Part One: 1419-1435
Part One: 1419-1435
Mehmed I takes Byzantium and creates the Golden Confederacy.
The first impulse of what would be soon known as the Golden Confederacy was given in 1419 by the Sultan Mehmed I. The wise and old man, who had been in power for seventeen years, saw the opportunity for his people, the Ottomans, to grab the regional power they had been deprived by Tamerlan and the Timurid Empire. The internal troubles of its rival would leave a room for the rise of the Turks.
Building a regional power
The first step was to take the wealthy city of Byzantium. The last part of the once glorious Byzantine Empire would be quickly swallowed: in 1419, Mehmed cancelled the vassalization he had with the Greeks, under the excuse that they had refused a new trade tax, and quickly moved his armies.
At the same time, he sent emissaries to the various Turkish kingdoms in Anatolia, with various results. In Candar, the Sultan found a goodwill people, considering favourably an alliance with the Ottomans, but only rude rebuttal came from Ghazi and Karaman. The wise and calm Mehmed knew he would have to take over them, but he wanted to fortify the European border of the Ottoman territory.
The first Golden Alliance
For that purpose, he gathered the Balkanic states, eager to find a protector against the greedy Hungary, in a loose diplomatic connection that he called the Golden Alliance. The links between the members was no more, at first, than a couple of diplomatic Royal Marriages, but the ties between the members of the Confederacy would be strengthened by a military alliance between them. Albania, Bosnia and Wallachia quickly joined. The alliance was called the Golden Alliance, because of the gold, looted from Thrace, that covered the room where the treaty was signed.
When the successful Sultan eventually sized the Second Rome and made Constantinople his capital, he was ready to retake his power in Anatolia. Unfortunately, death took him before he could achieve his dream, and his son would not immediately follow his steps.
Murad II creates the Golden Confederacy
The proud Sultan Murad II rose to power in May 1421, after the death of his father. He had a different view on the political situation than his father, and he was certainly more in a hurry to consolidate his power on his existing possessions than to conquer Anatolia. Murad was especially upset by Morea, the Greek kingdom which had supported the Byzantine Empire before its end. They were still leading raids in Macedonia, and it was something the new Sultan could not tolerate. He led his armies through the territories of his vassal of Athens, and in no time the cities of Morea fell before him.
The Sultan Murad, not looking for greedy conquests in an area that could prove itself hard to administrate, extended the idea of the Golden Alliance laid down by his father into a Confederacy. The members of the Golden Confederacy would give half of their monthly income to Constantinople, in return of which the Sultan would leave them administrate themselves and guarantee their independence. Every year, each member would send a delegation to the Congress of the Confederacy. With the years, the structure of the Confederacy would evolve, and the status of the different countries would depend if they were trustworthy allies, or vassal states and mere spoils of war, but it overall remained in the way Murad defined it in December 1421.
When he let Morea being an independent state, although vassal of the Ottomans, the objective of the Sultan were to keep the Empire as strong as possible, that is, of manageable size, without the large conquests that always led to dilution of weakness. In this strategy, Murad proved itself a man of great intelligence and a scholar, having studied the fate of many an empire in history, first among which were the Mongol and Timurid empires…
Having settled the first war of his reign, and despite his will to conquer the land of his ancestors in Anatolia, he gave some rest to his armies. He was a great administrator, and under his rules, the trade in Constantinople flourished, as well as the scientific progress. Despite being a good Muslim, the Sultan never allowed bigotry and superstition to rule his country, and he favoured inventiveness and new techniques.
Murad II conquers Anatolia
It was only in 1427 that the Ottoman Empire began another war. In Anatolia, the wealth and the glory of the Ottoman was so great that the other Turkish rulers were either strongly attracted or repulsed by it. Some, such as Candar and some local Ghazi rulers, did everything they could to please the Sultan, whereas the leaders of the Ghazi and Karaman displayed outright hostility. The Ottomans, for their respect of their neighbours’ rights, did not want to invade them, in a way familiar to the barbarian Christian kingdoms in Europe. But when Ghazi and Karaman begun to imprison and kill those of their subjects who where the most attracted by the glory of the Ottoman, Murad I had to take action. The war was quick, and the Anatolian states fell.
In 1428, the Ottoman dynasty was the leader of all the western Anatolia. Candar, Albania, Athens (which had swiftly taken over Morea in Greece in the aftermath of the Ottoman victory), Serbia and Bosnia, regrouped in the Confederacy, were vassals or allies. Wallachia was a worry, but they merely kept changing alliance between the Confederacy, the Hungarians, and Moldavia. A seven-year long period of prosperity began, during which the Turks started building refineries in Anatolia, an investment that would eventually prove being a profitable asset.