Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

their history. In Wallachia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, and Albania

hardy Slavs cut the forests, mined and tilled the earth, pastured

flocks, and eagerly bred their own replacements. From the Adriatic

to the Black Sea, from the Black Sea to the Baltic, Slavs, Italians,

Magyars, Bulgars, Greeks, and Jews carried the trade of East and West,

and cities sprouted in their path.

The great man of Serbia in this century was Stephen Dushan. His

father, Stephen Urosh III, begot him in a brief detour from

monogamy, gave him the affectionate name Dusha- i.e., Soul- and had

him crowned as heir apparent. When a more legitimate son arrived,

and received fond nicknames in his turn, Stephen deposed his father,

allowed him to be strangled, and ruled Serbia with a strong hand for a

generation. "Of all the men of his time," wrote a contemporary, he was

"the tallest, and terrible to look upon." `06096 Serbia forgave him

everything, for he waged successful war. He trained a large army,

led it with masterly generalship, conquered Bosnia, Albania, Epirus,

Acarnania, Aetolia, Macedonia, Thessaly. Transferring his capital from

Belgrade to Skoplje, he convened there a parliament of nobles, and

bade it unify and codify the laws of his diverse states; the resultant

Zabonik Tsara Dushana, or Lawbook of Czar Dushan (1349),

revealed a level of legal development and civilized usage not far

below that of Western Europe. Financed and perhaps stimulated by

this political exaltation, Serbian art in the fourteenth century

rivaled the contemporary flourish in Constantinople and the Morea;

magnificent churches were built, and their mosaics were freer and

livelier than those normally allowed by the more conservative

ecclesiasticism of the Greek capital. In 1355 Dushan assembled his

armies for the last time. He asked them whether they preferred to be

led against Byzantium or Hungary. They answered that they would follow

him wherever he chose to lead. "To Constantinople!" he cried. On the

way he fell sick and died.

His empire was too heterogeneous to be held together except by a man

of alert intelligence and disciplined energy. Bosnia seceded, and

attained for a proud moment, under Stephen Trtko, the hegemony of

the Balkans. Bulgaria under John Alexander had its last great age.

Wallachia, once part of the Byzantine Empire, detached itself (c.

1290), and ruled the spreading delta of the Danube. Moldavia threw off

its allegiance to Hungary (1349).

Upon these centrifugal statelets the Turkish blight fell even before

John V Palaeologus made Byzantium vassal to Murad I. Suleiman, the

dashing son of Sultan Orkhan, had led Turkish troops to the aid of

John VI Cantacuzene; he received, or took, as his reward the

fortress of Tzympe on the European side of the Dardanelles (1353).

When an earthquake shattered the walls of near-by Gallipoli,

Suleiman moved into the defenseless town. At his invitation Turkish

colonists crossed from Anatolia and spread along the northern coast of

the Sea of Marmora almost to Constantinople itself. With an

expanding Turkish army Suleiman marched into Thrace and captured

Adrianople (1361). Five years later Murad made it his European

capital. From that center the Turks would for a century aim their

blows at the divided Balkans.

Pope Urban V, recognizing the significance of this Turkish

infiltration into Europe, called upon all Christendom for another

crusade. An army of Serbs, Hungarians, and Wallachians marched

gallantly toward Adrianople. At the river Maritsa they celebrated

their unresisted advance with a feast. Amid their cups and revelry

they were surprised by a night assault from a relatively small Turkish

force. Many were slain before they could arm; many were drowned trying

to retreat across the river; the rest fled (1371). In 1385 Sofia

capitulated, and half of Bulgaria fell to the Ottomans. In 1386 they

took Nish, in 1387 Salonika. All Greece lay open to the Turks.

For one heroic year little Bosnia stemmed the tide. Stephen Trtko

joined his forces with the Serbians under Lazar I, and defeated the

Turks at Plochnik (1388). A year later Murad marched west with an army

that included many Christian contingents. At Kosovo he was met by a

coalition of Serbs, Bosnians, Magyars, Vlachs, Bulgars, Albanians, and

Poles. A Serb knight, Milosh Kobilich, pretending to be a deserter and

informer, made his way into Murad's tent, killed the Sultan, and was

hacked to death. Murad's son and heir, Bajazet I, rallied the Turks to

angry courage, and led them to victory. King Lazar was captured and

beheaded; Serbia became a tribute-paying vassal of the Turks, and

its new king, Stephen Lazarevitch, was compelled to send arms and

men to Bajazet. In 1392 Wallachia under John Shishman joined the

roster of Balkan states tributary to the Ottomans. Only Bulgaria and

Byzantium remained capable of defense.

