"I, Johanns Schiltberger, left my home near the city of Munich, situated in Bayern, at the time that King Sigismund of Hungary left for the land of the Infidels. This was, counting from Christ’s birth, in the thirteen hundred and ninety-fourth year, with a lord named Leinhart Richartingen. And I came back again from the land of the Infidels, counting from Christ’s birth, fourteen hundred and twenty seven. All that I saw in the land of the Infidels, of wars, and that was wonderful, also what chief towns and cities I have seen and visited, you will find described hereafter, perhaps not quite completely, but I was a prisoner and not independent. But so far as I was able to understand and to note, so have I [noted] the countries and cities as they are called in those countries, and I here make known and publish many interesting and strange adventures, which are worth listening to."
So begins Schiltberger’s written account of his great journeys, and so begins our story. Schiltberger could not have known that when he left his home near Munich it would be thirty years before he would see that land again. He may have expected adventure, war, and possibly death, but surely he could not expect to live as a prisoner to a Sultan and to a Khan, and to travel with them through Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine, to Egypt, Arabia, India, and the Central Asian steppe, to see Constantinople, Damascus, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Samarkand. At the end of this journey, he would see Bavaria again. There, he would tell of great battles such as at Nicopolis and Angora, of sieges and slaughters, and of far-flung peoples. He would speak of their religions, their social practices, and their saints and heroes. He would tell of miracles and monstrous beings.
Our source for these stories is the snappily titled The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and it is a text that can be viewed in many different ways. It is an adventure story, a prisoner narrative, a travel guide, the tale of a kind of Bavarian Marco Polo, an early 15th century autobiography, an anthropological inquiry, a work of comparative theology, and a text with a long and curious history in the European response to a lasting Ottoman threat.
As we shall see, the book’s protagonist is at times curiously absent from its pages, often emerging only to assert “I was present there, and I also saw this.” At times, we will know his role. We will read of his rushing forward with a spare horse when his lord’s has fallen in battle, but more often we shall need to remind ourselves. When, for example, we read the description of a resistant city besieged, its walls taken, and large portions of its population put to death, there is little to suggest that Schiltberger partook in this killing, but he most likely did. On other occasions, he explicitly will tell us that he was not there, saying, “but I have heard in the infidel country from those who have seen it… .”
He says he has heard, or that he has seen, but this will not always be true. Though in many ways a reliable source, Schiltberger did not himself record his journey. That task is thought to have been taken up by a now unknown Munich scribe, and, as we’ll discuss, either he or Schiltberger seems to have sometimes drawn upon various other travel narratives in creating the text. We have, in short, a fascinating and at times bizarre story of warfare, slavery, and exotic encounters. Its origins may at times be murky, but it remains always interesting, both in its historical context and, quite simply, as a great adventure. Over this and the next few episodes, we’ll be following this story, but we’ll also be looking at the world he’s moving in and the events through which he passes.
When Schiltberger departs in 1394 it is from a childhood and family of which, essentially, nothing is known. His date of birth is sometimes given as 1381, May the 9th, midday, which is quite specific, but it also appears to be sourced to an unsupported marginal note, so make of that what you will. Of his name, Schilt, or Schild, can mean “shield” or might be applied to a maker of shields but also in names came to identify people by the signs on their houses; -berg would most likely indicate the resident of a mountain or a town situated on or near a mountain. That aside, his early years are dark to us.
His Bavaria had been granted to Count-Palatine Otto of Wittelsbach in 1180 by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Within the Holy Roman Empire, Bavaria had expanded through marriage, purchase, and conquest, until 1253 when power decentralized, eventually coalescing around 4 duchies, Munich being one of them. At that Munich court, Schiltberger would eventually serve as chamberlain, something like a royal secretary and administrator, and as commander of the bodyguard to Albrecht III, a Wittelsbach. It is generally believed that his book was recorded there within that court culture, but that was all a long way off, many years, miles, and misadventures away.
Schiltberger’s narrative transports us almost immediately to an event that will cause fear and sadness in western Europe and expose central Europe to future Ottoman incursions. We open the first chapter and find it entitled “of the first combat between King Sigismund and the Turks.” He had left his home in 1394 and right away, in the first chapter, it’s 1396, and he is showing us the Battle of Nicopolis. But we may need a little context first.
