by Dan Davis
“He is holding, for now,” I said, watching the Turkish centre. The tens of thousands of infantry and horse there were still dug in behind their barricades and in their trenches. “He fears Hunyadi’s ability.”
“You think the Sultan afraid?” Walt asked.
“He respects Hunyadi’s ability,” I said. “And so he should. Here is a signal, men.”
Trumpets sounded and flags were waved from the centre where Hunyadi and his bodyguard advanced. I ordered my men forward and we moved away from King Vladislaus and his loyal troops who stayed back. I turned my horse to review the state of my men and noted behind them that the Wallachians were advancing to take the position that we were leaving. They would plug the gap and they would help to defend the King. Hunyadi really did know his business.
“Where is he leading us?” Walt called out over the wind and the growing din of battle. “Left, right, or centre?”
“We shall see,” I said. The noise of the clashes on the flanks was like a distant sea, rising and falling but relentless and growing louder as more and more men were drawn in.
“Care to wager on it?” Walt asked, grinning.
“Do not be crass,” I said as the men-at-arms of my company rode past us. “Thousands of men are about to die.”
“Ten ecus says that we attack the left flank.”
“You do not have ten ecus,” I said, nodding and holding up my hand to this or that man of mine as he advanced.
Walt patted his breastplate. “Got more than that right here, Richard.”
“Very well. Hunyadi must seek to save our right before it collapses,” I said, confidently. “And that is where we will go.”
“Richard wagers we go into the hills, very well, and I say it shall be the left.” Walt grinned. “Rob?”
“I do not have ten ecus,” he said. “But surely we will attack the centre?”
“Only a madman would assault ten thousand hand-gunners, Rob,” I said. “Protected by ten thousand spearmen.”
He scratched his nose. “I’ll not wager what I do not have.”
“Our lads look keen enough,” Walt said as the last of our men-at-arms advanced past us, raising their hands or their lances in salute to me as they went. “Hard-hearted bastards, ain’t they?”
We had French, Burgundians, Britons, English, Irish, Scots, Welsh, all desperate men seeking fortune and glory. But I had personally tested each one before allowing them to join my company and Rob and Walt kept a close eye on them. Since leaving England, we had recruited those we needed as we crossed Europe and we had expelled those who were found wanting, either in ability or in moral character. Some were brutal men, killers with little education and even less fear, but I would not allow disobedience or men not in possession of self-control. They were a good company and I was pleased with them.
“Will we get close to the Sultan?” Rob asked. “You believe William to be there, at his side. But if the centre is unassailable…”
“The more that I think on it, I believe if we drive off the flanks, we will have a stalemate. We cannot assail their central position and I doubt they will attempt our wagonberg. If his sipahis are crushed, the Sultan will likely withdraw. William will have to wait for another day.”
“If he’s even there at all,” Walt said.
“The time for discussion is over,” I snapped. “Come, let us catch Hunyadi and his men and do our duty.”
With a final glance back at the great banner and bodyguard of King Vladislaus and the vast wagonberg behind him, I closed the visor on my helm. I could see ahead through the slits and down at my body through the breathing holes but due to the solid armour covering my neck, I had to turn my shoulders along with my head in order to see to either side. My nose was filled at once with the sourness of my breath.
We galloped forward and with surprise I saw Hunyadi’s banner continuing straight toward the centre of the enemy. We were yet far enough away that their Janissaries’ handheld firearms would not reach us but still I thought I had overestimated Janos Hunyadi. He was going to charge straight into a hail of deadly lead balls and the battle would be lost. All would be lost.
But I should have had faith for, with a waving of signal flags and blaring of trumpets, he finally ordered us to attack the enemy flank.
Not toward the hills where our right was crumbling, as I had wagered ten gold pieces in expectation of, but instead to our left, where Szilágyi’s Hungarians were holding.
We had advanced so far that we crashed into their flank and slipped behind them, attacking the rear.
