God's War: A New History of the Crusades

by Christopher Tyerman

  The disastrous Nicopolis campaign has been described melodramatically as ‘a final failure’. ‘There would be no more crusades.’60 Others have acknowledged the defeat as decisive as well as crushing. In confirming Ottoman military strength, and the adhesiveness of their Balkan clients, it exposed the ineffectiveness of western arms, traditional crusade strategies and the feeble hold Sigismund possessed over his allies. Only the irruption of Timur into western Asia in 1400 and his defeat of Bayezid in 1402 at Ankara saved Constantinople and central Europe. In Christian Europe, Nicopolis has been credited with Sigismund abandoning aggression against the Ottomans for his German and Bohemian interests and the disintegration of Anglo-French unity, with wide implications for the survival of Richard II’s regime (it fell in 1399) and the renewal of the Hundred Years War (in 1415). However, both immediate and long-term effects can be exaggerated. Only a relatively small army had been engaged at Nicopolis. The popular court poet and chronicler Froissart was told only 700 French knights were involved.61 The failure to coordinate the land attack with naval operations ran counter to contemporary experience and advice. The disaster of 1396 failed to disarm enthusiasm for fighting the infidel. Neither technically nor generically was Nicopolis the last crusade. Nicopolis did not lead to the conquest of Hungary, Bayezid’s aggression turning eastwards in 1397–1400. The reaction to Nicopolis in France did not match that to other defeats during the Hundred Years’ War. In England, chroniclers’ almost universal silence indicates minimal impact. Nicopolis did not mark a watershed between crusading optimism and pessimism.

  The response to the Nicopolis defeat did reveal how crusading was viewed. On their release from Ottoman captivity and return to France in 1398, John of Nevers and his companions were ecstatically received as heroes. The manner of their defeat had inspired a familiar round of hand-wringing introspection. On 9 January 1397 churches across France conducted grief-laden memorial services. Writers close to the French court and in contact with survivors were in no doubt that vanity and folly had led to the Frenchmen’s destruction, although the bravery of individuals was accorded due praise. Nicopolis was transformed into a morality story of sin, redemption and heroism, a paradigm of the image of later medieval crusading itself. The well-informed official chronicler from the monastery of St Denis eschewed easy clichés in highlighting the contrast between the lavish feasts, ornate tents, gawdy clothes and loose women of the Christians with the God-fearing, prudent, discreet Bayezid, a suitable instrument of God’s chastisement of sinners despite his ‘Turkish superstition’.62 Secular writers transmuted events into good stories with a didactic purpose. Froissart’s almost wholly fantastical account of the 1396 campaign, written before 1402, emphasized the scale of the Ottoman threat, inventing threats by Bayezid to march on Rome and feed his horse on the altar in St Peter’s.63 This was no simple call to return to arms, but a polemic to end the papal schism and unite Christendom, precisely the Anglo-French policy that had preceded Nicopolis, a view that did nothing to disturb underlying assumptions about chivalric honour or the efficacy of holy war. Similar themes of folly, pride, Christendom’s disorder, catastrophic defeat, the papal schism and a utopian desire to sweep the Islamic tide back as far as Jerusalem dominated the earliest literary response to the news of Nicopolis, Philip of Mézières’s Epistre Lamentable et Consolatoire (Letter of Lament and Consolation), written by the veteran propagandist, now pushing seventy, in the first weeks of 1397.64 Mézières’s overlaying of pragmatic assessment of responsibility with revivalist cliché stood for a whole body of thoughtful contemporary opinion, mirrored in most other literary, historical, even diplomatic considerations of the eastern question. His ideas were not simply rhetorical flourishes or the eccentricities of a lonely, disappointed political has-been. Instead of flummery distractions, chivalry and holy war were inescapable weapons in the combat with Islam, a view the defeat at Nicopolis, in the hands of literary observers, at least, did much to reinforce. However, the response to Nicopolis confirmed a more damaging trait. Westerners’ reactions were hobbled by a crippling solipsism that explored their own cultural disposition obsessively while failing in any sustained or serious fashion to comprehend or dissect the nature of their opponents. This, too, accorded with some of the longest traditions of crusading and did not end with the great defeat on the Danube.

