How Constantinople Survived an Ottoman Siege - Medieval DOCUMENTARY

On a beautiful summer morning in the year 1422, the citizens of Constantinople woke up to another presumably uneventful day as the sound of church bells echoed throughout the Roman capital. Suddenly, the sound of morning prayers was interrupted by supernatural sounds that can only be described as large explosions. As the ground beneath them shook violently, military horns began to sound in the distance. Then, news of terror began to spread through the streets of the city: the entire force of the Ottoman army had arrived at the gates of the Theodosian walls. After twenty years of internal strife and civil wars, the Ottoman decision to seize Constantinople was resumed in full force.

In this video, we will cover the Ottoman

siege

of Constantinople in 1422, as well as the dangerous political tightrope that the Osmanli regime walked during this time. This video is available for free thanks to our YouTube members and sponsors. We fund our free content through our program of exclusive videos made for our members and sponsors, who get two documentaries a week that are not available to the public. We have a growing collection featuring the First Punic War, the History of Prussia, the Italian Wars of Unification, and a revision of the classic text: Xenophon's Anabasis. We're now covering the Russo-Japanese War and the Albigensian Crusades, not to mention our massive week-to-week coverage of the Pacific War and a host of other projects.

All of this is done for our sponsors and with generous donations from them. So if you enjoy our content and want to see more and support the cause of the story, consider becoming a YouTube member or patron. You'll also get early access to public content, a spot on our lively Discord server, and behind-the-scenes information and benefits. We rely on our sponsors to support our growing team in the production of these videos, so thank you to everyone who is already involved and we hope you will consider joining too. Ascension of Mehmed I (1413): With the Ottoman interregnum coming to an end with the defeat and death of Musa Çelebi, the House of Osman entered a period of reconstruction.

Once the Ottoman throne was secured, the twenty-seven-year-old Sultan Mehmed I began his reign by rallying the ranks of his personal council by appointing to positions of power men who had supported his cause over the past decade. The main groups that benefited from this restructuring of the government were Turkmen ghazi warriors and Anatolian notables, who had long been abandoned during the "lightning" years, but had since regrouped around the new sultan. It was these Turkmens who made The new sultan also reaffirmed the Treaty of Gallipoli with the Byzantines and the Genoese. as was his promise to Manuel II of military assistance during his war effort against Musa.

As a result of all these political developments, the formally influential Kapikulu and Devshirme military and political classes were reduced in size and marginalized in the new Ottoman administration. many of his timar possessions were confiscated and redistributed by the state. Anatolian Campaigns of Mehmed I (1413-1415): With his internal affairs resolved at home, Mehmed turned his sights eastward as he sought to establish Ottoman control over war-torn Anatolia. a region that, over the past decade, had seen many of its settlements and pastures brutally plundered. Not wanting to invoke the wrath of the Timurids as his father did with his rapid conquest of Anatolia during the 1390s, the Ottoman sultan opted for a more subtle form of territorial expansion through vassalage.

During the first months of 1414, the Ottoman sultan personally led an army along the Aegean coast of the plateau, overwhelming the Turkish beyliks in the area in a single military campaign. The Sarukhan and Aydinid beyliks were officially annexed to the Ottoman kingdom, while the Menteşe and the Germiyanids were vassals. The former ruler of the Aydinids, Cüneyd Bey, who had been a key ally of both Suleyman Çelebi and Musa Çelebi during the interregnum, was pardoned for his past actions against Edirne and granted the vital governorship of Nicopolis. After reestablishing Ottoman rule in western Anatolia, Mehmed marched against the Candarid Beylik of Isfendiyar Bey, who had sided with Timur during the Battle of Ankara, and vassalized his state in addition to the Beyliks of Canik throughout the Black Sea coast.

In response to a failed Karamanid

siege

of Bursa while campaigning against Musa in the Balkans back in 1413, the Ottoman sultan declared war against Mehmed II Bey in early 1415 in retaliation for invading his lands. However, due to heavy spring rains hampering his siege of Konya, Mehmed concluded a hasty peace treaty with the Karamanid ruler, which saw him recapture the cities of Egirdir, Akşehir and Beyşehir for the Sultanate. Balkan campaigns of Mehmed I (1415-1418): Returning victoriously to Edirne with much of Anatolia again under Ottoman rule, Mehmed began planning military operations in the Balkans to reaffirm the projection of Muslim power in the region after many years of Ottoman military inactivity.

