18

JOHN OF HUNYAD.

[INTROD. and soon afterwards died at Neszmély, between Gran and Vienna (Oct. 27th, 1439). Just previously to that event Amurath had despatched an embassy to Wladislaus III. (or VI.), King of Poland, offering to support the pretensions of his brother Casimir to the throne of Bohemia against Albert, provided that when Casimir should have attained the object of his ambition, Wladislaus should refrain from assisting Hungary. The negotiations were hardly concluded, and the Turkish ambassadors were still at Cracow, when a deputation arrived from Hungary to offer the Crown of that Kingdom, vacant by Albert's death, to Wladislaus, who determined to accept it, announced his resolution to the Turkish ambassadors, and expressed to them his wish to remain at constant peace with the Sultan. Such a peace, however, was not in Amurath's contemplation; and the civil wars which ensued between Wladislaus and the party which supported the claim of Albert's posthumous son, the infant Ladislaus, to the Hungarian throne, promised to render that Kingdom an easy prey to the Turkish arms. In the spring of 1440 Amurath marched to attack Belgrade, the only place which, after the taking of Semendria and reduction of Servia, opposed his entrance into Hungary; but after sitting seven months before the town he was compelled to relinquish the attempt, with a loss of 17,000 men.

It was at this period that the house of Huniades, destined for many years to be the chief bulwark of Europe against the Turks, first appeared upon the scene. John Corvinus Huniades, or John of Hunyad, the founder of it, was by birth a Wallachian, and, according to some accounts, a natural son of the Emperor Sigismund. He derived the name of Corvinus from the village of Corvinum, in which he was born;' that of Huniades, from a small estate on the borders of Wallachia and Transylvania, presented to him by the Emperor Sigismund as a reward for his services in Italy. John of Hunyad had increased his possessions by marrying a wealthy lady of illustrious family; and the Emperor Albert II. had made him Ban, or Count, of Szöreny. He headed the powerful party which supported the call of Wladislaus, King of Poland, to the Hungarian throne; and that Prince, in reward of his aid, made him Voyvode of Transylvania and Ban of Temesvar, and conferred on him the command in the southern provinces of Hungary. John of Hunyad fixed his head-quarters at Belgrade, whence he repelled the ravages of the Turks. In these cam

Or according to another account, the castle of Piatra de Corro in Wallachia.

Engel, Gesch. des ungarischen Reiches,
B. iii. S. 298.

INTROD.]

EXPEDITION OF WLADISLAUS.

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paigns he gained several victories, of which the most decisive was that of Vasag, in 1442, which almost annihilated the Turkish army.

During these alarming wars all eyes had been turned towards Rome, as the only quarter whence help might be expected for Christendom. But the efforts of Eugenius IV., who then filled the Papal throne, proved of little avail, and Eugenius was left to complain of the poverty of the Papal treasury, the lukewarmness of Christian Princes, and the dissensions of the Church, which frustrated all efficient preparations against the Turks. In 1442 his zeal was again awakened by the representations of a Franciscan monk residing at Constantinople, who painted to him in lively colours the miseries of the young Christian slaves, chiefly Hungarians, whom he daily saw dragged through the streets of that capital to be shipped off to Asia. The call of the monk was supported by embassies from the Byzantine Emperor, the King of Cyprus, and the Despots of Peloponnesus. Touched by these appeals, Eugenius addressed a circular to all the prelates of Europe, requiring them to contribute a tenth of their incomes to the Turkish war, and promised himself to dedicate to the same object a fifth of the whole revenue of the Apostolic Chamber.' At the same time he despatched Cardinal Julian Cesarini into Hungary, to endeavour to restore peace in that distracted country and to animate the people against the Infidels. The death of Queen

Elizabeth, however, the mother of the young king Ladislaus, and the recent victories of John of Hunyad, contributed more to these objects than all the exhortations of Cardinal Julian. After the demise of Elizabeth, most of the nobles who had supported her hastened to do homage to Wladislaus: and though the Emperor Frederick III., the guardian of her son, at first opposed the accession of the Polish King, yet the disturbances in his own Austrian dominions, and the imminent danger from the Turks, ultimately induced him to conclude a truce for two years.