“Keep the men together!” I ordered. “Stay together!”
My company formed up together on either side of me and we charged into the sipahis. I thrust my lance into a Turk and shoved him out of his saddle before pushing on into the man behind him. The press of men was enormous and the sea of horses swelled and crashed under the weight of our charge. My men knew not to advance too far, too quickly, and we helped each other to disengage and pull back. Once we and our horses had paused for breath, we dressed our line and advanced again into a charge at their crumbling flank.
As their centre pulled back to meet our charges, Szilágyi pushed them further with his own men. Hundreds died in the charges and hundreds more in the press of the fighting but they were unnerved due to being surrounded and their will crumbled until the sipahis fighting us fled in something close to panic.
“Stay here!” I ordered, and Walt and Rob and my other key men ensured my company stayed together. There was little better in life than pursuing a fleeing enemy and many a soldier let it go to his head, whooping and cheering as he chased the sipahis. But the day was far from over and we would need every man on the field and so my company reined in and came back to the centre with me.
Other captains and lords were not so fortunate in their soldiers as was I. For the Turks fled so far that the chasing Hungarians disappeared along the lakeshore. Later I would hear that they in fact got fully behind the Turkish lines and began looting enemy camps that they found there. The damned fools filled their purses with loot and sport as they ran through panicking camp followers and servants while the rest of us fought on.
As Hunyadi attempted to rally us back to him in the centre, Walt rode up, shouting and pointing his bloody mace behind me.
Opening my visor, I turned to look up at the hills.
Our right flank was destroyed.
The men there were outnumbered in horse but they had also been surrounded by Turkish archers in the woods, shooting down at our knights as they fled the field. Some of the Germans were pulling back to the wagonberg, still in good order with banners raised, but the flank was still open.
“Are we finished?” Rob called. “Should we return for Eva?”
“The Wallachians must hold the line in front of the wagons,” I cried. “The battle is yet in the balance, men. We have won a flank apiece but both centres hold. All is well. We shall yet win the day.”
But I had underestimated Mircea, son of Vlad Dracul, and his Wallachian horsemen, for they did not hold, nor did they engage the enemy. Even as the rest of the Christians watched, they galloped their seven thousand men, perhaps a fifth of our army, along the banks of the lake through the gap the Hungarians had opened up by crushing that flank. Later, I would discover that young Mircea stopped only to join in the looting of the Turkish camp before continuing on all the way back to Wallachia.
“Those duplicitous bastards,” I shouted as they cantered by in their thousands. “Treacherous little shit. I swear by Christ I shall have his head.”
“Is that it?” Walt asked. “We can’t win, now, can we?”
“No,” Rob said. “Only a matter of time before some other lords decide to follow the Wallachians.”
“We are not lost! But we must assault the horsemen on our right,” I shouted to my men, pointing up at the hills. “The only enemy cavalry on the field is there, do you see? We can still kill them all. Do you hear me? We will kill the enemy cavalry and then the day is not lost.”
When wearing a helm, it was difficult to hear a lord’s voice especially with the wind and the roar of battle, and so I shouted something clearer my men would understand. “We will kill them!”
Hunyadi and his Hungarians were forming up to do just that and I led my men forward with them. We rode slowly across the field and squires and pages handed out water and wine and some men stuffed bread or slices of sausage into their mouths. Exhausted horses were exchanged, and damaged weapons replaced. It appeared that some of the Hungarian nobles who had remained in the centre with the king were moving rightward to join us in the rising ground. I wondered whether the Turks would chance an assault against the King, but we were now between him and most of the enemy’s remaining horse so it seemed likely he would be safe where he was.
The Turks were superb horsemen. Their horses were well-bred and trained for war, just as the men riding them were. Big fellows with bow legs and broad chests, just like the Mongols and other Tartars from whom they were descended. Hundreds of years of success on the battlefields of the steppe, and the hills of Anatolia, and the plains of Thrace and Bulgaria, had made them experts at war and had provided them with enormous riches plundered from the collapsing Roman Empire of the east.
