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00:00From obscure beginnings as a warrior tribe of nomadic horsemen, the Ottoman Empire rose to
00:12become the most powerful force in the Islamic world. With its magnificent capital, Istanbul,
00:22here on the European shores of the Bosporus, it stood as a self-styled caliphate whose
00:28territories rivaled those of ancient Rome. This was an empire founded on military
00:36conquest and the Ottomans had a mastery of Europe in their sight. For 500 years the
00:42battle raged back and forth as the Ottomans tried to establish a permanent
00:47presence in Eastern Europe. It's a legacy that continues to haunt these contested
00:53lands to this day.
00:58For all its grandeur and might, little is known about the Ottoman Empire's earliest
01:15beginnings. But legend tells us something of its purpose. And the legend goes something
01:22like this. Osman, a young Turkoman tribal warrior living somewhere in northwest Anatolia, travelled
01:30to the home of Edibali, a highly regarded religious man in the area.
01:38Osman knew Edibali and he admired his teachings. He also had his eye on the old man's daughter.
01:45Edibali, for his part, wasn't quite so enamoured of his prospective son-in-law. But Osman persevered,
01:51he continued his visits, and then one night something extraordinary happened.
01:55Osman dreamed he saw the moon rise up from the holy man's chest as he lay sleeping. It crossed the sky and it sat in Osman's own chest.
02:05Then a tree sprouted from Osman's navel. It grew large and strong and its branches spread across the entire sky, casting a cooling shade on all the land. Streams of fresh water rushed down from the mountains and people drank from it.
02:24Osman immediately woke up Edibali and told him his dream, which the old man interpreted as a divine prophecy, foretelling a glorious future for Osman and the expansion of his people. A dream of empire, no less.
02:48Osman, no less. Well, the stuff of legend, probably. But Osman, the Turkoman warrior, was a real historical figure and is recognised as the founder of the Ottoman dynasty.
03:00The word Osman actually means the people of Osman. And the name Osman means bone cruncher, a rather ominous portent for the future.
03:09Oh, in case you're wondering, yes, he did get the girl. He married her.
03:14Osman. This legend is rooted in Central Asian mythology. This is an example of the Ottoman Turks pre-Islamic origins.
03:27The tree story is one of several which are justifications for expansion and rule and to some extent you might even say universal domination.
03:39The idea that the Turks are destined to rule the world.
03:48Exploiting their legendary skills as warrior horsemen, the people of Osman spread out across northwestern Anatolia.
03:55They ransacked towns and villages, both Byzantine and Muslim, acquiring more territory, booty and recruits.
04:03But it wasn't until they captured the Byzantine town of Prusa in 1326 that their status would change, setting them on a course for empire.
04:20Prusa was little more than an outpost on the edges of the dwindling Byzantine Empire.
04:27Osman had his eye on the city for some time, but it wasn't until his son Orhar came to power that the Ottomans succeeded in taking it.
04:36Known today as Borsa, the city is the fourth largest in Turkey and one of the country's historical gems.
04:43But for the Ottomans of the early 14th century, it represented not the past, but the future.
04:49Borsa was important. When they took control of it, it sort of altered the whole of their society.
05:01They suddenly became rulers of a significant town for the first time.
05:06The Ottomans renamed the city Borsa and they made it their capital.
05:13So suddenly we see them abandoning a tribal way of life and adopting an urban lifestyle.
05:19And they also acquire imperial ambitions, a dream of empire which they realise by rebuilding the city in their own image.
05:28It's like that calling card. They say, we've arrived, we're here to stay and we mean business.
05:34And it's really a quite dramatic transformation and it happens very quickly.
05:43Considered by many to be the true heart of the Ottoman Empire, Borsa is filled with impressive monuments from the early Ottoman period.
05:51Dominating the city is the Grand Ulu Kami, or Great Mosque.
05:58Built at the end of the 14th century, its scale and beauty expresses perfectly the empire's lofty ambitions.
06:09But it is perhaps the older Yildirim Bayezid mosque complex, built about 60 years after the city's conquest,
06:16that tells us more about the Ottomans' aims in those nascent days of empire.
06:21Set just outside the city centre, with its own hospital, school, bathhouse and kitchen,
06:29it was the Ottomans' first mosque complex, built to attract a community that could be taxed and thereby generate revenue.
06:37Stepping inside this mosque, one is immediately struck by the grandeur of the interior,
06:47which is of course precisely what was intended. This is a power statement.
06:52But it also gets the impression that it's not very mosque-like. It's a bit like a church, if that's not too sacrilegious.
06:59It has a transept, except the transept is towards the door.
