Dracula's Wars E-Book

James Waterson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 463

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The real Dracula was far from Bram Stoker's well-mannered aristocrat. Better known as Vlad the Impaler, he was named for his favoured execution method: running a spear through his victim's lower body, then standing them upright so it skewered their vital organs. In a world ruled by petty tyrants and constantly at war, the young Dracula was held hostage by the Turks while his father was assassinated and his brother was buried alive. Finally released, Dracula conducted an almighty purge, surrounding his palace with noblemen impaled on stakes. Then he turned his attention to military campaigns against the Turks and Bulgars to consolidate his power. Yet to Romanians and the Pope he was a hero and liberator, fighting to protect his kingdom and countrymen from invasion in a complex and treacherous time. And, as an initiate in the Order of the Dragon, Dracula also played a vital (if not entirely noble) part in the fight against the Ottoman war machine. In this full account of Vlad Dracula, James Waterson details the good and the bad of this warlord prince, offering a fascinating insight into the violent end of the Middle Ages.

Leseprobe

For RO&DO&37

The old centuries had, and have, powers oftheir own which mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill.

Jonathan Harker’s Journal, 15 May

Bram Stoker, Dracula

We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us … but what if we are only an afterglow of them?

J.G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Szekelys – and the Dracula as their heart’s blood, their brains, and their swords – can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Habsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over.

Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.1

I have acknowledged the intellect, passion, humour and numerous kindnesses of two of my former tutors at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the introductions of a total of four previous volumes. I am pleased to once again have the opportunity to express my ongoing debt to Dr Brian Williams and to Dr David Morgan. I thank the former for having set the undergraduate essay ‘Discuss Ottoman relations with the Serbs from the Battle of the River Maritz to the fall of Constantinople’ and the latter for expounding his theory ‘that you just cannot avoid the Mongols’ on day one of Eurasian History 101, which has shaped my approach to the subject ever since, and it is a pleasure to once again prove him right; for if the nascent Ottoman state was not the direct result of the collapse of the Mongol-created Sultanate of Rum then I am not entirely sure what it was.

To these superb teachers and academics I would like to add a third and somewhat belated acknowledgement. Dr Colin Heywood introduced me to the later Ottoman Empire and I can give him no higher praise than that given during a review of one of his works on Bosnia by the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies: ‘another example of his versatility and of thoughtful and careful scholarship in both its conceptual and practical aspects, unlike much Ottoman scholarship, Heywood’s prose is always a pleasure to read.’ It was also always a pleasure to listen to Dr Heywood lecture.

I would like to thank my indulgent Dubai office colleagues, Ian Milburn and Larry Neal, for their genially unimpeachable forbearance at yet another retelling of how Grousset’s classic tripartite chronology of Crusade and Jihad in the Holy Land, L’anarchie Musulmane: L’equilibre: L’anarchieFranque2 could be applied mutatis mutandis to the medieval and early modern history of the Balkans as a scheme, with Dracula as both an identifiable point in its evolution, and an exemplar of the anarchic response of the medieval Europeans to the challenge of the Ottomans in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Their restraint and nodding encouragement while I expounded such ideas has led, in no small part, to the production of this volume with its overarching theme of ‘L’anarchie Européen: L’equilibre: L’anarchie Turc.’

I cannot give enough thanks to His Majesty, King Abdullah II of Jordan for his hospitality at several points in the last year and for the simple pleasure of our discussions on matters military, Middle Eastern and medieval.

In every book that I have produced thus far I have expressed my love and gratitude to my wife, Michele. This will never change; she remains the principal delight of my life.

Notes

1    Count Dracula, Johnathan Harker’s Journal, 8 May. Stoker, B., Dracula, 1897.

2    Grousset, R., Histoire des Croisades et du Royaume Franc de Jerusalem, Tome I: L’anarchie Musulmane et la Monarchie Franque, Plon, Paris, 1934; Histoire des Croisades et du Royaume Franc de Jerusalem, Tome II: Monarchie Franque et Monarchie Musulman l’equilibre, Plon, Paris, 1935; Histoire des Croisades et du Royaume franc de Jérusalem, Tome III: La Monarchie Musulmane et l’anarchie Franque, Plon, Paris, 1935.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

A Note on Transliteration, Titles and Dates

Timeline

Maps

Introduction: Why Dracula?

1  An Ottoman Creation? The Europe into which Vlad Tepes was Born

2  The Dragon’s Son: Vlad II Dracul’s Deeds and the Youth of Dracula

3  To Catch a Sultan: Dracula’s First Reign

4  The Fall: Dracula’s Loss of Wallachia

5  Death and Resurrection: Dracula’s Return to Power, Murder and Immortalisation

6  Aftermath, History and Myth: The Legacies of Dracula and his Rivals

Further Reading

Plates

Copyright

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION, TITLES AND DATES

There are many, many ways of rendering both Turkish and the Cyrillic languages of the Balkans into English. I have generally opted for the most commonly used ‘short’ forms of names rather than the more scholarly forms, simply because the vast swathe of names that the reader encounters whilst reading any history of the medieval Balkans means that any familiar faces are welcome.

For city and country names I have used the nomenclature of the period. The Balkan cities are given their European names rather than Turkish names unless that change has remained ‘permanent’ (or has at least lasted down to our day) as this is how they are most commonly denoted in other texts that the reader might be led to review.

Diacritical marks have generally been omitted for the sake of clarity, and uncommon or unique terms have been italicised; for example, voivode, a vassal prince.

TIMELINE

1241–42

The Mongols invade Hungary.

1261

The Byzantine Palaiologi retake Constantinople from the Latin Crusaders.

1301

The Ottoman ruler Osman attacks Nicaea.

1307

Beginning of Angevin dynasty in Hungary.

1326

The Ottoman ruler Orhan captures Bursa.

1329

Nicaea captured by Ottomans.

1330

Battle of Velbazhd-Kyustendil, Serbia defeats Bulgaria. Battle of Posada, Wallachia wins independence from Hungary.

1337

Nicomedia is captured by the Ottomans.

1345

Ottoman annexation of the Turkish beylik of Karaysei.

1346

Ottomans form an alliance with John Kantakouzenos of the Morea against the Byzantine ruling house of Constantinople.

