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Rh : Ladislaw's severed head, borne on a pike over the Ottoman ranks, struck terror and despair into the hearts of his followers; Hunyadi, after a vain, furious effort to redeem this ghastly symbol of defeat, fled from a field red with his countrymen's blood; the papal legate and two Hungarian bishops perished in the thickest of the fray. It was the beginning of the end, and four years later the cause of Christendom received its deathblow at Kossova, when Hunyadi, beaten finally back from Servia, was taught by the bitterness of defeat that his name no longer sounded ominously, as of old, in the ears of his Moslem foe. Only Scanderbeg remained unsubdued amid his mountain peaks, and Amurath, flushed with conquest, now turned his whole attention to the final punishment of this audacious rebel.

The scale on which the invasion of Croia was planned shows in itself how deep-seated was the sultan's anger, and how relentless his purpose. One hundred and sixty thousand men were assembled in Adrianople, the ablest generals were united in command, and Mohammed, his savage son and successor, accompanied the expedition, filled with fierce hopes