Sorry its taken so long (researching national heroes of Balkans nations can take quite awhile), but here's a big update for the weekend.
"When walking the razor's edge, it pays to tread carefully." Niccolo Sforza, Italian philosopher, author, and political theorist.
1454 Mehmed, now fully feeling the effects of his loss, readies himself to return to the battlefield. Although his pride would have him immediately attack the Byzantines in reprisal for their defiance, pragmatism wins out, and in early spring he turns west and takes 40,000 men out of his forces at Adrianople to deal with the Albanians on the border. Over the past several months their raids have become more and more damaging, and have continued despite the onset of winter. Besides that, Albania had been in open rebellion under George Kastrioti Skanderbeg for a decade, and Mehmed saw this as an opportunity to eliminate an annoying thorn in his side while he waited for his fleet to be assembled at Thessalonica.
His forces arrived at the unofficial border of Albania on March 3rd, and shortly thereafter besiege the castle of Kruje, the main headquarters of Skanderbeg. Despite launching several assaults on the small and beleaguered garrison the Ottomans are repelled each time. The siege only ends when, in the early morning hours of April 5th, Skanderbeg and the garrison sally forth, and quickly breach the western perimeter of the siege lines. By the time the Ottoman main force knows what is happening Skanderbeg and the 2,000 men of the garrison are gone, vanished with the rising sun. Now defenseless, Kruje is taken with no further casualties, but no significant supplies are found within, and Mehmed must spend two precious weeks resupplying, rearming, and garrisoning the fortress to insure that it isn’t used to further hinder him. By April 21st Skanderbeg has every lord in Albania sending him troops and money, and the Venetians giving him foreign backing. His forces are still greatly outnumbered by Mehmed’s, but they are able to garrison every fortress and hill fort in Albania against invasion, making every inch Mehmed gains so difficult that by summer he has only just managed to secure the area surrounding Kruje completely.
Despite the fierce resistance along the way, Mehmed manages to bring 38,000 of his original 40,000 men (roughly 1,500 casualties, and 500 men left to garrison Kruje) to Lezhe, which is acting as capital for the Albanian League of Lezhe despite being currently owned by the Venetians. The city is put under siege on the 19th of June, marking the official declaration of war between Venice and Mehmed’s Ottomans, although this changes nothing for the moment, as the Venetians have already been supplying the Albanian resistance, and are not yet willing to directly intervene in the situation. With a garrison of less than 10,000, the defenders of Lezhe have next to no chance at driving the Turks from the field, and resign themselves to keeping the walls from being overrun. Mehmed, for his part, is beginning to see the writing on the wall about assaulting fortifications, and wisely decides to hold the siege lines and bombard the city with his cannons instead of risking pitched battle. This poses the challenge of keeping his supply lines open and safe from raiders, but Mehmed manages to do so without spreading himself too thin, and so the siege continues.
Back in Constantinople things have been far from quiet, as Constantine has been attempting to restore the pro union Gregory III to the patriarchate. In 1451 the people of Constantinople replaced Gregory III with Athanasius II, who is anti-unionist. Ordinarily Constantine would be willing to tolerate Athanasius’ anti-unionism, but Pope Nicholas V, who has been harboring Gregory since his exile from Constantinople, has just sent Gregory back, along with a moderate sum of money, and a request that Constantine reinstate Gregory as Patriarch of Constantinople. More importantly, the Pope has promised significant financial aid to Constantine if he reinstates Gregory, but makes known in no uncertain terms that there will be no aid if Athanasius remains in power, and even goes so far as to threaten Constantine with the possibility of a trade embargo condemning all Catholics who trade in Constantinople. That is something that Constantine can’t allow to happen if he is to continue to resist Turkish encroachment, and so he makes the reinstatement of Gregory a top priority venture.