1343–52

Serbia conquers most of Byzantine Greece.

1354

Earthquakes allow the Ottomans to occupy Gallipoli, their first European territory.

1359

Traditional date of independence of Moldavia from Hungary.

1361

Ottoman capture of Adrianople (Edirne).

1362

Accession of Ottoman ruler, Murad I.

1363

First Battle of the River Maritza.

1365

Edirne becomes the new Ottoman capital.

1370

The Kingdom of Poland joined with the Kingdom of Hungary.

1371

Battle of Cernomen–Second Battle of River Maritz. Coalition defeated by the Ottomans, beginning of fragmentation of Bulgaria.

1385

Ottomans enter Albania, Ottoman capture of Sofia.

1386

Ottoman capture of Nis.

1387

Ottoman capture of Thessalonica, Ottoman capture of Konya.

1389

First Battle of Kosovo, most of Serbia accepts Ottoman suzerainty.

1393

Collapse of Bulgarian independence.

1396

Crusade and Battle of Nicopolis, Crusaders and Hungary defeated by Ottomans.

1402

Battle of Ankara, Ottomans defeated by Timur Leng. Ottoman sultan, Bayezid I, captured.

1402–13

The FitnetDevri. The sons of Sultan Bayezid make war on each other for possession of what remains of the Ottoman Empire. An alliance with the Despot of Serbia finally brings Mehemmed I to the throne.

1417

Wallachia accepts Ottoman suzerainty.

1418

The Order of the Dragon formed to honour Christian leaders combating heretics and the Ottomans.

1419–36

The Hussite Wars rage across Eastern Europe.

1422

Ottoman siege of Constantinople.

1431

Vlad Dracula born.

1431

Vlad II Dracul is made a member of the Order of the Dragon by King Sigismund of Hungary.

1434–44

Reign of Vladislaus III as King of Poland from 1434 and of both Poland and Hungary from 1440.

1436

Vlad II Dracul takes the throne of Wallachia.

1437

Vlad II Dracul signs an alliance with the Ottoman Sultan Murad II.

1441

Jonas Hunyadi forces Vlad II Dracul to resume resistance to the Ottomans.

1441–44

Hungarian–Ottoman war.

1443–44

Jonas Hunyadi leads a major offensive against the Turks and occupies Nis and Sofia.

1444

Hungarian–Ottoman war concludes with the Peace of Szeged.

1444

Vladislaus III breaks the truce and invades Ottoman territory; he is killed when his multinational Crusader army is crushed at Varna.

1444

Jonas Hunyadi escapes the debacle of the Crusade of Varna and is briefly imprisoned in Wallachia.

1444–47

Interregnum in Poland.

1447

Jonas Hunyadi raids Wallachia. Vlad II Dracul is assassinated in the marshes near Bucharest and his son, Mircea II, is killed. Hunyadi proclaimed ruler before passing Wallachia’s sovereignty to his vassal Vladislaus.

1448

Vlad Dracula claims power in Wallachia with the support of the Ottomans.

1448

Second Battle of Kosovo. Vlad Dracula assumes the Wallachian Prince’s Crown.

1448

Vladislaus defeats Vlad Dracula; Vlad Dracula flees to the court of Moldavia.

1453

The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Sultan Mehemmed II.

1454–66

Thirteen Years War between Poland and the Teutonic Order.

1456

Jonas Hunyadi defeats the Ottomans at the siege of Belgrade using an army of professional troops and armed peasants. Death of Jonas Hunyadi.

1456–62

Vlad Dracula returns to Wallachia with Hungarian support, Vladislas II defeated and killed. Wallachian nobility, the boyars, punished en masse by impalement by Vlad Dracula for the killing of his brother and father. Vlad Dracula raises lower order men into his personal household and bodyguard.

1456

Vlad Dracula rebuilds Poenari Castle using slave labour. He pays homage to the Hungarian king and the Turkish sultan.

1458–61

Vlad Dracula makes war on the Saxons of Transylvania.

1460

Crusade called against the Ottomans. Mehemmed II occupies Bosnia, Serbia and the Peloponnese. Albania continues to resist under George Skanderbeg.

1462

The Ottoman governor of Nicopolis attempts to ambush Vlad Dracula but is captured and impaled. Vlad Dracula campaigns along the River Danube to the Black Sea with a force comprised extensively of Wallachian and Bulgarian peasants. Vlad Dracula attacks the Ottomans during a celebrated night attack.

1462

Ottoman aggression finally forces Vlad Dracula to flee to Hungary despite a campaign of guerrilla warfare and scorched earth tactics. Mehemmed II’s auxiliary cavalry is led by Radu, Vlad Dracula’s brother. Radu III is recognised as Prince of Wallachia by most boyars and by Hungary.

1462–74

Vlad Dracula imprisoned by King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.

1463

Battle of the Vistula Lagoon, Teutonic Knights’ Fleet defeated by ships from Danzig and Elbing.

1463

Michael Beheim, a meistersinger, authors a long poem detailing the cruelties of Vlad Tepes and his victories against the Ottoman Turks.

1466

Teutonic Order becomes a vassal of the Polish Crown.

1467

Skanderbeg breaks the second Ottoman siege of Kruje.

1467

Stephen of Moldavia goes to war with Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, over the Black Sea fortress of Chilia.

1468

Death of Skanderbeg.

1469

Matthias Corvinus elected King of Bohemia.

1470

War between Radu III of Wallachia and Stephen of Moldavia.

1471

Montenegro’s prince swears vassalage to Mehemmed II.

1473

Stephen of Moldavia defeats Radu III in battle near Bucharest. Radu III dies and is replaced by Stephen’s candidate, Basarab III Laiot.

1473

Mehemmed II defeats the vast army of Uzun Hasan in Anatolia with artillery and handguns.

1475–76

Ottoman Turks raid Moldavia but are defeated by Stephen the Great at the Battle of Vaslui.

1476

Vlad Dracula takes a command under Matthias Corvinus. He carries out a massacre in Srebrenica.

1476

Vlad Dracula assumes rank of Voivode of Wallachia again with the support of an army of Hungarians, Transylvanians, Moldavians, Serbians and Wallachians.

1476

Vlad Dracula killed and decapitated in marshes near Bucharest.

1480

Ottoman invasion of Italy.

