Battle of Nicopolis

After Kosovo the Ottomans overran most of the Balkans: in 1393 the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Shishman lost Nicopolis, his temporary capital, and from 1394 Bayezid blockaded Constantinople. Hungary, now the frontier of Christendom, appealed to the West. According to Barbara Tuchman, two things made the crusade possible: the truce of 1389 in the Hundred Years’ War, which freed the French nobility, and the backing of Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy, who placed his son John, Count of Nevers, at the head of the French contingent, with the constable Philip of Artois, Count of Eu, Marshal Boucicaut and Enguerrand de Coucy at his side. The crusaders left Dijon on 30 April 1396, joined Sigismund at Buda in July and marched down the Danube, supported by Venetian ships on the river; they took Vidin, whose ruler Ivan Sratsimir surrendered, sacked Rahovo and from 12 September besieged Nicopolis, without siege engines.

Bayezid came up by forced marches. Rejecting Sigismund’s plan to send the Wallachian foot first, the French insisted on leading the attack; their charge broke the Ottoman irregulars and infantry, but the knights, many by now on foot, struggled up the slope and met the sultan’s fresh cavalry held in reserve, and Nevers was captured. The Hungarians and their allies were enveloped and finally overwhelmed, a reinforcement of some 1,500 Serbian knights under Stefan Lazarević playing an important part; Sigismund escaped in a boat to the Venetian ships and returned home by sea by way of Constantinople. The next day Bayezid, enraged by the crusaders’ massacre of prisoners taken at Rahovo, had captives put to death — most estimates range from 300 to 3,000 (the eyewitness Schiltberger speaks of 10,000) — and kept the great lords for ransom; Nevers and his companions were freed in 1397 for 200,000 gold florins.

The size of the armies is uncertain: medieval chroniclers spoke of up to 400,000 men, the eyewitness Johann Schiltberger, captured at the age of sixteen, put Sigismund’s army at 16,000 men (one manuscript of his book has 60,000), and 19th-century German historians estimated 7,500–15,000 Christians and 12,000–20,000 Ottomans. The defeat ended hopes of reviving the Second Bulgarian Empire — Ivan Sratsimir was taken to Bursa and killed — and John of Nevers won the name “the Fearless”.