Talk:Battle of Varna

Where do some people get these inflated numbers, the Ottoman army at that time was not bigger then 30000/35000. Even at their hight the Ottomans were unable to form such large armies. It seems to me that people write down what they think it should be instead of putting real history. There are also no articles to back up the claims made in this article.

wrong numbers

Following information about the battle is not precise but much closer to the real numbers. For more information refer to another website. Or a history book will be better.

Strengths of Armies (total number of soldiers) Turkish Army - 40000 Crusader Army - 100000

Losses Turkish Army - 15000 Crusader Army - 65000 (including the Hungarian King Vladislas, who had given his word some time before the battle to the Turks that he wouldn't fight against them. He should have kept his word. He was a brave man though.)

• Stop using huge numbers for the strengths of the Ottoman armies. 120.000 was an impossible number for the time of the Battle of Varna. Ottoman armies started to contain 100,000(+) soldiers with the Siege of Constantinople. Varna was before the conquests of Mehmet the Conqueror. With respect, Deliogul 07:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I have red that The Ottomans managed to gather 70,000 men(50,000 arabs and 20,000 Turks). The crusader army was huge, up to 325,000, according to new researches. It seems like an impossible number, but there were so many allies that they succeeded gathering such huge army.

With respects the battle of Varna was just ten years prior to the siege and fall of Constantinople so I think that might be a bad basis for how many soldiers the Ottomans could not have had. 68.48.160.243 23:55, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Just checked a couple of Hungarian history books. According to them, the Turkish Army was between 40,00 and 60,000 strong, while the Hungarian army was maybe 20-25,000 strong. The largest crusading army on the Balkans was the one defeated at Nikopolis in 1396, and even that was no stronger than 80,000 at most. Whelp 13:52, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Image from Polski Chronicle

Can someone confirm that this is a picture of the battle? The picture is from Polski Chronicle from 1564.

I see crosses on the eight of the flags on the right (the one in the center is fluttering on a cavalry horn); and I see crescent moons on two of the flags on the left. So, it would seem this is a battle between christians and moslems. Beyond that I don't know. And, that's probably as much as others have noticed. 68.48.160.243 00:58, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

sources and links

I believe Wikipedia to be a fantastic idea however I wish contributors would aknowledge their sources and more importantly not copy other sites verbatem. For example this wording is straight from my website http://www.warfareeast.co.uk/main/Hungarian_Battles.htm#Varna

(formally http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/matthaywood/main/Hungarian_Battles.htm#Varna)

'the Hungarian army was smaller and very imbalanced. It contained almost no infantry, except 100 to 300 Czech mercenary handgunners. There were also 100 warwagons probably with crews, though none are mentioned. The rest of the army was heavy cavalry, mostly Royal and foreign mercenaries, with some Episcopal and Noble banners as well. '

and this from this article

'The Hungarian army was smaller and very imbalanced. It contained almost no infantry, except 100 to 300 Czech mercenary handgunners. There were also 100 warwagons probably with crews, though none are mentioned. The rest of the army was heavy cavalry, mostly Royal and foreign mercenaries, with some Episcopal and Noble banners as well.'

please reword it or link to the original source.

"By this time the Turkish army may have contained 60,000 men (probably Murad himself did not know how many he had) almost outnumbering the Christians by three to one." The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571 Vol.2:The Fifteenth Century (p.90) by Kenneth Meyer Setton

"...In due course the sultan arrived at Varna with his army of between 60,000 and 100,000 men, as against only 19,000 to 20,000 for the Christians." East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500 (p.247) by Jean W.Sedlar Lysandros 18:42, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Problems with the article

First, I think "Aftermath" and "Follow up" are really the same thing and should be one section. Moreover "Aftermath" largely tries to be the section on the battle itself, which is missing. We need a section titled something like -oh, I don't know- The Battle. Plus I expect the decription of battle could be fleshed out a bit more. Someone attacked without waiting for someone else and died, and that was it. Well, that might actually go farther to represent what happened than I thought. But still, there must have been other things that happened also.

Also, it reads "Władysław III of Poland", but then it goes on to read "The death of Władysław III in the battle left Hungary in the hands..." Am I missing something here? So just which country was Wladyslaw king of exactly? (Sounds Polish to me, but I'm not just taking a guess on this one.)

And, what was Janos Hunyadi? Was he the king of Hungary? Or something else? A respected knight perhaps? It just seems unfair to the guy that folks haven't bothered to put what he was. Like, oh Hunyadi? Don't worry about him. Not important. Won't be on the test.

Oh and the bit about the Bulgarians "affectionate" nickname for Wladyslaw... I can't help but think that may be cynical sarcasm. The Bulgarians especially during the Byzantine era are known for an ironic, sometimes cruel, sense of "affection".

My last thought is that, except for elite mercenaries such as the Czechs, historians of the era were known for an infantry-don't-count kind of attitude. Not only that, but historically you could count on knights bringing about twenty plus or minus bonus men-at-arms with them to the field of battle. At least a handful of who were indispensable as support for the knight. Not that I think the numbers on the size of the united Christian army were wrong. I just think that a much larger portion of them were infantry than has been suggested. But, since historians haven't felt like mentioning them much, and because I suspect the infantry didn't do much in the battle before things had already gone very very bad, I think they've been over-looked. 68.48.160.243 01:35, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Wladyslaw II of Poland was Wladyslaw I of Hungary - elected as Hungarian king in 1440 by the Hungarian nobles opposing Habsburg influence. Janos Hunyadi, at the time of Varna, was voivode of Transylvania. As to the composition of the Hungarian army, it was really mostly cavalry - as the mercenary infantry refused to embark on a traitorous campaign (if I remember correctly). Whelp 14:00, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If anything is cynical, it is your comment on Bulgarians. From where exactly did you get the impression that they were "known" for "an ironic, sometime cruel, sense of "affection"? Please, do not make such childish and racist remarks, especially wneh they are not backed up by any proof. If you wish, I can show you a map of Varna or any random Bulgarian publication regarding the battle and Wladyslav, all of which prove you wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.83.252.114 (talk) 08:42, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Further reading

I have added a link to the article, it seems only the Introduction is available online, but even that contains a lot of information. I don't have the time (or, honestly, the interest) to go through and extract/write up all of it for this article, but it could help it significantly, perhaps even with the mentioned sourcing issues for the numbers. I can only imagine how much more information the full book has, if anyone can get hold of that. -Bbik 07:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)