Part 6: Part VI: An Assassin in Sultan Beyazid's Court

Part VI: An Assassin in Sultan Beyazid's Court


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Vicas and wdarrk join me for some goofy times as we end Sequence 3 and begin Sequence 4, the Sequence whose first mission is one of the most memorable in the series so far. As I mentioned in the video, I was really disappointed in Ezio for not not singing about the assassination of the Doge of Venice in Assassin's Creed II. But, he does make a lot of references, including a ballad about the Pazzi brothers, barbs at Rodrigo, Cesare, and Lucrezia Borgia (the latter of how he lays a really sick burn about her incestuous tendencies), and even a his brief affair with Caterina, which began in Assassin's Creed II and continued into Brotherhood

Since I was talking about the third siege of Vienna by the Ottomans, I thought I'd expand a bit on that. As I mentioned in the video, Suleiman attempted to conquer the city twice, but was beaten both times (well, to be exact, he tried again in 1532, but he never actually made it to the city. A force of Croatian and Hungarian soldiers under the leadership of the Hapsburg monarchy stopped them in Hungary). In 1683, the Ottomans tried again. The great Catholic powers of Eastern Europe, Poland (technically the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) and Austria, joined forces to fight back the Empire. The dramatic climax of the siege was Poland's king, John III Sobieski, leading the largest cavalry charge in history to rout the Ottoman siege and push them south of the Danube. Although the Ottoman Empire recovered some of the territory lost in the ensuing pursuit, the last siege of Vienna decidedly showed the Ottoman Empire had gone as far as it would go in Europe, and the technological edge the Empire had in the 16th century was gone.

The decline of the Ottoman Empire is a very long, very complicated topic, but a lot of it has to do with conservative influences like the Janissary Corps, who were completely out of control by the time they were disbanded, gradually winning out over reformer elements. Of course, joining Germany in World War I didn't do them any favors in the end.