Portrait of Bayezid I Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1389-1402)

The Battle of Nicopolis Jean Froissart

In the battle of the Nicopolis, Bajazet defeated a confederate army of a hundred thousand Christians, who had proudly boasted that if the sky should fall they could uphold it on their lances. The far greater part was slain or driven into the Danube. . . . In the pride of victory Bajazet threatened that he would besiege Buda; that he would subdue the adjacent countries of Germany and Italy; and that he would feed his horse with a bushel of oats on the altar of Saint Peter at Rome. His progress was checked, not by the miraculous interposition of the apostle, not by a crusade of the Christian powers, but by a long and painful fit of the gout. The disorders of the moral are sometimes corrected by those of the physical world; and an acrimonious humor falling on the single fiber of one man may prevent or suspend the misery of nations.”

From Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The Battle of Nicopolis (September 25, 1396) resulted in the defeat of an allied army of Hungarian, French, German, and other troops at the hands of the Turks. It is often referred to as the Crusade of Nicopolis and was the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Age.

 

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Highlighted in Frontispiece Spring 2012 – Volume 4, Issue 2

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