Constantine’s efforts to reinstate Patriarch Gregory III are aided considerably by the good will felt towards the Latins following the defense of Constantinople from Mehmed he previous year, but there is still a large majority within the population who find the idea of reunification with Rome intolerable. Constantine is able to downplay Gregory’s unionist attitude, and remind the people of his legitimacy as patriarch, and on March 7th Gregory is reinstated, while Athanasius, who has rapidly fallen out of popularity after criticizing the Latins directly after their heroic defense of the breach, is quietly removed from the public eye and shipped off to Venetian Crete. Almost immediately there are riots in the streets, as Gregory’s first sermon upon being reinstated directly mentions the possibility of reunifying the churches. Constantine realizes that for this to work Gregory must be kept on a much shorter leash, and from this point on Gregory is forbidden from saying mass except during Holy Week, and even then he is to be closely monitored by the emperor personally. The situation isn’t pretty, but it is enough to convince the papacy to offer their aid, which Constantine gladly accepts.
There was also a brief military campaign under Constantine in the July of 1454, when he received an intelligence report on Rumelihisarı, the new fortress built by Mehmed in 1451-2 to aid in the siege of Constantinople. Now virtually abandoned because of the failure of Mehmed’s siege, Constantine snatched at the opportunity for a quick popularity boosting victory, and got one after assembling 2,000 men and several of the new Orbon guns as a task force to take the castle. Although the fortress had been stripped of most of it’s more valuable items, there was still a small cache of gold, and a few cannons and munitions that were left behind for the castle’s defense. Ultimately the most valuable thing that is gained from the conquest of Rumelihisarı is the stone of the castle itself, which it high quality, and is used to cheaply repair the breach in the Theodosian Walls, and the fortress on Tenedos, saving Constantine a great deal of money on two necessary projects. The fortress is ultimately reduced to it’s earthworks, and thereafter abandoned, as Constantine has no desire to see it re-manned by the Turks.
In the Morea, Thomas is pleasantly surprised by Mehmed’s choice to ignore the Duchy of Athens for now, and he continues to collect monthly tribute from the Athenians as a result. The Morea itself is largely demilitarized, as it is quite important that the men taken from the fields for last year’s campaign get back to work on the farms now, but Thomas resolves to keep a standing army of 1,000 men, in addition to the local militias, to help him keep order and if necessary defend the peninsula from the Turks or Venetians. He also begins to have correspondence with George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, and is rewarded for the effort with an alliance with the League of Lezhe. Lastly, Thomas is able to celebrate the birth of his first son, whom he names Andreas, on July 2nd of 1454.
For the Candarli Ottoman Empire 1454 was a year of growing pains. While the overwhelming majority of the Anatolian nobles had sided with Candarli and his puppet Orhan II during the split, the transition had not been totally painless. Only after Mehmed’s defeat at Constantinople was the Grand Vizier’s position truly secure, as the bloody and high casualty defeat vindicated his stance of opposition to European expansion. Although there were none who would outright support Mehmed with him still stuck in Europe, the Grand Vizier recognized that if Mehmed did somehow manage to return to Anatolia there would be no way to guarantee the loyalty of the higher-ups. Because of this, Candarli was forced to move allot of money under the table to ensure loyalty in his people, and by 1454 he was getting quite tired of this routine.
The chance to change this had come almost immediately after the Turkish split. The neighboring Karamanid Emirate, a second class power to the Ottomans, but one commited to their destruction nonetheless, had begun raiding as soon as Orhan had been placed on the throne. Their leader, Ibrahim II, officially stated that he did not recognize the ascent of Orhan II (although he did not state that he supported Mehmed either), and declared war upon the Candarli Ottoman Empire around the time of Mehmed’s failure to take Constantinople. Ibrahim had set about gathering troops for an invasion, and by May he and a force of over 20,000 were ready to march. His forces had set up siege lines around the important Ottoman city of Ankara in the same month. For Candarli Halil Pasha, this was an opportunity too good to miss, and he gathered together all the troops he had managed to secure since his ascent, along with his Sultan and many of his nobles (a force numbering roughly 36,000 total), and marched to meet the Karamanids.
