Wladyslaw III of Poland

Wladyslaw III was king of Poland at ten and king of Hungary at seventeen, and was killed at twenty charging the Ottoman line at Varna. He was the son of Wladyslaw II Jagiello and succeeded him in 1434 under a regency dominated by Bishop Zbigniew Olesnicki. The Hungarian crown came to him in 1440 after a disputed election against the infant Ladislaus the Posthumous, and with it the war against the Ottomans on the Danube, which was in practice run by Janos Hunyadi. The Long Campaign of 1443 and 1444 went startlingly well: Hunyadi's army crossed the Balkans in winter, beat Ottoman forces repeatedly, and forced Murad II to the Treaty of Szeged, a ten-year truce sworn on the gospels. The papal legate Cardinal Cesarini then argued that an oath sworn to an infidel did not bind, a Venetian and papal fleet was already at sea, and the king broke the truce and marched for the Black Sea coast, expecting the fleet to close the straits. It did not; Murad crossed with a large army, partly ferried by Genoese ships for a fee. At Varna on 10 November 1444 the two forces met and the Hungarian wings held for most of the day. Wladyslaw, apparently trying to end it by killing or capturing the sultan, charged the janissary line around Murad with a few hundred knights. The horse went down, he was killed, and his head was displayed on a lance, which broke the army. His body was never found, which produced pretenders for decades. He is remembered in Poland as Warnenczyk, of Varna.

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