The Fall of The Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526 - Buda 1541

CHAPTER VII
OPERATIONS UP TO THE BATTLE

The Fall of Petervarad and Ujlak.The Ottoman Army Reaches the Drava

As already mentioned, on June 19, during the advance along thevalley of the Morava, Grand Vezir Ibrahim was instructed by thesultan to capture Petervarad. According to Ottoman sources thecastle was a "stumbling block" along the "highway of the holystruggle" [401] by which we must understand that it closed off access tothe Danube, hampering the movements of the fleet. Moreover, itcould endanger the supply lines if by-passed and left in the rear ofthe Ottoman armies (see Map No. 6). Thanks to reconnaissanceconducted by Bali Beg, the Ottoman high command obtained thefollowing correct information about the Hungarians: on July 8 theking was still in Buda, over 1,000 troops were stationed at the castleof Petervarad, and the "accursed priest", Tomori, was in the vicinitywith 2,000 soldiers [402]

Ibrahim launched the siege of the castle on July 14 with theRumelian army, the 2,000 janissaries assigned to him, the 150artillery pieces, and the flotilla. Once under the castle they immediately started constructing the siege trenches and battery positionsand soon, together with the artillery, launched a barrage. On July 17the Anatolian army joined the besiegers. The garrison of the castleheld out bravely and made a few sallies. It repelled the assaults ofthe Ottomans repeatedly and inflicted on them significant losses.The Ottomans were able to take the castle on July 28 only afterundermining and blowing up one of the bastions and storming itthrough the breach. [403] With only a handful of men on the northernbank of the Danube Tomori could not come to the rescue of thedefenders. By this time the troops of the bishop of Pecs, of the chapter of Esztergom, and of the abbey of Szekszard were all in hiscamp, to be joined later by Peter Perenyi and his banderium; yet hisforces still numbered no more than 4,000.[404]

It seems the Ottoman command wanted to present the union ofthe forces from Croatia and Transylvania with the royal forces bydispatching the army of Ibrahim with extraordinary urgency fromPetervarad to Ujlak, the siege of which was launched as ear]y asAugust 1. It was undertaken with the same generous expenditure ofmateriel as that of Petervarad. The defenders of this much weakercastle were compelled to surrender in a week. [405]

In the meantime, smaller units captured the castles of the Sremone by one, sometimes even without a fight, because the garrisonsfled rather than await the arrival of the enemy. Thus the roadtowards the Drava lay open. Touching upon Sotin, Vukovo, andBorovo, the army reached Eszek on August 14 [406] The ships arrivedthere at the same time or shortly thereafter, as we know from one ofBurgio's reports. [407] The fact that the Ottomans began to build thebridge "in a great hurry" as soon as they reached Eszek also indicates important it was for the Ottoman command to advance asrapidly as possible. The bridge was ready by the 19th; the crossingbegan on the 21st, went on continuously, and was completed by the23rd. The bridge was dismantled or burnt down while the army wason its way to the river Karasso. [408]

After the fall of Petervarad Tomori moved to Bacs. A few dayslater he proceeded to the mouth of the river Karasso and, crossingthe Danube, stopped somewhere in the area of Baranyakisfalud andHercegszollos, sending only smaller patrols on detail to the Drava.

Where to Fight the Battle? Conflict between Court and Notability

We have already mentioned that since the Hungarian government was well aware that it would not be able to hold up theOttomans either at the Sava or at the Drava, it decided to fight apitched battle. It may be assumed that Mohacs had been selected asthe battlefield from the start. The letters of Louis II indicate that hewanted to move further southward, leaving Tolna behind, and we also know that in the last week of June the palatine asked the kingto send money and troops to Mohacs. [409]

It is possible, however, that the king accepted this p]an only underpressure from the military council; in reality, along with his immediate entourage, he wanted either to avoid battle altogether, or to fightit much further to the north, awaiting the arrival of the forces fromCroatia and Transylvania and of the foreign mercenaries. Naturally this line of thinking implied that the southern parts, or an evenlarger portion of the country, would have to be forfeited. It is impossible to arrive at a precise assessment of these different intentionsbecause of the contradictions and the chronological inaccuracies inthe sources available to us. At any rate all signs indicate deepdivisions between the court and the nobility.

To begin with, the king's decision to wait so long in Buda needs tobe explained. He left on July 20, according to Burgio, on the 23rd,according to Brodarics. [410] He was supposed to have reached Tolnathree weeks earlier. Presumably the reason for the delay was notmerely that it took a long time to form the royal banderium becauseof a lack of funds, as Burgio maintains, or that the nobility likewisereached Tolna with\ considerable delay, but also the fact that theking and his entourage were becoming increasingly convinced thatno battle must be fought before uniting all possible forces. Somenobles seem to have got wind of this dilatory plan, which causedunrest in their ranks. After describing the king's lack of preparedness, Burgio's report of July 5 read:

