the last years of byzantium and the rise of the ottomans

O’ROURKE: Byzantium’s Last Years

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THE LAST YEARS OF BYZANTIUMAD 1328-1453

The fall of the Roman Empire,and the rise of the Ottomans

An encyclopaedic chronology,with many asides on the Palaiologian army

and an occasional noticeabout the navy of Constantinople.

Complied byMICHAEL O’ROURKECanberra Australia

Published September 2011

List of Roman (“Byzantine”)Emperors

Ottoman emirs and sultans

All were of thePalaiologos/Palaeologus dynasty,except for John Cantacuzenus.

The title ‘sultan’ was first formallyassumed in 1383 by Murad I.

1328-41:Andronicus III Palaiologos

1324-1361: Orhan Ghazi, Orhan Bey

1341-76:John V (Gk Ioannes)Regent, 1341-47: dowager empressAnna of Savoy

Senior co-emperor 1347-54:John VI Kantakouzenos

(In 1346, Orhan marriedKantakouzenos’s daughterTheodora.)

1376-79:Andronicus IV

1362-1389:Murad I, Hüdavendigâr, "the God-like One"

1379-91: 1389-1402:


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John V againRival emperor 1390: John VII

Bayezid I, Yıldırım, ‘theThunderbolt’

1391-1425:Manuel (Gk Manouel) II

1413-1421:Mehmed I Çelebi

1425-48:John VIII ‘Calojohn’ (Kaloioannes,‘John the Good’)

1421-51:Murad II

1449-53:Constantine XI (Konstantinos)Dragases

1451-81:Mehmet II, el-Fatih, ‘the Conqueror’

Place-Names and Technical Terms

When place-names and technical terms first appear, I define or specify them.Here are a few that some readers may not know:

Byzantium: say “buh-zantium” or, if you must, “bai-zantium”.Byzantine: say “bizz’n’teen”. Please avoid “bai-zan-tyne”!

Achaia: In Greece: the NW corner of the Peloponnesus, i.e. the mainland to theSE of Cephalonia/Kefalonia.

Aegean Islands: The major islands in the east, from north to south are:Samothrace; Imbros (present-day Turkish Gökçeada or Imroz, west of theGallipoli peninsula); Lemnos; Lesbos/Lesvos (1,633 sq km: largest in area: if itwere square it would be 40 x 40 km); Chios [English pronunciation “kaios”, westof Izmir/Smyrna]; Ikaros; Samos; Kos; and Rhodes/Rhodos (almost as big asLesbos: 1,408 sq km).

Angevin is the adjectival form of Anjou (present-day Angers in NW France:located in the triangle formed by Nantes, Le Mans and Tours). The ‘House of Anjou’ was established by the Capetian prince Charles of Anjou,d.1285, the younger brother of the Capetian king Louis IX (“Saint Louis”) ofFrance, 1226-1270. Charles made himself by force of arms king of South Italy(Naples). In its time, the House ruled Naples and Sicily, Hungary, Croatia, andPoland. (These later Angevins are distinct from the Plantagenets, descendedfrom an earlier Count of Anjou. The Plantagenets, e.g. Richard I ‘the Lionheart’,ruled western France and the larger part of the British Isles—domains that havebeen dubbed the ‘Angevin empire’ by modern historians—until 1217.)

Bithynia: The far NW corner of Asia Minor/modern Turkey-in-Asia. GreekNicaea/Nikaia = Turkish Iznik.


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Bursa (Gk Prusa): A town in NW Asia Minor, capital of the Ottoman Turks from1326. (Today it is Turkey’s 4th largest city.)To locate it, run an imaginary linedirectly south from Istanbul-Constantinople across the Sea of Marmara. Bursa isabout 20 km from the southern shore of the Marmara. It is also on a line drawnwest-east from Gallipoli (Çanakkale) to Ankara: somewhat closer to the former.

Despotes: (Greek) ‘Master, lord, ruler’. The most senior office under theEmperor. The term has no special connotations of harsh and arbitrary rule, as theEnglish term ‘despot’ does.

Epirus: West-central Greece plus our southern Albania. English pronunciation‘ep-i-rus’ (preferred) or ‘epaius’ (older but also correct).

“Greek” [Latin Graecus] is a Western term. The ‘Byzantines’ of course calledthemselves Romans (Greek: Rhomaioi), while the Latins called them Graeci,‘Greeks’. “Called the emperor of the Greeks”: thus the French pope Martin IV in1281, when affecting to excommunicate the first Palaiologos, Michael VIII.

Hyperpyron: (Greek, “super-refined”) The gold coin of Constantinople. Pluralhyperpyra. The hyperpyron was in regular issue and circulation until the 1350s,remaining in use thereafter only as a money of account. After 1400, Byzantinecoinage became insignificant, as Italian money, notably the Venetian ducat,became the predominant circulating coinage.

Janissaries: Elite professional guards-infantry of the Ottoman army. Althoughslaves, they were well paid and were a standing army, ready to march at amoment’s notice.

Macedonia: In this paper, we mean the region centred on Thessaloniki inpresent-day Greece. That is, between Thessaly and Thrace, qqv. As shown in themap below, ancient Macdonia is today divided ebtwen several states.


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Morea: Greek Moreas: The medieval name of the Peleoponnesus; lower Greece.First used in Byzantine chronicles of the 10th Century. Cf ‘Romania’. Regions in the Peloponnesus: Achaia, in the NW, south of Patras; Corinthia: theNE near Corinth; the Argolid in the central-east around Argos and Nauplion;Laconia in the SE around Mistras (and ancient Sparta); Messenia in the south-westincluding the ports of Coron/Koroni, Modon/Methoni, and Pylos/Navarino;Elis in the central-west including Andravida; and in the heart of the Morea:Arcadia, including Tripoli/Tripolizza.

Mount Athos (English pronunciation ”ay-thos”): The famed monastic complex,or rather a series of monastic complexes, extending along the top or easternmostfinger, 50 km long, of the Halkidiki (Chalcidice) peninsula, SE of Thessalonica.The mountain called Mt Athos (2,033 m) and the earliest complex, the GreatLavra, are near the tip of the finger. As well as Greek monastries, there were/areGeorgian, Serbian and Bulgarian monastries.

Pera: (Greek for “across”:) Also known as Galata: modern Karaköy. The Genoesecolony located on the Golden Horn immediately north of Constantinople, acrossthe water. The famous Galata Tower was built by the Genoese in 1348 at thenorthernmost and highest point of the citadel. Cf the Turkish football teamGalatasaray.

Plovdiv (Greek Philippopolis, medieval Bulgarian Filibe): is a city on the MaritsaRiver in south-cental Bulgaria. The same river is called the Maritsa in Bulgaria,the Merich (Meriç) in Turkey and the ‘Evros/Hebrus in Greece. From Plovdivthe river runs SE into European Turkey, past Edirne (Gk Adrianople); from thereit runs broadly SSW until it enters the Aegean, forming the border betweenGreek Thrace/Traki and Turkish Thrace/Trakya. On the Greek side, the majortown was/is Didymoteicho [Bulg. Dimotika, Tk Dimetoka], about 25 km south ofEdirne/Adrianople.


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A pronoiar or stratiotes (‘soldier’) was a person holding a grant called a pronoia.Instead of paying taxes to the state, a set of farming villages paid their revenuesto a pronoiar. This enabled him to serve as a professional or semi-professionalcavalryman (lancer or combined bowman-lancer), supplying his own horse, armsand equipment. Although he received the revenues, the lands remained stateland. A pronoiar would commonly live a in a town, not in the country. (Bartusispp.182 ff discusses the considerable differences between this and Westernfeudalism.)

Romania/Rhômanía: This word had several shades of meaning. For theByzantines it was either a name for their whole empire (the Roman Empire:Basileia Rhomaion) or else a ‘national’ designator, i.e. for the regions where peoplespoke Greek, were Orthodox in religion and Byzantine in customs, even if theruler was a Latin. For the Latins, it tended to mean the lower half of our Greece(Boeotia, Attica, Epirus, the Peloponnesus) .

Rumeli/Rumelia: ‘Little Romania’. A Turkish term for the NE Balkans. TheEuropean capital of the Ottomans Turks was, from the late 1300s, at TkEdirne/Gk Adrianople.

Thessalònica, Thessalonìki: Greece’s second city. English pron. ThessalONica;modern Greek pron. ThessaloNIki.

Thessaly: Today’s east-central Greece; centred on Larisa/Larissa. Halfwaybetween Athens and Thessalonica/Thessaloniki.

Thrace: The large region adjoining Istanbul/Constantinople on the west: with itscentre at the present-day intersection-point of the borders of Greece, Bulgariaand Turkey-in-Europe. Cf ‘Plovdiv’.

Varangian: Byzantium’s famous (to Byzan-teen-ists!) guards-regiment of axe-armed heavy infantry.

WESTERN EURASIA IN 1328(Times Atlas 1994: 93, and map in Nicolle 2008: 53).

Before we come to Byzantium, here is an overview of the states of WesternEurasia. In the Muslim East the leading powers were the Mamelukes of Egypt, ruling asfar north as Syria; the Ilkhans (Muslim Turko-Mongols) of Persia who dominatedas far as eastern Anatolia (Rum); and the ‘post-Mongol’ Golden Horde orKipchak or Tatar Empire, ruling east of Hungary and around the top half of theBlack Sea. Among the Latin/Catholic powers, the strongest on paper look to be: Castile,now controlling the European side of the Gibraltar Strait; Aragon, whose power


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extended to Sardinia and Sicily; France; and Hungary, which dominated CatholicCroatia and Orthodox Bosnia. And, although small on land, Venice and Genoaare all powerful at sea. The Orthodox ‘Christian Roman Empire of the Greeks’, orRomania, known today as >>Byzantium<<, with the loss of nearly all of its Asianlands, has fallen from among the most powerful states. Cf Ibn Battuta’s list of thestrongest monarchs (below: after 1331).

Turning to the Aegean region, we will begin with the sea-trade routes and theislands. Byzantium continued to hold both sides of the Dardanelles and theBosphorus. So there was no impediment—except Turkish pirates [see under1330-34]—to Christian, mainly Venetian and Genoese, galleys sailing toConstantinople; the Genoese and sometimes the Venetians also operated in theBlack Sea. Cf 1329: leasing of Venetian galleys. Genoa held several trading enclaves inside the Black Sea: two on theWallachian coast above the Danube delta; one in Kipchak Crimea; and anotheron the Turkish/Trebizond coast at Amastris. In the Balkans Byzantium still ruled from Albania and Epirus throughMacedonia to Thrace. The empire’s longest land transect was from Albania east to thecapital. The Aegean islands were broadly divided west-north-east between Venice(west), Byzantium (north) and Genoa (east). Lesbos is Byzantine, while Chios isGenoese [see 1329]. Genoa also controls an enclave on the Turkish coast atPhocaea. Cf 1329: Smyrna. Crete is ruled by Venice; the Venetians trade east toRhodes and further. Rhodes and several other small islands in the SE Aegean areheld by the Knights Hospitallers (the French-dominated military Order of StJohn), who operate a modest navy. In Asia Minor, the interior Germiyanid state appears as the strongest of manyTurkish beyliks (lordships: small emirates), with the small land-lockedOttoman/Osmanli state perhaps in second place. (Cf evidence from Doria, Al-Umari and Ibn Battuta: below, after 1331.) Byzantium rules the whole southernlittoral of the Sea of Marmara, controlling it against the Karesi beylik and theOttomans. Cf 1329: battle of Pelekanon. The Byzantine ‘empire’ still looks on the map like the strongest state in theimmediate Aegean region (setting aside Bulgaria and the Germiyan beylik), but,as we will see, it is weakening in relation to the still inferior but fast-rising powersof Serbia and the Ottomans. The ‘empire’ extends, as we have said, west across theBalkans to the Adriatic Sea (Albania and Epirus), and south to Thessaly.Constantinople also controls the SE third of the Peloponnesian peninsula called‘the Morea’. Thus, after 1,000 years, Byzantium has become an essentially ‘European’realm (although ‘Europe’ is an anachronistic term, not useful until 1453). The Orthodox Bulgarians rule north of a notional line from Philippopolis(Plovdiv) to Burgas. The former town is Byzantine, the latter Bulgarian.Orthodox Serbia initially extends not much further south than Skopje. Cf 1330:Serbians defeat Bulgarians. There are still two Catholic* (Latin) states in lower Greece: the Catalan Duchyof Athens and the ‘Greco-French’ (Angevin) Principality of Achaea in thePeloponnesus. Cf 1330: the Greeks take Kalavryta. To the west, the other Latin powers are: Venice, the Angevin Kingdom ofNaples (S Italy), and Aragonese Sicily.


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(*) We mean the religion of their ruler. When Athens went from Catalan toForentine rule in 1385-88, the Catholic archbishop continued to live near and sayMass in the cathedral church of the Partheneon, while the Orthodox bishop wasconfined to the lower town (Fine, Balkans 1994: 404).

Major Cities

At this time the major cities of the greater Mediterranean world, with over 50,000people, were (from east to west): Tabriz in the Mongolo-Persian Ilkhanate;Mameluke Cairo; Byzantine ‘New Rome’ or Constantinople; Venice; Florence;Milan (nominally part of the German empire); Genoa; Paris; and the French-ruled woollen-cloth-making city of Ghent in Flanders (thus McEvedy, New Atlas1992). It will be noticed that of the 10, only two are Muslim. Mamluk Cairo, with probably 300,000 people in 1315, was possibly theworld's largest city; it was overtaken by Hangzhou/Hangchow, China, when theBlack Death hit the cities of western Eurasia in 1347-48: Hangchow would reach‘432,000’ in 1350. Then Nanking/Nanjing, China, by 1358: ‘487,000’ people in AD1400. According to Matschke 2002, the population of Constantinople may still haveexceeded 100,000 during the early Palaiologan period, though shortly before thecity fell (in 1453) to the Turks the number was barely half that. Old Rome, with perhaps 35,000 people, had now recovered to second-rankstatus. In 1305 the popes will leave Rome and take up residence at Avignon.


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Above: Turkia and Romania. By 1326 the Turkish beylik (lordship) ofKarasi held parts of the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara, as didthe Ottomans, but most of the littoral was still Byzantine. The near-defunct Turkish (Seljuq) Sultanate of Rum/Rome wasnow a vassal of the Mongol-ruled Ilkhanate of Persia. The unlabelledlavender segment between the Turkish beylik of Karesi and the beylikof Aydin is the beylik of Saruhan. Osman = Ottoman.

THE PALAIOLOGAN ARMY IN ABOUT 1330After Bartusis, Late Byantine Army [LBA], 1992.

Size

After 1204 it was unusual for a Byzantine army to number more than a fewthousand men. The “empire” was quite small, but in addition the expense ofmaintaining an army seems to have been greater everywhere in this period thanbefore about AD 1100. Moreover much less tax per head was able to be collectedthan before 1100 (cf Treadgold 1997: 842). For comparison, I have listed in anAppendix some estimates of the size of Western European field armies beforeand after the Black Death. Even quite large states were not capable of fielding bigarmies. An exception was the Ottoman Empire, once it had expanded to cover aquarter or more of Asia Minor: see the entry after AD 1432 in this chronology. At sea, the strongest power was Venice, but as a city-state (with only a fewcoastal and island colonies in the East), its resources were quite limited: see thediscussion below under AD 1410.

As for the Byzantines, Bartusis, LBA p.266, calculates that the state budget in the1320s was large enough to hire at most about 1,700 full-time professionals or‘mercenaries’. (In 1321, Andronicus succeeded in collecting much more tax andother revenues than usual, and planned—although the plan was neverrealised—to hire 3,000 salaried cavalrymen, i.e. ‘knights’, and a standing navywith 3,000 oarsmen, enough to man some 18-20 war-galleys: Treadgold 1997:pp.841 ff.) But there were in addition pronoiar cavalrymen (Greek professionals)and small-holder troops who were largely self-financing. Thus the men whocould be mustered for a campaign numbered over 3,000. The largest imperial field army mentioned in Kantakouzenus’s works [fl. 1345]numbered just 5,000 men; the largest in Gregoras [fl. 1340] was 3,000 men (LBApp.260 ff). This covered all the paid campaign troops supported by the emperorwhether by salary or other means: small-holder troops, pronoiars (tenuredcavalrymen) and imperial ‘mercenaries’ of differing ethnicities. In addition, therewere often unpaid ‘allied’ foreign troops deployed at no cost to emperor (orrather: no cash cost). They fought for booty. The median figure for allied Turks inseveral campaigns was 6-8,000 men, and the median for other allies 2-3,000. Thuson rare occasions an ally-boosted expeditionary force could exceed 10,000 men. Interestingly, in 1332, according to the Berber (Moroccan) traveller Ibn Battuta,who was a careful observer, fully “5,000” Byzantine cavalry or horsemen, all in


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armour, some also with horse-armour, rode out to meet the Byzantine wife of the‘Golden Horde’ (Kipchak) khan (see below under 1332). One must assume thatthis included not only regular soldiers but also garrison troops and probablysome civilians riding with them. Alternatively we should strike off a zero andread this as 500.

Adding together imperial and (unpaid) allied troops, an expeditionary army ofsome 5,000 men was possible, and one as large as 10,000 men was exceptional butnot unknown.

Such are the figures when time allowed for a full muster of the army and allies.But when an emergency called for a scratch army, the force deployed must havenumbered only in the hundreds! (Bartusis, LBA p.269). Garrisons guarding major towns and fortresses tended to number around 2-300 men per site, but figures as low as 30 men are reported. These troops werelower status amateur soldiers who did not go on campaigns (LBA pp.296, 299).Cf 1342.

Above: Fresco of military saints ca. 1300. Quite likely they representpronoiar soldiers (see in text). Points to note: 1. The small round shield carried by the left-handfigure. 2. The box-shaped quiver of the middle figure with the arrowspoints-up (suggesting he is a horse-archer); and his large concavetriangulate shield (also appropriate for a horseman). The dark purplecoloured shape behind his right knee is presumably a bow-case(another piece of cavalry gear)? His bow is relatively large. 3. Thelarger round shield of the right-hand figure. His neck projector looks


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like lamellar meatal. 4. The swords are about half their height. If theaverage medieval man was 175 cm tall, that translates to about 85-90cm.

Small-holders, pronoiars and mercenaries

To simplify, there were three categories of imperial troops who went oncampaign: (1) Small-holder soldiers, mainly infantry, numbering as manyas 2,500 in a very large army of 5,000. (2) The pronoiars, never numberingmore than “several hundred”, who were seen as the ‘ideal’ soldiers, beingin theory well-equipped and well-trained native Rhomaioi/‘Greek’ cavalry.Finally (3) salaried troops, so-called ‘mercenaries’, mostly foreigners orforeign-born, who were the actual elite, and numbered up to 2,000(Bartusis, LBA p.267).

1. Small-holder infantrymen

This term applied to land-owners who were semi-professional unsalariedfarmer-soldiers. Or better: soldier-landlords, as they may not personallyhave done the farming. In return for military service they were exemptedfrom taxation. Many were native Greek-Romanics, but others wereforeigners or the descendants of foreigners granted land in return formilitary service, e.g. the Cuman horse-archers transplanted to Asia Minorin 1241-42. Effectively all of the infantry (foot archers) would have been small-holdersoldiers. Some were spearmen.

As depicted in Heath (1995), a Byzantine infantry spearman wears a plainbascinet or round-cap-style helmet, a mail coif and mail body armour to theelbows and waist [his illustration C3]. Alternatively he wears mail also coveringthe whole of his legs [illustration D2]. He carries a tall (ca. 120 cm) narrow,triangular shield. The spear is relatively short: about 225 cm; that is, it is not apike.

Foot archers are referred to as ‘light’ infantry, but in one illustration in Bartusis[also Heath 1995: sketch D3] we see them wearing both helmets (brimmed war-hats) and body armour (evidently mail), with large, flat, box-style quivers girdedto their belts (i.e. not carried on a baldric). Parani 2003: 142 notes that both flap-closed box-quivers (arrow tips upwards: the cavalry style) and open type quivers(feathers upwards: the infantry style) are seen in late Byzantine art, the formerbeing more common. Bow-cases are also shown in illustrations, eg Figure 6 in Bartusis’s book: thesoldier wears an open, half-size bowcase [the top half of the bow is visible] on hisleft and a full quiver on his right. No baldric can be seen, suggesting that bothwere attached to his waist belt. (But baldrics were in use: in Bartusis’s Figure 5,the soldier carries a mace on a baldric, with his box quiver attached to his waist-belt.)


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Above: From the 14th Century ‘Alexander Romance’. Note the‘inverted teardrop’ or triangular shields, and the modest length of thespears. The turbaned figure is not a Turk but Alexander’s lieutenantSeleucus.

2. Pronoiar cavalry

These were the Byzantine professional cavalry armed with lance and sword. As pictured in Nicolle’s Eastern Europe 1988, a Byzantine pronoiar cavalrymanwore a metal helmet in the form of a low dish-shaped brimmed war-hat; a short-sleeved mail hauberk [body armour] extending from head (mail hood) to theknees; high boots; and he carried a medium-small convex triangular shield. Theminiatures in the Alexander Romance of ca.1330 show both cavalry and infantrycarrying fairly small round shields (reproduced in Bartusis, LBA).

The pronoiars were relatively high status town-dwellers who drew their incomefrom a pronoia (grant) of rural land-taxes. Most but not all were ethnically Greek;some would be Latins. They did not own the farms but rather were the payees of the peasant-farmers’taxes. A grant of a pronoia was a grant of revenue, not a land grant. Instead of payingtaxes to the central treasury, a nominated set of peasants paid money direct tothe pronoiar. Thus Kantakuzenos writes of those soldiers “having incomes fromvillages” (quoted in LBA p. 163). Not only were they few in number, the pronoiars as a group seem to have beennot very capable, often functioning just to bolster the elite mercenary units.


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Bartusis, LBA p.344, points outs unkindly that there was no occasion when they everplayed a decisive role in battle.

3. Foreign professionals

As Bartusis uses it, ‘mercenaries’ simply means salaried full-time soldiers who arenot Greeks. It is an unhappy term: cf the Gurkhas in the 20th C British army:salaried foreigners, but an elite and totally loyal. In the literature, the elite imperial troops are called ‘mercenaries’ becausenearly all were foreigners or at least of foreign descent: Alans, Cumans, Turks,Bulgarians, Serbs, Italians, Germans, French, Catalans, English and other Latins.Typically they were either Western ‘men at arms’ (‘knights’: heavy lancers) orEastern horse-archers. The Varangian Guard of course were ethnic Englishguards-infantry. Plate armour or mail? The Russian traveller Ignatius of Smolensk was presentat Manuel II’s coronation in Hagia Sophia in 1392. On either side of the emperorwalked 12 men at arms “completely (covered in) iron from head to foot” (quotedby Bartusis p.281). This sounds like plate armour but it could be a reference tomail.

A notional field army might be composed as follows:

600: foreign knights, e.g. Germans (lancers).1,000: horse-archers, usually allied Turks. 400: Byzantine/Greek pronoiar cavalry (lancers). Treadgold 1997: 842 puts

their numbers at about “500” in 1320.1,250: Byzantine/Greek infantry, mostly archers. Also from 1329 [see there] a few

Italian infantrymen, probably crossbowmen, served Byzantium. TheVarangians in this period did not normally go out on campaign, and notat all after 1329.------

Total: 3,250.


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14th century Byzantine troops.

Cavalry armour

The following details refer to cavalry. As noted, the Varangians, who werearmoured infantry, had ceased during the 1200s to be a field regiment (theirappearance on campaign in in 1329 is exceptional). The only remaining infantryserving on campaign were unarmoured light infantrymen, mainly archers. If theywore armour, it was quilt not metal.

Head: The typical, perhaps even standard, cavalry helmet was the “war hat” orchapel de fer, a relatively tall, brimmed conical helmet. As noted below, somebrimmed war-hats were low and dish-shaped. But conical helmets without brimsare also shown in contemporary illustrations (Bartusis LBA p.325; Heath 1995). Parani notes, p.124, that little was written about helmets in contemporaryworks, so we have to rely on artworks. She thinks (but offers no reasoning) thatthese are generally fanciful, which is to say, not based on real-life examples(p.125).

Neck armour, aventails: Both plate and mail neck-guards were worn. Sometimesthey were rigid or semi-rigid lamellar structures of metal or leather. But mailhoods/coifs were also in use.

Body: Probably mail was the most common type of armour used by cavalry.There were short and long types, some sleeveless, some with sleeves, some with


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attached hoods, some without. Sometimes lamellar cuirasses (made of laced orrivetted lamellae or platelets of metal or hardened leather) were worn over, orinstead of, mail hauberks, as depicted, for example, in the painting (ca. 1300) ofSt Demetrius at Mt Athos (Protaton Church) attributed to Manuel Panselinos fl.1290-1320. The saint wears a lamellar corselet that is sleeveless and extends onlyto the waist. His large rectangular quiver has the arrows stored points-upwards,so he is a cavalryman, but he also carries a spear or short lance. The miniatures inthe Alexander Romance of ca.1330 shows both mail and lamellar armour, oftenwith a soldier wearing a combination of both (reproduced in Bartusis, LBA; alsoNicolle, Eastern Europe). Parani pp.112ff says that the artistic evidence for lamellar armour after 1204 isequivocal; she suggests that mail probably predominated. Moreover she queries(p.114) whether depictions were drawn from life or invented. In any event, thearmour shown on Demetrius is realistic and very clearly lamellar. Over the body armour again, on top, was worn a quilted or padded clothsurcoat. There is mention in the mid-14th Century Pseudo-Kodinos of blue and white“epanoklibana”, which is to say: surcoats for covering (epano-) lamellar armour(klibana), being worn by the palace guards called Tzakones (Parani p.120).

In the fighting against Epirus in 1257, on one occasion the emperor’s uncleMichael Lascaris is said to have worn a corselet instead of a full breastplate “sothat he could flee the more readily when caught in a hard plight” (Setton 1976:75, citing Acropolites). This may imply that after 1250 the better class ofByzantine cavalrymen ordinarily wore some plate armour*, but of a kind that didnot cover the whole body.- Ibn Battuta in 1332 (see there) reports that some horses in the Byzantine armywore horse-armour of mail. The miniatures in the Alexander Romance of ca.1330show mainly unarmoured horse but several are shown with non-plate barding(reproduced in Bartusis, LBA).

(*) Keen 1999: 191, 199 notes that Latin knights began using horse-armour(“barding”) from the middle 1200s: mostly in the form of hardened leather, withmetal plates at first confined to the horse’s head and chest. The knight’s ownarmour remained mainly mail, although some iron-plate armour is seen from themid 1200s, worn to protect the elbows, knees and shins. Full plate armours forman and horse did not appear until the mid-to-late 1300s, and were not in wideuse until the mid 1400s.

A good illustration of lamellar armour can be found in the monastery of theForty Martyrs near Sparta. The wall paintings of the cave church are dated byone inscription to 1304/5. St Demetrios sits astride a white horse with his spearheld across his chest. The saddle has a raised cantle and pommel, features alsofound on the Sinai portraits, ca. 1275, of Sergios and the images of St George atNauplion and St John Chrysostom, Geraki. In Demetrios’ portrait, the saintwears a sleeveless waist-length lamellar corselet and a long surcoat over ornatelypatterned leggings. The upper arm protection is provided by pteruges (widestrips) evidently of leather. His boots extend up to mid-calf. —Sharon E. J.Gerstel, ‘Art and Identity in the Medieval Morea’, http://


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www.doaks.org/LACR.html. [Dead link 2011.]

Shields: The most common late Byzantine shield was the so-called ‘kite-shaped’or almond type, actually an elongated triangular shape and slightly curved: veryslightly convex. It was medium to large in size: three to five feet (90-150 cm) highand quite narrow: about 45 cm or 18 inches wide at the top (Bartusis, LBA p.326;Heath 1995: 44). Parani, p.129, adds that there was also a smaller more literallytriangular type with a slight vertical curve; she proposes that this was a uniquelyByzantine type. Finally she notes that a small flat round ‘oriental-style’ type ofshield is depicted in some Byzantine drawings, for example in the painting [ca.AD 1300] of St Mercurius at Mt Athos: hsio shield looks to be only about 35 cmor 14 inches in diameter. St Mercurius carries a quite large bow [to my eye: 150-160 cm or around five feet long], which may indicate that he is depicted as a footsoldier; but such a small shield might be better suited to a horseman. The painting of St Demetrius from Mt Athos, mentioned earlier, shows himwith a medium-sized round shield of a diameter that looks to my eye about 130cm or 4 ft 3 in.

Cavalry horse armour or “barding”: There is some evidence, literary and pictorial,that on occasion horses wore mail or metal lamellar barding. Presumably thiswas rare, barding being used only by nobles and perhaps the most elite cavalry(LBA p.324). As we have said, Ibn Battuta in 1332 (see there) reports that in theByzantine army many horses wore horse-armour of mail. Although the occasionwas ceremonial, it can be believed that such armour was also worn in battle. Latin ‘mercenaries’ (“men-at-arms”: salaried professional ‘knights’ fromWestern Europe) in Byzantine service would have used plate armour in theperiod 1350-1450.


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Above: Fresco of St Mercurius and St Artemius, Mt Athos, attributed toManuel Panselinos, dating to 1290-1310. Points to note: the large sizeof Mercurius’s bow, the small round shield and sabre, perhapsindicating he is depicted as a horse-archer. Artemius’s body armourlooks like mail, while his upper arm-guards are lamellar (leather?).His left hand rests on a large shield, and the spear (or javelin?) is not along one.

Weapons

Swords: The typical sword was straight and of medium length: perhaps up to 90cm long, to judge from depictions in art. Some straight swords had a slightlycurved tip, for example in the painting [ca. AD 1300] of St Mercurius at MtAthos, and (new in this period) there were also curved sabres. Parani p.135 proposes that swords were now worn girt at the waist, ie nothung on a baldric.

Maces – are mentioned in texts and seen in illustrations (but are not common:Parani p.139). One illustration, in Bartusis LBA p. 326, suggests that maces couldbe quite long, perhaps 60 cm. — In a battle fought in 1211, emperor Theodore I Lascaris personally slew thesultan Kay-Khusraw with a mace.

Spear: Spears or lances were the main weapon of the cavalry. Illustrations in artmay be unreliable, but it would appear, see e.g. illustration in frontispiece of


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Bartusis’s LBA, that the late Byzantine cavalry lance was shorter than the 12 ft or3.5 metre kontarion (long pike) of earlier times. Heath 1995: 43 says the infantryspear was about 8 ft or 2.4 m long. The couched charge was used by cavalry, having been adopted from the Westin the Comnenian period.

Bow: The Byzantines used the Eastern-style composite recurve bow. Amazingly (in view of earlier history), the bow was little used by the lateByzantine cavalry (pronoiars). Bartusis says that native Byzantine cavalry usedthe sword and lance “almost exclusively”. But this can be doubted. First, severalof the contemporary illustrations in his book show military saints in the guise ofwell equipped armoured soldiers who can only be cavalrymen, and theydefinitely carry bows, bow-cases and quivers as well as swords and lances(Bartusis, LBA p.330). Second, hunting with the bow was a favourite sport of theByzantine aristocracy; and Manuel Philes, aged about 25 in 1300, even wrote apoem about the emperor’s ornamental quiver (Parani 2003: 142). Third, IbnBattuta mentioned cavalry carrying both bows and lances in 1332 (see there).Finally, as Heath remarks, 1995: 24, Byzantine archers were frequently brigadedalongside Cuman mercenaries and Turkish auxiliaries on the battlefield, and thisprobably indicates that some Greek-Romanic archers were horse-archers ormulti-weaponed horse-lancer-bowmen. But, however that may be, certainly the composite recurve bow remained animportant weapon by virtue of its use by allied or mercenary horse-archers andthe Byzantine infantry. One has to guess, but perhaps as many as 40% of a fieldarmy carried bows.

In depictions of Byzantine military saints, their quivers are mostly, but notalways, box-shaped (rectangular) with a closing flap, and the arrows are storedpoint-upwards, as was the practice on the Eurasian steppes (Parani p.142). Thusthe saints being depicted are dismounted horsemen. In 1439 at Florence the Verona-based painter Pisanello drew sketches ofEmperor John VIII on horseback. (Cf chronology under 1417-18: John was anactive participant in campaigns in his youth.) John wears over his left thigh ahalf-size bow-case containing a strung bow about one metre long and whatappears to be a short, scabbarded sabre under it. The bowcase (to my eye about50 cm deep) contains about half of the bow’s length, the top half beinguncovered. Image here:http://www.oilpaintinghk.com/art/oil_paintings_58705.html. In anothersketch, Pisanello has drawn a bow-case that contains two-thirds of a strung bow,with only the top third exposed (in Nicolle, Eastern Europe p.37).


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Above: Illustration from the 14th Century ‘Alexander Romance’. Points to note: Only round shields are in evidence. Alexander’shorse and the one to his left wear horse-armour, possibly lamellarleather. The foot-archers wear iron ‘kettle-hats’ and box-shapedquivers attached to their belts containing arrows with the fletching atthe top: points downward (typical infantry style), but so too does thecavalryman behind Alexander. The body armour of the cavalrymanbehind Alexander looks to be lamellar iron. In the case of the foot-archer second from the right, his armour from its colour may belamellar leather.


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Above: John VIII (aged 46) in Italy as depicted by Pisanello

Cross-bows: The Latins made wide use of the cross-bow, but it was not much usedby the Byzantines, except in the case of town garrisons. (This makes sense:accuracy is not important in the effect of an arrow-storm during a battle in thefield, and the plain bow can be fired more quickly; the only real advantage of thecrossbow is that untrained soldiers can learn to use it more quickly, whereas theplain bow demands expertise and long years of practice.)

Firearms – have not yet appeared. The first reference to guns (cannons) in theBalkans comes in 1378 [cf 1389: said to have been used, ineffectually, by bothsides at Kossovo]; but firearms would not decide field battles until the 1500s. TheByzantines may have used small cannons as early as 1390 in an internal squabblecoup. The Genoese of Galata were using primitive bombards from 1392. The firstsiege in which the Ottomans used cannon was the 1422 siege of Constantinople(Bartusis, LBA pp.335, 337).

CHRONOLOGY BEGINS HERE


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1328-41: ANDRONIKOS III Palaiologos

Andronicus III Palaeologus, aged 32 at acc.: grandson of AndronicusII, who he deposed after a series of civil wars. 1st wife: Adelaide [Adelheid] von Brunschweig [Brunswick],renamed Irene, d. 1324. 2nd wife: marr. 1326: Joanna/Giovanna/Annaof Savoy. His youngest sister was married to successive tsars of Bulgaria. Hischief minister and general was John Cantacuzene/Kantakouzenos, laterEmperor John VI. During this reign the Ottoman Turks gained almost complete control ofNW Asia Minor, while Stephen (Stefan) Dushan of Serbia conqueredwestern Macedonia and Albania.

Warren Treadgold, 1997: 764 and 837, writes of Byzantium temporarily reversingits decline under Andronicus III, and he judges that on the whole his reign wassuccessful. Thanks to the commanding general, the Grand Domestic JohnCantacuzenus, “the real architect of Andronicus’s success”, Byzantium wouldwin more in Epirus, Thessaly and the islands than it would lose in Bithynia andaround Ochrid [in present-day FYROM/Slavic Macedonia]. Its army, albeit tiny,fought at least as well as the armies of its neighbours, “with the possibleexception of the Ottoman Turks” (p.764). Cf 1329, Battle of Pelekanon.

1315-21:Although strictly not within our chronological ambit, the Chora Church is wortha mention. The powerful Byzantine statesman Theodore Metochites endowed the


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Church of Holy Saviour in Chora (in the north-western sector of Constantinople)with much of its fine mosaics and frescos. The impressive decoration of theinterior was carried out between 1315 and 1321. The mosaic-work is the finestexample of the ‘Palaeologian Renaissance’. (The majority of the fabric of thecurrent building is earlier, namely from 1077–1081, when Maria Doukaina, themother-in-law of emperor Alexios I Komnenos, had the Chora Church rebuilt asan inscribed cross or quincunx: a popular architectural style of the time.)

There is no known instance of mosaic decoration in Byzantium after 1321; onlyfrescoes. This is probably to be explained by the negative economics of a smallpopulation fighting a civil war (Sevcenko in Treadgold‘s Renaissances, 1984p.161).

1325-1334:SW Aia Minor: The Aydin emir Mehmed divided the principality between hissons. The elder, Hızır, received Ephesus in 1325: he ruled it until his death in1360, first under the suzerainty of his father then under that of his youngerbrother, Umur Bey, who inherited the supreme power on the death of Mehmedin 1334. —Foss, Ephesus p.146

1328:At age 70 Andronicus II abdicated, i.e., he was deposed, and retired to amonastery; his grandson assumed the throne as Andronicus III. Evidently the Varangian Guard readily switched allegiance to the youngerAndronicus because, in 1330 when he fell seriously ill and his partisans wereafraid his grandfather would attempt to resume the throne, the Varangians wereused as a threat against it (Benedikz p.175).

The Venetian and Genoese traders of Constantinople were at this time engagedin a naval war being fought around the city. A Venetian fleet of 40 ships wasblockading the Genoese colony of Galata (Pera) and the mouth of the GoldenHorn. This meant that Genoese food ships carrying grain and fish from the BlackSea could not get through to the harbour and the Byzantine population was shortof food:

“During the campaign of the Venetians against the Genovese [sic: Genoese] in1328, a number of Genovese and Byzantine merchant ships were taken ashostage to secure a ransom. Upon release of these ships, the urban population [ofConstantinople] was relieved to see that their cargoes of grain and salted fishoriginating from the shores of the Sea of Azov and the deltas of the Don andKuban rivers had survived intact. At a time when the wheat-growing fields of Thraceand Macedonia were destroyed by incessant hostilities and warfare, the helpless capitalhad turned more than ever to these supply zones on the northern littoral of the Black Sea.However, the era of 1325-28 marked also the disintegration of the Byzantinemonopoly over the Black Sea grain trade as well as the control ofConstantinople over the grain exports to the West. The Genovese had the upperhand in the trade of the Black Sea grain.” —Eyüp Özveren, atwww.eh.net/xiiicongress/cd/papers/6%d6zveren48. Evidently what is meant, however, is that the proportion of Genoese ships


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increased relative to Greek-Romanic. The Genoese had been bringing grain toConstantinople from the Black Sea littoral for many decades. Matschke hasunderlined that “native (Byzantine) ships with native merchants and a variety ofnative products are attested between Thessalonike and Constantinople andbetween various Black Sea ports, independent of the Italians and with noconnections to them. Their presence reveals that one cannot speak of a true monopolyof Genoese and Venetians on either side of the straits” (in Laiou 2002: 790).

Above: Venetian gallley at the Battle of Curzola, 1298.Each bench had three oarsmen each pulling on his own oar, a system

called alla sensile.

1329:1a. Planning to proceed against rebellious Chios, Emperor Andronikos IIInegotiated a peace agreement with the Turks of Saruhan (Manisa) in 1329 (HasanCelâl Güzel, Cem Oguz & Osman Karatay, The Turks: Ottomans 2 v. )2002).

1b. Eastern Aegean: Andronikos III effected the recovery of the mainland coastalfortress of Old Phocaea and the islands of Lesbos and Chios from BenedettoZaccaria in 1329, but this did little to stem the Ottoman advance in Asia Minor.(The Zaccarias managed to maintain control of New Phocaea, 20 km away.) The Greek inhabitants of Chios, led by Leo Kalothetos, rebelled againstZaccaria rule in 1329. The emperor intervened, captured Martino Zaccaria andimprisoned him in Constantinople. —Nicol 1972: 176. Byzantium held Chios until 1346: see there.

The E Aegean: Martino Zaccaria's opponent on Chios, Leon Kalothetos,approaches the new Emperor Andronicus Paleologos with a plan to regain the


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island for Byzantium. Martino is thus summoned to Constantinople to explainwhy he has built a fortress without consent. Martino responds by removing theimperial standard, raising his own and retiring into his fortress. The emperorsends a fleet to take the island but Martino fails to negotiate for peace and hisown safety when he finds the island's Greeks and his own brother Benetto ll areopposed to him. He is taken prisoner to Constantinople. The island's Greek andLatin nobility are offered a lease on the same terms originally offered to Benettoll . But Benetto ll wants the island for himself and responds by chartering eightGenoese vessels in Constantinople and sailing for Chios. He is routed by theinhabitants and dies of a stroke a few days later (Long 1998).

Zaccaria had a standing army of two galleys, 100 cavalrymen and 1,000 (or “800”)infantrymen, according to the Wikipedia authors (under ‘Chios’ 2011, citingBenjamin Arbel, Bernard Hamilton and David Jacob, Latins and Greeks in theEastern Mediterranean after 1204 [1989]). Miller 1921: 292 says Zaccaria had 800men. The island’s revenues amounted to the surprisingly large sum of 120,000hyperpyra (gold coins) - equivalent to more than a 1/10th of the state budget ofthe empire at its highest in this period (Treadgold, State p.839). Presumably theincome from the alum mines of Phocaea is included here, as land taxes wouldsurely have been modest. Andronicus III declared Martino Zaccaria deposed. And with a fleet of 105[sic!] ships and boats, the Byzantines invaded Chios (Miller 1921: 292; Wikipedia,2011, ‘Martino Zaccaria’). One imagines the large majority were small boatsrather than large galleys: even so, the number of oarsmen involved may haveexceeded 3,780 if (purely a guess) there were 15 galleys [108 rowers each] and 90lesser craft [24 rowers each]. The number of imperial troops is not known, butjust “300” mounts were brought along for the cavalry (Bartusis p.262, citingKantakouzenos’s memoirs). Thus the entire expedition may have included nomore than (say) 1,200 professional fighters. Of course if every oarsmen alsocarried a sword, then the Italians were heavily outnumbered . . . Martin was taken prisoner to Constantinople. And Andronicus compelled thesubordinate governor of Phocea, Andreolo Cattaneo, to swear fealty to him. When the Genoese Martino Zaccaria surrendered Chios to Andronicus, theformer’s 800 Italian soldiers were given the choice of leaving or “takingmercenary pay to serve the emperor”. Most chose to become mercenaries andeither stayed on Chios or “numbered themselves among the servants of theemperor”, i.e. joined the imperial army (Kantakouzenos, quoted in Bartusis, LBAp.209).

2a. Asia: The Aydin-oglou Turks had held the upper fortress at Smyrna since1317; in 1329 under Umur Pasha they took its lower harbour from the Genoese.This became the main base of the Aydinoglu navy. The Aydinoglu capital wasinland at Birgi (ex-Greek Pyrgion). –Nicol B&V p.252; also ‘Aydin-oglu’, inEncyclopedia of Islam, Leiden, Brill 1960, I:783.

2b. The N Aegean: Sailing from Smyrna and Ayasuluk/Ephesus*, the fleet of theAydin-oglou Turks under Umur Pasha attacks Christian ships off the


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Dardanelles (Pryor 1988: 167). Among the weapons used by the Turks were thearbalest [steel crossbow] and wood crossbow [Inalcik, Maritime p.326], althoughwe may guess that the ‘ordinary’ composite bow predominated. According to Lemerle (also Inalcik, loc.cit.), Umur’s men also attacked Chiosaround this time, perhaps in early 1330 after the withdrawal of Zaccaria’s Genoese from that island. As related in thelater Turkish chronicle Dusturname by Enveri, the Turks “took innumerable boys,virgins and young women and gold and silver beyond reckoning” . . . “moon-faced virgins …. (and) beautiful Frankish [Italian] boys” (quoted in Paul Lemerle,L’Emirat d’Aydin, Paris 1957). The contemporary writer, al-‘Umari, writing in about 1330, says Umur wasengaged in jihad (cited in Ann Lambton & Bernard Lewis, The central Islamic landsfrom pre-Islamic times to the first world war, Volume 2, Cambridge University Press,1978, p.271); but of course there were also compelling non-religious reasons forgoing against the Christians, namely slaves, booty and fame. Al-‘Umari wasrelying on second-hand reports; he did not visit Aydin.

(*) By this time the ancient harbour was silted up; the actual port ofEphesus was an inlet about six km west of Ayasuluk** (as medievalEphesus was called: Italian Altoluogo) at the ancient port of Panormos(Foss, Ephesus after Antiquity, p.149).

(**) From Greek Ayios Theologos, [church of the] Holy Theologian.


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Above: Illustration from the 14th Century ‘Alexander Romance’.Points to note: 1. The iron ‘kettle-hat’ helmets. 2. The rider behindAlexander has a face-cover of mail. The differently sketched body-armour of the soldier visible over Alexander’s right shoulder wouldbe lamellar iron.

4. NW Asia Minor, 10 June: The last eastern offensive by Byzantium. AtPelecanus or Pelekanon, which was near modern Gebze*, on the road fromConstantinople to Nicomedia, the second and last major battle is fought betweenthe Empire and the Ottomans in Asia (thr fruist was at Bapheon in 1301 or 1302).Andronicus, accompanied by Cantacuzenus, makes a last valiant attempt torecover some of Asia Minor: unsuccessful attempt to force back the Ottomanswho were besieging Byzantine Nicomedia and Nicaea. The emperor himself waswounded by a Turkish arrow (Bradbury 2004: 11).

(*) Norwich says, wrongly, that Pelekanos is today’s Manyas, i.e. well west ofBursa. Pryor and Nicolle both say the battle was fought, after a march of more than twodays [1-3 June], at Pendik, 30 km from the capital, which is NW of Gebze inBithynia (Pryor 2006: 285; Nicolle 2008: 37; also Freely 2008: 114). Pendik is nowon the SE edge of Istanbul’s suburbs. Liakopoulos says Pelekanon is modern-day Eskihisar, nearer to (south of)Gebze and on the coast. Eskihisar is more than halfway from Byzantine


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Nicomedia to Constantinople, specifically about 45 km from the latter (in his‘Ottoman Conquest’, www.thesis.bilkent.edu.tr/0002131). The Byzantine armyretreated from Pelekanon to Philokrene, which is today’s Bayramoglu on thecoast west of Gebze and just 4 or 5 km west of Eskihisar. The sources say the Turks came down from the hills to attack the Byzantines:looking at a contour map one can only conclude that they were the hillsimmediately NW of central Gebze (nowadays the town surrounds the hills). Giventhe points to which the imperials retreated (see below in text), the battle musthave taken place on the flatter land immediately south-west of Gebze proper. Thatis, where today Gebze’s south-west suburbs extend.

The Battle of Pelekanon, 1329

In the battle of Pelekanon, about 8,000 Ottoman troops, or better: armedretainers, under Orhan (aged 48) defeated some 4,000 Byzantine soldiers underAndronicus (aged 32) and the grand domestic John Cantacuzenos (aged about34). There were perhaps as few as 3,000 on the imperial side, of whom 2,000 wereregulars (Nicol, Last Centuries p.169; Bartusis LBA p.91; Norwich 1996: 285;Freely 2008: 114). Cantacuzenos commanded the right wing. The lower totals are credible because they are fully consistent with the figuresoffered for the number of dead and wounded: see details below. As noted,Andronicus himself was wounded in the battle, as also was Cantacuzenus (Nicol,Cantacuzene 2002: 32).

In the time available, Andronicus was able to assemble troops only from thecapital and Thrace; the troops of Macedonia and “the rest of the west” (i.e. ourAlbania) did not participate (Bartusis, LBA p.236). He managed to assemblesome 2,000 regulars, so we may deduce that the whole professional land forcesin 1329 totalled no more than about 3,000. Adding irregulars, he may havecommanded as many as 4,000 men at Pelekanon.

The 2,000 regulars on the Greek-Romanic side were mainly cavalry: presumablyboth ‘men at arms’ (heavy cavalry: say 1,000?) and pronoiars (medium cavalry:say 500?) but also included the elite Varangian (English) infantry guard, say 500men. They were bolstered by an equal or larger number of irregulars: half-trained smallholder farmer-soldiers (LBA p.214, 236, citing Gregoras). Notingthat initially the imperials more than held their own against the Turks, we mustimagine that many, evem most, of these Byzantine farmer-infantrymen werearchers.

This (1329) is the last time we hear of the Varangians as a campaigning unit;after about 1329, or even earlier, they become or became palace guards normallyserving only in the capital or escorting the emperor when he travelled. The verylast reference to axe-bearing soldiers “of British race” comes in 1404 (Heath 1995:23; Bartusis p.275). Cf 1341, 1355.


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The Turks were first sighted on the third day, which would be 3 June. The battletook place on 10 June; presumably the six days 4-9 June were spent eyeing offeach other or counter-manoeuvring? Alternatively there was desultory fightingfor some days before the decisive phase on 10 June. The first phase of the battle went in the Empire’s favour. In a contest that tookup most of the day, the Byzantines beat off three Turkish attacks. The firstOttoman attack was made by just 300 horsemen, the next two by larger numbers.But Orhan held back most of his force. If we may believe Kantakouzenus—andhis modest but exact figures are consistent with other data from thisperiod—then the Byzantines sustained just “two” dead and a “few” wounded, asagainst nearly 270 (sic) dead on the Turkish side, in the opening phase of thebattle (Bartusis p.268; Nicol loc.cit.). Noting the small numbers on the imperial side, we may imagine that the Turks werenot always very fearsome in this era. Indeed one writer (see below under 1330)described the 14th century Ottoman horsemen as mediocre (“not good”) and theinfantry as more warlike in appearance than in reality. It must be a guess, butprobably some of the 270 Turkish fatalities were inflicted by lancer-charges andothers by the fire of the Byzantine infantry archers. In any event, the Byzantines thought that they had won and, as eveningapproached [10 June], began returning to their nearby camp. But the fighting wasrenewed, and in the second phase “127” Byzantines were killed. Andronicushimself was lightly wounded in the knee or thigh. A rumour that the wound wasfatal led to a panicky withdrawal from the camp to the imagined safety of the coast.The Turkish casualties in this second phase are not recorded but presumablywere fewer than 127 (Kantakuzenos, cited in LBA p.269; Nicol loc.cit.; Norwich1996: 285 gives a slightly different account). The Byzantines, or most of them, took refuge at four sites: (1) the fortress ofPhilokrene [modern Bayramoglu, on the coast to the west], Andronicus beingcarried there on a stretcher. He was put on a ship to Constantinople (night of 10June). Ramsay, Geography pp.184-85, says that as well as (1) Philokrene, theByzantines retired to (2) Niketiata (west), (3) Dakibyza [modern Gebze to thenorth-east] and (4) Ritzion [modern Darica: between Bayramoglu and Eskihisar]on the coast (south). The fort of Niketiata lay on the coast close to and west ofGebze, so also near Philokrene. The Turks followed close behind, and at dawn the next day (11 June) a battleor skirmish was fought outside the walls of Philokrene, in which two highranking imperials were killed. Kantakouzenos managed to rally his troops(evidently from all four refuge sites) and marched them in something like orderback to Chrysopolis, where they had left their ferry-boats (Nicol, loc.cit.; Finlay,Empire, 1854 p.530).

Lindner: “Orkhan's force consisted of nomad [horse] archers. A series of briefencounters was indecisive, but the Byzantines were able to repulse two largerTurkish attacks. It would seem as though the two armies had fought to a draw,although the Byzantines began to return to camp as victors. It was only duringthe undisciplined retirement of the Byzantine infantry that the Turks were able tosow panic and turn an indecisive encounter into a rout. It was the aftermath ofthe battle, not the direct encounter itself, which furnished Orkhan with victory”


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(thus Lindner; also LBA p.91). It would seem that either the imperial troops were well led, or the averageTurkish light cavalryman, a ‘gifted amateur’, was not yet as capable as theaverage professional or semi-professional soldier serving Byzantium - or both.Moreover probably many Turks were light infantrymen, or better: mereunarmoured herdsmen with a bow and dagger. In this period none were full-time professional troops, as were so many of their opponents.

Above: Ottoman horse-archer.

4. Venice: The Pregadi (the Senate) decided in 1329 to auction the state galleysand offer them on lease to the highest bidder voyage by voyage, on a given routeand under binding conditions. The experiment began with the trade to and fromthe Eastern Empire, and the success of the operation led to its being extended tothe galleys bound for the other destinations. This system ensured work for theArsenal, the largest state industry even in time of peace. —‘Veneto’ website:www.veneto.org/history/serenissima2.htm; accessed 2011.

5. The existence of a Christian minority in Ephesus and its surrounds is attestedby the writings of Manuel Gabaslas, called Matthew of Ephesus, created titulararchbishop of Ephesus in 1329. Emir Mehmet would not allow him to enter thetown. It was only in 1339 (see there) that he was able to take up his post, after adetour via Smyrna —Foss, Ephesus, p.148

1330: 1000th anniversary of the founding of Constantinople.


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c.1330:1. fl. Demetrius Triclinius, a writer of commentaries on classical lyric anddramatic poetry. He edited and analyzed the metrical structure of many textsfrom ancient Greece, particularly those of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.He is often compared favourably with two contemporary annotators of ancientGreek texts, Thomas Magister and Manuel Moschopulus. He had alsoknowledge of astronomy.

2. Asia Minor: “In about 1330”, says Inalçik, Emergence of the Ottoman State, “Al-'Umari's [d. 1349] two sources estimated that the 16 Turcoman [herder-tribal]principalities established by that time could mobilise over half-a-millioncavalrymen—the figure given by Balaban the Genoese [the Genoa-born mamlukDomenico Doria]—or over a quarter-of-a-million according to Haydar al-Uryan[Shaikh Haidar].'' The latter figure yields an average of about 17,000 men (275,000 /16 = 17, 187). In addition, they mentioned an unspecified number of infantry. The figures (writes Inalcik) were obviously greatly exaggerated [but Balaban’s totalis perhaps not incredible if it comprised all able-bodied Turkish men aged 15 to50 . . . - MO’R]. However, if we remember that the majority of these forcesconsisted of Turcoman tribesmen, the figure given for each individualprincipality can be interpreted as the relative number of fighting tribesmendependent upon a particular lord or ruler. It is noteworthy that the highestfigures in these accounts were given for the Mentese-oghlu (100,000 in Caria)[capital at Milas/Mylasa: near Bodrum] , the Aydin-oghlu (70,000 in lonia)[capital at Ayasuluk/Ephesus], the Osman-oghlu (Ottomans - 40,000 in Bithynia)[capital at Bursa: cf below: 1331], the Karasi-oghlu (over 40,000 in Mysia) [capitalat Balıkesir*], and the Sarukhan-oghlu (18,000 in Lydia) [capital atManisa/Magnessia ad Sipylum, NE of Izmir/Smyrna] - all of whom wereoperating in the area captured from the Byzantines in western Anatolia between1260 and 1330.” –Inalçik 1980. Cf Ibn Battuta’s figures in the table below, afer1331.

(*) At the halfway point on a line drawn from Izmir/Smyrna toIstanbul/Constantinople.

“The geographer al-Umari, whose sources provide information on the Ottomandomains ca. 1331, presents a … critical assessment of Orkhan's strength.According to his informants, Orkhan had 25,000 or 40,000 mediocre horse and analmost innumerable infantry, more warlike in appearance than in reality”(Lindner, emphasis added: cf Doria’s judgement below). If 8,000 of them could be held to a draw by 3 or 4,000 Byzantines (above: 1329),then certainly the quality of the Turkish forces must have been limited. Nicolle,Janissaries 1995: 7, notes that Orhan first enrolled a corps of fulltime infantry ataround this time, i.e. by 1338. The Janissaries as such were formed somewhatlater, after 1354. In an earlier work, Nicolle, Armies of the Ottoman Turks, 1983 p.9,he had written that they were first formed after the capture ofEdirne/Adrianople, i.e. in the 1360s.

— The figure of 25,000 Ottoman cavalry comes from al-Umari, ca. 1331: see the


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table below, after 1331. The judgment that they were “not good” is that of theItalian mamluk Domenico Doria (‘Balaban’); he says “40,000” were cavalry(Lippard 1984).— In the case of Aydin, Cantacuzenus reports that on a later occasion (in 1343)Umur came to help leading 29,000 men (or 15,000) transported by 380 (or 300)boats, some of whom may have been volunteers from other emirates as well menfrom the Aydin emirate (Zachariadou p.217). That is an average of 76 men perboat. Presumably all were warriors who also rowed and sailed, i.e. none werespecialist oarsmen.— Doria (Balaban) says Aydin had “70,000” cavalry enrolled; but this figureprobably included all able-bodied men of the emirate; al-Umari more plausiblysays Aydin could field “10,000” cavalry.

Emergence of plate armour in Western Europe: After c. 1330 illustrations ofknights armoured entirely or almost entirely in mail are rare (Claude Blair,European Armour Circa 1066 to Circa 1700. London: B. T. Batsford, 1958, p. 41).Armour was expensive and only the very rich could afford to keep up withchanges in style. Almost to the end of the 14th century, many knights made dowith armour composed mainly of mail, supplemented by a few pieces of plate(David Edge and John M Paddock, Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight. HongKong: Crescent Books, 1998, p.93).

The appearance of Latin infantrymen can be seen, for example, in the paintingsof Lippo Memmi of Siena, ca. 1291-1356. In “Jesus carrying his cross to Calvary”(1340s), and the “Arrest of Jesus”, the soldiers wear iron ‘kettle-hats’, mail coifs(hoods under the helmet) and mail body armour that seems to go to the wrist butnot below the thighs. They carry large shields that are chevron-shaped andconvex.

Warships

By our standards, medieval war-galleys were tiny:

Venetian galleyca. 1350*:

Present-dayAustralian“Armidale” classocean-going patrolboat:

Present-day USA“Cyclone” classcoastal patrolboat:

Boeing 737aircraft

Beam: 5.33-5.9 metres 9.5 7.6 3.76 m. fuselagewidth

Length: 40.3 to 40.4 m;elsewhere “37”m.**

56.8 55 metres 31-36 m.according towhich model.

Height of hull: 2.57 m.** -- --- ----

Tonnage: 600 [sic] 270 336 N/a


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(*) Lillian Martin, The art and archaeology of Venetian ships and boats, TexasA&M University Press, 2001, p.208.

(**) Museo Galieo, ‘Michael of Rhodes’ website,http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/michaelofrhodes/ships_galleys.html

Genoese naval regulations of about 1330 stipulated that a galley with a crew of“176” men should include several junior officers and 12 crossbowmen.Equipment included 160 cuirasses, 160 gorgets [armour for the throat], 170helmets, 12 further crossbows, 5,000 crossbow bolts [208 per crossbow], plusspears, javelins and bills (David Nicolle, Knight Hospitaller (2): 1306-1565, Osprey2001, p.31). The small number of crossbows is perhaps surprising; one imagines that the 12crossbowmen did not row, so that they could fire ahead while the ship was beingfast-rowed to the attack.

1330:1. Asia Minor: Orhan defeats the Byzantines in the battle of Philokrene in theMesothynian peninsula (entry under ‘Orkhan’ in Brill’s Encyc. Islam, 1936, ed.Houtsma, citing Cantacuzenus and Gregoras; inexplicably Nicolle 2008: 37 lists itas an Ottoman defeat). Others say this was just a sequel to the battle ofPelekanon, fought in 1329 (Nicol, Last Centuries; Heath & McBryde 1995: 8; Freely2008: 115). The modern-day location is variously given as either Bayramoglu orTavsanclı; both are near Gebze, about half-way between Constantinople andNicomedia. See the earlier discussion under 1329. It was now clear that Nicaea could not survive. See 1331.

2. North-central Morea: The Greek-Romanics capture Kalavryta from the Franks.Kalavryta lies between Patras and Corinth.

3. Low-point in Bulgarian power: the Serbs under prince Stefan Dushan defeatand capture the Tsar Michael Shishman, who was being aided by Byzantium.The western Bulgarian domains were absorbed by Serbia which was now therising power. Cf 1336.

The Bulgarians under Michael III, although aided by 3,000 ‘Mongols’ (Kipchaksand Ossetians), were heavily defeated by the Serbs at Velbuzhd or Velbazhd, apass near Kyustendil*, and large parts of Bulgaria came under Serbian domination.Michael's army was estimated by contemporaries to be 12,000 strong. StefanUrosh strengthened his army with additional Spanish and German mercenaries(1,000 soldiers each), who were the elite in a force that comprised a total of 15- or18,000 troops (numbers as given by Cantacuzenus and Gregoras). If these figures


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may be believed, they suggest that both these states were significantly strongerthan Byzantium.** As Runciman notes, 1965: 37, Bulgaria never recovered from this defeat; later inthe century, following the Serbian defeat at Kosovo (1389), the rump of Bulgariafell to the Turks.

(*) Located near the present-day ‘corner-point’ of Serbia, FYROM andBulgaria.

(**) McEvedy & Jones’ guesstimate for the population of Bulgaria [present-day borders] in 1300 is around 1,000,000. The number of able-bodied menmight have numbered some 150,000; so the figures are credible, albeitlarger than average in this era.

Stefan Decanski (Dushan) of Serbia, after defeating a Bulgarian army atVelbuzd—modern Kustendil in the far west of modern Bulgaria—expanded hisdominion down the Vardar valley (past Skopje) in 1330. John Fine says therewere some 15,000 men on either side. “The Serbian army, 15,000 strong, included1,000 Spanish mercenaries [figures asserted by Dushan himself], reflecting theincreasing importance mercenaries had on warfare during the period and thevalue of Serbian mines [silver mines in Bosnia and at Novo Brdo in what is nowKosovo] to pay for them. Decanski took advantage of the victory to extendSerbian control over [part of] Bulgaria but did not attack the Empire. The Serbiannobility, as usual, were more anxious [just] to gain booty from the rich Byzantinelands”. —Thus ‘Balkan Military History’, at balkanhistory.com/medieval.htm,accessed March 2010; also Fine 1994: 271. The numbers are perhaps surprisingly large, but this was an age of prosperity,before the Black Death. See 1331: raids into Byzantine Macedonia.

4. 16 July: Partial solar eclipse over Thrace predicted (calculated) by the historianand astronomer Nikephoros Gregoras [aged about 35], using Ptolemy’s tables,and described in his Ekthesis psephophorias ekleipseos heliou, ed. and French trans.,Calcul de l'eclipse de soleil du 16 juillet 1330, by J. Mogenet et al., Amsterdam:Gieben, 1983. Alternatively or in addition it was in 1330 that he predicted the eclipse of 14May 1337 (Paul Magdalino, The occult sciences in Byzantium, La Pomme d'or, 2006p.285).

1330-34:1a. At Smyrna (Turkish Izmir), the bey’s son Umur builds up the fleet of Adyin,and Aydin becomes a major player in the Aegean sea (Inalcik, Maritime p.323). The Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta (see below: after 1331) admired the fewgalleys that Aydin, unlike the other ‘maritime emirates’, managed to build –using local Byzantine/Greek shipwrights of course. Greeks also serves as theoarsmen. In his first major expedition to Chios in 1330, Umur commanded a fleet ofseven galleys [Turkish kadirga], and 21 light vessels, namely 14 kayik, and sevenigribar. He was accompanied by Hizir of Ayasoluk (Ephesus) with 22 kayiks and


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igribars, for a total of 50 vessels. A total of 3,000 fighters was embarked, i.e. anaverage of 60 per vessel (Inalcik loc.cit. and page 325). See 1332: 250 ships!

1b.. Greece and the Aegean: Turkish power is asserted across the Aegean. Raidsare made as far as Venetian Euboea and the Greek mainland. The inhabitants ofByzantine Lesbos in about 1330 and those of Byzantine Monemvasia in the Moreain 1333-34 were reduced to the status of tributaries by Umur, the future bey of theAydin-oglu. Cf 1332 and 1333.

1331:1. Thrace: A ‘Mongol’ (Uzbek) raiding party clashes with the Byzantine army.The new Bulgarian leader John (Ivan) Alexander, Michael Shishman’s nephewand successor, was born a ‘Tartar’ (Kipchak); he led 2,000 ‘Mongols’ and someBulgarians into Thrace; they recaptured the Black Sea ports of Mesembria andAnchialus (Lippard p.211). Andronicus negotiated with Ivan and initially an agreement was struck for anexchange of territor without fighting. But, although the Tatars were actuallyallied with Byzantium, Ivan deceived them into aiding him in an attack onAndronicus’s Byzantines, despite the peace agreement. A mere “102” Greekswere killed or captured (Kantakuzenos, cited in Bartusis, LBA p.269). This wasregarded as a major defeat. So, in view of the modest size of the losses, we mayguess the Byzantine force numbered not more than about 1,000. Or perhaps asmany as 2,000 noting that Andronicus and Kantacuzenus had let go many oftheir troops as soon as the agreement was struck (István Vásáry, Cumans andTatars: Oriental military in the pre-Ottoman Balkans, 1185-1365, CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005, p.130). Cf 1337.

2. NW Asia Minor: To their north, the Ottomans attack and annex the tiny beylikof Göynük (east of Geyve) (Nicolle 2008: 37).

3. Offered generous terms, Byzantine Nicaea surrenders to the Turks. TheOttoman Turks under Chandarli Kara Halil Pasha, a military judge from Bilecek,finally enter imperial Nicaea (Tk: Iznik) on 1-2 March 1331 following an Ottomanvictory over the Byzantines at Philokrene, on the road from Constantinople toNicomedia: just west of the latter, in 1329 or 1330 (Nicol 1993: 170). Those Greekswho wished could leave unmolested, taking their holy relics; the claim that mostchose to stay seems unlikely (see next: Ibn Battuta). Candarli Kara Halil Pasha is supposed, but this is doubtful, to have foundedthe Janissary corps of professional infantrymen thereafter. The Janissaries as suchwere almost certainly formed somewhat later, after the Ottomans penetrated toRumelia (Thrace). In his early work, Nicolle, Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1983p.9, says that they were first formed after the capture of Edirne/Adrianople, i.e.in the 1360s.

Measured along a line Constantinople-Nicomedia-Nicaea, the last is 120 km (75miles) from the first as the crow flies, about the same distance as from Sydney toNewcastle or London to Dover or Southhampton or Washington to Baltimore.


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The Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta arrived in Nicaea in October 1331, sevenmonths after its surrender. He found the city ". . . in a mouldering [decaying]condition and uninhabited except for a few men in the sultan's service." Inside thetown walls there were orchards, farms and cultivated fields. By contrast, theOttoman seat of Bursa, taken from Byzantium half a decade earlier, was athriving city (Lippard 1984: 5). Cf 1334. Ibn Battuta: “The sultan of Bursa is Orkhan Bek [sic: bey], son of Othman Chuk.He is the greatest of the Türkmen kings and the richest in wealth, lands, andmilitary forces, and possesses nearly 100 fortresses which he is continually visitingfor inspection and putting to rights. He fights with the infidels and besieges them. Itwas his father who captured Bursa from the Greeks, and it is said that hebesieged Yaznik [Nicaea] for about 20 years, but died before it was taken. Hisson Orkhan besieged it 12 years before capturing it, and it was there that I sawhim.”

The Roman (Rum, Byzantine) emperor had consistently figured in earlier Muslimlists of the world’s greatest rulers. Now he is finally omitted. For Battuta, theseven mightiest kings are: 1. the Marinid sultan of Morocco, Battuta’s ownsovereign [not actually very powerful, but . . . noblesse oblige]; 2. the Mamluksultan of Egypt; 3. the Mongol Ilkhan in Iraq/Iran; 4. Uzbek/Ozbeg, the Khan ofthe ‘Golden Horde’ or Kipchak Empire in present-day Ukraine and west CentralAsia; 5. the Jagatai/Chagatay (Mongol) Khan of Turkestan-east Central Asia; 6.India (the sultan of Delhi); and 7. the Yuan (Mongol) emperor of China (cited inEl Cheikh 2004: 213). The Latin kingdoms such as Castile and ‘Germany’ are notnoticed, or at least not rated. Castile was at least as powerful as Marinid Morocco,whereas ‘Germany’ was not united. And, putting Morocco to one side, onecannot say that Castile or France were as strong as any of the other six in his list.If land is the criterion, the third among the Christian powers was Hungary.

Quote: “The illustrious Sultan Muhammad Uzbeg Khan [of the Golden Horde] isthe ruler of a vast kingdom and a most powerful sovereign, victor over theenemies of God, the people of Constantinople the Great, and diligent in warringagainst them. He is one of the seven mighty kings of the world, to wit: [first],our master the Commander of the Faithful, may God strengthen his might andmagnify his victory! [i.e. the sultan of Morocco]; [second] the [Mamluk] sultan ofEgypt and Syria; [third], the sultan of the Two Iraqs [Ilkhanate]; [fourth], thisSultan Uzbeg; [fifth], the sultan of Turkestan and the lands beyond the Oxus [the‘Chagatay’ or Jagatai khanate]; [sixth], the sultan of India [Muhammad binTughluq of Delhi]; and [seventh], the sultan of China [i.e. the Yuan or Mongolemperor].”

4. Acc. Stephen (Stefan) Dushan, Serbian king: he will bring Serbia to the heightof its power. See 1336.

5. Byzantine Macedonia: Serbian raids in the neighbourhood of Berrhoea[Verria/Veroia: west of Thessalonica] disrupted monastic life, so GregoryPalamas [aged 35] returns* to Mount Athos, the great monastic complex on the


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peninsulas SE of Thessalonica (John Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas andOrthodox spirituality, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974 p.79).

