The world's leading conquerors

by Wilson Lloyd Bevan

In July, 1396, the various contingents from the Occident met the Hungarian and Roumanian armies at Bada. Mircea, who had had personal experience with the Turkish military power, advised, with the wisdom that comes from defeat, a policy of defensive action, that the allies should wait for Bajesid’s advance into Hungary. But this dilatory program was not acceptable to the Western knights, who declared that they were there to fight, not to waste time in the inaction of a camp. Accordingly the army went down the Danube to Ossovo, and the river was crossed near the so-called Iron Gates.

After winning some initial successes in a land where only the garrisons were Turkish, the crusaders, on September 12, reached Nicopolis, a place well fortified and strongly held by a veteran Ottoman general, Dogon-beg, who commanded a garrison of seasoned troops. At first the French knights tried to take the place by storm; but there were not enough ladders. It was, therefore, resolved to starve it out. The siege was in progress when Bajesid arrived from Constantinople. When he heard of the danger of his general he burnt his siege machines and hastened to Nicopolis. The crusaders would not at first believe that the Sultan was marching upon them; those who first reported the news in the camp were treated as spies and had their ears cut off. When it was found to be true, the Christians massacred the prisoners already taken.

In preparing for the battle there was a fatal diversity of views. Sigismund wished to put Mircea’s men in the first line, since they were not regarded as good warlike material; next to this division he wished to station the Hungarians, and then, as the chief support of the whole, the knights from the West. But the French would hear nothing of this plan, which they regarded as equivalent to an insult; the place in front belonged, they thought, to them by right. A few of the most experienced counselors of John of Burgundy agreed with Sigismund, but nothing could be done to persuade the mass of the French warriors to give way. In the Ottoman army there were no differences of opinion; the Sultan’s vassals were answerable to his command, and, it is to be noted, that Stephen, the young Servian despot, with a contingent of trained warriors, fought for Bajesid against the crusaders. But with this exception the Sultan’s army, in all reckoned at 110,000, was composed of Moslem troops. Out of the 110,000 ranged on the other side, there were about 20,000 crusaders, of whom 16,000 were French. These, with the bravado that came from the traditions of western chivalry, undertook to bear the brunt of the fighting. Sigismund again tried to secure the adoption of his more cautious plan, but without result. The constable of France, Count d’Eu, gave the signal to advance, and the French knights moved to the onslaught with cries of “Vive St. Denis, Vive St. George.” Sigismund’s army, composed of trusty Transylvanians, Hungarians, and Tschechs, was in the center, and on the right wing behind the crusaders, while Mircea’s men made up the left. The Turks were drawn up in three lines; in the first were irregular troops, “akindji” and “azabs,” and a body of mercenaries; in the second Asiatic foot soldiers flanked by two squadrons of “spahis”; behind were stationed what might be called the guard regiments, the Janitschars and the spahis of the Porte; a short distance away in individual formation stood the 5000 Servians under Stephen.

In their reckless dash forward the knights carried everything before them, the irregulars first, and Janitschars afterwards, though these were protected by a line of inclined pointed stakes. The horsemen had no difficulty in leaping over these obstacles, and made fearful execution with their swords on the Turks in the level plain. But, while the French were driving through their enemies in front like a flying wedge, the Turks on the two wings were reforming to make an inclosing movement around the knights. As these could not withdraw, they continued the charge right into the second line of Bajesid, where they put “hors de combat” five thousand Turks. But by this time both men and horses were exhausted, and the ranks were broken. The more cautious leaders advised Count d’Eu to fall back on the Hungarians for support, but he gave orders to renew the charge. The third line of the enemy could not, however, be broken; the Western crusaders were being overwhelmed by fresh bodies of Ottomans.

The Frenchmen might have been aided easily by their allies behind them, but at this moment Mircea, with his Wallachians and the Transylvanian contingent, suddenly deserted the field. This cowardly action threw the rest of the army into a panic. Soon Sigismund was left with but a fraction of his army, the men from the Christian lands in the East lent no aid, nor did they stand their ground. The Hungarian King advanced to rescue the Western crusaders, but a charge made by the Servians, who had as yet kept out of the battle, prevented the union of the now separated portions of the Christian army. The French, though left alone, performed great feats of arms, fighting, as the chronicles say, like mad wolves and frothing boars. Gathering together in small groups of eight or ten, the knights, using their long swords, fortified themselves behind the heaps of dead and wounded Turks. It was told how the standard of the Virgin, defended by John de Vienne and his companions, was six times struck to the ground, only to be proudly lifted again until the heroic Frenchman himself fell, still clasping in his arms the tattered standard. Sigismund also fought desperately, but there was no escape except by retreating northward to the Danube, where the galleys of Rhodes and Venice took on board what was left of the great army of the crusaders.

The splendid equipment of the Western knights furnished Bajesid with immense spoil; but it was a dear victory. From thirty to forty thousand of his men lay dead on the field, as a witness to the prowess of French chivalry. Wherever the French fought, the chronicles record that “for one Christian of those who lay dead on the field, there were thirty Turks or more, or other men of that faith.” Maddened by his losses, the Sultan ordered his prisoners to be killed. The massacre went on all day; 2000 were executed; only those escaped who were likely to be ransomed for large sums, and a few prisoners whose age was less than twenty years. It was the soldiers’ greed rather than the Sultan’s clemency which brought the butchery to an end.

When the news of the defeat was received at Paris, there was universal mourning. Then an embassy was sent, with rich presents for the Sultan, to arrange the ransom of the prisoners. The amount settled upon was 200,000 florins. The Western ambassadors were treated with great courtesy and magnificent entertainments were provided for their amusement. In parting from one of the distinguished captives, John the Fearless, son of the Duke of Burgundy, Bajesid said, “I do not wish to require from you the oath not to bear arms against me again; if, when you return home, you still find yourself in the humor for fighting me, you will find me always ready to meet you on the field of battle, for I am born for war and conquest.” As presents for Charles VI of France, in exchange for those that had been sent him, he despatched by the French envoys various warlike accouterments, among others a drum and bowstrings, made of human flesh.

The fancifulness of the Turk was also seen by his sending with those who made the formal announcement of his victory to the Moslem princes of Asia and Egypt, the Western prisoners all equipped in their heavy armor to enable the leaders of his own faith to understand the significance of his success. As a result of the battle of Nicopolis, Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Roumania accepted Ottoman rule; at the same time the adjoining lands of the Hungarian King became the field of Turkish raids.

Constantinople was in a perilous situation, but an attempt to take it failed (1398). Less fortunate, as has been seen, were the inhabitants of continental Greece, who saw Argos taken, and the country of the Peloponnesus ravaged by Bajesid. The troubles of the imperial city were not relieved by Bajesid’s failure to capture it, for by the instigation of the Turks, John, the nephew of Manuel, became a claimant for the crown, and at the head of 10,000 Ottoman troops marched on the city. The result was that Manuel agreed to take his nephew as associate in the Empire, a term which now had only a technical significance, for the imperial dignity meant little more than the rule over Constantinople itself. Bajesid refused to allow this arrangement unless further concessions were made, such as the establishment of a fourth mosque in the city, and the same local autonomy for the Turkish colony as that enjoyed by the Venetians and Genoese. Manuel refused and appealed to Western Christendom. France again showed its sympathy by sending a survivor of the Nicopolis campaign, a knight, Boucicout, who, with only 1200 men, forced the entrance of the Dardanelles, and afterwards won a minor success in Asia, though he failed in his attempt to take Nicodemia. Manuel tried, as his father had done, a personal visit to the West, and remained nearly two years in France. Bajesid, in the meantime, was encircling Constantinople with his fleet and armies, when the situation suddenly changed, owing to the expansion of a new power in the Orient.

The emirates of those Seldjouks, who had survived absorption by the Ottomans, had, at the close of the fourteenth century, formed a defensive alliance against Bajesid, but they were not successful. The Sultan seized their best provinces, and, when they resorted to arms, defeated the Seldjoukian emirs on the battlefield. Gradually the Ottoman dominions were approaching the Euphrates, by which they were brought near the frontier of the newly-organized Mongol empire, the creation of the great conqueror Timur. The growth of bad feeling between the two rival powers was accentuated, when each sovereign began to receive with favor the rebellious vassals of the other. Timur sent to the Sultan a threatening letter, which was answered in the temper in which it was couched. Timur’s reply was to cross the frontier, and this step was followed up by the capture of the important town of Sivas. All the inhabitants were massacred, the Christians in it being burned alive, and the governor of the place, a son of the Sultan, was strangled. Timur turned from his invasion of the south to attack Angora with the purpose of drawing the Turks into a trap. He succeeded, for he had between two and three hundred thousand men, while Bajesid, to oppose him, had only 120,000. A great battle took place on July 20, 1402, which ended most disastrously for the Turks, because the Seldjoukians went over to the enemy. Bajesid was captured, and two of his sons were killed. Much of the land to the west was overrun by the Mongols, but a permanent organization of the Mongol Empire was made impossible because of the death of Timur on February 19, 1405. Bajesid had also died of a broken heart, after his terrible defeat.