Mehmed was now—save for the tiresome presence of the Timurid Persian Empire to the east—ruler of all Muslim Asia. He could also now claim to be the legitimate heir of the succession of emperors—Solomon, Constantine, and Justinian—who in myth and reality had built and rebuilt the city, and to have fulfilled one part of the prophecy recorded in the Hadith, the oral traditions coming down from Muhammad, that the day would come when a Muslim emir would take both Constantinople and Rome. With the fall of the Golden Apple, the Ottomans became the only other state in the world to which the princes of Christendom were prepared to concede the title of “empire.”

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Mehmed, perhaps more than any subsequent sultan, determined to rule over a united, prosperous, and above all disciplined people. To that end, he restored to the Orthodox Church the powers and privileges it had enjoyed under Byzantine rule, together with a large part of its property.

From beyond the Dardanelles, however, it seemed as though Eastern Christendom had now vanished for good. In its place stood the most imposing power to threaten the liberties of the peoples of Europe since the days of Xerxes. All Christendom waited to see what would happen next. Would Mehmed remain where he was and consolidate his gains? Were further conquests of the West to be expected? And if so, where would they stop? The sacred city of the West, the still-beating heart of Christianity, was of course Rome, and Muhammad himself had reportedly promised that one day Rome too would be incorporated into the dar al-Islam.

On September 30, 1453, Pope Nicholas V issued a bull to all the Christian princes of the West, enjoining them to shed their blood and the blood of their subjects in a new crusade against the anti-Christ now seated in Constantinople. Pleading insolvency or the pressure of domestic affairs, the princes of Christendom—Charles VII of France, Henry VI of England (now, in any case, out of his mind), King Alfonso V of Aragon, and Emperor Frederick III—all politely declined.

For Nicholas’ successor, Pope Pius II, the Turkish menace became something of an obsession. Shrewd and well traveled, he had a far broader vision of the possibilities and need for Christian unity than his predecessors. In 1459 he proclaimed a new crusade to retake Constantinople, but nothing came of it.

The pope also tried diplomacy and flattery, proposing not only to recognize Mehmed’s claim to be ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire but also to transfer to him the imperium of the West. All the sultan had to do was to convert to Christianity. It was an empty gesture, as he must have known.

Mehmed never did come to Rome. He spent most of the rest of his reign consolidating his hold over the Balkans and securing his eastern frontiers. The failure of Mehmed to make good on his alleged promise to march on Rome did not, however, lessen the fear of the West that this remained the ultimate objective of his successors. Ever since 1480, when Ottoman forces had sacked and occupied Otranto on the Puglian coast of Italy, the Turkish navy, backed by Barbary Coast pirates, had created an atmosphere of almost constant alarm. All along the coasts of southern Italy and Spain, towers were constructed, many of which are still standing, to maintain a permanent watch for the marauders.

The fear was not limited to the Mediterranean or to the eastern borders of Christendom. Even as far away as Iceland, Christians prayed to be delivered from “the terror of the Turk.” In 1627, Ottoman-backed corsairs from North Africa penetrated deep into the North Sea and carried off four hundred captives for sale in the slave markets of Algeria. For all those who still lived beyond its borders, the empire of the Turks had become, in the words of historian Richard Knowles, “the present terror of the world.”

Almost every Ottoman victory was greeted with calls to mount a new crusade, with the objective of pushing the Turks out of Europe, out of Constantinople, even possibly out of all that had once been the Byzantine Empire. Yet no pontiff could do more than pontificate—and raise a certain amount of money. If there was to be a new crusade, it would have to be manned and financed by the secular rulers of Europe. And whenever possible, they preferred diplomacy to conflict.

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