The main battle lines were therefore drawn. France, including Burgundy and Savoy, and – for what it was worth – Scotland for Clement; England, Germany, Scandinavia, Hungary, Poland and most of Italy for Urban, with Spain for the moment undecided. Given such a preponderance of support Urban ought to have prevailed, but two factors operated against him. Avignon remained a centre of papal administration, with most of the records and the permanent staff; and Urban himself proved a drastically bad choice.
If France was the major – almost the only – adherent of Clement, Urban’s supporters were facing serious difficulties. The ten-year-old English King Richard II, who succeeded his grandfather Edward III in June 1377, attempted to raise much-needed cash by imposing crushing poll taxes, thereby provoking the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The best aid that could be given to the ‘Urbanists’ was the despatch of an army led by John of Gaunt to Portugal, which helped to secure Portugal’s independence from Castile, and began England’s oldest alliance with the marriage of his daughter Phillipa to the Portuguese King – but Gaunt had to renounce his proposed ‘crusade’ against Castile and the Avignon popes retained the Spanish kingdom’s loyalty.
Another ‘crusade’ was proclaimed by Pope Urban in 1383, which promised ‘marvellous indulgence’ to anyone who followed Bishop Despenser of Norwich in his invasion of France and Flanders. Any man who took arms against the Clementist ‘enemies of the cross’ would win no less merit ‘from the deaths of these dogs than if they had killed the same number of Jews or Saracens’. And to those unable to go on the crusade, a financial contribution, provided that it was adequate, ‘would confer the same advantages’. Once across the Channel the crusaders attacked the Urbanist town of Ypres, demonstrating the real motives behind the adventure. Although enthusiastically supported at the outset, both financially and militarily Bishop Despenser’s crusade proved a miserable failure, and contributed to the spreading contempt in which many held the whole idea of purchased salvation.
Each Pope now had a College of Cardinals and a Curia to support, but on a drastically reduced income. Urban should again have been in the stronger position, able to draw some funds from the Papal States with the chance of a remunerative Jubilee in the offing, but his preoccupation with securing the Kingdom of Naples for his nephew Francesco Prignano, otherwise known as ‘Butillo’ (useless and effeminate … crapulous, voluptuous, dedicated to sloth and luxury’, according to Dietrich von Niem, a senior member of Urban’s chancellery), proved very expensive. The affairs of that country were even more confused than usual; Queen Joanna, who had declared for Clement, was strangled in May 1382 and the country fought over by two members of that complicated Angevin family, Charles of Durazzo and Louis of Anjou, respectively supporting Urban and Clement. Urban, who was showing signs of paranoia, was kept under surveillance by King Charles, first at Naples, where the impossible Butillo raped a nun (he was only a young fellow, pleaded the Pope, a mere forty) and then in the castle of Nocera, a few miles to the south, in May 1384.
In September Louis died, leaving Charles free to deal with Pope Urban. Even the cardinals Urban had himself created were finding him intolerable, and therefore – it was a devotedly legalistic period – consulted a renowned canon lawyer on a hypothetical case. Could a pope, even if canonically elected, who was behaving so irresponsibly as to endanger the whole Church, be compelled to accept the rule of a hypothetical council to be convoked by the cardinals? When Urban heard of the cardinals’ démarche he had the six principal offenders arrested and thrown into a disused water tank. Dietrich unavailingly tried to reason with the by now maniacal Pope, whose face ‘glowed with anger like a lamp and whose throat grew hoarse with cursing’. The cardinals in their underground prison were tortured, as the Pope above listened with satisfaction to the howls while reading his breviary; five of their colleagues managed to escape with the story. Urban alienated anyone who came in contact with him. Nocera was besieged by Charles’s troops; a messenger who tried to escape was hurled back by a catapult, but the difficulty remained of what to do with the Supreme Pontiff when he was captured? Charles wisely allowed Urban to escape, taking with him his unhappy cardinals. One, the Bishop of Aquila, fell ill; Urban ordered him to be killed and the body left by the roadside.
The Pope’s party, not too hotly pursued, fled across Italy, paying very expensively for their safety – 35,000 florins to the citizens of Salerno – finding their way to the port of Trani, where they were met by Genoese ships. That, with the transport to Genoa, cost the Church another 80,000 florins. After a year as a fugitive in Genoa, Urban was politely shown the door, but before leaving he disposed of the remaining captive cardinals: four were killed, and the last, the Englishman Adam Easton, a Canon of Salisbury and one of the earliest Oxford Hebrew scholars, being released only after an appeal from King Richard II. Few cities were willing to shelter the Pope; Lucca agreed to do so for a fortnight, but Urban stayed a year before moving on to Perugia, and eventually in September 1388, back ignominiously to Rome, once more desolate, with the palaces of the cardinals stripped to provide building materials.
Desperate to gather funds for a crusade against Naples, Urban proclaimed yet another Jubilee. Pope Clement had defined fifty years as the proper interval, and 1400 therefore as the next Jubilee year, but Urban needed the money badly. He did not live to benefit from it, since the Pope died, probably poisoned, on 15 October 1389. His pontificate had been disastrous, ‘vir pessimus, crudelis et scandalosus’ according to one contemporary, and he died unregretted. Moral distaste might not have been too great a barrier – the papacy’s most important function was administering the whole vast and widespread assets of the Church – but it was impossible to do business with a man so devoted to gaining his own ends by incessant violence.
The Roman cardinals moved rapidly, on 2 November electing a successor, Piero Tomacelli, as Boniface IX, whose chief qualification was to be thoroughly unlike his predecessor. Only thirty-three, and quite remarkably inexperienced and careless, Dietrich lamented, but sensible, affable and energetic. His excommunication of Clement was nothing more than a ritual gesture immediately followed by a counter-anathema from Avignon. Consolidating his hold on the Curia, Boniface welcomed back any of Urban’s cardinals, including Adam Easton, the fortunate survivor of Urban’s torture chamber. A possibility of ending the schism now appeared, for both popes were at least reasonable men and England and France were for the moment enjoying a relative peace. But both Boniface and Clement were being too successful to make either inclined to negotiate.
