Ottoman Sultan Sultan Aladdin Ali sat dejectedly on a dilapidated throne in a room within his Ankara palace, watching the empty, fire-engulfed room with great pain.
It was the evening of May 29, 1453, and his Ankara palace was the last remaining territory of the Ottoman.
Since his younger brother chose to defect to the Romans three years ago, inviting them into the Anatolia interior, the Ottoman Sultanate, which had begun to show signs of revival, was continuously suppressed by them on the battlefield. The Ghazi Warriors and Janissaries, who had been invincible when fighting their own kin, were repeatedly defeated after encountering the Romans, who had begun to use a mix of cold and hot weapons in established formations:
In the late autumn of 1450, under Roman pressure and enticement, the Latins and Franks decisively abandoned all official dealings with the Ottoman, and even private civilian interactions were declared illegal; by the end of the same year, Roman Emperor Manuel III Gavras led his army to occupy the entire Dardanelles Strait, while Sultan Aladdin Ali's old rivals, Tekke and Aydin, recovered all their lost territories. At the same time, the former became a Roman vassal, and the latter, already a vassal, began to transfer its autonomy to the Roman Empire;
In early 1451, instigated by the Romans, Manuel III's old friend Karaman Bey Suleiman declared war on the Ottoman, beginning his westward and northward advance; in May of the same year, Uzun Hasan, who was about to fully control the White Sheep Dynasty, reaffirmed his agreement and marriage contract with the Romans, stating that he would not intervene in the conflict between the Ottoman and the Romans, and also dispatched troops to block civilian aid to the Ottoman from tribes within his territory; in July of the same year, Karaman and East Rome jointly sent troops to block several mountain passes in the Taurus Mountains to prevent other Turkmen Muslims from reinforcing the Ottoman; additionally, during this period, the Romans adopted a combination of firm and lenient attitudes towards the Turkmen within their borders, enticing them to at least not cause trouble for them. From then on, the Ottoman Sultanate under Sultan Aladdin Ali was completely isolated diplomatically. Fortunately, in the latter half of that year, no large-scale conflicts broke out between the two sides, who instead probed each other's strengths.
But that half-year was also the last period of peace for him and the entire Ottoman. On March 3, 1452, his half-brother Muhammad, who held the Tekke, somehow managed to secure a marriage alliance with Justiana Gavras, the eldest princess of the Roman Empire, in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople; less than half a month after the wedding, Muhammad, to show loyalty to his father-in-law, returned to his base and led a combined Roman and Turk army north to campaign against his half-brother; in May of the same year, after a great victory at Karasehir, the Romans, deeming the time ripe, re-entered the fray, invading the Sultanate's territory in two routes from the Sea of Marmara coast and the Pontic Mountains.
This time, the Roman Empire held nothing back. In July 1452, the Ottoman lost all its coastlines, and the capital Brusa was forced to become the frontline. Therefore, by the end of that month, Sultan Sultan Aladdin Ali and other high-ranking officials of the Sultanate were forced to move eastward to Ankara, the fortress hub in the heart of the Anatolia Plateau; in the autumn of the same year, all of western Ottoman fell; after easing tensions with the local Turks through lenient policies, the Romans, temporarily avoiding their obstruction, seized the opportunity and continued to advance steadily onto the Anatolia Plateau by the end of the year, joining forces with three other Turk factions to completely annihilate the Ottoman.
By this point, Sultan Aladdin Ali could no longer withstand the pressure and, in the first month of this year, 1453, he sued for peace with Manuel III, begging for peace on the condition of ceding all coastal territories except Brusa and a large number of border areas, and submitting to the Roman Empire.
However, Manuel chose to flatly reject the Ottoman's overture, saying, "When the Romans previously begged you for peace, you were so harsh on us. Did you ever think that one day, under the gaze of a just Allah, you would find yourselves in the same predicament?" After saying this with a mocking laugh in his tent outside Kutahya, the Basileus, in front of his eldest son Theodore, who was with him on the campaign, ordered his subordinates to drag the Ottoman envoys out and behead them publicly, sparing only the lives of two cart drivers and one deputy envoy, sending them back to Ankara to report.
In Manuel's eyes, the destruction of the Ottoman could not be delayed! Even if it was split into three pieces, the Ottoman was still the strongest of the Turkmen Muslim regimes. Manuel could not rest easy for a single day as long as it lived. He had finally achieved a temporary technological gap and used various methods to plunge the Ottoman into a once-in-a-millennium low point; how could he let this opportunity slip away! To avoid a disastrous defeat like Manuel I Komnenos at Myriokephalon, he had brought the empire's main forces after pacifying the northern borders and stabilizing diplomacy, even at the cost of his reputation and resources to win over and control other Turk factions. How could he stop now!?
Upon receiving such a response, Sultan Aladdin Ali and others finally fully understood that the Romans this time were not merely recovering territory and supporting vassals as a formality, but intended to completely annihilate them. In such a desperate situation, the Ottoman, once formidable across Europe and Asia Minor, exhausted all its resources, draining its last national strength, just to seek a glimmer of hope.
