VARNA Great Battles Varna
Christian crusaders faced obliteration at the hands of the Ottoman Sultan Murad II
On the morning of 10 November, 1444, a strong wind blew into the faces of the Crusaders manning a crescent-shaped line 3.2 kilometres (two miles) west of the Black Sea port of Varna. Suddenly thousands of Turkish foot soldiers swept down from the forested hills to the north. While Ottoman archers armed with powerful composite bows shot flights of arrows, other warriors armed with swords, axes and maces rushed towards the Crusaders’ right flank. Mounted Crusaders in the front line withdrew to a safe distance to avoid the volleys of lethal arrows. In so doing, they exposed a line of war wagons parked endto-end that guarded the crusader camp.
As the Turkish foot soldiers rushed headlong towards the wagons, Hungarian crossbowmen and hand gunners fired into the thick mass of enemy soldiers through holes in the armoured carts. Hungarian foot soldiers wielding flails and halberds hacked and slashed at the Turks who tried to pierce the formidable barrier. The attackers managed to topple several of the wagons and penetrate the barrier, but a furious counterattack drove them back.
The Turks entrusted with turning the Crusaders’ right flank had failed to achieve their objective. From that point forward, Ottoman Sultan Murad II would have to rely on the superior numbers of his light cavalry, known as sipahis, to defeat King Władysław’s heavily armoured knights. It would be a battle to the death, as the Crusaders had their backs to the Black Sea and no easy path of retreat should they lose the battle.
Rise of the Ottomans
By the time of the Crusade of Varna in the mid15th century, the Ottoman Turks were slowly but steadily advancing north through the Balkan Peninsula towards the Kingdom of Hungary. Founded by Osman I in 1299, the Islamic Ottoman Sultanate took root in north-western Anatolia. By the close of the 14th century the Ottomans had displaced the Byzantine Greeks as the dominant power in the region. Although at the time of the Varna Crusade the Byzantine Empire had not yet been ground completely into the dust under the sultan’s heel, it was on the brink of annihilation. The rump Byzantine Empire of the 1440s consisted of only the walled city of Constantinople and the Despotate of Morea (Peloponnese). At the outset of his reign Murad II had besieged Constantinople in 1422, but an insurrection in the east had forced him to leave the city.
Nearly 50 years earlier Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos sent envoys to Western Europe to beseech the Papacy and Latin nobility to send troops to preserve the empire. The result was the Nicopolis Crusade in which a Franco-hungarian army led by Hungarian King
Sigismund was soundly defeated in 1396 by Sultan Bayezid I’s formidable army in the rolling hills south of the Bulgarian stronghold of Nicopolis. If the Christians learned anything from their defeat, it was that the Ottomans possessed a professional army that rivalled any in Christendom.
By the mid-15th century another great crusade was in the offing. On 1 January 1443 Pope Eugenius IV called on the Catholic faithful to participate in a new crusade against the Ottomans. Its purpose was to drive the Turks from the Balkans, thereby loosening their grip on Constantinople. The Christians would have to fight their way 700 kilometres (435 miles) from Belgrade to Edirne (Adrianople), which was the principal Ottoman base in Rumelia, the European portion of the Ottoman Sultanate. Because England and France were embroiled in the Hundred Years’ War it largely fell to the Catholic Hungarians to oppose the Ottomans.
“THE OFFER OF A TRUCE WAS GENUINE, AS MURAD HAD GROWN WEARY OF WARFARE”
Crusader recruiting drive
Serbia and Wallachia had been puppet states of the Ottoman Sultanate since 1389 and 1395 respectively. In order for the Crusaders to field a sizeable army against the Ottomans, it was necessary that they received the military support of both vassal states, whose leaders seemed willing to go to war to be free from the Ottoman yoke. The senior military commander of the Hungarian forces at the time was János Hunyadi, the voivode (governor) of Transylvania, which was part of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Pope Eugenius’s right-hand man when it came to matters involving military operations against the Ottomans was Cardinal Julian Cesarini. The papal legate played a crucial role by resolving political disputes behind the scenes that threatened to derail cooperation among the Christian kingdoms involved in countering the Ottoman menace. A succession crisis occurred in Hungary in 1439 when there was no male heir to the throne. The Hungarian aristocracy gave the throne to the youthful King Władysław III of Poland in March 1440 with the proviso that he go to war against the Ottomans.
