The only question will be how the Pope could call on a crusade to save Constantinople when he realizes that a fallen Constantinople would have been a good bargaining chip for him to use?
Cnstantinople as a bargaining chip to be used by the pope to co-opt the Greek Orthodox clergy into a union with the Papacy. OK, with Suleiman holding the European half of the Ottoman Empire, would he actually try to create it in Bulgaria?
"Better the Sultan's turban than the Cardinal's hat" kind of thing?
The only question will be how the Pope could call on a crusade to save Constantinople when he realizes that a fallen Constantinople would have been a good bargaining chip for him to use?
There were somewhere on the order of a dozen crusades called for over the course of the 1400s, but most went unanswered, and the few that came to anything came up just a bit short, often to the point of bad luck. In my opinion, any time before Mehmed II takes Constantinople the Ottomans are in serious danger of falling apart. They are an empire without a significant navy divided in two by a semi hostile bosporus and the Venetian vulture looking for anything that they can profit from. Worse still, approximately half of their people if not more are still Christian and definitely not Turkish. Mehmed II fixes the most important problem by taking Constantinople, adding more Islamic turkish subjects through his eastern conquests, and creating the beginnings of the Ottoman navy as a dominant force. He also did a good job of milking the idea that he was better for Orthodoxy than the Pope by naming his own patriarch of Constantinople and keeping him in his pocket. Without all of this, the Ottoman Empire is still quite fragile in my opinion, and a significant defeat by westen forces that is actually followed up on could very possibly cost them their lands in Europe.
The Venetian vulture is not terribly interested in fighting the Ottomans at this point, the Christian subjects of the Ottomans for the most part are not any more troublesome than the Muslim subjects - yes, I know you're going to mention Skanderbeg and Dracula, but neither of them rebelled because they were ruled by a Muslim, especially not the later.
Also, the Ottomans had a significant enough navy to take and hold land on both sides of the Bosporus - the only rivals are the merchant republics which don't really have much interest in crusading, as their profits don't depend on whether Constantinople is Christian or Muslim..
I'm sure that the Ottomans could have fared worse than OTL in this period, but their weaknesses are more related to the conflict on who will be sultan than lacking strength, which is more than can be said for the Byzantines or the Papacy - Great (Western) Schism, anyone?
I wouldn't call Venice disinterested. They were definitely looking for weakness in the powers in the area in order to make a profit, regardless of who their gains came at the expence of. My memory is a bit hazy, but I'm pretty sure Venice was heavily responsible for Skanderbeg's success, though they undoubtedly made more gains from the Byzantines and their successors than they did from the Ottomans. I'm merely suggesting that they wouldn't hesitate to capitalize if the Ottomans showed weakness that could lead to Venetian gains in Greece.
Not enough harder for anyone to have an opportunity here or the Ottomans to be particularly endangered by their Christian subjects.Also, Skanderbeg and Dracula had little enough to do with Christianity, but they did have a good deal to do with them not being Turkish, and having a kind of proto-nationalism that made being ruled by the Ottomans unacceptable, though for Dracula I think he also had psychological issues that stemmed from abuse while held as a hostage by the Ottomans. Still, religion definitely made these areas harder to control, especially before the Ottomans began controling the Patriarch of Constantinople. I believe that Smyrna was noted for religious natured conflict into the 1500s.
Which suggests less "bad luck" and more it being an immensely difficult task.And yes, the papacy during this period was terribly mismanaged (to say nothing of Byzantium's well known issues). You would need them to get a winning combination of successfully raising a crusade, funding said crusade (without a middleman taking the money for himself), winning a major battle against the sultan, and then having the opportunity to capitalizr on that victory, so in essence the stars have to align. They got all the way up to three out of those four steps at a time for each of Skanderbeg, Hunyadi, and Dracula on different occasions, but something always went wrong with one of the steps and made lasting gains impossible.
Sure. But Venice wants to make a profit, not necessarily to engage in conquest. If they can make a profit without anything as costly as military campaigning, they'll be on it like vultures on a corpse.
Thus so far as an Ottoman collapse goes, Venice is not going to be one of the powers trying to make it happen.
Not enough harder for anyone to have an opportunity here or the Ottomans to be particularly endangered by their Christian subjects.
And I'm not sure what was proto-nationalistic about it. No one particularly likes being ruled by a foreign conqueror when they can be independent.
Which suggests less "bad luck" and more it being an immensely difficult task.
Venice certainly wouldn't make it happen, but they would likely make any backsliding done by the Ottomans worse, which is pretty much what they did OTL.
I wouldn't. In this era, cultural differences - as long as the ruler respects the customs and traditions and privileges of his subjects, being of the same culture is all but irrelevant.Christianity I only mean as one of many differences between the Ottoman sultans and about half of their population. I would just call being from a vastly different culture than a half your subjects a generally bad thing, with religion being a notable part of that. I could also mention language, or style of dress, but the point would be the same, just like how nowadays I don't like being under the administration of politicians who have nothing in common with me. Also, I only call those proto-nationalism because, especially in Albania, they were organizing their seperation from the Ottomans on cultural grounds rather than under the pretense of restoring a conquered nation.
Difficult as in the definition itself: "not easily or readily done; requiring much labor, skill, or planning to be performed successfully"Lastly, difficult as compared to what? I would still call them an easier nation to overthrow in this period than for instance Hungary, the Mamluks, England, or Aragon at around the same time. I think it may just be a difference of opinions between us, but I don't think that it would take more than a little tweak to history to make the Ottoman gains in Europe ephemeral after 1400.
Could the Crusaders temporarily ally with Tamerlane against the Turks though? I'm not sure IOTL if they did.