ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY


From the time (1354) when the Turks took Gallipoli and secured their
first dominion in Europe, the Ottoman power on that side of the
Hellespont was gradually increased. In 1360 Amurath I crossed from Asia
Minor, ravaged an extensive district, and took Adrianople, which he made
the first seat of his royalty and the first shrine of Mahometanism in
Europe. He next turned toward Bulgaria and Servia, where in the warlike
Slavonic tribes he found far stronger foes than the Greek victims of
earlier Turkish conquests.

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