The two armies met outside Ankara on July 4th of 1454. Despite an Ottoman numerical advantage of over 10,000, Ibrahim did not back down. As far as he knew, Orhan II was actually commanding the Ottoman forces, and Ibrahim refused to step aside for a boy king, believing that his superior command and troop quality would win the day. Moral was similarly high in the Ottoman army, as they believed that their own superior numbers and the Grand Vizier’s generalship would carry the day. The battle was fought on relatively flat even ground, which favored the Ottomans on account of their numbers. The fighting began when Candarli ordered a general cavalry charge against the Karamanids. The Sipahi cavalry contained most of the dangerous nobility, who in general preferred to fight on horseback. Candarli then ordered his infantry archers to begin firing, while his light cavalry archers ran around the Karamanid flanks. Here, the Ottoman light cavalry were forced to engage the Karamanid light cavalry, but their numbers were too great and within 20 minutes the Ottoman light cavalry had totally surrounded the Karamanid infantry. The fighting was fierce, but ultimately favored the Ottoman Sipahis over the Karramanid infantry. With the battle rapidly turning against him, Ibrahim chose not to commit his own heavy cavalry, and withdrew from the field with 10,000 cavalrymen (both light and heavy) in tow.
Although the Ottomans held the field, and had slaughtered the Karamanid infantry almost to a man, they had lost over half of their heavy cavalry, with as many dead or wounded from friendly fire as from the Karamanid soldiery. This of course, was exactly what Candarli Halil Pasha had hoped for, as he now had approximately half the wealthy strongmen to deal with. He pursued the Karamanids into their territory, and when Ibrahim neglected to defend the regional capital of Konya (on account of his low man count), the Ottomans stormed the city and defeated the undersized garrison with minimal casualties.
After this loss Ibrahim was able to gather new forces from his interior territories, and stop the Ottoman advance. Raiding continued between the two forces until mid-August, when Ibrahim II, Orhan II, and Candarli Halil Pasha negotiated a truce. Konya was ceded to the Ottomans, along with the surrounding area, but aside from this things returned to the prewar status between the two Turkish states. Back in Bursa, Candarli and Orhan were able to celebrate victory over the Karamanids, further securing the loyalty of the people, who had felt the neglect of the eastern frontier acutely during the reigns of Murad II and Mehmed II.
On November 1st Mehmed finally assaults Lezhe, after months of siege and bombardment. The city is so thoroughly destroyed that Mehmed was able to launch a full cavalry charge through the largest breach, and within hours the city is his. Despite this, the victory has is darkened when Mehmed learns that Skanderbeg has once again eluded his grasp, taking half the garrison with him to break the siege lines on the opposite side from Mehmed’s assault. Despite this, the city, ruined though it is, is still a moderately wealthy prize, and many of the youths of Lezhe find themselves drafted into Mehmed’s janissaries, where they will be trained to be among the most capable fighters in the world. The siege has cost Mehmed time, but that is all, as he has lost fewer than 500 men, and gained enough wealth from the city to pay for his expenses.
For Skanderbeg it is a bitter defeat, as the League of Lezhe begins to crumble without it’s titular capital, but hope remains for the wily Albanian. With the Ottomans now officially at war with them, the Lion of St. Mark begins to stir. The Venetians, who have had more than their fair share of grievances at Ottoman hands, most recently Mehmed’s siege of Constantinople, which, in addition to cutting them off from Constantinople and the black sea, had also threatened to eliminate one of the monarchs most indebted to them, are quite interested in the possibility of an anti-Ottoman crusade in Europe, but for the moment Venice is quiet. Wars at home and an elderly Doge have conspired to keep Venice from directly intervening against the Turks, but now that Mehmed has declared war and interrupted Venetian trade on two separate occasions, the serene republic is more open to the idea of an alliance against the Turks. There are tentative negotiations with the Papacy and the Byzantines, but for now that is all there is. Venice wants to be sure they will win if they are to spend money on a war after all.
Mehmed’s advances are felt elsewhere in Europe as well, as the Hungarians, under the effective control of regent John Hunyadi (since King Ladislaus V was currently being held against his will in the court of Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick III), make preparations for war with the Ottomans. One of these preparations was to give Hunyadi’s advisor Vlad Dracula control of his native homeland of Wallachia, naming him Voivode of Wallachia for the second time while quietly removing Vladislav II. Prince Vlad III, although still only 23, has thus far shown great promise in the eyes of John Hunyadi, and besides that he has an undying hatred of the Ottomans, especially Mehmed II. This is important to Hunyadi, as he has in the past had quite a bit of trouble with allies who are more focused on personal gain and glory than expelling the Ottomans from Europe. The main problem facing the prospect of an anti-Ottoman crusade at this point was the dubious loyalty of the Despot of Serbia, Durad Brankovic. Brankovic, now aged 77, was obviously not long for this world, and so Hunyadi decided that the best plan was to curry favor with his son Lazar (Durad’s heir apparent as his only son who had not been blinded by Murad II), and wait until Durad’s death. This also bode well for the Palaiologos, as Lazar Brankovic was Thomas Palaiologos’ son in law, and an ally of the empire.
