Ottoman–Hungarian Wars
Campaign of Louis I (1) – Treviso – Campaign of Louis I (2) – Nicopolis – Doboj – Radkersburg – Golubac – Lower Danube War – Smederevo – Szeben – Iron Gate – Long campaign – Niš – Várna – Kosovo – Nándorfehérvár (1456) – Vaslui – Breadfield – Krbava field – Otranto – Mohács (1526) – Campaign of 1527–28 – Little War (1530-52) – Kőszeg – Buda(1541) – Campaign of 1543 – Eger (1552) – Szigetvár – Keresztes – Saint Gotthard – Vienna (1683) – Buda (1686) – Mohács (1687) – Slankamen – Zenta – Petrovaradin
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The Ottoman-Hungarian War refers to a series of battles between the Ottoman Empire and the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Following the Byzantine civil war, the Ottoman capture of Gallipoli and the decisive Battle of Kosovo, the Ottoman Empire seemed poised to conquer the whole of the Balkans. However, the Ottoman invasion of Serbia drove Hungary to war against the Ottomans, with the former having interests in the Balkans and competing for the vassalship of the Balkan states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Moldavia.
Initial Hungarian success culminated in the Crusade of Varna, though without significant outside support the Hungarians were defeated. Nonetheless the Ottomans suffered more defeats at Belgrade, even after the conquest of Constantinople. In particular was the infamous Vlad the Impaler who with limited Hungarian help resisted Ottoman rule until the Ottomans were able to place his brother, a man less feared and less hated by the populace on the throne of Wallachia. Ottoman success was once again halted at Moldavia due to Hungarian intervention but the Turks emerged triumphant at last when Moldavia and then Belgrade fell to Bayezid II and Suleiman the Magnificent respectively. In 1526 the Ottomans crushed the Hungarian army at Mohács with King Louis II of Hungary perishing along with 14,000 of his foot soldiers. Following this defeat, the eastern region of the Kingdom of Hungary (mainly Transylvania) ceased as an independent power and served as an Ottoman tributary state, constantly engaged in civil war with Royal Hungary. The war continued with the Habsburgs now asserting primacy in the conflict with the Suleiman and his successors. The northern and western parts of Hungary managed to remain free from Ottoman rule, but the Kingdom of Hungary, the most powerful state east of Vienna under Matthias I, was now divided and at constant war with the Turks.
Background
In the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, and the Turkish victory at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into the rest of Europe.
The Battle of Nicopolis is thought to be the first significant encounter between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, where a broad alliance of Christian monarchs and the Knights Hospitaller were defeated by a numerically superior Turkish army (the Ottomans had also enlisted the support of their new vassal, the Serbian Despotate).
Balkan and Turkish wars of Louis the Great
Louis I of Hungary (King: 1342-1382)
In 1344 Wallachia and Moldavia became Louis's vassal.
Louis with his ernomous 80.000 strong army repelled the Serbian Dušan's armies in vojvodine of Mačva and principality of Travunia in 1349. when Czar Dusan broke into Bosnian territory he was defeated by Bosnian Stjepan II with the assistance of King Louis' troops, and when Dušan made a second attempt he was decisively beaten by his luckier rival, King Louis the Great himself, in 1354. The two monarchs signed the peace agreement in 1355.
His latter campaigns in the Balkans were aimed not so much at conquest and subjugation as at drawing the Serbs, Bosnians, Wallachians and Bulgarians into the fold of the Roman Catholic faith and at forming a united front against the looming Turkish menace. In 1366 John V Byzantine Emperor visited Hungary to beg for help against Turks. It was relatively easy to subdue Balkanian Orthodox countries by arms, but to convert them was a different matter. Despite Lajos' efforts, the peoples of the Balkans remained faithful to the Eastern Orthodox Church and their attitude toward Hungary remained ambiguous. Louis annexed Moldavia in 1352 and established a vassal principality there, before conquering Vidin in 1365. The rulers of Serbia, Walachia, Moldavia, and Bulgaria became his vassals. They regarded powerful Hungary as a potential menace to their national identity. For this reason, Hungary could never regard the Serbs and Wallachians as reliable allies in her subsequent wars against the Turks. The Ottoman Turks confronted the Balkan vassal states ever more often. Louis defeated the Turks when Hungarian and Turkish troops clashed for the first time in history at Nicapoli in 1366. The Hungarian Chapel in the Cathedral at Aachen was built to commemorate this victory. He defeated the Turkish army in Wallachia in 1374.
In the spring of 1365, Louis I headed a campaign against the Bulgarian Tsardom of Vidin and its ruler Ivan Sratsimir. He seized the city of Vidin on 2 May 1365; the region was under Hungarian rule until 1369.
But it is easily arguable that his Balkan enterprises brought Hungary, on balance, more loss of money than profit.[citation needed]
Timur and the Ottoman Interregnum
Despite these successes the Ottomans would have to start all over from near-scratch when in 1402 Timur the lame of the Chagatai Khanate captured the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid the Thunderbolt at Ankara, so named for the speed of his crushing victories against his Christian opponents, most notably at Nicopolis.
Campaigns of Murad II, 1421 - 1451
The Ottoman Empire seemed to have collapsed after 1402 but Murad II, the successor to Mehmed I proved to be a man of far greater ghazi skills then his peaceful predecessor whose appreciation of Byzantine assistance even made him go so far as to accept the Byzantine Emperor as his suzerain. Such an arrangement was out of all proportion to the powers of the two Empires, and in 1422 Murad II demonstrated how much of a "suzerain" the Emperor was to the Sultan when Constantinople narrowly escaped an Ottoman conquest
With Byzantium neutralized and terrified in servitude as a vassal, Murad II began his holy war against his Christian opponents, attacking Macedonia and capturing Thessalonika from the Venetians in 1430. Between 1435 and 1436 the Ottomans made a show of strength in Albania but the country survived total knock out when the Kingdom of Hungary, whose borders now neared those of the Ottoman realm intervened.
Campaigns of John Hunyadi
His first battles and the Long campaign
The burden of the Ottoman War now rested with him. In 1441 he delivered Serbia by the victory of Semendria. In 1442, not far from Nagyszeben, on which he had been forced to retire, he annihilated an immense Ottoman presence, and recovered for Hungary the suverainty of Wallachia. In February 1450, he signed an alliance treaty with Bogdan II of Moldavia.
In July, he vanquished a third Turkish army near the Iron Gates. These victories made Hunyadi a prominent enemy of the Ottomans and renowned throughout Christendom, and stimulated him in 1443 to undertake, along with King Władysław, the famous expedition known as the long campaign. Hunyadi, at the head of the vanguard, crossed the Balkans through the Gate of Trajan, captured Niš, defeated three Turkish pashas, and, after taking Sofia, united with the royal army and defeated Sultan Murad II at Snaim. The impatience of the king and the severity of the winter then compelled him (February 1444) to return home, but not before he had utterly broken the Sultan's power in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania.
No sooner had he regained Hungary than he received tempting offers from Pope Eugene IV, represented by the Legate Julian Cesarini, from Đurađ Branković, despot of Serbia, and Gjergj Kastrioti, prince of Albania, to resume the war and realize his ideal of driving the Ottomans from Europe. All the preparations had been made when Murad's envoys arrived in the royal camp at Szeged and offered a ten years' truce on advantageous terms. Branković bribed Hunyadi -he gave him his vast estates in Hungary- to support the acceptance of the peace. Cardinal Julian Cesarini found a traitorous solution. The king swore that he would never give up the crusade, so all future peace and oath was automatically invalid. After this Hungary accepted the Sultan's offer and Hunyadi in Władysław's name swore on the Gospels to observe them.
Murad II was unable to stop Hunyadi from calling in reinforcements from Western Europe. Few knights came, but those that did assisted in capturing Nis on November 3 1443, defeating another Turkish army as they crossed the Balkan Mountains and then taking another victory on Christmas Day. Christmas or not, supplies for the Crusader army were low and Hunyadi concluded a 10-year peace treaty with Murad II, presumably on his terms for it was triumphant Hungarian that entered Buda in February of 1444. 10 years was the maximum time permitted by Islamic law for a treaty with an "infidel". Unfortunately for the Hungarians, no such time limit existed in the minds of the Papal legate, for if it did it would have been a very small one - Cardinal Cesarini incited the Hungarians to break the treaty and attack the Turks once more. It was a foolish move, for much of the Crusader armies' strength had been reduced due to the loss (by defection) of Serbia, Albania and the Byzantine Empire. Fanciful ideas had been discussed of Greeks making diversionary attacks in the Peloponnese. Even the recapture of Jerusalem was entertained.