1480

First Ottoman siege of Rhodes.

1481

Death of Mehemmed II. Contest between Bayezid II and Cem for Ottoman throne.

1485

Bartholomeus Gothan prints an account in German, About an Evil Tyrant Named Dracole Wyda.

1488

Marcus Ayrer authors a history of Vlad the Impaler, detailing his atrocities.

1492

Moldavia again accepts Ottoman suzerainty.

1497

Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope.

1500

Matthias Hupfuff publishes a pamphlet in German on Vlad Dracula with a woodcut depicting him eating amid hundreds of impaled victims.

1510

Portuguese threaten Ottoman Indian Ocean trade.

1514

Battle of Chaldiran, Safavids defeated by Ottomans.

1517

Capture of Cairo, Mamluk Dynasty extinguished by Ottomans.

1519

Charles V crowned as Holy Roman Emperor.

1520

Accession of Suleiman I, the Magnificent.

1521

Ottoman capture of Belgrade.

1522

Second siege of Rhodes.

1526

Battle of Mohacs, Hungary completely defeated by Ottomans. Hungary effectively dismembered by Ottomans and Habsburgs.

1527

Croatia accepts Austrian–Habsburg rule.

1529

Ottoman siege of Vienna fails.

1543

Antonio Bonfinius authors a detailed version of the later life of Vlad Dracula and his death.

1552

Ivan IV of Russia seizes Khanate of Kazan.

1552

Ottoman control of much of Transylvania.

1565

Failure of Ottoman siege of Malta.

1568

Treaty of Edirne between Ottomans and Habsburgs agrees the partition of Hungary

1571

Battle of Lepanto.

1575

Massive devaluation in silver currency value across Europe with Spanish New World mines’ overproduction. Disastrous effect on Ottoman silver coinage.

1580s

‘Harem politics’ begin to dominate the Ottoman polity.

1580s–90s

Janissary revolts and Anatolian revolts over debasement of coin.

1593–1606

Habsburg–Ottoman war.

1614

Death of Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian countess famous for bathing in virgins’ blood.

1618–48

Thirty Years War.

1656

Huge revolts over coin debasement paralyse Istanbul.

1657–58

Revolt of Rakoczi in Transylvania.

1667

Ukraine divided between Russia and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

1669

Crete falls to Ottomans.

1671–72

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth at war with Ottomans.

1683–99

Poland, Venice, Habsburgs and Russia at war with Ottomans.

1683

Second Ottoman siege of Vienna fails.

1686

Ottomans lose Buda and large parts of Hungary.

1687

Second Battle of Mohacs, Ottomans defeated.

1688

Ottoman loss of Belgrade.

1688–97

War of the League of Augsburg.

1690

Ottomans retake Belgrade.

1697

Ottomans routed at Senta by Habsburg army.

1699

Treaty of Karlovitz brings peace between Habsburgs and Ottomans.

1897

Bram Stoker authors the novel Dracula.

1847

Petar Petrovic Njegos composes ‘The Mountain Wreath’.

1989

Slobodan Milosevic reinterprets Serb and Balkan medieval history in a speech on the anniversary of the First Battle of Kosovo, laying out justifications for the launching of the Balkan Wars.

MAPS

INTRODUCTION:WHY DRACULA?

The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger; and being stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men; he is of cunning more than mortal … he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not …1

Vlad Tepes or Vlad Dracula was, in many ways, a walking shadow and a poor player that did strut and fret his hour upon a stage filled with characters who outshone him by far. His contemporaries included such luminaries as Mehemmed II, Jonas Hunyadi and George Skanderbeg.

So, why review his life and deeds?

The answer to this lies in the very nature of Dracula. He epitomises the petty tyrants that made up so many of his predecessors, successors and rivals and who composed the body politic of the Balkans in the medieval age. Equally, his dubious vassalages to this or that overlord are no more or less complex than those of virtually every other minor Balkan prince of the same period, and can act as a study in the way that Eastern Europe reacted to the rapid incursions and stunning victories of the Ottomans in this same period. His tactics, approach to warfare and the armies that he built are likewise a version in miniature of the military changes that were occurring right across Europe in the fifteenth century.

Also, Dracula’s tale is full of feats of daring and ferocity, and that should be reason enough to look at his life. He was also perhaps cursed, as the Chinese phrase has it, to ‘live in interesting times’ and the action in which he was enmeshed, in order that we can fully comprehend it, requires us to look beyond the Balkans and to other deeds undertaken both in the further reaches of Western Europe and in Asia Minor and the Levant.

Almost continual warfare raged across Europe during the period 1300 to 1500 with France, England and Scotland confronting each other during the Hundred Years War, the Wars of the Roses torturing England, and politico-religious wars blazing across the rest of Europe. The confrontations between Muslims and Christians in the Balkans and in Spain, and between the Ottomans and their Turkish ‘cousins’ the Mamluks of Egypt and the Turcomen of Iran and Anatolia, as well as the last bitter flaring up of the great Turko-Mongolic conflagrations of the thirteenth century, made the period one of true political and military revolution.

Dracula died an ignoble death, little mourned and apparently of little political contemporary consequence. That he has been heard of since, and indeed achieved an apparent immortality, is of course due largely to his metamorphosis at the hands of Bram Stoker into the vampire count of Victorian horror fantasy.

Like Dracula, the legacy of the medieval age has also reverberated down into the modern world. It has continued to light the way to dusty death for so many in the Balkans, particularly at the beginning and at the end of the twentieth century. This means that the period, the individuals who shaped its history and their deeds remain of vital interest. I have aimed, in this volume, to make sense of the actions of Dracula and his rivals. This is no easy task; it is often hard in the history of the Balkans to discern an intelligible pattern of intent among its rulers or to ascertain reason or morality. Despite this and the sometimes apparently random, chaotic and near-nihilistic acts that these characters not infrequently undertook, I hope I have revealed their acts as being much more than simply ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’.

Note

1    Van Helsing, Mina Harker’s Journal, 30 September. Stoker, B., Dracula, 1897.

1

AN OTTOMAN CREATION?