(*) Palamas had become a monk at Athos in 1316; he formed a small hermitcommunity at Verria in 1326.

6. Greece: Walter [Gautier] de Brienne, the French count of Brienne (France) andof Lecce [in Angevin south Italy], with papal endorsement, led Italo-Frenchforces in a vain attempt to retake the duchy of Athens from the Catalans. (TheCatalan ‘Grand Company’, mercenaries who had once served Byzantium, took itfrom his father in 1311; they killed Walter senior in the decisive battle.) Departing from Brindisi in August 1331 with 800 French cavalry and 500Tuscan infantry, de Brienne landed near Arta (in the Italian-ruled despotate ofEpirus-Cephalonia). John Orsini of Epirus-Cephalonia was forced to abandonByzantine suzerainty and accept Angevin (Neapolitan) suzerainty. Theexpedition then marched to Attica and Boeotia, but the Catalans declined to givebattle and retired behind the walls of Athens and Thebes. The local Greeks gavethem no help, and all they could do was ravage the countryside. Their suppliesbegan to dwindle, and in mid 1332 they adandoned the task and returned to Italy(Setton, Papacy p. 452; George Finlay, The History of Greece from its Conquest by theCrusaders to its Conquest by the Turks, and of the Empire of Trebizond 1204 – 1461,Will. Blackwood, 1851 p.177).


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Above: Note the several Christian enclaves within Muslim Asia Minor:1. Genoese Foça/Phocaea on the Mediterranean coast west of Manisa;2. Greek (Byzantine) Alashehir/Philadelphia on the Aydin-Saruhanborder; and the three Genoese-held ports on the Black Sea coast: 4Amasra, 5 Sinop/Sinope and 6 Samsun. Finally, 7 Trabzon, or the‘empire of Trebizond’, is Greek. The Turkish suffix –ogullari means “sons of”, ie ‘tribe or clan of x’.‘Devleti’ translates as ‘state of’. ‘Karakoyunlular’is Qara Qoyunlu or‘the Black Sheep’, a dynasty of Turkmen rulers; they capturedBaghdad in 1410.

The ‘Ghazi Emirates’ in 1330-33

Ibn Battuta, aged 26, travelled from Alanya to Konya and thence NNW to Sinopeon the Black Sea coast in 1330 (or 1332); later (1331 or 1333: the exact chronologyis unclear) he proceeded to visit, among other places, the Ghazi Emirates inwestern Asia Minor.— He describes Orhan of the Ottomans, perhaps too generously, as already the“greatest of the kings of the Turkmens [herders] and the richest in wealth, landsand military, possessing nearly 100 fortresses” (cf Nicolle, Ottomans 2008: 35). Asnoted below, Doria (Balaban) and al-Umari more more credibly place Germiyanin the first place.— He calls Balikesir (Gk Akhyaous), the principal town of the Karesi emirate,“populous”, yet it had no working mosque (only a roofless one); one can onlyguess that most of the town was Greek. Most of its major products, laudanumand silk, were exported to Greek Constantinople.— Bergama, also part of the Karesi beylik, was in ruins except for a large andmighty fortress on a hill.— Phocaea was held by the Genoese Zaccaria family.

Turkoman Forts and Cavalry ForcesAccording to Doria [Balaban] and Haydar (al-Umari’s two sources) and ibn Battuta;cited in Lippard 1984: 5 ff; listed from largest to smallest. Al-Umari’s informmation came from Doria and Haydar; al-Umari said that heregarded Doria as more reliable than Haydar.

We assume the troop numbers here are just counts of able-bodied men. Thesecavalry would be mostly “amateurs”, i.e. herders with useful archery skills. Weknow from other sources that Aydin had an army of just 3,000 men in 1330, or atleast that is how many fighters they embarked on a maritime expedition (Inalcik,Maritime p.325), whereas here the lowest figure given is “55,000” horsemen. Andin 1430 an Italian source noted that the Ottoman province of Menteshe (as it hadbecome) produced just “7,000” horsemen (Lauro Quirini, cited by Zachariadou,Patmos p.132), compared with the “36,000” recorded 90 years earlier by IbnBattuta.


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The term “fort” too must have included all walled towns and villages as wellas fortresses having only a garrison and no civilian population. In the case of the Ottomans, the famous Janissaries lie still in the future.

Largest cavalry forces (Doria): Germiyan, Aydin, Menteshe.Ditto, Haydar: Germiyan, Antalya, Karaman.Ibn Battuta ranks them 1 Germiyan 2 Aydin and 3 Ottoman in terms of cavalry.Most forts (Doria): Germiyan, Aydin, Menteshe.

The ranking below is based on the average of Doria and Haydar for the numberof cavalry. Column b. = Doria (cavalry), c. = Doria (forts), d. = ShaikhHaidar/Haydar (ca. 1331)

a.Beylik

b.MostHorsemen(Doria)

c.Most Forts(Doria)

d.Haidar/al-Umari -horse

(1) Germiyan: capitalat Kutahya; accordingto Doria, the mostpowerful of theTurkmen chieftains.

Ibn Battuta saidOrhan of theOttomans was‘greatest of the kingsof the Turkmens’:with almost 100fortresses.

100,000cavalry

Ibn Battuta’s1st in terms ofcavalrynumbers wasGermiyan, with70 K.

Germiyan:350+

40,000 cavalry -Germiyan

(2) Aydin-oglu,capital at Birgi:

Ibn Battuta’s 2nd, with55 K: Aydin.

70,000 –/+ “300”fortresses.

Haidar’s equal 1st:40,000 – Antalya

300 forts – Aydin.

(3) Menteshe:

Ibn Battuta’s 3rd forcavalry, with 36 K:Ottoman.

?50,000+ 200 forts –Menteshe.

40,000 – Karaman

(4) Emirate of Karasi/Baliksehir; plusothers at Bergama.

“Larger army”than theOttomans, ie40,000+

“over 50”forts.

30,000+ - Kastamonu;


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others at Bergama.

Ibn Battuta’s 4th, with30 K was Karasi.

Ottomans, ie40,000+

150 forts in theKaraman beylik

(5) Ottoman (Bursasegment only):

Ibn Battuta’s 5th, with27 K: Kastamonu.

40,000 and“50+” forts. +8,000 cavalryat the sub-emirate ofNicaea with“30” forts.

50+ forts -Ottomans ofBursa, ieDoria’s figureis half that ofIbn Battuta.

25,000 cavalry

(6) Kastamonu:

(Ibn Battuta’s 6th: 24K: Antalya.)

25,000 and40+ fortresses.

50+ forts:Balikesir(Karesi)

(7) Karaman:

(Ibn Battuta’s 7th

strongest: 18 K :Saruhan.)

25,000 40+ 10,000 – Birgi (Aydin-oglu)

(8) Emirate ofBergama: Karasifamily: Bergama itselfwas in ruins exceptfor a large fortress ona hill.

20,000 and“15” fortresses.

3,000 – Goynuk: thegarrison of a singletown east of Geyve;subject to the Ottomans.

(9) Saruhan: 18,000 ie10,000 atManisa plus8,000 at KasBerdik; and“20” fortresses.

30 - Nicaea(Ottomanbeylik of)

3,000 –Kerdele/Gerede:small beylik in NEAnatolia; west ofKastamonu.

(10) Nicaea (Ottomansub-emirate):

8,000 25 forts in thebeylik ofAntalya

3,000 – Mentehse

(11) Antalya: 8,000 20 forts:Saruhan

200 horse [sic] –Malikkesri(Balikesir/Karasi) –presumably just thesize of the garrison.

(12)– Geyve: 50 kmeast of Nicaea;presumably anOttoman vassal

7,000 and “10”forts.

15 forts:Bergama

Geyve has 10fortresses, concurringwith Doria.


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Ottoman vassal

(13) Denizli: 5,000 10 forts: Geyve

(14) Tavas, south ofDenizli:

4,000. 4 forts- Tavas

1331:The Islamic dates given by Ibn Battuta are consistent with either 1331 or 1333. Our Moroccan traveller came from the east to Ladik (Denizli); then via Muglato Milas [Gk Mylasa], the seat of the Menteshe emir, inland from modernBodrum: “one of the finest and msost important towns in the country”. He thenproceeded northwards visiting in turn the courts of Aydin [at Birgi, Gk Pyrgion] ,Sarukhan [Manisa], Karesi [Balikesir] and finally the Ottomans [Bursa] (Dunnp.151). After Birgi, Ibn Battuta went ESE via Tire to Aya Soluk (Ephesus: also underAydin rule), then “Yazmir” (Izmir, Smyrna: also under Aydin rule), Manisa (NEof Smyrna), Bergama, Balikesir, Bursa and Iznik. Only at Ayasoluk was he notwarmly welcomed, because there he committed a sin of etiquette, and wassnubbed by the governor. He says that the larger part of Smyrna was in ruins,plainly because of the recent fighting with the Genoese (above: see 1329). Hementions Umur’s recently commenced naval war with the ‘infidels’ (Greeks,Genoese and French). At Manisa he met the aged Saruhan, the eponymous emir. He mentions “Fuja” or “Foudjah” (‘New Phocaea’: Italian Fuggia, Tk Foça, GkPhokaia*) as a town on the coast “belonging to the infidels”, i.e. the Genoeseunder the Zaccaria family. He says the Genoese paid an annual tribute toSaruhan (d. 1345) “in return for which he is content to leave them alone becauseof the strength of the city”.

(*) There was an Old Phocaea and a New Phocaea, 20 km aprt. TheByzaantines had ousted the Zaccarias from Chios and Old Phocaea in1329, leaving only New Phocoea remaining in their hands (Notes to theFrench edn of Ibn battuata p.144:ttp://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/ibn_battuta/voyages_tome_II/ibn_battuta_t2.pdf).

From Magnesia/Manisa he proceeded to Bergama (emirate of Karesi): it was “inruins” except for a strong fortress on a hill. Next was Balikesir: “it was his father[i.e. emir Karesi, d. ca. 1320**] who built this town”. Our traveller reached Bursain September or October. After summarising Orhan bey’s wars with theByzantines, he describes “Yaznik” or “Yeznik” [Iznik, Nicaea], recentlyconquered by the Ottomans [March 1331], as “in ruins and uninhabited exceptfor a few men in the Sultan’s service”. These men were under the command ofOrhan’s wife “Bayalun khatun” (Nilufer). Ibn Battuta then (November) turnedeastwards back into Anatolia (Gibb trans., Ibn Battuta 1929, 2004 reprint,Routlege).


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(**) Karesi Beg/Bey, who captured Bergama around 1306. The Byzantine fortcalled ‘Palaio-kastron’ gave its name to a new town of ‘Bali-kesir’. If we follow the French Wikipedia, the eponymous emir Karesi had three sonswho succeeded hin in turn. In ?1330/35 first son Açlan (‘Ajlan) was succeeded bysecond son Demirhan (Demir Khan), r. ?1330-46, based at Balikesir.Alternatively, Demirhan was Karesi’s grandson. Third, Yakhshi Khan, whetherbrother or father, was based at Bergama. As quoted in the the French Wikipedia [2011 under ‘Karesiogullari’], IbnBattuta says that it was Shuçaeddin Yahsihan (Arabic Shuja al-Din Yakshi Khan),?1330-1346, who he met at Bergama, and, say the French authors, at Balikesir hemet a son or nephew of Yahshihan also named Demirhan:

« . . . nous arrivâmes à Berghamah, ville en ruine, qui possède une citadelle grande et trèsforte, située sur la cime d’une montagne. ... Il (Le sultan) est appelé Yakhchy khân.Khân, chez ces peuples, signifie la même chose que Sultan, et yakhchy veut dire excellent.Nous le trouvâmes dans son habitation d’été ; on lui annonça notre arrivée, et il nousenvoya un festin et une pièce de cette étoffe appelée kodsy. » [We arrived at Bergama, atown in ruins, but with a great and very strong citadel, located on the summit ofa hill. … He (the emir) is called Yakhchy khan [Tk Yahshihan]. Among them“khan” [the Turkish form is –han, MO’R] signifies the same as ‘sultan’, and“yakhchy” may be rendered as ‘excellent’ [Turkish yahshi, ‘good, beautiful’]. Wefound him in his summer residence; our arrival was proclaimed and he sent us afeast and a piece of the fabric called “kodsy”. [My trans. MO’R]

- Ibn Battûta, French trans.

Quelques jours après son passage à Bergama, Ibn Battûta passe à de Balikesir où ilrencontre un fils ou neveu de Yahshihan: [Several days after his passage to Bergama IB crosses to Balikesir where he meets a son or nephew ofYahshihan:]

« Il se nomme Domoûr khân, et il ne possède aucune bonne qualité. C’est son père qui abâti cette ville, dont la population s’est accrue d’un grand nombre de vauriens, sous lerègne du prince actuel ; « car les hommes suivent la religion de leur roi » (tel roi, telpeuple). » [His name was Domour khan [Tk Demirhan] and he had not a singlevirtue. It was his father who had built the town, whose population had beenswelled by a great number of good-for-nothings under the rule of the currentprince, ‘for men follow the religion of their king’ (like king, like people)”]— Ibn Battûta, op.cit., vol. II [« Du sultan de Balîkesri », p. 146.

1331-32:1. Aegean region: Narrative sources mention high numbers that imply a largepopulation before the Black Death. The chronicler Sanudo, for example, tells of25,000 Greeks (Byzantines) being taken slaves during the Ottoman raids of 1331and 1332 (Fleet 1999, chapter 4, “Slaves”) . Cf 1332 below. In Fleet’s book, the following places are noted as having slave markets in theperiod 1300-1350:

Alanya/Candelor (Turks): Hamidoglu TurksAntalya (beylik of Teke)


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Aydin: Sultanhisar (Nyssa), Theologus/Ayasoluk, Ania [south ofEphesus].Balat/Palatia (ancient Miletus) [Mentese beylik]Bursa (Ottoman)Candia, Crete (Venetian)Cyprus (Latin-ruled)Foca (Phocaea) [Genoese] – slaves exported to Sicily.Genoese-held ports: Black Sea, Pera, Chios.Karesi/Baliksehir.Magnesia/Manisa (Mentese)Naxos of the Angevins – much used as a sales stop by Turks.Rhodes of the Hospitallers.Saruhan: unspecifed.Venetian: Crete.

According to Lane, 1973: 133, as noted earlier, most of the slaves bought or soldby the Venetians around 1300 were Greeks, many bought from the Turks, butduring the 1300s the view developed that fellow Christians should not betrafficked, and the northern Black Sea region, i.e. the Kipchak Empire (Khanateof the Golden Horde) became the main source of supply. The Genoese inparticular traded slaves from the Black Sea to Muslim Egypt (Fleet 1999: 37).

2. The writer Nikephoros Gregoras, 1293/94–1360/61, began his career as anastronomer and ended it as a theological controversialist. Some of his letters anda few passages of his Roman [Byzantine] History touch upon philosophicalsubjects: especially noteworthy is the vehement criticism of Aristotle in thedialogue Phlorentius, ostensibly an account of the author's debate with fellowtheologian Barlaam of Calabria (c. 1290–1348) in 1331–32. —Stanford Encyc. ofPhilosophy, at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/byzantine-philosophy/;accessed 2009.

1331-72:Serbian control of Bulgaria will be ended by Ivan IV (Ivan Alexander 1331-72),but Bulgaria will be left divided into rival states; the two largest, one was basedat Veliko Turnovo and the other at Vidin, will be ruled by Ivan's two sons. Seenext.

1332:1. Rhodes: An anti-Turkish treaty was concluded between Venice, theHospitallers of Rhodes and Byzantium. Although the treaty was not all put into action, its terms usefully show whatthe Christian powers thought they were capable of doing. First, they woulddedicate 20 galleys to police the Aegean, of which 10 would come from Byzantium.Philip VI of Capetian France and pope John XXII* joined in 1333-34, proposing tosupply four galleys each. By 1334 there was a commitment for the supply of 40galleys in all, including from Venice: 10 from Venice, 10 from Rhodes, Byzantiumsix, Cyprus six and the Pope and King of France together* eight. (See 1334: navalvictory of Adramyttium.)


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The treaty also envisaged that by 1335 a force of 800 men-at-arms (knights)would land in Anatolia under the command of the French lord, Louis, theBourbon duke of Clermont: (a) 400 knights supplied by the Pope and Philip VI*;(b) 200 by the Hospitallers, (c) 100 by Byzantium, and (d) 100 by the (French)King of Cyprus, Hugh of Lusignan, who was also the titular or claimant king ofJerusalem. If one adds infantry to (say) at three times the number of knights, theplanned expedition might have totalled 3,200 troops.** The ships to transportthem would come from the same five powers, plus Venice and Angevin [French]Naples (whose king also claimed Jerusalem). This never came about (see NormanHousley, The Avignon papacy and the Crusades, 1305-1378, OUP,1986, pp.25-27;also Inalcik, Maritime p.228).

(*) From 1305 to 1378 the Popes resided in Avignon, in modern-dayFrance. A total of seven popes reigned at Avignon; all were French, and allwere increasingly under the influence of the French crown.

(**) Cf 1330 above – list of the military strength of the Turkish beyliks.

2. Thrace: Last-ever major clash between Byzantines and Bulgarians. The Byzantines overran Bulgarian-controlled northeastern Thrace. In response,Ivan Alexander, who was dealing with rebels in the north, rushed southwardwith a strong army and swiftly caught up with Andronikos III at Rusokastro, afortress-village south of Aytos, west of Burgas, in our SE Bulgaria. The Byzantine right wing was commanded by a protostrator*, the left wing wasunder a megas papias* Alexios Tzamplakon, and the centre was commandedpersonally by the emperor. The army formed a wide front in two lines with theflanks positioned behind the centre forming a crescent. After giving the impression that he wished to negotiate, Ivan Alexander,reinforced by Mongol or Kipchak cavalry (“8,000” Bulgarians plus “3,000”Mongols), overwhelmed the smaller but better organised Byzantine army(“3,000” men) in the three-hour Battle of Rusokastro [18 July 1332]. The contested‘cities’ surrendered to Ivan, while Andronikos III sought refuge within the wallsof Rusokastro. The war ended with Ivan Alexander meeting Andronikos andagreeing to a peace based on the status quo (Wikipedia, 2011, under ‘IvanAlexander’).

(*) These were ranks or titles, not posts. In the 12th C, the protostrator had beensecond-in-command of the army after the megas domestikos, and was equatedby Niketas Choniates to the Western marshal; but in the Palaiologian period itseems to gave become just a high title. The title protostrator (which could be heldby several people at once) occupies the 8th position in the imperial hierarchy inthe mid-14th century Book of Offices of Pseudo-Kodinos; while megas papias isonly 22nd (Bartusis pp.250 ff)

3a. First Balkan expedition by Umur [aged about 23], son of the bey of Izmir[Smyrna]: a failed attack on Gallipoli and Thrace. In alliance with the ‘sea ghazis’of Sarukhan, Umur attacked Gallipoli, the island of Samothrace, and the port ofPorou in Thrace. A further expedition was made to Thessaly and VenetianEuboea (in 1331 and 1332: Inalcik, Maritime p.316). Cf 1334.


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First European alliance against the Turks: as noted above, a five-year agreementof cooperation was signed by Venice, Byzantium and the Hospitallers of Rhodes(see A. Laiou, 1970: Marino Sanudo Torsello, Byzantium and the Turks: TheBackground to the Anti-Turkish League of 1332-1334). The relative weakness of theTurks as mariners is illustrated by the size of the proposed fleet: the plan was tocreate a Christian fleet of just 20 galleys, of which 10 would be contributed byConstantinople. This was considered enough to defeat the many small boats ofthe weaker Turkish fleets. - Cf 1333 and 1334.

3b. The Aegean: The Emirs of Aydin (Smyrna) and Menteshe (Miletus) began toexact tribute from the Venetian-ruled island of Negroponte [Euboea], the Duchyof the Archipelago (Naxos) and a number of other islands under Venetian lords.Constantinople too was forced to pay annual tribute. Cf next. Also 1333:Ottoman treaty. There were more than 300 renegade Christians in a Turkish armada of 70*(nearly all small) vessels that sailed against the Christian islands in 1332.Sanudo** calls them perfidi Christiani (Zachariadou p.216; also Pryor 1988: 171).At an average of just four men per boat, we may guess that the Christians werethe pilots or navigators while the Muslims rowed and fought.

(*) Inalcik, Maritime p.323, says that Umur of Aydin commanded “250” ships andboats on his 1332 expedition against the Morea, Bodonitsa (Mundenitsa in EGreece: a castle on the Evvian Gulf near ancient Thermopylae, garrisoned byItalians) and Euboea, and “170” in 1333, numbers which in both cases no doubtincluded vessels supplied by the other maritime beyliks. Kantakuzenos (cited byInalcik, note 88) says Aydin itself had “72” vessels by 1332.

(**) Chronicle of Marino Sanudo (Istoria del Regno di Romania sive regno di Morea):the story of the Frankish/Latin states of Greece, written in the period 1326-1333by the Venetian Marino Sanudo Torsello, d.ca 1343.

Small Turkish Boats vs Large Christian War-Galleys

Alone among the emirs of the Asian coast, Umur Pasha Aydinoglu constructed afew modestly-sized war galleys. Including small boats, Umur dispatched atdifferent times naval expeditions of 75, 170 and 250 vessels, most of whih werenot galleys. The other emirs relied wholly on small boats which they deployed in fleets ofsometimes over 200. On one occasion the emirs are said to have combined theirforces into a large fleet of “800” boats (Zachariadou pp.215 ff, and Ozturkler,“Umur” at http://www.ozturkler.com/data_english/0003/0003_01_17.htm;accessed 2007). While the light vessels of the Turks allowed them to transport significantnumbers of warriors to the Aegean islands, they were unable to confront thelarge galleys with their high central fire-platforms (or “castles”). Also, until about1400 the Turks remained most uncertain at sea due to their lack of experience (orbetter: lack of a maritime tradition) and were generally easy to defeat. The navalforces of the Genoese, Venetians and Byzantines are widely reported in oursources as superior to the Turkish fleets (Zachariadou pp.215 ff). See references


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to Christian victories under 1319, 1320 and 1334.

Ibn Battuta describes Byzantium and the Byzantines

The Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta, aged 28, visited Constantinople in 1332 (or1334: the exact year is uncertain). He recorded, as would be expected, that Greeks(Byzantines) were still to be found in large numbers in Turkish western Anatolia.

In one passage he recounts a visit home to Constantinople by“Bayalan/Bayalun”, the Byzantine wife of Uzbek, Khan of the Tatars or KipchakTurks (‘Golden Horde’), in whose party he was travelling. Bayalan was pregnantand received permission to return to Constantinople to give birth there. IbnBattuta went with her because it gave him the opportunity for the first time tovisit a non-Muslim realm and to see the famous city. Much later, on his retrunjourney (1349) to Morocco from the distant East he was to stop briefly in Sardinia(Dunn pp.170, 276). Note: Uzbek or Oz Bey was the khan’s name; ethnically he was a Mongol.Reign: 1313-41. Most of his subjects were Turkic-speaking groups. Uzbekislamicised the formerly shamanist Horde, or at least its western regions. The capitalwas at Sarai, on a tributary of the Volga River.

“The amir [i.e. Kipchak army commander] Baydara with 5,000 troops travelledwith her [the khatun ‘Bayalan’, a Byzantine noblewoman, one of the khan’s wives:a legitimised (adopted) natural daughter of Andronicus III*], and her own troopsnumbered about 500 horsemen, 200 of whom were her attendant slaves and Greeks[Byzantines], and the remainder Turks. She had with her also about 200 maidens,most of whom were Greeks, and about 400 carts and about 2,000 draught andriding horses, as well as 300 oxen and 200 camels. She had also 10 Greek youthsand the same number of Indians, whose leader-in-chief was called Sunbul theIndian; the leader of the Greeks was a man of conspicuous bravery calledMichael … The Greeks had heard that this khatun was returning to her country, and therecame to this fortress [in Thrace, at the Byzantine border] to meet her the GreekKifali [i.e. Greek kephale, meaning ‘head, chief, governor’] Nicholas, with a largearmy and a large hospitality-gift, accompanied by the princesses and nurses fromthe palace of her father, the king* of Constantinople . …. [At the Danube or perhapsfurther south: Dunn p.171 suggests this was Yambol or Jamboli in SE Bulgaria]The commander Baydara returned [to Khan Uzbeg] with his troops, and nonetravelled on with the khatun but her own people.” The Rhomaniyan noblewoman quickly reverted to Christian habits: “She lefther mosque behind at the fort and the practice of calling to prayer was abolished.As part of her hospitality-gifts she was given intoxicating liquors [i.e., wine], whichshe drank, and swine, and I was told by one of her suite that she ate them. . . .Sentiments formerly hidden were revealed because of our entry into the land ofthe infidels, but the khatun charged the amir Kifali to treat us honourably, andon one occasion he beat one of his guards [or “his mamluks”: Dunn p.171]because he had laughed at our prayer.”

(*) Emperor Andronicus III was aged 35 in 1332; his wife Anna of Savoy was


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aged about 26. But this daughter was either the daughter of Andronicus’s firstwife, Irene (d. 1324) or else an adopted daughter … .

Bayalan is met by her Brother

A significant point in the following text from Ibn Battuta is that some cavalrymencarried both bows and lances and rode horses with some sort of mail barding (horsearmour). It may be implied that one in 20 rode armoured horses.

(In inner Thrace, some 10 miles from Constantinople:) “ . . . her brother, whosename was Kifali Qaras, arrived with 5,000 [sic!]* horsemen, fully accoutred inarmour. When they prepared to meet the princess, her brother, dressed in white,rode a grey horse, having over his head a parasol ornamented with jewels. On hisright hand he had five princes and the same number on his left hand, all dressedin white also, and with parasols embroidered in gold over their heads. In front ofhim were 100 foot soldiers and 100 horsemen, who wore long coats of mail overthemselves and their horses, each one of them leading a saddled and armouredhorse carrying the arms of a horseman, consisting of a jewelled helmet, abreastplate, a bow, and a sword, and each man had in his hand a lance with apennant at its head. Most of these lances were covered with plaques of gold andsilver. These led horses [that] are the riding horses of the sultan's [emperor’s]son. His horsemen were divided into squadrons, 200 horsemen in each squadron.Over them was a commander, who had in front of him 10 of the horsemen, fullyaccoutred in armour, each leading a horse, and behind him 10 coloured standards,carried by 10 of the horsemen, and 10 kettledrums slung over the shoulders of 10of the horsemen, with whom were six others sounding trumpets and bugles andfifes.”

(*) This must surely have represented all the cavalry enrolled in or hired for theByzantine army, which at this time was tiny.

Ibn Battuta enters the City

“When we reached the first gate of the king's [emperor’s] palace [the Blachernai]we found there about 100 men, with an officer on a platform, and I heard themsaying "Sarakinu, Sarakinu" ["Saracen, Saracen"], which means Muslims. Theywould not let us enter, and when those who were with the khatun [the Greek wifeof the Khagan] said that we belonged to their party, they answered, "They cannotenter except by permission". So we stayed at the gate. One of the khatun's partysent a messenger to tell her of this while she was still with her father [theemperor]. She told him about us and he gave orders that we should enter, andassigned us a house near the khatun's house. He wrote also on our behalf anorder that we should not be abused wheresoever we went in the city, and thisorder was proclaimed in the bazaars.”

The Greek monarch receives Ibn Battuta

“I reached a great pavilion, where the king (Emperor) was seated on his throne,


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with his wife [?or mistress], the mother of the khatun, before him. At the foot ofthe throne were the khatun and her brothers,* to the right of it six men and to theleft of it four, and behind it four, every one of them armed. The Emperor signed to me, before I had saluted and reached him, to sit downfor a moment, in order that my apprehension might be calmed. After doing so, Iapproached him and saluted him, and he signed to me to sit down, but I did notdo so. He questioned me about Jerusalem, the Sacred Rock, the Church of theHoly Sepulchre, the cradle of Jesus, and Bethlehem, and about the city ofAbraham [Hebron], then about Damascus, Cairo, Iraq, and Anatolia, and Ianswered all his questions about these, the Jew interpreting between us. He was pleased with my replies and said to his sons, "Treat this man withhonour and ensure his safety". … I requested him to designate someone to ridein the city with me every day, that I might see its marvellous and rare sights andtell of them in my own country, and he appointed a man as I had asked. Theyhave a custom that anyone who wears the king's robe of honour and rides hishorse is paraded round with trumpets, fifes and drums, so that the people may seehim.”

(*) This is curious. Andronicus’s eldest son, the future John V, was aged just twoyears in 1334. Also it is said that Bayalun was Andronicus’s illegitimate orlegitimised (adopted) daughter, and not the daughter of his wife Anna of Savoy.

Above: Constantinople with Hagia Sofia in the foreground.


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13 Villages within Constantinople

At Constantinople: "At dawn (he writes) the drums, trumpets and fifes were sounded; the troopsmounted, and the king [emperor] with his wife, . . . came out, accompanied bythe high officials of state and the courtiers. Over the king's head there was acanopy, carried by a number of horsemen and men on foot, who had in theirhands long staves, each surmounted by something resembling a ball of leather,with which they hoisted the canopy. In the centre of this canopy was a sort ofpavilion which was supported by horsemen [carrying] staves". "The city lies at the foot of a hill which projects about nine miles into the sea,its breadth being the same or greater. On the top of the hill there is a small citadeland the Emperor's palace [meaning the disused ancient palace in the easternsector rather than the Blachernai in the far NW sector]. Round this hill runs thecity-wall, which is very strong and cannot be taken by assault from the sea front.Within its circuit there are about 13 inhabited villages.* The principal church[Hagia Sophia] is in the midst of this [main] part of the city."

(*) Arable lands within the city had been cultivated at least since the time ofMichael Palaeogus (1260s) and no doubt earlier, during the period of Latin rule:Pachymeres 187, II.6-14, cited by Geanakoplos 1959: 130.

More fully: “The part of the city on the eastern bank of the river [sic: southern sideof the Golden Horn] is called Istambul, and contains the residence of theEmperor, the nobles and the rest of the population. Its bazaars and streets arespacious and paved with flagstones; each bazaar has gates which are closedupon it at night, and the majority of the artisans and sellers in them are women. Thecity lies at the foot of a hill which projects about nine miles into the sea, itsbreadth being the same or greater. On the top of the hill [near the city’s easternpoint] there is a small citadel and the Emperor's palace. Round this hill runs thecity-wall, which is very strong and cannot be taken by assault from the sea front.Within its circuit there are about 13 inhabited villages. The principal church is inthe midst of this part of the city.” "The second part [of the city], on the western [i.e., north of the City proper]bank of the river, is called Galata, and is reserved to the Frankish Christians whodwell there. They are of different kinds, including Genoese, Venetians, Romans[Byzantines?] and people of France; they are subject to the authority of the kingof Constantinople …. They are all men of commerce and their harbour is one ofthe largest in the world; I saw there about 100 galleys and other large ships, andthe small ships were too many to be counted."

Ibn Batutta visits a Convent and (perhaps) meets the Retired Emperor

“I entered a monastery [nunnery] with the Greek whom the king had given meas a guide. Inside it was a church containing about 500 virgins [nuns] wearinghair-garments; their heads were shaved and covered with felt bonnets. They wereexceedingly beautiful and showed the traces of their austerities [presumablyfasting: M.O’R]. A youth [?eunuch] sitting on a pulpit was reading the gospel tothem in the most beautiful voice I have ever heard; round him were eight other


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youths on pulpits with their priest, and when the first youth had finishedreading another began. The Greek said to me, "These girls are kings' daughters[i.e. nobles] who have given themselves to the service of this church, andlikewise the boys who are reading [are kings' sons]."

Ibn Battuta met the retired emperor-monk Andronicus II (1258-1332), or rather,someone who was represented to him as the retired emperor: “When the Greek [Battuta’s guide] saw him he dismounted and said to me,"Dismount, for this is the king's [emperor’s] father". When my guide saluted himthe king asked him about me, then stopped and sent for me. He took my handand said to the Greek (who knew the Arabic tongue:), "Say to this Saracen(meaning Muslim), 'I clasp the hand which has entered Jerusalem and the footwhich has walked within the Dome of the Rock and the great church of the HolySepulchre and Bethlehem,'" and he laid his hand upon my feet and passed it overhis face. I was astonished at their good opinion of one who, though not of their religion,had entered these places. Then he took my hand and as I walked with him, askedme about Jerusalem and the Christians who were there, and questioned me atlength.”

Now, as Ross Dunn has pointed out, Andronicus senior had died in 1332, socould not have been met by Ibn Battuta in 1334; possibly his Greek guide washaving a bit of fun. —Dunn 2004: 172.

The Ghazi Beyliks

In the early 14th century western Asia Minor was divided between as many asnine Turkish beyliks or "ghazi emirates". The four western-most beyliks werethose of the Ottomans (at Bursa); Sarukhan (at Manisa); Aydin-oglu (at Ephesusand Birgi) and Menteshe (at Milas). It was not until the reign of Bajazet orBayezid, 1389-1402, that the Ottomans would finally remove the last of theirTurkish rivals and establish their rule over all of Asia Minor. During the 1320s and 1330s the Ottomans swallowed up their westernneighbour, the emirate of Karasi/Qarasi, with its seat at Pergamos, SW of Bursa.To the north, the last years of Osman's reign and the first decade of Orkhan's rulesaw Ottoman expansion down the Sakarya/Sangarius River as far as the BlackSea. These campaigns were against Muslim, not Christian, beys.

* * *

From Recovery to Ruin

It is instructive to compare the restored empire’s size as it had been in 1261 withits position 80 years later. The era began with Byzantium dominant in the Balkans, and much strongerthan the then minor states of Serbia and Bulgaria. But within a generation theempire was so weak that it could no longer afford, or believed it could no longerafford, a blue-water navy. And after 1300, when the Serbs asserted themselves byencroaching on imperial lands as far as the Aegean, and Bulgaria expanded into


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northern Thrace, Byzantium did not have the money or men to expel them. It isno surprise that large scale mosaic artworks were no longer produced after 1320. In Asia, Constantinople had still ruled between a quarter and a third of AsiaMinor in 1261. Eighty years later this had all been lost, except for several islands inthe eastern Aegean. The Türkmen first of all, having been pushed westward bythe Mongols, and then a powerful new local emirate, the Ottomans, steadily tookit all.

Thus, having begun as the strongest power in the region between Hungary andPersia in 1261, and still recognised as a major power, by the 1340s Byzantiumwas nearly the weakest.

1333:Bithynia: Andronicus in person took a relief ship to Nicomedia to bring food toits starving inhabitants. While there he arranged to meet Orhan, and a settlementwas agreed, the first formal treaty between a Byzantine emperor and anOttoman emir. Andronicus promised to pay 12,000 gold coins in return for peaceand the continued rule of the little of Bithynia that still remained in Christianhands (Nicol, Cantacuzene p.33; Agoston & Masters p.109).

1333-34:During the years 1333–1334, the Calabrian-born Italo-Greek cleric ‘Barlaam’[born Bernardo Massari: aged about 34 in 1333] undertook to negotiate the unionof churches, Latin and Orthodox, with the representatives of Pope John XXII. In1339 he was also sent to the royal courts of Naples and Paris. For this occasion hewrote 21 treatises against the Latins in which he opposed papal primacy and thefilioque doctrine (“and from the Son”; a formulation concerning the Trinity thatthe Byzantines had long opposed). —Wikipedia, 2011, ‘Barlaam’. In 1342 at Avignon, then the seat of the Popes, he met the Tuscan-born poetPetrarch (aged 38) and (unsuccessfully) taught him Greek.

2. Crimea of the Golden Horde: The most important Tatar (Kipchak) town in theCrimea was Solghat (Italian Solchati: Eski Qirim/Saryi Krym*), the provincialcapital of the Golden Horde, in the south-eastern interior. The first khan of theGolden Horde to become Muslim, Ozbeg 1313-1341, ordered a madrasa builtthere in 1332, while in 1338 local Armenians built the Christian monasticcomplex called Surb Khach. In 1333-34 the Arab (Moroccan) traveller Ibn Battuta visited Venetian** Soldaia[modern Sudak] and Genoese Kaffa/Caffa/Cafà [modern Feodosiya], both on the SEcoast. He mentions that Kaffa was mostly Genoese and a large town. He countedabout 200 ships in Kaffa Harbour (Dunn 2004: 163). There was a further Genoesecolony at Kherch (Cerko/Cherkio) at the extreme eastern point of the Crimea, onthe western side of the Kerch Strait or “Cimmerian Bosporus”: the entrance tothe Sea of Azov; and the Venetians ran a colony at Tanais/Tana on the Don,which is to say: at the far NE point of the Sea of Azov. There they sold Italian andFlemish textiles and bought slaves (Dunn p.166).


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The ‘Gotho-Greek’ principality of Theodoro or “Gothia”, a vassal first ofTrebizond, then of the Golden Horde, was located in the central-southernprojection of the Crimean peninsula. The capital town was Doros (modernMangup: east of Sevastopol). The population was a mixture of Greeks, CrimeanGoths, Alans, Bulgars, Kypchaks and other nations, which confessed OrthodoxChristianity. The principality's official language was Greek (Paul Magocsi, AHistory of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples, University of Toronto Press, 2010,p.118 ff). The Karaims or Karaites, Crimean ethnic-Turkish Jews, had a fortifiedsettlement at Kirk/Qirq Yer [modern Chufut-Kale], in the south of the peninsula,NE of Sevastopol. It was located in the southern part of the sector known as“Tartaria”. Karaites also lived in Sudak/Soldaia and Feodosiya/Caffa.

(*) The towns of Sudak (coastal), Staryi Krym (inland) and Feodosiya(coastal) make up a small triangle in the south-east of the Crimeanpeninsula. Staryi Krym/Solghat lies some 25 km west of Feodosiya/Caffa.

(**) Venice will cede control of Soldaia to the Genose in 1365.

1334:1. Western Macedonia: Serbia expanded south and SE into Byzantine territory in“outer” Macedonia, taking Ohrid, Prilep, Kastoria, Strumica/Strumitsa, andVoden in or before about 1334 (ca. 1332-1334). The one time governor ofThessalonica, Syrgiannes Palaeologos, had deserted to the side of the Serbiansand aided their advance. In August of 1334 Stefan Dushan and Andronicus madepeace, and the forces of Andronicus were allowed to retake control of those partsof Macedonia that Syrgiannes had been directly responsible for capturing. But theSerbs retained Ohrid, Prilep and Strumica (Fine 1994, pp. 287-88; Wikipedia, 2011,‘Andronicus III’; Norwich, Decline pp.284-85).

2. East Aegean: Naval victories were won by Italian-led forces over the Turks in1334 and 1359. In September 1334 a fleet of 40 Christian ships - Venetians,Hospitallers of Rhodes, Cyprus, Byzantium, and Papal and French troops - underVenetian leadership defeated and burned a fleet of “over 200” boats of the emirof Karasi, Yakhshi Bey, in the Gulf of Adramyttion (Edremit). This seems to havebeen the first serious battle between Turkish and Christian naval forces (thereis no record of any clash between Christian ships and Umar of Aydin’s fleet from1330 to 1344) (Inalcik, Maritime p.324). As we noted earlier, the weakness of the Turkish naval forces during the 14th

century was due to their use of small boats and lack of experience at sea; theChristians relied on large war-galleys. Only Aydin among the Turks built a few largegalleys. The Christian fleet also tried to land at Smyrna but was beaten off byTurkish archers (Zachariadou pp.214-15; Inalcik, Maritime p.316). From the Venetian point of view, the actions of 1333-1345 had importantconsequences: they strengthened the Venetian positions in the Aegean, dealt apowerful blow at the ‘Maritime Emirates’ - Aydın, Sarukhan and Karasi/Qarasi -, and contributed to a break in the relations between John VI Cantacuzene andhis ally the new Bey of Aydın, Umur-beg.


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From 1334:The Aegean: Reign of Bahaeddin Ghazi ‘Umar Bey or Umur Beg (the sobriquet‘Bahaeddin’ means “splendour of the faith”), 1334-48, the Turkish bey or lord ofthe Aydin-oglu. The capital was inland at Birgi (ex-Greek Pyrgion), ESE ofSmyrna/Izmir (Inalcik, Maritime p.316). He will initiate an attack on the CycladesIslands and Thessalonica, take Chios* [the island off Asia Minor: west of Smyrna]and come to the aid of John Cantacuzenos, who he will help elevate to the throneof New Rome (Constantinople) (see 1337, 1347/48).

(*) Chios: The Aegean was effectively divided between Venetian and Genoesespheres. Venice dominated the route to Constantinople via the Dalmatian coastand the Ionian islands. Genoa controlled an alternative route by way of Chiosand the eastern shore.

Umur extracted annual tributes from the Christian inhabitants of the wholeAegean: money was paid by Venetian Negroponte or Euboea, the Latins andGreeks of the Morea, and the entire coast of Byzantine Thessaly, Macedonia andThrace as far as the Byzantine capital (Zachariadou 1989: 214). But if caught by even a small Christian flotilla, Umur’s navy was likely to becrushed. Zachariadou, p.216, cites a Turkish writer describing the emir’s terrorwhen, on one occasion, sailing with seven light vessels (‘caigues’), he met fiveChristian galleys near the island of Tenedos.

The Muslims conducted no sea commerce of their own. They preferred piracy,i.e. capturing the commercial cargoes of Christian ships, selling captives asslaves, taking booty and receiving money-tribute. The ports of Altoluogo (Gk:Ephesus, Tk Ayasulug) under the Aydinoglu, and Palatia (Byz: Kastro Palation,Tk: Balat, ancient Miletus) under the Menteshe beys became major slave markets(Pryor 1988: 171). Balat is located north of Bodrum and ENE of the Greek islandof Patmos (the latter was under Hospitaller rule in the 1330s).

Ex-Romaic Nicaea becomes Turkish

We have seen (above: 1331) that Ibn Battuta found Nicaea “. . . in a moulderingcondition and uninhabited except for a few men in the sultan's service.” This soonchanged. The old Nicaea [Gk Nikaia], called Iznik by the Turks, became the cradle ofOttoman architecture and it was there that the first Ottoman-style mosque wasbuilt, the Haci Özbek Mosque. This mosque, constructed in 1334, is notable for itssingle dome. Also during the reign of Orhan Bey, Kara Halil Hayrettin Pasha hadthe Yesil Cami or Green Mosque built (ca. 1380) by the architect Haci Musa inIznik: it was completed after his death by his son, Ali Pasha, in 1392, with anexterior covered with marble blocks. The materials that went into theconstruction of the minaret show the continuation of Seljuk traditions.

1330s:


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1. The Aegean: According to Sanudo, the Turks took “25,000” captives duringtheir raids of the early 1330s (1331-32). There must have been more than a fewislands and stretches of the mainland coasts that were desolated (Zachariadoup.217; Fleet 1999: 39).

2. Byzantium: Religious struggle for and against the mystical, anti-intellectualschool of the ‘Hesychasm’. The Hesychasts were led by a monk from Mt Athos,Gregory Palamas, 1296-1359, afterwards metropolitan of Thessalonica. He wrotemany polemical works. Gregory had already begun to write on the nature of the procession of theHoly Spirit, especially in comparison with the Latin view which was then beingmuch discussed, while living at his hermitage of St Sabbas on Athos, in the early1330s. He wrote his Apodictic Treatises to this effect c.1336; they would soon playa great part in the controversies to follow. —M C Steenberg, ‘Gregory Palamas:An Historical Overview’, at www.monachos.net/content/patristics/studies-fathers/61-gregory-palamas-an-historical-overview. See 1341.

Barlaam of Calabria and Gregoras were both on the losing side in the Hesychaststrife, which raged between c. 1337 and 1351 and revolved around the questionof theological method. The winner was Gregory Palamas (aged 41 in 1337),famous for his claim that even though God's substance (ousia) is necessarilyconcealed to us, we can have direct experience of his activities (energeiai). Thefirst 29 of Palamas’ 150 Chapters attempt to put natural philosophy on a moresecure footing by placing facts about the world as a whole—in contrast toparticular facts, such as astronomical phenomena—in the same epistemologicalcategory as facts about God and Man, which are only knowable through theteaching of the spirit. —Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/byzantine-philosophy/; accessed 2011).

1335:1. The fleet of Aydin and the other beyliks, a total of “270” ships and boats,attacks the Morea (Inalcik, Maritime p.323).

2a. Near Smyrna: The emperor was preparing to attack the Genoese. UmurPasha, the young emir of Aydin, came personally to Andronicus’s camp at KaraBurun [the peninsula between Chios and Smyrna], where Umur also met (for thefirst time) and befriended the Grand Domestic John Kantakuzenos (Nicol,Reluctant Emperor, pp.35-36). Inalcik says they met “near” theCheshme/Aerythrea peninsula (Maritime p. 317); the latter is nearer Chios thanKaraburun.* For the Byzantines, a key issue was the recent occupation ofMytilene (on Lesbos) by the Genoese lord of Phocaea.** A treaty was signed with Umur in 1336, and he was to provide much help tothe emperor and especially Kantakuzenos: see 1336 and 1337. Needless perhapsto say, the Byzantines saw the payment of money as the funding of a junior allyand parvenu barbarian, whereas the Turks saw themselves as the senior partnerand the payment of money as recognition of their overlordship (cf BenjaminArbel, Bernard Hamilton, Latins and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1204,Routledge, 1989 pp.220ff, citing the Turkish chronicler Enveri).


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(*) A line drawn due west from Izmir crossed first the peninsula ofKarabun, then the lesser peninsula of Chesme, then the Byzantine-controlled island of Chios (recovered from the Genoese in 1329). Thisregion was the intersection of Genoese, Byzantine, Saruhan andAydinoglu holdings. Mytilene is on the eastern side of Byzantine Lesbos.From Lesbos, Genoese-held Phocaea (Yenifoça or ‘New Phocaea’: FogliaNuova) located to the SE, on the mainland. Izmir/Smyra of the Aydinogluwas further down (40 km away) on the mainland coast. Manisa, the seat ofSaruhan was inland, ESE of Yenifoça.

(**) Ancient Phocaea or Foça and (founded in 1275:) New Phocaea, Italian‘Foglia Nuovo’, Turkish Yenifoça (NE of Old Phocaea), are about 20 kmapart.

2b. Asian coast: At the end of 1335, Andronicus left behind several ships toblockade Lesbos, where Mytilene was in the hands of the Genoese, while he ledother troops to besiege New Phocaea/Foglia Nuova. The Genoese led by the“Lord of Phocaea”, Domenico Cattaneo (a grandson of Benedetto Zaccaria),received some help from the Hospitallers. The Turks of Saruhan providedAndronicus with men and supplied his troops until the town capitulated(William Miller, Essays on the Latin Orient, CUP Archive, 1964 p.294).

3. NW Asia Minor: Orhan’s Ottomans capture Lopadion (Ulubad), the keyimperial fortress on the highway that ran east from Byzantine Cyzicus and thecoast to the recently Ottoman-conquered Bursa (ODB ii:1250; or in May 1337according to Nicol, Last Centuries p.145). Evidently this occurred as part of theOttoman conquest of Karesi. See 1337: Nicomedia.

1336:(Dunn dates this to 1331 or 1333:) SW Asia Minor: Ibn Battuta visits Ladik(Laodiceia, Denizli).”a most important town with seven cathedral-mosques”.“The distinctive mark of the [male] Greeks is their tall peaked hats, red or white;their women wear capacious turbans”. “Most of the artisans [seamstresses making cotton fabrics] there are Greekwomen”. Also there was a slave market in the town where buyers came “topurchase [beautiful] Greek girls and put them out to prostitution; each girl has topay a regular share to her master. The girls go into the bath houses with the men”(quoted in Freely 2008: 138: square brackets = alternative rendering).


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1336-37:(Or 1337-38:) Epirus: Anna Palaiologus Orsini assumed the regency for heryoung son Nicephorus but failed to allay the enmity of the Rhomaniyan emperorAndronikos III Palaiologos. He invaded and annexed the Epirote part of Thessaly in1336 and advanced on Ioannina. The Albanians took advantage of conflict to thesouth to raid the Byzantine possessions in the north, but were defeated by theemperor in 1337. Cf below under 1337.

1336-40:Orhan’s Ottomans conquer most of the emirate of Karesi (except for Çanakkaleand Edremit/Adramyttium), establishing their presence for the first time on thecoast of the Sea of Marmara.

1336-58:West coast of Asia Minor: Andronicus’s troops, allied with those of theSaroukhan/Saruhan emir of Magnesia [acc. 1313], besieged the Genoese-ruledtowns of Old and New Phocea in 1336 or 1337 and obliged them to pay tribute.They continued also to pay annually to Saroukhan 500 ducats. The Greeksoccupied the two towns from 1340 to 1345, and again in 1358 for a short period(Cath. Encyc., online, under ‘Phocaea’).

1337:Final extinction of Romaic rule in Bithynia: the Ottomans take Nicomedia (Tk:Izmit), just 80 km east of Constantinople. The Ottomans finally managed to


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blockade the narrow gulf on which it stood, and the town, without food and otherresources, was forced to capitulate (Runciman 1965: 33; Freely 2008: 115). In this year Orhan had an Arabic inscription about himself and his fatherplaced on a mosque at Bursa which reads “the great and magnificent emir, thewarrior of the Holy Faith … [or] Sultan*, son of the Sultan of the Ghazis, ghazison of ghazi**, [or] … march-lord (“margrave”, “marquis”) of the horizons[marzuban al-afaq***], hero of the world and of the faith . . ..” (quoted in BernardLewis, The Political Language of Islam, University of Chicago Press, 1991 p.147;also Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice, PrincetonUniversity Press, 2008, p.145). See below after 1340 for a discussion of jihad or, as some maintain, its absence(Lindner vs Wittek) .

(*) Or such is the supposed wording. In fact, a recent re-inspection has shownthat the term used was not “sultan” but “the exalted great emir”. Evidently themis-rendering of ‘sultan’ was due to Paul Wittek (Bonner loc.cit., also PeterRehm: ‘Ventures into the Reign of Osman: A New Consensus on Early OttomanHistoriography’, p.4, online athttp://www.etudeshistoriques.org/index.php/etudeshistorique/article/viewFile/12/9; citing Heath Lowry).

(**) Arabic ghazi comes from ghazawan, “to carry out a military expedition”,hence “military raider”. They were mercenary frontier fighters who relied onplunder. The extent to which they were driven by religious motives is a hotlydebated issue. Ghazi became part of the ‘throne name’ of the Sultans, and MuradII, acc.1421, took it up as one of his formal titles.

(***) Marzuban is the Arabic form of the Pahlavi/Persian word marzpan, meaning‘margrave/marcher lord’; also rendered as ‘military governor of a frontierprovince’ (Kramers, ‘Marzuban’ in Encyc. Islam VI: 633). Al-afaq is Arabic for ‘ofthe horizons’. Cf alam al-afaq: ‘the world of horizons’, ie, the physical or finiterealm of this world (Qur. 1:2 and Qur. 41:53). In Turkish the term is uç bey, i.e.‘lord (begi, bey) of the frontier (uç)’. The Greek equivalent was akron, “farthestbounds, uttermost parts”, hence akritai, ‘borderers, border-guardsmen’.

2a. Thrace: Last-ever ‘Mongol’ (Kipchak) incursion into the empire: a “massive”force advanced as far as the Hellespont, where they met and defeated a group ofTurks who had crossed the straits to plunder Byzantine territory. (There wereraiders from both the Karesi and Ottoman principalities separately engaged inThrace.) Gregoras says the Kipchaks and Turks were like two dogs fighting over acorpse (Lippard p.211).

2b. The NW Balkans: With an army including 2,000 unpaid Turkish allies (“azebs”:infantry archers) from Aydin, Andronicus and his general Cantacuzenus marchto Albania and then tour into Epirus (Fine 1994: 292). The Albanians having beendefeated, the Epirotes capitulated (1338). The Turks on this occasion were(perhaps surprisingly) all infantrymen, so we must guess there was in addition a


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small force of native Byzantine cavalrymen (say 500). Miller notes that no Greekemperor had visited Epirus since the time of Manuel I nearly two centuries earlier. The emperor engaged a body of Turkish infantrymen and, along with anumber of Byzantine cavalry, led them from Thessaly against the “unruly”Albanians in the region east of Durres. The enemy are described as “Albaniannomads from Balagrada (Berat: SE of Durres) and [the SW coastal area of]Kanina”. The Turks in turn are described “light-armed Turkish forces andarchers, who operate admirably in inaccessible regions”. Foot soldiers werechosen because cavalry were less effective in the highlands. The reward for the Turkswas to enslave as many of the Albanian women and children as they couldcapture, and other booty (Kantakouzenos’s memoirs, quoted in R. Elsie: EarlyAlbania, a Reader of Historical Texts, 11th-17th Centuries, Wiesbaden 2003).

When, in 1336/37, Andronikos III attacked the Albanian tribes in themountainous areas around Berat and Kanina, going as far as Durres/Durrazzo,his booty is said to have included 300,000 oxen (a huge number for such terrain),5,000 horses, and 1,200,000 sheep (sic: Kantakouzenos’s figures: Laiou, 2002,“Agrarian Economy”, in his (ed.) Economic Hist of Byzantium p.317). One shouldprobably strike the final zero off all these figures, if not simply reject them aswild guesses! Evidently the Turks left the oxen to the Greeks, preferring humancaptives as more valuable; Kantakouzenos claimed that Greeks were not allowedto enslave fellow Christians (Finlay, Empire, 1854 II: 536). But why herd an oxfrom Albania across the Balkans to Constantinople? It must be that the animalswere just the total owned by the defeated Albanians: two horses each wouldrepresent 2,500 conquered Albanian fighters, who each could certainly haveowned an average of 480 sheep ….

Outcome: Epirus and Thessaly were re-annexed to the empire. Cf 1337 below: theSerbs intervene. See also 1348.

3. (This is more commonly dated to 1335:) Old and New Phocaea were towns inW Asia Minor under Genoese rule. Andronicus, allied with theSaroukhan/Saruhan emir of Magnesia/Manisa, besieged the two towns andobliged them to pay the tribute stipulated back in 1275. They continued also topay annually to Saruhan 500 ducats.

4. c. 1337: The Hospitallers of Rhodes re-capture Cos, the neighbouring island(Setton, Crusades p.293).

From 1337:Taking advantage of the unsettled conditions and then the Romaic civil war(from 1341), Stefan Dushan of Serbia was able, in 1337-40 and in 1345, to conquerAlbania, eastern Macedonia, Epirus and Thessaly. He undertook 13 campaignsagainst Byzantium in which he advanced as far as the imperial capital itself.There were few if any battles: the Serbs simply blockaded the Byzantinefortresses and starved them out (Fine 1994: 320). See 1337, 1343, 1345, etc.


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1337-41:Constantinople: About the year 1337, during the patriarchate of John Kalekas, aCalabrian monk, Barlaam, who was the abbot of the Monastery of the St. Saviourin Chora, learned of the practice of hesychasm during a visit to Mount Athos.Barlaam was scandalized and began to campaign against the practice and itsadvocate Gregory Palamas. The dispute grew until in 1341, emperor AndronikosIII, a supporter of Gregory Palamas, convened the Fifth Council ofConstantinople at which Patriarch John, while supportive of Barlaam, did notresist his condemnation. After his condemnation Barlaam left Constantinoplepermanently.

(*) The practice of a method of mental ascesis (self-control, self-denial, self-discipline) that involves the use of the Jesus Prayer assisted by certainpsychophysical techniques, the view being that one cannot be a genuine or a truetheologian or teach knowledge of God without having experienced God, as isdefined as the vision of God (theoria). (In Eastern Orthodoxy, theology is nottreated as an academic pursuit; instead, it is based on revelation, so thatOrthodox theology and its theologians are seen as validated by ascetic pursuits,rather than academic degrees.) The hesychasts stated that at higher stages oftheir prayer practice they reached the actual contemplation-union with the TaborLight, i.e., Uncreated Divine Light or photomos seen by the apostles in the event ofthe Transfiguration of Christ and Saint Paul while on the road to Damascus. Barlaam issued a number of treatises mocking the absurdity of the practiceswhich, he claimed, included, "miraculous separations and reunions of the spiritand the soul, of the traffic which demons have with the soul, of the differencebetween red lights and white lights, of the entry and departure of the intelligencethrough the nostrils with the breath, of the shields that gather together round thenavel, and finally of the union of Our Lord with the soul, which takes place inthe full and sensible certitude of the heart within the navel."

Venice: The register of 1338 estimated that “30,000” Venetian men were capableof bearing arms; many of these were skilled crossbowmen (Wikipedia: “Venice”,2011). I see this as an ‘in principle’ claim: see my the discussion of Venice’s navalpower under AD 1410, below.

1339:1. Greece: The Epirotes rebelled in Arta on behalf of the 11 years old pretenderNikephoros Orsini in 1339, and he was duly sent to Epirus. However,Andronikos III and John Kantakouzenos swiftly subdued the rebellion andbesieged the young ex-despot Nikephoros in ‘Thomokastron’ [Riza or Riniasa,ESE of Ioannina: the castle there had been built by an earlier despot, Thomas IKomnenos Doukas, acc. 1297] (Fine 1994: 254). Assuring the pretender’s personalsafety, John Kantakouzenos persuaded the garrison to surrender. In 1339, there was a revolt supported by the Taranto-based Catherine ofValois, titular/claimant Empress of Constantinople, who was in the Peloponnese


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at the time, and by Nikephoros who had returned with her from Italy. She sentNicephorus to Epirus with a detachment of Angevin troops, who occupiedThomokastron. At the end of 1339 the imperial army returned to the area andnext year, 1340, Andronikos III himself arrived together with JohnKantakouzenos. Nikephoros and the Angevin garrison were persuaded throughdiplomacy to recognize the authority of the emperor (November 1340: Fine 1994:254). He surrendered Thomokastron, married Maria Kantakouzene, the daughterof John Kantakouzenos, and received the title of panhypersebastos. Thus by theend of 1340 Byzantium had recovered Epirus and Acarnania (the region S of Arta)[originally lost by Constantinople in 1204].

2. The West: The Greco-Calabrian Basilian monk, Barlaam, leaves for Avignon -at this time the seat of the popes - as Byzantine ambassador on a mission of unitywith the Latin Church. The embassy fails when Pope Benedict XII rejects his‘dogmatic relativism’. —“Monachos.Net”, ‘Gregory Palamas’, atwww.monachos.net/content/patristics/studies-fathers/63-gregory-palamas-historical-timeline; accessed 2011.

3. East Mediterranean: Matthew the titular metropolitan archbishop of Ephesusleft Constantinople to take up residence at his see. He stopped first in Chios toobtain reliable information about the local situation. To get from Smyrna toEphesus (Altoluogo to the Italians) he had a pay money to Umur Bey of Aydin.He had six priests for his whole archdiocese and at Ephesus itself severalthousand parishioners, most of them prisoners and slaves (Foss, Ephesus afterAntiquity p.149; David Jonsson, The Clash of Ideologies, Xulon Press, 2005 p.191).See next.

1339: Midpoint in the THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WARS: from the beginning ofJohn Kantakouzenus’s alliance with the younger Andronicus (III) Palaiologos tothe year that John’s son and co-emperor Matthew Kantakuzenus renounces hisclaim to the throne and John V Palaiologos becomes sole emperor.

Late 1339/early 1340:From Greek to Turk: The bishop of Ephesus, Mathew, was able to take upresidence there, after many years in Constantinople as titular bishop. He recordsthat Smyrna (Izmir), where he was briefly detained by Umur Beg, remained alarge “city”; but after several decades of Turkish rule it had undergone a drasticethnographic change, and the harbour was “filled” with Turkish pirate ships (citedin Vryonis 1971). This was not yet two generations from the beginning of Muslimrule. One would therefore expect at least three-quarters of the people to beChristians (they were still a majority as late as the ealy 20th Century), although itseems (see above) that Christians were in the minority. Cf entry for 1340-54below.

c.1340:“Romania”: The Florentine merchant Francesco Pegolotti records in La Praticadella Mercatura, c. 1340, that ‘vino greco’, i.e. Greek-style wine, or from a grapevariety of Greek origin, was exported from southern Italy to Constantinople, theByzantine Greek capital. There was not necessarily any confusion, since wine


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exported from Greece was at that period usually called ‘vino di Romania’ [literally‘Byzantium’, but here a general reference to the lower Balkans]. This wasRumney or Romney wine in English. Rumney was exported from Methoni in thesouthern Peloponnese - one English source calls it Rompney of Modonn* - andperhaps also from Patras and other ports (Wikipedia 2011, ‘Vino Greco’).

(*) Modon, the Italian name for the port of Methoni, a Venetian outpost in theMorea. The Morea was divided between Latin (Angevin) Achaia and Byzantium(Mistra).

Above: The ‘long style’ of Byzantine elite dress, before Italianinfluences were felt. Mosaic dated 1315-1320 in the Chora church

(Kahriye-Cami). Other mosaics in the same church show lower statusmen in tunics that extend only to the knee.

1340:Constantinople: fl. Nicephorus Gregoras, “one of the greatest intellects of the 14th

century”, a historian, mathematician and astronomer, e.g. predicting eclipses andexplaining the astrolabe.


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A student of Metochites and a principal opponent of Palamas and theHesychasts, Gregoras wrote prose of all kinds, including a massive Roman [ie,Byzantine] History covering the period to 1359. Gregoras complained about young fashionable men who appeared in churchon Sunday dressed in peculiar fashion with Italian dress.* Gregoras was apartisan of John Kantakouzenos during the civil war and could be accused of abias. What is revealing is that Bessarion, one of the main proponents of the unionof the Churches, agreed with Gregoras in his belief that the ‘Greek’ (Rhomaioi)aristocracy was spending substantial amounts of money on Italian clothing.—Alexander Mirkovic, ‘Politics of Silence . . .’, Golden Horn 8 (2) 2001, athttp://www.isidore-of-seville.com/goudenhoorn/82alexander.html; accessed2009.

(*) The draped garments and straight seams of previous centuries were beingreplaced by curved seams and the beginnings of tailoring, which allowedclothing to more closely fit the human form. Also, the use of lacing and buttonsallowed a snugger fit to clothing. Replacing the long ‘super tunic’ of previouscenturies, the outer garment of this era was a shorter cote or cotte. It replaced thetunic and was knee length and close-fitting. This new low necked, knee lengthpiece was tight fitting and buttoned or laced down the front to waist level. Byabout 1350 came the cote-hardie, a body-hugging buttoned coat reaching to themid-thigh or juist to the groin. Tight-fitting multi-coloured hose makes its appearance. As headdress, Latinmen often wore caped hoods. The gipon or jupon, also called a pourpoint or doublet: a body-huggingpinafore or body-shirt, emerged during the 14th century (after about 1350).

For example, the painting called “La campagna ben governata” (1337-38) byAmbrogio Lorenzetti of Siena, ca.1290-1348, shows hoods with short tails, ‘RobinHood style’ caps, and short, knee-length parti-coloured bodywear (cotes) worntight around the torso, belted at the waist but flared below the waist. Tight hoseis worn with simple shoes.

1340: The “last great Arab offensive" is defeated in what is now Spain.Christian Castile stymies Muslim Grenada.

1340-54:Arguing against Wittek,* and for the absence of jihad, Linder notes that neitherOsman nor Orkhan seem to have placed much emphasis on converting theirChristian neighbours. At least as late as 1340, Christians could serve as judges inOttoman Bithynia. In 1354, late in Orkhan's reign, a Romaic observer reportedthat there was no persecution of Christians or pressure to convert to Islam in theOttoman domains (Lindner, ‘Tent of Osman’; also Lindner, Nomads and Ottomansin Medieval Anatolia. Bloomington: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies,1983). On the other hand, Housley says that, writing in about 1330, al-Umari sawUmur of Aydin's naval war as possessing the consistency and ferocity of a Jihad(Norman Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274-1580: from Lyons to Alcazar, OxfordUniversity Press, 1992, p.57). And see 1354: Palamas’s contemporary assessment.


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Uyar & Erickson have proposed that the Ottomans were not strictly religiousfighters but raiders (Tk akinci) with the unshakeable belief of the superiority ofIslam. Religious motives were part of it, but there were imperatives “beyondsimple holy war” (Mesut Uyar & Edward Erickson, A military history of theOttomans: from Osman to Atatürk, p.14).

(*) Paul Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Lenox Hill Publishingand Distribution Co., 1938. - Wittek and his critics are discussed by Peter Rehm:‘Ventures into the Reign of Osman: A New Consensus on Early OttomanHistoriography’, p.4, online athttp://www.etudeshistoriques.org/index.php/etudeshistorique/article/viewFile/12/9.

1341:1. Black Sea: Umur leads the fleet of Aydin, and vessels from the other beyliks,“350” ships and boats in all, on an expedition to Kilia [Greek Kellia, in what isnow Romania, then the Golden Horde Khanate] at the mouth of the Danube,which is to say: through the ‘Christian’ waters of the Dardanelles, Sea ofMarmara and the Bosporus. A Turkish source records that the raid yielded“countless slaves, girls and boys, as well as material goods, so that the whole ofthe Aydin-ili was filled with wealth” (Inalcik, Maritime pp.323, 327).

2. Andronikos III died aged 44 or 45 in 1341, and was succeeded by his youngson, nine years old John V Palaiologos. His death may have beem due to malaria(see Lascaratos & Marketos in J Roy Soc Med (1997) 90, 106-109).

18 June 1341: Three days after the death of Andronicus III, Patriarch John Calecasand Great Domestic Cantacuzene begin to vie for the regency. After an initialround of stormy arguments, the two exchange oaths of mutual fidelity, andCantacuzene leaves on a military campaign in the Balkans. —Monachos.net:‘Palamas Timeline’, http://www.monachos.net/content/patristics/studies-fathers/63-gregory-palamas-historical-timeline.

3. Epirus: Anna Palaiologina, Regent, for her absent six years old son,Nikephorus II Orsini, despot of Epirus (1341-42), +after 1355; 1m: ca 1328 Ioannes(John) Orsini, Despot of Epirus and Ct of Cephallenia, (+of poisoning 1335); 2m:before 1355, Ivan Asen of Bulgaria, governor of Valona [Vlorë in present-dayAlbania] (+1363). Taken to Constantinople, young Nikephoros remained attached to thehousehold of Kantakouzenos during the Byzantine civil war of 1341–1347.(Nikephoros II will tkae advantage of the Byzantine civil war and the death ofDu_an to escape and to reestablish himself in Epirus in 1356.)

The Byzantine Army in the 14th Century

The largest imperial field army mentioned in Kantakuzenus’s works, fl. 1345,numbered 5,000 men; the largest in Gregoras, fl. 1340, was 3,000 men (Bartusis,LBA p.260 ff). This covered all the campaign troops paid by the empire whetherby salary or other income: small-holder troops, pronoiars and imperial


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mercenaries of whatever ethnicity. Cf below: perhaps 3,000 men underKantakuzenus in 1341. In addition, there were often allied foreign troops deployed at no cost toemperor (or rather: no cash cost). The median figure for Turks in severalcampaigns was 6-8,000 men, and the median for other allies 2-3,000. Cf 1343:‘6,000’ Turks from Aydin. Adding together imperial and allied troops, an army of some 5,000 men wouldbe possible, while one as large as 10,000 men was truly exceptional.

1341-47:Civil war: Anna of Savoy, aged about 35, regent for her

son, nine-years old JOHN V PALAIOLOGOS, versus theerstwhile regent John Cantacuzenus.

Kantakuzenos, aged about 46 in 1341, had served as ageneral under the two Andronicuses [Andronicus II andIII]. To gain the throne, he had to fight a dangerous civil

war,1341-47, against the adherents of a rival boy-emperor,John V.

Treadgold 1997: 777 notes that Cantacuzenus brieflycreated (restored) a small Imperial navy in 1348-49.

Cf the poem by Cavafy:

"Will Kantakuzenos pity me if I appeal to him,fall at his feet and kiss his purple shoes? People say he’s kindly.But what about his minions, his army?Perhaps I should plead with the Lady Irene his wife?

"I must have been mad to affiliate with Anna -curse Andronicus for marrying the bitch!Utterly incompetent and ruthless,even the Franks deplore her,her scheming useless, ridiculous, pointless!The foreigners took the city, holy Constantinople,but Kantacuzenos crushed them under his heel."

Religious conflict continues: Hesychasm won fervent support, but aroused equallyviolent opposition, mainly because of the simplistic exaggerations practised bycertain of its ardent enthusiasts. It marshalled its followers in the East, and setthem against anything Western or papal. It was supported by the Rhomaniyanaristocracy and thereby prevailed in three Synods (1341, 1347, 1351).

1341:1a. The Hagioritic Tome which Gregory Palamas drafted in early 1341 with thesupport of the monastic communities of Athos, clearly demonstrates a pointed


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attack at Barlaam’s views. The Hagioritic Tome was to be accepted by fourcouncils of Constantinople, at which the Byzantine Church affirmed theorthodoxy of hesychast spirituality and mysticism (Harvey Egan, An Anthology ofChristian mysticism, Liturgical Press, 1991, p.312).

