Battle of Muhi
Contemporary depiction of the Battle of Muhi
| date | April 11, 1241 |
|---|---|
| place | Muhi , Hungary |
| output | Mongol victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
King Béla IV. |
|
| Troop strength | |
| According to ancient chronicles, 100,000 men, possibly significantly fewer | According to ancient chronicles, 100,000 men, possibly significantly fewer |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
According to ancient chronicles, 70,000 dead, possibly significantly fewer |
In the Battle of Muhi , the Mongols under Batu Khan and Subutai defeated the army of the Hungarian King Béla IV on April 11, 1241. His troops were trapped in a wagon castle on the western bank of the Sajó and almost completely destroyed, including most of the secular and ecclesiastical Senior class. Because of the battle on the river, it is also known as the Battle of the Sajo .
Course of the battle
With a cavalry army of 150,000 men, who carried up to 500,000 horses, Batu Khan first conquered the Russian cities. On their conquest to the west, the main division of the Mongolian army invaded Hungary over the Verecke pass . Shibani , a brother of Batu and then still a prince, commanded part of the force. Two days before the victory against Bela's troops, a second Mongolian troop contingent had already wiped out a German-Polish army of knights in the Battle of Liegnitz in 1241 .
Like the Silesians , the Hungarians fell for the tactics of the Mongols, who faked a retreat with the help of the Parthian maneuver . 70,000 of the 100,000 Hungarians, Cumans , Wallachians , Bohemians , Serbs and Teutonic Knights fighting together are said to have fallen.
According to the sources, only a few Hungarians managed to escape , including King Béla IV. First he fled via northern Hungary and Pressburg to the enemy Duke Frederick II of Austria , who stole the treasure he had carried and forced him to cede three border counties (Hungarian again in 1246). The king then withdrew to Croatia until the death of the great Mongol khan Ögedei (as far as the Adriatic Sea on the Dalmatian island of Trogir ), with the Mongol persecutors behind them , who plundered Split and threatened Trieste .
As a result, the Mongols crossed the frozen Danube , plundered the capital Buda , devastated Transdanubia and advanced to Wiener Neustadt .
Consequences of the Hungarian defeat
Béla's empire, especially the rural population, suffered from the devastation of the " Tatar Storm " until 1242 . Not only the Hungarian army, but the entire kingdom seemed to have been destroyed; historiography speaks of the “collapse” of Hungary. Large parts of the population of Hungary were enslaved and deported on death marches , unless they could flee starving into the swamps or into those few fortified cities that could withstand the Mongol besiegers and offer protection.
The Croatians were able to defeat a small advance detachment of the Mongols in 1242 after the area around Zagreb had been devastated, but they could not prevent the sacking of Dubrovnik (Ragusa). The Mongol armies, however, moved on to Bulgaria via Serbia and Montenegro , before returning to southern Russia in 1243 via what is now Romania , where Batu Khan founded his own empire. As a thank you for saving the Hungarian king, many Croatian cities received the golden bull for a free royal city.
literature
- Gustav Strakosch-Grassmann: The Mongol invasion of Central Europe in 1241 and 1242 . Wagner, Innsbruck 1893. Reprinted by University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan / London 1980, DNB 810843080
- Denis Sinor : Inner Asia and its contacts with medieval Europe . Variorum Reprint, London 1977, ISBN 0860780015
- Hansgerd Göckenjan : The Mongol Storm. Reports from eyewitnesses and contemporaries 1235–1250 . Styria, Graz 1985, ISBN 3-222-10902-8
- Frank Pleyer: The Battle of Mohi on April 11, 1241 . In: Siebenbürgische Semesterblätter 2 (1988), pp. 150–162, ISSN 0344-3418
- Marianne Tölle (Red.): The Mongol Storm: AD 1200–1300. Translated from the English by Ursula Maria Mössner. Time-Life Books, Amsterdam 1989, ISBN 90-6182-980-1
- Ulrich Schmilewski (Ed.): Wahlstatt 1241: Contributions to the Mongol battle near Liegnitz and its aftermath . Bergstadtverlag Korn, Würzburg 1991, ISBN 3-87888-057-X
- James Chambers: The devil's horsemen: The Mongol invasion of Europe . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1979. New edition: Phoenix, London 2003, ISBN 1842122436 . Castle Books, Edison (New Jersey, 2003)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Karlheinz Gleß: The horse in the military . Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin ³1989, ISBN 3-327-00694-6 , pp. 71–72.