Battle of Mohács
Battle of Mohács | |
---|---|
Part of the Kingdom of Hungary | |
Result |
Ottoman victory
|
Hungarian Slovenes
Behram Pasha
300 guns
80 guns (only 50 arrived on time)
2,000 prisoners executed[10]
The Battle of Mohács (Hungarian: [ˈmohaːt͡ʃ]; Hungarian: mohácsi csata, Turkish: Mohaç Muharebesi or Mohaç Savaşı) was fought on 29 August 1526 near Mohács, Kingdom of Hungary, between the forces of the Kingdom of Hungary and its allies, led by Louis II, and those of the Ottoman Empire, led by Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman victory led to the partition of Hungary for several centuries between the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Principality of Transylvania. Further, the death of Louis II as he fled the battle marked the end of the Jagiellonian dynasty in Hungary and Bohemia, whose dynastic claims passed to the House of Habsburg.
During the battle, the Ottomans utilised the
Background
Decline of the royal power in Hungary (1490–1526)
After the death of the
Given the naive fiscal and land policy of the royal court, the central power began to experience severe financial difficulties, largely due to the enlargement of feudal lands at royal expense. The noble estate of the parliament succeeded in reducing their tax burden by 70–80%, at the expense of the country's ability to defend itself.[16] Vladislaus became the magnates' helpless "prisoner"; he could make no decision without their consent.
The standing mercenary army (the Black Army) of Matthias Corvinus was dissolved by the aristocracy. The magnates also dismantled the national administration systems and bureaucracy throughout the country. The country's defenses sagged as border-guards and castle garrisons went unpaid, fortresses fell into disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled.[17] Hungary's international role declined, its political stability shaken; social progress was deadlocked. The arrival of Protestantism further worsened internal relations in the country.
In 1514, the weakened and old King Vladislaus II faced a major peasant rebellion led by
Jagiellonian-Habsburg attempt to organize defence against the Ottomans
King Louis II of Hungary married
In the early 1500s, Vladislav II (ruled 1490–1516), Louis II and Croatian nobles repeatedly asked Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I for help, but during Maximilian's reign, assistance for Hungary remained a plan. After the first chain of fortresses fell however, assessing the threat to his own provinces, Archduke Ferdinand (later Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I) made a significant effort to help his brother-in-law. When Nándorfehérvár was being besieged, he summoned his estates and proposed sending troops to Hungary. In the end, 2,000 German infantry troops were sent. From 1522 to the 1526 defeat at Mohács, field troops from Austria frequently arrived but were not placed into fortresses at the border as regular garrisons yet. Even though this military aid purportedly strengthened this area of the border, it had the undesired effect of dissolving the unified leadership that the ban had held until that time.[19]
Alfred Kohler opines that the coordination effort attempted by Ferdinand, Mary and Louis failed because the young Hungarian king showed a lack of vigour, which was also recognized by Hungarian nobles. Mary, on the other hand, was much more decisive and vigorous, but the non-Hungarian advisors she relied on created distrust.[20][21]
European events, and the Franco-Ottoman alliance
In Europe, especially in Germany, negative trends have started to unfold. The Fuggers, who had taken control of the finances, "by around 1503 had a veritable monopoly of 'favoritism' in Germany, Hungary, Poland and Scandinavia, to the extent that any priest who wanted to get access to even the most modest parish had to turn to the merchants of Augsburg."
The Fugger family controlled the distribution of the Roman Catholic Church's indulgences, which, among other reasons, soon led to an international scandal and then to strong social unrest. After 1517, European public opinion became increasingly preoccupied and divided by the Reformation launched by Martin Luther. The religious upheaval was compounded by the German Peasants' War of 1524-1526, which mobilised considerable forces and, in addition to the material damage, caused more than 100,000 deaths.
Between 1521 and 1526, the Western European powers were preoccupied with the current episode of the Italian wars (which lasted from 1494 to 1559, with minor interruptions). France first sought allies in Eastern Europe against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. French envoy Antonio Rincon visited Poland and Hungary several times between 1522 and 1525. After the Battle of Bicocca (1522), King Francis I of France tried - unsuccessfully - to ally himself with King Sigismund I of Poland. The Hungarian royal court also rejected the French offer, unlike János Szapolyai, the Voivode of Transylvania, who showed a willingness to cooperate with the French, although the formal treaty was not signed until 1528.