Wladislaus, being thus confirmed upon the throne of Hungary, determined on an expedition against the Infidels. The domestic troubles in which most of the European Princes were then plunged prevented their giving him any assistance; yet considerable bodies of the people, chiefly French and Germans, assumed the cross and joined his forces. The van set out from Buda in July, 1443, led by John of Hunyad and George, Despot of Servia; the main body, about 20,000 strong, under the command of Wladislaus himself, followed a day later; while Cardinal

1 Raynaldus, Ann. Eccl. t. ix. p. 416 (ed. 1752).

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BATTLE OF VARNA.

[INTROD. Julian was at the head of the crusaders. They penetrated to the Balkan and defeated the Ottoman force which defended the approaches; but at the pass of Slulu Derbend (Porta Trajani) were repulsed, and being in great want of provisions, were obliged to make a precipitate though unmolested retreat to Belgrade, and thence to Buda. The expedition, however, made so great an impression upon Amurath, that he entered into negotiations, and in June, 1444, a peace of ten years was concluded at Szegedin, by which it was agreed that the Turks should retain Bulgaria but restore Servia to the Despot George, on condition of his paying half the revenue of that country to the Porte; that neither of the parties should cross the Danube; and that Wallachia should be under the protection of Hungary.

This peace was scarcely concluded when the Christians prepared to break it. The campaign of Wladislaus had excited great interest in Europe. Ambassadors from many European States appeared at Buda to congratulate him on his success, and to offer him succours for another expedition; Poland alone besought him to refrain, and to turn his attention to the domestic evils of his Kingdom. Cardinal Julian took advantage of the general feeling to urge the renewal of the war, and persuaded the Hungarian Diet assembled at Buda to adopt his advice. Even John of Hunyad and the Despot of Servia, who had just protested against so thoughtless a breach of faith, were carried away by the warlike ardour excited by the address of Julian. But perhaps the motive which chiefly weighed in the rupture of the peace of Szegedin was the news which arrived immediately after the departure of the Turkish plenipotentiaries, that Amurath with his whole army had crossed over into Asia to quell an insurrection in Caramania; and that the fleet assembled by the Pope, and now in the neighbourhood of the Hellespont, would suffice to cut off his return. The Pope absolved Wladislaus from his oath; but the only pretext which the Christians could allege for their breach of faith was that the Turks had not yet evacuated some of the surrendered fortresses. The expedition terminated in the disastrous battle of Varna (Nov. 10th, 1444), in which the Christians were completely defeated, and King Wladislaus and Cardinal Julian lost their lives. This battle is memorable in a military point of view as displaying the superiority of the Janissaries over the European cavalry, although the latter soon mastered the Turkish light horse. Very few of the defeated army succeeded in reaching their homes.

INTROD.]

BATTLE OF COSSOVA.

