Reimagining Constantinople, War with Serbia & Siege of Novo Brdo: Episode 27

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[00:01:24] In Episodes 26 Parts 1 and 2 we talked about the strategic consequences after the conquest of Constantinople for both the Ottomans and Europeans. Now we're going back in time to July 1453. Sultan Mehmed II is set up in the dilapidated old imperial palace,

[00:01:48] home of the past Byzantine emperors for centuries. Outside of this ancient abode, the troops were being brought back into order. The spoils of war were assembled in the roadways and were carefully weighed and there was an entire military unit in the Ottoman army

[00:02:06] detailing the loot and guarding it, and then selling it and giving a cut to the individual soldier responsible for procuring it. Before the Turkish families who had supported Mehmed during the siege, they were able to move into the more prominent sectors of the ancient city.

[00:02:24] Neighborhoods that would be later turned into powerhouses propping up the Ottoman regime in the coming decades and then these same centers that once supported the Ottoman sultans would become spots of rebellions in the 1800s. After dispatching with the old guard,

[00:02:43] finally, which you can listen to in Episode 26 Part 1, which was kicked off with the execution of Kandarli Halia Pasha, Mehmed then turned his attention to the remaining relatives of the late Byzantine emperor Constantine XI. The dead emperor had two nephews, age 14 and 17,

[00:03:07] and these kids had fallen into Ottoman hands. After sizing the boys up, Mehmed mercifully decided that they didn't constitute a threat to himself. Instead, he decided to give the young men an option. They could simply leave and mooch off of relatives in the goodwill in western

[00:03:27] Europe for the rest of their lives, or they could embrace this new world, convert to Islam, and then serve the Ottoman Empire. In a rare display of mercy, foresight, and prudence, Sultan Mehmed allowed the two sole remaining male relatives of the last Roman imperial dynasty

[00:03:49] to go and enter Ottoman imperial service. The boys would go on to enter the elite palace schools in Edrine, Embersha, where they would become proficient in Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Latin. They learned advanced mathematics and military tactics. They would go on to serve the Ottomans

[00:04:10] for the rest of their lives, both of them ascending to the high ranks of admiral and general respectively. Next up on the plate, Sultan Mehmed summoned a Byzantine nobleman named Grand Duke Norta. I haven't said much about this figure, but let's suffice it to say,

[00:04:30] any podcast dealing in depth with the Byzantines would probably have tons of stuff to say. The Duke had been in near constant contact with Haaliy during the siege, and he had been in correspondence with Haaliy in 1451 when negotiations between the

[00:04:49] Byzantines and Ottoman were kicking on. Once more, Mehmed was a man who admired loyalty, almost as much as he demanded competency from those around him. These two factors wouldn't bode very well for the fate of the Grand Duke. The Duke, according to the story,

[00:05:11] held back money from his emperor when Constantine most needed it to pay the soldiers defending the city, and also contributed very little, save a little defense of the sea wall during the actual

[00:05:24] siege. In short, Mehmed viewed the Duke as a treacherous fellow. It should be noted as well that the Grand Duke Norta is famous in history nerd circles for saying that he would rather see

[00:05:39] a Turkish turban in the midst of Constantinople than the Pope's hat, yikes. This saying which may or may not have been Nortara really sums up the fact he was working against Constantine when the Byzantine emperor was willing to negotiate with the West over religious matters in order

[00:05:58] to secure military aid. At any rate, Mehmed saw the Duke as a greedy treacherous man who simply had no place in his new empire, so the Duke was executed at some point in June of 1453. Now that we've spilled some blood and spared others the sword, let's see exactly

[00:06:21] what Mehmed had in store for his new city. But first, let's address the naming issue. No, the Ottomans didn't change the name from Constantinople to Istanbul. That won't happen until the 28th of March 1930. From 1453 to 1930, the Ottomans referred to their city

[00:06:44] exactly as they had before. A Turkified version of this old Roman name, Constantini. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to keep the old Roman name Constantinople. For one, it just feels like the Ottoman Empire to me. Most of my references I'm reading still refer to it as

[00:07:04] Constantinople, and I happen to like it. So Sultan Mehmed would work for the rest of his reign, and really this would be a project not completed until under his grandson Selim I, of transforming the landscape and architecture into his new imperial capital.