  BURGUNDY AND THE CRUSADE

  The Nicopolis expedition had been a largely Burgundian affair, an element in the increasingly fevered power struggle around the throne of the insane Charles VI. The tradition of Burgundian leadership of western crusade planning continued until the end of the Valois line of dukes in 1477.65 Burgundian writers, and others, repeatedly reminded fifteenthcentury dukes of their gallant holy warrior ancestor John of Nevers, not least to deflect attention from his subsequent career as duke, a shifty, devious figure hardly inspiring pride, let alone honour or glamour.66 As counts of Flanders as well as dukes and counts of Burgundy, the Valois dukes could lay claim to two of the grandest dynastic and regional crusading traditions. Their championing of the crusade and the need to tackle the eastern question served a similarly consistent political purpose. Once the prospect of dominating the French government evaporated after the English victories of 1415–20, Duke Philip the Good turned his attention to consolidating his autonomous authority in Burgundy, Flanders and the Low Countries. Although lacking the important asset of a crown, for over half a century Duke Philip and his son Charles the Rash sought to assert a role as independent rulers in the west, taking advantage of the Anglo-French war and a weak German empire. Leadership ship of the crusade enhanced self-image and status, allowing dukes a distinctive, independent diplomatic role. It also gave access to clerical taxes: Philip the Good received three grants of ecclesiastical tenths from his lands in the Low Countries between 1449 and 1455 alone. His crusade policy was further underpinned by huge ducal revenues in which even the massive Nicopolis ransoms made little dent.

  However, to achieve these political, diplomatic and fiscal benefits, a crusade policy needed to be validated by action. Here the Burgundian dukes’ record appears equivocal; energetic over many decades but always falling just short of substantial military commitment. In an apparent attempt to overcome the solipsist myopia of previous generations, spies were despatched on extensive journeys to the east to survey both the Turkish and Mamluk enemies in the 1420s and 1430s. Earlier crusade texts were collected and if necessary translated.67 Philip employed Jean Germain bishop of Châlons (1436–61) as a pet court crusade expert for over twenty years, even supplying him with a translation of the Koran by the Venetian chaplain of Damascus, where Bertrandon de la Broquière had obtained a copy in 1433 during his reconnaissance tour of the Near East.68 Germain peddled an erudite if muddled mixture of historical exegesis and vapid exhortation over two decades. Among other courtiers were eastern experts, such as Ghillebert of Lannoy (the spy sponsored by Philip the Good and Henry V of England in 1421) and Brocquière, and soldiers with experience of fighting the Turks, such as Geoffrey of Thoisy, with twenty years’ active involvement in campaigns in north Africa, the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea from the 1440s to 1460s, or Waleran of Wavrin, a veteran of operations around the Black Sea in 1444–5. For decades, the Burgundian court attracted foreign crusade enthusiasts, lobbyists and diplomats, becoming a sort of clearing house for crusade schemes, however crackpot. When John Torcello, on behalf of John VIII Palaeologus, presented a plan for an anti-Turkish crusade to the Council of Florence in 1439 it was submitted for Burgundian scrutiny, only to be dissected and rejected by Duke Philip’s expert, Brocquière, unsurprisingly given John’s prediction that, following the defeat of the Turks, Jerusalem would fall within weeks.69 Into the 1470s, any serious and many fanciful crusade schemes received an airing at the ducal court.70

  Crusading found institutional expression through the ducal chivalric order, the Order of the Golden Fleece (1431). Key noble, court and military figures were knights or companions of the order, which acted a
s a permanent forum for testing and arousing enthusiasm. In the 1460s, its chancellor, William Filastre bishop of Tournai, led Burgundy’s response to the crusade plans of Pius II; in 1473 the order’s chapter supplied the setting for a new papal crusade appeal.71 A generation earlier, Jean Germain acted as the order’s chancellor and used its chapter meeting at Mons in 1451 to expand on his crusade ideas. One consequence of this meeting was the great Feast of the Pheasant, held at Lille on 17 February 1454 to promote Burgundian commitment to the eastern holy war. Constantinople had fallen the previous May; the duke was in the middle of active planning for an anti-Turkish expedition. The climax of the feast’s entertainment consisted of a tableau including the Lamentation of the Holy Church, delivered to the duke and assembled knights, according to tradition, by one of the organizers of the revels, Oliver de la Marche, dressed as a woman, in a white satin frock and wimple, under a black cloak, perched in a castle carried on the back of a fake elephant that had been led into the hall by a grim-looking giant dressed as a ‘Saracen of Granada’. (Oliver later explained the allegory; the elephant stood for exotic Constantinople; the castle, faith; the weeping lady, the church; and the giant, the Turk.) Once the affecting protest had finished, the Golden Fleece King of Arms (i.e. chief herald) entered with a live pheasant. On this remarkably or chemically quiescent bird more than 200 vows of varying implausibility were sworn to fight the infidel. One of the more sensible vows came from Ghillebert of Lannoy, the spy of thirty years before. The whole event was lavish beyond fancy; even Oliver de la Marche’s professional eye noticed the excess of extravagance.72

