28. Trash Talk Backfires
In addition to destroying cities and massacring people by the hundreds of thousands at a go, Tamerlane was into piling up pyramids of severed heads, cementing live prisoners into the walls of captured cities, and erecting towers of his victims’ skulls. Not provoking such a figure seems like common sense. However, Ottoman sultan Bayezid seemingly abandoning his senses, got into a flame war with Tamerlane, swapping insulting letters with him for years.
It ended when Tamerlane finally showed up in 1402, defeated Bayezid, and took him captive. The Ottoman sultan was then humiliated by being kept in a cage at his conqueror’s court, while Bayezid’s favorite wife was made to serve Tamerlane and his courtiers, naked.