James Baquet Nicopolis is a Bulgarian town, the name of which means “City of Victory” (sharing a root with the goddess for whom Nike shoes were named). The town and its environs have been the site of numerous battles throughout history. The first recorded was in 48 B.C., between Persians and Romans; the last was in 1912, during the First Balkan War, when the Greeks took the city from the waning Ottoman Empire. But the battle we are talking now took place in 1396. The last Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Shishman lived in Nicopolis from 1393 to 1395, when it was occupied by the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Bayezid I, who beheaded Ivan. Nicopolis then became the focus for what some have called the “Last Crusade,” proclaimed by Pope Boniface IX against the Turks in 1394, despite the fact that crusades by then had become somewhat archaic. Thus, in 1396, the Holy Roman Empire, the remnants of the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdoms of France, England, Hungary, Croatia, Portugal, Poland, and the now-Spanish Kingdoms of Castille, Aragon, and Navarre, the now-Italian Republics of Venice and Genoa, the Swiss Confederacy, and Savoy, Burgundy, Transylvania, and Wallachia — all joined the Bulgarian Empire in besieging the Ottomans in Nicopolis. And they lost. The Christians were outnumbered, but more crucial was the fact that they were still operating by the medieval eschewal of unity of command, instead making decisions via a loosely-woven leadership structure. Also working against them was the terrain. Nicopolis was located at the base of, and on top of, a cliff overlooking the Danube, making it difficult to besiege. But the Crusaders surrounded it, intending to starve out the inhabitants, when Sultan Bayezid arrived with troops to relieve the town. Against the advice of the older, more prudent leaders, some of the younger Crusaders took their men and rushed into battle before all the scouts had reported back in. Reports vary as to what happened on the battlefield. One modern historian calls accounts of the battle “a tossing kaleidoscope.” But the upshot was that the Christian army was vanquished, though, as one chronicler wrote, “neither frothing boar nor enraged wolf [ever fought] more fiercely.” Vocabulary: Which words above mean: 1. outdated 2. rejection 3. slobbering 4. extremely important 5. result, outcome 6. cautiously wise 7. growing smaller, fading 8. remaining parts 9. continually changing pattern 10. surrounding area | 