A thousand years of the Hungarian art of war

CHAPTER II

THE MONGOL INVASION OF 1241

Three centuries after the original conquest, Hungary looked much like any other feudal kingdom of Europe./1/ Although the throne was still inherited by the successors of Arpad, the authority and power of the king were greatly curtailed. The rich magnates cared less about the national security of the whole kingdom than about petty feudal quarrels with their fellow landlords. In 1222 the magnates forced King Andrew II to issue the Golden Bull, a document which determined the rights and duties of the king as well as of the magnates. It authorized the magnates to rebel against the king if he violated the resolutions of the Golden bull,/2/ and made the king only primus inter pares, first among equals. Andrew's son, Bela IV (1235-1270), tried, with the help of a handful of his supporters, to restore the king's former authority and power without much success. Thus, Hungary lived in a "happy feudal anarchy" at exactly the time when in Asia a new world power, the Mongol Empire, began to expand toward Europe.

The condition of military affairs closely resembled general conditions in this changing society. The king commanded two separate Hungarian armies.

The royal army, maintained by him, was supported by the treasury. The army was made up of free Hungarians who served in return for small land donations or for direct money payments for themselves and their descendants during their lifetimes./3/ They served in the forts of the borderlands or in the territories of the royal counties. Soldiers of the royal court and government officials also joined the royal army whenever they were needed. These troops of the royal army were Western-type heavy-armored cavalry soldiers. A smaller part of the royal army was made up of light cavalrymen from contingents of newly immigrated Petcheneg, Cuman and other nomadic tribes. The strength of the royal army was between 40,000 to 50,000 horsemen./4/

The second army under the king's command was the national

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army. It existed only on paper during times of peace. In wartime, but only in case of a national emergency, the king had the right to mobilize the entire male population. In such a case, existing feudal relations and obligations were suspended. Every Hungarian had to join the national army, obeying only the king's orders for the duration of the war. These inexperienced soldiers were, almost without exception, light cavalrymen of doubtful value in combat.

The Mongols (Tatars) before 1206 were only one of the many wandering nomadic tribes of Asia. In that year, the tribal assembly, the Kurtiltai, recognized their leader, Temujin, as Janghiz Khan, "very might lord."/5/ He had a genius for conquest and domination. By the time of his death in 1227, his empire extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Dnieper River, from the Nordic Sea to Tibet, from Kiev to the lower Danube. His son, Ogdai, continued the expansion toward the West. In 1224, Temujin's generals defeated the combined Russian-Cuman forces at the Kalka River. In 1236, the Bulgars were subjugated, and in 1240 Kiev was burned and its population massacred.

In 1241, the main groups of the Mongol army branched out. As one army under Orda Khan invaded Poland, it inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the combined forces of Duke Henry of Silesia and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order at Liegnitz. The second army, directed by Batu Khan, crossed the eastern Carpathians, while the third army followed the Danube from its lower branch to the West. All of these armies were to launch a converging attack on Hungary /6/ during the spring and summer months of 1241.

The Hungarians had first learned about the Mongol threat in 1229, when King Andrew granted asylum to some fleeing Russian boyars. In 1237, a Dominican friar, Julianus, who was to lead the Magyars (still living as nomads on the banks of the upper Volga) to Hungary, was arrested by the Mongols and sent back to King Bela with a letter from Batu Khan./7/ In this letter, Batu Khan called upon the Hungarian king to surrender his kingdom unconditionally to the Tatar forces or face complete destruction./8/ Bela did not reply. Two more Mongol messages were brought to Hungary: the first, in 1239, by the defeated Cuman tribes, who asked for and received asylum in Hungary, and the second, in February, 1241, by the defeated Polish princes.

Only now did King Bela call his magnates to join his army in defense of the country. He also asked the papacy and the Western European rulers for additional help./9/ Foreign help came in the form of a small knight-detachment under the leadership of Frederick, Prince of Austria, but they were too few to influence the

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outcome of the campaign. The majority of the Hungarian magnates did not believe in the seriousness of the Mongol danger; some of them perhaps even hoped that a defeat of the royal army would force Bela to discontinue his centralization efforts and thus strengthen their own power.

