Constantine the Last Emperor of the Greeks, or the Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks E-Book

Chedomil Mijatovich

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 254

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Mijatovich's Constantine the Last Emperor of the Greeks, or the Conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, is a fascinating history of the fall of Constantinople.

Leseprobe

CHAPTER I. MORAL CAUSES OF THE RAPID RISE OF THE OTTOMAN AND THE FALL OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRES.

Islam and Byzantinism.

In the one hundred years from the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century (1365—1465) events deeply tragically in their character and of great historical importance occurred on the Balkanic Peninsula. An entire change of social and political conditions was accomplished amidst terrible convulsions, accompanied by fearful bloodshed and unspeakable suffering. A foreign race, a strange religion, and a low culture took possession of the beautiful regions between three seas, where once a highly gifted and comparatively cultured people formed and kept up independent states.

It is one of the most interesting unsolved problems of history how an uncivilized and by no means numerous tribe so speedily succeeded in destroying three Christian kingdoms of a higher degree of culture, and in building up in their stead an extensive, powerful, and enduring Empire. The great fact, however, stands out prominently, assuming the dignity of a general law, that organization of forces, although these may be small in themselves and low in their inspirations, is always victorious over disorganized forces, even though the latter be great, and superior in their individual character.

The Turks were not destitute of certain virtues and natural gifts when they left the Turcoman steppes and came to Armenia to guard the eastern frontier of the Seldjuk Sultans; but after their acceptance of Islam their national character went through an evolutionary change. The sparks of fire thrown out of the volcanic soul of the great Prophet of Arabia inflamed the susceptible sons of the Asiatic deserts, and the metal of their original character was molten and crystallized into a new form of national individuality, capable of the accomplishment of the great, and even more terrible than great, task assigned to them by Providence. As an irresistible avalanche, they moved westward, breaking down and burying all political and national organizations whose elasticity had been weakened and whose strength had been undermined by ages of abuse and mismanagement.

Islam not only impressed upon Ertoghrul and his followers the duty of being upright before God, truthful and charitable amongst men, but gave them political ideas, transforming a tribe of nomads into a body of warriors and statesmen, capable of creating, maintaining, and developing a great empire. Islam filled them to overflowing with genuine religious enthusiasm, and with the belief that to serve God meant to subdue the Infidels, and conquer the world. This, their central idea, was a bond of unity, giving them political purpose and organization. Their faith immeasurably increased the forces inherent in an energetic, hardy, and astute race.

But all the energy of a youthful and hardy race, all their admirable organization, and the high spirit with which Islam inspired the Turks, would not of themselves explain the swift extension of the Turkish rule in Europe. Had the valiant and enthusiastic followers of Mohammed encountered even one really strong, healthy, and well-organized State on this side of the Hellespont, it is doubtful whether the pages of history would have recorded the wonderful growth of the Ottoman Empire. To decipher the secret of that rapid triumphant march we must read the record not only in the lurid glare which conquering Islam gives, but also by the pallid light shed by dying Byzantinism.

It is not easy to describe in a few words what Byzantinism was. It seems as though historic Providence had desired to see the harvest which could be raised, if the seed of Christian civilization should be sown on the peninsula between Asia and Europe, watered by Western rains and warmed by Eastern suns, on fields abandoned by Hellenic culture and somewhat ploughed by Roman institutions. It might have been hoped that the Divine idea of brotherhood would unite the warm heart of New Rome and the practical reason of Old Rome into an admirable harmony, capable of lifting humanity to heights as yet unattained.

But the experiment was not a success. The great forces, from the combination of which so much might have been expected, proved barren. From the spirit of the East some colors and some forms were accepted, but little of its depth, and warmth, and inherent nobility. From Eastern Philosophy only a few more or less nebulous ideas of mysticism were retained; and what of good was borrowed from Roman institutions took no real root, because Roman institutions presuppose a consciousness of responsibility, and also initiative and civic sentiment. What took the deepest root were the forms and spirit of autocratic government from the worst times of the Roman Imperialism, which made the existence of individual liberty impossible. The Christian religion was too abstract, too sublime to be fully understood; it was pushed backward to let the Church come forward.

