Battle of Nicopolis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Battle of Nicopolis
Part of the Ottoman wars in Europe
Ottoman-Hungarian Wars

Battle of Nicopolis
(Note the counterfactual depiction of siege weapons)
Date September 25, 1396
Location Nicopolis, Bulgaria
24°53′45″E / 43.70583°N 24.89583°E / 43.70583; 24.89583
Result Decisive Ottoman victory
Belligerents
Ottoman Empire France[1]
Knights Hospitaller[1]
Kingdom of Hungary[1]
Republic of Venice[1]
contingents from German princes of the Holy Roman Empire[1]
units from Poland, Bohemia, Navarre, Transylvania and Spain[1]
Wallachia[2]
Commanders
Bayezid I
Stefan Lazarević Sigismund
Philip, Count of Eu ^#
Jean Le Maingre ^#
John the Fearless ^#
Enguerrand VII ^#
Jean de Vienne †
Jean de Carrouges †
Mircea the Elder
Stephen II Lacković
Strength
Heavily disputed but credibly estimated at perhaps 12,000-15,000.[3] See the Strength of forces section. Heavily disputed but credibly estimated at perhaps 7,500-16,000.[3][4] See the Strength of forces section.
Casualties and losses
Heavy casualties, especially during the initial phase of the battle; Ottoman casualties include the massacre of ~1000 civilian hostages by the Crusaders the night before the battle. Most of the Crusader army was destroyed or captured; a small portion, including Sigismund, escaped.[5]
300-3,000 prisoners were executed.[6][7]

The Battle of Nicopolis (Bulgarian: Битка при Никопол, Bitka pri Nikopol; Turkish: Niğbolu Savaşı, Hungarian: Nikápolyi Csata, Romanian: Bătălia de la Nicopole) took place on September 25, 1396, between the Ottoman Empire versus an allied force from the Kingdom of Hungary, France, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Republic of Venice, as well as smaller contingents and individuals from elsewhere in Europe, near the Danubian fortress of Nicopolis, in modern Bulgaria. It is often referred to as the Crusade of Nicopolis and was the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages.

Background

There were many minor crusades in the 14th century, undertaken by individual kings or knights. Most recently there had been a failed 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).

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 conquest 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 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.

The two decisive factors in the formation of the last crusade were the ongoing Hundred Years' War between Richard II's England and Charles VI's France and the support of Philip II, Duke of Burgundy.[8] In 1389, the war had ground to one of its periodic truces. Further, in March 1395, Richard II proposed a marriage between himself and Charles VI's daughter Isabella in the interests of peace and the two kings met in October 1396 on the borders of Calais to agree to the union.[9] The support of Burgundy, among the most powerful of the French nobles was also vital. In 1391, Burgundy, trying to decide between sending a crusade to either Prussia or Hungary, sent his envoy Guy de Tremoille to Venice and Hungary to evaluate the situation. Burgundy originally envisioned a crusade led by himself and the Dukes of Orléans and Lancaster, though none would join the eventual crusade. It was very unlikely that defense against the Turks was considered a particularly important goal of the crusade. Burgundy's interest in sponsoring the crusade was in increasing his and his house's prestige and power and, historian Barbara Tuchman notes, "since he was the prince of self-magnification, the result was that opulent display became the dominant theme; plans, logistics, intelligence about the enemy came second, if at all."[10] In 1394, Burgundy extracted 120,000 livres from Flanders, sufficient to begin preparations for a crusade, and in January 1395 sent word to Sigismund, the King of Hungary that an official request to the King of France would be accepted.[10] (Sigismund became Holy Roman Emperor in 1433).