c. 1488
John Hunyadi died shortly after the battle for Belgrade, and King Ladislaus V of Hungary a little over a year later. The successor to their ambitions, and to the leadership of Hungary, was Hunyadi’s younger son Matthias Corvinus, who was elected king in 1458 and ruled for over three decades until his death in 1490. Those years witnessed the remarkable growth of a “Renaissance” royal court in Buda, and the royal notary John Thurocz (c. 1435–89) was in the middle of it all. Toward the end of a long career at court, he turned his attention to the writing of a comprehensive history that could speak to the strong self-confidence and ambitions of his patron, King Matthias. Thurocz’s Chronicle of the Hungarians, published in 1488, unfolded in four parts. The first three parts of the chronicle were largely compiled or recast from earlier works, but the last, covering the period from 1387–1487, Thurocz completed himself. He had no existing narratives at his disposal, but he did have the advantages of his position, which gave him access to royal charters, books, letters, and other materials, as well as the oral testimonies and memories of key players in events close to his own day.
Source: John Thurocz, Chronicle of the Hungarians, trans. Frank Mantello (Bloomington: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, 1991), 173–86.
249. Concerning the Assault on the City of Constantinople Made by the Sultan of the Turks
In the course of the same year in which King Ladislas had come into Hungary,1 around the first month of summer, Mehmed, sultan of the Turks, turned his arms against the Greeks and waged a formidable war against the whole of Greece, contrary to the treaties he had entered into with the emperor of the Greeks and contrary to his oath. And after collecting countless troops from every source and setting in motion all the instruments of war in his kingdom, with a blockade by land and sea he violently and arrogantly attacked that most celebrated city of Constantinople, formerly called Byzantium, child of the ancient emperors and mistress of the world. And with the unremitting attacks of his arms he so devastated the sad city, which was begging for reinforcements from Christian kings and yet was abandoned by everyone to disaster and destruction, that even women were compelled to come to its defense. But what good was it for the Greeks to raise a mismatched hand against so many countless foes? Devising a new kind of assault, the sultan had subterranean tunnels and trenches excavated, which he used for an ambuscade; and when the sea had been spanned both with chains and by a bridge, and wooden towers had been erected to such a height that they were taller than the walls of the city, which were exceedingly tall, and from their tops the Turks were with thick showers of arrows striking everything that was being mobilized in the city, he caused, with the additional use of an assemblage of siege-engines and ballistas of many kinds and of unforeseen size, the city’s walls to be reduced to debris. At length, with the walls for the most part in ruins on the ground, the sultan, to the exceedingly loud noise of drums and trumpets, set in motion all the main strength of his expedition to invade the interior of the city, and after the [fourth] day of the siege he took the city with the use of the utmost force and in one final struggle. And once its emperor had, when the enemy entered the city, been many times wounded and slain, everything of beauty the sultan of the Turks found in the city, both of God and of men, he handed over to be pillaged by the unclean hands of the Turks. The city’s leading citizens were taken prisoner and brought to him, and the cruel prince had them most miserably strangled; the tombs of saints he had overturned, and their relics sunk in the sea. Who can put into adequate words, who can mourn, who can describe the fall of so great a city, the disaster, so very much to be lamented, suffered by the Christian religion, and the countless and enormous crimes indiscriminately perpetrated with brutality and wickedness by a rabid enemy against the sacred and profane, and against men and women alike?
250. Concerning the Siege of the Fortress of Nándorfehérvár by the Sultan of the Turks
King Ladislas was staying in the fortress of Buda and the 1455th year of the Lord was passing, when it was heard that Mehmed, sultan of the Turks, was threatening to invade the kingdom of Hungary and intended to storm the fortress of Nándorfehérvár as soon as possible. This news caused not only the common people of Hungary but also all the neighboring regions and practically the whole of Christendom to become very anxious and apprehensive. For the ferocious blockade of the city of Constantinople was vividly imagined by all Catholic people and seized everyone with great terror. Indeed, once the sultan of the Turks had obtained his victory over the Greeks, it was as if he had become some other man, and swelling with ambition and a very haughty pride, he thought that the triumphant times of the late Alexander the Great of the Macedonians had come back for him.2 For he is supposed to have said: “One God rules in the heavens; it is appropriate that only one prince rule the earth.”
When these rumors were reported to King Ladislas, at once the young prince became profoundly frightened, and Count Ulrich, whose actions reflected the German spirit of warlike courage and whose advice guided the king, was no less disturbed. They did not therefore discuss the protection of the kingdom nor did they ready their arms to withstand the enemy, but, as if unaware of the rumors, they withdrew one dark night from the fortress of Buda and proceeded to the city of Vienna by an indirect route. And the fortress of Buda remained closed and without appropriate defense beyond mid-month, and although the fearful rumor of the arrival of so large an enemy force daily became more widespread, no one was moved to take up arms against it.
