Part 20

Thus all hope of aid from allies was at an end, the brave general and his small Hungarian force had to rely on their own resources, separated as they were by some weeks' journey from their own country, while the enemy would be soon upon them in numbers five times their own. Yet even so Huniades' faith and courage did not desert him. The proverb says: "If thy sword be short, lengthen it by a step forward." And Huniades boldly, but yet with the caution that behoved a careful general, took up his position before the Sultan's army. Both he and his Hungarians fought with dauntless courage, availing themselves of every advantage and beating back every assault. Already victory seemed to be assured. A few hours after the battle had begun both the Turkish wings had been broken, and even the Sultan and the brave janissaries were thinking of flight, when the young king, the Pole Vladislaus, whom Huniades had adjured by God to remain in a place of safety, until the combat should be decided, was persuaded by his Polish suite to fling himself with the small band in immediate attendance upon him right on the centre of the janissaries, so that he too might have a share in the victory and not leave it all to Huniades. The janissaries wavered for a moment under this new and unexpected attack, but soon perceiving that they had to do with the King of Hungary they closed round his band which had penetrated far into their ranks. The king's horse was first hamstrung, and, as it fell, the king's head was severed from his body, stuck upon the point of a spear and exposed to the view of both armies. The Hungarians, shocked at the unexpected sight, wavered and, feeling themselves lost, began to fly. All the entreaties and exhortations of Huniades were in vain. Such was the confusion that he could be neither seen nor heard, and in a few minutes the whole Hungarian army was in confused flight.

Huniades, left to himself, had too to seek safety in flight. Alone, deserted by all, he had to make his way from one place of concealment to another till after some weeks' wandering he arrived in Hungary. The bad news had preceded him; and in consequence everything was in confusion. Again arose that difficult question: Who should be the new king under such difficult circumstances? The Sultan's army had, however, suffered so much in the battle of Varna that for the time he left the Hungarians unmolested.

The nation was disposed to choose for its king the child, Ladislaus, son of King Albert, the predecessor of Vladislaus. The child, however, was in the power of the neighboring prince, Frederick, the Archduke of Austria, who was not disposed to let him go out of his hands without a heavy ransom. Under these circumstances the more powerful nobles in Hungary took advantage of the confusion to strengthen each his own position at the expense of the nation. At first the government of the country was entrusted to a number of captains, but this proved so evidently disastrous that the better sort of people succeeded in having them abolished and Huniades established as sole governor. For all that, however, Huniades had a good deal of trouble with the chief aristocrats, Garay, Czillei, Ujlaki, who, envying the parvenu his sudden promotion and despising his obscure origin, took up arms to resist his authority. Thus Huniades, instead of blunting the edge of his sword upon foreign foes, had to bridle the insubordination of his own countrymen. Luckily it did not take long to force the discontented to own the weight of his arm and his superiority as a military leader.

Order being thus to some extent re-established at home, Huniades was again able to turn his attention to the Turks. He felt that he had in fact gained the battle of Varna, which was only lost through the jealous humor of a youthful king; that it behoved him not to stop half way; that it was his duty to continue offensive operations. But in so doing he had to rely upon his own proper forces. It is true that he was governor of the country, but for the purpose of offensive warfare beyond the frontier he could not gain the consent of the great nobles.

Luckily his private property had enormously increased by this time. The Hungarian Constitution ordered the king to bestow the estates of such noblemen, as died without male heirs or had been condemned for any offence, on such noblemen as had approved themselves valiant defenders of the country. Now where could be found a more worthy recipient of such estates than Huniades, to whom the public treasury was besides a debtor on account of the sums he disbursed for the constant warfare he maintained against the Turks? Especially in the south of Hungary a whole series of lordly estates, many of them belonging to the crown, had come into Huniades' hands, either as pledges for the repayment of the money he had paid his soldiers, or as his own private property.

The yearly revenue arising from these vast estates was employed by Huniades not in personal expenditure but in the defence of his country. He himself lived as simply as anyone of his soldiers, and recognized no other use of money than as a weapon to be used for the defence of Christendom against Islam. In the early morn while all his suite still slept he passed hours in prayer before the altar in the dimly lighted church, imploring the help of the Almighty for the attainment of his sole object in life--the destruction of the Turkish power. At last (1448) he set out against the Sultan with a picked army of 24,000 of his most trusty soldiers.