And the Church identified itself very speedily with the compactly-organized body of ignorant, superstitious, selfish and ambitious monks and priests, who exalted the position of the Emperor only to use him as their servant, and who made practical Christianity mean adoration of old bones, rags, and mummies, and the buying and selling of prayers for the repose of the souls of the dead. The people, having been led astray from the pure source of evangelical truth, found new power nowhere, nor a new idea capable of moving them to great and glorious action. The Emperors and the Church hierarchy became allies, and remained so to the last.

Before the blast of that powerful alliance the sparks of individual liberty were quickly extinguished. Revolutions only made matters worse, because they gave occasions for the display of brutal force, cruelty, servility, and treason, and ended by strengthening the autocracy. Every generous instinct was crushed out to recompense base selfishness and vile ingratitude. The nation became an inert mass, without initiative and without will. Before the Emperor and the Church prelates it groveled in the dust; behind them it rose up to spit at them and shake its fist. Tyranny and exploitation above, hatred and cowardice beneath; cruelty often, hypocrisy always and everywhere, in the upper and lower strata. Outward polish and dexterity replaced true culture; phraseology hid lack of ideas.

Both political and social bodies were alike rotten; the spirit of the nation was languid, devoid of all elasticity. Selfishness placed itself on the throne of public interest, and tried to cover its hideousness with the mantle of false patriotism. This political and social system, in which straightforwardness and manliness were replaced by astuteness, hypocrisy, and cowardice, while, however, there still lingered love for fine forms and refined manners,—this system, in which the State generally appears in the ecclesiastical garb, bore the name of Byzantinism.

It was inevitable that some Byzantinism should enter into the political and social organism of the Slavonic nations of the Balkan Peninsula. Practically they went to the Byzantine Greeks to learn political and social wisdom, just as they went to Constantinople for their religion. It was a slow and exhausting process by which Byzantine notions displaced Slavonic traditions among the Serbians and Bulgarians. And this struggle, not unnaturally, contributed to weaken the Slavonic kingdoms. It was in its own way preparing the paths for the Turkish invasion.

It is especially noteworthy that we find so many Serbian and Bulgarian malcontents in the camp and at the Court of the Ottoman Sultans. The social and political conditions of those Slavonic kingdoms of the Balkans were highly unsatisfactory. The nobles were haughty and exclusive. They jealously watched the kings, and resented bitterly every attempt at reform. They were hard and exacting masters to the tillers of the soil settled on their estates, who had to do much personal service, and to give a large part of the produce of their labor. The power, centered in the kings, was not strong enough to prevent all sorts of abuse on the part of the privileged class. Emperor Stephan Dushan essayed to fix by legal enactments the duties of the peasants towards their feudal lords. At the Parliament held in 1349 at Scopia he obtained the consent of his noblemen and high ecclesiastic dignitaries to such a law, and a certain protection of the central power was extended to the peasantry. But after the death of this most remarkable man in Serbian history, the authority of the Central Government was shattered, and if the landlord acted unjustly there were none to protect the injured tenant. In

Bosnia, even so late as in the beginning of the fifteenth century, some of the landlords regularly exported their peasants and sold them as slaves!

The consequence of such a state of things was that the peasantry, the great bulk of the population, hating their unjust and exacting masters, became more and more indifferent to the fate of the country. The first Sultans, on their part, systematically, from the very beginning of their settlement in Europe, protected and ostentatiously aimed at satisfying the peasantry, never neglecting any occasion publicly to manifest their desire to do justice to the poor. At the same time they ruthlessly exterminated the national aristocracy. Therefore when the horrors of the invasion had passed away, the peasantry quickly reconciled themselves to the Turkish rule, which in some respects seems to have brought them a change for the better. Numerous proofs might be adduced for this assertion, however paradoxical it may appear today.

In a letter written by Stephan, the last king of Bosnia, in 1463 to Pope Pius II, we find these remarkable words: “The Turks promise to all who side with them freedom, and the rough mind of the peasants does not understand the artfulness of such a promise, and believes that such freedom will last forever; and so it may happen that the misguided common people may turn away from me, unless they see that I am supported by you”. And when Sultan Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, invaded Bosnia in 1464, the peasantry would not move against him, saying: “It is not our business to defend the king; let the nobles do it!”

There still exists a letter reporting a conversation between the envoy of the Duke of Milan and King Alfonso of Naples, in December 1455, in which it is said that the Albanian peasantry preferred the rule of the Turks to that of their own nobles! King Alfonso was anxious lest the Albanians should abandon Skanderbeg, and surrender again to the Turks, because “li homeni de quello paese sono molto affeti al Turcho, el quale gli fa una bona e humana SIGNORIA!”. These are the words of the king himself!

