the effect of killing the christian prisoners at the battle of nicopolis

THE EFFECT OF KILLING THE CHRISTIAN PRISONERS AT THE BATTLE OF NICOPOLIS1

Kelly DeVries

When the reports [of defeat] were made known and published, nobody could describe the great grief which they caused in France, both on the part of the duke of Burgundy, who doubted whether he would be able to get his son back for money, and [thought] that he would be put to death, and on that of the fathers, mothers, wives, and male and female relatives of the other lords, knights and squires who were dead. A great mourning began throughout the kingdom of France by those whom it concerned; and more generally, everybody lamented the noble knights who had fallen there, who represented the flower of France ... All our lords had solemn masses for the dead sung in their chapels for the good lords, knights and squires, and all the Christians who had died. . . But it may be well that we had more need of their prayers on our behalf, since they, God willing, are saints in Paradise.2

So wrote the anonymous biographer of the French marshal, Jean II le Meingre dit Boucicault, as he concluded his account of the battle of Nicopolis, lost to the Ottoman Turks on September 25, 1396.3

The marshal himself was held as a prisoner, captured that day when he, with most of the European crusaders who had ridden out of France, England, Burgundy, the Low Countries, Italy, Germany, and Hungary met defeat at the hands of Sultan Bayezid I (1389-1402). But Boucicault was one of the lucky ones. He was not yet a "saint in Paradise." The marshal had been spared execution because of his noble status and friendship with John the Fearless, count of

__________ 1 This article builds on part of my essay "The Lack of a Western European

Military Response to the Ottoman Invasions of Eastern Europe from Nicopolis (1396) to Mohács (1526)," The Journal of Military History 63(1999): 539-59.

2 Le livre des fais du Mareschal de Bouciquaut, ed. D. Lalande (Paris, 1985), 118-20. I have used the translation of this passage found in Norman Housley, Documents on the Later Crusades, 1274-1580 (New York, 1996), 106-7.

3 The date of the battle of Nicopolis was disputed until Aziz Suryal Atiya published The Crusade of Nicopolis in 1934. Since that time, September 25 has been the recognized date. On the controversy see Aziz Suryal Atiya, The Crusade of Nicopolis (London, 1934), 149-51 and idem, The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1938), 450 (n. 3).

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Nevers, heir to the lands of Burgundy, titular leader of the crusaders at Nicopolis, despite his youth (he had not yet reached the age of twenty-five). According to Boucicault's biographer, John pleaded with Bayezid on behalf of the marshal. Putting his thumbs together to indicate their brotherhood, the future duke of Burgundy convinced the Ottoman military leader not to slay Boucicault.4 Jean Froissart, whose chronicle also contains a version of this story, asserts that the future duke's gesture really indicated how much ransom money Boucicault was worth rather than any feelings of friendship that the two men shared. The result was the same, however: Boucicault's life was spared.5

But why did John the Fearless need to plead for the life of his marshal? Indeed, why were so many "saints" sent to "Paradise" at Nicopolis, especially as it seems that few of the crusaders actually perished in the battle itself? The answer is tragically simple. The Ottoman Turks acted against the customary laws of war, which bound both Christians and Muslims even when fighting one another: no prisoner of war was ever to be executed, especially if he was a noble!6 Following the battle, the sultan put to death the majority of prisoners. It was this act more than any other which caused the mourning throughout Europe referred to in the opening quotation, and it was this act which stayed in the memory far longer than even the defeat in battle did. Invariably, it provoked an outpouring of Ottoman atrocity stories, stories which would grow and be embell- ished throughout the next century. Finally, it was this act more than anything else that terrified western armies, many of which would refuse to go against the Ottoman Turks again until the sixteenth century.

Despite the continual crusading rhetoric since the fall of Acre in 1291,7 an international crusading coalition of the sort that had fought ___________

4 Le livre des fais du Mareschal de Bouciquaut, 116-17. See also Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571), 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1976), 1:355-56.

3 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, in Oeuvres de Froissart, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, 28 vols. (Brussels, 1867), 15:327-38. Froissart was basing this on the testimony of eyewitnesses to the battle and its aftermath. See also Setton, 355-56.

6 On ransoming prisoners rather than killing them, see Philippe Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones (London, 1984), 255-59 and M.H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1965), 156-85.

7 Since the fall of Acre there had been numerous calls for renewed crusading to the Middle East. See Atiya, Crusade in the Later Middle Ages, 95-113; idem, "The

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at Nicopolis had been long in coming. Putting together this crusade had required the efforts of some of the greatest diplomatic minds of Europe since peace between England and France had to precede any new expedition to the east.8 Indeed, it was only after lengthy negotiations that what Françoise Autrand has called the paix impossible, was signed in 1393.9 The terms included: (1) the restoration of Cherbourg to France; (2) the marriage of Richard II of England to Isabelle, daughter of Charles VI of France; (3) a twenty-eight year truce; and (4) an agreement to sponsor a crusade against the Turks. In this crusade, both kings and Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy agreed to participate.10 By 1396, all of the provisions had been accom- plished except for the crusade, though by then sufficient finances had been raised to support a sizeable force.

