Remembering the battle of Varna in 1444

Every year this point in November with Remembrance Day and the anniversary of the 1918 Armistice focuses the thoughts of most of us on the casualties of the two World Wars of the twentieth  century, and of subsequent campaigns involving the armed forces of the Crown.

Not a little of that reflection is about the pity and the horror of war and its consequences in personal and social terms. Beyond that, it may lead to thought about the place of war not only in the history of the last century and a quarter, and in the present, but also throughout history, and in all places. Wars may well be justified, or they may be completely illegitimate, and their consequences are wide and far-reaching. Not only are troops and civilians killed and maimed, with all the attendant consequences, and maps redrawn and territories lost or gained, and we tell ourselves not just that we won, or lost, but that the right cause won, or lost. War is Original Sin and the fallen nature of humanity made manifest in all its variety and contradictions - nobility, bravery, gallantry, cruelty, savagery, misery all enmeshed and blended together. I am not a pacifist, war is sometimes, regrettably, necessary, and the best way to peace is by strong defence and vigilance, but let us make no mistake - war is terrible and terrifying.

It is with those thoughts in mind that I look now not at events since 1914 - many still raw and still difficult to process - but to an anniversary that falls today from the period in which I tend to have a particular interest. 580 years ago today the battle of Varna was fought between a central European Christian coalition and the Ottomans on the shore of the Black Sea in Bulgaria. The catastrophic defeat of the Christian forces helped shift the political parameters of the Balkans and beyond for centuries to come. Reading something about it is not just to look at distant events but in fact at ones with a continuing legacy, and in the fates of individuals find something we can empathise with.

Wikipedia sets the scene with Crusade of Varna and an account of the conflict in Battle of Varna

It also has biographies of the two commanders who did not survive the day - the Polish and Hungarian king Władysław III of Poland and Cardinal Julian Cesarini - and of one who did - in John Hunyadi

War and the consequences of war do not end when the fighting stops.

The Crusade of Varna

A conversation with one of my students a few weeks ago reminded me that the 570th anniversary of the Crusade of Varna, which culminated in the disastrous defeat of the Polish-Hungarian army at the battle of Varna on November 10th 1444. Amongst the numerous fatalities were the twenty year old King Wladyslaw III of Poland and Hungary amd the Papal Legate, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini.

The Crusade was an ambitious plan to rescue the remains of the Byzantine Empire from the ever advancing Turks with a Papal fleet to transfer the troops from Varna to relieve Constantinople. Like the other great Crusading venture of the period, that of Nicopolis in 1396 - for which see the accounts at Crusade of Nicopolis and Battle of Nicopolis - it ended in a catastrophe for the Christian army, and in consequence paved the way for the loss of Constantinople in 1453 and eventually the Hungarian disaster at Mohacs in 1526.

In a piece about the recent book by Colin Imber The Crusade of Varna 1443-45 (Crusade Texts in Translation 14, Ashgate) it is said that "[m]ore than any other single event, it was Murad's victory at Varna that secured Ottoman domination of the Balkan Peninsula, with consequences which are still apparent today."

There is an online account of the Crusade at Crusade of Varna and of the battle itself at Battle of Varna.

To help readers unfamiliar with the period and region to understand the tangled diplomacy and politics of the period in central Europe and the Balkans it may be useful to look at the online life of the young Polish King who led the Crusade, King Wladyslaw III, who had become King of Hungary in 1440, which can be seen at Władysław III of Poland, and it may also be helpful to look at the life of his life of his father King Wladyslaw II (Grand Duke Jagiello of Lithuania), who had united Poland and Lithuania by his first marriage to Jadwiga of Poland in 1387, which can be seen at Władysław II Jagiełło. There is an illustrated online chronology of King Wladyslaw III in Polish here.

The Seal of King Wladislaw III

Image:ukrmap.su

The cenotaph to King Wladyslaw III erected in 1906 in the Wawel cathedral in Cracow

Image:modernmedievalist.blogspot.co.uk

Before I prepared this post I was unfamiliar with the story of the King's survival at Varna and of his subsequent life and marriage in Portugal, recounted in the online biography above. Such myths of the suvival of a ruler who disappears, such as those of King Harold II in England, of King Sebastian of Portugal or of King Louis XVII in Frances, or of members of the Romanov dynasty in the twentieth century, are a by no means unknown phenomemon, and point to the human desire to hope against the odds, and to create myths around young and romantic royal figures.