My opinion is rather that His Majesty will retreat, and we will end up by losing even the areas on this side of the Drava.... It cannot be denied that His Majesty's life is in danger. If they do not go down to the battlefield he will fall into the hands of his own subjects, and that could end only badly, for no one would hesitate to blame him and his advisers for the fall of the country. But if His Majesty does go down to fight all the w ay to the Drava, he would be poorly equipped and ill prepared and I dare say that in addition to the dangers from the enemy his own subjects would also present a threat, because everyone is dissatisfied with him. Especially the voivode Szapolyai and his followers are against him and--it is strongly suspected--they are in cahoots with the Turks. So his Majesty will have no other recourse than to flee the country. [411]

It is curious that Burgio wrote this report after the session of thediet at which the nobility unanimously backed the king, grantinghim plenipotentiary powers and leasing \0lerboczi in the lurch.Either Burgio was wrong or, if not, there was a sudden change in themood of the nobility. The only thing one can think of is that thecourt's military projects had aroused the distrust of the nobility.Incidentally, there is no foundation to Burgio's remark about Szapolyai's attitude and intentions. From our point of view what matters were the hesitations of the king: should he remain in Buda or goto war?

Nor can we know which party, the court or the nobility, wasresponsible for the delay of the assembly at Tolna. Brodarics wrotethat the king advanced towards Tolna slowly, hoping that otherswould "join him along the way." [412] This, however, seems most unlikely, if only because most of the nobility, coming from differentregions of the country, would not use the Buda-Tolna road. We alsoknow from Burgio that the Palatine himself told the king that thenobility would go to war only once the king was on his way. [413] InBurgio's report of July 8 we again find hints that the court wantedthe king to remain in Buda. Although the royal banderium was notyet outfitted, in Burgio's opinion, "it would be better for the king toproceed than to await the arrival of the Turks in Buda." [414]

These clues jibe with the reluctance shown by the king to getinvolved in battle, and the fantastic project of a campaign againstBulgaria and Serbia which he entertained during these very weeks;only in the days immediately preceding his departure from Buda didhe definitely give up on this project. Some light is shed upon thesecret intentions of the king by Burgio's report of August 5:

The king told me he will go down to Tolna and will prevent the Turks from crossing the Drava. Failing this he would like to withdraw to Slavonia, for two reasons: first, because the bishop of Zagreb and the ban of Croatia, Ferenc Batthyany, are in Slavonia and he considers them his most loyal men, and because this is where he has least to fear from the intrigues of his subjects, moreover, because in this province he and Archduke Ferdinand have a good many castles.... [415]

The king reached Tolna on August 6 and remained there until the 13th. .According to Brodarics, "they held protracted debates" there.Once again the palatine was instructed to hurry and to reach theDrava before the enemy to prevent his crossing. Some magnates,however, refused, while others referred to their privileges and theirright, as great lords, to fight only under the banner of the king; inshort, the idea of defending the Drava line was dropped. The palatine had already reached Mohacs, while the others remained behindtalking about privileges. Brodarics tells us that the king declared inthe general assembly:

"I can see that everyone is using my person as an excuse.... I accepted this great danger personally exposing my own life to all the fickleness of fortune, for the sake of the country and for your welfare. So that none may find an excuse for their cowardice in my person and so that they would not blame me for anything, tomorrow, with the help of God omnipotent, I will accompany you to that place w here others will not go without me." Then the king issued orders to set off on the following day, although there were some who, well aware of the dangers involved, tried to dissuade him from this undertaking, but in vain. [416]

Burgio, on the other hand, provides the following account:

the king sent Ambrus Sarkany from Tolna to Eszek to defend the castle and prevent the Turks from throwing a bridge across the Drava, by way of troops he ordered part of the papal infantry to accompany him. His Majesty also sent down Count Palatine Istvan Bathory, along with some lords, their banderia, and the soldiers from the provinces, while the archbishop of Kalocsa, who is now at Bacs, is to cross the Danube and join Sarkany and Bathory as well. [417]

Two days later he wrote: "The only news since the thirteenth,when I wrote my last letter, is that His Majesty ordered those lordsand noblemen from the provinces he had dispatched to Eszek previously, but had not gone, finally to get on their way; and now indeedthey are moving." [418]

There is diametrical contradiction between the accounts providedby Brodarics and by Burgio; according to the latter the noblemenfinally agreed to go--although almost certainly they did not go to theDrava, as we shall see. The problem common to both accounts is thatthere could have been no serious intent of defending the line of theDrava: as we have seen, at this time the Ottomans were much closer to the Drava than the Hungarians at Tolna. Thanks to his reconnaissance, Tomori knew with almost hourly precision where the Ottoman forces were and which way they were heading. Of course thecourt was kept duly informed.

While it is true that Brodarics knew precious little about militaryaffairs, he was surely not that inept at comprehending militarydiscussions. The debate must have been about whether or not tofight the battle. After all, in his very first sentence Brodarics statesthat the "king's continued advance" was also mentioned. The lastsentence of the king's outburst--"I will accompany you to the place~here others will not go without me"--points clearly to the fact thatthe main issue was whether to advance to meet the enemy, and notwhether to defend the Drava. The contradiction is so blatant thatone cannot help suspecting that Brodarics was silent about theessence of the debate because by describing the scene in such pathetic tones he meant to erect an immortal monument to the tragicfate of the young king.