In a long and storied life, King Sigismund would be King of Hungary, Germany, Bohemia, and Italy, and, for a time, Holy Roman Emperor. As a little side-note here - Sigismund is also responsible for founding the chivalric Order of the Dragon, the military order devoted to combating the Ottomans from which Vlad Drakulya of Wallachia got his name, meaning “the son of the dragon,” and thus how we got a book named Dracula. Drakulya actually had something in common with Schiltberger, living as he did, as a prisoner with of the Ottomans for a time. And this was quite a common practice, for the sons of Ottoman vassals to be held as hostages to insure their fathers’ loyalty.
Getting back to Schiltberger, he reports that Sigusmund, then King of Hungary, had appealed to Latin Christendom for assistance against the Ottomans who increasingly threatened his lands, and many fighters - we’ll get into just how many later - answered this call. That they would do so was far from a forgone conclusion.
The French, who would make a substantial portion of this response, had had a hard hundred years of plague, peasant uprisings, roving mercenary bands, and warfare.
Cycles of the plague periodically devastated the population, threatening the coming on of the end times, and contributing to massive social instability. These are the years of the Black Death we’re talking about, so in the 1300s you have the population of Europe plummeting. An estimated 30-50 percent of it succumb in mysterious and horrible circumstances, and even at the low end of this very broad range that’s well over 20 million people dying.
In the 1350s, peasants, known derisively as jacques, tired of raids and killings at the hands of brigands; they tired of the unceasing demands and abuses of a knightly class, itself stretched thin by the cost of warfare and ransom; … they tired of starvation. They rose up in a jacquerie against the nobles and the clergy, and further death, destruction, and instability resulted.
Routiers, soldiers of various nationalities released from service and experienced in plunder and war, roamed the countryside. These “free companies” took villages and even castles for profit and further tipped the state of things into one of chaotic discord.
The Church itself was, by the end of the century, in no position to provide reassurance, stricken as it was by the Western Schism, that great division by which Latin Christians found themselves cast out into excommunication by the one of the two Popes which they did not follow.
Meanwhile, a little skirmish now termed the 100 years war had intermittently idled and raged, draining away blood, bodies, treasure, and, one might have thought, interest in further foreign adventure.
A peace, however, was established between the French and English crowns, binding them by the marriage of Richard the second to the daughter of Charles the sixth. Though it would not turn out to be a lasting one, this truce was to allow for a crusade against the Ottomans in the century’s closing years, and King Sigismund was not alone in wanting one. Pope Boniface the ninth was calling for war upon the Ottomans from his seat in Rome. The republics of Venice and Genoa saw their interests threatened by Ottoman expansion. In the Balkans, lords such as the Bulgarians looked for an opportunity to free themselves from the Ottoman threat, even if they, being of the Orthodox tradition, also distrusted the assistance of western crusaders. Meanwhile in France, one of its most powerful figures, Phillip the Duke of Burgundy, was leaning eagerly towards the glory of a righteous war, any righteous war, and it was on Hungary he would settle, signalling to Sigismund that now was the time. The king’s calls for aid would be answered, but exactly who would be answering is an interesting topic in itself.
There had been plans taking shape in the early 1390s for a crusade, its target not yet determined. In 1394 those plans crystallized around a joint expedition to be lead by the dukes of Burgundy, Orleans, and Lancaster, and by year’s end Hungary was selected as the destination. Initial considerations are said to have included the involvement of the kings Richard the second and Charles the sixth, but in the eventual expedition, leadership would fall neither to dukes nor to kings. Instead, it would be the son of Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy. Jean de Nevers, only later to be known as “the Fearless” for his part in all of this, would be leading the French contingent.
There were also other figures with military experience along. There was a great of deal of collective experience contributed by men such as the renowned Marshal Boucicaut; Enguerrand de Coucy; Philipe de Artois, the constable of France; and Jean de Vienne, admiral of France. However, some sources, both contemporaneous and modern, have pointed to comparatively young and untested leadership as being partially responsible for the disaster to come.