This time it was on the frontier of Servia, on the so-called Field of Blackbirds, that Huniades encountered Sultan Murad, as before with an army of 150,000 men--more than five times the number of the Christians. Huniades at first withdrew himself into his intrenched camp, but in a few days felt himself strong enough to engage with the enemy on the open field. The battle lasted without interruption for two days and a night. Huniades himself was several times in deadly peril. Once his horse was shot under him. He was to be found wherever assistance, support, encouragement were needed. At last on the morning of the third day as the Turks who had received reinforcements were about to renew the attack, the Voyvode of Wallachia passed over to the side of the Turks. The voyvode belonged to the Orthodox Eastern Church. He had joined Huniades on the way, and his desertion transferred 6,000 men from one side to the other, and decided the battle in favor of the Turks. The Hungarians, worn out by fatigue, fell into a discouragement, while Huniades had no fresh troops to bring up to their support. The battle came to a sudden end. Seventeen thousand Hungarian corpses strewed the field, but the loss of the Turks was more than 30,000 men.

Huniades again left to himself had again to make his escape. At first he only dismissed his military suite; afterwards he separated from his faithful servant in the hope that separately they might more easily baffle their pursuers. Next he had to turn his horse adrift, as the poor animal was incapable of continuing his journey. Thus he made his way alone and on foot toward the frontiers of his native land. After a while looking down from the top of a piece of elevated ground he perceived a large body of Turks from whom he hid himself in a neighboring lake. He thus escaped this danger, but only to encounter another. At a turn of the road he came so suddenly upon a party of Turkish plunderers as to be unable to escape from them, and thus became their prisoner. But the Turks did not recognize him, and leaving him in the hands of two of their number the rest went on in search of more prey. His two guards soon came to blows with one another about a heavy gold cross which they had found on the person of their captive, and, while they were thus quarrelling, Huniades suddenly wrenched his sword out of the hand of one of the two Turks and cut off his head, upon which the other took to flight, and Huniades was again free.

In the meantime, however, George, the Prince of Servia, who took part with the aristocratic malcontents, and out of pure hatred to Huniades had, in spite of his being a Christian, gone over to the side of the Turks, had given strict orders that all Hungarian stragglers were to be apprehended and brought before him. In this way Huniades fell into the hands of some Servian peasants who delivered him to their prince. Nor did he regain his liberty without the payment of a heavy ransom, leaving his son, Ladislaus, as hostage in his stead.

He thus returned home amid a thousand perils and with the painful experience that Europe left him to his own resources to fight as he best could against the ever-advancing Turks. The dependencies of the Hungarian crown, Servia and Wallachia, on whose recovery he had spent so much blood and treasure, instead of supporting him as might be expected of Christian countries threw themselves in a suicidal manner into the arms of the Turks. They hoped by their ready submission to find favor in the eyes of the irresistible conquerors, by whom, however, they were a little later on devoured.

After these events Huniades continued to act as Governor or Regent of Hungary for five years more, by which time the young Ladislaus, son of King Albert, attained his majority. In 1453 he finally laid down his dignity as governor, and gave over the power into the hands of the young king, Ladislaus V., whom Huniades had first to liberate by force of arms from his uncle, Frederick of Austria, before he could set him on the throne of Hungary. The young king, of German origin had, however, hardly become emancipated from his guardian, when he fell under the influence of his other uncle, Ulric Czillei. This Czillei was a great nobleman of Styria, but was withal possessed of large estates in Hungary. As a foreigner and as a relative of King Sigismund, he had long viewed with an evil eye Huniades' elevation. On one occasion Huniades had to inflict punishment on him. He consequently now did everything he could to induce the young king, his nephew, to hate the great captain as he himself did. He sought to infuse jealousy into his mind and to lead him to believe that Huniades aimed at the crown. His slanders found the readier credence in the mind of the youthful sovereign as he was completely stupefied by an uninterrupted course of debauchery. At last the king was brought to agree to a plan for ensnaring the great man who so often jeoparded his life and his substance in the defence of his country and religion. They summoned him in the king's name to Vienna, where Ladislaus as an Austrian prince was then staying, with the intention of waylaying and murdering him. But Huniades got wind of the whole plot, and, when he arrived at the place of ambush, it was at the head of 2,000 picked Hungarian warriors. Thus it was Czillei who fell into the snare. "Wretched creature!" exclaimed Huniades; "thou hast fallen into the pit thou diggedst for me; were it not that I regard the dignity of the king and my own humanity, thou shouldst suffer a punishment proportioned to thy crime. As it is, I let thee off this time, but come no more into my sight or thou shalt pay for it with thy life."

