Their advances led to the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, where a western crusade met with disaster.
Field of Glory II: Medieval - Sublime Porte In the east, most of Anatolia had been conquered from the other Turkic beyliks. His defeat of the Ottomans at Ankara in 1402 set back Ottoman expansion by several decades. A number of brilliant Balkan leaders rose during the 15th century to challenge Ottoman hegemony; John Hunyadi and his son, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, the Albanian hero Skanderbeg, Stephen the Great of Moldavia, and the Wallachian Voivode Vlad Țepeș 'The Impaler'.Timur was born in 1336 into a noble family in the Turco-Mongol Barlas confederation in Transoxiana (in modern-day Uzbekistan).