Plague, War, and Social Change in the “Long”Fourteenth Century 227aggressive leadership of Osman (1258–1324), it offered
the opportunity for continued warfare to ambitious
men from all over the Turkic world and a refuge to
others who had fled from the Mongol advance in cen-
tral Asia. With the population of the Ottoman state
swelled by thousands of immigrants, the tiny emirate
became the nucleus of the Ottoman Empire.
From the beginning, it was a serious threat to the
Byzantine state revived by Michael Paleologus after the
Fourth Crusade. Deprived of his Anatolian heartland
and caught between the Ottomans on one side and the
Serbian Empire of Stephen Dushan (d. 1355) on the
other, the Greek emperor was only one of many re-
gional princes striving for preeminence in the tangled
world of Balkan politics. Taking advantage of divisions
among the Christians, Osman’s son, Orhan, ordered
the first Turkish invasion of Europe in 1356. The best
hope of expelling him lay in an alliance between the
Serbians and the Bulgarians. A history of mutual distrust
inhibited their cooperation, however, and the Serbian
army was defeated in 1371. By 1389 the Turks had
achieved military predominance in the peninsula.
The threat to Constantinople was now imminent,
and the Greeks sent missions to Rome in the hope of
enlisting western support against the Turks. Negotia-
tions broke down over theological and other issues.
The pope was reluctant to compromise, and some
Greeks came to believe that the Latin church was a
greater threat to the survival of their religion than Is-
lam. From the standpoint of Western intellectual devel-
opment, this contact between Greek and Latin
scholar-diplomats would have far-reaching conse-
quences, but politically it was a failure.
Meanwhile, southeastern Europe settled into a pe-
riod of almost chronic warfare. The Serbs and Bulgari-
ans were restless and unreliable tributaries of the Turks.
The Byzantine emperor lacked a credible offensive
force, but the Albanians remained a threat. In the
northwest, the Hungarians were growing uneasy.
Eventually a crusade was organized by János Hunyadi,
the voivod of Transylvania who would one day be-
come king of Hungary. His defeat at Varna in 1444
and again on the plain of Kossovo in 1448 left the
Turks in control of virtually everything south of the
Danube. Only the Albanian mountains and Constan-
tinople remained free.
In 1453 the great city, now seriously depopulated,
fell to Mehmet “the Conqueror” after a long siege. The
Byzantine Empire had ceased to exist. The church of
St. Sophia became a mosque, and the Greeks, together
with the other Balkan peoples, became subjects of the
Ottoman sultan. Their faith and much of their culture
was preserved, for the Turks did not believe in forced
conversions. They would not regain political indepen-
dence until the nineteenth century.The Hundred Years’ War in the West
The Hundred Years’ War, though centered on France
and England, was a generalized west European conflict
that also involved the Low Countries and the Iberian
kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. Because its
active phases were interspersed with periods of relative
peace, regarding it not as one war but as several whose
underlying causes were related is probably best. The
most immediate of these causes was the ongoing
struggle over the status of English fiefs in France. The
situation was complicated by dynastic instability and
by the weakening of feudal institutions as a whole.
Of all the problems created by feudalism, none was
more exasperating than the ambivalent situation of the
kings of England. For two centuries they had struggled
with their dual role as French vassals and as sovereign
princes whose interests were frequently in conflict with
those of France (see chapter 8). Every reign since that
of Henry II had produced disputes over Guienne and
Gascony. Another French attempt to confiscate these
fiefs led to the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War in
spring 1337 (see map 12.2).
This action by Philip VI of France came at the end
of a long diplomatic crisis. Nearly a decade earlier,
Philip had been proclaimed king when his cousin,
Charles IV, died without male heirs. The claim of En-
gland’s Edward III, son of Charles’s sister, had been de-
nied on the controversial premise that the Salic law
forbade royal inheritance through the female line. Ed-
ward, young and beset with internal enemies, chose not
to press the point. Relations gradually deteriorated
when Philip began to pursue more aggressive policies
on several fronts. In the year of his coronation he re-
captured the county of Flanders from the urban rebels
who had achieved independence from France at Cour-
trai in 1302. This represented a threat to the primary
market for English wool, as Philip was now in a posi-
tion to forbid its importation. Worst of all, he began to
support Edward’s enemies in Scotland.
By 1336 Edward was secure on his throne and be-
gan preparing for war. Papal attempts at mediation
failed, and in May 1337, Philip ordered the confisca-
tion of English fiefs in France, citing Edward’s support
for the Flemish rebels and other sins against feudal
obligation as a pretext.