Battle of Zlatitsa | |||||||
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Part of Crusade of Varna | |||||||
Sredna Gora | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Kingdom of Hungary Kingdom of Poland Serbian Despotate Papal States | Ottoman Empire | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Władysław III of Poland John Hunyadi Đurađ Branković Julian Cesarini |
Murad II Kasim Pasha Turakhan Beg | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
Unknown | Unknown | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Heavy casualties during the battle and the subsequent retreat[1] | Unknown |
The Battle of Zlatitsa was fought on 12 December 1443[2][3] between the Ottoman Empire and Serbian and Hungarian troops in the Balkans as part of the larger Crusade of Varna.[4] The battle was fought at Zlatitsa Pass (Bulgarian: Златишки проход) (Turkish: İzladi Derbendi) near the town of Zlatitsa in the Balkan Mountains, Ottoman Empire (modern-day Bulgaria). The impatience of the King of Poland and the severity of the winter then compelled John Hunyadi to return home in February 1444, but not before he had utterly broken the Sultan's power in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania.
In reality, it had been a disaster. In his account of the Hungarian army's retreat, Długosz describes 'the greater part of the King's army falling in heaps, overcome by hunger, and some soldiers marching with their bodies tottering hither and thither... most of them in truth so exhausted that you would think them to be ghosts devoid of flesh rather than men. His description echoes precisely the account of the army's return in The Holy Wars of Sultan Murad.
the most important battle of the whole campaign took place at Bolvani, in the plain of Nish on November 3, 1443
...finally defeated Hunyadi at the Battle of Zlatica (İzladi) in 1443