For the outside world, 1454 was a relatively quiet year, with the notable exception of the death of King John II of Castille. Although his death was one of natural causes, his succession was not completely strait forward. He had been married twice, and although he had one son from each marriage, neither of them were perfect candidates. His elder son Henry was 29 years old, and was the obvious choice for succession, but had yet to sire a single child, legitimate or otherwise, and was widely considered to be impotent. Besides that, he was a generally weak personality, rumored to be a homosexual, and failed to inspire loyalty in the nobility. John’s second son, Alfonso, was still only 2 years old, so he was considered unsuitable so long as an adult male heir existed, but there were those within the kingdom who found the idea of a regency to be an opportunity to be sought after. Despite this, Henry was crowned as Henry IV, and for the moment proceeded to take his place on the throne.
In England the final loss of the Hundred Years War had caused their king, the somewhat feeble minded Henry VI to sink into madness. Although he recovered by the end of the year, and his position had been helped somewhat by the birth of his son, Edward in October, he had nonetheless lost a dangerous amount of respect in the eyes of his powerful nobility. For the moment, the people of England are simply glad to have their king back in a respectable state of sanity, but storm clouds are gathering, and the stage is set for civil war.
Besides this, 1454 was a time of preparation, as various factions watched and waited for their best opportunity to strike at one another. The Balkans threaten to boil over, as preparations for the Ottoman Crusade (as it would later be called) reach their height, and Albania is locked in a desperate struggle against the inexorable advance of Mehmed II. In Western Europe, it is succession, rather than holy war, that has most people concerned, but the former is often more devastating than the later. Still, the events of 1454 are often forgotten in the cloudburst of the late 1450s, an interesting time to be sure.
"When walking the razor's edge, it pays to tread carefully." Niccolo Sforza, Italian philosopher, author, and political theorist.
1454 Mehmed, now fully feeling the effects of his loss, readies himself to return to the battlefield. Although his pride would have him immediately attack the Byzantines in reprisal for their defiance, pragmatism wins out, and in early spring he turns west and takes 40,000 men out of his forces at Adrianople to deal with the Albanians on the border. Over the past several months their raids have become more and more damaging, and have continued despite the onset of winter. Besides that, Albania had been in open rebellion under George Kastrioti Skanderbeg for a decade, and Mehmed saw this as an opportunity to eliminate an annoying thorn in his side while he waited for his fleet to be assembled at Thessalonica.
His forces arrived at the unofficial border of Albania on March 3rd, and shortly thereafter besiege the castle of Kruje, the main headquarters of Skanderbeg. Despite launching several assaults on the small and beleaguered garrison the Ottomans are repelled each time. The siege only ends when, in the early morning hours of April 5th, Skanderbeg and the garrison sally forth, and quickly breach the western perimeter of the siege lines. By the time the Ottoman main force knows what is happening Skanderbeg and the 2,000 men of the garrison are gone, vanished with the rising sun. Now defenseless, Kruje is taken with no further casualties, but no significant supplies are found within, and Mehmed must spend two precious weeks resupplying, rearming, and garrisoning the fortress to insure that it isn’t used to further hinder him. By April 21st Skanderbeg has every lord in Albania sending him troops and money, and the Venetians giving him foreign backing. His forces are still greatly outnumbered by Mehmed’s, but they are able to garrison every fortress and hill fort in Albania against invasion, making every inch Mehmed gains so difficult that by summer he has only just managed to secure the area surrounding Kruje completely.
