Battle of Mohi

Battle of Mohi Part of the Mongol invasion of Europe Date 11 April 1241 Location Sajó River, Hungary Result Decisive Mongol victory Belligerents Kingdom of Hungary Kingdom of Croatia Knights Templar Minor belligerent: Duchy of Austria Mongol Empire Commanders and leaders Béla IV of Hungary Coloman of Slavonia  (DOW) Archbishop Ugrin Csák  † Archbishop Matthias Rátót  † Frederick II of Austria Palatine Denis Tomaj  † Rembald de Voczon Batu Khan Subutai Shiban Berke Boroldai Units involved primarily Light cavalry Knights Templar Crossbowmen Infantry Cavalry, predominantly horse archers and lancers Stone throwers Possibly Chinese firearm units and other gunpowder units Strength 'up to 80,000[1] Other estimations: 25,000[2][3] 15,000[4] 10,000.[5][6][7] up to 70,000[8] Other estimations: 25,000[2][3] 30,000[9] Casualties and losses Most of army killed[3] Heavy[3]

Mongol invasions and conquests Asia Burma First Ngasaunggyan Pagan Second Central Asia Qara Khitai Khwarezm China Western Xia Jin Song Japan Bun'ei Kōan Vietnam Bạch Đằng Other invasions India Java Korea Tibet Europe Georgia Rus' Volga Bulgaria (Samara Bend, Bilär) Dzurdzuketia (Chechnya) Poland (first) Hungary (first) Bulgaria and Serbia Poland (second) Hungary (second) Poland (third) Middle East Khwarezmia Anatolia (Köse Dağ, Byzantine–Mongol alliance, Mongol Armenia) Baghdad Levant Palestine (Ain Jalut) Mongol invasion of Hungary 1st invasion (1241-42) Brassó Nagyszeben Mohi Pest Esztergom Zagreb 2nd invasion (1285-86)

The Battle of Mohi (today Muhi), also known as Battle of the Sajó River or Battle of the Tisza River (11 April 1241), was the main battle between the Mongol Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary during the Mongol invasion of Europe. It took place at Muhi, southwest of the Sajó River. After the invasion, Hungary lay in ruins. Nearly half of the inhabited places had been destroyed by the invading armies. Around 15–25 percent of the population was lost, mostly in lowland areas, especially in the Great Hungarian Plain, the southern reaches of the Hungarian plain in the area now called the Banat and in southern Transylvania.^[10]

Background

The Mongol invasion of Europe

The Mongols attacked Hungary with three armies. One of them attacked through Poland in order to withhold possible Polish auxiliaries and defeated the army of Duke Henry II the Pious of Silesia at Legnica. A southern army attacked Transylvania, defeated the voivod and crushed the Transylvanian Hungarian army. The main army led by Khan Batu and Subutai attacked Hungary through the fortified Verecke Pass and annihilated the army led by Denis Tomaj, the count palatine on 12 March 1241.^[11]

Warnings and Hungarian preparation

In 1223, the expanding Mongol Empire defeated an allied Cuman army at the Kalka River. The defeated Cumans retreated towards Hungary. Hungary had tried to convert the Cumans to Christianity and expand its influence over them for several decades beforehand. The Hungarian King Béla IV even began to use the title "King of Cumania". When Cuman refugees (ca. 40,000 people) sought asylum in his kingdom, it seemed that at least a portion of the Cumans had accepted Hungarian rule. The Mongols saw Hungary as a rival, and the Cuman migration to Hungary as a casus belli. In their ultimatum they also blamed Hungary for "missing envoys".^[12]

The Mongolian threat appeared during a time of political turmoil in Hungary. Traditionally, the base of royal power consisted of vast estates owned as royal property. Under King Andrew II, donations of land to nobles by the crown reached a new peak: whole counties were donated. As Andrew II said, "The best measure of royal generosity is measureless". After Béla IV inherited his father's throne he began to reconfiscate Andrew’s donations and to execute or expel his advisers. He also denied the nobles' right of personal hearings and accepted only written petitions to his chancellery. He even had the chairs of the council chamber taken away in order to force everybody to stand in his presence. His actions caused great disaffection among the nobles. The newly arrived and grateful Cumans gave the king more power (and increased prestige with the Church for converting them) but also caused more friction. The nomadic Cumans did not easily integrate with the settled Hungarians and the nobles were shocked that the king supported the Cumans in quarrels between the two.

