The issue of the Ottoman troops size at the beginning of the Mehmed II reign is not solved by historians. The lack of reliable information and significant discrepancies between sources lead to the fact that the size of the Ottoman army is approximately determined. The victories of Turkish weapons strengthened the contemporaries’ opinion that the Sultan’s army numbered hundreds of thousands of soldiers. It is significant that even pope Pius II, who was interested in collective resistance to the Ottomans, talked about frightening figures of 200.000 or more. In order to convince the sovereigns of Europe to support the crusade, he had to focus on qualitative, rather not quantitative superiority of the united Christian forces over the Turks. In this work, the author gives an approximate assessment of the military potential of the army of Mehmed II in the middle of the 15th century. In his opinion, the figure closest to reality was given by Cardinal Bessarion at the Council of Mantua in 1459, determining the size of the enemy’s armed forces at 80.000 men, and taking into account auxiliary formations - no more than 100.000.
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