when they reached the Danube, but they besieged the city of Nicopolis. The Ottomans defeated them in the Battle of Nicopolis on 25September, capturing 3,000 prisoners. As the Ottomans pressed westward, Sultan Murad II destroyed the last Papal-funded Crusade at Varna on the Black Sea in 1444 and four years later crushed the last Hungarian expedition. John Hunyadi and Giovanni da Capistrano organised a 1456 Crusade to lift the Siege of Belgrade. Æneas Sylvius and John of Capistrano preached the Crusade, the princes of the Holy Roman Empire in the Diets of Ratisbon and Frankfurt promised assistance, and a league was formed between Venice, Florence and Milan, but nothing came of it. Venice was the only polity to continue to pose a significant threat to the Ottomans in the Mediterranean, but it pursued the "Crusade" mostly for its commercial interests, leading to the protracted Ottoman–Venetian Wars, which continued, with interruptions, until 1718. The end of the Crusades, in at least a nominal effort of Catholic Europe against Muslim incursion, came in the 16thcentury, when the Franco-Imperial wars assumed continental proportions. Francis I of France sought allies from all quarters, including from German Protestant princes and Muslims. Amongst these, he entered into one of the capitulations of the Ottoman Empire with Suleiman the Magnificent while making common cause with Hayreddin Barbarossa and a number of the Sultan's North African vassals. Growth (1453–1683) The defeat in 1456 at the siege of Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade) held up Ottoman expansion into Catholic Europe for 70 years, though for one year (1480–1481) the Italian port of Otranto was taken, and in 1493 the Ottoman army successfully raided Croatia and Styria. Wars in Albania and Italy The Ottomans took much of Albania in the 1385 Battle of Savra. The 1444 League of Lezhë briefly restored one part of Albania, until Ottomans captured complete territory of Albania after capture of Shkodër in 1479 and Durrës in 1501. The Ottomans faced resistance from Albanians who gathered around their leader, Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, son of a feudal Albanian Nobleman, Gjon Kastrioti who also fought against the Ottomans in the Albanian revolt of 1432–1436 led by Gjergj Arianiti. Skanderbeg managed to fend off Ottoman attacks for more than 25 years, culminating at the siege of Shkodra in 1478–79. During this period, many Albanian victories were achieved like the Battle of Torvioll, Battle of Otonetë, siege of Krujë, Battle of Polog, Battle