Crusade from Smyrna

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Crusade from Smyrna
date 1343/44 to 1351
place Aegean Sea , Smyrna
output The Christian League conquers the port of Smyrna.
Parties to the conflict

Pope Clement VI ,
Republic of Venice , Order of St. John ,
Kingdom of Cyprus


Dauphiné de Viennois

Emirate of Aydın ,
Turkish pirates

Commander

Heinrich von Asti †,
Martino Zaccaria †,
Piero Zeno


Humbert II of Viennois

Umur Bey


The Smyrna Crusade, proclaimed in 1343, was a campaign by a Catholic league under the leadership of the papacy against the Turkish emirate of Aydın under Umur Bey . The " crusade " was primarily a measure against Turkish pirates after they had looted numerous Catholic areas in Greece in the previous years. The majority of the fighting took place around the Aydın-ruled port city of Smyrna (today's Izmir) in Asia Minor .

background

During the Byzantine Empire, Smyrna was one of the most important ports in the eastern Aegean . The Nymphaion Agreement in 1261 gave the Republic of Genoa the right to establish a trading colony there. In 1317 the Turkish petty prince Aydınoğlu Mehmed Bey succeeded in taking the inland castle hill of Smyrna ( Pagos , the Hellenistic acropolis, today called Kadifekale ). The lower town with the port and the new fortress there initially remained in Genoese hands, but was conquered by Mehmed's son Umur in 1329 .

Under Umur's rule, the emirate of Aydın quickly rose to sea power; Smyrna and Ephesus -Panormos became the two main bases of the Turkish fleet. Ships flying the Aydın flag carried out piracy throughout the eastern Mediterranean and raided raids on the Morea and Negroponte . The Turks only attacked Latin (i.e. Catholic) possessions, as Umur had formed an alliance with the Byzantine regent Johannes Kantakuzenos in 1335 .

Call to the crusade

1342 was in Avignon Pierre Roger , the bishop of Sens , as Clement VI. elected as the new Pope. Clemens was a great supporter of the idea of the crusade and hoped - 50 years after the fall of Acre and 70 years since the last crusade - that enthusiasm for the crusade would flare up again. A foray into the Holy Land was utterly utopian at the time, but pushing the Turks back from the coast of Asia Minor seemed a feasible and sensible undertaking. Clemens found support from the Venetians , whose Negroponte colony suffered the worst from the Turkish pillage. Of all the Turkish principalities , Aydın was by far the strongest sea power and was therefore selected as a target.

On September 30, 1343 Pope Clemens called for a crusade against the "Turks in Romania " with the bull Insurgentibus contra fidem , in which the atrocities of the Turkish pirates were described in detail, and raised a Europe-wide crusade tithe for three years . For the first time the planned target of a crusade was the Greek area, and for the first time it was explicitly directed against Turks. For the first time, economic interests, namely the safety of merchant shipping in the eastern Mediterranean, also played a decisive role. In addition, the crusade, Clement's prestige project, was also intended to improve the reduced reputation of the Avignon papacy .

Heinrich von Asti , Latin patriarch in exile of Constantinople and Bishop of Negroponte, was appointed spiritual leader ( legate ) of the crusade . In addition to the Papal States and the Republic of Venice (under Doge Andrea Dandolo ), the Order of St. John of Rhodes (under Grand Master Helion de Villeneuve ) and King Hugo IV of Cyprus joined the company. The Republic of Genoa was in conflict with the King of Cyprus and therefore did not participate directly, but the Genoese Martino Zaccaria , the overthrown ruler of Chios and arch enemy of the Turks of Aydın, agreed to lead the papal fleet. Zaccaria obviously wanted to use the crusade to recapture his island from the Byzantines, although the Pope had expressly forbidden this. The Pope's two most important allies were missing, however: France was at war with England and the Kingdom of Naples had been in an unstable state since the young Queen Joanna ascended the throne . No help could be expected from the Frankish princes in Greece, where French, Catalan and Italian adventurers fought for power.

In the meantime, a civil war had broken out in the Byzantine Empire between the emperor's widow Anna of Savoy and Johannes Kantakuzenos (the ally of Umur Bey), so that it was foreseeable that the Byzantines would not interfere in the crusade - which, after all, had formerly aimed at Byzantine territory can.

Attack on Smyrna

View of Smyrna from 1801. Even 450 years after the crusade, you can still see the fortified city with the port and the old castle on the hill in the background.
Walls of Smyrna Castle ( Kadifekale ). The castle on the hill could not be conquered by the crusaders.