1b. 10 June: First session of a Church Council held in St. Sophia, lasting only oneday. “The sickly Andronicus III presides in person [aged 44: he dies on 15 June];hearings are public; senators and ‘general judges’ from the Imperial Court arepresent, along with bishops, several archimandrites [senior abbots whosupervised junior abbots] and hegoumenoi [abbots]. The Council is clearlyunfavourable to Barlaam, who at the end of the day, under the advice ofCantacuzene his ‘protector’, confesses his error. Palamas freely pardons him”. –From http://www.monachos.net/patristics/palamas_appendices.shtml;accessed 2011. August 1341: Second Council session in St. Sophia, presided over byCantacuzene, who [the new emperor being a child: John V, aged nine] acts as defacto emperor. Patriarch Calecas summons Akindynos* as the accused, and againattempts to limit discussion to non-doctrinal matters. The synod eventuallycondemns Akindynos and rejects his teaching about ‘the light’. Thus the firstreaction of the Byzantine Church as a whole is clearly favourable to Palamas(idem).

(*) Gregory Akindynos, one of Barlaam's friends, and originally also a friend ofSt Gregory Palamas, took up the controversy before in the period 1337-41, andthree other synods on the subject were held, at the second of which the followersof Barlaam gained a brief victory. Cf 1351.

2a. Thrace: To “complete and even increase the fiscal resources destined for thecampaign” in Thrace [see next], John Kantakouzenos received from Patrikiotes,who had made a fortune as a tax collector, 100,000 hyperpyra and movablegoods to the value of 40,000 hyperpyra in 1341 (Memoirs of Kantakuzenos, ed.Schopen III.8). If (this is a guess) half this amount went to the soldiers, theyreceived an average of about 32 hyperpyra each. (Cf the salary of 72 hyperpyrap.a. paid to foreign mercenaries by Andronicus III in the 1320s: Treadgold 1997:842.) But officers get more; so probably fewer than 10 hyperpyra each went to theother ranks. Cf 1343: crown jewels pawned by John’s rival Anna.

2b. Thrace: The grand domestic Kantakouzenos, with perhaps 3,000 troops,marched out from the capital into Thrace, drove off a body of raiding Turks andpersuaded the Bulgarians and Serbs to make peace. At Didymotichus,downstream from Adrianople, he accepted the submission of the Latin delegatesfrom the Peloponnesus. See next.

2c. Seeing the weakness of the local Angevins in the Morea, the Greeks of theMorea appealed to Cantacuzenus to accept control of the principality of Achaia.Cantacuzenus accepted, but the annexation was never implemented. Meanwhilehis rival Anna strikes a treaty with Genoa, ending the conflict with the Genoesemerchants of Galata (the Italian colony on the northern side of the Golden Horn).


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And when Anna seeks to remove Cantacuzenus (see next), popular opinionwill force most of the local governors of the Thracian towns to declare for theregency and against Cantacuzenus.

3. Civil war: The dowager empress Anna of Savoy and her allies arrange forAnna’s son, the young John V, to sign an order dismissing Cantacuzenus. Alongwith patriarch Calecas, Anna becomes regent in his place; and at Didymoteichonin Thrace (downstream from Adrianople/Edirne) Cantacuzenus allows histroops to proclaim him emperor (26 October). In response Anna arranges theformal crowning of her son the young John V (19 November) (Nicol, ReluctantEmperor p.55; Norwich, Decline p.296). — It has been proposed that the ensuing civil war was “more devastating in itsconsequences than any that the Byzantines had ever brought upon themselves”(Nicol, Lady p. 87). As will appear, the fighting was quite desultory and causedfew deaths among the combatants. To that extent, Nicol exaggerates. But theconflict ruined the economy, and in 1344-45 (see next) the Serbs pushed pastThessaloniki to reach the Aegean, while in 1354 (see there) the Turks managed toset up a foothold on the European side of the Dardanelles. — It is said that the last reference to Varangians in service relates to their use in1341 as bodyguards to the young John V. In fact they are last mentioned in 1395and 1404: see Bartusis, LBA pp.274-75, 281: correcting Stephen Lowe,www.oocities.org/egfrothos/BattleHonours.html.

Severing of the ‘Empire’

“Communications dwindled between Constantinople and Thessalonike after the1320s because of the civil war between the two Andronikoi. After 1341, asAngeliki Laiou points out, we have no references for use of the Via Egnatia at all;by that time, communications [with Thessalonike] were by sea alone” [cf 1345:Serbian control of the NW Aegean coast]. —Anna Avramea, ‘Land and SeaCommunications, Fourth–Fifteenth Centuries’, in The Economic History ofByzantium: From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou,2002. No doubt the Via Egnatia was still used by the local Macedonian and ThracianGreeks in 1342-44. Cantacuzenus’s army used it in 1342, but they did not go asfar as Thessalonike. Then in 1344-45 the Serbians under Dushan enter andconquer NE Macedonia as far as the sea, cutting forever any Romaic use of theland route between the capital and Thessalonica. (In 1371 the Byzantinegovernor of Thessalonica will briefly recover all of Macedonia in the wake of thedefeat of the Serbs by the Turks. By then, however, Thrace and its section of thegreat road were in Turkish hands.)

1341-43:Venice and Constantinople discuss and negotiate for a league of Christian statesagainst Umur of Aydin, whose raids have pressed hard upon Venetian-ruledEuboea and the Cyclades (Inalcik, Maritime p.318). See 1344.


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1341-47:Civil war in Byzantium: Cantacuzenus against the regent Anna and the boy-emperor John V. Both sides negotiate for aid from the Serbians, Bulgarians,Venetians, Turks and the Papacy (Frederic Miller, Agnes Vandome & JohnMcBrewster, The Byzantine Civil War of 1341-1347, BDM Publishing House Ltd.,2010). Sometimes women even assumed military command, as when Irene Asanina,wife of John VI Kantakouzenos, was placed in charge of the garrison atDidymoteichon during the civil war of 1341-47, and in 1348 when she tookresponsibility for the defence of Constantinople during her husband's absence. At Trebizond the civil war is fought (1341) between the local elite and Genoeseand Venetian traders and troops from Constantinople, resulting in greatdestruction for the town and its institutions.

1342:1a. The Balkans: Leaving a garrison under his wife at Didymotichus,Cantacuzenus and his army marched past the hostile towns of Thrace in thedirection of Thessalonica. Before his reached that city, it was taken over by local‘Zealots’ (see next) who nominally favoured the regency (Nicol 1993: 195). Seeingthat Thessalonica would resist him, he decided on visiting Serbia to seek militaryaid from Dushan. See para 3 below.

1b. The people of Thessalonica rebelled against Kantakouzenos’s governor in1342, led by a group called ‘Zealots’, a group of anti-aristocratic reformers. Elite partisans of the usurper John VI Kantakouzenos attempt to hand Th. overto him, but the faction of Zealots arouses the populace—“they incited the people[demos] against the rich [dynatoi]”, worote Kantakouzenos*—to expel pro-Kantakouzenian notables and establish a quasi-independent regime, supportingthe legitimate successor, John V Palaiologos. John Apokaukos, son of thelegitimist leader in the capital, Alexios Apokaukos, is sent to share governmentwith Zealot leader Michael Palaiologos [evidently a person unrelated to theemperor]; resentful of Zealot high-handedness, Apokaukos has Michaelmurdered (1344?) (Nicol 2003: 201; extract from Kantakouzenos’s memoirs athttp://www.landmarkhistory.com/Urban_Class_Warfare_The_Zealot_Revolt_in_Thessalonika.htm*).

(*) “. . .the Zealots, who from the poorest and most ignoble status had suddenlybecome rich and arrogant, seized everything for themselves, and either drew themiddle class toward them or forced them (reluctantly) to accept them. Or theZealots condemned wisdom and reasonableness as being "Cantacuzenism."

The Zealots seized power in 1342 and, after driving out the supporters ofCantacuzenus, they set up their own government in the city. The possessions ofthe aristocracy were confiscated. The Zealots were regarded in conservativeecclesiastical circles as disciples of Barlaam of Calabria and Gregory Acindynus,but were also violently opposed to the Hesychasts, who supported Cantacuzenus(Wikipedia 2011, ‘Zealots’) . See 1345.


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Although their regime was characterised by Gregoras as “a strangeochlocracy” [i.e. mob rule], that is probably too simple. There is nodocumentation about the Zealots’ aims or program.

The zealots, who may have been champions of the freedom and independence ofthe church, were opposed to state interference in church affairs, a point of viewwhich brought them into continual collision with the state or aristocracy. Therebellion bears resemblance with contemporary Italian urban conflict betweenpopolo grosso and popolo minuto. They controlled the city for seven years. —AMirkovic in the journal Golden Horn, at www.isidore-of-seville.com/goudenhoorn/82alexander; accessed 2011.

2. The Balkans: Seeking an alliance, John Cantacuzenus visits Dushan in Serbia,travelling (July 1342) via the Axius (our Vardar) River, i.e. via Skopje. Dushan’sseat was at Prizren (Prishtina) in what is now Kosovo. No agreement is reached.Indeed, immediately after John’s departure, the Serbs invade the empire, takingVoden (Edessa): see next. Cf 1343. Having let go many of his soldiers in 1341-42, and some having deserted,Cantacuzenus still had a force of over 2,000 regular cavalry - perhaps 2,500 in allif one adds the men in the private retinues of the nobles with him who werecapable of fighting (Bartusis, LBA pp.95, 224, citing Gregoras; also Treadgold1997: 767). This may imply that he had commanded a field army as large as about 3,500men in 1341.

This “2,000” is the last figure ever recorded* for the size of a Byzantine fieldarmy, and, especially after the Black Death (from 1349), only some hundreds ofnative troops can have been enrolled. From this time, when the emperordeployed large forces, they were nearly all Turkish allies or mercenaries. See1343, 1345, 1346, 1350 and 1352. The reliance on Turks ended of course in thelater 1350s, when the Turks crossed to Europe and began to conquer ByzantineThrace in their own right.

(*) Unless we count the mention in the Chronicle of the Tocco family, a Greektext written at Cephalonia after 1425, which indicates that the emperor had 500horsemen and local Byzantine lords had retinues of 20-100 armed men (ODBi:185).

The “8,000 archers” Kantakuzenos says he left in Didymoteichon would havereferred to all the civilians able to bear arms, and they may actually have beennearer 800 in number (cf LBA p.297).

3. The lower Balkans: Dushan’s Serbs invade Romaic Macedonia and Thessaly,taking Edessa and Kastoria (Treadgold 1997: 767; Fine 1994: 100).


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The Serbian systematic offensive began in 1342. It proceeded without even asingle major battle (in part because Byzantium’s few troops were preoccupiedelsewhere). The Byzantine fortresses were simply blockaded and starved intosubmission. In the end, by 1345, Dushan had annexed almost the whole ofByzantine Europe from the Balkan mountains to Kavala on the N Aegean coast,except for the Peloponnesus and Thessaloniki, which he could not conquerbecause he had no fleet (Jean Sedlar, A history of East Central Europe: East CentralEurope in the Middle Ages, University of Washington Press p.384). Cf 1343:Thracian forts.

Italy: Early origins of Western "humanism", by which is meant therecovery of the knowledge of pagan Antiquity. Barlaam, the Greco-Calabrian Basilian monk and theologian lived briefly in Naples. Havingtransferred his allegiance from the church of Constantinople to theWestern church, Barlaam taught Greek at the court of the Angevin king ofNaples. One of his pupils was, for a period, Petrarch, who wanted to readHomer in the original Greek but the Italian was either lazy or uneducableor Barlaam was a poor teacher. His method of teaching involved takingPlato and translating it bit by bit into Latin, with the idea that Petrarchwould thus grasp the mechanics of the language and be able to read it. Petrarch failed to learn Greek for a second time during 1358. Cf 1343.

1343:1a. Thrace: In early 1343 [winter], Cantacuzenos’ ally Umur of Aydin sailed upthe Evros/Maritsa river with a fleet of ‘200’ [Kantakuzenos] or ‘300’ [Gregoras]ships/boats, including some vessels drawn from the other beyliks, and ‘31,000-29,000’ Turkish horse and foot (according to Kantakouzenos: Bartusis p.96) or15,000 men (according to Turkish sources: Inalcik, Maritime p.326) and relievedDemotika from a Bulgarian army investing it. Presumably one drops a zero fromthe Turkish numbers, to get 3,100? After pillaging Thrace for a few months,Cantacuzenos was forced to retreat to Asia as his army suffered from the heavywinter of 1342-43.

1b. Civil war in the west: The pretender Catatacuzenus brought troops fromEpirus and Thessaly to besiege Thessalonica, which was loyal to the regency.Dushan now switched sides and marched against Cantacuzenus who withdrew.Cantacuzenus marched back into Thrace where he was was joined (summer1343) by 6,000 Turks, mainly infantry, sent by his friend Umur of Aydin (oragain, dropping a zero from the “30,000” asserted by Kantakuzenos [Bartusisp.96]: perhaps 3,000 Turks). Kantakuzenos refers to Umur’s men as “auxiliaryinfantry”, which may suggest that very few fought as cavalry. The Turkish boatscould not carry horses: but some local horses no doubt were available in Thrace(LBA pp.95, 96). He saw the Turks as allies, not mercenaries, because he paid them nothing:they fought for booty, slaves and moveable property. With them and his owntroops the pretender set out to rescue his wife isolated in Didymotichus andunder threat from the Bulgarians (later 1343-early 1444) —Treadgold, State p.768.


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1c. Albania: Having switched to the side of the regency, and againstCantacuzenus, the Serbians under Dushan overrun Byzantine-ruled Albania,modern Shqiperia, as the Albanians call Albania. Cantacuzenus meanwhile wasengaged in Thrace, where Umur of Aydin came to his aid with “60” ships and“6,000” Turkish troops. —D. Nicol, The Reluctant Emperor, pp. 67-68. See 1344-45. The presence of his Turkish allies allowed Kantakouzenos to turn his attentiontowards Thrace: leaving his son Manuel as governor at Veria and westernMacedonia, he marched towards Demotika, relieving the two and seeing his wifeagain after more than a year.

When Cantacuzenus’ wife, Eirene, was blockaded by the Bulgarians inDidymoteichon, Umur sailed to her aid from Asia Minor with a force of 380boats and supposedly “29,000” or “30,000” or “31,000” men (according to theemperor’s memoirs; others say 300 boats and 15,000 men). Umur succeeded infrightening the Bulgarians away (LBA p. 96; Liakopoulos, ‘Ottoman conquest’, atwww.thesis.bilkent.edu.tr/0002131.pdf).

As noted, Treadgold prefers a figure of just 6,000 Turks. But if the figure of atleast 29,000 men in 380 boats is right, then each vessel on average would havecarried 76 or more men. We may imagine the soldiers also served asoarsmen/sailors, i.e. probably there were no non-combatant rowers/sailors.

Western humanism as anti-medievalism: The Italian poet Petrarch in 1343made a list of his favourite (Latin) books. It contained almost nothing frommedieval times; all his favourites are from ancient times. Indeed it is theItalian ‘humanists’ who, in the period 1340 to 1540, will create the idea ofthe 'middle ages' … When the Italians later seek to learn Greek from Romaic exiles, theironly interest will be in so-called 'classical' (pre-Byzantine, pre-Christian)Greek texts.

1343-69:Asia Minor: Following the Turkish conquest in the early 1300s, the old Greektown of Sardis declined rapidly. It was still formally the seat of a metropolitanate(archbishopric) in 1343, when it must have been at best a large village withpossibly zero Muslim inhabitants. By 1369, however, it was “nothing more than afield of ruins” and the title of metropolitan of Sardis passed to the bishop ofnearby Philadelphia (Vryonis 1971).

1344:1a. Thrace/Bulgaria: Cantacuzenus’s Greeks and Turks finally enterDidymotichus. After subduing most of western and NW Thrace forCantacuzenus, including Stanimaka (Azenovgrad: SE of Plovdiv) and Tzepania,most of the Turks went home to Aydin. The pretender’s remaining Turksdefeated a Bulgarian attack from the north and an attack from the east by troopsof the regent Alexius Apocaucus (Fine 1994: 303; Treadgold, State p.768). See1344.1b.


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Western Thrace: The town of Komotini in the southern foothills of theRhodope range had one, or possibly even several, substantial marketsaround 1340. We know this from an incidental report by NikephorosGregoras, who recounts in 1344 that the troops of John Kantakouzenos,prior to setting out on a new military campaign, bustled about these agorai(market-squares) to buy everything they needed (Matschke in Laiou 2002:779).

1b. NW Thrace: To gain the support of Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria, the regencycedes to him the region of the upper Marica/Maritsa River, along with nineThracian towns including Philippopolis (Plovdiv), Stanimaka (Azenovgrad) andTzepania. The Bulgarians quickly occupied this territory, taking the latter twotowns from Kantakouzenos. Fine 1994: 304 notes that this territory was to remainBulgarian-ruled until the Ottoman conquest.

The megas doux and regent Alexios Apokaukos is depicted in a donorportrait in a collection of the "Works of Hippocrates" commissioned byhim in the early 1340s. Alexios is depicted in the garb of his office,wearing a richly decorated collarless silk kaftan (purple) that extends tohis ankles and the skaranikon, a ceremonial headdress - a sort of domed orcylindrical mitre or high hat (in gold and red), depicting the reigningemperor.

1c. (Or in 1343:) Anna pawns the crown jewels of Byzantium. Nicol 1993: 199 andNorwich 1996: 300 date this to August 1343.

To raise money to fight Cantacuzenus, the empress Anna pawns the crownjewels to Venice for 30,000 gold ducats or about 60,000 half-gold hyperpyra. See1347. (The crown jewels were never to return: they may have been melted downwhen Napoleon conquered Venice in 1797 . . . )

2. The west Aegean: The Ottoman Turks in the form of a flotilla of corsairsoccupied part of Venetian-ruled Naxos, killing the men and enslaving “6,000”women and children (Wikipedia 2011, under ‘John Sanudo’; John Freely, TheCyclades: Discovering the Greek Islands of the Aegean, I.B.Tauris, 2006, p.16).

3. Asia Minor: ‘The Crusade of Smyrna’. A Venetian-led naval league foughtCantacuzenus’s ally the Anatolian Turkish emirate of Aydin and [28 October1344] captured the port of Smyrna (Izmir). Venice supplied the ships, while theHospitallers of Rhodes, Cyprus and the papacy supplied the troops. Another source says Venetian Cyprus, Venice and Rhodes (the Hospitallers)put together an armada of 20 or “24” galleys [Inalcik, Maritime p. 319 says ’20;“24” is the figure in Kantakuzenos’s memoirs: Setton, Papacy and the Levant,pp.190-91] commanded by the Hospitaller Fra' Gian de Biandra. The Latinsstormed Umur's* stronghold at Smyrna in October, burning his entire navy of“over 300” boats and ships at anchor. The Italian chronicler Cortusi says “52”


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Turkish vessels were sunk, while Kantakouzenos recalled that “60” were burned(ibid.) Taking advantage of a momentary incautiousness on the part of the ‘sons ofAydın’ (Aydinoglu), the Latins took back the lower castle at Smyrna but only that.A 60-year period of uneasy cohabitation ensued between the three powers, i.e. theAydın-oglu, the Saruhan-oglu of Manisa/Magnesia and the Christians. The firstheld the upper castle of Izmir, the second Izmir's opposite coast and the thirdIzmir's port and sea-side castle. Inalcik, Maritime p.319, notes that the loss of the port and lower castle meantan end to Umur’s maritime expeditions. Now he had to go to Europe overland, andonly with the cooperation of the principalities of Sarukan and Karasi.

(*) If we may believe a Venetian source, a Venetian delegation in 1344 or 1346visited Umur, aged about 35/37, and found him enormously fat, with a stomach“like a wine cask [barrel]” (Setton, Papacy p.207; Foss, Ephesus p.152).

1344-45:1a. Thrace: Momchil, a former brigand who had been entrusted byKantakouzenos with control over the Rhodope mountains area, switched overnominally to the regency. The rebel or Bulgarian “adventurer” Momchilo, lately a governor under theRhomaniyans, declared himself independent under the regency in 1344. Hedefeated an Ottoman flotilla near Portolagos [NE of Thasos Island; SE of Xanthi]and seceded from the Byzantine Empire, proclaiming himself an independentruler in the Rhodope region and the Aegean, with the capital of his domain inwestern Thrace at Xanthi. However, he was attacked by Aydin-oglu and Romaicforces led by John VI Cantacuzenus a year later; his band, numbering a fewthousand people, was defeated and Momchil himself was killed near his capital. Kantakuzenos defeated him in 1345 – see also there - at the battle ofPeritheorion (Xanthi, Anastasioupolis) in far western Thrace, just east of theNestos River.

1b. Civil war continues. As the price for Bulgaria’s support against Cantacuzenos, as noted, the regencyfor John V Palaiologos ceded to tsar Ivan Alexander the town of Philippopolis(Plovdiv) and nine fortresses in the Rhodope Mountains in 1344 (DemetresTziovas, Greece and the Balkans: identities, perceptions and cultural encounters,Ashgate 2003, p.31). In 1345 Cantacuzenus captures Adrianople from the regency, and withOttoman (not Aydin-oglu) aid, he takes control as far as the Black Sea coast ofThrace. Seeing this, and judging that the pretender is more of a Turkophile orless of a Turkophobe than the regent, Umur also sends some of his Aydin Turksto join in on Cantacuzenus’s side. They all march to Constantinople, where theregent Apocaukas has been murdered (June 1345 or 11 July), but they find theother members of the regency still in firm control of the impregnable city(Treadgold, State p.769).

2. Macedonia: Taking advantage of the Byzantine civil war, the Serbs underDushan capture Serres and reach the Aegean coast.


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Dushan now begins to call himself, in aspirational terms, fere totius imperiiRomani dominus, ‘of almost (fere) the whole of the Roman empire, lord’ (Dushan,letter written at Serres addressed to the Doge of Venice, quoted in Norwich 1996:308: Vasiliev has imperii Romaniae: ‘of the empire of Romania’). This was ratherextravagant; but certainly, by conquering as far east as Mt Athos and the coast ofNE Macedonia, he had indeed split the small Roman ‘empire’. See next. Bartusis: “The most tangible consequence of the [renewed] civil war [in theempire] was the the conquest of [most of] Macedonia by the Serbs under StefanDushan” (LBA p.94). Dushan’s Serbs plundered and occupied nearly all of Macedonia and Epirus.By the end of 1345, only Thessalonica, held by the Zealots, and Veria, possiblystill holding out under Manuel Kantakouzenos, remained outside Serbiancontrol. By this time Cantacuzenus or his allies control Thessaly, and in Macedonia theregion around Thessalonica but not Thessalonica itself, and Thrace. The regencyholds just Thessalonica, the Capital and some islands.

Stefan Dusan of Serbia conquered the Greek fortresses of eastern or north-easternMacedonia as far as the Aegean Sea in 1344-1345. The entire region, includingMount Athos and its hinterland with numerous monastic properties, remained anintegral part of the Serbian Empire until the battle of the Marica in September 1371. Cfnext (1345). This also cut off forever the land route between Byzantium’s two majorcentres, Thessaloniki and Constantinople. From now until the definitiveabandonment of Thessaloniki in 1423, the empire’s main communications wereby sea. In 1346 the farthest one could ride from Constantinople across imperialterritory was the 350 or so km WNW into western Thrace, to the easternRhodope Mountains (today’s SW Bulgaria).

Given the successes of the Serbs, the following statement, in a letter dated 1345from the young theologian Demetrius Kydones to Kantakuzenos sounds likevain-glory. (His attitude had cnaged by 1361: see there.) “Here in Macedonia we have big cities, [and] an army capable of beating thebarbarians. … It is still only the name of Macedonia that terrifies barbarians,especially when they recall Alexander [the Great] and the few [sic!!]Macedonians who once occupied Asia” (Kydones Ep.8, quoted by Karathanasis,in Burke and Scott 2000: 112). Alexander, of course, led an army of . . . over100,000 men.

3. fl. Nicephorus Gregoras, the theologian and historian. He was appointed toconduct the unsuccessful negotiations for a union of the Greek and Latinchurches with the ambassadors of Pope John XXII (1333). Gregoras subsequentlytook an important part in the Hesychast controversy, in which he violentlyopposed Gregorius Palamas, the chief supporter of the sect.


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His chief work is his Roman [Byzantine] History, in 37 books, of the years 1204to 1359. It thus partly supplements and partly continues the work of GeorgePachymeres, which covers the period to 1308.

1344-46:Anna and the regency called on the help of the Turks on five occasions (Nicol,Lady p. 88). As we have seen, Cantacuzenus also used Turkish aid: initially fromthe Aydin-oglu, later from the Osmanlis (Ottomans). See 1346.

1345:Thrace: Umur returned to the aid of Kantakuzenos in spring 1345, with an armyof reportedly “20,000” horsemen (Kantakouzenos’ own figure: Bartusis p.96; Fine1994, pp. 303–304; Treadgold 1997, p. 768). After raiding Bulgaria, the alliesturned against the Bulgarian bandit-lord Momchil of Rhodope. Momchil hadgathered a substantial force of 300 horse and 5,000 foot (or “over 4,000 armedmen” if we follow Gregoras: Fine loc.cit.). Exploiting the power vacuum in theRhodope, an effective no man's land between the Serbs, Bulgarians andByzantines, he had set himself up as a quasi-independent prince. On 7 July 1345,the two armies clashed at Peritheorion, near Xanthi. Momchil's army wascrushed, and he himself fell in the field.

At Peritheorion/Anastasiopolis [7 July 1345] the Cantacuzenist-Aydinoglu armydrew up in three taxeis or divisions: (1) John Asen—a Byzantine, not a Bulgarianas his name may suggest, and a relative of Kantakouzenos’s wife—took the leftflank with the Byzantine/Latin heavy cavalry (kataphraktoi); (2) Kantakouzenoscommanded the centre with “picked” [Gk logades] Byzantine and Turkish troops;and (3) Umur Pasha of Aydin led the right wing with his Turkish horse-archers(Bartusis LBA p.256).— If there were “6,000” Turks present [see above – 1343], then Kantakouzenos’swhole army possibly numbered of the order of 8,000 men; but it would havebeen larger again if we can believe there were “20,000” Turks present(Kantakouzenos’s figure: Bartusis p.96; Fine1994: 304).— No figures are given for the number of ethnic Greek (Byzantine) troopspresent in the Cantacuzenist army, but if they could be deployed both in thecentre and on one wing, then they can hardly have been fewer than 1,000. Let usimagine then that Umur’s men comprised 1,500 horsemen and 4,500 infantry (allthe latter in the centre). If so, we can picture, although it is pure speculation, thatthere were say 500 Greek and Latin cavalry on the left flank; say 1,000 Greekinfantry alongside (let us guess) 4,500 Turkish foot in the centre; and 1,500Turkish horse on the right flank.

2. Macedonia: As noted, in 1345 the Serbs under Stefan Dushan, after a longsiege, seized Serres [25 September 1345] , inland NE of Thessalonica, along withthe Aegean coastal sector around Mt Athos, cutting the empire in two. (Part ofthe Chalcidic peninsula remained in Greek hands.) The most easterly towncaptured by the Serbs was Kavalla (Fine 1994: 306). The following year Dushan has himself crowned – 16 April 1346 in Skopje - as(putative) Emperor "of Rascia and Romania", meaning Serbia and Byzantium.


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Even so, he allowed the monks of Mt Athos to mention the Byzantine emperor’sname first in their prayers, ahead of his own (Fine, ibid.)

The central administration at Mt Athos passed into the hands of the Serbs, whodistributed the lands of the Protaton with lavish generosity. This stirred theRhomaniyan authorities – and particularly the Patriarchate in Constantinople –to action; but the Serbian domination of Mount Athos lasted, with only a singlebrief interruption, until 1371. Byzantium retained Thessalonica itself: loyal to the regency; and Thessaly:controlled by the Cantacuzenists.

3. Thessalonica: Upon the murder of Alexios Apokaukos in the capital, his sonJohn pursues an independent policy, seeking to join the Kantakouzenian side inexchange for confirmation of his rule in Th.; but revived Zealot agitation leads toa preemptive riot, as a result of which John and 100 city notables are brutallymurdered; under one Andreas Palaiologos, the Zealot regime becomes moreradical and staunchly anti-Kantakouzenian. The acropolis in a late Byzantine city offered security to its governors. Theacropolis of Thessalonica, for example, played this role. The grand primikerios*John Apokaukos had a residence (oikia) in Thessalonica, from which he governedthe city. When relations with the Zealots worsened in the summer of 1345,however, he stayed in the acropolis in the NE sector of the city. —Bazirkis, inTalbot ed., ‘Late Byzantine Thessalonike’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 2003; accessedonline 2007.

(*) The megas primikerios was a high official in charge of palace ceremonies.Presumably Apokaukos had held this post earlier in Constantinople.

Zealot Revolt

In 1345 there was a plot by the imperial governor to surrender Thessalonica toCantacuzenus. He had the leader of the Zealots, Michael Palaeologus*, killed. Butthis caused even greater violence (Fine 1994: 308). Led now by Andrew(Andreas) Palaeologus*, the Zealots overpowered the reaction, as described bychief minister Demetrius Cydones: “… one after another the prisoners were hurled from the walls of the citadeland hacked to pieces by the mob of the Zealots assembled below. Then followeda hunt for all the members of the upper classes: they were driven through the streetslike slaves, with ropes round their necks - here a servant dragged his master,there a slave his purchaser, while the peasant struck the strategus [army officer]and the labourer beat the soldier (i.e. the pronoiar).”

(*) Neither man has been connected to the imperial family of this name.

4. Ottoman rule reaches the Sea of Marmara: The Ottomans already had severaltoeholds on the Sea of Marmara. In 1345 or 1346, taking advantage of its internalconflicts, the Ottoman leader Orhan annexed Karas/Karesi, the emirate


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bordering the Dardanelles, and gained control of the area between the Gulf ofEdremit or Adrymittium and Kapdag (Cyzicus) (Shaw 1976: 15). This put theOttomans in full control of the Asian shore of the Sea of Marmara. Orhan thus put himself in a position to end the lucrative monopoly enjoyed bythe beylik of Aydin, that of providing troops to competing Byzantine factions inThrace and at Constantinople. The Ottomans replaced Aydin as the principal ally ofthe Byzantine emperor John VI Cantacuzenus. Cf 1346.

1345-46:Eastern Aegean: Seizure of Chios by the Genoese who rule until 1566. While the Holy League was battling Catancuzenus’s ally Umur at Smyrna, theGenoese exploited the fighting to take (1346) Chios from the regents, weakeningthem further (Treadgold, State p.770). The Doge in Genoa borrows money from Genoese aristocrats to equip asubstantial* fleet of 25 or 29 galleys manned by 6,000 ‘troops’ under admiralSimone Vignoso. (Average: 240 men per vessel; if, say, 148 in each vessel weremariners, then we have 90+ soldiers also embarked on each vessel.**) Theylanded on 14 June 1346. The Rhomaniyan governor of Chios, Zubos, withdrawsto the kastro (citadel) for three months until persuaded to accept generous termson 12 or 16 September 1346. The terms include the continuation of the almostunique rights and privileges of the Chian (local Greek) nobility and theirexemption from direct taxation and that certain monasteries would retain theirfortunes and property. In return, the Chians are to become Genoese citizens, pay7,000 hyperpera (but for three years only), hand over their fortress and take theoath of allegiance to Genoa (Long 1998). See 1363. Having received the surrender of Chios, Vignoso led his troops to theAnatolian coast, the beylik of Sarukan, where they took both Old and NewPhocaea by 20 September (and with it the alum mines). Setton calls this a“startling” success, one that appeared to have restored the Genoese commercialestablishment in the Levant (Papacy, p.207).

(*) In 1424 when a “powerful” fleet was desired, the Venetian Senate voted toarm 25 galleys (Lane, Venetian Ships p.254).

(**) The prescribed crew of a standard galley was “212” men in 1412 (Lane,Venetian Ships p.254). Cf the Venetian galley crew of AD 1561: 10 officers, about65 sailors, gunners and other staff, plus 138 rowers: total 213 (Wikipedia, 2011,‘Galley’). So in the expedition of 1345-46 it is possible that over 90 men per vessel(240-148 = 92) were specialist non-rowing marines or soldiers.

1345-66: Italy-Provence: The first 'humanist' epistolary or letter collection:letters in Latin by Petrarch, in imitation of Cicero.

Serbia had emerged by this time as the dominant power in the Balkans. Asnoted, from 1346 its king Stephen (Stefan) Urosh IV Dushan, r. 1331-55, beganpretentiously to style himself 'Tsar [emperor: basileus] of the Serbs [Serbias:Rascians] and Greeks [Romanias]'. In Latin documents: Imperator Rasciae et


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Romaniae. In Serbian: ‘Car Srba I Grka’ (Boskovic p.1). Dushan politely dominatedthe true “Greek” (Romaic, Byzantine) emperors, John V Palaeologus (to 1347)and John VI Cantacuzenus, 1347-54.

STATES AND CITIES IN WESTERN EURASIA AND NORTH AFRICAON THE EVE OF THE BLACK DEATHAfter McEvedy, New Atlas p.89.

Tracking from the east, the largest cities in 1346 were:

a. Tabriz, in the Mongol-Persian Ilkhanate. After 1335, the khanate began todisintegrate rapidly, and split up into several rival successor states, mostprominently the Jalayirids. Tabriz was ruled by the Cubanid/Chobanid house. Itspopulation may have been of the order of 250,000 around 1390 and presumablymore than that in 1346 (Dunn, Ibn Battuta 1989 p.101). Lesser cities in the former Ilkhanate were: Herat under the Karts/Kartids,Nishapur of the Sarbardars, Yazd of the Muzaffarids, Shiraz of the Indjids/Injuids,Isfahan (Injuids), Basra (Jalayirids), Wasit (Jalayirids), Baghdad of the Jalayirids,and Sultaniyah (Chobanid). Italics = ruling houses contending for the Ilkhanate. The key trade route ran from Samarkand to Nishapur, then to Sultaniyah andTabriz. From the latter goods were carried to Christian (Greek) Trebizond on theBlack Sea coast.

Iran remained divided until the arrival (1381) of Timur of Samarkand, who isvariously described as of Mongol or Turkic origin. After establishing a powerbase in Transoxiana, he invaded Iran in 1381 and conquered it piece by piece. Hissuccessors, the Timurids, maintained a hold on most of Iran until 1452, whenthey lost the bulk of it to the ‘Black Sheep’ Turkmen.

b. Cairo of the Mamluks, probably the largest city west of India. Lesser cities inthe Mamluk Eqyptian empire were Mecca, Damascus, Damietta (a port on Niledelta coast), Mahalla (ditto) and Alexandria. Cairo around 1325 may have had at least 450,000 and perhaps over 500,000people (Dunn loc.cit..; also Maya Shatzmiller, Labour in the medieval Islamic world,Brill 1994 p.60, citing Dols). "This city of Cairo has a population greater than thatof all Tuscany," wrote the Italian traveller Frescobaldi of his visit in 1384, "andthere is a street which has by itself more people than all of Florence” (quoted inDunn 1989: 45: no doubt a very long street!). [Tuscany in area is about 23,000 sqkm; applying a modest density figure (post-Black Death) of 10 per sq km we get230,000 people – so Frescobaldi’s estimation looks credible.]

c. Constantinople of the Romans (‘Byzantines’, ‘Greeks’). If the Black Deathreduced the population to 50,000 by 1350 [Karl Kaser, The Balkans and the NearEast: Introduction to a Shared History, LIT Verlag Münster, 2010 p.196], then thecity may have had some 150,000 people before 1347. At the end in 1453 it was just45-50,000 (Marios Philippides & Walter Hanak, The Siege and the Fall ofConstantinople in 1453, Ashgate, 2011, p.179, citing Jacoby and others).


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d. The north Italian cities of Venice, Florence, Genoa and Milan. Venice aside,they were nominally part of the so-called ‘Holy Roman [German] Empire’ but inpractice independent republics. Estimates based on military enrolments put the population of Venice at 160,000in about 1300 (Catherine Killerby, Sumptuary law in Italy, 1200-1500, OUP 2002p.43, citing Lane). The population of the “dogado”, i.e. the city of Venice and thenarrow coastal strip on the Italian mainland, fell to about 80,000 after the Plagueof 1347-48 (F C Lane, Venice, a maritime republic, JHU Press, 1973 p.175).Presumably it had recovered to about 100,000 by 1400. Genoa’s population fell after 1315 but it was still around 100,000 when theBlack Death arrived (Robert S. Gottfried, The black death: natural and humandisaster in medieval Europe, Simon and Schuster 1985 p.43) Northern Italy had many sizeable urban centres of the second and third rank,many more than any other region in all of Wewstern Eurasia-north Africa. Some werenominally part of the German (‘Holy Roman’) Empire, while others (notably inthe lower Po Valley) were theoretically part of the (Italian) Papal State.* Milan led the Lombard ‘cities’ (in our terms, just large towns) against theGerman Emperors and defeated them, gaining independence (battles ofLegnano, 1176, and Parma, 1248). At the time of the Black Death its populationwas close to 100,000 according to Robertt Gottfried (loc.cit. p.48: no source cited);or over 100,000 if we follow William Naphy & Andrew Spicer (The Black Death: ahistory of plagues, 1345-1730, Tempus 2002, p.35). Meanwhile the Republic ofVenice, Pisa [some 40,000 people in 1347] and Genoa were able to conquer theirnaval empires around the Mediterranean sea (in 1204 Venice conquered one-fourth of Byzantine Empire by diverting the Fourth Crusade). Towns such asParma, Ferrara, Verona, Padua, Lucca, Mantua and others were able to createstable states at the expense of their neighbours, some of which lasted untilmodern times.

(*) From 1305 to 1378 the Popes resided in Avignon, in modern-dayFrance. A total of seven popes reigned at Avignon; all were French, and allwere increasingly under the influence of the French crown.

e. Ghent in Flanders, nominally part of France. The wool industry created thefirst European industrialised zone in Ghent from the 11th Century on. Itpopulation was perhaps 50,000 or 65,000 in 1400 (María Jesús Viguera et al., IbnKhaldun: the Mediterranean in the 14th century: rise and fall of Empires, Seville:Fundación El legado andalusì, 2006, p.193, citing Fourquin; also Eric Mielants,The origins of capitalism and the "rise of the West", Temple University Press, 2007,p.25, citing Prevenier). Flanders’ autonomous urban communes were instrumental in defeating aFrench attempt at annexation (1300–1302), finally defeating the French in theBattle of the Golden Spurs (11 July 1302), near Kortrijk. Two years later, theuprising was defeated and Flanders remained part of the French Crown. From1405 to 1482 Flanders shared the same rulers as Burgundy.

f. Paris in the Valois kingdom of France (Capetian dynasty until 1328). It hadperhaps 100,000 people around 1325 (Thomas Bergin & Jennifer Speake, eds.


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Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation, Infobase Publishing, 2004,p.360). For the year 1400, half a century after the Black Death, estimates rangefrom as low as 80,000 to as high as 210,000: averaging the two we get 145,000(Hendrik Spruyt, The sovereign state and its competitors: an analysis of systemschange, Princeton University Press, 1996, p.87, citing various sources). Lesser cities included Toulouse and Rouen. In the so-called ‘Hundred Years War’, 1337-1453, an artefact of the historians,France was generally supported by Castile, Aragon and Genoa. England wassupported by the ‘Holy Roman Empire’, Flanders and the duchy of Burgundy [ade facto independent part of the Holy Roman Empire, today part of easternFrance].

Other strong powers in Christendom were Castile (Cordoba and Toledo), Aragon(Barcelona and Valencia), the loose confederation called the ‘German Empire’(Nuremburg, Cologne, Liege) and the Angevin Kingdom of Sicily/S Italy(Naples, Messina, Palermo). Hungary too was quite strong, but little urbanised. Other Muslim powers were the Marinid Sultanate of Morocco (Marrakesh,Rabat/Sale and Fez) and the Hafsid Caliphate of Tunis (Tunis and Kairouan). The great Khanate of the Golden Horde or Kipchak Empire in our Rumania-Ukraine-east Russia was militarily very powerful, but little urbanised.

The Aegean Sector

The Byzantine Empire was all but defunct. Having lost all its Asian territories,except for a few isolated fortresses, Byzantium now ruled only three parcels ofterritory in Europe: 1. Constantinople and southern Thrace: its largest domain; 2.Thessalonica and north-central Greece (as it now is): but Epirus and Thessaly willbe lost to the Serbs 1348-49; and 3. an isolated outpost in the southernPeloponnesus - about half of the Peloponnesus or Morea: capital at Monemvasia.Two other outposts may be mentioned: the isolated city of Philadelphiasurrounded by Turkish domains in inland west-central Asia Minor, and the largeeastern Aegean island of Lesbos. The Serbs were the strongest state in the region, or apparently the strongest.Treadgold 1997: 777 calls Dushan’s empire “jerry-built”. The Serbs controlled atongue of land, including the peninsula of Mt Athos, that extended to the Aegeancoast. This separated Greek Thessalonica from Greek Constantinople. After 1349,the Serbs controlled territories on all sides of Thessaloniki including the south. See 1348,1349. Sicily, Genoa and Venice dominated the southern Aegean. The Knights of StJohn or "Hospitallers" held Rhodes, offshore from the emirate of Menteshe. Western Asia Minor was divided between 10 different ghazi emirates, one ofwhich was the Osmanli or Ottomans [capital at Bursa since 1326], namely: 1.Ottomans, capital at Bursa; 2. Karasi - opposite the Dardanelles, now reduced tothe Çanakkale-Edremit/Adramyttium sector and under continuing threat fromthe Ottomans: see 1346; 3. Sarukhan or Saruhan, at Manisa in the west: nearest toLesbos; 4. Aydin, at Birgi and Izmir-Smyrna; 5. Menteshe (Milas, ancientMiletus); 6. inland Germiyan, with its seat at Kutahya in west-central Anatolia; 7.Hamid or Hamidili (at Egridir); 8. Tekke (south coast - Antalya); 9. Jandar or the


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Chandarids, in the north: at Kastamonu near the Black Sea coast; and 10.Karaman, at Laranda near Konya.

Slavery

The young Demetrios Kydones (aged 22: afterwards Byzantine chief minister)gives us a very fragmentary description of a small town in Byzantine Thrace,where he spent a short time at the beginning of September 1346. He mentions itsmarket and reports on the daily events: an oxcart that gets stuck in the muck ofthe street, a quarrel over borrowed money and the interest demanded, a sale ofslaves “who were surely war captives”. —Thus K Matschke, ‘The Late ByzantineUrban Economy, Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries’, in Laiou ed. The EconomicHistory of Byzantium, From the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, 2002. Bartusis notes that in late Byzantine times the army did not enslave itsprisoners (LBA p.249; also Finlay, Empire, 1854 II: 536, citing Kantakouzenos: seein the chronology under 1336-37). It is more likely therefore that these slaves hadbeen brought in by civilian slave-traders, e.g. ‘Tatar’ (Kipchak) slaves broughtoverland from the Danube through Bulgaria or by sea from Genoese Kaffa. Wedo not know whether the buyers were local Greeks (unlikely) or Muslim traders(likely). Speaking generally, if any Byzantine bought a slave, he was a rich man; butpractically all the buyers were Muslim traders from Egypt and elsewhere. Forslavery had ceased to be very important in Byzantium after AD 800. The Al-'Iqdal-Farid of ca. 900 mentions the Byzantine slaves' primary role as being in therealm of domestic services, and they were also used on monastic properties intothe 900s. But they practically disappeared from Byzantium after the middle ofthe 11th century, “except for the case of a few domestics, enfranchised bytestaments”. —Michael Kaplan, ‘Slavery’, in Vauchez et al. eds, Encyc of theMiddle Ages, 2005 p.1360.

The prices of slaves sold at Latin Cyprus, Venetian Crete and ByzantineConstantinople in the period 1350-62 have been collated by Morrisson &Cheyney (in Laiou 2002).— Constantinople 1350: median 45 hyperpyra. Highest: 63 for a slave woman nottagged “Tatar” (almost all others are tagged Tatar). Lowest: 26 for a “Tatarslave”, by implication a man. In 1362 the range was 50-70 hyperpya (three cases):more expensive than Cyprus in 1360.— Cyprus 1360: average 25-30 hyperpyra (hp) or Byzantine gold coins.— Crete in the 1380s: males slaves averaged 64-90 hyperpyra; female slavesaveraged 95-96 hp.

For comparison: an ordinary horse cost 12-14 hyperpyra in this period. So atvarious times, a slave cost the same as four horses. Buying power can also be illustrated by listing the annual salaries of soldiers inthis period: Byzantine senior officers were paid 150-400 hp; Cretan (Venetian)“mounted captains” 240 hp; Cretan foot captains 168 hp; and Cretan mountedsergeants 35 hp. Civilian incomes: Cretan doctor 250 hp, Cretan constructionworker 100; domestic servant in Constantinople 14 hp. The dowry of a middle-class daughter could exceed 100 hp.


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1346:Serbia: Dushan was crowned Emperor of the Serbs “and Romans”* (Byzantines)on Easter Sunday, 16 April 1346, probably in Skopje. The title tsar had replaced‘king’ (kral) in 1345.* Serbian, Greek and Albanian nobles attended, andchroniclers (notably Gregoras) contrasted the grandeur of the event with theimpoverishment of the Byzantines. Dushan's crown was bejewelled gold, while theRhomaniyan Emperor was reduced (see 1347) to ‘jewels’ made of coloured glassset in gilded leather. The dishes at Kantakouzenos’s coronation were of pewter and clayinstead of gold and silver (Gregoras, cited by Parani p.29; Nicol, Lady p.75).Dushan's imperial majesty was underscored by an ecclesiastical element, anautocthonous Patriarch of the Serbian church (independent since 1219 but nowfor the first time called ‘patriarch’); the Bulgarian patriarch was also present. Theseat of the Serbian patriarch was Pech/Peje, in what is now western Kosovo.Needless to say, Byzantium did not recognise Dushan’s imperial title (Fine 1994:309).

(*) 'Tsar [emperor: basileus kai autokrator] of the Serbs [Serbias] and Greeks[Romanias]'. In Latin documents: Imperator Rasciae** et Romaniae. InSerbian: ‘Car Srba i Grka’ (Boskovic p.1). Kral derives etymologically from‘Karolus’, i.e. Charlemagne.

(**) Rascia (Serbian Rashka) was the region around Rash, located in far SESerbia on the Serbian side of today’s Serbian-Kosovo border. Rash was theseat of the strongest of the early Serbian chiefs (zhupans). ‘Rascia’ came tobe used by Westerners as the name of the Serbian state, when it emrgedunder Stefan Nemanja, 1109-1199. The Byzantines always called Serbia‘Serbia’. Note that Dushan’s capital was at Skopje, not Rash.

2. Adrianople: Cantacuzenus, aged 51, allows himself to be finally crowned on 19May 1346 in Adrianople. (A further crowning took place in Constantinople thenext year.) The ceremony was performed by the patriarch of Jerusalem becausethe patriarch of Constantinople, John XIV Calecas/Kalekas, was on the opposingside. Adrianople was chosen because it was the largest town that Cantacuzenuscontrolled. Patriarch Lazarus of Jerusalem solemnly crowns Cantacuzene at Adrianople; aCouncil of Thracian bishops and those Metropolitans who had fledConstantinople assemble there and pronounce the deposition of Calecas on thegrounds that he had ordained condemned heretics. Thus Calecas is no longerconsidered the legitimate Patriarch by that camp, and Cantacuzene gives Lazarusa sort of ad interim authority.

3. Thrace: Balica, the Wallachian leader of Dobruja, i.e. the Danube delta,interferes in the internal struggles of the Empire. He sends 1,000 soldiers underthe command of Dobrotici and his brother Theodore to support the regent Annaof Savoy, mother of John V Paleologus, against John VI Cantacuzenus, pretenderto the imperial throne.


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Turks on both sides: The Ottomans make a treaty with the Byzantine pretenderCantacuzenus. Orhan led 5,500 Ottoman horsemen across the Dardanelles insupport of John Cantacuzene (Shaw I:16). Orhan came across the Sea of Marmarawith a fleet of 30 galleys and boats: average 183 men per vessel. They ejected theWallachians from the Black Sea coast NW of Constantinople. In return, emirOrhan received the pretender’s teenage daughter Theodora as a bride (the marriage tookplace at Selymbria in 1346). (Nicolle 2008: 40; Freely 2008: 116). John’s rival the empress Anna responded by hiring 6,000 Turkish troops fromthe emir of Saruhan, but, after pillaging in Thrace, they deserted to Cantacuzenus(Treadgold, State p. 770).

Orhan, c.1324-c.1360, had defeated the Byzantine army at Battle of Pelacanon orMaltepe [above: 1329], effectively ending Byzantine rule in western Anatolia. Hetransformed the Ottoman principality into a state, taking over Byzantinegovernmental and military machinery centred at Bursa. Declaring independence,he threw off vassalage to Seljuks and Ilkhanids, minted his own coins, and hadhis own name recited in Friday prayers. - Used mainly peaceful means to takeover the neighbouring Turkoman (herder-Turks) principality of Karesi. - Enlisted‘Greek’ (Rhomaioi) officers and men could serve in the Ottoman army without therequirement to convert.

4. Asia: The Ottomans began the gradual envelopment of the other Anatolianemirates in the middle 14th century. The first to fall to the Ottomans was Karasiin the region from Bergama-Pergamum to the Asian coast of the Dardanelles in1346 (or 1345) (1346 according to Nicolle, Ottomans p.39). Around 1346, taking advantage of an internal struggle for the throne in 1345-1346, the Ottomans annexed the adjacent emirate of Karasi thus gaining fullaccess to the Aegean Sea. Orhan, who had a fleet of at least 36 vessels as early asthe 1330s, thereby acquired the important fleet of the Karasi Turks who,relatively more experienced in naval warfare, began to collaborate successfullywith the Ottomans by organising raids on the Greek littoral. The Karesi domains extended to the Asian shore of the Dardanelles, so thisbrought the Ottomans within sight of Byzantium’s European shore.


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Above: Modern Istanbul showing Hagia Sophiawith the later minarets deleted.

5. Earthquake: the eastern semi-dome and arch of Hagia Sophia collapsed on 19May 1346. (The earthquake that caused the fatal cracks occurred earlier: inOctober 1344.) The eastern buttressing half-dome collapsed together with thecorresponding quarter of the main dome. The repairs would take six (or eight)years. This was the third collapse in the building’s history, again caused by anearthquake. This time about a third of the east part of the dome was involved,together with its main supporting arch. Reconstruction was finished by 1354, butbecause of lack of funds, the work was limited and was carried out carelessly,leaving obvious signs on the building. The work was botched due to shortage of money although the regent Anne ofSavoy raised a considerable sum. Replacing the 13 ribs of the dome without newcentring resulted in the present ‘jog’ in the cornice. As a precaution, the stones ofthe northeast pendentive [support rib] were clamped in iron. Revealingly, the architects were two Latins, namely Georgios SynadenosAstras, called ‘Faciolatus’ [Latin for “I build (it) wide”], an ethnic Latin (perhapsItalian) Byzantine subject from Lesbos who became governor of Lemnos, andGiovanni Peralta, a Sicilo-Catalan [others say Italian] employed at the court.—See chapter by Matschke, in Nevra Necipoglu ed., Byzantine Constantinople:Monuments, Topography and Everyday Life, Brill, 2001; also W. Emerson and R.L.Van Nice ‘The Construction of the Second Dome and its Repairs’, Archeology 14no. 3, Autumn 1951, Cambridge, Mass. p.163, pp. 169-170.

6. The Genoese re-conquered Chios and the port of Phocaea in 1346, as we notedearlier, and the island of Lesbos in 1354.


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France: During the Battle of Crécy in 1346, “6,000” Ligurian (Genoese)crossbowmen were deployed by the French in the first line. But theEnglish longbow could be fired at a faster rate than the crossbow. When thecrossbowmen began to come under heavy fire from the English bowmen,the Genoese commander, Ottone Doria, ordered his troops to retreat.

Territory in 1346Map in Nicolle 2008: 39.

The Asian side of the Dardanelles was in Ottoman hands [see 1352], butByzantium controlled a section of the southern littoral of the Sea of Marmaraitself in the greater Cyzicus region, from Biga in the west to near Lopadion(Ulubad) in the east. The town of Lopadion itself had fallen to the Turks in 1327(D M Nicol, Last Centuries, p. 145). Thus the western end of Lake Ulubad (GkApolyant) was Greek while the eastern end was Turkish. Also in Asia Byzantium still held a third or so of the Optimaton peninsula(classical “Mesothynia”) in Asia opposite Constantinople. All else was Ottoman. Constantinople controlled the whole European shore of the Dardanelles andthe northern shore of the Sea of Marmara; also the Aegean islands includingLesbos and Chios (until 1346: see below). Lesbos lay offshore from ex-Karesiterritory now in Ottoman hands. Chios lay offshore from the emirate of Saruhan. Byzantium also held a mainland enclave at Phocaea, surrounded by Saruhan.The Genoese held the port of Smyrna, which also marked the intersection pointof Saruhan and Aydin: Saruhan controlled the coast north of Smyrna, Aydin thecoast south of it. To the east, inland, there was a Byzantine enclave around thetown of Philadelphia.

From 1346:Thrace: Kantakouzenos' Turkish allies pillaged parts of Bulgarian Thrace in 1346,1347, 1349, 1352 and 1354. To this were added the ravages of the Black Deathfrom 1347. The Bulgarians' attempts to repel the invaders met with repeatedfailure, and Ivan Alexander's third son and co-emperor, Ivan Asen IV, was killedin battle against the Turks in 1349.

1346-53:The marriage of Orhan (aged 65*) and Kantakouzenos’s daughter Theodora(aged 14!) brought seven years of peace. —Donald M. Nicol, The ReluctantEmperor: A Biography of John Cantacuzene, Cambridge University Press, 2002 p.78.- To be more exact: Orhan did not fight Cantacuzenus; but his men raidedByzantine territory loyal to the Regency. Cf 1353: raids from Tyzmpe/Çimpe, and 1354: loss of Gallipoli.

(*) His fourth marriage. Curiously, although he married first as early as1299, his eldest known son (Suleyman) was born in 1316.


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Theodora Cantacuzene, as the wife of Orhan, clung tenaciously to her Christianreligion despite many attempts to convert her to Islam. She became, says Nicol(Lady p.74, quoting the emperor’s memoirs) a tower of strength to the Christian‘prisoners and slaves’ in her husband’s realm – Christians remained of course themajority among his free subjects– and a shining example of Christian virtue toall. And when Orhan dies in 1362 she will hurry back (still only 30 years old) toConstantinople (Nicol, Reluctant Emperor, p.146).

1347:1. End of the civil war: In February John VI Cantacuzenus, with 1,000 troops, islet into the capital by his supporters there, through a tunnel they have dug underthe city walls. The dowager empress Anna negotiates an agreement wherebyCantacuzenus becomes senior emperor while her son, 15 years old John VPalaiologos, remains junior emperor (Treadgold, State p. 770).— Anna’s council was convened on 1 February 1347 and resulted in thecondemnation of Calecas and a reaffirmation of the Tome of 1341. The next day,Cantacuzene would make a triumphant formal entrance into the city. However,the issue of contention between the Domestic and John V was yet to be resolved.Empress Anna sent Palamas himself to act as mediator, a task in which he hadgreat success: Cantacuzene and John were soon proclaimed co-Emperors. — Cantacuzene makes his entry into the capital, as Calecas (the patriarch) is nowno longer an issue. Anna does not yet succumb, and barricades herself into thepalace. Only at the intervention of her son John V, then aged 15, does she send anambassador: Gregory Palamas himself. This time Gregory succeeds completelyin bringing the two sides together. Cantacuzene and John V are recognised as co-Emperors, effectively returning things to the political regime prior to autumn1341. Cantacuzenus is subsequently re-crowned (21 May) as John VI with imitation(glass) crown jewels, the real crown jewels having been pawned to Venice (byAnna: see above under 1343). St Sophia being in disrepair, the crowning tookplace at the Blachernai palace. The boy-emperor John V was married toCantacuzenus’s daughter a week later. At the banquets that followed, the winewas served in pewter vessels and the food from plates of cheap earthenware(Gregoras, cited by Norwich, Decline p.306; and Nicol, Lady p.75).

Poem by Cavafy:

Of Coloured Glass

I'm very moved by one detail in the coronation at Vlachernai* of John Kantakuzinos and Irini, daughter of Andronikos Asan.** Because they had only a few precious stones (our afflicted empire was extremely poor) they wore artificial ones: numerous pieces of glass, red, green, or blue. I find nothing humiliating or undignified in those little pieces of coloured glass. Just the opposite: they seem


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a sad protest against the unjust misfortune of the couple being crowned, symbols of what they deserved to have, of what surely it was right that they should have at their coronation - a Lord John Kantakuzinos, a Lady Irini, daughter of Andronikos.

(*) The Blachernai palace.(**) Kantakouzenos’s wife, married before 1320. Irene’s fatherAndronicus Asen was the exiled son of the Bulgarian tsar Ivan IIIAsen (d. 1303: the Asen dynasty had been ousted in 1280). Hergrandmother was a Palaiologina.

1b. Helena Kantakuzene, aged 13 or 14, marries the co-emperor John VPalaeologus, aged 15. The marriage took place on 28 May or 29 May 1347, i.e.immediately before the Plague began to rage. Helena was about 13 years old,while her groom was a month short of his 15th birthday. Peace only lasted until1352 when her husband resumed hostilities against her father.

2. BLACK DEATH: The plague strikes Constantinople in the spring [aboutApril] of 1347, and sweeps on to the West. One victim was AndronicusCantacuzenus, the new co-emperor’s youngest son.

1347-54:JOHN VI Kantakouzenos (Cantacuzenus)

Formerly general of the army. Aged about 52 when he finally assumedthe throne. Wife: Irene, a granddaughter of the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen III. Hiseldest daughter Theodora was married to the Ottoman emir Orhan.His second daughter Maria married Nicephorus II Doukas, despot of


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Epiros. The youngest, Helena, married co-emperor John VPalaiologos.

“Although [his] reign saw Byzantium decline from a viable state to awreck, most of the fault was not his. . . . Without the Black Death,Cantacuzenus would probably have defeated the jerry-built empire of[the Serbian] Stephen Dushan, regained the upper hand and keptcontrol of his Turks”, or so supposes Treadgold 1997: 777. (The loss ofcontrol alludes to the seizure of the Gallipoli peninsula by Turksofficially fighting on his side.)

Kantakuzenos was not dealt a good hand. The civil war had exhausted the publictreasury and brought about significant territorial losses: Chios and Phocea to theGenoese, Philippopolis [Plovdiv] to the Bulgarians, and Albania and parts ofThessaly and Macedonia (around Serres) to the Serbs (Treadgold 1997: 770).

1347-48:Mt Athos: Women normally remained outside the Mountain with its all-malemonasteries. Nevertheless Helen or Jelena of Bulgaria, the wife of the Serbiantsar Stefan Dusan, accompanied him throughout a lengthy four-month residence,end of 1347-start of 1348, in Athos (where they were taking refuge from thePlague: see next). Helen’s husband had, however, recently conquered Serres andits surrounding territory, so perhaps force majeure played its part (Fine 1994: 306;Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, 1958: 620).

1347-49:THE BLACK DEATH or bubonic plague spread to the Black Sea from centralAsia, and thence on Genoese ships to Constantinople (spring 1347: before July),Mameluk Alexandria, Sicily, Venice and Genoa itself, and thence as far asScotland. It seems to have arrived at Constantinople in May, was recognised as theplague in July, became epidemic in September, and peaked in late autumn. Itarrived in what is now central and southern Greece in late summer and autumnthe same year. Also in autumn 1347 it succeeded in covering the whole westerncoast of (Turkish-ruled) Asia Minor. In 1348 it spread through the wholelowlands of Asia Minor before finally reaching the Anatolian Plateau in 1349.Meanwhile in the West it was first noticed at Marseilles on 1 November 1347 (OleJørgen Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346-1353: the complete history, Boydell Press,2004 pp.61ff, 69, 74ff) Cantacuzenus writes about it in his memoirs (History iv.8); one of its firstvictims was his eldest son, Andronicus. Cydones too writes about it in his letters,saying “the Greatest [city] is becoming a small town …” (quoted by Marien 2009:62). Cf 1361. If the Byzantine empire’s population was two million in 1312 [see there], thenby 1349 it must have fallen to . . . say 1,300,000. And one might guess thatConstantinople itself was reduced to . . . say just 50,000. In qualitative terms,


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Baloglu p.408 proposes that the City’s population fell by a half, more than theprobable proportion of one-third dead in the provinces.

About 15 million people were dead by 1349, perhaps a third of the population ofthe Mediterranean world. . . Nor were the Faithful exempted: Tunis, Aswan, ,Damascus, Jerusalem, Antioch and of course Mecca followed. It also hit TurkishAsia Minor, as we have said, although how severely is not known, because therecords are sparse. Marien (2009: 51) speculates that because relatively moreTurks led a pastoral way of life, it may have had less impact there.

At Venice the population of the “dogado” [the city of Venice and the narrowcoastal strip on the Italian mainland] fell to about 80,000. This meant thatconscripting enough rowers for the war-galleys became very difficult. (Thesemen were free citizens, not slaves, and were paid, albeit not very much.) Thusthe government turned to the Stato da Mar [its ‘sea-empire’], i.e. men fromDalmatia and Venice’s Greek colonies. Of the large fleet of 35 galleys sent East in1350, Venetians manned 25 and these others 10 galleys (F C Lane, Venice, amaritime republic, JHU Press, 1973 p.175). The prescribed crew of a standard galley was “212” men in 1412 (Lane,Venetian Ships p.254). Or if we use “216” rowers per ship [Angus Konstam, TonyBryan, Renaissance War Galley 1470-1590, Osprey Publishing, 2002, p.5], then 35galleys required 7,560 oarsmen. That approximates to one in every two able-bodied males serving in the galleys . . .

In the Emperor’s Own Voice

Thrace: In his memoirs Cantacuzenus describes as follows his clash withrenegade Turks in Thrace in 1348 (see also there: they had recently been inByzantine service). The enemy numbered not quite 2,000. The emperor, havingrecently let most of his field army return home, commanded far fewer: say 750men. At a guess, they may have comprised 250 cavalry (“heavily-armedhorsemen”) and 500 light infantry (“archers and light-armed soldiers”).

“The emperor” – he writes of himself in the 3rd person - “thought he ought notlead his heavily-armed horsemen with the [foot] archers and light-armed soldiersinto this difficult ground and into places, cut by ditches and narrow passes, toengage in battle. In addition to the barbarians' superior numbers, the roughground would contribute considerably to their victory. For this reason heordered the army to assemble in a shaded place, capable of concealing them andtook every precaution that it would not be clear to the barbarians what washappening. “ . . . At their encounter [it was an ambush] the Romans conquered by storm.They also killed most of the barbarians and captured many alive. One of the twogenerals, named Kara Mehmet, fell during the battle. The other, Mar Atoumanus,with those few who had escaped death for the moment, dismounted andretreated to a certain hill. By standing their ground and shooting many arrows,they kept the Romans away from the hill and wounded many soldiers and


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horses.” —The History of John Cantacuzenus (Book IV), online atwww.deremilitari.org/resources/sources/cantacuzenus.

1348:1. East Aegean: In May 1348 Umur of Aydin was killed while besieging theChristian-held lower castle at Smyrna. Cantacuzenus grieved for him, asGregoras records. —Inalcik, Maritime p.320; D M Nicol, The last centuries ofByzantium, 1261-1453, Cambridge University Press, 1993 p.203.

2. The Balkans: Dushan’s Serbs invade Thessaly and Epirus: Cantacuzenusobtained “10,000” Turkish irregulars (foot and horse) from his father-in-lawOrhan to assist Byzantium-Rhomaniya against the Serbs (Bartusis p.97). But theTurks soon deserted, i.e. they departed to take part in plunder and slave-taking.The emperor then raised a small army of his own (probably not more than 2,000men) and attacked in Thrace against his father-in-law's Ottomans (as describedabove) and the Serbs. He also established a small Rhomaniyan navy, but theGenoese of Galata - his neighbours and trading rivals - quickly destroyed it(1349: see below).

The civil war and the Black Death so weakened Byzantium that the Serbs overranEpirus and Thessaly with little resistance (1348-49). All of northern Greece,except for Thessalonica, was lost to the empire. The only large region of farmlandstill belonging to Byzantium was in Thrace, where the two major towns wereAdrianople and Didymotichum (LBA p.97; Norwich, Decline p.309).

Sometimes women even assumed military command, as when Irene, wife ofEmperor John VI Kantakouzenos, was placed in charge of the garrison atDidymoteichon – the fortress on the Marica River south of Adrianople - duringthe civil war of 1341-47, and in 1348 when she took responsibility for the defenceof Constantinople during her husband’s absence.

3. The Serbian “empire”: To put his extended realm on a sound legal footing,Dushan promulgates a new legislative code (Norwich 1996: 308). Or in 1349: Fine1994, p.314.

4. Mystra becomes the seat of the Despotate of Morea [Gk Moreos] - the lowerPeloponnesus. Mystras or Mistra developed at such a rate that in 1348, 100 years after thebuilding of the Frankish castle, it became the capital of the Despotate of Moreawith prince Manuel Kantakouzenos, aged about 22, as first Despot, son of theEmperor John VI. Manuel Kantakouzenos, Despot of the Peloponnese, 1349-80, contender to theprincipality of Achaia: born ca 1326, died Mistra, Peloponnese 10.4.1380, buriedthere; m. in Constantinople 1347, Isabelle de Lusignan, dau. of the French King ofCyprus.


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5. d. Gregory Akindynos (ca. 1300-1348): Anti-Palamite theologian and protegeof Irene Choumnaina (fl. 1322), the daughter-in-law of Andronicus II. Gregoryreceived a very good secular education. He was ordained deacon and then priestin 1344 by the patriarch John XIV Kalekas. Although Palamas was his friend,Gregory criticised his doctrines. Akindynos objected not to hesychasm but to thedistinction between the essence and energies of God that Palamas had employedin defending it. He was sent into exile following his excommunication at theCouncil of Blachernai [1347] and died shortly afterwards. His most famous anti-Palamite theological treatise was the Antirrhetics, containing arguments againstthe teaching of Palamas (David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: metaphysics andthe division of Christendom, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp.234 ff). See next.

c.1348:Palamas returns to Constantinople after his time on Athos with Dushan. Therehe debates with Nicephorus Gregoras, a firm anti-Palamite.

1348-49: In 1348, the Genoese seized Kerasous, the second most importantcity of the ‘empire’ of Trerbizond in revenge for a massacre of Genoese bythe Trapezuntines some years earlier. In May 1349, a Genoese expeditionfrom Caffa was launched against Trebizond. The small Trapezuntine fleetunder Michael Tzanichites was destroyed and the people of Trebizondresponded by killing any Westerner they found in the capital. Eventually,peace was reached with the Genoese, but in exchange for Kerasous theywere given the fortress of Leontokastron. From now on Trebizond'scommercial capacity was lessened even further, as the Genoese came toincreasingly command the lucrative Black Sea trade of the port.

1348-49:Emperor John Cantacuzene tries to rebuild a Byzantine navy but is (largely)foiled by the Genoese: his own account of this follows below. Cf 1351-52. John VI Kantakouzenos had trouble in procuring raw materials with which tobuild ships, in Constantinople, to face the Genoese of Galata; and since ablockade made it impossible to transport timber by sea to the capital, woodsuitable for shipbuilding was moved overland Thrace, from the Little Haemosmountains. —Ioannis Cantacuzeni, Historiarum libri quatuor [memoirs], ed. L.Schopen, 3 vols. (Bonn, 1831–32), 3:70–77. As Makris notes (in Laiou, ed. 2002), regardless of its outcome, theundertaking of Kantakouzenos in building even a small war-fleet at top speed in1348 presupposed the existence of well-organised shipyards. The galleys built atthis time were fitted with battle towers, but they sank (1149) off the capital in thefirst spell of rough weather.

When Byzantium sought to undercut the Genoese of Galata by charging lowerimport tariffs, the Genoese declared war (mid 1348). The Constantinopolitansresponded with vigour. By the spring of 1349 they had built and deployed ninelarge war-galleys and 100 smaller vessels; but the Byzantine amateurs barelymanaged to row out from shore, and their ships were quickly captured by the


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more professional Genoese, almost without an arrow being fired (Bartusis, LBAp.98; Norwich, Decline pp.311-12). Cf 1351. Cantacuzenus’s own account of this incident follows below.

The massive tower that still dominates the Galata district in modern Istanbul wasbuilt by the Genoese traders in 1349 as a watchtower and a fortification for theirwalled enclave.