In 1393 Bajazet invaded Bulgaria. After a siege of three months

Trnovo, the capital, fell; the churches were desecrated, the palaces

were set on fire, the leading nobles were invited to a conference

and were massacred. The Pope again appealed to Christendom, and King

Sigismund of Hungary summoned Europe to arms. France, though engaged

in a life-and-death struggle with England, sent a force of cavaliers

under the Count of Nevers; the Count of Hohenzollern and the Grand

Master of the Knights of St. John came with their followers; the

Elector Palatine brought a company of Bavarian horse; John Shishman

renounced his vassalage and came with his troops to fight under the

Hungarian King.

The united army, 60,000 strong, marched through Serbia and

besieged the Turkish garrison in Nicopolis. Warned that Bajazet,

with an army from Asia, was coming to raise the siege, the French

knights, gay with wine and women, promised to annihilate it, and

boasted that if the sky should fall they would hold it up with their

spears. For his part Bajazet vowed that he would stable his horse at

the high altar of St. Peter's in Rome. `06097 He placed his weakest

troops in front, with strategy that should have been obvious. The

French knights plunged through them triumphantly, then through

10,000 Janissaries, then through 5,000 Turkish cavalry, then charged

recklessly up a hill. Just beyond its summit they found themselves

faced by the main body of the Turkish army- 40,000 lancers. The nobles

fought nobly, were killed or captured or put to flight, and the allied

infantry behind them were disordered by their rout. The Hungarians and

Germans were nevertheless driving back the Turks when Stephen

Lazarevitch of Serbia led 5,000 Christians against the Christian army,

and won the crucial battle of Nicopolis for the Sultan (1396).

Maddened by the sight of so many of his men lying dead on the field,

and by the claim of the rescued garrison that the Christian

besiegers had killed their Turkish prisoners, Bajazet ordered the

10,000 captives to be put to death. The Count of Nevers was allowed to

choose twenty-four knights to be saved for the ransom they might

bring. Several thousand Christians were slaughtered in a bloody ritual

that went on from sunrise to late afternoon, until the Sultan's

officers persuaded him to spare the rest. `06098 From that day till

1878 Bulgaria was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Bajazet now took

most of Greece, and then marched against Constantinople.

III. THE LAST YEARS OF CONSTANTINOPLE: 1373-1453

-

No other government ever so fully deserved to fall as the Byzantine.

Having lost the will to defend itself, and unable to persuade the

too sophisticated Greeks that it is sweet and noble to die for one's

country, it sent no contingent to the Christian armies at the Maritsa,

Kosovo, or Nicopolis. It provided 12,000 soldiers for the Sultan in

1379; and it was Byzantine troops that, on the order of John VII

Palaeologus, compelled the Byzantine city of Philadelphia, in Asia

Minor, to surrender to the Turks (1390).

When Bajazet resumed the siege of Constantinople (1402), the

Byzantine Empire was reduced to its capital: Bajazet commanded both

coasts of the Sea of Marmora, controlled the Dardanelles, ruled nearly

all of Asia Minor and the Balkans, and passed safely between his

Asiatic and European capitals. The final hour seemed to have struck

for the beleaguered city. Starving Greeks let themselves down over the

walls, and deserted to the Turks in order to eat. Suddenly from the

Moslem East an "infidel" savior appeared for the outpost of

Christendom. Timur the Lame- Tamerlane the Great- had determined to

check the growth and insolence of Ottoman power. As the Tatar hordes

rolled west Bajazet abandoned the siege of Constantinople, and hurried

to regroup his forces in Anatolia. Turks met Tatars at Ankara

(1402); Bajazet was defeated and captured. The Turkish tide ebbed

for a generation; God at last seemed to be on the side of the

Christians.

Under the wise rule of Manuel II Byzantium recovered most of

Greece and parts of Thrace. But Mohammed I reorganized the Turkish

army, and Murad II led it, after a major defeat, to major victories.

