The Siege Of Belgrade

The empire of Rome finally reached its end, not in the fifth century, as

ordinarily considered, but in the fifteenth; not at Rome, but at

Constantinople, where the Eastern empire survived the Western for a

thousand years. At length, in 1453, the Turks captured Constantinople,

set a broad foot upon the degenerate empire of the East, and crushed out

the last feeble remnants of life left in the pygmy successor of the

colo sus of the past.



And now Europe, which had looked on with clasped hands while the Turks

swept over the Bosphorus and captured Constantinople, suddenly awoke to

the peril of its situation. A blow in time might have saved the Greek

empire. The blow had not been struck, and now Europe had itself to save.

Terror seized upon the nations which had let their petty intrigues stand

in the way of that broad policy in which safety lay, for they could not

forget past instances of Asiatic invasion. The frightful ravages wrought

by the Huns and the Avars were far in the past, but no long time had

elapsed since the coming of the Magyars and the Mongols, and now here

was another of those hordes of murderous barbarians, hanging like a

cloud of war on the eastern skirt of Europe, and threatening to rain

death and ruin upon the land. The dread of the nations was not amiss.

They had neglected to strengthen the eastern barrier to the Turkish

avalanche. Now it threatened their very doors, and they must meet it at

home.



The Turks were not long in making their purpose evident. Within two

years after the fall of Constantinople they were on the march again, and

had laid siege to Belgrade, the first obstacle in their pathway to

universal conquest. The Turkish cannons were thundering at the doors of

Europe. Belgrade fallen, Vienna would come next, and the march of the

barbarians might only end at the sea.



And yet, despite their danger, the people of Germany remained supine.

Hungary had valiantly defended itself against the Turks ten years

before, without aid from the German empire. It looked now as if Belgrade

might be left to its fate. The brave John Hunyades and his faithful

Hungarians were the only bulwarks of Europe against the foe, for the

people seemed incapable of seeing a danger a thousand miles away. The

pope and his legate John Capistrano, general of the Capuchins, were the

only aids to the valiant Hunyades in his vigorous defence. They preached

a crusade, but with little success. Capistrano traversed Germany,

eloquently calling the people to arms against the barbarians. The result

was similar to that on previous occasions, the real offenders were

neglected, the innocent suffered. The people, instead of arming against

the Turks, turned against the Jews, and murdered them by thousands.

Whatever happened in Europe,--a plague, an invasion, a famine, a

financial strait,--that unhappy people were in some way held

responsible, and mediaeval Europe seemed to think it could, at any time,

check the frightful career of a comet or ward off pestilence by

slaughtering a few thousands of Jews. It cannot be said that it worked

well on this occasion; the Jews died, but the Turks surrounded Belgrade

still.



Capistrano found no military ardor in Germany, in princes or people. The

princes contented themselves with ordering prayers and ringing the

Turkish bells, as they were called. The people were as supine as their

princes. He did, however, succeed, by the aid of his earnest eloquence,

in gathering a force of a few thousands of peasants, priests, scholars,

and the like; a motley host who were chiefly armed with iron flails and

pitchforks, but who followed him with an enthusiasm equal to his own.

With this shadow of an army he joined Hunyades, and the combined force

made its way in boats down the Danube into the heart of Hungary, and

approached the frontier fortress which Mahomet II. was besieging with a

host of one hundred and sixty thousand men, and which its defender, the

brother-in-law of John Hunyades, had nearly given up for lost.



On came the flotilla,--the peasants with their flails and forks and

Hunyades with his trained soldiers,--and attacked the Turkish fleet with

such furious energy that it was defeated and dispersed, and the allied

forces made their way into the beleaguered city. Capistrano and his

followers were full of enthusiasm. He was a second Peter the Hermit,

his peasant horde were crusaders, fierce against the infidels,

disdaining death in God's cause; neither leader nor followers had a

grain of military knowledge or experience, but they had, what is

sometimes better, courage and enthusiasm.



