[518] Donado da Lezze, p. 9.
[519] Leunclavius, Hist. Musul. Turc., preface, p. 14, speaks of how grateful Sigismund was later for the services rendered to him personally by the Burgrave in the Nicopolis campaign, and that the friendship formed then led to the later advancement of the house of Brandenburg.
[520] Wylie, i. 6, 158, quoting Ducas, 13, and Venetian State Papers (Brown), i. 85. Ducas knew nothing of Nicopolis, while the Venetian reference is based on a misapprehension.
[521] Lavisse, Histoire de France, iv. 311: ‘on l’avait vu à la bataille de Nicopoli sur les bords de la Baltique avec les chevaliers teutoniques.’ Lavisse has evidently mixed up the Nicopolis expedition with the earlier Prussian one in which Henry did take part. His statement on the same page that Henry IV took part in the Boucicaut expedition is another error.
[522] Conclusive proof of the whereabouts of Henry in the summer of 1396 is found in the letter ‘escript ... le xxe jour d’augst’. This letter is in Arch. Nat., Paris, J. 644: 3511. For the expeditions in which Henry did take part, when he was Henry of Derby, see vol. lii of the Camden Society, edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith, London, 1894, 4to.
[523] Froissart, p. 244.
[524] Phr., I. 14, p. 59; Bontinius, III. 2.
[525] Engel, Geschichte der Bulgaren, p. 468. According to the authority who has made the most exhaustive study of the Nicopolis expedition, Sigismund disposed of 120,000 men in all, including the western allies: Kiss, in À Nikápolyi ülkozet, p. 266. Kiss’s estimate is corroborated by the Cronica Dolfina, which says that Sigismund had one hundred thousand men under arms in 1394. Sanuto quotes this in Muratori, xxii, col. 762. Cf. also Hungarian Nat. Archives, Dipl. 8201, 8212, 8214, 8493, 8541.
[526] Schiltberger, p. 2.
[527] Bruun, in his Geographische Anmerkungen zum Reisebuch von Schiltberger (Sitz.-Ber. k. Bay. Akademie, 1869, ii. 271), tried to prove that the battle was fought, not at Nicopolis on the Danube, but near the ancient Nicopolis of Trajan’s foundation. But in his notes to the English translation of Schilt., Hakluyt, lviii. 108-9, he assents to the contention which Kanitz makes in Donau-Bulgarien, ii. 58-70, that the battle was near Nicopolis-on-the-Danube. An examination of the chronicles corroborates Kanitz’s hypothesis over against the ingenuous argument of Jireček. Some historians have been so unmindful of geographical considerations as to put the battle at the ancient Nicopolis ad Haemum, of which Ortellius, p. 225, speaks.