As Jean and his followers moved east, they did so in great style, and we can read of this in Froissart’s Chronicles of the time:
"The lords of France made vast preparations for their expedition to Hungary, and solicited the company and service of different barons, knights, and squires. Such as were not asked, and had a wish to go thither, made application to the constable of France, the count de la Marche or the lord de Coucy, that they would take them in their company. Some were accepted: but those who were not, considering the great distance Hungary and Turkey were from France, greatly cooled in their ardour; for, as they were not retained they were not sufficiently wealthy to perform the journey with credit to themselves. Nothing was spared in the preparations for the young John of Burgundy with regard to horses, armour, emblazonments, dresses, silver and gold plate, and the duke’s officers were fully employed in the business. Large sums of florins were given to the servants of John of Burgundy, who paid them to the different workmen as they finished and brought home their works. The barons, knights, and squires, to do him honour, exerted themselves to make their equipments as handsome as possible."
And this will come up again, when the crusaders depart from Buda to meet the Ottomans, that there is a tremendous concern for appearances. We read, “The lords of France were desirous of making a handsome figure, and examined well their armour and equipage, sparing no money to have them as complete as possible. Their appearance was grandly magnificent, when they took the field from Buda, the principal city of Hungary.” Phillipe de Mezieres, a near life-long enthusiast of crusading in general made similar observations, that “they go like kings, preceded by minstrels and heralds in purple and rich garments, making great feasts of outrageous foods.” In these tellings at least, the movement of the crusaders becomes an immensely proud celebration, a parade, a travelling righteous carnival, and, in great literary style, it sets things up nicely for the fall.
This word “crusader” which we’ve been using requires some examination here. We are, after all, well past Pope Urban II’s 1095 call at Claremont for war in the holy land. We are not even bound for Palestine, though Froissart has some of these crusaders making plans for pushing on and making their way there after crushing the Ottomans. The word Crusade has actually been applied with varying criteria, at times including only certain military actions in Palestine and at others extending to wars against internal, Christian, opponents such as the Cathars, the Hussites, and, in continuing the near-annual get togethers even after their enemy’s conversion, the Lithuanians. Perhaps a less muddying way to think of this is simply as Church sanctioned violence, but we should not lose sight of how significant that sanctioning was.
Going on crusade involved first “taking the cross,” making a vow of commitment, often a very public act, and affixing the cross to one’s clothes as an outward sign of that commitment. In doing so, certain legal privileges were obtained, and often these were very practical necessities to encourage enrollment. For example, there was, in theory at least, protection for the knights’ holdings while they were away. They hardly wished to return to find, as some did, their castles compromised or their family taken or killed, and just as they may worry for the state of their possessions, they may worry for the state of their soul.
The world through which they struggled was not an easy one in which to live a Christian life, and some knights were quite troubled by the contradictions posed by their unavoidably violent earthly activities. Some wrestled, as did the knight Tancred, as to “whether to follow in the footsteps of the Gospel or the world.” Taking the cross offered an answer to the problem, a way to strive within the world, to engage in a just war, a devotional war. This was, in a sense, military life as prayer.
All of this brings us to the plenary indulgence, a full pardon with no further penitential practice required to wipe one’s slate clean; this is what had been offered at Claremont and since then: a way back from all that one had done.
One can easily project greed for treasure and glory back upon those who answered this call and those that followed, and you wouldn’t always be wrong, but we shouldn’t lose sight of how expensive, difficult, and dangerous crusading was. For a taste of that danger, and the hardships of knights at war more generally, we can read the 15th century chronicle, The Deeds of Don Pero Nino:
Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow; their ease is weariness and sweat; they have one good day after many bad; they are vowed to all manner of labour; they are for ever swallowing their fear; they expose themselves to every peril; they give up their bodies to the adventure of life in death. Mouldy bread or biscuit, meat cooked or uncooked; today enough to eat and tomorrow nothing, little or no wine, water from a pond, bad quarters, the shelter of a tent or branches, a bad bed, poor sleep with their armour still on their backs, burdened with iron, the enemy an arrow-shot off. “Ware! Who goes there? To arms! To arms!” With the first drowsiness, an alarm; at dawn, the trumpet. “To horse! To horse! Muster! Muster!” As look-outs, as sentinels, keeping watch by day and by night, fighting without cover, as foragers, as scouts, guard after guard, duty after duty. . . Such is their calling, a life of great fatigues, bereft of all ease.
