The Central Europe Crusade...

[Thessalos]

THE 5TH CRUSADE
In the MTW as you all know the Ugrians and the Polish cannot launch a crusade.Most of you might think that this is historically corect.Well, yesterday i found an old history book that talked about the 5th Crusade...
I was thrilled because i thought that the Crusades were only 4.
At 1443 the Byzantine emperor John Palaiologos H'(the 7th) was overun by the Turks.So he requested the help of the "Westerns",(Hesperinoi as they are called in Greek).The pope called the true sons of the Catholick church to respont to the call for help from the Orthodox Cristian brothers from the east to fight the common enemy of Cristiandom.England and France at that time were at war whith each other and Germany was separated in 400 federations and it was imposible to commit such act.So,in that dificult hour for the Byzantines the Ugrians and the Polish accepted to anser that call for help.
Under the command of the young King Ladislav the crusaders marched towards the Balkans and in 10 November of 1444 they met the huge Turkish army at Varna.The crusaders were outnumbered by the Turks (56,000 Cristians against 170,000 Turks!!!)and their equipment was lesser than the enemy's.But the crusaders had an advantage,their hight morale.They were sure of their victory because their perpose was holy.The homelands of Cristianity were in danger,they had to protect them at all costs!
It was a bloody fight that lasted half day.Blood formed a huge lake that was as deep as the hight of the knees!The crusaders were very close to victory but a huge disaster hapened.The leader of the crusade,king Ladislav,was knoked down by a Turkish spear!He was almost 20 years old but he gave his life for this holy purpose...
Everything was lost for the Cristians from the momment the boy king fell dead...
The batle was lost and the glorius Hellenik empire of Byzantium altought have fought valorous,in the end fell to the hands of the savage Turks...But the casualties of the batlle of Varna teached the Turks a bloody lesson and stoped their expansion to the old continent,Europe.


This is the story of the 5th crusade and i wonder if in the last period the Polish and the Hungurians can launch a crusade...

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:rtwno: PAS MI HELLIN VARVAROS :rtwno:

[Kralizec]

The confusion probably stems from the confusion around the definition of "crusade". Most people think it to mean the 4 wars launched to liberate the Holy land, but many wars in the middle ages were proclaimed as being crusades. The reconquest of spain for example, or the German "crusades" against Poland wich ironicly was just as catholic as the HRE.

[Thessalos]

Well my friend you maybe right cause i also heard that the wars between the Byzantines and the Persians at 629-672AD were called by the Byzantines "Staurofories" wich means Crusade!

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:rtwno: PAS MI HELLIN VARVAROS :rtwno:

[mikkele]

Well my friend you maybe right cause i also heard that the wars between the Byzantines and the Persians at 629-672AD were called by the Byzantines "Staurofories" wich means Crusade!

According to John Julius Norwich's excellent Byzantium trilogy, the Emperor Heraclius (610 - 641 AD) was the world's first crusader. He liberated Jerusalem from the Persians and retrieved the True Cross, which had been removed from Jerusalem in 614 AD by the Persian general Shahr-Baraz. But these wars took place between 622 and 628 AD.

[_Aetius_]

According to John Julius Norwich's excellent Byzantium trilogy, the Emperor Heraclius (610 - 641 AD) was the world's first crusader. He liberated Jerusalem from the Persians and retrieved the True Cross, which had been removed from Jerusalem in 614 AD by the Persian general Shahr-Baraz. But these wars took place between 622 and 628 AD.

Hey ive got that book "Byzantium the early centuries" ~:) a fantastic read im looking out for the following books in the series now.

I think the official crusade tally is about 9 or something, there were crusades against pagans and so on its hard to calculate which ones are official crusades and to even define what a crusade is as the first crusades were to take the holy land but *crusades* were aimed at spain and the reconquista Lithuanians and Generally pagans in central europe.

There was an earlier attempt to save Byzantium John V called for aid and an army was led by the Holy Roman Emperor who was also King of Hungary Sigismund, Constantinople was under siege by the Sultan Bayezid. The armies were around 100,000 each and the Ottoman lost 35,000 and the Christians 20,000 but the battle of Nicopolis was despite the casualties a Christian defeat and the Christians never launched any serious assault on the Turks until the already mentioned battle of Varna, were by then the Byzantine situation was almost certainly irretrievable anyway.

