R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

Venient annis saecula seri

Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum

Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus

Tiphysque novos detegat orbes

Nec sit terris ultima Thule

Possibly he had pondered over a less-known passage in the prose writings of the same author, who predicts that the time shall come when knowledge shall be vastly increased, and men shall look back with amazement at the ignorance of the Greeks and Romans. There was confirmation for such hopes in Holy Scripture. The anticipation of the Chaldean seer that in the latest times “many should run to and fro, and knowledge be increased” he interpreted as foreshadowing the opening of five-sixths of the globe, hitherto closed, to man’s travel, study, and reinvigorated powers of reasoning. Into the future of history in the narrow sense of the word, Bacon ventured only by one memorable forecast, since abundantly verified, and more abundantly by momentous events of quite recent occurrence. He prophesied that the great inheritances of the East and the West, both at the time ready to slip from the feeble grasp of Spain, must alike fall to those who commanded the ocean—to that Anglo-Saxon race of which he will remain to all time one of the most illustrious representatives.

IN the middle of the fourteenth century two powers which had recently sprung into unexpected prominence were closing in upon Constantinople from the west and from the east. But in the race for the stronghold on the Bosphorus the competitor which might have seemed to have the best chances of winning, suddenly fell out. With the death of Stephen Dusan (1356) the ill-consolidated empire of Servia collapsed: his successors were ciphers; whereas Orchan, the Sultan of the Ottomans, handed down a well-disciplined State, built on strong foundations, to a line of eminent princes. Under him the Ottoman Turks won (1358) their first foothold on European soil by the occupation of the fortress of Gallipoli,—somewhat less than a century before Mohammad II captured Constantinople. It was not long before Orchan’s son Murad I had crept round and conquered the eastern half of the Balkan peninsula, cutting off Constantinople from Christian Europe. For the first time, since the days of Darius and Xerxes, Thrace passed under the sway of an Asiatic power,—often as the hosts of Sassanid kings and Saracen caliphs had lined the shores of the dividing straits. If the conquest had resembled in character the old Persian conquest, if the inhabitants had been required only to pay tribute to a distant ruler and receive his garrisons in their cities, the lot of these lands would have been light. But they were taken into full possession by their new lords; and oriental nomads of an alien and intolerant religion were planted as the dominant race amid the Christian population. The circumstance that the Ottomans were nomads (they were a clan of the Turkish tribe of Oghuz) gives their empire its significance in the history of mankind. In the perpetual struggle between the herdsmen and the tillers of the soil which has been waged from remote ages on the continents of Europe and Asia, the advance of the Ottomans was a decisive victory for the children of the steppes. This feature of their conquest is of no less fundamental importance than its aspect as a victory for Islam.

How the Ottomans were caught in the tide of the Mongol invasion and their power almost ruined; how they recovered under the prudent guidance of Mohammad I; how the wave of conquest once more rolled on under Murad II, until a seal was set upon their European empire by the capture of Constantinople,—all this has been told by Gibbon. The story is here taken up in 1453.

For a moment it was not clear whether the new lord of Constantinople would be content with a suzerainty over the neighbouring lands which had once been provinces of the Roman empire, or would reduce them to the condition of provinces of the Ottoman realm. The princes of the Peloponnese, the despot of Servia, the lords of some of the island States of the Aegean, forthwith offered their submission. Mohammad soon showed that he would not acquiesce in a system of vassal states paying him tribute as overlord, but aimed at compassing the complete and immediate subjection of the Balkan peninsula. A typical oriental conqueror, he was driven on by the true instinct that it would be fatal to stand still or abandon aggression; he believed that it was the destiny of his people to spread the religion of the Prophet over the whole earth, and the task of his life was to further the accomplishment of this end. His next successors worked with varying vigour in the same direction, and the Ottomans throve so long as they conquered. But it was constant success in war that quickened and strengthened the frame of their State; and the hour in which limits were set to territorial advance marks the beginning of a rapid decline. The nature of their institutions, as we shall see, demanded war.

Mohammad first turned his arms against Servia. This step was determined by Servia’s geographical position, lying on the road to Hungary. For Mohammad saw that Hungary was the only country, John Hunyady the only leader, that he had seriously to fear. The two western powers which had the greatest interests at stake in the east and were most gravely affected by the change of masters at Constantinople, were Venice and Genoa. The Genoese were accustomed to dealings with the Ottomans; they were the first Christian power west of the Adriatic that had made a treaty with them, and they had not scrupled to use the alliance of the infidels against their fellow-Christians. The Genoese colony of Galata sent the keys of their walled town to Mohammad on the fall of the City, and the Sultan though he slighted their walls granted them a favourable capitulation securing their liberties and commercial rights. But Genoa was feeble and indifferent; and, feeling herself unequal to new efforts, she transferred, before the fatal year was over, her Pontic settlements to the Genoese Bank of St George, into whose hands the administration of Corsica passed about the same time. But the financial resources of the Bank did not suffice for the task of supporting these colonies, and Genoese trade declined. Venice, on the other hand, was not indifferent; and her first thought was, not to recover the bulwark of Christendom from the hands of the Muslim, but to preserve her own commercial privileges under the rule of the infidel sovereign. She sent an envoy to Mohammad; and a treaty, which formed the basis of all subsequent negociations, was presently concluded. By it she secured freedom of trade for her merchants and the privilege of protecting Venetian settlers on Turkish soil by means of her own officers.

Hungary, then, was the only power that Mohammad, secure on the side of Venice, had immediately to fear. In the first month of 1454 the young and worthless King Ladislaus had assembled a diet at Buda and carried extraordinary measures for organising an army against the Turks. John Hunyady, appointed commander-in-chief, had a host ready to take the field in spring, when George Brankovic, the despot of Servia, arrived, suppliant for help, with the news that the Turk was advancing against his kingdom. Hunyady crossed the Danube and raided Turkish territory, while Mohammad beleaguered the Servian fortresses of Ostroviza and Semendra (Smederevo). He took Ostroviza, but Semendra—a stronghold of capital strategic importance for operations against Servia, Hungary, and Wallachia—was saved by the arrival of the Magyar general, and Mohammad retreated. A large detachment of the retreating army encountered Hunyady near Krusovac. No regular battle was fought; a panic seized the Turks and they were routed with slaughter. Hunyady completed his campaign by descending the Danube and reducing the Ottoman fortress of Widdin to ashes.