On 29 August 1526, on the plain south of Mohács by the Danube, the Ottoman army of Sultan Suleiman I destroyed the army of King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia. Late in the afternoon the Hungarian heavy cavalry charged, broke against the janissaries' volleys and the Ottoman guns, and was overwhelmed; the infantry left behind was almost wiped out. The twenty-year-old king drowned while fleeing. The battle opened the way to Buda, and began the partition of Hungary between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs.
A kingdom alone
By 1526 Hungary stood almost alone against the Ottomans. A history published by the Hungarian Ministry of Defence's Zrínyi Média notes that Charles V was busy with his war against France, Venice had made a truce with the Sultan, Poland was threatened by the Tatars, and only the Pope sent regular money. Suleiman left Istanbul in the last week of April, reached Belgrade on 30 June and took the Danube fortresses of Pétervárad and Újlak in July and August. Short of funds and divided, the Hungarian court was slow to mobilize, and no attempt was made to stop the Ottomans crossing the Drava between 21 and 23 August.1
Louis gathered his army at Mohács. The eyewitness chancellor István Brodarics counted about 25,000 men, a figure the Ministry history accepts and Britannica's 24,000 to 26,000 matches, though some historians have put the army at 50,000 to 60,000. The Ministry history estimates the regular Ottoman troops at no more than 60,000. The Transylvanian army of János Szapolyai and the Croatian cavalry never arrived.2
One charge
Pál Tomori, archbishop of Kalocsa and captain of the southern border, shared command with György Szapolyai after an unprecedented vote; neither had led an army of this size. According to Brodarics, the king himself argued for retreating, but the border troops threatened to turn on the camp if there was no battle. The Hungarians formed up at dawn on 29 August in two lines, with heavy cavalry on the wings and about 10,000 infantry in the center, and waited all day. The Ottomans came over the terrace above the plain in the afternoon.3
Between three and four o'clock Tomori ordered the charge, apparently hoping to rout the Rumelian corps before the rest of the Ottoman army formed up. The Ottoman cavalry gave way, the Hungarians took it for victory, and Tomori sent in the second line too. The janissaries' volleys stopped the horsemen in front of the guns, and by the time the Hungarian infantry arrived the Ottoman center and the Anatolian corps were in line at the foot of the terrace. Tomori was cut down trying to stop the retreat, and the infantry left on the field was almost destroyed.4
The death of a king
The Ministry history counts about 10,000 infantry and 4,000 cavalry killed, with seven prelates and twenty-eight barons. Louis II did not fall on the field but, it is said, drowned in a marsh as he fled. He was twenty years old and the last of the Jagiellon line to rule Hungary and Bohemia. The date of the battle is that of the Julian calendar, then still in use.5
Hungary divided
When the news reached Buda on 30 August, Queen Mary and her court fled at once. Suleiman entered Buda on 11 September, had it plundered and burned, and then withdrew south, leaving no garrison for the time being; the Ministry history sees the burning of Buda and Pest as the symbol of the fall of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. The death of the king without an heir split the kingdom: Louis's Bohemian and Hungarian crowns passed to the Habsburg Ferdinand I, and the country was divided between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs. The Habsburg history site Die Welt der Habsburger sees Mohács as the beginning of the Habsburgs' Turkish wars, which led to the sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683.6
The full story is told in our article on the Battle of Mohács, and the victor's life in our biography of Suleiman the Magnificent.
Also on this day
- 1622: Battle of Fleurus. In the Thirty Years' War, Córdoba's Spanish army blocked the Protestant mercenaries of Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick near Fleurus, in the Spanish Netherlands.
