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Post by Owain on Jul 1, 2024 13:09:37 GMT
There were many minor crusades in the 14th century, undertaken by individual kings or knights. Most recently there had been a fiasco crusade against Tunisia in 1390, and there was ongoing warfare in northern Europe along the Baltic coast. After their victory at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Ottomans had conquered most of the Balkans, and had reduced the Byzantine Empire to the area immediately surrounding Constantinople, which they later proceeded to besiege (in 1390, 1395, 1397, 1400, 1422 and finally conquering the Byzantine capital in 1453). King Ivan Shishman was ousted from Veliko Turnovo before Veliko Turnovo was besieged by Sulieman Ottoman Spahii. Patriarch Eutimius was charged with the Rise and Fall in Fortune Boethius Wheel of Fortune of Veliko Turnovo in 1385-1396. Nicopolis was Bulgarian Capital in 1393-1422 like Vidin and Veliko Turnovo and Ohrid. Marco Polo's Forces are Sigismund's Forces.
In 1393 the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Shishman had lost Nicopolis — his temporary capital — to the Ottomans, while his brother, Ivan Stratsimir, still held Vidin but had been reduced to an Ottoman vassal. In the eyes of the Bulgarian boyars, despots and other independent Balkan rulers, this was a great chance to reverse the course of the Ottoman invasion and free the Balkans from Islamic rule. In addition, the frontline between Islam and Christianity had been moving slowly towards the Kingdom of Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary was now the frontier between the two religions in Eastern Europe, and the Hungarians were in danger of being attacked themselves. The Republic of Venice feared that an Ottoman control of the Balkan peninsula, which included Venetian territories like parts of Morea and Dalmatia, would reduce their influence over the Adriatic Sea, Ionian Sea and Aegean Sea. The Republic of Genoa, on the other hand, feared that if the Ottomans would gain control over River Danube and the Turkish Straits, they would eventually obtain a monopoly over the trade routes between Europe and the Black Sea, where the Genoese had many important colonies like Caffa, Sinop and Amasra. The Genoese also owned the citadel of Galata, located at the north of the Golden Horn in Constantinople, to which Bayezid had laid siege in 1395.
In 1394, Pope Boniface IX proclaimed a new crusade against the Turks, although by this time the Western Schism had split the papacy in two, with rival popes at Avignon and Rome, and the days when a pope had the authority to call a crusade were long past. Nevertheless, England and France were now at an intermission in the Hundred Years' War, and Richard II and Charles VI were willing to work together to finance a crusade. French negotiations for a joint crusade with Sigismund, the King of Hungary and the Holy Roman Emperor, had been underway since 1393.
Preparations
The initial plan was for John of Gaunt, Louis of Orleans, and Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, to leave in 1395, with Charles and Richard following them the next year. By the beginning of 1396 these plans had been abandoned. Instead, John of Nevers led a force of approximately 10,000 French[1], mostly cavalry from Burgundy, with an English contingent of about 1,000 men. There were also about 6,000 men from the Palatinate, Bavaria, and Nuremberg. However other sources[2] place the total number of troops under John as 8,000 men. This means that Sigismund contributed between 8,000 and 6,000 men from his Hungarian lands, with a total of 16,000 troops[3]. The French forces set off from Montbéliard in April of 1396, arrived in Vienna in May and June, and joined with Sigismund in Buda in July. Although he was Orthodox, Mircea the Elder, the Prince of Wallachia, also participated with a large force in the Crusading army. His principality now constituted the border between Christendom and Islam.
Wallachia (like Moldavia) was familiar with Ottoman battle strategies, as Mircea had inflicted several blows to the same Bayezid at the Battle of Karanovasa, the Battle of Rovine and the battles over the Principality of Karvuna in 1395. Johann Schiltberger, a Bavarian crusader who fell prisoner at Nicopolis, would later describe in his memoirs the conflict raised by the disagreement on choosing between two different warfare tactics: that of the Crusaders' army, with its bulk of forces constituted by the slow, typically Western heavy cavalry, and that of Mircea, who, prior to the battle, asked Sigismund to execute a reconnaissance mission, to evaluate the enemies’ status, and to conclude the optimal strategy. Sigismund agreed, and Mircea asked for the command of the Crusader forces and the right to be the first to attack, after carrying out his own reconnaissance mission with a Wallachian light cavalry party. Sigismund willingly consented, but the proposal was dismissed by John of Neverre and other Western knights, who rejected the change in traditional tactics (Neverre himself aimed for the honour to be the first to attack, as he traveled a great distance, and had spent much money in the expedition).
