10–11 November 1444
The king’s charge
While Hunyadi is on the left, Władysław does not wait for him. He charges the Ottoman centre with 500 Polish knights to take Murad prisoner, and the knights break into the lines of the janissaries. In front of Murad’s tent the king’s horse falls into a pit or is cut down, and the king is killed.
Neşri, Sadeddin and an anonymous Ottoman chronicle name the janissary who cuts off the king’s head as Koca Hızır, and the head is raised on a lance before the armies. Murad’s own memorandum says that the king was taken alive and put to death later. His body is never found.
Murad II enthroned above the slain Władysław III, in the Hünername of Seyyid Lokman, 1584–1588, Topkapı Palace MuseumWikimedia Commons, Nakkaş Osman, Public domain (Murad II and Władysław III of Poland.jpg)
The crusader army breaks. John Hunyadi comes back from the left, tries to recover the king’s body and to rally the men while the Ottoman wings close round the centre, and then escapes from the field. The men left in the wagon fort hold out through the night, and on 11 November the Ottomans storm it. Setton estimates that the crusaders lose about half their army, and Feridun Emecen gives the Ottoman dead as 7,000 to 8,000.
Sources
- Filippo Buonaccorsi (Callimachus), Historia de rege Vladislao (about 1487).
- Jan Długosz, Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae (late 15th century).
- Mehmed Neşri, Kitâb-ı Cihan-nümâ (late 15th century).
- Anonymous, Tevârîh-i Âl-i Osmân (late 15th century).
- Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 2 (1978).
- Feridun M. Emecen, “Varna Muharebesi”, in TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi (2012).
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