WI Crusaders win battle of Nicopolis in 1396?

In 1396 Sultan Bayezid I clashed with Western Crusaders near Nicopolis. The French and English formed the vanguard, while Sigismund divided his troops into three: he commanded the Hungarian and German troops in the centre himself, the Transylvanians formed the right wing, and the Wallachians under Mircea the Elder formed the left. Bayezid formed his lines with a vanguard of cavalry protected by a line of stakes, a main line of archers and Janissaries, and the main body of Ottomans and Serbians hidden behind hills some distance away. Mircea the Elder of Wallachia advised a cautious battle plan, and requested to be allowed to attack first. Wallachian cavalry were to harass the Ottomans out of their positions so that the skilled horse archers would be able to easily pick off individual Turks, thus leaving the Turkish main line severely weakened and more prone to collapsing under the weight of a subsequent charge of the heavy Western knights. Mircea's proposal was refused by the other Crusaders, who thought that the Wallachian ruler only wanted to gain all the glory for himself. Thus, a straightforward sledgehammer-tactic was put in motion by the Westerners, a plan which would prove to be disastrous for the Crusader forces.
WI Crusaders had listened to Mircea and won the battle of Nicopolis? How is this altering History? Any thoughts?
 
It might require a POD such as Mircea saving Jean de Nevers falling from his horse or something to get the western nobles to listen to him.
Assuming Nicopol is a defeat for the Ottomans, while it may delay them for a while I can still see a recurrence of the battle when the Ottomans resurge under Murad II.
 
In 1396 Sultan Bayezid I clashed with Western Crusaders near Nicopolis. The French and English formed the vanguard, while Sigismund divided his troops into three: he commanded the Hungarian and German troops in the centre himself, the Transylvanians formed the right wing, and the Wallachians under Mircea the Elder formed the left. Bayezid formed his lines with a vanguard of cavalry protected by a line of stakes, a main line of archers and Janissaries, and the main body of Ottomans and Serbians hidden behind hills some distance away. Mircea the Elder of Wallachia advised a cautious battle plan, and requested to be allowed to attack first. Wallachian cavalry were to harass the Ottomans out of their positions so that the skilled horse archers would be able to easily pick off individual Turks, thus leaving the Turkish main line severely weakened and more prone to collapsing under the weight of a subsequent charge of the heavy Western knights. Mircea's proposal was refused by the other Crusaders, who thought that the Wallachian ruler only wanted to gain all the glory for himself. Thus, a straightforward sledgehammer-tactic was put in motion by the Westerners, a plan which would prove to be disastrous for the Crusader forces.
WI Crusaders had listened to Mircea and won the battle of Nicopolis? How is this altering History? Any thoughts?

Mircea's plan wouldn't have worked. The Ottoman disposition was well-designed to deal with such threats. The small number of horse archers would have made little headway against the much larger number of Ottoman horse archers, and the Ottomans were disposed in depth, with expendable light troops screening the main body. The army was specifically trained not to panic when the front lines fell back on the heavier troops.

Even if it had, winning a minor battle on the Ottoman periphery wouldn't accomplish much - Beyazid would just return for round two, and the deeper into Ottoman territory the "Crusade" reaches, the more serious their disadvantages.

Very often these battles get inflated too much in the imagination as "what ifs" - battles that loom large in Western histories were often of little notice to the Ottomans themselves - for instance Lepanto, which was just a shrug and a "meh" for the Ottomans, who didn't consider it that big a deal.
 
Yeah yeah yeah.......
So I hear that the Ottomans literally had gold mines coming out of each and every orifice. Is this true?
 
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Yeah yeah yeah.......
So I hear that the Ottomans literally had gold mines coming out of each and every orifice. Is this true?

Very funny. That doesn't change that Nikopolis was a frontier town, the Ottomans had much greater resources than the Crusader allies, way better unity of command, a far superior tactical system, and were one state instead of several squabbling ones trying to hold together an alliance with very divergent interests.

The Ottoman army was way more mobile (Beyazid is referred to as Yıldırım in Turkish, meaning "lightning"), which would prevent any sort of devastating pursuit that was the source of most military losses.

All this would accomplish is an orgy of looting, half the Crusader army going home, and the rest either being crushed in a rematch or being forced to withraw or having to endure a siege.

Beyazid was facing simultaneously a considerable conflict in the East, the West, and the Byzantines in the middle of his empire. A minor Crusade was just not a very important factor compared to real enemies, like Timur - and even that battle was close.
 
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