First, driving deep into the decentralized principalities of Albania, Mehmed captured the regional cities of Vlorë and Kruje, reaching the Adriatic coast in 1417. Ottoman raids deep into Bosnia, the Morea, and Transylvania also resumed during this period, as that the sultan sought to please his Turkmen Ghazi warriors with the riches of the local region. Mehmed also launched a war against Wallachia as its ruler, Mircea I, had been a critical ally of Musa during the interregnum and therefore had to be punished. The following hostilities were brief, as the ailing sixty-year-old voivode wished to maintain peace with Edirne, so he signed a peace treaty that allowed him to cede the crucial fortress city of Giurgiu on the Danube and the region of Dobruja to Mehmed.

In addition to territorial concessions, Wallachia also became an official vassal of Edirne, forcing it to once again pay an annual tribute to the Ottoman state. Better still for Mehmed, in 1418, Mircea of ​​Wallachia, the man who had dealt Bayezid two defeats in one year and had been a thorn in Ottoman expansion in Europe for over twenty years, had died of natural causes. Early Ottoman naval operations and first war with Venice (1414-1419): It was also during this period that the newly emerging Ottoman fleet began conducting major naval operations in the broader region for the first time in its history.

Since the end of the interregnum, many Ottoman coastal settlements and merchant ships in the Aegean had been harassed by various privateer groups stationed on the numerous island colonies of the Venetians. As a result, Edirne began its own military operations against Venice when a newly built galley fleet led by Çali Bey raided the Venetian islands of Andros, Paros, Melos and Euboea between 1414 and 1415. As hostilities between the two sides intensified In 1416, the combined fleets of the Ottomans and Venice met at the mouth of the Dardanelles Strait, where the latter crushed the former's fleet in open battle. The engagement that would later become known as the Battle of Gallipoli resulted in the death of Çali Bey and the capture of much of the new Ottoman fleet and its crew by Venice.

With Emperor Manuel II mediating peace talks in Constantinople, an official peace treaty between Edirne and Venice would be concluded in 1419, in which both sides agreed to transfers of prisoners of war in exchange for Mehmed's recognition of overseas possessions. of Venice in the eastern Mediterranean. Unfortunately for Edirne, the loss of the war ensured the Venetian Republic's naval superiority in the Aegean Sea for the next few decades, as the remnants of the Ottoman fleet returned to the port of Gallipoli. Sheikh Bedreddin's Rebellion (1416) – In addition to military events abroad, a series of political events at home would consume a large portion of Sultan Mehmed I's reign.

During the Ottoman Sultan's restructuring of his government personnel At the beginning of his rule, many statesmen who had supported Bayezid's wrong son were exiled throughout the Ottoman kingdom. One of these exiled men was Musa Çelebi's kadıasker or chief military judge, Sheikh Bedreddin. Being of mixed Muslim and Christian ancestry, the military judge had gained a large following for his utopian syncretic vision of the Ottoman sultanate, as well as his views on the legal equality of all followers of the Abrahamic religions and property. community property of all peoples. Bedreddin's views spread like wildfire throughout the Balkans and Anatolia during the years following the Battle of Ankara, as the vast majority of ordinary Ottoman citizens had been plagued by economic instability and war for the past thirteen years and They were therefore dissatisfied with the central government in Edirne. .

These ongoing political developments constituted a major internal threat to the Sunni-identified Ottoman state, which saw itself as the authority on political and religious matters within its domains. Traveling from Nicaea to Candarid Beylik, and then from Wallachia to Ottoman Bulgaria, the former chief military judge preached his popular message to the people of the regions, which soon sparked a large-scale civil rebellion in 1416. In a short period of time , Izmir, Manisa and the regions of Dobruja and Sarukhan had rebelled against Ottoman rule, in which tens of thousands of Muslim and Christian peasants, madrasa students and marginalized Kapikulu soldiers joined the ranks of the rebellion.

