Guillaume Caoursin

Yesterday's post on Mesih Pasha mentions the Siege of Rhodes in 1480, when a small garrison of Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes withstood an attack by the Ottomans. The garrison was led by Grand Master Pierre d'Aubusson. The vice-chancellor of the order was Guillaume Caoursin, who wrote (among other things) an account of the event.

Caoursin was born in 1430 in Douai in northern France, and joined the Order of Saint John (also know as the Hospitallers) as a young man. By 1462 he was vice-chancellor of the Order in Rhodes, and in 1462 he accompanied the Grand Master Piero Raimondo Zacosta to Rome for the holding of a general chapter under the guidance of Pope Paul II.

While in Rome, Zacosta died (he was in his 60s), and Giovanni Battista Orsini succeeded him. Caoursin went back to Rhodes with the new Grand Master, but was sent back to Rome in 1470 to request help from the pope for dealing with the Turks. Orsini died in 1476, and Caoursin now worked under Grand Master Pierre d'Aubusson.

In 1480, Mesih Pasha led an Ottoman force of 160 ships and 70,000 men against Rhodes. While the Turks bombarded the walls, the citizens dug a new moat and new fortification within the city walls near the Jewish quarter in case the bombardment breached the walls.

On 27 July the Janissaries managed to enter the city. d'Aubusson led the fighting, though wounded in five places. A three-hour battle forced the Turks back, and the Knights pursued all the way back to the Ottoman tents, taking booty and the holy standard of Islam. Caoursin reported that between three and four thousand Turks were slain that day. The Ottomans gave up on 17 August.

Caoursin married shortly after 1480. He was rewarded by d'Aubusson with 1000 gold florins for his services to the Order. His "next act" came in 1484, when he became ambassador to Pope Innocent VIII. Innocent was so impressed by Caoursin that he made him his apostolic secretary. Caoursin remained there, writing about his Order and about Rhodes.

Innocent VIII might also have kept Caoursin close because of his knowledge of the Ottomans and the Siege of Rhodes, of which I will have more to say tomorrow.

The Mesih End

Mesih Pasha was chosen from obscurity—we don't even know his original name before Mehmed II forced him to convert to Islam and made him a member of the Ottoman administration after the Conquest of Constantinople—and rose to great heights, but sultans can be fickle.

Mesih was Grand Admiral of the Ottoman navy and had great successes. He negotiated (successfully) with the rebelling Janissaries when they occupied the palace, angry at the sultan's imprisoning of one of their favorites. He negotiated a compromise with Sultan Bayezid II's rival half-brother, Cem, who had teamed up with the Knights Hospitallers in Rhodes against Bayezid. (The illustration shows Mesih at Rhodes.)

For some reason, however, he fell out of favor with Bayezid in 1485 and was dismissed from his position as vizier at court, being made simply governor of Filibe (once called Philippopolis, now Plovdiv, the second-largest city in Bulgaria). He was shortly exiled (essentially) to Kaffa, on the northern coast of the Black Sea.

His exile did not last forever. In 1497 he was made sanjak bey, military and administrative leader of the port city Akkerman (now Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi in southern Ukraine). While there he halted a Poolish invasion of Moldavia, sending several Polish nobles to Bayezid as tribute.

In 1499 he went on pilgrimage to Mecca, an excuse for leaving his position which gave him a reason to visit Constantinople and try to get back to a position at court. Fortunately, the Venetians were fighting the Ottomans again, and his previous naval experience against the Venetians led to being re-named vizier, and then in 1501 Grand Vizier.

Things were looking up again, but that same year the Venetians attacked Lesbos to get it back from the Ottomans. Bayezid, unhappy that the Venetians felt able to make such a bold move against him, in a fit of pique struck Mesih. We don't know how serious the injury may have been, but soon after, after supervising putting out a fire in a Constantinople suburb, Mesih was supposedly injured. He died in November 1501. He was buried in the Murat Pasha Mosque in Constantinople, begun by his brother Hass Murad Pasha and completed by Mesih himself.

Now for something completely different. The illustration above, a painting of Mesih addressing Rhodes, was painted by an eyewitness of that negotiation! His name was Guillaume Caoursin, and we're going to talk about him next.

