Sultan Ahmed I read the books about Alexander the Great growing up, and decided that, should he have the opportunity, he would make his empire the equal of Alexander's. Only more durable.
By the age of 35, he may not have conquered as much as Alexander, but he had outlived him, and had made quite the impression on the world stage.
He knew he was well-known and well-feared when, in 1523, the French ambassador informed him that France was withdrawing their delegation, and had signed an alliance with the Mamluks to counter any further Ottoman aggression.
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Just seven years earlier, in 1516, the Europeans had largely thought they didn't need to worry about Ahmed. Sure, his janissary regency had finished his father's campaign to secure Serbia, but Ahmed had been focused on the east. Taking Syria from the Mamluks to show who the strongest power in the area was. Incorporating the rest of Aq Qoyunlu. Crushing the armies of Qara Qoyunlu and making it clear that the Ottomans intended to rule the Fertile Crescent, not be allied with its ruler.
Along the way, he had flexed Ottoman power towards Europe just once, forcing Muscovy to sign a white peace with Kazan. That had been a bloodless bit of diplomacy, a burnishing of the Ottoman image in Europe that may have resulted in the collective guard being let down.
But establishing pre-eminence in the Middle East was just Ahmed's first act. And when Bohemia invaded Hungary, he knew it was time for his second act. Hungary, since 1444, had long effectively acted as a strong buffer. Austria let Hungary be free, as did Poland and Bohemia, and the Ottomans did as well. All had seen the cost of Varna, and none were eager to repeat it.
The Bohemian invasion shattered that illusion, the first power grab against neutral Hungary in seventy years, and Ahmed was not going to help Hungary repel the Bohemians and their French allies. He was going to secure the Hungarian Balkans for the Ottoman Empire.
That was done with lightning speed. Ahmed then turned against the Ottomans' traditional foes, the Venetians, and took their Dalmatian coastline, and gave the Florentine coast to Genoa. Venice was effectively now a local player, although they still had Corfu as Ahmed had been so focused on making a point by occupying Venice itself that he had neglected to send an army to take that fortress.
By now it was early 1521, Bohemia was still at war with Hungary, and diplomats and cardinals across Europe were alarmed by their obsolete maps. Some teamed up diplomatically, but Aragon took the issue directly to the powers above:
Aragon had long enjoyed a shield against Ottoman expansion, that of their alliance with Austria. With an alliance with God Almighty, surely they would triumph.
But Ahmed was not going to sit around and let the Crusade grow in strength. He declared war on Aragon, their Austrian allies, and the Knights, who had been plundering Ottoman coastlines.
Europe watched nervously, at first hopeful that the Barcelona Crusade would become the Istanbul Crusade. But in their strongest test yet, Ottoman armies performed flawlessly. Sicily and Sardinia were quickly occupied, the Austrians and Aragonese defeated on Genoese territory, and an Austrian expedition into the Balkans defeated by a smaller, yet more potent, Ottoman force. With Ottoman forces in Iberia occupying Aragonese cities and then Barcelona itself, the Aragonese were forced to concede Sicily and Rhodes to the Ottomans.
No amount of "restoring the Western Roman Empire" propaganda was going to dispel the fears of western Europe this time. If Aragon and Austria
together couldn't stop Ahmed, who could? Hence the coming together of the Mamluks, France, Poland, and many of the smaller Holy Roman states. Even Ahmed's allies in Genoa and Lithuania were fearful of what was to come - spurn the world's strongest power and their thus-far-reliable ally, or face the ire of the second and third strongest together, plus many more beyond that. The Ottomans had repelled Austria and Aragon from the gates of Genoa, but could they really be expected to repel the combined forces of Milan, France, and the Pope? The odds weren't fantastic.
Red = Coalition partners. Orange/green = would join a coalition but have truce. Orange = May join coalition. Yellow = Could join coalition if they weren't our allies. Wallachia and the Western Roman Empire (Morea/Morean Italy) are our vassals.
But for the time being, Ahmed could be satisfied that while Alexander had reached much farther east, he had not reached as far west, and had certainly never launched a successful campaign in Iberia. Whether his conquests would stand the test of time was a question for the next chapter.