Unfortunately, by 1396, all of the would-be crusading leaders appear to have lost their ardor for the expedition. Charles VI had pushed his participatory responsibility onto his brother, Louis, duke of Orléans; Richard II onto his uncle, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster; and Philip the Bold onto his son, John the Fearless, count

_________ Crusade in the Fourteenth Century," in A History of The Crusades, 6 vols. ed. K.M. Setton et al., 6 vols. (Madison, Wisconsin, 1960-1969), 3:3-26; Norman Housley, The Later Crusades: From Lyons to Alcazar, 1274-1580 (Oxford, 1992), 376-93; idem, "Pope Clement V and the Crusades of 1309--10," Journal of Medieval History 8(1982): 29-43; Svlvia Schein, "Philip IV and the Crusade: A Reconsideration," in Crusade, and Settlement, ed. P.W. Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), 121-26; C.J. Tyerman, "Marino Sanudo Torsello and the Lost Crusade: Lobbying in the Fourteenth Century," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser., 32(1982): 56-74; idem, "Philip V of France, the Assemblies of 1319-20 and the Crusade," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 57(1984): 15-34; idem, "Philip VI and the Recovery of the Holy Land," English Historical Review 100(1985): 25-52; idem, "Sed Nihil Fecit? The Last Capetians and the Recovery of the Holy Land," in War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J.O. Prestwich, ed. J. Gillingham and J.C. Holt (Cambridge, 1984), 170-81. There was also an anti-crusading rhetoric. See Elizabeth Siberry, "Criticism of Crusading in Fourteenth-Century England," in Crusade and Settlement, 127-34.

8 Chief among these diplomats was Philippe de Mézières whose endeavors in this matter were extensive. See N. Jorga, Philippe de Mézières (1327-1405) et la croisade au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1896). Among his most important crusading works is a letter written to Richard II pleading for the English king to seek peace in the Hundred Years War. See Philippe de Mézières, Letter to King Richard II: A Plea Made in 1395 for Peace between England and France, ed. and trans. G.W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1975).

9 Françoise Autrand, "La paix impossible: les négociations franco-anglaises à la fin du 14e siècle," in Annales de Bourgogne 68(1997): 11-22.

10 See Autrand, 37; J.J.N. Palmer, England, France and Christendom, 1377-99 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, l972), 142-51, 166-79; and Richard Vaughan, Philip the Bold: The Formation of the Burgundian State (London, 1962), 61-62.

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of Nevers. When Louis of Orléans and John of Gaunt also backed out, John the Fearless, the highest ranking noble remaining, was left in charge.11 The withdrawals did not upset the planning of the crusade, which was soon augumented by such participants as Marshal Boucicault; Philip of Artois, constable of France; Jean de Vienne, admiral of France; Guillaume de la Trémoille, marshal of Burgundy; and Enguerrand de Coucy VII. On the other hand, the withdrawal of so many high-ranking nobles demonstrates an unmistakable reluctance to emulate their royal ancestors by personally participating in such a venture. One critical consequence of this reluctance was the replacing of more experienced military leaders, men such as Orléans and Lancaster, by the proud and reckless enthusiasm of youth. This would play a major role in determining the outcome at Nicopolis. While perhaps not popular among the royal magnates of western Europe, the crusade of Nicopolis found great favor among what would later be called the "rank-and-file".

When John the Fearless left Dijon on April 30, 1396, he com- manded sizeable contingents from France, Burgundy, England, and the Low Countries. This force marched first to Regensburg, then traveled by boat down the Danube, stopping in Vienna and Buda. More and more soldiers from Germany, Austria, and Italy swelled its ranks. Among these were King Sigismund I of Hungary (1387-1437), a contingent of Knights Hospitallers, and a large group of lesser nobles.12 When further reinforced by knights and nobles of central Europe, this had become the largest European force raised in the post-Black Death era. Contemporary sources put it at more than 100,000, with modern historians numbering it between 12,000 and 16,000.13

______________ 11 Vaughan, 62-63. 12 The most important of these nobles were Count Palatine Ruprecht Pipan,

Count Herman II of Cilly, Burgrave John III of Nuremberg, Philibert de Naillac, Grand Master of Rhodes, and Nicholas Kanizsay, archbishop of Gran.

13 The number of troops at Nicopolis is disputed. While Atiya (Nicopolis, 66-69 and Crusade, 446) holds onto the large numbers given by contemporary western chroniclers, other historians have chosen to lower them. See Housley, Later Crusades, 76; Gustav Kling, Die Schlacht bei Nikopolis im Jahre 1396 (Berlin, 1906), 14-24, 81; Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War Within the Framework of Political History, trans. W.J. Renfroe, Jr., 5 vols. (Westport, Connecticut, 1984), 3:476-81; and R. Rosetti, "Notes on the Battle of Nicopolis (1396)," Slavonic and East European Review 15(1936-37): 629-38. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, modern historians tending to underestimate numbers as much as contemporary historians tend to exaggerate

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Once gathered, the crusade pushed eastward. Western leaders against the advice of Sigismund, who wanted to establish a defensive perimeter north of the Danube, yearned for an immediate confrontation with the main Turkish force. The crusaders quickly overran Ottoman garrisons at Vidin and Rahova (modern Oryakhovista) bringing them to the large and well-fortified town of Nicopolis, which they invested between September 8 and 10.14

During the crusader advance toward Nicopolis, Bayezid I was far to the east, besieging Constantinople.15 Scouts and spies regularly kept him informed of activities throughout his realm, and when news came of the crusader attacks on Vidin and Rahova, followed by their arrival at Nicopolis, the Ottoman sultan broke off his own siege and quickly marched north to relieve his frontier outpost. The speed of the Ottoman advance was extraordinary, and, on September 24, when he camped only four miles south of the besieged town, his presence surprised the crusader.16 Bayezid, like many of the western leaders, was enthusiastic for an immediate confrontation: hence, he planned for a battle on the day following his arrival.

