This repulse greatly discouraged the sultan. He was still more
discouraged when the crusaders, irrepressible in their hot enthusiasm,
broke from the city and made a fierce attack upon his works. Capistrano,
seeing that they were not to be restrained, put himself at their head,
and with a stick in one hand and a crucifix in the other, led them to
the assault. It proved an irresistible one. The Turks could not sustain
themselves against these flail-swinging peasants. One intrenchment after
another fell into their hands, until three had been stormed and taken.
Their success inspired Hunyades. Filled with a new respect for his
peasant allies, and seeing that now or never was the time to strike, he
came to their aid with his cavalry, and fell so suddenly and violently
upon the Turkish rear that the invaders were put to rout.
Onward pushed the crusaders and their allies; backward went the Turks.
The remaining intrenchments were stubbornly defended, but that storm of
iron flails, those pikes and pitchforks, wielded by the zeal of
enthusiasts, were not to be resisted, and in the end all that remained
of the Turkish army broke into panic flight, the sultan himself being
wounded, and more than twenty thousand of his men left dead upon the
field.
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