At length, upon the arrival of that part of the next summer when the ears of corn in the fields, brought forth from the living soil, were already turning yellow, and Phoebus was causing his chariot to be drawn through the field of the constellation Gemini, the Twins,3 the aforementioned sultan of the Turks, along with his terrible and multifarious engines of war and more than 400,000 Turks, attacked the aforementioned fortress of Nándorfehérvár by encircling it with a terrifying blockade. The tops of their innumerable tents, spread out over the level ground of the plain far and wide on all sides, could be seen from the lofty walls of the fortress. Indeed, no one could with his eyes take in the masses of the enemy. What is more, the sultan had brought many ships constructed after the pattern of sea-going vessels, and with these he had so fortified the Danube and Sava rivers flowing alongside the fortress that no one could use a boat to bring aid to it. With the greatest labors he had brought devices and siege-machines and ballistas, so many in number, so great in size, and of a kind and magnitude that no one could ever believe they had been transported for the destruction of a fortress. These were with astonishing quickness assembled near the fortress of Kruševac, for because of their size they could not have been conveyed from distant parts. At length these machines were placed opposite that part of the fortress facing the plain. Some of them repeatedly struck the solid walls of the castle; others kept shooting stones the size of a bushel high into the air, which fell down with formidable impact within the walls of the fortress, instantly killing, like a thunderbolt, every living thing they hit.
And so day and night the siege-machines discharged violently and repeatedly, resounding with a thunderous noise, and their terrifying din could be heard as far away as the city of Szeged and in other cities far and wide, distant more than twenty-four Hungarian miles.4 And the uninterrupted firing of the siege-machines gave off incessant smoke, and the thick murkiness of its clouds darkened the air, once splendidly clear, from the golden radiance of the sun. The swift breezes were tainted with the sulfurous stench, and neither the intensely hot summer’s day nor the darkness of night brought any rest to the besiegers and the besieged, for the whole time was spent in deadly struggle.
The tops of the noble towers were collapsing under the massive impact, the walls were being shattered, and the lofty defensive walls protecting the fortress and its inhabitants were being razed to the ground. What more can be said, except that the besieged, utterly dazed by a profound fear of death, were waiting only for their last day?
Rumor of this most bitter and powerful siege spread through all the counties of the kingdom, but the Hungarian lords had fallen prey to a kind of torpor, as if in a deep sleep, and were not bringing any armed assistance to the city that was about to be lost. At last a man of innate courage and military expertise, the aforementioned lord count of Beszterce, went to oppose this awe-inspiring method of laying siege, escorted by a modest number of troops and intending to fight to the finish with an exceedingly numerous foe. A very great number of Hungarians assembled, people who were marked with the sign of the cross by the aforementioned friar Giovanni da Capestrano and were ready to fight for the name of Christ, and from Polish regions there came some three hundred crusaders. Although the lord count, as was mentioned above, had been relieved of the responsibilities of government, he was nevertheless unable to endure not attacking the enemy, impelled as he was by his usual restless energy. He therefore searched for a way by which he could remove the enemy’s ships from the aforementioned rivers and bring armed assistance to those laboring under the blockade.
Eventually, after hunting down some ships, he loaded them with armed troops and crusaders and at length dispatched them along the river Danube against the enemy vessels. The result of this maneuver was that both enemies were brought together in a naval battle. Amongst the Turks their loud battle cry abounded, and the Hungarians, too, with loud voices called upon the lord Jesus for assistance. Since both enemies had been deprived of escape routes, there commenced some very fierce fighting. The ships of both sides were conveyed here and there over the deep waters of the Danube, and many men, mortally wounded, were falling from them into the river. The clear water of the Danube turned blood-red from the immense slaughter, the result of the shedding of so much blood, and meals for the voracious fish were made of combatants on both sides.
At length, after the drawn-out struggle of the fight, the Hungarians were victorious; and charging very fiercely against the Turks, they cut apart their ships, which had been fastened together with iron chains, and set them alight.5 After this became known to the sultan of the Turks, he is supposed to have said: “Now it will be more difficult for us to have our way.”