The Church in Bulgaria and Serbia, in its material relations with the people, was only another form of aristocracy: it demanded labor, service, and a part of the produce of the land. The monks formed a privileged caste, and did not pay taxes to the State, nor did they share any public burden. Their numbers were continually increasing. The thousands of churches and cloisters built by pious kings, queens, and nobles, were not able to contain them. They were living in towns and villages and in private houses, constantly exposed, and frequently succumbing, to worldly temptations. Very few of them were saints, and the majority managed to forfeit the respect of the people, not only for themselves but for the Church. The great Reformer and Lawgiver, Stephan Dushan, by law forbade monks and nuns to live otherwise than cloistered; but the monks proved stronger than the mighty Tzar. The mass of the people believed in the miraculous powers of relics, but did not like the monks.

This dislike explains to some extent the rapid spread of the religious sect of the Bogumils or Partharenes, especially in Bulgaria and Bosnia. The Orthodox Church fiercely opposed these first rude Protestants of Europe. The history of the religious wars which raged in the Balkan Peninsula through two centuries (1250-1450) has not yet been written; but some of the results of that struggle were evident in the deterioration of the religious life, and in the weakening of the political organization of the Bulgarian, Serbian, and Bosnian kingdoms. In Albania, where the conflict between the Orthodox and the Catholic clergy raged most fiercely, and in Bosnia, where the struggle between the Orthodox Church and the Partharenes lasted longest, Islam speedily found converts.

It is characteristic of the dispositions of the people at this period (1360-1460) that the Calabrian monk Barlaam found warm supporters among the Greeks of Constantinople itself, when he denounced the ignorance and indolence of the monks of the “Holy Mountain Athos”. Still more characteristic that Gemistos Plethon, the personal friend of the Emperor John Paleologus, one of the great theological and philosophical lights among the Greeks at the Council of Florence, thought it necessary to frame a new religion! He was certainly not the only man whom Christianity, as it was represented by the Orthodox Church of his time, did not satisfy.

In addition to the circumstances of the social and religious life, there were some other influences at work to disorganize the vital forces of the Christian States. There were almost always several pretenders to the imperial throne in Constantinople and the royal thrones in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia, who hoped by Turkish help to satisfy their own ambition. Naturally, these claimants were ever hospitably welcomed by the Sultans. Again and again gifted Serbians, or Bulgarians, or Greeks, who in their own country could not rise from the position in which they were born, found an open way to wealth, honor, and power, a path to the saddle of a Beyler Bey (Commander-in-Chief), or to the carpet of a Vizier, and perhaps to the golden cage of one of the daughters or sisters of the Sultan himself! It seems a paradox to say that the Turks opened new horizons to the people of the Balkan Peninsula. Yet their political system, a combination of absolute despotism with the very broadest democracy, had much in it that was novel and acceptable. To the notions of an average Greek, and especially to the notions of an average Serbian or Bulgarian, that system was not more unnatural or more disagreeable than the feudal system which secured all the good things of the world only to the nobles and the priests.

The presence of Christian malcontents, refugees, pretenders, and adventurers in the Turkish camp and at the Sultan’s Porte, materially aided Turkish policy and Turkish arms to progress from victory to victory. Without them the Turkish Viziers and generals could hardly have obtained that minute and exact knowledge of men and circumstances in Christian countries, which so often astonished their contemporaries. Thus the Porte became promptly informed of the plans of the Christian kings, and was enabled to counteract them. Indeed, the leadership of the new Empire speedily passed into the hands of Christian renegades, and almost all the great statesmen and generals of the Sultans at this period were of Greek, Bulgarian, or Serbian origin.

The last-mentioned circumstance constitutes one of the most tragic characteristics of the history of the Balkan nations. Its sadness is deepened by the fatal entanglement of the Christian nations of the Peninsula, who were skillfully compelled to annihilate each other in furtherance of Turkish aggrandizement. In the Turkish army which destroyed the Serbian kingdom on the field of Kossovo (1389), there were numbers of Greek, Bulgarian, and Serbian warriors. Among others, Despot Constantine Dragash (the maternal grandfather of the last Emperor of the Greeks), followed Sultan Murad I with a contingent of auxiliary troops. When in the battle near Nicopolis in 1396, the French knights, aided by the Polish and Hungarian cavalry, routed the Janissaries of Bayazed Ildirim, the Sultan’s reserve, consisting of several thousands of Serbian Cuirassiers, under the command of Prince Stephan Lazarevich, came rushing down to snatch the victory from the Christians.