Boniface was able to reassert control over Rome itself, ruling as absolutely as had any of his predecessors, and much helped in this by the proceeds of Urban’s posthumous Jubilee year of 1390. Even if France and Spain ignored the invitation pilgrims from all parts of the empire and from England flocked to Rome. Those who did not choose to attend could obtain the same spiritual benefits by visiting many of the imperial cathedrals, from Cologne to Prague – on payment, naturally, of the appropriate fees, which totalled more than 100,000 florins. More money was raised by selling control – vicariates – of many of the Papal States. Such authority was meant to be temporary, and subject to payment of fees, but once in control of a city, families held on. The Este of Ferrara, the Malatesta at Rimini and many others were able to found dynasties, and such great cities as Bologna accepted delegated papal authority. Peace, and an immediate income, was secured, but effective authority over the Papal States became even more theoretical.
Personally as avaricious as the previous Boniface, the new Pope raised further funds by straightforward sale of all the Church offices that he could claim to control – and frequently as many times over as he could. Once a benefice had been sold, if a higher bid was received it was granted as a ‘preference’; should a better offer be made it would be classed as a ‘pre-preference’ – which still did not guarantee possession, since the post might go to an even higher bidder; and if anyone complained, the Holy Father simply stopped the case from being heard. Cash was of course preferred, but corn, pigs and horses were also acceptable. Gregory had been allowed to collect taxes from the English Church, but the efforts of Urban and Boniface to do so were sharply reprimanded by Parliament. Existing laws against papal demands, dating from the first Statute of Provisors in 1351, were ratcheted up, and passed even against the clerical majority in the House of Lords.
At Avignon Clement was able to carry on the management easily enough, with the machinery of government lying conveniently to hand, while Urban had to rely upon his few faithful followers on their constant journeyings. Facing such a contender, Clement had little difficulty in maintaining the moral high ground and some success in recruiting support from the Italian states, recoiling from Urban’s now manifest insanity; but France had to remain his main source of income, since Spain did not contribute much to the papal exchequer. Clement was therefore obliged to squeeze as much as possible from the French Church, but could rely on the consistent support of the French crown, which went as far as funding Louis of Anjou’s unsuccessful but very expensive 1382 attempt to invade Naples and unseat Urban. With a smoothly operating Curia and no civil unrest there was little incentive to negotiate with his rival in Rome
Another opportunity to end the schism was offered when Clement died in September 1394. King Charles VI of France immediately told the cardinals not to elect a successor until he had despatched an ambassador to them. ‘It was’, wrote the King, ‘as though the Holy Ghost stood at the door and knocked.’ The knock, however, was not loud enough for the Avignon cardinals, who, suspecting its contents, decided not to open the King’s letter until they had pre-empted the issue by electing a new pope. They chose one of their number, neither French nor Italian, but Spanish, Pedro de Luna. Before the election the cardinals had agreed that the successful candidate would, if need be, immediately resign the papacy, which he would do, Pedro claimed, ‘as easily as taking off my hat’. In fact Pedro, elected as Benedict XIII, was to cling tenaciously to office till his death nearly thirty years later.
Apart from whatever support he might gather in his native country – and Pedro was well connected, a cousin of the King of Aragon – as Benedict XIII he relied almost entirely on France. His claim to the papacy was shaky; it could not be argued that Boniface, his Roman competitor, had been improperly elected. The advantage of a sympathetic pope at Avignon was diminishing as peace with England edged near, prompted by King Richard II, very conscious of the ‘very great mischiefs and destructions’ of the intolerable wars between the two realms. The possibility of the two Western powers once again joining in a Crusade emerged; and a crisis was approaching on the Eastern frontiers.
The Turks Arrive in Europe
The fall of Acre had put an end to any realistic prospect of reviving the kingdom of Outremer. By that time the Byzantine Empire, the last vestige of Imperial Rome, had been reduced to a shadow. The disintegration had begun in 1077 when the Seljuk Turkish Sultan Alp Arsan annihilated the Greek army at Manzikert and took over much of Asia Minor, but it was not the Turks that dealt the decisive blow to the Greek Empire, but their fellow-Christians during the Fourth Crusade of 1205. Deciding that looting the schismatic and heretical Orthodox Greeks was a more profitable enterprise than a hard fight against the infidel, Constantinople was pillaged by the Crusaders. The Greek Emperor was deposed and the Empire fragmented, a French dynasty was enthroned in his place, and Greece itself divided into feudal states. Pope Innocent II, who had launched the Crusade, deplored the destruction but reflected that ‘By the just judgement of God the kingdom of the Greeks is translated from … the disobedient to the faithful, from the schismatic to the Catholic’ and comforted himself with the result of his other crusade, against the Albigensian heretics, which had ended in a very satisfactory general massacre.
Crusading enthusiasm did not entirely expire after the expulsion of the Europeans from Syria, but both the theatre of war and the enemy changed. There was much discussion, which at least clarified ideas. Any expedition across the Mediterranean, whether to Egypt, the centre of Mamluk power, or Syria, the direct route to the Holy Places, would be expensive – some three million florins to support the army for a single year. Such very large sums could be found only by mobilizing Church resources throughout Europe, and by substantial contributions from the laity; much easier said than done, as the fate of the Crusading Tax of 1312–13 proved. It was also assumed that the lead must be taken by France, both as the richest country and as the traditional inspiration of all crusades. But France was embroiled in war with England from 1337, and for some years getting much the worse of it. It was therefore hardly surprising that another six-year tenth, which should have been collected in all Europe from 1336, was raised only in France, and then spent on resisting the English invasion.