No contemporary Turkish account of the battle of Nicopolis exists. On the other hand, western descriptions of this event abound, many of them based on the testimony of eyewitnesses.17 According to the chroniclers, the Turkish army was 100,000 strong; on the other hand, modern historians drop this number to 15-20,000. It was composed not only of Ottoman Turks, but also of soldiers from conquered and vassal countries, namely Serbs, Bulgarians, Bosnians, and Albanians. The Turkish janissary corp, filled with young Christian tribute-children and prisoners of war who had converted to Islam, anchored the Ottoman army.18 Otherwise, the Turkish force was comprised mainly

_________ them. For a survey of who claims what in the dispute see Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 351-53. Setton himself believes in a number between 12,000-16,000 on each side.

14 Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 347-49 and Vaughan, 68-69. 15 A narrative of and the sources for this siege can be found in Paul Gautier,

"Un récit inédit du siège de Constantinople par les turcs (1394-1402)," Revue des études byzantines 23(1965): 100-17 and N. Necipoglu, "Economic Conditions in Constantinople during the Siege of Bayezid I (1394-1402)," in Constantinople and Its Hinterland, ed. C. Mango and G. Dagron (Aldershot, 1995), 157-67.

16 Vaughan, 69. 17 See Johann Schiltberger, and other eye-witness accounts used by Jean Froissart,

the anonymous author of Le livre des fais du Mareschal de Bouciquaut, Jean Juvenal des Ursins, and the Religieux de Saint-Denis.

18 On the early history of Ottoman conquests in Europe see Halil Inalcik, The

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of infantry, with some light cavalry. On the other side, the crusaders fielded an army composed of both heavy cavalry and infantry. While the western European contingents were largely mounted, the Hungarian and other central European soldiers (Wallachians, Transylvanians, and some Germans) for the most part fought on foot.

The single most important factor determining the battle's outcome involved the relative inexperience of the Christian leadership. Due to the nearly constant warfare of the period, most soldiers fighting on both sides were veterans. The same, however, cannot be said of their leaders. For while Bayezid and his officer corps had considerable combat experience, John the Fearless and those around him did not. Sigismund was the only Christian general who had fought against the Ottoman Turks. Despite their obvious lack of experience, John and his knights felt that they had traveled all that way to defend Hungary precisely because the Hungarian king had not been able to do so. Consequently, they were not about to listen to Sigismund, no matter how experienced he might be. This was an attitude which quickly and disastrously led to defeat.19

At Nicopolis, Sigismund recommended that the central European troops including his own men, should be placed in the vanguard to meet the irregular Turkish infantry which stood in front of their army. Here, they could take a defensive stance while trying to pro- voke the Turks into a charge. Sigismund was confident that such a charge would either be defeated at first impact or subsequently scat- tered by the strong crusader cavalry coming up from the rear. The

________ Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300—1600, trans. N. Itzkowitz and C. Imber (New Rochelle, New Jersey, 1973), 3-16; Justin McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 (London, 1997), 33-50; John V.A. Fine, Jr., The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest (Ann Arbor, 1987), 325-425; and Peter F. Sugar, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804 (Seattle, 1977), 3-30. On the janissary corp, see Inalcik, 11 and Atiya, Nicopolis, 73-75.

19 The standard secondary accounts of battle are: Atiya, Nicopolis, 82-97; Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 351-56; Delbrück, 473-81; Sir Charles Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, 2 vols. (London, 1905), 2:348-53; Gustav Köhler, Die Entwickelung des Kriegswesens und der Kriegführung in der Ritterzeit von Mitte des 11. Jahrhunderts bis zu de Hussitenkriegen, 2 vols. (Breslau, 1886), 2:625-55; Gustav Köhler, Die Schlachten von Nicopoli und Warna (Breslau, 1882); Alois Brauner, Die Schlacht bei Nikopolis, 1396 (Breslau, 1876); and Ferdinand von Šišić, "Die Schlacht bei Nikopolis (25 September 1396)," Wissenschaftliche mitteilungen aus Bosnia und der Hercegovina 6(1899): 291-327; David Nicolle, Nicopolis 1396: The Last Crusade (London, 1999) appeared after this essay was written.