The Turks gave proof of their great astuteness, at this early stage of their history, by their using chiefly Christian money and Christian arms to subdue, and afterwards to destroy, the Christian States of the Balkan. It was a general rule of their policy not to occupy at once the country of the defeated Christian Prince, but to impose a heavy tribute in money, and to exact that a contingent of his best soldiers should be regularly provided to fight against the Sultan’s enemies, even if the latter were friendly Christian neighbors of the vassal Prince.

King Marko (the hero of so many Serbian and Bulgarian national songs) has illustrated well the feeling with which comparatively cultured Christian knights fought in the ranks of the Turkish army. At the commencement of the great battle at Rovine between the Turks and the Vallachs (1394), King Marko turned to his relative, Despot Constantine Dragash, and said: “I pray God to give victory to the Christians, though I pay for it with my own life!”

These historic words were only an echo of the pain which many a Christian knight endured when, in the monstrously anomalous position, he had to draw his sword for the Mohammedan Turks against brethren of his own faith. But that anomaly was only one of the bitter, yet inevitable, fruits of Byzantinism.

East and West.

Byzantinism prepared the way for the Turkish invasion. It enfeebled the Balkan nations, destroyed their mental elasticity, and engendered a selfishness, which ripened into all sorts of wickedness. Byzantinism on one side and the youthful energy of a religiously disposed tribe of born warriors on the other explain much, but do not explain all; the relations of the Byzantine Empire with the West of Europe must also be considered.

When the Eastern and Western Churches separated (A.D. 1053), they did not part with sorrowing hearts, but with mutual anger and great bitterness. Yet the separation of the Churches was not the beginning of the estrangement; it was rather the result of deeper underlying differences of sentiments and opinions. Old Rome and New Rome were not of the same temper, nor of similar nerve and fiber. Separation only deepened their mutual aversion. The priests and monks had done their best to concentrate the latent antipathies and to set them ablaze. The people, when they kissed the hands of their priests, seemed to have received from these, who should have been preachers of peace and charity, only new incentives to hatred and intolerance.

The source of bitterness, opened by ecclesiastical hands even at the foot of the Altar, grew to be a deep river, running in the channels dug by political events.

The Normans occupying the south of Italy found it easy to cross over to Albania, a province of the Byzantine Empire. With the benediction of Pope Gregory VII, Robert Guiscar, “Duke by the grace of God and St Peter”, besieged Durazzo (Dyrrachium) in 1081. This strong place on the Albanian coast of the Adriatic was the key of the famous old Roman road Via Egnatia, which, crossing Albania and Macedonia diagonally, led to Salonica, joining there another military road to Constantinople. It might almost be said that Durazzo was the western gate of the Byzantine Empire.

It is worthy of note that even at the occasion of this first attempt by a foreign power to obtain a firm footing in the Balkanic Peninsula, antagonistic interests came into play. While Robert Guiscar and Pope Gregory combined to effect the conquest of the Byzantine Empire, Venice sent her fleet to assist the Emperor in repulsing their attack. And though the Normans defeated the Byzantine army, took Durazzo, and conquered a number of towns and castles in Epirus and Thessaly, yet in the end they had to relinquish their conquests because the German Emperor, Henry IV, invaded Italy.

But the Normans returned to the charge. For nearly a century the Greek Empire had to defend itself against their attacks. Guiscar’s expedition was followed by that of Bohemund (A.D. 1107), of King Roger (in 1146), and the great invasion of Tancred (1185). The latter not only took Durazzo and Salonica, but marched into Thracia on his way to Constantinople.

The Norman successes had indirectly important results. They helped to destroy the prestige of the Byzantine arms in the eyes of the Serbians, Bulgarians, and Albanians. They shook the weakened Empire, and started its slow dismemberment. They demonstrated to Western Catholic Europe that the conquest of the Eastern Empire was not impossible. And this demonstration fired the ambition of the Popes to convert the East, by arms if not by arguments, and to compel it to bow to Rome. It is significant that this very Pope Gregory, in a letter written in 1073 to Ebouly de Rossi, declared “that it is far better for a country to remain under the rule of Islam, than be governed by Christians who refuse to acknowledge the rights of the Catholic Church”. The Orient’s answer to this we shall learn from the excited Greeks in the days preceding the great catastrophe.