The device of economic sanctions, later to become a favourite expedient of governments pressed to be seen to take some action, but unwilling to run the risks of using force, was attempted. A complete embargo on trade with Islam was imposed, and promptly evaded by the same methods still in use today; the use of staging posts where cargoes could be exchanged, the generous grant of exemptions and judicious bribery. The Christian territories of Cyprus and the little kingdom of Armenia, still precariously allowed to exist in the Syrian gulf, were more than willing to cooperate. Vested interests, especially those of the Venetians and Genoese, whose conflict was almost as permanent as that of the French and English, continued to protect their trade with Islam by any means that came to hand – Genoa on one occasion actually subsidizing Turkish pirates to attack the Hospitaller knights. The most significant crusader success, however, was one against their fellow-Christians, the Greeks of Rhodes, captured in 1306 to become the headquarters of the Hospitallers. Together with Cyprus and the unequalled naval strength of the Italian mercantile republics, the Westerners had, if not the command of the sea, at least a consistent superiority. A joint Venetian–Rhodian expedition captured the mainland city of Smyrna in 1344, and held it for nearly sixty years. A much larger expedition, led by King Peter of Cyprus, three years in the preparation, sailed in 1365 with 165 ships from Rhodes to attack Alexandria. The city fell, with an accompanying massacre of appalling violence; Christians, Muslims and Jews who stood between the Crusaders and their loot were cut down. The conquest could not be held, and the city was soon evacuated. Since many of the victims, and their property, were Venetian traders the republic was infuriated; crusades were meant to be profitable to investors, but this was disastrous; and the Genoese, who had prudently held back, reaped the benefit.
There were no successors: future crusades were directed at different targets. In 1370 the Mamluks signed a peace treaty with Cyprus, which signified an end to Christian efforts to regain the Holy Places by force. Arrangements were put in place to allow pilgrims to visit Palestine, which, at least under Muslim rule, have continued ever since. The only crusades attempted were not against Muslims but against fellow-Christians; what remained of the Byzantine Empire offered easier opportunities than did the bellicose Turks. The Latin emperors of Byzantium, who had grabbed the throne in the disgraceful Crusade of 1204, had been replaced by the legitimate Greek Palaeologue dynasty in 1261. In an attempt to restore the Latin claimant and ‘to undertake the pious task of restoring the noble limb severed by the schismatics from the body of our common mother, the Holy Roman Church’, the insatiably ambitious Charles I of Naples obtained papal permission for a crusade against the Greeks. That particular venture was terminated by the Sicilian Vespers and after 1324 diplomacy took the place of aggression as the Byzantine Emperor sent envoys to Avignon to discuss the new Islamic threat, but was equally unproductive. The twenty-year war between Naples and Aragon that followed the Sicilian Vespers was also an official crusade, and a failure. Rather more effective were the numerous crusades – at least nine – authorized by the French popes sequestered at Avignon against their Italian enemies, which eventually succeeded in restoring enough order to enable the popes once again to settle in Rome. It was possible to argue that defence of the Vicar of Christ’s rights was no more than the duty of any Christian, the faithful performance of which assured a place in heaven, but it is unlikely that many crusaders were inspired by such notions: they were paid soldiers operating under professional leadership. With the start of the schism, with two popes preaching the wrath of God against each other, such crusading ideals as had survived were miserably diminished.
And all these efforts, against Byzantium, Egypt, the Levant and political opponents in Europe, siphoned off financial and military resources from the real threat facing Christendom: the advance of the Ottoman Turks in the Balkans.
Saladin, the most famous of the Seljuk Turks, the ‘Saracens’ of the earlier Crusades, and his successors had to cope with the rival Shi’ite Fatimid dynasty in Egypt, later replaced by the Mamluk warrior-state, family conflicts and civil wars, and eventually a crushing defeat in 1243 by the Mongols. It was not until the early years of the fourteenth century that a new Turkish dynasty emerged which, by virtue of its position on the borders of the Dardanelles and the Black Sea, far away from the previous Turkish conquests in the south, was able to mount a Muslim counter-crusade. Two events made 1346 a turning point in crusading history. A French army was decisively beaten by the English at Crécy, putting an end for the moment both to French dreams of European ascendancy and any future alliance of the two countries in a major Crusade. At the other end of Europe the Ottoman Sultan Orkhan led his troops across the sea straits of Gallipoli.
The Osmanli or Ottoman Turks, who were to remain in power until the twentieth century, took their name from Osman (d. 1326) who with his son Orkhan (1326–62) consolidated their tribal bands into settled communities, capturing the neighbouring cities of Nicea – capital of the emperor-in-exile only a century before – and Nicodemia. They remained at heart ghazis, religious warriors dedicated to spreading the Muslim creed, but also realistic pragmatists. Catholic Europe had not paid very much attention to the Ottoman Turks; their own efforts, such as they had been, were against the Mamluks in Egypt and on the Mediterranean coasts, while the Ottomans had been moving in from the east, displacing the Byzantine armies from the southern Black Sea shore. Their appearance before the walls of Constantinople was, oddly enough, by the invitation of Catalan mercenaries who had rebelled against their employer, the Greek Emperor. Nationalist or religious distinctions were decidedly flexible in the fourteenth century. After this demonstration of Turkish fighting qualities the Greek imperial pretender, John Cantacuzene, enlisted Orkhan’s aid in defeating the Serbian King Stefan Dushan in 1350, followed by the Genoese and the Venetians two years later. Following Sultan Orkhan’s death, with the Greeks now dependent on Turkish support and John Palaeologue recognized as sole Byzantine Emperor in 1354 as John V, the new Turkish Sultan, Murad I (1362–89) dramatically extended his nation’s power.
The first actual clash between Turks and Westerners was launched by Pope Urban V and led by Count Amedeo VI of Savoy, a cousin of the Greek Emperor, in 1363. It proved surprisingly successful: Amedeo’s small army turned the Turks out of Gallipoli, which was held for over two years, and after an expedition round to the Black Sea, was able to release his cousin from the Bulgarians, who had captured him after a fruitless journey made by the Emperor to Hungary.