THE EUROPE INTO WHICHVLAD TEPES WAS BORN

He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come; though afterwards he can come as he please.1

The world that Vlad Dracula was born into was one of petty tyrants, and even today, after the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the collapse of the Communist Bloc in the late twentieth century, we are once again in a period defined by ‘Balkanisation’. Indeed, the history of the region has, almost perpetually, been defined by fragmentation with, at best, non-cooperation between neighbours and, at worst, straightforward hostility.

It was not always so but the progressive disasters that struck the Byzantine Empire from the close of the eleventh century onwards through to the Latin–Venetian Crusader conquest of Constantinople in 1204 and the spectacular implosion of a Serbian successor state after the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 left behind a prickly assortment of nationalities, faiths and affiliations with little cohesion, led far too often by men of narrow vision and debased motives.

The tenuous hold of the Latin emperors of Constantinople, and of their Venetian allies, ended in 1261 when Alexius Strategopoulos, a general of Michael Palaiologos the Emperor of Nicaea, whilst reconnoitring in the vicinity of Constantinople discovered that the city was virtually undefended. The majority of the city’s Latin and Venetian forces were off besieging an island in the Black Sea, and whilst Strategopoulos did not exactly stroll into Constantinople he was certainly the recipient of a great deal of help and advice from the populace and was unhindered by any defence worth the name by the Latin forces. A small detachment of Nicaeans entered through an undefended portal in the land walls and opened the city to the main army.

Baldwin II, who had been emperor for some thirty-three years, fled and the Latin Empire died quietly:

By the providence of God the city of Constantine again became subject to the Emperor of the Romans, in a just and fitting way, on the 25th July, in the fourth indiction, in the 6769th year since the creation of the world, after being held by the enemy for fifty-eight years.2

The hyperbole of the Byzantine historian George Akropolites notwithstanding, nothing can disguise the fact that Michael had, in fact, gained little more than the opportunity to regain the seat of his illustrious predecessors. No Byzantine emperor would ever again wield the power of a Justinian or even an Alexius and the city was a shadow of its former glory.

Indeed, the events of 1261 presaged much of what was to occur in the Balkans throughout the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Michael’s success against the Latins was due largely to his alliance with Bulgaria and a treaty with Genoa, by which he granted it privileges similar to those enjoyed by the Venetians in the former Byzantine Empire. A Genoese fleet ferried the Nicaean army across the Straits to Thrace, and that it did so was no surprise. Bitter rivalry between the two main Italian maritime republics in the eastern Mediterranean was a feature of the entire crusading period3 and it would continue to damage European attempts to meet the challenge of the Ottomans in the eastern Mediterranean in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries despite repeated papal interdictions.4

Furthermore, the forces of the restored Byzantine Empire remained weak. Improvements in the economic condition and security of Western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries appear to have been matched by a downturn in the economy of the eastern Mediterranean. There was a lack of ‘external security’ in the Balkans following the loss of Byzantium’s eastern Anatolian colonies after 1071, and through the incursions of the Bulgars into the Danube valley in the 1180s and the Vlachs throughout the Balkans in the 1190s. In fact the Greek Empire’s agricultural production and manufacturing output actually grew over the eleventh century, but there was an economic decline in the empire in the same period that became so acute that the first debasement of gold coinage since the fourth century was made in this period. This economic deterioration was related to a rise in the influence of the Byzantine aristocracy, whose acquisition of lands made the peasantry dependent on local ‘feudal’ lords and made direct revenue collection by the state increasingly difficult.5

The effects of the economic embarrassment of the state can be seen in the empire’s naval dependence on Venice in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, leading to its concession of toll-free passage through Byzantine waters following Venetian ravaging of the Greek coastline and islands in 1125 and a further extension of rights following more Venetian ‘gunboat diplomacy’ in 1175. By the time of the Massacre of the Latins in 1182 there were approximately 60,000 Venetians in Constantinople.

The Latin Empire’s financial woes between 1204 and 1261 are a good indication of what Michael was winning back for the Greeks. It was throughout its brief life chronically short of manpower and money and appears to have been unattractive even to adventurers from the West. By example, during the poverty-racked reign of the last emperor 1,000 Latins were in the service of the Saljuq Turks against the Mongols. Pope Gregory IX even resorted to pleading with the Count of Brittany to crusade for the Latin emperor rather than for Outremer. Henry of Romania neatly summarised the situation: ‘there is nothing lacking to [our] complete possession of the Empire save an abundance of Latins.’

Given the above it is not surprising that the restoration of Michael Palaiologos to Constantinople depleted Byzantium’s Anatolian border of troops. Between 1204 and 1261 there was a definite lessening in the westward movement of Turkish nomads in Anatolia as the Byzantine ruling elite’s enforced Anatolian exile in Nicaea and Trebizond required them to defend the region, and to at least attempt to reduce a rapacious tax regime that had been applied to the peasantry of Anatolia. These crushing taxes had commonly caused desperate peasants to join the nomad Turks.

This partial renascence of Byzantine Anatolia ended abruptly with the move back across the Bosporus of the Byzantine aristocracy. The westward movement of the Turkish war bands that thrived in the hinterland between the Byzantine Empire and the Saljuq Sultanate of Rum began afresh. Later, of course, the Byzantines’ internecine struggles for power would even lead to active invitations to these same Turkish nomads to fight in the Greek civil wars.

Byzantium was a hollow shell of its former self. Its territories embraced a corner of north-western Anatolia, Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly and a smattering of small holdings in the Peloponnese. Most of Greece still lay in Latin Frank hands, and all of the north-western Balkans was lost irretrievably. Venice and Catholic Hungary controlled Dalmatia and Croatia, and even Michael’s ally, Bulgaria, remained wary of too close an alliance with the old Orthodox power. That the Latin Empire of Constantinople failed to last in fact had less to do with a renascence of Greek power than a failure on the part of the Latins to ally themselves with the Vlacho-Bulgar states and ‘diplomatic ineptitude’6 in dealings with the native populace. Any actions of the Latin emperor were also hampered by a constitution that favoured the Venetians and fief holders far more than the central authority. A not dissimilar position faced the Byzantine emperors in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The power of the aristocracy had been enhanced by the simple fact that the emperors needed every ounce of Greek support they could gather, and the empire resembled more and more the feudal entities by which it was now surrounded.

