6 - The Ottoman-Hungarian Campaigns of 1442

Summary

The anti-Ottoman campaigns of 1442 mark a turning point in the career of one of East-Central Europe's most celebrated military leaders – John Hunyadi. In the course of the year Hunyadi would wage a total of four victorious campaigns against the Ottomans, two of which were decisive and celebrated throughout Christendom. His success was likewise the catalyst for two major crusade expeditions that followed in 1443 and 1444. For the Ottomans, they were the first major military defeats at the hands of a Christian army in almost four generations. They had the effect of reversing a hitherto aggressive Ottoman policy of expansion that had begun in earnest with the death of Emperor Sigismund in 1437. Nowhere was this more apparent than when Şehabeddin Pasha, one of the strongest proponents of this policy, was himself defeated and forced to skulk back to the capital in shame.

Despite these famous events (or perhaps because of them) the historiography of Hunyadi's 1442 campaigns has been from the beginning characterized by confusing discrepancies and seemingly irreconcilable variations in narrative. It is not unlike a jumbled ball of yarn, which began with a small tangle but with successive handling, beginning in the same century and continuing to today, has become increasingly snarled to the point that the original threads are no longer discernible. Take, for example, a passage from Klaus-Peter Matschke's commendable summary of the Ottoman-Christian conflict, titled The Cross and the Crescent, the History of the Turkish Wars.