The Brief and Violent Reign of Selim I
Selim I Yavuz, nicknamed "the grim" rose to the Ottoman throne in 918 (1512) via a coup d'etat against his father Bayezid II. So far, histroy as I had once learned it was repeating itself. Selim's chief goal for his reign is to conquer as much land for the House of Osman as is conceviably possible, he has barley even seen the capital before he leaves with his troops for the fortified town of Sivas near the borders of Persia and the Mamluk Sultanate. Conquest-driven warmonger that he is, Selim is no fool, and he wisely allows the realm 2 years of peace during which time new soliders are recruited and internal infrastructure improved. Being head of the fleet, gossip courses through a large seaport as easily as water, and now the gossip deals with which of our enemies has been singled out for conquest by Selim. All doubts are ended in the early months of 919, when word gets around that Hadim Sinan, hero of two Persian wars, had been relocated from Kurdistan to Adana, leaving the Ottoman Empire's two largest armies under its two top generals directly north of the lands controlled by the Mamluks of Egypt.
I should pause to mention goings on outside Turkey in this period, for as the Ottoman Empire prepares to attack the Mamluks, nearly all of Europe is engulfed in war, with those usual belligerants, Spain and France, having started the ball rolling. By the time the Turkish armies were crossing into Mamluk territory, Milan had been annexed by France and Kazan had fallen to Russia. The fall of Kazan would imperil the very future of the quadrupal alliance of Bayezid, as the notoriously paranoid Khan of Astrakhan disagreed vehemently with Selim's attack on the Mamluks, not only did the Khan refuse to join the alliance's war effort, he even refused free passage through his lands by Sibirian troops. The Khan of Sibir was a more honorable man and had several regiments ready to place at Selim's disposal. The Sibirian leader was most vexed when the Grand Vizier negotiated Astrakhan's continued membership in the alliance, and relations within the alliance grew colder. Astrakhan's treachery meant that only Turkey and the Hafsids would participate in the Mamluk war, which began with Selim's declaration of war on 16 Thaw al-Qid'ah 920 (Jan 2, 1515).
Hadim Sinan takes 28,000 men and several artillerey regiments and invests Aleppo, while the Mamluk Sultan Al-Kansur leads 28,000 of his best troops against Selim and 42,000 Ottoman troops in Sivas. The battle of Sivas proved to be a long and bloody ordeal, with the the tide of battle turning several times. Towards the end of Muharram 921 (Mar 1515), the Ottoman lines show signs of breaking, while the Mamluks with their unholy zeal continue to charge. Selim elects on a strategic withdrawl to Kurdistan with Al-Kansur in hot pursuit, it seems as if the Mamluks have the upper hand, but the wily Selim manages to re-energize his forces as they settle in to the mountainous terrain of Kurdistan. Al-Kansur and the Mamluks charge the Turkish positions, but they are outnumbered and facing an uphill struggle against an entrenched enemy and the battle soon turns into a rout. With the Mamluks retreating in disarray, Selim leads a group of Sipahis against them, Al-Kansur is felled by a Turkish arrow and the remnants of his army are either slaughtered by the Sipahis or flee into the mountains, where rumourmongers at court would claim they made their way to Astrakhan, where the Khan would grant asylum to any experienced solider willing to fight for him. Meanwhile, Hadim Sinan has captured Aleppo and advanced to Lebanon, Hadim Sinan claims this undefended and unfortified province merely by marching through it and by Jumaada 921 (Aug 1515), Judea is under seige by Hadim Sinan. A month later, Selim's victorious troops have advanced beyond the frontier and initiated a seige of Damascus.
With the situation in Syria increasingly desperate, the Mamluks open a new line of attack in the Meditteranean, involving my naval divisions in the war at last. It begins with an amphibious Mamluk assault against Turkish Cyrpus, defended by 8,000 Janissaries on anti-rebel patrols, the battle in Cyrpus is one of the bloodiest in this war, and is ruled a draw due to the fact that both opposing armies were utterly annihilated. In Cairo, with the Sultan dead and the authority of the government crumbling around them, the Mamluks send out more fleets against the islands of Crete and Cyprus, which they see as the Achillles Heel of the Empire. However, the Mamluks have not counted on Kemal Reis (yours truly) and my moments of glory in the Mamluk campaigns come in Jumaada 921. As Hadim marches through the Lebanon, I meet a squadron of Mamluk ships off the coast of Cyprus and send them to the bottom of the Mediterranean, I then sail down to the coast of Palestine, where a second contingent of Mamluk ships waits to be sunk. Shortly afterwards, good news comes from the land front, where Selim has launched a succesfull assault on Damascus and Hadim Sinan has captured Judea by sending his Janissaries through the breach made in the walls of Acre by the Turkish cannons.
As 921 fades to 922 (1516), Hadim Sinan has marched his troops through the trackless wastes of Sinai to advance to very gates of Cairo, the rich and fertile Nile valley now lays open to Turkish soliders. A small Mamluk force evades Hadim and heads to Judea with hopes of recapturing the province, but they are met and utterly destroyed by Selim's troops, who force-march their way across Sinai to join Hadim Sinan in Egypt, where the great generals combine their forces. At the end of Rabay al-Thanny (June), just I have chased away another Mamluk naval group from Crete, word comes that Cairo has surrendered to the Ottomans. With the Mamluks on thier last legs, the great generals split their forces once more, with Hadim and the artillery heading to Delta and Selim and his more mobile forces heading south, where Asyut (Cataract), the southernmost outpost of the Mamluks, a sparse garrison town of only 200, takes to its barricades to meet Selim. The defenders of Asyut fought bravely, but they were too few and their ramparts too small to hold off Selim and his Janissaries, and Asyut falls to the Ottomans, with the upper Nile valley claimed, Selim heads for Cyrenacia, a small city at the western edge of the Mamluk Sultanate. Hafsid contingents have already begun a seige of the city, and when Selim adds his Turks to the Hafsid forces, the Sultan elects to assault rather than leave the beseigers to face the scorching desert sun. The assault on Cyrenacia of Safar 923 (March 1517) will become one of the most famous events in all of Turkish histroy. The combined Ottoman-Hafsid force captures the citadel, but Sultan Selim I was cut down by an arrow from an unknown Mamluk sharpshooter, ending the reign of Selim I (r.1512-17), 5 years marked by some of the bloodiest warfare in all of Turkish history. Though bloody, these years also brought glory, as Selim dies with the Mamluks, long-time foes of the Ottomans, on their knees, with only 2 provinces remaining under Mamluk control, one of which was under seige. As Selim's body was laid to rest outside Cyrenacia, a Regency came to power in Istanbul (note: my Monarch general dies in March 1517, and I get a sudden death of monarch event in July, is the AI getting smart or is it coincidence?) vowing to complete Selim's work and see the final defeat and annexation of the Mamluks of Egypt. Meanwhile, far beyond the borders of Turkey, foreign observers watch Ottoman military success with alarm, some of them begin wondering if the Turks can be taken down a peg or two...