Of course the Latin Empire had failed to gain the support of the emerging Balkan states because of what we might today term confessionalism, but what was to the medieval mind a much more straightforward question of faith, salvation and identity. Identity was a potent concept in the Middle Ages and particularly so in the Balkans. The sometimes vicious attempts to suppress religious dissent in this period, and the lack of a unified and coherent response between Catholic and Orthodox Europe to the Ottoman threat, only make sense as long as we keep this idea of identity in mind. Medieval communities were defined by their religion, and religion also demarcated each community’s political allegiances. Leaders who ‘switched’ their allegiances from Catholic to Orthodox or vice versa risked losing all allegiance from their lords and from the ‘peasant base’. It was not for nothing that Thomas Aquinas compared those who slipped from the true faith to counterfeiters, as both eroded the secular foundations of society.7

A distinct religious and cultural identity seems to have been arrived at by Western Europeans during the High Middle Ages. This appears as an element of the changes to the Western European mindset over the Crusades period. There was a change from the desire to make pilgrimage to the Holy Places to one of the ‘holy right’ of the Latins as holders of the only true Christian creed to conquer Christendom and beyond for the Catholic faith. As an example of this, Robert of Clari justified the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the need to remove the relics from the schismatic Greeks to the safety of the West.8

Furthermore, the outlook of Western Europeans appears to have been affected profoundly by a notion of ‘universal’ Crusades. Helmond of Bosau discussed the attitude of the Second Crusade’s participants: ‘to its initiators it seemed that one part of the army should be sent to the eastern regions, another to Spain and a third against the Slavs ...’ Certainly during the preaching for the Second Crusade there was an alteration in the ‘format’ of indulgences. There was a distinct change from the notion of a penitent pilgrim to a more formal system of indulgences that were not centred on the Holy Sepulchre. This has been viewed as an attempt by the Papacy to bring the Crusading movement more under its own control in order to use the movement as a tool of its temporal policy.9

A distinct shift away from the notion of Crusading as being centred on the Holy Sepulchre was certainly clear by the time of the Latin conquest of Constantinople.10 The indulgences granted for the Fourth Crusade differ markedly from those of any previous expeditio; the notion of a merciful god who rewards meritorious works was introduced and this allowed for an even greater degree of flexibility in the use of the Crusade weapon. Certainly an extension of the essence of crusading was seen later in this period with the Albigenisian Crusade and the Baltic Crusades,11 which went as far as the settling of peasants from the Netherlands, Flanders and Westphalia in East Prussia by the Teutonic Knights. There was concurrent success for Western Christendom in Spain and by 1248 only Granada remained to be taken in Spain by the Reconquista.

Of the Catholic world’s wooden-headedness towards the ‘Eastern question’ on both temporal and spiritual matters much more later, but it is enough to say now that the Byzantines had, potentially, in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the opportunity to cast themselves as leaders of the Orthodox world by simple virtue of once again having possession of the senior Patriarchate of the Orthodox world within the walls of their capital. To this end Michael VIII Palaiologos had both the Bulgarian and Serbian Orthodox churches subordinated to the authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1272.

The newly restored Byzantine Empire concentrated its efforts during the 1260s and 1270s on bringing the Black Sea coast back under its control and returning Bulgaria to a position of clientage through a ‘classic’ Byzantine blend of military action and marriage alliance. There were also piecemeal recoveries of the minor Latin principalities in the southern Peloponnese. Michael VIII Palaiologos came to the throne with southern Thrace, Thessalonica, southern Macedonia and a few offshore Aegean islands under his control. Michael was able to establish a Greek district of the Morea and by the first decades of the fourteenth century, Byzantium again controlled most of the southern Peloponnese.

Michael allied himself to Catholic Hungary in the hope that it would act as a counterweight in the north to the rising Orthodox state of Serbia. Ironically, the greatest threat to Michael’s ambitions in fact came from the Catholic West. Charles of Anjou had enjoyed papal favour in his usurpation of the Crown of Sicily in 1266 and this meeting of minds seems to have extended to the possible re-conquest of Constantinople and to the extension of Charles’ power throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Charles undertook lengthy preparatory work for such a venture by gathering an invasion fleet, and by forming alliances with the Balkan states surrounding Byzantium. He also established cordial relations with the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and Syria, with the aim of allowing unimpeded operations for his fleet in the eastern Mediterranean.

Byzantium lacked the resources to reconstitute a fleet anywhere close to the empire’s navy of the eleventh century and Michael was forced to take on economically disadvantageous alliances with Venice and Genoa, which were granted extensive commercial privileges and resident colonies in Constantinople, in exchange for naval assistance.

Charles made good headway in his plans to restore the Latin Empire of Greece, and by the 1270s Corfu, some of the adjacent Greek coastline and Achaia were in his hands. He then moved against Epiros and drove the despot John Angelos into Thessaly. Charles also proclaimed himself King of Albania, and established alliances with Stefan Uros I of Serbia and even with John of Thessaly.

Michael gained a short-term advantage in the conflict by acknowledging papal primacy over a proposed union of the Orthodox and Catholic churches at the Council of Lyon in 1274. In exchange for agreeing to the union, Michael obtained papal assurances of non-interference as he gathered allies and forces for an offensive against Charles’ forces in Epiros and Thessaly.

All the benefits that Michael gained by recognising the Pope as the overlord of the Orthodox church were, however, swiftly lost as the empire’s Orthodox clergy, patriarch and a large part of the population rejected the union. Michael attempted, through a fairly vigorous persecution, to stem this loss of support for his cause but soon enough he had lost the Balkan Orthodox states of Bulgaria, Serbia, Epiros and Thessaly to the enemy. Byzantine leadership of the Orthodox world was damaged irreparably, and the ultimate benefactor of Michael’s policy was to be Serbia.

The election of a French Pope, Martin IV, in 1281 seemed likely to doom Michael, and the Pope took no time at all to condemn Michael as a schismatic and illegitimate ruler. Charles therefore seemed primed to conquer the Balkans for Catholicism and was prevented from doing so only by Byzantine gold. In a masterful piece of diplomacy, Michael brought to life the revolt against Charles known as the Sicilian Vespers, and also financed the fleet of Pedro III of Aragon during his attack on Sicily and his attempt to take Charles’ throne. Charles’ challenge was effectively ended by Michael’s political skill but the Byzantine emperor had been forced to alienate his own people and any potential Orthodox allies and to denude Anatolia of its forces to meet it. By the turn of the century Byzantium’s armies were dependent on Latin, often Catalan, and Turkish mercenaries.

