All these news, arriving at once, had an immediate effect in changing men’s minds as well as the face of affairs. A fresh council was called; Cardinal Julian arose among the leaders, and reproached them with having betrayed both their fortune and their glory; he reproached them in severe terms, with having signed a disgraceful peace, which was sacrilegious, fatal to Europe, and fatal to the Church. “You had sworn,” said he, “to combat the eternal enemies of Christendom, and now you have sworn upon the Gospel, to lay down your arms. To which of these two oaths will you be faithful? You have just thought proper to conclude a treaty with the Mussulmans; but have you not also treaties with your allies? Will you abandon these generous allies at the moment that they are flying from all parts to your assistance, and are coming to share the perils of a war in which God has so visibly protected your first labours?
“But, what do I say? You not only abandon your allies, you leave, without support and without hope, that crowd of Christians whom you have promised to deliver from an insupportable yoke, and who must now remain a prey to all the outrages of the Mussulmans whom your victories have irritated. The groans of so many victims will pursue you into your retreat, and will accuse you before God and before men.
“You close for ever the gates of Asia against the Christian phalanxes, and you restore to the Mussulmans the hopes they had lost of invading the countries of Christendom. To what interests, answer me, have you sacrificed your own glory and the safety of the Christian world? Had not war already given you all that the sultan Amurath promises? Would he not have already given you still more; and do not the pledges obtained by victory inspire more confidence than the promises of infidels?
“What shall I say to the sovereign pontiff who has sent me to you, not to treat with Mussulmans, but to drive them beyond the seas? What shall I say to all the pastors of the Christian Churches, and to all the faithful of the West, who are now offering up prayers to Heaven for the success of your arms?
“There is no doubt that the barbarians, whom we have twice conquered, would never have consented to a peace, if they had had the means of carrying on the war. Do you believe they will observe the truce, when fortune shall become more favourable to them? No; Christian warriors cannot remain bound by an impious compact which gives up the Church and Europe to the disciples of Mahomet. Learn that there is no peace between God and his enemies, between truth and falsehood, between Heaven and Hell. There is no necessity for me to absolve you from an oath evidently contrary to religion and morality, to all that which constitutes, among men, the sanctity and faith of promises. I exhort you then, in the name of God, in the name of the Gospel, to resume your arms and follow me in the road of salvation and glory.”
The safety of Christendom may, no doubt, be pleaded in extenuation of the violence of this discourse; but impartial history, whatever may be the reasons alleged, cannot approve of this open violation of the faith of oaths. The leaders of the crusade might merit the reproaches of the apostolic legate, who accused them of having made a peace disgraceful in itself and dangerous to Christian Europe; but they certainly also deserve the contempt of posterity for violating treaties they had so recently concluded. When Cardinal Julian began to speak, the minds of his auditors were already wavering; when he had finished his discourse, the warlike ardour which animated him seized upon the whole assembly, and manifested itself by the loud acclamations of a general approbation. With one unanimous voice they all swore to recommence the war, on the same spot where they had just sworn to maintain peace.
The enthusiasm of most of the leaders was at its height it scarcely allowed them to observe that they had lost half their army. A great number of the Crusaders had quitted their colours, some impatient to return to their homes, but by far the greater part dissatisfied with a treaty, which rendered their bravery and their exploits useless. The prince of Servia, a near neighbour of the Turks, and in dread of their vengeance, did not dare to run the risk of a new war, and sent no troops to the army of Hunniades and Ladislaus. They waited in vain for the reinforcements promised by Skanderberg, who was obliged to defend Albania. There remained not more than twenty thousand men under the banners of the cross. A chief of the Wallachians, on joining the Crusaders with his cavalry, could not refrain from expressing his surprise to the king of Hungary, at the smallness of his numbers; and told him that the sultan they were going to contend with, was frequently followed to the chase by more slaves than the Christian warriors amounted to.
The principal leaders were advised to defer the commencement of the war till the arrival of fresh Crusaders, or the return of those that had left them; but Ladislaus, Hunniades, and particularly Julian, were persuaded that God protected the defenders of the cross, and that nothing could resist them. They set forward on their march, and crossing the deserts of Bulgaria, encamped at Warna, on the shores of the Black Sea.
It was there the Crusaders, instead of finding the fleet which was to second them, learned that Amurath had left his retreat at Magnesia, and was hastening to meet them at the head of sixty thousand combatants. At this intelligence all the extravagant confidence infused by the Cardinal Julian faded away, and in their despair they accused the Greeks of having betrayed or abandoned them; and the Genoese, with the nephew of the Pope, who commanded the Christian fleet, of having yielded the passage of Galliopoli to the Turks. This accusation is repeated in all the chronicles of the West; but the Turkish historians make no mention of it; they, on the contrary, say that Amurath crossed the Hellespont at a considerable distance from the places occupied by the Christian fleet; and that the grand vizier, who was upon the European shore, protected the passage of the Ottoman army by a battery of cannon. “As soon as the troops of Amurath,” adds the Turkish historian Coggia Effendi, “gained the shore, they offered up prayers and thanks to the God of Mahomet, and the zephyr of victory breathed upon the Mussulman banners.” The sultan pursued his march, swearing by the prophets of Islamism, to punish its enemies for the violation of treaties. If some authors may be believed, the emperor of the Turks supplicated Jesus Christ himself to avenge the outrage committed upon his name by the perjured warriors. At the approach of the Ottomans, Hunniades and the legate advised retreat; but retreat became impossible, and Ladislaus determined to conquer or die. The battle began: and it was then, says the Ottoman historian, “that an infinite number of valiant men were borne to the valley of shadows by torrents of blood.” At the commencement of the battle both the right and left wings of the Mussulman army were broken. Some authors say that Amurath thought of flying, and that he was stopped by a janissary, who retained him by the bridle of his horse; others celebrate the firm courage of the sultan, and compare him to a rock which resists all the blasts of the tempest. Coggia Effendi, whom we have already quoted, adds that the Ottoman emperor addressed, upon the field of battle, a prayer to the God of Mahomet, and conjured him with tears to remove from the Mussulmans the bitter cup of contempt and affliction.
Fortune appeared to favour the arms of the Crusaders. A great part of the Ottoman army fled before twenty-four thousand Christian soldiers, and nothing could resist the impetuous courage of the king of Hungary. A crowd of prelates and bishops, armed with cuirasses and swords, accompanied Ladislaus, and intreated him to direct his attacks towards the point at which Amurath still fought, defended by the bravest of his janissaries. He listened but too willingly to their imprudent advice, and having rushed among the enemy’s battalions, he was instantly pierced by a thousand lances, and fell with all who had been able to follow him. His head, fixed upon the point of a lance, and shown to the Hungarians, spread consternation through their ranks. It was in vain Hunniades and the bishops endeavoured to revive the courage of the Crusaders, by telling them they were not fighting for an earthly king, but for Jesus Christ; the whole Christian army disbanded, and fled in the greatest disorder. Hunniades himself was carried away with the rest: ten thousand soldiers of the cross lost their lives, and the Turks made a great number of prisoners. Cardinal Julian perished either in the battle or the flight.