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that had brought his companions to this fatality, fought with an unlimited audacity that carved a circle of death around him. Philippe de Bar and Odard de Chasseron were killed. The banner of Notre Dame clutched in the hand of Admiral de Vienne wavered and fell. Bleeding from many wounds, he raised it again and, while trying to rally the faint-hearted from flight, with banner in one hand and sword in the other, was struck down and slain. Coucy’s outstanding figure was seen “unshaken by the heavy leather clubs of the Saracens that beat upon his head” and their weapons that battered his armor. “For he was tall and heavy and of great strength and delivered such blows upon them as cut them all to pieces.”

The Turks closed round Nevers. His bodyguard, prostrating themselves in attitudes of submission, appealed wordlessly for his life. Holy war or not, the infidel was as interested in rich ransoms as anyone else, and spared the Count. Upon his surrender, the remaining French yielded. The Battle of Nicopolis was lost, the debacle complete. Thousands of prisoners were taken, all the crusaders’ equipment, provisions, banners, and golden clothes fell to the victors. “Since the Battle of Roncesvalles when [all] twelve peers of France were slain, Christendom received not so great a damage.”

Though Froissart could not have known it, his epitaph for the crusade was historically just. The valor of the French had been extraordinary and the damage they inflicted on the enemy sufficient to show that if they had fought united with their allies, the result—and the history of Europe—might have been different. As it was, the Turks’ victory, by turning back the Western challenge and retaining Nicopolis, lodged them firmly in Europe, ensured the fall of Constantinople, and sealed their hold on Bulgaria for the next 500 years. “We lost the day by the pride and vanity of these French,” Sigismund said to the Grand Master; “if they had believed my advice, we had enough men to fight our enemies.”

The defeat was followed by a frightful sequel. As Bajazet toured the battlefield, hoping to find the corpse of the King of Hungary—and finding that of Vienne with the banner still held by his dead hand—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. Jacques de Helly, a French knight who had seen service with Murad I, was recognized by Turkish officials and called upon to designate the leading nobles for ransom. Coucy, Bar, D’Eu, Guy de Tremoille, Jacques de la Marche, and a number of others in addition to the Count of Nevers were thus spared, 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. Nevers, Coucy, and the rest 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. Boucicaut, dazed and wounded, was recognized in the line. Nevers fell on his knees before the Sultan and, by a pantomime of hands pressed together with fingers entwined, indicating that they were like brothers, capable of equal ransom, succeeded in having Boucicaut spared. 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. Estimates of the number killed range—aside from the wilder figures—from 300 to 3,000.

The dead on the battlefield were many