These mercenary forces were, however, still impressive in their make-up and abilities. Turkish mercenaries acted generally as light cavalry skirmishers armed with a bow that was used to lay down harassment fire, a typical technique of steppe nomads. There were also heavy cavalry archers who shot larger composite bows like their contemporaries in the Mamluk armies of Egypt and Syria. Their discipline and ability to lay down rapid, accurate and coordinated arrow-fire would have been similar to that of the famous Bahriyya regiments of Egypt.12 The Byzantine Varangian infantry guard of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian mercenaries would have provided both longbow archery and close quarters capability with their war axes.

Michael had, however, also exhausted the treasury and growing financial pressures forced him to hold back on fortifications repair and rebuilding, and also to strip away garrisons along the Anatolian border that faced the increasingly aggressive Turkish nomads.

Michael died in 1282, and that his successors were unable to match his achievements or repair the damage done by his religious policy is not surprising. That they were unable to do so is related partly to the above issues of exhausted finances, heavy taxation in Byzantine lands, Western European threats, and the actions of a Greek aristocracy that made alliance to the empire by other Orthodox states unattractive. What was perhaps more important, however, were the internecine feuds and competition for the imperial purple that wracked the empire in the first half of the fourteenth century and the rise of Serbia, which claimed both militarily and spiritually to be the true successor to the Byzantine state from before 1204. The Byzantine civil wars are of utmost importance in the creation of the world that Vlad Dracula was born into simply because they were the root cause of the Ottoman expansion into Europe, an occurrence that would define the character of and the conflicts within the Balkans for the next seven centuries.

It is also important to any understanding of how the above events brought the Ottoman Turks across the Bosporus and into Europe in the early fourteenth century that the early Ottoman state and its ethos are understood. The ‘Turkic drive’ across Anatolia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has been misunderstood previously by even great and skilled historians, who have seen ideology where there was in fact realpolitik in its purest form. It has been a common fault to write of the expansion of the Turks across Anatolia as being related chiefly to a form of Ghazi tradition amongst the Turkic peoples, keen to expand the borders of Islam and to extend their religion into the Dar al-Harb, the realm of war or more simply those lands which were not, as yet, Muslim. In fact the Turks’ push across Anatolia, and into conflict with the Byzantine potentates that existed, tenuously, on its northern coast, was related, rather, to a combination of simple opportunism, changes in the Byzantine society of Anatolia, pressures on the Muslim societies of the near-east in this period and a degree of compulsion related to potential Malthusian crises.

That Ghazism has been seen as the main element contributing to both the Turkic expansion in Anatolia and the formation of the Ottoman state is due to a generous application of hindsight and a search for a unifying theme in a period where there is instead a flux of actions by the Turks, some of which, in fact, ran counter to the idea of any expansion of the Dar al-Islam. In fact, the theory that a Holy War was being waged by the Anatolian Turks in the thirteenth century13 was adopted as an elegant hypothesis that corresponded very tidily to the Ottoman ideology of the later fourteenth century.14 The primary sources do not support such a hypothesis. No Byzantine text discusses the existence of Ghazis in the marches of Anatolia.15 This does not, of course, rule out entirely the possibility of Ghazi activity on the border but it certainly detracts from the idea of hordes of fanatical Islamic warriors. The typically fastidious interest in all religious matters of Byzantine writers would have ensured the recording of such a phenomenon. Other Georgian, Syriac and Armenian sources tend to emphasise the impact of the Turkish expansion on the Christian peoples of the region. This gives a very incomplete history and, of course, absolutely no indication of the self-view of the Turkic nomads. In the absence of any written contemporary doctrines for a ‘fanatic resolve to war against the infidel’16 it is hard to countenance an impressively large movement of Islamic fanaticism in Anatolia in this period.

There is, of course, evidence of a long tradition of holy warriors in Islam. This stretched back to the seventh-century ribats,17fortified religious houses on the borders of Islam from which attacks could be made on the unbelievers’ lands beyond and from which Ghazis could defend the lands of Islam. Furthermore, among the orthodox leaders of Syria who led the counter-Crusades of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Ghazism was a central characteristic of their ideology, and this is not surprising. Saladin, though a Kurd, has to be viewed as a product of the religious and political culture centred on cities such as Cairo and Damascus, and the Turkish Mamluks of Egypt and Syria were an urban elite whose cultural and military mores were shaped by long exposure to Arabic civilisation and orthodox Sunnism. Furthermore, an alliance between the military men of the near-east and the ‘men of the pen’, the religious scholars, was necessary to legitimise the actions of men such as Zengi, Nur al-Din, Saladin and Al-Zahir Baybars,18 who as often as not were usurpers of thrones and of the levers of power, and to bring the body of Sunnism together as one society into the conflict with the Crusaders. This is a central tenet of jihad.19

As a counterpoint to the above, Turkic culture in Anatolia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was one of a pragmatic tribalism, and whilst it is possible that ‘wars of the faith’, or Ghaza, were endorsed by the sheikhs who guided the religion of the Turks, the religion they propagated was very much more akin to the shamanism of the steppes than to ‘orthodox’ Muslim teaching.20 Indeed, there is evidence of both mummification and human sacrifice among the nomads of Anatolia in this period.21 Furthermore, if we apply the example of another steppe people, the Mongols, to the Turkic nomads of Anatolia in this period then a picture of a society with a large degree of religious tolerance emerges.22 Certainly ‘syncretism and latitude’ appear to have been the dominant features of religious life in the Sultanate of Rum23 and it was common for the Sultans of Rum to have both Christian mothers and wives, and for there to be a large presence of Christians at the sultan’s court.24

The nature of Turkish Anatolian society, which was numerically strongly Christian with a minority Turkic hegemony (William of Rubruck, a contemporary, in fact suggested a ratio of ten to one), is illustrated nicely by the volume of overtly Christian iconography found on Danishmendid coinage,25 the presence of Christian judges as late as 1340 in Ottoman Bithynia and the complete absence of any forced conversion to Islam within any of the Anatolian states until at least 1354.26 Indeed, even in the longer established Turkish Sultanate of Persia Coptic and Armenian Church writers praised Sultan Malik Shah for his religious tolerance and policy towards Christians.27

