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Hunyadi's Crusade: Part Two
Akinci irregular lassos a Hungarian knight. 15th century Ottoman miniature.
On August 9th 1453, four months after the era defining conquest of Constantinople, an Ottoman army 22,000 strong (one of three corps advancing through the region) arrived in the Serbian village of Pristina. At the head of the army, under the banner of the seven Imperial horse tails [1] was Mehmet II. Despite hearing warnings from his ghazi scouts that John Hunyadi was amassing a powerful Christian army to the north, the Sultan ordered his soldiers to halt. Riding five kilometres into the countryside, Mehmet and a small cadre arrived at an inconspicuous stretch of land known as Kosovo Field. Here they came to prayer and see the place where the Turks had smashed Christian armies in both 1389 and 1448. The latter time it had been Mehmet’s father Murad II who had triumphed over Hunyadi’s Serbian-Hungarian coalition. Mehmet himself had been present on that day and there’s seems to have been some consideration over whether the Sultan would remain in Pristina to meet the Regent on that symbolic battlefield. However after three days the Ottoman camp was packed up and the advance north resumed. The reason was Belgrade. The focus of the entire Ottoman campaign was the ‘White City’, the hub of Hunyadi’s operations in the region and one of the most imposing fortresses in South-eastern Europe. The capture of the city would push Ottoman control to the Danube and snatch Serbia from Hungarian control wholesale, a long sought after goal of the Empire.
Their Christian opponents were well aware of Mehmet’s intent and had no wish to fight a siege against the Ottomans (or more accurately against the cannons of Urban [2]). Hunyadi was confident he could defeat the young Mehmet in open battle, where his acumen for siege craft would be irrelevant. Hunyadi also had considerations of morale and logistics that encouraged a swift confrontation. Due to the opposition of many at King Ladislaus’ court, the Regent had been forced to raise his army almost entirely from his own (admittedly vast) coffers. At its core the army was a conglomeration of mercenary bands including French, German, Italian, Polish, Bohemian, and of course Hungarian troops. Beyond this the bulk of the men had been raised from the peasantry. Encouraged by the religious zeal of Giovanni Capestrano [3] and the endorsement of Rome to fight the heathen, thousands had set off with only scythe or pitchfork to hand. Concerned by the cost of keeping his professional soldiers and maintaining the fervour of Capestrano’s crusaders, Hunyadi left Belgrade to seek out the Sultan. Despite the determination of both commanders to do battle, an outbreak of plague in the region struck without respect for nationality or faith [4]. At the city of Nis the Ottoman besiegers led by Serdar Pasha were so badly hit by disease that Mehmet was forced to send several thousand men to reinforce the assault.
Mehmet II Fatih on the march
Many of the more superstitious of Hunyadi’s men saw the outbreak as a curse on the Crusade’s effort and began to slip away. Only a rousing sermon from Capestrano stopped the trickle of deserters from turning into a flood. Illness and fear the opposing army had not been hit by the plague saw weeks of tentative skirmishes. The arrival of the Despot Durad and his Serbian troops at Hunyadi’s camp finally galvanised the Regent into action. Word had reached of the fall of Jagodina Castle, a key position on the Belgrade Road. Reinforced and now aware of Mehmet’s location, the Hungarians marched along the Sava River to meet their foe. The Ottomans had plenty forewarning of the enemy’s approach. As the crusaders snaked through the Moravian hills their column was a cacophony of gongs, bells, trumpets and hymns. Camp followers cooked food in the wagons of the rear-guard, while others had brought their herds of goats and cattle. The combined stench of sweat, excrement, food and burning incense was said to be overpowering. An Italian mercenary captain in Hunyadi’s service later claimed that the Turks would have smelt the army long before they saw it. Stealth was of no concern to either side at this point. Mehmet had encamped near the town of Milosevo on September 25th, a thousand pennants of red, gold and green fluttering in the autumn breeze for all to see.
The next day the two armies faced each other across a narrow field buttressed on both sides by hills. Of finesse and tactics there is little to say. In the confined space both armies slammed into one another in a grinding maelstrom. Expert use of war wagons allowed the mercenaries to inflict major damage on the Janissary centre. After hours of back and forth, a classic tactic of their nomadic past turned the tide for the Ottomans. Over half of Mehmet’s army at Milosevo was cavalry which he utilised to lure Hunyadi’s inexperienced peasants with feint retreat after feint retreat [5]. Fearful that the bulk of his army would break under sipahi assault, Hunyadi led his knights and mounted men-at-arms, under flanking support from the mercenary infantry, in a charge down the centre, intending to cut the Ottomans in half and force them to break. Sadly for Hunyadi the surprise attack worked too well, the cavalry barging through the Turkish lines while their infantry support struggled to keep up. Isolated, the sipahi struck the knights from all sides with bow and lance, slaughtering the heavily armoured Christians forced into a crush by the encirclement. Durad and hundreds of others fell before Hunyadi and the survivors were able to break out of the scrum.