  The Vow of the Pheasant acted as the focus for a wider assault on the interests of the new crusade. The visual and ritual high-jinks of the Lille festivities were matched by widely circulated written memoranda, such as the Florentine James Tedaldo’s eyewitness account of the fall of Constantinople; public assemblies of the Order of the Golden Fleece; religious ceremonies; verses, such as those of the Lamentation itself; and music, the great Burgundian composer Guillaume Dufay (c.1400–1474) writing a four-part motet on the same subject. Duke Philip was investing heavily in creating an atmosphere of engagement in which crusading, while not necessarily the most rational occupation, became respectable, accepted and unexceptional. However playful the crusade junketing, it was mirrored by a genuine, if sentimental, commitment to holy war, a prerequisite of princely stature.73 In a forbidding international climate for organizing a crusading army, such ludic gestures kept the issue tangibly, excitingly alive.

  Duke Philip’s practical crusading achievements fell far short of the intoxicating and possibly intoxicated demonstrations at Lille. A striking feature of the Feast of the Pheasant was its secularity, despite the tableaux of the church and another of divine grace. Nobody took the cross; there were no clerics on view. Jean Germain had been banished to the margins. The morally dubious pagan progenitor of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Jason, featured in the Lille tableaux, not the biblical hero Gideon and his fleece moistened by heaven’s dew promoted by Germain as the order’s inspiration.74 Yet without active promotion by the church, the court’s obsession was likely to remain confined to itself. Popular engagement with the anti-Turkish posturing of the Burgundian court in the 1450s and 1460s only came with preaching, the sale of indulgences, local church processions and taking the cross. In practical terms, the Burgundian crusade activity fell into three categories; specific planning of grand crusades; general diplomatic encouragement; and regular, small-scale material and military assistance for Christian rulers in the east. Philip the Good’s third marriage to the forceful Isabella of Portugal (1430) associated Burgundy with one of the continuing Iberian traditions of holy war, leading to plans for joint action, for example in Greece in 1436–7. John of Nevers had established good relations with the Hospitallers in Rhodes on his release from captivity in 1397–8. His son provided regular aid for Rhodes, as in 1441 and 1444, when Geoffrey of Thoisy assisted in the defence against the Mamluk attack on the island. Burgundian ships and men campaigned in the Black Sea in 1444 and 1445. In 1472–3 Charles the Rash promised to provide money and galleys to assist the Venetian plan for a two-pronged assault on the Ottomans. As so often, nothing came of this. A similar fate befell the two most intense efforts in crusade planning, 1451–4 and 1459–64.

  THE CRUSADE OF VARNA

  One of the most significant western interventions in eastern Europe attracted only modest Burgundian assistance. After church union was agreed at the Council of Florence (1439), Pope Eugenius IV attempted to coordinate relief for Constantinople. In 1442–3, the pope appointed a legate to eastern Europe, Cardinal Julian Ceasarini (previously a legate on the anti-Hussite crusade of 1431), and tried to orchestrate with Venice a western naval blockade of the Dardenelles while a Hungarian and Serbian army, under John Hunyadi of Transylvania (1440–56, regent of Hungary 1445–56), attacked Rumelia, as the European provinces of the Ottoman empire were known. With the Venetians holding aloof, no western flotilla had arrived to block Ottoman passage of the straits by the time the large Serbo-Hungarian force, strengthened by levies from Bohemia, Moldavia and some western volunteers, launched an attack through Bulgaria towards Thrace in the late autumn and winter of 1443–4.75 It proved a great success. Nish and Sofia were taken and the Ottoman capital at Erdine (Adrianople) threatened, before the invaders retired to Belgrade. However, plans for 1444 were compromised by a contradiction in allied war aims. The Hungarians and Serbs sought their own advantage, security of frontiers for one, restoration of independence for the other. They had little interest and some suspicion of the legate’s desire to relieve Constantinople. The locals were the more realistic. By the 1440s, much of Thrace had become thoroughly Turcified. There was no Byzantine empire to restore. Sultan Murad II exploited these divisions by offering peace terms to George Brancovic of Serbia (1427–56) and King Ladislas IV of Hungary. Brancovic accepted; Ladislas, after some equivocation, did not. The negotiations delayed assembling a new army, giving the Ottomans time to prepare their defences.

