The Ottoman Empire won a decisive victory at Mohacs on 29 August 1526, annihilating the army of the kingdom of Hungary in under two hours. King Louis II died in the rout and the Hungarian nobility was cut down almost to a man; the defeat opened the way for 150 years of Ottoman power in the heart of Europe.
On 29 August 1526, on a plain by the Danube near Mohács2, the army of the kingdom of Hungary charged the Ottoman host of Suleiman the Magnificent and was annihilated in under two hours. The young King Louis II died in the rout, the Hungarian nobility was cut down almost to a man, and one of the great kingdoms of central Europe simply ceased to function. Mohács opened the way for 150 years of Ottoman power in the heart of Europe.
A kingdom in the Ottoman path
For a century the Ottomans had pushed up the Danube, and after taking Belgrade in 1521 the road into Hungary lay open3. In 1526 Suleiman the Magnificent marched north with a large, well-drilled army built around his janissary infantry and a powerful artillery train. The kingdom of Hungary, divided among its magnates and slow to gather, could raise only a fraction of that strength in time4 to meet him.
Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in profile, a portrait from the workshop of Titian, painted around 1530. Public domain
A doomed charge
The Hungarians under King Louis II and the warrior-archbishop Pál Tomori chose to give battle on the plain of Mohács before their full forces or their Transylvanian allies had arrived1. Trusting in the shock of their heavy cavalry3, they charged the Ottoman line. The first charge drove in the Ottoman forward troops, but as the knights pressed on they came up against the janissaries and the chained ranks of Ottoman guns.
Hungarian knights clash with Ottoman horsemen, a woodcut from a news pamphlet printed in Leipzig in the autumn of 1526, weeks after the battle. Public domain
In under two hours a kingdom lost its king, its army and its future.
Annihilation
Ottoman artillery and massed handgun fire shattered the Hungarian charge, and the attack collapsed into a rout. The battle was over in perhaps an hour and a half. King Louis II, fleeing the field, drowned in a swollen stream1; with him died bishops, magnates and the flower of the Hungarian nobility. Thousands of prisoners were killed in the days that followed.
Map of the battle of Mohács on 29 August 1526, from József Bánlaky's military history of the Hungarian nation, 1930: the Hungarian army on the plain by the Danube and the Ottoman army arriving from the south. Public domain
The partition of Hungary
Hungary never recovered. With no king and no army, the kingdom broke apart: the Habsburgs claimed the west and north, the Ottomans occupied the centre5, and Transylvania became a separate principality under Ottoman overlordship. Mohács is remembered in Hungary as a national catastrophe, the day the medieval kingdom died6 and central Europe was opened to the Ottomans.
The Finding of the Body of King Louis II, painted by Bertalan Székely in 1860. The young king drowned in a stream as he fled the field. Public domain
Frequently asked questions
When and where was the Battle of Mohács?
It was fought on 29 August 1526 on a plain near Mohács in southern Hungary, by the Danube, during the Ottoman-Hungarian Wars.
Who fought at Mohács and who won?
The Ottoman Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent decisively defeated the kingdom of Hungary under King Louis II and Archbishop Pál Tomori.
How did King Louis II die?
Fleeing the lost battle, the young king drowned in a swollen stream, reportedly weighed down by his armour. He left no heir, which deepened the succession crisis that tore Hungary apart.
Why was the battle so one-sided?
Hungary met the Ottomans before gathering its full strength or its Transylvanian allies, and its heavy-cavalry charge broke against disciplined janissaries, massed handguns and Ottoman artillery. The battle lasted under two hours.
Why does Mohács matter?
It destroyed the independent kingdom of Hungary, which was then partitioned between the Habsburgs, the Ottomans and Transylvania, and it opened central Europe to about 150 years of Ottoman power.
Sources and notes
Numbered notes in the text point to the works below.
Géza Perjés, The Fall of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary: Mohács 1526 - Buda 1541 (Social Science Monographs / Atlantic Research and Publications, 1989). ↩
István Brodarics, De conflictu Hungarorum cum Solymano Turcarum imperatore ad Mohach historia verissima, eyewitness account by the Hungarian chancellor, 1527; gives the Hungarian strength at about 25,000. ↩
Pál Engel, The Realm of St Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895-1526 (I.B. Tauris, 2001). ↩
