to her trade network, became the center for exchange of news, cash and ransomed captives. On 13 February 1397, de Coucy, ill and perhaps suffering from battle wounds, died. Boucicaut and Guy de Tremoille released on their own accord to seek funds in the Levant reached Rhodes where de Tremoille fell ill and died around Easter. French negotiators in the Sultan's court finally reached agreement on a ransom of 200,000 gold florins in June. Comte d'Eu died on 15 June. With a down payment of 75,000, the prisoners were released on 24 June on their promise to stay in Venice until the rest of the ransom was paid. However, the nobles found it unthinkable to travel in less than their accustomed splendor and borrowed nearly as much as the ransom amount in reprovisioning themselves. Arriving in Venice in October after stopping in various islands to recover and borrow money, the financial transactions required to both provide the ransom and pay for the travel arrangements and living expenses of the nobles were tremendously complicated. A three-sided transaction between Burgundy, Sigismund and Venice took 27 years to settle. A plague outbreak in Venice required the nobles to move temporarily to Treviso, but still claimed Henri de Bar. The last of the Crusader leaders – Nevers, Boucicaut, Guillaume de Tremoille and Jacques de la Marche -, along with seven or eight other knights, re-entered France in February 1398. They were greeted by minstrels, parties and parades as they journeyed across the kingdom, though Tuchman notes, "the receptions probably represented not so much popular enthusiasm as organized joy, in which the 14th century excelled." Broader ramifications With a historian's hindsight Johan Huizinga remarked upon "the lamentable consequences of statecraft recklessly embarking on an enterprise of vital import in the spirit of a chivalrous adventure", though participants and contemporary chroniclers did not analyse the event in these terms. No new expedition was launched from Western Europe to stop the Turkish advance in the Balkans after this defeat, until the 1440s. England and France soon renewed their war. Wallachia continued its stance against the Ottomans, having stopped another expedition in the next year, 1397, and in 1400 yet another expedition of the Ottomans. The defeat and imprisonment of Sultan Bayezid I by Timur (Tamerlane) at Ankara in the summer of 1402 opened a period of anarchy in the Ottoman Empire and Mircea cel Batran took advantage