Thus, both sides, believing they had no retreat, finally engaged in the final decisive battle in Eskisehir in early March of the same year. The combined Roman and vassal forces, totaling fifty thousand, directly confronted the Ottoman army of less than thirty thousand, and the future battle between the two sides fully erupted in the river valley.
Recalling this, Sultan Aladdin Ali, no longer as spirited as before, couldn't help but reveal a bitter and ugly smile. As he smiled, he finally couldn't hold back and cried out in anger and pain towards the ceiling.
Yes, in the end, the Ottoman was defeated. Even though their discipline and morale were not inferior to, and even surpassed, the enemy, under the increasingly mature Roman firepower, the Ottoman army, already at a disadvantage in numbers and quality, was completely defeated before dawn on March 12. With tens of thousands of Ghazi Warriors buried in the fields, the once mighty Ottoman finally met its end.
Late March 1453, Karaman occupied Afyonkarahisar;
Early April 1453, the Roman Empire seized the Ottoman's northeastern strongholds of Tokat, Corum, and Sivas;
Early May 1453, all regions except those surrounding Ankara fell into the hands of the Ottoman's enemies;
Late early May 1453, the Ankara region, excluding Ankara city, was recovered by the Roman Empire;
Mid-May 1453, because all the military and civilians in the city had been called out for the Battle of Eskisehir, the Roman army easily captured most of this fortress city. At this point, only the Ankara palace remained before the complete destruction of the Ottoman.
At this time, the Roman offensive suddenly ceased. They had completely surrounded the palace, yet showed no signs of attacking. Believing he had found a glimmer of hope, Sultan Aladdin Ali repeatedly sent several servants to negotiate peace with the Romans, but he would always see the gruesome sight of those servants, with their throats slit and stripped of their clothes, hanging upside down on crosses the next morning.
Was this the Roman Emperor's way of tormenting him? In his grief and indignation, Sultan Aladdin Ali sometimes even considered this possibility while trapped in the palace. But he immediately dismissed it: how could that practical and rational Roman Emperor do such a thing for such a trivial reason? There must be some deeper meaning behind his actions.
Sultan Aladdin Ali naturally would not understand that Manuel, the old adversary of his Ottoman family, was not acting out of military or political considerations, but simply out of pure mischief. For this Emperor, who was familiar with the history of his previous life, having Rome's mortal enemy die on May 29, 1453, could be said to bring him a sense of fated pleasure.
Of course, he would certainly keep such thoughts to himself. In fact, except for the accompanying Prime Minister and eldest son, everyone believed that their Basileus must have had a reason for acting this way. Only those two, who were very close to Manuel, could vaguely perceive that he might genuinely be doing it out of pleasure.
This deathly silence continued until noon on May 29. It was then that the Basileus finally ordered a full assault on Ankara city.
This final stage could no longer be called a war; it was merely a cynical conclusion. Thousands of Roman soldiers stormed outside the palace, clashing with the last Janissaries who swore to defend their Sultan to the death. Every soldier hoped to be the first to cut off the head of the infidel Sultan.
Facing this situation, the previously dejected Sultan rallied once more, commanding his last hundred or so soldiers to bravely resist the Roman advance, even though it was futile. This almost meaningless struggle for the Ottoman continued until nightfall. By then, the palace gate was controlled by Roman soldiers, and the Sultan, already bearing several wounds, was reluctantly moved to an underground compartment under the protection of his loyal retainers. Feeling his end approaching, he fell into a trance, recalling all the aforementioned events as if in a fleeting vision.
Returning from his memories to reality, seeing that all his loyal retainers had gone to guard the room's entrance for him, and hearing the approaching greek curses, Sultan Aladdin Ali couldn't help but cry out:
"Allah, I beg you, let a Muslim cut off my head!"
But no one responded; all his subordinates were outside, dying for their Sultan. Yet even if they had heard, they probably wouldn't have been willing to do such a heart-wrenching deed.
Realizing this and understanding his predicament, Sultan Aladdin Ali despairingly drew the scimitar from his waist with his right hand;
The clash of swords outside the room gradually thinned.
The young Sultan slowly rose, took down a torch from the room with his left hand, and stared blankly at it;
Violent banging sounds came from the door of the underground room.
The Sultan sat at a birch table, his face contorted;
The door was finally forced open, and three or four fully armed Roman soldiers burst in.
The Sultan sneered and threw the torch to the ground, letting it set the room ablaze;
The soldiers were terrified and tried to squeeze out, but some bolder ones attempted to extinguish the fire on the spot.
Seizing this opportunity, the last Ottoman Sultan, Sultan Aladdin Ali, finally raised his right-hand scimitar and cleanly slit his own throat, ending his short but ill-fated life.
On the night of May 29, 1453, the last Ottoman Sultan, Sultan Aladdin Ali, only 28 years old, committed suicide by slitting his throat after setting his residence in the basement of the Ankara palace on fire. His last remaining Janissary soldiers guarded the burning palace to the death, until the very last man.
Late that night, after the last Janissary fell in battle, the Philaka Legion under Roman Emperor Manuel III stepped into this last Ottoman territory and, on the Basileus's orders, executed all of Sultan Sultan Aladdin Ali's wives, concubines, and children that night.
Thus, the once-powerful Ottoman Sultanate was completely destroyed.