In the spring of 1344 the Christian fleet set out. Venice had contributed around 20 galleys ( commanded by Piero Zeno ), the Hospitallers six, and the Pope and King of Cyprus four each.

On Ascension Day , May 13, 1344, the fleet defeated a large Turkish ship formation near Pallene ( Chalkidiki ) and burned over fifty enemy ships. During the summer months, the fleet appears to have continued to hunt Turkish pirates in the Aegean Sea, as the crusaders did not reach Smyrna until October 28th. Umur Bey had not expected an attack from the seaside and was completely unprepared. At this time, his troops were either in Byzantine service or guarded the hinterland against the neighboring Turkish principalities. The crusaders first destroyed the enemy ships trapped in the port and then conquered the port fortress in a flash . The Turks withdrew to the castle hill.

There was now a stalemate as neither the Christians nor the Turks could conquer the opposing position. The Venetians walled the harbor district and dug a moat . Umur Bey pulled together reinforcements and besieged the port, aided by the shelling of mango trees . After a successful failure of the crusaders, however, he had to break off the siege.

Somewhat outside of the city and thus also outside of the defensive ring were the ruins of a church that was regarded by Christians as the late ancient metropolitan church. To celebrate the victory over the Turks, Patriarch Heinrich von Asti decided to hold a mass there. Zaccaria had objections, but had to submit to the higher-ranking patriarch, so that the Christian leadership went to church on January 17, 1345. The Turks saw this, saw the opportunity, and attacked while the crusaders held the service. Most of the Christian soldiers managed to escape to the safe haven, but the leaders of the crusade including Zaccaria, Zeno and the Patriarch were surrounded and killed in the church (the truth of the circumstances of the death is disputed, however).

Despite losing their leadership, the remaining Christian troops were able to hold the fortified harbor and the stalemate continued. After the news of the death of the leader had reached Europe and caused consternation there, Pope Clemens appointed the Johanniter Grand Master Hélion de Villeneuve as interim leader of the remaining troops. Bishop Raymond Saquet of Thérouanne was appointed the new papal legate of the crusade, while Bertrand des Baux , Seigneur de Courthézon , was to command the papal galleys. Both showed little enthusiasm and stayed in France. In May 1345, the Pope appointed Giovanni de Biandrate , the Prior of St. John of Lombardy , as captain of the troops in Smyrna. The new Venetian fleet leader was Niccolò Pisani , who was replaced some time later by Giustiniano Giustinian .

Crusade of the Dauphin of Viennois

Great seal of Humbert II of Viennois. It shows how he wanted to be seen himself: as a knight.

Support came in the person of the Dauphin von Viennois , Humbert II. He had been planning to take part in a crusade for some time and therefore readily offered his help to the Pope. Humbert, the last of his dynasty, was extremely pious and saw himself as a "noble Christian knight". But he was not a competent military leader and generally not very determined.

In May 1345 he was appointed the new leader of the crusade by the Pope, and in the summer he set sail in Marseille. Via Genoa he reached Venice by land at the end of October, where negotiations were held about the further Venetian contribution to the crusade. The Venetians' interest in the crusade had meanwhile slackened off considerably; The focus was now on a new conflict with Hungary over the city of Zara , a trade expedition to Alexandria and the assassination of the Neapolitan prince consort Andreas , which threatened to spark a great war in Italy. Eventually Humbert received two galleys that took him and his few troops to Negroponte, where they arrived at Christmas 1345.

In Negroponte, at the request of the Venetians, Humbert tried in vain to settle the conflict over the margraviate of Boudonitza (between Guglielma Pallavicini and her husband Niccolò Zorzi ). He also got in contact with the Venice-friendly Byzantine regent Anna of Savoy and asked to be allowed to use the island of Chios temporarily as a base. However, the Genoese under Admiral Simone Vignoso thwarted these plans by attacking the Byzantines on Chios in the summer of 1346 and conquering the island. This represented a serious setback for Humbert and Pope Clemens and led to conflicts in the crusader camp, as there was no agreement on how to react to the Genoese approach.

In February 1346, the crusaders are said to have defeated a large Turkish army in Mytilene on Lesbos , but this is probably a false report that originated in Italy. In any case, at the end of June Humbert finally reached Smyrna. He fought a few skirmishes with the Turks here, but they did not change the deadlock on the ground. He had clearly too few soldiers to attack the castle or to advance inland (for example to Umur's capital Ayasluğ ).

