Until 1441, Hunyadi’s campaigns were only preliminaries to the protracted warfare against the Turks in which he won his fame as ‘Törökverö’ (Scourge of the Turks). In 1437 Sigismund appointed Hunyadi chief of defense of southern Hungary, which stretched from eastern Transylvania to the Adriatic. After Sigismund’s death that same year, the next king of Hungary, Ladislas (Laszlo) V, made him captain of Nandorfehervár (Belgrade) and the voivode (prince) of Transylvania. As if by providence, the king put the right man in the right place at the right time.

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The years preceding Hunyadi’s appointment saw a gradual Turkish advance on the Balkan Peninsula toward Hungary. ‘The Turks are coming!’ was a cry that could be heard with increasing frequency throughout the terrified southern regions of the country. Whole villages were being destroyed, thousands killed, and thousands of others, including women and children, taken captive to be sold in the slave markets of the Ottoman Empire.

The Turkish raids had developed into a military campaign against Transylvania, where, occasionally, the sultan’s troops were assisted by the Wallachian Prince Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Dragon). Dracul’s son, then held as a hostage by the Turks, would succeed his father as voivode in September 1456. Called Prince Vlad Tepes (the Impaler), he put 20,000 persons to death during the six years between 1456 and 1462. He refused tribute to the sultan, repeatedly defeated the Turks, and, as his name suggests, impaled his prisoners. Finally killed in 1476, Vlad Tepes is a controversial Romanian national hero whose other sobriquet,’son of the dragon,’ or Dracula, served as the inspiration for Irish author Bram Stoker’s fictional vampire.

After he was appointed commander of southern Hungary, János Hunyadi decided it was time to put a halt to Turkish intrusions. The first to receive his ‘calling card’ of war was Beg Iszhak, commander of the Turkish garrison occupying Szendro. As punishment for past raids, Hunyadi caught up with Beg Iszhak’s troops and forced them to make a stand. Iszhak assumed that, as usual, the Magyars would attack the main body of his army with cavalry. Instead, Hunyadi sent his own elite foot soldiers to meet the central Turkish force in hand-to-hand combat. At the same time, the Hungarian cavalry attacked the flanks of the Turks, who–unprepared for mounted assault–were soon dispersed. Hunyadi’s horsemen then turned their attention to the foot soldiers in the Turkish center, who were already flagging from fighting the Magyar infantry. The battle was an unmitigated disaster for Beg Iszhak and put an end to his marauding on Hungarian soil.

In the following year, 1438, Hunyadi prepared another fateful surprise for another Turkish potentate, Mezid Pasha, at Nagyszeben, Transylvania. By that time, Hunyadi was so feared by the Turks that the night before the battle Mezid ordered his elite troops to concentrate on Hunyadi and his bodyguards. ‘To kill the lion, his heart must be pierced,’ Mezid exhorted his men. ‘We can defeat the Hungarian army if we get Hunyadi…dead or alive! Don’t miss him! He wears a silvery helmet and carries a shield emblazoned with a raven. Mounted on a white horse, he is always found in the thick of the battle!’

Thanks to a spy in the Ottoman camp, Hunyadi knew that he would be their main target. Simon Kemény, in an act of the highest loyalty to his leader, offered to don Hunyadi’s battle armor to draw the enemy’s fire and thus secure freedom of action for Hunyadi. After some hesitation, Hunyadi agreed and ordered his elite Székler troops to surround and protect Kemény.

During the battle the following day, almost everything happened the way Mezid Pasha had calculated. His troops overwhelmed the Hungarian hero on the white horse. Seeing him fall, the Turks triumphantly began shouting, ‘Hunyadi is dead! Hunyadi is dead!’

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