Having achieved a glorious victory in the naval engagement, the lord count at once approached the fortress and brought solace to its captains, who were by now in a state of shock and confusion and awaiting no other fate but death. “Why,” he said, “are you terrified? Is it just the Turks you now see? They are the very ones we have very often routed; and we have ourselves sometimes fled before them. Why does the sight of them, whom you have many times seen, upset you? Have you not personally experienced their arms and their fighting power? Let us then put our trust, my dear sons, in Christ, for whose name we have very frequently shed our blood, and let us fight all the more courageously with his enemy and ours! Did not Christ die for us? Let us then also die for him. Be therefore resolute and courageous in war. The enemy, as we know, is afraid. And if God is with us, this enemy can easily be crushed. For he is in the habit of turning tail, and is not ashamed to give way, take flight, and return home a fugitive. What further need is there of discussion, seeing that you, too, have found out these things by trial while enduring, under my leadership, the long weariness of war?” And so, with these and a great many more words, and by his very presence, the lord count restored them to a state of no little aggressiveness. In addition, he strengthened the fortress with fresh troops and also brought into it a very large number of crusaders. And although they were of common birth and ignorant of the use of arms, the lord count trained them for war as best he could.
Before this, the sultan of the Turks had heard that his father Murad, while alive, had devoted seven months to a siege at the base of the fortress of Nándorfehérvár and had not at all been able to take it, and he had withdrawn from it without a victory and with disgrace.6 Consequently, with the leaders of his army in attendance upon him, the sultan of the Turks immoderately criticized his father and said that he could capture this same fortress in fifteen days. When the voivode of Anatolia,7 the most exalted of the sultan’s commanders, heard him boasting in this way, he obtained permission to speak first and replied to the sultan’s remarks as follows: “Mightiest Sultan, it would be in my best interests to say something agreeable in the presence of your dignity, but I am afraid that the future outcome of this undertaking may convict me of telling your clemency a lie. Yet we should know that the Hungarians surrender their fortresses with greater reluctance than the Greeks.”
The tops of the noble towers had by now been knocked down and the defensive walls were largely reduced to rubble on the ground, and the moats and embankments of the fortress were filled up and the ground made level, so that there was no barrier at all to stop the enemy’s incursion. When the fifteenth day of the siege, which I mentioned above, had begun to dawn, immediately the sultan, while the sunrise was still glowing brightly, mobilized all his hordes of people with the sounds of beating drums and blaring trumpets all round. And with a frenzied charge, he attacked the fortress, penetrating into its midst with a bloody slaughter. Now although the Hungarians were too few to join battle with so numerous an enemy, they nevertheless defended themselves with all their strength. And very often proclaiming the help of the lord Jesus, they keenly concentrated their efforts on the enemy’s destruction. So the lethal war was renewed, with fighting in the streets of the fortress. The bodies of many men who had been killed fell on both sides, and the loud, confused sound of much shouting and of the clanging of countless swords re-echoed in the air. Frequently were both enemies, one after the other, compelled to retreat.
Friar Giovanni da Capestrano was also there. As if in a trance, he and other friars, who with him had prostrated themselves on the ground, were with groans offering prayers, their thoughts and hands raised up for help from on high and their eyes fixed on heaven. Indeed, with the prophet they might have said: “I have lifted my eyes unto the mountains, whence help shall come to me.”8 The lord count of Beszterce was, with threats in one place and warnings in another, urgently pressing his men to fight. Likewise Mihaly Szilágyi,9 the captain, and Laszló Kanizsai,10 two young men of surpassing knightly courage, as well as the armed troops that the lord count had brought along with them, and also the companies of crusaders, all took up a position on the ruined walls of the fortress and were fighting with great ferocity.
First the Turks, who had very often been driven out of the fortress and had re-entered it as the result of a dreadful struggle, were stronger than the Hungarians. Now a very great number of houses in the fortress were set alight and were spouting fierce flames. Then a great many of the sultan’s standards were held aloft on the walls of the fortress as a sign of victory; and then the Hungarians, deprived of all hope of offering resistance, were forced to withdraw, if there was any place for them to retreat to, for the vision of imminent death was for each of them fast becoming a grim reality. Finally, when they saw that flight could not save them but that death alone would be their solution of so great a crisis, they once again loudly invoked the name of the lord Jesus, readied their arms and joined their shields, and rushed against the enemy with as powerful an assault as possible.
The deadly struggle was therefore resumed, with many on both sides pouring forth their blood and their souls. And the help of God was not wanting. For in a short time all the Turkish ranks were thrown into disarray by so strong and vigorous an assault by the Hungarians, and were forced to turn and flee. The Hungarians for that reason regained their fierceness, and as if aided from heaven with fresh fighting spirit, they pursued them at sword point for a very long time, until all the siege-engines and the other catapults that the Turks had employed to destroy the fortress were deprived of the soldiers manning them. The Hungarians therefore set alight all the defense works the Turks had erected, and with iron nails firmly closed the siege-engines’ apertures that were designed to discharge fire.