The Moslems still drew inspiration from the belief that to die for

Islam was to win paradise; even if there should be no paradise and

no houris, they were impartial enough to consider the Greek maidens

beautiful. The Christians were not so impartial. Greek Catholics hated

Roman Catholics and were hated in turn. When Venetians hunted and

massacred Greek Catholics in Crete for refusing to accept the Roman

ritual and papal supremacy, Pope Urban V joined Petrarch in

congratulating the doge on his firm protection of the one true

Church (c. 1350). `06099 The populace and lower clergy of Byzantium

repudiated all attempts to reunite Greek with Latin Christianity;

and a Byzantine noble declared that he would rather see the Turkish

turban at Constantinople than the red hat of a Roman cardinal. `060910

Most Balkan states hated their neighbors more than the Turks, and some

preferred to submit to the Moslems, who taxed no more than the

Christian rulers, persecuted heresy less or not at all, `060911 and

allowed four wives.

In 1422 Murad II renewed the attack upon Constantinople. A revolt in

the Balkans compelled him to abandon the siege, and John VIII

Palaeologus was allowed to reign in relative peace on condition of

paying a heavy annual tribute to the Turks. Murad reconquered

Greece, Salonika, and most of Albania. Serbia resisted manfully

under George Brankovic; a combined army of Serbians and Hungarians

under Hunyadi Janos defeated Murad at Kunovitza (1444), and

Brankovic ruled Serbia till his death at the age of ninety (1456).

After victories at Varna and in the second battle of Kosovo (1448),

Murad signed a peace with the Emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus,

and retired to Adrianople to die (1451).

Mohammed II, surnamed the Conqueror, came to the Ottoman throne at

twenty-one. He confirmed the treaty with Constantine, and sent his

nephew Orkhan to be brought up (possibly as a spy) at the Byzantine

court. When other Moslem powers challenged his authority in Western

Asia, Mohammed ferried his army across the Straits, and left his

European possessions in charge of the Vizier Khalil Pasha, known for

friendliness to Byzantium. Constantine had more courage than wit; he

informed the Vizier that unless the pension paid for the care of

Mohammed's nephew should be doubled, Orkhan would be put forward by

Byzantium as a claimant to the Ottoman throne. `060912 Apparently

Constantine thought that the revolt in Asia offered an opportunity

to weaken the Turks in Europe. But he had neglected to secure either

his alliances in the west or his communications to the south. Mohammed

made peace with his Moslem enemies, and with Venice, Wallachia,

Bosnia, and Hungary. Crossing back to Europe, he raised a powerful

fortress on the Bosporus above Constantinople, thereby ensuring the

unimpeded passage of his troops between the continents, and

controlling all commerce entering the Black Sea. For eight months he

gathered materials and men. He hired Christian gunsmiths to cast for

him the largest cannon yet known, which would hurl stone balls

weighing 600 pounds. In June 1452, he declared war, and began the

final siege of Constantinople with 140,000 men. `060913

Constantine led the defense with desperate resolution. He equipped

his 7,000 soldiers with small cannon, lances, bows and arrows, flaming

torches, and crude firearms discharging leaden bullets of a walnut's

size. Sleeping only by snatches, he supervised, every night, the

repair of the damage done to the walls during the day. Nevertheless

the ancient defenses crumbled more and more before the battering

rams and superior artillery of the Turks; now ended the medieval

fortification of cities by walls. On May 29 the Turks fought their way

across a moat filled with the bodies of their own slain, and surged

over or through the walls into the terrorized city. The cries of the

dying were drowned in the martial music of trumpets and drums. The

Greeks at last fought bravely; the young Emperor was everywhere in the

heat of the action, and the nobles who were with him died to a man

in his defense. Surrounded by Turks, he cried out, "Cannot there be

found a Christian to cut off my head?" He threw off his imperial

garments, fought as a common soldier, disappeared in the rout of his

little army, and was never heard of again.

The victors massacred thousands, till all defense ceased. Then

they began that rampant plunder which had so long been the substance

of their hopes. Every usable adult among the defeated was taken as a

prize; nuns were ravished like other women in an impartial mania of

rape; Christian masters and servants, shorn of the garb that marked

their state, found themselves suddenly equalized in indiscriminate

slavery. Pillage was not quite uncontrolled; when Mohammed II found

a Moslem piously destroying the marble pavement of St. Sophia, he

smote him with the royal scimitar, and announced that all buildings

were to be reserved for orderly rapine by the Sultan. St. Sophia was

transformed into a mosque after proper purification; all its Christian

insignia were removed, and its mosaics were whitewashed into

oblivion for 500 years. On the very day of the city's fall, or on

the ensuing Friday, a muezzin mounted the tallest turret of Hagia

Sophia and summoned the Moslems to gather in it for prayer to

victorious Allah. Mohammed II performed the Moslem ritual in

Christendom's most famous shrine.

