Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (71 page)

Laetentur Coeli
were condemned as outcasts and traitors to the Faith, castigated throughout the capital and in several cases physically attacked - to the point where in
1441
a large number of them issued a public manifesto, regretting that they had ever put their names to the decree and formally retracting their support for it.

Such general revulsion could not but have a dangerous effect on the Emperor's own position. In the summer of
1442
his ever-ambitious brother Demetrius - who had accompanied him to Florence but had left early, together with George Scholarius and Plethon, and returned his minor Despotate at Mesembria - tried to seize the throne for himself in the name of Orthodoxy. Despite assistance from the Turks, he was quickly captured and put under house arrest; but his attempted
coup
was only a symptom of a greater dissatisfaction, which continued to grow -
especially after the return to Constantinople of the Metropolitan of Ephesus the following year. Mark Eugenicus proved a far more dangerous opponent than Demetrius. In other circumstances he might have been dismissed as an incorrigible reactionary, but now he stood out as the most fearless and determined champion of the Faith. After all the practice that he had gained in Ferrara and Florence, he was a superb debater; and such was the genuine piety and the blamelessness of his life that there could be no question of trumping up charges against him and sending him into exile.

True, there were other distinguished pro-unionists who might have given John their support; but Bessarion of Nicaea, who had been converted to Catholicism in
1439
and
almost immediately made a cardinal, had left Constantinople in disgust within a few months of his return and taken the first available ship back to Italy, never again to set foot on Byzantine soil.
1
His friend Isidore of Kiev, who had also been admitted to the Cardinalate, was less lucky: on his return to Moscow he was deposed and arrested - though later he too managed to escape to Italy and, as we shall see, was back in Constantinople soon afterwards as a papal representative. As for George Scholarius, that distinguished Latin scholar, he was to reveal feet of clay; before long he too renounced the
Laetentur Coeli
and retired to a monastery. After the death of Mark Eugenicus in
1444
he was to become the generally accepted leader of the anti-unionists.

1
In Rome Bessarion was to found an academy for the translation and publication of ancient Greek authors. By his death in
1472
he had amassed an important library of Greek manuscripts, all of which he left to Venice - where they became the nucleus of the Biblioteca Marciana.

The papal nuncio in Constantinople naturally kept his master fully informed of these developments, for which he tended to hold the Emperor responsible. Pope Eugenius, however, chose at least temporarily to overlook them. Church union now existed, at least on paper; and it was now incumbent on him to raise a Crusade against Byzantium's enemies. Were he to refuse to do so on the grounds of spiritual insubordination, he would not only be going back on his word to the Emperor; he would be proclaiming to all that the Council of Florence had been a failure, the
Laetentur Coeli
worthless. Besides, the Crusade was becoming more obviously necessary every day; for the Ottoman
advance was relentl
ess. Smederevo, the great Danubian fortress built by George Brankovich in
1420
some twenty-five miles south-east of Belgrade,
1
had surrendered in
1439
after a three-month siege; Brankovich himself had sought refuge in Hungary. Though Belgrade itself still held out, virtually all the rest of northern Serbia was under Turkish control. In
1441
the Sultan's army crossed into Transylvania; there could be no doubt that Hungary would be next.

It was thus the Hungarians - together with the Serbs under George Brankovich - who formed the bulk of the Pope's Crusade, the Hungarian King Ladislas (also King of Poland, the two Kingdoms having been temporarily united) whom he named its leader and a Hungarian general - the brilliant John Hunyadi, Voyevod of Transylvania - to whom he entrusted the supreme military command. The organization he placed in the hands of Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, the principal Latin spokesman at Florence who had long been Eugenius's right-hand man, particularly where foreign relations were concerned. The necessary fleet was to be provided by the Venetians, the Duke of Burgundy and the Pope himself. It was to sail through the Hellespont, the Marmara and the Bosphorus to the Black Sea, thence if necessary proceeding up the Danube to meet the army, which would advance simultaneously from the north-west.

