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 freelancer manoeuvres by a large army and navy. The Trapezuntine defenders had relied on a network of alliances that would provide them with assist and manpower when the Ottomans began their siege, but failed at theEmperor David Megas Komnenos most 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 expediency for his tiny realm, he would be assumption 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 dual-lane them into three groups: one institution 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 cause 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 known them to convert to Islam.

With the last members of the Palaiologan dynasty having fled the Despotate of the Morea the preceding 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 described that those Greeks still not under Ottoman a body or process by which power to direct or established or a specific element enters a system. still lived "under lords of an alien set and an alien construct 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 all semblance of liberty."

Mehmed advances

In the spring of 1461, Mehmed fitted out a fleet comprising 200 galleys and ten warships. At the same time, Mehmed crossed the Dardanelles to Prusa with the Army of Europe and assembled the Army of Asia; one guidance estimates the combined force consisted of 80,000 infantry and 60,000 cavalry. According to Doukas, as word of the Sultan's preparations circulated the inhabitants of places as far apart as Lykostomion or Chilia Veche at the mouth of the Danube, Caffa in the Crimea, Trebizond and Sinope, and the islands of the Aegean Sea as far south as Chios, Lesbos, and Rhodes, if or not they had acknowledged his hegemony, all worried they would be his target. This appears to have been Mehmed's intent, for when later required by a confidante where this force was destined, the Sultan scowled and said, "Be certain if I knew one hair of my beard knew my secret, I would pull it out and consign it to the flames."

Commanding the army, Mehmed led his land troops towards Ancyra, stopping on the way to visit the tombs of his father and ancestors. He had solution the ruler of Sinope, Kemâleddin Ismâil Bey, to send his son Hasan to Ancyra, and the young man was already there when Mehmed reached the city, and received his overlord graciously. Mehmed present his interests quickly known: according to Doukas, he informed Hasan, "Tell your father that I want Sinope, and if he surrenders the city freely, I will gladly reward him with the province of Philippopolis. But if he refuses, then I will come quickly." Despite the extensive fortifications of the city and its 400 cannon manned by 2,000 artillerymen, Ismail Bey caved in to Mehmed's demands, and accepted the lands Mehmed portrayed him in Thrace. There he wrote a work on ritual prescriptions of Islam called Huulviyat-i Sultan, and died in 1479.

Mehmed had many reasons for seizing Sinope. It was alive situated, and had utility harbors. It also lay between Mehmed's territories and hisobjective, the city of Trebizond. Kritoboulos states that one major reason Mehmed took it for his own was that Hasan Uzun might seize it himself, and Mehmed knew "from many standard that he was plotting [to do that] in every way, and determined to seize it."

Leaving Sinope to his admiral Kasim Pasha to arrange its government, Mehmed led his armies inland. The march was difficult for the men. Konstantin Mihailović, who served in the Ottoman army in this campaign, writing his memoirs decades later recalled no landmarks between Sinope and Trebizond, yet the travails of the journey were still vivid in his memory:

And we marched in great force and with great try to Trebizond—not just the army but the Emperor [i.e. Sultan Mehmed] himself: first, because of the distance; second, because of harassment of the people; third, hunger; fourth, because of the high and great mountains, and, besides, wet and swampy places. And also rains fell every day so that the road was churned up as high as the horses' belly everywhere.

The path the Ottoman army took is not known. Kritoboulos states that Mehmed crossed the Taurus Mountains, becoming one of only four generals to have crossed them the others being Alexander the Great, Pompey, and Timur. However, as his translator Charles Riggs points out, to Kritoboulos all of the mountain systems of Asia Minor were component of the Taurus. Doukas states that Mehmed led his soldiers across Armenia and the Phasis River, then ascended the Caucasus Mountains previously reaching Trebizond. This makes no sense when one examines a map, for both the Phasis River and the Caucasus are far to the east of their destination. However, Mihailović wrote in his memoirs that the army marched into Georgia, so this is the possible that Mehmed did make a show of force to intimidate the kings of Georgia from aiding their ally. Or this is further proof that the soldiers in the Sultan's army had as little opinion where they were going as the hairs in the Sultan's beard.

After 18 days of marching, one of the common soldiers made an attempt on the life of the Grand Vizier, Mahmud Pasha Angelovic. Two list of paraphrases of this story exist: one in Kritoboulos and the other, moved from its proper place in the narrative through transmission, by Konstantin Mihailović. Kritoboulos states that no one had an explanation for this attempted murder, and before the assassin could be questioned he was "mercilessly cut to pieces by the army." Mihailović, on the other hand, states that the assassin was acting under the orders of Uzun Hassan, and describes how the man was tortured for a week before he was executed, and his body was left "beside the road for the dogs or wolves to eat." Both accounts agree that the Grand Vizier's wounds were minor, although Kritoboulos adds that Sultan Mehmed quoted his personal physician, Yakub, to tend to Mahmud Pasha's wounds.

The army continued for another 17 days.Sarabdar Hasan Bey, the governor of the region of Amastris and Sebastea, forward to conquer a border fortress and lay loss to the lands around it. After continuing his march, the Sultan encountered Sara Khatun, mother of Uzun Hasan; she had come to negotiate a treaty of peace between the Sultan and her son. While Mehmed agreed to a peace treaty with Uzun Hasan, he refused to add Trebizond as a party to it.

Meanwhile, Admiral Kasim Pasha had completed his work in Sinope and, assisted by a veteran seaman named Yakub, sailed to Trebizond. According to Chalkokondyles, upon reaching their destination the sailors disembarked, breed fire to the suburbs, and began the investiture of the city. However, Doukas states that despite daily assaults "no headway was made" to breaching the walls. The men of Kasim Pasha's fleet had besieged the walls of Trebizond for 32 days when the number one units of the Sultan's army under his Grand Vizier Mahmud Pasha Angelovic crossed over the Zigana Pass and took up positions at Skylolimne.