JBO'C's Historical Reference |
Timur versus Bayezid |
Timur versus BayezidJust at the moment when the Sultan seemed to have attained the pinnacle of his ambition, when his authority was unquestioningly obeyed over the greater part of the Byzantine Empire in Europe and Asia, when the Christian states were regarding him with terror as the scourge of the world, another and a greater scourge came to quell him, and at one stroke all the vast fabric of empire which Bayezid had so triumphantly erected was shattered to the ground. This terrible conqueror was Timur the Tartar, or as we call him "Tamerlane." Timur was of Turkish race, and was born near Samarkand in 1333 He was consequently an old man of nearly seventy when he came to encounter Bayezid in 1402. It had taken him many years to establish his authority over a portion of the numerous divisions into which the immense empire of Genghis Khan had fallen after the death of that stupendous conqueror. Timur was but a petty chief among many others : but at last he won his way, and became ruler of Samarkand and the whole province of Transoxiana, or "Beyond the River" (Ma-wara-n-nahr), as the Arabs called the country north of the Oxus. Once fairly established in this province, Timur began to overrun the surrounding lands, and during thirty years his ruthless armies spread over the provinces of Asia, from Delhi to Damascus, and from the Sea of Aral to the Persian Gulf. The sub-division of the Mohammedan Empire into numerous petty kingdoms rendered it powerless to meet the overwhelming hordes which Timur brought down from Central Asia. One and all, the kings and princes of Persia and Syria succumbed, and Timur carried his banners triumphantly as far as the frontier of Egypt, where the brave Mamluk Sultans still dared to defy him. He had so far left Bayezid unmolested; partly because he was too powerful to be rashly provoked, and partly because Timur respected the Sultan's valorous deeds against the Christians: for Timur, though a wholesale butcher, was very conscientious in matters of religion, and held that Bayezid’s fighting for the Faith rightly covered a multitude of sins. But when two great empires march together, as did those of the Tartar and the Turk, and when each of them has been built up at the expense of a number of petty dynasties, every prince of which naturally sought an asylum at the Court of the rival emperor, the relations of the two Powers are apt to become strained. So it proved in the present case. Bayezid had sheltered some of the princes of Mesopotamia whom Timur had overthrown: Timur had welcomed to his Court the petty rulers of Asia Minor whom Bayezid had expelled. Of course the refugees on either side, in hope of restoration, lost no opportunity of exciting the jealousy and irritability of the rival tyrants. The result was that, after an interchange of embassies which only embittered the minds of both sovereigns, and in which the Turk displayed more than his wonted insolence, Timur advanced to Sivas, the ancient Sebaste, in Cappadocia, an important city which had recently acknowledged the authority of the Turk along with most of the towns of Asia Minor, and after a determined siege stormed the place and put the garrison to the sword. Among the rest, Prince Ertoghrul, a son of Bayezid was executed (1400). The Sultan was laying siege to Constantinople. when he heard the news of the fall of Sivas and the death of his son. He hurried over to Asia, at the head of his veteran troops, who had for years borne the brunt of war against the chivalry of Serbia, Hungary, and France, on such fields as Kosovo and Nicopolis; but when he arrived Timur was gone: he had marched south to menace the Mamluks of Egypt. It was not till the next year (1402) that the two forces met, and in the interval Bayezid had lost prestige with his soldiers. Timur's spies had been at work, sowing disaffection among their ranks, and the Sultan's notorious meanness and avarice gave only too much color to the insinuations of these emissaries; the Turkish troops became less hostile to Timur when they found how liberal he was to his followers. Still Bayezid did nothing to allay the growing murmurs of his men, and advanced to meet his adversary with an army estimated vaguely at 120,000. Timur, who is fabled to have commanded six times 'this number, outmaneuvered him and secured an open field at Angora, where his superior force could be used to the best advantage. So far was Bayezid from manifesting even common caution in the presence of the enemy, that out of mere bravado he employed his army in a grand hunt in the neighborhood of Angora. His hunting was ill chosen as to place as well as time, for there was no water, and it is said that no less than five thousand Turks perished from mere thirst, with never a Tartar arrow to speed them. When the infatuated Sultan returned to his camp, he found that Timur had seized it in his absence, and had poisoned the stream that would have refreshed the -weary Turks. In this position the Ottoman led his dispirited men against the enemy. On the one side were men thirsty and exhausted, inferior in numbers, and discontented with their leader: on the other, a vast host, strongly posted, splendidly generalled, neglecting no precaution of war, and possessing every advantage of numbers, discipline, and physical condition. The result could not be doubtful. In the battle many of Bayezid’s troops, among whom were forced contingents from the recently annexed states of Asia Minor, went over to the enemy, and only the Janissaries who formed the center, and the Serbian auxiliaries under their king, Stephen Lazarevich, on the left, gave anything like a soldier's account of themselves on that memorable day. The valor of the Janissaries and the Serbs could avail little against Timur's numbers, and the end was utter rout. Old Knolles tells the story in his quaint and graphic style : " The next day the two armies drew near together and encamped within a league one of the other; where all the night long you might have heard such noise of horses as that it