When in February 1451 Mehemmed II ascended the throne for the second time, the situation was ripe for the final collapse of the Byzantine state. Constantinople being his prime target, the young sultan carefully avoided any clash with the Christian world. A huge Ottoman army surrounded the underpopulated Byzantine capital in the first days of April 1453, and Mehemmed himself, with his janissaries, encamped not far from the city walls. Heavy bombardment was carried out day and night by technically advanced cannons. Even more advanced engineering techniques were used to drag seventy-two boats over land from the Bosporus to the Golden Horn. On 29 May Constantinople fell. An old dream of the Muslim world thus became a reality, and the church of St Sophia was converted into a mosque. The Ottoman Empire became the successor of the Byzantine.
An agreement on oath between the sultan and his army had preceded the final assault: the city was to be given over to sack by the soldiers. This meant that moveable property, including human beings, would belong to the soldiers, buildings and land to the sultan. Accordingly, the soldiers pillaged everything in the city and took all the inhabitants prisoners to sell them as slaves or to claim ransoms. Within the city neither man, nor animal, nor bird was heard to cry out or utter a voice the day after its fall.
The sultan immediately took care of the repopulation and reorganisation of the city by inviting his dignitaries to settle, by liberating prisoners and establishing them in it, by calling back old Constantinopolitans who had moved to other places before the final siege and, mainly, by largely applying the Ottoman method of compulsory deportation: groups of inhabitants from other towns (surgun) were obliged to settle in Constantinople. These were chosen from among merchants and craftsmen living in urban centres; most of them were dhimmis. The sultan encouraged the new inhabitants by offering them houses and exemption from taxes. Another important measure for the repopulation of the city was the re-establishment of religious authorities. According to old Islamic principles, the sultan first named a patriarch of the Greek Orthodox community: he chose the openly anti-papal Gennadios Scholarios for this post. There followed the nomination of the learned Moshe Kapsali as rabbi, and finally that of Joachim as patriarch of the Armenians.
Shortly after the conquest of Constantinople, Mehemmed ordered the execution of Halil Djandarli: the war party, with the sultan at its head, assumed all power, while the moderate one seemed to have disappeared. A long period of war began with the Ottoman state governed by those devoted to the idea of territorial expansion, of military glory or simply booty. Mehemmed was continuously on campaign or, as his biographer, Tursun Beg, put it: ‘it was one of the Sultan’s happy customs that if he achieved an easy conquest in one year, he would strive, if sufficient time remained, to add yet another victory to it’. The warlike spirit of the sultan’s milieu is described by a Slav soldier resident for several years in his court, presumably as a janissary. On one occasion, Mehemmed, having heard that the pope’s troops were marching against his territories, summoned his high officials to inform them about the danger and take counsel with them. They told him: ‘Fortunate lord, march upon them in their lands; it is better than if you waited for them at home.’
Mehemmed II judged that the existence of vassals was no longer useful and he transformed their domains into Ottoman provinces. The Gattilusi were expelled from Ainos and Lesbos (1454—62); the Brankovic family lost Serbia (1459); the Palaiologoi were removed from the Morea (1460); the Grand Komnenoi were compelled to surrender Trebizond (1461). Some among his ex-vassals, for instance the Grand Komnenoi and descendants of the Brankovic and of the Palaiologoi, were granted revenues from land by the sultan, usually in the Strymon region. Members of the old Christian aristocratic families living in the former vassal territories were often allowed to stay, some of them as timar-holders.
The Hungarians remained the most serious enemy of the Ottomans in Europe, as they continued to exercise influence upon the lesser Balkan states. Mehemmed II was unable to expel them from Belgrade, but he subjugated Bosnia (1463) and Herzegovina (1466), and carried out devastating campaigns against Wallachia (1462) and Moldavia (1476). Skender bey resisted for some years in Albania, but, after repeated military operations and his death (1468), this country also became Ottoman territory. Between 1463 and 1479 Mehemmed II fought against the Venetians, who fiercely defended their possessions in the Morea and in Albania, but lost the island of Euboia (Negroponte). He also fought against the Genoese, and expelled them from their possessions in the Crimea (1475). Finally, in 1480, he despatched an army which landed in southern Italy and occupied Otranto. On the other side, in Anatolia, he put an end to the emirate of Karaman (1475). His great foe in the east was Uzun-Hasan, the lord of the Akkoyunlu, who ruled over Persia, Mesopotamia and Armenia. Uzun-Hasan controlled important parts of the caravan routes connecting central Asia with Anatolia and possessed focal points of trade, such as the town of Erzindjan. Therefore, serious conflict of interests existed between him and the Ottoman sultan. Furthermore, the Akkoyunlu lord became more dangerous by establishing good relations with the pope and the Venetians. He was finally badly defeated by the Ottomans at Otluk Beli in 1473.
The historian Tursun bey never hid the fact that Ottoman troops were sometimes displeased by the arduous annual campaigns which they had to undertake. When, in full winter, Mehemmed began preparations for the campaign against Ainos, the janissaries resented the orders. When, in 1458, he ordered a campaign against the Morea, officers and soldiers showed signs of discontent at the excessively intense military activity. His vizier was obliged to remind them that the sultan had been chosen ruler by God in order to carry out holy war, and that world conquest could not be accomplished without sacrifice.
Despite devotion to war and its resulting preoccupations, Mehemmed and his milieu did not remain indifferent to the currents of the Renaissance flourishing among his enemies. Several humanists and artists visited the sultan’s court, Gentile Bellini, who painted his portrait (see plate 24), being the most famous. The taste for Renaissance art was also developed among the sultan’s subjects, as is attested by a few surviving monuments of the time.
The excessively warlike policy of the sultan exhausted the economy of his lands. To finance his military operations he was obliged to increase customs fees and some of the taxes paid by the peasants, and to impose new taxes upon the inhabitants of Istanbul. He repeatedly debased the silver coinage: the silver coin (akce) was devalued by approximately 30 per cent during his reign. In order to increase and reward his cavalry troops properly, he confiscated land properties belonging to charitable institutions (vakf) or to individuals (mulk), and distributed them as limars. This measure provoked the enmity of some influential families of landowners and especially that of the people of religion (ehl-i din), that is the ulema, the sheyhs and dervishes, who controlled the vakf. The latter were already displeased because the sultan, in an effort to curtail non-military expenses, had abolished the gifts customarily distributed to them.