August – September 1396
Vidin and Rahova, 1396
At Orșova, where the Danube narrows at the Iron Gates, the army crosses to the right bank on pontoons and boats over eight days. Ivan Sratsimir opens the gates of Vidin and hands over its Ottoman garrison, whose officers are put to death. The French reach Rahova by a night march ahead of their allies and fight for the bridge over the moat until Sigismund arrives. The next morning the town surrenders to Sigismund on the promise that its people will be spared, but the French sack and burn it, kill many of its people and take 1,000 Turkish and Bulgarian inhabitants hostage.
The Danube at the narrowest point of the Iron GatesWikimedia Commons, Lys3rg0, Public domain (Danube Iron Gorge La Cazane.JPG)
The army comes in sight of Nicopolis (Nikopol) on 12 September. The fortress stands on a limestone cliff above the Danube, a larger walled town on the heights and a smaller one below, and its governor Doğan Bey prepares for a long siege. The crusaders have brought no siege engines. They block the town by land while the ships close the river, and wait to starve it out.
The fortress of Baba Vida at Vidin on the DanubeWikimedia Commons, Klearchos Kapoutsis from Wrocław, Poland, CC BY 2.0 (Baba Vida Klearchos 4.jpg)
Bayezid leaves the blockade of Constantinople. His army gathers between Edirne and Philippopolis, where Stefan Lazarević joins him with Serbian heavy horsemen from Kruševac. The army crosses the Shipka Pass and reaches Tarnovo, about 110 km south of Nicopolis, where 500 horsemen sent by Sigismund find it. Coucy rides south with 500 knights and 500 mounted archers and ambushes an Ottoman detachment in a pass.
Sources
- Johann Schiltberger, Reisebuch (about 1427).
- Jean Froissart, Chronicles, book IV (about 1400).
- Konstantin the Philosopher, Life of Despot Stefan Lazarević (1431).
- Aziz S. Atiya, The Crusade of Nicopolis (1934).
- Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978).
- David Nicolle, Nicopolis 1396: The Last Crusade (1999).
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987), 424–425.
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