So get this: 1444, Ottoman Sultan Murad II signs a peace deal with Hungary and then decides
that’s it, his work here is done, the empire is saved forever, and gives the throne to
his twelve-year-old son.
Did he want to take it easy and figured his boy could handle himself?
Was this some kind of scheme to teach his son valuable life lessons?
Was he attempting to develop a Disney Channel original series?
We may never know.
Whatever the case, the Hungarians noticed, and hardly after the ink on that peace treaty
was dry one of the cardinals was pushing the king to go back to the battlefield.
Wladyslaw III: “That doesn’t sound very Christian”
Cardinal Cesarini: “ThAt dOeSN’t SOunD veRy ChRiStiAn who’s the Jesus expert here?”
And that’s how the tween sultan found himself leading his first war.
It would not be his last.
[intro]
Thomas: “So my daughter married Ivan III, but my son wrote in his will, if I can find
it around here…”
David of Trebizond: “No, but if you go back to before the fourth crusade…”
Mehmed: “What seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?”
David: “Ugh, we’re trying to figure out who the Roman empire is supposed to belong
to, but we’re losing track of all our ancestors, and besides we don’t even have access to
all the records we need to know for certain” Mehmed: “Heh, that’s why I signed up for
MyHeritage” Thomas: “Your heritage?”
Mehmed: “No no, MyHeritage, the world’s number one family history service.
They have 16 billion records, so you’re bound to learn something new about your ancestors.
All you need is seven connections to get started” Orphan: “Bu’ sir, I don’ know much abou’
my family” Mehmed: “Sounds like their DNA test is perfect
for you!
You could find family members you didn’t even know you had!
And the coolest part, if you have an old black and white photograph of your grandparents,
for example, presto, full colour and in motion!
Bringing history to life, what a concept!
I mean, seriously, I’ve - no, I’ve paid more than a month’s subscription just to
get a single image colorized on Fiverr before, and I’ve had so much fun exploring my family
tree in full, I’m actually in touch with a lot of these far-flung cousins and so, yeah,
I’ve been into genealogy for a long time.
You can access everything for 14 days free at the link on-screen or in the description,
and if you like it, you’ll also get a 50% discount!
And now we can finally say for certain, that the true inheritor of Rome is –”
Mehmed II: “Dad, they’re torching the Balkans, you have to come help”
Murad II: “You’ve been a governor for seven years, you’ll be fine - ooh, green
one!”
Mehmed II: “No, that’s not how this works Dad.
If you’re in charge then you need to come lead your armies.
If I’m in charge then I order you to come and lead your armies!”
Murad II: “Aw…”
Murad fought and won the battle of Varna, but it would be two years before he actually
came back to the palace to take charge of the government again, which is frankly an
obscene level of trust he had in his viziers, but the important thing is that when Mehmed
took the throne again as a man, he wasn’t just well-studied, he’d seen a thing or
two.
He was also a total nerd who was obsessed with history and classical literature, wouldn’t
know anyone like that, low key idolized Alexander the Great, which uh, y’know, a little basic,
just saying.
And he spends his days spitballing ideas with his advisors about how to achieve his dreams.
Vizier: “What are we going to do today, your majesty?”
Mehmed II: “The same thing we do every day, Halil.
Try to take over Constantinople.”
Vizier: “They’re already our vassals, I don’t see the rush to conquer it-”
Mehmed II: “Because it would be epic!
Hello?
I could be a Roman emperor!”
Vizier: “Greater men than we have tried and failed.
Attila, the Bulgarians, the Rus, even the great caliphates couldn’t breach the walls,
they’re too thick” Mehmed II: “Oh they’re thick all right”
Vizier: “We’ve tried like four or five times, if having a massive army and a fortress
directly across the strait won’t do it, what will?”
Mehmed II: “A fortress… directly next to the city…”
Mehmed builds his fortress, he names it the throat-slitter just to be extra, and he takes
control of the Bosphorus strait, no one gets in or out without his permission.