The Tower and the Naval Fight with the Genoese,as described in Cantacuzenus’s memoirs:

“ … They [the Genoese of Galata] armed their own galleys which had beenreadied and as many light boats and fast-sailing ones as they had, and burnedthe houses outside the walls of Byzantium along the sea [i.e. the Golden Horn].They also captured some transports while others they burned. They burned all the[Byzantine] galleys which had been prepared except three which, under the orders ofthe emperor's son, the Romans [Byzantines] took from the place calledKosmidion [outside the city: the upper shore of the Golden Horn, near thenorthern or Blachernai “corner” of the walls] where they were being readied,since the destruction was encompassing everything. Leading them across the river which flows by the place called Pissa, theydragged them up onto dry land and, placing a guard on either side, theywatched over them.” “. . . now that they [the Genoese] had gained control of the sea, they sailed upand down along the coasts [adjoining Constantinople], causing destruction andconsigning everything to the flames. They also sallied forth together and firstfortified the hill [at Galata], raising a tower on its summit. Both men and womendisplayed equally every eagerness. Even the most distinguished did not consider itbeneath them to take part with the others in the construction. After marking out therest of the land, they then fortified it with a wall as far as the material would go,raising the wall to a height they thought sufficient. “. . . he [Cantacuzenus] commanded the Byzantines to contribute and placedConstantine Tarchaneiotes in charge of the collection [see below: tax on wine andwheat] while he turned his attention to preparing [more] galleys. Since theGalatans held the sea and it was most difficult to import wood by sea fit for shipbuilding, he commanded the Byzantines to bring the wood in by oxen and mulesfrom the mountains opposite Sergentzion [NW of Constantinople]. The woodwas brought in with a great deal of difficulty and hard work and the galleys wereconstructed at the docks in the Heptaskalon [“Seven Piers”: the harbour on south-central edge of the city, ie farthest from Galata]. . . . while the galleys were being constructed, the emperor selected sailors andheavily-armed soldiers and readied all else for battle. He appointed as generals theprotostrator Fazzolati [a Genoese renegade] over the three galleys along thePissa, and Tzamplakon, the megadux, over those built in the Heptaskalon.” . . . When all the [nine] imperial galleys had been thoroughly readied, theyset out from the dockyard, fittingly equipped and inferior to none of the fleetsmustered by the Romans in many years, both in numbers of heavily-armed troops


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and in the splendour and scale of the preparations. Quite a few single-tiered vessels,both fast-sailing vessels and small boats carrying heavily-armed soldiers, accompaniedthe fleet, and all joined in the expedition eagerly because of their hatred of theLatins. The Latins, struck by the size of the armada, considered everything otherthan engaging in a sea battle with the imperial galleys.” . . . Suddenly an unexpected wind fell upon them [the Byzantines] and upsetthe first three galleys on which the wooden towers stood. The rest of the menwith their armour fell from the other ships into the sea, sailors as well as heavily-armed soldiers, and in one instant all the boats appeared empty of seamen. … TheLatins in Galata put to sea with revived courage and, taking the galleys in tow,pulled them up onto the beach. No one prevented them or defended the ships, sothat they had a bloodless victory.” —The History of John Cantacuzenus (Book IV),excerpts online at www.deremilitari.org/resources/sources/cantacuzenus;accessed 2011. By 1351-52 the Byzantines were operating 12 war-galleys: see there. No doubtsome were purchased from, or gifted by Venice, but it seems that many of the 12were built at Constantinople.

1349:1. CP: John VI Kantakouzenos imposed taxes on the sale and production of wine.Wine merchants were taxed twice as much as wine producers. He also taxed thewheat from the Black Sea at half a gold nomisma per modios. He lowered thekommerkion (the sales and import/exprt tax) at Constantinople to two percent tocompete with the Italians (who charged higher tax for goods landed at Galata),and introduced a special tax on imports of wine, wheat, and the bulk tradecontrolled by the Genoese (Ana Mamie Raguz, The Resilient Empire: Institutionalreform in Byzantium, California State University, Dominguez Hills, 2007). See1349-50.1.

2. Serbia annexes Epirus. Or in 1348: Balard, “Balkans’ in NCMH, 1995: 828.

1349-50:1. Cantacuzenus builds a second, then a third tiny fleet: the Genoese soon agreeto terms in order to maintain their trading rights, and the Byzantines manage torecover Chios and Phocaea (Treadgold 1997: 774). Cf 1350 and 1351.

2. As noted earlier, the emperor’s son Manuel took charge of the province of theMorea in 1349 with the rank of Despot (Gk: “lord”) and governed it with growingsuccess until his death in 1380; his eldest son, Matthew, was given a principalityin Thrace; while the junior emperor John V, who had married a daughter ofCantacuzenus, ruled in Thessalonica after 1351. Among the troops employed by the Rhomaniyans in the Morea, we havereports of Albanians* (Heath 1995: 21). Cf 1390s.

(*) Albanian immigation: Some have proposed that, when the Ottomansconquered Greece in the 15th century, already some 45% of it was populated byAlbanians (P. Trudgill & G.A. Tzavaras, A sociolinguistic study of Albanian dialects


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spoken in the Attica and Biotia [sic] areas of Greece. London: Social Science ResearchCouncil Report, 1975, p.6).

3. [1350:] Orhan sends “20,000 cavalry” troops to retake Serbian-controlledThessaloniki for Cantacuzenus (recently offered to the Serbs by the Byzantinereligious rebels known as the Zealots). The city surrenders to Cantacuzenus,without the Turks having to fight; they quickly returned to Asia (Bartusis, LBAp.97; Norwich, Decline p.314). See 1351. Aware that their downfall was only a question of time, the Zealots started tonegotiate and offered to surrender to the Serbian Emperor, Stefan Dushan,preferring foreign rule to that of Cantacuzenus. But by the end of 1349 their rulecollapsed. With Serbian pressure mounting and the Zealot regime crumbling, theZealot leader Andreas Palaiologos is expelled and his successor, AlexiosMetochites, negotiates the city’s capitulation. Andrew Palaeologus fled to Serbia,while Cantacuzenus, accompanied by co-emperor John Palaeologus, made (1350)a triumphal entry into the city. See 1350 – recovery of parts of Macedonia.

After the Serbs had advanced to surround Thessalonica, and entered northernGreece (1345, 1349), John VI Cantacuzenus possessed nothing beyond theancient prestige of his office, the Great City itself, and some patches ofterritory in Thrace, at Thessalonica and in the Peloponnese. Serbia dominatedthe Balkans. The Aegean islands were dominated by the Sicilians, Venetians andGenoese. Asia Minor was Turkish: divided among several ghazi emirates,including that of the Ottomans at Bursa.

“ ... Byzantine dominion withered. Its last strength”, writes McEvedy, “wassquandered in a civil war, which abandoned the recently annexed Despotate ofEpirus, together with all Macedonia, to the Serbs. Under Steven Dushan, thesouth Slavs at last achieved an empire, and the moment had come for them toclaim the heritage of Byzantium. But Dushan’s feverish attempt to reproduce, ina decade of victory, the splendour of a millennial decline failed for the lack of theone success that might have cemented the others: the taking of Constantinople”(McEvedy 1961: 78).

By 1350 elite first-class Western knights had added a significant amount of plate-armour to their mail hauberks. Supplementary pieces of plate armour were wornover the suit of mail. Plate protected especially the legs and arms. The helmet waseither a great helm with visor and high ornamental crest (in jousts, without thecrest in battle) or, in battle only, a simpler pointed “bascinet” (metal skull-cap).The lance is very large and heavy (Hopkins 1996: 99).

1350:1 Macedonia: The Byzantines recaptured Beroea/Verria and Vodena (EuropeanEdessa) from the Serbs. So vicious was the fighting that . . . at Verria a singlesoldier was killed and at Vodena not one person was killed on either side(Kantakouzenos, cited in LBA p. 269; Norwich, Decline p.314).


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2. In 1350, the Venetian colony of Crete feared an attack coming from the Turksof Ephesus (Aydin). The Venetians decided to send an embassy to the emir Hizir.The Turks, they insisted, should cease their acts of piracy and not help theGenoese. On their side the Genoese also sent an embassy to Ephesus, known tothem as Altoluogo, to thank Hizir for his benevolence to them and his offer ofsupport. The Genoese obtained supplies for their colony at Chios, and Hizirallowed Genoese galleys to be supplied at Ephesus. He hoped thus tocounterbalance the influence of Venice (Foss, Ephesus, p.154). Cf 1350-52.

c. 1350:Approximate date of key buildings and frescos of the Peribleptos (“celebrated”,“admired by all”) Monastery at Mistra in the Peloponnesus - Morea. See entry for1350-75.

d. 1350: Early emergence of vernacular languages in W Europe: d. thesatirist Juan Ruiz, arch-priest of Hita, "the first true poet writing inSpanish”, i.e. Castilian. His pseudo-autobiography Libro de buen amor, ca1343, mentions among other things Moorish dancing girls and sex withnuns. Cf 1353 – Boccaccio’s Italian; and 1362 - English. Already Dante had written his Divine Comedy in Italian in the years after1308.

1350-75:Mistra: late Byzantine Church of the Mother of God Peribleptos, with paintedvaults.

1350-52:In 1350 the Venetian admiral Nicolo Pisani led a squadron to Constantinople toconclude an alliance with the Byzantines. See 1351. They also tried to attackGenoese Galata, which was formally allied with Byzantium. At the mouth of theBosphorus, he engaged in a fierce battle with the Genoese, forcing a bloody non-victory against the distinguished admiral Paganino Doria (in 1352: see there). Cf next: Venice trades grain to Thessalonica.

In 1350 the intermittent, opportunistic taking of vulnerable vessels and theircargoes by both sides flared into a more serious conflict when a Venetian fleet ofarmed galleys sent east under the command of Marco Ruzzini to deal with aquarrel over trading rights at Tana caught about 14 Genoese galleys in theharbour of Castro near Negroponte and took ten. The Genoese response was todispatch in 1351 year a fleet of some 64 galleys under the command of PaganinoDoria to the Aegean (Mitch Stone:http://mitchtestone.blogspot.com/2008/09/venetians-genoese-and-turks.html)

1351:Dissolution of the anti-Turkish Christian league. Hizir, the bey of Aydin, madeovertures to the Genoese, causing Venice to withdraw its contribution. And nowVenice too opened negotiations with Hizir, who allowed the Venetian-Catalanfleet to pass the winter of 1351-52 at Ephesus! (Inalcik, Maritime p.321).


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The bey was referred to in Italian documents as “lord and emir of Theologos”,that being the medieval Greek name of Ephesus: Turkish Ayaslug from ‘AyiosTheologos’ (K Fleet, in J. Chrysostomides, Charalambos Dendrinos & JudithHerrin, eds., Porphyrogenita: Publications for the Centre for Hellenic Studies, KingsCollege, London, Ashgate 2003 p.282).

2. Final session of the Fifth Council of Constantinople, presided over byCantacuzenus. At this synod Hesychast doctrine was established as the doctrine of theOrthodox Church. An illustration of the event shows eight Varangian guards stationed behindthe emperor, wearing boat-shaped white hats trimmed with gold, and blue gowns(copy in Heath, Armies 1118, 1995: 7). Interestingly, the Varangians voiced theiracclamations of the emperor in English (Bartusis p.273, citing Pseudo-Kodinos, fl.1355). The English were the most prominent element in the Varangian Guard fromthe late 11th to the 14th century. Although there were probably few Englishmenserving in the guard by the time of its writing, the 14th-century (c. 1355) Book ofOffices of Georgios Kodinos or Pseudo-Kodinos mentions the Christmas customof the Guard. "Then the Varangians come and wish the Emperor many years inthe language of their country, that is, English, and beating their battle-axes withloud noise." —Peri ton offikialion tou palatiou tou Konstantinoupoleus (De officiis,‘Book of Offices’), in J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus, vol. 157 (Paris,1854), p.76; also Bartusis LBA p. 273; Benedikz p.180.

3a. Macedonia: The Serbians again threaten Thessalonica. Cantacuzenus sendshis erstwhile rival Anna of Savoy to stiffen the resolve of her son John V and tonegotiate with Dushan. Surprisingly, she persuades Dushan to withdraw; andshe enters the city, which becomes her domain. After the Zealot period, 1342–50, the harbour at Thessalonica did not flourishas before; Demetrios Kydones referred to it as a large fortified harbour. Bazirkissuggests it had probably become partly silted up, like the sea-front of the city. Theinner wall of the harbour was not as wide as the main fortification wall proper,but it did have towers. Kantakouzenos mentions that near the sea gate of thiswall, which led to the harbour, was a quarter inhabited by sailors, who hadplayed a decisive role in the Zealot insurrection. —Bazirkis, in Talbot ed., ‘LateByzantine Thessalonike’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 2003; accessed online 2007.

3b. The Aegean: Grain in the form of wheat and barley was the most importantland product traded by the Byzantines. We see a steady decline in grain productiondue to Ottoman conquest and civil conflicts. For example in 1350 or 1351: seethere, Thessalonica was unable - this was only several years after the Plague - tofeed itself due to the Serbian siege; and Venice provided supplies of grain.—Angeliki Laiou-Thomadakis, 'The Byzantine Economy in the MediterraneanTrade System', in Dumbarton Oaks Papers (1980-81) 34-35, 178.

1351-54:Byzantine civil war resumes. John V is supported by the Serbs and Bulgarians,while John VI is supported by the Ottomans. Cantacuzenus's Turks are provided


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(1352) with a base at Gallipoli which they will decide to keep when he tries (1354:se there) to disband them.

Travel by galley

Documents dating from the second half of the 14th century and concerning thevoyages of Genoese ships are indicative of the time it could take to cover aspecific route by sea. These ships sailed (rowed) close to the coast, rarely venturing out into theopen sea except in emergencies or where it was unavoidable in terms of one’sdestination. The day’s voyage would begin at dawn, and at dusk the ship wouldtake refuge in a bay where the night would be spent; they rarely sailed indarkness. A good average for a day’s travel is quoted as ‘75-80 km’ in John Morrison &Robert Gardiner, The Age of the Galley, 1995 p.219. Calculated using 14 hours ofdaylight (as at Athens in mid-summer) that represents around five km/h. If we look at specific examples, we find that in 1351, one Genoese galleycovered an average distance of 65 km per day, and another in 1369 made 76 km in aday. The voyage from Alexandria to Genoa took 23 days, or 29 days in the case ofanother galley. A distance of 176 km (sic) covered in a single day was regarded as anoteworthy exception: another ship took two days and nights at sea to cover the80 km from Ios to Melos in bad weather, i.e. only 20 km for each 12 hours(Avramea in Laiou ed. 2002).

1351-52:N Aegean and Sea of Marmara: The Venetian fleet attacked Galata (Pera)*, theGenoese base on the other side of the Golden Horn from Constantinople;Cantacuzenus with his tiny native navy (12 ships) joins in on the Catalan-Venetian side. The Venetians withdraw and the Genoese punish Byzantium (buta treaty is struck in May 1352). Meanwhile John V Palaeologus's mother, Anna ofSavoy, has taken control in Thessalonica; and, when Matthew Cantacuzenus(John's son) takes control of Adrianople, the Paleologians capture him:Cantacuzenus goes to his son's aid with Turkish mercenaries.

(*) “Nikephoros Gregoras tells us that in the mid-14th century the Genoese werecollecting 200,000 gold pieces [annually] from their customs-house at Galata,whereas the customs of Constantinople [itself] were barely taking in 30,000.These figures [or the discrepancy between them] may be exaggerated, but theygive a picture of economic and fiscal activities on the two sides of the GoldenHorn at this time” (thus Oikonomides). [It should be added that Byzantiumrelied more on land taxes than customs.]

The Venetians assembled an alliance of Byzantines - who did not like Genoeseairs of superiority any better than they had Venetian - and Aragonese/Catalans,who opposed the Genoese in the western Mediterranean (Dotson 2001). In the


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Bosphorus, or more precisely, near its mouth, a fierce but indecisive battle wasfought (13 February 1352); while at Alghero in Sardinia (1353) the Genoese fleetwas defeated by the Venetians and their Aragonese allies. Naval battle of the Bosphorus, 13 February 1352: a slightly smaller Venetian-led fleet, including some galleys from Byzantium (12 ships) and Aragon (26ships), faced over 60 galleys* of the Genoese under Doria (Nicol, B&V p.275). TheGenoese also has some Turkish support: 1,000 archers and nine light vesselscalled (in Italian) parascarmi. Turks: see Luttrell’s paper atwww.deremilitari.org/resources/pdfs/luttrell.pdf). Cf 1351.

(*) This was a massive force for this era. In 1424 when a “powerful” fleet wasdesired, the Venetian Senate voted to arm just 25 galleys (Lane, Venetian Shipsp.254).

A Genoese fleet led by Paganino Doria fought a combined fleet of Venetian,Aragonese and Greek galleys to an impasse in the Bosphorus. The Byzantinesfinanced a handful of their own galleys (12 ships), while Venice subsidisedothers: to the tune of 1,000 ducats per month per ship (Gardiner 2004: 223; alsoNorwich, Decline p.317). The Venetians gained reinforcements by hiring the allied fleets of Aragon andByzantium, and set out against Pera, the Genoese base opposite Constantinople.There the Genoese had a large fleet of over 60 galleys under Paganino Doria. Theallied fleets failed to meet up, causing a series of delays and diversions, buteventually there was a bitter and bloody encounter near the Bosphorus in the latewinter of 1352. So great was the number of dead on both sides that the tacticaloutcome of the battle was uncertain. The battle was indecisive and inflicted heavy losses on both sides, but in theend Venice had to abandon the Bosphorus and the Aragonese fleet was hardesthit. After the 1352 battle near the mouth of the Bosphoros, the Venetian-Aragonesefleet departed for the West, leaving the Byzantines alone facing the enemyGenoese of Galata. Helped by a contingent of Ottoman troops, the Genoesesurrounded Constantinople by land. This persuaded the emperor to make (6May 1352) a treaty (Nicol, B&V p.276).

The sea-battle in the Bosphorus between the Byzantines and the Genoese (13 February1352) brought an end to Kantakuzenos’s ambitious ideas concerning the reconstructionof the Byzantine navy (thus Liakopoulos).

1352:1. Kantakouzenos acquires a personal or palace guard of some “500” Catalans;they were marines who stayed on from the allied Aragonese-Venetian fleet of1351-52 (Bartusis p.285; Heath 1995: 22; Treadgold 1997: 842). What this meantfor the Varangians (if indeed they were still extant: cf 1351 above), we do notknow. Cf 1352.3.


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2. Coastal western Asia Minor: The Ottomans grant trading rights to theGenoese. Genoa reached agreement with the Ottomans in 1352, giving her amonopoly over the alum mines of Magnesia (John H. Pryor, Geography,technology, and war: studies in the maritime history of the Mediterranean, 649-1571,Cambridge University Press, 1992 p.173) Alum or hydrated potassium aluminium sulphate (Potassium alum) was usedin dyeing and medicine - a dye-fixer (mordant) for wool; as a base in skinwhiteners and treatments.

3. The Byzantine civil war continues. The deteriorating relations betweenMatthew Kantakouzenos (now placed in charge of eastern Thrace) and John V (inwestern Thrace) led to open war again in 1352, when John V, supported byVenice and Turkish troops, launched an attack on Matthew Kantakouzenos. JohnVI came to his son's aid with “10,000” Ottoman troops, who retook the towns ofThrace and liberally plundered them. There were also a few Catalans in theservice of Kantakouzenos senior. In October 1352, at Pythion near Demotika, theOttoman force met and defeated 4,000 Serbs, provided to John V by StefanDushan (Fine 1994, pp. 325–326; Treadgold 1997, pp. 775–776; Luttrell p.123).This was the Ottomans' first victory in Europe.

Dissatisfied with his pseudo-independent imperial regime in Thrace, John Vintrigues with Stefan Dushan; his mother, Anna of Savoy, resolves the situation,and, when John moves off to take a partition of Thracian territory, Anna assumesactive government of Thrace in her own right, as “despoina,” until her death inca.1365. With financial backing from Venice, John V requested aid from Bulgaria andSerbia to attack Cantacuzenist Thrace. The Bulgarian tsar sent a small force andDushan sent “4,000” Serbian troops (the last time that Serbs would fight forByzantium). Adrianople was besieged. Kantakouzenos responded by calling infrom Orhan either “7,000” or “not fewer than 10,000 [Turkish] cavalry”. Theycrossed at the Dardanelles. Kantakouzenos’ Turks decisively defeated John’sGreeks, Bulgarians and Serbs in the region between Adrianople andDidymoteicho [Dimotika or Demotika] in Thrace (Bartusis LBA p.100, citingKantakouzenos and Gregoras; Heath 1995: 34; Norwich 1996: 318).

First Ottoman acquisition in Thrace: Tzympe/Çimpe on the European shore of theGallipoli isthmus opposite Abydos. Çimpe was a small fort or castle locatedbetween between Bolayir and Gallipoli. Orhan’s son Suleyman aidsCantacuzenus at Adrianople; Suleyman also occupies Tzympe on the Europeanside of the Dardanelles; in retrospect this appears as the beginnings of theOttoman conquests in Thrace.— Orhan’s son Suleyman went to Adrianople to give assistance to Cantacuzenus,his relative since 1346, against Serbian and Bulgarian forces; on the way, he tookpossession (1352) of Tzympe and as a reward for his service the emperor allowedhim to hold on to it (Nicolle, Ottomans p.40). See 1354.

FIVE YEARS SINCE THE ARRIVAL OF THE PLAGUE


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Territories

When the Ottomans acquired their first foothold on the European shores of theDardanelles at Impe, Çimpe or Tzympe in 1352-54, over half of the upperBalkans was controlled by the Serbs. The ‘Greek’ or Rhomaioi Empire, torn bycivil war, held Thrace and our S Bulgaria roughly south of a line running duewest from the Black Sea port of Burgas (Purgos, Burgaz) to the Struma (Strymon)River below Sofia. A Bulgarian state, which stretched to the Danube, occupiedthe area north of Byzantine Thrace. In addition Byzantium held a small areaaround the city of Salonika (Thessaloniki, Tk: Selanik) and an enclave in thesoutheast of the Morea or Peloponnesus. See map.

Above: Serbia’s expansion to 1355 and contraction thereafter.

1353:1. Thrace: In alliance with Genoa, Orhan’s son Suleyman Pasha raids fromTyzmpe (Çimpi) into Byzantine territory seizing a number of villages and townsas far as Rodosto (Tekirdag) (Shaw, Ottoman Empire, p.16). See 1354.


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2. A series of setbacks on John V Palaiologos’s part results in the coronation ofMatthew (Matias) Cantacuzene*, son of John VI, as co-emperor atConstantinople. Patriarch Kallistos, who refuses (1353) to perform thecoronation, is deposed and replaced by Philotheus. Kallistos and John are exiledto the island of Tenedos, and the coronation is carried out in 1354 (Norwich 1996:319). Thus there were for a period nominally three emperors. In 1357, he was captured by his enemies, who delivered him to the rivalemperor John V Palaiologos. Compelled to abdicate, he moved to the Morea, in1361, and assisted his brother Manuel Kantakouzenos in its government.

(*) Mathaios (Matthew) Asenes Kantakouzenos, co-Emperor of Byzantium(IV.1353-XII.1357): crowned, aged about 28, in the Church of the Virgin,Blachernai II.1354 (effective ruler around Adrianople), Despot of Mistra (1357-ca1380). Born ca 1325, died as a monk in the Peloponnese 1391; m.Thessalonikeearly 1341 Eirene Palaiologina (b.1327, +ca 1357), dau. of Despot DemetriosPalaiologos, son of Emp. Andronikos III. —‘ Kantakouzenos family’, 2011, athttp://genealogy.euweb.cz/byzant/byzant5.html.

1353: The Serbs under Dushan defeated Louis of Hungary, who had beenurged by the pope to lead a Catholic crusade. The Serbs acquiredBelgrade.

d. Stjepan (Stephen) II Kotromanich, first Bosnian ruler to coin money.

Italy: Boccaccio, c.1313-1375, completes his Decameron, a collection of talesin Italian. ‘The vernacular’ was beginning to oust Latin in written works, aprocess that would take many centuries.

Western Mediterranean: In 1353 the Venetians and Aragonese took thewar against Genoa to the western Mediterranean and won a victory offSardinia. The battle was not decisive, and in the next year Paganino Doriainflicted a crushing defeat on the allies off Modon [SW Greece: the south-western tip of the Morea] in the battle of Porto Longo.

1354:1. The Dardanelles: The Byzantine fortress-port of Gallipoli/Kallipolis/Geliboluwas located near Tzympe, where Suleyman had his base. Gallipoli itself is on thecentral-east coast of the peninsula at the top of the Dardanelles; Tzympe lies inthe SE, opposite Abydos and Çanakkale. When Gallipoli’s and Tzympe’s walls were destroyed by a further earthquake[2 March], the Turks occupied them and other strong-points, and garrisonedthem with additional troops from Anatolia (March 1354). In response to theearthquake, towns and villages were abandoned by the native Greeks, and theTurks, supposedly the senior emperor’s friends ands allies, moved to occupymany of them (Norwich, Decline p.320). The Ottoman prince Suleyman wasleading former Karesi officers and men (Kunt, ‘Rise of the Ottomans’, in NCMHp.849). Cantacuzenus offered 40,000 hyperpyra if the Turks would leave, but emirOrhan declined the offer, evidently preferring to keep his gains as a foothold. Hereportedly said that the earthquake was a sign that God wanted the Turks to


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stay. This brought the senior emperor’s popularity to its lowest ebb (Shaw,Empire p. 16; Nicol, Lady p.78). See below: Cantacuzenus is pressured intoabdicating.

The establishment of what looked like a Turkish beachhead aroused great anxiety inByzantium and the wider Christian world (Inalcik 1973 p.9; Bartusis LBA p.101). Seenext.

Shortly after the occupation of Kallipolis, the Ottomans began to collect tax ortribute from the inhabitants of Thrace in the zone extending between Kallipolisand Constantinople. They raided as far as the Byzantine capital itself; this may becounted as the first Osmanli attack on Constantinople.

2. Gregory Palamas, aged 58, Metropolitan of Thessalonica and distinguishedtheologian, was taken a prisoner to the Ottoman territories, where he had theopportunity to meet the Christian communities and also to participate in a publictheological debate organised by Orhan in Nicaea. Palamas had left Thessalonica for Constantinople on an imperial warship putat his disposal. He waited until the earthquake of 2 March was over, but headinginto the Dardanelles his ship was forced by wind to land in Gallipoli, where hefinds the town overtaken by the Turks. The Turks take Gregory and his entouragecaptive. During his captivity in Turkish control (until 1355), Gregory is allowed(under escort) to travel a great deal, and he learns of the Turkish culture. Hespeaks favourably of the occupying force, so long as they allow for the religiousfreedom of those under their control. The Christians saw the Turks as mere pirates seeking loot and captives to sellin slave-markets and imagined that this was just greed, which of course it was.But also they had no knowledge of the idea of jihad. Palamas was thereforeastonished to find that the Turks attributed their success to their love of God:“(they) boast of having got the better of the Romans by their love of God … (and) theybelieve God approves [of taking slaves, murdering and pillaging]”. —Quoted inZachariadou p. 219; alsohttp://www.monachos.net/patristics/palamas_appendices.shtml.

More fully, he wrote: “these impious people, hated by God and infamous, boastof having got the better of the Romans by their love of God … they live by thebow, the sword and debauchery, finding pleasure in taking slaves, devotingthemselves to murder, pillage, spoil … and not only do they commit thesecrimes, but even—what an aberration—they believe that God approves of them”(quoted in Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Oxford history of the Crusades, OUP 1999).Equally, he records the fairly good treatment of Greek Christian dhimmis alreadyunder Ottoman rule in Asia Minor. Palamas was told by some that theypreferred Turkish rule to the harsher rule of the French and Italians in FrankishGreece and the Aegean islands (Nicol, Reluctant Emperor, p.177).

3. Kiev: The Russian church at this time was still subordinate to Constantinople.Emperor John and Patriarch Philotheus appointed the Muscovite candidate tothe post of ”metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia”. When Cantacuzenus was


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deposed (see next) the post went to the candidate of the ruler of Lithuania, whichdominated the region at this time (Obolensky p.340).

4. Taking advantage of Kantakouzenos’s loss of popularity, the 22-years old JohnV Palaeologus leads a small armed force to, and is let into, Constantinople (22November). Aged about 62, John Cantacuzenus either abdicates or is deposed (4December), but is allowed to retire to a monastery, where he will write at lengthon theology (in favour of the Hesychasts) and contemporary history (justifyinghis own reign). It was an amicable retirement, and he remained on good termswith all the Palaeologi, often providing John V with useful political and militaryadvice (Fine 1994: 327; Joan Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire,OUP p.262). “Although [his] reign saw Byzantium decline from a viable state to a wreck,most of the fault was not his. . . . Without the Black Death, Cantacuzenus wouldprobably have defeated the jerry-built empire of Stephen Dushan, regained theupper hand and kept control of his Turks”, or so supposes Treadgold 1997: 777.

5. d. Eirene Asenina Cantucuzene, empress 1347–1354.

fl. Petrarch, the Italian poet, writing in both Latin and Italian. He was the first to understand, through careful reading of old texts, thatlatter-day Latin was not the same as classical Latin. This was the origin ofthe concept of the Middle Ages - the period of supposedly 'debased' Latin.He suggested that Dante’s Italian writings were suitable only for woolworkersand innkeepers while his own Latin (so he imagined) was comparable withHomer's Greek and Virgil's Latin. Ironically Petrarch is remembered todayfor his Italian poems.

fl. ibn-Battuta, Arab voyager and geographer. A Moroccan Berber, hetravelled as far as China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Constantinople(see earlier under 1332). He retired to Fez in the Marinid Sultanate in 1354 towrite the narrative of his travels. See excerpts earlier: 1330s.

Territory in 1355

Looking back, the major changes since 1328 are: 1. in Asia the loss of theremaining section of Bithynia near Constantinople. The Ottomans now control allthe southern-eastern shore of the Sea of Marmara from the Dardanelles to theBosphorus opposite Constantinople. 2. There is one tiny gain in Asia, namely theoutpost of Phocaea opposite Lesbos. Lesbos too is still in Greek hands. 3. Themost dramatic change is in Europe: the Serbs have seized all of Epirus and Thessalyand most of Macedonia, including most of the Chalcidice peninsula and Mt Athos.Thessalonica and a small parcel of territory around it have become a ‘land island’surrounded by Serbian-ruled territory, with Thessalonica connected toConstantinople only by ship (maps in Bartusis, pp.20-21).

Despite its ancient prestige, Byzantium was now just a minor state comprisingonly the capital and Thrace; the N Aegean islands plus Lesbos; also Thessalonikiand its tiny hinterland; and the south-eastern third of the Peloponnesus or


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Morea. There was also an outpost or enclave around the fortress-town ofPhiladelphia in inland west-central Asia Minor, a tiny Byzantine land-island in alarge Turkish sea. Thrace formed the only substantial area of farmland stillruled by the Basileus. Byzantium's immediate neighbours were the Ottoman Turks in Asia; Bulgaria;and Serbia, which ruled as far as the NW Aegean and taking in the Mt Athospeninsula. The Latin princedoms were: the now Florentine duchy of Athens; theItalo-French (Angevin) principality of Achaia ruling most of the Morea;Venetian-ruled Euboea (Negroponte: the large island N of Athens) and Crete; theDuchy of the Archipelago (the Cyclades); and the Hospitallers or Knights of StJohn on Rhodes off the Turkish coast.

The palace guards in and before 1355

An anonymous text on ceremonies dated c.1355 known as the ‘Pseudo-Kodinos’contains some incidental information about the army including the guards of thepalace. It is an antiquarian document, and not all units were necessarily stillextant in 1355. Five types of palace guards are mentioned: the Tzakones, Vardariotai,Paramonai, Varangians and Mourtatoi. As noted earlier (see 1351), theVarangians were nearly all Englishmen.

i. The Tzakones were distinctively dressed bodyguards, not to be confused withthe Morean marines and wall-guards of the same name. As a guard they do notappear before 1262 nor after 1285, except in the Pseudo-Kodinos.

ii. The Vardariotai were a sort of paramilitary police who kept order during stateceremonies. Evidently they disappeared after 1272 (Bartusis, LBA p.280, 283).

iii. The Paramonai (literally “Near-standers’) are otherwise known only from ahandful of references in the period 1272-1315. They were, or had been, nativeByzantine-Greek mounted guardsmen, although some were infantry. Bartusissees them as ‘native mercenaries’, meaning Greek-speaking salaried fulltimesoldiers (LBA p.140).

iv. After about 1329 the Varangians no longer took part in campaign warfare butbecame a literal bodyguard. They also served as guardians of the imperial treasureand as prison-managers. In formal processions they attended closely upon theemperor with their distinctive axes. They are last mentioned in 1395 (accordingto LBA pp.274-75, 281) or more probably in 1404 (see there).

v. The Mourtatoi, according to the Pseudo-Kodinos, were foot archers serving inthe palace. Nicolle, Fall p.20, suggests they were crossbowmen (yet one of theillustrations shows a soldier with an ordinary bow). In Ottomans, 2008: 62, heproposes they were Turkish foot archers in Byzantine service. Or, as Bartusissuggests, perhaps descendants from mixed Greek-Turkish marriages. Evidentlythey were not a unit but just a type of soldier forming an element in the palaceguard or at least who were sometimes found in the palace guard; they alsoserved in campaigns (LBA p.278).


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1354-1453:BYZANTIUM’S FINAL CENTURY . . .

1354-76: JOHN V PALAEOLOGUS

Son of Andronicus III and Anna of Savoy. Aged 22 or 23when he ousted John VI Cantacuzenus and became senioremperor in 1354. Wife: Helena, daughter of Cantacuzenus. Children: thefuture Andronicus IV, born 1348; the future Manuel II, born1350; and Theodore, born ca. 1355. Baum calls John “a weak and unsuccessful ruler”(Wilhelm Baum, ‘Manuel II’, http://www.roman-emperors.org/manuel2.htm).

In 1354 western Thrace remained in the control of Manuel Cantacuzenus (cf1359).

1354:1. The Ottomans occupy Gallipoli (after the earthquake of 2 March); John VPalaeologus breaks into Constantinople; abdication of John Cantacuzenus.— The Turkish occupation of Gallipoli/Kallipolis caused panic among thepopulation of Constantinople, who felt that the capital was now under seriousthreat (Kenneth Setton, Harry Hazard, Norman Zacour, A History of the Crusades:The Impact of the Crusades on Europe, 1990, p. 235). Thus, when John V, who at thetime was on Tenedos (the island south of the Gallipoli peninsula), enteredConstantinople with the support of the Genoese adventurer, FrancescoGattilusio, the people went over to his side. Kantakouzenos, aged around 59, wasforced to step down and John V was left in sole possession of the throne. At night, Gattilusio had his sailors wake the sleeping sentries, and shout (fromthe ships) that one of their ships had been wrecked and that they (the sailors)would share the remains of the cargo with whoever would help them. "At thisappeal to their love of gain the guards opened the gate" (writes Miller). Some 500of Gattilusio's band entered and killed the sentries. Gattilusio and his band thenran along the wall shouting "Long live the Emperor John Palaiologos", wakingthe populace. The demonstrations in Palaiologos's favour convincedCantacuzene that resistance would be futile, and he retired to a monastery.— William Miller, "The Gattilusi of Lesbos", in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 22 (1913),406-447, quoted by W A Reitwiesner, ‘The Lesbian ancestors of Prince Rainier …’(1995), online at http://www.wargs.com/essays/lesbian.html; accessed 2011.

2. East Aegean: By agreement with the new emperor, Gattilusio’s band ofGenoese occupied the Byzantine island of Lesbos, off the Ottoman coast, in 1354.Gattilusio led 2,500 soldiers and had just two galleys (also boats, one imagines)


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(Elisavet Zachariadou, Studies in pre-Ottoman Turkey and the Ottomans. Ashgate,2007 p.761). Cf 1355-56.

Princess Maria Palaeologina Gatilusio: future ruler of Lesbos, the Italo-GreekIsland State: Emperor Ióannés (John) V Palaiologos, emperor of Byzantium, gavehis sister the island as dowry when Maria married (1355) baron FrancescoGattilusio, patrician of Genoa, the self-installed archon of Lesbos. In 1384 herhusband and two oldest sons were killed by an earthquake. Their only survivingson, Jacopo, reigned under the name of Francesco II until his death 1403. Shelived ca. 1330/35-ca. 1401.

1354-94:This was the period in which the devshirme (“collecting, hand-picking,recruitment”) or human tax was developed: the Turks began to take regularlevies of Greek and other Christian boys to be raised as Muslim soldiers. TheGreeks in a later era would call it paedomazoma, ‘harvest of children’ (Byer inNCMH p.777). The date is uncertain but the majority opinion is that the practicebegan under Murad I, r. 1362-1389. The first clear reference to it comes in 1395:see there. We read, for example, in the biography of St. Philotheus (Patriarch ofConstantinople) that after the surrender [in 1387] of Christopolis/Kavalla[western Thrace] the Sultan ordered (probably after 1391) the imposition of thisform of youth-tribute in those parts. This decree may have been the same as thatwhich Isidore Glabas (metropolitan of Thessalonica) refers to in connection withthe youth-tribute imposed in Thessalonica in 1395; and if this is so, the decreewhich concerned Christopolis must also be ascribed to that year (Vacalopoulos,trans. 1973).

1355:Trebizond was, in and after Marco Polo's time (d. 1324), the principal port forthe Black Sea-Persia trade, via Erzerum and Tabriz. The tiny size of the ‘empire’ is illustrated by the fact that, according to PeroTafur, the Spanish (Castilian) traveller, the capital “city” Trebizond had just 4,000people in 1437-38 (cited in Nicol, Last Centuries, 1993 p.405). (The term “empire”reflects the fact that in the 1200s the ruler claimed the title of basileus or Greek‘Emperor’.) Trebizond maintained a permanent naval force (last mentioned in 1437) oftwo or three large warships that were able to transport 300-600 men (embarkedtotal up to 1,800: this shows the small size of the army) and could build smallerships in extraordinary circumstances. In 1355 we read of one large warship and11 ploiaria [boats, skiffs]; in 1372 40 xylaria; and in 1379 two large warships andtwo boats (Krakras, loc.cit.; also Spanish Wikipedia under ‘Imperio deTrebisonda’, no sources cited). The largest army of the ‘empire’, recorded in 1366, was 2,000 troops:cavalrymen and infantrymen, according to Sokrates Krakras, “The Lions ofTrebizond”, dead linl 2011, but cached by Google, atwww.fortunecity.com/underworld/straif/69/engtrapez; also Heath 1995: 39.Alternatively, Trebizond had the respectable total of some 3,500 (‘fewer than4,000’) troops in 1437, according to Tafur (Wikipedia, 2007, ‘Empire of


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Trebizond’). A Muslim report of 1350 said that the soldiers of Trebizond were"warlike men and without fear, although few and badly equipped, heroic liketerrible lions that never let to their prey escape” (Spanish Wikipedia under‘Imperio de Trebisonda’, no sources cited.) See 1461: Trebizond falls to the Ottomans.

1355-58: Dalmatia: Anti-Venetian coalition. At the end of 1355, after thepeace with Genoa, Venice had to deal with the "whole of Slavonia[modern Croatia] in tumult". Arrayed against Venice in 1356 were thedukes of Austria, the patriarch of Aquileia, the Carrarese lord of Padua,and most dangerous of all, the Hungarians, who were laying siege to Zara(Zadar). Zara fell, Trad (Trogir) and Spalato (Split) went over to theHungarians, and in June 1358 Venice ceded her claim to the possessions inDalmatia to the Hungarian crown.

1355-59Thrace: The Ottomans based in the Gallipoli peninsula raid into SE Thrace. By1360 they will control the whole lower region east of the mouth of the EvrosRiver (Nicolle 2008: 41, 44).

1355-67:1. A Byzantine envoy, 1355-56, takes a letter from emperor John to the pope inAvignon requesting military assistance. It was an entirely modest request: 1,000infantry, 500 knights, 15 transport vessels and five war galleys; they would serveByzantium for only six months. Although conversion to Catholicism and John’sson as hostage were offered, this produced no significant result (Nicol, LastCenturies p. 258).

2. Following the death of Stephen Dushan of Serbia in December 1355, his sonand co-emperor Stephen Urosh V, 1355-67, becomes sole monarch. This reign sawSerbia disintegrate into feudal lordships (under minor "despotes"). In Epirus, theAlbanian clans asserted themselves against Serbian and Greek nobles. See next.Also 1358-72: Hungarian suzerainty.

Ex-Serbian Epirus: Nikephoros II Ducas Orsini, son of the late Italo-Greekdespot, took advantage of the Byzantine civil war and the death of Dushan toescape and to re-establish himself in Epirus in 1356, to which he also addedThessaly. But Orsini and the local Greeks securely controlled only the towns; much ofthe countryside was dominated by Albanian clans. Orsini died putting down anAlbanian revolt in 1359 and the territory of the former despotate became acomponent part of the personal Epirote-Thessalian ‘empire’ of Dushan's half-brother, Simeon Urosh, nicknamed Sinisha (also called Simeon-SinishaPalaiologos for his Greek mother Maria Palaiologina) [1359-ca.1370]. Simeoneffectively left Epirus to the Albanians, focussing his rule on Thessaly (MirandaVickers, The Albanians: a modern history, I.B.Tauris, 1999 p.4). In 1367 the Epirotan Despotate was resurrected under a local Serbiannobleman Thomas II Prerljubovich (1367-1384), while Simeon continued to rule


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Thessaly. With much of Epirus under the control of Albanian clans, the area wasdivided between several rulers, each claiming the title of despotes.

1356: France: The ‘Black Prince’, son of the English king, defeats andcaptures the French king. This leads to English rule in Aquitaine, present-daySW France, for over 50 years …

1356-66:Bulgaria was under pressure from Byzantium, the Hungarians and Wallachians(Gk Blachoi or Vlachoi; our ‘Rumanians’*). The Ottomans sent military aid to theBulgarians.

(*) Transdanubian Wallachia had broken free from Hungary in 1330. In the 14th century the Vlachs or Wallachians called themselves (in theirRomance tongue) Romani. The Byzantines knew themselves as (in Greek)Rhomaioi. The geographical name ‘Romania’ generally meant the lower Balkansor more generally the Byzantine Empire; it was not applied to the trans-Danubian region until the 19th century.

1357:1a. Matthew Kantakuzenos, controlling Thrace, formally renounces his claim tothe throne. John V Palaiologos finally becomes the undisputed ruler of “anempire in ruins” (Bartusis, LBA p.102).

1b. Thrace: Some date the Turkish capture of Dimetoka or Didymoteichum – onthe Maritsa south of Adrianople/Edirne, SW of Constantinople - to 1357; othersprefer 1359, 1360 or 1361. See the discussion below under 1359: it was lost andcaptured more than once in the period 1359-61.

2. Venice promises aid to John in return for confirming his debt to them of100,000 hyperpyra. Cf 1369.

3. Death of the prince Suleyman Pasha in a hunting accident; Orhan makes peacewith Byzantium. Cf 1357-58 below.

TEN YEARS SINCE THE APPEARANCE OF THE BLACK DEATH

1357-58:The Aegean: In the spring or summer of 1357 Genoese or Greek ‘pirates’operating from Phocaea, the Byzantine-ruled coastal town N of Turkish Smyrna,kidnapped Halil, the 11 or 12-year-old son of Orhan and Theodora. (Byzantiumhad recently recovered Phocaea from Genoa.) Halil was Kantakouzenus’sgrandson and Theodora was John Palaiologos’s own sister-in-law. It is not clearif the Genoese initially knew who the boy was; it was probably just a randomtaking of a captive for sale. Not surprisingly Orhan appealed to Palaiologos for help. The emperor agreedto assist him if Orhan ceased Turkish incursions in Thrace. Thus, for a period oftwo years, 1357-1359, Ottoman offensive operations in Thrace were limited.


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Orhan's key objective was to effect the release of his son Halil. He insisted thatJohn V Palaeologus proceed in person with a ‘fleet’ against the Phocaeans - atthat time, Byzantium had just three galleys! (Assuming all the rowers alsofought, the fighting strength of the expedition cannot gave exceeded some 900men.) The emperor set out in the following spring, i.e. in 1358. Orhan had alsomade an agreement with Ilyas Bey, the ruling prince of Saruhan, to attack thePhocaeans by land; together they encircled the town, but without success. TheByzantine governor Leo Kalothetos was a strong Kantakouzenist and would notcooperate. So Orhan decided to pay 100,000 hyperpyra (30,000 ducats) to ransomHalil, and in 1359 Halil was duly returned (Nicol, Last Centuries, p.261; alsoFinlay, History of the Byz Empire, vol 2, Blackwood 1854, p.576). Cf 1359.

1357-60:Gallipoli: In the period 1357-1359 the Turks began a thorough colonisation of theGallipoli/Gelibolu Peninsula. In his Conquest of Thrace (2002), Liakopoulos notesthat a vakfiyye [endowment] of Orhan to his son Süleyman, dated in 1360, gives alist of many villages and çiftliks [estates] with Turkish names in the area. Thiscolonisation was strengthened by nomads, aîhis [urban religious brotherhoods]and dervishes who poured in “every day” from Asia Minor.

1358-72: Hungary achieves nominal suzerainty over Bosnia, the Serbian states,Wallachia and Moldavia.

1359:1. The Ottomans resumed their raids on Thrace, perhaps as a riposte to theactivity of the papal legate, Peter Thomas, who visited Constantinople with hisfleet and then proceeded to make an attack on the Ottoman fort at Lampsakos(Lapseki) in the autumn of 1359. The troops were a mixed bunch of Hospitallers(50 men), Venetians (two galleys), Genoese, English and ‘Greeks’ (Luttrell, ‘LatinResponses’ at www.deremilitari.org/resources/pdfs/luttrell.pdf; accessed 2011;Norman Housley, The Avignon papacy and the Crusades, 1305-1378, OxfordUniversity Press, 1986, p.38). Peter (Pierre) Thomas arrived at Constantinople accompanied by Venetian andRhodian (Hospitaller) galleys. He failed to cement the union between thechurches, but with Greek assistance the motley Latin forces (Hospitallers,Venetians, Genoese and English) destroyed the Ottoman fort at Lampsacus onthe Asian shore opposite Gallipoli in the Dardanelles. Some “300” Turks werekilled. This was probably the first ever Latin assault on the Ottomans (Setton, Papacyp.236; Luttrell p.124)

Loss of inner Thrace: The Turks take Arcadiopolis, east of Adrianople, andnearby towns, including Boulgaropygon, Apros and Rhaidestros, on and inlandfrom the northern, Thracian shore of the Sea of Marmara (Liakopoulos, Conquestof Thrace). This put them inside a 100-mile/160 km radius drawn from Constantinople… Indeed, as we have noted, a Turkish advance guard briefly made an excursionto the walls of Constantinople itself in 1359 (Norwich 1996: 328).


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“The unusual intensity”, writes Inalcik, “of the renewed assaults by Rumelian[Europe-based] ghazis [religious warriors] in 1359 stirred an echo even in theWestern sources. It was then that the systematic occupation of [inner] Thracereally began. The Florentine Villani writes that Didymoteichum [on the Evros orMaritsa River 40 km below Adrianople] temporarily fell for the first time to theTurks in 1359 in the course of this assault, and Turkish raiders appeared at thewalls of Byzantium in that same year”. —Thus Halil Inalcik, ‘The Conquest ofEdirne (1361)’, Archivum Ottomanicum, III, The Hague, 1971. Emphasis added. Ottoman tradition gives 761 A.H., ie, 23 November 1359 to 13 October 1360, asthe date of the conquest of Edirne/Adrianople. But the generally accepted date is1361; some argue for 1369.

2. Greece: In Epirus Nikephoros II Orsini was killed in a skirmish against theAlbanians, and this opened up a welcome opportunity for Simeon Urosh ofSerbia. Consequently, he rapidly swept into Thessaly and was acknowledged as itsruler in 1359. He then invaded Epirus, where the towns, harried by the Albanianclansmen who had taken over the countryside, also recognised his authority. (Ex-Byzantine Epirus was governed thereafter by Albanian chiefs under Serbiansuzerainty.) —Fine 1994: 350-51.

3. Greece: Probably in 1359, but possibly in 1360, a combined Christian fleet ofVenetians, Hospitallers, the (Greek) Despot of Morea and the bailie [governor] ofAchaea, burned 35 Turkish vessels (probably from Aydin) off Megara (west ofAthens). Aydin was allied with the Catalans of Athens and the surviving Turkswere able to take refuge with the Catalans at Thebes (NW of Athens). Cf 1363.—Inalcik, ‘Maritime’ p.321; Kenneth Meyer Setton A History of the Crusades: Thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries, v.7 1975, p.297.

4. Gregory Palamas dies, 14 Nov. 1359, aged 63, having been a bishop for 12-and-a-half years. His body is buried in his cathedral of Haghia Sophia inThessaloniki.

fl. Leontios Pilatos, south Italian-Greek teacher and translator. AtPetrarch's suggestion and with Boccaccio's help, the Calabrian GreekLeonzio Pilato came to Florence and made (1360-62) a complete Latintranslation of the Iliad and Odyssey, although a very poor one. ‘OurLeontius is really a Calabrian, but would have us to consider him a Thessalian asthough it were nobler to be Greek than Italian’ (wrote Petrarch).

Late 1350s:Cydones translates into Greek Ricolda’s Improbatio Alcorani or “Condemnation ofthe Quran”, a defence of Christianity against Islam. This gave, says Vryonis,Byzantine polemicists a fresh arsenal of details and arguments. Ricolda or Riccoldo of Monte Croce, fl. 1302, was an Italian monk whotravelled widely in the East. He was in Il-Khan-ruled Baghdad when the news ofthe fall (1291) of Acre (the last ‘Crusader’ outpost in Palestine) to the Mamluksreached the city.


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Above: A 16th Century rendering of Murad I, r. 1361-1389.

1359-61:Thrace: Murad, 33 years old and still prince in 1359, commanded the Ottomanoutpost in Gallipoli. Arguing that attack was the best form of defence, he decidedto go for Adrianople/Edirne. In 1359, as we noted, his forces took the fortressesalong the lower Evros/Meriç valley, the river that enters the Aegean NW ofGallipoli, and those on the road from Constantinople to Adrianople, thus cuttingoff the supply line to the latter. Adrianople would surrender in 1361 (or such wasthe majority view among historians: some now think it held out until 1369).

Murad’s men seized the vital fortresses along the historic Constantinople-Adrianople road, which were, starting from Constantinople: Corlu, Misini andBurgus (Lule-Burgaz: Gk Arcadiopolis). At the same time the Turkishcommanders of the marches, some of whom were ex-Karesi in origin, wereholding down the Byzantine fortresses, and especially Didymoteichum, whichprotected Edirne (Adrianople) from the south, i.e. from the lower Maritsa (Evros)valley. These Turks were not necessarily under Ottoman control; they seem to have actedindependently. Or so say some: there is much debate about this (cf Kunt, in ‘Riseof the Ottomans’, in CNMH p.849). In the second and final phase of the expedition, prince Murad set up hisheadquarters in Baba-Eskisi, at a distance of 55 km from Edirne; from there hesent Lala Qahin [‘Shahin’] against Adrianople. Metin Kunt writes of the Turkishforces, frontiersmen and Ottoman regular troops together, marching up the


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Maritsa to Adrianople. The Byzantine forces that gathered in Adrianopleattempted to scatter the Ottomans by engaging in a battle outside the walls, atSazludere/Sazlidere, but when they were defeated they retreated into thefortress. —Kunt loc.cit.; Halil Inalcik, "The Conquest of Edirne (1361)", ArchivumOttomanicum, III, The Hague, 1971. See 1361.

1360:1. fl. Nicholas Cabasilas: Byzantine scholar and mystical humanist, born inThessalonica. Haussig calls him a representative of “the final stage ofmysticism”: Haussig, Hans Wilhelm, A history of Byzantine civilization,translated [from the German] by J. M. Hussey, (London, Thames & Hudson,1971). He supported Palamas, and approved of secular and Classical learning; apioneer of the term "Hellene" to mean a contemporary Byzantine Greek rather than itsprevious meaning of Ancient Greek pagan. His views on mysticism did not coincidewith Palamas’s; mystical experience could best be reached, he argued, byconcentration on the Sacrament, and there was no reason why a mystic shouldnot be a man of the world: secular learning would help rather than hinder him.He was apparently considered for the office of Patriarch in 1354.

2. The history of Nikephoros Gregoras, Romaike Historia, in 37 "books" orchapters, covers the period to 1359. When Gregoras passed through Bithynia en route to Turkish Nicaea in themiddle of the 14th century, just one generation after the conquest of Nicaea, heobserved that the population consisted of 1 Greeks, 2 mixovarvaroi - ‘mixo-barbari’ or Graeco-Turks, and 3 Turks. Intermarriage of Muslim and Christians atevery level of society played a very important role in the integration andabsorption of the Greek Christian element into Muslim society. —Vryonis,Medieval Hellenism, pp.228-29.

The Aegean Region in 1360Maps in Nicolle 2008: 44; 59.

By 1360-61 the tiny 'empire' consisted of little more than the immediatehinterlands of three cities and an outpost in the Morea or Peloponnesus: (a) theEuropean side of Constantinople and the immediate littoral on the Asian side; (b)Adrianople and southern Thrace, as far as Kavala [in eastern Macedonia]: lost by1361; and (c) around Thessalonica. A tongue of Serbian-controlled territory inMacedonia, including Serres and Mt Athos, separated Kavala from Thessalonica. Also [d] the south-east third of the Peloponnesus or Morea acknowledged theemperor in Constantinople. Other Byzantine outposts were [e] on the Black Seacoast of Asia around Heraclea, [f] around Biga in Bithynia, the town “inside” theOttoman dominated littoral of the Sea of Marmara, and [g] the town ofPhiladelphia, a tiny island of Greek rule on the borderland between the Turkishemirates of Saruhan and Aydin. The Ottomans held a segment of lower Thrace east of the Evros river andByzantine Ainos, and both sides the Dardanelles. Thus potentially they could try to


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control the sea-trade route from the Aegean into the Sea of Marmara. (In fact theVenetian and Genoese galleys prevailed or were let through: there was indeed atreaty between the Ottomans and Genoese.) Byzantium held both sides of theBosphorus. If we look at the Aegean itself, we see that Byzantium held the northernislands including Lemnos, Venice the western islands from Negroponte (Euboea)and Naxos to Crete, and the Genoese the eastern islands from Lesbos down toSamos, with the Knights of St John at Kos and Rhodes. On the Asian shore, theGenoese held Phocaea (against Saruhan) and the Hospitallers held Smyrna(against Aydin). Asia Minor was controlled by various Turkish emirates, including thepowerful Ottomans of Bursa. The other emirates were the coastal states ofSarukhan, Aydin, Menteshe, inland Germiyan, and Hamid (in SW Asia Minor). At this time, although the strongest in Asia, the Ottomans did not appear to bethe most powerful state in the region. (Cf 1361 below.) Bulgaria’s territory, orrather that of various Bulgarian princes and lords, was still extensive; and stillthe most powerful realm appeared to be the (now disintegrating) ex-“empire” ofSerbia, whose contending princes ruled the whole NW half of the Balkans, fromNish south as far as Epirus and east as far as inner Macedonia including theStrymon Valley, Serres and the peninsula of Chalcidice-Mt Athos. In Macedoniathe Greeks of Byzantium controlled only the immediate environs of Thessalonica.Thessaly was divided between the Serbs and the Wallachian (Vlach) Duchy ofNeopatras. The Latin kingdom of Naples held two enclaves on the Serbian-dominatedAdriatic coast: (a) around Durres in modern Albania and (b) at Corfu and aroundButrinto in Epirus.


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Above: The situation on the eve of the fall of Adrianople/Edirne to theTurks. Purple = the Byzantine Empire or Romania. The dot and label ‘Genoa’ next to Constantinople is to indicate the“internal” Genoese colony of Pera/Galata. “Achaea” = the Latin(Angevin) Principality of Achaia. ‘Anjevian’ is an unorthodox spellingof Angevin. Athens and Neopatria [lower Thessaly] were ruled,nominally on behalf of Sicily, by the Catalan Company. Epirus andThessaly, whose populations were largely “Greek” (Byzantine), wereruled by the Serbian prince Simeon Urosh, 1359-70 (uncle of the thenSerbian ruler, Stefan V). The blue spot in Asia Minor north of Cyrus was ‘Lesser’ or CilicianArmenia, a long-surviving Christian realm that was soon to beannexed (1375) by the Mamluks of Egypt. Notice too that ‘Frankish’(Lusignan) Cyprus controls a section of the Asia Minor littoral.

1360-1405: Central Asia: Tamerlane or 'Timur the lame', ruler of Samarkand,proclaims himself (1360) restorer of the Mongol Empire. Timur himself wasa Mongol-descended Turkish-speaker; the administrative language of hisrealm was Persian. See 1370. While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places such asBaghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Persian, Indian and Turkiccities were sacked and destroyed, and several million people wereslaughtered or starved.

1360-62:Latin- (French-) ruled Cyprus: Famagusta had risen to the position of the chiefChristian slave emporium in the eastern Mediterranean following the fall [in thelater 1200s] of Crusader outposts in the Levant, and of the settlement of coloniesof foreign traders there, particularly the Genoese. The Venetian notary Nicola deBoeteriis recorded, during 1360-62, sales of a ‘large’ number of Greek slaves, butno Arab, Turkish or black slaves (on the whole, 22 men - 24 women). —BenjaminArbel (1993), ‘Slave Trade and Slave Labour in Frankish Cyprus, 1191-1571’,Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 24 = N.S. 14:149-190.

1360-89:“Orchan’s brother Amurath I [i.e. prince Murad, sultan from 1362] conquersThrace and ‘Romania’ [Greece], 1360-89, fights the Sclavonians [sic], Bulgarians,Servians, Bosnians and Albanians [see 1385], and converts them to his allies”(1911 edn of Encyc. Brit). Cf 1361.

1361: 100 years since the Greek (Byzantine) recovery of Constantinople.

1361:Expatriates: The scholar and several times chief minister (mesazon) DemetriosKydones, ca.1324-ca.1398, first served in that post as a young man under


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Kantakouzenos. He later was a personal friend and teacher of prince Manuel II(the future emperor: acc. 1391). Kydones/Cydones, a student of Latin, worked in Italy from 1354. Heconverted to Latin Catholicism at some point between 1355 and 1361 (at age 31+).In 1369, Emperor John V Palaiologos recalled Kydones to Constantinople andnamed him Imperial Prime Minister or Mesazon, the second time he held thisposition, 1369-1383. Returning to Italy he eventually applied for and was grantedVenetian citizenship. Recalled again to Constantinople in 1391 by his formerpupil Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, the son of Emperor John V Palaiologos,Kydones resumed the position of Prime Minister ("Mesazon"), but in 1396hostility to his Catholicism compelled him to retire permanently to the island ofCrete, then ruled by the Venetians. He died there the following year, in 1398.—Kianka, ‘Cydones’ in The International History Review,Vol. 7, No. 2, May, 1985;also Dennis, Letters of Manuel II, 1977 p.xxxix. Cf below, 1360-61.

2. Thrace: The Ottomans capture Didymotechion and (probably) Adrianople.

The Turks renewed their push into Europe after Dushan's death (1355). Bartusisp.104 and Nicol, Last Centuries p.262 note that it is not known whether it was theOttomans or other Turks who took Didymoteichon, downstream fromAdrianople, in 1361. But possibly it was other, non-Ottoman Turks who tookAdrianople.; or ex-Karsei ireegaulsr in coaperion with Ottoman regular, as Kuntenvisages. Probably in the same year, 1361, following a victory over a combinedByzantine-Bulgarian force at Eski Baba or Baba-eskisi, SE of Adrianople, orrather between Eski Baba and Adrianople, the Turks received the surrender thethird largest East Roman town, Adrianople in Thrace. It would subsequently become thenew Ottoman capital (present-day Edirne) (in 1377). —Halil Inalcik, ‘The Conquestof Edirne (1361)’, Archivum Ottomanicum, III, The Hague, 1971. The generally agreed date for the occupation of Adrianople is 1361; some haveargued that it was retaken by the Christians and held out until 1369, showingthat the Turkish conquest was slower and more piecemeal than previouslythought (Harris 2005: 65, citing Imber’s Ottoman Empire 1990; Kunt in CNHMp.850; also Bartusis). The Chronicle of Panaretos (kept by Trebizond’s ambassador toConstantinople) states that Adrianople was still in Byzantine hands at the time ofthe second bubonic plague (thanatos tou boubounos), i.e. in 1361-62; it is thereferepossible or even likely that plague aided the conquest of the Thracian towns bythe Ottomans (Marien 2009: 96, citing Babinger).

Halecki says that news of the fall, or at least the investment, of Adrianoplereached Venice as early as 14 March 1361. It created a powerful impression anddrew the attention of the West for the first time (or rather the second: the earlierfall of Gallipoli had also been noticed) to this new land power emerging in theLevant. (At sea the Ottomans were still more of a nuisance than a threat at thistime.) —Oskar Halecki in his (1972) Un Empereur de Byzance à Rome, London,Variorum Reprints, cited in Inalcik’s “Conquest of Edirne”; also in The


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Cambridge Medieval History: excerpt at http://www.raven-glass.com/vlad/romania/neighbrs.html.

The Turks adopted the term Rumeli ("Rumelia") to designate the portions of theBalkan Peninsula that they acquired from the Rhomaioi in the fourteenthcentury. "Rumelia" was a diminutive term. If Anatolia was Rum, 'Rome' proper,then the European territories were Lesser Rome or ‘Rumeli’.

Murad, Sultan from 1362: First Ottoman ruler to plan and carry out organisedconquests up to the Danube river. Control of Byzantine food supplies enabled him tomake the Byzantine emperors into vassals. Initial conquests of Thrace and a newcapital Edirne (old Adrianople) in 1361 gave the Ottomans control of theByzantine administrative, financial and military centres in Southeastern Europe. Edirne became the base for further conquests along Black Sea coast, throughBulgaria and Rumania to the mouth of the Danube; through the Balkanmountains in Bulgaria and west to the Maritsa river, where they will defeat aSerb army in the 'Rout of the Serbs' battle (1364); along the shores of Aegean Seato Salonica with help of the ethnic Greek Muslim champion Evrenos*, routing theBulgarians in Macedonia at the Battle of Samako (1371); and finally an advancefrom Salonica north up Vardar River under command of Turkoman prince KaraTimurtash that will capture Nish (1386).

(*) Kara Timürtash Gazi Evrenos, ca. 1327-1417. His family converted to Islamsoon after 1302 and he served first the Karasi bey and then the Ottomans whenthey annexed the Karasi emirate (Nicolle, Ottomans 2008: 39).

1361: Latin counter–strike. The French of Cyprus under the youngLusignan king Peter/Pierre I make an expedition to Asia Minor tocapture Antalya (”Adalia”), seat of the Tekke beylik. The fleet was madeup of 119 vessels, some large and many small, including four Hospitallergalleys and two papal galleys. Adalia was quickly taken. News of thissurprising success spread throughout Christendom and briefly madePierre famous (Setton, Papacy, p.240)

1361-62:Second outbreak of the Black Death. The whole of the Byzantine domainssuffered, according to the Short Chronicles/Brachea Chronika. In ConstantinopleCydones lost his mother amd two of his sisters. Many, perhaps most, of theruling caste escaped to the country (Marien 209: 63-64). The Chronicle of Panaretos (kept by Trebizond’s ambassador toConstantinople) states that Adrianople was still in Byzantine hands at the time ofthe second bubonic plague (thanatos tou boubounos); it is therefore possible oreven likely that plague aided the conquest of the Thracian towns by theOttomans (Marien 2009: 96, citing Babinger). It also struck at least a part of the Ottoman realms, but the records are sparse;it is possible that the emir Orhan’s death (1361) was due to plague, rather than


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from grief at the death of his son as Turkish tradition has it (Marien 2009: 52-53,citing Schreiner).

1361-65:1a. Thrace: Pushing inland to the north and then north-west, the Ottomans takeArcadiopolis (Luleburgaz), Chorlu (NW of Silivri), Keshan* [in the west near thelower Evros/Maritsa River], Pinarhisar [north of Luleburgaz] and Babaeski [GkBoulgarophygon, west of Luleburgaz] in 1361 and Adrianople (Edirne) in 1361 or1362 (Nicolle 2008: 56; Murat Ocak, The Turks: Middle ages, Yeni Türkiye, 2002).

(*) This area was again in Greek hands 559 years later: in AD 1920-22 afterthe end of WWII; the Turks retook it in 1922 ( = AH 1341).

1b. Bulgaria: The Turks conquer north-west to Bulgarian Philippopolis (ourPlovdiv) and Beroe, which is modern Stara Zagora. Plovdiv falls in 1363 or 1364(Nicolle 2008: 55; Shaw 1979: 18).

1362: d. sultan Orhan, aged 79, probably from the plague, which broke out in this year(or in 1361); accession of his son Murad I (1362-89). Ottoman civil war ensues;uprising against the Ottomans in Anatolia. In Orhan’s long reign the Osmanli/Ottoman emirate had more than trebled insize, expandinging east to beyond Ankara, west to inner Thrace, and southwestbeyond Bergama/Pergamon to the border of the Aydinoglu.

Ottoman Standing Army

The changeover from Early Ottoman to Later Ottoman comes when the army isrestructured around 1362 by the establishment of quasi-feudal levies (timariots)in the newly-conquered Balkans, and the foundation of the Qapukulu (Kapikulu)and the Janissary (Yeniçeri) corps, initially from captured Thracian (Greek)soldiers: thus slave-soldiers. ‘Kapikulu’ is a generic term covering both cavalryand infantry. There were only a few thousand Janissaries, elite heavyinfantrymen, until after 1400. After 1362 we find a kind of standing army, mainly cavalry, capable ofdefending fixed positions and conducting offensive raids. Professional regularslargely replaced the earlier type of Turcoman volunteer cavalry, mostly unpaid, whohad operated in large numbers along with lesser numbers of irregular lightinfantrymen (foot archers) in support. Already there was a small core of salariedprofessionals under Orhan (d. 1362), superseded thereafter by a larger force ofprofessionals remunerated with land holdings (timar, land grants, “fiefs”: but thelands remained State lands). Of course there were still volunteers after 1362 butthey became second-class troops (Nicolle, Janissaries 1995: 9; and his Ottomans2008: 61ff). Cavalry are represented by the feudal Sipahis [“horsemen”], mounted quasi-feudal warriors who served in return for a small fief (timariot) from which theyself-financed their weapons, equipment and horse. They had some armour: atleast a helmet, often mail and usually a shield. They fought mostly with the bowand hand weapons (sword and mace); lances were rare until later (Late Ottoman


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period) (Mesut Uyar & Edward Erickson, A military history of the Ottomans: fromOsman to Atatürk, ABC-CLIO, 2009 p.54) These troops would have been supplemented by mercenaries, some of whomwere even ‘Greek’ (Rhomaioi).

Above: Bellini’s pen drawing of an Ottoman janissary in ca 1480, i.e. afterthe fall of Constantinople. He wears a soft-cloth (felt) conical headdress sohigh that it droops backwards; a bow and what appears to be a combinedbowcase-quiver but may be a simple quiver. He is pictured thus because the Turks did not use chairs.

1362: Early emergence of England as a nation-state: English replacesFrench as the spoken language in the law courts of England (writtenlaw continued to be recorded in Latin). Most pre-modern political units were not nation-states. "France"simply meant the collection of rural estates lorded over by the manwho called himself 'king of France'. The peasant workers, althoughno longer permanently tied to the estate of their master - serfdomhad ended de facto - had no solidarity even with the next valley,and on top of the collection of rural estates there lay various feudalallegiances (kings dominating dukes who dominated lesserbarons).

1362-82:


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In Europe this period will see the Ottomans conquer outer Thrace and lowerBulgaria: west to the edge of Macedonia (Serres)and north-west beyond Filibe(Philippopolis, Plovdiv) [see 1363-65]. In Asia the Ottomans will expand SE intothe Great Lakes region of Anatolia. By 1382 they will hold somewhat moreterritory in Asia than in Europe.

1363:1. E Aegean: The status of Genoese-ruled Chios vis-à-vis Byzantium is finallysettled when the Emperor concedes the island to the Genoese Giustiniani familyin return for an annual payment of 500 gold hyperpyra (Long 1998). (By 1400 thepopulation would consist of some 8,000 Greek and perhaps 2,000 Latins, or about12* people per sq km: Lutttrell in CNMH p.804).

(*) Stathakopoulos 2008 offers conservative figures for a populationdensity, empire-wide, in the whole Byzantine millennium, of nine peopleper km2 in tough times, rising to 15 per km2 in fair to good times.

2. Murad I paid a visit to Edirne/Adrianople, and appointed Lala‘shahin Pashacommander of the garrison (Shahin Yildirm & Gunay Karaka, Edirne müzeleri veören yerleri, YKY 2006 p.23: text is in English). Edirne became a crucial militarybase for subsequent territorial conquests by the Turks in Rumelia, although it didnot become the Ottoman capital until 1377. See next.

3. Catalan (Sicilian*) Athens vs Achaea: A contingent of Anatolian Turks(presumably from Aydin), who crossed to Thebes first by sea and then land, wasbased in Thebes as allies of the the Catalan/Sicilian vicar-general Roger deLluria. This was resented by other Catalans, who appealed to their overlord theAragonese-Sicilian king. De Lluria and his Turkish allies attacked Angevin-ruledAchaea, overwhelming the forces sent there from Sicily* (Setton, Crusades p.202;Inalcik, Maritime p.321).

