In July, 1396, the various contingents from the Occident met the Hungarian and Roumanian armies at Bada. Mircea, who had had personal experience with the Turkish military power, advised, with the wisdom that comes from defeat, a policy of defensive action, that the allies should wait for Bajesid’s advance into Hungary. But this dilatory program was not acceptable to the Western knights, who declared that they were there to fight, not to waste time in the inaction of a camp. Accordingly the army went down the Danube to Ossovo, and the river was crossed near the so-called Iron Gates. After winning some initial successes in a land where only the garrisons were Turkish, the crusaders, on September 12, reached Nicopolis, a place well fortified and strongly held by a veteran Ottoman general, Dogon-beg, who commanded a garrison of seasoned troops. At first the French knights tried to take the place by storm; but there were not enough ladders. It was, therefore, resolved to starve it out. The siege was in progress when Bajesid arrived from Constantinople. When he heard of the danger of his general he burnt his siege machines and hastened to Nicopolis. The crusaders would not at first believe that the Sultan was marching upon them; those who first reported the news in the camp were treated as spies and had their ears cut off. When it was found to be true, the Christians massacred the prisoners already taken. In preparing for the battle there was a fatal diversity of views. Sigismund wished to put Mircea’s men in the first line, since they were not regarded as good warlike material; next to this division he wished to station the Hungarians, and then, as the chief support of the whole, the knights from the West. But the French would hear nothing of this plan, which they regarded as equivalent to an insult; the place in front belonged, they thought, to them by right. A few of the most experienced counselors of John of Burgundy agreed with Sigismund, but nothing could be done to persuade the mass of the French warriors to give way. In the Ottoman army there were no differences of opinion; the Sultan’s vassals were answerable to his command, and, it is to be noted, that Stephen, the young Servian despot, with a contingent of trained warriors, fought for Bajesid against the crusaders. But with this exception the Sultan’s army, in all reckoned at 110,000, was composed of Moslem troops. Out of the 110,000 ranged on the other side, there were about 20,000 crusaders, of whom 16,000 were French. These, with the bravado that came from the traditions of western chivalry, undertook to bear the brunt of the fighting. Sigismund again tried to secure the adoption of his more cautious plan, but without result. The constable of France, Count d’Eu, gave the signal to advance, and the French knights moved to the onslaught with cries of “Vive St. Denis, Vive St. George.” Sigismund’s army, composed of trusty Transylvanians,