[00:07:26] Here are two key takeaways I'd like to cover. At first, the city was extremely depopulated. After the soldiers looted for three days, they also made slaves of many of us inhabitants. This meant Mehmed was limited in the human

[00:07:43] capital he had to work with at the moment. He needed the Greeks for their expertise in languages, math, their extensive knowledge of engineering, and general knowledge of the trade routes. So he ransomed, personally, several Greeks taken as slaves from his own troops. After

[00:08:02] compensating his troops for their loss, he then absorbed these Greeks into his own household apparatus to make the best use of their technical expertise. He also went on to forcibly resettle Turks from the interior of Anatolia. They would come by their hundreds of thousands over the

[00:08:22] course of his reign. This demonstrated the vastly increased power of the Office of Sultanate, and also the willingness of the great families of Anatolia to move to the Ottoman capital and begin setting down routes. Mehmed also sent word out all across this empire,

[00:08:42] and even to the Christians, and he invited any and all able-bodied man, woman, and child who wanted a new beginning. No questions would be asked and no conversion to Islam required. This would lead to a net positive growth in the city's population on up till the 19th century.

[00:09:03] Second, he started an ambitious building project. Edrine, the former capital, was about 100 miles away, and was within two or four days of marching away from the hostile Christian powers. As such, the government buildings around Edrine weren't exactly made of stone and mortar,

[00:09:26] and these structures were designed to be abandoned quickly, should the Ottomans have to run for the hills if Hanyadi decided to show up with his angry Wallachian mountain men in battle wagons. As the empire grew, so too the need for an extensive bureaucracy to control

[00:09:44] and administer it. The tents and wooden houses weren't cutting it in Edrine. So, in his new imperial capital, Mehmed had whole streets and tombs leveled to make way for administrative buildings and centers of government, the most important of which was his future Topeki Palace. Not wanting

[00:10:07] to stand under the long shadows of the Byzantine Empire, Mehmed ordered a new palace to be built for all future Ottoman sultans. Unlike previous sultans such as his dad, Marad II,

[00:10:21] Mehmed made no bones about the fact that he was not one of the guys. I've alluded to this new attitude in Mehmed the Forgotten Years episode, but already predisposed to be an aloof, especially after the conquest, and with these pesky prophecies floating around about Mehmed's opposed divinity,

[00:10:45] Mehmed wanted to take and exploit these factors and shroud the office of the sultanate around religious mystery, crushing power, and fear. The design, intention, and architecture of the Topeki Palace would reflect the political philosophy of Mehmed and the new reality of his Ottoman Empire.

[00:11:11] First, he demanded practicality. Most European and Middle Eastern palaces and government centers were haphazard affairs with barely any rational thought to functionality. Either that or they were so heavily fortified, the defenses hindered the easy free-flowing movement of people and politics

[00:11:34] that was so necessary for a government to run smoothly. This practical nature of the Ottomans is a feature which worked its way in to every single level of their governance. This was most typified by the first walled section of the Topeki Palace.

[00:11:53] This was a section dedicated for the commoners and merchants, money changers, lenders, traders, and travelers. Only the most exclusive merchants would be allowed to sell their wares here. The rich families from Anatolia would gather in this section where they

[00:12:11] would negotiate marriages, drink Turkish coffee, and engage in some good old-fashioned horse trading. The gates to the first section would open at sunrise and close at the blow of a horn by the end of the day. The second section of Topeki was for the middle-ranking government officials.

[00:12:29] A few suits were dedicated for them to live in and conduct business. This area would contain a few guard houses for the Janissaries, pump houses, quarters for slaves and servants, and a very few choice for an invoice.

[00:12:47] The third and final portion of the palace was reserved for the Sultan himself, his harem, and imperial treasury. It was here the Sultan would converse with his Grand Vizier, Aga of the Janissaries, Khadi of their religious judges, and nobody else saved his mother.

