WI : Crusade of 1452

So, interestingly, I found this guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_VIII_of_Georgia

Who (despite his kingdom falling into disarray) was apparently going to be involved in a 120k strong crusade against the Ottoman Empire.

So what if, on the construction of Rumelihisari in 1451, the Crusade was given the go-ahead, and led by a competent commander (perhaps John Hunyadi is given command), with the explicit aims of establishing a Catholic Bulgaria, and restoring a Catholic Roman Empire - (with the premise that if Constantine doesn't agree, they put someone else in charge - Perhaps a Komnenid, or a Palialogoi from Montferrat) in Greece and the Anatolian Coasts.

Assuming the Crusade works together, and arrives in Ottoman territory in Feb of 1453, what sort of chances would they have? What routes of invasion would work best, and what impact would that have on the siege of Constantinople?
 
Assuming they can learn from the mistakes of Varna, I'd say the chances are pretty good. The hardest part of this endeavour, in my opinion, would be convincing the european states to spend resources and troops on this crusade, after what happened on 1444 and 1448.
A competent commander like Hunyadi is important, but I feel that managing to get support from Venice or Genoa is also key to success if they are trying to relieve the siege on Constantinople. Again, the siege would probably be postponed when the sultan hears that 100k christians crossed the danube, so the major battle is likely to be somewhere else.
 
120,000?
There weren't even that many men at varna, even with both sides of the battle combined!
Where are these troops coming from?

Additionally, I doubt europe would be very excited for another crusade, only roughly ten years after the titanic disaster that was the last one.
 
Perhaps we could remove, or weaken, Pope Pius II's illness. From my very brief reading on the topic, it seemed that the Pope's illness and sudden death played a part in the collapse of the venture - as well as the competition ad bickering between Venice and the other Italian merchant states. Any successful crusade is almost going to have to have Venice involved at the very least.
 
Perhaps we could remove, or weaken, Pope Pius II's illness. From my very brief reading on the topic, it seemed that the Pope's illness and sudden death played a part in the collapse of the venture - as well as the competition ad bickering between Venice and the other Italian merchant states. Any successful crusade is almost going to have to have Venice involved at the very least.

I would fully expect Venice to be compensated with trading cities in the Aegean and Anatolia. They do benefit from having a weaker power controlling the lands around their trade routes.
 

RedNation

Banned
The Ottomans were just too powerful at this point. No European crusader army could hope to inflict lasting damage on their Balkans possessions. It's a pipe dream I'm afraid.
 
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