Late Medieval Politics and the Quest for Constantinople
The Crusades occupy a strange place in the American imagination. Popular impressions of what they were, why they happened, and what their practitioners hoped to accomplish are incredibly varied and often dependent upon contemporary political outlook. My own opinion on the matter is that the Crusades were a uniquely Medieval phenomenon upheld by complex motivations, most of which are nearly-impenetrable for a modern audience. While researching Califia’s Crusade, however, I stumbled upon a near-Crusade in the late 1400s which targeted Constantinople as its objective.
Constantinople, known in modern times as Istanbul, was built as the capital of the Roman Empire under Constantine I, then served as the new capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (commonly called the “Byzantine” Empire) for centuries thereafter. In 1204, however, the armies of the Fourth Crusade seized the city after getting involved in a succession dispute and established the Latin Occupation which was overturned in 1261. The resurgent forces of the Eastern Roman Empire once more established Constantinople as their capital.
When the Ottoman Empire began its steady rise to regional power throughout Asia Minor in the 1400s, besieging Constantinople became a somewhat common occurrence. In fact, the infamous Fall of Constantinople in 1453 was the result of the fifth large-scale siege by the Ottomans. The first took place in 1391, making the final conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire the culmination of a 62-year endeavor.
The Fall of Constantinople was, to put it mildly, an incredibly shocking event to the rest of Europe. While it was true that the Eastern Roman Empire had descended into a defunct microstate by the time of its defeat, it had long existed as a symbol of Christian power in eastern Europe, a protective buffer against supposed hordes of invaders. If Constantinople could fall to Ottoman aggression, then so could every other state in Europe.
The Roman Catholic Church had a particular vested interest in encouraging the fighting men of Europe to take on the encroaching Ottoman menace. In addition to the obvious religious differences, The church in Rome had actually just begun to make headways into the late Byzantine government and believed they were tantalizingly close to bringing Eastern Orthodox practitioners back under their own jurisdiction, undoing the great schism of 1054 and reuniting the church once and for all. Reconquering Constantinople and placing a sufficiently Rome-friendly monarch upon its throne could accomplish that goal and assuage fears that the Ottoman conquest might soon jump the Adriatic to incorporate Italy itself.
However, western Europe in the late 1400s was hardly a unified bloc. Much as their rulers might want to drive back the Ottoman menace and even conquer Palestine, these were what we might call reach goals intended for future generations. The needs of the present were far too pressing to justify imperial adventures on behalf of the church. However, in 1481, the church in Rome saw a potential opportunity when Sultan Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinople himself, passed away and a succession dispute erupted between his two sons.
The elder son of the late sultan was Bayezid and his younger brother was Cem (pronounced closer to “Chem”). The late sultan’s body was brought to Constantinople for burial and while Bayezid was far off, the Grand Vizier attempted to rally support for the succession of Cem.
This was a bad plan, however, because the 34-year-old Bayezid had already been shoring up support among key pillars of Ottoman society, especially the elite soldiers of the Ottoman army, the Janissaries. Bayezid had also arranged marriages between many of his daughters and influential Ottoman nobles and also sought the friendship of those who were dissatisfied by his father’s reign. By contrast, Cem was only 22 years of age and had not yet built any similarly influential network of supporters.
While the Grand Vizier attempted to launch a last-ditch attempt at appointing Cem the new sultan, he had issued strict orders for the Janissaries to remain outside of Constantinople. However, the Janissaries soon learned of his attempts to gain support among other Ottoman nobles for Cem’s elevation and they disobeyed orders, storming into the city and murdering the Grand Vizier. Their support for Bayezid paid off; he was soon after placed on the Ottoman throne as Sultan Bayezid II.
Cem raised an army and an intermittent civil war ensued over the next few years. The sultan ultimately won these struggles and while he repeatedly rejected Cem’s proposals to divide the empire between them, he did offer his younger brother generous stipends to live a quiet life far from the political heart of the Ottoman Empire.
Cem repeatedly rejected these offers but eventually his luck ran out and he was forced to flee to Rhodes and place himself in the custody of the Knights Hospitaller. He made them an enticing offer: help him gain the throne of the Ottoman Empire in exchange for a promise of peaceful relations between the empire and their Christian neighbors. It turned out to be an offer they could refuse.
The Hospitallers had little desire and even less practical capability to issue a military challenge to the Ottoman Empire. Instead of supporting Cem, they reached out to Sultan Bayezid II and he offered them 40,000 ducats a year to keep his younger brother imprisoned. Cem spent the rest of his life as a captive, but seems to have lived very comfortably. He was relocated, first to Savoy and then to France, but in 1489 he was given into the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, who began making plans to put this political pawn into play.
While Sultan Bayezid II may have wanted to continue his family’s legacy of conquest, annexation, and expansion, the presence of Cem in Christian custody forced him to instead maintain the empire he had inherited. The threat of a crusading army seeking to replace him with his younger brother, potentially gaining the allegiance of discontented political elements within the Ottoman Empire, was enough to contain the expanding empire for the moment.
Pope Innocent VIII wanted to launch the very crusade which Bayezid feared. However, the man whom Innocent had in mind to lead this effort, King Matthias of Hungary, died shortly after Cem was placed in papal custody, deflating any hopes for a crusade. The pope continued, over the next few years, soliciting the various monarchs of Europe to spearhead this crusade which would target Constantinople and elevate Cem as its new sultan but to no avail. Cem’s presence continued to be lucrative and useful for the church, however, as the pope frequently threatened to release him whenever the Ottoman army appeared to be planning a new Balkans campaign.
Innocent VIII died in 1492 and was succeeded by Alexander VI. The new pope continued soliciting payments from the Ottomans and preventing them from launching new expansion campaigns with threats of releasing Cem until 1495, when circumstances conspired to force the new pope to give Cem over to Charles VIII of France, who had marched through Rome on his way to campaign against the Kingdom of Naples. He demanded Cem be placed in his custody and Alexander VI, who had become pope in part through bribes given to influential Cardinal electors, feared that he might be deposed for corruption and happily gave the Ottoman exile up.
Charles VIII brought Cem along with him on the Naples campaign and the Sultan’s younger brother died in early 1495. With his death, any real hope of a renewed crusade against Constantinople effectively died as well.
In spite of their high-stakes sibling rivalry, Sultan Bayezid II declared a three-day period of national mourning upon learning of his brother’s death. Eventually Cem’s remains were brought to the empire and he was interred at Bursa, where he still lies today.
It is unlikely that the cancelled Crusade against Constantinople in the late 1400s would have succeeded. Cem had been exiled from Ottoman lands for more than a decade and was, by most accounts, perfectly content to live out his days in comfort and luxury rather than risk his life challenging his brother’s rule. Even if the king of Hungary had not died so inconveniently, the impending invasion of Charles VIII shows that the would-be crusading powers of western Europe were far more concerned with campaigning against one another than they were with reversing a conquest that occurred nearly fifty years before.
The rest is, of course, history. Pope Alexander VI died in 1502, Sultan Bayezid II was usurped by his son Selim in 1509 after a period of civil war between his sons, and Constantinople remained in the hands of the Ottoman Empire until its dissolution in 1922.
Looking for a fun Alternate History in which this Crusade wasn't cancelled? You've come to the right place! My latest novel, Califia's Crusade, is available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Bookshop.org and many other popular platforms!