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Constantinople: Conquered in 1402!

Y

Ysengrimus

Active member
Hey guys, this is my first thread, so I'm a little nervous. I'm pondering the imponderables and a scenario flashed across my brain.
What if Bayezid I managed to take Constantinople instead of rushing off to battle Timur the Lame at Ankara in 1402? His disastrous defeat at Ankara opened up the Ottoman Interregnum which threw the empire into 8 years of chaos, and bought the Byzantines nearly 5 decades of extended time. Bayezid I had started off the siege in 1393--breaking it off to crush the last European crusade to stop him at the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. The city on the Bosphorus had been under siege on and off for nine years.
People were lowering themselves out of the city on ropes and deserting to the Ottomans. The city's fall was a matter of weeks, if not days.
But, in our timeline, Bayezid and Timur had been involved in a multiyear correspondence, in what can be considered one of the best instances of imperial shit-talking in recorded history. It was too much for Bayezid to resist in our timeline, and he rode off into western Anatolia to defeat.
However, if he'd restrained himself, Bayezid would have profited far more.
If Bayezid had captured Constantinople in 1402--which by all accounts he was on verge of doing before being interrupted by Timur--we might be looking at a much stronger Ottoman empire far earlier, in the short term.

In the short term:
-Bayezid I takes Constantinople. This hugely boosts his claims to legitimacy as the chief representative of Islam--as a ghazi. This may seem like a small thing, but it was something that Timur was using to market himself as a savior of the Islamic world and win allies (never mind that such PR didn't stop him from carving a swathe of destruction through the Levant, Middle East and upper Mamluk Egypt, all Muslim-majority territories). To take Constantinople would be a serious blow to that image.
-Timur likely retreats, or at least delays his move into Anatolia to challenge Bayezid. His dream was to conquer China, like the Genghisids who he claimed descent from (And married into, to increase his own legitimacy, and that of the Timurid dynasty he left behind). The comparative risks--extending into Anatolia, outrunning his supply-lines, crossing the Bosphorus in order to reach Bayezid I--were far greater than the possible rewards. He was getting up there in years, and doubtless would have been in a rush to achieve his dreams.
-No Ottoman Interregnum (as above). This means that Murad II may not have necessarily inherited the throne, or his descendant, Mehmet II ascending to power. Bayezid was a skilled military leader, but by most sources, a less able administrator. This might have the the counter-intuitive effect of making the Ottomans much stronger while Bayezid lived, but weaker in the long term.

Longer term:
-Venice and Genoa--the major European maritime trading powers, would have to come to terms with this change of regimes and establish trade relations with the new Ottoman capital. The rest of Europe, likely too exhausted and disheartened from both fighting each other and their previous defeat at Nicopolis, would be in no shape to contest the Ottoman's new city.

What do you guys think about this scenario as a springboard? Likely effects? How far could this rabbit-hole go?
 
An interesting possibility, not least as I see Bayezid as a capable but rash and flawed ruler compared to the more statesmanlike Mehmed I or Murad II - like Mehmed II, he was a brilliant general and had vision for his state's future but was rash and open to coming unstuck at some point if his enemies had a competent and large enough coalition. If he wins Constantinople and becomes a sort of 'Islamic Caesa' and 'heir to the Eastern Empire' and/or Timur does not confront him directly he could consider himself invincible, and stretch his nation's resources too far and too soon. Would he aim at the Levant to conquer Syria and Palestine once Timur is safely dead (1405), anticipating the work of Selim I, but come up against a stronger and less poorly-led Mameluke regime in Egypt? Or take on Hungary next in the Balkans/ middle Danube and come up against a defensive coalition there, mustered by Sigismund of Luxembourg as king of H - a better organiser and less rash than Louis II who lost to the Turks at Mohacs in the real-life 'Ottoman vs Hungary' battlefield showdown? An Ottoman army that Bayezid, still in his 50s and probably physically capable of the campaign, has led as far as the Hungarian plains after taking Belgrade (c 1408-10?) would have been in a difficult position, with an extended supply-line and probably full of forcibly enrolled vassals (including the Serb Christian lords and Wallachians) that had only just been forced into the Sultanate and were fighting for it out of fear not loyalty. They could then desert on the battlefield and Bayezid end up dead or defeated, leaving his army in a mess far from home and his Balkan vassals likely to revolt with Hungarian aid. Was saving the full-size Sultanate in Europe as well as Asia Minor then beyond the skills of his eldest son Sulaiman, given the latter's OTL poor showing as a warlord (exacerbated by poor health, drugs, or laziness ?) in real life and deposition by his younger brother Musa in 1411?

The same sort of disaster could occur to Bayezid in a desert battle in the Sinai, or in the Judaean/ Samarian hills, against the Mamelukes who knew the climate better - and who had seen off the similarly large but unacclimatised Mongol army at Ain Jalut. And if Bayezid is killed but there is no enforced division of his realm by his conqueror as Timur did in OTL, does the Sultanate stay together under Sulaiman despite his weaknesses as he has the largest and best-trained military force in it (the Janissaries) to hand? or does one of his brothers flee to a remote province and as a better general depose him in a civil war - either Musa or Mehmed, the latter more likely to receive help from Venice or Genoa to keep the Sultanate weak so they can extort a lucrative trade-deal out of it for free passage via the Bosphorus to the Black Sea and Crimea for their ships? There is nothing inevitable about a secure chain of capable Ottoman rulers passing on the throne and one state from father to son from 1326 to 1566 - if an equilibrium had been reached between rivals in a civil war it could stay divided, one son in Europe and one in Asia. The Timurid state broke up, so the Ottomans can go the same way.

