It was a war that should’ve been an easy triumph for the armies of Transylvania; the Austrians would charge in as they always had and rip apart the Polish army, while the Bohemians dealt with the northern regions of the country, and Transylvania the south. Alas, these things have a habit of never going according to the perfectly laid plans upon which they were decided.
Austria advanced its armies into Poland and sat upon their western provinces, content to let the sieges run their course and advance casually. The armies of Transylvania advanced into the province of Carpathia, and fought their first battle of the war, not against the armies of Poland, but against freshly raised Ukrainian nationalists. The rebels were driven off by Transylvania, and the siege started on the 30th of December, 1422. But as the armies of Transylvania advanced deeper into Polish lands, wary of the large Polish army rumoured to be nearby, a messenger arrived from the Austrians, stating that peace had been settled between the two kingdoms, with Poland, acting as the alliance leader with Venice, agreed to cede the province of Krain to the Austrians. It was a setback, but one that could be overcome. The Bohemians still entangled the Polish army in the north, fighting several inconclusive battles between the two. But the Bohemians signed for peace with the Poles on the 8th of March, 1422, gaining the provinces of Sieradiz, Poznan, and Kalisz, shortly after the province of Ruthenia fell to the Transylvanians on the 20th of February. Transylvania, now facing a nation larger then its own, with vast manpower reserves still untapped, and a more numerous and better trained army, sent a peace feeler to the Polish. Transylvania was willing to drop the war, and sign a white peace with the Poles, but the messenger’s head was returned instead.
It was decidedly barbaric a gesture, but it made the standing of Poland perfectly clear to King Janos. The Poles would fight to the death, rather than surrender to a pissant state such as Transylvania. Transylvania’s vassals were being less than compliant as well, with the army of Wallachia sitting at their home province, and Croatia’s army marching across Transylvania and back again to deal with minor landings by the Danes in Ragusa. Transylvania’s relatively small army was left alone to deal with the Polish army, which was still intact despite having fought the Austrians and Bohemians, and somehow manage to siege enough provinces to work out a favourable peace deal. Thankfully, peasants in the Kingdom of Poland were growing increasingly more militant due to the high war exhaustion of the state, and rebellions in the north of Poland occupied much of the Polish armies time. The cities and forts within the mountainous province of Carpathia had held out like stubborn mules against the Transylvanians, but eventually surrendered after their water supplies were poisoned and food rations grew thin. The province surrendered on the 16th of March, 1423, the same day that Erdély Durazzo married a promising young Transylvanian captain by the name of István Kolozsvár, who oddly enough took the last name of Durazzo, seeing that his house had long been bereft of the proper title of nobility. The marriage would prove to be a very pivotal decision in Transylvania's history.
I.
István Kolozsvár, A.K.A. István Durazzo
King Janos was furious at his daughter, as he had had plans to use her as a tool to improve his standings with the Austrians and tie the two kingdoms together; alas love is a strange thing.
The war was starting to look up. The Poles seemed to be content with keeping their capital safe, allowing the Transylvanians to rampage across the southern parts of Poland. King Janos was still concerned about the possibility of the heathen nations that bordered Transylvania taking the advantage of Transylvania’s occupation with the Polish as a golden opportunity to cripple the state. Double shifts of scouts were ordered to these border regions, to notify the king of any suspicious activity from either the Ottomans or the Golden Horde. The Bohemians, knowing too well the danger of allowing Muslim nations to carve a path into Europe, guaranteed the Kingdom of Transylvania once again, pledging to come to its aid should the heathens threaten to destroy Christendom's gate keeper.
