Battle of Pressburg

In the Battle of Pressburg , the Bavarian army, led by Margrave Luitpold of Bavaria , was defeated on July 4, 907 by the Hungarians under their Grand Duke Árpád . As a result of this battle, the area of the later so-called " Ostmark " ( Marcha orientalis ) slipped out of control by the East Franconian Empire and the colonization efforts in this area came to a standstill for around half a century.

Starting position

After the military successes that Margrave Luitpold of Bavaria had achieved in the years 900 and 901 against Hungarian detachments laden with loot and moving home, in 907 he gathered a large force in the border fortress of Ennsburg , which was built shortly after 900 , to join him at the beginning of summer allegedly to advance three army detachments into the territory of the Hungarians. The aim of this campaign is likely to have been at least a permanent security of the Bavarian east against the Hungarian invaders, but possibly the margrave also pursued more far-reaching plans, such as the conquest of Hungarian territory.

Course of the battle

According to the sources, the decisive battle, " about the course of which almost nothing is known ", was fought near Brezalauspurc , a place that is mostly equated with today's Bratislava ( German : Pressburg or Pressburg , Hungarian : Pozsony ). It is assumed that the Hungarians, in accordance with the combat tactics of the steppe peoples , avoided a head-on clash with the much better-equipped Bavarians and instead harassed them continuously with rapid cavalry attacks in which they showered their opponents with a hail of arrows from afar. Finally, the Hungarians seem to have succeeded in encircling the Bavarian army and in this way almost completely destroyed it. In addition to Margrave Luitpold, Archbishop Thietmar von Salzburg , Bishops Udo von Freising , Zacharias von Säben-Brixen as well as 19 counts and most of the Bavarian army were also killed in this battle .

The American medievalist Charles R. Bowlus takes an alternative view of the location of the battle . He localized Brezalauspurc , the fortress of the Slavic Duke Brazlavo, due to topographical, military-historical and tactical conditions in today's Zalavár ( Mosapurc ). He thinks that the Bavarian army had ventured deep into Hungarian territory in an attempt to relieve the ducal castle , which was presumably destroyed by the Hungarians , but underestimated that they were in terrain that offered the Hungarian cavalry warriors optimal combat conditions. Through their classic maneuvers, such as B. pseudo escapes, the Hungarians may have succeeded in persuading Bavarian contingents to pursue the supposedly defeated enemy, thereby breaking up their closed front and gradually annihilating the pursuers. Accordingly, the annihilation of the Bavarians would have dragged on over a longer period of time and the date of the battle usually given would only indicate the day on which the Bavarian army had finally ceased to exist as a combat formation. According to other research results, three battles were supposed to have taken place near Pressburg, on July 4th and 5th with the Bavarian army divisions marching separately north and south of the Danube and on August 9th with the troops of the Moravian Empire , which were in a source as allies of Bavaria are called. According to this interpretation, the final fall of the Moravian Empire is related to the battle of Pressburg.

consequences

The Marcha orientalis had to be surrendered without a fight after the battle up to the Enns , the colonization of this area largely came to a standstill and Eastern Franconia was again wide open to Hungarian invasions . Duke Arnulf the Evil of Bavaria was able to prevent the Hungarian invasions into Bavaria by treaty, but it was not until Otto the Great was finally released from the latent danger through the battle on the Lechfeld in 955 . The borderline that had stretched from the time of Charlemagne to the catastrophe of 907 to Lake Balaton or even beyond was never reached again.

literature

Rudolf Hiestand : Pressburg 907. A turning point in the history of the East Franconian Empire? In: Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 57, 1994, pp. 1-20 ( online ).
Roman Zehetmayer (Ed.): Fateful year 907. The battle near Pressburg and early medieval Lower Austria . Lower Austrian regional archive, St. Pölten 2007, ISBN 978-3-901635-11-3 (catalog for the exhibition of the same name by the Lower Austrian regional archive, July 3 to October 28, 2007).

Remarks

↑ Review of Fateful Year 907 by Roman Deutinger , accessed on October 18, 2011.
^ Charles R. Bowlus: The battle on the Lechfeld. With a foreword by Stefan Weinfurter. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2012, ISBN 978-3-7995-0765-3 , p. 127f. See also: Charles R. Bowlus: Franks, Moravians and Magyars. The Struggle for the Middle Danube, 788-907. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1995, ISBN 978-0-8122-3276-9 .

[1] Review of Fateful Year 907 by Roman Deutinger , accessed on October 18, 2011.

[2] Charles R. Bowlus: The battle on the Lechfeld. With a foreword by Stefan Weinfurter. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2012, ISBN 978-3-7995-0765-3 , p. 127f. See also: Charles R. Bowlus: Franks, Moravians and Magyars. The Struggle for the Middle Danube, 788-907. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1995, ISBN 978-0-8122-3276-9 .