OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

157

expedition were reduced to an inadequate forceof twenty thousand men. A Wa lachian chief,who joined the royal standard with his vassals,presumed to remark that their numbers did notexceed the hunting retinue that sometimes at-tended the sultan; and the gift of two horses ofmatchless speed might admonish Ladislaus ofhis secret foresight of the event. But the des-pot of Servia, after the restoration of his countryand children, was tempted by the promise ofnew realms; and the inexperience of the king,the enthusiasm of the legate, and the martialpresumption of Huniades himself, were persua-ded that every obstacle must yield to the invinci-ble virtue of the sword arid the cross. After thepassage of the Danube , two roads might lead toConstantinople and the Hellespont ; the one di-rect, abrupt, and difficult, through the mountainsof Haemus; the other, more tedious and secure,over a level country, and along the shores of theBuxine, in which their flanks, according to theScythian discipline, might always be covered bya moveable fortification of waggons. The latter

co

was judiciously preferred ; the catholics march-ed through the plains of Bulgaria , burning, withwanton cruelty, the churches and villages of theChristian natives; and their last station was atWarna , near the sea-shore; on which the defeatand death of Ladislaus have bestowed a memor-able name. 1 ’

b Warna, under tlie Grecian name of Odessns, was a colony of theMilesians, which they denominated from the hero Ulysses (Cellarius,tom. i, p.374, d’Anville, tom. i, p. 312). According to Arrian ’s Peri-plus of the Euxine (p. 24, 25, in the first volume of Hudson’s Geogra-phers ',,

CHAP

LXVII.