In early August 1434, during the second week of the Bosporus Army's siege of Sinop, Bosporus Caesar Manuel, who was in the military camp, received a request for an audience from an envoy of the Ottoman Sultanate.
"Let him in," Manuel sighed, ordering the envoy to be admitted.
It was probably a diplomatic message ordering a ceasefire, he thought, what was coming would come. Fortunately, Manuel had already prepared for a quick surrender and related plans. Even if the Ottoman ordered him to withdraw from Pontus and even Asia Minor, he could still remotely control Trabzon by supporting proxies or clan members.
"It's fine, as long as I kneel fast enough and pay enough, the Ottoman will have no reason to come after me. I don't have the courage to fight them head-on, but I have plenty of courage to wave a white flag. Just give in!" Thinking this, the young Caesar inexplicably puffed out his chest for this thought process, which could be described as capitulationist.
Thus, Manuel and his entourage met the Ottoman envoy, Chandler Pasha, in a village named Guerze near Sinop in the occupied territory. The Bosporus side did not dare to show any disrespect to the Ottoman envoy. However, Chandler Pasha merely shook his head and sneered at their proper etiquette, saying nothing.
Due to the Bosporus side's emphasis, the Ottoman envoy met their monarch, Manuel himself, less than an hour after arriving in Guerze. At this time, Manuel was dressed in a luxurious dalmatica, his expression as calm as ever. He believed that no matter what demands the Ottoman made, he could resolve them perfectly with his smooth diplomatic skills.
With this thought, Manuel smiled and communicated with the Ottoman Pasha with very proper etiquette. However, the Ottoman Turk on the other side completely disregarded the feelings of the Bosporus Caesar, merely arrogantly reading out his Sultan's decree to the Black Sea Romans in his eyes.
Although the Ottoman spoke in a very convoluted manner, the Bosporus side accurately extracted the main meaning. Ottoman Sultan Murad II's message, simply put, was one sentence: regardless of the process or method, the forces of the Bosphorus Despotate must completely withdraw from the Asia Minor region within one month.
Facing the terms of the treaty proposed by the Ottoman, Manuel initially maintained a gentle smile, but the more he listened, the more he felt that his fake smile was about to break.
This wasn't even an attitude of ordering negotiations; they were being treated as a vassal state that could be arbitrarily controlled! Looking at this demand, wasn't it an order for him to abandon all his achievements in Asia Minor and return to his old home on the north shore of the Black Sea?
How could he agree to such an unreasonable demand, which was tantamount to forcing him to his death?
For a moment, Manuel abandoned his original idea of surrendering and instead recognized reality. Even his attitude towards the Ottoman Turk Pasha in his heart became exceptionally cold.
However, on the surface, he maintained a fake smile, trying his best to prevent his generals from rushing forward in anger. Even so, he still tried to find that elusive hope, "Chandler Pasha, I believe this demand should not conform to the wishes of your Sultan, should it?"
"This is naturally the will of our Sultan. And since you know our Sultan," Chandler Pasha snorted coldly, "then why can't you Romans learn from his virtues?"
Hearing this, Manuel couldn't help but recall certain direct and indirect experiences from his previous life. His blood pressure immediately soared, and he froze in place with anger, unable to say anything.
"But Chandler, I believe your country should at least leave us some room to retreat," Serenus, the Chief Secretary, stepped forward, acting as his monarch's mouthpiece.
"Who told you not to leave yourselves a way out?" Chandler Pasha snorted coldly, scoffing dismissively.
As soon as these words were uttered, Manuel felt as if he was about to faint, almost spitting out a mouthful of old blood from anger. At this moment, the Caesar only wanted to curse, no, he was already cursing Murad's ancestors for eighteen generations in his heart, although the Ottoman family did not yet have eighteen generations of ancestors.
The outcome was obvious; there was nothing left to discuss between them. Therefore, after only half an hour, this meeting, which was called a peace talk but was actually a unilateral show of force by the Ottoman, came to an end. Although Caesar and his key attendees still wore their characteristic fake smiles, they wholeheartedly wanted to kill these Ottoman envoys on the spot.
After seeing off the envoys, Manuel finally dropped the false smile on his face, and to everyone's surprise, he slammed his fist on the wooden table in front of him, cursing the Ottoman Sultan with incredibly vulgar language, "Murad, why don't you go die with your mother?"
Seeing their monarch so enraged, everyone present was startled: this was the first time they had seen their Caesar so angry as to utter such crude words. And after blurting out those words, Manuel was also startled by himself. He immediately forced himself to calm down and waved his hand at his subordinates as if unconcerned, "Prepare for battle with the Ottoman. What just happened, let's pretend it didn't. You may all withdraw first."
Once he was certain that he was alone in the camp and that no one else would know what had happened inside, he finally completely removed his mask of feigned peace and calm, sweeping all the objects off the table and exploding in a rage without any pretense of decorum:
"Murad, a murderer, Lucifer's lackey, Rumelia's swineherd, an inferior Turk pig, a Tatar catamite, a goat-f***er from Brusa; a universally acknowledged brain-damaged idiot, an imbecile under Allah; you motherless bastard, one day I will twist off your head and kick it like a ball, shove porcupine quills into your smooth, shiny ass, and make your sons catch your thick, white, fatty buttocks with their faces!
"What kind of Sultan or Bey are you, claiming your ancestors were Oghuz? You're clearly a descendant of slaves from Turkmen. You mentally retarded imbecile with an underdeveloped cerebellum and no brain development, your mother is some whore from who knows where, you are as inferior as your ancestors! I'll f*** your whole family, I'll kill your whole family, I'll kill all of you! I'll burn your dreams, I'll f*** your mother!"
During this outburst, he fully utilized his linguistic talents, blending greek, Gothic, Tatar, and Chinese in a way that was incredibly difficult to describe. If anyone had been observing at that moment, they would likely have doubted their own linguistic abilities due to his bizarrely structured words.
And at the very end of this outburst, the 22-year-old Caesar Manuel, with tears bursting from his eyes, pointed directly in the direction of Brusa and roared:
"Damn it, let's go to war with the Ottoman!!!"