The Venetians tried to slip one past him, he blew up the ship, beheaded the survivors,
and turned the captain into a human scarecrow.
Mehmed II: “Well they’re definitely gonna pay the toll, I tell you that much”
Vizier: “Okay.
No fleet will rescue the Byzantines.
But what of the walls?”
Just then a Hungarian engineer wanders in, explaining how he was turned away from Constantinople
by an emperor who couldn’t afford his services.
Mehmed II: “...what kind of services?”
Orban: “I want to build a cannon.”
Mehmed II: “A cannon?”
Orban: “A really big cannon” Vizier: “Your majesty-”
Mehmed II “Ah-ah.
I’m listening…”
Orban: “Nearly twenty feet long and heavier than a whale.
Carried onto the battlefield by sixty oxen.
The cannonballs-” Mehmed II: “A hundred pounds each!”
Orban “Bigger” Mehmed II: “Two hundred pounds!”
Orban: “Bigger” Mehmed II: “Th… three hundred pounds?”
Orban: “Bigger” Mehmed II: “God be praised!”
Orban: “Sign here and I’ll give you a weapon to blast through the walls of Babylon
itself” Mehmed II: “Shut up and take my money!”
War soon came to Constantinople.
And sixty oxen carried the mother of all cannons that fired those mighty rounds over a mile
into the Theodosian Walls.
And the Ottomans hoisted their ships over the very hills to break the Byzantine’s
blockade, and their men tirelessly dug beneath the city to undermine its defenses, but the
city refused to crack, until
Soldiers: “Hey this one’s open!”
[soldiers go rushing in] Mehmed: “Well that was a freebie”
Mehmed: “All right, hey, you getting this?
*ahem* My soldiers!
I once told you, either I would take this city or it would take me.
Today, Rome is reborn!
Today -” [dame da ne growing louder in the background]
Constantine XI: “...this empire did fell the walls of Carthage, repel the savage Huns…”
Mehmed: “Hey!
No, this is my day!
Okay?”
Constantine XI: “Then as my city falls…
I will fall with her” Mehmed: “What?
No, what is this ******, I’m Augustus and he’s Antony, why does he get the epic moving
speech?”
Sad though it was to see the end of 2,000 years of history, and as brutal as the attack
was, make no mistake there was lots of theft and murder and other words I’m not supposed
to say on YouTube, funnily enough the city itself really started popping off after the
Ottomans got a hold of it, in 1453 there were about 50,000 people in a city designed to
hold ten times that, within a century it had fully rebounded and become the most populous
city in all of Europe again.
And while the Hagia Sophia got turned into a mosque, which means for once I don’t have
to keep cropping out the minarets and Islamic symbols and Arabic text, it remained a surprisingly
multicultural city, with Mehmed going out of his way to make sure that the city was
an important site for Christians and Jews, who were given a fair bit of government autonomy.
After the fall of Constantinople there were technically a couple Byzantine holdouts.
Mehmed actually adopted the city’s would-be heirs into the Ottoman Empire, gave one of
them a province to govern that was frankly bigger than what was left of the Eastern Roman
Empire anyway, and the other one became a top admiral and vizier.
The last Byzantine emperor’s brothers were holed up in the Peloponnese peninsula, where
Mehmed kind of just absorbed them as vassals until he realized they were just completely
useless.
These guys were the last flickering embers of the Roman Empire, Constantinople was just
taken, and their subjects hated them so much those two nitwits had to ask Mehmed to put
down rebellions for them, then they went and rebelled against Mehmed and he just went ahead
and conquered the darn place.
Thomas: “And so the last of our lands is taken… but I swear before God, the emperor
of Rome will return” Mehmed: “Hahaha, indeed I shall!”
Thomas: “What?”
Mehmed: “What?”
Thomas: “I was talking about me.
I’m the next oldest.”
Mehmed: “Yeah, but…
I’m the guy with the fancy hat in Constantinople ruling over Roman lands”
Demetrios: “You took it by force!”
