Sigismund was the first ruler of Hungary for whom the defence of the southern border became a central issue. With the defeat of the allied Balkan army at the battle of Kosovo (1389) the ‘buffer zone’ keeping the Ottomans far from Hungary’s territory had collapsed. Nicopolis had shown that the long-outdated crusading idea would not serve in the confrontation with the sultan. However, for a short while the country could still count on a ‘third force’ against the Turks. Hungarian foreign policy was successful in winning the Serbian ruler, Stephan Lazarevic, as a valuable ally. For several years Hrvoja of Bosnia and Mircea of Wallachia also acknowledged Sigismund’s suzerainty. However, suspicions of Hungary’s political aspirations and memories of her missionary zeal (against Bosnian ‘heretics’ and Orthodox Christians) hindered the consolidation of such alliances. Sigismund and his barons, aware of the need to protect the country’s frontiers, began to build up a system of defences. Pipo Scolari, the Florentine financial counsellor who became commander of the southeastern border regions, and later the brothers Talloci (of Ragusan origin) established a two-tiered chain of fortifications from the Transylvanian border to the Adriatic Sea with ample garrisons and a sizeable light cavalry settled around and between them. These troops consisted in a large part of South Slav lords and their retainers, who had been forced out of their country by the advancing Ottoman Empire, and were thus familiar with the enemy’s warfare. The linchpin of the system was Belgrade, acquired by Hungary from the Serbian despot, Stephan, in 1427. To finance the building and upkeep of this system, Pipo and his successors were granted the income of several counties, the banates along the frontier, and the Transylvanian salt mines. (The salt monopoly was a large monetary source; in fact, soldiers were often directly paid in salt.) After 1403 counties and royal domains were no longer given to officers of the household as ‘honours’ (similar to service fiefs), but entrusted to military men, usually styled ‘captains’, with full powers.
In the 1430s the country was faced with challenges from both north and south, when the Hussites attacked northern Hungary (today’s Slovakia). The threat of war on two fronts (aggravated by an ongoing struggle with Venice for Dalmatia) triggered a royal proposal for a new military ordinance that would remain the basis of defence for a long time. This, the so-called Siena Register, was drafted by Sigismund during his involuntary stay in Italy, on the way to his imperial coronation in 1432/3. Although not formally implemented by the diet of 1435, it reflects the distribution of wealth, prestige and power in the country. Consistent with tradition, seignorial troops (called banderia, meaning a force of 100—400 lances) were to be fielded by the two archbishops, the six or seven richest bishops, the palatine, the chief justices, the officers of the king’s and the queen’s household, the bans of Croatia, Slavonia and the border districts, the voivodes of Transylvania and the lords of Croatia and Dalmatia. In addition one or more royal banderia of up to 1,000 lances (partly paid by the king, partly supplied by his ‘knights of the court’) were to be deployed at the threatened borders. In the framework of the general levy, the seventy-two counties were to supply 50—300 mounted soldiers each, according to size and population. One of the two innovations was that some fifty noblemen, holders of the newly established great landed estates, were listed by name as commanders of 50—100 lances. Most of them came not from the leading families, but were rich middle-rank landowners who, in the course of the century, became ‘banderial lords’, forerunners of the formalised estate of magnates in early modern times. The other reform was the establishment of a local militia, based on taxable plots (porta), hence called militiaportalis. Envisaged as early as at the Temesvar (Timisoara, Romania) diet of 1397 and decreed in 1435, this auxiliary military force was intended to augment the banderia of the great lords and prelates. The decree stipulated that all landowners (the lesser ones in groups) should arm and equip a soldier for every twenty (in later regulations thirty-three) tenant peasants and send them to war under command of the county’s captain.
The Siena Register also points to the fact that barons, prelates and richer nobles had sizeable armed retinues, ready to follow the king’s call. These troops consisted of those noble familiares who took service with more powerful lords. Thus the majority of Hungarian nobles, whilst not living like peasants (they still claimed exemption from taxation), none the less became the servitors of their more fortunate fellows. This arrangement did not infringe on the noble status and inalienable estate of the retainer, who remained ‘the king’s man’, subject only to royal courts, except in matters regarding his contractual service. Retainers were rewarded with cash or other kinds of revenues, rarely with land, and served their seniors not only as armed companions but also as administrators of their estates and aides in public offices. Retainers followed their domini into higher royal service as well, and thus became, for example, judges and protonotaries (practical lawyers) of the central courts. While familiaritas somewhat resembled a western type of feudal relationship, it was less formal and less reciprocal than classical vassalage, and rarely lasted as long. On the other hand, it was not essentially different from the English practice of livery and maintenance.