  A western fleet of twenty-two or twenty-four galleys arrived in the Dardenelles in July 1444, mainly contributed by the papacy, Burgundy and Venice, manned by Venetians. Remaining immobile on station, the fleet totally failed to prevent Murad crossing the Bosporus north of Constantinople in October 1444 with a very large army. Neither did it make any attempt to harry the Black Sea coast or join up with the land army that advanced from the Danube to the Bulgarian port of Varna with just such an intention. The fleet’s Venetian captain, Alvise Loredan, declined to risk his ships, provoke the Turks or assist the Hungarians, perhaps fearful of the competitive dangers of committing Venice too actively in the interests of other land powers. The Ottoman and Hungarian armies met on 10 November at Varna. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Hungarians fought all day, the battle itself ending without either side gaining a clear advantage. However, losses were horrifying. King Ladislas and Cardinal Cesarini were both killed. Morale evaporated. The remnant of the Hungarian army under Hunyadi withdrew, leaving victory to the Ottomans. Varna confirmed Ottoman control of Rumelia while exposing the diplomatic fragility of their opponents. Peaceful accommodation, even under duress, seemed preferable to many Serbs, Hungarians and Poles, a point reinforced by Varna’s catastrophic casualties and the passivity of the Venetian naval commanders. Aggression was not as obvious a reaction to Ottoman power along the Danube or in the Aegean as it appeared in the council chambers of Rome or the banqueting halls of the Low Countries. The reluctance of eastern rulers to agree among themselves, still less to fight at western behest, placed a bar to foreign aid. Hunyadi, now regent of Hungary (for Ladislas V), reflecting his own territorial vulnerability as lord of Transylvania, did pursue an aggressive policy. In 1448 he obtained crusade indulgences from Nicholas V for a foray into Serbia that ended in defeat by Murad II at Kossovo, the site of the great iconic Serbian defeat by Murad I in 1389. No western crusaders accompanied him. After Varna, eastern and central Europe was left l
argely to its own devices. Western rulers’ political interests were concentrated in Greece, the Aegean and Cyprus; their emotional anxieties focused on Constantinople.

  THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

  In 1453, Mehmed II decided to risk a full assault on Constantinople, despite undefeated enemies on his eastern (Karaman) and western (Hungary) frontiers. The city would unite his empire, remove a potentially troublesome base for hostile troops and help define a universalist imperial ideology. Heavy artillery and temporary naval supremacy supplied the immediate means of conquest. The final siege by land and sea began in April 1453.76 The last Greek emperor, Constantine XI, was politically and financially bankrupt, short of fighting men and bereft of allies willing to come to his aid, both Hungary and Venice holding back. His ramshackle, depopulated city was defended by a garrison of only a few thousand, afforced by Italian professionals. Constantine could only wait behind the great walls of the city and hope for relief that never came. After weeks of heavy pounding, the Turks moved in for the kill early on the morning of 29 May 1453, when the attackers swarmed into the breaches in the western land walls. The final scene saw the few defenders, the Italians prominent among then, in a desperate last stand within the walls. Constantine was killed in the press, his body possibly mutilated and his head taken as a trophy to the victorious sultan. The second sack of Constantinople may have been as damaging as the first in 1204. Perhaps as many as 4,000 Greek civilians died, about a tenth of the remaining population; many others were enslaved or ransomed. Within a decade, the last mainland Greek outposts had been engulfed; the surviving Latin holdings appeared even more precarious.