[537] Cf. Miller, in Story of Nations Series, pp. 290-1.
[538] Belonging to the grand master of Rhodes: Froissart, p. 317. But Morosini, p. 15, and others, say that he went directly on board Monicego’s galley. It is a pity that Hammer, in his description of the battle of Nicopolis, relied so much on such an unreliable third-hand authority as Abbé Vertot. Skentkláráy, À dunai hajóhadak törtenéte, says that Jean de Vienne commanded the galleys.
[539] Schiltberger, p. 6.
[540] Bonfinius, one of the earliest Hungarian historians, recorded that Sigismund had boasted that he would not only turn the Osmanlis out of Europe, but also that with the army under his command, if the sky fell, it could be held up on their lances: Decades, ii. 403.
[541] ‘Sigismund was cruel and sensual, perjured and frivolous, rapacious and dissolute, fierce and pusillanimous, a byword and object of horror to the Bohemians, hated and despised by the Germans, a warning to all rulers. His companion, John XXIII, lewd and murderous, a simonist and an infidel, was a true comrade for Sigismund in all evil deeds’: Dr. Flajshans, in Mistr Jan Hus: quotation translated by Count Lützow, John Hus and his Times, pp. 137-8.
[542] Froissart, pp. 330-1.
[543] But not until he ‘regracioit les dieux et les déesses selon la loy où il creoit et que les paiens croient’: Froissart, p. 321. The ignorance among the western chroniclers of everything pertaining to the Osmanlis—or the wider circle of Mohammedan peoples—was appalling.
[544] Schiltberger, p. 5. Cf. Froissart, pp. 322-8; Relig. de St.-Denis; Chronique de Boucicaut; Chronique des 4 premiers Valois, éd. Luce, p. 326; and the other chronicles and secondary authorities given in Bibliography.
[545] Xénopol, in Hist, générale, iii. 882, whose writings furnish the most reliable and most accessible data for Rumanian history, allows his patriotism to get the better of his judgement when he writes that this unimportant skirmish was a complete defeat inflicted upon Bayezid, and that ‘le Sultan court jusqu’à Adrinople’! Xénopol makes no attempt to explain the battle of Nicopolis, and Mircea’s action in and after the battle.
[546] Schiltberger, p. 6. Chalc., II, pp. 76-80, who exaggerates the raid to the point of saying that Bayezid reached the environs of Buda.