The Brothers Murad and Mesih

After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II, he took two young male potential Byzantine heirs, converted them to Islam, and made them important figures in the new administration.

We don't know their original names, or their exact parentage (they were reported by some Ottoman historians to be nephews of the deposed Byzantine Emperor Constantine), but they were converted to Islam and renamed Hass Murad Pasha and Mesih Pasha. Both had powerful career positions.

Hass—a title meaning "private" or "personal"—was also very wealthy. He had accrued a significant amount of wealth by 1465/66 when he began the construction of a new mosque, called the Murat Pasha Mosque in Istanbul (still in use; see illustration).

In 1468, the current Grand Vizier and beylerbey ("lord of lords") was dismissed, and Hass replaced him as beylerbey, the commander-in-chief of the Balkans. Life in the Balkans was not peaceful. In 1473, he led a troop of 20,000 against an uprising. When the enemy retreated, Hass Murad intended to follow.

One of the men under his command, Mahmud Pasha, warned him that this particular enemy employed the tactic of "feigned retreats": pretending to flee in disarray and yet prepared to turn and fight when pursued. Murad did not listen. He crossed the Euphrates, his army was ambushed and many captured, and Hass Murad Pasha was killed.

The other brother, Mesih Pasha, was first mentioned in the records as military and administrative commander of Gelibolu (Gallipoli). Gallipoli was a chief Ottoman naval base, and so Mesih had control of a large part of the navy. There was an Ottoman-Venetian War in 1463 - 1479 in which Mesih conquered Euboea, the second-largest Greek island. 

Venetian records of the time claim that Mesih was willing to surrender Gallipoli to Venice for 40,000 gold ducats, but this arrangement never came to fruition, so may have been a Venetian plan to stir up unrest among the Ottomans, and discredit a successful enemy leader.

A new sultan came to the throne, Bayezid II (1481 - 1512). There were some problems with a rival claim, and when Bayezid imprisoned the Grand Vizier who was sympathetic to Bayezid's rival, the Janissaries revolted and invaded the palace (the Grand Vizier, like the Janissaries, was a devşirme). Mesih was sent to negotiate, which he did successfully.

In January 1485 he fell out of favor with Beyazid. This was not the end of his story, however. I'll continue it next time.

After the Conquest

Once Mehmed II had taken Constantinople in 1453, absorbing it into the Ottoman Empire, he declared himself Roman Caesar. His thinking was that Constantinople had been the seat of the emperors of Rome since 330CE, and therefore whomever sat on that throne was in charge. Western Europe and the Popes did not support this claim, but thinking was different in the East. 

Contemporary Byzantine scholar George of Trebizond (1395 - 1486) supported this view. Another who aligned with the new Caesar was Gennadius Scholarius, whom Mehmed chose as the new Patriarch of Constantinople.

Note that Mehmed did not declare Eastern Orthodoxy heretical. He was actually quite magnanimous to his potential opposition. For example, when he then turned his attention to the royal family, he did not simply execute anyone who might have provided the nucleus of an insurrection and coup.

The defeated Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, who had died during the siege, had no heirs. He had nephews of a deceased brother who would have been next in line. As was mentioned in the post on the Janissaries, a Muslim practice called devşirme (the "ş" is pronounced like "sh") took children of conquered peoples and converted them, training them to be loyal Muslims.

Mehmed took at least two boys who were purportedly related to Constantine, converted them to Islam and renamed them Hass Murad Pasha and Mesih Pasha. Hass—a title meaning "private" or "personal"—became beylerbey ("lord of lords"), the commander-in-chief of the Balkans in 1468. (The illustration shows his signature.) Mesih (1443 - 1501) became Grand Admiral of the Ottoman Navy.

We do not know the parentage of the two young men who rose so high in the sultan's favor. Contemporary Ottoman chronicles claim they were nephews of Constantine, but offer different names for their father. Still, Murad and Mesih were lucky that Constantine was succeeded by Mehmed and not another prominent Greek noble, who might have followed the Byzantine tradition of eliminating all possible opposition through incarceration, execution, or blinding.

It would be nice to think that the two boys had not only good lives but peaceful ends. That was not to be the case, however. I'll give you the rundown on their careers tomorrow.