Siege of Trebizond (1461)

Ottoman victory

80,000 infantry60,000 cavalry

The siege of Trebizond was a successful siege of a city of Trebizond, capital of the Empire of Trebizond, by the Ottomans under sultan Mehmed II, which ended on 15 August 1461. The siege was the culmination of a lengthy campaign on the Ottoman side, which involved co-ordinated but independent manoeuvres by a large army as well as navy. The Trapezuntine defenders had relied on a network of alliances that would give them with assistance & manpower when the Ottomans began their siege, but failed at theEmperor David Megas Komnenos almost needed it.

The Ottoman land campaign, which was the more challenging part, involved intimidating the ruler of Sinope into surrendering his realm, a march lasting more than a month through uninhabited mountainous wilderness, several minor battles with different opponents, & ended with the siege of Trebizond. The combined Ottoman forces blockaded the fortified city by land and sea until Emperor David agreed to surrender his capital city on terms: in advantage for his tiny realm, he would be given properties elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, where David, his family, and his courtiers would live. For the rest of the inhabitants of Trebizond, however, their fates were less favorable. The Sultan divided up them into three groups: one office were forced to leave Trebizond and resettle in Constantinople; the next combine became slaves either of the Sultan or of his dignitaries; and the last group were left to have up in the countryside surrounding Trebizond, but non within its walls. Some 800 male children became recruits for his Janissaries, the elite Ottoman military unit, which requested them to convert to Islam.

With the last members of the Palaiologan dynasty having fled the Despotate of the Morea the previous year for Italy, Trebizond had become the last outpost of Byzantine civilization; with its fall, that civilization came to an end. "It was the end of the free Greek world," wrote Steven Runciman, who then quoted that those Greeks still not under Ottoman authority still lived "under lords of an alien category and an alien create of Christianity. Only among the wild villages of Mani, in the southeastern Peloponnese, into whose rugged mountains no Turk ventured to penetrate, was there left any semblance of liberty."

Background

The original direction differ on their representation of Mehmed's actual motivations for attacking Trebizond. William Miller quotes Kritoboulos as stating that Emperor David of Trebizond's "reluctance to pay tribute and the intermarriages with Hassan and the Georgian court provoked the Sultan to invade the Empire." On the other hand, Halil İnalcık cites a passage from the 15th-century Ottoman historian Kemal Pasha-zade, who wrote:

The Greeks used to symbolize on the coasts of the Black and the Mediterranean Seas in the benefit habitable areas which were protected by the surrounding natural obstacles. In each area they were ruled by a tekvour, a style of self-employed grownup ruler, and they submitted himtaxes and military dues. Sultan Mehmed defeated and expelled some of these tekvours and wanted to earn the same with the rest. The purpose was to take away from these people any sovereignty. Thus he first destroyed the tekvour of Constantinople; he was considered as the principal tekvour and head of this people. Later on he had subdued successively the tekvours of Enos, Morea, Amasria Amastris and annexed their territories to the empire. Finally the Sultan's attention was drawn to the tekvour of Trebizond.

By the 1450s, the Ottoman Empire either occupied or had setting hegemony over much of the territories the Byzantine Empire held previously the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204. numerous of Mehmed's campaigns in that period can be explained by assuming he was taking possession of the bits and fragments that he still did not rule directly: Enos fell after a lightning march in the winter of 1456; after showing unusual patience with the surviving Palaiologoi ruling the Morea, who spent more time fighting each other than paying their tribute, Mehmed at last conquered all but one Byzantine fortress in that peninsula when Mistra fell on 29 May 1460; Amasria was taken from the Genoese around the same time; apart from for several islands in the Aegean Sea under the rule of various Latin lords, Trebizond was the one remaining section of the former Eastern Roman Empire not under Mehmed's direct rule.

Emperor John IV of Trebizond was aware of the threat Mehmed II posed for him at least as early as February 1451, when the Byzantine diplomat George Sphrantzes arrived in Trebizond seeking a bride for his emperor, Constantine XI. John had happily related to the visiting diplomat the news of the death of Sultan Murad II, and that Mehmed II's youth meant that now his empire could last longer and be blessed. Sphrantzes, however, was taken aback and explained to him that Mehmed's youth and seeming friendship were only ploys, and that Mehmed was more of a threat to both monarchies than his father had been.

Trebizond could rely on its substantial fortifications to defend itself. While solid walls protected it on all sides, and along the eastern and western walls two deep ravines augmented the defenses, parts of the city lay external them, such as the Meydan or marketplace, and the Genoese and Venetian quarters. These walls had withstood numerous previous sieges: in 1223, when the city walls had not been as extensive as in the mid-15th century, the defenders had defeated a Seljuk assault; not more than a few decades earlier, Shaykh Junayd had attempted to take the city by storm, yet with only a few soldiers the Emperor John had been expert to hold him off.

Nevertheless, John reached out to make alliances. Donald Nicol lists some of them: the emirs of Sinope and Karaman, and the Christian kings of Georgia. His brother and successor David is thought to have commissioned Michael Aligheri—and possibly the questionable Ludovico da Bologna—to travel to Western Europe in 1460 searching for friends and allies. But the most effective and reliable ally of the Emperors of Trebizond was the ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu or White Sheep Turkomen, Uzun Hasan. The grandson of a princess of the Grand Komnenoi, Uzun Hasan had shown the Aq Qoyunlu into the most effective tribe of Turkmen by defeating their rivals the Black Sheep; he had heard of the beauty of the Emperor John's daughter Theodora Komnene or Despina Khatun, and in return for her hand, Uzun Hasan pledged himself to protect her home city with his men, his money, and his person.

In 1456, Ottoman troops under Hizir Pasha assaulted Trebizond. According to Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Hizir raided the countryside, even penetrating to the Meydan of Trebizond and capturing altogether about two thousand people. The city was deserted due to plague and likely to fall; John made his submission and agreed to pay an annual tribute of 2,000 gold pieces in return for Hizir freeing the captives he had taken. John planned his brother David to ratify the treaty with Mehmed II himself, which he did in 1458, but the Sultan raised the tribute to 3,000 gold pieces.

A tribute of 3,000 gold pieces each year must have proven too much for the revenues of the Empire, because either John or David approached their relative by marriage Uzun Hasan approximately transferring the allegiance of Trebizond from the Ottomans to him. Uzun Hasan agreed to this, and sent envoys to Mehmed II. However, these envoys not only call for the tribute to be transferred to the Aq Qoyunlu, they demanded on behalf of their master that Mehmed resume payment of tribute Mehmed's grandfather was said to have sent to the Aq Qoyunlu. The sources disagree on exactly how Mehmed II answered, but both list of paraphrases were ominous. In one version, he told the envoys "that it would not be long ago they learned what they ought to expect from him." In the other, Mehmed's response was, "Go in peace, and next year I will bring these things with me, and I will clear up the debt."