07:03And I think probably the early architects and artisans and builders who were responsible for this building,
07:09they probably came from Byzantium themselves.
07:12And that, of course, was the benchmark that the Ottomans were pitching themselves against.
07:27Impressive as it was, Bersa couldn't compare with the legendary capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople,
07:35located 56 miles to the north.
07:38Spread out along the European side of the Bosphorus, Constantinople sat at the crossroads of ancient trade routes between East and West,
07:48which made the city immensely powerful and wealthy.
07:52Known today as Istanbul, Constantinople was once the epicentre of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Orthodox Christian Church.
08:08The Byzantine Empire had shrunk and was no longer powerful, but it had this cultural significance.
08:16It had been there since the first expansion of Islam.
08:20It had resisted attack by the early Muslim Arabs successfully.
08:25It had resisted attacks over centuries.
08:28It loomed hugely in the imagination and the political sort of landscape of the Ottomans,
08:36and indeed of all the Muslims of the Middle East.
08:39By the mid-14th century, the Byzantine Empire was embroiled in a power struggle between two claimants to the throne.
08:51John VI Kantikazinus, a close confidants of the previous emperor,
08:56and John V Palaiologos, the 20-year-old hereditary heir to the throne.
09:01Kantikazinus, aware of the Ottomans' formidable reputation as warriors, invited Orhan's forces to help him suppress the rebellion.
09:17So, in 1352, an Ottoman force made its way to the Dardanelles Straits,
09:22a narrow strip of water separating Anatolia from the Gallipoli Peninsula on the mainland of southeastern Europe.
09:30Born of desperation, the Byzantine king's decision was to have dire consequences,
09:36not only for the future of Byzantium, but also the Balkans.
09:40The back door to Europe had been literally flung open to Ottoman expansion, and the pickings were rich.
09:51Landing on the European side of the straits, Orhan's forces marched into Thrace,
09:55where they roundly defeated the Byzantine rebels.
09:58This was the first major battle the Ottomans would fight and win on European soil.
10:07Kantikazinus's reign was secured, but any expectations he might have had about Orhan's armies returning from whence they came were quickly dispelled.
10:17According to Islamic law, once some land has been conquered by Islam, it becomes part of the Islamic world.
10:32It was believed the Islamic world was destined, really, to sweep over the whole of the earth.
10:38And so there could only ever be an advance in this.
10:42And once a flag had been planted in a piece of land, it was theirs and it was non-negotiable.
10:49Orhan does seem to have used this idea that you can't abandon territory which has once been conquered by Muslims.
10:58So he can't give back this little fortress.
11:01Gives them the base, the Byzantines are not strong enough to take it back by force, and from there they can raid.
11:09Ottoman forces swept northwards across Thrace with breathtaking speed.
11:14Bypassing Constantinople itself, they pushed deeper into Europe, reaching the city of Adrianopolis near the Bulgarian border in little more than a decade.
11:23Under late Byzantine rule, the Balkans was a chaotic collection of little kingdoms, very fragmented, and ruled by Christian feudal overlords who oppressed their peasantry very heavily.
11:43You could say, really, it was absolutely ripe for picking.
11:47They had been fighting between the Byzantines, the Bulgarians, the Serbs, various other people, sort of, the place was in a mess.
11:57It really provided an opportunity for the Ottomans to step in and actually to provide something a little bit better.
12:05In some places they were accepted, in some places they were even welcomed.
12:10It's almost like a sense of relief.
12:12Finally, the locals might be saying, we've got a government that can govern.
12:23Named after the Roman Emperor Hadrian, Adrianopolis was a significant conquest for the Ottomans.
12:30It was perfectly positioned to launch far-reaching campaigns into Europe.
12:34By the time of its capture, Orhan had died, and his more than capable son Murad had come to power.
12:44Murad was an accomplished military leader who understood the city's strategic potential.
12:50So he changed his name to the Turkish Edene and began to transform it into a grand European capital for his empire.
12:57The Ottomans celebrated their entry into Europe with a dazzling display of architectural magnificence.
13:09But for all that, Erdene was first and foremost a military centre.
13:14It's a legacy that is still very much alive to this day.
13:17Edene lays claim to the longest, continually running, state-sanctioned sports competition in the world.
13:34The annual Kökpina Oil Wrestling Tournament.
13:37Oil wrestling is the national sport of Turkey, and its history goes back a long way.
13:50But the competitions in Erdene began in the 14th century, when the Ottoman army came to town.
13:55Turkish historian Sonat Tursun is a fan of the event, and he's invited me to watch a practice match between two of this year's strongest contenders.
