Salvete Omnes,
today we are to commemorate the tragic battle of Varna, in Bulgaria (Academia article about Bulgarians during the crusade 1443-44).
On this day in November 1444 our crusading Polish and Hungarian king, Wladyslaw III (1424-44) of the Jagiellon dynasty, fought the pitched battle against the Ottoman army under sultan Murad II.
The king's forces, not very large and numbering circa 15,000 fighting men, had many good commanders among the leadership, including the principal war chief of the Hungarian realms Janos (John) Hunyadi of Transylvania.
King's banner - part of one of the two large banderias of the army center - included two son of our famous knight Zawisza Czarny Sulima coat of arms.
During the final course of battle king's bodyguard 400-500 strong lancer detachment attacked the 5000 (?) janisary infantry square, within which sultan Murad was sheltering and commanding his army from. It was a daring feat, a gamble and furious attempt to finish the foe at its most central element, the command post.
The action of the Jagiellon royal detachment was not unlike many military actions in history, let me show three of them - first, going deep into the ancient world we see the pretender Cyrus the Younger, of the Achaemenid dynasty, who in 401BC at Cunaxa led his bodyguard armored horse detachment against his brother's, Artaxerxes, 5-6,000 strong center. He got within the striking distance to his brother-king, even wounded the king of kings but was killed before he could slay his older brother.
In 1621, during the Ottoman siege of Khotyn's entrenched Polish-Lithuanian army, the 4 banners of Polish winged hussars charged 10,000-strong Ottoman assault divisions, and after a furious struggle and mayhem these 600 lancers confused, terrified and broke the attackers' will to proceed and saved the day, while killing countless Ottoman cavalrymen and infantrymen.
In 1656 Polish-Lithuanian several winged hussar banners(perhaps as many as 500 men and horses under Polubinski) charged the entire Swedish-Brandenburg-Prussian army(at least 20,000 men, horses and artillery) during the 3rd day of the battle of Warsaw. They penetrated Swedish cavalry lines and disrupted the Swedish array, but in the end, without proper support their amazing charge was fruitless and ended in defeat.
King Wladyslaw's charge at the janissaries square behind a palisade eventually ended in defeat, and the fate of the king remains somewhat a mystery, from dying right there before the sultan on the field to escaping to distant Madeira, Portugal and living his life out there.
The Varna defeat was huge, but the savage fighting bloodied the victors too, and Janos Hunyadi, who escaped from the debacle, went on fighting the Ottomans in the Balkans for years to come.
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| the ceremonial tomb of Wladyslaw III, with no body inside the sarcophagus, at the Krakow Wawel Cathedral |
Pacem aeternam
Valete
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