Rumelia Eyalet
Substate | Defunct
1454 CE to 1520 CE
The Eyalet of Rumeli or Rumelia, also known as the Beylerbeylik of Rumeli, is a first-level province (beylerbeylik or eyalet) of the Ottoman Empire encompassing most of the Balkans ("Rumelia").
For most of its history it is also the largest and most important province of the Empire.The capital is in Adrianople (Edirne), Sofia, and finally Monastir (Bitola).
Its reported area in the nineteenth century is 48,119 square miles (124,630 km2).
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The Albanians' resistance to the Turks in the mid-fifteenth century wins them acclaim all over Europe.
Gjon Kastrioti of Kruje was one of the Albanian clan leaders who had submitted to Turkish suzerainty.
He was compelled to send his four sons to the Otto-man capital to be trained for military service.
The youngest, Gjergj Kastrioti (1403-68), who will become the Albanians' greatest national hero, captures the sultan's attention.
Renamed Iskander when he converts to Islam, the young man participates in military expeditions to Asia Minor and Europe.
When appointed to administer a Balkan district, Iskander becomes known as Skanderbeg.
After Ottoman forces under Skanderbeg's command suffer defeat in a battle near Nis, in present-day Serbia, in 1443, the Albanian rushes to Krujë and tricks a Turkish pasha into surrendering to him the Kastrioti family fortress.
Skanderbeg now re-embraces Roman Catholicism and declares a holy war against the Turks.
The Ottoman sultan considers himself God's agent on earth, the leader of a religious—not a national—state whose purpose is to defend and propagate Islam.
Non-Muslims pay extra taxes and hold an inferior status, but they can retain their old religion and a large measure of local autonomy.
By converting to Islam, individuals among the conquered can elevate themselves to the privileged stratum of society.
In the early years of the empire, all Ottoman high officials are the sultan's bondsmen, the children of Christian subjects chosen in childhood for their promise, converted to Islam, and educated to serve.
Some are selected from prisoners of war, others sent as gifts, and still others obtained through devshirme, the tribute of children levied in the Ottoman Empire's Balkan lands.
Many of the best fighters in the sultan's elite guard, the janissaries, are conscripted as young boys from Christian Albanian families, and high-ranking Ottoman officials often have Albanian bodyguards.
Albanian resistance to the Ottoman Empire, with support from Naples and the Vatican, continues mostly in Albania's highlands, where the chieftains even oppose the construction of roads out of fear that they will bring Ottoman soldiers and tax collectors.
The Albanians' fractured leadership, however, fails to halt the Ottoman onslaught.
Krujë falls to the Ottoman Turks in 1478; Shkoder succumbs in 1479 after a fifteen-month siege; and the Venetians evacuate Durres in 1501.
The defeats trigger a great Albanian exodus to southern Italy, especially to the kingdom of Naples, as well as to Sicily, Greece, Romania, and Egypt.
Most of the Albanian refugees belong to the Orthodox Church.
Some of the emigres to Italy convert to Roman Catholicism, and the rest establish a Uniate Church.
The Albanians of Italy will significantly influence the Albanian national movement in future centuries, and Albanian Franciscan priests, most of whom are descended from emigres to Italy, will play a significant role in the preservation of Catholicism in Albania's northern regions.
Albanian chieftains gather on March 1, 1444, in the cathedral of Lezhe with the prince of Montenegro and delegates from Venice and proclaim Skanderbeg commander of the Albanian resistance.
All of Albania, including most of Epirus, accepts his leadership against the Ottoman Turks, but local leaders keep control of their own districts.
Under a red flag bearing Skanderbeg's heraldic emblem, an Albanian force of about thirty thousand men holds off brutal Ottoman campaigns against their lands for twenty-four years.
Twice the Albanians overcome sieges of Krujë.
In 1449 the Albanians rout Sultan Murad II himself.
Later, they repulse attacks led by Sultan Mehmed II.
In 1461 Skanderbeg goes to the aid of his suzerain, King Alfonso I of Naples, against the kings of Sicily.
The government under Skanderbeg is unstable, however, and at times local Albanian rulers cooperate with the Ottoman Turks against him.
When Skanderbeg dies at Lezhe, the sultan reportedly cries out, "Asia and Europe are mine at last. Woe to Christendom! She has lost her sword and shield."
Bulgarian resistance had continued, but the capture of Constantinople has given the Ottomans a base from which to crush local uprisings.
In consolidating its Balkan territories, the new Ottoman political order eliminates the entire Bulgarian state apparatus.
The Ottomans also crush the nobility as a landholding class and potential center of resistance.
