Though nominally a crusade, this battle was effectively just another episode in the ongoing Turco-Hungarian wars that persisted throughout the 15th century. With their natural line of retreat cut by the Turks, the Christian army, comprised largely of Poles and Hungarians, under Hunyadi, King Vladislav III and Cardinal Cesarini, decided to give battle to the superior Ottoman forces. According to an eye-witness the Christians numbered barely 16,000 men (another source even says 12,000), plus 4,000 Wallachians and some artillery. They drew up with the king and his Polish bodyguard and gentry in the centre, with the Hungarians and French crusaders on the right and the Wallachians, under Vlad Dracul, on the left. In addition a wagon-fortress of 150 wagons was set up in the rear, and more Wallachians formed a mobile reserve. The Ottomans, commanded by Sultan Murad II, are said to have numbered 60,000 men, and may have fielded some artillery of their own.
At about 9 a. m., after both armies had faced each other unmoving for some 3 hours, the Ottoman skirmishers (6,000 akinjis and ’azabs) finally advanced and began a concerted attack, Anatolian feudal cavalry simultaneously attacking the Christian right wing while it was thus engaged frontally. But for a few hundred cavalry the Christian right was routed, though Vladislav and Hunyadi led a desperate counter-attack which drove back the Anatolians, killing 3,000 including their leader, the beylerbey Guvegu Karaca, upon whose death they broke. The Christian left wing, meanwhile, was being similarly hard-pressed by Rumelian feudal horse, but here too the tide of battle was changed by a counter-attack led by Hunyadi, who had switched his division back from the right flank while King Vladislav reoccupied the centre with his personal troops, 2 squadrons of heavy cavalry comprised of all the Poles and a few Hungarians.
Demoralised by the flight of the Anatolians, the Rumelians and akinjis too began to give way, only the Janissaries, behind a ditch and rampart in the centre, still holding firm. However, goaded by his Polish knights’ jealousy of Hunyadi’s exploits, Vladislav chose this moment to launch a rash attack against the Janissaries with his 500 cavalry (Piccolomini actually reckoned that there were ‘scarcely’ 300).
Although he met with initial success, once fully engaged in hand-to-hand combat his small force was surrounded by the Ottoman infantry, who concentrated on bringing down the Poles’ horses. Vladislav himself was killed by a Janissary when his own horse was killed under him, his head then being chopped off and impaled on a spear to be displayed all over the battlefield, upon which the Christian army broke and fled, while the remaining Ottomans withdrew to their own camp in good order. The Christians had lost
10,000 men, Cesarini too being among them, while the Turks had lost somewhat more, sources claiming up to 30-40,000. Certainly Murad is supposed to have said after the battle, ‘May Allah never grant me another such victory.’
World History