After a wave of illness spread among the crusaders, Humbert finally lost all enthusiasm for the crusade. In late summer he withdrew to Rhodes, sick and frustrated, and asked the Pope in early 1347 to withdraw his crusade vows. Shortly afterwards, his wife, who had accompanied him so far, died. After Pope Clemens finally released him from his oath at the end of March, Humbert returned to his homeland via Venice. His crusade had been a complete failure. Since he had paid for the company with his own funds, he had not only used up his large fortune, but had also become heavily in debt. Soon afterwards he bequeathed the Dauphiné to the son of the French king and entered the priesthood.

Peace negotiations and Umur's death

14th century Venetian galley

While Humbert was on his way home in the spring of 1347, a Christian ship formation at Imbros won another major victory over the Turks.

The costs for the galleys and soldiers were enormous, however, and Pope Clement got increasingly into financial problems. This was reinforced by the fact that the papacy also had to support the Order of St. John financially, as the latter had lost large amounts of money in the bankruptcy of the Florentine banks Bardi and Peruzzi from 1343 onwards. At the same time, the crises in Europe increased: the Pope was in open conflict with Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian , France had been crushed by the English at Crécy , and the Hungarian king raised an invading army against Naples. The Venetians continued to reliably provide the majority of the galleys, but in the meantime they argued with the Hospitallers about tariffs and armed against Genoa. The new Johanniter Grand Master Dieudonné de Gozon and the King of Cyprus also turned their attention more to the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia , which was under pressure due to internal power struggles and an attack by the Mamluks .

Against this background, Clemens was finally ready from November 1346 to make peace with Umur. Since Humbert was no longer available, the papal envoy Bartolommeo de 'Tomari (who had previously distinguished himself as a messenger between Clemens and Humbert) and the Knight of St. John Dragonnet de Joyeuse were commissioned to start the negotiations. Umur Bey was also ready for peace negotiations. He proposed to keep the status quo : Smyrna's port and the lower city should remain in Christian hands, while the upper castle would remain Turkish. However, the former Turkish port fortress should be destroyed; the walls newly erected by the Venetians are likely to remain. The latter demand was rejected by the Pope. The conflict dragged on.

In 1347 the Black Death reached Asia Minor, and in 1348 the epidemic spread to Europe. With the onset of mass extinction, all plans for additional crusade efforts finally failed.

In the meantime Johannes Kantakuzenos had won the Byzantine civil war and had entered Constantinople. His former ally, the Serbian King Stefan Dušan , had changed sides, conquered most of the Balkan Peninsula and also crowned himself emperor. Johannes Kantakuzenos therefore sought help from the West. So he wrote to the Pope and thanked him for the fight against the Turks - although these Turks were his allies! The hoped-for support did not materialize, however; instead, about a year later, there was even a war with Genoa .

In the spring of 1348 Kantakuzenos raised an army against the Serbs and also called Umur Bey to arms. Umur then gathered his troops. With a mighty army behind him, he could not resist the temptation and attacked the Crusaders in Smyrna around May. After the failure of the negotiations, he had every reason to do so, as there was a danger of a Christian attack in his absence. During the promising battle for the walls, Umur was fatally hit by an arrow; his troops then withdrew.

He was succeeded by his brother Hızır ( Khidr Beg ). He was much more open to the Pope's demands and made very far-reaching concessions (including the fight against piracy, disarming the navy, half of the trade income in Ephesus and the re-establishment of the bishops in his territory), even if it is rather unlikely that he himself wanted to stick to it in the long term. Hızır sent its own embassy to Avignon, which arrived there in 1349. The conflicts in Europe and the lengthy consultation with Venice and Cyprus as well as the fact that the Venetians were happy to continue the war at sea, but at the same time did not want to pay for the maintenance of the troops in Smyrna, meant that the negotiations continued until 1351 moved without a result. Meanwhile there was also open war between Venice and Genoa. In September 1351 Pope Clement finally had his galleys recalled from the Aegean Sea and from then on did not mention the subject again; the league was broken and the crusade ended for good. He died a year later.

consequences

The eastern Mediterranean around 1355. The collapse of the Byzantine Empire in favor of the Ottomans and Serbs is clearly visible.

Relations between Aydın and the Italian Maritime Republics quickly normalized: after Genoa had established trade relations with Aydın in early 1351, Venice soon followed. The Turkish emirate had largely recovered from the attack by 1350; from that year pirates drove out from Ephesus again. However, Aydın never achieved the importance it had under Umur; none of his successors had his political or military stature. In 1390 İsa Bey , the successor of Hızır, had to submit to the aspiring Ottomans .

