The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II - Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire Read Online Free PDF Page A

the Turks and drive them from Europe within the year, ‘notwithstanding any treaties or negotiations whatsoever…’.
    Three weeks after Mehmet came to the throne the crusader army crossed the Danube and began marching eastward along the right bank of the river through Ottoman territory, led by King Ladislas, John Hunyadi and Cardinal Cesarini. The crusader forces also included naval contingents from Burgundy, Venice and the papacy, whose ships patrolled the Danube, the Black Sea and the straits between Europe and Asia.
    When news of the invasion reached Edirne Mehmet sent a courier to inform Murat at his place of retirement in Manisa. Murat immediately mustered the troops of the Anatolian army, and in late October he had them ferried across the Bosphorus and led them to Edirne. Leaving Mehmet and Halil Pasha to guard Edirne, Murat then led his army north to Yanbol, where reinforcements under Sihabeddin Pasha joined him, bringing the number of men in his army up to some 60,000, almost three times the size of the Christian force.
    Murat caught up with the crusaders on 10 November 1444 near Varna on the Black Sea. During the first stage of the battle the crusaders defeated both wings of the Ottoman army, but Murat led his janissaries in a counter-attack that killed Ladislas. This turned the tide of battle, for when the crusader army learned that the king had died they turned and ‘fled like sheep before a wolf’, according to an anonymous Turkish chronicler. The chronicler goes on to say that on the following day the crusaders surrendered to the Turks, who ‘after making prisoner all their fresh-faced youths, put all the older ones to the sword, so that these proud infidels suffered what they themselves had planned against the community of Muhammed’. John Hunyadi was one of the few crusader leaders to escape, and the following year he was elected regent of Hungary.
    After his victory Murat led his army back to Edirne. Soon afterwards he resumed his retirement in Manisa, leaving Mehmet to continue his rule as sultan in Edirne under the tutelage of the grand vezir Halil Pasha.
    The Venetians thought to take advantage of Mehmet’s youth by negotiating a peace treaty with him, which was signed at Edirne on 23 February 1446. A copy of the treaty is still preserved in the Venetian State Archives, the only extant document from Mehmet’s first reign.
    Meanwhile, Halil Pasha had been sending a series of messages to Murat, imploring him to resume his rule as sultan, saying that Mehmet was too young and immature to rule. One instance of Mehmet’s immaturity cited by Halil Pasha was Mehmet’s impetuous plan to attack Constantinople, from which he was dissuaded by the grand vezir. Another concerned the janissaries, who had in April 1446 demanded an increase in pay. When this was refused they rioted and burned down the Edirne bedesten , or covered market, whereupon Mehmet gave in to their demands, setting a dangerous precedent that would trouble the Ottoman sultanate for centuries to come.
    After the latter incident Halil Pasha persuaded Mehmet to give up the throne and recall his father. Murat reluctantly agreed to return, and at the beginning of September 1446 he came back to Edirne and resumed his rule as sultan, while Mehmet withdrew to Manisa.
    Meanwhile, Christian forces had made gains in southern Greece and Albania, and as soon as Murat resumed his reign he launched counterattacks in both places. His opponent in southern Greece was the Despot of the Morea (Peloponnesos), Constantine Dragases, younger brother of the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus. During the winter of 1446-7 Murat regained the territory that Constantine had taken. Then the following year he launched a campaign against Skanderbeg, the Albanian leader, who was forced to abandon the Ottoman lands he had retaken and flee into the mountains, where for the next two decades he continued to fight against the Turks.
    Pope Nicholas V was elected to the papacy