Sheikh Bedreddin's rebellion posed a serious challenge to the authority of Sultan Mehmed I during a period when the leader of the Ottomans was attempting to reunite the scattered pieces of his father's ancient kingdom. A military response led by Grand Vizier Bayezid Pasha and the Sultan's eldest son, Şehzade Murad, was quickly launched against the rebellious regions of Anatolia, and in a short but indiscriminately bloody campaign, all resistance was crushed. Meanwhile, Mehmed launched his own military response against Bedreddin, who was stationed in Dobruja, and won a quick victory over the rebels which saw him capture the rebel leader.

After a one-sided trial held at Serres, Sheikh Bedreddin was hanged along with his followers in a display of Ottoman supremacy before the region at large. The first civil revolt in Ottoman history resulted in the Ottoman regime cracking down on religious orders throughout the Empire, with Edirne making a direct effort to silence the dissenting voices of judges and religious leaders in the Balkans and Anatolia. First Rebellion of Mustafa “The Impostor” (1416): It was also during this period that a ghost from the Ottoman Interregnum past raised its ugly head when Bayezid's last son, Mustafa Çelebi, made his bid for the throne.

Captured along with his father after the Battle of Ankara, the young Ottoman prince had spent most of the last decade in the Timurid capital of Samarkand before deciding to return to Anatolia. Upon first arriving in Trabzon, Mustafa traveled to the courts of the Candarid and Karamanid beyliks to seek military and political support against Mehmed. Then, with the help of the Venetians, Bayezid's youngest son sailed to Ottoman Bulgaria and enlisted the help of local Muslim governors and Christian leaders in the region to support his war effort. The former ruler of the Aydinids, Cüneyd Bey, who had been governor of Nicopolis since his defeat by Mehmed in 1414, opened its doors to the rebel prince and the pair began gathering troops in Ottoman Thessaly while Mehmed was distracted with the Bedreddins. . rebellion.

However, upon learning of Mustafa Çelebi's return, the Ottoman sultan began a propaganda campaign against his younger brother proclaiming him as an impostor and a false son of Bayezid, as he was a relatively unknown figure to the majority of society.

ottoman

. After suppressing Bedreddin's rebellion at Dobruja, Mehmed quickly marched towards Mustafa's forces and defeated him in battle, in which the rebellious Ottoman prince and his followers sought refuge in Byzantine-controlled Thessaloniki. Sending a petition to Emperor Manuel II, with whom he was on good terms, the Ottoman sultan demanded the immediate return of his rebellious brother. In a classic example of Byzantine diplomacy, the Emperor of Constantinople offered Mehmed to exile Mustafa and his supporters to the island of Lemnos in exchange for an annual tribute of 300,000 Ottoman akçe.

Knowing that he could not afford to be harsh with Byzantium due to the economically uncertain state he found himself in, Mehmed accepted Manuel's terms and returned to Edirne. Death of Mehmed I and Ascension of Murad II (1421): During the spring of 1421,While on a hunting expedition near the lush forests of Bursa, the thirty-five-year-old Ottoman sultan fell from his horse and was seriously injured. paralyzed. Returning to the imperial palace and knowing that his days were numbered, Mehmed ordered his eldest son, Şehzade Murad, who was the governor of Amasya, to come to the ancient capital immediately to quickly secure the Ottoman throne for him.

However, the Ottoman sultan, who had received more than forty battle wounds in 24 battles over the past 20 years, succumbed to his wounds before the arrival of his son. Often regarded as the second founder of the Ottoman state due to his exploits during the interregnum and his stabilizing reign, Sultan Mehmed I would become one of the most respected members of the House of Osman for generations to come. Against all odds, the former Ottoman monarch had managed to pick up the scattered pieces of his father's kingdom at the Battle of Ankara and rebuild a state that was once again in control of his own destiny.

For more than forty-two days, Grand Vizier Bayezid Pasha and his staff kept the sultan's death a secret while fears of civil war circulated in the imperial palace. In an unusual series of events, Mehmed's body was placed on a stretcher to hide the stench of his decomposing body, and during the days when audiences were being held, state officials dressed their former sultan in their imperial regalia and They hid behind his cloak to simulate that the sultan was stroking his beard and moving his arms. Only with the arrival of the seventeen-year-old Murad in the former Ottoman capital of Bursa and his accession to the throne did news of Mehmed's death become public.