14:11Watching these gentlemen writhing around as we are, tell me something about the rules.
14:17The rules are different from modern wrestling.
14:19If the belly of a wrestler is exposed to sun, then the wrestling is over.
14:25Alternatively, if a wrestler grabs the other one into the air and walks three steps, then the wrestling is over two.
14:36Well, so that was a lift, yeah?
14:38A good lift, but he walked for two paces.
14:41Ah, right. He's going to take three.
14:42Yes.
14:44According to legend, oil wrestling came to Erdene in the 14th century, when a group of Ottoman soldiers began to wrestle nearby.
14:52Two of the soldiers were so evenly matched that they wrestled through the night, until they both died of exhaustion.
14:59To honour them, a wrestling competition has taken place in Erdene ever since.
15:03Oily men in leather britches. Where does that come from, sort of?
15:13It comes from Central Asia. It was a kind of preparation for war. So every Turkish warrior was a wrestler at the same time.
15:22The Ottoman army is famous for being very well organised and structured. How were the forces recruited?
15:31The real power of the Ottoman army was the Jansary, who formed at most 10% of the army.
15:41Those Jansaries were not Turks. They were taken from Christian families in Balkans.
15:46Their children were taken as a kind of tax.
15:53And these children were forcibly removed from their families, I understand it, which seems a terribly sort of harsh position.
16:00In the beginning, it was. But in time, as families saw that, their children could rose to the highest positions.
16:10Most of the families gave their children voluntarily.
16:12So that's rather extraordinary that some of the highest officers in the land were occupied by non-Turks and originally people who were Christians.
16:22Yes. But of course, they learnt Turkish traditions and of course, they became good Muslims.
16:29And once they were taken from families and trained, they were only loyal to the Sultan.
16:35So that's game over, is it? Yes.
16:48Congratulations. Great battles. Titans. Very spectacular.
16:52Dynamics, tell misiniz. Would you like to try?
16:54Oh, I think I need to bulk up a bit before I take you on, but I'll be back.
17:06In the latter half of the 14th century, the Ottoman army was probably the most efficient and formidable fighting force in the Western world.
17:14With professional, salaried troops at its core, each with a specific role to play, it was a very modern army compared to its European rivals.
17:23Each division was immediately recognizable by its colorful uniforms and insignia, feathers, plumes, that kind of thing.
17:38And it played a very specific role in the Ottoman war machine.
17:41Now, these rather fearsome bunch of desperados behind me.
17:46They're from the Balkasia Caresi Cavalry Enactment Group.
17:50And they're going to show me exactly how all of this fitted together.
17:54Gentlemen, are you ready?
17:55Yes.
17:57I'm out of here.
17:59At its core were the Janissaries, that elite force of infantrymen drawn from Balkan children.
18:04The salaried force loyal to the Sultan, the Janissaries were highly trained fighters likened to the Roman Praetorian Guards.
18:13Their reputation for ferocious charges was unrivalled.
18:22Just as elite were the Sepahis, and the Sultan's own Capiculu Sepahis Cavalry.
18:27They were the main attacking force of the army, eating charges from the front and performing pincer-like attacks from the flanks.
18:43Then there were the irregular forces.
18:46Called up in times of war, they were unsalaried and unpredictable.
18:50The Bashibazooks were foot soldiers, motivated primarily by the promise of booty.
18:55The word Bashibazooks means damaged head in Turkish.
18:59A reference to their complete lack of discipline and reckless courage in battle.
19:08Last but not least were the Akinji.
19:10A light cavalry used for surprise attacks and lightning raids on the enemy before the battle had even begun.
19:17Often drawn from religiously motivated warriors, the Akinjis were the jihadis of their day.
19:22Known as the Crazies because of their suicidally courageous tactics, they were respected for their horsemanship and skilled use of weaponry.
19:31To give you a better idea of their capabilities, these watermelons represent the heads of their enemy.
19:43These were the fighting divisions, but the Ottomans fielded huge armies, 100 to 150,000 men, and they all had to be provided for.
20:04So there was a huge contingent of camp followers, the people who put up the tents and carried them, the people who cooked for the army, water bearers, medical supplies, the people who carried the weapons.
20:19And then there were the engineers, and then there were the engineers who made the roads and put bridges over the rivers ahead.
20:24There was even a marching band.
20:27An Ottoman army on the move was a huge logistical exercise.
20:30Oh, where did everybody go?
20:31With his well-organised army, Murad marched deeper into the Balkans, sweeping eastward to the shores of the Black Sea, westward to the frontiers of Greece and Macedonia, and northward into Bulgaria, taking the important trading centre of Blovdiv in 1364.