Murad turned his attention to his northern frontiers only in 1369, capturing Adrianople, which became the new Turkish capital of Edirne, thus cutting off Constantinople. Emperor John V acknowledged Murad as his suzerain, guaranteeing not to oppose the Turkish attacks against the fellow-Orthodox kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria, which now formed the frontier between Muslims and Christians. Independent until 1018, thereafter a Greek province for a century and a half, the Bulgarian Empire had survived to become a pressing threat to the by then French Emperors of Byzantium. By 1230 Wallachia, to the north, and Macedonia to the west, both formed part of Bulgaria, but this supremacy did not last under Tatar invasions and civil war.
Bulgarian hegemony was challenged by the Serbians, whose Tsar Stefan IV Dushan (1308–55) ruled over Byzantine, Bulgarian and Hungarian provinces. On his death the Serbian Empire divided and many Serbs rallied to the Turkish armies; Serbs and Greeks both fought on the Ottoman side at the battle of Konya in Asia Minor in 1387. The final defeat of the Serbian and Bosnian armies at Kosovo, on 15 June 1389, a never-to-be-forgotten date for Serbs, on the ‘Field of the Blackbirds’, resulted in the Serbs becoming allies of their conquerors. Stephen Lazaric was allowed to rule Serbia from 1389 as a faithful ally of the Turks, whose European possessions now reached as far north as the Danube. At the start of Murad’s reign his lands could be crossed in three days; at the time of his death it took forty-one days to traverse the Turkish Empire.
The success of the Turks was not due to any technical superiority: much of their armament was supplied by Venetian and Genoese traders, and Constantinople eventually fell to the great guns built by a Hungarian artilleryman. Their main strength lay in light cavalry, capable of quick movement, skilled in using the short bow and, vitally, in unity of command, a quality almost always missing in crusader armies, composed as they were of troops from different nations, with different tactics and, frequently, independently minded leaders. In 1363 the Turks remained essentially the frontier raiders that had swept through Anatolia, with few infantry units and no real sea power, but this was changing. The Ottoman conquests produced many potential recruits who could be trained as infantry – Janissaries – or more disciplined cavalry – Sipahis. Whatever their racial or religious origin the new recruits quickly became loyal Ottomans, regarding themselves as an elite.
In some ways Turkish policies foreshadowed those of the British in India. Once an enemy had been decisively beaten, and its leaders disposed of, the people were incorporated into the Turkish state. Conversion to Islam was a matter of choice, essential to hold senior posts, but otherwise not insisted on. Once converted, the Christian, whatever his origin, gained all the privileges of the Muslim, including freedom from taxation and the right to hold land, together with the duty to serve in the army. To the remaining Christians individual security and the protection of Turkish law were available, and the Orthodox Church was given a recognized place in the state. Compared with the persecution and aggressions of Catholic Europe the Turks were moderate masters and accepted by the newly subject peoples. As the Sikhs had done after the British conquest, the Serbs and Bulgars became enthusiastic warriors in the Turkish army. Seventeen years after their defeat at Kosovo, the Serb cavalry led the final charge that shattered the last great Crusade at Nicopolis.
Murad, who perished, possibly assassinated during the Kosovo battle, was succeeded by his son Bayezid (1389–1403), well named Ilderim, the Thunderbolt, who immediately took the precaution of killing his only brother. Bayezid was initially more concerned with conquests in Asia Minor, but in 1391 he turned his attention to Constantinople, which resulted in the cession of the suburb of Galata, henceforward a Muslim quarter, and the humiliation of several Greek dignitaries, blinded and mutilated on the Sultan’s orders. The city itself was too strongly defended to make an attack worthwhile, and, for the time being, was simply isolated and besieged.
With the effectual end of Greek military power, and the southern Balkans subdued, the Christian front against Islam was formed – moving from east to west – by Wallachia, Hungary and Bosnia: on the southern Adriatic coasts beyond the mountains a number of scattered and impoverished states presented no challenge and little invitation to the Turks. Of the Christian countries Hungary was by far the most powerful, prosperous and technically advanced. Wallachia, under its tenacious Voivode, Mircea (1386–1418), reluctantly relied upon Hungarian support against the Turks (and sometimes vice versa) and had developed a sufficiently effective army to preserve Wallachian independence. Bosnia, ruled by King Tvartko I (1353–91), was an even more reluctant ally of Hungary, both countries competing for that enticing strip of Adriatic coast known as Dalmatia. It needed skilful diplomacy and promises of powerful assistance to persuade these princes to accept Hungarian leadership in an offensive against those formidable Ottoman armies, so soon after the disaster at Kosovo. And Hungary was in the uncertain control of young King Sigismund.
The Last Crusade
The Emperor Charles IV left a large family by his four wives. Four daughters were married off to prominent German families and a fifth to King Richard of England. The eldest son, who ruled Bohemia as Václav IV, was acknowledged by the electors as Charles’s successor in the empire; Sigismund was given the Mark of Brandenburg, and John the adjacent province of Neumarkt. Among their thirteen cousins, King John’s grandchildren, the most prominent was Jost, Margrave of Moravia (1354–1411). The Luxembourg family influence was extended when in 1382 Václav’s sister Anne married the young King Richard, thus uniting the two most powerful enemies of France. It proved to be an unusually happy marriage, but the alliance was never fully operative. This was largely Václav’s own fault, since unlike his predecessor or his younger brother Sigismund, Václav was no soldier, and regarded diplomacy and administration as boring duties, to be avoided whenever possible.
Bohemia had almost exhausted its traditional tax revenue base, and had no method of public taxation such as had been developed in England. What resources Václav could raise were earmarked for the expenses of his projected journey to Rome, where Urban would crown him as Holy Roman Emperor. It was a pursuit of prestige rather than power, and came to nothing. England and the empire were diplomatically united against France, but the alliance produced no practical result, and when Anne died in 1394 the connection dissolved, but one subsequently important result was the increased interchange of ideas between England and Bohemia.