Smyrna, more precisely the port and the lower city, remained in Christian hands until 1402 (more than fifty years). After Venice withdrew in 1350, the Johanniter officially assumed supreme command of the defense. The city government consisted of a papal captain, a vicar and the archbishop. Although the upper castle remained under Turkish control and Smyrna was a tiny exclave in Turkish territory, there was no longer any major fighting. Pope Clement's successor Innocent VI. tried to revive the league in late 1353 and 1357 unsuccessfully. Since the maintenance of the garrison cost enormous sums, Innocent planned to convert the exclave into a trading colony based on the Genoese model. In 1359 he appointed the Johanniter Niccolò Benedetti as captain of the city and endowed him with far-reaching powers. Benedetti was soon deposed by his order, whereupon the Pope transferred the management of the city from 1363 to 1374 to Genoese. In 1379 the food supply in Smyrna and Rhodes was so bad that the Johanniter were forced to trade with the Turks.

Philippe de Mézières , a former companion of Humbert von Vienne on his crusade, rose to become Chancellor of King Peter I of Cyprus from 1360 . Together with the papal legate Pierre Thomas , he successfully propagated a new crusade. In 1365, crusaders attacked Alexandria and sacked the city before retreating.

Even after the subjugation of Aydın by the Ottomans, Smyrna was initially able to avoid conquest. In 1402 the Ottomans were defeated in the Battle of Ankara by the Mongol-Turkish troops of Timur . The Timurids then advanced further west and stood before Smyrna by the end of the year. The Christian garrison, about two hundred knights under the command of the Aragonese Hospitaller Íñigo de Alfaro , refused to surrender. The Timurids then attacked with siege engines, tunneled under the walls, blocked the harbor entrance and stormed the city after fifteen days of resistance. The residents were massacred and the city destroyed. The city was later rebuilt by the Ottomans, but burned down again by the Venetians in 1472.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Mike Carr, Nikolaos G. Chrissis (Ed.): Contact and Conflict in Frankish Greece and the Aegean, 1204-1453: Crusade, Religion and Trade between Latins, Greeks and Turks , Ashgate Publishing, 2014, p. 131
  2. Donald M. Nicol : The Reluctant Emperor: A Biography of John Cantacuzene, Byzantine Emperor and Monk , Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 35
    Kenneth Meyer Setton: The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571: The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries , American Philosophical Society, 1976, p. 182
  3. Dieter Mertens : "Claromontani passagii exemplum": Pope Urban II and the first crusade in the Turkish war propaganda of Renaissance humanism . In: Bodo Guthmüller, Wilhelm Kühlmann (eds.): Europe and the Turks in the Renaissance , De Gruyter, 2000, p. 66f
    Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , p. 189f
  4. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 190/191
  5. ^ Heinrich Kretschmayr : History of Venice , second volume, 1920, p. 204;
    and Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , p. 192
  6. Steven Runciman : History of the Crusades , CH Beck, 1995, p. 1230
  7. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 190-193. In A History of the Crusades: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (edited by Setton), p. 294, Anthony Luttrell writes that the leaders were killed in an attack on Castle Hill. Runciman, however, reports that the crusader leadership was killed in an inland advance.
  8. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , p. 193
  9. Kenneth Meyer Setton (ed.), Anthony Luttrell: A History of the Crusades: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries , University of Wisconsin Press, 1969, p. 295
  10. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 206, 209, 216
  11. ^ Runciman: History of the Crusades , Volume 3, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 452;
    Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , p. 211
  12. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 195-202
  13. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 202-207
  14. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 204-211
  15. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , p. 212
  16. Jonathan Riley-Smith : The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades , Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 339
  17. ^ Setton (ed.), Luttrell: A History of the Crusades: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries , p. 295
  18. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 209, 213/214, 216
  19. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 212-215
  20. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 215/216
  21. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , pp. 216-223
  22. ^ Setton: The Papacy and the Levant , p. 222
  23. ^ Clive Foss: Ephesus after Antiquity: A Late antique, Byzantine and Turkish City , Cambridge University Bridge, 1979, p. 151
  24. ^ Runciman: A History of the Crusades , Volume 3, p. 452
  25. Jürgen Sarnowsky : Die Johanniter: a spiritual order of knights in the Middle Ages and modern times , CH Beck, 2011, pp. 91–93
  26. Ernst Werner: The Birth of a Great Power - the Ottomans (1300–1481), Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 1985, p. 151.
  27. Kenneth Meyer Setton (ed.), Anthony Luttrell: A History of the Crusades: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries , p. 308
  28. Kenneth Meyer Setton: The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571: The Fifteenth Century , American Philosophical Society, 1978, p. 317