King Béla began to mobilise his army and ordered all of his troops, including the Cumans, to the city of Pest. Frederick II, Duke of Austria and Styria, also arrived there to help him. At this moment, the conflict between Cumans and Hungarians caused riots and the Cuman khan – who had been under the personal protection of the king – was murdered. Some sources mention the role of Duke Frederick in inciting this riot, but his true role is unknown. The Cumans believed that they had been betrayed, and left the country to the south, pillaging all the way. The full mobilisation was unsuccessful; many contingents were unable to reach Pest; some were destroyed by Mongols before they arrived, some by renegade Cumans. Many nobles refused to take part in the campaign because they hated the king and desired his downfall. Hardly anybody believed that the Mongol attack was a serious threat to the kingdom's security, and the Cuman defection was considered minor and usual. This attitude may have contributed to the death of the Cuman Khan Kuthen.^[13]

The battle

Initial actions

The Mongol vanguard reached Pest on 15 March and began to pillage the neighbouring area. King Béla forbade his men to attack them, as the Hungarian army was still unprepared. Even so, Duke Frederick attacked and defeated a minor raiding party, so Béla came to be seen as a coward. After this "heroic" act, Duke Frederick returned home. Ugrin Csák, the archbishop of Kalocsa, also tried to attack a Mongol contingent, but he was lured to a swamp and his armoured cavalry became irretrievably stuck in it. He barely escaped with his life.

Finally, the king decided to offer the Mongols battle, but they began to retreat. This affirmed the opinion of the nobles that the Mongols were not a threat and the king’s behaviour was not cautious but cowardly. After a week of forced marches and frequent Mongol attacks, the Hungarian army, an approximately 15,000-strong collection of varied Hungarian forces, reached the flooded River Sajó. It stopped to rest and to wait for additional supplies, but because of the wooded terrain on the far bank of the Sajó the king and the Hungarians still did not know that the main Mongol army which numbered between 20,000 and 30,000 was present. The cautious king ordered the building of a heavily fortified camp of wagons.

The Mongol plan

It is highly unlikely that the Mongols originally wanted to cross a wide and dangerous river to attack a fortified camp. It is more likely that their original plan was to attack the Hungarians while crossing the river, as in the Battle of the Kalka River, although this is still not certain. A Ruthenian slave of the Mongols escaped to the Hungarians and warned them that the Mongols intended a night attack over the bridge over the Sajó.^[13]

The Mongols planned to bring their three contingents together if possible before engaging in battle and watched for signs that the Hungarians planned to attack. The way the camp was fortified was a tactical error since this would impede moves to escape in the event of an attack.^[14]

Subutai planned an encircling attack that required Batu's force to cross the river over the Sajó bridge and his force to cross the river spontaneously by constructing a temporary bridge downstream. Subutai took roughly 40% of the army in this encircling operation, leaving the other 60% with Batu. The plan was not perfectly executed because multiple units of Batu's force crossed the bridge prematurely for military exploits.

Fight at the Sajó bridge

The Hungarians still did not believe that there would be a full-scale attack, but the troops of the King's brother Coloman, Duke of Slavonia, and Archbishop Ugrin Csák with Rembald de Voczon, the Templar master, left the camp to surprise the Mongols and defend the unguarded bridge. They reached the bridge at midnight, having marched the last seven kilometres in darkness (the sun having set at 18:29). It is very unlikely that the Mongols wanted to attack at night (horse archers avoid night battles), but they wanted to cross the river to be able to attack the Hungarian camp at dawn. When Coloman and Ugrin arrived they found the Mongols unprepared and in the middle of crossing the bridge. They successfully forced them into battle and achieved a victory there. The Mongols had been unprepared for the crossbowmen, who had inflicted considerable losses on them, helped by the size of the bridge, which was a minimum of 200 meters long. The Hungarians left some soldiers to guard the bridge and returned to the camp, unaware that the main Mongol army was nearby. Arriving at the camp at around 02:00, they celebrated their victory.^[13]

Main battle

Morning

The unexpected Hungarian victory forced the Mongol generals to modify their plans. Sejban was sent north to a ford with a smaller force to cross the river and attack the rear of the bridge-guard. At about 04:00, as daylight started to break, they began the crossing. Meanwhile, Subutai went south to build a makeshift emergency bridge while the Hungarians were engaged at the main bridge, but left Batu a plan to use giant stone throwers to clear the crossbowmen opposing them. At dawn, Batu, with the help of seven stone throwers, attacked the Hungarian guards on the bridge. When Sejban and his men arrived, the Hungarians retreated to their camp. The Mongol main forces finished crossing the river around 08:00.

