The battle of Nicopolis is the most important episode in the busy and eventful career of Schiltberger, whose circumstantial account of the action fully agrees with what we learn from other sources. He escaped the general massacre of prisoners, upon the defeat and flight of Sigismund, through the timely intervention of Souleiman, the eldest son of Bajazet. Thurnmaier says that Schiltberger was spared on account of his good looks, and at once appointed page to the Sultan;[5] but this is probably a fancy of the Bavarian annalist, because it is very distinctly asserted in the text that none under twenty were executed, and the youthful captive was barely sixteen years of age. He suffered considerably from the effects of three wounds, a circumstance to which he casually and most modestly refers in a subsequent chapter. Whilst in the service of Bajazet, he was employed as one of his personal attendants in the quality of runner; he possibly took part in the siege of Constantinople; was in an expedition sent to Egypt for the relief of the sultan Faradj, when he probably embarked at some port in Cilicia; and in various expeditions in Asia Minor. Upon the fall of Bajazet at the battle of Angora, July 20th, 1402, our runner became the prisoner of Timour, with whom he remained in Asia Minor; the Sultan himself being a captive in the camp. The fable of the iron cage is scarcely worth recalling to mind; but had there been a shadow of truth in it, Schiltberger would not have failed to notice the circumstance of the powerful monarch he had served so long being thus ignominiously treated. Schiltberger’s first acquaintance with Armenia and Georgia was made upon the occasion of Timour’s invasion of those countries after his conquests in Asia Minor. Then followed the expedition to Abhase, the period of rest in the plain of Karabagh, and the return to Samarkand across the Araxes and through the kingdoms of Persia. As the victories of the invincible Timour in India, Azerbaijan, and Syria, were related to him by his new comrades, so has Schiltberger recorded them, with some fresh details on the horrible atrocities committed.