In the great Christian host thus destroyed, there was a large body of the Knights of Malta, all of whom, it is said, perished with the exception of the Grand Master, who escaped with King Sigismund in a boat. The historian, it should be added, gives this as the “general idea” of the fighting, but he goes on to suggest that the Christian army was not so large as has been said, and that it was the carelessness of the Christians, no less than the greatness of the Ottoman leader, that gave so signal a victory to the latter, for he continues, speaking of the leaders of the French army, “when their scouts announced the approach of the Turks, the gay and thoughtless youths were at table, already heated with wine; they instantly clasped their armour, mounted their horses, rode full speed to the vanguard, and resented as an affront the advice of Sigismond, which would have deprived them of the right and honour of the foremost attack. The battle of Nicopoli would not have been lost if the French would have obeyed the prudence of the Hungarians; but it might have been gloriously won had the Hungarians imitated the valour of the French. They dispersed the first line, consisting of the troops of Asia; forced a rampart of stakes, which had been planted against the cavalry; broke, after a bloody conflict, the janizaries themselves; and were at length overwhelmed by the numerous squadrons that issued from the woods, and charged on all sides this handful of intrepid warriors.” The victory placed the Danubian provinces under Turkish rule, and so may be said to have been responsible for nearly five centuries of that sporadic struggle which only ended after the termination of the Russo-Turkish War in 1878. Again and again was Nicopoli a battle centre. It was besieged once more by the Hungarians in 1444; twice the Turks were defeated here in the closing decade of the sixteenth century. The town was occupied by the Russians in 1810, and in 1829 the Russians destroyed the Turkish flotilla here and stormed the place. In 1877 before the advance on Plevna, Nicopoli was captured and burnt by the Russians, and was occupied by the Rumanians during the stubborn attack on Plevna.