Although the Mongol danger was serious and real, Hungary was not prepared to deal with it, as in the minds of the people (who had lived free from nomadic invasions for the last few hundred years) a new invasion seemed impossible. The population was no longer a soldier population. Only the rich nobles were trained as heavy-amored cavalry. The Hungarians had long since forgotten the light-cavalry strategy and tactics of their ancestors, which were almost the same as those now used by the Mongols. They had also forgotten how their ancestors had been defeated at Augsburg in 955./10/ The Hungarian army (some 60,000 on the eve of the Battle of Muhi)/11/ was made up of brave individual knights without tactical knowledge, discipline, or talented, expert commanders. Inasmuch as the Hungarian army had no trained light cavalry at all, King Bela welcomed the Cuman king, Kotony, and his fighters. They were not only experts in nomadic warfare, but on two occasions they had already proved that they could fight successfully against the Mongols. But the sudden change from a migrating, warrior life to a civilized, settled, peaceful way of life was to traumatic for the Cumans. Soon a rumor began to circulate in Hungary that the Cumans were the agents of the Mongols. On the other hand, Batu Khan himself justified his invasion of Hungary because Bela had given asylum to the Cumans who were regarded as rebels and traitors in the Mongol Empire./12/ If this were true, then King Bela had taken an unnecessarily great risk which proved to be detrimental to his plans. When some hot-headed Hungarians attacked the Cuman camp and killed their king, the Cumans escaped to the south, looting, ravaging the countryside, and slaughtering the surprised Magyar population. The Austrian troops moved back to Austria shortly thereafter to "enlist more Western help." The Hungarians remained alone. At the end of March, 1241, the royal heavy-cavalry army moved from Buda toward the invading armies of Batu in order to stop the Mongol invasion. Lacking expert generalship, tactical training and, most importantly, any kind of discipline, it really was a group of individual fighters and knights rather than an army.

Arriving at the Hernad River without having been challenged to a fight by the Mongols, the army encamped on April 10, 1241. The area proved to be excellent for nomadic tactics. The many arms of the Hernad and Tisza Rivers and the numerous little forests and

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meadows made the terrain impracticable for the battle formation of a heavy-cavalry army. The Mongols began their attack the next night. Soon, it was clear that the Hungarians were losing the battle. The king escaped with the help of his faithful and brave bodyguard, but the rest of the army was either killed without mercy by the Mongols or drowned in the rivers while attempting an escape.

The Mongols now systematically occupied the Great Hungarian Plains, as well as the slopes of the northern Carpathian Mountains, and Transylvania. Where they found local resistance, they mercilessly killed the population. Where the people did not offer any resistance, they forced the men into servitude in the Mongol army and the women and children were killed or carried off. Still, tens of thousands avoided Mongol domination by taking refuge behind the walls of the few fortresses or by hiding in the huge, jungle-like forests or the large marshes alongside the rivers. The Mongols, instead of leaving already defenceless and helpless peoples behind and continuing their campaign through Pannonia to Western Europe, spent the entire summer and fall securing and "pacifying" the occupied territories. Then, during the winter, contrary to the traditional strategy of the nomadic armies which started campaigns only in spring-time, they crossed the Danube and continued their systematic occupation all the way to the Austrian borders and the Adriatic shores in Dalmatia.

During the spring of 1242, Ogdai Khan died. Batu Khan, who was one of the contenders to the imperial throne, returned at once with his armies to Asia, leaving the whole of Eastern Europe depopulated and in ruins. But Western Europe escaped unscathed.

The majority of Hungarian historians claim that Hungary's long resistance against the Mongols actually saved Western Europe. Western European historians almost unanimously reject this interpretation. They point out that the Mongols evacuated Hungary of their own free will, and that Western Europe was saved by the sudden death of Ogdai Khan, not by the heroic struggle of the Hungarians. For a proper evaluation we must review here the military aspects of the invasion. Let us first observe the Mongols.

Batu Khan organized three armies for the 1241 campaign. The northern army, which attacked Poland, consisted of about 40,000, light cavalrymen. The southern army probably had about the same strength, while the central army, under Batu Khan's personal command, numbered 60,000 light-cavalry soldiers./13/ Only when they wanted to occupy and hold a territory did a nomadic people use such force./14/ After the destruction of the Hungarian army at Muhi, the Mongol armies advanced to the Danube River. Instead of

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crossing it, they turned back to the interior of the country, criss-crossing the land and pacifying it by establishing garrisons and local administrative governmental centers./15/ During the winter of 1241-1242, instead of resting in winter quarters, the Mongols continued their campaign and systematically occupied Pannonia. Thus, to use a modern expression, they built a base for further strategic operations in Hungary. To the good fortune of Western Europe, at Ogdai's death, they withdrew to Asia.

