The Last Sunrise

Five hundred and fifty-four years ago on this day the Roman Empire was at last extinguished. By then the Empire was, of course, Greek not Roman; Christian not pagan; and no longer strong but pitifully weak. Dispossessed of all its Anatolian and Asian province, and most of its European, all that remained was the great city of Constantinople, much of which was reduced by privation, disease, and depopulation to overgrown ruins. The Turks under a great conqueror, Mehmet II, besieged the city beginning in April, the day after Easter. They outnumbered the defenders at least 10 to 1; possibly the fell Janissaries alone outnumbered the defenders. A pious, brave and noble man, by grim irony named Constantine, was the last Byzantine Emperor: he led his small force of Greek and Italian soldiers with stoic dignity and courage. He died on the very walls of the city with which he shared a name.

The slaughter and rapine that awaited the surviving citizens of the city need not be dwelt on at length. It was unspeakable. Children raped on Christian altars; women and elderly impaled; blood running on the streets; St. Sophia a great bloodbath, then a mosque. Legend holds that several priests vanished into the very walls of the church, to return when Constantinople is liberated from the yoke of the Mohammedan. Untold Greeks were captured and clasped in fetters, the maidens and attractive boys destined for Turkish harems, the strong boys for the barracks of the Janissaries, to repeat the conquest of other Christians in other lands; and the Orthodox Church itself was seized into a captivity under which much of it toils to this day. The slave markets of the world showed a rapid depreciation in their miserable commodity for months to come. Though he has promised three days of looting (to entice those among his army of lesser piety), the Sultan now called a halt to it after one, so terrible was the pillage; few complained. The city was vanquished and violated. He established the Greeks under the standard dhimma contract, Islam's system of official subjugation and humiliation: a kind of Jim Crow for infidels. Eventually order was restored, and before long the city was thriving again, after a fashion, under Turkish suzerainty. Human resilience is a remarkable thing. But the Roman Empire was no more. The morning of May 29, 1453, shone with the last sunrise over Greek Rome.

and the peace of islam continues to march along...

The German states, Poland, Hungary and even Russia failed to help.

The Battle of Varna took place on November 10, 1444 near Varna in eastern Bulgaria. In this battle the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Murad II defeated the Polish and Hungarian armies under Wladyslaw III of Poland and Janos Hunyadi.

Prelude

After a failed expedition in 1441/1442 against Belgrade, the Ottoman sultan Murad II signed a ten-year truce with Hungary. After he had made peace with the Karaman Emirate in Anatolia in August 1444, he resigned the throne to his twelve year-old son Mehmed II.

Despite the peace treaty, Hungary co-operated with Venice and the pope, Eugene IV, to organize a new crusader army. On this news Murad was recalled to the throne by his son. Although Murad initially refused this summoning persistently on the grounds that he was not the sultan anymore, he was outwitted by his son who on the news of his refusal wrote to him: "If you are the sultan, lead your armies; but if I am the sultan, I hereby order you to come and lead my armies." Murad then had no choice but to reclaim the throne.

Forces

A mixed Christian army consisting mainly of Hungarian and of Polish forces, but with detachments of Czechs, papal knights, Bosnians, Croatians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians and Ruthenians, met with a numerically superior force of Ottoman Turks. The Hungarians were ill-equipped, and were promised support from Wallachia, Albania and Constantinople did not arrive. The Hungarian army was smaller and very imbalanced. It contained almost no infantry, except one hundred to three hundred Czech mercenary handgunners. There were also one hundred war wagons probably with crews, though none are mentioned. The rest of the army was heavy cavalry, mostly Royal and foreign mercenaries, with some Episcopal and Noble banners as well. They had promises from Venetians that their fleet would not allow the Turkish army to cross the Bosphorus. There they would meet up with elements of the Papal fleet and move down the coast to Constantinople, pushing the Ottomans out of the Balkans as they went.

Aftermath

The 30,000 Crusaders were overwhelmed by 120,000 Turks. Over half of the soldiers from the united army perished. The king Wladyslaw III was also killed in the battle (he fell in a trap and was beheaded) while launching an attack without waiting for Janos Hunyadi and his forces to join him. The death of Wladyslaw III in the battle left Hungary in the hands of the four-year-old Ladislaus Posthumous of Bohemia and Hungary. In an expression of gratitude, the Bulgarian people affectionately gave Wladyslaw III the name 'Varnenchik' (Warneczyk in Polish), after the city of Varna, where he fought and died.

Follow up

The defeat ended any serious attempts to prevent the conquest of eastern Europe by Turks for several decades. It also set the stage for the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

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