20:57Ottoman expansion seemed unstoppable, but there was one obstacle looming on their horizon, Serbia.
21:08At its height, the Serbian Empire stretched from the southern border of Hungary, down the Adriatic coast, and deep into Macedonia and Greece.
21:18Serbia was one of the major powers of the Orthodox Christian Balkans.
21:25But it always seemed to be on the verge of taking over from the Byzantine, from the Roman Empire, becoming the new Rome, which would defend the Orthodox faith and Orthodox civilisation.
21:40It didn't happen. Why didn't it happen? It's those rotten Turks. They came and spoiled it all.
21:47Murad's forces defeated Serbian resistance in Macedonia, making vassals of the local princes, before pushing into the Serbian heartland, taking the city of Nice in 1385.
21:58As the Ottomans closed in, what remained of the once great Serbian empire was being held together by a regional prince, Laza Aribeljovic.
22:08Prince Lazaar managed to repel Ottoman advances for a time, but Murad's forces launched a devastating offensive, climaxing here in fields just outside of Pristina, in what was then the Serbian province of Kosovo.
22:27The Battle of Kosovo took place in 1389. And it was fought here at Kosovo Polje, Kosovo Fields. It was an epic struggle between two mighty armies that acquired a legendary status in the hearts and minds of the Serbian people.
22:45Now, shortly before the battle, Prince Lazaar issued a famous proclamation or curse on anyone who didn't turn up to defend the homeland against the infidel.
22:56And it goes like this.
22:58Whoever is a Serb, of Serb birth, of Serb blood, of Serb heritage, and comes not to fight at Kosovo, may he never have progeny born of love, neither son nor daughter.
23:12And may nothing sown by his hand ever grow, neither red wine nor white wheat.
23:19And may he be forever dying in filth, as long as his children may live.
23:25Pretty potent stuff.
23:27On June the 15th, an Ottoman force of some 25,000 men, under the command of Murad himself, clashed head on with a Serbian force of about 16,000, under the leadership of Prince Lazaar.
23:44The Serbs put up a good fight, but they were ultimately no match for the superior numbers and discipline of the Ottoman army.
23:52As the battle turned against the Serbs, legend holds that one of their noblemen, a knight named Milos Obelic, pretended to desert to the Turkish side.
24:07When he was brought before Sultan Murad, he pulled out a hidden dagger and slew him, slashing him from belly to neck.
24:16The story continues when the Sultan's son, Bayezid, who was also at the battle, learned of his father s murder.
24:25He sent for his brother, Yaqob, but gave orders that he not be informed of what had happened.
24:33When Yaqob arrived from the battlefield, his father s death was revealed to him.
24:40But what he didn't realize was that his brother Bayezid had arranged for him to be strangled to death, leaving Bayezid as the sole heir to the Ottoman throne.
24:50It was a neat, if cynical, trek on Bayezid's part, but one that set a dangerous precedent for institutionalized fratricide amongst future claimants to the Sultanate.
25:10Murad was buried at Kosovo Field. This is his tomb. The Ottomans had lost their Sultan. But the Serbs, they too had lost their leader.
25:22Prince Laza was also killed on the field of battle. And both sides had suffered enormous casualties.
25:29One can't really say it was a victory for the Ottomans, and it certainly wasn't a victory for the Serbs, because there is a difference.
25:35The Ottomans had plenty of soldiers deployed elsewhere in the Empire, but for the Serbs, it was an entire generation of fighting men cut short, wiped out.
25:46They would never make a recovery. For the Ottomans, it was but a temporary setback in an otherwise relentless advance through the Balkans.
25:54The Battle of Kosovo Field would cast a long shadow over Serbian memory.
26:04This is going to be carried forward for hundreds of years.
26:07That one day and extinction of Serbia's hopes of a national identity is not going to be forgotten.
26:14The Battle of Kosovo lives on in the collective memory of Serbs today.
26:29Every year, on the anniversary of the battle, hundreds of Serbs pour into Kosovo, now an independent and largely Muslim republic,
26:37to commemorate their history at the Ghazi Mestan, or Hero's Monument, situated here near the site of the battle.
26:45As part of the ceremony, representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Christian Church perform mass in front of the monument,
27:05on which is inscribed Prince Lazar's famous curse.
27:08Famous curse.
27:24The Battle of this place between the Serbian and the Ottoman Empire is very important in our history.
27:34Is this the first time you have come here?
27:35Yes, first and I plan to come again.
27:42Come again, yes.
27:43Are you a young person? When you go to school, do you learn about this in your history lessons?
27:46Of course, of course. This is part of history that every child has to know.