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western knights rejected this plan.20 Despite agreement with Sigismund by Enguerrand de Coucy, perhaps the most sage and experienced of the crusader leaders,21 Philip of Artois used his influence and his office to counter the Hungarian king's proposal. According to Froissart, he replied with these words:

Yes, yes, the king of Hungary wishes to gain all the honor of the day. He has given us the vanguard, and now he wishes to take it away, that he may have the first blow. Let those who will believe what he sends to us, but for my part I never will... In the name of God and Saint George, you shall see me this day prove myself a good knight.22

And so it happened; with a flurry of pride and enthusiasm the crusader cavalry dashed against a line of stakes behind which the Turk- ish army was arrayed. Although their initial attack enjoyed some success, breaking through the stakes and pushing back the Turkish irregulars, the main body of the enemy did not flee. When Bayezid launched a counter-attack with his regular troops, including cavalry, infantry, and archers, the impetus of the crusaders had been spent. Even though some Germans and Hungarians hurried forward to reinforce them, they, too, were routed.23 Those Christians who could, tried to flee from the battlefield, but the Danube River blocked their path and few were actually able to leave the scene of what would

__________ 20 Atiya, Nicopolis, 82-84; Atiya, Crusade, 447; and Henry L. Savage, "Enguerrand

de Coucy VII and the Campaign of Nicopolis," Speculum 14(1939): 434-35. This comes chiefly from Froissart, XV: 313-14.

21 Froissart, XV:314. Savage is adamant that Coucy did in fact agree with Sigismund (434-35), basing this on Froissart's account alone, however.

22 Froissart, XV:314. Several other chronicles also record this tactical disagree- ment: Le livre des fais du Mareschal de Bouciquaut, 106-7; Chronique du religieux de Saint Denis, ed. L. Bellaguet, 2 vols. (Paris, 1839-52), 2:484-91; Res gestae ab anno 1383 ad 1405 in Chroniques relatives à l'histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de Bourgogne, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1876), 226; Jean Brandon, Chronique in Chroniques relatives à l'histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de Bourgogne, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1870), 37; Chronique des Pays-Bas in Corpus chronico- rum Flandriae, ed. J.J. de Smet (Brussels, 1856), 294; Conrad Justinger, Die Berner- Chronik, ed. G. Studer (Berne, 1871), 183; Anonymous of Florence, Cronica volgare in Rerum Italicarum scriptores, n.s. 27, pt. 2, ed. E. Bellondi (Rome, 1915), 208-9; and Antonio Morosini, Chronique, ed. L. Dorez (Paris, 1898), 10-11.

23 Atiya, Nicopolis, 89-93; Oman, 2:351-52; Delbrück, 478-79; and Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 352-55. Atiya (Nicopolis, 92-93) maintains that there was German and Hungarian reinforcement, even though Johannes Schiltberger, Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa (1396-1427), ed. K.F. Neumann and trans. J.B. Telfer (London, 1879), 3 is the only contemporary author to contend that this took place. He was an eye-witness to the battle and may have been taken prisoner in this charge.

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become a slaughter-house. Among the ones who did escape were the Wallachians and Transylvanians, neither of whom had been involved in the fight. When the tide of battle turned against their allies, both fled.24 Sigismund himself retreated to the Danube, boarded a boat, and sailed to safety.25

Jean Froissart claims that the battle of Nicopolis lasted three hours. By the end, it had become clear that the Ottoman Turks had won a great victory. Few crusaders had been killed on the battlefield, but many had been captured. The Turks, on the other hand, had taken significant losses, far more, it seems, than did their better-armored opponents.26 In a lengthy passage describing the massacre which ensued, one of the survivors, Johann Schiltberger claims that these Turkish losses caused the execution of the Christian prisoners:

And now when the King Weyasat [Beyezid] had fought the battle, he went near the city where King Sigmund [sic] had encamped with his army, and then went to the battle-field and looked upon his people that were killed; and when he saw that so many of his people were killed, he was torn by great grief, and swore he would not leave their blood unavenged, and ordered his people to bring every prisoner before him the next day, each with as many prisoners as he had made, bound with a cord. I was one of three bound with the same cord, and was taken by him who had captured us. When the prisoners were brought before the king, he took the Duke of Burgony [sic] that he might see his vengeance because of his people that had been killed. When the Duke of Burgony [sic] saw his anger, he asked him to spare the lives of several he would name; this was granted by the king. Then he selected twelve lords, his own countrymen, also Stephen Synüher and the lord Hannsen of Bodem. Then each [Turk] was ordered to kill his own prisoners, and for those who did not wish to do so the king appointed others in their place. Then they took my companions and cut off their heads, and when it came to my turn, the king's son saw me and ordered that I should be left alive, and I was taken to the other boys, because none under xx years of age were killed, and I was scarcely sixteen years old. Then I saw the lord Hannsen Greiff, who __________

24 Atiya, Nicopolis, 93-95 and Savage, 436. 25 Atiya, Nicopolis, 93-94. On Sigismund's role in the Nicopolis campaign in gen-

eral and the battle in specific, see Martin Kitzinger, "Sigismonde, roi de Hongrie, et la croisade," Annales de Bourgogne 68(1997): 23-34.

26 Atiya, Nicopolis, 96-98 and Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 354-55. How many Turks were actually killed cannot be determined from the sources. Le livre des fais du Mareschal de Bouciquaut (112) claims that it was 20,000, but this is generally seen as an exaggeration by modern historians. See Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 354-55.