Such magnanimity, however, did not disarm the hostility of those who surrounded the king. On the pretence of treason against the king Huniades was deprived of all his offices and all his estates. The document is still to be seen in the Hungarian State Archives, in which the king, led astray by the jealousies that prevailed among his councillors, represents every virtue of the hero as a crime, and condemns him to exile.

Fortunately Czillei himself soon fell into disfavor; the Germans themselves overthrew him; and the king, now better informed, replaced Huniades in the post of Captain-General of the Kingdom.

Huniades, who had been living meanwhile retired in one of his castles, now complied with the king's wish without difficulty or hesitation, and again assumed the highest military command. Instead of seeking how to revenge himself after the manner of ordinary men, he only thought of the great enemy of his country, the Turk. And indeed, as it was, threatening clouds hung over the horizon in the southeast.

A new sultan had come to the throne, Mohammed II., one of the greatest sovereigns of the house of Othman. He began his reign with the occupation of Constantinople (1453), and thus destroyed the last refuge of the Byzantine Empire. At the news of this event all Europe burst into a chorus of lamentation. The whole importance of the Eastern Question at once presented itself before the nations of Christendom. It was at once understood that the new conqueror would not remain idle within the crumbling walls of Constantinople. And indeed in no long time was published the proud _mot d'ordre_ "As there is but one God in heaven, so there shall be but one master upon earth."

Huniades looked toward Constantinople with heavy heart. He foresaw the outburst of the storm which would in the first place fall upon his own country, threatening it with utter ruin. Huniades, so it seemed, was again left alone in the defence of Christendom.

The approaching danger was delayed for a few years, but in 1456 Mohammed, having finally established himself in Constantinople, set out with the intention of striking a fatal blow against Hungary. On the borders of that country, on the bank of the Danube, on what was, properly speaking Servian territory, stood the fortress of Belgrade. When the danger from the Turks became imminent, the kings of Hungary purchased the place from the despots of Servia, giving them in exchange several extensive estates in Hungary, and had at great expense turned it into a vast fortress, at that time supposed to be impregnable. Mohammed determined to take the place, and to this end made the most extensive preparations. He led to the walls of Belgrade an army of not less than 150,000 men. The approach of this immense host so terrified the young king that he left Hungary and took refuge in Vienna along with his uncle and counsellor, Czillei.

Huniades alone remained at his post, resolute like a lion attacked. The energy of the old leader--he was now sixty-eight years old--was only steeled by the greatness of the danger; his forethought and his mental resources were but increased. As he saw that it would be impossible to do anything with a small army, he sent his friend, John Capistran, an Italian Franciscan, a man animated by a burning zeal akin to his own, to preach a crusade against the enemies of Christendom through the towns and villages of the Great Hungarian Plain. This the friar did to such effect that in a few weeks he had collected 60,000 men, ready to fight in defence of the Cross. This army of Crusaders--the last in the history of the nations--had for its gathering cry the bells of the churches, for its arms, scythes and axes, Christ for its leader, and John Huniades and John Capistran for his lieutenants.

The two greatest leaders in war of that day contended for the possession of Belgrade. The same army now surrounded that fortress which a few years before had stormed Constantinople reputed impregnable. The same hero defended it who had so often in the course of a single decennium defeated the Turkish foe in an offensive war, who now, regardless of danger, with a small but faithful band of followers, was prepared to do all that courage, resolution, and prudence might effect.

Many hundred large cannon began to break down the stone ramparts; many hundred boats forming a river flotilla covered the Danube, so as to cut off all communication between the fortress and Hungary. During this time Huniades' son Ladislaus, and his brother-in-law Michael Szilagyi, were in command in the fortress. Huniades' first daring plan was to force his way through the blockading flotilla, and enter Belgrade before the eyes of the whole Turkish army, taking with him his own soldiers and Capistran's crusaders. The plan completely succeeded. With his own flotilla of boats he broke through that of the Turks and made his entrance into the fortress in triumph. After this the struggle was continued with equal resolution and ability on both sides; such advantage as the Christians derived from the protection afforded by the fortifications being fully compensated by the enormous superiority in numbers both of men and cannon on the part of the Turks. Without example in the history of the storming of fortresses was the stratagem practised by Huniades when he permitted the picked troops of the enemy, the janissaries, to penetrate within the fortification and there destroyed them in the place they thought they had taken. Ten thousand janissaries had already swarmed into the town and were preparing to attack the bridges and gates of the citadel, when Huniades ordered fagots soaked in pitch and sulphur and other combustibles to be flung from the ramparts into the midst of the crowded ranks of the janissaries. The fire seized on their loose garments, and in a short time the whole body was a sea of fire. Every one sought to fly. Then it was that Huniades sallied out with his picked band, while Capistran with a tall cross in his hand and the cry of "Jesus" on his lips followed with his crowd of fanatics, the cannon of the fortress played upon the Turkish camp, the Sultan himself was wounded and swept along by the stream of fugitives. Forty thousand Turks were left dead upon the field, four thousand were taken prisoners and three thousand cannon were captured.

