Pope Urban V preached a crusade against the Turks; and Servia, Hungary, Bosnia, and Wallachia leagued themselves to drive the Ottomans out of Europe.  Amurath defeated them and added new territory to his previous acquisitions.  A peace was made in 1376, but a new though fruitless attempt of the Slavonic peoples against him gave Amurath a pretext for further assault upon southeastern Europe.  In 1389 he conquered and annexed Bulgaria and subjugated the Servians.  In the same year Amurath was assassinated.

Bajazet I, the son and successor of Amurath, still further extended the Turkish conquests.  Under Bajazet’s son, Mahomet I (1413-1421), comparative peace prevailed; but his son, Amurath II, rekindled the flames of war.  A strong combination, including, with other peoples, the Hungarians and Poles, was made against him.  In the struggle that followed, and which for a time promised the complete expulsion of the Turks from Europe, the great leader was the Hungarian, John Hunyady, born in 1388.  According to some writers, he was a Wallach and the son of a common soldier.  Creasy calls him “the illegitimate son of Sigismund, King of Hungary, and the fair Elizabeth Morsiney.”  With him appeared a new spirit, such as the Ottomans up to that time could not have expected to encounter in that part of Europe.  In Vambery’s narrative we have the authority of Hungary’s greatest historian for the leading events in the life of her greatest hero.

In Europe a new power pulsating with youthful life had arrived from somewhere in the interior of Asia with the intention of conquering the world.  This power was the Turk—­not merely a single nation, but a whole group of peoples clustered round a nation, inspired by one single idea which urged them ever forward—­“There is no god but God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God.”

The Mahometan flood already beat upon the bounds of Catholic Christendom, in the forefront of which stood Hungary.  Hungary’s King, Sigismund, was able for a moment in 1396 to unite the nations of Europe against the common danger, but the proud array of mail-clad knights were swept away like chaff before the steady ranks of the janizaries.

And herewith began the long series of desolating inroads into Hungary, for the Turks were wont to suck the blood of the nation they had marked down as their prey.  They took the country by surprise, secretly, suddenly, like a summer storm, appearing in overwhelming numbers, burning, murdering, robbing, especially men in the hopes of a rich ransom, or children whom they might bring up as Mahometans and janizaries.  This body, the flower of the Turkish armies, owed its origin for the most part to the Christian children thus stolen from their parents and their country.  This infantry of the janizaries was the first standing army in Europe.  Living constantly together under a common discipline, like the inmates of a cloister, they rushed blindly forward to the cry of “God and his Prophet!” like some splendid, powerful wild beast eager for prey.  The Turkish sultans published the proud order:  “Forward!  Let us conquer the whole world; wheresoever we tie up our horses’ heads, that land is our own.”