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On this date in 1396, Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I put thousands of Christian Crusaders to the sword — and with them, Christians’ zest for holy war against the Turk.

The day after crushing a European Crusading expedition at the Battle of Nicopolis — where Christ’s multinational divisions might have crippled themselves by opting for political reasons to go with gloryhounding French knights’ demand for a heavy cavalry charge as opposed to sneakier tactics — Bayezid was mighty sore to find that the invaders had executed en masse Muslim prisoners from their last engagement.

Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror relates the result:

The defeat was followed by a frightful sequel. As Bajazet toured the battlefield … he was “torn by grief” at the sight of his losses, which outnumbered the Christian. He swore he would not leave their blood unavenged, and the discovery of the massacre of the prisoners of Rachowa augmented his rage. He ordered all prisoners to be brought before him next morning. … [T]he leading nobles … were … spared [for ransom], as well as all those judged to be under twenty for forced service with the Turks.

The rest, an uncertain figure of several thousand, were marched naked before the Sultan, bound together in groups of three or four, with hands tied and ropes around their necks. Bajazet looked at them briefly, then signed to the executioners to set to work. They decapitated the captives group by group, in some cases cut their throats or severed their limbs until corpses and killers alike were awash in blood. [The Christian nobles being spared] were forced to stand by the Sultan and watch the heads of their companions fall under the scimitars and the blood spurt from their headless trunks…. The killing continued from early morning to late afternoon until Bajazet, himself sickened at the sight or, as some say, persuaded by his ministers that too much rage in Christendom would be raised against him, called off the executioners.

In truth, the era of the Crusade as most readily conceived — a bid to conquer the Holy Land — was long past by this time. But it had been under that tattered old banner that Christendom summoned its vassals to check the rising Ottoman Empire, which by this time had reduced Byzantium to a rump state around Constantinople.

The battle that precipitated this day’s* feast of carrion occurred in Bulgaria, where the Turks’ growing European footprint (and this affair essentially pinched out the Bulgarian Empire of the day) exercised the European courts in figurative as well as literal ways. Though other ventures would hoist the crusading pennant, there would be no major offensive incursions against the Turks until “crusades” had fallen well out of fashion.

None of this gory affair is to be confused with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where a leap of faith proved more felicitous.

* Most sources place the Battle of Nicopolis at September 25, although some say September 28 — the latter date would obviously place this massacre on September 29.

Also On This Date

• 1764: Lt. Vasily Mirovich, for attempting to topple Catherine the Great

On this date in 1873, Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil Levski was hanged by the Ottoman Empire in Sofia — just a few years before that city became the capital of the independent Bulgarian state the hanged man fought for.

“If I win — the entire nation wins; if I lose — I lose only myself.” Vasil Levski, honored on a plaque in Sofia. Image courtesy of dickcherry.

The “Apostle of Freedom” was born with the surname Ivanov near a Sofia nearing 500 years of Ottoman rule. Thanks in great part to his efforts, it would never celebrate that anniversary.

The Ottomans were in their youthful vigor when they had absorbed Bulgaria; within a century of that conquest, they would besiege Vienna. But by the 19th century that empire once capable of terrifying Christendom was well into its decline, an advanced state of decrepitude that made it “the sick man of Europe.”

In the age of nationalism, provinces began breaking away.

The steward of an independent Bulgaria initially took clerical vows — he would always carry the nickname “the Deacon” — but was soon swept up in Bulgaria’s patriotic stirrings and took up with revolutionary Georgi Rakovski. A stupendous leaping feat during his training as a soldier earned him the name “Levski” — “lion-like”.

He proved worthy of that name.

Over the 1860’s, he developed into a principal theorist and organizer of the revolution, latticing Bulgaria with local insurrectionary networks under central control and dedicated to civil equality in an eventual Bulgarian state. When Levski was arrested, that network was his legacy: his self-conscious refusal to betray it set the stage for a national uprising a few years later — and for Bulgaria’s eventual return to the community of nations following the Russo-Turkish war.

The logo of Sofia-based football club Levski.

He remains a national hero and his name adorns streets, landmarks, even football clubs throughout the country.

The poet Hristo Botev, one of Levski’s heirs in revolutionary leadership, marked this day’s hanging in verse:

O my Mother, dear Motherland
Why weep you so mournfully, so plaintively?
And you, raven, cursed bird -
On whose grave croak you with such a dread?

Ah, I know - I know you’re weeping, Mother
Because you are a dismal slave,
Because your holy voice, Mother
Is a helpless voice - a voice in the wilderness.

Weep! There, near the edge of Sofia town
Stretches - I saw it - a dismal gallows
And one of your sons, Bulgaria
Hangs from it with a terrible power.

The raven croaks dreadfully, ominously
Dogs and wolves howl in the fields,
Old people pray to God with fervor
Women weep, children cry.

Winter croons its evil song,
Gales sweep thistle across the field
And cold and frost and hopeless weeping
Heep sorrow on your heart.

Others throughout Bulgaria on this date still lay flowers at his monuments and pay every manner of tribute. And for the Bulgarian diaspora, his name remains a source of pride … and an occasional flashpoint.

Also On This Date

• 1957: Dedan Kimathi, Mau Mau commander