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was lord of Payern, and four others, bound with the same cord. When he saw the great revenge that was taking place, he cried with a loud voice and consoled the horse- and foot-soldiers who were standing there to die. "Stand firm", he said, "when our blood this day is spilt for the Christian faith, and we by God's help shall become the children of heaven." When he said this, he knelt, and was beheaded together with his companions. Blood was spilled from morning until vespers, and when the king's counsellors saw that so much blood was spilled and that still it did not stop, they rose and fell upon their knees before the king, and entreated him for the sake of God that he would forget his rage, that he might not draw down upon himself the vengeance of God, as enough blood was already spilled. He consented, and ordered that they should stop, and that the rest of the people should be brought together, and from them he took his share and left the rest to his people who had made them prisoners.27

How many Christian prisoners were actually killed can not be known for sure. Perhaps as many as 6,000 crusaders had been captured, including all of the leading Franco-Burgundian nobles. But only about 300 returned to western Europe, having together paid more than 200,000 ducats in ransom.28 Other prisoners under the age of twenty were made slaves. Some, like Schiltberger, would eventually return home, though in his case it would take more than thirty years to do so.29 It is not known how many Christians were enslaved, though the number may have been considerable. Emmanuel Piloti recalled seeing two hundred of them taken at Nicopolis who had been sent by Bayezid to the Sultan of Egypt.30 If a comparable number were sent to other places throughout the Turkish Empire, as many as several thousand prisoners may have been spared execution. Even so,

___________ 27 Schiltberger, 4-5. See also Froissart, 15:320, 325, 327-28; Le livre des fais du

Mareschal de Bouciquaut, 113-17; Chronique du religieux de Saint Denis, 2:516-21; Res gestae ab anno 1383 ad 1405, 227; Jean Brandon, 37; Anonymous of Florence, 209; Johann von Posilge, Chronik des Landes Preussen (von 1360 an, fortgesetzt bis 1419), ed. T. Hirsch, M. Töppen, and E. Strehlke (Leipzig, 1866), 209; Historia vitae et regni Ricardi secundi, ed. G.B. Stow, Jr. (Philadelphia, 1977), 137.

28 On the numbers of prisoners taken see Atiya, Nicopolis, 94-97; Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 355-56; and Jean Richard, "Les prisonniers de Nicopolis," Annales de Bourgogne 68(1997): 75-84. On the ransom for John of Fearless and other captives and how it was raised see Vaughan, 71-78 and B.-A. Pocquet du Haut- Jussé, "Le retour de Nicopolis et la rançon de Jeans san Puer," Annales de Bourgogne 9(1937): 296-302.

29 Schiltberger, 5. 30 Emmanuel Piloti, Traité d'Emmanuel Piloti sur le passage en Terre Sainte (1420), ed.

P.-H. Dopp (Leuven, 1958), 412. See also Richard, 81-82.

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this means that as many as 5,000 Christian prisoners could have been executed after their defeat, a remarkable number.

It took some time for news of the defeat to reach western Europe. According to Kenneth Setton, more than two months elapsed before word of Nicopolis arrived in France, to be greeted by widely vary- ing reactions. Some, like the great crusade propagandist, Philippe de Mézières, whose speeches and writings may have done much to insti- gate the journey to Nicopolis, tried to explain away the defeat by criticizing those who had been defeated. In his Épistre lamentable et consolatoire, he accuses the crusaders of following the "three daugh- ters of Lucifer"—"pride, cupidity, and luxury"—instead of the four virtues of good governance—"order, the discipline of chivalry, obedience, and justice."31 To others, like French poet Eustace Deschamps, it was a time for honoring the dead. In a poem entitled Pour les Français morts à Nicopolis, Deschamps praises the crusaders for having "carried the banner of Our Lady against the Turks; but these devoted men were slain by the lance. May God have mercy on each of their souls."32 Most people, however, received the news only with sadness and mourning, as represented in the quotation by Marshal Boucicault's biographer which opened this article.

The general European reaction changed when John the Fearless and his ransomed companions returned to the west some nine months later. These men brought with them harrowing, but as yet unheard tales, recounting how the prisoners had been executed before their eyes. One can only imagine the psychological impact that witness- ing such a ruthless act could have had on these young leaders. They

_________ 31 This text, although in several manuscripts, remains unedited in its entirety. A

partial edition, under the title Épistre lamentable et consolatoire sur le fait de la desconfiture lacrimable du noble et vaillant roy de Honguerie par les turcs devant la ville de Nicopoli, can be found in Oeuvres de Froissart, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1867-77), 16: 444-525. See also Atiya, Nicopolis, 124-25; Atiya, Crusade, 152-54; Jorga, 498-504; Philippe Contamine, "La Consolation de la desconfiture de Hongrie de Philippe de Mézières (1396)," Annales de Bourgogne 68(1997): 35-48; Joan Williamson, "Philippe de Mézières and the Idea of Crusade," in The Military Orders: Fighting for Faith and Caring for the Sick, ed. M. Barber (Aldershot, 1994), 358-64; and Kiril Petkov, "The Rotten Apple and the Good Apples: Orthodox, Catholics, and Turks in Philippe de Mézières' Crusading Propaganda," Journal of Medieval History 23(1997): 255-70.