King Władysław and Hunyadi embarked on a limited campaign against the Ottomans in late 1443. The objective of the Long Campaign, as it became known, was to roll back the Ottoman conquests in Serbia made at the expense of beleaguered Serbian Despot George Brankovic. The 25,000 Christian troops drove the Ottomans from Serbia, but the attack ground to a halt in Sofia, Bulgaria.
In the aftermath of the campaign, Sultan Murad adopted new weapons used by the Europeans so that his army would be able to compete evenly against the Christians in future wars. He created an artillery train with heavy bombards and lighter cannon and also equipped a significant number of his janissaries with ‘hand-cannons’, as primitive hand guns were called in the 15th century.
Offer of peace
Murad appealed directly to King Władysław for a ten-year truce. The offer of a truce was genuine, as Murad had grown weary of warfare and intended to abdicate in favour of his 12-yearold son Mehmet II. A continuation of the war meant that Serbia and Transylvania were likely to lose territory if the Ottomans were victorious. Brankovic was keen on peace, for he not only stood to lose territory but his two sons were also Murad’s prisoners.
The proposal came at a time when there was heated debate about whether to resume operations against the Ottomans in Rumelia (the Balkans). The Papacy argued for a combined land-sea operation by which the Crusaders would capture the stronghold of Varna on the Black Sea. The Papal fleet, which comprised galleys from the Papacy, Venice, Burgundy and Ragusa, totalled 30 galleys. Genoan galleys were conspicuously absent from the Papal fleet, as the Genoese did not want to jeopardise their close mercantile relationship with the Ottomans.
The crusader fleet’s first objective was to establish a blockade of the Dardanelles that would prevent Murad from ferrying his royal army from Anatolia to Rumelia. Afterwards, it was to support the operations of the crusader army by taking up station in the Black Sea. It was a plan that was fraught with problems, considering the difficulties that medieval armies had with synchronising their movements over long distances.
Władysław vacillated between whether to renew military operations against the Ottoman Sultanate or whether to accept the peace
treaty. His behaviour throughout the spring and summer of 1444 caused substantial confusion and bedevilled his subjects and allies alike. The preparations for a crusade against Ottoman Rumelia proceeded unabated despite negotiations between Murad and Władysław. Murad, who wanted to end the war in Rumelia in order to abdicate his throne, offered to cease military operations against Hungary and Serbia for ten years, guarantee the independence of Bosnia and northern Serbia, release Brankovic’s two sons who were held in Ottoman captivity and pay 100,000 gold florins in reparations. Władysław’s emissaries and Murad agreed to the final terms of the Treaty of Szeged on 12 June 1443 in Adrianople.
Sultan Murad departed for Anatolia in mid-july in order to transfer the throne to his young son. He had grown weary of the dayto-day challenges of ruling the sultanate, as well as leading its army in battle. But Murad had no sooner gone into retirement than he was recalled to power in September to lead Ottoman forces against the Crusaders.
Broken oath
Władysław swore an oath on 1 August to honour the treaty, and then three days later renounced it. Cesarini absolved him of his oaths, stating he did not have to honour an oath to an infidel. In swearing the oath, Władysław sought to ensure that Murad left Rumelia so that it would be defended by an under-strength army. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, but Murad soon discovered the deception.
The Ottoman sultans were masters of dividing and weakening their enemies through truces and treaties. When Władysław reneged on the truce, Murad’s emissaries quickly arranged a separate treaty that same month with Serbian Despot George Brankovic.
In return for remaining neutral in future Christian wars against the Ottomans, Brankovic’s sons were released from captivity and all of his lands in northern Serbia were returned to him. Władysław was something of a neophyte when it came to complex political negotiations and did not realise that a separate peace for Serbia would deprive him of 8,000 Serbian troops in the upcoming crusade.
The Papal fleet arrived at Constantinople in July. Although they made contact with the Byzantine Greeks, they received very few updates of the progress of the crusade. The Papal and Venetian vessels blockaded the Dardanelles while the Burgundian and Ragusan vessels took up station in the Bosphorus. As the months passed by the crews grew weary of the blockade. Nevertheless, they continued maintaining their blockade while anxiously awaiting word that the army had marched. In mid-september they learned that rumours of a peace deal were false when Cardinal Cesarini sent word to the Byzantine Emperor informing him that the Crusaders would soon advance.
The arrival of a fleet of galleys from various Latin powers with hostile intentions was further proof to Sultan Murad and his generals that the Hungarians intended to renew military operations against them. What’s more, it
“OTTOMAN SULTANS WERE MASTERS OF DIVIDING AND WEAKENING THEIR ENEMIES”