The Crusade set off some twenty-five thousand strong in the late summer of
1443,
and within weeks succeeded in destroying the forces of the Turkish Governor of Rumelia just outside the Serbian city of Nish. Unopposed, it now marched onward into Bulgaria where Sofia surrendered, after only a token resistance, shortly before Christmas. January
1444
saw another major victory; and by late spring the Sultan was growing seriously alarmed. Suddenly, his Empire was threatened on

1
Its ruins still stand tod
ay, and very impressive they are
.

every side. In Anatolia he was struggling to put down a dangerous rising of the Karamans. In Albania a certain George Kastriotes, the famous Scanderbeg, had raised the banner of revolt from his castle at Croia. In the Morea, Constantine Palaeologus - who, having exchanged his Black Sea appanage with his brother Theodore, had been ruling as Despot since the previous October — had rebuilt the Hexamilion and pushed on across the Gulf of Corinth, where before long he had occupied both Athens and Thebes and forced the local Duke Nerio II Acciajuoli to pay him the tribute that the Duke had previously owed to the Sultan as his vassal. Clearly, if Turkish power were to be maintained, Murad would have to make some sort of accommodation with his enemies.

In June, ambassadors from King Ladislas, George Brankovich and John Hunyadi were received at the Sultan's court in Adrianople. The result of the ensuing negotiations was a ten-year truce, by the terms of which, among other concessions, Murad promised to loosen his grip on Wallachia, and Brankovich had his Serbian territories restored to him. A month later the treaty was ratified by Ladislas at Szegedin. Freed at last - as he thought - from his problems in Europe, the Sultan left for Anatolia to deal with the Karaman rebels once and for all. When the news reached Rome, however, Pope Eugenius and his Curia were horrified. Hunyadi's victories and the recent promise of additional help from the Venetians had called up visions of the Turks being expelled altogether from Europe; were all the gains that the Crusade had so far achieved to be thrown away? Cardinal Cesarini was particularly incensed: refusing to see his careful organization brought to nothing, he hastened to Szegedin, immediately absolved King Ladislas from the oath he had sworn to the Sultan and virtually ordered the Crusade on its way again.

Ladislas should have refused. Not only was he breaking his solemn word — absolution or no absolution - to the Sultan; his forces were dangerously diminished. Many of the erstwhile Crusaders had already left for home and George Brankovich, who had in any case been delighted with the terms of the truce, was determined to observe it. But a few reinforcements had recently arrived from Wallachia, and the young King decided to do as he was bidden. In September he was back with the army - accompanied now by the cardinal himself. The Crusade started off once again, and despite sporadic resistance somehow managed to make its way across Bulgaria to the Black Sea near Varna, where Ladislas confidently expected to find his fleet awaiting him. The fleet, however, was otherwise engaged. Murad, on hearing of his betrayal, had rushed back from Anatolia with an army of eighty thousand men, and the allied ships - mostiy Venetian - were desperately trying to prevent him from crossing the Bosphorus. They failed. Forcing his way across the strait, the furious Sultan hurried up the Black Sea coast and on
10
November
1444,
with the broken treaty pinned to his standard, tore into the Crusading army. The Christians stood their ground and fought with desperate courage; outnumbered, however, by more than three to one, they had no chance. Ladislas fell; so, shortly afterwards, did Cesarini. The army was annihilated; of its leaders, only John Hunyadi managed to escape with a few of his men. The last Crusade ever to be launched against the Turks in Europe had ended in catastrophe. It was a devastating blow, from which Christian morale would never recover.

For the Emperor John Palaeologus, the disaster at Varna meant the negation of all his work, the frustration of all his diplomacy, the end of all his hopes. For this, he now realized, and for this alone he had risked the dangers of foreign travel, endured the barely concealed scorn of his fellow-princes, betrayed his Church and incurred the hatred and contempt of the vast majority of his own subjects. And the final humiliation was yet to come. When the victorious Sultan returned it was John, as his loyal and faithful vassal, who was obliged to bid him welcome and congratulate him on his triumph.