When the fleeing Hungarians arrived at the camp they woke the others. Coloman, Ugrin and the Templar master then left the camp again to deal with the attackers. Others remained there, believing this was also a minor attack and that Coloman would again be victorious. But as Coloman and Ugrin witnessed the horde of Mongols swell, they realised that this was not a minor raid but an attack by the main Mongol force. After some heavy fighting they returned to the camp hoping to mobilise the full army. They were badly disappointed, as the King had not even issued orders to prepare for the battle. Archbishop Ugrin reproached the King for his faults in public. Finally the Hungarian army sallied forth, but this delay gave Batu enough time to finish the crossing.

A hard struggle ensued. The Hungarians outnumbered Batu's detachment, and the Mongols were unable to move quickly because the Sajó was behind their backs. The "History of the Yuan Dynasty" (Yuan shi) mentions that Batu lost thirty of his baaturs (heavily armoured bodyguards) and one of his lieutenants, Bakatu, when he personally assaulted a strong point with the vanguard.^[15] The struggle seemed to be going terribly for the Mongols; in two hours of fighting, they suffered grievous losses, and were just barely saved from being routed by a charge of Hungarian knights by the firepower of their siege engines.^[16] At the end of the second hour, as the Hungarians were preparing another charge to shatter the Mongol lines, Subutai, who had been delayed by bridge-building, attacked the Hungarians’ rear flank. The Hungarians retreated back to their fortified camp before Subutai could complete his encirclement.^[17] Because of the losses suffered (James Chambers describes the Mongol force as "dangerously depleted") and the size of the surviving Hungarian force, Batu suggested to retreat. He was no longer confident that his men could defeat the Hungarians if they decided to come out again, and blamed Subutai for the terrible casualties his wing took. Subutai stated that regardless of Batu's decision, he would not retreat until his force reached Pest. Batu was eventually persuaded and resumed the attack.

Afternoon

It is possible that the Hungarians might have had the capability to defend the camp, but their sallies were ineffective, and they were terrified by the flaming arrows, resulting in the deaths of many soldiers by the trampling crush of their comrades. The nobles inside the camp felt little loyalty to the king, and likely would have deserted had they not already been surrounded. Bela's brother, Coloman, rallied enough men to sally out and charge the Mongols, but his attack was driven back. The Mongols used their siege equipment to pound the camp's fortifications, and set fire to the tents. Finally, the demoralized soldiers decided to flee. They tried to escape through a gap left open on purpose by the Mongols, because fleeing soldiers can be killed more easily than those who, with their backs to a wall, are forced to fight to the death. There, most of them were slaughtered.

Archbishop Ugrin was killed, but Coloman and Béla managed to escape – though Coloman's wounds were so serious that he died soon after. While the Mongols had suffered heavy casualties themselves, the Hungarians had lost almost their entire force. The Mongol army followed the tradition of cutting off an ear from each man they killed in battle for post-battle calculation of enemy casualty. Human ears collected from the Battle of Mohi filled nine large sacks.

Role of gunpowder and firearms

Several modern historians have speculated that Chinese firearms and gunpowder weapons were deployed by the Mongols at the Battle of Mohi.^{[18][19][20][21][22]} According to William H. McNeill, Chinese gunpowder weapons may have been used in Hungary at that time.^[23] Other sources mention weapons like "flaming arrows" and "naphtha bombs".^[24][25] Professor Kenneth Warren Chase credits the Mongols with introducing gunpowder and its associated weaponry into Europe.^[26]

Aftermath

Devastation of Hungary

After their victory, the Mongols regrouped and began an assault on the Hungarian country.^[13] The Hungarians' losses were such that they were unable to mount an effective defence. The city of Pest was taken and burnt down. The Mongols systematically occupied the Great Hungarian Plains, the slopes of the northern Carpathian Mountains, and Transylvania. Where they found local resistance, they ruthlessly killed the population. Where the locale offered no resistance, they forced the men into servitude in the Mongol army. Hungary lay in ruins. Nearly half of the inhabited places had been destroyed by the invading armies. Around 15 to 25 percent of the population was lost,^[10] mostly in lowland areas, especially in the Alföld (where there were hardly any survivors), in the southern reaches of the Hungarian plain in the area now called the Banat, and in southern Transylvania.

