Chapter 59 Ottoman Concession and the Formation of the Crusades

Bayezid arrived at Varna with his army immediately. He was so angry that he ordered an attack without waiting for the siege equipment and artillery to arrive.

Bayezid was also confused. He was beaten up directly. Because it was a siege, the cavalry was useless and could only rely on infantry. But the problem is that you don’t have any siege equipment, and the previous transportation was robbed. So how to fight now, just rely on ladders to climb up, naturally suffer heavy losses.

Seeing that he couldn’t win for the time being, Bayezid ordered people to persuade them to surrender, but the other party didn’t agree and almost killed the envoy.

Well, let’s wait for supplies next.

Bayezid probably never lost his temper so much in his life. In order to avoid sneak attacks at night, he also increased cavalry patrols. As a result, there were no sneak attacks for several days, which made him feel relieved.

Yes, Peter didn’t plan to attack at night. He was ready to attack in broad daylight. Definitely unforgettable.

At noon that day, all Ottoman soldiers prayed. They never thought that the enemy was nearby.

"Allah..."

The Ottoman soldiers were praying when they suddenly heard the sound of fighting.

These camps were only temporarily reinforced, and with low morale, the outermost Ottoman soldiers had not yet picked up their weapons, and they became ghosts under the knife.

Taking advantage of the opponent's prayer to attack, well, not bad, very good.

Although it was a surprise, many Ottoman soldiers still reacted and took up weapons to fight. At the same time, soldiers from other places also arrived quickly, and Bayezid led the Janissaries to help.

"They insulted Allah, kill them all!"

The combat effectiveness of the Janissaries is not bad, but if they face the same Cossacks as them, they can only fight 50-50, after all, the opponent is doing it with real swords and guns.

And just as they gradually moved eastward, to the west of the camp. A louder sound of fighting rang out.

The comers were Peter's main force, and their sudden backstab caught the Ottomans off guard. But relying on the advantage of numbers, it gradually stabilized.

The enemy retreated, but the Ottomans also suffered heavy losses. Bayezid had to consider retreating, especially now that he was alone in the deep.

In order to lure the enemy out, Bayezid ordered the army to yell and curse. They said Peter was a coward and didn't dare to come out because he was scared by the Ottomans.

Peter listened to them without any expression. He just looked at the map by himself.

"Only those who are at the end of their rope will yell."

Peter continued to maintain the policy of clearing the walls and fields, and sent people to disrupt the Ottoman supply lines. More importantly, due to hygiene problems, an epidemic broke out in the Ottoman camp. Many people died.

Bayezid couldn't hold on any longer. After losing two pashas and a large number of soldiers in succession, he issued an order to retreat.

This was Bayezid's humiliation. He had never been so aggrieved. At the same time, he cursed Peter several times, thinking that it was because he didn't dare to fight that they suffered heavy losses.

And going back was another loss. The Ottomans gradually lost in Peter's mobile warfare. And Bayezid had no way to do anything.

In the south, Mircea's army also successfully captured Burgas. Because most of the defenders in the city were taken away by Bayezid, there were less than 2,000 people guarding the city, and Mircea took it without much effort.

The fall of the two towns of Sofia and Burgas can be said to have completely ruined the Ottoman expansion since Murad I. At the same time, the Ottoman army could not go back.

————Dividing line————

Okay, let's turn our attention elsewhere. The news that Wallachia had defeated the Ottoman army also spread to other parts of Europe. The King of Hungary believed that a crusade was needed to completely drive the Ottomans out of the Balkans, and Venice was also worried that the Ottoman Empire would control the Balkan Peninsula, including Venice's territories in Morea and Dalmatia, which would weaken Venice's influence on the Adriatic Sea, the Ionian Sea and the Aegean Sea.

Genoa was worried that if the Ottoman Empire controlled the Danube and the Turkish Straits, they would eventually monopolize the trade route from Europe to the Black Sea. Genoa controlled Kaffa, Sinop and Amasra in the Black Sea. The Genoese also controlled Galata, north of the Golden Horn in Constantinople, and Bayezid I had attacked Galata.

Even though the Great Schism of the Western Church had split the papacy in two, with the Avignon and Rome popes at odds, and the power of the pope to call a crusade had long since disappeared, the pope of Rome still called for a crusade against the Turks.

At the same time, there was another key factor in the formation of the crusade: the Hundred Years' War between Richard II of England and Charles VI of France, and the support of Philip II, Duke of Burgundy. In 1389, the Hundred Years' War entered a periodic truce, and for this reason, the topic of the crusade grew again.

To increase his chances of success, Sigismund sent four knights and a bishop to the court in Paris to describe the "40,000" Turks plundering and endangering Christian territories, and to ask for help on behalf of Sigismund of Hungary. Charles VI had already made peace with England through marriage, and replied that as the "leader of Christian kings", he had a responsibility to protect Christianity and teach Bayezid I a lesson. French nobles responded enthusiastically. Philip of Artois, the commander-in-chief of the French knights, and Jean Le Maigret, the French marshal, both said that participating in the Crusade was the duty of a "warrior".

Philip, Duke of Burgundy, had planned to lead the Crusade with John of Gaunt and Louis I, but the plan was ultimately aborted. Philip claimed that the peace treaty with England meant that England had to participate in the Crusade, but perhaps that was because no one was willing to leave the throne, while other contenders for the throne were around. Philip appointed his eldest son, John of Nevers, as the nominal commander. The Duke probably thought that his eldest and second sons, Eux and Boucicaut, were under 35 years old at the time and lacked the necessary experience, so he appointed the most experienced warrior and politician in the country, Enguerrand VII, Duke of Coucy, as John's "chief advisor".

Nevers had a large number of "advisers" around him, as well as some outstanding French lords, who he could "consult when he thought it appropriate", because medieval warriors did not understand the concept of unified command.

Their main goals were to drive the Ottoman Empire out of the Balkans, lift the siege of Constantinople, then invade the Anatolian Peninsula and the Levant, recapture the Holy Land of Jerusalem from the Mamluk Sultanate, and then return by ship. Although the Crusaders had ambitious goals, their actions were shameful. They lacked unified command, had loose military discipline, burned, killed, and looted along the way, and had great contempt for the Ottoman Empire, and did not carry siege equipment.