The capture of Constantinople shook every throne in Europe. The

bulwark had fallen that had protected Europe from Asia for over a

thousand years. That Moslem power and faith which the Crusaders had

hoped to drive back into inner Asia had now made its way over the

corpse of Byzantium, and through the Balkans to the very gates of

Hungary. The papacy, which had dreamed of all Greek Christianity

submitting to the rule of Rome, saw with dismay the rapid conversion

of millions of southeastern Europeans to Islam. Routes of commerce

once open to Western vessels were now in alien hands, and could be

clogged with tolls in peace or closed with guns in war. Byzantine art,

exiled from home, found refuge in Russia, while in the West its

influence disappeared with its pride. The migration of Greek

scholars to Italy and France, which had begun in 1397, was now

accelerated, fructifying Italy with the salvage of ancient Greece.

In one sense nothing was lost; only the dead had died. Byzantium had

finished its role, and yielded its place, in the heroic and

sanguinary, noble and ignominious procession of mankind.

IV. HUNYADI JANOS: 1387-1456

-

The population of Hungary, numbering some 700,000 in the

fourteenth century, was a fluctuating mixture of Magyars,

Pannonians, Slovaks, Bulgars, Khazars, Patzinaks, Cumans,

Slavonians, Croats, Russians, Armenians, Wallachians, Bosnians, and

Serbs: in summary, a minority of Magyars ruling a majority of Slavs.

In the nascent cities a mercantile middle class and an industrial

proletariat began to form in the fourteenth century; and as these were

mostly immigrants from Germany, Flanders, and Italy, new racial

tensions were added to the ethnic maze.

When Andrew III died, ending the Arpad dynasty (907-1301), a war

of succession further divided the nation, and peace returned only when

the higher nobility, having made the monarchy elective, conferred

the crown of St. Stephen upon Charles Robert of Anjou (1308).

Charles brought with him French ideas of feudalism and chivalry,

Italian ideas of business and industry. He promoted the development of

Hungary's gold mines, encouraged enterprise, stabilized the

currency, cleansed the judiciary, and gave the nation a competent

administration. Under Charles and his son Louis, Hungary became a

Western state, eager to win the help of the West against the

proliferating East.

Louis I, wrote Voltaire, "reigned happily in Hungary forty years"

(1342-82), and (not so happily) "in Poland twelve years. His people

gave him the surname of the Great, which he well deserved; and yet

this prince is hardly known in [Western] Europe, because he did not

reign over men capable of transmitting his fame and virtues to other

nations. How few know that in the fourteenth century there was a Louis

the Great in the Carpathian Mountains!" `060914 His character

mingled urbane culture and chivalrous sentiments with military ardor

and capacity. He indulged occasionally in wars- to avenge his murdered

brother in Naples, to recover from Venice the Dalmatian ports that had

long seemed to Hungary its due outlets to the sea, and to check the

aggressive expansion of Serbia and Turkey by bringing Croatia, Bosnia,

and northern Bulgaria under Hungarian control. By example and

precept he spread the chivalric ideal among the nobility, and raised

the level of manners and morals in his people. During his reign and

that of his father, Hungarian Gothic achieved its finest

embodiments, and Nicholas Kolozsvari and his sons carved such

notable statuary as the St. George now in Prague. In 1367 Louis

founded the University of Pecs; but this, along with much of Hungary's

medieval glory, disappeared in the long and exhausting struggle with

the Turks.

Louis's son-in-law, Sigismund I, enjoyed a reign whose length

(1387-1437) should have made possible long-term and farsighted

policies. But his tasks were greater than his powers. He led a huge

army against Bajazet at Nicopolis, and barely escaped from that

disaster with his life. He realized that the Turkish advance was now

the paramount problem of Europe; he devoted great care and failing

funds to fortifying the southern frontier, and built at the junction

of the Danube and the Save the great fortress of Belgrade. But his

election to the Imperial office compelled him to neglect Hungary

during long absences in Germany; and his acquisition of the Bohemian

crown widened his responsibilities without enlarging his capacities.