As we can see, success, financial, military, or life-preserving, was no guarantee with such enterprises. We should not, out of 21st century skepticism, disregard too easily the role of religious motivations in taking up these commitments.
As for Schiltberger, we really have no idea how he felt about the whole thing. It’s one of the things that is most striking in reading his story now, that we have little idea of how he feels about anything really, so we cannot say what his or, perhaps more relevantly, his lord’s motivations may have been. Were they seeking treasure, glory, political advantage, religious redemption, or the defence of Christendom? We simply do not know.
We do know that he and his lord were among those responding to King Sigusmund’s call for aid, and we have some idea, or rather a great range of ideas, as to who else was there. Schiltberger initially puts the number at “many people from all countries,” but we can do a bit better than that. Sigusmund is said to have boasted - actually this is attributed to a variety of sources - that not only would he drive the Turks out of Europe, but if the sky should fall then he was prepared to support it on the tips of his lances. Supporting this claim are estimates on the high end of up to 130k men with 60k horse, but supporting 60k horses would be an appalling endeavour in itself and there’s little to suggest 130k soldiers being present at the Battle of Nicopolis. Radu Rosetti once mentioned examining the battlefield and seeing no way for 100k men in total to have been present let alone 130k on the one side and, as Schiltberger has it, 200k on that of the Ottomans. More reasonably, Schiltberger estimates that 16k men opposed the Ottomans that day, and Rosetti argues for something similar, in the range of 10-20k facing 10-20k.
And who exactly were these “many people from all countries”? Who joined with Sigusmund’s Hungarians? We’ve already seen that there were of course many French fighters. There were also Central European knights and nobles, Germans such as Schiltberger and his lord, and large contingents of Transylvanians and Wallachians; men came from the low countries, what we’d call the Netherlands and Belgium; the Venetians provided naval aid and transport; and there may have been English knights, or perhaps only English speaking Knights Hospitallers of Rhodes. All in all, the Battle of Nicopolis would be very much an international affair with Serbs, Albanians, Bulgarians, Bosnians, and a variety of Christian-born janissaries figuring amongst the “Turkish” side.
Commanding the Ottomans was Sultan Bayezid I. We will be discussing the Ottomans in much greater detail in the following episode, but we should spend a moment here on Bayezid. In 1389, at the Battle of Kosovo, Bayezid’s father, Murad, had led a large Ottoman army into battle against Prince Lazar’s Serbian forces. The result had been a mutually destructive victory for the Ottomans that had left both commanders dead upon the field. Murad had possibly been slain by a Serbian knight who first declared his intent to desert to the Ottoman in order to get close enough to stab him, and I say possibly here because there are other versions of Murad’s death, one’s which don’t involve deceit. However it occurred, the news was apparently greeted with relief by Charles VI who is said to have thanked god in Notre-Dame, but there would soon be fresh reasons to worry, as power passed to Bayezid.
What kind of leader was Bayezid? He would solidify that power by killing his own brother. He apparently earned the nickname Yildirim, or Thunderbolt, for his swift and decisive military actions. On campaign as a Sultan, he counted a Serbian prince and a Byzantine emperor among his vassals. As an administrator, he sought to centralize power. He shifted it from the beys, or lords, men who might easily attempt to make their own empires should they perceive their relative strength to be up to the task, and relocated it within an increasingly bureaucratized Sultanate, complete with growing numbers of troops who were directly loyal to himself and not only through vassal beyliks. In the years before Nicopolis, he expanded Ottoman control within Anatolia before gaining conquests in Greece and Bulgaria and beginning one of the interminable sieges of Constantinople that characterize that city’s history. That’s where he may have been when news reached him of the forces which Schiltberger accompanied and he went north to meet them.