Tribalism was therefore the key to the Ottoman state’s genesis, and not jihad. To understand fully what this meant in thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Anatolia we need to look at the nature of Turko-Mongolic tribes. It is valueless to view the tribe as a simple group created through patrilineal descent. The racial make-up of the tribes that have operated across Eurasia right from the times of Attila and before and down through the times of Chinggis and Kublai Khan was that of ‘shared interest organisms’. The tribes that operated in Anatolia may very easily have been comprised of Byzantine Greeks, Turks, Kurds and Armenians. For these individuals, fighting on the borders of the Dar al-Islam would have been, in many ways, ‘a means of livelihood’.28 Indeed, the Byzantines took advantage of the fighting ability of these men by placing Akritai, nomad mercenary warriors, from the Balkans and southern Russia in the Anatolian borderland as a buffer to the border incursions of the eastern Turks in the thirteenth century. These tribes appear to have operated in much the same way as their ‘Islamic’ counterparts, and it seems likely that ‘desertions’ from the Akritai to warrior groups across the border were common as conditions of service were more advantageous and the opportunity for booty was greater.

Turkish incursions into Byzantine Anatolia showed an upturn in intensity at certain times. These peaks of activity appear to be related to pressures from the east and to internal economic pressures on the Turkish pastoralists of Anatolia. Successive waves of Turkic peoples were set in motion right from the advance of the Kara Khitai in 1141 into Central Asia, the defeat and capture of Sanjar, the Sultan of Eastern Persia, by the Ghuzz Turks in 1153 through to the Mongol invasions that culminated in the Mongol defeat of the Anatolian Turks at the Battle of Kose Dagh in 1243, and their sack of Baghdad in 1258. Equally the chaos of the Mongol Ilkhanate of Persia and Iraq in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries made Anatolia an attractive proposition both to Turkish warriors and to members of the Ulema.29 The Ulema were of particular importance as they brought structure to nascent Turkish states and also gave an Islamic ‘gloss’ to their conquests. It is entirely feasible that the writings of these men were the genesis of the ‘Ghazi heritage’ of the Ottomans. An example of their florid prose is given by the historian Oruj:

Ghazis and champions striving in the way of truth, and the path of Allah gathering the fruits of Ghaza and expending them … choosing truth, striving for religion, lacking pride in the world, following the way of the sharia, taking revenge … blazing forth the way of Islam from the East to the West.

At a more prosaic level, western Anatolia would also have enticed Turkish pastoralists fleeing events to the east due to its fertile river valleys and high ridges.

Inspired tribal leaders would have been a focus for warriors, and it is possible that religious rhetoric would have been used by such men, but this did not have to be Islamic per se, the expounding of a shamanic creed is also possible. Indeed, a ‘popular’ non-orthodox Islamic culture was present in the Ottoman border state with a strong oral tradition, suffused with the mystical aspects of Sufism. Ottoman rulers and their followers were connected through membership in mystical orders or dervipes, fellowships or ahis, and even guilds or esnafs.

Furthermore, it is as likely that factors such as the success of the leader in warfare and the economic advantages of joining or supporting a clan leader were paramount in potential followers’ minds. Booty was certainly the economic basis of most groups operating on either side of the border, and there was almost ‘perpetual conflict’ in the marches both against ‘Christian lands’ and, perhaps even predominantly, against Islamic states, as in the conquest of Karacahisar in the last quarter of the thirteenth century by men whom the Great Saljuq chroniclers in fact regarded as ‘rebels’.30

As noted above, Byzantium had lost much of its free peasantry from which it could recruit both militia and regular troops and even more of its ability to gather revenue from western Anatolia in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The introduction of mercenary forces as an attempt to shore up the border aggravated these problems as the ferocity shown by these mercenaries towards Catholic and Orthodox Christians alike and the severe taxes of the Byzantine lords who controlled them contributed to an insecure and harsh living for the Greek peasantry. The definitive example of this was the Catalan mercenaries who arrived in Anatolia in 1304. They were effective in that they defeated the Turks on several occasions but they were also rapacious and indiscriminate in their pillaging of both Turkish and Byzantine regions. The Byzantines brought them back to Europe but they caused chaos there too, ravaging Thrace, Macedonia and Thessaly before finally seizing control of Athens in 1311.

It is entirely likely, therefore, that Byzantine Christian peasants often preferred Turkic rule to Byzantine rule because this offered lighter taxes and a higher degree of security. There was certainly acquiescence in and not uncommonly assistance by Byzantine Christians in the incursions of the nomadic Turks.31

The grassroots détente seen above was not, of course, the only engagement between Turks and Byzantium. Turkish Princes fleeing from their sultan’s wrath often found refuge with the Christian Byzantines rather than with the Muslim rulers of Syria. It is, in fact, almost impossible to find evidence of an ideological confrontation in the region during this period, and this is perhaps why, added to their obvious military ability, the Byzantine princes competing for the throne of the Isopostolos turned to the Turks, and to the Ottomans in particular, for warriors.32

It was local success in the borderlands and against other local Turkish lords that brought more and more Akinji, or raiders, to the standard of Osman, who claimed independence for his beylik in 1299 from the Saljuq Sultanate of Rum. Of course, Osman had some natural advantages in that his territories lay astride the main route to Europe and abutted Byzantium’s most populous and richest Anatolian territories, but it was his innate talents that made the most of the opportunities that this provided. The fact that these raiders came with their households also gave longevity to what could have become simply a transient warrior band with plunder as its main intent, and the state settled upon a capital, Bursa, shortly after the death of Osman and the succession of his son, Orhan, in 1326.

The Byzantine civil war that erupted in 1321 between Emperor Andronikos II and his namesake grandson lasted seven years, but this first war drew in Balkan powers rather than the Turks. Bulgaria backed the young pretender whilst Serbia took the part of the elder. With Byzantine Macedonia’s support finally going to the younger Andronikos, the old emperor was forced to abdicate in 1328 but Byzantium’s tribulations were far from over. The empire’s European territories shrank once more, with Serbia gaining most from this withering away of the Greek state.