King
In a watershed moment in European diplomacy, Francis formed a formal Franco-Ottoman alliance with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent as an ally against Charles V. The French-Ottoman strategic, and sometimes tactical, alliance lasted for about three centuries.[22]
To relieve the Habsburg pressure on France, in 1525 Francis asked Suleiman to make war on the Holy Roman Empire, and the road from Turkey to the Holy Roman Empire led across Hungary. The request of the French king coincided well with the ambitions of Suleiman in Europe and gave him an incentive to attack Hungary in 1526, leading to the Battle of Mohács.[22]
At the news of the war, the young King Louis II of Hungary appealed to the European princes for help, but only King Henry VIII of England offered aid (which arrived only in 1527 to Queen Mary of Hungary in Pozsony) and the Pope offered 50,000 gold pieces, while neither Charles V nor Ferdinand Habsburg (Archduke of Austria, the Hungarian king's brother-in-law) did anything. The fact is that the Habsburgs' armies were still on the battlefields of Italy.
Preparations
The Hungarians had long opposed Ottoman expansion in southeastern Europe, but in 1521 the Turks advanced up the Danube River and took
The loss of Nándorfehérvár caused great alarm in Hungary, but the huge 60,000-strong royal army – led by the king, but recruited too late and too slowly – neglected to take food along. Therefore, the army disbanded spontaneously under pressure from hunger and disease without even trying to recapture Belgrade from the newly installed Turkish garrisons. In 1523, Archbishop
The Hungarian nobles, who still did not realize the magnitude of the approaching danger, did not immediately heed their king's call for troops. Eventually, the Hungarians assembled in three main units: the
The number of regular professional paid soldiers (
The Ottomans obtained most of the arquebuses for their janissary army from Hungarian and Venetian gunsmiths. This phenomenon was so widespread and severe, that in 1525 the Hungarian Parliament had to pass a law against the export of Hungarian-made arquebuses for the Ottoman Empire.[26]
Contrary to popular belief, the Hungarian infantry was so well equipped with arquebuses that, it had an unusually high firepower in a comparison with contemporary Western European standards. Both armies faced a tactical challenge, namely that they could not move their firepower very well. As a result, they were only able to use them effectively if they fired from a defensive position. The question was who could force the other to start the attack on the battlefield, that is, to attack positions that could then be defended with cannons and arquebuses.[27]
The division of the Hungarian army according to arms based on our current knowledge is, without claiming completeness: 3,000 armoured knights from the Hungarian noble banderiums, the king's bodyguard (1,000 armoured knights),[28] 4,500 light cavalry (mainly hussars of Serbian origin), 6,700 mainly Hungarian infantry, 5,300 Papal infantry (mainly German Landsknechte, but Italian and Spanish contingents were also represented in smaller numbers) and 1,500 Polish infantry, with an unknown number of artillerymen. As for the rest of the army, we do not have sufficient data and accurate knowledge for a full reconstruction at present.[29]
The geography of the area meant that the Hungarians could not know the Ottomans' ultimate goal until the latter crossed the Balkan Mountains, and when they did, the Transylvanian and Croatian forces were farther from Buda than the Ottomans were. Contemporary historical records, though sparse, indicate that Louis preferred a plan of retreat, in effect ceding the country to Ottoman advances, rather than directly engaging the Ottoman army in open battle. The Hungarian war council – without waiting for reinforcements from Croatia and Transylvania only a few days march away – made a serious tactical error by choosing the battlefield near Mohács, an open but uneven plain with some swampy marshes.
