From Belgrade to Vienna: King Matthias and the Ottomans, 1458–1483

Chapter 4 From Belgrade to Vienna: King Matthias and the Ottomans, 1458–1483

1 Securing the Borders, 1458–1466

1.1 Hungary and the Fall of Serbia, 1457–1459 Despite the serious losses under the walls of Belgrade that the Ottoman army had suffered in human casualties and Mehmed ii himself in prestige, their fail ure to take the castle did not halt Ottoman expansion in the Balkans, nor did it put a check on Turkish raiding towards the southern regions of Hungary. Although no offensive on the scale of 1456 was to be mounted until 1521, the sys tematic destruction of the frontier zone continued without considerable inter ruption and smaller strongholds were regularly besieged. Moreover, evidently under the influence of the aborted siege of Belgrade, Mehmed ii changed his strategy of conquest and decided to suppress the belt of buffer states that still protected Hungary from the south and to consolidate Ottoman influence in the Balkans.1 The final occupation of Serbia in 1458–59 and the fall of the me dieval Bosnian state in 1463 meant that Hungary became a direct neighbour of the Ottoman Empire along a border that ran from Transylvania right down to the Adriatic Sea and so, consequently, the area to be defended by Hungarian troops financed from the Hungarian treasury extended considerably. The crusaders’ efforts were not meant to end with the deaths of János Hu nyadi and Giovanni da Capestrano in 1456.2 King Ladislaus v left Vienna in Au gust with the declared aim of continuing the anti-Ottoman war, and although Hungarian scholarship has traditionally endorsed the view that his goal was merely to break the power of the Hunyadis by force of arms, this view is rath er a reflection of the equally traditional bias in favour of the great Hunyadi and his sons than a correct interpretation of the king’s real intentions.3 From Buda, where he arrived around the middle of September, Ladislaus advanced

1 Ferenc Szakály and Pál Fodor, “A kenyérmezei csata (1479. október 13.),” Hadtörténelmi Közle mények 111, 1998, 310. 2 See Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 114–15. 3 József Teleki Gr., Hunyadiak kora Magyarországon, 5 vols. (Pest: Emich Gusztáv, 1852–56), ii, 454; Vilmos Fraknói, Hunyadi Mátyás király, 1440–1490 (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társu lat, 1890), 34; Elekes, Hunyadi, 441.

From Belgrade to Vienna: King Matthias and the Ottomans 189

southwards along the right bank of the Danube with troops hired by Count Ulrich of Cilli, arriving in the second week of October at Futak, where the army was to assemble. His aim was still to march against the Ottomans.4 Alongside the new wave of crusaders coming from the Empire, the assembly at Futak witnessed the muster of “professional” troops in considerable num bers, led by various German, Czech, and Hungarian princes and lords. Also present in the king’s camp was the elderly despot of Serbia, George Branković, with some 1,500 troops, and the king of Bosnia sent his forces there as well. The most important precondition for sustaining the war effort was, however, an agreement to be forged between the king and János Hunyadi’s heirs, his elder son László and his brother-in-law Mihály Szilágyi, who held not only Belgrade but also a great number of other royal possessions and resources that had been administered by the late Hunyadi as governor and later as captain-general but which were now wanted by the king. While László Hunyadi himself was appar ently willing to reach a compromise with Ladislaus v and appeared personally in the camp at Futak, his uncle, Szilágyi, a crude soldier of middling noble stock, remained intransigent and refused to open the gates of Belgrade to the royal troops. Instead, Ladislaus v was forced to enter in the company of Count Ulrich and a handful of followers only.5 What happened thereafter, on 9 No vember 1456, will never be entirely clear; the most probable version of events is that László Hunyadi and Szilágyi, together with some of their accomplices who had been previously hidden in a neighbouring room, provoked a brawl with the quick-tempered count and cut him to pieces.6 While shortly before the fatal encounter in the castle of Belgrade it was still planned that the army would spend the winter in Transylvania and the offensive would be continued in the spring of 1457,7 the slaughter of the king’s closest male relative by László Hunyadi and his accomplices rendered any co operation between the royalists and the supporters of the Hunyadi party an impossibility. Within days of the murder the crusaders were ordered to cross the Sava and head for home along the Danube, and the mercenaries recruited

4 “er verstee nicht anders den unsers genedigs herren chunigs genad werd sich selbs in aigener person mit all den sein geben in den zug” – DF 242544. 5 On the assembly of Futak see Pálosfalvi, “Tettes vagy áldozat,” 397–99. 6 The sources on the murder of Count Ulrich of Cilli have been gathered and analysed in Johannes Grabmayer, “Das Opfer war der Täter. Das Attentat von Belgrad 1456 – Über Ster ben und Tod Ulrichs ii. von Cilli,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsfor schung 111, 2003, 286–316. See also Fabio Forner, “Enea Silvio Piccolomini e la congiura contro Ulrich von Cilli,” in F. Forner, C.M. Monti and P.G. Schmitt (eds.), Margarita amicorum. Studi di cultura europea per Agostino Sottili (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2005), 351–77. 7 Jos(eph) Baader, “Zur Geschichte des Kreuzzuges v. J. 1456,” Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit 10, 1863, 8, 289.