(*) The Aragonese king of Sicily was also Duke of Athens.

4. Insurrection against Venetian rule in Crete [after 159 years of Latin rule: butnot the first]. It was provoked by the imposition of new taxes to make repairs inthe harbour of Candia but the real grievance was the harsh rule by the Venetiansand their allies among the Greek upper-class. Venetian officials were killed, imprison or expelled. The rebels, who includedItalians and other Latins as well as Greeks, created their own ruling council, butthe two nationalities did not get on well. Venice was a month’s sail away, butwhen the news reached there the authorities wrote to all the neighbouring rulersin the Aegean asking them to not interfere. The Pope wrote to the rebels sayingthey needed Venice to defend them from the Muslims. This was rejected. Venicethen (early 1364) engaged troops to retake the island, and informed the Popeand others that they would happily go East after subduing the island and wouldtransport other crusaders, eg from Savoy, if they want to go to Cyprus andlaunch a crusade in the East from there. A fleet of 33 galleys, 18 of which could


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carry horses, was hired to convey the troops to Crete. (This was a strong force forthis time, at least in naval terms: in 1424, when a “powerful” fleet was desired,the Venetian Senate voted to arm 25 galleys: Lane, Venetian Ships p.254).* The fleet under the admiral Domenico Michiel of Santa Fosca and Luchino dalVerme (a Veronese condottiero) sailed in April 1364 with 1,000 cavalry and 2,000infantry, Italians and Germans, but all were in Venetian service: the idea of acrusade in the Levant had lapsed. (18 /1,000 horses = 55+ horses per horse-transport: they must have been large vessels. + Dividing the 3000 men into 15ships we get 200 per ship: very cramped ….) Meanwhile on Crete fighting broke out between the Greeks and Latins, andthe Greeks seemed to be winning. But the expeditionary force quickly intervenedand re-secured the island for Venice, or at least the lowlands were secured. Somerebels declared (August 1364) allegiance to Byzantium (which had not expressedany sympathy or solidarity) and withdrew into the mountains to fight guerreillastyle. The last rebels were not finially defeated until 1366 (Setton, Papacy pp.49ff;Hodgson, Venice in the 13th and 14th Ccc, London 1910, pp.477ff).

(*) But much weaker than in former times: see Appendix II.

Above: Galia grosse (big galley) of the later 14th C.

1363-65:Ottoman conquests in S Bulgaria and western Thrace; conquest of Philippopolis(Plovdiv) [1363]. See 1364, 1371. As Inalcik notes (1973, p.11), the broad line of advance was along the ancienthighways, the Via Egnatia and the old Roman road to Belgrade. Local Christianlords frequently decided that accepting Turkish suzerainty was better thanfighting. The whole Maritsa [Meriç, Evros] valley was under Turkish control by 1365.But it took a further 20 years for the Ottomans to reach the Albanian coast andthe Adriatic in the west (1385).


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Inalcik p.13 points to several non-military factors in the progress of Ottomanexpansion. First, the Turkish feudal code was easier on the peasants than that ofStephan Dushan, d.1355. Second, the Ottomans formally recognised theOrthodox Church, ignoring the official (but resented) union of the Catholic andOrthodox churches since 1274.

1363-66:Thrace: Didymoteichon or Dimoteka serves as the temporary Ottoman capital onthe European side (then Edirne from 1367) (Gibbons, Foundation of OttomanEmpire, Oxford 1916).

1364:1. Asia Minor: The Kara-Biga/Pegai region, last Byzantine or former Byzantineenclave on the southern side of the Sea Marmara, falls to the Turks. ThusNicolle 2008: 41: evidently it was still in the hands of the descendants of theCatalan Great Company.

2. (Setton 1975: 297 places this in 1359-60:) Greece: Naval battle off Megara, in theSaronic Gulf south-west of Athens: an allied Frankish-Byzantine-Venetian-Rhodian fleet defeats the Turks; 35 Turkish ships are burnt, and the remnant ofthe enemy force is pursued overland to Thebes (Vacalopoulos p.82). Seeaboveundr 1359

1364/65:1. (Usually dated to 1371: see there:) The Battle of Adrianople or ‘second battle ofthe Maritsa’ or Tk: Sirf sindigi, Sırpsındı’ı: ‘Destruction (or Rout) of the Serbs', -the name was afterwards given to the site of the battle - was fought 25 km westof Edirne or Adrianople. The Ottomans defeat a joint army of Serbs, Wallachiansand Hungarians (Shaw p.18). Encyc. Brit. 1911 edn: At the instigation of the pope an allied army ofsupposedly 60,000 Serbs, Hungarians, Wallachians and Moldavians attacked theOttoman general Lala Shahin. Murad, who had returned to Brusa, crossed overto Biga, and sent on Haji Ilbeyi with 10,000 men; these fell by night on theServians (sic) and utterly routed them at a place still known as the "Servians'coffer".

2. Byzantium v Bulgaria: The Turks offer the Bulgarian Tsar an agreement tocollaborate against Byzantium. To punish the Tsar, Emperor John's tiny army,presumably a few hundred men, ventures into Bulgarian territory and seizes theport of Anchialus (1364); failed siege of Mesembria. Nicol, Last Centuries p.263,dates this to 1363. Then, after visiting the Hungarian king* - sailing/rowed (1365)up the Danube between Bulgarian, Moldavian and Wallachian territory -John/Ioannes/ V Palaiologos is left stranded in Buda (1365 or 1366). See 1366.

(*) Hungary was the nearest powerful Christian kingdom; its territories extendedas far as the Dalmatian coast, incorporating p.d. Croatia.


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Silver replaces gold

The gold hyperpyron, after suffering progressive debasement, was finallyabandoned, and replaced in the 1360s (perhaps in 1367) by a large, heavy coin ofgood silver, the stavraton, tariffed at half a (debased) hyperpyron. The stavratonand its fractions, the half and the eighth, were the pattern for the standardcoinage of Constantinople until its fall. There were also a new varieties of coppercoins called ‘tornese’ and ‘folaro’ (Hendy, Monetary Economy p.541).

1364-87:The first Grand Vizier [Arabic wazir, Tk: Vezir-i âzam, Sadrazam, Serdar-ı Ekrem orSadr-ı Azam] of the Ottomans was Çandarlı Kara Halil Hayreddin Pasha.

1365:1. Bulgaria: John Alexander or Ivan Alexandur divided his realm between his twosons. After his death in 1371, the two separate kingdoms of Turnovo and Vidinemerged. See 1366.

Marriage alliance with Byzantium: Ivan’s dau. Maria (Keratza) of Bulgaria (ca1348-1390) marries Prince Andronikos IV Palaiologos, future Emp. of Byzantium(12.8.1376-VII.1379) – cr. St.Sophia 18.10.1377, born Constantinople 11.4.1348,+28.6.1385. He was about 17; she was also about 17. Plovdiv (Philippopolis) having been recently lost to the Turks, it obviouslymade sense for Bulgaria and Byzantium to form an alliance. See 1366.

2. Crimea: Genoese troops seized the Greek town of Sudak, on the SE coast, in1365. Ibn Batutta (see above: 1330s) had counted Sudak as one of the four greatports of the world; its population was then mainly Turkic, i.e. Tatar/Kipchak.The Genoese took Soldaia (as they called Sudak) in 1365 and built strongdefences, still to be seen. Eventually (by 1380) they controlled a narrow strip ofthe coastal land, “the Captainship of Gothia”, that ran from Yamboli (Balaklava)in the west to Aluston (Alushta) in the east (Henry Seymour, Russia on the BlackSea and Sea of Azof: being a narrative of travels: J. Murray, 1855 p.245). A Goth0-Greek principality around the stronghold of Doros (modern Mangup), thePrincipality of Theodoro, continued to exist, while further north the KipchakEmpire or Khanate of the Golden Horde ruled the rest of the peninsula. The Genoese and the Venetians competed for a lucrative trade in slaves andspices, taking slaves from our Eastern Europe via Crimea to Egypt and buyingspices, silk, linen and aromatic woods there brought in by traders from India andCeylon. In the case of Tana, the Venetian colony on the NE coast of the Sea ofAzov, by 1408 no less than “78%” of its export earnings would come from slaves(Ascherson, quoted in Paul Magocsi, A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples,University of Toronto Press, 2010, p.118).


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1365/66:d. Anna of Savoy, aged about 60, dowager empress, widow of Andronicus II andmother of John V Palaeologus. Others say 1359. Nicol, Lady p.93, says 1365.

1366:Gallipoli: While the Turks were crossing the Byzantine-Bulgarian border in 1366,only to be defeated at Vidin, the Pope tried to organise a crusade against them.He was not successful, but a small Christian (Italian: Savoyard) fleet was able toreconquer the fortress of Gallipoli in the same year and return it to Byzantinecontrol. Nicolle 2008: 41 places this in 1364; but the generally accepted date is1366 (Kunt in NCMH p.851).

The Pope calls for a crusade against the Turks, but no one responds.— Seeking to return from Hungary to his capital, John finds himself effectivelyblocked by the Bulgarians. But a Franco-Italian or Savoyard fleet of 15 ships,under his cousin, the 22 years old Amadeo VI of Turin, known as "the GreenCount" (il Conte Verde), sails to the Black Sea and Danube mouth and rescues thestranded John. On the way, Amadeo captures the port of Gallipoli. See 1367. Hewas known as "le Comte Vert" after a tournament of May 1353 at Bourg-en-Bressewhere (aged 19) he appeared dressed entirely in green, and after which he usedthe colour green for his apartments, tents and sails. Count Amadeus of Savoy took the Turkish fortress of Gallipoli on 23 August1366 with 15 ships and an army numbering no more than 3,000 to 4,000 men,made up of about 1,700 or 1,500 of his Italian soldiers, Genoese from Lesbos andsome Byzantines. Some men were contributed by Francesco I Gattilusio, Lord ofLesbos. See 1367. Amadeus then sailed into the Black Sea where, on behalf ofByzantium, he captured (15-25 October 1366) six Bulgarian coastal townsincluding Mesembria and Sozopolis.* Varna he was unable to take. As a result,the Bulgarians released John V (Norwich 1996: 330; Bartusis, LBA p.105, citingNicol; E. Cox, The Green Count of Savoy. Amadeus VI and Transalpine Savoy in theFourteenth Century Princeton, 1967, p. 220, note 41; N. Housley, The AvignonPapacy and the Crusades, 1305-1378, Oxford, 1986, pp 44-5.)

(*) Sozopolis is on the south side of the Gulf of Burgas; Mesembria on itsnorth side.

Provence/N Italy: Early "humanism" and the recovery of the ancient pre-Christian classic texts: Petrarch obtains a complete copy of the Greekclassics Odyssey and Iliad in Latin. He had tried to learn Greek in order toread them in the original, but failed.

1367: 20 YEARS SINCE THE BLACK DEATH

1367:1a. John and Amadeo reach Constantinople.


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1b. Thrace: Amadeo returns the port of Gallipoli to Byzantium (14 June)(Kenneth Meyer Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571: The thirteenth andfourteenth centuries, American Philosophical Society, 1976 p.299). The ships of thevarious Christian states controlled the Dardanelles at this time [1367-76], and inprinciple the Turks were thereby in a difficult position. In practice, the Turks wereable, absent any large crusader army from the West, to proceed with their landconquests. See next.

1367-76:Thrace: The Byzantines were once more in control of Gallipoli and so in aposition to prevent Ottoman reinforcements crossing to the Balkans. It is likelytherefore, - or at any rate possible, - that much of the early conquest and defeat ofthe Bulgarians and Serbs was achieved by independent bands of Turks whoowed no allegiance to the Ottoman emir. —Harris 2005: 65, citing Beldiceanu-Steinher. Actually this seems unlikely, in light of the activities of Murad’s general LalaShâhin Pasha (see 1371). Also the Turks were in control of the whole Maritsavalley by 1365; probably enough settlement has taken place in the decade 1356-66for them to be able to support the required soldiers locally.

1368:Calabria: Three centuries after the Norman conquest of Byzantine Italy, theGreek language endured in S Italy. The anonymous author of a French chronicleof the late 1200s noted that "through the whole of Calabria the peasants speaknothing but Greek". In 1368 Petrarch recommended a stay in the region to a student who needed toimprove his knowledge of Greek.

1369:1. Emperor John V (aged 37) sails to the West and personally submits (18October) to the pope in Rome (briefly restored there - from Avignon), hoping tosecure western aid. He even kissed the pope’s feet. This was a personalconversion to Latin Catholicism; not the submission of the Eastern Church.However, in Venice he is detained (1370) by the Venetians, who seek moreByzantine territory in payment of his debts (Norwich 1996: 333 ff). His sonManuel (aged 19) will travel to Venice and ransom him in 1371 underhumiliating circumstances from a debtor's prison (Nicol, B&V pp.305ff; Baum,“Manuel II”, http://www.roman-emperors.org/manuel2.htm). Cf 1373.

2. Winter: First raid (1395) of the Ottoman Turks through Bulgaria into Wallachia(modern Rumania). The Wallachian prince Vladislav I, supported byTransylvanian contingents led by Ladislau of Dabica, defeats and chases (1396) theinvaders, then crosses the Danube and frees Bulgarian Vidin from Hungariandomination (Kurt Treptow et al. A History of Romania, The Centre for RomanianStudies,1997, p.99).

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East European cavalry c. 1370: A Serbian or Bulgarian illumination from thisperiod (in Bartusis, LBA) shows cavalry wearing lamellar armour extending tothe upper arm and upper thigh. While other illustrations show Serbians wearing visored bascinet helmets (i.e.the sides of the helmet extend to cover the ears), here the helmets are plain, openand brimless in a high conical shape, with a lamellar aventail supplying the earprotection. The horsemen carry medium-length spears or lances (apparentlyabout three metres long), which are deployed variously couched and overarm.Interestingly, their legs and feet are pushed forward so that their short stirrupsact to brace the riders (reproduced in Nicolle, Eastern Europe p.44). Lamellar armour was at least as effective as mail, if not superior, so we mustnot conclude that South-east Europe (below the Danube) was already fallingbehind the West (and Hungary), where a limited amount of plate armour wasnow being widely used to supplement the mainly mail protection. Full platearmour for man and horse did not appear in the West until the mid-to-late 1300s,and then only among the richest Western knights. (Full plate reached a peak inLatin Europe in the period 1450-1550, declining thereafter in the face of firearms.)

1370-89:In Europe, this period will see the Ottomans conquer parts of outer Bulgariaincluding Sofia and Serbian Nish, and west through Macedonia pastThessalonica as far as Ohrid and the edge of modern Albania.

1371-72:Thrace: Battle of Chermanon (Tk: Çirmen) or Battle of the Maritsa, on the Maritsaor Evros River near ex-Byzantine Adrianople, 26 September 1371. A smallerTurkish force of ghazis (irregulars), some “800” men [the figure given byLaonikos Chalkokondyles], in a surprise night attack defeated a larger Christianarmy, supposedly “70,000” (one might just believe 7,000) (Vladislav Boskovic,King Vukasin and the Disastrous Battle of Marica, GRIN Verlag, 2010, p.11). This wasthe first pitched battle since the Turks had established themselves in Europe and the firstTurkish victory over the Bulgarians and Serbs. Tsar Ivan Shishman of Bulgariadeclares himself a vassal of Murad (1372). Cf 1382. At this time John and Manuel were still en route by sea from Venice back toConstantinople.

The battle of Maritsa in 1371, in which the Christian leaders of northernMacedonia were defeated, sealed the conquest of Thrace. The Balkans were laidopen to the Ottoman raids. Norwich 1996: 335 calls it a “disaster . . . for the wholeof Christendom”. See below under 1372.

Chermanon and its Consequences

The Slav princes, Bulgarians and Serbs, led by the Serbian ruler of Prilep – nowin today’s FYROM - attacked Murad’s general Lala Shâhin Pasha, the first


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‘beyler-bey’ (governor-general) of Rumelia, in 1371. This took place at Chirmen(Chernomen, Chermanon: Gk ‘Ormenio/n), a small village on the lower Maritsa(Meriç, Ebros-Evros, Hebros) River just upstream from Turkish Edirne-Adrianople. The Encyc. Brit. places it on the upper Maritsa between Adrianopleand Philippopolis. On 26 September 1371, O.S. [old style], at Chernomen on the Evros/MaritsaRiver, Turkish military forces (irregulars) met the united armies of Volkashin orVukashin and John Uglesha/Ugljesa Mrnyavchevich of Serres. The Turksdefeated the attackers and the Christian leaders were killed in battle. Thisopened the road for further conquests to the north and west, and the BulgarianKing of Turnovo was forced to accept the status of an Ottoman vassal.

Macedonia: After the Battle of the Marica, where the Turks defeated the Serbs: Inthe autumn of 1371 the despot Manuel Palaeologos, governor of Thessalonika,moved to occupy the region of Serres and hitherto Serbian-ruled Chalcidice (theeastern peninsula of Macedonia). He liberated many towns in Eastern Macedoniafrom the "Serbian yoke" and made it possible for "justice to shine and for theMighty and Holy Lord and Emperor [John V Palaeologus] to assume the reign hehad been deprived of". Thus - www.byzconf.org/1999abstracts.html. Therestoration was brief: see 1372. But the following forts and towns in western Thrace fell to the Ottomans in1371: 1 Promousoulon; 2 Traianoupoli(s) on the Via Egnatia: on the right bank nearthe mouth of the Evros or Maritza; 3 Peristerion (Koptero in modern Xantheprovince, west of modern Komotini); 4 Peritheorion (Anastasioupolis, Buru); 5.Xantheia or Xanthi,* inland, west of Komotini: nearer to Serbian/Greek Serrai[see next] than Turkish Edirne; and 6 Maroneia or Maronia: near the N Aegeancoast in western Thrace: modern Rhodope region, west of modernAlexandroupoli.

(*) A line drawn north from the eastern coast of Thasos Island intersectswith Xanthi.

Thus Byzantine northern Macedonia now, for an all too brief moment, borderedupon Turkish-ruled western Thrace.

With a view to strengthening the defence of his province Manuel even went sofar as to sequestrate half of the properties of the monasteries of Athos and thedistrict of Thessalonica, and to distribute their revenues provisionally as pronoia(fiscal fiefs) to military personnel, turning a deaf ear to the complaints andprotestations of the Archbishop of Thessalonica, Isidore (Vacalopoulos, trans.1973).

The hard-headed monks of famous Mt Athos were not deceived. Having smelledthe future, they seek out the sultan, Murad I: 1362-89, and submit to him (1371)in return for the security of their monastic lands (Mango p.124). Formalsovereignty over the peninsula, however, remained with Byzantium (until 1383).


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2. West Aegean: The Christians were still supreme at sea. The Ottomans,encouraged by their victory at the Maritsa, sailed or rowed with a large fleet,presumably of small boats, against Mt Athos: just three Venetian galleys and asmall patrolling fleet from Byzantine Christoupolis - modern Kavala, near theMacedonian-Thracian border - were sufficient to reduce their plans to nothing(Zachariadou p.216).

1372: 25 YEARS SINCE THE BLACK DEATH

1372:Macedonia: Turkish akincilar (singular akinci, “raider/s, attacker/s”), i.e. lightcavalry, appeared before the walls of Byzantine Thessaloniki (11 April 1372). Inthe following years the Thessalonian plain and the ‘Mygdonian basin’ [i.e.western Thrace plus Macedonia] will be seized by the ghazıs (‘warriors for theFaith’) of the great uç-beg˘i or marcher-lord Evrenos, aged about 45. This startedthe process of conquering Thessaloniki in three stages: devastation of thecountryside, subjugation, conquest. —Vacalopoulos trans. 1973; Bazirkis, inTalbot ed., ‘Late Byzantine Thessalonike’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 2003; accessedonline 2011. Evren or Evrenos, born in western Asia Minor around 1327, bore what wasoriginally a Greek name. So his immediate ancestors were almost certainlyChristians from the region of Bursa; indeed some say he himself was a convert toIslam By 1382 the Ottomans will occupy all of Macedonia except for Thessalonikiitself.

Greece: A four-line brick inscription in the northwest corner of an enclosure atThessalonica is of a triumphal nature. It refers to the building of a tower by thedoux of Thessalonike, George Apokaukos, sqevnei Manouh’l despovtou (‘by thepower of the despot Manuel’), i.e. Manuel II Palaiologos, who governedThessalonike with the title of Despot (1369–73). In point of fact, says Bazirkisloc.cit., the work carried out was not the actual building of a tower, but merelyinvolved adding a rather shoddy superstructure to an existing well-builttriangular bastion, which had a commanding view of the broad plain to the northwestof the city and the main road leading to it (Bakirtzis 2003). Cf 1373: Yenice Vardar. See 1383.

1372-73:1. The Byzantine emperor, John V Palaeologus, becomes a vassal of the newlystyled "sultan" Murad. This means only that John acknowledged his dependenceon the sultan’s will; there was no formal feudal agreement. The key point wasthat John had to contribute his very few soldiers to the sultan’s campaigns (LBAp.196; Norwich 1996: 336 -37).


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2. Failed revolts (1373) by both the emperor's and the sultan's sons against theirfathers. Murad blinds his son ‘Saudji’ [Savcı Bey: he died from the botchedblinding] and compels John V to blind Andronikos [IV- accession 1376] and hisinfant son John. In fact only one of Andronicus’s eyes was blinded, or perhapsneither: Bartusis p.107 says that “evidently” the two later regained their sight.John made his younger son Manuel his heir (Treadgold 1997: 780).

c. 1373:Macedonia: The Turkish frontier commander Evrenos [Gk: Vrenes], whose titlewas Uç-beyi or (putative) ‘Marcher Lord’ of Thessaly, established a base in theMacedonian plain, an area that provided grazing lands for his horses, andfounded the town of Yeniçe [Yenije] Vardar, modern Giannitsa, near ancientPella, 50 km northwest of Thessaloniki. Yenije became the base of the ghazifollowers of Evrenos who took Macedonia, Thessaly (1392-93) and later Albania.—Machiel Kiel, ‘Yenice Vardar (Vardar Yenicesi-Giannitsa): A forgotten Turkishcultural centre in Macedonia of the 15th and 16th century’, Studia Byzantina etNeohellenica Neerlandica 3 (1973): 303.

1373: Frankish (Lusignan) Cyprus: Tensions between the Venetian andGenoese trader-colonies at Famagusta led to intervention from Genoa.Following the murder of Genoese traders on Cyprus, Genoa sent a fleet of“43” or “49” galleys and all but conquered the island. Counting sailors aswell as land-soldiers, the Genoese forces numbered “14,000”, a figurethat presumably included all those resident traders able to wield a sword*(Steven Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958-1528, UNC Press Books, 2002,p.236; George Hill, A History of Cyprus, Cambridge University Press, 2010reprint pp.392-93, 412). The peace settlement left a junta of local Lusignan(French) nobles governing for the French boy-king still in charge theisland, but under the military dominance of the Genoese garrison, andwith Famagusta wholly ceded to Genoa. Genoa deployed a relatively large force in Cyprus from 1373 to 1464,bigger than anything it could field at home, and big enough to frustrateVenetian ambitions there.

(*) Setton notes (Papacy p.295) that 200 men (oarsmen and others includingfighting troops) was a typical complement for an Italian galley in theearlier 1300s. Now 14,000 divided by 49 gives us 286 men per vessel: verycrammed, not to say overloaded.

1374-89:r. Stjepan (Stephen) Lazar I Hrebeljanovic, Knez (prince) of Raska, 1374-89, whichis today’s south-central Serbia. Afterwards made a saint of the Serbian church.Born 1329; +executed after the defeat at Kosovo in 1389. See 1381 – first Ottomanincursion.

1375: Syrian-Egyptian [Mamluk] conquest of Lesser Armenia. The Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia was a Christian enclave between theTurks of Asia Minor [Emirate of Karaman] and Mamluk-ruled Syria."Lesser Armenia" came to an end in 1375 when the Mamluk (Egyptian)


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general Emir Ashiq Timour of Mardin, Governor of Aleppo, captured thepatriarchal city of Sis in central Cilicia at the foot of the Anti-TaurusMountains and received the surrender of its last king, Leon V. Afterparading the Armenian king and the Catholicos (Armenian patriarch) inthe streets of Aleppo, Ashiq took the entire retinue to Cairo as war prizesfor the sultan.

1375: MIDPOINT IN THE RULE OF MURAD I, OTTOMAN EMIR ANDSULTAN

1376:1a. The Ottoman Sultan Murad watches from Edirne (Adrianople) while variousByzantine factions, and the Venetians and Genoese, fight over control of variousport towns. The Genoese colony at Constantinople resented John’s agreement tosell the island of Tenedos to the Venetians for 30,000 ducats and the return of theByzantine crown jewels (Norwich 1996: 337). Tenedos controlled the entrance tothe Dardanelles from the Aegean. With help from the Ottomans and Genoese, Andronicus Palaeologus, John V'seldest son, besieges the City for a month: they succeed in entering the City [12August 1376], where they capture his father and younger brother Manuel, and(aged 28) the prince assumes the East Roman throne as ANDRONICUS IV,1376-79. Wife: Maria of Bulgaria. See 1379. It will be recalled (see 1373) that Andronicus had been blinded or at leastpartially blinded; it seems that either he retained some sight or recovered it. Manuel was wounded during the fighting in the city. Andronicus had him andtheir father imprisoned. Andronikos IV takes Constantinople with Ottoman and Genoese support andthen returns (1377) Gallipoli to the Ottomans, thus reuniting the two halves ofthe sultanate. He promised Tenedos to the Genoese but could not deliver it; theVenetians seized it.

1b. Dardanelles: Murad receives back the fortress of Gallipoli that Amadeo ofSavoy had taken on 23 August 1366 and given to the Byzantines on 14 June 1367.

2. Albania: Arrival of the so-called ‘Navarrese Company’: Louis of Évreux, theCapetian (French) prince of Navarre (in today’s Spain), was also Count ofBeaumont-le-Roger in Normandy and, from 1366, nominal Duke of Durazzo(Durres, Albania). He employed a mercenary band or bands of Gascons, Basquesand Spanish, dubbed ‘the Navarrese’, to enforce his claims in the Balkans bycapturing (1376) Durres, thus reestablishing the regnum Albaniae (kingdom ofAlbania). He died the same year, leaving the Navarrese unemployed. See 1377-78.


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Above: Iberian troops of the 14th Century:Navarrese, Aragonese, Portuguese.

1376: fl. Hafiz, greatest lyric poet of Persia. Born in Shiraz, his poems won him the patronage of the local emir.Persia at this time was ruled by various successor sultanates and emirates,e.g. the ‘Mongol’ Jalayrids of Baghdad (following the collapse of MongolIlkhanate rule); by 1393 Iran was conquered by Timur/Tamerlane. Muzaffarid dynasty: Abu'l Fawaris Djamal ad-Din Shah Shuja (first atYazd, then Shiraz 1353) (1335-1364, 1366-1384) versus Qutb Al-Din ShahMahmud (at Isfahan) (1358-1366), d. 1375. Mahmud, with the support of his father-in-law Shaikh Uvais of theJalayirids, had invaded Fars and captured Shiraz. Shah Shuja would notbe able to reconquer his capital until 1366. Shah Mahmud would continueto play and influential role in Iranian politics, using his marriage allianceto claim Tabriz from the Jalayirids after Shaikh Uvais died in 1374. Heoccupied the city but soon gave up after he was struck by illness. He diedthe next year, allowing Shah Shuja to occupy Isfahan. Soon afterwards the Qara Qoyunlu or ‘Black Sheep’ Turkmen establishedthemselves as an independent principality at Van in central Armenia in1379 AD, expanding their rule and raiding heavily in southern Armenia inthe 1380s. For now, the Qara Qoyunlu were content to serve as clients ofthe Jalayirids in exchange for a free hand.

1376-79:


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CP: As noted, John's son Andronicus IV, aged 28, staged a second coup in 1376against his father and brother, who were then incarcerated in the prison of theAnemas tower of the Blachernai palace [in the NW corner of the city], whereAndronicus himself had previously been imprisoned. In 1379 father and brotherwill succeed in fleeing to Murad. They promise him higher tribute than hithertoand military help, if they are restored. With the aid of Turkish troops ferried inVenetian ships, John V [aged 47] and Manuel II reentered the Capital on 1 July1379; Andronicus fled to Galata (Norwich 1996: 339). Thus tiny Byzantium will become a client state of the Turks, and was obligatedto pay tribute and to enter into military alliance (see 1379).

1377:Adrianople became the first European Turkish capital when, celebrating thereturn of Gallipoli, Murad I formally entered the town (Nicol 1993: 280). Bursaremained the capital in Asia.

1377: 1. End of the so-called 'Babylonian Captivity': From French-dominated Avignon, the papacy returns to Rome. But an anti-pope ruledat Avignon until 1417.

2. Muslim Spain: the Alhambra court at Granada.

1377-78:The Balkans: ‘The Navarrese Company’ is a label used anachronistically byhistorians for the bands of Spanish, Gascon and Basque soldiers who had foughtfor Louis of Navarre. They put themselves at the command of the Peter IV ofAragon early in 1377. After the successful conquest of Durres/Durazzo[Albania], the bands disappear (1377) from view until their leader Urtubia isfound in the Morea in April 1378, leading 100 men or more in the employ ofNerio Acciajuoli, the Florentine governor of Corinth. They had entered the Morea in the spring or early summer of 1378, somecoming at the invitation of Gaucher of La Bastide, the Hospitaller commandantin the Principality of Achaea and others, probably at the behest of Nerio IAcciaioli of Corinth. They were not yet a single band or Company. Then, havingswitched formal allegiance from Aragon to the Duke of Andria [in S Italy], Jamesof Baux, the Angevin claimant to the throne of Achaea, the Navarrese captainsgoverned the Latin sector of the Morea until after 1383. See 1379, 1383.

1378:The Byzantine painter, Theophanes, called in Russian “Feofan Grek”, the Greek,famous for his work in Constantinople, Chalcedon and the Crimea, goes toRussia. After some years in Novgorod, he went to Moscow, at this time still asmall town in the Great Principality of Vladimir. He painted many icons, frescoesand miniatures (Birnbaum, ‘Medieval Novgorod’, California Slavic studies,Volume 14, ed. Henrik Birnbaum, Thomas Eekman, Hugh McLean, p.28)

1378-81:The origins of the fourth war between Genoa and Venice lay in rivalry over theconquest of the Byzantine island of Tenedos, which was a potential base


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commanding the Gallipoli straits coveted by both Venetians and Genoese. TheVenetians received it from John V and occupied it in 1376; war was not farbehind. See 1378.

Genoa vs Venice: “When … John V gave the Venetians the island of Tenedos[south of Gallipoli: at the mouth of the Dardanelles], the Genoese, fearing lest the[Venetians] should thereby have access to the Black Sea, espoused the cause of[John’s son] Andronicus; in this way broke out the conflict known as the War ofChioggia. The Genoese, defeated at Anzio (Italy: 1378), were victorious at Pola(1379) and blockaded Venice, but were obliged to surrender when the blockadewas broken by Vettor Pisani. The great rivals were now exhausted” (Cath. Encyc.under ‘Genoa’).

“In the fourth Venetian-Genoese war (1378-1381), the Genoese strategy ofstriking directly at Venice - for that seems to have been their consistent aim -almost succeeded. The war began when the Venetians occupied the small islandof Tenedos at the mouth of the Dardanelles. A strong base there would controlpassage to and from the Black Sea as thoroughly as Constantinople ever had. After an initial defeat in the Tyrrhenian Sea west of Italy by a Venetian fleetcommanded by Vettore Pisani, the Genoese struck directly into the Adriatic. In1379 Luciano Doria defeated Pisani just off Pola in Istria and began the siege ofChioggia at the southern entrance to the Venetian lagoon. After a six-monthcountersiege, the Genoese surrendered in 1381 to the forces of Doge AndreaContarini. Venice had barely managed to survive and the terms of the peacerequired them to abandon Tenedos.” —John Dotson, ‘Foundations of VenetianNaval Strategy from Pietro II Orseolo to the Battle of Zonchio 1000–1500’, inViator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies v. 32 (2001).

1379:

1. John V and Manuel - the emperor’s father and brother - escape (June 1379) andobtain aid from the Sultan Murad's Ottomans and the Venetians; Andronicus IV[aged 31] is deposed and his father John V (aged 47) is restored. Father and brother succeeded in fleeing to Murad, to whom they promisedhigher tribute than hitherto and military help, if they were restored. ThusByzantium had become a client state of the Turks, and was obligated to pay tribute* andto enter into military alliance. With the aid of Turkish troops ferried in Venetian ships, John V [aged 47] andManuel II reentered the Capital on 1 July 1379; Andronicus fled [1 July] to Pera,taking refuge with the Genoese until 1381 (Nicol, Last Centuries, p.281; Norwich1996: 339).

(*) Baum says (http://www.roman-emperors.org/manuel2.htm) that between1379 and 1402 Byzantium paid 690,000 hyperpyra (or 345,000 ducats) to theOttomans. That is to say: 15,000 ducats per year. Brocquière in 1432-33 (see there)mentions tribute of 10,000 ducats.


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This may be compared with, first, the expenses of the army and navy in the1320s, which Bartusis (pp.147-148) estimates at up to 300,000 hyperpyra,including up to 150,000 in cash for foreign-born professional soldiers or so-called‘mercenaries’. Or rather, 300,000 was the value of the army and navy: pronoiarswere paid direct by ‘their’ peasant-farmers, not by the state, and the lessersoldier-farmers received exemption from tax. It can also be compared with,second, the annual tribute paid in the 1380s by Venice to Hungary (which hadousted the Venetians from nearby Dalmatia), namely 7,000 ducats[Note] (Setton,Papacy p.322). After the fall of Constantinople, the Genoese of Chios paid theOttomans initially 6,000 ducats per year, and somewhat later 12,000(Mordtmann, ‘Sarkiz’ in Houtsma ed., Brill’s First Encyc. of Islam, 1993 reprintp.79)

[Note] The Venetian government’s revenue from taxes and its monopoly on saltwas 667,250 ducats (!) around 1450 (Paolo Malanima, The Pre-modern EuropeanEconomy: one thousand years, 10th-19th centuries, Brill 2009, p.338, citing Luzzatto).I have at hand no figures for the 1380s but even then the tribute was probably atrivial proportion of its revenue. One might expect the faded Byzantine state to be poorer, and indeed thisseems to have been the case. As Treadgold notes (1997: 841), the only recordedtotal for the empire’s revenues is that of 1320, namely one million hyperpyra.Land taxes yielded more than the excises on trade and commerce. Now the year1320 was an exceptional year for tax gathering, so that we must suppose thatnormally the empire’s revenues were below ‘667,000’ hyperpyra in the period1320-1345. In the period 1314-24 a Byzantine hyperpyron was worth 12 Venetiansilver ducats/grossi (Alfred Bellinger & Philip Grierson, Catalogue of the ByzantineCoins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: Michael VIIIto Constantine Xi, 1258-1453, Volume 5, Parts 1-2 Dumbarton Oaks1992, p.26).Thus Byzantium’s revenues were at least 12 million grossi per year. Now therewere 24 grossi to the gold ducat (Jan Lucassen, Wages and currency: globalcomparisons from antiquity to the twentieth century, Peter Lang, 2007 p.199). Thusthe revenues were at least 500,000 gold ducats in the early 1300s. To the extentthat the empire lost further territory after 1345, so its revenues must have fallen.

2. Latin Greece: The Navarrese Company, or the elements that would morph intoit, and a Greco-Florentine force from Corinth attacked the Catalan Duchy ofAthens. The Navarrese under Urtubia invaded Boeotia and attacked Thebes, whichwas part of the Duchy of Athens, then a possession of another Spanishmercenary company, the Catalan Grand Company, in the spring or earlysummer of 1379. (Thebes was the seat and main town of the Duchy of Athens.)John Fine says they were at least allies if not retainers of Nerio Acciajouli, theFlorentine banker who held Corinth (under the suzerainty of Angevin Naples).The invaders probably numbered much more than 100 knights, possibly morethan 200, which would have been a considerable force in the 14th century (just 30


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years after the Black Death). They took Thebes in May or June 1379 (Fine 1994:401; Wikipedia 2011 under ‘Juan de Urtubia’). See 1388.

Sometime during the first half of 1379 John (Juan) de Urtubia left the Morea andthe service of the Hospital (the Hospitallers of Rhodes) and with the connivanceof Nerio Acciajuoli effected the violent conquest of Thebes, the capital of theCatalan duchy of Athens. Following Urtubia's departure, the Navarrese andGascons remaining in Achaea were reformed (perhaps in 1380) into a singlecompany under three chiefs: Mahiot of Coquerel, Peter Bordo de Saint Superan,and Berard de Varvassa. Saint Superan and Varvassa had been members ofUrtubia's force. It is this new organization which we may call, conveniently if notwith entire accuracy, the ‘Navarrese Company of Achaea’.

It is not clear how and when the Florentine Nerio Acciajuoli acquired Thebes,and presumably Livadia, from the Navarrese, but the mercenary bands whichhad served under Mahiot of Coquerel and John de Urtubia seem finally to havemerged into a single "Company," which is referred to in the Hospitaller financialaccounts of August 1381. —H. W. Hazard ed., The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,University of Wisconsin Press 1975: ‘VII: The Catalans and Florentines in Greece,1380-1462’, p.233.

The cleric and translator Simon Atumano, born in Contantinople before 1320 ofGreco-Turkish stock, was the Bishop of Gerace in Calabria from 1348 until 1366and the Latin Archbishop of Thebes thereafter until 1380. While the Catalanssupported the Avignon Papacy during the Western Schism, Atumano remainedfaithful to Rome. In 1373, while visiting Avignon, Atumano translated the Deremediis irae of Plutarch into Latin from Greek. He participated in the talks aboutthe union of the Greek and Latin churches in Constantinople in 1374. In 1379,Atumano assisted the Navarrese Company under Juan de Urtubia to take Thebes(Setton, Crusades p.168). He got along no better with the Navarrese, andsometime in 1380–1381 fled to Rome.

1378-81:The ‘War of Chioggia’ (as described above) between John V and Venetians, onone side, and his son Andronicus and the Genoese on the other. See 1381.

1379:AS noted earlier, the Venetians helped John V to regain his throne in 1379, andthe tiny ‘empire’ (so called) was once again divided into appanages under hissons.

1379-91: JOHN V PALAEOLOGUS, restored.

Aged 47 in 1379, "John let his [tiny] army and navy decay, and squandered his lastasset, Byzantine prestige, on ill-conceived appeals to the papacy, to Hungary and toVenice" (so writes Treadgold 1997: 783). His first reign was marked by the gradual dissolution of the imperial powerthrough the rebellion of his son Andronicus and the encroachments of theOttomans, to whom in 1381 John acknowledged himself tributary, after a vain


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attempt to secure the help of the popes by submitting to the supremacy of theChurch of Rome.

1379-90:Period of Aragonese rule in the Duchy of Athens.

1380: Re-emergence of Christian Russia: Muscovite victory over the so-called 'Tatars' or Kipchaks* at Kulikovo on the Don. Our Russia was at thistime confined in the north, and divided between several pettyprincipalities. Kiev was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The result was not independence for Russia. The Kipchaks reassertedtheir rule after 1380; the Russian rulers resumed their role as vassal tax-collectors for the ‘Golden Horde’ khanate of the Kipchaks. Independencehad to await the reign of Ivan III, 1462-1505, who exploited the advantagesof gunpowder (cannons and arquebuses).

(*) In linguistic terms, Tatar is a varierty of Kypchak. The Turkiclanguages fall into four groups:

Southwestern (Oghuz Turkic) – including Osmanli/OttomanTurkish and Azerbaijani;

Northwestern (Kipchak Turkic) – including Tatar;Southeastern (Uyghur Turkic); andNortheastern (Siberian Turkic).

By 1380:1. The Ottomans have occupied all of Macedonia except for Thessaloniki. See1382, 1384, 1387. In Asia they expand to the south, step by step and peacfully,against their Muslim neighbours, even as far as Satalia (Antalya) on theMediterranean coast. It is not clear whether this territory was obtained asdowry, as bequest and/or by purchase (Kunt in NCMH p.851)

2. Crimea: By 1380 the Genoese effectively controlled the whole Crimean BlackSea coast, from Kaffa in the east to Chembalo in the west, and consolidated theirposition through a series of treaties with various Tatar Khans. Such was theimportance of Sudak (although subordinate to Kaffa) that the Black Sea wasreferred to as the ‘Sudak Sea' on contemporary maps of the area. There were also Genoese enclaves on the Turkish Black Sea coast of AsiaMinor: at Amastris in the beylik of Çandar and around Samsun in the beylik ofEretna (Nicolle 2008: 50).

The slave trade from the Black Sea: By the 1380s, the slave populations of theChristian states, from ‘Frankish’ Cyprus to Catalonia (Aragon) in the westernMediterranean, were largely from the Black Sea region: Circassians [from theNorth Caucasus: on the NE side of the Black Sea], Georgians, Armenians, Tatars,Bulgarians, and other peoples transported by Italian slave ships (D B Davis,‘Looking at Slavery from Broader Perspectives’, The American Historical Review,Vol. 105, No. 2, Apr., 2000). Of course the Ottomans also participated. Most Ottoman slaves in the 14thcentury were prisoners of war, since according to Muslim law only one-fifth of


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all captives taken in combat became the sultan's property, leaving the rest to theircaptors.

From ca. 1380:Ioannes (John) Kantakouzenos, born ca 1342, died after 1380. Titled as Despot(XII.1357), he was briefly Despot of the Peloponnese (ca 1380). Ancestor of theKantakouzenoi of Romania, future Princes of Moldavia and Wallachia.

1380-81:War continues between the Genoese and Venetians.

1380-85:The Thessalonian painters who had decorated the Nea Moni of Thessalonica(now the Church of the Prophet Elias) between 1360 and 1380 fled north to Serbiaat various times (to escape the Turks). It was they or their pupils who painted thefrescoes of the Monastery of Ravanica (central Serbia: NNE of Nish) between1385 and 1387, of the church at Sisojevac between 1390 and 1400, and of themonastery of Rechava between 1407 and 1418 (Vacalopoulos, trans. 1973).

1381:1. Balkans: A first Turkish incursion into Serbian territory (by a single unit of men) ischecked by prince Lazar’s general Crep on the Dubravnica River near Paracin,upstream from Nish (Sima ‘Cirkovi’c, The Serbs, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004 p.83). See1382.

2. In Constantinople, the pro-Genoese and pro-Venetian factions strike anagreement whereby Andronicus is reinstated as heir to the throne, i.e. in place ofhis younger brother Manuel (who was absent campaigning with his overlord thesultan). Manuel’s seat was at Thessalonica. Andronicus receives a smallappanage on the northern coast of the Marmara with its seat at Selymbria andincluding the towns of Panidus, Rhaedestus and Heraclea. It shared a borderwith Ottoman Thrace (Norwich 1996: 339; Nicolle 2008: 61).

3. Demetrius Cydones [Gk: Demetrios Kydones], aged 57; previously convertedto Latin Catholicism, was Byzantine prime minister (mesazon) and sometimeambassador to Italy. His journey to Venice in 1390, which contributed to re-introduce Greek culture to Italy, is credited with encouraging the nascent ItalianRenaissance.

1381-82:Further outbreak of plague at Pera, according to the Byzantine ‘Short Chronicles’(Marien 2009: 53).

1382:1. Greece: John’s son Manuel Palaeologus, aged 31, co-emperor at Thessalonica,tried to resist the Turks. He won over the rulers of Thessaly (the caesar AlexiosAngelos Philanthropenos [1373-1390] of ‘Megale-Vlachia’/Great Wallachia, asThessaly was now called) and Epirus (the Serb Thomas II Preljubovich of


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Ioannina), giving them each the title “despot”, and he built up a small army ofvolunteers (Nicol 2003: 287). See 1383 and 1393.

2. Bulgaria: The Bulgarian Tsar had declared himself an Ottoman vassal, andgave his sister as a wife for the sultan. Nevertheless the Turks under Lala Shahinpenetrated westwards and seized Sofia (Francis Dvornik, The Slavs in EuropeanHistory and Civilization, Rutgers University Press, 1962 -p.115). See 1393.

1382: fl. ibn Khaldun, Arab or better: ‘Maghrebo-Andalusian’ philosopherand historian, called the "founder of sociological history". Born in Tunis ofan ex-Spanish-Muslim family. Served as ambassador to Christian Castilefor the Sultan of Granada in 1364, aged 32. In later life he retired to Egyptas chief judge. Tunisia at this time was ruled by the Hafsid line. Spain was dominatedby Castile, with Granada a Muslim enclave in the south-east. Egypt-Palestine-Syria was ruled by the Mamelukes.

The Aegean Region in 1382

On land, the Ottomans were by far the strongest state, ruling territories about halfin Europe and half on the Asian side. In Asia, the Ottoman state was already theforemost of the Turkish states, but most of Anatolia was ruled by other Turkishemirates, including Saruhan, Aydin. Menteshe, Germiyan and Chandar. The Italian republics were dominant at sea: Genoa in the Black Sea and northAegean, and Venice in the southern Aegean. The Byzantine emperor ruled just Constantinople and small parcels of land‘within’ the Ottoman domination, namely the small Asian and Europeanpeninsulas immediately adjoining the Byzantine capital; several outposts on theBlack Sea coast of Turkish-ruled ex-Bulgaria; several north Aegean islands; theregion around Thessalonica including the Mt Athos peninsula; and the southernhalf of the Peloponnesus. In reality the ‘empire’ was four effectively independentstatelets: (i) John V reigned in Constantinople under Italian domination; (ii)Andronicus and his 12 years old son John [VII] held the N shore of the Marmara;(iii) prince Manuel II governed Thessalonica-Mt Athos [see next]; and (iv) JohnV’s 4th son, Theodore governed the Despotate of the Morea from Mistra (Norwich1996: 340).

John V was also nominally ruler of the inland region around the town ofPhiladelphia in SW Asia, a tiny Greek-Christian ‘land-island’ in the vast Turkish-Muslim realm. Philadelphia lay inland on the borderlands of Turkish emirates ofSaruhan, Aydin and Germiyan. Cf 1387.

1382-87:Macedonia: For nearly five years, from 1382 to 1387, John V’s son Manuelreigned as emperor at Thessaloniki and laboured to make it a rallying point for


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resistance against the encroaching Turks. In 1383 the enemy took ByzantineSerres and put Thessaloniki under siege. The city held out for nearly four years,finally falling to Murad's army in April 1387: see there. (In the meantime theTurks pushed west to Epirus.)

The fact that we are told that the ‘surrounding’ castles were besieged at the sametime as Thessalonica itself suggests that the castles of East and CentralMacedonia (excepting Kítros* and Platamón, which lie towards the Thessalianborder) fell into Turkish hands between 1383 and 1387 — most likely nearer theearlier date. Among the first of these places to be besieged was Sérres, possiblytowards the end of 1382. On 19 September 1383 the town was taken by storm. Itsfate was as prescribed by the time-honoured custom of the East: the town wasplundered and its inhabitants — their metropolitan, Matthew Phakrasis amongthem—were enslaved (Vacalopoulos, trans. 1973).

(*) Nicol, Last Centuries p.160, date the fall of Kitros to 1386.

1382-1407:Theodore I, brother of Andronicus IV and Manuel II, served as despotes (“lord,governor”) of the Morea. Mistra/Mystras (just west of Sparta/Sparti) became theempire’s de facto second capital, with its own bureaucracy, literati and artists. Theodore I Palaeologus, reigned 1383-1407, son of ‘Greek’ (Rhomaioi) emperorJohn V Palaeologus, ruled in the Morea from his capital at Mistra (modernMistras, Greece). He consolidated Byzantine rule by recognizing Turkishsuzerainty and settling Albanians in the territory to bring new blood andworkers into the despotate, which, under his successor, became a bastion ofByzantine strength in the midst of a crumbling empire. . . .

1383: 1. Balkans: As noted, the Turks take Serres, the town north-east of Thessalonica,from the Byzantines (Norwich 1996: 341).

2. Manuel wins several clashes* with the Turks but (following its submission) theOttomans seize Mount Athos, with which they have had earlier contacts. The firstbrief period of Ottoman rule of the peninsula begins. See 1385. (*) Three military successes were registered by the Greeks; two at sea and oneon land. Cydones says that the enemy's losses were heavy and the number ofprisoners taken considerable; and congratulates his pupil on his achievement intransforming the citizens of Thessalonica into 'warriors of Marathon'(Vacalopoulos, trans. 1973).

3. Death of James [Jacques] of Baux, last Latin (Provencal-Italian) claimant to thethrone of Constantinople. He was nominal overlord of the Navarrese in theMorea, with their seat at Old Navarino, and they now began to act entirely intheir own interest.

1383-87:


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Having taken Serres, the Turks besieged Thessaloniki from 1383 to 1387; after itsinhabitants had surrendered, the Turks maintained control of the city from 1387to 1403 (Setton, Papacy, p..329). The city’s economic prosperity came to an end. Seenext. Thessalonica was able to hold out for four years because the Sultan lacked aneffective fleet and the city could be resupplied from the sea.

1384:Thessalonica: Defeat of the last Byzantine army outside the Morea. – Murad’sTurks defeat the Greeks of Manuel II, the governor of Thessaloniki, at the battleof Chortaites or Chortiatis/Hortiatis on the SE, “four hours march” from the city.(Chortiatis is about 15 km away.)* Except for the Morea, this was to be the lastpitched battle fought between Byzantines and Turks (Bartusis, LBA p. 108;Vacalopoulos trans. 1973). The city, which could be resupplied from the sea, heldout until 1386. Figures are not available but we can safely guess that the Byzantine sidenumbered no more than 1,000 men. Although Constantinople was not finally conquered until 1453, it was too weakto deploy a field army after 1384. Its military forces simply comprised the garrisonsof the capital and Thessalonica and several hundred (up to 1,000) troops in theMorea. Cf 1385, 1387. Cf entry before 1422: just 500 troops in the emperor’s“army”.

(*) The fortress-monastery of Chortiatis [at 600 m] was/is located on the slopes ofMt Chortiatis [1,201 m]; an aqueduct ran from there to Thessaloniki, providingpart of the city’s water supply.

1384-86:Conquest of Bulgaria: The Sultan's regular army operated under his personalleadership and captured Sofia - probably in 1385, at the earliest 1384, - theenvirons of which had for some time been in the hands of the Turks. Shortlyafterwards they took Nish: in 1386 according to the Serbian chronicles (LeftenStavrianos & Traian Stoianovich, The Balkans since 1453, C. Hurst & Co.Publishers, 2008, p.44).

1385:1. (Or in 1384:) The Ottomans under Timurtash, the Beyler-bey of Rumeli, make afirst excursion against Albanian-dominated Epirus. They raided as far as Arta(Fine 1994: 352; Babinger, ‘Timurtash’, in Brill’s First Encyc. of Islam, ed. Houtsmap.783). Cf 1386: Corfu.

2. Andronicus IV (aged 37) marches with the garrison of Constantinople intoThrace against his father John V, who defeats him. There must have been fewerthan 100 men on either side! (Bartusis, LBA pp.108-09). Cf 1390.


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1385-86:1. Bulgaria: Ottomans capture Sofia (1385) and then Nish (1386). —Efraim KarshIslamic Imperialism: A History Yale University Press, 2007, p.888.

2. Macedonia: While the siege of Thessalonica continued throughout 1385 and1386, the Turks took Véroia, which was formerly the possession of the Serbianregional governor, Radoslav Hlapen, but at this time was once more in Greekhands (Vacalopoulos trans. 1973).

3. Latin Greece: Nerio Acciaiuoli, the Florentine ruler of Corinth, took up the titledominus Choranti et Ducaminis, "lord of Corinth and the Duchy of Athens", in1385. In the winter of that year, he successfully resisted an Ottoman raid. In 1386he occupied the lower city of Athens, although the Catalans* still held theacropolis (until he took it in 1388). - Kenneth Setton, Catalan Domination of Athens1311–1380, revised edition, Variorum: London, 1975.

(*) The Catalans of Greece recognised the throne of Aragonese Sicilyrather than that of Aragon itself. But by the marriage of Peter IV ofAragon to Mary of Sicily (herself Aragonese), the Kingdom of Sicily, aswell as the duchies of Athens and Neopatria, were added to theAragonese empire in 1381. The Greek possessions were to be permanentlylost to Nerio I Acciaioli in 1388.

A contemporary document, a letter of around 1385 written by the bishop ofArgos, says that “the lord Nerio [of Thebes] can raise a good 70 lances, 800Albanian horse, and a good many foot. The despot [ = Nerio’s son-in-lawTheodore Palaeologus, despot of the Morea], moreover, who is always with thelord Nerio, will also have at least 200 horse [knights] and a good many footincluding Turks, in his force. The Navarrese [in the Morea], however, have about1,300 horse.” Quoted in H. W. Hazard ed., The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries(1975): ‘VII: The Catalans and Florentines in Greece, 1380-1462’, p.239. If infantry numbered twice the knights in each case then we have totals of:Latin Moreots (Navarrese) 3,900; Greek Moreots (Despotate) 600; and Italo-Thebans over 1,000.

1386:1. (Or 1383:) Mount Athos came under the rule of the Turks; the monasteriesjointly submitted to the Sultan.

2. SW Greece: Fearing an attack by the Turks, the Council of Corfu asked for theprotection of Venice. This was agreed, and on 20 May 1386, the flag of Saint Markwas raised on the Old Fortress.

1386: fl. Timur of Samarkand. See 1402. - See also the illustrationbeleow, before 1400-02.


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1387:

Greece: The next imperial outpost to fall to the Ottomans was the second city ofthe Rhomaioi, Thessalonica, which Manuel surrendered in 1387. It had long beenan outpost of Romaic rule in Serbian-controlled territory, linked to the capitalonly by sea. After a ruinous Turkish siege led initially by Hayreddin Pasha [vizier ÇandarlıKara Halil Hayreddin Pasha], the Thessalonians force Manuel to leave and theyaccept some degree of Turkish rule or domination.

Defeatist elements in Thessalonica steadily gained adherents and began to formconspiracies. Manuel II, seeing that there was fear of his being handed over tothe Turkish commander-in-chief, Hayreddin Pasha, was obliged to abandon thecity by boat. He was in the process of making his way to his father when thelatter, fearing further complication, forestalled his arrival in Constantinople andinstructed hitn to seek some other refuge. Deprived of all hope in this quarter,Manuel fled to his brother-in-law, Francesco II Gattilusio, dynast of Lesbos, whonot without raising a good many difficulties for him, reluctantly gave himpermission to remain outside the walls of his capital. Subsequently Manueldecided on an act of dramatic boldness. He made his way to Brusa, the capital ofthe Ottoman state, where he presented himself before Murad and asked to beforgiven. The Sultan treated him with magnanimity, and after admonishing himforgave him (!) (Vacalopoulos, trans. 1973).

The Ottoman domains were divided about equally between NW Asia Minor andEurope (Macedonia, outer Thrace and S Bulgaria). The tiny central remnant ofthe Byzantine empire – inner Thrace and Constantinople itself – was a large‘island’ within the Turkish realm.

2. Asia Minor: Murad’s Balkan vassals contributed troops – a few hundredByzantines and Serbs – who helped in the Ottoman victory over the KaramandidTurks of SE Asia Minor. All the ghazi emirates now recognised Ottoman suzerainty. (They were mostlyannexed after 1389.)

From 1387:The Morea: In 1387 the despot Theodore became the willing vassal of Murad I inorder to crush his own rebellious archontes (lords) and gain the advantage overhis Christian (Navarrese-led) adversaries in the Morea. This relationship wasbroken early in 1394 only because Bayazid made impossible demands on hisvassal — especially the surrender of Argos — thus causing Theodore's flightfrom his camp. See next.

1387-88:First Turkish raids from Macedonia into the Romaic Peloponnese. The Turks, however,were not merely following a policy of raid and run. They were assisting their


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good friend or near-vassal, Theodore I Palaeologus, against his rebellious Greekarchontes and his Latin enemies in the Morea, including presumably theNavarrese (H. W. Hazard, ed., The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 1975: 246;Treadgold 1997: 782; Herrin 2007: 292; Bartusis p.114).

1387-90:The Aegean: Prince Manuel left Thessaloniki shortly before it was conquered inApril 1387, and fled to Lesbos. From 1387 to 1389 he was exiled on Lemnos, oneof the few Aegean islands to remain in the emperor's hands (Mango, OxfordHistory 2002 p.272). See 1390: Manuel to the capital.

1388:Morea: Venice buys Nauplia and Argos from the last of the ‘Frankish’ line, Maried’ Enghien [a county now in Belgium], widow of Peter Cornaro (Setton, Crusadesp.247).

1388-89:1a. A rare Turkish reverse: The Serbian prince (knez) Lazar Hrebelianovich, 1372-1389, organises a Christian army of Serbs, Bosnians (Croats) and Bulgarians whodefeat or at least stymie (1388) the Ottomans at the Battle of Ploshnik, a smallvillage on the Toplitsa River west of Nish. This was the first and only Serbianvictory over the Turks (Runciman 1965: 38). Lazar I of Serbia, Stjepan Tvrto I of Bosnia, and John Stratsimir of Vidin(“Danubian Bulgaria”) united against Murad I and together won a victory in1388 at Plocnik (Plotchnik). Murad pulled back to Nish. The sultan, however,turned around and invaded Vidin-Bulgaria, forcing this state to acknowledge hisoverlordship. See next.

1b. N Bulgaria: Encouraged by the Serbian and Bosnian victory over theOttomans at Plochnik in 1387/88, the Ottoman vassal Ivan Shishman of Bulgarianow refused to support Murat I or to recognise his suzerainty. The Ottomanreprisal was swift, and the enemy overran the Bulgarian defences, besieging IvanShishman in Nikopol (Nicopolis) on the Danube in 1388.

2. The Danube delta: Mircea ‘the Great’, supported by the population of Dobruja,defeats and chases out of Dobruja the Turks who, in 1388, installed themselvesthere under the command of the Grand Vizier Ali-Pasha. Then, near the Danube,he defeats an army sent by the Sultan Murad I to plunder the country. The Vlachor ‘Rumanian’ prince united Dobruja, including Silistra, with Wallachia (or suchis one view: the sequence of events and chronology are confused in the primarysources: see discussion in Donald Pitcher, An Historical Geography of the OttomanEmpire, Brill 1972, pp.49ff)

3. Serbia: The Ottomans return in the spring of 1389, destroy Lazar's ‘crusader’army at the Battle of Kosovo (Kosovo Polje: “Field of the Blackbirds”, 15 June1389), near Pristina, ending Serbian independence and establishing Ottoman rule


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in all of the eastern Balkans up to the Danube river. Cf 1391: Wallachia andBosnia become Turkish tributaries. Bosnia, Serbia and Wallachia became bufferzones between Hungary and the Ottomans.

The lowest figure cited for the strength of the Turkish side is 27,000 men.Murad's army might have numbered up to 40,000. Taking the 40,000 estimate, itprobably included 2,000 to 5,000 Janissaries, 2,500 of Murad's cavalry guard,6,000 sipahis, 20,000 azaps or infantry irregulars and akincis, light cavalry orhorse-irregulars; and 8,000 of his vassals. Uyar & Erickson propose that some25% [10,000] were akincis. Among the infantry were many archers from theformer Hamidid emirate of SW Anatolia [Pisidia] who formed a forwardskirmishing line. Notable is the relatively large number of infantry, perhaps areflection of a reorganisation of the Ottoman army (Mesut Uyar & EdwardErickson, A military history of the Ottomans: from Osman to Atatürk, ABC-CLIO,2009 p.25). The largest element was light irregular infantrymen, with elite infantry(Janissaries) and elite cavalry (sipahis) contributing fewer than 10,000. TheJanissaries formed the centre of the first line, with foot-archers on each wing; thecavalry made up a second line. On the Christian side, the lowest figure cited is 12,000 men, nearly all infantry.Lazar's army might have been 12-30,000. Taking an estimate of 25,000, some15,000 were under Lazar's command, 5,000 under Vuk (from the Skopje region),and the same under Vlatko (from Herzegovina). Several thousand were cavalry,but perhaps only several hundred were clad in full plate armour (Wikipedia 2011). If only a few hundred of the cavalry were knights in full plate armour, we mayguess that light-armoured foot and horse-archers played a more important role.Curiously perhaps, the cavalry formed the first line with infantry behind in asecond line (Wikipedia, 2011, ‘Battle of Kosovo’). Probably the idea was for theheavy cavalry to charge with the support of an arrow-storm generated by thefoot archers.

Murad is killed - assassinated in camp by a Serb - but his son Bayezid winsvictory. At the outset the victory seemed to be on the side of the Serbs (see furtherbelow on the several phases of the battle). The story goes that a noble Serb,Lazar’s son-in-law, Milosh Kobolich, contrived to force a passage into theTurkish camp, presented himself as a deserter to the Turks, and enteringMurad’s tent, killed him with a stab from a poisoned dagger. The confusionamong the Turks was rapidly quelled by Bayazid, the son of the slain Murad. Hesurrounded the Serbian army and inflicted a crushing defeat upon it. Lazar wastaken prisoner and slain (Vasiliev p.549).

Sultan Murad’s forces ‘probably’* annihilated the Serbian aristocracy at the battleof Kossovo, a loss long lamented by the Serbs under the name 'Field of theBlackbirds' (Norwich 1996: 343). Murad was killed; but, although the Serbs foughtwell, the Turks prevailed and Serbia became a Turkish vassal. Bulgaria for itspart was annexed fully (in 1392).


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(*) There is certainly little initially to indicate that it was a great Serbiandefeat; and the earliest reports of the conflict suggest, on the contrary, thatthe Christian forces had won. One looks in vain (says Emmert) for anycareful description of the battle, but there is enough detail to fuel thecontroversy over the actual outcome of the struggle. Neither the earliest Ottoman account by Ahmedi nor a description 100years after the battle makes any reference to plunder or other exploitationfrom the victory. Given the death of their leader and the decision to returnimmediately to Edirne, it was (says Emmert) perhaps a pyrrhic victory atbest. The first writer to give the name of Murad's assassin was KonstantinMihailovic from Ostrovica who wrote his Memoirs of a Janissary or TurkishChronicle about 1497. It was not until 1512, more than a century after Kosovo, that a highlydetailed description of the Battle of Kosovo appeared among the Turks.This account by Mehmed Nesri, however, would become the majorresource for subsequent descriptions of the battle, not only in the Ottomanworld but in Western Europe as well (Thomas Emmert, Kosovo, excerpt athttp://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/emmert.htm; and GligaElezovic, Ogledalo sveta ili istorija Mehmeda Nesrije, Belgrade, 1957).

According to Nesri, Lazar's army began the battle with a cannon volley whichdid not land close enough to do any damage. This was followed by an archeryattack, but the arrows also fell short of the Turkish lines. The Turks (perhaps)responded with cannon* and arrows, and then suddenly the Christians – led nodoubt by their heavy cavalry - surged against the Turkish left flank. Theycompletely defeated it and pushed their way to the rear of that flank. Nesriwrites: "The ruler [Bayezid] spoke to the archers, saying: 'Discharge your arrowsimmediately against the unbelievers, to prevent them from massing their troops,and to make them disperse behind one another like pigs.'" The manoeuvre,however, did not bear fruit, as another Turkish writer Sead-Eddin relates, thedischarge hardly bothered the Christian armoured knights, and "they suddenlycharged at the left wing of the troops of the Faithful like so many boars piercedby arrows" (quoted in Géza Perjés, The fall of the medieval kingdom of Hungary:Mohács 1526-Buda 1541, Social Science Monographs, 1989 p.56). By contrast, Uyar& Erickson loc.cit. (which seems unlikely) attribute this success to Serbian andBosnian heavy infantry. At the moment of possible defeat, however, Bayezid rallied the Turkish rightflank and began a counterattack against the Christians which ended in a victoryfor the Turks. It is mentioned that Bayezit used his mace to good effect.

(*) Possibly an anachronism. Bartusis says that the Ottomans did not use cannonuntil the 1422 siege of Constantinople (LBA p.337). Ágoston likewise says thatonly the Christians used cannons in this battle (Gábor Ágoston, Guns for thesultan: military power and the weapons industry in the Ottoman Empire, CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005 p.17).


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3. Attica: Nerio Acciajuoli of Thebes already held the lower city at Athens. In1388 he purchased the Duchy of Athens from Aragon - nominal overlord of theCatalan dukes of Athens - and took the Acropolis by surrender [2 May 1388]:Norman Housley, The later Crusades, 1274-1580: from Lyons to Alcazar, OUP 1992p.170. This inaugurated 68 years of Italian rule until Athens/Athinai fell to theTurks in 1456. (From 1395 to 1402 the Venetians briefly controlled the Duchy.)

In the 1380s Nerio Acciajuoli typically fielded 70 lances (Navarrese, Greco-French and Italian knights), 800 Albanian horse and ‘a good many foot’,presumably a total force of about 1,500 troops (Setton, Crusades p.239, quoting aletter of the bishop of Argos, ca. 1385).

By 1389:All of Bulgaria was in Ottoman hands.

1389:Greek Macedonia: The details of the Turkish advance westwards (saysVacalopoulos) have not been established with any degree of certainty. We do notknow, for instance, exactly when Náousa, Édessa, Kastoriá, and Ohrid (inmodern FYROM*) fell. Sweeping onwards beyond Náousa, the Turks reachedthe district of Édessa in 1389 (Vacalopoulos trans. 1973). Others say Ohrid andKastoria fell in 1385: Trudy Ring et al., International Dictionary of Historic Places:Southern Europe, Taylor & Francis, 1996 pp.361ff.

(*) From Thessaloniki to Ohrid the driving distance on modern roads is 280 km.Today the FYROM-Greek border runs between Ohrid (FYROM) and Edessa(Greece). Naousa is S of Edessa. Kastoria (Greece) lies SW from Edessa, near theAlbanian-Greek border.

1389-1402:Sultan Bayezid I. In a painting from the late 1500s, he is depicted as pale-complexioned with a bright red beard.

1389-90:Expansion of Ottoman power in Asia: In campaigns in 1389 and 1390, Bayezidconquered and/or annexed the east Aegean coastal emirates: Sarukhan, Aydinand Menteshe; and also inland Germiyan and Hamid. With the fall of Caria[Menteshe] in 1391, all of Turkish Asia Minor was united under Ottoman rule(until 1402: see there) (Parry et al., 1976: 24).

By 1390:Ottoman rule is extended to the Danube; Bulgaria is formally annexed in 1392.


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Trebizond: Under the rule of Alexios III, 1349–1390, the “city” (4,000people in 1437 according to Tafur) was one of the leading trade centres ofWestern Eurasia and was renowned for its wealth and artisticaccomplishment.

1390:JOHN VII Palaeologus, aged about 20, son of the late Andronicus IV, usedTurkish troops to depose his grandfather, John V, aged 58. John gained entry[April 1390] when his partisans within the city opened one of the gates for himand his Genoese supporters; the Turks were not let in (George Majeska, Russiantravellers to Constantinople in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Dumbarton Oaks,1984 p.411). The elder John barricaded himself into the Golden Gate fortress inthe city’s SW corner, while Manuel escaped and brought help from theHospitallers of Rhodes and Byzantine Lemnos. John VII was emperor for less than a year; his uncle Manuel removed him[August-17 September] with the help of the Hospitallers and briefly (1390-91)restored his (Manuel’s) father JOHN V, d. February 1391. In the interim (winterof 1390-91). Manuel was on campaign with the sultan Bayezid as the sultan’sloyal vassal (Majeska loc.cit. p.414). So weak was Byzantium that Bayezidrequired Manuel to supply just 100 soldiers for the sultan’s campaigns! (Bartusis,LBA p.110). Manuel then (nominally in 1391: aged 41; crowned in 1392) took the throne asMANUEL II (Norwich 1996: 146).

For Sultan Bayezid I (1389-1402), the conquest of Constantinople was the logicalconclusion of a process his father had initiated. He skilfully played thepretenders to the Byzantine throne off against each other, and backed John VII's(Andronicus IV' s son) seizure of power in April 1390. With Genoese and Turkishsoldiers, John VII won entry into the city. Thereupon Manuel returned fromLemnos to Constantinople (August), forced his way into the city on 17 September1390, expelled his nephew John VII, and reestablished his father as emperor.While his father was able to rule for a last time, Manuel had to reside at the sultan'scourt and as an obedient vassal accept any humiliation (during this time [see below:1391] he debated with a Muslim theologian; his record of this was famouslyquoted in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI). —Baum, www.roman-emperors.org/manuel2. See next.

2. Western Asia Minor: Expansion of Ottoman rule - annexation of TurkishAydin and the Sarukhan principality of Lydia (inland from Smyrna). AlsoPhiladelphia [today’s Alasehir], the last Byzantine-governed town in Asia Minor.As a vassal, Constantinople was forced to send (1391) a contingent of troops underprince Manuel to help Bayazid capture Philadelphia. The devastation and culturaltransformation of Anatolia are recorded in Manuel’s letters at this time (cited inVryonis 1971). See 1391-92.

