Matthias Corvinus (1440-1490) was born in Cluj, Transylvania. The nickname “Corvinus,” comes from the Latin corvusa, or crow, a bird depicted on the Hunyadi coat of arms. On the death of Hunyadi, a bitter struggle over the crown of Hungary broke out. In January 24, 1458 a faction of Hungarian nobles elected Matthias as the next king, believing as a young and educated man he would be easy to control.
Opponents of Matthias proclaimed as king the Habsburg emperor Friedrich III, who accepted his election and seized the crown jewels of Hungary as symbol of his authority. Matthias proved an able leader, however, and crushed opposition, taking as prisoners many of his rivals as well as Vlad Dracula, the prince of Wallachia. In 1463, Friedrich gave up his claim, accepted Matthias as the king of Hungary, and returned the crown.
Matthias raised a powerful army of mercenaries, the Black Army, to expand the borders of Hungary. In the beginnings, the core of the army consisted of 6–8,000 mercenaries. In the 1480s, the number was between 15,000 and 20,000, however the figures in the great Viennese military parade reached to 28,000 men (20,000 horsemen, 8,000 infantry) in 1485. The soldiers were mainly Bohemians, Germans, Serbs, Poles and, from 1480, Hungarians. Thus the Black Army was far larger than the army of Louis XI of France, the only other existing permanent professional European army in the era.
Matthias campaigned against the Turks in the Balkan Peninsula, defeating them in several battles in Serbia and Transylvania. In 1471 Matthias renewed the Serbian Despotate in south Hungary under Vuk Grgurević for the protection of the borders against the Ottomans. In 1479 an Ottoman army, on its return home from ravaging Transylvania, was annihilated at Szászváros (13 October 1479) in the Battle of Breadfield. The following year Matthias recaptured Jajce, drove the Ottomans from northern Serbia and instituted two new military banats, Jajce and Srebernik, from reconquered Bosnian territory.
Art by Tibor Tornyai: Coronation of Matthias Corvinus on 24 January 1458. The young prince was then only 14 years old.
In 1480 an Ottoman fleet seized Otranto in the Kingdom of Naples. At the solicitation of the pope Matthias sent the Hungarian general, Balázs Magyar, to recover the fortress, which surrendered on 10 May 1481. Again in 1488, Matthias took Ancona under his protection for a while, occupying it with a Hungarian garrison.
At home he established a new judicial system, improved education, and patronized several Italian artists, whom he invited to work at his court. He also built a prestigious library of books and manuscripts, the second largest in Europe after the papal library in Rome. According to Marcus Tanner, Matthias ruled "a European superpower" at the end of his reign. His conquests, however, were lost within months of his death.
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