[00:13:08] Surmounted by turrets, Janissaries, Black units from Africa, only storms rolling in from the Black Sea disturbed the inner tranquility of this sanctum. This is where the term sublime portée originated. A French diplomat noted the high tower and a

[00:13:28] shorthanded version of the section of Topeki as portée, and because of the mystique surrounding the office of Sultanate, sublime was added later. Thus we have a version of the Ottoman government which encapsulates the exclusive governing body of the Ottoman Empire with the

[00:13:49] Sultan at his head. His Aga of the Janissaries, the Grand Vizier, heads of the military, administrators, and visiting governors would all meet in a small council called the Davin. In front of this meeting room of the Davin was erected an elaborately decorated veil.

[00:14:11] Behind this veil would sit the Sultan listening in on their conversations and deliberations, or maybe not. They could never be quite sure. Isolation were the features of government in the new empire. Even the garden within the

[00:14:29] sanctum of Topeki where the Sultan strode in the morning sunlight was arraigned so narrowly nobody could walk alongside him. Which was a far cry from the marcher lords of Osman's day. From now on the Sultan would be distant, solitary, and surrounded by an air thick with incense

[00:14:52] and appearing before the populace only by carefully choreographed events on religious holidays. In addition to Khan of the Turks and Lord of the Balkans, Sultan Mehmed added Caesar of the Roman Empire to his growing titles. Most of Europe and in fact none of them recognized this new title.

[00:15:14] The only non-Muslim of note to recognize it was the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Speaking of which, the Greek Orthodox were about to experience a boom of sorts for the next 150 years. Many Greeks would be taken into Ottoman service,

[00:15:34] not required to convert for their expertise in languages and money. The Orthodox Church itself would be consolidated under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarch, making the office the second greatest landholder in the Ottoman Empire next to the Sultan himself.

[00:15:54] Like I said earlier, this all wouldn't happen at one time. It would take the rest of his reign to see these buildings and political goals come to fruition. Because even months after the conquest of Constantinople, trouble was brewing for the Ottomans. For one thing,

[00:16:13] the Hungarians had finally settled their civil wars and Hunyadi stepped aside as Regent of Hungary in favor of a new king. Now, Hunyadi was freed up to engage in his favorite pastime, fighting the Ottoman Empire. There was a flurry of diplomatic exchanges taking place

[00:16:34] and cloaking dagger stuff going on between the Ottoman court and out of their neighbor, the Serbians, and especially the Serbian ruler, the despot of Serbia, Duren Brankovic. Duren Brankovic was the father of Sultan Mehmed's stepmother, the princess Mara.

[00:16:56] Mara, as you recall, played a hand in the resignation of Marad in favor of Mehmed. Her plot wouldn't work out too well and Marad would return again, but she still had close ties with

[00:17:09] both the Ottoman and Serbian courts. For the Ottomans, the most important thing was to shore up their strategic position in the Balkans. This would mean pacifying or keeping neutral the powers of Wallachia and Serbia. Both countries could, and had in the past, been used as launch pads for

[00:17:31] invasions by the Christians. And Mehmed was having reasons to worry about Serbia. His stepmom reported that her dad was in talks with Hanyadi about ridding the Ottoman yoke, which had been around Serbia since the late 1300s. Duren Brankovic could honestly have an entire podcast dedicated to

[00:17:55] Helman as times. The man was 80 years old when he died, a virtual archon of ancient history in those days. Growing up he had witnessed first hand, and I'm not making this up, he saw these

[00:18:09] events. The Battle of Ankara, when Bayezid was defeated by Timur, the Crusade of Varna, the punitive campaign of Hanyadi's invasion of Ottoman Bulgaria, and the second battle of the Blackbirds in Kosovo. He was at times friends with, then enemies with, all of his neighbors,

[00:18:29] the Albanians, Wallachians, and Hungarians. He had a love-hate relationship with Hanyadi, and he had been captured and imprisoned by Hanyadi on more than one occasion. Talk about the craziness of Balkan politics. Throughout all of this, he had fought with the Ottomans, made peace with the