Mehmed: “Yeah so did your family!”
Demetrios: “No, that’s different, they came from inside the empire”
Mehmed: “Anatolia used to be inside the empire!”
Thomas: “No no no, no royal ties, foreign army, totally different culture and religion”
Mehmed: “What about if your family died out and you had no heirs to give the title
to?”
Thomas: “Eh, I’d probably give it to the Spanish”
Mehmed: “Excuse me?!”
But technically another piece of the Byzantine Empire still existed, in a way, you see there
was this kingdom called Trebizond, one of the tiny little kingdoms that popped up after
the, uh, Crusader incident [flashback to Innocent III footage], and it was still ruled by the
Komnenos dynasty who used to be in charge of the Byzantine Empire way back in the day.
Trebizond was ruled by a man named David.
In a story that should sound somewhat familiar, David’s brother John spent his last years
on earth searching for allies, he mustered up support from King George of Georgia.
David asks Mehmed if he can lay off the yearly tribute, Mehmed says “I’ll give you my
answer later”.
David: “What the hell is that” David’s wife: “I think that’s his answer.”
David: “So this is it…
The Komnenoi, rulers of this land for centuries, are finally to surrender to the hands of the
Turks.
Oh what a shameful end for the inheritors of Rome ”
Mehmed: “No!
Nuh-uh!
You see this?
I’m Caesar.”
David: “Caesar wears a turban?”
Mehmed: “He does now!
Or what, you think the Spanish have a better claim?”
David: “I mean I was just gonna lament about how the line dies with me, but…
I mean if it had to be someone it would be the Russians wouldn’t it?”
Mehmed: “The Russians?”
David: “Well obviously it’s not a perfect analogy, but y’know, Orthodox, historically
the Rus had a lot of marriages to the emperor’s families…”
Mehmed: “Jesus prophet, what’s a guy gotta do to be a Roman these days?”
And so that, totally, definitely, was the last scraps of the Byzantine Empire all squared
away.
But uh, they don’t call this guy Mehmed the Conqueror for nothing.
He got into a tiff with Serbia, which brought Hungary into the war, which is how this guy
John Hunyadi, who wasn’t the king of Hungary but may as well have been, found himself in
the city of Belgrade with the Ottomans at his doorstep, and no help coming from foreign
kingdoms.
“This city,” he said “emerging from time immemorial… has looked up at the whole
world.
Invaded by the Celts, trampled by the Roman army, ravaged by the Huns,”
Mehmed: “Point taken.”
Except this time, what should appear on the horizon but an army of foreign peasants, moved
by the plight of the Serbs, who’d taken to arms and trekked hundreds of miles to unite
behind Hunyadi and defy the Ottomans no matter how slim the odds.
Crowd man 1: “Taken by the Ostrogoths!”
Crowd man 2: “Recaptured by the Byzantines!”
Crowd man 3: “Nobly sacked by the migrating Slavs!”
Hunyadi: “Besieged by Bulgarians, generally knocked about by the aforementioned powers
in recent centuries… but to be taken by the Ottomans is a step too far!”
The last Byzantine emperor was no doubt rolling in his grave.
Or… wherever his body ended up.
Hunyadi was able to defend the city with a fleet of 200 ships along the Danube, but that
said Mehmed did end up conquering the rest of Serbia.
Believe it or not, we’re only 7 years out from the fall of Constantinople, all of these
wars were overlapping between 1454 and 1460.
But as they all were drawing to a close, there was one place that was still giving him trouble,
and he would have to attend to it personally.
Wallachia was a buffer between Hungary and the Ottomans, so they were constantly dethroning
and re-throning its rulers.
The new guy in charge is Vlad III, Dracula [lightning strike].
It’s the usual story, Mehmed demands tribute, European leader says I can’t pay right now,
only… so Mehmed was like a Greco-Roman fanboy, flair for the dramatic, Vlad was…
I have to get out ahead of this whole segment by saying that sources are conflicting and
A LOT of this is just stories that came out of the war that are wildly exaggerated or
even made up, but Vlad is like if an edgy misanthropic twelve-year-old wrote about the
things he would do if he was a king.