By this time the most successful beyliks in Anatolia were the Ottomans in the north-east and the Karaman in the south-west, and the tribes formed around these Turkish families also incorporated Greeks, Kurds and Armenians. Anatolian piracy engaged the attentions of the Venetians and Genoese, and the Turkish port of Smyrna was taken by a force comprised of Venetians, Cypriots and papal troops in 1344 to prevent its use by the pirate emirs.

A second Byzantine civil war ensued upon the death of Andronikos III Palaiologos in 1341 and the accession of the 9-year-old John V Palaiologos under the regency of John Kantakouzenos, Andronikos’ closest friend and supporter. Kantakouzenos’ opponents in the power-play over the ‘will’ of the child emperor were John V’s mother, who would pawn the crown jewels for 30,000 Venetian ducats in 1343 to support her cause, and the Patriarch of Constantinople. In brief, Kantakouzenos was threatened on all sides by the Serbs, the Bulgarians and the Anatolian Turks, who were now marauding along the Thracian coast, and as soon as he left the capital to deal with these dangers to the state he was ousted from his position as regent. He responded by declaring himself co-emperor with John V.

This second civil war was complicated further by inter-class conflict pitting impoverished peasants against wealthy aristocrats and a split in the Orthodox Church between the hesychasts and the patriarch and regency. Kantakouzenos, by default, became the champion of the hesychasts and their belief in direct communion with God via meditation.

Kantakouzenos allied with Serbia in 1342 whose boyars, or nobility, were keen to pursue further the conquest of lands in Macedonia, but the Serbs reversed their support for him a year later and so Kantakouzenos turned to the Anatolian Turks for assistance. Initially this came from within the ‘legitimate’ Saljuq Turkish state but soon enough he also obtained the military muscle he needed from the Ottomans. The Ottomans were carried across the Dardanelles by what was left of the Byzantine navy. His new allies turned the conflict around and soon enough Kantakouzenos’ apparently hopeless situation was reversed and Thrace was re-conquered. Thessalonica remained beyond his reach, however, and Macedonia was lost to the Serbs. The price for Orhan’s aid was the plundering of newly won territories, and to this was added the opportunity for the Ottomans to raid across Bulgaria when Tsar Ivan Aleksandur allied with the Constantinople faction.

The Constantinople regency also called upon Anatolian Turks in 1346 but the scheme backfired as there was nothing left to plunder in lands that the Ottomans had already passed through, so these ‘new’ Turks turned on their paymasters and raided across Bulgaria and throughout Constantinople’s environs. To add to the misery, the Black Death ravaged the city between 1346 and 1349.

Orhan cemented his relationship with Kantakouzenos by marrying his daughter in 1346. At this time probably 6,000 Ottoman akinji were at Kantakouzenos’ disposal and when he finally took the throne as Emperor John VI in 1347 he was protected from the Serbian threat to his north by his loyal Ottoman allies. By 1348 there were as many as 20,000 Ottoman troops engaged actively in Byzantine warfare and every one of them was needed as in 1352 a new contest began for the Byzantine imperial throne. John V Palaiologos attempted to win back what he had lost in the first contest with Kantakouzenos.

It was this second war that firmly established the Ottomans in Europe. John V Palaiologos turned to Serbia for aid and 4,000 Serbian horsemen battled Kantakouzenos’ Ottomans at Demotika in October 1352. The Ottomans were victorious and perhaps gained more from the campaign than Kantakouzenos. After conducting several campaigns in the service of Kantakouzenos, Orhan politely presented a bill of expenses. It called, among other items, for the surrender to him of a Greek stronghold on the European side of the Dardanelles. Like many another foolish and ambitious schemer, the Greek discovered too late that it was easier to summon the Devil than to get rid of him. After vain remonstrations he was obliged to make over the small castle of Cimpe Tzympe to his Ottoman ally in 1354.

Despite the above ‘success’ Kantakouzenos’ cause was damaged severely by the loss of Constantinople in 1354 and by 1357 John V Palaiologos was able to depose him. Kantakouzenos’ son Matthew was also ransomed over to John V Palaiologos by his Serb captors.

None of this, however, really impacted on Ottoman gains or their continued belligerency and Orhan’s son Suleiman reached as far as Adrianopole with his forces, and also began an investment of Gallipoli. Then, in 1354, an earthquake pulled down Gallipoli’s walls and the Ottomans swiftly, and bloodlessly, took occupation of the city. Gallipoli very quickly began to look much more like a permanent acquisition rather than just another staging post on a campaign. Administrators and the fabric of a new ‘colony’ soon began to appear.

Most of eastern Thrace was overrun by Ottoman forces in the 1350s and colonised with more Turks from Anatolia. The Ottomans were now placed strategically astride all of the major overland routes that linked Constantinople to any potential Balkan or Western European allies. Philippopolis was threatened and tribute was exacted from John V from 1356 onwards.

Soon after Orhan’s death in 1360, his successor Murad I won an important victory when he captured Adrianople, the most important Byzantine military, administrative and economic centre in Thrace. Murad transferred his capital there from Bursa, renaming it Edirne in 1361. This was a dramatic statement of intent as Edirne stood directly on the front line between Christendom and the Ottoman state, and its significance was not lost on John V Palaiologos.

The emperor appealed to the West for help, and like Kantakouzenos he held out the carrot of ending the schism between the Byzantine and Latin churches and of submission to the supremacy of Rome. The failure of this policy was not entirely surprising. The Byzantine embassies begging for assistance were sent home by the Pope with nothing, prompting the emperor’s chief advisor to state, ‘Constantinople will be taken, once this city is taken the Franks will be obliged to fight the barbarians in Italy and on the Rhine.’33 A Venetian-backed Crusade was sent against the Ottomans in 1366 but by 1369 Murad had conquered eastern Thrace. This, added to a series of personal disasters that included the diplomatic faux pas of remaining mounted whilst the Hungarian king Louis I left his mount to greet him, being hauled off to a debtor’s jail in Venice in 1369, and then being captured on his way back in Bulgarian territory, brought John V to finally accept suzerainty under Murad I in 1371.

Murad’s reign would see an acceleration in the Ottomans fortunes in battle, and before we turn to review the conditions of the other Balkan states that Vlad Dracula would later both ally with and compete against, it is useful to review the reasons for Ottoman success in this early stage of the development of their empire.