Fichtner writes that before the Battle of Mohács, there was a breakdown of communication between Louis and his brother-in-law, Archduke Ferdinand. Ferdinand was unaware of the urgency of the situation. To make the matter worse, Louis and the Hungarian court failed to inform him that they had decided to fight a decisive battle on the plain of Mohács (this decision was made on 26 August, one day before Ferdinand's departure: in a conference in Louis's camp in Bata, the chancellor Stephen Brodarics advised the king to wait for reinforcements from Austria and Bohemia, but a group of impetuous nobles managed to persuade the king to engage in an open, immediate battle on the plains of Mohacs against the numerically superior Ottomans). Ferdinand, facing religious tensions and uprisings in his own lands as well as his brothers' requests for more troops for other theaters, decided to tend to what he thought to be more urgent affairs first.[30] According to Stephen Fischer-Galati, that literature shows that Louis himself seemed to be unable to fully understand the seriousness or immediacy of the Turkish threat. It was possible that Louis based his confidence on the assurances of John Zapolya and his supporters, who promised to come to help. Magnates who feared Habsburg interference desired a total Hungarian effort to either contain (militarily or diplomatically) or reach a truce with the Porte.[31]
The Ottomans had advanced toward Mohács almost unopposed. While Louis waited in Buda, they had besieged several towns (Petervarad, Ujlak, and Eszek), and crossed the Sava and Drava Rivers. At Mohács the Hungarians numbered some 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers. The only external help was a small contingent of Polish troops (1,500 soldiers and knights) led by the royal captain Lenart Gnoiński (but organized and equipped by the Papal State).[32] The Ottoman army numbered perhaps 50,000,[2][3] though some contemporary and modern-day historians put the number of the Ottoman troops at 100,000.[10][33][34][35][36][37][38] Most of the Ottoman Balkan forces registered before this battle were described as Bosnians or Croats.[39]
The Hungarian army was arrayed to take advantage of the terrain and hoped to engage the Ottoman army piecemeal. They had the advantage that their troops were well-rested, while the Turks had just completed a strenuous march in scorching summer heat.
Battle
The Hungarian deployment for battle consisted of two lines.
The first had a center of mercenary infantry and artillery and the majority of the cavalry on either flank. The second was a mix of levy infantry and cavalry.
As the first of Suleiman's troops, the
Nearly the entire Hungarian royal army was destroyed in nearly 2 hours on the battlefield. During the retreat, the twenty-year-old king died when he fell backwards off his horse while trying to ride up a steep ravine of the Csele stream. He fell into the stream and, due to the weight of his armor, he was unable to stand up and drowned.[42] Suleiman the Magnificent expressed regret at the death of his young adversary. Upon encountering the lifeless body of King Louis, the Sultan is said to have lamented: "I came indeed in arms against him; but it was not my wish that he should be thus cut off before he scarcely tasted the sweets of life and royalty."[43]
The result was catastrophic for the Hungarians, with their lines advancing into withering fire and flank attacks, and falling into the same trap that John Hunyadi had so often used successfully against the Ottomans.[44] Beside the king, some 1,000 other Hungarian nobles and leaders were also killed. It is generally accepted that more than 14,000 Hungarian soldiers were killed in the initial battle.[7][8]
Suleiman could not believe that this small, suicidal army was all that the once powerful country could muster against him, so he waited at Mohacs for a few days before moving cautiously against Buda.[45] On 31 August, 2,000 Hungarian prisoners were massacred on the orders of the Sultan.[10]
Aftermath
The victory did not give the Ottomans the security they wanted. Buda was left undefended; only the French and Venetian ambassadors waited for the Sultan to congratulate him on his great victory.
Bohemia fell to the
The Austrian branch of Habsburg monarchs needed the economic power of Hungary for the Ottoman wars. During the Ottoman wars the territory controlled by the Kingdom of Hungary shrunk by around 60%. Despite these territorial and demographic losses, the smaller, heavily war-torn
The subsequent near constant warfare required a sustained commitment of Ottoman forces, proving a drain on resources that the largely rural and war-torn kingdom proved unable to repay. Crusader armies besieged Buda several times during the 16th century. Sultan Suleiman himself died of natural causes in Hungary during the
A book on the Turkish culture was written by Georgius Bartholomaeus with information obtained from Christian troops released by the Ottomans after the battle.[48][49][50]
Legacy
Mohács is seen by many Hungarians as the decisive downward turning point in the country's history, a national trauma that persists in the nation's folk memory. To indicate magnitude of bad luck at hand, Hungarians still say: "more was lost at Mohács" (Hungarian: Több is veszett Mohácsnál). Hungarians view Mohács as marking the end of Hungary as an independent and powerful European nation.[51]
Whilst Mohács was a decisive loss, it was the aftermath that truly put an end to fully independent Hungary. The ensuing two hundred years of near constant warfare between the two empires, Habsburg and Ottoman, turned Hungary into a perpetual battlefield and its territories were split into three parts. The countryside was regularly ravaged by armies moving back and forth, in turn devastating the population.
See also
Notes
- ISBN 9780816062591.
- ^ a b c Stavrianos, Balkans Since 1453, p. 26 "The latter group prevailed, and on 29 August 1526 the fateful battle of Mohacs was fought: 25,000 to 30,000 Hungarians and assorted allies on the one side, and on the other 45,000 Turkish regulars supported by 10,000 lightly armed irregulars."
