Book Review

Machiavelli of the Ottomans

The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II – conqueror of Constantinople, master of an empire and lord of two seas

When he heard the news of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III broke down in tears, and shut himself away in his quarters to pray and meditate. Pope Nicholas V issued a bull calling for a crusade, condemning the Ottoman Sultan as "a son of Satan, perdition and death". The man who caused such consternation across Europe was Mehmet, 22-year-old son of Sultan Murat and an unknown slave concubine who was prob­ably a Christian. For the next 27 years until his death, he was to wreak havoc across Christendom. Known as the Conqueror to the Turks for his feat in overcoming the last bastion of the ancient Graeco-Roman world, he was feared and loathed by his enemies, who called him everything from the Antichrist to the spawn of Beelzebub.

He was undoubtedly the most dangerous enemy Christendom has ever had to face. In almost 30 years of constant warfare he overcame Venice's empire in Greece and the Aegean, crushed and occupied Byzantium, Albania, Serbia and Bosnia, severely defeated Hungary, and invaded Italy to establish a base at Otranto, from which he intended to conquer the whole of Western Europe. His armies reached the outlying villages of the Venetian terra firma, a few miles from St Mark's Square, burning, looting, killing and taking slaves. Only the heroic Knights of St John on Rhodes, under their resolute Master, Jean d'Aubusson, succeeded in resisting his overwhelming military onslaught. Half the Knights, including many brave English and Scots, were killed by the end of the siege.

John Freely is one of our most eminent historians of all things Turkish and Levantine: any new book by him raises high expectations. This timely study of an Islamic warrior militant, implacably arraigned in permanent warfare against the Christian West, succeeds triumphantly. Lucid, impeccably balanced and fair-minded, deeply researched, clearly written and highly readable, this is a masterpiece and a model of what a really outstanding historical biography should be.
Mehmet was no fundamentalist, rather a Renaissance prince who welcomed Greek philosophers to his court at Topkapi Palace, which he himself had built. He was a decided Hellenophile who visited Athens and Troy, exempting the former from all taxes out of admiration for its illustrious past. A poet in Persian and Turkish, he commissioned artists such as Gentile Bellini to paint his portrait, and encouraged eminent scholars like the Greek Plethon to adorn his court. His role-model was Alexander the Great, whose exploits he aimed to surpass, but in reverse - that is, conquering the West from the East.
But he was also a ruthless enemy. His word was worth nothing: those who surrendered after being promised quarter were almost always executed. He tortured, impaled and beheaded at will. Priests and bishops he used to have strapped between two planks and then sawn in half through the middle. His army killed Christian children like dogs; women they raped and then enslaved; men were killed or enslaved. The terror he caused across Europe was the origin for the visceral hatred Islam and the Turks still inspire in many Christians throughout the Balkans, Greece and the Levant.

His policy was divide and conquer. He exhausted Venice after years of warfare, forcing her to sign a disadvantageous peace. Then, after crushing the Balkans, he attacked Hungary and Naples. Western Europe failed to unite against him in spite of endless papal diplomacy for a crusade to reconquer Constantinople. When he died, aged 49, of an abdominal blockage which one suspects may have been caused by poison, he was preparing to take a vast army into Italy to capture Rome. That he would have succeeded no one at the time doubted. Had he lived another 20 years, Christian Europe would have been no more. The strength of the Ottoman autocracy, its centralised, authori­tarian command structure, depending on a single man at the top, was also its weakness.

When Mehmet died his empire was convulsed by civil war as his sons vied for power. The papacy was making plans to flee to Avignon when news of Mehmet's death arrived. All over Europe church bells rang and joyous celebrations erupted. For hundreds of thousands of Christians, enslaved or killed, it was, however, too late.

This book should be in every library and in every school in Europe and America. Western Christian weakness and disunity in the face of ruthless, cruel enemies is as much a part of our world as that of the fifteenth century. In a sense Mehmet was an Ottoman Machiavelli, whose lust for power had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with vanity, egotism and false pride. He used Islam and Turkish imperialism as ­vehicles for his own ambition. His reign of terror was ultimately pointless and destructive, indicative of the hollowness and futility of earthly ambition. The last chapters of this brilliant study give a thumbnail account of the rest of Ottoman history until the collapse of the dynasty after the First World War. This outstanding book deserves to win all the prizes going.

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