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Updated: June 23, 2025
For this cause the young King, especially incited thereto by the Pope, determined to renew the war. Hunyady at first opposed the King's resolution, and wished to wait; later on he was gained over to the King's view, and took up the matter with his whole soul.
About Christmas, a season in which the Turk does not like to fight, amid heavy snow and severe cold, the Hungarian army of about thirty thousand men pressed forward. Hunyady marched in advance with the vanguard of twelve thousand picked men; after him the King and the Pope's legate, with the rest of the army.
This heroic soul, this burning faith, united to the tenacious energy of youth, were all found united in John Hunyady, accompanied withal by a singular talent for leadership in war. He could not rely for support upon the haughty magnates who could trace their descent back for centuries and despised the parvenu with a shorter pedigree and a smaller estate.
He led to the walls of Belgrad an army of not less than one hundred and fifty thousand men. The approach of this immense host so terrified the young King that he left Hungary and took refuge in Vienna along with his uncle and counsellor, Czillei. Hunyady alone remained at his post, resolute like a lion attacked.
He tried to obtain the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns; but Podiebrad, a Utraquist nobleman, was made king of Bohemia, and Matthias Corvinus succeeded Hunyady, his father, on the throne of Hungary. By the death of Albert, the brother of Frederick, to whom the emperor had been compelled to give up Vienna, he became master of all the Austrian lands except Tyrol.
Fortunately Czillei himself soon fell into disfavor; the Germans themselves overthrew him; and the King, now better informed, replaced Hunyady in the post of captain-general of the kingdom. Hunyady, who meanwhile had been living retired in one of his castles, now complied with the King's wish without difficulty or hesitation, and again assumed the highest military command.
One of their number, Simon Kemeny, who bore a striking resemblance to Hunyady, determined to sacrifice himself for his leader. He announced that he would put on Hunyady's clothes and armor. The Turks would then attack him under the belief that he was the celebrated chief, and while they were thus engaged the real Hunyady would fall upon them unexpectedly and put them to flight.
The defeat of Vladislav, king of Hungary, and of Hunyady, at Varna , caused by the rash onset of the king upon the janizaries, was succeeded by another Turkish victory at Kosovo, four years later. The city had seven thousand defenders, comprising two thousand Genoese and Venetians, who were commanded by an able man, the Genoese Justiniani.
At last, 1448, he set out against the Sultan with an army of twenty-four thousand of his most trusty soldiers. This time it was on the frontier of Servia, on the "Field of Blackbirds," that Hunyady encountered Sultan Amurath, who had an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men again more than five times the number of the Christians.
The Hungarians, worn out by fatigue, fell into a discouragement, while Hunyady had no fresh troops to bring up to their support. The battle came to a sudden end. Seventeen thousand Hungarian corpses strewed the field, but the loss of the Turks was more than thirty thousand men. Hunyady, again left to himself, had again to make his escape.
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