If Constantinople falls in 1402, Emperor Manuel II is out of the way, visiting Europe to get troops and money - in fact, that winter he is in Eltham, Kent, UK, visiting king Henry IV of England (a vigorous warrior and tournament champion who has been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem so a potential ally). His children, all under-age, and wife Irene Dragases are safe in the 'Morea' (Peloponnese) and only his nephew John VII is actually in Constantinople - and J was supposed to have considered selling his capital to Bayezid in return for lands elsewhere, as accepting the inevitable. So if the city falls Manuel can hold out in the Morea, based on the Byzantine regional enclave's capital there at Mistra near Sparta; and hopefully an alarmed Venice, which controls the seas, will hold off on its hopes of annexing the Peloponnese and see that it is more useful and cheaper to set Manuel up as its local ally to hold the Ottomans back and/or rally Western military aid to him. So we could get Venetian military help, on suitably extortionate terms of economic dependance knowing Venetian sharp practice, to keep the Ottomans back from the 'Hexamilion' wall over the isthmus of Corinth, with alarmed W European knights coming in on a new 'Crusade' to help man it and possibly take over (Florentine-ruled) Athens as an outpost. The 'Empire in exile' would then hold onto the Morea, under Manuel to his d 1425 then his sons - in OTl it was under a younger son, Theodore, as a vassal of the Emperor in Constantinople but in this version the Emperor would be based there. Their survival depends on them having - thanks to Venetian self-interest - more cannons than the Ottomans, the Venetian fleet to protect them at sea, and hopefully a post-Bayezid Ottoman civil war or Hungarian move to retake Serbia.

I have considered what might happen if this Byz enclave could hold out long-term as a Venetian vassal-state and the Ottomans were too weak or preoccupied to bother with southern Greece - most obviously if there is a long-term war over Serbia with a less feudal and poorly-led Hungary (ie a dynasty of Corvinus lasting into the C16th), a total Venetian naval dominance of the Eastern Med and Aegean, no 'Barbary' N African naval help to the Ottomans in the C16th due to Spain holding Algiers and Tunis, or an Ottoman break-up. Then do we get this Byzantine successor state of the Morea, centred at Mistra, as the core of a Greece that revolts successfully against the Turks either in the Russian attack of the late 1760s or as in OTL in 1821? And a dynasty of Paleologus on the Greek throne?
 
@heraclius
You've hit the nail on the head. One of the wonderfully contradictory things about alternate history is that things that should be deathblows often aren't.
The Ottoman Interregnum, by all rights, should have shattered and broken the fledgling Ottoman empire into flinders. A four-way civil war, partially sponsored by the Timur, the power that broke Bayezid? Doesn't look like a crucial step in the founding of a durable, lasting empire, does it? But it was. Stabilizing under Murad II, the Ottomans broke into the first of their growth spurts under Mehmed II (only topped by Sulemain the Lawgiver).
The idea of Venetians--always keen for a bit of sharp practice--having the remains of Byzantium on a leash would be a serious complicating factor. I'm sure they'd take advantage of any scrap of legitimacy they could. The idea of the name of Byzantium carrying weight outside of Russia or Greece--or swinging back into Constantinople in 1760s, if not earlier, is fascinating. Without the clean-sweep of 1453, there would be lingering political and military issues.
The Ottomans without North Africa and Egypt (not to mention the Levant) would be a much different empire, militarily, and culturally. Maybe they would seek to extend their influence into the Nogai lands, or the Crimean Khanate earlier?
 
Thinking about it, wouldn't one of the big efforts of even 'Ottomans but they struggle to break into the Levant' be the fact that I'd have thought it would be unlikely their claims to the Caliphate would be recognised outside of their immediate sphere of influence. A multi-polar Islamic world split between some sort of Iranian centred state, an Anatolian state and something based in Egypt sounds like it could be quite a stable equilibrium long term, with Arabia potentially off to the side doing its own thing and Mesopotamia declining in importance as it just becomes a three-way battlefield.
 
Alex Richards said:
Thinking about it, wouldn't one of the big efforts of even 'Ottomans but they struggle to break into the Levant' be the fact that I'd have thought it would be unlikely their claims to the Caliphate would be recognised outside of their immediate sphere of influence. A multi-polar Islamic world split between some sort of Iranian centred state, an Anatolian state and something based in Egypt sounds like it could be quite a stable equilibrium long term, with Arabia potentially off to the side doing its own thing and Mesopotamia declining in importance as it just becomes a three-way battlefield.
Click to expand...
Makes total sense. The balance of power between the three Gunpowder Empires (Mughal, Safavid, Ottoman) was something that would be a good model for how the balance of power between the Iranian Steppe, Anatolian/Ottoman power and the Levant/North Africa. Lets call them the Ottoman, Expanded Safavids and Mamluk Sultanate.
 
So how does this Ottomans Less Levant play out? More energy spent expanding into Europe or a smaller empire overall that's mainly Anatolia+Thrace+modern Greece?
 
Some fascinating ideas here. Most of them well outside of my usual areas of comfort, so very interesting to consider.

The butterflies being unleashed towards central Europe are rather interesting. The potential for a very different Hungary, and consequently a very different Hapsburg domain lead to serious differences to OTL, gradually spreading out across the whole of Europe.

I love the idea of a polity avoiding an OTL "disaster" and actually faring a lot worse as a result of it. I feel that, as many TLs have shrunk in their scope of years, we see such things less than we once did. Not that TLs finishing when they finish is a retrograde step. When I first got into AH, there seemed to be a distinct pressure to go to the present day, whether there was anyhting interesting to say about it or not. But it has meant that we have less works which can take such a broad sweep, and so such ideas are less prevalent.
 
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