In 1456 a young man stood looking at a fortress on a ridge where the River Sava meets the River Danube. The young man was Mehmed, Sultan of the Ottomans. The fortress was Belgrade. As Sultan, Mehmed was a Ghazi, a warrior of Islam, sworn to crush infidels and expand the borders of the Ottoman Caliphate. Three years earlier, at the age of twenty-one, Mehmed had shocked the Christian world by capturing Constantinople, seat of Emperors. After entering the ancient city in triumph he declared himself the new Caesar. His exploits earned him the title of Conqueror. Mehmed would go on to expand his Empire in Europe, forever changing the course of its history. Defending the fortress was a small band of a few thousand mercenaries, against seventy thousand Ottoman troops. The King of Hungary had fled to Vienna, his nobles abstained from the fight. Europe, exhausted from disastrous Crusades and internecine wars looked on with impotence and apathy. Belgrade did not quite stand alone, however. Janos Hunyadi, the great Hungarian military commander, marched to the aid of the beleaguered citadel. He had bested the Turks in many battles, but defeats at Varna in 1444 and Kosovo in 1448 had weakened his influence among his people. He relied on a few thousand mercenaries against the might of the Ottoman Empire. Even this redoubtable champion might not have resisted Mehmed's power. However, Belgrade would find salvation from an unlikely source. An army of simple townsfolk, students and peasants, called to wage a holy war against the Turk. They were led by a charismatic firebrand preacher, John of Capistrano. 1456: The Siege of Belgrade examines the context of the battle, the forces involved, the combat itself and the aftermath, with its wider historical significance.