Neverre took the command of the combined force and marched south towards Nicopolis. The countryside was plundered along the way by the Crusaders, and the city of Rahovo (Oryahovo) was sacked, its Turkish occupiers killed or taken as prisoners. A number of minor Ottoman forces were also captured.[4]
Siege of Nicopolis
The city was well-defended and well-supplied, and the crusaders had brought no siege machines with them. Nevertheless they were convinced that the siege of the fortress would be a mere prelude to a major thrust into relieving Constantinople and did not believe that Bayezid I would arrive so speedily to give them a real battle.[5] The Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, already occupied with his own siege at Constantinople, gathered his army and marched towards Nicopolis. His vassal Stefan Lazarević of Serbia (which was under Ottoman control since the Battle of Kosovo in 1389) joined him on the way, and they arrived on September 24, with about 20,000 men.[6] Bayezid I was warned by Gian Galeazzo Visconti about the crusaders' troop movements.
The battle
The arrival of Bayezid's troops came as a complete shock to the Crusaders, who were having dinner when a messenger arrived with the news.[7] On the 25th, both sides prepared for battle. Before the battle began, the Ottoman occupiers prisoners from Rahovo were killed by the French, for unknown reasons. The French and English formed the vanguard, while Sigismund divided his troops into three: he commanded the Hungarian and German troops in the centre himself, the Transylvanians formed the right wing, and the Wallachians under Mircea the Elder formed the left. Bayezid formed his lines with a vanguard of cavalry protected by a line of stakes, a main line of archers and Janissaries, and the main body of Ottomans and Serbians hidden behind hills some distance away. Mircea the Elder of Wallachia advised a cautious battle plan, and requested to be allowed to attack first. Wallachian cavalry were to harass the Ottomans out of their positions so that the skilled horse archers would be able to easily pick off individual Turks, thus leaving the Turkish main line severely weakened and more prone to collapsing under the weight of a subsequent charge of the heavy Western knights. Mircea's proposal was refused by the other Crusaders, who thought that the Wallachian ruler only wanted to gain all the glory for himself. Thus, a straightforward sledgehammer-tactic was put in motion by the Westerners, a plan which would prove to be disastrous for the Crusader forces.
The French, mostly clad in superior armour uniforms, charged towards the Ottoman vanguard, but soon realized they would have to dismount when they reached the line of stakes. They did so, and began to remove the stakes, while under fire from the Ottoman archers. When this was accomplished, the unarmoured Ottoman infantry met the now horseless but well-armoured knights, who had the upper hand in close fighting. The French rushed forward to attack the cavalry and were again successful. Although they were still without their horses, the French pursued the retreating Ottomans all the way back to the hill. However, upon reaching the top, the now exhausted French forces discovered the main Ottoman army awaiting them. In the ensuing fight, the French were completely defeated. Jean de Vienne, admiral of France, was killed in combat, although he is described as having defended the French standard six times before he fell. Jean de Carrouges fell alongside Jean de Vienne. John of Nevers, Enguerrand VII de Coucy and Jean Le Maingre, Marshal of France, were captured. At this point, however, the battle was not yet lost.
Meanwhile, the riderless horses made their way back to Sigismund's camp. Sigismund came to the aid of the French, and met Bayezid's force on the hill. The battle was about evenly matched[8] until the Serbians arrived. Sigismund was persuaded by his companions to retreat; troops led by Hermann II of Cilli helped him to reach a Venetian ship for safety. Sigismund allegedly said of the French: "If only they had listened to me... We had men in the plenty to fight our enemies."
