Ottoman expansion [1354-1571]

On the morning of April 2, 1453, on Monday after Easter, the vanguard of the Ottoman Turks' army arrived in front of the walls of Constantinople. It was a small cavalry unit. The Greeks attacled from the city and drove them away, killing a few Turks in the battle and injuring many of them before other Turkish riders arrived ...

When DEVÍN radio broadcast the Dynasty (Sovereigns in History) cycle in the Historia magistra vitae program, I had no idea what impact it would have on me. In the broadcast selected Slovak historians discussed individual rulers in Slovak history, from the Mojmír family to the Habsburg family. (In total, there were 10 dynasties that ruled in Slovakia) The part dedicated to the Luxemburgs, especially the only one who ruled here for 50 years, was particularly interesting. It's Sigismund of Luxembourg.

If we want to say something about the war that broke out between Sigismund's Hungary and Turkey, we must first and foremost look back a few years to better understand the whole situation.

The beginnings of the Ottoman Empire date back to the end of the 13th century. In 1299, one of the Seljuk emirs, Osman I, declared independence from the Seljuk sultan. The independent history of an important state began. He was very aggressive from the beginning, supported by the ideology of militarized Islam.

Before we get to Sigismund's fight with the Turks, we need to at least take a brief look at the first years of Sigismund's reign in Hungary. Originally, I expected that Sigismund was scattering property during the great clash with the Turks, but when I looked at the documents from this period, donations do not play a dominant role here, and that was a big surprise for me.

After the conquest of the Johannitic island of Rhodes and a series of successful campaigns in the Middle East, the Balkans and Hungary, the Turkish Ottoman Empire reached its largest history in history. And because the appetite grows with food, the Turkish Sultan Sülejman I the Magnificent ( 1494-1566 ), called by the Turkish historians of the Legislature, decided to occupy the island of Malta as the basis for further progress to the western Mediterranean, the new seat of the expulsive Knights of St. John ...