John Hunyades had military experience, and looked with cold disfavor

on the burning and blind zeal of his new recruits. He was willing that

they should aid him in repelling the furious attacks of the Turks, but

to his trained eyes an attack on the well-intrenched camp of the enemy

would have been simple madness, and he sternly forbade any such suicidal

course, even threatening death to whoever should attempt it.



In truth, his caution seemed reasonable. An immense host surrounded the

city on the land side, and had done so on the water side, also, until

the Christian flotilla had sunk, captured, and dispersed its boats. Far

as the eye could see, the gorgeously-embellished tents of the Turkish

army, with their gilded crescents glittering in the sun, filled the

field of view. Cannon-mounted earthworks threatened the walls from every

quarter. Squadrons of steel-clad horsemen swept the field. The crowding

thousands of besiegers pressed the city day and night. Even defence

seemed useless. Assault on such a host appeared madness to experienced

eyes. Hunyades seemed wise in his stern disapproval of such an idea.



Yet military knowledge has its limitations, when it fails to take into

account the power of enthusiasm. Blind zeal is a force whose

possibilities a general does not always estimate. It is capable of

performing miracles, as Hunyades was to learn. His orders, his threats

of death, had no restraining effect on the minds of the crusaders. They

had come to save Europe from the Turks, and they were not to be stayed

by orders or threats. What though the enemy greatly outnumbered them,

and had cannons and scimitars against their pikes and flails, had they

not God on their side, and should God's army pause to consider numbers

and cannon-balls? They were not to be restrained; attack they would, and

attack they did.



The siege had made great progress. The reinforcement had come barely in

time. The walls were crumbling under the incessant bombardment.

Convinced that he had made a practicable breach, Mahomet, the sultan,

ordered an assault in force. The Turks advanced, full of barbarian

courage, climbed the crumbled walls, and broke, as they supposed, into

the town, only to find new walls frowning before them. The vigorous

garrison had built new defences behind the old ones, and the

disheartened assailants learned that they had done their work in vain.



This repulse greatly discouraged the sultan. He was still more

discouraged when the crusaders, irrepressible in their hot enthusiasm,

broke from the city and made a fierce attack upon his works. Capistrano,

seeing that they were not to be restrained, put himself at their head,

and with a stick in one hand and a crucifix in the other, led them to

the assault. It proved an irresistible one. The Turks could not sustain

themselves against these flail-swinging peasants. One intrenchment after

another fell into their hands, until three had been stormed and taken.

Their success inspired Hunyades. Filled with a new respect for his

peasant allies, and seeing that now or never was the time to strike, he

came to their aid with his cavalry, and fell so suddenly and violently

upon the Turkish rear that the invaders were put to rout.



Onward pushed the crusaders and their allies; backward went the Turks.

The remaining intrenchments were stubbornly defended, but that storm of

iron flails, those pikes and pitchforks, wielded by the zeal of

enthusiasts, were not to be resisted, and in the end all that remained

of the Turkish army broke into panic flight, the sultan himself being

wounded, and more than twenty thousand of his men left dead upon the

field.



It was a signal victory. Miraculous almost, when one considers the great

disproportion of numbers. The works of the invaders, mounted with three

hundred cannon, and their camp, which contained an immense booty, fell

into the hands of the Christians, and the power of Mahomet II. was so

crippled that years passed before he was in condition to attempt a

second invasion of Europe.



The victors were not long to survive their signal triumph. The valiant

Hunyades died shortly after the battle, from wounds received in the

action or from fatal disease. Capistrano died in the same year (1456).

Hunyades left two sons, and the King of Hungary repaid his services by

oppressing both, and beheading one of these sons. But the king himself

died during the next year, and Matthias Corvinus, the remaining son of

Hunyades, was placed by the Hungarians on their throne. They had given

their brave defender the only reward in their power.



If the victory of Hunyades and Capistrano--the nobleman and the

monk--had been followed up by the princes of Europe, the Turks might

have been driven from Constantinople, Europe saved from future peril at

their hands, and the tide of subsequent history gained a cleaner and

purer flow. But nothing was done; the princes were too deeply interested

in their petty squabbles to entertain large views, and the Turks were

suffered to hold the empire of the East, and quietly to recruit their

forces for later assaults.