but whether he was compelled by the emperor to adopt this step, in order to allow the new reforms to be carried into execution, is uncertain. The despot Andronicus, the emperor’s second son, was appointed governor of Thessalonica. After his father’s death he sold the city to the Venetians for the sum of fifty thousand sequins.
In March, 1415, Manuel visited the Peloponnesus. The Roman Empire of the East had shrunk to such pitiful dimensions that the Byzantine province, which comprised only about three-quarters of that peninsula, was now its most extensive province. The first care of the emperor was to strengthen the means of defending this territory by fortifying the Isthmus of Corinth. He then directed his attention to reforming the abuses which the feudal tyranny of the Franks and the unprincipled fiscal extortions of the Greek archons had introduced into the administration. These abuses were rapidly exterminating the Greek agricultural population, and making way for the immigration of a ruder class of Albanian labourers.
When we compare the reforms of Manuel with the legislation of Orkhan, we are astonished at the great intellectual superiority displayed by the Ottomans at this period. The Greek emperor adopted only a few temporary devices to arrest the progress of social putrefaction in a diseased society. His own talents and the energies of his people were incompetent to make any bold efforts for extirpating the sources of the evil, and for infusing a spirit of honesty and patriotism into Greek society. Yet the fact that Greek society as well as the imperial government was rapidly decaying was generally acknowledged. The despot Theodore, Manuel’s brother, who died about the year 1407, had felt the task of undertaking the regeneration of Greece so hopeless, and had found the difficulty of governing the Peloponnesians so great, that he attempted to sell his province to the knights of Rhodes, after he had introduced numerous colonies of Albanians to fill up the void caused by the decrease of the native population.
From a satirist of the time, we learn that while the emperor Manuel was occupied in diminishing the power and checking the abuses of the archons of the Peloponnesus and of the Constantinopolitan officials, many of the courtiers in his household made a traffic of creating new corruptions in the administration by selling imperial decrees and golden bulls. The character of the native Greeks he declares to be equally bad. He says: “They are formed of three parts: their tongue speaks one thing, their mind meditates another, and their actions accord with neither.” There can be no good administration among an utterly demoralised people. When the emperor returned to Constantinople, he carried with him some of the most turbulent and intriguing of the Peloponnesian chiefs, who had, previous to his arrival, contrived to appropriate the greater part of the taxes levied on the people to their own use. Indeed the most important result of Manuel’s visit was the introduction of such a degree of order in the provincial administration, that a fixed sum could be regularly remitted to the imperial treasury at Constantinople. His son Theodore remained as his viceroy at Misithra.
[1421-1431 A.D.]
The death of Sultan Muhammed I in 1421 involved the empire in a contest with his son, Murad II. The self-conceit of the Greeks persuaded them that they could guide the progress of the Ottomans by their superiority in diplomacy. No experience could teach them that rhetoric and scholastic learning are feeble arms against military discipline and national courage. A pretender to the Ottoman throne resided at Constantinople, named Mustapha, who asserted that he was a son of Bajazet. He was now acknowledged as lawful sultan, and Manuel concluded with him a treaty, by which Mustapha promised to restore Gallipoli, the Chalcidice of Macedonia, and the maritime cities on the Black Sea, while the emperor engaged to furnish money and military stores. He was abandoned by his followers, taken prisoner by Murad II, and hanged, in order to convince the world that he was an impostor.