32 Eustace Deschamps, Oeuvres completes, ed. Q. de Saint Hilaire and G. Raynaud (Paris, 1878-1903), 7:77-78. Deschamps later wrote another poem which also praised those who participated on the crusade, Faicte pour ceuls de France quant ilz furent en Hongrie (8:85-86). These poems are also included in Atiya, Nicopolis, 129-32.

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had been forced to watch hours of bloodshed and thousands of mur- ders not countenanced by any law of war. It must have affected them.33

The story of Nicopolis also had an undeniable effect on those who had not actually participated in the conflict. For many centuries, western European lands had not suffered such wanton destruction of human life by soldiers. Earlier crusades had not witnessed such a wantonly bloodly spectacle. Indeed, the great Muslim leader, Saladin, was seen as a chivalric hero, exchanging prisoners of war of all classes, despite knowing of the massacres of Muslim prisoners by members of the First Crusade and by Richard the Lionheart.34 Even though constant warfare had plagued the kingdoms of western Europe for several decades before Nicopolis, the inhumane horrors of war had been kept to a minimum. In the chronicles of the period, many more acts of chivalry than of atrocity were recorded.35 How then was the west to react to such stories?

One reaction was to add to the record new Ottoman atrocity stories. Soon the Turks had become the symbol of evil, an evil which surpassed anything previously contemplated by western Europeans. This vilification was both propagated and expanded by some fifteenth- century travelers to the east, whose writings were copied and pop- ularized throughout western Europe.

By contrast, other travelers, including the pilgrim John of Segovia and the spy, Bertrandon de la Broquière believed that the prevailing image of Turks as evil incarnate was wrong. Such men argued that the Turks were in fact a benevolent and humane people, who treated foreigners, regardless of religion, with kindness. In fact, after

_________ 33 See Pius II, The Commentaries of Pius II, trans. F.A. Gragg (Northampton, 1957),

69. As evidence of this, at the Council of Mantua in 1459, Pope Pius II made a point of reminding then duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, that his father had witnessed this slaughter.

34 Dante, for example, places Saladin among the virtuous heathens in The Inferno, canto IV, line 129.

35 For Edward Ill's feeding of pregnant women inside the besieged town of Tournai in 1340, see Kelly DeVries, "Contemporary Views of Edward III's Failure at the Siege of Tournai, 1340," Nottingham Medieval Studies 39(1995): 97 -98. For the English king's feeding of the refugees cast out of Calais in 1347, see Kelly DeVries, "Hunger, Flemish Participation and the Flight of Philip VI: Contemporary Accounts of the Siege of Calais, 1346 47," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 12 n.s. (1991): 142. For the honor with which Edward dressed and returned the corpse of John, the king of Bohemia, after the battle of Crécy, see Kelly DeVries, Infantry Warfare in the Early Fourteenth. Century: Discipline, Tactics, and Technology (Woodbridge, 1996), 174.

168 a lengthy stay in Turkish lands, Bertrandon wrote: "I have found that the Turks are much more friendly to me than are the Greeks."36

However these writers were in the minority and converted few to their more favorable point-of-view. One surprising convert was Pope Pius II (1458-1464), who came to realize that the image of Turkish evil and violence was untrue, a sentiment he expressed repeatedly in his lengthy letter to Mehmed II (1451-1481) written sometime around 1459.37

Negative images of the Ottomans remained much more popular and more common. Instead of describing them as benevolent and humane, most writers continued to characterize the Turks as "treach- erous" (Raymond Peraudi),38 "ruthless and cruel" (Pero Tafur),39 or "cruel and ambitious" (Jehan de Waurin).40 Even the titles of some treatises clearly conveyed this prevailing view.41

Turkish military practices elicited the greatest amount of enmity among anti-Turkish writers. Such critics decried the Turk's "unnat- ural mastery over alien races"—to use the words of Jean Germain42—

____________ 36 Bertrandon de la Broquière, Le voyage d'Outremer de Bertrandon de la Broquière, ed.

C. Shefer, in Recueil de voyages et de documents pour servir à l'histoire de la géographic depuis le XIIIe jusqu'à la fin du XVIe siècle, (Paris, 1892), 149. On Bertrandon see Atiya, Crusade, pp. 197-207 and M. Izeddin, "Deux voyageurs du XVe siècle en Turquie: Bertrandon de la Broquière et Pero Tafur," Journal asiatique 239(1951): 159-74. On John of Segovia, see Richard W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1962), 86-92.

37 Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Epistola ad Mahomatem II (Epistle to Mohammed II), ed. and trans. A.R. Baca (New York, 1990), 11-12. On this aspect of Pius II’s writings and teachings see Southern, 98-103. Earlier in his life, Pius had not held the same view, believing instead that the Turks "were uncivilized men who are hostile to good manners and to literature" (Piccolomini, Epistola, 1). Indeed in the later letter, Pius even seems to understand that the military depredations which others had ascribed solely to the Turks, "many cities have been destroyed, sacred build- ings burned, virgins raped, and matrons violated," were the responsibility of both sides, Turk and Christian, who "have contended for supremacy by the sword."

38 Codex documentorum sacralissimarum indulgentiarum neerlandicarum (1300-1600), ed. P. Fredericq (The Hague, 1922), no. 290. Translated in Housley, Documents on the Later Crusades, 173-75.

