THE BULWARK OF CHRISTENDOM 129ordered the King's severed head to be impaled on a stake, to terrify the infidels. .. Later,
preserved in a pot of honey, it was sent to the capital of the country, to Bursa, to be exhib-
ited to the gaze of the common people...
Murad, meanwhile, sent news of this favourable event to all the neighbouring rulers.
To Egypt he sent twenty-five of his Christian captives, shackled hand and foot and in full
armour... When the feeble and faint-hearted Arabs saw the frightening figures of the
infidels, as enormous as high fortresses, they cried out in amazement at the prowess of
the Turks: 'Allah jensor ibn Osman!' (The Lord helps the Sons of Osman)...
That famous victory, which filled the whole people with joy and strengthened the
power of the Ottomans and the fortune of their subjects, was won on Tuesday, the ninth
day of the Redzeb Moon, in the 848th year after the flight of the Prophet.^6
The Polish historians who have implied that Wladyslaw III died the death of a
Christian martyr, selflessly laying down his life in defence of the Faith, have pro-
voked a barrage of high-explosive criticism. Their critics maintain that
Wladystaw paid the price of naive and ill-judged ambition.^7 Certainly, the
Varna Expedition would seem to have been inspired much more by Hungarian
interests than by Polish ones. It cannot be realistically compared to Poland's
relations with the Ottomans, or to the Spanish Keconquista.
For Poland, the Ottoman Turks represented less of a menace than the Tartars
of the Crimea. The Tartar war-parties made annual incursions along the three
great frontier trails of the steppes. They burned, looted, and carried off their
yasir or 'human booty' to be sold into slavery throughout the Muslim world. It
was the Tartars, not the Turks, who inspired the stream of protestations about
Poland's single-handed defence of Christendom against the Muslim invasion.
Yet these protestations can hardly to taken at their face value. The Tartars were
an infernal nuisance; but they posed no threat to European stability. Unlike the
Moors or the Ottomans, they entertained no permanent territorial ambitions,
and their czambuls never ventured beyond the limits of one summer's ride.
Polish attempts to control them were accompanied by much pious Christian
verbiage; but were more akin to police operations than to religious crusades.
After all, the Republic's own Christian Cossacks behaved in much the same
fashion; and the Republic's military leaders thought nothing of recruiting
Tartar auxiliaries for action against other Christian princes when occasion
demanded.
None of the crusading Orders knew much success in Poland. The Knights
Hospitallers founded several commanderies at an early date - at Strzygom in
Silesia in 1150, at Zagosc in Malopolska in 1153, and at Poznan in 1191. But
none really flourished. The Silesian commanderies passed under Bohemian con-
trol after the secession of the province, and those in the Kingdom of Poland
declined after the Mongol invasion of 1241-2. In the fifteenth century, the
Hospitallers were associated with the Teutonic Order, and attracted the retri-
bution of the Polish Kings accordingly. By the seventeenth century, there were
very few Hospitallers in Poland at all. In this connection, the amazing
Bartolomeus Nowodorski (1544-1624) - knight, pedagogue, and philosopher,