27:52That is from Serbia and from the Balkan. That was a big battle.
27:56And we all know about that. And we love our history. We love Kosovo.
28:01Kosovo is Serbia. Yes, it really is.
28:03The Battle of Kosovo has long been a potent symbol for Serbian nationalism, and the ceremony has, in recent times, been used to promote the restoration of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.
28:22But the battle was perhaps most controversially invoked by Slobodan Milosevic in 1989, when he gave a speech at the site calling for Serbian unity in the face of a rapidly disintegrating Yugoslavia.
28:42The great battle of Kosovo was a massive defeat for the Serbian people.
29:04And, put simply, it was followed by centuries of foreign occupation and oppression.
29:16The
29:25Their history has given them what can really be called a sense of persecution. You know, everybody is a Guinness. And this was built upon and it festered. And then it was used by politicians. It did have roots in reality.
29:43in reality. So, you know, it's both justified and understandable and tragic.
30:03Obelic is going to re-emerge and the curse of Lazar is going to re-emerge with Slobodan
30:10Milošević in the 1990s and the Kozlian genocide.
30:24In the 14th century, as in the 20th, the defeat of Serbia was portrayed in the starkest of terms.
30:30It was good versus evil, Christian against Muslim. The reality, however, was much more complicated.
30:37The Ottomans actually improved life for Christian peasants.
30:44The local Christian population in the towns and certainly in the countryside, they were left alone.
30:50They were not encouraged to convert. In fact, they were encouraged not to convert in a way
30:56because conversion to Islam actually brought lower taxes to the Ottoman treasury.
31:01Most of the Orthodox Church structure accepted the new political reality and worked with it.
31:10The patriarch would be in charge of the Orthodox Christians, the Jews and the Muslims.
31:16And as long as you paid your taxes, you are all effectively the flock, the Sultan's flock.
31:21You are all protected people. There were limitations on what you could do.
31:26For example, permission to build churches was limited. You couldn't ring a church bell.
31:31For a few centuries, you might have to give one of your numerous children a better chance of survival if he's taken by the Sultan to become a genissary, actually.
31:38There probably were times of the year during Islamic festivals and so on when it was probably best to keep your head down a bit.
31:47But they were not ghettoized in a kind of formal way and you did not have pogroms in the way that you did in Western Europe.
31:55Despite a policy of religious tolerance in the Ottoman Balkans, many Christians did convert to Islam.
32:06And one of the most popular engines of conversion were the dervish orders.
32:11Much like the Christian missionaries, the dervishes accompanied the Ottoman army on their Balkan campaigns
32:18and remained after the fighting was over to help establish a peaceful transition.
32:25Offering a more mystical form of Islam, dervishes were very popular and continued to thrive in pockets of the Balkans.
32:35Here in the Kosovan town of Prizren, dervishes from the Rufai sect practiced their faith in the time-honored way,
32:43offering us a glimpse into religious life during the Ottoman period.
32:46Today, they will be performing an annual piercing ceremony at their lodge.
32:53But before it begins, Sir Jamali Shehu, the lodge leader's son, is going to help me understand a bit more about their faith.
33:02So this functions like a mosque, this faith?
33:05Yes, of course. Because it's a mihrab here. He orients us to the Mecca.
33:11All right, so this is where this ceremony will take place.
33:14Yes.
33:15So tell me something about the actual ceremony and what's going to happen.
33:19Today's ceremony calls in our religion Sultaninevros.
33:25Yes.
33:26It means the birthday of Hazrat Imam Ali.
33:29And he was the cousin, the nephew of the Prophet?
33:33Yes.
33:34And his son-in-law?
33:35Yes.
33:36Right. These look some very extraordinarily sharp instruments.
33:40Tell me about what they are and how you use them.
33:43First, they are the small zarfs.
33:47Right.
33:48They're called zarfs.
33:49Yeah.
33:50Yes.
33:51These zarfs are piercings for children.
33:54And what part of the body do you pierce?
33:56In chickens.
33:57Right.
33:58From this side, they put shade.
34:01Yeah.
34:02And out on this side.
34:03Really?
34:04Yes.
34:05And they stay like this.
34:06Yeah, right.
34:08This must be extremely painful.
34:09No, it's not painful.
34:10We don't have pain just because when you know for who you are doing and why you are doing, you don't feel nothing.
34:18What age were you when you did this ceremony for the first time?
34:21First time?
34:22I was when I was six.
34:24Really?
34:25Yes.
34:26Gosh.
34:27And how do you feel after you perform this ritual? It must be an extraordinary experience.
34:31I feel really powerful, really good feelings, really happy.