The new rulers reorganize the Bulgarian church, which has existed as a separate patriarchate since 1235, making it a diocese under complete control of the Greek Patriarchate at Constantinople.
The sultan, in turn, totally controls the patriarchate.
The Ottoman issue has again become acute, and, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it seems natural that Sultan Mehmed II is rallying his resources in order to subjugate Hungary.
The sultan has initiated new pressure on the Hungarians and other European Christians, abducting some fifty thousand Serbs.
John Hunyadi, whose influence has waned in Hungary, had not been able to launch a counterattack against the Turks, nor could he go to the aid of Constantinople during the Turkish onslaught in 1453.
Mehmed’s immediate objective is Nándorfehérvár (today Belgrade), a major castle-fortress, and a gate keeper of south Hungary.
The fall of this stronghold would open a clear way to the heart of Central Europe.
Hunyadi had arrives at the siege of Nándorfehérvár at the end of 1455, after settling differences with his domestic enemies.
At his own expense, he restocks the supplies and arms of the fortress, leaving in it a strong garrison under the command of his brother-in-law Mihály Szilágyi and his own eldest son László Hunyadi.
He proceeds to form a relief army, and assembles a fleet of two hundred ships.
His main ally is the Franciscan friar Giovanni da Capistrano (known today as St. John of Capistrano), whose fiery oratory has drawn a large crusade made up mostly of peasants.
Although relatively ill-armed (mostly with farm equipment, such as scythes and pitchforks) they flock to Hunyadi and his small corps of seasoned mercenaries and cavalry.
The flotilla assembled by Hunyadi destroys the Ottoman fleet on July 14, 1456.
On July 21, Szilágyi's forces in the fortress repulse a fierce assault by the Rumelian army, and Hunyadi pursues the retreating Ottoman forces into their camp, taking advantage of the Turkish army's confused flight from the city.
After fierce but brief fighting, the camp is captured, and Mehmed lifts the siege and returns to Istanbul.
A seventy-year period of relative peace on Hungary's southeastern border begins with his flight.
However, plague breaks out in Hunyadi's camp three weeks after the lifting of the siege, and he dies on August 11.
On his deathbed, Hunyadi says, “Defend, my friends, Christendom and Hungary from all enemies... Do not quarrel among yourselves. If you should waste your energies in altercations, you will seal your own fate as well as dig the grave of our country.”
He is buried in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Gyulafehérvár (now: Alba Iulia) next to his younger brother, John the Younger.
Sultan Mehmet II pays him tribute: "Although he was my enemy I feel grief over his death, because the world has never seen such a man."
Mehmed II, mounting a new offensive in the northwest in 1456, lays siege to Belgrade.
Hunyadi's untrained peasant army, with the aid of his mercenary troops, wins one of the most remarkable victories in the history of Turkish wars, on July 22, after Hunyadi breaches a line of blockading Turkish ships on the Danube to break a three-week siege.
Not only is the siege raised, but also the relieving forces actually make sorties into the enemy camp, eventually driving the Turks from Semendria (Smederjevo) to ...
…Krusevac, where he meets with Mehmed, but the two do not conclude a peace.
Hunyadi dies a few days later of an epidemic that has broken out among the troops.
Because his grieving, leaderless troops are unable to capitalize on their military success, the opportunity will remain unexploited, though not without consequences; Hungary has been saved from Ottoman conquest for seventy years.
However, Ottomans occupy nearly all of Serbia.
Wallachia’s Vlad Ţepeş, whom the Pope holds in high regard, is the only European leader to have shown enthusiasm for the Pope’s crusade against the Ottomans.
Because of a lack of enthusiasm showed by Europeans for the crusade, Mehmed takes the opportunity to take an offensive stand.
Ţepeş's only ally, Mihály Szilágyi, is captured by the Turks while traversing Bulgaria in 1460.
Szilágyi's men are tortured to death, while Szilágyi is killed by being sawn in half.
Later this year, Mehmed sends envoys to Ţepeş to urge him to pay the delayed tribute.
Ţepeş provokes Mehmed by having the envoys killed and in a letter dated September 10, 1460, addressed to the Transylvanian Saxons of Kronstadt, he warns them of Mehmed's invasion plans and asks for their support.
Ţepeş has not paid the annual tribute of ten thousand ducats since 1459.
In addition to this, Mehmed has asked him for five hundred boys that are to be trained as janissaries.
Ţepeş refuses the demand, and the Turks cross the Danube and start to do their own recruiting, to which Ţepeş reacts by capturing the Turks and impaling them.