c. 1475
Jacopo Promontorio was a Genoese merchant who over the course of his long life developed extensive ties with the Ottoman world. Along with his brother Gian-Andrea, he spent nearly two decades at the court of Murad II before his return to Genoa in 1448. He then returned to the East after 1453 and became a merchant in the orbit of the court of Mehmed II. In that capacity he accompanied the sultan on the campaign that ended at Belgrade. Some years later, he returned home to Genoa to retire, and there around 1475 he recorded his Recollecta, a wide-ranging memoir that stands as a key early witness to life at the Ottoman court. The passage in which he recalls the battle for Belgrade is translated here.
Source: Trans. J. Mixson, from Franz Babinger, “Der Quellenwert der Berichte über den Eintsatz von Belgrad 1456,” Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1957), 1–69 (here 64–8).1
And so it was [that] in the aforementioned year, 1456, he [Mehmed II] went in person to Belgrade on the Danube with a great army, its great force made of men-at-arms and azaps on foot, drawn from all of Turkey and Greece. During the previous winter, he had arranged the construction of one hundred trireme hulls in the forests of Serbia, on a river called the Morava, around 760 miles to the south.2 He outfitted these ships in every way like those worthy of sailing on the sea, launched them into the river, and had them row toward the Danube where that river joins the Morava. He also arranged for the transportation of metal ore to the city of Skopje, some eight hundred miles to the south, where he had cast twenty-eight large cannons, the smallest of which shot stones weighing four cantari, some five, some six or seven.3 Other cannons and guns were also cast in great numbers and were transported to the city of Belgrade.
The force surrounded the city. On one side, the one hundred aforesaid galleys moved to block the passage of the Hungarians, and also to transport their soldiers to land across the water, where the army of the aforesaid Hungarians was positioned. This was because Belgrade is in fact located in Greece, that is, on the Danube River [on its southern bank], beyond which the country of Hungary begins. And behold! Suddenly the holy brother John of Capistrano of the Order of Friars Minor, of blessed memory, arrived with his great following of men, almost all of them devout foot soldiers of our holy faith, who were ready to die for it. There were also twenty thousand more in Belgrade. I saw the city bombarded by the strikes of the twenty-eight great cannons, and everything destroyed. I saw the aforesaid Great Turk engaged in a grand battle, from which he derived little honor. They had launched a bold assault and had entered the first and second walls with great fury. But that most prudent and most holy man, the aforesaid Friar John, knew that the Turks, after such a long and fierce battle, were all weak and tired (or a great part of them), and so divided his army in three: one larger force surrounding his person, a second for the beylerbey of Greece, another for the other beylerbey of Turkey. Inspired by the divine cult, he decided to take position and ordered for the attack of the beylerbey of Greece, in which seven thousand died; [he did] the same for the other beylerbey of Turkey, [and] the rest to the person of the Great Turk. And with the name of Jesus Christ going before and the holy banner of the holy cross, they drove them back,4 so that immediately all [the sultan’s troops] and both beylerbeys were put to rout, and a great part they cut to pieces and drove them away from the aforementioned cannons, whose firing now ceased. Similarly, all of the hundred galleys were destroyed in this way, namely that in fear the Turks set them on fire and moreover (so that Friar John could not take them) they burned all that remained in their possession.5
All the people who remained unwounded now fled to where the sultan has been, to gather around him. But the Grand Turk was no longer there, first because night had fallen, and second because in battle they had captured a few Hungarians who advised them that Biancho,6 the captain general of Hungary, was nearby on an island in the Danube some eight miles from Belgrade with ten thousand men-at-arms, all on horseback, who were well-positioned to launch a counterattack in the morning. The Great Turk was terrified, firmly believing that our Christians would not be moved for anything, and so by night fled secretly with all of his army toward Turkey, in great silence and great fear. Thus, through the whole night and for three days after, they fled like hunted rabbits along the highway, with great shame. The loss and cost were great: one hundred galleys and twenty-eight large cannons with nearly all of his pavilions and carriages left behind in flight, to his shame. And the Great Turk himself was dangerously wounded by an arrow in the left leg, indeed to the bone, and was already in great flight, seeing that the ağa, captain of the janissaries, had been cut to pieces, not knowing that he would be wounded in turning his back, as noted above. For he was wounded in the other, but in this one did not suffer a great injury.7 The belerbey of Greece, called Charagiabei, was killed.8 He was a leading general, the most valiant, most wise, most intelligent, most valued, most accepted, and greatest of the sultan’s men. The leader of the janissaries, too, as noted above, was killed, along with more than thirteen other Turkish men, apart from those taken captive. Altogether he suffered losses of more than 500,000 ducats, and after it all he remained wretched, malcontent, and irritated. There in person with the Great Turk was the aforementioned Lord James, his trading partner, who was witness to the campaign and to the fight.9
1 See also Franz Babinger, Die Aufzeichnungen des Genuesen Iacopo de Promontorio de Campis über den Osmanenstaat um 1475 (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1957). The text, which survives in a single copy of a lost original, is in a rambling Italian that is difficult to translate literally. The notes indicate some of the places where the original is somewhat obscure, or where the reading should be taken with caution. I am grateful to my colleague Dr. Jessica Goethals of the University of Alabama for her generous assistance in helping me wrestle with the challenges.
2 See document 12, n. 5. If an Italian mile was roughly equivalent to 1.8 km, making this a distance of some 820 miles, the estimate is inaccurate by an enormous margin. The region referenced (around the city of Skopje) is only some 300 miles from Belgrade.
3 A variable Italian unit of mass, the cantaro was anywhere from 50–70 kg. The stones described here thus weighed anywhere from 400–1,000 lb.
4 Here an approximation of an obscure phrase.
5 This passage, particularly obscure in its details, is paraphrased here for its general sense, which is clear enough. The overall prominence of the role of Capistrano in this account is striking.
6 A garbled Italian rendering of “Janko,” or John Hunyadi.
7 Here is another obscure passage. It seems to indicate that the sultan suffered two leg wounds, one more severe than the other.
8 Karaca Bey, commander of Thrace, here “Greece.”
9 Jacopo here makes reference to himself.