John Hunyadi: Encyclopedia II - John Hunyadi

John Hunyadi has sometimes been confused with an elder brother John (Romanian: Ioan Corvin de Hunedoara), also Ban of Szörény (Severin). The elder John died fighting for Hungary about 1440, defending Hungarian suzerainty.

While still a youth, the younger John Hunyadi entered the service of King Sigismund, who appreciated his qualities and borrowed money from him; he accompanied that monarch to Frankfurt in his quest for the imperial crown in 1410; took part in the Hussite Wars in 1420, and in 1437 drove the Turks from Semendria. For these services he received numerous estates and a seat in the royal council. In 1438 King Albert II made Hunyadi Ban of Szörény (Severin). Lying south of the defensible southern frontiers of Hungary, the Carpathians and the Drava/Sava/Danube complex, the province was subject to constant harassment by Ottoman forces.

On the sudden death of Albert in 1439, Hunyadi, feeling acutely that the situation demanded a warrior-king on the throne of St Stephen, lent the whole weight of his influence to the candidature of the young Polish King Wladislaus III (1440), and thus came into collision with the powerful Cilleis, the chief supporters of Albert's widow Elizabeth and her infant son, Ladislaus V. He took a prominent part in the ensuing civil war and was rewarded by Wladislaus III. with the captaincy of the fortress of Nándorfehérvár(Belgrade) and the governorship of Transylvania, which latter dignity, however, he shared with his rival Mihály Újlaki.

The burden of the Turkish War now rested entirely on his shoulders. In 1441 he delivered Serbia by the victory of Semendria. In 1442, not far from Hermannstadt (Sibiu), on which he had been forced to retire, he annihilated an immense Turkish host, and recovered for the Kingdom of Hungary the suzerainty of Wallachia and Moldavia; and in July he vanquished a third Turkish army near the Iron Gates. These victories made Hunyadi's name terrible to the Turks and renowned throughout Christendom, and stimulated him in 1443 to undertake, along with King Wladislaus, the famous expedition known as the "long campaign". Hunyadi, at the head of the vanguard, crossed the Balkans through the Gate of Trajan, captured Nish, defeated three Turkish pashas, and, after taking Sofia, united with the royal army and defeated Murad II at Snaim. The impatience of the king and the severity of the winter then compelled him (February 1444) to return home, but not before he had utterly broken the sultan's power in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania.

No sooner had he regained Hungary than he received tempting offers from the pope, represented by the legate Cardinal Cesarini, from Đurađ Branković, despot of Serbia, and Gjergj Kastrioti, prince of Albania, to resume the war and realize his favourite idea of driving the Turk from Europe. All the preparations had been made, when Murad's envoys arrived in the royal camp at Szeged and offered a ten years' truce on advantageous terms. Both Hunyadi and Branković counselled their acceptance, and Wladislaus swore on the Gospels to observe them.

Two days later Cesarini received the tidings that a fleet of galleys had set off for the Bosporus to prevent Murad (who, crushed by his recent disasters, had retired to Asia Minor) from recrossing into Europe, and the cardinal reminded the king that he had sworn to co-operate by land if the western powers attacked the Turks by sea. He then, by virtue of his legatine powers, absolved the king from his second oath, and in July the Hungarian army recrossed the frontier and advanced towards the Euxine coast in order to march to Constantinople escorted by the galleys.

Branković, however, fearful of the sultan's vengeance in case of disaster, privately informed Murad of the advance of the Christian host, and prevented Gjergj Kastrioti from joining it. On reaching Varna, the Hungarians found that the Venetian galleys had failed to prevent the transit of the sultan, who now confronted them with fourfold odds, and on the 10th of November 1444 they were utterly routed, Wladislaus falling on the field and Hunyadi narrowly escaping.