Second Rebellion of Mustafa “The Impostor” (1421-1422): The accession of Sultan Murad II during the spring of 1421 occurred during a period when there were many contenders for the Ottoman throne. Mustafa Çelebi and his followers were still exiled on the Byzantine island of Lemnos, Orhan Çelebi, grandson of Suleyman Çelebi of the Ottoman Interregnum, resided in Constantinople, while the future fate of the other three sons of Mehmed I, şehzades Mustafa, Mahmud and Yusuf was in the air. The practice of fratricide by the Ottoman monarchs had already been institutionalized in the 15th century, so the former Ottoman sultan had taken precautions against it by appointing his second eldest son, Mustafa, to the distant governorship of Isparta, while his Younger sons, Mahmud and Yusuf, were transferred to the protection of Constantinople.

Mehmed I's premature death also coincided with the deterioration of Ottoman-Byzantine relations, as in 1421 the ailing seventy-one-year-old Manuel II had ceded control of many of the state's functions to his eldest son and co-emperor. of the. , John VIII, who was more warlike towards Edirne. Faced with the political uncertainty surrounding Murad's rise, Byzantium launched the first volley of open hostilities, releasing Mustafa Çelebi and Cüneyd Bey from their exile on Lemnos, while the Ottoman claimant promised the Gallipoli peninsula to Constantinople in exchange for military assistance against Murad. . In the autumn of 1421, Gallipoli and much of Ottoman Thrace quickly fell to the rebel prince, while the Karamanids took the opportunity of Ottoman instability to reoccupy Egirdir, Akşehir and Beyşehir.

While Murad II was in Bursa busy raising an army for the coming wars, his grand vizier Bayezid Pasha, who was already stationed in Edirne, met with Mustafa's forces near the village of Sazlıdere, near the Thracian-Aegean coast. However, due to a series of mass defections from his Kapikulu ranks to the rebel prince, the Ottoman Grand Vizier was captured and beheaded at the insistence of Cüneyd Bey. Following his victory at Sazlıdere, Mustafa Çelebi entered the Ottoman capital of Edirne and proclaimed himself "Sultan of Rumelia" in front of a roaring crowd. Many Ottoman peasants in the local region and many in the ranks of the kapikulu had felt alienated by Mehmed I's pro-Turkman policies and his brutal suppression of the Bedreddin rebellion, and so favored his supposed younger brother Mustafa rather than his son Murad.

However, almost immediately after his initial victory, the newly crowned rebel sultan made a multitude of political miscalculations. He first reneged on his promise to cede the Gallipoli peninsula to Constantinople and then began an unpopular invasion of the Anatolian territories under Murad's control. In January 1422, Mustafa's 17,000-man army began to lay siege to Bursa, much to the chagrin of his Kapikulu contingent, who instead wished to be stationed in the Balkans and not fight in Anatolia. When Cüneyd Bey abandoned him to reclaim his former domains around Smyrna and lost fiscal assistance from Constantinople, Mustafa's army began to defect en masse to Murad, resulting in the latter efficiently defeating the former's army near the city. from Ulubat.

With Sultan Murad hotly pursuing him across Europe and effectively losing his entire army during the military campaign, the rebellious sultan retreated to Edirne and gathered the Ottoman treasury to make a last stand in Wallachia. However, Mustafa Çelebi, the last living son of “the lightning”, was captured by Murad's agents on his journey north and subsequently executed, thus ending the Ottoman civil war. Ottoman-Byzantine War and Siege of Constantinople (1422): With the death of Mustafa Çelebi, Sultan Murad II turned all his attention and anger towards the Byzantines for instigating the recent civil war in the first place, officially declaring war on Constantinople.

