Chapter 3: The Reign of a Bastard part 2
In 1516, however, the peace broke, when Vladislaus of Bohemia(proper) suddenly died. Vladislaus had a son, Louis, but he was still too young to rule. The nobility of Bohemia(proper) has been torn to two factions. One supported Louis, while the other invited John I Corvinus to unify Bohemia. Louis was supported by Sigismund I of Poland too. John led the Black Army into Bohemia, and his forces united with his supporters’ forces near Beneshau (Benesov). John met with his foes under Prague, and on the following day, the two army engaged in battle. John commanded the army himself during the fight. The battle has been won by John, who entered Prague on the same day. Louis and some of his supporters fled to Poland, in the hope of further Polish aid, but unfortunately for them, after the loss of the battle, Sigismund lost interest, and signed peace with Hungarians. There were many reasons for Louis’s defeat. First of all was the lack of external support. Indeed, Sigismund aided him, but it was just a very limited support since he was already preoccupied with fighting against the Muscovites. He couldn’t hope for the help of Maximilian neither, since he already signed a deal with John, which stated, he won’t interfere, in exchange for John’s voteas King of Bohemia for his grandson, Charles on the next Imperial election. The second reason was the lack of support from the populace. During his father’s reign, the magnates could mortify the peasantry and the lesser nobility without any consequences, which led to the need of a strong royal power, which obviously couldn’t be expected from a child king. The last and most important reason was the fighting within his faction, which eventually led to disintegration, and ultimately to the defeat.
Meanwhile, at the Porte, people became more and more concerned about the ever-growing power of John Corvinus’s, and initiations took place on a big scale war against Hungary. The war never came to realization during the reign of Selim I, because of his war with the Mameluke Empire and later of his sickness.
In 1519, Emperor Maximilian died, and his grandson, Charles, King of Spain has been elected as the new Emperor. John Corvinus kept his word and voted in Charles’s favour. With the improving relations between the two realms, Charles and John became de facto allies. John hoped that the powerful empire of Charles would aid him in a grand scale war against the Turks, which could oust them from Europe, but he was too naïve.
Since 1521, Charles V/I Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain was almost constantly in war with Francis I’s France. When a new war broke out between the two in 1526, Francis allied himself with the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman. With such a threat in the east, he wanted to distract Charles from the Italian affairs, since he was sure, that Charles definitely would help his ally, John I Corvinus of Hungary.
The Ottomans attacked Hungary in 1526, and eventually besieged Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade, Belgrad, Beograd) and the neighbouring fort of Zimony (Zemun, Semlin). The Ottoman forces were led by Sultan Suleiman himself. Belgrade and Zimony has been besieged for 27 days, when the relieving forces (led by the king) finally arrived. The Hungarians first attacked the enemy’s forces under Zimony, and forced them to abandon the siege, and to retreat to the other side of the river Sava, joining the ottoman main forces. After the Hungarians relieved Zimony, they refilled the supplies of the fort, and took a defensive position on the left bank of the Sava. John ordered his soldiers to harass the Ottoman flotilla on the Danube, which blockaded the way to Belgrade, with the cannons of the fort until the Hungarian flotilla arrives, then aid the Hungarian ships in breaking through the Ottoman blockade. The Hungarian flotilla arrived within hours, and then, with aid from the ground and the fort, it managed to crush the Ottoman fleets. Without the blockade, the Hungarians managed to link Belgrade to a supply line on the Danube.
With his successes, John felt confident enough to engage with the Ottoman main forces. After a brief discussion with his commanders, he decided to split his army into two. The Hungarian plan was very similar to of 1456’s, half of men supposed to go into the fort, then attempt a breakout to distract the enemy, while the other half of the army would cross the river Sava. Then two part of the army would constrain the Turks between two fire.
At the beginning, everything went according to the plan, the reinforced defenders broke out of the fort and attacked the Turks, while the other part of the army successfully crossed the Sava. The complications started here. It turned out, Suleiman managed to figure out the Hungarians’ plan (thanks to the reports of the Turkish scouts). Suleiman most of his forces to face with the Hungarians by the Sava, while the remaining forces of his army held their feet against the other Hungarian army. The split of forces came a bit late for the Ottomans, they were unable to stop the Hungarians cross the river, but still successfully ruined John’s plan. Now everything depended on the outcome of battle at the river, or at least that was what everyone thought. Suleiman underestimated (or maybe was misinformed of) the strength of the forces in the fort, and left too few men behind against them. From this point, the battle turned into a strange flow of events. While, the two main forces engaged on the bank of river Sava, the Hungarians successfully decimated and routed the Turks under the fort, seized or destroyed most of their siege equipment. The captain of the fort, by name John Zápolya (Szapolyai János) decided not to attack the Turkish camp, but to aid the royal army immediately, and so ordered his troops to march towards the battle.
The army at the Sava was led by George Zápolya (Szapolyai György) and by the King personally. When the battle began, despite the numerical superiority of the Turks, the Hungarians dictated the battle at the beginning. The Turks were in big pinch, but as the time passed, the difference in numbers started to show off. Slowly the Ottomans gained the upper hand, but the king’s army still held itself pretty well. John’s only hope was that the forces of the will come to his aid. He didn’t have to be disappointed. When the battle already seemed to be doomed, the relieving forces of Zápolya finally arrived and attacked the Turks in their back. This took Suleiman by surprise, because he still didn’t know about the defeat of his troops at the fort. After he realized the threat of the situation in which he was, He ordered his troops retreat, before the Hungarians could completely surround them. The retreat was orderly and didn’t became into an uncontrollable rout, mainly because their foes didn’t pursue them, since they suffered sensible casualties, just like the Turks too. Even though, the Ottoman army had to abandon many of their equipment from their camp, since they couldn’t know when will the Hungarians start to chase them.
Both army suffered hard losses, losing more than almost half their men, the Turks lost much of their siege equipment too, while the Hungarian forts of Nándorfehérvár and Zimony has been heavily damaged. Even though the Hungarians could claim the victory, they had the bigger and more sensible casualties, which made them open to peace talks, and eventually sent their envoy to the Turkish Sultan, to seek for peace. The envoy met with Suleiman in Nis, where the two side signed a truce for three years. Suleiman and John too felt humiliated by the outcome of the war, even though John won, he exactly knew, his victory was nothing more than a mere luck, and still he lost many men. Both rulers wanted revenge, and in the following years, two of the most fearsome armies of Europe emerged.