An attempt was made to hold off the main Mongol army at the Danube, which was mostly successful, from April 1241 until January 1242. In an unusually cold winter the river froze over, and after a number of close battles, the Mongols managed to cross. The royal family escaped to Austria to seek help from their ally Duke Frederick, but instead he arrested them, extorted an enormous ransom in gold and forced the king to cede three western counties to Austria. It was at this point that King Béla and some of his retinue fled south-west, through Hungarian-controlled territory, to the Adriatic coast and the castle of Trogir, where they stayed until the Mongols withdrew.^[27]

Surviving members of the royal retinue, being for the large part those that did not get to the battle of Mohi in time to participate, along with a number of disorganized irregulars consisting mostly of armed peasants, employed guerrilla tactics to harass the Mongol troops, occasionally engaging them in open battle. Much of the civilian population fled to areas of refuge inaccessible to the Mongol cavalry: high mountains in the north and east, swamps (especially on the Puszta, around Székesfehérvár and in the west, the Hanság), and older earthwork fortresses (most of which were in a motte-and-bailey form or consisted of a mud-banked enclosure on the top of a mountain, steep natural hill or man-made hill). Rogerius recounts his experience in one such refuge called Fátra in his Carmen Miserable. Such places are often referred to by the German term Fluchtburg.

By February 1242, more than a year after the initial invasion and a couple months before the Mongols' withdrawal, some important castles and towns had resisted the Mongol siege tactics. Among the nearly eighty sites that remained unconquered, only three were of the most formidable type: the then-new stone castle on an elevation: Fülek, Léka (near the western border) and Németújvár. The rest were either fortified towns (e.g., Székesfehérvár), old committal centre castles (e.g., Esztergom citadel), fortified monasteries (e.g. Tihany and Pannonhalma) or military fortresses (e.g. Vécs guarding a main trade route in the mountains of Transylvania). Ultimately, the country was not subdued, and though much of the population was slaughtered, the king and higher nobility avoided capture.

Reaction from other European rulers

While the king kept himself apprised of the situation in the rest of the country, he made numerous attempts to contact other rulers of Europe, including the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor, and the King of France. None of them were willing to provide significant support to Hungary. Pope Gregory XI called a Crusade against the Mongols, wrote to numerous German princes telling them to gather their forces, and ordered the clergy to give refuge to the Hungarian king and his subjects should they seek refuge from the Mongols. However, he warned the Hungarian king that help was unlikely to materialize as long as the Holy Roman Emperor remained belligerent and in conflict with the church.^[28]

His prediction was ultimately correct, as the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) took little part in fighting the Mongols, bar repelling minor raids in Bohemia, Moravia, Bavaria, and Austria. However, Frederick was well aware of the threat they posed even when reduced in strength from battles in Hungary and Poland. Even before the Pope's summons, Emperor Frederick II and his son, Conrad IV, called a Landfrieden throughout Germany. Conrad ordered the magnates to levy their armies, while Frederick II ordered them to strengthen their defenses.^[29] Conrad set July 1 as the date for a large German army to assemble at Nuremberg.

The army assembled on schedule, and was apparently powerful enough that contemporary chroniclers thought that the Mongols opted to withdraw because of its presence. It marched 50 miles east before stopping near Weiden. The exact reason is unknown, but they most likely stopped because the Mongols had ceased any raids into the HRE, and stayed on the east side of the Danube to ravage Hungary.^[30] However, there is no reference to the army disintegrating the same year, and the border states of the HRE such as Austria continued to strengthen their defenses, so they most likely were still adopting a defensive posture until the Mongol withdrawal in early 1242.^[31]