Even so, there was nothing in all the world that could stand up to a charge by the knights of Europe. We were superb horsemen, too, raised in the saddle, practised in the proper use of the lance from boyhood. Our steel armour was the finest the world had ever seen, whether Italian or German made, and as long as we were led by a lord who knew the limitations of the charge, there was no hope for an enemy that attempted to resist it.
Hunyadi ensured that each of his companies were formed up before he ordered the attack on the Turks. His bodyguard were the centre, and Hungarian lords surrounded him. Near to the centre, Walt and Rob harangued my company into a line with voices louder than thunder. Contingents from Germany formed their own lines above us to the right. The Bishop of Talotis, God love him, somehow brought his defeated men back to join us in a renewed assault.
The order was sounded to advance and six or seven thousand of us moved toward the Turkish sipahis. They were busy chasing down the poor remnants of the right flank, desperately defending themselves from the wheeling Turks. When they saw us coming, the enemy galloped in all directions, attempting to form up against us. I thought that they would certainly do it but as we got closer and slowly increased our pace, they were still attempting to regain their order and were yet in several great, confused masses rather than ordered formations. At the last moment, our scores of companies charged in a staggered, broken line that must have been a mile wide.
I saw little of it, as I lowered my lance and raked my spurs against my horse, trusting that my men would be beside me. I thrust my lance into a Turk’s helm with such force that he was certainly destroyed immediately. On, I charged, and my lance took the next man low on his flank as he turned to flee and his horse fell along with him. My lance broken, I used an axe to break through the Turks I came to. Beside me, my men attacked and we pushed on into the darkness of battle, with the cacophony of war filling my head so that all I could hear was a roar and the laboured breathing from my own lungs as I drove deeper into the enemy.
All of a sudden, there was daylight and sky, and no more enemies to kill.
They had broken and fled. Bodies lay everywhere underfoot and horses with no riders galloped in confusion this way and that.
Our men were celebrating our victory. We had killed the Beylerbey of Anatolia along with thousands of horsemen, and now the crusaders were the only horsemen left on the field.
“Now what?” Walt called, after we collected our surviving men and took stock of the damage done. Only six of my men had been killed. We were bruised and battered, some men nursing bad wounds, but my company had tasted a victory and only wanted more.
“No man loots the bodies,” I shouted. “Unless it is to replace a weapon he has lost. We must reform on Hunyadi and either attack that damned fortress of a Turkish centre or withdraw.”
“Richard?” Rob said, looking down the hill to our centre. “In the name of God, Richard, what is he doing?”
By he, Rob meant King Vladislaus III, who was riding at the heart of his enormous bodyguard. Thousands of heavily armoured horses and knights advanced along the flat of the plain straight at the Turkish centre.
“By God,” I cried. “He means to attack himself.”
“Stupid bastard,” Walt said, pausing to spit a mouthful of blood to one side. “He wants some of the glory for himself, does he not?”
“He must be blind,” Rob said. “Or mad.”
“Glory,” I said. “He seeks glory.”
Walt scoffed. “He’ll find a spear shoved up his arse instead, the silly bastard.”
“Long has he been in Hunyadi’s shadow. A lord should not be outshone by his vassal. And Vladislaus is a king.”
“So he means to steal Hunyadi’s victory and claim it for his own,” Rob said, nodding.
“He’s a fool,” Walt said.
“What do we do?” Rob asked.
I looked for Hunyadi’s banner. He was forming up his men but we were so much further away and the King, astonishingly, did not appear to be waiting for us. The trumpets sounded and we made our way across the slant of the hill toward the massive Turkish centre. By that point, we had been fighting for hours and our men and horses were exhausted. If we rushed toward the enemy, we would be on our knees by the time we reached them and so we were able to watch as the flower of Hungarian nobility charged the Turkish centre. It was the king’s finest men against the Sultan’s ranks of infantry, thousands of them, in prepared defensive position.