[00:18:49] Ottomans, and he would march what was left of free Serbia along a middle road between Hungary and the Ottomans. However, with Hungary now having settled their civil war at Hanyadi back in the saddle, Brankovic was starting to feel after the conquest of Constantinople that his middle

[00:19:10] of the road approach simply wasn't going to work anymore. Sultan Mahmed sent his envoys up from the new Ottoman capital in late 1453. The envoys contained a message from the new Lord of the Horizons, and they demanded three things from the Serbian despot. First, that Mahmed be

[00:19:32] recognized as Caesar of the Romans by Brankovic, and to celebrate his new ascension, Mahmed demanded a Serbian princess to marry. The envoys made plain as well that this union unlike the political marriage between Murad II and Princess Mara, which was strictly platonic,

[00:19:53] so as not to offend the prudish and virtuous Christians, this marriage to Mahmed was to produce children. No question about it. Second, the Sultan demanded an increase in both the Dürf Shirmay boy tribute, in addition to a drastic increase in the gold tithe mandated in their past

[00:20:14] treaties. Third, the new emperor demanded that the fortresses along the Ottoman and Serbian border be evacuated and replaced by an Ottoman garrison. To all of this, Duran Brankovic must blink silently as the envoys passed on the message. So he sent word back to

[00:20:37] Hanyadi that Serbia would be willing to formally join any new alliance against the Ottomans. Past Serbian policy had kept the country away from both the brunt of the Hungarian and Ottoman war machines, but with this new demand from Mahmed, Brankovic realized at the

[00:20:56] times were changing. The Serbian response reached Sultan Mahmed in September of 1453. The Serbian despots answer must have gone something like this. Wait a minute, Roman emperor? Come on, Mahmed, really get over yourself. And that request for boy tributes in gold? Well, you can f off. Princess, no, sorry,

[00:21:22] we're not going to do that. And as for those fortresses, not only am I denying the request that they be evacuated, I am reinforcing every single fortress with troops, money, and supplies. Upon hearing this news, Mahmed publicly berated the Serbian envoys. He then put word out to

[00:21:43] his governors and postures to muster what forces of his military he could. Right now, his biggest problem was going to be paying any military expeditionary force. He had debased the coinage in order to pay for his conquest of Constantinople.

[00:22:01] And because he had ransomed so many Greek slaves after the city's fall, his personal treasury was almost empty. And let's remember what happened last time Mahmed attempted to debase the coinage. Remember what happened the Janissaries had revolted?

[00:22:20] Word reached Mahmed that the best he could probably muster was going to be 50,000 men if he decided to march out right now. And those men weren't going to be ready until the middle of 1454 at best. This meant that facing a shortage in coins and slow mobilization,

[00:22:42] he wasn't going to really be able to pay the Serbians a visit until the spring of 1455 when he could get more men. At this point every side was mobilizing for war, evacuating the peasants, stocking up their fortresses, and saying prayers to whatever God they worshipped.

[00:23:03] Things are about to get really, really bad for the common folk on the Balkans, because what history calls the Ottoman Balkan Wars is about to get kicked off in April of 1455. In April, Mahmed's army mustered outside of Edrine, the new logistical stopping off point

[00:23:23] for the invasion of Europe, with an army of about 70,000. This would be far short of his general's estimation for a need of 150,000 if he was going to take on Serbia. But it was the best

[00:23:39] man that could do in the moment. He marched out from Edrine at the head of his Janissaries, special units, Akinchi, Saprahi horsemen and azams. In the middle of this vast train of men and animals were his fear giant cannons. Sultan Mehmed made a beeline straight for the

[00:23:59] Serbian city of Novobroto. Remember how I said he had been forced to debase the coinage? Well, his little ruse had worked for the short term. Although he had to bribe a lot of the officials

[00:24:13] to keep quiet as well as a few Janissary officers. In the assisting Janissary officials and officers who spoke out, well, he knew that he couldn't just execute them. Although the Ottomans didn't understand the wheels of inflation like we do today, they had a basic sense that,

[00:24:32] hey, if you just print out a bunch of money, then well, bad stuff is going to happen. So Mehmed meant to march straight to Novobroto. The city was the single greatest source of gold and silver mines in all of Eastern Europe. A Venetian ambassador to Serbia,

[00:24:52] estimated that the Serbian despot, Duran Brankovic, could count on 100,000 gold ducats each year, which was almost the equivalent to the amount of money the entire Holy Roman Empire made in a single year. If Mehmed was successful in taking the city and if he was going to get

[00:25:12] all the gold, he had to make sure that it was taken as intact as possible with its many quadres of expert miners safe and unharmed. Then the problem of paying his army and generally funding

[00:25:26] his empire would be solved. Taking Novobroto was no easy task, however. Brankovic had invested the city's central fortress, called the Castle of Sofia. Over the past two decades with weapons, expert castle defense mercenaries from all over Europe, supplies, and the best engineers had

[00:25:48] shored up his walls, all with an eye to offsetting the Ottoman's advantage in artillery. Arriving in May of 1455, Sultan Mehmed stopped outside the fortress, and he desperately behind the scenes tried to negotiate the fortress's surrender. He offered extremely generous terms, and practically begged the representatives to

[00:26:15] hey, can you guys just surrender? However, the defenders refused. Next would come a terrible and costly 41 day siege. Mehmed's cannons slowly whittled away the central turrets, and after a direct assault by Azab supported by Janissaries, the Ottomans finally broke through

[00:26:37] the defenses. The fighting however would continue for another day inside the fortress, as men, women, and children fought bitterly. After the siege, Mehmed, against his own wishes and desires, to preserve the prize expert miners, was forced to bend to the will of his troops,

[00:27:00] as they went off the leash for the Islamic customary three days of pillage, looting, and rape. He could only look on helplessly as Europe's top mining technical experts, not also in mining, but in watering, bridging, and smelting precious metals were either murdered, enslaved, or

[00:27:21] disabled by his rapacious and angry vengeful troops. All the men above the ages of 20, by the end of it, were murdered or enslaved. All 700 or so women of the fortress had been enslaved as well,

[00:27:37] and were unfortunately destined to endure the hell of the Arabic sex slave markets that awaited them. The only silver lining was Mehmed managed to get his hands on all the young men age 19 and below. It's worth noting right here that one such young lad was the legendary Constantine

[00:27:59] Milovilevich. Aspire young youth age 17, he was captured. The young men was one of the expert miners Brankovic was forced to send aid to Mehmed during the siege of Constantinople back in 1453. Constantine would go on to serve the Ottomans as a military auxiliary

[00:28:21] attached to a Janissary Orta. For the next 10 years or so he would serve the Ottomans and witness some of history's most bitter fighting. Along the way he became acquainted with Poshas, interacted with Sultan Mehmed, and he had tons of insights into the life,

[00:28:40] training, and practices of the Janissaries. He would end up being recaptured by Hungarian forces later in life where he would reconvert Christianity and he would go on to write a book entitled

[00:28:55] Memoirs of a Janissary. And this is a primary source material I am currently using and I might donate it to the show by a generous listener. To work on the Ottoman Empire podcast Patreon only

[00:29:11] episode series on the Janissaries that I'm writing. Although the book says Constantine was a Janissary, after reading it I found Constantine never explicitly states he was a member of the venerable Okaq Korh anywhere in the book. Plus he was put into action for the Ottomans almost

[00:29:32] immediately upon capture. Instead of being sent back to Edrine to one of the palace schools or training barracks, nor did he ever work the fields in Anatolia like a would-be Janissary. Janissary training would last for years and so I think it was most likely he was attached to

[00:29:52] an Orta as a laborer and an assistant. At any rate after the fall of Novoborod, it didn't bring Mehmed the Golden Riches he so desperately needed in the moment. The death and enslavement of these expert miners meant he'd have to forcibly resettle fresh bodies

[00:30:13] who would have to learn the fine craft of mining by trial and error. A process costing time and lives the Empire simply didn't have. We will get more into Sultana Mehmed's campaigns and to the Balkans next time. Thank you so much for listening

[00:30:42] and I'd like to thank each and every single person who listens to the show. Your support means more to me than you'll ever know. Thank you.