34:36Right.
34:37Because I'm doing the love.
34:38Yes.
34:39And this is it.
34:52The ceremony begins with the arrival of the lodger's spiritual leader, Sheikh Sheikh.
34:57As the devotees sing and dance, the Sheikh decides when the time is right for the piercings to start.
35:10There is no set order to the proceedings.
35:12Sheikh Sheikh who spontaneously chooses those he feels are ready.
35:17Blessing the implements with his lips, he begins.
35:20The Rufay piercing ritual originated centuries ago with the order's founder, Pierre Sejid Ahmed Rufay.
35:40He wanted to demonstrate the miracle of God's power by showing that one could overcome pain through faith and devotion to God.
35:53You know, this ritual, in the context of the dervish community, it's all about devotion, devotion to Allah.
36:00But I can see how this kind of mystical Islam might have also had an appeal to Christian communities in the Balkans as well.
36:09And there's that sort of element of fragilation, self-mortification, that kind of thing, which you find in the Christian church.
36:16And it also maybe even ties in with earlier, you know, pagan beliefs as well.
36:22So I can see the appeal when the Ottomans first came into this area.
36:26This might have been picked up upon by local communities as well.
36:47There may have been a degree of religious harmony in the Ottoman Balkans,
36:51but the Battle of Kosovo raised alarm bells across many of the Latin Christian nations in Central Europe.
36:59In particular, Hungary.
37:02With Buda, part of today's Budapest as its capital,
37:0614th century Hungary was one of Europe's largest and most powerful kingdoms.
37:14Controlling much of present-day Austria, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Romania,
37:19Hungary was acutely aware of the Ottoman menace now threatening its southern borders.
37:26The medieval kingdom of Hungary was huge.
37:30It was also emphatically Catholic Christian.
37:34Hungary is the frontier between Catholic, that is Latin, Christendom and the Orthodox world.
37:42The Hungarian state, you know, a bit like the Serbs,
37:45they expected to become the dominant power of this very large region.
37:50All of a sudden, there's another dominant power that seems to have come from nowhere.
37:54So we've got to stop there.
38:03Hungary was regarded by the Pope as an eastern bullock of Latin Christianity.
38:08So Hungary's King Sigismund, based in his palace here in Buda Castle,
38:13campaigned vigorously for a united front against the Ottomans
38:17and managed to persuade Pope Boniface the knight to back a new crusade.
38:22Despite enthusiastic support from across Europe,
38:26it would turn out to be the last of the big crusades
38:29and end in appalling disaster.
38:34In a rare moment of European unity,
38:37an alliance of crusader knights from France, Burgundy, Germany,
38:42gathered here in the castle of Buda in the summer of 1396
38:46to join forces with King Sigismund's Hungarian army.
38:49King Sigismund himself was so enthused by the assembled host
38:55that he rose excitedly that lances could have upheld the sky.
39:08In July of that year, the crusader army headed south along the Danube River
39:13towards the Balkans, where they would join up with local forces
39:16to rout the Muslim invader from Europe once and for all.
39:20Then it was on to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem from the sword of Islam.
39:25Well, that was the plan anyway.
39:31The crusaders say, it's going to be easy and we can fight Turks.
39:35They don't hardly wear any armour and they just shoot with feeble little bows
39:39and their blood is thin, which is why they won't come into close contact
39:42with us red-blooded Frenchmen and we can go out there with our full armours
39:48and our lovely big horses and great big swords
39:51and we're going to all come gloriously home again and the ladies are going to love us.
39:55The crusaders' chosen course, the Danube, was a hugely important waterway and trade route
40:02that flowed from southern Germany past Vienna and Budapest
40:05and down through the heart of the Balkans to the Black Sea.
40:09And it formed a natural border between Serbia, Bulgaria and the Romanian province of Wallachia.
40:20By the 14th century, the river had become the frontline in a war between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire
40:25that would last for years to come.
40:29Whoever held the Danube, held the advantage.
40:34The Ottomans occupied a number of fortified positions along the Danube river
40:38which the crusader army was keen on liberating.
40:41The most important of these was the garrison town of Nicopolis
40:45which lay downstream from here, a few hundred kilometres through these gorges.
40:49And in order to get there, they had to pass through treacherous enemy territory
40:54with the threat of ambush at every bend in the river.
41:04The crusaders made good progress and everything seemed to be going to plan
41:08until they entered northwest Bulgaria
41:11where the local population were Orthodox Christians.
41:14Here, the French and the Burgundian troops behaved appallingly.
41:20Basically, they ran amok, laying waste to Ottoman-held towns and villages
41:25and slaughtering the Christians as well as the Turks.
