...the Turks continue with their advance towards…
June 1462 CE
...the Turks continue with their advance towards Târgovişte.
On June 17, when the Turks camp south of the capital, Ţepeş launches his night attack with twenty-four thousand, or, possibly with only seven thousand to ten thousand horsemen.
The Wallachians make noise from their buglers and illuminate the battle with their torches; and in this night, they launch not one but several attacks.
Documents differ on the exact result of the skirmish: some sources say that the Wallachians slaughtered a great number of Turks, while others say the Ottoman losses were minimal.
Many horses and camels were, however, killed.
Some chronicles blame a Wallachian boyar named Galeş, who supposedly led a simultaneous attack on the Turks with a second army, for not being brave enough to cause the expected devastation on the enemy.
Ţepeş himself aims for the tent of the sultan, as he routs the Asian cavalry, but mistakenly goes for the tent of the two grand viziers Ishak Pasha and Mahmud Pasha.
The janissaries, under the command of Mihaloğlu Ali Bey, pursue the Wallachians and kill between one thousand and two thousand of them.
According to the chronicler Domenico Balbi, the total casualties for the conflict are numbered as five thousand for the Wallachian side and fifteen thousand for the Ottomans.
Even though the morale of the sultan and his army is low, Mehmed decides to besiege the capital, but instead finds it deserted with its gates wide open.
The Turkish army enters the capital and for half an hour, the army marches on the road that is bordered by some twenty thousand impaled Turks and Muslim Bulgarians.
Here, they find the rotting corpse of Hamza Pasha impaled on the highest stake, to symbolize his 'high ranking'.
Other sources say that the city had been defended by the soldiers, while the impaled corpses lay outside the city-walls for a distance of sixty miles.
Mehmed orders a deep trench to be dug out around the Turkish encampment in order to prevent enemy penetration and the following day (June 22), the Turks retreat.
Unable to subdue Vlad, the Turks depart the country, leaving Radu the Handsome to continue fighting.