Despite the fierce resistance along the way, Mehmed manages to bring 38,000 of his original 40,000 men (roughly 1,500 casualties, and 500 men left to garrison Kruje) to Lezhe, which is acting as capital for the Albanian League of Lezhe despite being currently owned by the Venetians. The city is put under siege on the 19th of June, marking the official declaration of war between Venice and Mehmed’s Ottomans, although this changes nothing for the moment, as the Venetians have already been supplying the Albanian resistance, and are not yet willing to directly intervene in the situation. With a garrison of less than 10,000, the defenders of Lezhe have next to no chance at driving the Turks from the field, and resign themselves to keeping the walls from being overrun. Mehmed, for his part, is beginning to see the writing on the wall about assaulting fortifications, and wisely decides to hold the siege lines and bombard the city with his cannons instead of risking pitched battle. This poses the challenge of keeping his supply lines open and safe from raiders, but Mehmed manages to do so without spreading himself too thin, and so the siege continues.
Back in Constantinople things have been far from quiet, as Constantine has been attempting to restore the pro union Gregory III to the patriarchate. In 1451 the people of Constantinople replaced Gregory III with Athanasius II, who is anti-unionist. Ordinarily Constantine would be willing to tolerate Athanasius’ anti-unionism, but Pope Nicholas V, who has been harboring Gregory since his exile from Constantinople, has just sent Gregory back, along with a moderate sum of money, and a request that Constantine reinstate Gregory as Patriarch of Constantinople. More importantly, the Pope has promised significant financial aid to Constantine if he reinstates Gregory, but makes known in no uncertain terms that there will be no aid if Athanasius remains in power, and even goes so far as to threaten Constantine with the possibility of a trade embargo condemning all Catholics who trade in Constantinople. That is something that Constantine can’t allow to happen if he is to continue to resist Turkish encroachment, and so he makes the reinstatement of Gregory a top priority venture.
Constantine’s efforts to reinstate Patriarch Gregory III are aided considerably by the good will felt towards the Latins following the defense of Constantinople from Mehmed he previous year, but there is still a large majority within the population who find the idea of reunification with Rome intolerable. Constantine is able to downplay Gregory’s unionist attitude, and remind the people of his legitimacy as patriarch, and on March 7th Gregory is reinstated, while Athanasius, who has rapidly fallen out of popularity after criticizing the Latins directly after their heroic defense of the breach, is quietly removed from the public eye and shipped off to Venetian Crete. Almost immediately there are riots in the streets, as Gregory’s first sermon upon being reinstated directly mentions the possibility of reunifying the churches. Constantine realizes that for this to work Gregory must be kept on a much shorter leash, and from this point on Gregory is forbidden from saying mass except during Holy Week, and even then he is to be closely monitored by the emperor personally. The situation isn’t pretty, but it is enough to convince the papacy to offer their aid, which Constantine gladly accepts.
There was also a brief military campaign under Constantine in the July of 1454, when he received an intelligence report on Rumelihisarı, the new fortress built by Mehmed in 1451-2 to aid in the siege of Constantinople. Now virtually abandoned because of the failure of Mehmed’s siege, Constantine snatched at the opportunity for a quick popularity boosting victory, and got one after assembling 2,000 men and several of the new Orbon guns as a task force to take the castle. Although the fortress had been stripped of most of it’s more valuable items, there was still a small cache of gold, and a few cannons and munitions that were left behind for the castle’s defense. Ultimately the most valuable thing that is gained from the conquest of Rumelihisarı is the stone of the castle itself, which it high quality, and is used to cheaply repair the breach in the Theodosian Walls, and the fortress on Tenedos, saving Constantine a great deal of money on two necessary projects. The fortress is ultimately reduced to it’s earthworks, and thereafter abandoned, as Constantine has no desire to see it re-manned by the Turks.
In the Morea, Thomas is pleasantly surprised by Mehmed’s choice to ignore the Duchy of Athens for now, and he continues to collect monthly tribute from the Athenians as a result. The Morea itself is largely demilitarized, as it is quite important that the men taken from the fields for last year’s campaign get back to work on the farms now, but Thomas resolves to keep a standing army of 1,000 men, in addition to the local militias, to help him keep order and if necessary defend the peninsula from the Turks or Venetians. He also begins to have correspondence with George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, and is rewarded for the effort with an alliance with the League of Lezhe. Lastly, Thomas is able to celebrate the birth of his first son, whom he names Andreas, on July 2nd of 1454.