- ^ a b c Nicolle, David, Hungary and the fall of Eastern Europe, 1000–1568, p. 13 "Hungary mustered some 25,000 men and 85 bore cannons (only 53 being used in actual battle), while for various reasons the troops from Transylvania and Croatia failed to arrive.
- ^ Feridun Emecen,"Battle of Mohacs". (in Turkish)
- ^ Cathal J. Nolan, The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000–1650: An Encyclopedia of Global Warfare and Civilization, Vol. 2, (Greenwood Press, 2006), 602.
- ^ "Battle of Mohacs | Summary".
- ^ a b Turner & Corvisier & Childs, A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War, pp. 365–366 "In 1526, at the battle of Mohács, the Hungarian army was destroyed by the Turks. King Louis II died, along with 7 bishops, 28 barons and most of his army (4,000 cavalry and 10,000 infantry)."
- ^ a b Minahan, One Europe, many nations: a historical dictionary of European national groups, p. 311 "A peasant uprising, crushed in 1514, was followed by defeat by the Ottoman Turks at the battle of Mohacs in 1526. King Louis II and more than 20,000 of his men perished in battle, which marked the end of Hungarian power in Central Europe."
- ^ Feridun Emecen,"Battle of Mohacs". "According to the rûznâme kept during the battle, the Hungarian dead who remained in the square were not left in the middle and were buried, while the bodies of 20,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry were counted." (in Turkish)
- ^ a b c Spencer Tucker Battles That Changed History: An Encyclopedia of World Conflict, p. 166 (published 2010)
- ISBN 978-0521603911
- ISBN 978-0-521-30358-3.
- ISBN 978-0-521-30358-3.
- ISBN 978-0-691-13597-7.
- ^ "Hungary". Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 27 December 2008. Retrieved 2008-11-21.
- ^ Francis Fukuyama: Origins of Political Order: From Pre-Human Times to the French Revolution
- ^ "A Country Study: Hungary". Geography.about.com. Archived from the original on 2012-07-08. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
- ^ Tamás Pálosfalvi, From Nicopolis to Mohács: A History of Ottoman-Hungarian Warfare, 1389–1526 (Brill, 2018)
- ISBN 978-90-04-49229-5. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
- ISBN 978-3-492-03163-9. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
- ISBN 978-3-406-50278-1. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
- ^ a b Merriman, p. 132
- ISBN 978-0253009890.
- ISBN 978-1139485463.
- ISBN 978-1139485463.
- ^ 18.08.2022 Interview with Balazs Németh, assistant professor of the Department of Military History, Philosophy and Cultural History of the Hungarian National University of Public Service, member of the Mohács 500 research group, we talked about the weaponry of the Battle of Mohács.Link: [1]
- ^ János B. Szabó, historian of the Budapest History Museum, in an interview given to the online magazine vasarnap.hu on 29.08.2020 on the occasion of the anniversary of the Battle of Mohács. Arhív LINK: [2]
- ^ Tamás Elter: The Unconventional Memory of Mohács (Origó 2016.08.29) URL:hu/tudomany/20160829-mohács-battle-ii-lajos-i-sulejman-hungarian-church-mag-habsburgs-uthority-osman-empire-i. html
- ^ historyandwar.org Archive link
- S2CID 146229761. Retrieved 19 September 2022.
- S2CID 245989338.
- ^ "Lengyel Hősi Emlékmű – Mohács". Archived from the original on 2018-12-01. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
- ^ Gábor Ágoston, Bruce Alan Masters: Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, p. 583 (published: 2009
- ^ Christian P. Potholm: Winning at war: seven keys to military victory throughout history, p. 117 (published in 2009)
- ^ William J. Duiker, Jackson J. Spielvogel: World History, Volume: I p. 419, (published: 2006)
- ^ Stanley Lane-Poole: Turkey, p. 179 (published 2004)
- ^ Stephen Turnbull: The Ottoman Empire, 1326–1699, p. 46
- ^ Battle of Mohács article Encyclopædia Britannica
- ISBN 978-0472025602.
- ^ "The Battle of Mohacs: The Fall of the Hungarian Empire", by Richard H. Berg, published in Against the Odds, Volume 3, Number 1, September 2004
- ISBN 9780813526850.