An added provision was made for Sigismund by arranging his marriage to Mary of Hungary, the great-great-granddaughter of Charles I of Naples, who had married a princess of the former ruling Hungarian Arpad family. The long reigns in Hungary of Mary’s grandfather, Charles-Robert (Carobert) (1308–42) and father Louis (1342–82) had firmly established Hungary as a European power. Much larger than present-day Hungary, the medieval kingdom included western Rumania (Transylvania), Croatia, Slovakia and Slovenia and, intermittently, parts of north Bosnia. The Angevin kings introduced new systems of reasonable taxation, encouraged immigration, especially of skilled workers, developed the gold mines, Europe’s largest, and disciplined the perennially rebellious nobility – a very large class, including those esquires classed as ‘quite noble’. Like his contemporary Charles IV in neighbouring Bohemia, Louis of Hungary (usually called the Great) built a new capital at Buda, and founded a university at Pécs; but Hungary’s very mixed population of Magyars, Germans, Slovaks, Wallachians, Tatar Cumans, Poles and Croats was less cohesive than that of Bohemia. In the last twelve years of his reign Louis had also inherited the crown of Poland, although he remained very much an absentee monarch. The Emperor Charles had hoped that Mary and Sigismund would inherit both kingdoms but – after a complex series of dynastic manoeuvres which we may be allowed to skip – the younger daughter Hedwige married Wladyslaw (1388–1436), King of Poland, previously Grand Duke Jogaila ( Jagiello) of Lithuania, who converted his people to Christianity and united the two states.
Like all his Luxembourg forebears Sigismund possessed great personal charm and combined the astuteness of his father Charles with the delight in war games of his grandfather, blind King John, killed at Crécy. His mother, Elisabeth of Pomerania, passed on her notable physical strength, which she liked to demonstrate by bending horseshoes and tearing chain mail apart. As a boy he had lived in Brandenburg; educated by an Italian tutor, with a German mother, speaking French to his father and taking lessons in Latin, he later added Hungarian and Czech to his extraordinary range of languages. To many he was the true inheritor of that authority that his great-grandfather, the Emperor Henry, ‘Alto Arrigo’, had represented.
When King Louis of Hungary died in September 1382 his heir Mary was eleven years old and her bridegroom-to-be Sigismund, at fourteen, was still in Prague under Václav’s tutelage. Having an eleven-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy sharing the throne of a great kingdom was inviting trouble and trouble duly arrived. Václav of Bohemia and his cousins took the opportunity to snatch a few border towns, and King Tvartko of Bosnia reoccupied territories he had previously been obliged to give up. The Queen Mother, Elizabeth of Bosnia, was appointed as regent, but a disputed succession was ensured by the claim of King Charles III of Naples – Charles of Durazzo – who had been brought up in Hungary. For the time being Charles, whose own country was being threatened by his relative Louis of Anjou, was unable to intervene but in 1384 Louis died, freeing Charles to invade Hungary, which he did in September 1385. Mary and Sigismund were hastily married in October, the ceremony being followed by Sigismund’s precipitous and unaccompanied retreat to Prague. Charles was, however, no match for Queen Elizabeth: within forty days of his coronation on 31 December he was kidnapped and mortally wounded by her agents, and Sigismund brought back to be accepted as Prince Consort, but with Elizabeth still very much in charge. She, however, was kidnapped in turn by Neapolitan sympathizers, who declared Charles’s infant son to be the rightful heir. In January 1387, after six months’ imprisonment, the Queen was strangled in front of her fellow-prisoner, Princess Mary. It is probable that Mary never forgave her husband for not preventing this outrage; they lived apart, but Sigismund took over her inheritance.
Faute de mieux, the Hungarian magnates accepted Sigismund first as ‘Leader and Captain of Hungary’ and finally, in March 1387, as King of one of the largest states in Europe. If the territories of the Moldavian and Wallachian Voivodes, which grudgingly admitted the overlordship of Hungary, are included, Sigismund’s lands stretched from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and, together with the other Luxembourg family possessions, very nearly to the Baltic. It was an uneasy inheritance. The powerful Horvati clan still supported the Naples claim, assisted by Tvartko of Bosnia; a Polish invasion supported Mary’s sister Hedwige’s claim to the Hungarian throne and Sigismund was expected to recover the territories previously captured by his kinsmen in Bohemia and Moravia. By a combination of war and diplomacy, the young King contrived to surmount all these difficulties and give his attention to a still graver peril, that of the Turkish advance.
A century of neglect had left Europe defenceless and though enormous sums had been raised to finance crusades, these had usually been against fellow-Christians. Only the Teutonic Knights (and the rug was pulled from under their feet when their Lithuanian enemies accepted Christianity) and the Castilians had consistently fought against infidel foes. The Franco-British contention had removed the two best-organized states from any effective crusading initiative; the schism had destroyed Catholic unity; Orthodox rule was disintegrating. The young King of Hungary was obliged to man the front line of defence, with a very limited chance of support.
His first challenge came from Bayezid. Apart from some raids into Hungary, the Sultan remained preoccupied with other parts of his empire, which he extended from the Black Sea to the Agean coasts, but it seemed obvious that his attention would soon turn northwards, and that the responsibility for meeting an attack must fall primarily on Sigismund. Faced with an urgent necessity for action, Sigismund began his campaigns in 1389, leading armies in person every year to one part or another of the five-hundred-mile frontier. One major success was the recovery of Wallachia in March 1395, which had previously submitted to the Sultan, thus consolidating the Christian frontier on the Danube. Shortly after, however, a Hungarian army was defeated, and Sigismund had to recover the situation by a rapid strike south, clearing the Turks from the northern bank of the Danube. Five years of war had made it clear that Hungary alone could not stem the Ottoman advance, and that if the Ottomans were to be driven back a pan-European effort was essential.