According to the opinion of Huniades himself the Turks had never suffered such a severe defeat. Its value as far as the Hungarians were concerned was heightened by the fact that the ambitious Sultan was personally humiliated. There was now great joy in Europe. At the news of the brilliant victory _Te deum_ was sung in all the more important cities throughout Europe, and the Pope wished to compliment Huniades with a crown.

Alas! a crown of another character awaited him--that of his Redeemer, in whose name he lived, fought, and fell. The exhalations from the vast number of unburied or imperfectly buried bodies, festering in the heat of summer, gave rise to an epidemic in the Christian camp, and to this the great leader fell a victim. Huniades died August 11, 1456, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He died amid the intoxication of his greatest victory, idolized by his followers, having once more preserved his country from imminent ruin. Could he have desired a more glorious death?

He went to his last rest with the consciousness that he had fulfilled his mission, having designed great things and having accomplished them.

And the result of his lifelong efforts survived him. His great enemy the Turk for half a century after his death could only harass the frontier of his native land; and his country, a few years after his death placed on the royal throne his son Matthias.

[Signature of the author.]

WARWICK, THE KING-MAKER

(1420-1471)

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, called the king-maker, eldest son of Richard, Earl of Salisbury and Alice Montacute, was born November 22, 1428. The history of this mighty peer is that of the whole of the contest between the two houses of York and Lancaster. The house of Neville had been built up by a series of wealthy marriages, and Richard made no exception to the rule. While yet a boy he was married to Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and through her, after the death of her brother and niece, he took his place at the age of twenty-one among the chief earls of the English realm. By this time the English rule in France had broken down, bringing the reigning house of Lancaster into great unpopularity, and throwing a correspondingly greater influence into the hands of the leader of the opposition, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. He was brother-in-law to the Earl of Salisbury, and so attached to his party the powerful influence of the Nevilles.

[Illustration: Huniades at Belgrade.]

The Duke of York at first made no claim to the throne, demanding only that he should have his place in the councils of the king, and even when swords were drawn the Yorkists swore their allegiance to the king, Henry VI., while fighting against his advisers. Of these favorites of the king, the chief was the Earl of Somerset, whom many suspected of a design to establish himself as the successor to the throne. It was between these two factions of York and Somerset, that the white and red roses were first employed as distinguishing badges.

[Illustration: Warwick. [TN]]

_Plantagenet._ Let him, that is a true born gentleman, And stands upon the honor of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

_Somerset._ Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer, But dare maintain the party of the truth, Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

_Warwick._ I love no colors; and, without all color Of base insinuating flattery, I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet. --_Shakespeare: I Henry VI._

The Wars of the Roses began with the battle of St. Albans (1455), in which Somerset was killed. The victory was gained to the Yorkists chiefly by the help of Warwick. By a sudden sally into the streets of the town he routed the royal forces, and gained for himself that character of daring and courage which he maintained to the end. He was rewarded with the post of Captain of Calais, which he retained throughout the changes of the parties. In this position he was practically independent, and scoured the Channel at his pleasure.

In 1458 he attacked some vessels which were under a treaty of peace with England, and being summoned to London to answer before the king, was violently attacked by the followers of Somerset and barely escaped with his life. In 1459 the civil war finally broke out. In the first campaign the Yorkists failed, owing to their inactivity. The leaders fled to the coast of Devon, where they hired five men to carry them to Bristol. As soon as they left land, Warwick, stripped to the doublet, took the helm, and steered straight for Calais, where he arrived in a few days. When Somerset, son of the earl slain at St. Albans, came to claim the keys of the stronghold, he had the mortification to find Warwick there before him.