39 Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures, ed. and trans. M. Letts (London, 1926), 128. See also Atiya, Crusade, 212-14 and Izeddin.

40 Jehan de Waurin, Récueil des croniques et anchiennes istories de la Grant Bretaigne, ed. W. and E.L.C.P. Hardy (London, 1864-91), V:257.

41 Bartholomew de Jana. Epistola de crudelitate Turcarum in Patriologiae Cursus Completus. Series Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne, 161 in 166 vols. (Paris, 1866-1928), 1055-78; J.A.B. Palmer, "Fr. Georgius de Hungaria, O.P., and the Tractatus de moribus condicionibus et nequicia turcorum," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 34(1951-52): 44-68.

42 Jean Germain, "Le discours du voyage d'Oultremer au très victorieux roi

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or their blind obedience to officers, according to Bertrandon de la Broquèrie.43 Ghillebert de Lannoy spoke out against the Turkish practice of using prisoners of war as military slaves,44 a view shared by Emmanuel Piloti.45 Philippe de Commynes accuses the Turks of murdering and mutilating prisoners:

The stradiots [a janissary company in the Turkish army] pursued [our men] ... up to the marshal's lodgings where the Germans were quar- tered, and they killed three or four and took away their heads, for such was their custom. For when the Venetians were at war with the Turk named Mohammed the Ottoman [Mehmed II] . . . he did not want his men to take any prisoners; and he gave them a ducat for each head.46

Thomas Basin writes that the conquered were degraded and molested:

There was in [Otranto] a bishop of irreproachable conduct and old age. These savage barbarians [the Turks] (more like dogs than humans, one might say) subjected this man to a most horrible death, without consideration of his dignity or his age, without any pity or fear of God whatsoever. They impaled his body from his groin all the way to his head so that his entrails were completely pushed out of the body. And they exacted the worst violences on many women and virgins of the town, and then they humiliated them by making them wear very short garments to cover their pudenda.47

Vivid images of Turkish violence were brought west by those fleeing the fall of Constantinople (1453). To Cardinal Bessarion, it was the desecration of the symbols of Christianity which showed the true barbarity of the Turks:

As for the venerable image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which the entire population of Constantinople used to worship before all else with the greatest devotion, those impious butchers detached its gold, silver and precious stones, cut up their meat on it for a long time, before finally trampling it beneath their feet, breaking it up with an

___________ Charles VII prononcé en 1452 par Jean Germain, evêque de Chalon," ed. C. Shéfer, Revue de l'orient latin 3(1895): 303-42. See also Atiya, Crusade, 204-8 and Southern, 94-99.

43 Bertandon de la Broquière, 221-22. 44 Ghillebert de Lannoy, Oeuvres de. Ghillebert de Lannoy, Voyageur, Diplomate et Moraliste,

ed. C. Potvin (Leuven, 1878), 119. See also Atiya, Crusade, 190-97. 45 Piloti, 412. 46 Philippe de Commynes, The Memoirs of Philippe de Commynes, ed. S. Kinser and

trans. I. Cazeaux, 2 vols. (New York, 1973), 2:520. 47 Thomas Basin, Histoire de Louis XI, ed. C. Samaran (Paris, 1963-72), 3:118-19.

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axe, and burning it. The representations of our Saviour in the vaults of the church, which were too high up to reach by hand and pollute with excrement, they shot arrows at shamelessly hurling abuse: "Let's see if the God of the Christians knows how to escape from our hands."48

While Bessarion condemned the treatment of sacred images, in the eyes of most westerners, the Turkish abuse of Constantinople's Christian population constituted the most vile and terrifying aspect of the Ottoman conquest. In the words of Michael Ducas:

Who can recount the calamity of that time and place? . . . The com- monest Turk sought the most tender maiden. The lovely nun, who heretofore belonged only to the one God, was now seized and bound by another master. The rapine caused the tugging and pulling of braids of hair, the exposure of bosoms and breasts, and outstretched arms.49

Philippe de Commynes sums it up in a single short sentence: "No

cruel act was omitted."50 Turkish atrocity stories remained commonplace through the end

of the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth. So pervasive were they that the archbishop of Spaleto, Bernadino Zane, even recounted one in the first session of the Fifth Lateran Council (May 10, 1512):

Within the confines of Europe [the Turks] have usurped no mean dominion with the effusion of much Christian blood . . . Not one among them has learned respect for the female sex, for the piety of youth, or compassion for the aged . . . They snatch children from the arms of their parents and infants from the breast of their mothers; they vio- late wives in front of husbands, they snatch virgins from the embrace of their mothers in wild lust, they cut down aged parents as though useless, in full view of their children; they yoke youths to the plough as if they were oxen and they destroy the cultivated land.51

Nevertheless by the sixteenth century, a new interpretation of Turkish military evils began to achieve prominence: the Turks were per- forming these atrocities on Christians only because the Christians

__________ 48 L. Mohler, "Bessarions Instruktion für die Kreuzzugspredigt in Venedig (1463),"

Römische Quartalschrift 35(1927): 337-49. A translation is found in Housley, Documents, 147-54. This quote is on 148.

49 Michael Ducas, Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, trans. H.J. Magoulias (Detroit, 1975), 227.

50 Commynes, 2:431. 51 As translated in Carl Max Kortepeter, "The Turkish Question in the Era of

the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517)," in The Ottoman Turks: Nomad Kingdom to World Empire (Istanbul, 1991), 111.