Whatever was debated in Tolna, major decisions were not madeuntil the discussions at Bata on August 16. [419] The king summonedTomori, who was stationed at the Karasso, and appointed himtogether with Gyorgy Szapolyai as commanders-in-chief, with theproviso that should Janos Szapolyai and Frangepan arrive, theywould take over. The council also reached final decision about fighting the battle at Mohacs. We know this partly because, according toBrodarics, "the leaders left" right after the debate "in order todesignate a camp site near the town of Mohacs." Here we must addthat it was probably not just a matter of finding a camp site, butrather to reconnoiter thoroughly the prospective battlefield and itsvicinity. We also know, from Ottoman sources, that it was at Batathat they decided to fight the battle at Mohacs. Suleyman's clerknoted on August 19: "A scoundrel came here [to Eszek] from Buda,and brought the news that 'at the fifth stage after crossing theDrava, you will meet with the evil king." [420] The battlefield wasactually five days' march from the Drava, and the Ottomans indeedreached it five days after their crossing.

It was also decided that the troops along the Karasso would bebrought up to Mohacs. After Tomori and Perenyi explored the fieldat Mohacs they went to the Karasso. A strange scene took placethere. It is reported by Brodarics as follows:

After he arrived here and called together his soldiers and the commanders of his units, he informed them about the king's wish to pull back the camp, which was also his own wish. The soldiers, however, grumbled and objected to pulling back just when they were within reach of the enemy. They felt they had to confront the enemy and fight bravely, as true men ought.... They also insisted they knew that the formerly courageous and invincible army of the Ottomans had perished, first at the battle of Belgrade and then at the siege of Rhodes.... Let them isolate the king and all the brave warriors from the cowardly mass of priests and other war-dodgers bent on softening the king, so outstanding in body and in spirit, whom they wanted to spoil with their cowardice and their unmanly advice, in order to turn the brave youths into their own image. [421]

Several insights may be gained from this scene. First, it shows thelack of discipline among the soldiers, a lack, one should point out,which mirrored the anarchical conditions prevailing in society atlarge. Second, the soldiers, inspired resolve to fight is noteworthy.We already spoke of the high morale of the troops, especially thosefighting in the border areas, and how superior they felt to theOttomans. This morale was not due to lack of self-criticism or tooverconfidence, but rather to an awareness deriving from the successful skirmishes fought in the border areas over several generations. The reference to the losses suffered by the Ottomans in thebattles of the preceding year is also striking. Burgio's report of May30 had already made the same claim, almost word for word:

The archbishop of Kalocsa advises the king to leave for the border areas immediately, and he encourages everyone by saying that the Turkish army is large in numbers only, but is not well trained, the troops being too young and inexperienced in war because the Turks lost the flower of their soldiery on the island of Rhodes (where they had been fighting against the Knights of Saint John), as well as in other wars. [422]

This assessment must have originated with Tomori, the veryTomori who had felt that the struggle against the overwhelmingpower of the Ottoman Empire was hopeless and tried to talk the kinginto signing a peace. Most likely he meant to compensate for thenews regarding the might of the Ottomans; while he could notincrease the effectiveness of the Hungarian forces or improve itsequipment, at least he could enhance its morale. We shall see that hewould try to do so again at a critical moment.

From all this follows that the debates at Tolna centered not on thedefense along the Drava, but whether or not to engage the enemy ina decisive battle, and, if so, when and where. We have seen thenegative effect the court's hesitation had on the mood of the nobility.The reports on the discussions at Tolna only exacerbated matters.The troops knew about the proposed delay, for--as we know fromBrodarics's communication--the discussions were held in a "populous assembly." Thus when Tomori tried "to persuade them"--asBrodarics puts it--to draw back further, the troops were convincedthat the king's point of view had prevailed in the discussions and,even when Tomori assured them of his own commitment to theorder, refused to follow.

Hence the forces under the command of Tomori and Perenyiremained by the Karasso, while the other part of the army marchedsouthward to the field at Mohacs, where more and more units weregathering. The king himself remained at Ujfalva, immediately to thenorth of Mohacs. Then late one night the camp at Mohacs, andeventually the king himself, received a report from reconnaissancethat the bulk of the Ottoman forces had already crossed the Drava;at the same time the lords at the Mohacs camp requested thepresence of the ruler in order to discuss what was to be done. [423] Allthis must have taken place in the night of the 23rd to the 24th, for weknow the army of Rumelia and the janissaries of the sultan were onthe northern side of the river by the dawn of the 23rd; only the armyof Anatolia and the baggage train had yet to cross. The personbearing the news must have left at this time; since his path wasdifficult, often across the swampy terrain, even a good horsemanmust have needed 12-14 hours to cover the distance of 70 kmseparating the Drava from the Karasso, and from there 20-25 kmmore to Ujfalva.

The Fall of The Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohacs 1526 - Buda 1541