HUNYADI, JÁNOS. - A brilliant strategist and Hungarian hero in the struggles against the Turks, born in the Hunyad castle in Transylvania around 1387, died at Zemun on 11 Aug. 1456.
Of Romanian origin, he first served King Sigismund in the Hussite wars, then in the years 1433-35 fought in the service of Filippo Maria Visconti, lord of Milan, where he thoroughly learned the military art and began to acquaint himself with humanistic culture.
Returning to Hungary, he conducted on behalf of King Ladislaus I numerous victorious campaigns against the Turks, pushing them back beyond the Balkans (1443). But the advantageous situation was overturned by the disastrous battle of Varna (1444), undertaken against H.’s dispositions by the king, who perished there together with Cardinal Legate G. Cesarini (q.v.), the principal promoter of this new expedition. In the period 1446-53, H., as Captain of the Realm and regent, victoriously defended the rights of succession of Ladislaus Posthumus, under whose reign he continued the struggle against the Turks and in 1456, with his troops—praised by St. John of Capistrano (q.v.)—liberated Belgrade from its siege. Struck by the epidemic, he died at Zemun. His second son, Matthias H., called Corvinus, became king of Hungary in 1458.