On 1 January 1443 Pope Eugene IV published a crusading bull. In early May, it was reported "that the Turks were in a bad state and that it would be easy to expel them from Europe". War was proclaimed against Sultan Murad II at the diet of Buda on Palm Sunday 1443, and with an army of 40,000 men, mostly Magyars, the young monarch, with Hunyadi commanding under him, crossed the Danube and took Nish and Sofia.[1]