The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire; a history of the Osmanlis up to the death of Bayezid I (1300-1403)Gibbons, Herbert Adams
History
The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire; a history of the Osmanlis up to the death of Bayezid I (1300-1403)
Gibbons, Herbert Adams
Turkey -- History -- 1288-1453
Kastamuni, practically coterminous with the Roman province of
Paphlagonia, stood between the Ottoman possessions and the Black Sea. In
the campaign of 1393, Samsun and the cities of the interior between
Samsun and Angora, were captured by the Osmanlis. When the Ottoman army
advanced to attack Kastamuni, Bayezid offered to allow the emir to
become his vassal, if he would surrender to him the emirs of Sarukhan
and Menteshe. Whether the lesser Bayezid was unwilling to violate the
laws of hospitality, or put little faith in the promises of the
conqueror after the fate which had overtaken the emir of Aïdin, it is
impossible to say. He and his guests fled to the court of Timur. The
occupation of Sinope gave the Osmanlis an excellent port on the south
coast of the Black Sea.
Bayezid was now master of the greater part of Anatolia, but master only
in name. He had not assimilated these conquests. As later events proved,
the inhabitants of these territories were still loyal to their former
rulers.
IV
After his return from the first Anatolian campaign, Bayezid ordered a
general advance along the northern and north-western frontiers. One band
invaded Bosnia, but did not make much headway. Three bands entered
Hungary, and initiated the system of rapid raiding that in time reached
as far as Germany, and made the ‘Turks’ the nightmare of Slavic,
Teutonic, and Italian Europe. The first battle on Hungarian soil was
fought at Nagy-Olosz, in Syrmia, not far from Karlovitz, where three
centuries later the Osmanlis signed the death-warrant of their
_Weltpolitik_.
The Danube was crossed also near Silistria. Before the terrible
akindjis could penetrate far into his country, the hospodar Mircea
surrendered, or was made prisoner. After a short exile at Brusa, he
regained his liberty by consenting to the payment of a tribute of three
thousand ducats, thirty horses, and twenty falcons.[460] He agreed to
help Bayezid against the Hungarians, who had long been asserting a
sovereignty over Wallachia, and in return Bayezid promised to settle no
Moslems and build no mosques north of the Danube. In the first Hungarian
invasion, Bayezid received more valuable aid from the Wallachians than
from his janissaries. There were no better fighters in the Balkan
peninsula than these descendants of the soldiers of Trajan. The
interference of Sigismund prevented an Ottoman invasion of Moldavia,
whose hospodars remained altogether independent of the Osmanlis until
the reign of Mohammed the Conqueror.[461]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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