21

In 1446, John of Hunyad, who had now been appointed Regent and Captain-General of Hungary, overran Wallachia, captured the Voyvode Drakul and his son, caused them to be executed, and conferred the Principality on Dan, Voyvode of Moldavia. The wish that lay nearest the Regent's heart was to retrieve his reputation against the Turks, so sadly damaged by the defeat at Varna; but the war which broke out with the Emperor Frederick III., who refused to restore to the Hungarians either the person of young Ladislaus or the crown of St. Stephen, delayed till 1448 any expedition for that purpose. A peace having at length been effected, by which the guardianship of Ladislaus, till he reached eighteen years of age, was assigned to the Emperor, John of Hunyad found himself at liberty to devote all his attention to the Turkish war; and though dissuaded from the enterprise by Pope Nicholas V., he crossed the Danube with a large army and pressed on with rapid marches till, on the 17th October, 1448, he encamped within sight of the Ottoman army on the Amselfeld, or plain of Cossova-the spot where more than half a century before the Turks had gained their first great victory over the Hungarians. After a struggle of three days, Hunyad was defeated by the overwhelming force of the Turks, and compelled to save himself by an ignominious flight; but the loss on both sides had been enormous, and Amurath, instead of pursuing the routed foe, returned to Adrianople to celebrate his victory. Hunyad was captured in his flight by the Despot of Servia and detained a prisoner till the end of the year, when he was liberated at the intercession of the Hungarian Diet assembled at Szegedin. The hard conditions of his ransom, which comprised the restoration of all the places in Hungary that had ever belonged to Servia, the payment of 100,000 pieces of gold, and the delivery of his eldest son Ladislaus as a hostage, were, however, cancelled by the convenient omnipotence of Rome, and he was released from his engagements by a bull of Nicholas V.1 Nothing further of importance happened between the Turks and Hungarians till after the fall of Constantinople, when the exploits of John of Hunyad will again claim our attention.

The arms of Amurath were next employed by a revolt in Albania. That country was ruled in the beginning of the fifteenth century by a number of independent chieftains, among whom the families of Arianites and Castriot were distinguished by the extent of their dominion. The former were connected on

1 Bull, prid. Id. April, 1450, in Raynaldus, Ann. Eccl. t. ix. p. 550.

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ALBANIA.

-GERMANY.

[INTROD. the female side with the family of the Comneni, and Arianites Topia Comnenus reigned over southern Albania from the river Vojutza to the Ambracian Gulf, or Gulf of Arta; while John Castriot was Prince of the northern districts from the same river to the neighbourhood of Zenta, except that the coast towns belonged to Venice. Both these Princes had been subdued by Amurath II. in 1423; Kroja, John Castriot's capital, was occupied by a Turkish garrison, and he himself and his four sons were carried into captivity. After a time the father was dismissed, but the children were retained and forcibly converted to Islam, after the Turkish fashion. How George, one of these, gained the favour of the Sultan by his talents and courage, and was raised to the rank of a Prince with the title of Scanderbeg, or Prince Alexander, and how he revolted, recovered his capital, and returned to the Christian faith, has been related by Gibbon." The Venetians, finding great benefit from the diversion he occasioned to the Turkish arms, conferred on him the right of citizenship, enrolled him among their nobles, and made him their commanderin-chief in Albania and Illyria. In 1449 and 1450 Amurath led two immense but unsuccessful expeditions against Kroja, which were nearly the last acts of his reign, for in 1451 he died at Adrianople.

Amurath was succeeded by his son Mahomet II., the conqueror of Constantinople (1451-1481). To relate the fall of that City, and to record the history of the Imperial family in Peloponnesus, would be only to repeat the pages of Gibbon; and we shall therefore now pass on to a brief survey of the state of the other European nations at this important epoch.

At the time of which we speak, the ruler of Germany was the chief temporal sovereign in Europe, and bore the title of Roman Emperor. That title had been revived in the West when, on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, Pope Leo III. invested Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Lombards and Patrician of the Romans, with the Imperial crown and mantle in the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome, and saluted him Emperor of the Romans amid the applause

1 Gibbon (Decline and Fall, vol. viii. p. 136, Smith's edition), from inferences drawn from the work of Marinus Barletius, places, though with hesitation, the captivity of Castriot in 1412. The date assigned by the Turkish historian Seadeddin-viz. the year 827 of the Hegira, or A.D. 1423-seems in all respects more probable. See Zinkeisen, Gesch. des osm. Reiches, B. i. S. 766 Anm.

2 Ubi supra.

The principal sources for the early history of Germany are, besides the great collections of Eccard, Freher, Struvius, Schardius, Mencke, Pez, Kollar, Pertz, and others; Schmidt, Gesch. der Deutschen; Pfeffel, Hist. d'Allemagne; Pütter (Dornford's transl.), Historical Development of the Constitution of the Germanic Empire.