The Battle of Varna

The battle in this picture was fought in 1444, on the Black Sea coast near Varna, in what is now Bulgaria. A young king, Wladyslaw the Third, who ruled both Poland and Hungary, led a Christian army against the Ottoman forces of Sultan Murad the Second, broke a recent truce to do it, and charged straight at the sultan's guard. The attack failed, the king was killed at about 20, and his body was never recovered, which fed centuries of rumor that he had somehow survived. Matejko painted this in 1879, when Poland had been wiped from the map by its neighbors and its past was something to keep alive. This small, fiery panel was most likely a study for a far larger picture that he never carried out.