The role of the Hungarians is now clear. If King Bela had capitulated at once, the Mongol armies, besides gaining a base for their strategic operations against the rest of Europe, would have been strengthened by the Hungarian army. Instead of losing time with the pacification of Hungary, they could have advanced at once into Western Europe. We know that the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor were fighting in Italy against the Pope and that the armies of the French and English kingdoms were severely weakened by expeditions to the Holy Land./16/ No force in Europe could have withstood a Mongol attack, either in 1241 or for many years to follow. It can safely be said that King Bela's decision to confront alone the overwhelming Mongolian forces saved Europe from being overrun in 1241 by the barbarian armies of Batu Khan.

BANDERIUM SYSTEM.

The Mongolian invasion taught the Magyars a simple lesson: although the Mongols had destroyed the countryside, the forts and fortified cities had survived. To improve their defence capabilities for the future, they had to build forts, not only on the borders but also inside the country. During the remaining decades of the 13th century and throughout the 14th century, the kings donated more and more royal land to the magnates with the condition that they build forts and take care of their defences.

Of course, the giving away of land decreased the royal income and led to the decline of the royal army's strength. To make up the losses, already in the 13th century the kings had begun to accept a new army system based on the banderia. A banderium had a minimum of 50 and a maximum of 1,000 soldiers who were hired, armed, and supplied by a landlord possessing the privilege of leading this unit under his own banner. Under the Anjou kings of Hungary, the banderia system was a flexible one which changed according to each king's needs. On many occasions, kings hired entire mercenary units under the command of a condottier captain (because the Hungarian nobility was not required to fight outside the borders, according to the military clauses of the Golden Bull /17/). Thus, the army organization remained in flux. The first unified banderia system was created under King Sigismund (1387-1437). In

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this new system, the number of soldiers serving in a banderium of the king was 1,000, while the number of soldiers in the magnates' banderia was 500./18/

The banderia of the king and of the main royal officials stood permanently. The soldiers were paid. Equipment, armament, and horses were supplied from the income of the royal salt monopoly. The soldiers were professional heavy-cavalrymen and on many occasions mercenaries. The garrisons of the free royal cities were also, on many occasions, permanently standing units, paid entirely or partially by the royal treasury.

The composition of the royal army was one-third heavy cavalry, one-third light cavalry, and the remaining one-third infantry. The number totalled between 60,000 and 70,000 soldiers./19/ Its strength was satisfactory against possible European enemies, but was insufficient against the mass armies of the Turks, or for a two-front war. Therefore, Hungary had to organize another army for such purposes.

The other, and we may add the greater part of the total Hungarian army was made up of banderia formed and organized only in case of national emergencies, when the noble insurrection was called. In this case, the insurrectionist army was made up of banderia of magnates, counties, cities and of the militia portalis.

A magnate organized his banderium at his own expense. He enlisted the lower nobles who already served him in some position in peacetime (familiares). The county's banderium included independent individual nobles who joined at their own expense. A city's banderium took in the population of the city. The number of banderia was prescribed by law. Cities had to provide the required number by hiring mercenaries in the event there were not enough available men./20/ Finally, every landowner had to arm a light-cavalryman after a certain number of jobbagy lot./21/ The number of required soldiers changed according to specific needs. For example, in 1453 one light-cavalryman was to be presented after each jobbagy lot. As the Turkish expansion came nearer to the Hungarian borders and Turkish soldiers began to raid Hungary, the requirements increased: in 1459, one soldier was required after every 20 jobbagy lots. Only four years later. in 1463, every ten jobbagy lots had to provide a light-cavalryman. In 1492 the requirement changed back to 20 jobbagy lots, but the soldier presented for the insurrection had to be a heavy-armored cavalry soldier./22/

Thus, the total strength of the Hungarian royal and insurrectional army amounted to about 250,000 soldiers. This seems a huge army, compared with the Western European armies./23/

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However, as we noted, only the royal army could be employed outside of Hungary. After deducting the troops needed to garrison and defend the forts and cities, the royal army alone usually averaged only 15,000 or 20,000 men./24/

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A thousand years of the Hungarian art of war