Transylvania also suffered defeats during this time. King Janos, a stubborn mule-headed man, insisted on leading the armies of Transylvania, as was fitting his station. Unfortunately, King Janos was more at home in a church than on a battlefield, and the army suffered greatly for this. Advisors pleaded with the King to step down and let one of Transylvania’s captains lead the army to victory, but the king refused, likely stung by his daughter’s “betrayal” (as he saw it), in marrying a lowly-born military captain. The Polish King, however, was a different beast altogether. Born during the time when his father was campaigning against the Golden Horde, and led the union between Poland and Lithuania, he was forged in battle, and his prowess showed. Even outnumbered, he managed to beat back the Transylvanians time and time again. Advancing to the Polish capital of Krakow, a mixed 4,000 strong Transylvanian army was sent running away like frightened girls by King Zyugmunt of Poland. Transylvania’s armies were being worn down, with fresh men arriving at a trickle to reinforce the armies in Poland. The Bohemians, seeing that the war could possibly turn against the Transylvanians, sent war subsidies to help the small state along, as the last thing they wanted was a resurgent Poland at their doorstep, challenging their authority as the Holy Roman Emperor.
The Polish had finally committed their entire army to deal with the Transylvanian threat. At Ruthenia, the Transylvanian army drove off a host of Polish soldiers, but suffered greatly for it; nearly a thousand Transylvanian men lay dead on the field, and only 400 Polish. Croatia had defeated the Danes in Ragusa, and were on their way to Poland. If the Polish were to win this war, they needed to crush the Transylvanian army quickly, and sue for peace, which Durazzo would be forced to accept with the war exhaustion in Transylvania climbing, and the possibility of a Muslim Jihad against the kingdom growing ever more imminent. The battlefield was decided, the fields that stretched in front of the Polish capital city of Warszawa. The war had drained the resources of both countries, and though King Janos was loathe to do it, he took out a loan from a Venitian merchant house and used the funds to pay for mercenary regiments for this final clash. It was the bloodiest battle that Transylvania had fought yet. It began in early October of 1423, and carried on for nearly a month. At the end of it, the Transylvanian army lay broken on the field, but they lay broken on
their field. The army of Transylvania had traded its men’s lives for the enemies morale, as for every Transylvanian that died, a Pole became disheartened and exhausted with the war. The Polish army eventually withdrew from the field, having lost the will to continue fighting a battle that it seemed would never end, or would end in disaster for the Poles if the Croatian army managed to arrive in time. The Battle of Warszawa would be taught in military academies across the world for the next 300 years, as a prime example of trading a tactical defeat, for a strategic victory. A fresh mercenary regiment arrived from Banat, and was tasked with carrying out the siege of the Polish capital, while the main Transylvanian army retreated to home territory to replenish its numbers.
II.
The Battle of Warszawa, October, 1423
As the Polish retreated back into their homeland, King Janos prepared his army for another round with the Polish army. Fate twists and turns, though, and sometimes it has a way of spinning a web that actually helps, rather than hinders. As the Polish army retreated to Lublin, a peasant revolt sprung up in the province and met the demoralized Polish army. A short battle was fought, and the Poles retreated to Sandomierz, right into the jaws of a group of Transylvanian mercenaries and regulars. The Polsih army finally collapsed, it could fight no more. They were set upon with a vengeance by the mercenaries, who cared not for ransom fees, as the fees would inevitably go to the Transylvanian nobility anyways. They wanted loot and spoils, death and slaughter. And their captain, a Transylvanian commoner raised through the ranks of the army, was happy to oblige them. The Polish army was slaughtered to the last man, as the history books tell us.
The Rout of the Polish 1st, February 22nd, 1424
The war was over for the Polish. With no army, their lands occupied in the north by rebels, and in the south by Transylvania, the country had no choice but to accept the peace deal offered. Poland would cede Ersekujvar and Carpathia, both Hungarian cultured provinces.
The Treaty of Partium, 27th of June, 1424
It was a modest peace deal, but it was the straw that broke the back of Poland; defeat, against the state of Transylvania, who only just recently had become a country of its own. The defeat gnawed at the citizens of Poland, causing indecision in domestic affairs, weakening its armies, and as a result rebellions grew more frequent than the rain. The state of Poland could no longer operate, and in April of 1425, collapsed in on itself, crushing the people of Poland, and cedeing more than half its territory to a resurgent Mazovia.
The Collapse of Poland, April 3rd, 1425
The Kingdom of Transylvania, 1425
I.
Actual portrait of Wladyslaw Warnenczyk (Wladyslaw III), King of Poland from 1424-1444. More information can be found here.
II.
Painting of the Battle of Tours, 732. More information can be found here.