[Thessalos]

I apologise my friend you are right! i made a huge historical mistake on the date of war and imagine that i am Greek and i should have known Heraclius legasy better than anyone

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:rtwno: PAS MI HELLIN VARVAROS :rtwno:

[_Aetius_]

According to John Julius Norwich's excellent Byzantium trilogy, the Emperor Heraclius (610 - 641 AD) was the world's first crusader. He liberated Jerusalem from the Persians and retrieved the True Cross, which had been removed from Jerusalem in 614 AD by the Persian general Shahr-Baraz. But these wars took place between 622 and 628 AD.

Hey ive got that book "Byzantium the early centuries" ~:) a fantastic read im looking out for the following books in the series now.

I think the official crusade tally is about 9 or something, there were crusades against pagans and so on its hard to calculate which ones are official crusades and to even define what a crusade is as the first crusades were to take the holy land but *crusades* were aimed at spain and the reconquista Lithuanians and Generally pagans in central europe.

There was an earlier attempt to save Byzantium John V called for aid and an army was led by the Holy Roman Emperor who was also King of Hungary Sigismund, Constantinople was under siege by the Sultan Bayezid. The armies were around 100,000 each and the Ottoman lost 35,000 and the Christians 20,000 but the battle of Nicopolis 1396 was despite the casualties a Christian defeat and the Christians never launched any serious assault on the Turks until the already mentioned battle of Varna, were by then the Byzantine situation was almost certainly irretrievable anyway.

Luckily for Byzantium Timur came along and Bazezid lifted the siege which had lasted for years about 7 I think and Bayezid and the turks were annihilated by Timur and his Mongols at Ankara surely saving Byzantium, Ive actually heard historians talking about this period and that if a serious crusade had been launched in this period of chaos for the turks that the turks may have been destroyed and Byzantium saved but europe was at that point in not fit shape to launch a crusade of suitable size nor did they have the ambition to.

[Empirate]

The fifth crusade was, by the count I've known, the one against Damiette 1217-1221. It's also the last to be assigned a number. But then, as you say, "crusade counting" never gives consistent results. Note, however, that this papal call for a crusade was first answered by the Hungarian king, who didn't accomplish much, however, and went home before the party really took off.
Also, there've always been contingents from Poland, Hungary, Denmark, even Norway taking the cross and helping out in the holy land. It's just that there never (or at least not prominently) was a king from these lands to take the cross, so in M:TW you can't start a crusade. Your troops still join ones already on their way, however. :grin2:

I wouldn't count emperor Heraclius' expedition as a "true" crusade. It may have been religiously motivated, but a sharper definition makes crusades impossibly before 1195, when pope Urbanus II. declared an armed expedition to the holy land to be good for your soul. H. E. Mayer, one of the most forward scholars on the whole matter of crusades, calls them an "armed pilgrimage": They involved both a military expedition and a humble pilgrimage.

[bretwalda]

Well, it is quite fruitless to count the crusades and assign a number as really there were quite a few of them. E.g. there were Danish crusades aimed at the Baltic states or the peasant uprising of 1514 in Hungary started off as a crusade against the Turks and also in the heroic defense of Nandorfehervar (Belgrad) in 1456 was helped by crusaders.

Sigismund was Hungarian king in the first place as the emperors of the HRE were elected from among the barons and other rulers of the lands, so whoever had the sufficient military and diplomatic strenght was elected.

In the battle of Varna the Polish ad Hungarian king was the same person about 20 years of age who was foolish enough to charge head on into the jannissaries, who split in front of them and surrounded and massacred them. The mastermind behind all of the campaigns in the first half of the 15. century was Hunyadi, Janos a Hungarian born in one of the counties of Transylvania of noble origin. (I assume a Rumanian person would insist the he was Rumanian but at that time no one mentions Rumanian nation so we might as well take the hypotesis that he was Hungarian)

Most of these campaigns met with limited success not because of the superior numbers of the Turks (they had very few good troops and a mass of auxiliary low quality troops) but because of the inadequate intelligence report and spy network that the Christian powers had at that time. The battle of Varna was a straight disaster. However from the Hungarian point of view these fights successfully halted the advance of the Turks for more than a century.

The son of Hunyadi, Janos was Matyas (Matthias Rex) who was probably the greatest king of Hungary, successfully defended the country from the Turks gained territories in the west (added Bohemia, Vienna, etc) cracked down internal opposition. Unfortunatelly this success was short lived as he had no legal heir and after his death (by poisoning or by natural causes - we don't know) the country went into a turmoil. This soon lead to peasant revolts and the defeat at Mohacs. Turks occupied the middle part, Transylvania became something like a Turkish vassal and "royal" Hungary was taken over German kings (Habsburgs). But that's another story...