Froissart’s Chronicles, admittedly a fascinating but not entirely reliable blend of fiction, rumour, and 2nd or 3rd hand historical account, paints a picture of the build up to this meeting as a 20 paces at dawn kind of affair. Bayezid had let it be known that he’d be coming for the Hungarians in the month of May with an immense army, and that he would cross the Danube and offer them combat. A period of frustration then ensues for Sigusmund and his allies as they wait for a Sultan’s army that does not materialize. They send out scouting parties and expert men into Anatolia to seek him out, and find no sign that he would threaten them that summer. Thus without an immediate opponent, they resolve to look for one, and they proceed South to attack his European holdings. Froissart at this point has one of Bayezid’s men fleeing from one of these holdings, searching for his master, and eventually finding him in Cairo. There, we’re treated to a fully fleshed out discussion on what ought to be done in response. However, the more realistic assessment seems to put Bayezid at Constantinople, busy in the work of besieging the city before coming North. Of the rest of the preamble, Schiltberger has little to say.
With Schiltberger, we get the bare minimum until we reach the battle. Sigusmund takes possession of one city with 300 men. He moves on to another, laying siege for 5 days before capturing it also, killing many Turks and taking many prisoners. 200 men are left there, and the army moves on, to Nicopolis. At Nicopolis, another siege is established by land and by water, this one lasting 16 days, and it does not end in victory. It ends with the news that Bayezid is coming, and he has 200k men.
Before we get to our battle, let’s pause for a moment on the nature of fighting at the time, not so much in its strategic outlines or in the details of this body or that of cavalry circling out in preparation for a flanking maneuver. I want instead to return to The Deeds of Don Pero Nino. It’s a work of glorification, a celebration of its author’s master, but I think it really nicely conveys a sense of claustrophobic chaos and also of how hard battle was on the survivors, and on their equipment. We’ll dip in as our protagonist has just struck down through the top of an opponent’s shield, splitting his head down to the eyes.
"While Pero Nino was doing among the enemies of his lord the King as a wolf does among the sheep when there is no shepherd to defend them, it befell that an arrow struck him in the neck. ... The arrow had knit together his gorget and his neck; but … he felt not his wound, or hardly at all; only it hindered him much in the movement of the upper body. And this pricked him on the more to fight, so that in a few hours he had swept the path clean before and had forced the enemy to withdraw over the bridge close against the city. Several lance stumps were still in his shield, and it was that which hindered him the most. ... the people of the city, seeing the havoc that he wrought, fired many crossbows at him, even as folk worry a bull that rushes out in the middle of the ring. He went forward with his face uncovered and a great bolt there found its mark, piercing his nostrils through most painfully, whereat he was dazed, but his daze lasted but little time. Soon he recovered himself, and the pain only made him press more bitterly on than ever. At the gate of the bridge there were steps; and Pero Nino found himself sorely beset when he had to climb them. There he did receive many sword blows on head and shoulders. At the last, he climbed them, cut himself a path and found himself so pressed against his enemies that sometimes they hit the bolt embedded in his nose, which made him suffer great pain. It happened even that one of them, seeking to cover himself, hit a great blow on the bolt with his shield and drove it further into his head. Weariness brought the battle to an end on both sides. When Pero Nino went back, his good shield was tattered and all in pieces; his sword had its gilded hilt almost broken and wrenched away and the blade was toothed like a saw and dyed with blood. … the fight had lasted for two whole hours, and … his armour was broken in several places by lance-heads, of which some had entered the flesh and drawn blood, although the coat was of great strength."
The battle we’re concerned with will perhaps not seem so colourful after that, but in any case, it seems to have been lost for the crusaders before they began. We can see it in Schiltberger, and it is elaborated upon in Froissart and the other contemporary sources. We’ll start with Schiltberger’s telling of the story.
