Eastern Southeast Europe (1480–1491 CE): Vassalage, Ottoman Consolidation, and Internal Challenges

Settlement and Migration Patterns

Moldavian and Wallachian Vassalage

Between 1480 and 1491 CE, regional autonomy diminished as principalities increasingly fell under external control. Moldavia, under its prince, accepted vassalage to the Polish king, aligning itself politically with Poland-Lithuania. Concurrently, Wallachia became a vassal of the Ottoman Sultan, significantly altering the geopolitical landscape and solidifying Ottoman dominance in the region.

Economic and Technological Developments

Consolidation of Ottoman Economic Influence

Under Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512), the Ottoman Empire intensified its economic integration of conquered territories. Infrastructure improvements, including road maintenance and fortification upgrades, reinforced economic stability and facilitated greater resource extraction from vassal states like Wallachia, further fueling Ottoman imperial ambitions.

Cultural and Artistic Developments

Continuity Amidst Political Change

Despite political subordination, both Moldavia and Wallachia maintained distinctive cultural identities, preserving local traditions and Orthodox Christian practices. The arts and religious institutions within these principalities continued to flourish, albeit under increasingly complex external political constraints.

Social and Religious Developments

Religious and Social Autonomy

While formally becoming vassals, Moldavia and Wallachia preserved significant religious autonomy, maintaining Orthodox Christianity and local ecclesiastical structures. Social organization within these principalities continued largely undisturbed at local levels, sustaining internal community cohesion despite external political pressures.

Political Dynamics and Regional Rivalries

Bayezid II’s Consolidation and Cem’s Revolt

Sultan Bayezid II, succeeding his father Mehmed II in 1481, prioritized consolidating his inherited territories, laying groundwork for further expansion into the Arab world and Central Europe. However, his early reign was significantly challenged by internal strife, particularly the revolt led by his younger brother, Cem (Jem Sultan). Cem allied himself strategically with external powers, notably the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria and the papacy, seeking to undermine Bayezid’s authority. This internal conflict temporarily diverted Ottoman resources and attention from external conquests, affecting regional stability and imperial strategy.

Long-Term Consequences and Historical Significance

The period 1480–1491 CE marked critical adjustments in regional power dynamics within Eastern Southeast Europe, notably through formal vassalage of Moldavia and Wallachia, enhancing Ottoman and Polish influence respectively. Sultan Bayezid II’s consolidation efforts amidst internal dynastic struggles laid crucial foundations for later Ottoman expansions and influenced subsequent regional political and cultural trajectories.

Ottoman sultan Bayezid II, a son of Mehmed II, consolidates the conquests of his father and lays the bases for new expansion into the Arab world and central Europe.

He is, however, preoccupied from the beginning of his reign in 1481 by the revolt of his younger brother Cem in alliance with the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria and the papacy.

Ivan Crnojević disembarks near Dubrovnik in June 1481 following the death in May of Sultan Mehmed II.

Using the civil war that erupts between Mehmed's heirs, Bayezid and Cem, he restores control over Zeta and Žabljak with the help of people that welcome him as a liberator and supported by forces under Skanderbeg's son Gjon Kastrioti II.

The new Ottoman sultan Bayezid accepts Ivan as his vassal.

In order to guarantee his loyalty to the Sultan, Ivan sends his youngest son Staniša and several of his friends to the sultan's court in 1382.

The center of his renewed realm is at Obod above the Crnojević River.

Wishing to preserve the realm of Zeta and its independence from the Ottomans because he doesn’t feel safe close to their common border, Ivan abandons the capital at Zabljak, as well as all of Zeta’s territory around Lake Scutari, and moves its capital deeper into the hills to …

…a less hospitable but more easily defended location in the field of Cetinje at the foot of Mount Lovćen.

He has his court built in 1482 and the monastery of the Mother of Christ in Cetinje as a personal endowment to the Orthodox Church in 1484, thus founding Cetinje as a town.

Once called Upper Zeta, this reduced territorial base, from which Ivan succeeds in resisting further Ottoman encroachment, comes to be known as Montenegro (Crna Gora—the Black Mountain).

His court and the monastery are the first recorded Renaissance buildings in Montenegro.

He also moves the seat of the Metropolitanate of Zeta to the Old Cetinje Monastery, where, upon his death in 1490, he is buried.

The war between Hungary and the Ottoman empire had dissolved into skirmishes in 1481 after the death of Sultan Mehmed II but  the lands of Stefan Vukčić's successors, south of Bosnia, are occupied in 1482 by Ottoman forces.

The Ottomans are the first to begin officially using the name Herzegovina (Hersek) for the region.

The Bosnian beylerbey Isa-beg Ishaković mentions the name in a letter from 1454.

Herzegovina is organized as the Sanjak of Herzegovina, within the Rumelia Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire.

Bayezid II's younger brother Cem captures the city of Inegöl with an army of four thousand, only six days after the installation of as his brother as Ottoman Sultan.

Bayezid sends his army under the command of vizier Ayas Pasha to kill his brother.

Cem defeats Bayezid's army and on May 28 declares himself Sultan of Anatolia, establishing his capital at Bursa to avoid the Janissaries.

He proposes dividing the empire amicably between them, leaving Bayezid only Europe.

Bayezid, adhering to the doctrine of indivisibility of rule formulated by their father, and reinforced by religious arguments and personal ambition, furiously rejects the proposal.

Declaring "between rulers there is no kinship," he marches on Bursa.

The decisive battle between the two rivals to the Ottoman throne takes place near the town of Yenişehir.

Cem loses and flees with his family to Mamluk Cairo.

There is some fear that Rome will suffer the same fate as Constantinople, which had fallen only twenty-seven years earlier.

Plans are made for the Pope and citizens of Rome to evacuate the city.

Pope Sixtus IV repeats his 1471 call for a crusade.

Several Italian city-states, Hungary and France respond positively to this.

The Republic of Venice does not, as it had signed an expensive peace treaty with the Ottomans in 1479.

An army is raised by king Ferdinand I of Naples to be led by his son Alphonso II of Naples, and king Matthias Corvinus of Hungary provides a contingent of troops.

The Christian forces besiege  the city on May 1, 1481, but when the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed II, dies on May 3 without the quarrels about his succession being finalized, the subsequent succession crisis results in the failure to send Ottoman reinforcements to relieve Otranto.

The Turkish garrison in Otranto is forced to negotiate with the Christian forces, which permit the Turks to withdraw to Albania.

Mehmed's financial measures had resulted  in widespread discontent throughout the country toward the end of his reign, especially when he distributed as military fiefs about twenty thousand villages and farms that had previously belonged to pious foundations or the landed gentry.

The economic stringencies imposed to finance Mehmed's campaigns had led during the last year of his reign to a virtual civil war between the major factions in Istanbul, the devsirme party and the Turkish aristocracy.

After the conquest of Constantinople and the execution of grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha, Mehmed had preferred to appoint grand viziers of devsirme origin instead of ethnic Turks to avoid possible crises caused by over-powerful grand viziers.

Having executing his last Turkish grand vizier, his next four grand viziers have been of devsirme origin.

Karamani Mehmet's appointment as grand vizier in 1476 therefore marks a notable exception, for he is a Turk from the recently conquered Karamanid territory in Anatolia.

In his short term in the office, Karamani Mehmet has tried to reform the Ottoman administration.

Born in Karaman, he had traveled to Constantinople to study in the medrese founded by Mahmud Pasha Angelovic.

Later on, he had worked as a teacher in the medrese.

Being a man of letters, in various occasions he had acted as a consultant to sultan.

He had been appointed as the court calligrapher and he has contributed to the kanunname of Mehmed II, a series of laws regularizing the Ottoman Empire.

He had also helped the sultan in writing letters of high literary value to Ak Koyunlu sultan Uzun Hasan.

At the death of Mehmed on May 3, 1481, his son Bayezid is the governor of Sivas, Tokat and Amasya, and his son Cem rules the provinces of Karaman and Konya as governor.

During Mehmed's last years, his relations with his eldest son Bayezid had become very strained, as Bayezid, who holds the governorship of Amasya, did not always obey his orders.

Contrary to Islamic law, which prohibits any unnecessary delay in burial, Mehmed II's body is transported to Constantinople, where it lies three days.

The grand vizier—believing himself to be fulfilling the wishes of the recently deceased Sultan—attempts to arrange a situation whereby the younger son Cem, whose governing seat at Konya is closer than his brother Bayezid's seat at Amasya, will arrive in Constantinople prior to his older sibling and be able to claim the throne.

In spite of Karamanlı Mehmet Pasha's attempts at secrecy, the Sultan's death and the grand vizier's plan are discovered by the Janissary corps, who support Bayezid over Cem and had been kept out of the capital after the Sultan's death.

As a result, the Janissary corps rebels, harassing Christians and Jews, entering the capital and lynching the grand vizier.

After the death of Karamanlı Mehmet Pasha, there is widespread rioting among the janissaries in Constantinople as there is neither a sultan nor a grand vizier to control the developments.

Understanding the danger of the situation, former grand vizier Ishak Pasha takes the initiative of beseeching Bayezid to arrive with all due haste.

In the meantime, Ishak Pasha takes the cautionary measure of proclaiming the latter's eleven-year-old son, Sehzade (prince) Korkut, as regent until the arrival of his father.

Prince Bayezid arrives at Constantinople on May 21 and, after promising amnesty and increased salary to the janissaries, is declared Sultan, initiating a reaction against Mehmed's policies.

In the meantime, however, the threat that Cem might lead a foreign attack has compelled Bayezid to concentrate on internal consolidation.

Most of the property confiscated by his father for military campaigns is restored to its original owners.

Equal taxes are established around the empire so that all subjects can fulfill their obligations to the government without the kind of disruption and dissatisfaction that had characterized the previous regime.

Particularly important is the establishment of the avâriz-i divaniye (“war chest”) tax, which provides for the extraordinary expenditures of war without special confiscations or heavy levies.

Though Bayezid prefers to maintain peace-in order to have the time and resources to concentrate on internal development-he is forced into a number of campaigns by the exigencies of the period and the demands of his more militant devsirme followers.