The History and Legacy of the Christian Battles against the Ottoman Empire in Central Europe

In terms of geopolitics, perhaps the most seminal event of the Middle Ages was the successful Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453. The city had been an imperial capital as far back as the 4th century, when Constantine the Great shifted the power center of the Roman Empire there, effectively establishing two almost equally powerful halves of antiquity’s greatest empire. Constantinople would continue to serve as the capital of the Byzantine Empire even after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century. Naturally, the Ottoman Empire would also use Constantinople as the capital of its empire after their conquest effectively ended the Byzantine Empire, and thanks to its strategic location, it has been a trading center for years and remains one today under the Turkish name of Istanbul.

The fall of Constantinople is still well-known today, but the Ottoman Empire was already pushing into Europe beforehand, and it would take repeated efforts by various European coalitions to prevent a complete Ottoman takeover of the continent. At the time, the most powerful European countries in Eastern Europe and the Balkans were Poland and Hungary. Russia was still throwing off the Mongol yoke, France and England were fighting an interminable war, Germany was broken into hundreds of entities, and the Holy Roman Empire was fighting the rise of Protestantism. The Italian merchant city-states of Venice and Genoa were intimately tied to the Balkans, the Byzantine Empire, the Black Sea, and the Ottomans. Genoa had been something of an Ottoman ally since the 1300s, even while the Ottomans were looming as a grave threat to Europe.

The Ottoman Sultan Murad II became known as the Ghazi Sultan and was seen as not only defending Islam against the Christians but also as a defender of other, less powerful Muslim beys. Thus, he gained support from Muslims both far and near before he turned his armies towards Venice, the Karamids, Serbia, and finally Hungary, which would get the Europeans’ attention. In the historic tradition that already dated back over 300 years, crusades were called to stop the Ottomans, and the main battles would be fought near Nicopolis and Varna, a fortified city on the Black Sea coast of what is now Bulgaria.

Naturally, the Byzantines and Europeans didn’t take the Ottoman incursions laying down, and in the generations before the Ottoman victory at Constantinople, European alliances frequently tried to check Ottoman advances, couching their campaigns in the terms of crusading. One of them came near the end of the 14th century, and it presaged what was to come in the 15th century.

The Ottoman campaigns of the 14th century would provide the context for the events that led to the Battle of Nicopolis. One of the last major crusades was launched in 1396 by Pope Boniface IX, and the timing was perfect for the European kingdoms to unite and form a strong threat to the Ottomans. The 100-year war between France and England was in a state of truce, and King Richard II had just married Princess Isabella of France. Thus, both the English and the Franks would be able to send forces to join in a crusade, and so would Hungary, Bulgaria, Venice, Genoa, Croatia, Wallachia, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Knights Hospitaller.

At the same time, it would be inaccurate to claim that the Battle of Nicopolis was the last serious threat the Ottoman Empire faced from the West before the beginning of its decline in the late 17th century. The Crusade of 1443, for example, posed a much more serious challenge to the Ottomans and came closer to succeeding. But history seems fascinated more by spectacular failures than near triumphs, and the campaign at Nicopolis is characterized by a long succession of failures and outright blunders from its very inception.