Crusade of Nicopolis routed by Bayezid

September 1396

A Franco-Burgundian crusader army led by Sigismund of Hungary and John the Fearless besieged the Bulgarian Danube fortress and was crushed by the Ottoman relief column in a battle that exposed the tactical obsolescence of western chivalric warfare. Bayezid had several thousand prisoners beheaded the next day. Western Europe would not seriously threaten the Ottomans again for fifty years.