- ^ Agnew 2013, p. 59.
- ISSN 0027-9358.
- ^ David Nicolle and Angus McBride: Hungary and the fall of Eastern Europe 1000–1568 p. 14
- ^ a b Bodolai, Zoltán (1978). "Chapter 9. Darkness After Noon". The Timeless Nation – The History, Literature, Music, Art and Folklore of the Hungarian Nation. Hungaria Publishing Company. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
- ISBN 9789004206830.
- ^ Dr. István Kenyeres: The Financial Administrative Reforms and Revenues of Ferdinand I in Hungary, English summary at p. 92 Link1: [3] Link2: [4]
- ^ Georgius Bartholomaeus (1567). De Turcarum moribus epitome. apud Ioan. Tornaesium. pp. 26–.
- ^ Alois Richard Nykl (1948). Gonzalo de Argote y de Molina's Discurso sobre la poesía castellana contenida en este libro (i.e. El libro de Patronio o El conde Lucanor) and Bartholomaeus Gjorgjević. J.H. Furst. p. 13.
- ISBN 978-3-88099-422-5.
- ^ Stanislava Kuzmová, "The Memory of the Jagiellonians in the Kingdom of Hungary, and in Hungarian and Slovak National Narratives." in Remembering the Jagiellonians (Routledge, 2018) pp. 71–100.
- ^ Peter F. Sugar et al., A History of Hungary (1990) pp. 83–85.
- ^ "Historical Memorial at Mohács". Hungarystartshere.com. Archived from the original on 2009-01-24. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
- ^ "Visitors' center at Mohács battlefield memorial site inaugurated – Caboodle.hu". Archived from the original on 3 September 2014. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
References and further reading
- Brodarics, Istvan[Stephanus Brodericus 1480–1539]: De conflictu Hungarorum cum Turcis ad Mohacz verissima historia. 1527, Krakow [It was originally a written report for the Polish king Sigismund I.] http://real-r.mtak.hu/1472/
- Agnew, Hugh (2013). The Czechs and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown.
- Király, Béla K., and Gunther Erich Rothenberg. War and Society in East Central Europe: The fall of medieval kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526 – Buda 1541 (Brooklyn College Press, 1989).
- Minahan, James B. One Europe, many nations: a historical dictionary of European national groups, (Greenwood Press, 2000).
- Molnár, Miklós, A Concise History of Hungary (Cambridge UP, 2001).
- Nicolle, David, Hungary and the fall of Eastern Europe, 1000–1568 (Osprey, 1988).
- Palffy, Geza. The Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy in the Sixteenth Century (East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 2010) 406 pages; Covers the period after the battle of Mohacs in 1526 when the Kingdom of Hungary was partitioned in three, with one segment going to the Habsburgs.
- Pálosfalvi, Tamás. From Nicopolis to Mohács: A History of Ottoman-Hungarian Warfare, 1389–1526 (Brill, 2018)
- Rady, Martyn. "Rethinking Jagiełło Hungary (1490–1526)." Central Europe 3.1 (2005): 3–18. online
- Stavrianos, L.S. Balkans Since 1453 (C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2000).
- Szabó, János B. "The Ottoman Conquest in Hungary: Decisive Events (Belgrade 1521, Mohács 1526, Vienna 1529, Buda 1541) and Results." in The Battle for Central Europe (Brill, 2019) pp. 263–275.
- I. Szulejmán [hadi] naplói. (az 1521, 1526, 1529, 1532-ik év).[Selection of war diaries of Suleiman sultan translated from Turiksh to Hungarian] 277–363 p. In: Thúry József: Török-Magyarkori Történelmi emlekek I.Török történetírók. Budapest, 1893, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia. 434 p. https://archive.org/details/trktrtne01thuruoft
- Turnbull, Stephen. The Ottoman Empire 1326–1699 (Osprey, 2003).
- Verancsics, Antal [1507–1573]: Memoria rerum que in Hungária nato rege Ludovico ultimo acciderunt, qui fuit ultimi Ladislai filius. Összes munkái között [among all of his works]: Monumenta Hungáriáé Historica Scriptores III. Közli: Szalay László. Pest. 1857
- History Foundation, Improvement of Balkan History Textbooks Project Reports (2001) ISBN 975-7306-91-6
External links
- The Fall of The Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526 – Buda 1541 (archived 21 April 2007)
- War diary of Suleiman in 1526