Posljednji svjedok ubojstva: Frankopani i Celjski u petnaestome stoljeću
The Last Witness to a Murder: The Frankopani and the Cilli in the Fifteenth Century

Summary/Abstract: A codex preserved at the National Library in Vienna contains a report composed by an anonymous soldier who participated in the botched crusade to lift the siege of Belgrade in November 1456 after John Hunyadi, the captain general of Hungary, had already repulsed the sultan, only to die of the plague soon afterwards. The report details the last days of Count Ulrich II Cilli, Hunyadi’s chief rival in Hungary, who was lured into the fortress together with King Ladislas V and then slain the following day by Hunyadi’s elder son Ladislas and his partisans. It also mentions the name of one of Cilli’s allies who fought vainly to defend him from his assailants: George I. Frankopan, a member of the leading Croatian baronial dynasty at the time and a cousin of Ulrich’s. The Cilli followed a carefully planned policy of combining mercenary service to great houses in the region and marrying well above their station to advance. This strategy paid off with the help of two Hungarian kings, Louis the Great and Sigismund of Luxemburg. The former arranged the marriage of the Cilli with daughters of the Bosnian ban and the Polish king, whereas the latter married Barbara Cilli. At the beginning of the 15th century, the Cilli married into the house of Frankopan and started to exert their influence on other prominent families in the region, such as the Görz, the Garai, or the Rosenberg. The tragic death of Elizabeth Frankopan in 1422, rumoured to have been slain by her husband, caused a long-lasting feud between the two houses, mended only after her son Ulrich II Cilli assumed the leadership of his dynasty. In the last decade of his life, Cilli managed to become the shadow behind the throne of Ladislas V, amassing power and titles in the process. In the end, various members of his Frankopan kindred seem to have forged closer ties with him and followed his policies in the Kingdom and abroad. He appears to have managed to bend most of his partners to his will, eclipsing them with ambition and political prowess.

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