Two years after his death the spreading Turks invaded Hungary. In

this crisis the nation produced its most famous hero. Hunyadi Janos

received his surname from the castle of Hunyadi in Transylvania, a

stronghold granted to his father for services in war. Janos- i.e.,

John- was trained for war almost daily in his youth. He

distinguished himself in a victory over the Turks at Semendria, and

the new king, Ladislas V, made him commander-in-chief of the armies

resisting the Turks. The repulse of the Ottomans became the

absorbing devotion of his career. When they entered Transylvania he

led against them newly disciplined troops inspired by his patriotism

and his generalship. It was in that battle that Simon Kemeny,

beloved in Hungarian literature, gave his life for his leader. Knowing

that the Turks had been instructed to seek out and kill Hunyadi, Simon

begged and received permission to exchange costumes with him. He

died under concentrated assaults, while Hunyadi directed the army to

victory (1442). Murad II dispatched 80,000 new troops to the front;

Hunyadi lured them, by feigned retreat, into a narrow pass where

only a fraction of them could fight at one time; and again Hunyadi's

strategy triumphed. Harassed by revolts in Asia, Murad sued for terms,

and agreed to pay a substantial indemnity. At Szeged, King Ladislas

and his allies signed with Murad's representatives a truce pledging

both sides to peace. Ladislas swore on the Bible, the Turkish

ambassadors on the Koran (1442).

But Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, papal legate at Buda, presently

judged the time propitious for an offensive. Murad had moved his

army to Asia; an Italian fleet, controlling the Dardanelles, could

prevent its return. The Cardinal, who had distinguished himself for

probity and ability, argued that a pledge to an infidel could not bind

a Christian. `060915 Hunyadi advised peace, and the Serbian contingent

refused to violate the truce. The envoys of the Western nations agreed

with Cesarini, and offered to contribute money and men to a sacred

crusade. Ladislas yielded, and in person led an attack upon Turkish

positions. The promised reinforcements from the West did not come; the

Ottoman army, 60,000 strong, eluded the Italian admiral, and crossed

back to Europe. At Varna near the Black Sea- his standard-bearer

holding the dishonored treaty aloft on a lance- Murad inflicted an

overwhelming defeat upon Ladislas' 20,000 men (1444). Hunyadi

counseled retreat, the King ordered advance. Hunyadi begged him to

stay in the rear; Ladislas plunged into the van of the fight, and

was killed. Cesarini did not quite regain his honor by losing his

life.

Four years later Hunyadi tried to redeem the disaster. Forcing his

way through a hostile Serbia, he met the Turks at Kosovo in a

furious engagement that raged for three days. The Hungarians were

routed, and Hunyadi joined them in flight. He hid for days in a marsh;

starving, he emerged, and was recognized by the Serbians, who handed

him over to the Turks. He was released on promising never to lead an

army across Serbian soil again.

In 1456 the Turks laid siege to Belgrade. Mohammed II aimed

against the citadel the heavy artillery that had shattered the walls

of Constantinople; Europe had never known so violent a bombardment.

Hunyadi led the defense with a skill and courage never forgotten in

Hungarian poetry. `060916 At last, preferring the anesthesia of battle

to the agonies of starvation, the besieged rushed from the fortress,

fought their way to the Turkish cannon, and so decisively vanquished

the enemy that for sixty years thereafter Hungary was spared any

Moslem attack. A few days after this historic defense Hunyadi died

of a fever in the camp. Hungary honors him as its greatest man.

V. THE TIDE AT FULL: 1453-81

-

The Turks now resumed the conquest of the Balkans. Serbia finally

succumbed in 1459, and remained a Turkish province till 1804. Mohammed

II took Corinth by siege, and Athens without raising a lance (1458).

The conqueror, like Caesar, gave the Athenians easy terms out of

respect for their ancestors, and displayed a cultivated interest in

the classical monuments. He could well be genial, having avenged not

only the Crusades but Marathon. Bosnia, whose port and capital,

Ragusa, had by some veneer of culture received the title of the

South Slavonic Athens, accepted Turkish rule in 1463, and adopted

the Moslem faith with an ease that startled the West.

The most valiant opponent of the Turks in the second half of the

fifteenth century was Scanderbeg of Albania. His real name was

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.