In 1394, responding to an appeal from Sigismund, Burgundy, France and England all sent embassies to Buda, to discuss a possible joint crusade. It was a propitious moment. The two major military powers were, for the time being, at peace: King Richard’s wife, Anne of Bohemia, died in 1394, and a marriage with King Charles of France’s infant daughter, Isabella, was being negotiated. General distrust at the schism had impressed laymen with the urgent necessity of taking some action to protect Christendom, stimulated by the influential writing of Philippe de Mézières. Prompted by his old tutor, King Charles wrote in May 1395 personally to his future son-in-law Richard:
by virtue of this peace between us … our mother, Holy Church, crushed and divided for this long time by the accursed schism, shall be revived in all her glory … then fair brother it will be a fit moment that you and I, for the propitiation of the sins of our ancestors, should undertake a crusade to succour our fellow-Christians, and to liberate the Holy Land … And so through the power of the Cross we shall spread the Holy Catholic Faith throughout all parts of the East, demonstrating the gallantry of the chivalry of England and France and of our other Christian brothers.
The stage seemed to be set for the first major Anglo-French campaign since the days of Richard the Lionheart two centuries before, which might have changed the course of history.
The first signs were encouraging. Both popes supported the Crusade and promised the usual plenary indulgences, but it is doubtful if this was a major incitement to recruitment, beyond lending a certain respectability to all promising adventure: it is always comforting to have the Gods on your side. Sigismund’s Hungarians were in some respects a national army, defending their homeland, but the Westerners were paid for their services, even those, such as the French Marshal Boucicault, who had earlier volunteered to serve Sultan Murad should he be warring against other Saracens, and who took the Cross out of sheer enthusiasm for a famous fight.
Such a frenetic quest for sensation was widespread among the contemporary French aristocracy, taking one form in fashionable extravagance, of which the best known example was the Dance of the Savages in 1392, when the King and five knights dressed as wild men – ‘wodehouses’. When their coats of flax and tar caught fire four were burned to death, and the King was saved only by the Duchess of Berry, who had the presence of mind to douse the flames with her gown. The same restlessness drove knights, long deprived of real battles, to look for adventure abroad. King Henry IV of England, when Earl of Derby, made two campaigns with the Teutonic Knights between 1390–92, at a cost of nearly £10,000 (c. 70,000 florins), during which he entertained lavishly. It was certainly not in the crusading ethos to lose £69 in gambling and give only £12 in charity, as Henry’s accounts show that he did.
On 9 March 1396 England and France agreed a truce intended to last for twenty-eight years, and in October the widowed King Richard married little Queen Isabella of France. A crusade on the old scale now seemed possible, but it was not to be led by the two Western monarchs. King Charles’s enthusiasms were now too often turning to madness, and King Richard was flirting with the unlikely prospect of being elected as Roman Emperor, which would have competed for the limited available funds. For his part King Sigismund well knew that any idea of ‘Liberating the Holy Land’ was entirely unrealistic and that the best that could be hoped for was to check the Turkish advance. The most enthusiastic response came from the French King’s great rival, Philip, Duke of Burgundy; with his influence extending from Boulogne to Basle, and from the North Sea nearly to Lyon, Philip the Bold (le Téméraire) was equal in power to any French monarch. Duke Philip seized the opportunity to win more distinction for Burgundy and to give his twenty-four-year-old son Count John of Nevers a chance to earn his name ‘the Fearless’. Raising the unprecedented sum of 700,000 gold francs – £140,000 – Duke Philip formally launched the project in April 1395. Indicating the failure of the Western countries to understand the dangers on the eastern frontier, the destination of this great enterprise had been left open and it was only in 1394 that Hungary was finally fixed upon.
Accidents of war apart, the expedition’s chances of success were doubtful. Contemporary warfare had shown that, while battles were still decided by the body-to-body clash of men-at-arms, this had to be accompanied by effective shooting. Competent archers, long- or cross-bowmen, if afforded some degree of protection either by natural features or by the pointed stakes used by the English, could harass attacking infantry, forcing them into a vulnerable mass where they could not wield their arms efficiently, and indeed often perished through suffocation; archers were invaluable, too, in covering a retreat. The second essential, then as now, was a unified command, capable of transmitting tactical orders quickly and a disciplined hierarchy that ensured they were obeyed.
It was this factor, quite as much as the unequalled efficiency of the long-bowmen, that had made English forces so successful, and so difficult for a multi-national multi-lingual Crusader army to emulate. A divided command was inevitable when the leadership of the Burgundian forces had to be given, as a matter of form, to the young Count of Nevers, but he was supported by some experienced warriors, the wisest of whom was the fifty-five-year-old Admiral Jean de Vienne, who had fought a number of sea battles against the English. Others, like the Count d’Eu, a relation of the King’s, and Marshal Boucicault, were new editions of the French knights who had been slaughtered at Crécy and Poitiers, and who had learned nothing from their predecessors’ mistakes. Unity cannot have been helped by the fact that Nevers and Sigismund, although of the same age, were so different in rank and personal qualities. Sigismund was an experienced fighter, king of a major country, tall, handsome, charming and generous to a fault, while John was a mere count, who had never seen action, and was small, ugly, mean and personally disagreeable.
Another supporter was the Grand Master of the Order of St John, Philibert de Naillac, who equipped a substantial fleet to act in what was to be a complex campaign, using the Danube to penetrate Turkish territory from the east while the main army approached from the west, with a rendezvous agreed at the river port of Nicopolis.
On 20 April 1396 the Burgundian army began to assemble at Dijon, and was given a four-month advance of pay before moving off. True, they were serving as Crusaders, perhaps appreciating the spiritual benefits, but not willing to risk their lives without due wages. A month later they had reached Vienna, a remarkably quick march, considerably helped by river-borne supplies following the army; Count John took the precaution of borrowing 100,000 ducats from Duke Leopold of Austria. Moving on to Buda, the Hungarian capital, they were met by a German contingent under the Count Palatine, Rupert of Bavaria, with knights from Poland and Bohemia, Sigismund’s Hungarians and the Wallachians of Voivode Mircea, in all perhaps 16,000, a substantial force for the period, but one without a unified command and with widely different views. The French especially were concerned with fame and glory, which had recently been in short supply.