3. Manuel Chrysoloras leads an embassy from Constantinople to Venice. Cf 1396.


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From 1390:Italy was not only the closest refuge, but it also offered a vibrant and progressiveatmosphere which many Byzantine intellectuals contrasted favourably with theirown ancient traditions and civilisation (Svevcvenko, 173-4; Geanakoplos, 'AByzantine looks at the Renaissance', 157-62). It was easiest for the wealthy and powerful, or those connected with courtcircles, to remove themselves to Italy. Theodore Palaeologus (d.1407), the brotherof the Romaic emperor Manuel II (1390-1425), for example, made arrangementswith Venice that he should be received in Venetian territory if the Turks tookConstantinople. Along with wealth and position, an added advantage wasconversion to Latin Christianity, by accepting the authority of the Pope and theWestern version of the creed (Jonathan Harris, ‘Byzantines in Renaissance Italy’,online @ http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html).

1390-91:1. Plague at Constantinople. It broke just before Manuel II left for Asia to assistthe sultan, as his vassal, in a military campaign against Isfendiyar(Candar/Jandar: the Turkish beylik of Kastamonu in north-central Anatolia).Manuel found that some of his men were struck down. This would suggest thatthe plague also struck Bayezid’s army (Marien 2009: 54).

2. Turkish campaign north of the Danube. The Wallachian army, commanded byMircea, together with Srazhimir [Ivan Stratsimir], the Bulgarian ex-tsar exiledfrom Vidin, defeats the invading Turks commanded by Firuz-Bey, who hadplundered terribly, drive them out of the country and reconquer Vidin, whereSrazhimir will be re-installed (up to 1396). Due to its geographical position, Vidin was innitially safe from attacks by theOttoman Turks who were ravaging the Balkans to the south and Ivan Stratsimirhad made no attempts to assist his half-brother tsar Ivan Shishman of Tarnovo inhis struggle against the Ottomans.

Janissaries: The first Janissary units comprised war captives and slaves, selectedone in five for enrollment in the ranks (Pencik rule). In the early to mid 1300s theyprobably numbered only around 1,000; rising to some 3,000 during Murad II’sreign, 1421-51 (Nicolle, Janissaries 1995: 7; Bartusis p.129). After the 1380s SultanMehmet I filled their ranks with the results of taxation in human form calleddevshirme: the Sultan’s men conscripted a number of non-Muslim, usuallyChristian Balkan boys, taken at birth at first at random, later by strict selection –to be trained. Initially they favoured Greeks, Albanians (who also supplied manygendarmes), and Bulgarians, usually selecting about one boy from 40 houses. By1475 the number of Janissaries will reach 6,000 (Nicolle p.7).

1395 sermon preached by Isidore of Thessalonica, referring to devshirme:

“ … he beholds that same child suddenly gripped by brutal, hostile hands, andforced into the acceptance of foreign ways and customs; to know that in a shortwhile the child will grow up into a personage wearing the uniform of a barbarian


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and speaking his barbarous tongue; a vessal replete with impiety and stench?What sort of consolations could sooth the anguish of a man who sees himself asit were severed into two pieces, the one taken away to serve no good purpose, tobecome a mass of depravity, while the remaining part he deems as useless as acorpse, yet full with grief and woe?" (in Vacalopoulos, trans. 1973).

MANUEL II, 1391-1425

Aged 41 at accession.Married 1392: Helena Dragash, daughter of the Serbian princeConstantine Dragas’. Six sons including John VIII, born 1392, andConstantine XI, born 1405. (Manuel married late: at age 40; but hadhad at least one mistress and an illegitimate daughter: George Dennis,


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The letters of Manuel II Palaeologus: text, translation, and notes,Dumbarton Oaks, 1977, p.70.)

1391:1. Death of John V, aged 58 or 59: Accession of his second son MANUEL IIPalaeologus, age 41, uncle of John VII and younger brother of the lateAndronicus IV. At the time of his father's death, Manuel was a hostage at the court of theOttoman emperor Beyazid I at Brusa, but he succeeded in making his escape (7March 1391); he was forthwith besieged in Constantinople by the sultan, whowarned him that he was emperor only inside the city walls. See next.

In mid 1391 Manuel was summoned to return to the Sultan’s camp in AsiaMinor, and was detained until January 1392. (Nicol, Last Centuries p.267). FromOctober to December of 1391 the emperor enjoyed the hospitality of a Muslimteacher or (Turkish:) müderris, ‘religious scholar, professor, senior teacher at amadrasa’ (Gk Mouterizes) at Ankara (Dennis, notes to Letters of Manuel II, p.61). AMuslim born to Christian parents acted as interpreter between the emperor andthe Kadi. The result of these conversations was the "Twenty-six Dialogues with aPersian," dedicated to his brother Theodore I. By 1399 the work had received itsfinal editing. Presumably the emperor took notes at the time of the conversations.Apart from the emperor's writings there is no independent proof that theconversations ever took place. They must represent a mixture of fact and fiction(says Baum). In 2006 Pope Benedict quoted some lines from the work about jihad and forcedconversion to Islam (as translated by the Vatican from Benedict’s Germanoriginal): "Show me [said Manuel to the müderris] just what Muhammad broughtthat was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as hiscommand to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

2. The Ottoman Turks may have surrounded Constantinople. According toDoukas, the first siege and blockade lasted eight years, from 1391 to 1399; butthis seems an error (see discussion in Reinert). Others prefer 1394-1402, the pointbeing that Manuel was acting from 1391 until 1394 as a dutiful vassal. The Ottoman Sultan Yildirim Beyazid besieged the City initially for sevenmonths. According to Doukas, ch.13, this was done with just 10,000 troops. Inthis version, the siege was altered to form a blockade as the sudden threat of aHungarian attack emerged. The Byzantines, however, accepted certainconditions. They included the creation of a Turkish quarter within the city, theestablishment of a Turkish court with a judge appointed by the Ottoman Sultan,the construction of a mosque and the foundation of a Turkish garrison on thenorthern shores of the Golden Horn. In addition, the Ottomans would receive anannual tribute of 10,000 gold pieces (1391 AD).

Beyazid then proceeded against Macedonia, where the fortress of Christopolisheld out against him, though for how long we do not know. When the Turksfinally took the town by assault, as punishment for its stubborn resistence theylevelled it to its foundations, the inhabitants scattering in various directions.


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Continuing on to semi-independent Thessalonica, Beyazid re-occupied and re-annexed it (Vacalopoulos, trans. 1973). Turkish rule was now complete in practically the whole of Macedonia. Theregion around Prilep under the rule of Kraljevich Marko and the northern part ofEastern Macedonia (today forming part of Bulgaria) under ConstantineDejanovich remained in a state of vassalage.

3. SW and south Asia Minor: The Ottomans annex Caria - the emirate of Milas -and take the ports of Antalya, controlled by the Latin (French) kingdom ofCyprus, and Alanya whjich was ruled by a Seljuq descended Türkmen chief(Shai Har-El, Struggle for domination in the Middle East: the Ottoman-Mamluk War,1485-91, Brill 1995, p.62; Paul Wittek, ‘Milas’, in Houtsma ed. Brill’s FirstEncyclopaedia of Islam, 1936/1993 repirnt, p.496).

Territory in 1391

When John V died in February 1391, after a reign of half a century, thepossessions of the Byzantine ‘Empire’ consisted only of the capital, some townson the Sea of Marmara, some Aegean islands, and Byzantine Morea, which madeup less than half of the Peloponnesus. Constantinople itself was a tiny ‘island’ ina vast Turkish-ruled ‘sea’.

In order to estimate the total population of the Morea, V. Panayiotopoulos (citedin Laiou 2002: 50) has used the Turkish census of 1530–1540 which gave 50,941families. Thus he estimates that around 200,000 people lived in the OttomanPeloponnesus at that time (with a household coefficient of 4, since he argues thatthe household structure was different in the Peloponnesus and in Macedonia),that is, a density of nine people per sq km. (In 1400 the population of the easternAegean island of Chios consisted of some 8,000 Greek and perhaps 2,000 Latins,or about 12 people per sq km: Lutttrell in NCMH p.804). ‘Nine’ was a low density compared with some parts of northern Greece*, andwe know that the Morea had not recovered from the ravages of the previouscentury. So perhaps we may hazard 100,000 Byzantines living in the Morea inabout 1400, 53 years after the Black Death. Cf the estimate of ‘up to 100,000’ in1460 on the eve of the Ottoman conquest (see under 1460). About one-third wasin Byzantine hands: so population ’33,000’. Based on known long-run percentages (Treadgold, Army p.163), we wouldexpect ’33,000’ people to afford to contribute a semi-professional army of aboutone percent, i.e. 330 semi-professional soldiers. Indeed, given the relativeprosperity of the Palaiologian period one might guess: 700 soldiers. Addingcivilian volunteers and temporary conscripts, the Morean Byzantines shouldhave been able to field a scratch fighting force of up to 1,500 men. Or even 2,250:that being half the likely number of able-bodied grown men in a population of33,000. Cf 1423: invasion by “23,000” Turks under Turahan. Cf next: 50 towns and villages.


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(*) Stathakopoulos 2008 offers conservative figures for a populationdensity, empire-wide, in the whole Byzantine millennium of nine peopleper km2 in tough times, rising to 15 per km2 in fair to good times.

1391-92:1. Asia Minor: After his enthronement in March 1391, Manuel II still had toperform military service for the sultan in Asia Minor. As a vassal of the Turks, inMay 1391 he was summoned to Anatolia and took part in a campaign on theBlack Sea coast until mid-January 1392. He not only had to support the sultanagainst various Turkish emirates, but as an especial humiliation, he had to aidhis mortal enemy with the conquest of Philadelphia, the last Greek/Byzantinehold-out in Asia Minor (Norwich 1996: 350; Baum loc.cit.).

2. The Morea: During the Palaiologan period, the territory of Monemvasiaincluded many settlements of various sizes. Thirteen of them, probably the mostimportant, are mentioned in the “silver bull” issued in 1391–92 by DespotTheodore I for Monemvasia. By combining information from sources of variousperiods, one can conclude that there existed in the territory more than 50settlements (towns and larger villages) and that most of them had some sort offortification. —Kaligas, ‘Monemvasia’, in Laiou ed. Economic History of Byzantium2002. See above: 1391 and below: 1450, for details of the whole Morea’s populationin the mid 1400s, namely about 100,000. But in 1392 only about a third of theMorea (the Mistra-Monemvasia sector) was in Byzantine hands: say 30,000people. Dividing by “50” we get 600, which ‘sounds right’ as an average for alarge-village/small town.

1391-1400:Italy: Manuel Chrysoloras, 1355-1415, was the first to translate the works ofHomer and (1400-03) Plato's Republic into Latin, in collaboration with his Italianpupil Uberto Decembrio of Milan. Chrysoloras arrived in Italy at the end of the fourteenth century. He came notas a teacher or a scholar, but as an envoy of the Byzantine emperor, charged withnegotiating Western assistance for the beleaguered remnants of the Empire. In1391, however, while staying in Venice, he gave some lessons in Greek to acertain Roberto Rossi, who then passed an enthusiastic account of his teacher tothe Chancellor of Florence, Coluccio Salutati, 1331-1406. So impressed wasSalutati that he decided to secure Chrysoloras's services, and in 1396 invited himto teach grammar and Greek literature at University of Florence. Chrysolorasonly occupied this post between 1397 and 1400, but in that period had a majoreffect. —See Ian Thomson, "Manuel Chrysoloras and the Early ItalianRenaissance," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 1 (1966): 76-80.

1392:Manuel II, aged 42, marries Helena (Jelena) Dragash, aged about 20, daughter ofthe Serbian noble, Constantine Dragash, ruler (gospodin) of Serbian (north-east)Macedonia: the region east of, but not including, Skopje. His seat was at


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Kyustendil (Velbazhd) in what is now far-western Bulgaria. Although a vassal ofthe Ottomans, Constantine enjoyed close relations with other Christian rulers.(As remarked earlier, Manuel married late; but had had at least one mistress andan illegitimate daughter.) Cf 1392-93.2b.

1392-93:1. In eastern Asia Minor, the Ottoman campaign (1392) was briefly stopped andpushed back (1393) by the forces of Kadi Burhaneddin, the emir of Sivas [easternAnatolia] (Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey:Volume 1 – 1976, p. 32).

2a. North-central Bulgaria: Returning from Asia Minor to the Balkans in 1393, thesultan proceeded into northern Bulgaria. Bayezid expelled the Wallachians fromSilistra and the Dobrudja and declared that ‘Danubian (or Turnovo) Bulgaria’,unable to fend for itself, was now an Ottoman province. The new Sultan Bayezit I invaded Bulgaria unexpectedly and besieged (1393)the capital Turnovo. The fortress-town was defended under the supervision ofthe Bulgarian patriarch Evtimii (Euthymius), while tsar Ivan Shishman had takenrefuge in Nikopol (Nicopolis) on the Danube once more. After a siege of threemonths, Turnovo fell by treason on 17 July 1393, a point sometimes taken as theend of the Second Bulgarian Empire, although both Ivan Shishman and IvanSratsimir survived (Fine 1994: 423). Cf 1395.

The Bulgarian capital Turnovo fell in July 1393 after a three-month siege.

2b. A rump Bulgarian principality re-grouped for several years at Vidin. See1396. All the vassal princes in the Balkans, including the Byzantine emperor and hisbrother, the despotes of the Morea, Theodore, were called before Bayezid first atSerres* {Macedonia] and later at Verria in 1393/94. Manuel went to Serres butrefused refused to attend the Verria convocation (Norwich 1996: 352). This ofcourse provoked the Sultan. - See below: Ottoman blockade of the City.

(*) Fine 1994: 428 prefers to date the summoning to Serres to 1393-94.

ca. 1393:When Basil (Vasiliy) I, grand duke or prince of Moscow, removed the ByzantineEmperor’s name from the liturgy, he received a letter of reproval fromConstantinople’s Patriarch Antonios IV. Or rather: Antonius/Anthony wrote tothe bishop of Novgorod, the chief Muscovite prelate, knowing the duke wouldbe informed. "The holy Emperor," he wrote, "is not as other rulers and other governors ofother regions are. He is anointed with the great myrrh [or chrism], and isconsecrated basileus and autocrator of the Romans - to wit, of all Christians."These other rulers, "who are called kings (reges) promiscuously among thenations," exercise a purely local authority; the Basileus alone is "lord and master


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of the oikoumene," the "universal Emperor," "the natural King" whose laws andordinances are or should be accepted in the whole world. —See the full text,quoted in James Henderson Burns, ed. The Cambridge history of medieval politicalthought c. 350-c. 1450, 1988 p.73. This was written when the Ottomans had already annexed Bulgaria and northGreece and made Wallachia and Bosnia their tributaries. Anthony acknowledgedthis in his letter, noting that Constantinople was “encircled” by “the nations”(meaning the Turks). See next. Vasiliy married his daughter Anna to prince John VIII Palaiologos, the futureemperor, in 1414 (John was still a baby at the time of Anthony’s letter.)

1393-94:Asia Minor: Anadolu-hisari is a castle on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus. Thename means ‘Anatolian Castle’. It was built in 1393 (or 1394) by the Ottomanemperor Bayezid II "the Thunderbolt" as a prelude to his siege of Constantinople.See 1394. The sultan knew that the emperor could obtain help only from Hungary, andin 1393-94 Bayezid conquered Thessaly* and Bulgaria; the next year (spring 1394)he began the blockade and siege of Constantinople. This was the longest in thecity's history, lasting from 1394 to 1402. In the city hunger and despair prevailed.

(*) As Setton explains, (Crusades 1975 p.254), Sultan Bayazid I’s troops invadedcentral Greece toward the end of 1393 and the beginning of 1394. They occupiedNeopatras [modern Ypati] and Livadia [Gk Levadia], and seized the county ofSalona [Amfissa: north of the Gulf of Corinth] together with its dependencies ofZeitounion [modern Lamia], Loidoriki and Veteranitsa. In other words: theregion NW of Thebes.

1394: Turks cross the lower Danube: Campaign of Sultan Bayezid I Yildirim inWallachia; the Ottoman army of about 40,000 men, accompanied by an armycorps about 8,000 men from the south-Danubian vassals, king Marko Kraljevic,prince Stefan Lazarevic [17 years old], and lord Constantin Dragashevic [ManuelII’s father-in-law], invaded the trans-Danubian lands.— 10 October 1394: The Battle of Rovine, fought probably on the Jiu river, nearCraiova in what is now south-central Romania. The army of Wallachia, about10,000 men, led by Mircea cel Batrin (“the Elder”), defeats the invading armies,gaining a remarkable victory. A Wallachain arrow-storm followed by a cavalrycharge won the day. Among the dead were king Marko and lord Constantine (orthe latter may have died later at Argesh in 1395). But the numerical inferiority of the Wallachian meant that Mircea could nottake advantage of the victory. The Sultan Bayazid I installs as ruling prince theboyar Vlad, called ‘the Usurper’, 1394-1397, supported by a part of the greatnobility, while Mircea retreats beyond the mountains to Transylvania [then partof Hungary; today’s NW Romania]. The Turks are likely to have taken hold ofDobruja (the Danube delta) during the same period. A further battle against the invaders, waged in the nearby Arges Valley, endsunsatisfactorily for Mircea [17 May 1395]. — The first Turkish incursion into Transylvania: into Birsa Land, the region aroundBrasov, the very centre of what is now Rumania.


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1394:1. The Sultanate: Bayezid sought to give an air of legitimacy to his conquests byrequesting the puppit Abbasid Caliph in Cairo (under Mamluk control: so inreality it was the Egyptian sultan who agreed), in 1394, to confer on him the titleof ‘Sultan of Rum', which he readily obtained. (The Mamluks probably wantedsupport against the rising power of Timur: thus Shai Har-El, Struggle fordomination in the Middle East: the Ottoman-Mamluk War, 1485-91, Brill, 1995: 67).His father, Murad I, had already adopted the title of Sultan, regarding his actualpower as sufficient justification, but he was in fact only ‘prince’ (bey); it wasBayezid who first assumed the title of Sultan with all its implications accordingto Sunni doctrine, as the independent and legitimate wielder of power in hisdominions.

2. Bayezid summoned Manuel, his nephew John VII, Theodore of Morea, andPrince Stefan Lazervic of Serbia to Serres in 1393/94 to show submission. Thesultan at first wanted to kill them all. Before he released them, they were forcedto watch as several Byzantine army officers were blinded. "The events in Serresconfirmed Manuel's opinion that the Turks were not amenable to any kind ofreasoning" (Baum). It seems that at Serres Bayezid had demanded that Manuel allow a kadi(Muslim official) to be installed within Constantinople, along with a Muslimquarter, a mosque and Muslim settlers. When Bayezid came to understand thatManuel would not concede this, he opened his siege of Constantinople later in1394 (Reinert p.147).

3. Greece: Ottoman conquest of Thessaly 1393-95; and raids into the Morea orPeloponnesus against the Latin-ruled principality of Achaia. The ageing Evrenos Beg crossed the isthmus into the Morea again at the end of1394 or the beginning of 1395. After spending a fortnight in Laconia he met theNavarrese forces at Leondari and together with them captured the fortress ofAkova from the Byzantines. In Thessaly, Trikkala, west of Larissa, but recently the capital of a Greco-Serbian principality*, fell in 1395 and became the headquarters of Turahan Beg,the first of a long line of pashas of Thessaly (Nicol, Last Centuries p.302).

(*) A Greek ruler succeeded the last Serbian ruler in 1373; later, from 1384,Thessaly subordinated itself to Byzantine Thessalonica.

In the 1390s the Romaic despot of the Morea, Theodore Palaeologus, allowedsome 10,000 Albanians to settle in the Morea in return for military service (thenumber presumably included women and children and well as men: if so, thenumber of soldiers would have numbered perhaps 1,500) (Heath 1995: 21). If weimagine the Greek Moreots themselves could supply 1,500 fighters, then we havea Byzantine-led army of 3,000. Cf 1394-95: loss of 3,000 horsemen.

The Ottomans were supreme on land, but the Christians dominated the southernAegean, controlling, from east to west: Cyprus, Rhodes [Kts of St John], parts ofthe central Ionian coast of Asia Minor [Genoa], Crete and the SW Aegean islands


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(Venice) and the Morea: Byzantine ‘Greek’ or Rhomaioi in the SE; and Latin(Navarrese*) Achaia in the NW.

(*) The so-called “Navarrese Company”, Spanish and Basque adventurers,operated as mercenaries in Greece from 1378 under the Gascon Mahiot ofCoquerel. By 1383 they were the effective rulers of the Latin sector of the Morea.Pedro Bordo de San Superano became leader when Mahiot died in 1386. Heallied with Venice from 1387. Cf 1394-95 below.

From 1394:As noted, the old East Roman capital itself came under perpetual blockade - until1402. “Byzantium”, writes Joan Hussey, p.81, “was virtually a Turkish dependencyand its emperor little more than a vassal who was liable for military service".— The Venetian navy was far superior to the still makeshift Ottoman fleet and sosupply from the sea was assured. On the land side, the great walls remainedimpregnable (Treadgold, State p.785). See 1395 below.

1394-95:E Greece: As soon as Nerio Acciaioli's death [Sept. 1394] was known, the despotesTheodore Palaiologos overran Corinthia (late 1394) and seized all the castles inthe castellany. Partly in answer to a request for aid from Carlo Tocco, EvrenosBey’s Ottomans launched a “massive raid” into the Peloponnesus (Fine 1994:431). The fighting is recorded by the Italian Nicholas of Martoni, near Capua, whospent February 24 and 25 (1395) in Athens on his way back from a pilgrimage tothe Holy Land. Nicholas informs us, "We could not get [from Athens] to the cityof Corinth by land because of the widespread fighting then going on between theduke of Cephalonia [Carlo Tocco: count of Cephalonia and duke of Leukas] andthe Despot of the Morea [Theodore I Palaiologos], brother of the emperor ofConstantinople, over the lands left by the lord Nerio, Duke of Athens, who wasthe father-in-law of the said duke and despot. The duke [of Cephalonia] had onhis side a large armed force of Turks, and was allied with the lord Turk against thesaid Despot . . . . The duke, perceiving that he could not withstand the might ofthe Despot, his brother-in-law, joined with the Turk against the Despot, and so aTurkish force, about 40,000 horse,** came over one night to Corinth, and suddenlyfell upon the camp of the despot's troops, broke it up, scattered all his people,and captured about 3,000 of the Despot's horse. The despot himself barely escapedcapture." Quoted in H. W. Hazard ed., The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (1975).

(**) One wants to drop the final zero to obtain the more credible numberof 4,000; but perhaps there were many bashi-bazouks (irregulars,adventurers, plunderers) with Evrenos.

Proceeding onwards into the Peloponnesus, Evrenos Beg (bey) met up with theNavarrese mercenary commander Pedro Bordo de San Superano and hisNavarrese and local Greco-Frank (Latin) troops at Leonardi in Laconia (i.e, in theByzantine sector). Together (having turned back) the Turks and Navarresebesieged and took Akova (near Argos) on 28 February. After Evrenos returned toThessaly, however, Pedro was defeated (4 June) by the Greeks and taken captive


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along with his brother-in-law and grand constable Andronico Asano Zaccaria,“Lord of Damala, Chalandritza, Maniatochori and Lisarea, Baron of Arcadia,Constable of Achaia”. In December, Venice paid 50,000 hyperpyra for the releaseof her allies (Setton, Crusades p.158). Cf 1399.

1395:1. Bulgaria: Turks cross the Danube: Bayezid’s expedition into Hungary andWallachia [present-day Rumania]. The battle of the Argesh/Arges River [17 May1395*] was tactically a Christian victory; nevertheless Wallachia had to submitand becomes an Ottoman vassal state; execution of Shishman, king of Bulgaria(Sugar, Ottoman Rule p.22). Cf 1396.

(*) This is the date in the Serbian annals for the death of princeConstantine Dejanovich (Konstantin Dragash, Manauel II”s father in law),who was wounded or killed at Argesh. Based on a Turkish source, Settonet al. Crusades, p.250 proposes that the battle actually took place on 10October 1394.

The Turks cross the western Balkan passes, and enter the Morava valley by wayof Sofia and Nish. And in the NE, the hospodar of Wallachia, Mircea ‘the Elder’, with the supportof the Hungarians, opposed the Turkish troops to the SE of Bucharest on theplain of Rovine, north of the lower Danube, in 1394 or 95. Serbs fought on bothsides. The Serb princes who fought as vassals on the side of the Sultan, includedprince Stefan Lazarevich (who survived) and Manuel’s own father-in-law,Constantine (Dejanovich) Dragash of Serres (who died). The contest was uncertain,first one side and then the other prevailing, but at the end of it Mircea, too, wasforced to pay tribute to the sultan (Norwich 1996: 354; Sugar loc.cit.). After thebattle, the Turks occupied the Dobrudja, the delta of the Danube, as well, andgained control over the fords of the Danube. Mircea appears to have been victorious militarily, but his forces and resources were sodepleted that he had to acknowledge the loss of the Dobrudja, into which Bayezid movedTurkish garrisons. Wallachia also had to accept the status of an Ottoman vassaland pay regular tribute. See next: 1396. Returning from this failed or at least unsuccessful campaign against Mircea Iof Wallachia, Sultan Bayezit I had the Bulgarian ruler Ivan Shishman beheaded atNikopolis on 3 June 1395.

The remainder of Ivan Shishman's territory was annexed by the OttomanEmpire, although Bulgarian ‘emperors’ continued to rule a mini-state at Vidinuntil 1422.

2. Alliance of Venice, Hungary and Byzantium against the Ottomans: a crusadingarmy is formed in Hungary. Emperor Manuel II promised to arm 10 galleys to help the ‘Crusade ofNicopolis’ as it was later dubbed. See next.


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Baum: “At the end of 1395 Manuel sent his envoy Manuel Philanthropenus toKing Sigismund; at the beginning of 1396 he concluded a treaty with him inwhich he obligated himself to equip 10 ships at his own expense and three at theking's expense for the crusade. The crusade of the Hungarian king Sigismund ofLuxemburg ended on September 25, 1396 [see there] in the battle of Nicopolis ina complete fiasco. According to the panegyric of Isidore of Monemvasia, theHungarian king fled on imperial galleys across the Black Sea to Constantinople,where he met with Manuel and then returned to Hungary. Manuel sent amessage to the Venetian council, putting Byzantium in the hands of the Venetiangovernment. But Venice, which already in the fourteenth century viewedByzantium as a "lost outpost," abandoned the empire to its fate.”

3. Thrace: The Romaics refused to accept some of the conditions put forth in1391. So ‘Yildirim’ Beyazid's army surrounded (1395) Constantinople once more,and the blockade turned into a siege (Setton, Papacy p.341). News now reachedthe Sultan that ‘crusaders’ – mainly Hungarians and French: see 1396 - weremarching towards the Balkans. Beyazid briefly lifted the siege and led his troopsinto the Balkans to confront the crusaders (1396 AD).

4. Russia: Vasily I, the grand prince of Moscow, realising how weak the emperorof the Romans (Byzantines) was, wrote a disparaging letter about him: “Since there was no other way to prove him [Vasily] wrong, patriarch Anthonyof Constantinople wrote a response … in 1395 arguing* how different theimperial office was from any other ruler. With all the other vestiges of powergone, he presents the emperor as the guarantor of true faith throughout theuniverse. The letter is a piece of political propaganda, so that one wonders towhat extent either side believed in the far fetched theory of religious supremacyof the sacred emperor of the Romans”. —A Mirkovic, ‘Politics of Silence . . . , GoldenHorn 8 (20) 2001, online at http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/goudenhoorn/82alexander.html.

(*) Excerpts: “For even if, by God's permission, the nations [primarily theOttoman Turks] have constricted the authority and domain of the emperor, stillto this day the emperor possesses the same charge from the church and the samerank and the same prayers [from the church]. The basileus [Gk: ‘sovereign’] isanointed with the great myrrh and is appointed basileus and autokrator of theRomans, and indeed of all Christians. Everywhere the name of the emperor iscommemorated by all patriarchs and metropolitans and bishops wherever menare called Christians, [a thing] which no other ruler or governor ever received. . ... . . our very great and holy autokrator [Gk: ‘emperor’], by the grace of God, ismost orthodox and faithful, a champion of' the church, its defender and avenger,so that it is impossible for bishops not to mention his name in the liturgy. Ofwhom, then, do the Fathers, councils, and canons speak? Always andeverywhere they speak loudly of the one rightful basileus, whose laws, decrees,and charters are in force throughout the world and who alone, only he, ismentioned in all places by Christians in the liturgy.”


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Armour

Western European (and Hungarian) knights, or at least the richer half, hadmainly moved to full plate armour by 1400. Plate was worn from head to toes,with mail used only to cover joints and other weak points. The Ottomans,however, preferred to use a combination of mail and plate, better suited to theirmobile style of fighting. The mail corselet (shirt-sleeved, to below the waist)provided the basic protection, but small plates of iron were sewn in or on: acrossthe shoulders an over the area of the chest and belly. Arm-guards and greaves ofiron were added (illustration by Palmer in Dougherty 2008: 82-83).

Above: Battle of Nicopolis, 1396.

1396:1. 25 September: “The Last Crusade” so-called: Sigismund of Hungary leads amainly Franco-Hungarian army against the Turks. Ottoman victory at the battleof Nicopolis on the southern side of the lower Danube (then the Turkish-Wallachian border). The result was that Wallachia, present-day Rumania, became a Turkishdependency.

The Battle of Nicopolis

The young king of Hungary and Croatia, the Luxemburger Zsigmond orSigismund, who later (1433) became the German Emperor, took the field with astrong cavalry force containing contingents from ‘every’ nation in WesternEurope (including even some Scots), but suffered an overwhelming defeat at thehands of Bayezid on 25 September 1396 at Nicopolis on the Danube.


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According to the Cambridge Medieval History, this was “a victory won by therigidly disciplined regular army of the Ottoman military machine over theundisciplined feudal army with its motley array of rival national contingents”. Itwould be better, however, to say: ‘a mainly regular army’ or ‘a small regulararmy bolstered by many irregulars’… .

The Western nobles flocked in thousands to the royal standard, and werereinforced by volunteers from nearly every part of Europe, the most importantcontingent being that of the French led by John, duke of Nevers, son of Philip II,duke of Burgundy. Sigismund set out with perhaps 90,000 men – some argue asfew as 16,000 men - and a fleet of 70 Genoese and Hospitaller galleys. Oncebelow Belgrade the land force crossed to the right bank of the Danube. Aftercapturing Vidin, they proceeded down to the Danube and camped before thefortress of Nicopolis (Norwich 1996: 354; Wikipedia, 2011, under ‘John theFearless’; Nicolle 2008: 66).

The main force was Hungarian but detachments came to the Danube from as faras France, Burgundy and Germany to form, according to some, possibly thebiggest crusading army ever assembled (thus Fletcher 2003: 135). Others argue thatthe numbers were relatively small, albeit relatively large for a post-Black Deathera army. Treadgold prefers to put the size of the Christian army at only about16,000 – against a somewhat larger force under Bayezid, while Nicolle suggeststhat both sides had about 15-16,000 men (Treadgold State, p.787; David Nicolle,Nicopolis 1396: The Last Crusade, Campaign Series, London: Osprey Publishing1999, p.37.)— The troops from the West were mainly heavy cavalry (knights) while theEastern Europeans were mainly infantry, light and heavy. So perhaps, and this isjust a guess: 4,000 Hungarian and Wallachian knights; 1,000 French, Burgundianand other Western knights; 8,000 Hungarian/Wallachian/Transylvanian foot;and 3,000 Western foot.— The frequently asserted figure of ‘100,000’ crusaders is correctly dismissed byBarbara Tuchman, who notes that 100,000 men would have taken a month tocross the Danube at the Iron Gates, while the crusaders took eight days(Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century, New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 1978, p.554). — All the Christian/Latin leaders were inexperienced except for Sigismund, andthe others chose not to adopt his proposed tactics. — The 15th century Ottoman historian Syükrullah claims (but we can reject this)that the Ottoman force was half the size of the crusaders’. It consisted mainly ofinfantry with some light and medium cavalry. The Balkan vassals of the Sultancontributed perhaps 5,000 men including 1,500 Serbian heavy cavalry underStefan Lazarevich, who was more anti-Hungarian than he was anti-Turk. Soperhaps, again just a guess: 2,000 Turkish horse (including sipahis), 1,500 Serbianknights, 8,000 Turkish foot (including an unknown number of Janissaries) and3,500 allied infantry. — Bayezid and his officer corps were experienced at war.

The situation in Constantinople and in the Morea greatly alarmed Latin leaders,especially King Sigismund (Zsigmond) of Luxemburg, who was German


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Emperor and King of Hungary (1387-1437). He asked for help and got it fromFrench knights and Venice. He then led his army into the Balkans, only to lose atthe great battle of Nikopolis (Nikopol, Niyebol) on 25 September 1396. Thisvictory won the sultan great fame as a ghazi throughout the Muslim world (Parryet al. 1976: 25).— With the Bulgarian infantry and the Hungarian army under King Sigismundof Hungary came French, Germans, Italians and Knights Hospitallers under theleadership of John of Nevers, son of the Duke of Burgundy.— In response to a crusade preached by Pope Boniface IX, a Franco-Burgundianarmy of “10,000” under the leadership of John of Nevers, son of Philip the Bold,Duke of Burgundy, marched to the relief of Christians savagely oppressed by thesoldiers of Islam. The admiral Tomanice Nico commanded the fleet of 44 galleysequipped by Venice and Genoa and joined later on by ships from Rhodes (theHospitallers). —‘Battle of Nicopolis’, Bulgarian History Page, athttp://www.geocities.com/nbulgaria/bulgaria/nicop396.htm; accessed 2009.

2. (or 1398:) Turks capture Vidin in the far NW of present-day Bulgaria andextinguish the last remnant of Bulgarian independence. Serbia now becomes anOttoman vassal, subservient but also semi-independent.

3. The return of the Greek language to Western Europe: The University of Veniceinvites Chrysoloras [above: 1390] to teach Greek in Venice. Hence the later term'Renaissance' or "re-birth". Cf 1403.

4. Italian slave trade: The bill of lading of a Black Sea ship putting into Genoa in1396 listed "17 bales of pilgrims' robes, 191 pieces of lead, and 80 slaves." —IrisOrigo, The Merchant of Prato (1963). Cf 1437 – Tafur’s visit to Kaffa.

1397:The Morea: A major Turkish raid [3 June] led by Timurtash Pasha on Venetian-ruled Argos (the town in the north-east, SSE of Corinth) led to the removal of14,000 captives. This left the district so bare that as late as 1480 it had only 200households, notwithstanding Venetian attempts to repopulate it with Albanians.(Argos was on the border of Achaean or Frankish Morea and Byzantine Morea.)— Setton, Papacy p.472; F. Zareinebaf et al. (2005), ‘Historical and economicgeography of Ottoman Greece’, Hesperia, supplement 34: online atwww2.let.uu.nl/solis/anpt/ejos/pdf8/wright-fin-01.pdf; accessed 2011.

Large Turkish forces led by Timurtash Beg and Ya'qub Pasha pillaged Boeotiaand Attica and then devastated the Morean peninsula on a major plunderingraid. Theodore sent a small army against them but it was “badly mangled” (Fine1994: 431). The invasion climaxed with the capture and sack (the citadel wasrazed) of Argos on 3 June 1397. The surviving population of the town(supposedly “14,000” people) was enslaved and deported to Asia Minor (Setton,Levant p.472).


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In anticipation, apparently, of this great invasion, the despot Theodore hadoffered Corinth to the Venetian republic in return for military aid, only to havehis proposal rejected by the senate (29 April 1397). When the Turks laid siege tothe citadel in the summer of 1397, Theodore in terror and desperation nextoffered Corinth to the Order of St. John (the Hospitallers). The knights accepted,and it is probable that they took possession of Corinth before the end of 1397.

Hazard: “It is sometimes stated that the Turks occupied the lower city of Athensin the spring or summer of 1397, but the evidence for assuming so is hardlyconclusive. It is of course quite possible. The Turks did take Argos on June 3,1397, sacked and burned the city, and are said to have carried off [from thewider region] 14,000 persons into slavery.” —H. W. Hazard ed., The fourteenth andfifteenth centuries, Harvard 1975.

2. Constantinople: Having defeated the Crusaders, Beyazid once more turned hisattention to Constantinople. In order to prevent military help from reaching theByzantines via the Black Sea - from Moldavia or Lithuanian-ruled Ukraine, - heordered the ‘Anatolian Fortress’, Anadolu Hisari, to be constructed at thenarrowest point of the Bosphorus on the Asian side (about 15 km fromConstantinople). Finally the Romaics accepted all the conditions laid out in thesiege of 1391. The annual tribute was raised to 30,000 gold pieces (1397 AD). Although primitive firearms were already common in the Latin West, theOttomans did not use cannon during this siege; it was not until 1422 that theyfirst used firearms against Constantinople (see there) (LBA p.336).

The great 'Greek' city of Constantinople did not fall immediately. Sultan Bajazet or Bayezid, 1389-1402, although a competent general, in thisrespect was unsuccessful. "New Rome" was still well defended, and the Turkswere often distracted. In 1396, as we have seen, they were checked by acrusading Western force led by the king of Hungary (Sigismund 1387-1437).Then in 1402 (see there), Timur or Tamerlane, the all-conquering ‘Turco-Mongol’ruler of Samarkand and a better general than Bayazid, made a punitiveexpedition to the west, inflicting a severe defeat on the upstart Ottoman sultan.The Ottomans temporarily lost control of their territories on the Asian side, andthe pressure on Rhomaniya/Byzantium was removed. Thessaloniki was restoredto Romaic imperial rule (1403). But the imperial "Greek" city was now reduced to a shadow of its former self,with well under 50,000 people, who (says Tafur: see 1437) lived mainly on thecoastal sides. So large was the city's interior area, however, that the space withinthe walls contained a number of hamlets separated by wheat-fields and orchards(Mango 1980 p.87; Treadgold 1997: 840; Harvey in Harris 2005). See 1403.

3. NW Balkans: Sultan Bayezid I approached Vidin and, assured by the promiseof his safety, the Bulgarian tsar (or anti-tsar*) Ivan Stratsimir came out to meethim. On the sultan’s order, Ivan Sratsimir was arrested and conveyed to Bursa,while the sultan confiscated the contents of the Vidin treasury. (The territory ofVidin, or at least some portions of it, appear to have remained under Ivan’s sonConstantine II's rule almost until his death in 1422.)


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(*) Ivan Stratsimar reigned in Vidin while his younger brother Ivan Shishmanreigned in Tarnovo - until 1393 when Tarnovo fell to the Ottomans.

1397-98:Embassies are dispatched to the West, seeking aid against the Turks. NowLondon and Moscow were included in the Byzantines’ trawling for friends.Charles VI of France particularly was targeted, as he had in the meantimebecome feudal overlord of Genoa (Norwich 1996: 357-58). See next.

1399:1. The N Aegean: The French king sends his Marshal (army commander),Jean/Jehan [John] le Meingre, also called Boucicaut, who had taken part in thebattle of Nicopolis, to Constantinople with six vessels and 1,200 soldiers, ofwhom 400 were heavy cavalry. Others joined him on the way so that when hereached Constantinople he was leading some 2,200 men: 600 knights, 600 armedgrooms and 1,000 archers (Bartusis, LBA p.111; also Norwich 1996: 359). In 1399they broke through the Turkish blockade of the Dardanelles and arrived inConstantinople to the rejoicing of the populace. Le Meingre persuaded theemperor Manuel to accompany him on his return trip to Western Europe. Theyleft Constantinople on 10 December 1399. —See 1399-1402.

2. The Peloponnesus: Following the Battle of Nicopolis, the Ottoman sultanBayezid I turned his attention to reducing the remaining Christian states inGreece. This drew Pedro Bordo de San Superano, the Navarrese prince ofAchaea, and the Byzantine Despot of Morea, Theodore I Palaeologus, intoalliance. The Order of St John, the Hospitallers, was also on side, but theVenetian senate refused to aid the Byzantines. In 1399, Pedro’s Achaeans defeatedan invading Turkish force and received the titles of papal vicar and ‘gonfalonier(“banner-bearer”) of Achaea’ from Boniface IX (15 February 1400). Hazard notes that conditions had become so bad in the Morea toward the endof the year 1399 that the despot Theodore sent a Greek monk to Venice,requesting asylum for himself and his family. —H. W. Hazard ed., The fourteenthand fifteenth centuries,1975: 262.

1399-1402:1. Manuel II tours Western Europe vainly seeking aid. His nephew, the deposedformer John VII, aged 29, acted as regent. Departing Constantinople on 10December 1399, Manuel reached Venice in April 1400. The Venetians gave himthe pleasant surprise of a lavish welcome (Nicol, B&V p.339). See further under1400. In 1400 he received the news that the ‘Mongols’ (Timur’s Muslim Mongolo-Turks) had invaded Asia Minor. For Byzantium they were welcome allies againstthe Turks. While the emperor was still in Paris, news arrived of Bayazit'soverwhelming defeat in the battle of Ankara (in 1402: see there), which affordedByzantium a chance to catch its breath. ‘Tamerlane’ (Timur), the ruler ofSamarkand, had defeated the rising Ottoman Empire and held it in check untilhis death in 1405.


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2. In the East, the Ottomans attack into the Mamluk-ruled domains in theEuphrates valley (1399).

Territory in 1400Map in NCMH p.855.

The boundary of Ottoman empire in the northwest was the lower Danube, withWallachia a Turkish vassal. In the west, the border ran down, from the middle Danube above Ottoman-ruled Vidin, past Nish through western Greece as far as eastern Epirus. West ofNish was Serbian land, held by Prince Stefan Lazarevich, but he was anothervassal who had to contribute military assistance to the Turks. Albania wasdivided between four Albanian statelets. In Epirus, further Albanian princelingsruled two local, short-lived statelets, centred in Arta (1358–1416) and [oppositeCorfu:] Gjirokastër (1386–1411) under the Losha and Zenebishi clans,respectively. Central Epirus and Ioannina were still in Greek hands, but under aforeign ruler, namely the Florentine nobleman, Esau de’ Buondelmonti. Boeotia was divided between the Ottomans and the Venetian duchy of Athens(Venice had control of Athens only briefly: from 1395 to 1402, when it reverted toFlorentine rule). Venice continued to rule Euboea/Negroponte, the large islandN of Athens. In Thrace Byzantium held only a fraction of land, i.e. to about 50 km west ofConstantinople (Chorlu was Turkish, Silivri/Selymbria Greek). In Asia the Ottomans controlled nearly the whole of Asia Minor, to about 40km west of Trebizond (still held by the Greeks) and in the south-east to beyondKonya. The Egyptians (Mamluks) controlled the Taurus Mountains and ‘LittleArmenia’ (having annexed Armenian Cilicia in 1375).

THE 1400s

1400:1. Manuel, on a tour of Western Europe (1400-03), receives a warm welcome inVenice. He proceeded thence, warmly received everywhere - at Padua, Vicenzaand Pavia - to Milan, and thence to Paris (June 1400). At Milan he met his friendthe Byzantine expatriate scholar Manuel Chrysoloras (Nicol B&V p.340). Charles VI of France received the emperor with great pomp in Paris in June1400 as did Henry IV in December 1400 in London.* The emperor employedConstantinopolitan relics and holy objects to win over the princes of Europe.—Baum, Manuel II, at http://www.roman-emperors.org/manuel2.htm; accessed2011; Norwich 1996: 363.

(*) Adam Usk, a Welsh chronicler in English service, describes the visit of theemperor Manuel II Palaiologos to London to meet king Henry IV in 1400. Thepurpose of the visit was to seek military and financial assistance. Manuel and


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Henry celebrated Christmas at Eltham, the palace south-east of London, and ajoust was given in his honour. This is how Usk describes his feelings about the emperor:

“I thought within myself, what a grievous thing it was that this greatChristian prince from the farther East should perforce be driven byunbelievers (or “infidels”) to visit the distant (or “more distant”) islands ofthe West [to get help against them]. My God! What dost thou, ancientglory of Rome? Shorn is the greatness of thy empire. . . . . Who would everbelieve that thou shouldst sink to such depth of misery, that, althoughonce seated on the throne of majesty, thus didst lord over all the world,now thou hast no power to bring succour to the Christian faith?” —AdamUsk, Chronicon AD 1377-1421. London: H. Frowde, 1904, 219-20; Vasiliev1958: 634. Brackets: alternative translations.

2. Italy: The dialect called ‘Salentine’ Greek, spoken in the Italian heel, at firstdeclined more rapidly than its Calabrian counterpart. But around 1400, morethan three centuries after the end of Byzantine rule, it was already confined to aterritorial strip bounded by Gallipoli and the Gulf of Taranto in the west andLake Limini near Otranto in the east, with Struda near Lecce and Alliste south ofGallipoli as its respective northern and southern limits (that is, just the south-central region of the heel). —Geoffey Hull, Polyglot Italy (1989), excerpt athttp://www.geocities.com/enosi_griko/articoli/greek_vernacular.html.

1400-02:


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The ‘Turko-Mongol’ amir Timur of Samarkand enters the picture. (Although aMuslim Turk, Timur saw himself as Genghis Khan’s heir.) He attacks TurkishAsia Minor (Sebasteia-Sivas was levelled to the ground in 1400), and capturesBaghdad (June 1401) and thereafter re-invades Asia Minor. His army crushesand captures Bayezid (and his Serbian vassals) at Ankara on 28 July 1402, andreaches the Aegean, where they pillage Ottoman Bursa and take Smyrna [Izmir],the last Christian enclave in Asia, from the Hospitallers. Meanwhile Bayezid’s sonSuleyman escaped across the Sea of Marmara in a Genoese galley, and lesserTurks paid huge sums to Byzantine boatmen to be ferried across the Bosporus(Norwich 1996: 36; Turnbull, Ottoman Empire p.29). As one result, the Ottomans ended their blockade of Constantinople (1402).“The intervention of Timur postponed the fall of Constantinople for half a century”,says Runciman 1965: 13. It appeared as if Timur had utterly destroyed theOttoman empire. At this time the Byzantines controlled nothing except the Great City and anoutpost in the Peloponnesus (the Morea).

The news of the ‘Mongol’ victory reached emperor Manuel in Paris in September1402 (Norwich 1996: 364; Nicolle 2008: 73).

1400-42:Venice: A colony of Byzantines in Venice provided some of the rowers forVenetian galleys, and carpenters for the Arsenal or shipyard. Between 1400 and1442 a dynasty of Greek shipwrights dominated the Arsenal, designing galleysfor both trade and war. Others, however, worked as tailors and gold wiredrawers, or joined the Stradioti [Gk stratatoi, ‘soldiers’], a light cavalry regimentin Venetian service initially recruited entirely from Greeks. (Many Albanianswere later recruited.) They fought in the style of the Turks, i.e. using hit and runtactics (Harris, ‘Byzantines in Renaissance Italy’, online at http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html).

1401:The Morea: Pedro’s Navarrese raided the Venetian-governed ports of Modonand Coron.

1402:Greece: Antonio Acciajuoli/Acciaioli of Thebes, the bastard son of Nerio andMaria Rendi, and an Ottoman vassal, suddenly swooped down upon VenetianAthens in force. His seizure of the lower town (in part at least) and his siege of the Acropoliswere known in Venice well before 22 August 1402, when the Venetian senatedecided to take drastic action against him. Letters were dispatched to theVenetian colonial government of Negroponte, authorising an increase of thecavalry force at its command "from 200 to 300 beyond the 50 for whichpermission was previously accorded the said government". With this force, andwith the bowmen and foot soldiers which they could raise locally, the bailie andcouncillors of Venetian Negroponte were to strive manfully "for the recovery of


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our city of Athens and for the injury and destruction of Antonio Acciajuoli and ofThebes and his other possessions". According to Chalcocondylas, Historia IV, theVenetian commander Francesco Bembo marched with “6,000” men fromNegroponte against Thebes (Hazard 1975: 263). But if there were only 300-350knights then a more likely figure is surely about 1,000. In any event, Acciaioli’s men ambushed Bembo’s force and forced them backto Negroponte. The siege of the acropolis then continued until the early monthsof 1403, when the starving Venetian garrison surrendered (Fine 1994: 435).

2. In the autumn of 1402, Timur’s army captured and pillaged Brusa, theOttoman capital; then, as we have seen, Timur made a significant contribution tothe Muslim Holy War by taking Christian Smyrna; finally, he re-established allthe Turkish princes in their domains (beyliks) – Saruhan, Aydin, Menteshe andGermiyan - before his departure in 1404 and his return to his court at Samarqand(Freely 2008: 121).

1402-03:Bayazit's eldest son, Suleiman, met with the regent John VII in August 1402.(Manuel was still in the West, as yet unaware of these events.) With Timur still inAsia Minor, Suleiman was willing to receive help, and early in 1403 he made atreaty of commerce and a pact of alliance against Timur with Venice, Genoa, theByzantine emperor, the duke of Naxos, and the Hospitallers on the island ofRhodes. Among other things he agreed to return Thessalonica to the Byzantines, togrant the high contracting parties the right to trade in his domains, and to giveAthens to the Venetians (i.e., see above: he was to instruct Acciajuoli to vacate it).The negotiations and their outcome are discussed at length in Dimitris Kastritsis,The sons of Bayezid: empire building and representation in the Ottoman civil of 1402-03,Brill, 2007, pp.53ff.

In February 1403 Sulayman and John—the sultan wanted to avert an anti-Turkish coalition in the West so as to have a free hand in the East—concluded apeace treaty on the Gallipoli peninsula in which Suleiman gave backThessaloniki, the Chalkidiki with Mt Athos, the coastal strip of Macedoniastretching from the Strymon to the mouth of the River Peneus as far inland, andthe islands of Skiathos, Skopelos and Skyros (west Aegean) as well as a strip ofthe Black Sea coast but not the port town of Gallipoli itself (Vacalopoulos, ‘Leslimites de l'empire byzantin’, Byzantion 55 [1962] 59-61; Treadgold 1997: 789). TheEuropean possessions of the Turks in "Rumeli" with their capital at Edirne/Adrianoplewere in turn formally recognised by Byzantium. See next. Byzantium no longer owed tribute to the Turks, and Suleiman even swore tobecome a vassal of the emperor! This was the Byzantine empire's last politicalsuccess (Baum, http://www.roman-emperors.org/manuel2.htm).

1402-11:Sultan Suleyman was nominal ruler of all Ottoman domains. In practice hecontrolled only the European side (Rumelia).


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- After the defeat by Timur, Bayezid's eldest son Emir Süleyman Çelebi movedthe state treasury from Bursa to Edirne, where he declared himself sultan (1402). - As we have noted, the beys, Turkish former subordinates of the Ottomansresumed their rule in Western Asia Minor, e.g. Aydin at Ephesus.

1403:1. Plague was rampant at Gallipoli and in Anatolia, as reported by Doukas andClavijo (Marien 2009: 35, 107).

2. Chaos in Anatolia: contest between the sons of Bayezid. Isa installs himself inBursa but is driven out by Mehmet. Meanwhile on the European side Suleyman -HQ at Adrianople/Edirne - makes a treaty with Constantinople, and (as notedabove) Thessalonica is returned to Byzantium. See 1407, 1423.

Early in 1403, a treaty is signed by Suleiman, son of Sultan Bayazet I, the co-emperor Ioannis/John VII, the representatives of Venice and Genoa, theIoannites and the Serb despot Stephan Lazarevic. Under the treaty theByzantines abolish taxes and recover the Thracian coasts on the Propontis and BlackSea [i.e. eastern Thrace], as well as ‘Palateoria’, which can perhaps be identifiedwith Peritheorion [Anastasiopolis in Thrace] (Anonymous: ‘Chronology ofThrace’, at . http://thesaurus.duth.gr/english/thrace.asp?theme=6; accessedApril 2011). -- The treaty provided that the Sultan would cancel all land grants in theseregions made to Turks (probably meaning timars or soldiers’ ‘fiefs’) but not anyland that Turks had purchased (Smyrlis, ‘First Ottoman Occupation’, in AlexanderBeihammer, Maria Parani, & Christopher Schabel, eds; Diplomatics in the easternMediterranean 1000-1500, Brill 2008, p.338). -- Manuel confirmed the treaty on his return (see next) but sent John into exile atnewly restored Thessalonica with the grand title ‘Basileus of all Thessaly’(Norwich 1996: 370).

3. May 1403: Returning from his Western tour, Manuel reaches Constantinople,after nearly three and a half years. He and his party of 40 were conveyed thenceinitially in Venetian galleys and finally in a combined Venetian-Genoese flotilla:a sense of honour for their two cities brought the Italian rivals briefly together(Nicol, B&V p.347; Norwich 1996: 369).

Territory

At the end of 1403, following the treaty, Byzantium ruled four tiny pockets ofland: 1. the northern littoral of the Sea of Marmara and a large slice of easternThrace (its largest domain) extending as far north as the northern side of the Gulfof Burgas, i.e. including the port-towns of Mesembria or Nessebar; Anchialus orPomorie; and Develtos: modern Debelt* [see 1403 above]; 2. a number of islandsin the North Aegean (see above); 3. Thessalonica and the Chalkidiki peninsulathat contained Mt Athos; and 4. the south-central half of the Morea orPeloponnesus. Or as Vacalopolus [trans. 1973] describes it, the boundaries of the Byzantineempire embraced, besides the capital itself, a few small towns and villages in the


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Propontis [the northern littoral of the Sea of Marmara] (Áyios Stéphanos,Selymbria, Heráclaea), and on the Black Sea coast (Médaea, Agathópolis,Sozópolis, Pyrgos, Anchíalos, Mesembría, Varna). Westwards they included thecoastal district stretching from the [western bank of the] Strymon (withChalcidice, Thessalonica and a small portion of the hinterland as far asChortiátis) to the head of the Malaean [sic: Malian/Maliakos] Gulf** (togetherwith Lamía and its environs); also included was the despotate of the Morea.Skyros and other islands of the Northern Sporádes also belonged to Byzantium,but they were “notoriously the nests of pirates and essentially ungovernable”.The Emperor “exercised but a shadowy control” over the Aenus region ofSouthern Thrace and the islands of the Thracian Gulf: Lemnos, Imbros,Samothrace and Thasos—, which were fiefs of the Genoese dynasty of theGattilusi.

(*) These towns remained Byzantine until 1453.

(**) That is: the coast as far as southern Thessaly. The Malian or MaliakosGulf cuts into east-central Greece, near Thermopylae, opposite the top ofEuboea. Lamia was/is inland from the top of the Gulf.

c. 1403: Italy: The Florentine scholar Leonardo Bruni translates into LatinSt Basil's 4th century Greek essay ‘To the Younger Generation on MakingGood Use of Greek Literature’. Being written by one of the great ChurchFathers, this text served as a useful defence against the critics of theancient pagan writers.

Clavijo’s Visit, 1403

Ruy González de Clavijo was the ambassador of Henry III of Castile to the courtof Timur, founder and ruler of the Timurid Empire. Here are extracts about theAegean region from his memoirs.

“On Saturday, the 6th of October [1403], at dawn, they [the sailors/rowerstransporting the Spanish envoys] made sail, and directed their course betweenthe land of Turkey, and the said island of Metellin [Mytilene, i.e. Lesbos], untilthey reached Cape St Mary. On Sunday they doubled the cape, and came in sightof a desert island called Tenio [Tenedos], on the left hand; and an inhabited island,belonging to Constantinople, called Nembro [Imbros].

“They entered the strait of Romania [the Dardanelles]; and the entrance is sonarrow that it is not more than eight miles across.”

“Gallipoli, a castle and town on the Grecian [sic: European] side, . . . is occupiedby the Mussulman Ahalali, eldest surviving son of the Turk. In the said port ofGallipoli, the Turk [i.e. the Sultan] has all his fleet of ships and galleys, 40 in number;and the castle is strongly fortified, with a large garrison” (trans. Markham: seereference below).


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Constantinople in 1403

“Though the circuit of the walls is . . . very great and the area spacious, the city isnot throughout very densely populated. There are within its compass many hillsand valleys where corn [wheat] fields and orchards are found, and among the orchard-lands there are hamlets and suburbs which are all included within the city limits.The most populous quarter of the city is along the lower level by the shoretowards the point that juts into the Sea [of Marmara]. The trading quarter of thecity is down by the gates which open on the strand [of the Golden Horn] andwhich are facing the opposite gates which pertain to the city of Pera [Galata], forit is here that the galleys and smaller vessels come to port to discharge theircargoes, and here by the strand it is that the people of Pera meet those ofConstantinople and transact their business and commerce. Everywherethroughout the city there are many great palaces, churches and monasteries, butmost of them are now in ruin. It is however plain that in former times whenConstantinople was in its pristine state it was one of the noblest capitals of theworld.” The Valens Aqueduct was perhaps, but probably not, still in use: “there stretchesfrom hill to hill, rising above the houses and orchards, the Aqueduct, and thiscarries water that is used to irrigate all these orchards”. —Clavijo, Embassy toTamerlane 1403-1406. Ed. Guy le Strange (London, 1928) pp.87-89. But in another translation, we read that “in a part below the church which isdedicated to the Holy Apostle, there is a bridge reaching from one valley toanother, over houses and gardens, by which water used to come, for the irrigationof those gardens” (trans. Markham, p.46, athttp://www.archive.org/stream/narrativeembass01markgoog/narrativeembass01markgoog_djvu.txt) A modern Spanish edition of Clavijo renders this passage as “por esta dichapuente [by this bridge] solía ir [used to go] agua de que se regaban [water withwhich they were watering/they watered: Preterite Imperfect tense, conveyingthe Past when relating a story] estas huertas [those kitchen-gardens/orchards]”.Page 50 of the text as published by Linkgua ediciones, 2007; also online (2009) athttp://www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/sirveobras/12593175330140403087846/.

“The sea between Pera and Constantinople [i.e. the Golden Horn] is narrow, notbeing more than a mile across, which is the third of a league; and this sea servesas the port for both cities; and I hold it to be the best and most beautiful in the world,and the most secure from all winds.”

Trebizond

“The city of Trebizond is built near the sea, and its wall rises up over some rocks,and on the highest part there is a very strong castle, which has another wallround it. A small river passes by the castle, and dashes over the rocks, and onthis side the city is very strong, but on the other side it is on open ground.Outside the city walls there are suburbs, and the most beautiful part is a street


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near the sea, which is in one of these suburbs, where they sell all the thingsrequired in the city.”

“The Greeks [of Trebizond] are armed with bows and swords, and other armslike the Turks, and they have cavalry.”

“The emperor [of Trebizond] and his son were dressed in imperial robes. Theywore, on their heads, tall hats surmounted by golden cords, on the top of whichwere cranes' feathers;* and the hats were bound with the skins of martens. Theycall the emperor Germanoli [Gk Kyr Manoli: ‘lord Manuel’: Manuel III MegasKomnenos] and his son Quelex [kyr Alexius, aged 21]; and they call the sonemperor as well as the father, because it is the custom to call the eldest legitimateson emperor, although his father may be alive; and the Greek name for emperor,is Basileus. This emperor pays tribute to Timour Beg, and to other Turks, who arehis neighbours.”

(*) Tall plumed hats are depicted on Greek soldiers in a Florentine painting on awooden marriage chest of c. 1462 depicting the Turkish capture ofConstantinople and Trebizond (reproduced in black & white in Heath, ByzantineArmies 1118-1461, 1995; coloured online, 2009, athttp://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dome/ho_14.39.htm).

1403-13:Civil war in Turkish Anatolia: conflicts between the sons of Bayezid and withother Turkish princes. Reassertion of Ottoman power: final end of the emirate ofAydin 1403; end of Saruhan 1410.

Struggle between Isa, Muhammad (Mehmed), Sulaiman and Musa, 1402-1413.In this period Bosnia, Serbia and Wallachia were able to throw off Turkishsuzerainty, meaning that they would have to be reconquered later.

1405: d. Timur of Samarkand.

1403-33:“Writers of the time agree that the city [Constantinople] had virtually fallen intoruin when it passed [1453] into Turkish hands. Clavijo [a Castilian diplomat:quoted earlier], who came to the city in 1403, writes that the city was ‘empty’ andthe doors of St. Sophia were lying on the ground; Buendelmonti writes, in 1419-1420, that the Church of the Apostles had become a ruin and the cisterns werebeing used as vineyards; Bertrandon de la Broquiere [a Burgundian spy or pilgrim]writes that in 1433 the city was [almost] ‘totally empty’” (see there for fullerquotes). – This meant that its unoccupied sections were much more extensivethan the parts where people lived. Clavijo, quoted in Norwich 1996, p.388: “It is poorly populated; for in themidst of it are a number of hills and valleys on [sic] which there are fields of corn[i.e. wheat and barley] and vineyards and many orchards; and in these cultivated


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areas the houses are clustered together like villages; and this is in the midst of thecity”. Cf above: 1397. Also cf 1450: population of perhaps 50-75,000. This wasperhaps one-tenth of the maximum in the 6th century, so we may imagine that upto 80% of the area inside the walls was unused, or only occasionally used forgrowing wheat and other crops.

1404:Last mention of the Varangian Guard (perhaps). Adam Usk, the Welshchronicler, briefly banished to Rome by his English king, encounters thereByzantine ambassadors visiting the pope. They tell him or seem to tell him thatManuel II’s retinue in Byzantium includes Britons who carry axes: “men of Britishrace . . . bear axes in their country, which others do not”* (quoted by Bartusis p. 275).—One imagines that at this late date they were a small bodyguard.

(*) ‘Your actual Englishman’ did not make much use of large axes in thisperiod; but of course in Ireland and Scotland the famous ‘gallowglass’ [Ir.gallóglaigh +s] preserved and re-perfected the use of the two-handedinfantry axe from AD 1290 to the early 1600s . . .

Chris Given-Wilson ed., The Chronicles of Adam Usk, OUP reprint 1997 p.199,seems to imply that the men in question may have been ordinary Englishmercenaries freshly appeared at Constantinople, not specifically axe-armedinfantrymen, mentioned in letter of 1402 from Manuel to Henry IV, followingManuel’s visit to England in1400. That is, perhaps the ambassadors in Romewere simply recalling the earlier history of the English in Constantinople. D’Amato p.12 suggests that the English soldiers of 1402-04 were mixed-blooddescendants of Varangians. Otherwise, we have mention of Varangians in Byzantine documents in 1400and 1395, although there it is not clear if they were still soldiers in service(Bartusis p.275). The last definite last mention of Varangians in military service isin the year 1341 in Cantacuzenus’s memoirs. In that year Kantakouzenos selected500 men as bodyguards for Emperor John V, adding to them 'axe-bearingVarangians, as many as there were in service'. Since in 1352 (see there)Kantakouzenos recruited 500 Catalans for his own personal guard, we mayimagine the Varangians were few in 1341.

c. 1405/1407:Or in 1410: The Morea: The cleric and scholar called “Plethon” [GeorgiosGemistos, aged about 45] was exiled to Mistra by his friend and admirer theEmperor of Constantinople, Manuel II Palaeologus, because the Orthodox clergywere outraged at his neoplatonic doctrines. He had studied for a period in theTurkish capital, Edirne/Adrianople. Mistra, a town in the southern portion of the


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Peloponnesus just five km from ancient Sparta, was capital of the largelyautonomous despotate of Morea. See 1438.

1406:The Morea: The Despot Theodore I, the implacable foe of the Navarrese and theZaccarias of Arcadia* (Centurione and Stephen), made a last effort to conquer theprincipality of Achaia in 1406. Despite his alliance with Carlo Tocco ofCephalonia and Centurione's brother Stephen, he once more was cheated of hisobjective (Setton, Crusades p.161).

(*) Until 1402 the Prince of Achaia had been the Navarrese captain San Superano;his widow Maria Zaccaria then ruled as regent until 1404, when their overlordLadislas King of Naples/Sicily [Anjou-Capet] recognised her nephew CenturioneZaccaria as Prince (“Prince of Achaea, lord of Arcadia, baron of Chalandritza”).

1407:Suleyman crosses into Asia and, in Mehmet’s absence, seizes his brother’s seat ofBursa. Meanwhile another brother, Musa, attacks Edirne (Norwich 1996: 372-74).See 1410 and 1410-11.

The relevant sons of Bayezid, all with his wife Devlet (d. 1411), were as follows.“Çelebi” is just an honorific, not a name:

a. Süleyman Çelebi, aged 30 in 1407, Co- Sultan of Rumelia: Murdered in1410.

b. Isa Çelebi, Governor of Anatolia (Balıkesir and Bursa ) (d. 1406) - son ofDevlet Hatun.

c. Musa Çelebi, Sultan of Rumelia (1410–1413 ) (d. 1413) - son of DevletShah Hatun.

d. Mehmed Çelebi, aged 25 in 1407: Governor of Anatolia (Amasya) andlater as Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I Çelebi, (1389–1421) - son of DevletHatun.

2. So good were the relations between Byzantium and the Ottomans that Manuelfor the first time could leave the capital and travel to Thessalonica and Mistra.(Both sides of the Dardanelles were Turkish.) He did so after the death of hisbrother Theodore, Despot of the Morea. Still in Mistra when John VII also dies atThessalonica, Manuel hastens there to install his third son, eight years oldAndronicus (Norwich 1996: 373; Nicol, Last Centuries p.324).

1409:Russian alliance: Marriage of 17 years old Prince Ióannés (John) VIII Palaiologos,future co-Emperor of Byzantium, 1421-25 and then Emperor 1425-48, born16.12.1392, died 31.10.1448; to 16 years old Anna of Moscow, 1393-1417, eldestdau. of Vasiliy I, Great or Grand Prince of Moscow, the most powerful of theseveral Russian princes.


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1409-10:The plague killed “10,000” people in Constantinople according the ‘ShortChronicles’. The Byzantine historian Sphrantzes says that the same plague killedBayezid’s son Yusuf, a hostage given to the Byzantines, but the date is contested.Yusuf’s death is not mentioned in the Turkish sources, perhaps because heconverted to Christianity before dying (Marien 2009: 55-56).

1410:1. Such was the rate of migration, and the flood of refugees after the defeat at thehands of Timur, that the Byzantine historian Michael Doukas, fl. 1450, believedthat already by 1410 there were more Turks in Europe than in Asia (Runciman1965: 42).

2. Ottoman civil war: The Battle of Kosmidion, 15 June 1410, was fought betweenthe forces of Musa Çelebi and the supporters of Suleyman Çelebi just outside theland walls of Constantinople: within sight of the Blachernai Palace (!). During thebattle, some of Musa's vassals, including the Serb Vuk Lazarevic, deserted himand joined Suleyman. It ended in a victory for Suleyman Çelebi: but see next.Musa fled to Bulgaria, accompanied by his Wallachian allies (Dimitris Kastritsis,The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of1402-13, Brill 2007, p.150).

3. Manuel II turns 60.

4. Venice’s naval forces: By 1410, according to Norwich (A History of Venice, NewYork: Knopf, 1982, p.269), Venice had a “navy” of “3,300” ships [sic!!*] mannedby 36,000 men [sic! 11 rowers per “ship”], and had recently taken over most ofmainland Venetia, including such important towns as Verona and Padua [1404-06]. A further 16,000 people worked in the Arsenal (Venice’s dockyard andweapons factory). More exactly, as given by Doge Tommaso Mocenigo (1414-1423), Venice had“300” navi or large ships in 1423. The seamen employed on them totalled only8,000 men, i.e, 26 or 27 per vessel. In addition there were “3,000” small craft,including sailing boats (“cogs”): very small, as they employed just “17,000” menor five or six men each. Total vessels 3,300.* Total seamen: “25,000” (Lane,Venetian Ships pp.106 and 253). Now the prescribed crew of a standard galley was “212” men in 1412 (Lane,Venetian Ships p.254). Using this with Mocenigo’s “8,000” men, Venice couldhave dispatched only 37 standard galleys . . . Indeed, in 1424, when a “powerful”fleet was desired, the Senate voted to arm 25 galleys (ibid). So, most of the ‘300’large ships must have been in mothballs at any one time.

(*) To interrogate this figure further, we may imagine that two-thirds of the’36,000’ men were drawn from the lagoon-city of Venice itself: viz 24,000. (Manyoarsmen serving Venice came from Dalmatia.) Ships crews needed to be able-bodied males; so that ’24,000’ men would represent a total population (men,women and children: babies to old women) of perhaps 144,000. Now theestimates for Venice’s total population in 1400 range from 110,000 to 200,000 –


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with a figure under 150,000 to be preferred (UNESCO 2000: History of humanityp.18; David Nicolle & Christopher Rothero, The Venetian Empire 1200-1670,Osprey Publishing, 1989 p.5; Hendrik Spruyt, The sovereign state and itscompetitors: an analysis of systems change, Princeton University Press, 1996 p.132). It follows that the ‘3,300’ “ships” were nothing more than simply all the tinyboats and large ships that could in principle be manned by the entire malepopulation, and in no sense a measure of Venice’s power to project itself militarilyacross the Mediterranean. Indeed Pryor says that the largest fleet ever dispatchedby any Italian city was “165” galleys, launched by Genoa in 1295; and that was inan era when galleys used fewer men per oar: two men per oar, 54 oars, 108oarsmen per ship (Pryor in Morrison & Gardner, eds.,The age of the galley:Mediterranean oared vessels since pre-classical times, Conway 1995 p.222). Setton notes (Papacy p.295) that 200 men (oarsmen and others includingfighting troops) was a typical complement for a Venetian galley in the earlier1300s.** Using this with our figure of “24,000” able-bodied men, Venice could inprinciple have manned about 120 galleys (that is, if all of standard size).** Butmost of Venice’s population of course would have been involved in primaryproduction, i.e. farming and fishing etc. They could not have been released toserve as oarsmen for months in the Levant …

(**) Cogs (small, high-sitting sailing ships) were also widely used after 1350(Lane, Republic 1973: 123).