The lesson which the Norman warfare in Albania and Epirus taught began to bear fruit already towards the end of the twelfth century. The Serbians, vassals of the Greek emperors, sought alliances in the West, with the evident intention of establishing a strong and independent State of their own on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire. Stephan Nemanya, the founder of the Serbian royal dynasty of Nemanyich, endeavored by special embassies to approach the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and in 1189 received him and his Crusaders with great hospitality at Nish. The Memoirs of Ansbertus, the Emperor’s secretary, state that the Serbian Prince urged the Emperor to make himself master of the Byzantine

Empire, promising him assistance. From another chronicler in the suite of Barbarossa we learn that Nemanya made these proposals in the names of his allies, Peter and Ivan Assen, the chiefs of the Bulgarian nation, as well as in his own name. Frederic was not prepared to enter into the vast projects of the Serbian rider. Notwithstanding this, they parted as sincere friends. Ansbertus never mentions Nemanya without adding, our friend, the great Count of Serbia.

The passing of the great and generally undisciplined armies of the Crusaders through Byzantine countries did not improve old feelings or remove old prejudices. On the contrary, it enabled the Western warriors (or, as the Greeks called them, “the Latins”) to perceive at once the weakness of the Empire and the unfriendliness of the people. On the other hand, the roughness and rudeness of the Crusaders confirmed the contempt which the Greeks felt for such “Western barbarians”.

The bitterness of the Greeks was naturally largely increased by the sudden appearance of the Crusaders under the walls of Constantinople, and by their subsequent conquest of that capital (A.D. 1204). For fifty-seven years (1204-1261) the Latins retained possession of Constantinople and the best European provinces of the Empire. For fifty-seven years the Catholic priests read masses at the altar of St Sophia, to the inexpressible sorrow and humiliation of the patriotic and bigoted orthodox Greeks. During these long, dark years the Greeks, especially the more narrow-minded populace of the capital, were storing up hatred of the Latins, which, even two hundred years later, prevented them finding anything more bitter to endure.

Michael Paleologus succeeded in 1261 in driving out the Latins from Constantinople. But he was unable to reconquer the islands, the fortified towns in Thessaly and Morea. Instead of despots and princes bearing the names of the old Greek families, we find a Guy de la Tremouille, Baron de Chilandritza, a Guillaume de la Roche, Duc d’Athenes, a Nicholas de Saint-Omer, Seigneur de Thebes, Richard Comte de Cephalonie, Guillaume Allman Baron de Patras, Villain d’Annoy Baron d’Arcadie, Bertrand de Baux, “Mareschalcus Achaiae”, &c. &c. This combination of French names and feudal titles with the classical names of Athens, Patras, Thebes, Arcadia, Achaia, &c., sounds even in our day strange and almost grotesque. But it must have inspired the patriotic Greeks of those days with frantic hatred and despair. And the highest, the most cultured class in Constantinople, those who under the new dynasty of Paleologus ruled the Empire, could not but feel great humiliation at the thought of the French baronies in the classical territories of the Peloponnesus. Nor could the Greeks be without anxiety whilst the energetic and clever Anjous, the French dynasty of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, were asserting their pretensions to the Imperial throne of Constantinople. Catherine de Valois, the wife of Philip II of Anjou, bore proudly the titles of Empress of Constantinople, Despotissa of Romania, Duchess of Durazzo, Princess of Achaia, &c. &c.

The diplomatic and military preparations of Charles I to reconquer the Byzantine Empire, which Baldwin II (of Courtenay) had ceded to his house, were so extensive and so menacing that Michael Paleologus thought there was only one course to pursue in order to avert the danger. He accepted the invitation addressed to him by Pope Gregory X, and sent representatives of the Greek Church to the Council of Lyons. There, on the 29th of June 1279, amidst much enthusiasm, the reconciliation of the Eastern and Western Churches was solemnly proclaimed.

This really did help to avert the danger and counteract the preparations of the ambitious King of Naples. The Greek diplomatists were highly pleased with the success of their move; the monks and the people of Constantinople only laughed at the performances of the Council; but in the end this insincere attempt at reconciliation produced greater estrangement, increasing among the Latins their disgust against what they called the hypocrisy and duplicity of the Greeks.

