(3B.) Nicopolis, the city besieged “by water and by land for XVI days”, must, unquestionably, have been the place of that name on the right bank of the Danube, and not ancient Nicopolis, “ad Istrum”, as believed by some authors, the site of which, distant nearly forty miles from the river, has been satisfactorily determined by M. Kanitz, from an inscription he has been fortunate enough to disinter out of a mass of its ruins. The present Nicopolis, built on a limestone cliff, fills a ravine formed by two heights commanding the town. Sigismund may, or may not, have occupied those heights; but, when surprised at his dinner, at ten o’clock in the morning on the day of the battle, by being informed that the Turks were making their appearance (Froissart, iv, c. 52), he advanced one mile only from his encampment outside the beleaguered city, for the purpose of encountering Bajazet; and the French assumed the offensive immediately after the “Duke of Walachy” had reconnoitred the enemy’s position. If a further advance was made at all, it could scarcely have covered much ground, seeing that the 12,000 foot-soldiers routed by Sigismund had advanced to oppose him; and when the king was about to follow up his victory by attacking a body of horse, the sultan being on the point of taking to flight, the timely aid of the latter’s ally, the despot of Servia, changed the fortunes of the day. The battle, says Froissart, lasted three hours only, and the result, so disastrous to the Christian army, he attributes to the impetuosity of Philippe d’Artois, Comte d’Eu, who disregarded the instructions of the king of Hungary. “Nous perdons hui la journée”, said the latter to the Grand Master of Rhodes, “par l’orgueil et bobant (vanity) de ces François; et s’ils m’eussent cru, nous avions gens assez pour combattre nos ennemies.”
The Christian soldiers fled in disorder, and being hard pressed by Bajazet’s troops, many were killed on the mountain, one of the heights near Nicopolis, as they hurried to the Danube, many others being drowned in their unsuccessful efforts to reach the shipping—probably some of the vessels of the Venetian blockading squadron, under the command of Giovanni Mocenigo, on board of which, Sigismund, and Philibert de Noillac, Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, were received; the latter being conveyed to Rhodes, whence the ships sailed for Dalmatia to land the king. It seems pretty clear, from Schiltberger’s narrative, that the battle of Nicopolis was fought in the immediate vicinity of the city on the Danube, and therefore at a considerable distance from the ancient Nicopolis, the city of Trajan. Details of the action will be found in Aubert de Vertot d’Aubeuff’s _Histoire des Chevaliers Hospitaliers de St. Jean de Jerusalem_, etc., 1726.