According to the opinion of Huniades himself the Turks had never suffered such a severe defeat. Its value as far as the Hungarians were concerned was heightened by the fact that the ambitious Sultan was personally humiliated. There was now great joy in Europe. At the news of the brilliant victory _Te deum_ was sung in all the more important cities throughout Europe, and the Pope wished to compliment Huniades with a crown.
Alas! a crown of another character awaited him--that of his Redeemer, in whose name he lived, fought, and fell. The exhalations from the vast number of unburied or imperfectly buried bodies, festering in the heat of summer, gave rise to an epidemic in the Christian camp, and to this the great leader fell a victim. Huniades died August 11, 1456, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He died amid the intoxication of his greatest victory, idolized by his followers, having once more preserved his country from imminent ruin. Could he have desired a more glorious death?
He went to his last rest with the consciousness that he had fulfilled his mission, having designed great things and having accomplished them.
And the result of his lifelong efforts survived him. His great enemy the Turk for half a century after his death could only harass the frontier of his native land; and his country, a few years after his death placed on the royal throne his son Matthias.
Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, called the king-maker, eldest son of Richard, Earl of Salisbury and Alice Montacute, was born November 22, 1428. The history of this mighty peer is that of the whole of the contest between the two houses of York and Lancaster. The house of Neville had been built up by a series of wealthy marriages, and Richard made no exception to the rule. While yet a boy he was married to Anne, daughter of the Earl of Warwick, and through her, after the death of her brother and niece, he took his place at the age of twenty-one among the chief earls of the English realm. By this time the English rule in France had broken down, bringing the reigning house of Lancaster into great unpopularity, and throwing a correspondingly greater influence into the hands of the leader of the opposition, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. He was brother-in-law to the Earl of Salisbury, and so attached to his party the powerful influence of the Nevilles.