After a few days ride – altogether seven from Belgrade (making more than 60 km/day) – across the Hungarian Plain, Bertrandon arrived in Pest. During his trip he noticed the great number of wild horses, the source of the rich market in Szeged. (Actually, he also heard that Pest can also supply thousands of horses; there they were sold by “stables,” i. e., ten for 200 florins, which he found very cheap, once again.) Having crossed the Danube there, he came to Buda.

Buda is the capital of Hungary, situated on an eminence and is larger than broad. To the east is the Danube, to the west a valley and to the south a palace which command the gate of the town: it was begun by the present emperor [Sigismund – JMB] and when he shall finished it, will be extensive and strong. On this side, but without the wall are very handsome hot baths. […]The town is governed by Germans, as well to police and commerce, and what regards the different professions. Many Jews live there who speak French well, several of them being descendants of those driven formerly from France.

De la Brocquiere then went back to Pest (on the east side of the river) where he met French craftsmen, invited there by Sigismund, who – after his travels in France – wanted to establish royal manufactures in Hungary. Nothing came of the plan. There he heard the rumor that the king-emperor planned to have a chain built across the Danube to control the traffic, but Bertrandon found this unrealistic, the river being too wide there. (He was wrong; at the narrowest point the Danube is less than 400 meters wide and thus the chain would have been half as long as that across the Golden Horn.) Reporting about the mineral wealth of the country, he praises the quality of the salt, which he, correctly, lists as the basis of the queen’s income. He also described the kind of cart in which several people travel in Hungary, drawn only by one horse. His detailed picture of them is a unique source for the special Hungarian kocsi (hence: couch!), with tall wheels on the rear, now (and probably then, too) called “sandrunner” (homokfuto). Finally, Bertrandon describes a tournament, held a propos the marriage of the young Count of Cilje, which he found very different from what he was used to in France. This paragraph is a unique source for such tournaments in Hungary.^>10

I saw him [the son of the governor Ulrich of Cilje – JMB] at a tournament after their manner where the combatants were mounted on small horses and low saddles: they were gallantly dressed and had strong and short lances. It was a pleasing spectacle. Whenever the two champions hit, both perhaps, but certainly one of them must be unhorsed – and it is then seen, who has the firmest seat.

Bertrandon then left for Austria, where he encountered the first skepticism regarding his crusading plans. After a month he arrived back in Burgundy. Received with grace by his Duke Philippe, but his message was not much listened to. However, the Koran and a Life of Muhammad (in Latin translation), which he brought with him and was given by the duke to a learned cleric, engendered some polemical writings against Islam.

In the later fifteenth century, especially during the reign of King Matthias I (Corvinus) several foreign, mainly Italian, Humanists travelled to Hungary and made notes of their journey. None of them contains particularly relevant information, mainly because they, couched in elegant Ciceronian Latin, reflect more literary conventions than actual personal observations. Therefore, let us conclude with an interesting paragraph from the travelogue of the learned Jacques Bongars,