The adventures of John Hunyadi — the Hungarian governor and scourge of Muslim Turks, loved by peasants and hated by the elites — all but climaxed in a horrific way on this date in history.
Following his epic “Long Campaign,” which terrorized the aggressive Ottomans during the fall and early winter of 1442, Hunyadi’s “name struck such fear into the enemy that, when their children cried, [Turkish] mothers made them be quiet by threatening that John would come,” wrote Aeneas Piccolomini (1405–1464), the future Pope Pius II and one of Hunyadi’s contemporaries.
Indeed, so traumatized by what they had just experienced, and so convinced that “the military strength of not only Hungary but also Germany had been mobilized against them, the Turks rather uncharacteristically “sued for peace.” Hungarian King Ladislaus agreed, and a ten-year truce was declared.
Rome was outraged that a peace had been made just when the Ottomans’ overthrow seemed imminent. Pope Eugene IV implored Ladislaus to maintain the Crusade and “hurl back the infidel sect of Muhammad overseas,” from where it could no longer terrorize the Christian West. Others, including Hunyadi himself, were not so sure; he was concerned by how utterly exhausted Hungary was, how costly the last battles were, and how difficult it was to obtain outside help. But he resigned himself by saying, “I listen to the ruler, I do not rule.”
For long Ladislaus deliberated; although he did not want “to abandon his defense of Christendom,” he also did not want to renege on the peace treaty he had made with Murad. During that time, John Palaeologus, the emperor of perennially besieged Constantinople — who knew the Turks better than most — sent a message warning the Hungarian king “against false, deceitful peace treaties” from the Ottomans (a sentiment echoed by many contemporary Christians).
When soon thereafter the Turks refused to surrender several castles they had agreed to in keeping with the treaty, Ladislaus finally decided to resume the war. He managed to put together an army of some 20,000 fighters drawn primarily from Hungary, Poland, and Wallachia (Romania).
In response, the sultan himself led the Muslim army, which at the very least outnumbered the Crusaders by four to one (though several sources put the Ottoman army at 120,000). Such swollen numbers could mobilize so quickly only because Murad had proclaimed a defensive jihad, prompting his chief ulema to issue a fatwa “in accordance with sharia law,” saying that, “because the infidels who are as low as the dust are attacking us, it is an obligation on all of us to join the jihad.”
Being so outnumbered, Hunyadi’s plan was to shock and awe the enemy — “to attack them violently, to strike terror amidst them” with “vigour and quickness.”
The opposing forces finally met at Varna by the Black Sea. There, on November 10, 1444, in the midst of a massive sea-storm and driving wind, the Christians and Muslims collided in one of history’s most dramatic battles. In the words of an Ottoman chronicler:
They shot each other with cannons, muskets, and crossbows, like a rain of death. The accursed king [Ladislaus] stood in the middle, the accursed Yanko [Hunyadi] on one side … and attacked Sultan Murad and overwhelmed him, carried both his wings away, and grappled with the Anatolian troops. It was a very great battle.
So overwhelmed by the fiery onslaught of this Christian blitzkrieg, the much larger Turkish lines began to break; terrified Muslims “fled before the infidels had even attacked them,” continues the Turkish chronicler. “No one remained; they ran away without looking behind them.”
On seeing this, Murad cried, “O Allah, give the religion of Islam strength and bestow victory on the religion of Islam out of respect for the light of Muhammad!” Instantly, Allah reportedly “caused temptations to enter the heart of the accursed [Ladislaus] so that he became overweening and attacked Sultan Murad. In his pride he thought himself a mighty hero … and hurled himself against Sultan Murad’s people. Through Allah’s grace the king’s horse stumbled and he himself fell head over heels on his face.” Two giant Muslims instantly pounced on and beheaded him.
Concludes the Ottoman chronicler:
When Sultan Murad saw it, he thanked Allah greatly and had the head stuck on a spear and held aloft. Criers cried in all four directions, saying “The king’s head has been cut off and stuck on a spear!” The whole scattered army reformed around Sultan Murad…. When the accursed [Hunyadi] saw that the [Christian] armies were beginning to scatter [on news of the king’s slaughter], he said to the infidels, “We came here for the sake of our religion, not for the sake of the king!” and thus he brought the army to order again. Then he turned and made two or three attacks. He saw that the Muslims had increased in numbers [because those who had fled were returning] and thought it best to flee without further ado. When the army of Islam saw this, they pursued the infidels on every side. The soldiers of Islam had beaten the soldiers of the infidels and began to kill them.
While the above Muslim account is permeated with hagiographical elements, its general outline is confirmed by Christian sources. Greek historian Doukas succinctly summarizes the battle as follows:
A terrific and frightful battle was fought from early morning until the ninth hour [3 p.m.], and the Christians butchered the Turks mercilessly. At about the tenth hour the Saxon king [Ladislaus], accompanied by about five hundred troops, turned his cavalry toward the enemy. [Hunyadi] attempted to stop him but could not. And as the Saxon king drew near, his horse was struck a mortal blow, throwing its rider headlong. The Turks decapitated him on the spot. Janos became aware of what had happened when he saw the head hoisted on a lance. There were cries and shouts, such as, “Let him flee who can!” The Turks slaughtered most of the Christians. As night fell, Janos barely escaped by crossing the Danube.
Turkish casualties were so high and mangled bodies so widely scattered that it took the sultan three days to confirm his victory. Aside from those few who managed to escape, the Christians were utterly annihilated. There and then, “in accordance with a barbarous custom, the Sultan ordered tables to be set and held a feast among the corpses of the vanquished.”
As for Ladislaus’s head, Murad “had it flayed and the skin stuffed with various roots and cotton so that it would not spoil; and he had the hair combed and prepared with sulfide, so that it would be made up as if it were alive. And he ordered that this head be stuck on a pike and carried about all his cities,” as proof that Allah “had let him vanquish his enemy.”
Because Varna was arguably the greatest victory of Sultan Murad’s career, he decreed that “all the community of Muhammad should be informed of it. Let there be great illuminations and celebrations so that all the community of Muhammad can rejoice, and the infidels … suffer grief and foreboding when they hear of it.” In a letter to the sultan of Tabriz, Murad boasted that Allah had made him victorious “in scattering and confounding the infidels who are as low as the earth,” adding “may Allah exterminate and destroy them and may He not leave a trace of them on the face of the earth.” Especially invective words were directed against the “the ill-omened Hungarians, who are worshippers of idols … enemies of the religion of the Prophet and deniers of Muhammad’s message.”
It was an especially dark time for Hungary, which also suffered a succession crisis following the slaughter of its king, as one noble fought the other. Worse was to come at the hands of the Turks, but in the end, after more than a decade of setbacks, Hunyadi — with the aid of the average Christian “peasant” — managed to rise to the task and reverse the tide.
But that is another story.
Raymond Ibrahim is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum. Portions of this article were excerpted from his book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam.