The Rise of the Ottoman Empire

The Sultan Mehmet II (1432 - 1480) Art Print
Gentile Bellini
18 in. x 24 in.

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The rise of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is one of the major events of history, the significance of which is yet not fully appreciated by those who supply the school histories for western European or American readers. The period which seems to the average student to be fully given up to Renaissance, Reformation and religious wars was also the period of the advent of an empire which was perhaps the greatest the world has seen since Roman, or at least since Saracen, days. Just when Martin Luther was launching his revolt Selim I (1512 - 1526) extended his empire by conquest over the Persians and the whole of Kurdistan, Syria and Egypt. Master of the sacred cities of Islam, he forced the last of the Abbasid caliphs to surrender to him and his successors the title of caliph and the outer symbols of that sacred office, the holy standard, the mantle of the Prophet, and--not least--his sword. His son, Suleiman, or "Solomon the Magnificent," with the heritage of Asia at his command, sent his hosts into the Danube Valley.

In 1521 he captured Belgrade and in 1526, at the Battle of Mohács, defeated the Hungarian King Louis II, who perished with the flower of his chivalry. A creature of the Sultan was enthroned at Budapest, whose rocky escarpment by the Danube still bears the marks and memories of the Turk. Vienna was next besieged, but without success (1529), and Suleiman's advance to world-empire was stayed. Even as it was, he reached and ravaged Styria and Carniola, almost at the gate of central Europe. At the same time his corsair admiral, Khair-ed-din--known to the Christians as Barbarossa--established his power in Northern Africa and spread terror in the Mediterranean.

By a strange turn in events the best friend of Suleiman in Europe was the one who, by age-long traditional policy, should have led in the coalition against him. Francis I, however, beaten to his knees by Charles V, was in no mood for a joint crusade upon his rival's other enemy. Much had changed since the days of St. Louis. But even yet the historian must be cynical who is not shocked to find that it was emissaries of the King of France who were sent to stir up Suleiman to march upon the Hungarians on the fatal field of Mohács. 1 Francis chose, however, to follow this policy through; and finally, in 1536, the Caliph and the "Most Christian King" made a treaty which laid a basis for French supremacy in the Levant.

The exact substance of this treaty and its bearing upon the question of the Straits is discussed in the following section. But before turning to it we should recall the economic as well as the political importance of this new policy to France, that of friendly rapprochement with the Turks. The consolidation of the Asiatic Empire of Selim and the conquest of Egypt had at last brought the entire Oriental and East Indian trade into the monopolistic hands of Turkey. The conquest of Constantinople in 1453, while it must have injured this trade with the west, did not do so effectively, for the other ports were still open, especially Alexandria.

The greatest splendor of Venice, indeed, is in the half-century following the taking of Constantinople. It was able to tap the other routes, and generally remained on sufficiently fair terms to bargain with the Turks. It was this advantage which France now prepared to share. But another event had already robbed the Levant of its unique commercial value for Europe. For in 1499, Vasco da Gama had found the sea-route to India and the flow of trade was diverted from Cairo to Lisbon, sufficiently, at least, to ruin Venice. Thus, while Spain and Portugal and later Holland and England turned to the rich profits of sea-borne trade, France reaped no such harvest from the agreement with the Turk as would have fallen to her had the world remained mediaeval and limited to Mediterranean channels for its outlet to the east.

It would carry us too far afield to follow these suggestions further, however, and we must return to the narrower problem of the effects of this new turn in events upon the trade of the Straits and the Black Sea.