The Emperor's brother Constantine, on the other hand, was undismayed. He had found a new ally in the shape of the Duke of Burgundy, Philip V. Philip, a fervent believer in the fight against the infidel, had already provided - or at any rate offered to provide - ships for the recent disastrous Crusade, but like Constantine he had been in no way deterred by its failure. In the summer of
1445
he sent a company of several hundred of his own men to the Morea, thus enabling the Despot to embark on another raiding expedition through central Greece as far as the Pindus mountains and into Albania. He was welcomed everywhere he went, and at least one local Venetian governor was obliged to beat a hasty retreat. Meanwhile Constantine's own Governor of Achaia left his base at Vostitsa with a small company of cavalry and foot soldiers, crossed to the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth and drove the Turks out of western Phocis - the region around Delphi.

This last insult was too much for the Sultan. Only a few months before, he had abdicated his throne in favour of his son Mehmet; now he furiously resumed his old authority to take vengeance against these upstart Greeks. In November
1446,
acco
mpanied by the recently evicted
Duke of Athens and Thebes, he swept down into the Morea at the head of an army of some fifty thousand. Phocis was once again overrun; Constantine and his brother-Despot Thomas hurried back to the rebuilt Hexamilion, determined to hold it at all costs. But they had not reckoned on Murad's weaponry. He had brought with him not only the usual siege engines and scaling-ladders, but something that the Greeks had never seen before - heavy artillery. For five days his long cannons pounded away at the great wall; then, on
10
December, he gave the order for the final assault. Most of the defenders were taken prisoner or massacred; the Despots themselves barely managed to make their way back to Mistra.

But the Sultan was not yet ready for a war of conquest. That would come in its own time; meanwhile he was in no hurry. His purpose on this occasion was simply to chastise the Greeks, to teach them a lesson and to leave them in no doubt as to who was master, in the Morea just as everywhere else. Sending half his army under his General Turachan southwards towards Mistra, he himself set off with his regiment of Janissaries along the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, leaving a trail of devastation behind him. The city of Patras — though most of its population had fled across the Gulf to Naupactus - had prepared itself for a siege and refused to surrender; ignoring it, Murad marched on to Clarenza, where Turachan joined him. The general had failed to reach Mistra; it was by now mid-winter, and the mountain passes were blocked by snow. But he too had laid waste the countryside, burning and pillaging every town and village through which he had passed. The historian Laonicus Chalcocondylas - whose father had been briefly imprisoned after delivering a message from Constantine to the Sultan at an earlier stage of the campaign, after which he had been an eye-witness of the battle for the Hexamilion - reports that when Murad and his general returned to Adrianople they took with them no less than sixty thousand prisoners; a later account estimates the number of dead at twenty-two thousand.

In one respect the Despots were lucky: their capital was spared. The Italian traveller and antiquarian Ciriaco of Ancona, arriving at Mistra in July
1447,
seems to have noticed few changes since his previous visit ten years before. He had an audience with the Despot Thomas, he met the ageing Plethon, and he was delighted to be taken by Laonicus Chalcocondylas to inspect the ruins of ancient Sparta on the plain below the city. Admittedly these interested the father of modern archaeology far more than contemporary Mistra, but he noted that the land was fertile and the recent harvest plentiful, and it is clear that - at least to the average visitor - life in the southern Peloponnese appeared normal enough. Things could, however, have been very different. Mistra had been saved by one thing only: an unusually early and severe winter. Had the Sultan launched his campaign in May or June rather than in November, Turachan would have had no difficulty in reaching the remotest corners of the Peloponnese; and Mistra, with all its churches and glorious frescos, would almost certainly have been reduced to ashes.