There was no pause in the fighting as long as daylight lasted, but the struggle that had previously taken place in the narrow streets of the fortress was thereafter continued for a time with much severity on the broad plain, until night arrived and with its darkness separated the two foes. But how the sultan, under cover of that night’s thick shadows, slipped away by flight below the fortress, no one is in a position to state for certain. Nevertheless, to God’s glory and the consternation of the sultan, suffice it to say that, deprived of all his war engines, and having abandoned all his siege-machines and the other kinds of catapults he had brought there, he returned to his own land after a huge slaughter of his own people. And what is more, thereafter any mention of this fortress, made by anyone in his presence, was to him never welcome.
In spite of what has been written here, certain people have said this about the sultan’s flight: that he had been wounded in the chest by an arrow during the fierce heat of battle when he was mustering his troops for the fight, and had then fallen to the ground more dead than alive. And his men had picked him up and carried him to their tents. But when it had reached nightfall, the Turks had seen that both the commander of Anatolia and indeed all their nobles had been killed in the war, that they themselves had suffered the greatest of slaughters, and that the sultan himself had hardly any pulse, as if he were half-dead. And terrified they would be attacked by the Hungarians come morning, they had begun to flee. Carrying the sultan with them so that he would not be made more ill by the labors of the journey, they had encamped beyond their fortress called Zrnov.11 And when the sultan had there recovered consciousness and had asked where he now was, and they had pointed out the place to him, he had said: “And why or how did we come to this place?” “We were decisively defeated,” they said, “by the Hungarians, and the commander of Anatolia and practically all the leaders of your army have been killed. We also suffered a great slaughter; and, what is more, we imagined that your serene highness was dead instead of alive. And so we fled until we reached this place.” The sultan had in his turn also inquired if the siege-engines and the other devices had also been abandoned there; and when they had replied that indeed everything had been left there, the sultan at once had said, afflicted with profound bitterness of heart: “Bring me poison that I may drink it and die rather than return to my kingdom in disgrace!”
In this way, then, did the sultan of the Turks end his fight with the Hungarians below the fortress of Nándorfehérvár. And he, who with arrogant attitude and proud gaze wished alone to rule the whole world, was decisively defeated by divine judgment at the hands of a rustic band that were better with hoes than weapons. And he who had very joyfully arrived to the sound of many trumpets and many drums, fled shamefully in the silence of the gloomy night.
251. Concerning the Death of Lord Janos Hunyadi, Count of Beszterce
After this victory the lord count of Beszterce fell ill. From the early days of his youth he had completed so many important tasks in wartime, but he had not yet succumbed to old age.12 He was, however, weary from the uninterrupted burden of bearing arms and the fulfillment of his responsibilities, and he was drained of strength. He fell ill there, and after suffering from the illness for a few days, he was at length taken to the town of Zemplen,13 and with the commendation of that man of God, the aforementioned friar Giovanni da Capestrano, he gave his spirit back to his Savior. There arose a loud lamentation throughout the whole of Hungary, and the land was distressed, as was the rest of Christendom, and grieved exceedingly when it heard that its champion had died. Moreover, even the stars fixed high in the heavens announced his death in advance, for a remarkable star with a tail had appeared in the heavens prior to his passing.14 Even Sultan Mehmed mourned, though put to flight by this lord count below the aforementioned fortress of Nandorfehervar just before his death. When the death of the lord count was announced by Despot George of Rascia to the sultan as if to console him, it is reported that the sultan remained silent, with his head motionless, for a full hour, and that he, although the count’s enemy, suffered greatly at his passing and said to the messenger that from the beginning of time there never had been such a man in the service of a prince. That man alone, amongst all the mortals of our generation, demonstrated how correct Solon was in ancient times when he denied supreme happiness to Croesus, king of the Lydians and the richest of all kings, who was questioning him about this. Is it not the case, for instance, that Tellus, the most outstanding of all the Athenians, whom Solon placed above Croesus in happiness after he had seen the latter’s treasure-chambers, was provided for by the supreme creator of the world with children, for whom everyone had the highest hopes? Is it not also the case that the count lived a life redolent in all respects of much glory and fame, and that a most illustrious death came to him as his lot just as it came to Tellus, when it brought to a close his life following the conquest and rout of so great a sultan, with the greatest of praise for the victory he was always striving for, when he could still taste the sweetness of his triumph, and with his good name intact?15