For the Candarli Ottoman Empire 1454 was a year of growing pains. While the overwhelming majority of the Anatolian nobles had sided with Candarli and his puppet Orhan II during the split, the transition had not been totally painless. Only after Mehmed’s defeat at Constantinople was the Grand Vizier’s position truly secure, as the bloody and high casualty defeat vindicated his stance of opposition to European expansion. Although there were none who would outright support Mehmed with him still stuck in Europe, the Grand Vizier recognized that if Mehmed did somehow manage to return to Anatolia there would be no way to guarantee the loyalty of the higher-ups. Because of this, Candarli was forced to move allot of money under the table to ensure loyalty in his people, and by 1454 he was getting quite tired of this routine.
The chance to change this had come almost immediately after the Turkish split. The neighboring Karamanid Emirate, a second class power to the Ottomans, but one commited to their destruction nonetheless, had begun raiding as soon as Orhan had been placed on the throne. Their leader, Ibrahim II, officially stated that he did not recognize the ascent of Orhan II (although he did not state that he supported Mehmed either), and declared war upon the Candarli Ottoman Empire around the time of Mehmed’s failure to take Constantinople. Ibrahim had set about gathering troops for an invasion, and by May he and a force of over 20,000 were ready to march. His forces had set up siege lines around the important Ottoman city of Ankara in the same month. For Candarli Halil Pasha, this was an opportunity too good to miss, and he gathered together all the troops he had managed to secure since his ascent, along with his Sultan and many of his nobles (a force numbering roughly 36,000 total), and marched to meet the Karamanids.
The two armies met outside Ankara on July 4th of 1454. Despite an Ottoman numerical advantage of over 10,000, Ibrahim did not back down. As far as he knew, Orhan II was actually commanding the Ottoman forces, and Ibrahim refused to step aside for a boy king, believing that his superior command and troop quality would win the day. Moral was similarly high in the Ottoman army, as they believed that their own superior numbers and the Grand Vizier’s generalship would carry the day. The battle was fought on relatively flat even ground, which favored the Ottomans on account of their numbers. The fighting began when Candarli ordered a general cavalry charge against the Karamanids. The Sipahi cavalry contained most of the dangerous nobility, who in general preferred to fight on horseback. Candarli then ordered his infantry archers to begin firing, while his light cavalry archers ran around the Karamanid flanks. Here, the Ottoman light cavalry were forced to engage the Karamanid light cavalry, but their numbers were too great and within 20 minutes the Ottoman light cavalry had totally surrounded the Karamanid infantry. The fighting was fierce, but ultimately favored the Ottoman Sipahis over the Karramanid infantry. With the battle rapidly turning against him, Ibrahim chose not to commit his own heavy cavalry, and withdrew from the field with 10,000 cavalrymen (both light and heavy) in tow.
Although the Ottomans held the field, and had slaughtered the Karamanid infantry almost to a man, they had lost over half of their heavy cavalry, with as many dead or wounded from friendly fire as from the Karamanid soldiery. This of course, was exactly what Candarli Halil Pasha had hoped for, as he now had approximately half the wealthy strongmen to deal with. He pursued the Karamanids into their territory, and when Ibrahim neglected to defend the regional capital of Konya (on account of his low man count), the Ottomans stormed the city and defeated the undersized garrison with minimal casualties.
After this loss Ibrahim was able to gather new forces from his interior territories, and stop the Ottoman advance. Raiding continued between the two forces until mid-August, when Ibrahim II, Orhan II, and Candarli Halil Pasha negotiated a truce. Konya was ceded to the Ottomans, along with the surrounding area, but aside from this things returned to the prewar status between the two Turkish states. Back in Bursa, Candarli and Orhan were able to celebrate victory over the Karamanids, further securing the loyalty of the people, who had felt the neglect of the eastern frontier acutely during the reigns of Murad II and Mehmed II.