41:28This really angered the local Wallachian and Bulgarian militias
41:32which in turn upset King Sigismund.
41:34He'd been relying on them for support.
41:36Worryingly, it revealed serious divisions in the crusader camp
41:40before they'd even engaged the Ottomans in a major battle.
41:45The crusaders persevered, reaching Nicopolis, today's Nicopolis,
41:50in September of 1396.
41:55These days, Nicopolis is a sleepy Bulgarian town
41:58with a sizeable Muslim minority.
42:01But in the 14th century, it was an important Ottoman stronghold
42:05on the fringes of their empire.
42:07Sultan Bayezid had fortified the town well,
42:09manning it with both Ottoman troops and Orthodox Christian vassals.
42:15But he and the bulk of his army had yet to reach the city
42:18before the crusaders arrived.
42:20Sigismund's forces laid siege to Nicopolis sturdy fortifications,
42:28including its citadel, which stood here on a bluff overlooking the river.
42:33But they failed to take the town before the Sultan turned up with his reinforcements.
42:39The ensuing battle would be a humiliating disaster for the crusaders on many levels.
42:44The crusaders had been misbehaving themselves, not just with the raping and pillaging,
42:54but having a fair number of whores and prostitutes with the army,
42:59feasting and carousing and generally not behaving like a sort of pious Christian army.
43:04They were caught with their trousers down. In many cases, literally.
43:08King Sigismund tried to organise some kind of plan of attack.
43:14He suggested that his own troops, who were experienced at fighting the Ottomans,
43:18should lead the order of battle with the French following.
43:21But the French weren't having any of that.
43:23They weren't going to follow some Hungarian peasants into battle.
43:26So they charged off in their rather drunken stupor
43:29and instead of meeting their great glorious Battle of the Sultan,
43:33they met their deaths.
43:34The Burgundians, they wanted to just get in there and get stuck in,
43:40because this is the way they fought.
43:42Massive cavalry charge, busting through the enemy.
43:47They were quite convinced they could just push aside anything.
43:51Well, in actual fact, they did.
43:53They pushed aside the first line of defence.
43:56They smashed into and through the second line of defence.
43:59They're exhausted. They're absolutely exhausted.
44:03And then all of a sudden, there's another Turkish army charging downhill
44:08against a bunch of sweaty, exhausted, thirsty and very often wounded or injured men in heavy armour.
44:17And there was a certain amount of fighting, but they just bowled the Burgundians over.
44:22Angered by the crusaders' slaughter of Ottoman prisoners in the lead-up to the battle,
44:30Bayezid ordered his own captives beheaded.
44:33The resulting bloodbath was reported to be so violent that the Sultan himself became sickened
44:39and stopped the massacre halfway through.
44:40It was picked up by the Christian propagandists portraying the Muslims as ruthless barbarians
44:50who slaughtered their prisoners.
44:52And on the other side, the propagandists say precisely the same thing about the Christians
44:57because they had already slaughtered many of their prisoners just before the battle started.
45:01So this is feeding into the mythology of fear, mistrust and eventually hate on both sides.
45:15For Christian Europe, the defeat of the crusader army at Nicopolis was more than just a military disaster
45:21and a humiliation. It put religion at the centre of the conflict.
45:24Stories of Sultan Bayezid's merciless massacre of prisoners of war spread across the continent like wildfire.
45:33The Ottomans were not just a foreign invading army, they were evil incarnate and their Sultan the Antichrist.
45:40By the end of the 14th century, Ottoman control of the Bulgarian Danube was secure.
45:54But Bayezid had a much bigger prize in his sights.
45:58One that he was in the process of capturing before the crusaders of Nicopol distracted him.
46:04Known as the Red Apple, it was the capital of Eastern Christendom itself,
46:09Constantinople.
46:14Surrounded on all sides by Ottoman territory, it was only a matter of time before the famed city would fall.
46:22But fate intervened.
46:24The mighty armies of the legendary Mongol warrior king, Tamerlan, attacked Eastern Anatolia.
46:31War ensued, Bayezid was taken prisoner and died,
46:34leaving the very future of the Ottoman Sultanate in question as rival sons fought for the throne.
46:43The conquests of Constantinople would have to wait some 50 years,
46:48when an ambitious new Sultan, Bekha II, came to the throne.
46:52Mehmet's ambition was to gain legitimacy within the Islamic world.
47:07To be the one who fulfilled prophecies which are attributed to the prophets.
47:12And to take the red apple the Turks called this city.
47:17This has been the most powerful center city in the world for, you know, a thousand years.