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deserved it.52 In other words, God was using the Ottomans and their abuses to punish sinful Christians. Both Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther, not often in agreement, subscribed to this belief. As Erasmus puts it, "God, offended by our wickedness, from time to time uses the outrages committed by these barbarians to reform us."53

Luther, initially at least, agreed that "the Turk is the rod of the wrath of the Lord our God."54

Some might believe that images of Turkish cruelty should have roused a military response in the West. In fact, the opposite occurred; instead of encouraging a crusade against the Turks, such images long continued to frighten those who might otherwise have participated. Why should they submit themselves to such cruelties and degradations?55

______________ 52 While a new interpretation of Turkish military evils, the idea of military defeat

due to the sins of the losers (pecatis exigentibus) was not new. See Kelly DeVries, "God and Defeat in Medieval Warfare: Some Preliminary Thoughts," The Circle of War in the Middle Ages: Essays on Medieval Military and Naval History, ed. D. Kagay and L.J. Andrew Villalon (Woodbridge, 1999), 87-100.

53 Desiderius Erasmus, "On the War Against the Turks/ De bello turcico," in The Erasmus Reader, ed. E. Rummel (Toronto, 1990), 318. Nevertheless, Erasmus held that the answer to the Turkish problems was not war but conversion, warning those who wished to contend against them that the result would be even more warfare and the likelihood of attacks made against Germany. See Erasmus, 315-33; James D. Tracy, Erasmus of the Low Countries (Berkeley, 1996), 194-96; and Peter Heath, "War and Peace in the Works of Erasmus: A Medieval Perspective" in The Medieval Military Revolution: State, Society and Military Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. A. Ayton and J.L. Price (London, 1995), 121-44.

54 Martin Luther, On War Against the Turk, trans. C.M. Jacobs and R.C. Schultz, in Luther's Works, 46, ed. R.C. Schultz (Philadelphia, 1967), 170. From as early as 1518 Luther believed that "der Türcke ist unsers herr Gottes zornige rute." This position led Pope Leo X in 1520 to include this in his bull, Exsurge Domine, as one of his bases for condemning the reformer. Luther reacted to this specific condem- nation by claiming that the reason why the papacy continued to call for a crusade against the Turks was to increase its own wealth: "The popes had never seriously intended to wage war against the Turk; instead they used the Turkish war as a cover for their game and robbed Germany of money by means of indulgences whenever they took the notion" (Luther, 164). This addition to Luther's arguments only intensified his belief that the Turks were being used by God to punish the sins of Christian Europe. Later, Luther would change his view on this. See Kenneth M. Setton, "Lutheranism and the Turkish Peril," Balkan Studies 3(1962): 133-68.

55 While atrocity stories appear with the recounting of almost every military sit- uation throughout the Middle Ages, those that arise from the Turkish invasions seem to have an almost clear-cut fatalism that is associated with them, as if there is to be no relief from the terror caused by the invaders, no revenge from God. As such these stories are similar to those that accompany the successful military operations of other non-Christians against Christians, i.e. the Mongol invasions, but differ from atrocity stories which accompany military adventures of Christian versus

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However, in 1529, after the Turks had overrun most of southeastern Europe, Sultan Süleyman I, the "Magnificent" (1520-1566), began the first Turkish siege of Vienna. Westerners could no longer remain fearfully apathetic to what was happening in the east, for now it was happening in the center of Europe. Emperor Charles V (1519-1556) determined that the moment had once again come to counter the Turkish threat. For the first time since the defeat at Nicopolis, 137 years earlier, western Europe put together an army to "crusade" against the Ottomans.

It would be highly speculative to conclude that the execution of Christian prisoners captured at the battle of Nicopolis kept western Europeans from attacking the Ottomans for such a long time. After all, no contemporary source makes such an assertion. In addition, one must remember the wars of western Europe which kept soldiers fully employed, leaving them little time to mount a crusade in the east. What is more, the Hungarians, especially under the leadership of Janos Hunyadi and his son, Matthias Corvinus, had enjoyed greater success in defending their own borders without assistance from any- one in the West. Such factors must have played a role in keeping western crusaders from marching against the Turkish threat.56 Finally, the nature of war had changed. A western Christian military leader, Henry V (1413-1422), duplicated what Bayezid had done at Nicopolis when in 1415 he murdered French prisoners at Agincourt.57 Still, it cannot be denied that after Nicopolis, with its stories of Ottoman military atrocities, it would be more than a century before a western army would once again take the field against the Turks. In the meantime, the Ottoman Empire had grown until it was larger than all Christian kingdoms of the west put together.

_________ Christian forces. It should be said, however, that there is a need for a study of atrocity stories in the Middle Ages.

56 These two points are investigated more fully in my article, "The Lack of a Western European Military Response to the Ottoman Invasions of Eastern Europe from Nicopolis (1396) to Mohács (1526)," The Journal of Military History 63(1999): 539-59.

57 On the killing of the prisoners at Agincourt, see Heath, 84-85, 108-12. The connection between these two events was first suggested to me by one of my stu- dents, Zachary Nall.