At length his body, while his family and followers shed many tears, was carried to Gyulafehérvár16 and honorably buried. Now the lord count died in the 1456th year of the Lord’s Incarnation, when Virgo had the sun as a guest in her heavenly bed. When the aforementioned friar Giovanni da Capestrano observed him laboring to breathe his last, he is reported, after commending him to God, to have repeated this sorrowful epitaph: “Hail, heavenly circle of light; you have fallen, corona of the kingdom! You have been extinguished, lamp of the world! Alas! The mirror into which we were hoping to look has been shattered. Now that your enemy has been decisively defeated, you reign with God and celebrate your triumph with the angels, O good Janos!”17
The lord count was a man of moderate height, with a large neck, curly chestnut-colored hair, large eyes, a look of calm assurance, a ruddy complexion, and so appositely and elegantly proportioned in the other parts of his body that he was recognized as a man of the first rank and importance in the midst of large numbers of people. He had two sons, to whom all of Hungary was looking with unrestrained longing. For the merits of their father compelled everyone to love them, and people observed that they had also inherited the courage and character of their father. The elder of these was called Laszlo, who was the same height as his father and a most outstanding young man amongst all his contemporaries for his courage as a knight, the integrity of his character, and his kindness and generosity. The younger son, Matthias,18 was still a boy when his father passed away. While alive his father was profoundly fond of this boy, and his youthful agility commended him in the eyes of everyone. All who looked at him foresaw that he would be a great man.
252. Concerning the Death of Friar Giovanni da Capestrano
Now those who during life have together fostered a mutual love in Christ are not parted from each other at the time of cruel death’s dire examination. For friar Giovanni da Capestrano, the man previously mentioned, whose name deserves to be written in the catalog of saints, and who had been attached to the aforementioned lord count of Beszterce in sincere affection and love, did not live for many days after the passing of the lord count. Greatly desiring to live in a starry dwelling more than in an earthly one, he restored his poor body, now separated from his soul, to the earth of which it had been made, as his spirit flew up to heaven.19 Buried in the convent of the Observant Friars Minor established in the town of Ujlak,20 in whose habit he imitated the life of his holy father Francis, his body was renowned because of countless miracles, and its fame has not ceased right to the present day.
1 Correctly three years before, in 1453.
2 Mehmed II was known to be an admirer of the ancient Macedonian king, Alexander the Great (d. 323 B.C.).
3 That is, during the zodiacal period between May 21 and June 22. The date is wrong, however, as the Ottoman army arrived before Belgrade in the first days of July and began the siege on July 4.
4 One Hungarian mile is equivalent to about 8.5 km, and the twenty-four miles given by the chronicler is therefore 204 km or 127 statute miles. In fact, the distance by air in kilometers between Belgrade and Szeged is somewhat less, about 170 km.
5 On July 14, the eleventh day of the siege.
6 In 1440. See the introduction, p. 9.
7 İshak Paşa (d. 1487), beylerbey of Anatolia.
8 Psalm 120 (121):1.
9 For Szilágyi (d. 1461) see the introduction, p. 25, as well as Tagliacozzo’s account in document 25, e.g., n. 3, and n. 19.
10 Laszló Kanizsai (d. 1477/8), later voivode of Transylvania (1459–61) and Master of the Horse (1464–7).
11 The fortress of Zrnov, south of Belgrade, was built by the Turks in the 1440s.
12 Hunyadi’s age is not known, but he must have been about fifty at the time.
13 Zemplen or Zimony, also Semlin. Today Zemun, opposite Belgrade, a market in Szerem county. Hunyadi died there on August 11, 1456. See Map 3: The Siege and Relief of Belgrade, 1456, on p. 284.
14 See documents 22 and 23.
15 In a confused way Thurocz is here referring to a story he found in a Latin translation of the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–c. 420 B.C.). According to Herodotus, the Athenian Solon was asked once by King Croesus of Lydia whom he considered to be the happiest man in the world. It must have been the Athenian named Tellus, Solon answered, whose city was prosperous, who had fine sons and grandchildren, and who died gloriously in a battle in which the enemies of Athens were routed.
16 Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia) in Transylvania, in whose cathedral Hunyadi’s tomb is still to be seen.
17 Compare to the account of Ebendorfer in document 26.
18 Matthias I, later surnamed Corvinus, the future king of Hungary (1458–90).
19 Capistrano died on October 23, 1456, ten weeks after Hunyadi.
20 Today Ilok in modern Croatia. For Capistrano’s death, posthumous miracles, and long-delayed canonization, see Andrić, Miracles of St. John Capistran, cited in the introduction, n. 66.