Béla IV. (Hungary)

Béla IV.

Béla IV.Lithograph by Josef Kriehuber after a drawing by Moritz von Schwind , ca.1828

Béla venerabilis (* November 1206 , † May 3, 1270 on the Rabbit Island ( Margaret Island ) near Buda ) from the Arpaden family was from 1235 as Béla IV. King of Hungary and as Bela III. in personal union also King of Croatia and from 1254 to 1258 Duke of Styria .

Life

Béla was the son of King Andreas II and his wife Gertrud and the brother of Elisabeth of Thuringia .

The most important event in Bélas IV's reign was the invasion of a Mongol army under Batu , the khan of the Golden Horde . After the conquest of the Kievan Rus (1240), the most important Russian principality, the Mongols overran Halitsch-Volhynia and attacked Poland and Moravia in the north and Hungary in the south in two pillars . Khan Batu and Subutai led the main Mongolian force in the south to the Hungarian capital, Ofen . On April 11, 1241, the Hungarians were defeated under Béla IV in the battle of Muhi . Following this, the Mongolian departments reunited on Hungarian territory. The escaping Béla was pursued by the Mongols as far as the Croatian Mediterranean coast . After the unexpected death of the great khan Ögedei , Batu broke off his campaign and withdrew with his troops towards the east. By then, however, they had already depopulated large parts of Hungary in massacres. It is estimated that of the two million people who are believed to have lived in Hungary in 1240, half fell victim to the Mongol storm and a further half a million died in the course of the famine and epidemics that followed. The devastating event for the country is also known as tatárjárás in Hungary .

In the following years, Béla began to rebuild his country. To do this, he brought settlers into the country, initially mainly from France and Wallonia , but later mainly from the German Rhineland . Other settlers came from the immediate neighboring countries. As early as 1239, Cumans fleeing the Mongols had been settled between the Danube and Tisza . The army built up after the Mongol invasion and with which the king undertook his subsequent campaigns consisted primarily of them. In addition, Béla launched an extensive castle and town-building program, in which the settlers also helped and which promoted the expansion of the power of the Hungarian oligarchy, which should ultimately culminate in the formation of petty kingdoms from 1301 . The new concept in town planning was that the towns were surrounded by stone walls. Because the lack of such fortified cities was one reason for the success of the Mongolian conquest. On November 16, 1242, he gave Zagreb the title of a free royal city with the Golden Bull ( Croatian zlatna bula ) . Virovitica received the status of a free royal city as early as 1234 .

After Duke Friedrich II of Austria and Styria had been killed in the Battle of the Leitha in 1246 , Béla tried to obtain his ducal title, which he wanted to transfer to the allied Prince of Halitsch-Volhynia (Galicia), but this was unsuccessful . After Ottokar II had prevailed in Austria in 1251 , Béla concluded the Peace of Oven with him in 1254 and even entered into a close alliance with him in the Peace of Vienna in 1261 .

progeny

With Maria Laskaris of Nicaea :

• Kinga (Kunigunde) of Hungary , saint of the Catholic Church since 1999, (* 1224; † 1292), ∞ Boleslaw V of Poland (* 1226; † 1279)
• Anna of Hungary (* 1226), ∞ Rostislaw, Prince of Kiev (* 1210, † 1264), their daughter Kunigunde von Halitsch married King Ottokar II. Přemysl of Bohemia
• Elisabeth of Hungary (* 1236; † 1271), ∞ Heinrich XIII. , Duke of Bavaria (* 1250; † 1289/90)
• Stephen V , King of Hungary, Croatia and Dalmatia (* 1240; † 1272)
• Margaret of Hungary (* 1242; † 1270), saint
• Jolenta Helena (* around 1244; † after 1303), ∞ Bolesław von Kalisch (* after 1221; † 1279), their daughter Hedwig von Kalisch married Władysław I. Ellenlang
• Constance of Hungary, ∞ Lev Danylovych , Prince of Halitsch;

literature

• János M. Bak: Béla IV . In: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe . Volume 1. Munich 1974, pp. 174-176
• Bela IV. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 3 : Austria - Bisectrix . London 1910, p. 662 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : Béla IV.  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Béla IV - king of Hungary. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . (English). 
• Béla IV. In the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vjesnik. »Zlatna bula« - temelj razvoja Zagreba kroz stoljeća ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Croatian) 

predecessor	Office	successor
Andreas II./I.	King of Hungary 1235–1270	Stephan V./VI.
Andreas II./I.	King of Croatia, Dalmatia and Rama 1235–1270	Stephan V./VI.