John, I know thee well, and am informed that you are in your own country a great lord. You are young, and in the future I hope you will be able to recover with your courage from the shame of the misfortune which has come to you in your foul knightly enterprise, and that in the desire of getting rid of the reproach and recovering your honour you will assemble your power to come against me and give me battle. If I were afraid of that and wanted to, before your release, I would make you swear upon your oath and religion that you would never bear arms against me, nor those who are in your company here. But no; neither upon you nor any other of those here will I impose this oath, because I desire, when you have returned to your home, and will have leisure, that you assemble your power and come against me. You will find me always ready to meet you and your people on the field of battle. And what I say to you, you can say in like manner to those to whom you will have the pleasure of speaking about it, because for this purpose was I born, to carry arms and always to conquer what is ahead of me.[9] Before their final departure, Bayezid treated these knights to a day’s sport on a regal scale; seven thousand falconers were employed on the occasion, and five thousand men led dogs to pick up the game. The historian does not state what was the bag resulting from this great battle. Of the twenty-four knights only one, Marshal Boucicaut, took up the parting challenge of Bayezid and returned to the East to make war against him. The others showed no desire to wipe out the disgrace of their defeat.[10] After this great battle at Nicopolis the Ottoman army made irruptions into Wallachia, Styria, and Hungary. The city of Peterwardein was captured and eighteen thousand of its inhabitants were sold into slavery. Another division invaded Syrmia, and devastated the country between the Drave and the Danube. The fortresses on the river taken by the crusaders were recaptured. The raid into Wallachia was a failure. The Turks engaged in it were defeated and driven back. Bayezid himself threatened Buda, in Hungary, but his progress was checked by a long and painful fit of gout. Gibbon moralizes on this in the following sentence: “The disorders of the moral are sometimes corrected by those of the physical world; and an acrimonious humour falling on a single fibre of one man may prevent or suspend the misery of nations.”[11] The invasion of Hungary on this occasion was a failure.