occupied Serbia. King Albert II had made Hunyadi the
bán (military governor) of Szörény, a Hungarian prov-
ince, in 1438. When Albert died in 1439, Hunyadi sup-
ported the election of the Polish prince Wladyslaw III
as his successor and was rewarded by Wladyslaw with
the captaincy of Belgrade and the title of voivode (gov-
ernor) of Transylvania (though he had to share the latter
honor). Under Ulászló I, the title taken by Wladyslaw,
Hunyadi was able to establish a campaign against the
Turks. After raising an army of some 30,000 men, he
crossed the Danube River and entered Serbia, begin-
ning what is known in Hungarian history as “The Long
Campaign” (1441–44). Hunyadi’s army occupied the
cities of Nis and Sofia and regained control of much of
the Balkans by the following year. This offensive caused
the Turks to withdraw, and the Turkish sultan, Murad
II, asked for peace. However, Murad soon sent forces
across the Dardanelles again to bring war into southern
Europe. At Varna on 10 November 1444, the sultan’s
army slaughtered a Christian force; King Ulászló I was
killed in the battle, and Hunyadi escaped with his life.
Named as governor to rule during the reign of the new
king, young László V, Hunyadi again raised an army to
attack Murad, and he met the Turks at Kosovo (17 Oc-
tober 1448). Although they were vastly outnumbered,
Hunyadi’s army inflicted some 40,000 casualties on the
Turks before they were forced to withdraw, having sus-
tained about 17,000 casualties.
With the death of Murad in 1451, mehmet ii
came to power as the Turkish sultan. As a consequence
of Hunyadi’s previous withdrawal, Mehmet marched his
forces eastward, and the Turks took Constantinople in
- Fresh from this victory, he then turned his armies
on Belgrade, presaging a full-scale Turkish attack on Eu-
rope as a whole. Consequently, Pope Calixtus III sent a
Franciscan monk, John of Capistrano, to Hungary to
incite its citizens against the Islamic invaders. Belgrade
was ill prepared to fend off the attack but had enough
men to force the Turks to besiege the city instead of at-
tacking it. The Hungarian forces, commanded by Hu-
nyadi’s brother-in-law and son, numbered only about
60,000–75,000 troops, while Mehmet had approxi-
mately 100,000–300,000 men (historians are unsure
as to exact numbers). In addition, the Turks had 200
ships stationed in the Danube River as support. Hun-
yadi, who had gone off to form a new army and fleet,
returned and attacked the Turkish fleet, sinking three
vessels and capturing four large ships with supplies.
Mehmet ordered an attack on the city’s walls on 21 July,
but the besieged garrison attacked the Turks with all
available materials, including setting the moat around
the city on fire. Turks caught in the moat were burned
to death, and others were massacred by the Hungarians.
The Turks were forced to retreat, but then Hunyadi’s
land forces arrived and attacked them on 22 July. This
led to a massive withdrawal by the Turks, during which
Mehmet was wounded.
After 40 days, the siege was broken. It is believed
that some 50,000 Turks had been slaughtered in the
fighting, while the Hungarians lost about 10,000. The
Turks were later attacked by Serb forces, who inflicted an
additional 25,000 casualties. Pope Calixtus called Hun-
yadi “the most outstanding man the world had seen in
300 years.” However, Hunyadi’s victory was short-lived.
During the siege, a plague had swept Belgrade, and he
succumbed to the disease on 11 August 1456. On his
deathbed, he told his troops, “Defend, my friends,
Christendom and Hungary from all enemies.... Do
not quarrel amongst yourselves.... If you should waste
your energies in altercations, you will seal your own
fate as well as dig the grave of your country.” John of
Capistrano died of the same disease two months later.
Hunyadi’s son became the king of Hungary in 1458,
taking the throne as Matthias I.
In Eastern Europe, the name of János Hunyadi is
still honored as one of the region’s saviors. His victory at
Belgrade is one of history’s great battles, a turning point
that caused the Muslim invaders to pause for nearly a
century before they attempted another incursion into
Europe. Hunyadi is known to Islam as Törökverö, or
“Scourge of the Turks.”References: Windrow, Martin, and Francis K. Mason,
“Hunyadi, János, Count of Bestercze,” in The Wordsworth
Dictionary of Military Biography (Hertfordshire, U.K.:
Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1997), 139–40; Bak, János M.
and Béla K. Király, editors, Hunyadi to Rákóczi: War and
Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Hungary (Boul-
der, Colo.: Social Science Monographs, 1982); Held, Jo-
seph, Hunyadi: Legend and Reality (Boulder, Colo.: East
European Monographs, 1985); Bruce, George, “Belgrade
I,” in Collins Dictionary of Wars (Glasgow, Scotland:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), 32; “Hunyadi, Janos,”
in Command: From Alexander the Great to Zhukov—The
Greatest Commanders of World History, edited by James
Lucas (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1988), 41–42.hunyADi, JánoS