As regional Ottoman marching lords rapidly seized Nicomedia and the Byzantine settlements in Thessaly, Murad and his new grand vizier, Candarli Ibrahim Pasha, began the dual sieges of Constantinople and Thessalonica. Despite his youth, Murad had already gained much-needed military experience during his father's reign and the recent Ottoman civil war, so the young sultan was determined to follow in his grandfather's footsteps and lay siege to the capital of the Romans. . For sixty-three days, Murad II rained hell on Constantinople when, for the first time, cannons and other explosives were used to breach the walls of Theodosius. An eyewitness to the siege, John Kananos, tells how the sultan built an immense earthen wall from the Sea of ​​Marmara to the Golden Horn.

From there his troops launched volleys of fire and stones with catapults against and over the walls of land and thus a large part of the capital's suburbs were burned. A highly revered imam in the Ottoman camp called Sheik Bokhari, who claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad, had predicted that Constantinople would fall on August 24, so the main Ottoman assault took place that day. A long and bitter battle for possession of the walls followed. However, the city's determined defenders stood firm on their battlements as they repelled wave after wave of Ottoman attacks on the walls. Murad II's Anatolian Campaigns (1422-1425): While Murad was busy in Constantinople, events emerging from Anatolia would force him to lift the siege of the Byzantine capital.

The Sultan's younger half-brother, thirteen-year-old Şehzade Mustafa, better known in Ottoman historiography as “Little Mustafa,” had rebelled and seized Nicaea with the military help of the Candarid, Karamanid, and Geriyan beyliks. The Sultan's two other younger brothers, şehzades Mahmud and Yusuf, were also freed in Anatolia by Manuel II in an attempt to provoke even more civil strife in the region. Finally, Cüneyd Bey had recaptured Smyrna and once again reestablished the Aydinid Beylik. With his eastern possessions in open anarchy and little progress in breaking Theodosius' walls, the sultan of the Ottomans abandoned his siege of Constantinople and crossed into Anatolia.

Catching "little Mustafa" off guard, Murad quickly seized Nicaea and executed his rebellious half-brother before also capturing and detaining his two other younger brothers, Mahmud and Yusuf, in Bursa. The couple would die following an outbreak of plague in the former Ottoman capital in 1429. Continuing his war effort against the Turkish beyliks of Anatolia, many of whom supported 'Little Mustafa's' rebellion, Murad once invaded and vassalized the Candarids. further with the marriage of his sister, Selçuk Hatun, to the heir apparent of the beylik while he himself married the daughter of Isfendiyar Bey, Hatice Halime Hatun. Meanwhile, with the sudden death of Mehmed II Bey during the siege of Antalya against the Teke Beylik, his eldest son and presumed heir, Ibrahim II Bey, took control of the Karamanid throne and resumed peace talks. with Murad.

In exchange for Egirdir, Akşehir and Beyşehir, the new Karamanid ruler married another sister of the Ottoman sultan, Ilaldi Sultan Hatun, and peace was once again restored between Edirne and Konya. Having no sons, the ruler of the Germiyanids, Yakup II Bey, handed over his domain to Murad, while Menteşe and the Teke beyliks were completely annexed to the Ottoman Sultanate. Lastly, Cüneyd Bey, the former ruler of the Aydinids who had challenged Ottoman rule for more than two decades, had been defeated by the local Ottoman governors of the region in association with the Genoese and was beheaded in 1425, resulting in the complete annexation of the region.

The ephemeral restoration of Aydinid Beylik. In the first eighteen months of his reign, Murad II had impressively managed to crush two major rebellions, carry out a major siege of Constantinople, and recapture large areas of Anatolia for the Ottoman sultanate. Only time will tell if he would be worthy of carrying the banner of his ancestors or, better yet, parading said banners into the depths of Europe. In the next episode of our series on the early history of the Ottomans, we will look back at the early years of Sultan Murad II's reign and Edirne's renewed interest in waging wars of conquest in Europe.

To make sure you don't miss this, make sure you are subscribed and have hit the bell button. Please consider liking, subscribing, commenting and sharing; It's a great help. Recently, we have started publishing weekly exclusive content for YouTube sponsors and members. Consider joining their ranks via the link in the description or the button below the video to watch these weekly videos, learn about our schedule, get early access to our videos, access our private discord. , and much more. This is the Kings and Generals channel, and we will see you in the next one.