The Wallachian Duke makes the first move, asking Sigusmund’s permission to go and “look at the winds”, a really delightful description of reconnaissance. He returns to tell the king that he has seen 20 banners, with 10k men behind each one. So the King begins to make his plans, and those same Wallachians ask to lead the attack. This is, after all, not their first run-in with the Turks, and they have experienced this enemy in battle. But here the Burgundian leader steps forward, and says [no, I have come a great distance with 6,000 men, and I have no intention of giving up that position of honour.] In Froissart, this episode is much more expansive, with Jean de Nevers seeking counsel and disagreement among the French leaders. Some argue that they should respect the Hungarian king’s position and his reasons. Others say that this would be base cowardice and in any case the Hungarian king is only trying to snatch away from them the glory of the day, this last position being that of a lord left embittered that his opinion was not asked before that of another lord, so bitter in fact, that he seems to have spurred the attack on immediately. In Schiltberger we only see Sigusmund begging the Burgundian to reconsider, but Jean instead gathers his men and attacks. He cuts through 2 enemy formations but finds himself mired in a third. Looking around, he sees his forces surrounded and largely unhorsed and he surrenders.
Let’s look to Schiltberger for the rest of the battle:
"When the King heard that Jean de Nevers was forced to surrender, he took the rest of the people and defeated a body of twelve thousand foot soldiers that had been sent to oppose him. They were all trampled upon and destroyed, and in this engagement a shot killed the horse of my lord Leinhart Richartinger; and I, Johanns Schiltberger his runner, when I saw this, rode up to him in the crowd and assisted him to mount my own horse, and then I mounted another which belonged to the Turks, and rode back to the other runners. And when all the [Turkish] foot-soldiers were killed, the King advanced upon another corps which was of horse. When the Turkish King saw the King advancing, he was about to fly but [Stephen, Prince of Serbia,] known as the despot, seeing this, went to the assistance of the Turkish King with 15k chosen men and many other bannerets, and the despot threw himself with his people on the king’s banner and overturned it; and when the king saw that the banner was overturned and that he could not remain, he took to flight."
And that was it for the Hungarians and their supporters. King Sigusmund reaches a boat on the Danube to escape and so does the Knights Hospitallers’ Grand Master. Many others would drown in the attempt, falling beneath the surface as they tried to swim across, cast violently from overcrowded ships, or struck back as they climbed aboard, those who had already reached safety lashing down in desperation at their hands and faces. What had gone wrong? Sigusmund is said to have remarked to the Grand Master that they had “lost the day by the pride and vanity of these French,” and there does seem to be some truth to this remark. That Burgundian led charge was apparently made against a body of infantry that had actually driven long stakes into the ground, sharpened points ready to break any such cavalry charge. Not the best situation to ride into, and many were unhorsed as they, one way or another, penetrated that line. After this initial impetuous charge against the stakes, there appears to have been a pause in which older knights argued that they should reorder their ranks and await their allies, but they were not listened to. The French believed that they had already encountered the enemy in its entirety and in pursuit could rout them, winning the day and slaughtering those who ran before them. In their heavy armour, they reached the crest of a hill or plateau and found instead a fresh reserve of Bayezid’s men which he’d held back. They were not infantry irregulars this time, like those already broken on the field below. These were the mounted sipahi, and they enveloped the disordered crusaders and forced their surrender.
Meanwhile, large numbers of riderless French horses were stampeding into their allies on the plain, causing chaos, and the sight of this actually leads the Wallachians to withdraw. They thought the day lost, and they knew their own land would soon be threatened, as it had been before. Besides this, they had little reason to put much faith in those they fought alongside. Wallachia had long sat uneasily among more powerful neighbours, and had reason to fear that Hungary would impose political dominance as well as Catholicism, for Wallachia was Orthodox and in the religious sphere of Constantinople rather than Rome. The western knights inspired no more confidence, with disorder and debauchery that had grown especially bad when they’d reached the schismatic lands, and a “war as sport” attitude that could only be disagreeable for a people prepared to defend their land against an immediate and formidable threat.
What else had gone wrong? Excessive concern with luxury, with glory, and with pride seems to have played a role, and so did divisions, distrust, and the lack of clear command structure, this last something which had plagued French military efforts for some time and must have badly affected the loose alliance. Among the western knights there was a lack of understanding of their adversary and, according to the chronicles, a lack of respect for the Ottomans as a military power. There was also a tremendous lack of preparedness for this endeavour. For example, when they besieged the city of Nicopolis, they did so without siege equipment, and were apparently content in the bravery of the men they threw against the walls and in their nightly banquets.