In front of the ranks of waiting Janissaries were lines of azabs, the peasant spearmen. These were swiftly overcome by the power of the Hungarian charge and the spearmen fell or were scattered as the nobles and their men rode them down and continued on, barely slowing or needing to reform. It was a magnificent display of bright colours and shining steel.
Behind were ranks of armoured infantry, armed with spears and axes, and wearing metal helms. But these men fled as the Hungarians rode down the thousands of peasant levies in front of them.
That left only the Janissaries between the King of Hungary and the Sultan of the Turks.
“He’s going to do it!” Walt shouted. “Bloody hell, Richard, the king is going to kill the Sultan after all.”
Many of my men and the others around us believed the same, for they raised their weapons and cheered, urging their king on. There were ten thousand Janissaries but their lines looked rather thin compared to that of the peasants the king had just run down. The Janissaries were barely armoured.
My heart fluttered at the thought that we might just do it after all. If the Turks break, we shall have to pursue William through Bulgaria, I thought.
As the king and his men approached the hill upon which the ten thousand Janissaries formed, the foremost ranks of the elite Turkish soldiers raised their long weapons to their chests, pointed them, and almost as one fired their hand-guns.
I had seen small hand-held cannons here and there for years. In Milan, decades earlier, I had watched a company of mercenaries displaying one such weapon which they propped up at the front with a long, forked stick and a man held at the rear with the pole attached to the iron barrel. When another of the fellows held a burning rope to the touch hole, the small cannon belched out a great stinking cloud of smoke with a sound so loud it caused my ears to ring for a day. The poor fool not only missed the target but fell over backwards after the shot, no doubt more from fear of mishap than from the force. How we laughed.
“Absurd of them to suggest such a device could replace a crossbow,” I said to Walt, both of us grinning at the notion.
Fifty years later and we yet used crossbows but often they were used beside hand-gunners, whose firearms had developed into reliable weapons fired by couching the thing in one’s arm at chest height while touching the firing pan with a lit
rope. The Bohemians used them to great effectiveness from the safety of their wagons, as did the Hungarians who had taken up their arms and methods.
But the Janissaries had them also and trained to use them in the field and had done so with great success against Turkmen tribes in the east and against the poor people of the Balkans and so were well practised in technique and application. Far more than I had realised until that moment.
Thousands of Janissaries fired their guns in a great billowing of smoke that belched from their lines.
Moments later, the massive sound of it reached us and boomed and rolled from the hills.
Down on the plain, the royal and noble riders and horses fell in their scores but still they came on, their horses drumming their hooves on the earth. Before they reached the Janissaries, another volley of smoke and noise crashed and more knights fell tumbling back or rolling beneath their horses.
It was a slaughter. It reminded me of English archers shooting their longbows into French knights so many decades before. But instead of joy, I now felt horror.
Even though so many fell, the mad charge of the Hungarian nobles reached the Janissaries lines. We still rode closer and as we descended, it became more difficult to see but their charge crashed into the Janissaries at many places. They rode down the enemy palisades and then broke through the Janissaries’ lines. Once through the first ranks of hand-gunners, they pushed deeper in.
I still had hope.
The king’s banner wavered and slowed but it, and the king beneath it, pushed deeper into the Turk’s camp to within a stone’s throw of the Sultan’s great tents.
But the enemy numbers were too many.
By the time we came down the hills and reached the flanks of the enemy lines, there was little we could do to reach the King, deep in the centre. We killed thousands of spearmen on our approach, we bowled over the armoured Anatolian infantry who had fled the king’s charge, and we rode down Janissaries and cut at them. And yet they did not break. Far from it, in fact, and when they recovered from the shock enough to begin firing their hand-guns at us, we were forced back in our thousands and we retreated out of range for another charge.
