60 | Mahmud Pasha and His Christian Circle
Then the Grand Signor was trying to take with treachery Smederevo, a prin-
cipal city of this state, arranging to make ruler a brother of the Beylerbeyi of
Rumeli, with the consent of many Serbs, who came with an officer [subaşı]
and many Turks, in order to make Despot the said brother of the Beylerbeyi of
Rumeli, named Amolulo [sic] Angelović. Some noblemen, with all the people
who were in Smederevo, believed without suspicion that the brother of the Pa-
sha was supposed to become ruler with the confirmation of the Sultan, and not
that they would be totally in the hands of the Turk. They let the above-men-
tioned man enter Smederevo with some brigades and many Turks with him.
And soon, when the Turks were inside, they climbed on the tower of the gate
with the standard of the Turk, shouting, “Long Live the Turkish Emperor.”
The people, realizing this treachery, ran shouting, cut to pieces the Turks and
many Serbs, who were their allies, and have taken the brother of the Pasha.Shortly thereafter, in May 1458, the Ottoman army, led by Mahmud Pasha, in-
vaded Serbia, in the first of two campaigns, which culminated in the definitive
annexation of the despotate to the Ottoman lands in the following year.
The captivity of Michael Angelović seems to have lasted for a few years, but
by 1470 at the latest he was free and in the entourage of his brother, because the
Venetian Council of Ten, an administrative body, awarded him an annual salary
of 10,000 ducats. A report from August 1473, written by the Venetian ambassa-
dor to the Akkoyunlu leader Uzun Hasan, informs us that among the prominent
Ottoman casualties of the disastrous battle of Tercan in Anatolia was “a princi-
pal Lord, whom the sultan had in Istanbul and was Christian,... and he is the
brother of Mahmud Pasha.” Thus, we learn that Michael Angelović remained a
Christian until his death and was living in Istanbul.
George Amiroutzes and Trebizond
George Amiroutzes, a cousin of Mahmud Pasha, played a role similar to that of
Michael Angelović in the fall of the empire of the Grand Komnenoi of Trebi-
zond in 1461. According to a sixteenth-century Greek chronicle, “With the trea-
son and fraud of this Protovestiarios [George Amiroutzes], the Sultan marched
against Trebizond. He [Amiroutzes] also convinced the poor Emperor to sur-
render.” The reliability of this information is doubted by modern historians
because of the silence of contemporary accounts and a letter from Amiroutzes
to Cardinal Bessarion shortly after the conquest of Trebizond in which he la-
mented the fall of his native city and asked for help to obtain the release of his
son from captivity.
Whether Amiroutzes played a role in the surrender of Trebizond or not, his
relationship to the grand vizier led later Greek authors to suspect him of coop-
eration with the Ottomans. This close relationship continued even after 1461 and
was cited by the sixteenth-century Greek chronicle as the reason for one of the
earliest interventions of the Ottoman authorities into the affairs of the Greek