In other sources, the question arises as to whether in fact Sigusmund’s forces adequately followed up on the French assault, and there are reports of bitter complaints from the western knights that their supposed allies had not sufficiently supported them.
But all of these reasons, valid or not, give no thought to the strength and effectiveness of the Ottoman forces. Without going into too much detail on the Ottomans here, this was a military empire in its expansion phase. Its armies were clearly skilled and experienced, sharpened by consistent large-scale combat, and capably led.
The truth of any explanations are hard to assess at this point. The twin demons of hubris and immoral behaviour do make for a convenient narrative following a defeat, for they do well to answer the question “how could we have lost?” in a way that is perhaps not too uncomfortable. Another interesting narrative that arose in the aftermath, was that of the Turk as God’s instrument, the rod with which he lashed at his people for their sin. It’s an idea that will pop up in the 15th and 16th centuries with Erasmus and Luther, but it also appears here in response to Nicopolis.
Some sources indicate a shifting of the narrative as survivors such as the Burgundian leader arrived home, greeted as glorious in battle. Boucicaut’s chronicler, on the other hand, offers the simple response of widespread sadness:
"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."
News of the defeat actually spreads quite slowly. It’s easy for us to forget now, but solid information would likely have been carried home at the pace of the survivors, many of them wounded, who escaped Nicopolis and avoided drowning in the Danube. They had lost nearly everything in the process, and on their way they would lose even more. They could be beaten, robbed, or slain on the road, and some reached home only to die shortly after as a result of what they had been through. So you have, by some reckonings, at least 3 months elapsing before confirmation arrives in Paris. The first men spreading stories of the defeat there were not rewarded for their pains. Their account was greeted with incredulity, and perhaps for fear of the panic it may cause, orders were given for their imprisonment, with death by drowning a pending possibility. However, the arrival of Jacques de Helly, perhaps on Christmas Day, carried confirmation of the worst, and the worst went beyond the matter of mere defeat, for the killing had not simply stopped at Nicopolis when the fighting had.
On the morning after the battle, Bayezid had risen and walked the area, seeing first the site of Sigismund’s encampment and then turning to the battlefield and taking in all that had happened. Seeing so many of his people there dead, he was filled with grief and with rage. He swore that their blood would not go unavenged and he gave orders for the prisoners to be brought before him the following day. That next day, the prisoners were gathered and tied with cords, and Jean the fearless was brought forward to witness Bayezid’s revenge. The future duke interceded on his friends’ behalf, indicating by signs either their brotherhood or their wealth, and Bayezid, moved either by mercy and respect or an interest in profiting from the lively ransom business of the time, gave consent for some of the surviving French leaders to be spared. Those who were not so rich or notable to be included in this lucky twelve remained bound before Bayezid. We’ll end this episode with Schiltberger’s description of what happened next:
"Then they took my companions and cut off their heads, and when it came to my turn, the king’s son ordered that I should be left alive, and I was taken to the other boys, because none under 20 years of age were killed, and I was scarcely 16 years old.Then I saw the lord Hannsen Greiff, who was a noble of Bayern, 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 counselors 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 took his share and left the rest to his people who had made them prisoners. I was among those the king took for his share, and the people that were killed on that day were reckoned at ten thousand men.
The king then sent a lord named Hoder of Ungern, with sixty boys, as a mark of honour to the king-sultan; and he would have sent me to the king-sultan, but I was severely wounded, having three wounds, so for fear that I might die on the way I was left with the Turkish king. Other prisoners were sent as an offering to the king of Babilony and the king of Persia, also into WhiteTartary, into Greater Armenia, and also into other countries…
I was taken to the palace of the Turkish king; there for six year I was obliged to run on my feet with the others, wherever he went, it being the custom that the lords have people to run before them. After six years I deserved to be allowed to ride, and I rode six years with him, so that I was twelve years with him; and it is to be noted what the said Turkish king did during these twelve years, all of which is written down piece by piece."