Above: Later style of Venetian galley.


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1410-11:Thrace: Musa defeats his brother Suleiman (15 June 1410) and takes Edirne(1411); Suleiman is strangled (Norwich 1996: 374).

1411-13:Musa Çelebi rules as Ottoman sultan at Edirne/Adrianople. With the help of the voyvode of Wallachia, he attacked Edirne in 1411 andseized it from his brother Sulayman. Musa Çelebi struck coins in his own name.The Byzantines and Serbs allied themselves with Mehmed (in Bursa). The feud between the remaining two heirs to the Ottoman throne, PrincesMusa (at Edirne) and Mehmet (at Brusa), served not only to weaken the OttomanEmpire but to further strengthen Byzantium's position. As Prince Musa besiegedConstantinople (from August 1411), Manuel struck an arrangement with PrinceMehmet whose troops the Byzantines ferried across to attack his brother's forcesoutside Constantinople. The Serbs and Byzantines provided troops to aidMehmet’s army. Ther were two campaigns by Mehmet, the first in which he (andManuel) lost, the second he won. Thus, the siege had to be lifted (June-July 1412AD) (Norwich 1996: 375). Mehmet pursued Musa into Serbia (see next) and killed him. Now asundisputed sultan, he was suitably grateful to Manuel. See next.

Musa sent a further army to Thessalonica and it too was subjected to a siege atthis time: Fine 1994: 507.

1413:1. The western Black Sea coast: As noted, in 1412-13 Manuel supported Mehmet(Ar. Muhammad) in the war against his brother Musa. In 1413 Mehmetconfirmed the peace treaty of Gallipoli with Byzantium, which thereby regainedfurther territories on the Black Sea. Turkish Bulgaria: During Musa's siege of Constantinople, Mehmed had movedhis troops (and a small number of Byzantine soldiers) south of his brother'sposition, entered Sofia and pushed on to Nis, where he was joined by the Serbsunder the Ottoman vassal Stefan Lazarevic (total forces some 10,000). Mehmedthen turned around and in 1413 met Musa's forces at Jamurlu (Çamurlu) nearSofia in our west-central Bulgaria (July 1413). Mehmed, who Constantinoplefavoured, won the battle; Musa lost his life. Byzantium’s assistance was crucial because only it had the ships ansd boats toferry Mehmet’s large army across the straits, as well as provide a safe place for itto assemble prior to the campaign and retreat in case of defeat (DimitrisKastritsis ,The sons of Bayezid: empire building and representation in the Ottoman civilwar of 1402-13, Brill 2007, pp.189ff). We cannot think that “the many infidels” (ieChristian troops) contibuted by Manuel, as the Turkish chronicler describesthem, amounted to even as many as 1,000 men. The Ottoman Empire was finally reunited under Sultan Mehmed I (1413-21),and the reorganization of the state could begin. Cf 1416.

2. In Samos, the Genoese under the Giustiniani regained supremacy (from theVenetians) and ruled the island together with Chios.


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1413-21:Mehmed, Ottoman sultan, aged 31 in 1413. See 1416. Mehmed realized how precarious was the balance of power in Europe, andhow unsettled was the situation in his own lands, and he knew that thedescendants of Timur could still challenge him at any moment in Anatolia. Hetherefore became a man of peace after 1413, concentrating on his domesticproblems.

1414:Proceeding via Thasos, Manuel visits Thessalonica accompanied by contingentsof infantry and cavalry. His party consisted of four galleys and two horsetransports (Norwich 1996: 376); so the number of troops was probably around400. See next.

1414-15:Manuel tours his impoverished, or presumably impoverished, realms: see 1422.Having repulsed (1414) an attack by Genoese from Lesbos on the island ofThasos in the NW Aegean, he sojourned there for three months (Norwich 1996:377). Manuel, with a fleet of four galleys and two other vessels carrying someinfantry and cavalry, re-took (1414) the island of Thasos from the Genoese; orelse he repulsed an attempt by the Genoese to take it (Treadgold 1997: 791). (TheGenoese held a large stretch of islands and parts of the coast of the Turkish-dominated eastern Aegean.) He then winters in Thessalonica before visiting the Peloponnesus (the Morea)in 1415. This involved sailing (rowing) through the Venetian-dominated southAegean. Cf 1416, 1422 and 1423.

The 5th century Hexamilion (“six mile”) wall across the isthmus near Corinth wasrebuilt in 1415; eight years later, however, the Turks found it unmanned. See 1423(Bartusis, LBA p.115 ff). When first built in the 6th century it had 153 towers anda castle at either end. Since it took Manuel’s men just 25 days to rebuild (Nicol,Last Centuries p.328), one would guess that not everything was re-created. Onthe other hand, the work was expensive: the extra taxes levied for this in theMorea caused an uprising.

— The tax he imposed for the rebuilding of the Hexamilion provoked rebellionbut in July 1415 at Kalamata in the south Manuel’s few hundred troops wereenough to defeat the rebels (Norwich 1996: 377; Bradbury 2004: 175). See 1417.

1415, Battle of Agincourt: The English under Henry V defeat the French.Anne Curry has recently argued there were more English and Welshtroops than previously thought, and far fewer on the French side. She wasable to count the number of soldiers on both sides accurately because allwere paid recruits. Their names and wages were recorded. She calculatesthat total numbers were about 8,000 (mainly foot archers) on Henry’s sideand 12,000 on the French. Curry: Agincourt, A New History, 2005.


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Cf 1425: 25,000 Turks invade the Morea.

1415-1439: Italy: Traverarai translates many early Christian Greek textsinto Latin.

1416:1. Venice, Constantinople and Wallachia [present-day Rumania: nominally aTurkish protectorate] ally against Mehmed, who also has to mollify Timur’s sonShahrukh, his nominal overlord in Iran.— Byzantium supported the challenge by Mehmed’s other brother Mustafa whohad reappeared, probably from the East, after the civil war was decided. In thiswar Venice destroyed Mehmed’s fleet near Gallipoli in 1416, but he defeatedMustafa, who sought refuge in Byzantine Thessalonica. In the peace that ensued,the sultan promised not to attack Byzantine territory in exchange for Manuel'sagreement to hold Mustafa prisoner (he was confined on Lemnos).— When the Ottoman fleet was defeated by the Venetians near Gallipoli and thecrews of the ships were captured, many Greeks were among the prisoners; theywere not just sailors but also timar-holders, i.e. holding land received in returnfor soldiering for the Sultan (Zachariadou p.216). Also many of the hired crew inthe Ottoman fleet during the Ottoman-Venetian War of 1416 were Genoese(Gábor Ágoston & Bruce Masters, Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire 2009, p.427).

2. Further Ottoman siege of Thessalonica (Russell 2010: p.21).

French crossbowman, 1417.After the John Rous Pageant c.1485 at Caen (1417).

1417-18:The Peloponnesus: The tiny imperial army of Constantinople (see after 1421-22below), led by the future Emperor prince John VIII (aged 25) and the despotes


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Theodore II Palaeologus, invaded (1417) Italian-ruled Achaea. They alsoharrassed the hinterlands of the several Venetian-ruled ports. Some veryfantastic figures are given for the number of Byzantine troops; one figure in anItalian source is “10,000” horse and “5,000” archers (Bartusis, p.266): this isperhaps credible if we lop a zero off the number of cavalry. And one guesses thatfew of the ‘archers’ would be salaried professionals.* John and Theodore’s men took the Messenia region in the south-west and theElide (Elis/Ilia) valley and forced Centurione Zaccaria, the Genoese prince ofAchaea, to hole up in Clarentsa [or Glarentza, present-day Kyllini in the far west,the major port of Achaia: at the westernmost tip: nearest port to Cephalonia],from which he fled by sea in spring 1418. A little later, Patras too [the northerntown on the Gulf of Patras] fell. Only by the mediation of the Venetians who heldNavarrino or Pylos, the port of Messenia, was Centurione able to secure a truce(Setton, Crusades, pp162-63; also his Papacy at p.10).

(*) A post-conquest census taken by the Ottomans in 1461 found that thepopulation of the Morea/Peloponnesus was “20,000” households, whichpresumably equates to something around 100,000 people, or a little less (F.Zarinebaf et al., ‘Historical and economic geography of Ottoman Greece’,Hesperia, supplement 34, (2005), Princeton USA: onlinewww2.let.uu.nl/solis/anpt/ejos/pdf8/wright-fin-01.pdf; accessed 2008). Thearea of the Peloponnesus is some 21,500 sq km; thus the population density wasunder five persons per sq km, which was quite low by medieval standards :perhaps a reflection of the region’s recent woes [cf Stathakopoulos 2008 offersconservative figures for a population density, Empire-wide, in the wholeByzantine millennium, of nine people per km2 in tough times, rising to 15 perkm2 in fair to good times]. For the purposes of a thought experiment, let us suppose that the Despotatehad 75,000 subjects in 1417 (Greeks, Albanians and Latins). The number of able-bodied grown males might have been 12,500; so a full “call-out” ought to havebeen able to realise 6,000+ armed men.

Urban life in Frankish and ex-Frankish Greece was primarily limited to theharbour-ports and zones: 1 Corinth; 2 Clarentza or Clarence [It. Chiarenza,Glarentsa, modern Kyllini], 3 Pylos or Port de Jonc [Port of Junch, Zanklon,Avarinos, Navarin] in Achaia, and also 5 Thebes, an "artisanal" city of the formerduchy of Athens, rich from its silk workshops. A certain urban development alsocharacterized 6 Andravida or Andreville, in the inland sector of the far west, thenominal capital of the principality of Achaia, as well as the princely residences of 7Kalamata or Calemate: on the central-south coast in Achaia, and formerly at 8Athens** in the duchy; although the Latin princes especially resided at Clarentza-Kyllini and Thebes.

(**) The Italian notary Nicolo’ da Martoni, who visited Athens itself in 1395,describes it as a “small” town of some 1,000 houses. The Acropolis had long sincebeen converted into a medieval castle and the ‘city’ had shrunk to a settlementhuddled at the foot of the rock. It was ruled by the Acciajuoli family of Florenceunder Venetian suzerainty. —J. M. Patton, Chapters on Medieval and RenaissanceVisitors to Greek Lands, Princeton, N.J., 1951, p.32.


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We may perhaps deduce from this that the chief towns of the Morea had atmost 10,000 people.

1420:Plague. Sphrantzes says that in order to escape it Manuel temporarily transferredhis court to the Monastery of the Periblebtos (Marien 2009: 63).

1420-21:Italian marriage alliances: Manuel’s eldest son John (aged 28) married Sophia ofMontferrat, and Theodore the Despot of the Morea (aged about 25) marries thedaughter of the Count of Rimini. John was at the same time crowned co-emperoras John VIII (Norwich 1996: 381-82).

1420-35: From medieval to early modern? - “Quattrocento art” in N Italy:The use of the perspective vanishing point allows the Florentines toincrease the range of their painting.

1421:1. When Mehmet I in 1421 requested permission to travel from Europe to Asiavia Constantinople, Manuel rejected a plan of murdering him and personallyaccompanied him. (The Ottomans controlled the whole Bosphoros, the southernside of the Marmara Sea, and the Dardanelles; but Mehmet and Mustafa werefighting for the throne: presumably crossing via Christian Constantinople was alow-risk option.) Cf 1422.

2. d. Mehmet; accession of Murad II, sultan 1421-44; and again 1446-51.Constantinople took the side of Mustafa Duzme (‘anti-sultan’ 1421-22) against hisnephew Murad II.

1421: Pre-Renaissance 'humanism' (rediscovery of ancient texts):Discovery, at Lodi near Milan, of the complete text of Cicero's De oratoreand other ancient texts. This led to a movement of "purification" inmodern Latin writing - called "Ciceronianism".

1421-22:1a. Mustafa, who Byzantium supported, crossed the Bosphorus on Genoeseships, with some 12,000 cavalry and 5,000 infantry, but was beaten by the armyof his brother Murad at the beginning of the year 1422. Murad has Mustafapublicly hanged (Agoston & Masters, p.399; Nancy Bisaha, Creating East andWest: Renaissance humanists and the Ottoman Turks, University of PennsylvaniaPress, 2006, p.236). This Mustafa, who claimed to be Murad’s uncle and is called “False” Mustafaby the Turkish chronicles should be distinguished from Murad’s youngerbrother, “Little” Mustafa, who was strangled in 1423 (Nicol, Last Centuries p.333).

1b. Sixth siege of CP: To punish Manuel for having aided Mustafa, the newsultan Murad, with some 10,000 men, besieges Constantinople; this fails afterfour months (8 or 10 June to 6 September 1422) (Bartusis p.117; Setton, Papacy


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p.12; Nicol, Last Centuries p.333). Thessalonica was also blockaded. See 1423:Venetian rule.— Murat II laid a siege the moment he ascended the Ottoman throne. Just asByzantine resistance was broken and the city had almost capitulated, a majorrebellion broke out in Anatolia. A pretender to the Ottoman throne, SultanMurat's younger brother, Prince Mustafa, started it, with help from the beys ofGermiyan and Karaman. They put Bursa under threat. Once more, as brothermarched against brother, the Byzantines were left to their own devices (1422AD). By February 1423 Murat had defeated and excuted Mustafa (Shaw, OttomanEmpire I: 45).— From June to September 1422 Constantinople was besieged for the secondtime by the Turks. The fortifications of the city nonetheless held up to theTurkish pressure.— Byzantine women came out the help guard the walls, carrying stones andwater for the soldiers (Kananos, cited in Bartusis, LBA p.308).

Large cannons were deployed by Murad, for the first time in Ottoman history.Evidently they were either ineffective or poorly operated. The Turks also hadvarious primitive handguns (Kananos, cited in LBA p. 337).

2. The same fate befell the Macedonian capital, Thessalonica. Bürak Bey, the sonof Evrenos, laid siege to the city in June 1422 and ravaged Kalamaria, the easternregion of Chalcidice as far as Cassándria [SE of Thessalonica: on the lowest fingerof the Chalcidice] (Vacalopoulos, trans. 1973).

3. Byzantine-ruled Morea remained prosperous. According to a Venetian report,it had more than 150 castles or forts; and it had both silk and cotton industries andoverall yielded more revenues than Venetian-ruled Crete (Miller p.386). See 1423.

The Byzantine Army

… was of course tiny at this time. The Chronicle of the Tocco family, a Greek textwritten at Cephalonia after 1425, indicates that the emperor had 500 horsemenand local Byzantine lords had retinues of 20-100 armed men (ODB i:185). The population of Greece, within its modern-day boundaries, was of the orderof 750,000 at this time (McEvedy & Jones Population Atlas p.113). Let us imaginethat a third or 250,000 people lived in the Morea (both the Frankish and imperialsectors), and that 1% or 2,500 were semi-professional soldiers. Allowing ameasure for the Frankish lords, we might give the despotate of the Morea half ofthese or just 1,250 trained soldiers. Cf 1423: invasion by “25,000” Turks.

1422-40:


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The island of Lemnos/Limnos in the N Aegean is governed by DemetriosPalaiologos, Manuel II’s younger son. (In 1440 he became governor ofMesembria.) In 1437 (see there: probably because he was too untrustworthy to leavebehind) he was part of the entourage of his brother Emperor John VIIIPalaiologos that went to the West. This was to Florence for the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence, which sought to reunite the Catholic (Latin or West Roman)Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

1423:1. “Little” Mustafa, who was being used as a figurehead by Byzantium and theAnatolian emirs, is betrayed to his brother and Murad has him strangled (Nicol,Last Centuries p.333).

2. Greece: Thessaloniki was lost once more, irretrievably. Besieged by the Turksand hampered by ill health, the desperate despotes Andronikos, with his father’sapproval, negotiates the transfer of Th. to Venice. The ruler of Thessalonica,Andronicus Palaeologus, and the nobles decided that it would be preferable tohand over the city to the Venetians, and this they did on condition that theVenetians would respect the town's autonomy and the privileges enjoyed by theArchbishop and the Church (Vacalopoulos, trans. 1973). Byzantine Thessaloniki, still under Turkish blockade, thus became a Venetianpossession due to the sieges and famine within. It was purchased by them inreturn for supplies and the promise to defend it from the Turks (Norwich 1996:385). Seven years later (1430), the Venetians will be forcibly "relieved" of theirpurchase when the city is stormed by the army of Sultan Murad. This reduced the emperor’s realm to just the city of Constantinople, an urbanisland in the middle of the Ottoman empire, along with the distant outpost of theMorea [the Peloponnesus: cf next 1423.3, and 1428].In the meantime Murad made peace within Byzantines, in order that they would not (asthe Turks feared) accept Venetian rule in Constantinople ( + see 1424). - At this timeVenice dominated the southern Aegean from Crete and Euboea and also held ( -against the Turks) toeholds in Epirus and p.d. Albania. Genoa clung to a numberof islands off the coast of Turkish Asia Minor (where various Turkish beys,including Menteshe,were still resisting Ottoman rule). Cf 1425.


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3. The Peloponnesus: Murad’s general Turahan or Turakhan Bey invadesAlbania, Thessaly and the Peloponnese/Morea (May). He proceeded to theMorea with an army of “25,000” including a contingent from Italian-ruledAthens, already a vassal of the Turks. Turahan found [22 May 1423] theHexamilion wall near Corinth undefended and his troops demolished it(Bartusis, LBA p.116; Norwich 1996: 390). Cf 1431. May 1423: The Turkish commander Turakhan Beg entered the Morea on aterrifying razzia, ravaging the land and attacking the towns ofMystras/Mistra, Leontari and Gardiki/Anavyto (both in Arcadia: SW of Tripolisand NW of Mistra) and ‘Tabia’ which is today’s Davia, about 10 km NW ofTripoli (that is, almost at the exact geographical centrepoint of the Peloponnesus:Setton, Papacy p.38). As Diana Wright relates, citing Chalcocondyles, they first made a drive downthrough the Nemea valley, and into the passes of Mt Lyrkeo, south-eastwardspast Mantinea—the same general route as today’s E65 highway—and southdown past Tripoli, as far as Mistra (the Byzantine capital). This raid was timed totake advantage of the barley harvest, and then the wheat. (Harvesting from May:winnowing from July.) After raiding the Mistra area, Turahan’s men started backnorth through the “miserable” passes of the Taygetos range and back up into theplain south-west of Tripoli where they assaulted two of the more importantGreek towns in the Morea, Gardiki [present-day Anavyrto] and Leondari. TheGreeks perhaps wisely did nothing to respond, but at Davia the local Albaniansbravely confronted the Turks [5 June 1423]. Turahan’s troops captured and thenslew “800” Albanians and, says Chalcocondyles, made a tower of their heads(Wright’s blog 2011 athttp://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/search/label/Turahan%20Bey). The Byzantines, and separately the local Moreot Albanians, managed toambush Turakhan, but this was a temporary check only. The Turks prevailed,


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and they marched home with over 7,000 Christian prisoners - 6,000 Byzantinesubjects (Greeks and Albanians) and 1,260 Venetian subjects (Italians andGreeks). The emperor was obliged (1424) to purchase peace by offering anannual tribute of 100,000 hyperpyra (Miller p.387; Setton, Papacy p.17). But seethe excerpt from Brocquière below, after AD 1432: he says only 10,000 were paid.

See in text below for discussion of these illustrations.

1423-48:JOHN VIII Palaeologus

Son of Manuel II. Aged 31 at accession. First wife: Anna of Kiev, d.1417: daughter of the Muscovite ruler. Second: Sophia of Montferrat.Third: Maria of Trebizond, d. 1439.


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John visited Italy in 1438-39 and as a result we have several gooddepictions of him:

(a) A contemporary medallion by the Italian artist Pisanello famouslyshows an aquiline-nosed John with a full but well-trimmed andpointed beard. He wears a large high-crowned mitre-like hat. Its largefront brim points forward and at the back is turned-up* (US Library ofCongress: reproduced in Browning 1992: 246; image here:http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?44031+0+0).

(*) A hat rather than a crown. A portrait of Manuel Laskaris, d. 1445,in the church of the Pantanassa in Mistra shows him in the same styleof high hat. Other illustrations show John VIII wearing the familiarjewel-studded bulbous-domed crown and pendilia (side-hung pearls)of Late Byzantium. According to David Alexander, ‘Pisanello’s Hat’, Gladius XXIV,2004: 139, the hat was not an indigenous Greek design but an Islamictype, possibly a gift from the Egyptian sultan. This is perhaps unlikelyin view of the Mistra portrait of Laskaris. On the other hand, Pisanellodid copy down an Arabic inscription on a robe in John VIII’swardrobe in 1438.

(b) Antonio Averlino made a bronze bust of the emperor known asFilarete (from the Greek: "lover of virtue"), probably in 1439, wearingthe same imperial hat. Image here:http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Medieval/Bio/JohnVIIIPalaeologus.html.

(c) See image above: Most famously Benozzo Gozzoli in about 1460portrayed, or ‘doctored’ a memory of, John (d. 1448) as one of theMagi in an extravagant fresco in the Capella dei Magi in Florence.Here the emperor’s hair is longer and his beard more trimmed (butvery much in contrast to the beardless locals depicted in theprocession). The headdress or crown (pointed crown with sidedecoration of curved feathers) looks totally un-Byzantine, but hewears a luxurious full black caftan with stylised designs sewn in gold.The purple boots and long spurs certainly look imperial. Image here:http://www.paradoxplace.com/perspectives/italian%20images/montages/firenze/capella_dei_magi.htm.

1423-24:John VIII travels to Italy for one last appeal to the Western powers. Turned awayby the dukes of Milan and Mantua, he proceeded to Hungary where (summer1424) he met the German-Hungarian king Sigisimund*, again to be disappointed.He returned to Byzantium via the Danube and Black Sea (1 November 1424)(Norwich 1996: 386; Nicol B&V p.365). (Part but not all of the European coast ofthe Black Sea was Ottoman territory; there were several Byzantine-controlledports on the lower coast.)


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(*) A Luxemburger, Sigismund was Margrave of Brandenburg from 1378. Hesuccessively became king of Hungary from 1387; ‘Germany’ (in formal terms:“King of the Romans”) from 1411; and Bohemia from 1419. He was later chosenas titular western Emperor (“Holy Roman Emperor”), in 1433.

1423-30:Ottoman-Venetian war. See 1430.

1424:1a. A peace treaty between the Ottoman Adrianople and ByzantineConstantinople was struck during the emperor’s absence in the West. Murad concluded a new treaty with Byzantium, which, as noted, againbecame tribute-paying, at the rate of ‘100,000 hyperpyra’ a year (thus Baum, loc.cit.). Treadgold, 1997: 792 and note p.966, rightly prefers the more realistic sum of“about 20,000” hyperpyra, i.e. the amount given in Doukas as “300,000 aspra”[Turkish “akcha” or akçe]. By this time the hyperpyron was only a notionalmoney of account; the tribute was paid in silver coins called aspra (singularaspron). Treadgold has “14” aspra to the hyperpyron, so more exactly: ’21,429’hyperpyra. Or, using around 11 akçe per hyperpyron in the late 1430s: Fleet 2009,p.14: nearer 30,000 hyperpryra. Setton et al., Crusades p.257, render this 300,000akçe as equivalent to about 10,000 ducats. Brocquière confirms this, reporting in 1432 (see there) that Byzantium waspaying the Sultan “10,000 ducats”. If we use the known exchange rate of threehyperpyron per ducat (Fleet loc.cit.), that translates back to 30,000 hyperpyra.

1b. Mount Athos was cut off from Greek (but Venetian-ruled) Thessaloniki; andfinally, in 1424, a delegation of monks, with the approval of the DespotAndronicos Palaeologos, paid homage to Sultan Murad in Adrianople, thusushering in the second period of Ottoman rule over the Holy Mount (AthanasiosKarakatsanis & Basile Atsalos, eds., Treasures of Mount Athos. MouseioVyzantinou Politismou (Thessaloniki Greece), Greece: Hypourgeio Politismou,Ministry of Culture, Museum of Byzantine Culture, 1997 p.9).

2. The Ottomans re-annexe Menteshe (SW Asia Minor).

1425:1. Death of the retired Manuel II; John VIII rules as sole monarch.

2. Greece: The Turks had 30,000 men (Vacalopoulos’s figure: Setton et al. p.257prefer 5,000) engaged in the siege of Venetian-ruled Thessalonica, against whomwere ranged 700 Italian balistarii (crossbowmen) supported by the Greektownsfolk (Bartusis, p.298). In addition, the Venetian infantry were supported bythe five galleys which were anchored in the harbour of Thessalonica. On theVenetian flank, and with his own body of troops, fought Mustafa, one ofBayezid's five sons and a claimant to the Turkish throne. The enemy's attackswere repulsed; in fact, after losing 2,000 men the Turks' hopes were dashed andthey were forced to withdraw for a time (Vacalopoulos 1973; Kenneth Setton,Harry Hazard & Norman Zacour, A History of the Crusades: The Impact of theCrusades on Europe, Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1990). + See 1430.


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2. The Ottomans reassert (1425) their rule down the east coast of Asia Minor -annexation of Menteshe, 1426. The emirate of Karaman remained independent inSE Asia Minor.

1427:1a. The Morea: Byzantium’s last naval victory in the ‘Battle of the Echinades’.*John VIII, his brother Constantine, and George Sphrantzes lead a campaignagainst Carlo Tocco, Lord of Cephalonia and Epirus, “duke of Leucadia” [mod.Lefkada],* who had seized the port of Glarentsa/Clarenza (Killini). While Johnbesieges Clarenza by land, a Byzantine flotilla led by Leontares destroys Tocco’sfleet among the Echinades Islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Patras. A treatyconceded Elis and Clarenza to Byzantium, although the Latins held Patras until1429 (Setton, Papacy p.19; Nicol, Last Centuries p.346; Norwich 1996: 393). Cf1428.

(*) In the Ionian Islands, Ithaki (Ithaca) lies between Lefkada andKeffalonia (Cephalonia). The Echinades are a set of small islands nearerthe coast of Epirus, opposite Ithaki.

The campaign, 1427-28, against Tocco on land and sea was led by emperor JohnVIII and Constantine (XI), the ablest of the sons of Manuel II. John VIII gainedthe last naval victory of Byzantium in the battle of the Echinades islands (SE ofLefkada; east of Ithaca, Ithaki) off the Acarnanian coast, in which he destroyedthe superior forces of the duke of Leucadia. Carlo not only surrendered hispossessions in Elis, including Glarentsa, to Constantine but also gave him thehand of his niece Maddalena, the elder daughter of the late Leonard II. See 1428.

1b. The Byzantine authorities reorganised the Morea into three despotates, basedat (a) Mistra in the south-east; (b) Glarentza near Kyllini in the far west; and (c)Kalavryta in the north.

1428:Prince Konstantinos XI "Dragasés" Palaiologos, future Emp. of Byzantium, born1405, died 1453, marries Maddalena-Theodora Tocco (dies 1429)—niece of CarloTocco of Epirus and dau. of Leonardo II, Lord of Zante in the Ionian Islands.

1428-29:Plague at Ottoman Bursa. Many of the notables died, suggesting that the practiceof ‘escaping fast and far’ may not have been practised, or else the Sultanprevented them from fleeing (Marien 2009: 65-66, 89).

1428-32:Following the victory over Tocco, old Latin Achaea returns to the Byzantines. In 1429, Thomas Palaeologus of the Morea besieged the last “Frankish” lordCenturione in Chalandritsa and extracted a treaty from him whereby hisdaughter, Catherine, would marry him and thus make him Centurione's heir in


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Achaea. Centurione was allowed to keep his inheritance of Arcadia. Centurioneretired to Arcadia in 1430, after the marriage was finalised. He died there a shorttwo years later. His domains passed to the despotate of Morea and intoByzantine hands* (Fine 1994: 544). Thus the whole of the Morea now briefly returned to Greek rule, except for theVenetian ports of Corone, Modone, Argos and Nauplia. Various Latin lordsruled south-central Greece, from southern Epirus to Athens, constituting a bufferzone between the Ottoman Balkans and the Morea. See 1430 and 1432.

(*) The Morea was divided thus between the three junior Palaiologoi princes: 1.Theodore [aged about 36 in 1432] retained the south-east including thetraditional capital of Mistra. 2. Constantine [aged 27] ruled the areas north ofArcadia including Kalavryta and Patras, and the northwest including Corinth. 3.Thomas [aged about 25] held the title of Despot, ruling the southwest, northwestand Arcadia (the centre). Theodore had an honorary precedence but was givenno authority over his brothers (Fine loc.cit.)

1429: Joan of Arc at the siege of Orleans, SSW of Paris. In 1430 she iscaptured by the Burgundians; and in 1431 tried and hanged. At this time nearly all of northern France and some parts of thesouthwest were under foreign control. The English ruled Paris, while theBurgundians controlled Reims. The French claimant, Charles of Valois(“the Dauphin”), maintained an itinerant court in the Loire Valley atcastles such as Chinon (near Tours) and Bourges, higher up on (eastalong) the Loire. Joan first met Charles at Chinon. She was tested fororthodoxy by clerics at Poitiers, south of Chinon. She then proceeded tovictory at Orleans, SSW of Paris.

1430:The Ottomans take Thessalonica from Venice, 29 March, and in Epirus theycapture Ioannina. A large Ottoman fleet attacked Salonika/Thessaloniki by surprise. TheVenetians later signed a peace treaty, in 1432. The treaty gave the Ottomans thecity of Salonika and the surrounding land.

The Turkish land army, supposedly “190,000” men, came up on 26 March (Nicol,B&V 1992: 371, and Last Centuries p.138). Dropping a zero gives the more likelynumber of 19,000 [see below after 1432: Bertrandon’s figures]. Murad wasexpecting a peaceful surrender but the Turks found the Venetians and Greeksready to resist. (A count of the men on the walls revealed the alarming weaknessof the defence: there was only one man to every two or three crenelles in thewalls! - Vacalopoulos. Or as Doukas put it, “barely one crossbowman to cover 10turrets”: Bartusis p.298.)


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There were three days’ preparations. Each day, long lines of camels and ox-cartscould be seen bringing up siege-engines and other war-material. Then a generalassault was launched under the command of Sinan (Karasinan) Pasha, beylerbeyof the Turkish European territories, ‘the general of the West’, as an eye-witness,John Anagnostes, calls him. “Their war-cry alone would have been enough toshake from its foundations an even greater and more populous city thanThessalonica”: so ran the Venetian war-report. There was spirited resistance (Greek women also participated) but the Turkssoon burst into the city, some by means of ladders and others through breachesin the walls, and brandishing their swords, swept down through the streetstowards the lower parts of the city. At the same time they broke through thewalls at several points. Some 7,000 captives (Anagnostes’s estimate) were dragged off as slaves to thetents of the Turkish camp — an ill-assorted mass of men, women and children,bound together in lines. Churches, monuments and other public buildingsbecame the scene of frenzied searches for hidden treasure, as each and everystone was suspected of concealing some secreted hoard (thus Vacalopoulos,excerpted at the site http://history-of-macedonia.com/, accessed 2011; also NewCambridge Medieval History (NCMH), Vol. 7, 1998: 778, and Norwich 1996: 395).

The Aegean Region in 1430

Genoa dominated at sea in the eastern Aegean and in the Black Sea, where itstraders controlled small land enclaves on the coast of Asia Minor and in theCrimea (vs the ‘Golden Horde’ or Kipchak Khanate of Sarai). In the south, Venicedominated the seas, controlling Crete and the southern Aegean islands. On land, the large Ottoman Empire was dominant, ruling from what is nowsouthern Serbia, Epirus and the Gulf of Corinth in the west across the Balkansand Asia Minor to the borders of Trebizond in the east. ‘East Roman’ Constantinople now controlled just a few parcels of land: the tinyhinterlands in the Asian and European peninsulas adjoining Constantinople;several towns on the Black Sea coast of Turkish-ruled former Bulgaria; some NAegean islands; and effectively the whole Peloponnesus (“Morea”): vs the Duchyof Athens (Time Atlas 1994: 100).

The Faded City of Constantinople

As Vasiliev notes, an interesting description of Constantinople was written by apilgrim, envoy and spy returning from Jerusalem, an Aquitaine-bornBurgundian court official Bertrandon de la Brocquière, who visited the capital ofthe Palaeologi at the beginning of the thirties (1432-33), shortly after the fall ofThessalonica. (See excerpts below, after 1432.) He praised the good state of thewalls, the land-walls in particular, but remarks on its emptiness. He also noticedsome desolation in the city; he spoke for example of the ruins and remnants oftwo beautiful palaces - destroyed, according to a tradition, by an Emperor at thecommand of a Turkish sultan. Bertrandon wrote that he saw in Constantinople many merchants of variousnations, but the Venetians “had more authority”; in another place he mentioned


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Venetians, Genoese and Catalans. —A A Vasiliev, athttp://www.intratext.com/ixt/eng0832/_p2b.htm; accessed 2011.

In 1437, a Spanish (Castilian) traveller, Pero Tafur or Tarfur, was graciouslyreceived at Constantinople by Emperor John VIII. (Again, excerpts are quotedbelow, after 1437.) When, on his way back from the Crimea and Trebizond, Tafurvisited Constantinople again, the “Despotes Dragas”, i.e. Constantine, John’sbrother, was governing there, for John himself at that time was in Italy. Tafurremarked that “the church they called Valayerna [the Blachernai: in the far NWsector] is today so burnt that it cannot be repaired”; that “the dockyard musthave been magnificent; even now it is sufficient to house the ships”. “TheEmperor’s Palace must have been very magnificent, but now it is in such statethat both it and the city show well the evils which the people have suffered andstill endure . . . The city is sparsely populated . . . The inhabitants are not well clad,but sad and poor [or: “poor and shabby”]” (extract quoted in Norwich 1996: 389).

1431:The Morea: Evidently the Hexamilion wall near Corinth had been rebuilt, forwhen Turahan (Ottoman governor of Thessaly since 1423) again invaded theMorea he had it destroyed once more. It had 153 towers and a castle at each end(Bartusis, LBA p.116; Nicolle 2008: 82) Cf 1443.

30 May 1431: The English burn to death Joan of Arc at Rouen.

1432:1. A Byzantine embassy went to the West for a church council; confusednegotiations continued for several years, and it was not until 1437 that thecouncil was convened (see there).

2. The Morea: When the despot Thomas, the emperor’s brother, inherits the lastportion of the Principality of Achaea, the Byzantines finally ruled the wholePeloponnesus or Morea, except for the Venetian ports of Methone or Modon andKorone or Coron, both on the left-most cape, and Nauplia at the the top of theeastern gulf. See map. Thomas Palaiologus ruled from Clarenza, present-day Killini, on the coast nearthe NW point of the Morea, while his older brother Constantine ruled as seniorDespot from Mistra in the SE (Runciman 1965: 50).


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1430s: Italy: First 'moral dialogues' (high-style prose) written in the Italianvernacular, by Alberti and Palmieri. They are entirely secular in tone,showing the "liberation" of (some) high culture from Christiandomination.

Byzantium in Bertrandon de Brocquière’s Le Voyage d'Outre-Mer, 1432-33Online athttp://www.archive.org/stream/travelsbertrand00legrgoog/travelsbertrand00legrgoog_djvu.txt.

Brocquiere, aged about 32 in 1432, was a senior official at the court of Philip ‘theGood’, duke of Burgundy, during whose reign, 1419-1467, Burgundy was at itspeak: the capital was Dijon, north of Lyon and Geneva. He left on a pilgrimage tothe East in that year, sailing from Venice to Jaffa. After visiting Jerusalem, hejoined a Muslim land caravan that was travelling to Bursa. He crossed from AsiaMinor probably in December 1432 as he was in Constantinople until 23 January1433. We deal here only with the Aegean parts of his journey.

From Bursa he travelled to Nicomedia and thence overland to the Bosphoros.“All this country is difficult to travel; but beyond Nicomedia, towardConstantinople, it is very fine, and tolerably good travelling. It is more peopledwith Greeks than Turks; but these Greeks have a greater aversion to the LatinChristians than the Turks themselves.” (The Ottomans had just taken Nicaea – in


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1331, and Nicomedia remained under Byzantine rule, albeit that the hinterlandswee dominated by the Turks.) At Constantinople he had run-ins with Greeks, evidently because they quicklyidentified him as a Latin, prompting this warning: “All those [Greeks] withwhom I have had any concerns have only made me more suspicious, for I havefound more probity in the Turks.” Describing Genoese Pera, he writes: “The portis the handsomest of all I have seen, and I believe I may add, of any in thepossession of the Christians, for the largest Genoese vessels may lie alongside thequays; but as all the world knows this, I shall not say more.”

Describing the Byzantine city itself, he mentions the discrete urban villages thatconstituted it, thus: “Constantinople is formed of many separate parts, so that itcontains several open spaces to a greater extent than those built on. The largestvessels can anchor under its walls as at Pera: it has besides a small harbour in theinterior, capable of containing three or four galleys. This is situated to thesouthward, near a gate . . .”. The harbour in question was probably the Harbourof Sophia (or ‘of Julian’) near the southern end of the Hippodrome (cf Magdalinoin Laiou ed., 2002: 536). The Harbour of Theodosius, into which the River Lykosran, had already silted up centuries earlier. “This prince [the emperor] must be under great subjection to the Turk, since hepays him, as I am told, a tribute of 10,000 ducats annually; and this sum is onlyfor Constantinople, for beyond that town he possesses nothing but a castle situatedthree leagues to the north and in Greece [sic: he means the European side] a small citycalled Salubria (“two days journey” from the capital; recte: Selymbria, Tk: Silivri).Selymbria fell to the Turks in 1399; but it had been returned in the treaty of 1403.

Bertrandon attended a church service at Hagia Sophia out of curiosity and tocatch sight of the emperor John VIII and his empress. He had heard that theempress, Maria of Trebizond, as well as being beautiful, rode her horse astride: “Iwas also desirous to see how she mounted her horse; for it was thus she hadcome to the church, attended only by two ladies, three old men, ministers ofstate, and three of that species of men [i.e. eunuchs] to whose guard the Turksentrust their wives.” She and John then rode back to the place at the other end ofthe city. Next he mentions the Hippodrome: “In the front of St Sophia is a large andhandsome square, surrounded with walls like a palace, where games wereperformed in ancient times. I saw the brother of the emperor, the despot of theMorea [Theodore II, then aged about 37], exercising himself there, with a score ofother horsemen. Each had a bow, and they galloped along the inclosure,throwing their hats before them, which, when they had passed, they shot at; andhe who with his arrow pierced his hat, or was nearest to it, was esteemed themost expert. This exercise they had adopted from the Turks, and was one of whichthey were endeavouring to make themselves masters.”

Our Burgundian left Constantinople in January 1433 in the company of theMilanese ambassador to the sultan, bound for the Ottoman capital Adrianople(Edirne). Passing Selymbia, whence the highway runs NW to Adrianople, henotes that “this country is completely ruined, and has but poor villages.”Conditions improved further on in Ottoman territory: “The country from


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Constantinople hither [i.e, to Adrianople] is good, and well watered, - but thinlypeopled, having fertile valleys that produce everything but wood.” “We [eventually] came to Adrianople, a large commercial town, verypopulous, and situated on a great river called the Mariza, six days journey* fromConstantinople. This is the strongest town possessed by the Turk in Greece [sic:Rumelia], and here he chiefly resides.”

(*) They made about 45 km per day, indicating that the entire party wasmounted. In 1437 (see there), the same journey took Tafur nine days.

It seems implied that Murad had a core, standing army of 5,000 at Adrianople:

“His household is composed of 5,000 persons, as well horse as foot, but inwar-time he does not augment their pay, so that he does not expend morethan in time of peace, contrary to what happens in other nations.” [Thisnumber would have included Janissaries.]

“Greece [i.e. Rumelia or European Turkey, or rather, his subjects and vassals inEurope] annually supplies him with 30,000 men, whom he may lead whither hepleases, - and Turkey [i.e. Anatolia: see more below] 10,000, for whom he onlyfinds provisions. Should he want a more considerable army, Greece alone, asthey tell me, can then furnish him with 120,000 more; but he is obliged to pay forthese. The pay is five aspers [Turkish: akçe] for the infantry, and eight for thecavalry.” [At this time, during the reign Mehmet II, 1423-1481, a Venetian ducatwas worth 40-50 aspers: Setton, Papacy and the Levant, 1978 p.227. Spandounes,writing afrer 1453, says “54” aspers to the ducat: Nicol, Donald M., ed. (1997),Theodore Spandounes: On the origin of the Ottoman emperors, Cambridge UniversityPress, p.109. Venetian oarsmen were paid 200 soldi (10 lira) per month or 2,400pa or 120 lira pa in the late 1300s: Long et al., The Book of Michael of Rhodes p.42;Setton p.944.]

“I have, however, heard that of these 120,000, there was but half, that is to say,the cavalry, that went properly equipped, and well armed with tarquais [quiveror bow-case] and sword: the rest were composed of men on foot miserablyaccoutred, — some having swords without bows, others without swords, bows, orany arms whatever, many having only staves. It is the same with the infantrysupplied by Turkey [Anatolia], one half armed with staves. This Turkish infantryis nevertheless more esteemed than the Greek, and considered as better soldiers.”

The Ottomans were capable of raising a field army of over 50,000:

“Other persons, whose testimony I regard as authentic, have since toldme, that the troops Turkey [i.e., Anatolia] is obliged to furnish, when theprince wants to form an army, amount to 30,000 men, and those fromGreece to twenty [thousand] without including two or three thousand slavesof his own, whom he arms well.” This is almost certainly a reference to theJanisseries, for he goes on to say that, “among these slaves are manyChristians; and there are likewise numbers of them among the troopsfrom Greece, Albanians, Bulgarians, and from other countries.”


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“In the last army from Greece [Rumelia], there were 3,000 Serbian horse,which the despot of the province had sent under the command of one ofhis sons. It was with great regret that these people came to serve him, butthey dared not refuse.”

See next for a more extended discussion of Murad’s army, drawing further onBertrandon’s account.

Brocquière on the Ottoman Army of the 1430s

The Burgundian courtier Bertrandon de Brocquière describes the Turkish armyas he saw and heard about it in 1432 or 1433. The various estimates of his informants put the total available troops atbetween 50,000 and 120,000. This suggests that the true figure was under 100,000.Probably 25,000 men could be put into the field at fairly short notice. No singleChristian state could raise even as many as 10,000 soldiers, so the Turks would usuallyoutnumber them, except when a Christian coalition was formed.

“Over these [cotton tunics]”, he writes, “they [the Ottoman troops] wear a robe[caftan?] made of felt, like a mantle [which] withstands the rain . . . knee lengthboots and pantaloons …. When on the march or in battle, they pull up their tunicsand tuck them into their trousers . . . “. “Their headgear consists of a round white cap ornamented with plates of iron onall sides to protect the whole head and the neck. It is about six inches [15 cm] highand ends in a point.* . . [they] keep their knees very high in short stirrups; in thisposition, the least thrust from a lance is enough to unseat them.” This of course makesthe contrast with the heavier plate-armoured lancers of the Latin West.

(*) Presumably 15 cm above the top of the head, i.e. high and concave-peaked or cylindrical, like the ‘Helmet of Orhan Ghazi’ in Istanbul’sAskeri Muze; the reference to the “neck” possibly means that there was alamellar aventail . . ..

Weapons: Brocqiere mentions bows, swords, shields and “a strong short-handledmace spiked at one end”. He does not mention lances, but we know they were inuse. It is implied that the poorer troops did not carry shields. “Several [sic] of theTurks have small wooden bucklers [presumably carried on the upper left arm] withwhich they cover themselves well on horseback when they draw the bow”.

Almost all Turkish soldiers were lightly armoured, contrasting very distinctly withthe French and Italians of his time.

Among the infantry it appears that only a minority were well equipped with ashield and several types of weapons. Most foot soldiers carried just a sword[light infantry] or only a bow [foot archers] and many had nothing more than a club


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or stave [volunteers and irregulars]! Even so, as we have seen, Brocquiereconsidered the average Turkish foot soldier superior to his Greek counterpart.The sources imply that Byzantine commanders had too much contempt for theirown troops for the latter to rally effectively behind them (Vacalopoulos pp.141-43, citing Brocquière, Ducas and the Spaniard Tafur). The normal Ottoman tactic (for cavalry) was to attack in several large separateunits, seeking to surround the enemy. Another tactic was ambush. Against awell-deployed enemy, the tactic was to surround them and then press hit andrun attacks continually from all sides, riding around at high speed at the distanceof an arrow’s flight.

Brocquière attributed the success of the Ottomans to several factors: (1) moraleand a self-regard which was bolstered by the ease of their victories and theirbelief that God was using them to punish the ‘debased’ Greeks; (2) discipline,shown in their obedience to their commanders and their ability to advancenoiselessly into battle; (3) vigilance, in the form of constant use of forward scoutsriding several days ahead of the main army; and (4) their speed of attack. “TheTurks attack on the run, and, since they are all lightly armed, they cover a distanceof three days’ normal march between nightfall and dawn”. Chalcondylas, cited in Nicolle, Janissaries, 1995: 3, also recorded theirdiscipline, but he underlined logistics and organisation: an excellent commissariat,maintaining roads in good repair, having well-ordered camps, large numbers ofpack animals and well organised support services. But Brocquiere believed the Turks were not so strong that well-trained andproperly led Christian forces could not defeat them, especially noting therelatively poor armament of most of the Ottoman infantry.

1430s-1440s: Italian scholars engaged in a debate about when Latinliterature first became 'debased' ("medieval") = origins of the present-day notion of the Middle Ages. The favoured nominees for "Last ofthe Ancients" included Boethius, fl. 520, and Cassiodorus, fl. 525. Greek of course became the language of the Italian ruling class, orpart of it, when Byzantium conquered Italy from the Romanised Gothslater in the 500s. The church in most of Italy continued to use Latin,except in the Mezzogiorno where again Greek dominated. By 600 themajor languages of Italy were Latin, Greek and (a new arrival)Lombardic. Lombardic soon died out in favour of Latin or ‘proto-Italian’ dialects, but Greek remained for many centuries the maintongue in Calabria and south Apulia/Puglia (south of a line drawnfrom Cosenza in Calabaria and Taranto in Puglia).

1435-37:Plague in the region of the Sea of Marmara (Constantinople and the Ottomanrealms); also at Trebizond (Marien 2009: 108-09, citing Turkish and Italiansources).


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1436-37, Italy: Bruni translates Aristotle's Politics into Latin.

1437:There were 67 metropolitan sees (senior archbishops) dependent on thePatriarch of Constantinople, ranging from Turkish southern Albania and Greecein the west to Turkish Asia Minor in the east and Serbia, Turkish Bulgaria,Wallachia and the Russian principalities in the north.* Just eight metropolitansremained in the emperor’s own dominions (coastal ex-Bulgaria and inner Thrace)and seven more in the Despotate of the Morea** (Runciman 1965: 20). To makethe same point another way, 52 senior sees or 78% were located in lands nowruled by Catholic Latin, Orthodox Slavic, Romano-Wallachian or Muslim rulers.

(*) Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch had from their foundation beenautocephalous (self-ruling) patriarchates. Two ‘Orthodox’ churchesbecame officially autocephalous in later centuries, namely those ofBulgaria [10th century, patriarchal seat at Trnovo] and Serbia [13th century,patriarchal seat at Pech]. Georgia too was independent. The Ottomans liquidated the Patriarchate of Trnovo in 1393, and theywill in the future (in terms of this chronology) also liquidate the Patriarchyof Pech (in AD 1459). Trnovo was subordinated to Constantinople after 1393,and was not re-established until 1870. Pech was to be reinstated in 1557.

(**) This seems a very high ‘clerical density’. The population of the Moreawas of the order of 100,000 (see entry below for 1449). Thus we have over14,000 people per archdiocese. Allowing (say) five bishops permetropolitan, we have bishops servicing only 2,800 people each …

2. The Morea: “. . . the famous traveller, archaeologist, and merchant of thattime, Cyriacus* of Ancona [Italy: Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli, aged 46] visited Mistra,where he was graciously received by the despot (Constantinum cognomentoDragas, ‘Constantine, surnamed Dragases’) and his dignitaries. At his courtCyriacus met Gemistus Plethon, the most learned man of his age, and ‘Nicholas’Chalcocondyles, son of his Athenian friend George, a young man [aged about 20]very well versed in Latin and Greek. ‘Nicholas’ Chalcocondyles can have beennone other than the future historian Laonikos Chalcocondyles, for the nameLaonikos is merely Nicolaos, Nicholas, slightly changed. During his first stay atMistra, under the Despot Theodore Palaeologus in 1437, Cyriacus . . . visitedancient monuments at Sparta and copied Greek inscriptions”. —Vasiliev,‘History of Byzantium’, at www.ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/john-viii; accessed2005.

(*) Cyriac, or Ciriaco de' Pizzecolli, 1391-1452, was a merchant anddiplomat from Ancona, a self-taught humanist and antiquarian. His is theonly surviving record for many of the antiquities he described, and formost of the 1,000 or so Greek and Latin inscriptions he copied on voyagesin Italy, Greece, the Mediterranean islands, and Asia Minor.

3. Leading a delegation 700 or 800 strong (!), the emperor and patriarch embarkfor the West, leaving the emperor’s brother Constantine as regent. Among the


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700 were Plethon and a young scholar called Bessarion, already titularMetropolitan of Nicaea (Norwich 1996: 397). The accounts of the 1437 journey by sea of the Byzantine delegation to theCouncil of Florence, by the Byzantine cleric Sylvester Syropoulos and the Greco-Venetian fleet commander Michael of Rhodes, mention that most of the shipswere Venetian or Papal, but also record that Emperor John VIII travelled on an"imperial ship". It is unclear whether that ship was Byzantine or had been hired,and its type is not mentioned. It is, however, recorded as having been faster thanthe Venetian great merchant galleys accompanying it, possibly indicating that itwas a light war galley (‘Voyage from Constantinople’,http://syropoulos.co.uk/ships.htm; 2011).

Venetian galleys used in the eastern Mediterranean were called “galleys ofRomania” [meaning Byzantium]. They were 37 metres long with a hull just 2.57metres high (Museo Galieo, ‘Michael of Rhodes’ website,http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/michaelofrhodes/ships_galleys.html

4. Pero Tafur, who visited Trebizond in 1437, reported that the town had fewerthan 4,000 troops.

Greeks, Latins and Turks in Pero Tafur’s Andanças e viajes (Travels andAdventures), 1437

Pero or Pedro Tafur, aged about 26 in 1436, toured the Mediterranean region in1436-39 as an information-gathering envoy for Juan II of Castile. We present hereonly the Byzantine sector of his voyages. On the outward journey, Tafur ‘sailed’ (his galley was rowed) from Ancona inItaly to Rhodes and thence north via Samos to Genoese-ruled Chios. From therehe crossed to the Genoese settlement of “Foja-Vecchia” (Sp: Foja-veija: OldPhocaea) on the Turkish coast. Returning thence to Chios, he next sailed north to Tenedos and into theDardanelles, which he calls “the Straits of Romania” (Sp: canal de Romania). “Noship can enter the Straits without first anchoring there [Tenedos] to find theentrance, which is very narrow, and the Turks, knowing how many ships touchthere, arm themselves and lie in wait and kill many Christians.” Tenedos was anuninhabited no man’s land, except for its well-maintained port (it seems impliedthat Christians not Turks manned the port). Reaching Constantinople in AD 1437, our Castilian went first to the Latinenclave of Pera. He then presented himself in Constantinople to the Emperor,John VIII. The following day the Emperor took him hunting (falconry). Theconversations he had show that the hatred of the Venetians among the Greekswent back to the sack of 1204. “The city is badly populated and there is need ofgood soldiers, which is no wonder since the Greeks have such powerful nationsto contend with.” The emperor could not entertain Tafur for long because John was readying tovisit the West (Tafur had already encountered at Chios the galleys sent to collect


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him). “There went with him two of his brothers, and 800 men, all noblemen ofhigh rank.” Leaving Constantinople, our Spaniard proceeded to the Ottoman capitalAdrianople (Edirne: Tafur’s Andrenopoli) and thence across the lower Black Sea toTrebizond (Tafur’s Trapesundia). It took nine days by land to reach Adrianople, arate of about 30 km per day. There he had an audience with ‘The Grand Turk’(Gran Turco), i.e. sultan Murad II: “He was so handsomely attended that I neversaw the like, for he had with him all his forces, which amount to 600,000 [sic*]horsemen, and, lest it should appear that I am exaggerating, I refer to those whogave me the information. In good faith, I am afraid to repeat all that was told me.There is not a pedestrian in the whole country, but all go on horseback, on verysmall and lank horses.” But the Turkish horses did not impress him: “I would aslike ride to war or to tourney on one of our asses as on any of their horses.”

(*) Cf the numbers given above (1433) by Brocquiere.

Here again Tafur went along on a monarch’s hunt:

“The Turks have the custom to carry in the saddle an iron staff [?mace], and atambourine [sic: bowcase?] with their bows and quivers. This is the whole of theirfighting outfit*, and since the country is cold and often frozen, and the horses falleasily, the men wear boots of Damascine leather up to the knees, which are veryhard, and to which the spurs are fixed. These they wear always, and if the horsefalls they can free their legs without receiving any injury, and the boot remains inthe stirrup. . . . Their saddles are like asses' saddles, but very rich and coveredwith fine cloths, and their stirrups are rather short than long.”

(*) That is to say, lances were not common in this period.

Returning thence again to Constantinople, our young Spaniard sought passage toKaffa (Sp: Cafa), the port city in the Crimea. His ship proceeded first to theGenoese-held port of Sinope and then to Greek Trebizond. “Trebizond(Trapesonda) has about 4,000 inhabitants. It is well walled, and they say that theground is fruitful and that it produces a large revenue.” “Kaffa . . . is part of the Empire of Tartary [el imperio Tartaria, our ‘GoldenHorde’ or Kipchak empire], but the city is held by the Genoese who have licenceto inhabit there, only the Tartars did not think that they would settle there insuch numbers. . . . The city is very large, as large as Seville, or larger, with twice asmany inhabitants, Christians and Catholics as well as Greeks, and all the nationsof the world.” Tafur was surprised by, and disdainful of, the brisk slave trade at Kaffa, butnevethelesss felt able to buy three people (two women and one man) for hishousehold in Cordoba:

“In this city [Kaffa] they sell more slaves, both male and female, than anywhere elsein the world, and the Sultan of Egypt (el soldán de Babilonia, i.e. Cairo) has hisagents here, and they buy the slaves and send them to Cairo, and they are calledMamelukes [slave-soldiers, from Arabic mamalik, ‘owned’]. The Christians have aBull from the Pope, authorising them to buy and keep as slaves the Christians of


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other nations, to prevent their falling into the hands of the Moors andrenouncing the Faith. These are Russians (Sp: roxos), Mingrelians, Caucasians(abogasos, ‘Abasgians’), Circassians, Bulgarians, Armenians and divers otherpeople of the Christian world.”

He took ship back to Constantinople by the same route. A quarantine was inforce as it was already known that there was plague in the Crimea. But Tafurreceived an exemption as he was personally known to the Empress and theregent, the absent emperor’s brother “the Despot Dragas” (Constantine). He toured Hagia Sofia (his Santa Sufia). “Inside, the circuit is for the most partbadly kept, but the church itself is in such fine state that it seems today to haveonly just been finished.” And: “Beneath [it] there is a great cistern which, they say,could contain a ship of 3,000 botas [1,800 tons]* in full sail, the breadth, heightand depth of water being all sufficient. I know not if such a statement can besupported, but I never saw a larger in my life and do not believe that one exists.”The massive equestrian column of Justinian still stood nearby; but so manycenturies had passed that the Byzantines now believed the statue was ofConstantine the Great. The same error had been related to Bertrandon in 1433.

(*) Bota = Italian botta, botte. One botta = about 0.6 deadweight tons. So3,000 botte = 1,800 tons. The size of a modern corvette or small frigate.

In a much-cited passage he sketches the dilapidation and depopulation of thecapital:

“The city is sparsely populated. It is divided into districts, that by the sea-shorehaving the largest population. The inhabitants are not well clad, but sad andpoor, showing the hardship of their lot which is, however, not so bad as theydeserve, for they are a vicious people, steeped in sin.* It is their custom whenanyone dies not to open the door of the house for the whole of that year except incase of necessity. They go continually about the city howling as if in lamentation,and thus they long ago foreshadowed the evil which has befallen them.”

(*) Latins saw the Greeks as semi-heretical schismatics.

Departing homeward, he sailed via Mytilene, the town on the Genoese-ruledisland of Lesbos, where the ship took on a cargo of alum. They proceeded thenceto Turkish-ruled “Salonica” (Thessaloniki) and Venetian-ruled Negroponte(Evvia, Euboea) before reaching Andros, the most northerly island of theCyclades. Next was Crete. From there Tafur’s ship turned west and continued tothe SW point of mainland Greece at Modone and up to Corfu. Thence into theAdriatic Sea which was known in the 1400s as “the Gulf of Venice”. —Text athttp://www.corvalliscommunitypages.com/Europe/iberianonislam/pero.htm

1438: The first ‘humanist’ or classically-inspired work to be written inEngland was a Latin treatise on virtues and vices by the Papal manuscriptcollector, the visiting Italian Pietro del Monte. The British Isles were stillan intellectual backwater. (The first philosophical work by an English


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humanist was Examinatorium in Phaedonem Platonis by John Doget, ca.1480.)

1438:1. The Eastern delegation reached Venice on 8 February and proceeded thence toFerrara, the initial site of the council. The famous medallion designed by Pisanello was crafted when emperor JohnVIII journeyed to Italy in 1438 for the councils of Ferrara and Florence (1438-39)in a vain search for aid against the Turks. It shows the basileus wearing a highpointed hat with a large forward-pointing brim.

Byzantine scholarship became more fully available to the West after 1438, whenByzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus attended the Council of Ferrara, laterknown as the Council of Florence, to discuss a union of the Orthodox andCatholic churches. Despite being a secular philosopher, Plethon (GeorgeGemistos) was chosen to accompany John VIII on the basis of his renownedwisdom and morality. Other delegates included Plethon's former studentsBessarion, Mark Eugenikos and Scholarios. The Florentine magnate Cosimo de' Medici attended lectures given in Florenceby Plethon and, according to Ficino, was inspired to found the AcademiaPlatonica in Florence, where Italian students of Plethon continued to teach afterthe conclusion of the council (Ficino was mistaken according to Blum, citingKristeller: Paul Blum, Philosophers of the Renaissance, CUA Press 2010, p.25).

2. The army of Trebizond was tiny. The population of the whole ‘empire’ was250,000 and there were (says Tafur) just 4,000 inhabitants of the so-called ‘city’ ofTrebizond in 1438. —Website “The Lions of Trebizond”, atwww.fortunecity.com/underworld/straif/69/engtrapez.

3. Ottoman Empire: It is not known when the first elite Janissary infantry unitwas formed – presumably in the later 1300s - but the first Western reference to thecorps occurs in 1438. (Nicolle, Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1983 p.9, proposes thatthey were first formed after the capture of Edirne/Adrianople, i.e . in the 1360s.) Ali Annoshar says that the number of Janissaries had risen by Murad’s reign(d. 1451) from a few hundred in the early years of the century to about 7,000(Annoshar, The Ghazi sultans and the frontiers of Islam: a comparative study of the latemedieval and early modern periods, Volume 9 of Routledge studies in MiddleEastern history 2009, p. 146, citing Imber). Bartusis p.129 prefers “no more than3,000” in Murad’s reign.

1439:1. Formal reunion of the eastern/Greek and western/Latin Churches.— The Council of Florence or Ferrara-Florence in 1439 was attended by theemperor John VIII, the Eastern patriarch, and many Orthodox bishops anddignitaries. After protracted and difficult discussions, they agreed to submit tothe authority of Rome.


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— A momentary union, more apparent than real, took place between the Latinand the Greek churches (5-6 July 1439). The only Eastern bishop to refuse to signonto the union was Mark of Ephesus, who held that Rome was in both heresyand schism for its acceptance of the Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed (filioque:“and from the Son”; a formulation that the Byzantines had long opposed) and forthe papal claims to universal jurisdiction over the Church.— Byzantine scholarship became more fully available to the West after 1438,when John VIII Palaeologus attended the Council of Ferrara and the Council ofFlorence to discuss a union of the Greek and Roman churches. AccompanyingJohn VIII were Plethon, his student ‘Johannes’ (more correctly Basil) Bessarion,and George Scholarios. It was at this time that Bessarion, soon made a cardinal,converted to Latin Catholicism.

At the Council of Florence, held in Ferrara and then Florence, Bessarionsupported the Latin church and gained the favour of Pope Eugene IV, whoinvested him with the rank of cardinal at a consistory of 18 December 1439. Fromthat time, he resided permanently in Italy, doing much, by his patronage of learnedmen, by his collection of books and manuscripts, and by his own writings, tospread abroad the new learning. His palazzo in Rome was a virtual Academy forthe studies of new humanistic learning, a centre for learned Greeks and Greekrefugees, whom he supported by commissioning transcripts of Greekmanuscripts and translations into Latin that made Greek scholarship available toWestern Europeans (Wikipedia 2011 under ‘Bessarion’). See 1460.

2. Serbia and Bosnia become tributary dependencies of the Ottomans. The Ottoman sultan Murad II annexes Serbia and forces the Serbian despotGeorge Brankovic to take refuge in Hungary.

1440-41:The NW Balkans: Having taken control of most of northern Serbia, the Ottomansbesiege Hungarian-governed Belgrade but they fail to take it. The Christiancommander was John Talloci, Prior of the Hospitallers in Hungary. Both sidesdeployed cannons. There was initially no help from outside because Hungary was in the middleof a civil war (Colin Imber, The Crusade of Varna, 1443-45, Ashgate Publishing,Ltd., 2006, p.11). When the Turks under Evrenoszade `Ali Bey besieged Belgrade by land andwater (1440-1), the town was delivered at the end of six months by KingVladislav III of Poland, now also king of Hungary. But the real heart ofHungarian resistance to the Turks was the voivode [governor] of Transylvania,John (Janos) Hunyadi, who in the same year (1441: see there) won a victory overthe Turks at Semendria on the Danube below Belgrade and in the following yeardrove back Turkish attacks on Transylvania. —Cambridge Medieval History,excerpted at the ‘Romanian Knowledge Page’: www.raven-glass.com/vlad/romania/neighbrs.html; accessed 2011.

1440: Italy: The Rome-born scholar Valla exposes the Donation ofConstantine - for centuries past the authority for the secular power of thepapacy - as a forgery.


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1440-51:Turkish-dominated Bulgaria: The Byzantine outpost around Mesembria [modernNesebar] is governed – under his brother’s close supervision - by DemetriosPalaiologos, Manuel II’s youngest son (aged 33 in 1440). Unhappy with thisappointment, in 1442 he made an alliance with the Ottoman Turks, who lent himmilitary support and briefly besieged Constantinople, demanding that Demetriosbe given control of the more strategic appanage of Selymbria (Silivri) nearer thecapital. This effort failed, and the appanage of Selymbria was turned over first toConstantine Palaiologos and then to Theodore II Palaiologos (thus Wikipedia2011).

1441-42:1. Wallachia/Rumania: In 1441 the Turks crossed the Danube into Transylvania(Wallachia). But the Hungarian general - later regent - Janos (John) Hunyadi,aged 54, delivered Serbia by the victory of Semendria, modern Smederevo, aTurkish-held fortress on the Danube downstream from Turkish-dominatedBelgrade. Then in 1442, not far from Sibiu in present-day Rumania (medievalWallachia), to which he had been forced to retire, he annihilated an “immense”Ottoman presence, and recovered for Hungary the suzerainty of Wallachia. TheTurks were expelled from Transylvania. A peace was agreed in 1444 by whichSmederevo was returned to the Serbs. See next.— In 1441 and 1442 the Hungarians penetrated deep into the Balkans, forcingMurad to come to an agreement. The Treaty of Edirne, in 1444, which wasextended by the Treaty of Szeged during the same year, re-established Serbia asa buffer state. (The Serbian Despotate will fall in 1459 following the siege of the"temporary" capital Smederevo [near Belgrade], followed by Bosnia a few yearslater, and Herzegovina in 1482.)— At this time the Turks maintained 60 ships at Gallipoli and a river fleet of 80-100 light vessels on the Danube.

2. Constantinople: Repairs to the city walls made by John VIII were recorded in alarge, very neat and square, Greek inscription (see photograph p.160 inTreadgold’s Renaissances 1984).

Slavery

[Cyriac of Ancona, writing on 3 December 1442:] “For on numerous occasions wesaw Christians* - boys as well as unmarried girls and masses of married womenof every description - paraded pitiably by the Turks in long lines throughout thetowns of Thrace and Macedonia bound by iron chains, and lashed by whips, andin the end put up for sale in villages and markets and along the shore of theHellespont, an unspeakably shameful and obscene sight, like a cattle market, soto speak.” —Edward W. Bodnar & Clive Foss, Cyriac of Ancona: Later Travels. TheI Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, 2003. See 1444: Cyriac visitsthe Morea.

(*) Islam forbade the enslaving of fellow Muslims.


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1443:Near Corinth: The despot of the Morea, the future emperor Constantine XI,orders a further rebuilding of the Hexamilion wall with its 153 towers (Bartusisp.116). See 1446.

1443-44:Serbia: The Hungarians and other Christians under Janos Hunyadi defeat theTurks at Nish and Mount Kunovica. Then Murad beats (1444) Hunyadi andyoung (20 year old) Polish-Hungarian king Wladislaw III at Varna in OttomanBulgaria, but Hunyadi escapes (Bradbury 2004: 49). A Hungarian crusader army: some 25,000 men led by the Hungarian/Polishking King Vladislav or Ladislas and his general John Hunyadi, reinforced withGermans and Poles, invaded Rumelia in 1443, while the Sultan was absent inAnatolia engaged in repelling a Karaman attack. The Christians defeated theTurks at Nis, captured Sofia and achieved several further victories; but, as theywere crossing the mountains (Sredna Gora) into the plain of Philippopolis in thedepth of winter, they encountered powerful Turkish resistance at Zlatica(Turkish Izladi), which compelled them to turn back (12 December 1443), thoughthey did gain victories over the Turks during their retreat (Norwich 1996: 404). The following year, in September 1444 a crusading army was again on themove, crossed the Danube at Orsova and marched through Bulgaria in thedirection of Varna, from which it was hoped to launch an attack upon the Turksby sea. The soldiers were variously drawn from Hungary, Poland, Wallachia,Moldavia, Lithuania, Bulgarians, the papacy, Croats and the (German) TeutonicKnights. They may have numbered some 20,000 (Ervin Liptai: Magyarországhadtörténete I. Zrínyi Katonai Kiadó, Budapest 1984). On receiving the news,Murad hastily concluded the Karaman campaign in Asia Minor, made peacewith Ibrahim Bey of Karaman and hurried back to Europe, where his “60-80,000”troops inflicted a crushing defeat on the Christians at Varna on 10 November1444; the king of Hungary, Vladislav, fell in battle, and only fragments of thecrusaders' army (including Hunyadi) were able to make their way home(Norwich 1996: 406: Liptai prefers “about 60,000”). Two banners with a total of 3,500 men from the king's Polish and Hungarianbodyguards, Hungarian royal mercenaries, and banners of Hungarian noblesheld the centre. The Wallachian cavalry was left in reserve behind the centre. Theright flank that lined up the hill towards the village of Kamenar numbered 6,500men in 5 banners. Bishop Jan Dominek of Varadin with his personal banner ledthe force; the papal delegate Cesarini commanded a banner of Germanmercenaries and a Bosnian one. The Bishop of Eger led his own banner, and themilitary governor of Slavonia, ban Franco Talotsi, commanded one Croatianbanner. The left flank, a total of 5,000 men in 5 banners, was led by MichaelSzilágyi, Hunyadi's brother in law, and was made up of Hunyadi'sTransylvanians, Bulgarians, German mercenaries and banners of Hungarianmagnates. Behind the Hungarians, closer to the Black Sea and the lake, was theWagenburg, defended by 300 or 600 Czech and Ruthenian mercenaries underhetman Ceyka, along with Poles, Lithuanians and Wallachians. Every wagonwas manned by 7 to 10 soldiers and the Wagenburg was equipped withbombards (mortar-style cannons) (Wikipedia 2011: ‘Battle of Varna’).