47:23And to give himself legitimacy, his role model was Alexander the Great.
47:31He was going to be the Muslim Alexander the Great.
47:39Mehmet's ambitions were lofty, to say the least.
47:42But he set about achieving his goal with steely determination.
47:46In 1452, less than a year after he'd come to the throne, Mehmet began constructing this fortress
47:56on the European side of the Bosphorus, a few miles northeast of Constantinople.
48:01Now, directly opposite, on the other side of the Bosphorus,
48:05there was an earlier Ottoman castle built by Bayezid I when he tried to take the city in 1394.
48:11And between them, these two fortifications effectively gave Mehmet control of all sea traffic passing up and down the Bosphorus.
48:20Thereby denying Constantinople reinforcements and supplies.
48:25He had the city by the throat.
48:32The other thing he does is that he's the first Otter Insultant to construct a fleet.
48:37And he built a fleet of about 25 ships at Gallipoli.
48:42And these appear outside the walls of the city.
48:45And these completely stun the defenders.
48:50But Mehmet had another trick up his sleeve.
48:53A secret weapon he had specially commissioned to bring Constantinople to its knees.
48:57It was a new super cannon, larger and more powerful than anything seen before.
49:04The iconic weapon brought to the walls with an enormous cannon, big enough for a man to climb inside, which he had created at his capital, Edirne.
49:17There was a great PR thing around this, really.
49:20He had it hauled outside the city walls of Edirne.
49:21He had the cannon loaded and fired and the huge shot, which weighed about half a tonne, shot across the land for about a mile and buried itself in the earth.
49:32And he made sure the news of the coming of this cannon preceded it so that it was a psychological weapon as well as actually a weapon of war.
49:41With Constantinople's sea approaches sealed off, Mehmet surrounded the landward sides of the city with a force of over 100,000 men and an enormous range of artillery.
49:54Constantinople's legendary walls had withstood numerous sieges in the past.
50:00But this was a new kind of threat, of a size and capability never seen before.
50:05As the guns began to fire from all directions, it became abundantly clear Constantinople was doomed.
50:24The scale of this thing, the size of the army along a four mile front, cannons dug in all the way along.
50:32The banners, the tents, the huge numbers of people and animals, the call to prayer, the night time chanting, particularly as they approached the final attack.
50:46The line of fires ringing the front line all the way across this four mile front.
50:51It certainly frightened the Byzantine defenders. They thought the end of the world had come.
50:56Mehmet's forces relentlessly bombarded the city for nearly two months until on May the 29th, 1453, it ordered a full scale assault.
51:10Ottoman troops surged, overwhelming the defenders and breaking into the city where they sacked and burned to everything in sight.
51:20Constantinople, the symbolic heart of Eastern Christendom for over a millennium, had fallen.
51:31It was almost like the beginning of the end of days.
51:36What did it mean? What would happen? Would this mean the final triumph of Islam, which were followed by the Day of Judgment?
51:44It was, if one can make a crude analogy, a 9-11 moment.
51:47People could remember where they were when they heard the news.
51:52People wept in the streets of Rome, because this city had been there for so long.
51:58It had been there for 1,300 years.
52:03And it was one of the fixed realities of the world.
52:07Even as far away as England and Sweden, people were appalled by this alien presence coming into the European arena
52:14and destroying what seemed like one of the cornerstones of Christendom.
52:27For the Muslim world, the fall of Rome, Eastern Rome, Constantinople,
52:35the bastion of Christianity against the Muslim expansion, was hugely significant.
52:41Because this catapulted the Ottoman state into the centre of the perception of the Islamic world.
52:49All of a sudden, this sort of nouveau bunch of characters suddenly become the centre of power,
52:57centre of cultural perceptions in the Middle East.
53:01This was really, really profound.
53:03In little more than 150 years, the Ottomans had emerged from a rabble of nomadic warriors
53:16to become one of the great powers of the day.
53:20Now the empire would enter into a golden age, a flowering of cultural and artistic achievements.
53:25But the Ottomans were not about to put away their sword.
53:29As self-styled defenders of the Muslim faith, their rapidly expanding frontiers ran smack into the eastern borders of Christendom.
53:39Christian Europe, both fascinated and fearful, braced itself for a titanic struggle with an implacable firm.
53:46Part two of Ottomans versus Christians, we follow the Ottoman campaign into the heart of Europe and the great siege of Vienna.
53:59Part two of Ottomans versus Christian Europe.
54:00Part two of Ottomans versus KNIVATON.
54:18Part two of Ottomans, will be well connected to the Sientist.
54:23Part two of Ottomans and the big Bhatian.
54:26The sea of Vienna.
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