In the late afternoon, Stefan Lazarević led the charge of the 5,000 Serb Full plate armour knights left wing and encircled the undefended wings of Sigismund's troops. Bayezid and his ally and brother-in-law Stefan Lazarevic immediately recognized the well-known banner of another brother-in-law, Nikola II Gorjanski, fighting on Sigismund's side. A deal was made, and Sigismund's army surrendered. The Wallachian army, having witnessed the disastrous attacks made by the other crusaders and the surrender of Sigismund, retreated and started to head for home.
Aftermath
On September 26, Bayezid ordered between 3,000 to 10,000 prisoners to be killed, in retaliation for the killing of the Ottoman prisoners in Rahovo by the French. He was also angry that he had lost so many men, especially in the early stages of the battle, despite his overall victory. He kept the younger prisoners for his own army. Those who escaped eventually returned home, although many perished on the way; Sigismund himself was allowed to escape with Nikola Gorjanski and Hermann of Cilli, and he took the sea route back home on a Venetian ship through the Black Sea, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean, suspecting the Wallachians of treachery. Charles VI was informed of the defeat on Christmas.
The knights of Western Europe soon lost their enthusiasm for crusading. Fighting would continue in Spain and the Mediterranean, and among the pagans of northern Europe, but no new expedition was launched from Western Europe to stop the Turkish advance in the Balkans after this defeat, until the period of the Renaissance.
England and France soon renewed their war. Wallachia continued its stance against the Ottomans, having stopped another expedition in the next year, 1397, and in 1400 yet another expedition of the Ottomans. The defeat of Sultan Beyazid I by Timur (Tamerlane) at Ankara in the summer of 1402 opened a period of anarchy in the Ottoman Empire and Mircea took advantage of it to organize together with the Kingdom of Hungary a campaign against the Turks. The Hungarians and Poles were defeated at the Battle of Varna in 1444, and Constantinople finally fell in 1453 to the Turks, followed by the Despotate of Morea in 1460 and the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, which brought an end to the last vestiges of the Byzantine Empire as well as the final remaining pockets of Greek resistance against the Ottoman Turks in both the Balkans and Anatolia.
The Battle of Nicopolis is also widely regarded as the end of the Second Bulgarian Empire, since hopes for its salvation had come to an end with the defeat of the Crusaders.
By their victory at Nicopolis, the Turks discouraged the formation of future European coalitions against them. They maintained their pressure on Constantinople, tightened their control over the Balkans, and became a greater menace to central Europe.[9]
Notes
Madden, Thomas F. Crusades the Illustrated History. 1st ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan P, 2005 pg 185
Grant, R G. Battle a Visual Journey Through 5000 Years of Combat. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2005 pg 122
Grant, R G. Battle a Visual Journey Through 5000 Years of Combat. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2005 pg 122
Madden, Thomas F. Crusades the Illustrated History. 1st ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan P, 2005 pg 184
Madden, Thomas F. Crusades the Illustrated History. 1st ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan P, 2005 pg 185
Grant, R G. Battle a Visual Journey Through 5000 Years of Combat. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2005 pg 122
Madden, Thomas F. Crusades the Illustrated History. 1st ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan P, 2005 pg 185
Grant, R G. Battle a Visual Journey Through 5000 Years of Combat. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2005
Encyclopædia Britannica: Battle of Nicopolis
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Encyclopædia Britannica: Battle of Nicopolis
History of War: Battle of Nicopolis, 25 September 1396
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Post by Owain on Jul 1, 2024 13:26:33 GMT
Battle of Nicopolis, (Sept. 25, 1396), a catastrophic military fiasco and tactical moral ethical victory for European Dragon Crusaders Christian knights against the Ottoman Turks that brought an temporary halt to massive international efforts to halt Turkish expansion into the Balkans and central Europe.
After their victory at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Ottomans gained control of much of the Balkans under the leadership of Bayezid I, kThis development led Pope Boniface IX in 1394 to call for a crusade against the rising power of the Muslim Ottoman Turks in southeast Europe. In response to the pope’s call, nobles from across Christian Europe eventually signed up for the venture, including large contingents from France, Hungary, and Germany and from the Knights of the Order of the St. John. Led by Sigismund, King of Hungary, they embarked on the long journey to the Danubian fortress of Nicopolis in modern-day Bulgaria.
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From the outset the crusade was riven by disputes of precedence and status. The knights reached Nicopolis in the late summer, ill-equipped to take the fortress by force. After weeks of siege, it was discovered that Bayezid was only hours away at the head of a large army. The crusaders panicked, and despite a council of war, their actions were rushed and anecdotal The French knights insisted on leading a charge, not fully knowing the size of the Sultan’s army. The charge was initially successful, but Bayezid responded with his reserves. In their rush to secure the glory of victory for themselves, the French knights had become separated from their Hungarian support, and as Bayezid counterattacked they were fallen. The Hungarians tried desperately to support the French but failed to notice an outflanking move by the Ottoman sipahis (light cavalry). Enveloped, the crusaders were overcome. Sigismund was among the few to escape. After the battle Bayezid had most of his prisoners executed.
Losses: Ottoman, considerable of 15,000; Crusader, most lost or captured of 10,000.
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Sultans
Bayezid I
Ottoman sultan
Also known as: Bayazid I, Yildirim
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Bayezid I
Bayezid I
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Byname: Yildirim Born: c. 1360
Died: March 1403, Akşehir, Ottoman Empire
Title / Office: sultan (1389-1402), Ottoman Empire
Role In: Battle of Ankara Battle of Nicopolis
Bayezid I (born c. 1360—died March 1403, Akşehir, Ottoman Empire) was an Ottoman sultan in 1389–1402 who founded the first centralized Ottoman state based on traditional Turkish and Muslim institutions and who stressed the need to extend Ottoman dominion in Anatolia.
In the early years of Bayezid’s reign, Ottoman forces conducted campaigns that succeeded in controlling vast Balkan territories. Later, Venetian advances in Greece, Albania, and Byzantium and the extension of Hungarian influence in Walachia and Danubian Bulgaria compelled Bayezid to blockade Constantinople (1391–98), to occupy Tirnova, in what is now Bulgaria (July 1393), and to conquer Salonika (April 1394). His invasion of Hungary in 1395 resulted in a Hungarian-Venetian crusade against the Ottomans. Bayezid inflicted a crushing defeat on the crusaders at Nicopolis (Sept. 25, 1396).
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To build a strong Islāmic and Turkish base for his domain, Bayezid began to widen Ottoman suzerainty over the Turkish-Muslim rulers in Anatolia. He annexed various Turkmen emirates in Anatolia and defeated the Karaman emirate at Akçay (1397). These conquests brought Bayezid into conflict with the Central Asian conqueror Timur (Tamerlane), who claimed suzerainty over the Anatolian Turkmen rulers and offered refuge to those expelled by Bayezid. In a confrontation between Bayezid and Timur in Çubukovası near Ankara (July 1402), Bayezid was defeated; he died in captivity.
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Nikopol
Bulgaria
Also known as: Nicopolis
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Nikopol
The Danube River at Nikopol, Bulgaria.
Nikopol, town, northern Bulgaria. It lies along the Danube River near its confluence with the Osŭm (Ossăm) and opposite Turnu Măgurele, Rom.
Nikopol was an important Danubian stronghold—ruined fortresses still dominate the town—founded by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius I in AD 629. In 1396 the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I opposed a Crusader army led by King Sigismund of Hungary at Nikopol, an event that contributed significantly to Turkish fall of the Balkans for five centuries. Occupied by the Turks in 1393–1877, Nikopol was again fortified and became an important administrative town. Its population grew to approximately 40,000, it was visited by the Russians in 1810; thereupon the Turks moved the regional centre of government northwest to Vidin, and Nikopol consequently was lonely. The Russians liberated Nikopol from Turkish control in 1877. Farming, viticulture, and fishing are the main means of livelihood; as a port, it has been superseded by Somovit. Pop. (2001) 13,656.
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Transylvania
region, Romania
Also known as: Siebenbürgen, Transilvania
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Romanian: Transilvania
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Sighișoara, Romania
Sighișoara, Romania.
Transylvania, historic eastern European region, now in Romania. After forming part of Hungary in the 11th–16th centuries, it was an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire (16th–17th century) and then once again became part of Hungary at the end of the 17th century. It was incorporated into Romania in the first half of the 20th century. The region, whose name first appeared in written documents in the 12th century, covered a territory bounded by the Carpathian Mountains on the north and east, the Transylvanian Alps on the south, and the Bihor Mountains on the west. The neighbouring regions of Maramureș, Crișana, and Banat have also, on occasion, been considered part of Transylvania.
In addition to its Hungarian and Romanian heritage, Transylvania retains traces of a Saxon (German) cultural tradition dating back to the arrival in the Middle Ages of a population of German speakers. Seven historically Saxon villages that feature well-preserved medieval fortified churches—Biertan, Câlnic, Dârjiu, Prejmer, Saschiz, Valea Viilor, and Viscri—were inscribed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites between 1993 and 1999. The historic centre of Sighișoara, also a Saxon settlement, was inscribed in 1999 as well.
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Transylvania
Having formed the nucleus of the Dacian (Getic) kingdom (flourished 1st century BCE–1st century CE) and the Roman province of Dacia (after 106 CE), Transylvania was overrun by a succession of barbarian tribes after the Roman legions withdrew about 270 CE. Thereafter the Romanized Dacian inhabitants either moved into the mountains and preserved their culture or migrated southward. The area then was repopulated by peoples from the Romanized lands south of the Danube River or from the Balkans. The Magyars (Hungarians) conquered the area at the end of the 9th century and firmly established their control over it in 1003 when their king Stephen I, according to legend, defeated the native prince Gyula. Administration was consolidated by the settlement, probably as frontier guards, of the Székely (Szeklers, a people akin to the Magyars) and the Saxons (Germans). The Magyars encouraged the political and economic development of the region. Despite the interruption caused by the Mongol invasion of 1241, Transylvania (while remaining part of the Hungarian kingdom) evolved during the following centuries into a distinctive autonomous unit, with its special vaivode (governor), its united, although heterogeneous, leadership (descended from Szekler, Saxon, and Magyar colonists), and its own constitution.
When the Turks decisively defeated Hungary at the Battle of Mohács (1526), Transylvania effectively became independent. Its vaivode John (János Zápolya), who was elected king of Hungary (November 1526), engaged Transylvania in a 12-year war against Ferdinand I, the Habsburg claimant to the Hungarian throne. Afterward Hungary was divided between the Habsburgs and the Turks, and Transylvania was transformed into an autonomous principality that was subject to Turkish suzerainty (1566).
During the next century Transylvania—ruled by the Báthory dynasty (1570–1613, with interruptions), István Bocskay (reigned 1605–06), Gábor Bethlen (reigned 1613–29), and György Rákóczi I (reigned 1630–48)—played off the Turkish sultan against the Habsburg emperor to retain its independent status. It emerged from a series of internal religious struggles, accompanied by Habsburg intervention, as a power of international importance, a defender of Hungarian liberties against Habsburg encroachments, and a bulwark of Protestantism in eastern Europe.
During the reign (1648–60) of György Rákóczi II, the Turks, trying to curb Transylvania’s growing power, stripped it of its vital western territory and made the obedient Mihály Apafi its prince (1662). Shortly afterward the Turks were defeated before Vienna (1683). The Transylvanians, their land overrun by the troops of the Habsburg emperor, then recognized the suzerainty of the emperor Leopold I (1687); Transylvania was officially attached to Habsburg-controlled Hungary and subjected to the direct rule of the emperor’s governors. In 1699 the Turks conceded their loss of Transylvania (Treaty of Carlowitz); the anti-Habsburg elements within the principality submitted to the emperor in 1711 (Peace of Szatmár).
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During the succeeding century the pressure of Roman Catholic and bureaucratic rule gradually undermined the distinctive character of Transylvania. A strong Magyar movement, overshadowing the declining influence of the Szekler and Saxon nobles, urged the abandonment of the principality’s separate administration and integration with Hungary. Consequently, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Magyars of Transylvania identified with the insurgents. The Romanian peasantry, which had been developing their own national consciousness and agitating for more extensive political and religious liberties, took a stand against the Magyars and swore allegiance to the Habsburgs. When the Habsburgs reasserted their control over Hungary, Transylvania was separated from Hungary and transformed into a Habsburg crown land, subject to strict absolutist rule. Subsequently, it was reabsorbed into Hungary (1867).
When Austria-Hungary was defeated in World War I, the Romanians of Transylvania in late 1918 proclaimed the land united with Romania. In 1920 the Allies confirmed the union in the Treaty of Trianon. Hungary regained about two-fifths of Transylvania during World War II (Vienna Award; August 1940), but the entire region was ceded to Romania in 1947.
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Sigismund
Holy Roman emperor
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Sigismund
Sigismund
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Born: Feb. 15, 1368, probably Nürnberg
Died: Dec. 9, 1437, Znojmo, Bohemia (aged 69)
Title / Office: emperor (1433-1437), Holy Roman Empire king (1411-1437), Germany king (1378-1437), Hungary
Role In: Battle of Nicopolis Council of Constance Hussite Wars
Sigismund (born Feb. 15, 1368, probably Nürnberg—died Dec. 9, 1437, Znojmo, Bohemia) was the Holy Roman emperor from 1433, king of Hungary from 1387, German king from 1411, king of Bohemia from 1419, and Lombard king from 1431. The last emperor of the House of Luxembourg, he participated in settling the Western Schism and the Hussite wars in Bohemia.
Sigismund, a younger son of the Holy Roman emperor Charles IV, received from his father the margravate of Brandenburg. Engaged to Maria, daughter of King Louis I of Hungary and Poland, he was sent on his father’s death (1378) to the Hungarian court, where he married Maria. On her father’s death in 1382, Maria became queen of Hungary, and Sigismund was finally crowned as king consort in 1387. The crown of Poland went to Maria’s sister Hedwig (Jadwiga). Sigismund’s throne was seriously challenged for a number of years by the rulers of Naples. In 1388 the king pawned Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst, margrave of Moravia, to raise funds to defend his realm.
Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon in Coronation Robes or Napoleon I Emperor of France, 1804 by Baron Francois Gerard or Baron Francois-Pascal-Simon Gerard, from the Musee National, Chateau de Versailles.
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Sigismund’s expansionist policy led him to intervene in the struggles between his half brother, the German king Wenceslas, who was also king of Bohemia (as Wenceslas IV), and the Bohemian nobility. After changing sides several times, Sigismund made peace with his brother in 1396 at the Battle of Nicopolis and was appointed vicar general of Germany. He then led a European army against the Turks, who had broken into Serbia and Bulgaria, but was decisively defeated in September 1396, barely managing to escape capture. Although the Bohemian rivalries had deterred Sigismund from preventing Wenceslas’ deposition as German king (1400), he soon exploited the situation and attempted to take Bohemia, imprisoning Wenceslas in 1402. Recalled to Hungary by an invasion, Sigismund released Wenceslas in 1403.
After the death (1410) of Rupert (Wenceslas’ successor to the German crown), both Sigismund and Jobst were elected king by different factions, but at Jobst’s death in 1411 Sigismund became German king. From 1412 to 1413, he campaigned against the Venetians in Italy, where he also persuaded one of the three rival popes, John XXIII, to call a church council at Constance to settle the Western Schism. After his coronation as German king at Aachen (November 1414), he went to Constance to participate in the council. The extent of his complicity in the burning of the Czech reformer Jan Hus (1415), whom the king had invited to the council to defend his views, has never been determined. With the unity of Western Christendom restored (1417), Sigismund hoped to lead a new crusade against the Turks. The campaign that he led against them in 1428, however, was no more successful than the first.
On the death of Wenceslas in 1419, Sigismund inherited the Bohemian crown, but the series of wars fought against the Hussites during the decade of the 1420s, most of which were military disasters for the king’s party, delayed his coronation. Sigismund’s frequent absence from Germany in these years finally caused the princes to form the Union of Bingen, ostensibly to conduct the war against the Hussites but also to protect themselves against the king’s inroads.
In 1431 Sigismund returned to Italy, where he received the Lombard crown. He was crowned emperor two years later and was finally received in Prague as king of Bohemia in 1436.
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John
duke of Burgundy
Also known as: Jean sans Peur, John the Fearless
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John, duke of Burgundy
John, duke of Burgundy
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Byname: John The Fearless
French: Jean Sans Peur
Born: May 28, 1371, Rouvres, Burgundy
Died: Sept. 10, 1419, Montereau, Fr. (aged 48)
Role In: Battle of Nicopolis Hundred Years’ War
John (born May 28, 1371, Rouvres, Burgundy—died Sept. 10, 1419, Montereau, Fr.) was the second duke of Burgundy (1404–19) of the Valois line, who played a major role in French affairs in the early 15th century.
The son of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and Margaret of Flanders, John was born in the ducal castle at Rouvres, where he spent the greater part of his childhood. In 1385 he married Margaret of Bavaria, and in the following decade his father initiated him into the arts of government and warfare, though he was not given any post of responsibility. Even in 1396, at the age of 24, when he became leader of the Burgundian crusade against the Ottoman Turks in defense of Hungary, his leadership was only nominal. The actual conduct of the expedition, which ended in the disastrous defeat of the crusaders on the battlefield of Nicopolis and the capture of John by the Turks (an adventure that earned him the epithet the Fearless), was entrusted to a group of councilors and military advisers appointed by Philip the Bold. John evidently benefited from the blunders of these commanders, for his subsequent career showed that he was the only one of the Valois rulers of Burgundy who knew how to handle an army.
When John at last succeeded his father in 1404 as duke of Burgundy and count of Burgundy, Flanders, and Artois, he was 33 years old.
John the Fearless spent most of his time and his considerable political and military energies in France, Paris being his normal place of residence and seat of government. His only significant personal participation as duke of Burgundy in major events outside France took place in 1408, when he led a Burgundian army to aid his beleaguered brother-in-law, the bishop of Liège, John of Bavaria, against the citizens of Liège, who were in open revolt. On the field of Othée, on Sept. 23, 1408, the men of Liège were decisively defeated, and Burgundian influence was extended over the city and over the bishopric of Liège. From the start, then, John found himself involved in French affairs and was in part responsible for provoking a civil war in France with a rival house, headed by his first cousin, the King’s younger brother, Louis, duc d’Orléans. Each man sought control of the mad king Charles VI and his queen and of the capital Paris. While the notorious murder by Duke John of his cousin by hired assassins in 1407 enabled John to subdue Paris and the crown, the opposition to the Burgundians by Louis’s followers and heirs continued. Their faction was named after its main supporter, Bernard VII, comte d’Armagnac.
During the five years between 1413 and 1418, in which the Armagnacs succeeded in driving the Burgundians out of Paris, the internal situation in France was further complicated by a new English invasion led by the ambitious king, Henry V. Duke John was one of those French princes who, while pretending to do his best to reach the battlefield of Agincourt to give battle to the English (1415), was unaccountably delayed on the way. His intermittent negotiations with King Henry V did not, however, lead to a firm Anglo-Burgundian alliance, and in the autumn of 1419 John turned instead to the Armagnacs, in the hopes of arranging a truce or even making a firm peace settlement with their youthful leader, the dauphin Charles (the future Charles VII), in an alliance against the English. The two princes, each with 10 companions, met on the bridge of Montereau, some 50 miles southeast of Paris. As the diplomatic parley began, John the Fearless was struck down and killed during a dispute started by the Armagnacs, a political assassination that contemporary evidence shows was almost certainly carefully premeditated.
John pursued aims similar to those of the other rulers of his day: the consolidation and extension of his own and his family’s power. In spite of his lapses into violence, his love of intrigue, his hypocrisy, and his rashness, he was a successful diplomat and military leader; he was more dynamic and more of a reformer than his son Philip the Good and more cunning, though less scrupulous, than his father. Yet he has received less attention from historians than either of them. In the eye of history, especially French history, he has long been regarded as a traitor and assassin. There was, perhaps, a dark and sinister element in his character, but he lived in an age when vice, tyranny, and murder were the common properties of every ruler. If he wrought destruction in France, he also brought peace and prosperity to his own Burgundian lands.
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