The victory of the Ottoman
Empire - the one of a centralized army with coherent tactics and strategies,
against the personal value and the individualism of the western knights -
was crushing.
Two years before Nicopole, Mircea the Old (1386-1418), the ruler of Wallachia,
had won the battle of Rovine against the powerful sultan Baiazid. As long
as Mircea the Old lived and ruled the country, the Ottoman power was stopped
at the Danube. It was the first of a long succession of victories, which transformed
the Romanian rulers into defenders of Christianity. This supreme European
value, "Christianity", was invoked like a motto in the policy of
the Romanian rulers in order to get help from the rest of Europe, from the
papacy and from the western states. The Romanians' victories showed to the
whole Europe that the Ottomans could be beaten. Unfortunately, they couldn't
be crushed because of the huge military, human and economical potential of
an empire that lay on two continents. The victories obtained by the Romanians,
alone or sporadically helped by Hungary or Poland, determined the Turks to
give up the idea of conquering the Romanian Countries, being content with
their transformation into vassal states and with the acknowledgement of their
autonomy and individuality. These ideas were registered in the Romanian-Ottoman
agreements, named capitulations, which have been so often invoked by the Romanian
intellectuals in the modern age. The fact that the first capitulations were
signed during the reign of Vlad the Impeller isn't quite without importance.
So, summarizing the essence of the Romanian-Ottoman military conflict during
the XV-th century, the Italian humanist Fillipo Buonaccorsi Callimachus asserted:
"The Romanians, after they repelled the weapons and the attempts of the
Porte, concluded treaties, being not defeated, but victorious."
The Romanians still had many occasions to prove their merit as defenders of
Europe. The Ottomans attacked continuously, wanting to rule the Danube, which,
if the ottoman troops had penetrated deeply into the continent, would have
been good means of transportation, upholding the army.