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The Ottoman centre included the Janissaries and levies from Rumelia (theBalkans) deployed around two ancient Thracian burial mounds. Sultan Muradobserved and directed the battle from one of them. The Janissaries dug in behindditches and two palisades. The right wing consisted of Kapikulus and Sipahis(professional medium cavalry) from Rumelia, and the left wing was made up byAkıncıs (irregular light cavalaty), Sipahis from Anatolia, and other forces.Janissary archers and Akıncı light cavalry were deployed on the Franga plateau. For most of the day the Christians had the advantage, defeating first theAnatolian troops and killing their commander, the governor-general (andbrother in law of the sultan) Karaca Bey, and then towards the end of the daydriving the Rumelian cavalry under Shabeddin Pasha from the field. This left theSultan alone with a guard of Janissaries and other infantry. Apparently theHungarian king was jealous that Hunyadi, a commoner, was taking all the glory,while he a king sat idly by. Ignoring Hunyadi’s advice not to attack, Vladislav’spersonal ‘banner’ (500 Polish knights) charged the Sultan’s position. A Janissarydragged Vladislav from his horse (or else his horse fell in a pitfall) and removedhis head. This threw the Christians into disorder, and the Turkish cavalry wasable to return and complete a rout (Colin Imber, The Crusade of Varna, Ashgate2006, pp.30-31)

Vasiliev, p.567, notes that the battle of Varna was the last attempt of Latin Europe tocome to the help of perishing Byzantium (also Norwich 1996: 406). ThereafterConstantinople was left to its fate.

c.1444:The Peloponnesus: In a letter written from Italy to the despot of Morea around1444, Bessarion reveals his interest in the matter of outdated Byzantinetechnology: “I heard that the Peloponnesos, especially the area around Sparta itself, is fullof iron metal and that it is lacking men who know how to extract it and to constructweapons and other things . . . These four skills, my excellent lord: engineering, iron-working, weapons manufacture, and naval architecture - are needed and useful tothose who wish to prosper. Send four or eight young men here to the West,together with appropriate means - and let not many know about this - so thatwhen they return to Greece they can pass on the knowledge to other Greeks.”—Letter of Bessarion to the Despot of the Morea Constantine Palaeologus (c.1444), in S. Lambros, ed., Neos Hellenomnemon (Athens, 1906), vol. 3, 43-44.Translation in: D.J. Geanakoplos, Byzantium, 379. Quoted in Mirkovic,“Byzantinism?”, Golden Horn, at www.isidore-of-seville.com/goudenhoorn/82alexander; accessed 2011.

1444:1. Greece: The Italian manuscript-hunter and papal diplomat Cyriacus of Anconawas in the Morea. There were few local scholars of any distinction but hediscovered a large library in Kalavryta in the central-north, inland from the Sshore of the Gulf of Corinth, owned by the scholar-general George Palaeologus


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Cantacuzenos (d. after 1456: son of the one-time despot DemetriusCantacuzenos). Palaeologus lent him a copy of Herodotus (Vacalopoulos p.170;Miller, Essays on the Latin Orient p.149). Cyriacus’s drawings of the Partheneon and Acropolis at Athens in 1444 arethe easiest known depiction of it.

2. Greece: the last success of Byzantine arms. With the Turks far away inBulgaria (see next), the despot Constantine campaigns from the Morea north-east into Italian-ruled Attica and Boeotia. He captures or subjects to tributeAthens, Thebes and Boeotia. He pressed on into Ottoman territory, brieflyrestoring Greek rule over Thessaly as far as Mt Olympus by the end of 1445 (Fine1994: 561: Bartusis LBA p. 118, citing Chalkokondyles). See 1446.

Byzantine foot archers: “Mail [i.e. not plate armour] was still widely worn (and)bows were a favoured weapon” (Nicolle, Eastern Europe p.47).

3. The Byzantines were sheltering Orhan, son of Sulayman and grandson ofBayezid, and so the prospect of a Turkish civil war presented itself.— To prevent this, or for religious motives, Murad (aged 40) abdicated [August1444] in favour of his 12 year old son Mehmed. Murad retired to Manisa,apparently to the contemplative life of a mystic. See 1446 – resumption of thethrone.— Murad II came out of retirement to win won the Battle of Varna on 10November 1444 against the Hungarians under János Hunyadi but lost the Battleof Jalowaz and was forced or persuaded or he chose to abdicate again (late Nov-early December). His exact motives are not known (Franz Babinger, Mehmed theConqueror and His Time, Princeton University Press, 1992 p.41). Despite the Christians’ significant military advantages, the Polish kingWladyslaw/Vladislav failed to recognise the serious threat which the Turkishempire posed to Europe as a whole. Therefore, when the Battle of Varna beganon 10 November 1444, he did not sense that this would be his final fight.

The Ottoman victory at Varna on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria removed thefinal Christian threat. Thus it “sealed the fate of the Balkans and the Byzantineempire” (Inalcik p.21).

Firearms [tüfenks, handguns] were in use by some of Murad’s forces at Varna, butthey were not the decisive weapons (Agoston, Guns for the Sultan p.19). A keyfactor was the self-confidence of the elite Janissaries who stood firm against theHungarian heavy lancer-cavalry (Nicolle 2008: 79). Recklessness and indiscipline on the part of the mainly cavalry Christian armycaused them to launch a series of uncoordinated attacks. They became boggeddown in mêlées where their lance charge could not be used. The Europeancharge was powerful but it needed support from infantry and missile troops,


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something the Ottomans had at Varna but the ‘Crusaders’ lacked (Dougherty2008: 85).

The Ottomans began using guns more widely sometime between 1444 and 1448.Following that, new troop types began to appear, such as the regular arquebusinfantry: Payade Topçı, literally "foot artillery"; regular cavalry armed with rifles:Svari Topçı Neferi, literally "mounted artillery soldiers"; and bombardiers(Khımbaracı), consisting of grenadiers who threw explosives called khımbara andthe soldiers who served the artillery with maintenance and powder supplies.

1444: Failed Mamluk (Egyptian) siege of Rhodes. The siege of Rhodes bythe Mamluks lasted 40 days. Their fleet of 75 vessels appeared offshore onMonday, 10 August, 1444. After a decisive battle on September 10 theMamluks withdrew on September 14. Some 9,000 Mulsims were killed orcaptured (Setton, Papacy pp.87-88)

1445:The Balkans: From the Morea, the Despot Constantine led Byzantine and 300Burgundian troops on campaign into Ottoman-ruled Epirus and Albania (Heath,Byz Armies p.22). This resulted from Constantine striking an alliance with theDuke of Burgundy. At about the same time, another small Byzantine forcecrossed the Gulf of Corinth and drove the Turks from the Delphi region(Norwich 1996: 406). See next.

1446:Greece: Murad (aged 42) resumes the Ottoman throne,* and leads supposedly“50-60,000” men on another campaign against the (Greek) Despot of Morea. Forthe third time the Turks demolish the Hexamilion wall across the isthmus ofCorinth. Murad deployed cannons, siege engines and scaling ladders (27November–10 December 1446) (Nicolle, Immortal Emperor pp.30ff). Murad himself, accompanied by Turahan, led the army (supposedly “50,000”men) into Greece during winter, and used heavy artillery to break through theHexamilion (10 December 1446). The walls must have been well-rebuilt andcarefully guarded because it took a fortnight of steady bombardment to breakthrough (Runciman 1965: 50). Doukas says that it had been defended by “60,000” Albanians and Greeks: animpossible figure, but credible if we lose a zero: i.e. 6,000 defenders (Bartusis,LBA p.116). Now the Hexamilion ran for some eight kilometres across theisthmus (Gregory, History of Byzantium, 2010 p.109). Let us picture the ‘6,000’men as 60 units of 100 men: if evenly spaced there would be 133 metres betweeneach unit … Originally in the 6th Century it had had 153 towers, ie one every 50metres on average. Dividing 6,000 men between 153 towers, we get 40 men pertower.

(*) As noted, Murad II was forced or persuaded to abdicate in 1444; hereassumed the throne in 1446. The boy Mehmet went (1446) to Manisa,while Murad took control in Edirne. Mehmet then had to wait until hisfather’s death in 1451.


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Murad sent Turahan and half the army further on into the Morea towards Mistrawhile he himself proceeded west along the southern side of the Gulf of Corinthwith the other half. Patras, with its garrison or armed populace of 4,000 men, wasbypassed and left in Byzantine hands. The two armies came together at Clarentza(modern Killini in the far NW). Turahan had not managed to reach Mistra in theheight of winter. In January 1447 they all returned north with, it is said, 60,000 prisoners (givenby contemporary sources, both Venetian and Greek, but hardly credible**) andleaving behind in their wake (a perhaps more credible figure:) “22,000” deadGreeks, Albanians and Franks. —Norwich 1996: 407; Nicolle loc.cit..

(**) See mention below under 1450 of a census taken in 1461.

Murad’s son Mehmet II, 12 years old, was the first Ottoman sultan whoseaccession took place in Edirne after the city had become the Ottoman capital. Butthe Byzantines and the Pope stirred up the subject Christians of Rumelia againsthim. This led to panic in Edirne. Threatened by the approach of a Venetian fleetand a new Polish-Hungarian-Wallachian army under Hunyadi, the former sultanMurad re-assumed (late 1446) control, although his son Mehmet nominallyremained sultan (Runciman, Fall p.57). Mehmet’s role was limited to beinggovernor of Manisa. See 1448.

1446: fl. Manetti, first western scholar to systematically study ancientHebrew.

1447: fl. Tommaso Parentucelli, the "humanist pope" Nicholas V, d. 1455.

1447:1. Lower Greece: The Italian traveller and antiquarian Ciriaco of Ancona makes asecond visit to Mistra in July: this was less than six months after the Morea hadbeen ravaged by the Turks (Norwich 1996: 407).

2. Demetrius Chalcondyles, 1424-1511, brother of the historian, was born inAthens. In 1447, aged 23, he migrated to Italy, where Cardinal Bessarion gavehim his patronage. He became famous as a teacher of Greek letters and Platonicphilosophy. In 1463 he was made professor at Padua, and in 1479 he wassummoned by Lorenzo de' Medici to Florence to fill the professorship vacated byJohn Argyropoulos. See 1451 and 1463.


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1448-53:CONSTANTINE XI,

called ‘Dragases’ after his mother (the Greek form of theSerbian ‘Dragash’, her family name),

last Roman emperor

Second son of Manuel II; younger brother of John VIII.Aged 44 at accession. First wife: Maddelena-Teodora Tocco,d. 1429. Second: Catherine Gattiluso, d. 1442. Runciman 1965: 53 describes him, based on his career inthe Morea, as a good soldier, competent administrator,honourable, generous, patient, and liked by all.

1448:1. The Balkans, Second Battle of Kosovo, 17 October: The regent John (Janos)Hunyadi led a Wallachian*-Hungarian ‘Crusader’ army of around “24,000” men,mainly Hungarians, across the Danube River into Turkish-ruled Serbia and washeading southward, intent on driving Islam back to Asia Minor. Leadingperhaps 50 or 60,000 men, Murad II intercepted them at Kosovo in October 1448and in a three-day battle (18-20 October 1448) finally defeated them, securingOttoman rule south of the Danube River. The Ottomans thus regainedWallachia as a vassal state. —Jean W. Sedlar, East Central Europe in the MiddleAges, 1000-1500, University of Washington Press, pp. 247-48; also Nicolle 2008:79.

(*) Wallachia: the region immediately north of the Danube; modern-dayRumania.

Hunyadi, eager to avenge the ignominy of Varna, made war on the Turks andinvaded Serbia. Murad took the field with a large army and gained a decisivevictory on 17-19 October 1448, on the same Field of the Blackbirds (Kossovo polje)where 59 years earlier (in 1389) Serbia's fate had been decided. This victory finallyrestored Ottoman rule over the Balkans. It was only in Albania that the rebels heldout under Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu or ‘George Castriota’, called by the Turks“Skanderbeg”, ie ‘Alexander-bey’, d.1468.


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2. Death of emperor John VIII, aged 56.

1449:Crowned in the Morea on 6 January, Constantine travelled to Constantinople in aCatalan ship and reached it on 12 March 1149. Nicol B&V 1992 p. 390 andNorwich 1996: 411 say it was a Venetian ship. In his Immortal Emperor, 2002 p.40,Nicol corrects this to Catalan, citing Sphrantzes. Runciman 1965: 52 likewise saysCatalan.

Territories in 1450

The huge Ottoman empire ruled from the Balkans - south as far to Thessaly - toeastern Asia Minor. The northern littoral of the Sea of Marmara was divided between theByzantines (Herakleia and east to Constantinople) and the Ottomans (the westincluding Gallipoli). The Byzantines also controlled the Black Sea coast of Thraceand former Bulgaria north as far as Mesembria. But all of inland Thrace andbeyond was Ottoman. In the Aegean, the Christians dominated: Byzantium held the northern islandsincluding Thasos and Lemnos; the Genoese Giustianiani family ruled the islandsoff the coast of Turkish Asia Minor such as Chios and Samos; Venice governedEuboea (Montenegro) and Crete; various Italians and ‘Greco-Frank’ families (alsoVenice) ruled the islands of Naxos and ‘the Archipelago’; and the Byzantinescontrolled the entire Morea, the largest part of their tiny “empire”: see 1452. Finallythe Hospitallers (Latin knights) ruled Rhodes and several nearby islands. But allof the Asia Minor mainland was Ottoman.

A post-conquest census taken by the Ottomans in 1461 found that the populationof the Morea was “20,000” households, which presumably equates to somethingaround 100,000 people, or a little less. —F. Zarinebaf et al. (2005), ‘Historical andeconomic geography of Ottoman Greece’, Hesperia, supplement 34, PrincetonUSA: online www2.let.uu.nl/solis/anpt/ejos/pdf8/wright-fin-01.pdf; accessed2008. It is a guess, but possibly the proportions were something like: 60% Greeks,30% ethnic Albanians and 10% ethnic ‘Franks’ and Italians.

c.1450:1. Various estimates put Constantinople’s population at 50-75,000 people.Magdalino says “70,000”: ‘Medieval C’nople’, in Laiou ed., 2002: 536. CfSchneider, ‘Die Bevolkerung Konstantinopels in XV. Jahrhundert’, Nachrichtender Akademie der Wissenschaften in Götingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse (1949),236-37; and Charanis, ‘Note on the population and cties of the Byzantine Empirein the Thirteenth Century’, The Joshua Starr Memorial Volume, New York, 1953,p.139.


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2. Lower Peloponnese: The governor of the Mani peninsula, the middle finger oflowest Greece, was Manuel Kantakouzenos, called "Ghin" (an Albanian name), fl.1450. There was a revolt in 1453-54 when he was proclaimed Despot by the localAlbanians (Setton, Papacy p.148). The revolt was crushed by the Turks in 1454 asa favour to their vassals the Palaeologoi. Manuel died an exile in Hungary 1470.

1451:1. The new sultan Mehmed, 19 years old, was angered when Constantine hintedthat he, Constantine, might let free the Ottoman pretender Orchan (grandson ofthe late Suleiman) who was living as a refugee in Constantinople. The young sultan was further angered when, returning from the East, hefound his sea crossing to Gallipoli blocked by Christian (Italian) ships. Thisforced him and his retinue to go north, to cross over the Bosphorus into territorythat was still officially Byzantine. The whole of both the eastern and westernshores were in Turkish control, but the Christians still dominated at sea. It is said that this inconvenience prompted Mehmed to proceed with theconquest of the Christian outpost of Constantinople (Nicol, B&V p.393). See1452.

2. fl. the historian George Sphrantzes or Phrantzes, 1401-77. He began his careeras secretary to Manuel II, d. 1423, and served thereafter in various official posts.He was present in Constantinople during the final siege in 1453. As an old manhe took refuge on the Venetian-ruled island of Corfu. —Last of the “pro-Greek” historians. By contrast, Laonicus Chalcondyles andCritobulos of Imbros, fl. 1460, the biographer of Muhammad II, wrote so-called“pro-Turkish” histories. They saw the Turkish conquest as tragic but inevitable(Runciman 1965: 194).

1451-81:Sultan Mehmet II; posthumously dubbed el-Fatih, ‘the Conqueror’. Aged 19 ataccession, it is said, unreliably, that he learnt to be fluent in Greek, Arabic, Latin,Persian and Hebrew, as well as his native Turkish! (Runciman 1965: 36). Otherswill allow only that he knew Turkish, Arabic and Persian. Kritoboulos, whoknew him personally, said that he knew Greek only in Arabic and Persiantranslations (Patrinelis, ‘Mehmet II’, in Viator II, 1972, p.351). - “Lectio difficiliorlectio potior”!

1452:1. Thrace: As a prelude to attacking Constantinople, Mehmet orders the buildingof a new fort, called Boghaz-kesen, ‘the throat-cutter’: now called Rumeli Hisar,on the European side of the Bosporus: about 12 km from the city. It was begunon 15 April and completed on 31 August 1452 (Runciman 1965: 66; Norwich1996: 415).

2. The Morea: The sultan ordered the elderly general Turahan to invade theMorea once again in October 1452. The general took with him a large army andhis grown sons Umur and Ahmed. The idea was to distract the emperor’s


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brothers so that they would be unable to send him aid from the Morea when theinvestment of Constantinople began (Runciman 1965: 75). The Hexamilion wall, across the isthmus, was no longer in their way and theyplundered all the Peloponnese from Corinth down to Messenia. They took Neokastron[Pylos, Navarino] in Messenia but Siderokastron [near the coast in N Messenia]successfully resisted. Only one other setback marred their victory. In anencounter with the army of the Despot Matthew Asen, one of the officers of theformer despot Demetrios managed to capture Turahan's son Ahmed. Ahmedwas carried away as a prisoner to Mistra (thus Donald M. Nicol, The ImmortalEmperor, Cambridge Univ. Press, Canto edition, 1992; xxx p,86).

3. In October 1452 Cardinal Isidore, who had been appointed papal legate,arrived in Constantinople. He brought with him a company of 200 archers fromNaples, and he was accompanied by Leonardo of Chios, Genoese Archbishop ofLesbos (Nicol, Last Centuries)

1452-53:1. Italy: fl. Bessarion, émigré Byzantine scholar and cardinal of the Latin Church.He was a key figure in the revival of (Christian-oriented) Platonism. Cf 1484.

2. THE TURKS CAPTURE CONSTANTINOPLE: - FINAL END OF THEROMAN EMPIRE.

Mehmed II’s Turks built the Rumeli Hisari fortress on the European side in Jan-Aug 1452 to give him full control of the Bosphorus, and he then declared hisintention to take the City.

March 1453: The Ottoman fleet assembles off Gallipoli. It comprised 31 galleys, 75fast longboats, 20 large transport sailing-barges, and some light sloops andcutters (Norwich 1996: 418). See further below for a more detailed chronology ofevents. The Ottoman army marched out from Adrianople in March, and reachedConstantinople on 2 April (ibid.) The siege commenced on 6 April 1453. It was


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almost seven weeks into the siege, on 22 May 1453, when a lunar eclipse tookplace. After a siege of nearly eight weeks - the bombardment lasted 55 days -, the citywas taken on 29 May 1453. Wave upon wave of the Sultan's front-line troopscharged up to the land walls. For nearly two (or four) hours they hammered atthe weakest section, where the guns had already done their ruinous work. At about 1:30 in the morning of 29 May, Mehmet launched a series of massiveassaults on the walls. After four hours of fierce but inconclusive fighting, thecommander of the Byzantines' Genoese allies was wounded, the Kerkoporta gatewas breached—or possibly left open—and the tide of battle turned. By mid-morning, Constantinople belonged to the Ottoman Turks. A small pocket of Greek/Byzantine rule continued in the Morea: see 1460.

Poem by Cavafy:Theophilos Palaiologos*

This is the last year, this the last of the Greek emperors. And, alas, how sadly those around him talk. Kyr Theophilos Palaiologos* in his grief, in his despair, says: "I would rather die than live."

Ah, Kyr Theophilos Palaiologos, how much of the pathos, the yearning of our race, how much weariness- such exhaustion from injustice and persecution- your six tragic words contained.

(*) The emperor’s cousin, killed fighting alongside him. He diedcharging forward against the final Turkish assault. Kyr = ‘lord’.

The Final Siege of New Rome, 1453

a. Attackers

Not counting irregulars, the Turkish army besieging Constantinople numberedover 50,000 men. Turkish authorities set the total of the Ottoman forces at notmore than 80,000 regular troops (Runciman 1965: 76; Norwich 1996: 418). But ifwe include the irregulars on the Turkish side, it is clear that the defenders wereoutnumbered by at least 15 to one. The lowest number offered by an eyewitness was that of the Florentine soldierTedaldi: “60,000” fighting men among the Turks. Up to 40,000 were cavalry,making the number of regular infantry as few as perhaps 20,000 including 5,000or more elite Janissaries (Bartusis, LBA p.129, citing the Florentine merchantGiacomo Tedaldi). Norwich 1996: 418, following Runciman 1965: 76, prefers“12,000” Janissaries; another contemporary source, Leonard of Chios, says“15,000” Janissaries were present in 1453: Runciman p.215.


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— Mehmed deployed some 50 primitive cannons, including one monster piecewhich required 60 oxen to haul it (Runciman 1965: 78; Browning 1992: 249).

For weeks the Turkish guns relentlessly battered the Land Walls. In the words ofan eye-witness, the Venetian ship’s-doctor Nicolo Barbaro, "firing their cannonagain and again, with so many other guns and arrows without number ... that theair seemed to split apart." Mehmed's biggest cannon fired on the walls for weeks, but due to itsimprecision and the extremely slow rate of reloading the Byzantines were able torepair most of the damage after each shot, limiting the cannon's effect. CfBarbaro: “On 20 May there were hardly any attacks or skirmishings by sea or onland, except for the usual cannon fire which continually brought stretches of thewalls down to the ground, while we Christians quickly repaired the damage with [astockade of] barrels and withies and earth to make them as strong as they had beenbefore. Men and women, the old and the young and the priests, all workedtogether at these repairs because of the urgency of the matter, since they had tobe strong: the cannon would have stripped the whole of the city of its defences,except that when the shots struck, they landed in the repaired sections whichwere of earth.”

The lowest contemporary estimates of the strength of the Ottoman fleet areabout 100 ships (“more than 92”: Tedaldi) and about 145 (Barbaro). A realisticreport puts the total at 126 vessels, viz: 6 large galleys, 10 ordinary galleys, 15smaller galleys, 20 horse-transports (sailing barges) and 75 large rowing boats. Barbaro: “The Turkish fleet was made up of 145 ships, galleys, fuste, parandarie[heavy sailing-barges used for transport] and bregantini [brigantines], of which 12were fully equipped galleys, 70 to 80 to large fuste [lesser galleys], 20 to 25parandarie [transports and troop barges], and the rest bregantini [sail-boats alsoequipped with oars]; also in this Turkish fleet there was one ship of about 200botte*, which came from Sinopolis loaded with stones for cannonballs, hurdlesand timber, and other munitions for their army of the sort necessary for makingwar.”

(*) About 125 tons.


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Giustiniani’s Italians may have looked like this.

b. Defenders

On the Christian side the defenders - Greeks, Venetians and others - numberedsome 8,000 men including perhaps 3,000 non-Byzantines, mainly Italians(Bartusis, LBA p.131; Runciman 1965: 85 prefers ‘up to 7,000’ in all). The majorityoverall, said Leonard of Chios, had helmets and body armour, but some did not.Among the Greeks, civilians far outnumbered trained soldiers (LBA p.130).— The number of the defenders within the walls was assessed by the imperialchancellor George Sphrantzes who claimed to have been sent to count them bythe Emperor, namely “4,773” Greeks and about “200” foreigners. The latterfigure is obviously much too low. Indeed neither of his figures can be acceptedwithout question. Italian sources put the number of Greek fighters at 6,000-7,000and there were 700 Italian troops under Giustiniani (Bartusis in LBA p.131 prefers‘about 5,000’ Byzantines).

The Byzantines also had a few cannons, but they were much smaller than those ofthe Ottomans and the recoil tended to damage their own walls. Kritovoulosexplains that the Byzantines were unable to fire their own artillery from vantagepoints on top of the land walls because the recoil from the cannons shook thewalls and caused pieces of them to fall. Since the Greeks did not want to weakenthe integrity of their walls in the face of heavy Ottoman bombardment, thedefensive armament upon Constantinople’s walls was limited to handheldranged weapons.


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The largest figure cited for ships on the Christian side is 39 including just ninelarger galleys. The nine major ships were: 4 Genoese, 3 Venetian-Cretan, 1Byzantine and 1 Anconan (Tedaldi, cited in LBA p.132). Others say the defenders had a fleet of 26 capital ships: about 10 Byzantine; 5from Genoa, 5 from Venice, 3 from Venetian Crete, 1 from Ancona [Italy], 1 fromdistant Spain/Catalonia, and 1 from France/Provence (Runcimen 1965: 85;Nicolle, Constantinople 1453: The end of Byzantium, 2000, p. 45). Barbaro lists 10 large galleys ranging in size from 2,500 botte to 600, the medianbeing 800 botte or about 480 tons. By our standards they were almost tiny: like amodern corvette or large patrol boat. Cf 1,825 metric tons for the Italian Minerva-clas corvette and 270 tons for the Australian Armidale-class ocean patrol boats.

Above: The view here is to the south.

c. The Walls

To an attacker the defences of Constantinople presented first a ditch or moat 60feet [18 metres] wide and 20-30 feet [six to nine metres: others say “10” metres]deep. There was next an embankment protected by a parapet [1.5 metres high]leading to the outer wall, which was the wall the Christians chose to defend in1453. It was guarded by square towers built at intervals of 50-100 yards (metres)along its length and rising to heights of 30 feet [over nine metres: others give “8.5”metres: Turnbull, Stephen (2004), The Walls of Constantinople AD 324–1453


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(Fortress 25), Osprey Publishing]. More importantly, seeing that cannons wereused by the Turks, the outer wall was two metres thick. The last line of defence,separated from the outer wall by a space of about 50 feet [15 metres], was theinner or great wall, about 40 feet [12 metres*] in height, protected by 96 towersrising to heights of 60 feet [18 metres] (Nicol, Last Centuries, Ch.18).

(*) If in the 15th C. the average man was 1.75 m tall, then this is a height of 6.8men. Or if we use 3.5 m as the height of a building storey, 3.4 storeys high.

d. The Course of the Siege

The young Genoese noble and warlord Giovanni Giustiniani Longo arrived atConstantinople as a volunteer on 29 January 1453 bringing a battalion of “700”(Barbaro’s figure) or “400” (Leonard of Chios and Kritoboulos) of his own troops,recruited at Genoa, Chios and Rhodes. He was an experienced professionalsoldier and renowned for his skill in siege warfare. The Emperor immediatelyappointed him to take general command of the defence of the walls on thelandward side (Runciman 1965: 83; Bartusis p.125; also D M Nicol, The ImmortalEmperor, 1992). In February the Ottoman advance guard left Edirne taking siege cannons to thesiege-lines outside Constantinople, while other Ottoman contingents capturedmost remaining Byzantine outposts along the Marmara coast. And still furtherOttoman contingents captured the remaining Byzantine outposts (towns, villagesand forts) along the Black Sea coast from Mesembria to the inner Thracian coast(Nicolle 2008: 84). The contest commenced when the first Turkish detachment came into sight onthe landward side on 2 April 1453. Venice dispatched a small fleet in May.

5 April: The Turkish land forces were finally all in place when the Sultan arrivedwith the last detachments of the army (Runciman 1965: 79; Bartusis p.122).

6 April: The fighting opened with a heavy bombardment of the walls.

9 April: “On the ninth day of April, seeing that nevertheless the faithless Turkswould come with their fleet and army, to gain their accursed intention ofcompletely destroying the wretched city of Constantinople, preparations began tobe made for this on the harbour side, and so we put [vessels] along the boomwhich ran across the harbour; nine of the biggest ships which were there and theseships along the length of the boom stretched from Constantinople as far as Pera;they were well armed and in good order, all ready to join battle, and one as goodas another.” Thus Barbaro, an eyewitness.

12 April: A new round of bombardment began; it would last “with ceaselessmonotony” for more than six weeks: for “48” days according to Norwich (1996:424; also Runciman 1965: 97).


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18 April: First assault on the walls: a night attack on the Mesoteichion, the lowestmiddle section of the walls under which the River Lycus ran into the city. Thesections damaged by cannon-fire had been refortified with a stockade of woodenplanks topped with barrels of earth. The assault failed after four hours (Runciman1965: 99).

20 April: Arrival from the Aegean of four large vessels: three Genoese warshipsand one large Imperial-Greek grain-transport. They fought their way through alarge Turkish fleet into the Golden Horn, humiliating the Ottoman admiral andangering the Sultan (Runciman 1965: 102-03; Norwich 1996: 425).

We have a presumed report of Greek Fire, but more probably in fact some otherkind of incendiary material*, being used against the Turkish ships on thisoccasion (Runciman 1965: 102). It was also used later on land, under the directionof Johann (John) Grant, the emperor’s German or Scottish engineer, againsttunnellers and to destroy a giant siege machine (D. Nicolle, J. Haldon and S.Turnbull, The Fall of Constantinople: The Ottoman Conquest of Byzantium, Osprey2007, p.152).

(*) See the discussion in Bartusis, LBA pp 340 ff. Only two less reliable sourcessay “liquid fire” was used and by both sides. It is almost certain, however, thatthe material in question was a combination of “pitch, brushwood andgunpowder”, as mentioned by Barbaro, an eyewitness.

21 April: “There was a continuous bombardment all day of the walls by SanRomano [Gate of St Romanus: the most central gate in the wall], and a tower wasrazed to the ground by the bombardment, with several yards [metres] of wall.This was the time when those in the city, and also those in the fleet, began to beafraid” (diary of Barbaro). By this time the outer wall of the city across the Lycus valley (geographicallythe lowest point) had been completely destroyed in many places; but every nightthe defenders came out to restore it with stockades built with planks, barrels andsacks of earth (Runciman 1965: 97).

22 April: Using oxen and wooden cradles, the Turks haul some 70 ships or boatsoverland via Galata (Pera) – across the peninsula above (behind) Pera - to belaunched on the Golden Horn (Bartusis, LBA p.132; Runciman 1965: 105;Norwich 1996: 427). This opened a new front in the siege.

5 May: “On the fifth of May, the wicked and evil Turks went and placed greatcannon on the top of the hill above Pera [Galata], and with these cannon theybegan to fire over Pera at our fleet, which lay by the boom [in the Golden Horn].They continued this bombardment for several days, firing stones of 200 poundsweight each, and the third shot which was fired sent to the bottom a Genoeseship of 300 butte*” (Barbaro).


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(*) About 190 tons.

22 May: A lunar eclipse occurred, which the Byzantines interpreted as a negativesign. It also worried the Turks. (The moon rose at Constantinople at 19:31 localtime, i.e. half-past-seven at night; the moon was already in full eclipse. It exitedfrom totality at 20: 41 and from penumbra at 21: 50, i.e. just before 10 pm:‘Eclipses of the Moon in History’ in Ron Sun, C. Lee Giles, Sequence learning:paradigms, algorithms, and applications, Springer, 2001 p.85).

From mid-May to 25 May, the Ottomans sought to break through the walls byconstructing underground tunnels in an effort to sap them. Many of the sapperswere Serbians sent from Novo Brdo by the Serbian Despot. They were placedunder the command of Zaganos Pasha. However, the Byzantines employed anengineer named Johannes Grant (who was said to be German but was probablyScottish), and he had countertunnels dug, allowing Byzantine troops to enter thetunnels and kill the Turkish and Serbian workers. The heaviest concentration of Byzantine and foreign soldiers was along thecentral stretch of walls extending from around the Gate of St. Romanos to theCharisios or Adrianople Gate, against which the main attack was directed; evenhere, fewer than 1,000 Christian soldiers held back the first two waves and the fullstrength of the Turkish Janissaries before they were outflanked as a result of thefall of the Kerkoporta postern (small gate or door) near the Kaligaria gate (mod.Egri Kapi: near the Blachernai Place and the northern end of the wall). All sources agree that the elite Janissary infantry advanced with terrifyingdiscipline, slowly and with neither noise nor music (Nicolle 2008: 85).

29 May: Final attack. The Turks enter: “This butchery lasted from sunrise, whenthe Turks entered the city, until midday, and anyone they found was put to thescimitar in their rage. Those of our merchants who escaped hid themselves inunderground places, and when the first mad slaughter was over, they werefound by the Turks and were all taken and sold as slaves” (Barbaro). Critopoulos or Kritibolus of Imbros, cited by Vacalopoulos, p.202, says that“50,000” Christians were enslaved; Leonard of Chios, the Latin Archbishop ofLesbos, says “60,000”. This may seem rather a high figure, but relatively few haddied in the fighting: only some 4,000 or 3,000; and for some time no one or almostno-one was allowed to stay in the devastated city (cf Runciman 1965: 203 and226). Cf 1454.

1454:1. Revolt in the Morea by Albanians and Greeks under Manuel ‘Ghin’Kantakouzenos. Mehmet II sent his general Turahan Bey to help Demetrios andThomas, as his vassals, to regain control (Nicolle 2008: 88; Nicol, ImmortalEmperor, p.111). See 1460.

2. The future historian Michael Critopoulos or Critoboulos was a local politicalleader of Imbros - the island in the North Aegean: south of the Dardanelles - and


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played an active role in the peaceful handover of the islands of Imbros, Limnos andThasos to the Ottomans after the final breakdown of the Byzantine state. He later wrote a historical account of the rise of the Ottomans and the finalconquest of the remainder of the Byzantine Empire. Its main part is a biographyof the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II, ‘the Conqueror’, to whom the work was alsodedicated. Writing under Ottoman rule, Critopoulos expressed admiration forMehmet in his work, and combined the mourning of the Byzantine loss with anacceptance of the shift of power to the Ottoman Turks, which he interpreted as adivinely ordained world historic event. In doing so, he took as a literary model theworks of Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian of the Roman destruction ofJerusalem (Wikipedia, 2011, ‘Critoboulos’).

1456:1. Thrace: With the conquest in 1456 of Ainos [Tk: Enez], at the mouth of theEvros/Maritsa, from the Genoese, the last important Christian post in Thrace isincorporated into the Ottoman empire. The Turks also took control of the N.Aegean islands of Byzantine Thasos, Genoese Samothrace and Imbros (1457).

2. The Danube: Ottoman failure at the siege of Hungarian-governed Belgrade.Janos (John) Hunyadi, aged about 49, arrives with a substantial, mainlyHungarian army (only 4,000 were professionals: Setton, Papacy p.177) to bolsterthe garrison. The Turks arrived on 3 July and deployed 300 cannons. Initially theJanissaries were threatening to break into the fortress, but were beaten off.Unexpectedly, the Christian army of about 45,000 (or 60,000) Hungarians, Serbsand some Western Europeans—most were local peasants and townsmen armedwith scythes and pitchforks—sallies forth and routs a surprised 65,000 Turks(low figure 30,000 vs high figure 100,000). Thus Hunyadi “saves Europe” - if onlyfor a generation or two - by defeating Mehmet II, who is wounded (by an arrowin the thigh). On 22 July Mehmet orders withdrawal. Hunyadi dies soon afterwhen disease broke out in the Christian camp.

3. Or 1458: The Turks receive Italian-ruled Athens. The last Florentine dukesurrendered the town to the Ottomans on 4 June 1456, thus bringing to a close twoand a half centuries of Latin domination.

4. The Greek “empire” of Trebizond pays money tribute to Mehmed. See 1461.

5. Italy: John Argyropoulos, an official in the service of one of the rulers of theByzantine Morea, was sent to Italy in 1456 on a diplomatic mission. He too wasoffered the chance to teach in Florence and he accepted with alacrity, remainingin Italy until his death in 1487.

1458:Mehmet in the Morea: Unable to take Acrocorinth, the citadel-fortress nearCorinth, the Ottomans pillaged into the interior before turning NW to takePatras. Mehmet’s troops then returned to lay siege again to Acrocorinth, whoseleaders now (August) decided to surrender (Runciman 1965: 171). For two years, 1458-60, the Turks occupied the NE quarter of the Morea, fromPatras to Corinth (map in Vacalopoulos p.405). See 1460-61.


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When the Turks captured Athens in 1458, the monastery of nearby Dafni wasreturned to the Orthodox Church (from Catholic control) and was reoccupied byOrthodox monks who also made alterations to the buildings.

1458-69:Italy: The scholar George of Trebizond [cf 1461 below], although he hadtranslated Plato in the past, in 1458 wrote a strongly worded denunciation ofhim, entitled Comparisons of Aristotle and Plato. He claimed that Plato's ideas ledinevitably to immorality and heresy, and denounced any attempt to reconcilePlatonism with Christianity. To prove his point, he cited Bessarion's teacher, George Gemistos Plethon,who he claimed had been led by reading Plato to abjure Christianity and to turnto the worship of the old Olympian gods. In response, Bessarion and othermembers of his circle became some of the most prominent champions of theworks of Plato against those who favoured the more traditionally acceptableAristotle. In 1469, Bessarion published his Against the Calumniator of Plato, the'calumniator' being George of Trebizond. —Jonathan Harris, ‘Byzantines inRenaissance Italy’, at //www.the-orb.net/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html; accessed 2011.

1460:1. Rhodes: A Turkish fleet of 40 ships and “7,000 soldiers” (we assume oarsmen-fighters: 175 men per ship) landed at Simi/Symi (the island near Rhodes) andbesieged the Hospitaller castle for 14 days before withdrawing (J. M. Upton-Ward, The Military Orders: On land and by sea, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2008p.216)

2. Italy and Germany: Basilios Bessarion (the Trebizond-born Catholic cardinaland titular Latin Patriarch of Constantinople) wanted the West to go to the aid ofhis homeland Byzantium. He therefore accepted the commission given him bythe pope to attend two German diets held in 1460, one on the 2nd of March atNuremberg, the other on the 25th of the same month at Worms. Neither,however, had any practical results. At the command of the pope he went toVienna to induce the emperor to assist, with arms and supplies, MatthiasCorvinus, the young King of Hungary. After a long wait the German leaders, on17 September, asked for another delay, and only the express wish of Pius II keptBessarion in Germany for a whole year, pleading the cause of the Christians ofthe East. Internal discord among the German leaders prevented them fromreaching any decision concerning the crusade, and Bessarion returned to Romedisillusioned and discouraged (Cath. Encyc., ‘Bessarion’).

1460-61:End of Romaic rule in Greece: Mehmet II (aged 28) leads the Ottoman conquestof Byzantine Morea. Mistra and Patras surrendered (29 May 1460) withoutresistance, but some of the Byzantines’ smaller fortress-towns put up a fiercestruggle. The northern fortress of Kalavrytra fell also in 1460. The Venetian-ruled


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ports of Modon and Croton saved themselves by welcoming the Sultan withlavish gifts and honours (Runciman 1965: 72; Harris 2005: 67). See 1463.

1461:1. Asia Minor: Ottomans conquer the tiny so-called “empire” (mini-state) ofTrebizond, the last capital of the Greeks. Mehmet led a sizeable army from Brusa, first to Sinope whose emir quicklysurrendered, then south across Armenia to neutralize Uzun Hasan (theruler of western Iran: the Sultan of the Aq Qoyunlu dynasty, or White SheepTurkmen) who had received a request for aid from the rule of Trebizond.Meanwhile a sizeable fleet under the command of Mahmud Pasha Angelovich*sailed (rowed) from the Bosphoros. Having isolated Trebizond, the Turks quicklyswept down upon it before the inhabitants knew they were coming, and placed itunder siege. The town held out for a month before the ‘emperor’ Davidsurrendered on 15 August 1461. This was 200 years to the day since MichaelPalaeologus had recaptured Constantinople from the Latins and a new dawn had seemedto be breaking for the Greek world (Runciman 1965: 175). See 1462.

(*) Mahmud had been born a Christian of Greek descent in Serbia but atage seven was taken in the devshirme [seizure of Christian boys] orotherwise enslaved, and became a janissary. Having distinguished himselfat the Siege of Belgrade (1456), he was made Grand Vizier.

2. Corfu: George Sphrantzes (also Phrantzes or Phrantza), 1401-c.1478, was a lateByzantine historian. Born in Constantinople, at an early age he had becomesecretary to Manuel II Palaeologus, d. 1425; in 1432 he was protovestiarius(‘Master of Robes’); in 1446 prefect of ‘Sparta’ [Mistra]; and subsequently (from1451) Great Logothete (chancellor). He was present at the Ottoman siege andcapture of the capital in 1453. After the Turks removed the Peloponnesian princes (1460: see next), Phrantzaretired to the monastery of Tarchaniotes in Corfu. There he wrote his Chronicle,containing the history of the House of the Palaeologi from 1258 to 1476,including a valuable account of the fall of Constantinople.

3. One of the rulers or Despots of the Peloponnese, Thomas Palaeologus, brotherof the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, fled to Corfu with his family andthen crossed alone to Italy. Arriving in Rome in March 1461, he threw himself onthe mercy of the Pope, Pius II. Pius granted Thomas a lodging and an annualpension which he enjoyed until his death in 1465. – Harris, ‘Byz in RenaissanceItaly’: http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html.

1462:Lesbos: The fleet of Mahmud Pasha (67 ships), grand vizier since 1453, besiegesMytilene, the Italo-Greek town on the E coast of Lesbos, offshore from - NW of –Smyrna. The Turks bombarded the twon with 27 guns (Setton, Papacy, p.238;Kramers, ‘Mahmud Pasha’, in Houtsma ed. Encyc. p.137). Further south,


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Melanoudion, the Genoese-held fortress near Miletos, falls (an area protected byouter walls on the outskirts of the town). Then, after 27 days’ bombardment,Lesbos’s Greco-Genoese ruler Niccolo Gattilusio handed over the castle atMytilene (Houtsma, ed. First Encyc of Islam, Brill 1993, under ‘Mytilini’, p.483).Molyvos on the island of Lesbos was the next town to fall, followed by AghiiTheodori and Eresus. The Sultan received the surrender of the island in person.“Ten thousand” captives are sent to Ottoman Constantinople. (Chios remained inGenoese hands.) The Ottoman poet and historian Enveri, author of the verse-chronicleDüsturname (1464), took part in the subjugation of Lesbos.

1463:1. “The first Byzantine historian to recognize the Turkish authority as such wasLaonicus Chalcocondyles (c.1432-c.1490)” (Dölger 1967: 233). Chalcocondyles’history, which covered the years 1298 to 1463, was patterned after that ofThucydides, and he took as his central theme the origin and growth of Turkishpower. Chalcondyles was born in Italian-ruled Athens in about 1423. His family wentto the Byzantine Peloponnese, where, according to Kyriakos the Agonites, helived at the court of Konstantinos Palaiologos and was taught by GeorgeGemistos Plethon. His work, Proofs of Histories, comprises one of the most important sources forthe final 150 years of Byzantine history. It covers the period from 1298 to 1463,describing the fall of the Greek empire and the rise of the Ottoman Turks, whichforms the centre of the narrative, down to the defeat of the Venetians andMathias, king of Hungary, by Mehmed II.

2. The Ottomans annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. (Wikipedia:) Under the king Stjephan Tomshevich, Bosnia officially "fell with awhisper" (shaptom pala) in 1463 and became the westernmost province of theOttoman Empire. The Turks were aided by a heterodox Christian sect, theBogomils, who had been mistreated by the Hungarians. Herzegovina held outagainst the Turks until 1482.

1463-64:Venetian-Ottoman War: the Venetians briefly (re)capture the Morea but it isquickly recovered by the Turks. - In 1463, after Venice refused to give up ports on the Aegean side of Morea,Mehmed and Venice began their second war during the 1400s. Also in 1463,Mehmed took Bosnia. - The Turks and Venetians continued to fight from time to time, but the positionon land did not change after this time. Cf 1469.

1464-65: Printing arrives in Italy from Germany. The first press was at theBenedictine Monastery of Subiaco, 80 km east of Rome. Venice later became thecentre of the printing industry in Italy.

1465:


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fl. John Argyropoulos, émigré ‘Greek’ (Rhomaioi) scholar in Italy from 1456. Hetaught at Padua, Florence and Rome. He left a number of Latin translations,including many of Aristotle’s works, but his real importance lies in his work as ateacher in Italy. Cf Fotis Vassileiou and Barbara Saribalidou, "John Argyropoulos,teacher of Leonardo Da Vinci", Philosophy Pathways 117, 2006.

1467-72:a. Calabria and Puglia: Latinisation of post-Byzantine Italy: “Among those[towns] which held out longest for the Greek Rite were Acerenza (and perhapsGravina), 1302; Gerace [in Calabria], 1467; Oppido, 1472, when it wastemporarily united to Gerace; Rossano, 1460; Gallipoli [on the heel of Italy], 1513;Bova (to the time of Gregory XIII), etc. —Cath. Encyc. under “Italo-Greeks”.

b. N Italy: Exiled Byzantine scribes were often obscure individuals known onlyfrom the signatures or colophons which they appended to the manuscripts theycopied. One example is Demetrius Trivolis, a native of the Peloponnese, whomade a copy of Homer's Odyssey for Bessarion in Rome in 1469. – Harris, ‘Byz inRenaissance Italy’: http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/late/laterbyz/harris-ren.html.

c. Bessarion publishes (1471) Periculis Imminentibus (‘Of Imminent Perils’), inwhich he warns Italy against coming Turkish expansionism. His fears were well-founded: see 1480.

1469-70:The Aegean: Venetian attack on Enos and New Phocaea; Mehmed II’s fleetconquers Venetian-ruled Euboea.

1472:The 'Grand Prince' of Moscow, Ivan III “the Great”, marries Sophia Palaeologus,the niece of the last Roman/Byzantine emperor (and daughter of Thomas,claimant to the throne of Constantinople). Ivan was the first Russian ruleroccasionally to call himself Tsar or emperor, a term previously reserved for theByzantine ruler. See discussion below under “Greek and Russian Orthodoxy”

1475:Transdanubia: Stephen/Stefan of Moldavia scored a temporary victory over theOttoman Empire at the Battle of Vaslui which was reversed by the next year'sdefeat at Paraul Alb. At Vasliu, supposedly 40,000 Moldovan, Hungarian, andPolish troops commanded by Stefan defeated a Turkish and Wallachian forcenumbering over 100,000 (Charles King, The Moldovans: Romania, Russia, and thepolitics of culture, Hoover Press, 2000 p.15).

1480:1. Unsucessful Ottoman invasion of Rhodes.

2. Italy: In the summer of 1480 an Ottoman fleet of 132 ships and 18,000 men - av.nearly 140 per vessel; ergo many were smaller types - took control of Otranto, on


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the back heel of Italy. From Otranto the Ottomans began making raids deeperinto Italy. The Pope considered fleeing. Cath. Encyc.: “The name of Otranto is linked to the tragic events which tookplace in July 1480, when a fleet of Turkish warships besieged the town. TheTurks’ bold plan was to subdue Italy and France and join forces with theMuslims ruling [a small part of] Spain; but they were caught unawares by theunexpected resistance of the inhabitants of Otranto, who held them at bay for 15days. Eventually the Muslims broke into the town and ordered the Christians toabjure. On their refusal, the Turks breached the cathedral and killed BishopStefano Pendinelli and all the others who had taken refuge within the walls.” The Turks left a garrison in charge of Otranto, but in 1481 a Neapolitan armyof “20,000” besieged them and, to avoid starvation, the garrison surrendered thetown after a fiercely contested siege of four and a half months (Ivy Corfis &Michael Wolfe, The Medieval City Under Siege, Boydell & Brewer, 2000, p.253). See1495.

1481:Ottoman-ruled Thessalonica: The monumental tomb of the grain merchantLoukas Spantounes was manufactured in the workshop of Pietro Lombardo inVenice and erected in the basilica of St. Demetrios in 1481. This work is the lastfunerary monument of the Byzantine aristocracy. —Bazirkis, in Talbot ed., ‘LateByzantine Thessalonike’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 2003; accessed online 2011.

1484: 1. fl. Angelo Poliziano, Florentine humanist, the first scholar toundertake a thorough collation (comparison and analysis of variant copies) of anancient manuscript.

2. Ficino publishes the whole of Plato's dialogues in Latin translation.

Early 1490s: The Florentine ruler Lorenzo de'Medici sends collectors toOttoman-ruled Constantinople in search of ancient Greek texts.

1493: Humanism as anti-medievalism: d. Ermolao Barbaro, Venetianhumanist, a severe critic of the "bad" Latin of Aquinas and AlbertusMagnus. Barbaro of course is forgotten but Rome at least remembersAquinas.

1495:Italy: Kemal Reis (a corsair in the sultan’s employ) set sail from Istanbul andraided the Gulf of Taranto with a force of small force of five galleys, five fustas(smaller ships: up to 50 oars: 2x25 oars*), a barque and a smaller ship.

(*) The fusta or fuste was in essence a small galley -- a narrow, light and fast shipwith shallow draft, powered by both oars and sail. Typically it had 12 to 15 two-man rowing benches on each side, and a single mast with a lateen (triangular)sail.


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THE ‘THIRD ROME’

The Russians, from the conversion of the 'Viking' Prince of Kiev in AD 989,looked to Constantinople as the centre of orthodox Christianity. ‘Russians’: Originally the common people of Ukraine and Russia were mainlyof Finnish stock, the Slavs being at first a minority (see Pipes chapter 2). Theruling caste in Kiev, the Viking 'Rus', followed a Scandinavian-Norman cultureuntil they were slavicised in the period 950-1050.

Threatened by the Turks, the Basileus and the patriarch of New Rome(Constantinople) submitted to the Papacy in 1439 [see there] and agreed to a re-union of the Eastern and Western churches. The Russian hierarchy regarded thisas "an incredible act of treachery", as George Ostrogorsky puts it.Constantinople's 'treachery' caused Kiev and Moscow to begin re-thinking theposition of the 'Greek' emperor as the Favoured One of God. And, 20 years afterthe fall in 1453 of the East Roman capital, the 'Grand Prince' of Moscow, Ivan III“the Great”, married (1472) the niece of the last Roman emperor. Then in a treatywith the town of Pskov in 1473, Ivan III, the Grand-Duke of Moscow, used thetitle of Tsar; the use became more consistent after he freed himself from Tatar(Kipchak) vassalage in 1480.

Tsar was originally used in Russia to refer to the Roman (Byzantine) Emperor; indue course it was also applied to the Kipchak ruler (khan of the Golden Horde)as overlord of the Russians. Its core meaning was a self-determining ruler, i.e.one not subject to any other (Isabel De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, YaleUniversity Press, 2006, pp.49-50). The very first ruler to call himself Tsar was actually a nearer neighbour toByzantium, namely Simeon I, ‘the Great’, of Bulgaria, r. 893-927. Simeon beganhis reign as a mere ‘prince’ (Slavic knyaz) but in or after 913, by force majeure, heassumed or received the title of “emperor” (Gk basileus; Slavic tsar). TheByzantine patriarch (and regent for Byzantium’s boy-emperor) submitted tocrowning Simeon, but he did so in order to avoid war, and it was quite sometime before the Byzantine state could bring itself to recognise Simeon’s self-assumed title of ‘basileus’. The term "Basileus" was not used to refer to theBulgarian ruler until the boy-emperor had grown to manhood and assumed solerule as Constantine VII (945-959) (Steven Runciman, The Emperor RomanosLecapenus and His Reign, 1929; reprinted 1963, p.100; J J Norwich, Byzantium: TheApogee, Penguin edn. 1993, p.147). By Ivan III’s time, however, the Bulgarian Empire - also the Serbian Empireunder the self-proclaimed tsar Stefan Urosh IV Dushan, 1346: see there - hadalready been extinguished by the Ottoman Turks and hence played no role as amodel for the Russian prince.

Grand Prince Ivan III, acc. 1462, established Moscow's independence from the so-called ‘Tatars’, i.e. Kipchaks, by successfully repudiating the payment of tribute(1480). From about 1480 he is designated as "imperator" in his Latincorrespondence; as "keyser" in his correspondence with the Swedish regent; andas "kejser" in his correspondence with the Danish king, the Teutonic Knights and


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the Hansa (Wikipedia, 2011, under “Tsar”). This was his own, aspirational usage:it was not reciprocated until the time of Ivan IV. In 1492, the metropolitan of Moscow, proclaiming the paschal canon for thenew millenium, called Ivan III "the new Constantine" and Moscow "the newConstantinople". On this, see Dimitri Stremooukhoff (1953): 'Moscow the ThirdRome: Sources of the Doctrine', Speculum 28(1):84-101.

The idea of a Third Rome developed quite slowly. It was formulated initially inthe early 1500s by Filofei, a Russian monk, becoming in due course an integralpart of Muscovite political theory (see in Pipes and Obolensky). Pipes argues,however, that Russian absolutism has owed much more to the Mongol (Tartar)model than to the Byzantine example. Specifically the idea crystallised with a panegyric letter composed by theRussian monk Philotheus or Filofey in 1512 to Grand Duke Vasili (Basil) III,which proclaimed: "Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will notbe a fourth. No one will replace your Christian Tsardom!" (Runciman 1965: 178).Contrary to a common misconception, Filofey explicitly identifies Third Romewith Russia the country rather than with Moscow the city (Stremooukhoff p.99). As we have said, the ‘Grand Prince’ Ivan III (d. 1505) had been the firstRussian ruler occasionally to call himself Tsar or emperor, a term previouslyreserved for the Byzantine ruler and the Kipchak khan. It was Ivan IV 'theTerrible', meaning awesome [groznyi, ‘fearsome, severe, forbidding,threatening’], 1533-84, who gave himself the definitive title Tsar vseia Rossii or'Tsar of all the Russias' in 1547. This was nearly a century after the fall of the‘Second Rome’.

Ivan IV created an early Russian empire by conquering the successor states to the GoldenHorde: the Tatar (Turkic) khanates of Kazan (1552: located on the upper Volga Riverwest of Moscow) and Astrakhan (1556: located where the lower Volga River runsinto the Caspian Sea) and in the west by trying, unsuccessfully, to dominate the Polesand Swedes. Reflecting on these achievements – for religious orthodoxy wassupposed to guarantee military success - Moscow finally began to believe it wasindeed the "Third Rome".

Ivan IV Vasilyevich, called The Terrible or better: “awesome”, grand duke ofMoscow 1533-1547 and, from 1547, tsar of Russia (1547-1584), was one of themain creators of the Russian state. Ivan was born in Moscow, the son ofBasil/Vasili III. As we have said, he was the first Russian ruler to be formallycrowned (1547) as tsar, aged 16. Specifically he was proclaimed “God-crownedTsar and sovereign [or ‘autocrat’: Ru. samoderzhets] of all Great Russia” (echoingthe Greek formula basileus kai autokrator, ‘sovereign and emperor’: De Madariaga,loc.cit.). He was crowned thus by metropolitan archbishop Macarius/Makarii ofMoscow, metropolitan from 1542, who apparently cultivated in young Ivan theidea of the ruler as the guardian of the church, as the Byzantine emperor hadbeen (Abbott Gleason, A companion to Russian history, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009p.62). The first 13 years of Ivan's reign constitute one of the greatest periods ofinternal reform, external expansion and centralisation of state power in thehistory of Russia. Ivan convened the first national representative assembly ever


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summoned by a Russian ruler, and initiated an updating of the Russian lawcode. His conquests - Kazan 1552, Astrakhan 1556 - brought within the bordersof Russia the entire Volga River, to the NW of the top of the Caspian Sea. TheRusuains finally came out of the forests onto the steppes. The religious confirmation came a little later, in 1561, or more than a centuryafter the Great City had fallen to the infidel Turks. In that year, after long drawnout negotiations, the Greek Patriarch, writing from Turkish-ruledConstantinople, acclaimed the Muscovite ruler “emperor and master [Tsar' iGosudar'*] of Orthodox Christians in the entire world” (De Madariaga, p.52). It wasnot until 1589, however, 136 years after the fall of Constantinople, that theMetropolitan of Moscow was acknowledged by the patriarch of Constantinopleand the other Eastern archbishoprics as a fellow Patriarch.

(*) Often rendered as “sovereign” or “lord”. It was/is the counterpart ofthe Greek despotes and Latin dominus. It connotes ‘slave-owner’. Pipes pp.21, 48, 65 glosses it as ‘lord, master, outright owner of all men and things’.For, unlike a despotes, there was no law to constrain a gosudar’. . . . (For acontrary view, see Madariaga loc.cit. pp 34 ff: she argues against aliteralist reading of ‘slave-master’ and slave’. And she may have a point:doulos [fem. doule] in Greek literally means ‘slave’ but it was also used in aloose way to denote a free subject or free servant. And cf Luke 1.38: ‘I amthe doule of the Most High’.)

Aftermath, 1453-1910

It is interesting to look at the numbers of Greeks in the provinces of TurkishAnatolia in the final period of the Ottoman Empire. On the eve of the First WorldWar, the five Asian provinces with the largest Turkish populations were: Bursa[NW], Konya [central/SE], Kastamon [north], Trebizond and Ankara. Greekswere not a majority anywhere in Asia Minor (16% of the total), but formed verylarge minorities in the Izmir [Aegean coast], Trebizond, Sivas [NE], Adana [SE:Cilicia] and Konya provinces. Kastamon province had the fewest Greeks. Therewere also relatively large Armenian populations in the provinces of Sivas (wherethey outnumbered Greeks*), Ankara (ditto); Bursa, Izmit and Trebizond*;making up 5.5% overall in Asian Turkey. In Adana province* Armenians werenearly as many as Greeks (Dimitri Pentzopoulos, The Balkan exchange of minoritiesand its impact on Greece. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. 2002pp. 29–30, cited inWikipedia 2011).

(*) Sivas and Trebizond provinces took in the western and northern partsof Old Armenia, while Adana province covered what had once been themedieval region of New or ‘Little’ Armenia in Cilicia.

In the case of Europe, it should be noted that the Slavs were not the only groupsto move into the southern part of the Balkan peninsula in Late Antiquity and theMiddle Ages. Many Albanians came in also, especially in the period 1000-1450.They settled in Athens, Corinth, Mani, Thessaly and even in the Aegean islands.In the early nineteenth century, the population of Athens was 24 percentAlbanian, 32 percent Turkish, and only 44 percent Greek. The village of Marathon,


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scene of the great victory in 490 BC, was, early in the nineteenth century, almostentirely Albanian (John Shea, Macedonia and Greece: The Struggle to Define a Newnation , McFarland 2008, p.88) As for the Vlach minority, the Armãnji or Aromanians, there have been nopopulation statistics collected regarding the Romance-speaking descendants ofancient Latin speakers, since the Greek census of 1951. The censuses of 1935 and1951 recorded 19,703 and 39,855 Vlachs respectively. Greece does not recognisethe presence of a Vlach minority.

APPENDIX oneThe size of Latin and N European field armies

While medieval numbers are a very vexed issue, the point to notice is thatinvading expeditionary armies sent even by large states seem frequently enough tohave numbered fewer than 10,000 men. (The sizes of the armies of the Italiancity-states are impressive precisely because of their small populations andtax–bases, and an indication of how rich they were.)

Italics: over 20,000. Underlined: under 10,000.

Battle Home side Invader, attacker

1314: Bannockburn Perhaps 7,500 Scots (PeteArmstrong, Bannockburn.Botley, Oxford: OspreyPublishing., 2002, p.43.)

At least 13,700 English(Armstrong loc.cit.)

1322: Muhldorf Upper Bavaria: 1,800knights plus mercenaries(Wikipedia): total say3,600?

Duchy of Austria: 1,400knights, Cuman (Turkish)cavalry and mercenaries:total say 4,200?

1346: Crecy: France: 35-38,000(Wikipedia, citing JohnLynn, "Battle: A History ofCombat and Culture".Cambridge, MA:Westview Press, 2003).

England as few as 9,000 or asmany as 16,000 (Wikipedia).

(Black Death 1347-49)

1356: Poitiers France 11,000 including8,000 knights.

England 6,000 including3,000 knights (Wikipedia,citing Jonathan Sumption,2001, Trial by Fire. faber &faber. p.235)


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1367: Najera.

Vilalon & Kagaysay the sources aretoo discrepant toallow a conclusion.

Castile [Henry II] andFrance: Only 4,500 knightsplus some infantry: say13,500?Supposedly “60,000” horseincluding 6,000 knightsand ’40,000’ infantryspearmen (Wikipedia: nosource cited): 100,000 notcredible (Vilalon & Kagay).A midrange estimate is“31,000”.

Castile [Peter] andEngland/Aquitaine: Lowestestimate 7,000 (cited inVilalon & Kagay); possibly28,000 including 14,000knights (Wikipedia); 30,000(Froissart).

1387: Castagnaro,SE of Verona.Earliest example ofthe use of cannon infield warfare in Italy.

Verona: under 15,000,namely 9,000 horse, 2,600crossbowmen and severalthousand other infantry(Paduan chronicler, citedby Caferro).

Padua: 8,600, namely 7,000knights, 1,000 infantry and600 English foot-archers(Nicolle p.24).

1402 : Casalecchio,near Bologna

Bologna, Florence andallies: n.a.

Milan and allies: vanguard of2,000 cavalry, so totalperhaps 8,000?

1410: Grunwald:said to be one of thelargest battles of theera.

Teutonic Order: 11,000(Razin), 27,000 (Kuczynski)

Poland, Lithuania and allies:just 16,000 (Razin), or 39,000men? (Kuczynski).

1415: Agincourt France 12,000 (Curry), 12-15,000 (Schnerb, alsoMortimer), 32,000 (Barker).

England: 6,000 of whom only900 knights (Barker), 8,100(Mortimer), 9,000 (Curry)

Caffero, Hawkwood 2006David Nicolle, Italian Medieval Armies, Osprey 1983.L. J. Andrew Villalon & Donald Kagay, The Hundred Years War: a wider focus, Brill2005.

APPENDIX 2

The Byzantine Reconquest of Crete in AD 911

The purpose of this appendix is to show how small the Italian and Aegean naviesof the 14th and 15th centuries were compared to that of the Empire in the 10th C.


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“Some estimate may be formed (writes Gibbon) of the power of the Greekemperors, by the curious and minute detail of the armament which was preparedfor the reduction of Crete [in 911]. A fleet of 112 galleys (“dromons”), and 75vessels [total 187] of the Pamphylian style, was equipped in the capital, theislands of the Aegean Sea, and the seaports of Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. Itcarried 34,000 mariners [oarsmen], 7,340 soldiers, 700 Russians, and 5,087Mardaites [marines]*, whose fathers [i.e. ancestors] had been transplanted fromthe mountains of Libanus [S Syria and Lebanon]” (Decline and Fall, citing Const.Porphy. De Cerem.: Constantine VII's "Ceremony Book"). Total of non-oarsmen:13,127 fighters. Cf below: Whittrow and Haldon say 17,000+.

(*) Mardaïtes (marda+ites): Descendants of Christian refugees from Syria;first settled in the Aegean naval themes in the 680s.

Ships: 112 + 75 = 187 vessels, or an average of some 240 men per vessel (rowersand troops). Or, if we spread the number of troops evenly, then the result is 34soldiers per vessel (or 90+ if there were 17,000+ troops).

Of the ‘197’ (or 187 or 180 or 119)* major ships in the Romaniyan expeditionaryfleet, most were drawn from the central or Imperial fleet, with lesser numbersfrom the themes [provinces] of Hellas; Samos/Aegean; and the Cibyrrhaeots ofAsia Minor.

(*) Treadgold, State p.470, says 119 ships; Constantine says 187, namely 75 elitechelandia pamphyloi and 112 other dromons: text in Pryor & Jeffreys p.550. – Giventhe number of rowers and marines, the higher figure of 197 given by Heathshould perhaps be preferred.

Ship Numbers

In the Cretan expedition of 911, the contingents of the fleets were as followsaccording to Gibbon’s Decline, vol 9, p. 354. The figures in square brackets arefrom Heath, Dark Ages, 1976.

The Central Fleet:100 [or 102] ships from the central or Imperial Fleet - 40 elite* pamphylians and60 other dromonds [sic].

(*) This distinction follows Pryor & Jeffreys, who argue that ‘pamphylians’were vessels crewed by picked mariners rather than being a distinct shiptype or design.

Provincial Fleets:(a) 31 from the Cibyrrh. Theme [SW Asia Minor]: 16 elite pamphylians and 15other dromons. Oarsmen and marines: 6,760 men, average 218 per ship. Cf ships’ complements in the Thematic fleets in 929: 108-110 men perOusakios; 120-150 per Pamphylos; and 220 officers and oarsmen per largeDromon (Heath 1976: 13). Average: 164, not including marines.


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(b) 22 from the Samos Theme: 12 pamphylians and 10 other dromonds. Oarsmen and marines: 5,690 or average 259 men per vessel, so nearly all musthave been bigger ships (e.g. 200 rowers, 40 marines and 19 others).

(c)17 from the Aegean Theme: 7 pamphylians and 10 other dromonds. Oarsmen and marines: 3,100 or average 182 per ship, so possibly none was ofthe largest type. Subtotal 35 and 35 [vs Heath’s 33 and 42].

(d) 10 from the Helladic Theme: 10 dromonds [Heath: 10 ships]. All were thelarger type of dromon, i.e. with 230 oarsmen/naval crew and 70 marines each(text of Constantine in Pryor & Jeffreys p.550).

Grand total 180 ships [Heath says “197”], i.e. 75 pamphylians and 105 otherdromonds, Or according to Toynbee, 1973, p. 33, 33 larger and 42 smaller typepamphyla; and 102 other dromons: total “177”. As noted, Constantine himselfsays “187” in all.

There is no actual reference to specialist horse-transport ships, but there ismention of large amounts of barley and also skalai, which no doubt meantgangways or boarding ramps. Leo says “he [Nicephorus] had brought rampswith him [to Crete] on the transport ships and thus transferred the army, fullyarmed and mounted, from the seas to dry land” (Leo Diaconus. I:3; also Pryor &Jeffreys Dromon p.306). - See below for a discussion of what may be deducedfrom the amount of barley; it is possible that Constantine’s “187” meant onlywarships and that there were further ships dedicated to transporting horses.

Mariners, Marines and Soldiers

The estimates for the number of fighting men, or at least the number of specialistfighters - marines and embarked soldiers - vary from about 6,000 (Treadgold) toover 17,000 (Whittow and Haldon). These scholars assume, which is by no meanscertain, that the rowers did not fight, or at least not on this expedition. It is statedexplicitly, at least for the later expedition of AD 949, that many or even most ofthe rowers were armed to fight: see Pryor & Jeffreys Dromon p.261.

i. Of the “42,774” men on the 911 expedition, “36,837” or 86% were rowers,according to Treadgold. The embarked fighting men or specialist fighters mayhave numbered only about 5,937 (sic: Treadgold, Army p.190, note 11).

ii. Heath 1976: 13, following Gibbon, offers these figures: 34,000 rowers; ‘7,340’land troops; 5,087 ‘Mardaites of the West’ [marines]; and 700 Rus mercenaries.These are the actual numbers recorded by Constantine himself: text in Pryor &Jeffreys, Dromon p.550. Adding the last three we have 13,127 fighting men. CfWhittow’s figures, below.


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iii. Haldon says “just over 17,000 (excluding oarsmen)” in his Byzantium at War1997, excerpted athttp://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/haldon1.htm. “Irrespective of what one makes of Treadgold’s aggregate statistics andprojections, one should remember that for an imperial field-army of the middle-Byzantine period to have consisted of 25-30,000 troops was exceptional, and evenwhen on campaign against strategically vital targets such as Crete in 911 or 949,the [fighting] forces deployed could be considerably smaller” (Haldon 1997).

iv. Mark Whittow, The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025, University of CaliforniaPress 1996, p.185 presents the figures thus:

1. Marines:

Mardaïtes (from thePeloponnesus andCephalonia)

5,087

Imperial fleet, marines 4,200

Kibyrrhotai fleet [southern AsiaMinor]

1,190

Russians (Imperial fleet) 700

Samos flotilla 700

Hellas flotilla 700

[North] Aegean flotilla 490

Subtotal 13,067

13,067 / 70 = 187. This figure nicelytallies with the “187” ships said to havesailed, “70” being a standardcomplement of marines.

2. Land troops:

Tagmata (Constantinople andenvirons)

1,037

Thrakesian Theme [west AsiaMinor]

1,000

Sebasteis Theme (Armenians) 1,000

Armenians from Palation (in theAnatolikon:central AsaiMinor)

500

Armenians from Priene (in theThrakesion)

500

Sub-total 4,037


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Grand-total 17,104

The amount of horse-feed carried would have fed as many as 10,000 cavalrymounts for about two weeks, but in all probability the number of horses takenwas more like 5,000 (say Pryor & Jeffreys, Dromon p.306). This figure seems high,noting that in the later expedition of 949 the cavalry mounts numbered only afew more than 2,000 animals. Moreover 5,000 horses translates as 27 animals pership on average. And we know that medieval specialist horse-transport shipsordinarily carried fewer than 30 horses each (Gardiner 2004: 115). If the expedition really had that many horses, then it was very severelyovercrowded, each ship also having to accommodate on average about 230humans (using Treadgold’s figures). Of course Constantine’s “187” vessels mayhave meant only the warships; the several thousand horses could well have beentransported in a further 100+ civilian galleys. The latter seems more likely, giventhat the expedition of 949 comprised “3,308” vessels of all sizes, includingtroopships, horse-transporters and supply boats.

[text ends]

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the last years of byzantium and the rise of the ottomans

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