The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire; a history of the Osmanlis up to the death of Bayezid I (1300-1403) by Herbert Adams Gibbons

Author:Herbert Adams Gibbons [Gibbons, Herbert Adams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780714619842
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2004-11-11T00:00:00+00:00

XIX

After Angora the Ottoman army could have been annihilated; for Timur sent his victorious Tartars hot upon the heels of the refugees. Not only did they follow Soleiman to the Sea of Marmora, and the divisions which had retreated to the Bosphorus, but they pursued closely the main body of the army, which, to the number of possibly forty thousand, had fled along the customary line of march to the Dardanelles.[651] There Greeks and Latins vied in helping the refugees to cross.[652] A Venetian eye-witness of the crossing of the Bosphorus wrote that the Venetians in good faith offered to join with the Genoese in refusing to transport the Osmanlis who were crowded upon the Asiatic shore. But the Genoese started secretly to ferry them over to Europe, with the aid of the Greeks. Then the Venetians, fearing to lose favour with the Osmanlis, started in to help.[653] This testimony is corroborated by Clavijo, who visited Constantinople in the following year. He adds that Timur was disgusted with the way the Greeks and Latins failed to co-operate with him in destroying the Ottoman army.[654]

The astonishing fact is then clearly demonstrated that Greeks, Venetians, and Genoese made no effort to take advantage of their great opportunity. Nor did they, during the ten years of civil war that followed the death of Bayezid, make any move, in concert or separately, to drive the Osmanlis out of Europe. When it was not yet certain what Timur would do in regard to Asia Minor, or even whether he would invade Europe,[655] the Venetians and Genoese established with Soleiman at Adrianople the same friendly relations that they had been so careful to maintain with his father, and fought each other in the Bosphorus. Pope Boniface was straining every nerve to help Ladislas of Sicily to win the crown of Hungary against Sigismund,[656] who, alone of the princes of Europe, had his hands been free, might have contested the Balkan peninsula with the warring factions of the Osmanlis.

The decade of civil war among the sons of Bayezid passed without interference from the outside world, and without a single uprising on the part of the subjugated Balkan Christians. The house of Osman, although divided against itself, did stand. In 1413, Mohammed I, triumphing over his brothers, became sole sovereign of the Osmanlis. The crisis was over, and the career of conquest, interrupted for the moment by Timur, was resumed.

Nicopolis had proved that the Osmanlis could hold against Europe what they had won. Angora had proved that they were too firmly rooted in the Balkan peninsula and in north-western Asia Minor, as an indigenous race and as a nation, to be destroyed by the misfortunes of their dynasty. Since the test of possession is ability to hold, in foul weather as well as in fair, who can deny that the Osmanlis under Bayezid had inherited the Byzantine Empire?

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