The Battle of Milosevo - September 26th 1453
Soon the entire Christian army was in retreat towards Belgrade. As Hunyadi’s men shambled north, they came under sporadic attack from Mehmet’s outriders. These raids spurred on the men, ever aware the Turks were in pursuit. The Regent sent couriers ahead begging the Hungarian Diet and King Ladislaus for aid. On the march, the remnants of the Serbian nobility elected Hunyadi Regent of the Despotate and Custodian of Belgrade. It was a hurried ceremony enacted by desperate men. With the first two sons of Durad blind (by Turkish hands) and living in exile, and the third a puppet of the Ottomans, the lords removed any pretence of their independence from Hungary and submitted to Hunyadi’s rule, hoping for a protection in desperate times. Hope of help from the west was removed when word reached the Christians that Stefan, Lord of Zeta and his Montenegrins had been crushed by Yusuf Pasha at the Battle of Cetinje. Despite the grim atmosphere that pervaded Hunyadi’s army, Belgrade was no defenceless hamlet. Protected on two sides by the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers and sporting three lines of defensive walls, it was an imposing obstacle even to Mehmet the Conqueror.
Arriving only days after Hunyadi, the Sultan encircled Belgrade on October 7th and began a week long bombardment of the city, eventually creating several breaches in the outer walls. On October 15th, Mehmet ordered an all-out assault which began at sundown and continued all night. The Ottomans attacked from all sides, with barges ferrying troops across the Sava. The Janissaries led the way, pushing deep into the city. At this most crucial moment of the siege, Hunyadi ordered the defenders to throw tarred wood into the breaches, and then set them alight. Soon a wall of flames separated the Janissaries fighting towards the central keep from their comrades trying to breach through the gaps into the upper town. The fierce battle between the encircled Janissaries and Crusaders inside the upper town was turning in favour of the Christians and the Hungarians managed to beat off the fierce assault from outside the walls. The Janissaries remaining inside the city were thus massacred while the Ottoman troops trying to breach the upper town suffered heavy losses. Mehmet was infuriated at the failure of his elite soldiers and over the coming weeks the walls of Belgrade were torn apart as the attacks continued.
Although the defenders struggled to rebuild the walls, the rubble strewn streets were used to their advantage, turning houses into redoubts and ambushing Turkish soldiers lost in the winding alleys [6]. Mehmet was further hindered by the weather, as rain turned the rivers into raging torrents, allowing Hunyadi to focus his defences on the land wall. By the end of October the snows had begun, and the Regent feared the freezing of the rivers would allow Mehmet to recommence his attacks on the Danube and Sava walls, stretching his tired soldiers to their limit. Following a massive Ottoman assault on November 14th, Capestrano and Hunyadi led the Crusaders in pursuit out of the city. In a moment of hesitation, the warrior-priest urged his peasant followers into a full blown sortie. Hunyadi joined in the counter-attack, and much to the Turks’ horror, the Christians were soon into their camp, the defenders’ religious zeal and desperation overwhelming Mehmet’s tired besiegers. This sudden turn of fortune broke the Ottomans’ spirit and having to be almost physically removed by his generals from the battlefield, the Sultan ordered the retreat. All across Europe, church bells rang in celebration of the ‘Miracle of Belgrade’ [7].
The Ottomans retired back to Jagodina Castle in silence, with Mehmet enveloped in shame and anger. On arriving, he ordered several of his commanders be executed for what he saw as their failure. When word arrived of Bulgarian revolt Mehmet was so introverted Serdar Pasha set off with 3,000 sipahis after several days of inaction from his lord. Despite their surprise victory, Hunyadi’s men were in no state to capitalise. Belgrade was a ruin, the Serbian royal line was dead and the Crusader army spent, the Regent’s coffers all but stripped by the campaign. Despite Capestrano’s pleas the survivors of the peasant contingent began to head north to their farms almost as soon the siege had been lifted. Fears of an Ottoman counter-attack were allayed in December when an envoy arrived in Belgrade, requesting peace. In no place to haggle, Hunyadi was forced to accept the loss of southern Serbia and Montenegro, while Albania by this point had devolved into such petty inter-clan conflict there was no nation to save. When the Regent arrived in Buda on Christmas Eve he was hailed as the vanquisher of the ‘Great Turk’. The nobles who had avoided offering aid now lauded him as he brought young King Ladislaus the crown of Serbia [8]. The Regent might have been the only man in Christendom who did not praise his efforts. Though he had held Mehmet at the Danube, the price paid by his allies had been great. Next time the Ottomans would strike Hungary itself.
The results of the 'victorious' crusade
[1] A hangover from their nomadic days, Ottoman leaders’ seniority was symbolised by the number of horse tails they had on their banner; Seven for the Sultan, five for the Grand Vizier, four for a Pasha commanding the army and three for others important Pashas.
[2] Mehmet’s chief engineer who provided all those lovely great cannon at Constantinople.
[3] Capestrano was an OTL demagogue and ‘warrior-priest’ who helped whip up the Hungarian peasantry in 1456 to join Hunyadi. He even led troops at the Siege of Belgrade that year despite being in his seventies.
[4] Both armies suffered huge attrition penalties before they could do battle in-game.
[5] A much beloved tactic from Saladin to Genghis Khan, Western armies spent centuries getting lured in by this simple trick.
[6] These surprisingly ‘modern’ tactics were used in the real 1456 siege.
[7] This too is based on the 1456 siege.
[8] With no strong contender for the Despotate and Hunyadi unwilling to take the crown, he urged the Serb lords to elect Ladislaus, to give them security and entrench Hungarian control of Belgrade.