On November 1st Mehmed finally assaults Lezhe, after months of siege and bombardment. The city is so thoroughly destroyed that Mehmed was able to launch a full cavalry charge through the largest breach, and within hours the city is his. Despite this, the victory has is darkened when Mehmed learns that Skanderbeg has once again eluded his grasp, taking half the garrison with him to break the siege lines on the opposite side from Mehmed’s assault. Despite this, the city, ruined though it is, is still a moderately wealthy prize, and many of the youths of Lezhe find themselves drafted into Mehmed’s janissaries, where they will be trained to be among the most capable fighters in the world. The siege has cost Mehmed time, but that is all, as he has lost fewer than 500 men, and gained enough wealth from the city to pay for his expenses.
For Skanderbeg it is a bitter defeat, as the League of Lezhe begins to crumble without it’s titular capital, but hope remains for the wily Albanian. With the Ottomans now officially at war with them, the Lion of St. Mark begins to stir. The Venetians, who have had more than their fair share of grievances at Ottoman hands, most recently Mehmed’s siege of Constantinople, which, in addition to cutting them off from Constantinople and the black sea, had also threatened to eliminate one of the monarchs most indebted to them, are quite interested in the possibility of an anti-Ottoman crusade in Europe, but for the moment Venice is quiet. Wars at home and an elderly Doge have conspired to keep Venice from directly intervening against the Turks, but now that Mehmed has declared war and interrupted Venetian trade on two separate occasions, the serene republic is more open to the idea of an alliance against the Turks. There are tentative negotiations with the Papacy and the Byzantines, but for now that is all there is. Venice wants to be sure they will win if they are to spend money on a war after all.
Mehmed’s advances are felt elsewhere in Europe as well, as the Hungarians, under the effective control of regent John Hunyadi (since King Ladislaus V was currently being held against his will in the court of Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick III), make preparations for war with the Ottomans. One of these preparations was to give Hunyadi’s advisor Vlad Dracula control of his native homeland of Wallachia, naming him Voivode of Wallachia for the second time while quietly removing Vladislav II. Prince Vlad III, although still only 23, has thus far shown great promise in the eyes of John Hunyadi, and besides that he has an undying hatred of the Ottomans, especially Mehmed II. This is important to Hunyadi, as he has in the past had quite a bit of trouble with allies who are more focused on personal gain and glory than expelling the Ottomans from Europe. The main problem facing the prospect of an anti-Ottoman crusade at this point was the dubious loyalty of the Despot of Serbia, Durad Brankovic. Brankovic, now aged 77, was obviously not long for this world, and so Hunyadi decided that the best plan was to curry favor with his son Lazar (Durad’s heir apparent as his only son who had not been blinded by Murad II), and wait until Durad’s death. This also bode well for the Palaiologos, as Lazar Brankovic was Thomas Palaiologos’ son in law, and an ally of the empire.
For the outside world, 1454 was a relatively quiet year, with the notable exception of the death of King John II of Castille. Although his death was one of natural causes, his succession was not completely strait forward. He had been married twice, and although he had one son from each marriage, neither of them were perfect candidates. His elder son Henry was 29 years old, and was the obvious choice for succession, but had yet to sire a single child, legitimate or otherwise, and was widely considered to be impotent. Besides that, he was a generally weak personality, rumored to be a homosexual, and failed to inspire loyalty in the nobility. John’s second son, Alfonso, was still only 2 years old, so he was considered unsuitable so long as an adult male heir existed, but there were those within the kingdom who found the idea of a regency to be an opportunity to be sought after. Despite this, Henry was crowned as Henry IV, and for the moment proceeded to take his place on the throne.
In England the final loss of the Hundred Years War had caused their king, the somewhat feeble minded Henry VI to sink into madness. Although he recovered by the end of the year, and his position had been helped somewhat by the birth of his son, Edward in October, he had nonetheless lost a dangerous amount of respect in the eyes of his powerful nobility. For the moment, the people of England are simply glad to have their king back in a respectable state of sanity, but storm clouds are gathering, and the stage is set for civil war.
Besides this, 1454 was a time of preparation, as various factions watched and waited for their best opportunity to strike at one another. The Balkans threaten to boil over, as preparations for the Ottoman Crusade (as it would later be called) reach their height, and Albania is locked in a desperate struggle against the inexorable advance of Mehmed II. In Western Europe, it is succession, rather than holy war, that has most people concerned, but the former is often more devastating than the later. Still, the events of 1454 are often forgotten in the cloudburst of the late 1450s, an interesting time to be sure.