They set out from Buda richly furnished, with green silk tents and the finest clothes; ‘thinking to be fresh and gay, they spared not gold nor silver’, according to Froissart. Few of the Western soldiers – that part of the force was almost all men-at-arms, heavy armoured cavalry, with a few hundred Italian cross-bowmen – had seen any frontier fighting, and that was usually alongside the Teutonic knights, whose arms and tactics were also those of the French and English. The Hungarians and Wallachians had, on the other hand, much painful experience of Turkish warfare, and fought in very similar fashion, with light cavalry and infantry, although the nobles were armed in Western fashion. Sigismund in particular had learned the vital importance of prudence and had the added advantage of knowing the terrain, having secured the north bank of the river at Nicopolis on his campaign the previous year.
The army moved south through Timişoara, with their supplies coming down the Danube past Belgrade. In mid-August they met at Orasova, upstream of the Iron Gates, which blocked navigation. It took six days for the army to cross to the south bank of the river, where they left Hungarian territory for Serbia and Bulgaria, both under Ottoman rule, but populated by Orthodox Christians. Regarding them as schismatics, no better than infidels, the French soldiers began to harass and maltreat the locals. Their behaviour was reproved by the accompanying clergy, but as one priest regretted, ‘They might as well have talked to a deaf ass.’ Downstream of the Iron Gates the army could be supplied from the seagoing galleys of the Knights of St John and the Venetians, an early example of combined operations which would enable the Crusaders to wait at Nicopolis until the Turkish forces appeared. It was a well-prepared strategy, but the subsequent tactics were disastrous.
The Westerners did not understand the nature of the Balkan borders, which were not a defended frontier between two permanently antagonistic powers, but rather an extensive zone of interaction, bursting now and then into conflict, but with considerable periods of reasonably tolerant co-existence. Conventions of acceptable conduct developed, much as they did on the Anglo-Scottish border at the same time. Not appreciating these conventions, attacking indiscriminately and killing their prisoners, the Crusaders brought a new savagery into the border warfare, for which they were soon made to account.
The first engagement was at Vidin, the capital of one of the Bulgarian principalities which had accepted Ottoman rule. Although the gates of the town were opened, the small Turkish garrison was massacred, in defiance of the accepted rules of war; but that did not prevent Count John and three hundred others being knighted on ‘the field of honour’. A few days later the Turkish garrison at Orjahovo was unsuccessfully attacked by a Burgundian force under d’Eu and Boucicault. When Sigismund came up with the main army the garrison attempted to surrender. Sigismund himself would have accepted; this was a town on the borders of his country and he saw no reason for its destruction, but the French insisted on storming the town and massacring all the inhabitants who did not seem to be worth ransoming, the more likely prospects being taken away with the army.
The Crusaders arrived at Nicopolis on 12 September to find that the fleet had reached the city two days previously – an excellent logistical performance. The town itself was strongly fortified and well garrisoned, but the Turkish field army had not yet arrived. Until it came up there was nothing for the Crusaders to do but blockade the town and wait. Waiting is never good for morale, and arguments followed about what to do next, the French demanding action and glory, the Hungarians counselling caution. Against Sigismund’s objections, the French also massacred the prisoners taken at Orjahovo: this was a traditional Crusader practice, but a foolish move in view of what followed.
Sigismund planned a defensive battle. There was plenty of time left to build a strong defensive position, with the river preventing encirclement and the Venetian fleet maintaining communications and supplies. An initial Turkish cavalry attack would be absorbed by a skirmishing screen of Transylvanian and Wallachian light cavalry, well trained in fighting Turks; the main Turkish attack of armoured horse and foot would meet the prepared defences, manned by the heavy infantry, and would finally be crushed by a charge of the elite French, Hungarian and German knights. This eminently sensible plan was supported by the veterans, Admiral Jean de Vienne and the Sire de Coucy, but was angrily opposed by the younger knights. Arguments continued, with mutual exasperation, until contact was made with Bayezid’s force by a Hungarian patrol, two days’ march to the south. On the 24th there was a cavalry clash which the French, under de Coucy, won dramatically and on the following day both armies were ready for action. Sigismund made one last attempt to convince the French to agree to his plan; d’Eu refused to listen, jumped up, seized a banner, and shouted, ‘Forward in the name of God and St George. Today you will see me a valorous knight.’ Froissart, who had spoken to at least one of those present, recorded, ‘It was informed to us that de Coucy said “I would counsel to obey the King of Hungary’s commandment” but that d’Eu “for pride and despite” cried “Obey him who will, for I do not.”’
Bayezid, who had no such problems of divided command, had in fact chosen exactly the same tactics that Sigismund had suggested. One good account of the subsequent battle survives, that of a young Bavarian squire, Johann Schiltberger of Munich. The Crusaders drew up with their backs to the river, the French cavalry, as Nevers demanded, in the front line. True to the methods that had lost them the battle of Crécy fifty years previously, the French knights impetuously charged, scattering the first ranks but floundering to a halt against the main Turkish army. They attempted to retreat but Nevers, according to Schiltberger, ‘found himself surrounded, and more than half his horsemen unhorsed, for the Turks aimed at horses only’. Sigismund had no alternative but to follow as fast as possible, but could not reach the fight soon enough to save the French, who had surrendered. The Hungarian cavalry routed a division of Turkish infantry ‘all trampled on and destroyed’. Schiltberger continued:
… in this engagement a shot killed the horse of my lord Lienhart Richartinger; and I, Hanns Schiltberger, his runner, when I saw this, rode up to him in the crowd and assisted him to mount my own horse, and I then mounted another which belonged to the Turks, and rode back to the other runners. And when all the Turkish foot soldiers were killed, the king [Sigismund] advanced upon another corps which was of horse. When the Turkish king saw the king advance, he was about to fly …
That proved the decisive moment: the Serbian cavalry, held in reserve by Bayezid and led by Stephen Lazaric, charged the Hungarian left wing, scattering Sigismund’s force. Considering that this was only nine years since the fatal battle of Kosovo, both Serbian pragmatism and the efficiency of Turkish methods of converting enemies to allies were convincingly demonstrated.
