Robert Nisbet Bain

“ We are so accustomed to regard Hunyadi as the incarnation of Christian chivalry that we are apt to forget that he was a great captain and a great statesman as well as a great hero. It has well been said that he fought with his head rather than with his arm. He was the first to recognize the insufficiency and the unreliability of the feudal levies, the first to employ a regular army on a large scale, the first to depend more upon strategy and tactics than upon mere courage. He was in fact the first Hungarian general in the modern sense of the word. ”

“ It was only late in life that he learnt to read and write, and his Latin was always very defective. He owed his influence partly to his natural genius and partly to the transparent integrity and nobility of his character. ”

“ On the 14th of July 1456 Hunyadi with his flotilla destroyed the Turkish fleet; on the 21st Szilágyi beat off a fierce assault, and the same day Hunyadi, taking advantage of the confusion of the Turks, pursued them into their camp, which he captured after a desperate encounter. Mahommed thereupon raised the siege and returned to Constantinople, and the independence of Hungary was secured for another seventy years. ”