Matthias Corvinus

1443–1490

Matthias Corvinus was king of Hungary and Croatia from 1458 to 1490 and one of the most powerful rulers of late medieval central Europe. Elected after the death of Ladislaus the Posthumous, he strengthened royal taxation and administration, maintained the professional Black Army and pursued ambitious wars in Bohemia and Austria while cultivating a celebrated Renaissance court at Buda.

Matthias combined military expansion with deliberate royal patronage, maintaining the professional Black Army and establishing a Renaissance court celebrated for the Bibliotheca Corviniana. He captured Vienna in 1485 during his wars with the Habsburgs and ruled from there for part of his final years. His attempts to secure the succession of his illegitimate son John Corvinus failed, and many of his conquests unravelled after his death in 1490.

In Peter Darman’s Homeland, set in central Europe in the early 1460s, during the reign of Matthias Corvinus and renewed conflict around Wallachia, “Kings and princes think differently to you because you are Swiss.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Matthias Corvinus (1 series)

Alpine Warrior in Order

by Peter Darman 9 books 4.5(9,135)

The Alpine Warrior series follows Leon Muller, a young Bernese exile who becomes a Swiss mercenary in the middle of the fifteenth century. His career begins amid the Old Zürich War before carrying him into the wars of northern Italy, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and the…