Equally dramatic to Mehmed, but way darker.
Mehmed sends his envoy to collect tribute, and Vlad sends back their corpses with their
hats nailed into their skulls.
Mehmed sends in his army, and this is where things get messy, but a version of the story
looks something like this: Mehmed tries to set up an ambush, but Vlad finds out and ambushes
the Ottomans.
He retreats to his capital, burning all the crops and poisoning all the wells along the
way.
The Ottomans are low key terrified because any time they break apart from the main army,
they get picked off in the night and are never seen again.
Vlad then sneaks into the Ottoman camp himself, huge grain of salt there, finds out where
the Sultan’s tent is, and then either he brings in his whole army the next night and
attacks the camp trying to assassinate Mehmed, or he comes in with a smaller force that are
all disguised as Ottoman soldiers, so even though they’re outnumbered, the Ottomans
are so panicked they start stabbing each other in the back.
But the creepiest part, comes either just outside the city of Targoviste, or, creepier
still, when the Ottomans arrive at the capital and find the gates wide open.
They’re walking down the main street, and there’s virtually no defenses, the place
is a ghost town, until up ahead they see a column of men standing against them.
The Ottomans presumably order their soldiers to take attack formation, but Vlad’s men
don’t move.
And then they realize: Those aren’t Vlad’s men.
They’re Ottomans.
It’s a field, a mile wide and four miles long, of 20,000 dead Ottomans impaled on spikes.
Presumably Mehmed was thinking something along the lines of “Oh my God, human scarecrows,
who would do a thing like that?!”
followed by “Wait a second, how… that must be like every casualty we’ve suffered
so far, did they…
like during the battle were they going out of their way to pick up corpses…?”
At some point after this the Ottomans noped on back to Ottoman land, and the Wallachians
dethrone Vlad by themselves.
Win win!
Okay, I’ll quickly mention… he took over Bosnia [Baka Mitai plays as Bosnian king Stephen
Tomasevic is executed], he reconquered a lot of Anatolia [battle in Anatolia, next line
of Baka Mitai], invaded Moldavia [next line of Baka Mitai over Stephen the great] but
didn’t conquer it, there was a war with the venetians that was probably important
but no one had a dramatic speech about the fall of their kingdom, and oh, Albania.
What’s that?
This is a collaborative video?
Sick, all right, tag out, you’re watching Hikma History
Thanks Jack.
Skanderbeg is one of the greatest military commanders you’ve probably
never heard of.
In a 25 year grudge match to the death, he led the Albanians to 13 victories
over the Ottoman military machine.
Using guerrilla warfare tactics combined with his
intimate knowledge of the Ottoman military, something he picked up in his 20 years of
service to the Sultan, Skanderbeg was able to halt Mehmed Fatih’s march into Albania.
In a life filled with wars and battles, there are
claims that Skanderbeg killed up to 3,000 men
personally during his lifetime.
Find out more about this unsung hero of history in the video I
made about his conflicts with the Ottomans over on my channel.
Back to you Jack.
Ah, thank you sir.
Look at that, a whole segment I didn’t have to animate.
If you want a good source of interesting Muslim history, he’s your guy.
So uh, yeah, that’s pretty much Mehmed II for you, except oh wait he took over Italy!
Well not, not all of Italy, just like, one town, but I dunno, I was pretty surprised
to find out that the Ottomans conquered even part of it.
His admiral seized the heel of Italy, and now, finally, he’s got Europe in a real
tizzy.
Because Constantinople, ah they were on their way out anyway, they weren’t even Catholic,
but Ottomans in Italy?
Who’s to say they won’t take over the city of Rome, that is just uncalled for.
The Pope’s calling on a crusade, you got Hungary bringing in troops, France, Spain,
Naples, all bearing down on this one castle, and then Mehmed got sick and died.