Mongol withdrawal

During the summer and autumn of 1241, most of the Mongol forces were resting on the Hungarian Plain. In late March, 1242, they began to withdraw. The most common reason given for this withdrawal is the Great Khan Ögedei's death on December 11, 1241, which supposedly forced the Mongols to retreat to Mongolia so that the princes of the blood could be present for the election of a new great khan. This is attested to by one primary source: the chronicle of Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, who after visiting the Mongol court, stated that the Mongols withdrew for this reason; he further stated that God had caused the Great Khan's death to protect Latin Christendom.^[32] However, this contradicts the Mongol accounts; a high minister and historian of the Mongol Ilkhanate, Rashid Al-Din, explicitly states in his records that the Mongols were not aware of Ögedei's death when they began their withdrawal.^[33] Rashid's account more accurately reflects reality, as by Carpini's account, a messenger would have to be able to make the journey from Mongolia to Central Europe in a little over three months in the middle of winter. Carpini himself accompanied a Mongol party in a much shorter journey (from Kiev to Mongolia) during the summer and fall of 1246, where the party "made great speed" in order to reach the election ceremony in time, and made use of several horses per person while riding nearly all day and night. It took five months.^[34]

The true reasons for the Mongol withdrawal are not fully known, but numerous plausible explanations exist. The Mongol invasion had bogged down into a series of costly and frustrating sieges, where they gained little loot and ran into stiff resistance. They had lost a large amount of men despite their victories (see above). Finally, they were stretched thin in the European theater, and were experiencing a rebellion by the Cumans in what is now southern Russia, and the Caucasus (Batu returned to put it down, and spent roughly a year doing so).^[35] Regardless of their reasons, the Mongols had completely withdrawn from Central Europe by mid-1242, though they still launched military operations in the west at this time, most notably the 1241-1243 Mongol invasion of Anatolia.^[36]

After the withdrawal of the Mongol troops, Subutai was reassigned by Guyuk to engage the Southern Song, and died of old age in 1248.

Hungarian reforms

However, the kingdom was not broken. Within a year of the withdrawal of the Mongols, the three westernmost counties (Moson, Sopron, and Vas) that were extorted as ransom by Duke Frederick of Austria were recaptured, and a local uprising in Slavonia was quashed. The threat of another Mongol invasion, this time taken seriously, was the source of national unity and provided the impetus for Béla IV's extensive expansion of Hungarian defenses, especially the building of new stone castles (forty-four in the first ten years) and the revitalization of the army, including expanding the number of heavily armoured cavalry in the royal army. Béla IV is seen now as a second founder of the nation, partly in recognition of all that was done during his reign to reconstruct and fortify the country against foreign invasion from the east. These improvements were to pay off in 1285 when Nogai Khan attempted an invasion of the country. In that event, the invasion was defeated quickly,^[37] as were a number of other attacks before and after.

In later centuries, as Mongol influence waned and central European defences became more capable, the attention of countries of central Europe would increasingly be directed to the south-east and the growing influence of the Ottoman Empire.

See also

• Battle of Legnica

References

Further reading

• Amitai-Preiss, Reuven (1998). The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-52290-0. 
• Carey, Brian Todd (2007). Warfare in the Medieval World. Pen & Sword Books. ISBN 1-84415-339-8. 
• Gabriel, Richard A. (2006). Genghis Khan's Greatest General: Subotai the Valiant. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-3734-7. 
• Kosztolnyik, Z. J. (1996). Hungary in the Thirteenth Century. East European Monographs; No. CDXXXIX. New York: Columbia University Press. 
• Morgan, David (1990). The Mongols. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-17563-6. 
• Nicolle, David (1998). The Mongol Warlords. Brockhampton Press. 
• Regan, Geoffrey (1992). The Guinness Book of Decisive Battles. Canopy Books. 
• Saunders, J. J. (1971). The History of the Mongol Conquests. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0-8122-1766-7. 
• Sicker, Martin (2000). The Islamic World in Ascendancy: from the Arab conquests to the siege of Vienna. Praeger Publishers. 
• Soucek, Svatopluk (2000). A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge University Press. 
• Jackson, Peter (2005). The Mongols and the West. Pearson Longman. 

External links

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Coordinates: 47°58′39.89″N 20°54′47.85″E / 47.9777472°N 20.9132917°E / 47.9777472; 20.9132917