The Battle of Muhi

What to know about the Battle of Muhi?

The medieval Hungarian state suffered one of its worst defeats at the Battle of Muh in 1241. The army led by Batu Khan dealt a devastating blow to the armies of Béla IV. The Hungarian king, who had fled to Trau, rebuilt the plundered country after the Mongols had withdrawn. The short but devastating Mongol rule became part of national memory as the Tatar invasion.

The site of the most serious military defeat of the medieval Hungarian state before Mohács was the battlefield near Muhi. The Mongol invasion of 1241-42 became part of Hungarian national memory as the Tatar invasion, and the unexpected defeat at Muhi became a symbolic event of the loss of the country.

The Tartar main forces were camped in northeastern Hungary. The Hungarian army led by Béla IV was advancing towards them, pursuing the Tartar outposts. The decisive clash took place on 10-11 April 1241 near the river Sajó, near present-day Muhi (the clash between the Hungarian main force and the Séker camp, which resulted in the destruction of the Mongol army, took place on the 11th). The Hungarian forces numbered between 20-25,000 men, while the Mongol army numbered between 30-35,000.

The king did not want to rush the crossing of the Sajó, camped on the west side and probably wanted to defeat the enemy in a decisive battle the next day. He knew that one of the Tartars' greatest strengths was their extreme mobility, so they camped together, defending themselves with chariot castles. The next day, it was primarily this entrenched position that caused the army's defeat, although many historians do not consider the camp to have been a mistake in itself, and in fact, Béla's choice of location was justified for several reasons

A Russian ("Ruthenian") prisoner who had escaped to the Hungarians brought news of the Tartars' plan to attack. The king's brother, Kalman, and one of the country's archbishops, Ugrin, led a unit that surprised the Tatars crossing the bridge over the Sajó River, and probably inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. They certainly forced them to return.

The battle was later recorded in Chinese annals. According to these, many Tatar warriors died in the first battle at the bridge, several of the Khan's bodyguards in the cavalry fell, and Batu lost one of his leaders, Bakatu. The Chinese source also reports that the Khan was considering suspending the operation, but was persuaded by Subodai (Subodai) to launch an encircling attack. Carpini, the papal envoy to the Tartars, also reported a hill where masses of their fighters lost during the Hungarian campaign were buried. Most of the dead were presumably taken home by the Tatars from the area around the battle site of Muhi.

"At midnight they arrived at the bridge, and behold, some of the Tatars had already crossed it. When the Hungarians saw them, they immediately rushed upon them, and, fighting with them bravely enough, killed most of them, and drowned others in the river, pinning them to the bridge."
(Spalatói Tamás)

In the end, however, most of the victims were Hungarians, as Batu Khan accepted his leader's proposal and led another, but now successful, night attack. Unfortunately, the princes of Kalmán overestimated their victory at the bridge, thinking it a decisive battle and retired, except for the bridge guards, although the heavy cavalry could only assert their military strength by dressing up and standing in line. The bridge guards might have been able to defend themselves successfully against a smaller enemy force, but there the Khan led the Tartar attack, and the nomadic warriors crossed the Sajo in other places.

This was a possibility the Hungarians had not anticipated. Sejban's forces found a ford, but Sübetej's failed, and his forces crossed the river with a makeshift bridge, albeit after a delay.

There was another desperate attempt by the Hungarians to stop the enemy after this. Some later writings on the battle (textbooks, books for students) omit this resistance, as with the first attempt by the Tatars to cross the Sajo, portraying the battle as being only about the encirclement of the camp and the massacre that followed, although this was undoubtedly the most important part of the battle. It was the smaller forces led by Kalman and Ugrin who fought to defend the camp, and it was also the time when the Knights Templar who fought on our side bled to death. The Tartars then surrounded the Hungarian sect camp.

"Like a flock of sheep, they have confined themselves to a narrow hole."
(Batu Khan on the Hungarian army destroyed in the Battle of Muhi)

In the confined space, in the thick arrow shower, the Hungarian army could not deploy, and the battle was certainly made more difficult by panic. The Tartars opened the way for the fugitives, hoping to easily capture the king. The extent of the defeat and loss of the Hungarian forces is shown by the fact that both archbishops of the country, three bishops, the bishop, the governor, the magistrate and many other ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries remained on the battlefield. However, the king and part of the army did break out successfully.

."And the bodies lay on the ground like herds of grazing cattle, sheep or pigs in the desert, or stones hewn for building in the quarry."

(Rogerius)

By the end of 1241, the Mongol conquerors ruled the north and east of the country. Bela IV and his family fled first to Prince Frederick of Austria and then to Dalmatia.

In the second half of January 1242, a united army of Tatars led by Batu Khan crossed the frozen Danube. Of the settlements attacked, the castles of Esztergom and Székesfehérvár, and the monastery of Pannonhalma were able to repel the siege successfully. Shortly afterwards, the conquerors unexpectedly withdrew from the country.

The Tatar Invasion

A rich tradition of the Tatar invasion has developed in Hungarian folk memory, but a significant part of it is not related to the great campaign, but to the "second Tatar invasion" of 1285 and the invasions that lasted until the second decade of the 18th century. During the Turkish wars, Tatar troops fought and looted alongside the Turkish armies, and the experience and fear of this fuelled and sustained for centuries the folklore of fleeing and hiding from the 'dog-headed Tatars'.

But it is important to stress that this is not an isolated phenomenon. The ethnographer Ilona Dobos pointed out that the pejorative term "dog-headed" was used throughout Europe to describe various horse-ridden peoples invading from the East, including the Huns and the Hungarians.

The main Tatar force, led by Batu, reached the country through the Vereckei Pass in the spring of 1241. The troops of the Nadar defending the pass suffered a crushing defeat. A few days later, the Tartar outposts were already destroying the area around Pest and Vác. Smaller clashes also took place with the gathering Hungarian armies.

Batu Khan

The Mongolian and Hungarian main forces met at the Sajó river, in the Muhi area. Historians still argue about the size of the armies, but they agree that the Mongol army invading the Carpathian Basin was at most twice the size of the Hungarian army. There are also scholars who believe that the two armies at Muhi were of equal strength. Batu Khan, the brilliant commander, immediately recognised the unfavourable position of the Hungarian army. On 11 April 1241, crossing the river, he surrounded the Séket camp, almost annihilating the hordes of Béla IV, who escaped the Mongol ring only with great luck. Historians also differ in their opinions about the loss of the Hungarian army, but in historical memory Muhi has become a symbol of total annihilation.

IV. Béla

Soon after his accession to the throne in 1235, King Béla IV had to face a threat of unimaginable magnitude, the invasion of the Mongol conquerors of Inner Asia. Although Friar Julianus, a Dominican monk in search of Magna Hungaria, brought news of the threat to Hungary as early as late 1236, Béla IV, weakened by power struggles with the overlords, was not prepared to face the most powerful army of the age. The reception of the Kuns fleeing the Mongols in 1239 led to further internal tensions.

After all, the settlement of the Kuns, who had previously fought against the Hungarians, was greeted with serious hostility, as the king was suspected of wanting to use the war-torn soldiers of Prince Kötöny against the lords. The rapid successes of the Mongols in Hungary in March 1241 and their almost unimpeded advance led to suspicions that the Kuns were colluding with the armies of Batu Khan, and an angry mob in German-inhabited Pest killed Kötöny and his entourage. Afterwards, the outraged and not inconsiderably powerful Kuns marched southwards, ravaged several settlements, defeated two Hungarian armies and left the country. