Crusades and Crusaders in Medieval Greece 45
Genoa, while the disputed papal election in 1378 initiated the Great Schism of
the western Church.
In the meantime, Turkish advance in the Balkans seemed unstoppable:
the Byzantine emperor, disillusioned about the prospects of western help,
acknowledged the Ottoman sultan’s suzerainty in 1373; Bulgaria was overrun,
while Serbian resistance was crushed at Kosovo in 1389.57 The great siege of
Constantinople (1394–1402) by Bayezid i began just as the Ottomans reached
the Hungarian frontier in the Danube. It was clear that naval leagues were no
longer adequate: a large overland campaign was needed to halt the Turkish
advance. The following years saw two major expeditions resembling in many
respects the traditional campaigns of the early period of crusading, with mul-
tinational armies and nobles signed with the cross taking the field against the
“enemies of the faith”. Both campaigns were to end in spectacular defeats, how-
ever, at Nicopolis (1396) and Varna (1444).
King Sigismund of Hungary (1387–1437), who would become a central figure
of the crusade over his fifty-year long reign, took the initiative in summoning
a coalition of western forces. The campaign was set for 1395, and both popes
in Rome and Avignon supported it with preaching and indulgences. Venice
agreed to provide galleys to patrol the straits and impose a blockade against any
Ottoman reinforcements. A great number of French nobles took the cross. John
of Nevers, the son of Duke Philip the Bold, was to lead the Burgundian contin-
gent. Burgundian preparations were ostentatious, with immense expenditure
for the tents, banners and all kinds of luxurious fittings of the army; nothing
was spared, as Setton commented, “except perhaps the exercise of common
sense, for such preparations were better adapted to a coronation or a royal
wedding than a campaign against the Turks”.58 King Sigismund’s Hungarian
army was also joined by the lords of Transylvania and Wallachia. The various
contingents met in Buda in July 1396 and then marched into Bulgaria, forcing
Bayezid to loosen the siege of Constantinople and rush to meet them. The deci-
sive battle took place at the plain of Nicopolis, in September 1396. It ended in a
total rout of the Christian army, as the impetuous French knights were cut off
from the main body of the Hungarian infantry during the charge. Sigismund
barely escaped on a ship. The majority of the other leading participants were
either slain or taken prisoners.59
57 John V.A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (Ann Arbor, 1994), pp. 379–424.
58 Setton, Papacy, 1:345–46.
59 See in general: Aziz Suryal Atiya, The Crusade of Nicopolis (London, 1934); idem, The
Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1938), pp. 435–62; Setton, Papacy, 1:341–69;
Housley, Later Crusades, pp. 73–79; Jacques Paviot and Martine Chauney-Bouillot, eds,