15 – 21 July 1456
The assault of 21 July
After the defeat on the river Mehmed has his guns fire on the walls day and night. The defenders fire back, and a cannon ball kills Karaca Pasha, the beylerbey of Rumelia. The Ottomans attack in small numbers every day and fill the ditch before the walls with earth, and the guns open several breaches in the walls. Before the assault Hunyadi brings about 4,000 more men into the fortress.
The moat and walls of Belgrade fortressWikimedia Commons, Алексей Белобородов, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Belgrade. Moat and walls of Kalemegdan fortress.jpg)
On 21 July at sundown Mehmed orders a general assault, which goes on through the night. His troops flood into the town and attack the upper town, and the janissaries break through its weaker eastern walls. Hunyadi has the defenders throw tarred wood and brushwood into the breaches and set it alight. A wall of fire cuts off the janissaries inside from the troops who try to follow them through the breaches.
Titus Dugovics drags an Ottoman standard-bearer from the wall of Belgrade, a legend of the siege painted by Sándor Wagner in 1859Wikimedia Commons, Sándor Wagner, Public domain (Wágner, Sándor - The Self- Sacrifice of Titusz Dugovics - Google Art Project.jpg)
The janissaries trapped inside fight Michael Szilágyi’s men in the upper town and are killed. The troops outside the walls are beaten off with heavy losses. In the Turkish accounts the men who break in start to plunder and are caught by crusaders who lie in wait for them.
Sources
- Laonikos Chalkokondyles, Histories (c. 1464).
- Michael Kritovoulos, History of Mehmed the Conqueror (about 1467).
- Tursun Beg, Tarih-i Ebü’l-Feth (about 1490).
- Aşıkpaşazade, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Konstantin Mihailović, Memoirs of a Janissary (about 1500).
- János Thuróczy, Chronica Hungarorum (1488).
- Antonio Bonfini, Rerum Ungaricarum decades (about 1497).
- Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (1978).
- Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 2 (1978).
- Pál Engel, The Realm of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526 (2001).
- Tamás Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis to Mohács: A History of Ottoman-Hungarian Warfare, 1389–1526 (2018).
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