seemed the heavens were full of voices, the air did so resound ; and every man thought the night long, to come to the trial of his valor and the gaining of his desires. The Scythians talked of nothing but the spoil, the proud Parthians of their honor, arid the poor Christians of their deliverance, all to be gained by the next day's victory: every man during the night speaking according to his own humor. All which Tamerlane, walking this night up and down in his camp, heard, and much rejoiced to see the hope that his soldiers had already in general conceived of the victory. Who, after the second watch, returning unto his pavilion, and there casting himself upon a carpet, had thought to have slept awhile: but his cares not suffering him to do so, he then, as his manner was, called for a book wherein was contained the lives of his fathers and ancestors and of other valiant worthies, the which he used ordinarily to read, as he then did ; not as therewith vainly to deceive the time, but to make use thereof by the imitation of that which was by them worthily done, and declining of such dangers as they by their rashness or oversight fell into. . . " Now was Tamerlane by an espy advertised that Bayezid, having before given orders for the disposing of his army, was on foot in the midst of thirty thousand Janissaries, his principal men of war and greatest strength, wherein he meant that day to fight, and in whom he had reposed his greatest hope. . . . His army marching all in one front, in form of a half moon (but not so well knit together as was Tamerlane's whose squadrons directly followed one another) seemed almost as great as his; and so with infinite numbers of most horrible outcries still advanced forward; Tamerlane and his soldiers all the while standing fast with great silence. There was not possible to be seen a more furious charge than was by the Turks given upon the Prince of Ciarcan, who had commandment not to fight before the enemy came up to him : neither could have been chosen a fairer plain, and where the skilful choice of the place was of less advantage for the one or the other ; but that Tamerlane had the river on the left hand of his army, serving him to some small advantage. Now this young Prince of Ciarcan with his forty thousand horse was in this first encounter almost wholly overthrown, yet having fought right valiantly and entered into them, even into the midst of the Janissaries (where the person of Bayezid was), putting them in disorder, was himself there slain. About which time Axalla set upon them with the avant-garde, but not with like danger; for having overthrown one of the enemy's wings, and cut it all to pieces, and his footmen coming to join with him as they had been commanded, he faced the battalion of the Janissaries, who right valiantly behaved themselves for the safety of their prince. This hard fight continued one hour, and yet you could not have seen any scattered, but the one still resolutely fighting against the other. You might there have seen the horsemen like mountains rush together, and infinite numbers of men die, cry, lament, and threaten, all in one instant. Tamerlane had patience all this while, to see the event of this so mortal a fight ; but perceiving his men at length to give ground, he sent ten thousand of his horse to join again with the ten thousand appointed for the rearward, and commanded them to assist him at such time as he should have need of them ; and at the very same time charged himself and made them to give him room, causing the footmen to charge also, who gave a furious onset upon the battalion of the Janissaries. Now Bayezid had in his army a great number of mercenary Tartars [of the Seljuk States]. . . . These Tartars and other soldiers, seeing some their friends, and other some their natural and loving princes in the army of Tamerlane, stricken with the terror of disloyalty and abhorring the cruelty of the proud tyrant, in the heat of the battle revolted from Bayezid to their own princes, which their revolt much weakened Bayezid's forces. Who, nevertheless, with his own men of war, and especially the Janissaries, and the help of the Christian soldiers brought to his aid from Serbia and other places of Europe, with great courage maintained the fight: but the multitude and not true valor prevailed; for as much as might be done by valiant and courageous men was by the Janissaries and the rest performed, both for the preservation of the person of their prince and the gaining of the victory. But in the end, the horsemen with whom Tamerlane himself was giving a fresh charge, and the avant-garde wholly knit again to him reinforcing the charge, he with much ado obtained the victory." 1 So on the field of Angora, where the Ottomans had won
their spurs in their first combat by the side of the
Seljuk Turks a hundred and fifty years before, now was
their empire shattered to the ground. Bayezid himself, with one
of his sons, was taken prisoner, and the unfortunate
Sultan became a part of his victor's pageant, and was
condemned in fetters, to follow his captor about in his
pomps and campaigns. The fact that he was carried in a
barred litter gave rise to the well-known legend that he
was kept in an iron cage.2 He died eight months later,
and Timur survived his humbled prisoner but two years. In
that time, however, he had overrun the Turkish Empire in
Asia, had occupied Nicaea, Brusa, and the other chief
cities of the coast, had wrested Smyrna from the valiant
Knights of St. John, and had restored the various petty
princes of Asia Minor to their former possessions. The
empire of the Turks, built up with so much skill and
bravery, till it had become the terror of Europe,
crumbled to dust before the Asiatic despot, who well
earned his title of " The Wrath of God." The
history of the Ottomans seemed to have suddenly come to
an end. Seldom has the world seen so complete, so
terrible, a catastrophe as the fall of Bayezid from the
summit of power to the shame of a chained captive. V. 1 Knolles, i. 152. |
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