Schiltberger recorded: ‘My lord Leinhart Richartinger, Werner Pentznawer, Oldřich Kulcher, and little Stainer, all bannerets, were killed in the fight, also many other brave knights and soldiers. Of those who could not cross the water and reach the vessels, a portion were killed; but the larger number were made prisoners.’ Some of the Crusader leaders, including Sigismund and Philibert de Naillac, their retreat covered by a few cross-bowmen, escaped to the ships or to the north bank but perhaps two thousand survived to be taken prisoner. Sigismund, who had probably foreseen the likely outcome once his advice had been neglected, was able to instruct John Garai to return overland and take charge of Hungarian affairs, together with Detricus Bebek and John Pasztor, nominated as Palatine and Chancellor in his absence. Sigismund made his way back by sea, arriving in Buda by February 1397. Infuriated by the evidence of the massacre of the Orjahovo garrison, Bayezid ordered the prisoners to be killed, only excepting the twenty most important, who included Nevers and Boucicault, together with any boys under sixteen, considered by the Turks as too young to die. After perhaps five hundred had been decapitated, the executions were halted. Admiral de Vienne was killed in the fighting, de Coucy and d’Eu died, but the others were well treated by the Turks and returned home safely. One of the surviving prisoners was Johann Schiltberger, who subsequently spent twelve years as an attendant to the Sultan’s court, and travelled extensively, without any attempt being made to force him to convert, before returning in 1427.
On hearing the news of Nicopolis the Emperor Manoel, who succeeded John in 1373, wrote that ‘… life is not worth living after that calamity, the deluge of the whole world’. Manoel, the remnants of whose empire were now in grave peril, appealed for Christian unity. Even after the terrible defeat at Nicopolis, there was some response; generous promises were made, and Marshal Boucicault actually took a small force to help the Byzantine garrison. Realizing that a very much greater effort would be needed, the Marshal escorted the Emperor to Paris in an attempt to recruit more help. Little could be done in Paris with King Charles relapsed into madness, but the Emperor pressed on to London. Manoel was personally impressive, cultivated and diplomatic; although he came as a supplicant, he behaved as the inheritor of a thousand years of Empire, not offering any concessions to the Roman Church, but requiring the help of fellow-Christians against a common threat. With the rediscovery of classical texts interest in Greek culture was reviving, although it was another century before the language was taught in universities.
Manoel was received with every honour; King Henry IV met the Emperor personally on Blackheath, and put him up in the new Eltham Palace, where he spent two months over the Christmas of 1400. The Church official, Adam of Usk, lamented, ‘I thought within myself, what a grievous thing it was that this great Christian prince from the farther east, should perforce be driven by unbelievers to visit the distant islands of the west, to seek aid against them. My God! What dost thou ancient glory of Rome? Shorn is the greatness of thine empire this day.’ He also noted that the Emperor found the English ‘fickle and changeable’, given to wearing extravagant and undignified costumes. Manoel was sent off with good wishes and £2,000 as a contribution to the defence of Christendom – and even that was nothing more than a sum earlier promised by King Richard.
Bayezid strengthened Turkish defences along the river but made no other attempt to follow up his victory; there was still unfinished business to be attended to further south. The pressure on Constantinople was intensified, and expansion in Anatolia resumed, at first successfully. By 1400, however, a new threat had emerged as the old conqueror Timur-i-Leng – Tamerlane – the founder of the Mughal dynasty that was to rule in northern India until the nineteenth century, turned his attention to sweeping the Ottomans out of Anatolia. Moving to counter his attack, Bayezid’s army was defeated outside Ankara in 1402, and the Sultan himself taken prisoner, dying the following year. The succession was disputed among his sons Musa (Moses), Suyleman (Solomon), Isa (Jesus) and Mehmet (Mohamed) – their names showing a typical Turkish disregard for orthodox Islam – the struggle ending with Mehmet ruling in Anatolia and Musa in the Balkans. Musa had succeeded to his share with the help of Serbia and Wallachia, which had regained their independence after Bayezid’s death. When Musa died in 1413, Mehmet was left in control of all the Ottoman Empire, but in Europe Mircea was still reigning in Wallachia, Stephen Lazaric had regained Serbia, the Albanian princes were uniting and Venice had acquired Dalmatia. There was therefore no immediate threat to Hungary, although it was generally understood that it would not be long before the Turkish offensive was renewed, and Emperor Manoel was still holding on in Byzantium. For the time being the pressure on Christendom, Catholic and Orthodox, was relaxed.
After Nicopolis Sigismund’s major foreign policy concern had to be the defence of his frontier. There would be no more major Hungarian sorties, and the buffer states of Serbia, Wallachia and Bosnia would be reinforced. By a combination of persuasion and force Sigismund succeeded; any truces that could be agreed would be welcome. Serbia changed sides and joined Sigismund in 1403, only six years after the Serbs had made the final charge at Nicopolis. King Stephen Lazaric was endowed with large estates in Hungary and, in one of Sigismund’s most effective public relations coups, made a member of the exclusive Order of the Dragon. Inaugurated in 1408, the Order, like that of the Golden Fleece, was initially restricted to sovereign princes, but later expanded to include useful nobles. One of the first new creations in 1431 was Vlad II of Transylvania, whose son Vlad Tepes, also entitled to the cognomen ‘Dracul’ signifying membership of the Order, became famous as Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula.
King Stephen kept a foot in both camps by acknowledging Ottoman suzerainty, and the Serbian frontier in the west remained peaceful. Mircea of Wallachia, although also keeping all his options open, secured that border against the Turks. Bosnia was more difficult and it required three years of campaigns before that country was at least temporarily subdued. Turkish attention was otherwise engaged, but when Mehmet came to power in 1413 war would surely follow.