At Varna in 1444 Sultan Murad II destroyed the crusade of the Polish-Hungarian king Władysław III, who died charging the Janissaries — the last serious attempt to halt the Ottomans before Constantinople fell.
The Battle of Varna, fought on 10 November 1444 on the Black Sea coast, ended the last serious crusade against the Ottoman Empire before the fall of Constantinople. The army of Władysław III — king of both Poland and Hungary — and the great general John Hunyadi met Sultan Murad II near Varna and was destroyed; the young king died charging the Janissary line.
The crusade had marched on the strength of a truce it then broke, absolved of its oath by a papal legate; its annihilation removed the last external hope of relief for Byzantine Constantinople, which fell to Murad's son Mehmed II nine years later.
After John Hunyadi's successful "Long Campaign" of 1443, the Ottomans signed the Peace of Szeged (1444), and Murad II — mourning his heir — withdrew to Anatolia, leaving the throne to his young son. Urged by the papal legate Cardinal Cesarini, who absolved them of the oath, the crusaders tore up the truce and marched for the Black Sea coast, hoping to meet a Venetian fleet and cut the Ottomans' European lands from Asia.
Murad returned, ferried his army across the Bosphorus past the ineffective blockade, and marched north to meet the crusade at Varna.
The crusade was led by Władysław III of Poland, king of Hungary as well, with the war directed by John Hunyadi, the age's ablest anti-Ottoman commander. The army — Hungarians, Poles, Wallachians, and crusaders under Cardinal Cesarini — was substantially smaller than the Ottoman host, usually estimated in the mid-teens of thousands.
Murad II commanded the larger Ottoman field army, its centre anchored on the Janissaries behind field defences. The nailed truce, broken with the treaty-copy reportedly raised on a lance as the Ottomans' standard, framed the battle as a judgment.
Hunyadi's handling of the wings drove back the Ottoman cavalry on both flanks, and for a time the crusade seemed to be winning. Then Władysław, against Hunyadi's advice and eager for glory, led the Polish and Hungarian royal knights in a charge straight at the sultan and the Janissary line.
The charge broke on the Janissaries' stakes and reserve; the king was killed and his head taken, and the sight of the royal banner's fall shattered the crusade's morale. Hunyadi extricated part of the army, but the crusade was destroyed.
The death of a crowned king on the field was a shock felt across Europe; the "Varna" epithet attached to the fallen Władysław. Hunyadi fought on — his defeat at the second Kosovo in 1448 completing the collapse of the northern crusades — but no coalition of that scale threatened the Ottoman Balkans again.
Varna's deeper consequence was Byzantine: with the last relief-crusade destroyed, Constantinople stood alone, and Murad's son Mehmed II took it in 1453. The battle is remembered as the moment the crusading strategy against the Ottomans finally failed, and the road to the fall of the city ran open.