But that which the embarrassed and short-sighted Byzantine leaders at the close of the thirteenth century considered only as a clever stroke of policy became an unavoidable necessity from the middle of the fourteenth century. John Cantacuzene, who, with all his shortcomings and vanities, was an able statesman, recognized at once that the Turks were a

far more formidable danger to the Greek Empire than either the Latins or the neighboring Slavs. He was the first to declare openly that an alliance with the warlike nations of the West could alone save the Greek Empire from the Turks. From his time onwards the alliance with the Latins became the standing policy of the Byzantine statesmen. It was a policy imposed by force of circumstances. The orthodox kings of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Bosnia, were by the same circumstances led to seek for alliances with the Catholic kings of Hungary and Poland.

Some Greek, and especially some Russian historians cannot sufficiently blame Rome for its utilizing the danger that threatened the Eastern Empire to impose the Papal authority on it. But it was only natural that the Popes should seize the opportunity to bring about the union of the Churches. It was impossible for them to act differently. It was for them a simple and unavoidable compliance with a sacred and self-evident duty. From their point of view, it was manifest that Providence had chosen to use the arms of the Infidels to break the stubbornness of the stiff-necked Greeks, and to compel them to bow before the successors of St Peter. In perfect good faith, the Popes thought it clearly their duty to co-operate with Providence for so good a purpose. Rome doing its duty added much to the melancholy character of this great tragedy.

But it was also quite natural that the masses of the orthodox people in Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece, should not be able to comprehend the motives which produced the apparent inconsistency of their own rulers and statesmen. They had grown up and been systematically educated in the belief that the Roman Church was the enemy of their own national and truly orthodox Church, and that the Pope was an incarnate Anti-Christ; they had been accustomed to give the name of “Rim-papa” to their dogs; they had been taught that the Latins were cheats, liars, and thieves, faithless and effeminate weaklings, who ate frogs, rats, and cats. And now, suddenly, their rulers came and declared to them that in consequence of a (probably exaggerated) danger from the Turks, they must unite their “Orthodox” Church with the “heretical” Church of Rome, acknowledge “antichrist” as “Christ’s Vicar” on earth, and embrace as brothers the impure and barbarous Latins!

It was not an easy task for the Emperors of Byzantium and for their statesmen to suppress their own personal feelings, conquer their own prejudices, and accept with a good grace what seemed to be inevitable. Yet they did it. The Council of Florence in A.D. 1438 bears evidence of the readiness of some Greeks to sacrifice their dearest and deepest personal affections and convictions to the political interest of their country. But no earthly power was able to change the heart of the masses of the people, and to dispel the clouds of prejudices accumulated through so many generations. The populace execrated the union subscribed to by their Emperor and his great secular and ecclesiastic dignitaries. To the axiom of Gregory VII, “Better Islam than schism” the Greeks of Constantinople now answered, “Better Islam than the Pope!”. And Islam, turning towards Mecca, praised the only one and true God, who did not permit the Giaours to unite against the faithful!

To the wide-awake and wary Turkish Sultans it was quite clear that the real and practical alliance of the Balkanic with the Western nations would be the death-warrant of Turkish ambitions. Therefore to prevent such an alliance by every means became to the Porte a matter of immense importance.

Sometimes they succeeded in doing this by prompt military action. When it was reported to Murad I that King Shishman of Bulgaria had entered into negotiations for an offensive and defensive alliance with King Lazar of Serbia and King Sigismund of Hungary, the Turks unexpectedly invaded Bulgaria, and destroyed her army, capturing Shishman and all the royal family in Nicopolis (A.D. 1386). There is no doubt that the great battle on the field of Kossovo (15th June 1389) was fought with the intention of paralyzing Serbia before her ally, the King of Hungary, could come to her assistance. When, a few years later, Vuk Brankovich, prince of the country lying between Bosnia and Macedonia (now Kossovo-Eyalet), reopened negotiations with Hungary, the Turks prevented the accomplishment of his projects by suddenly seizing and poisoning him (1395). When, shortly afterwards, the young Prince of Serbia, Stephan, the son of Lazar, went personally to do homage to Bayazed Ilderim, the Sultan warned him against leaning toward Hungary, “because”, he said impressively, “no

good can come to those who lean that way; think what became of King Shishman, and the other princes who sought alliances with Hungary!