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The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

21. The Real Life Raven King

The Raven King’s Mercenary Black Army sounds like something from George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. It actually refers to a real-life monarch and military unit, who became Europe’s most formidable warriors in the second half of the 15^th century. To wit, king Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1443 – 1490), whose name translates as “Matthew the Raven“, and a mercenary army he assembled to hold back the Ottoman Turks.

When Hungary’s king Ladislaus V died childless in 1457, the Diet of Hungary convened in January 1458 to elect a new king. It eventually chose 14-year-old Matthias Corvinus as a compromise candidate to avert a civil war between rival factions. The plan was for Matthias’ uncle to rule as regent until the new king came of age, but the teenager surprised everybody by administering state affairs independently from the start.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.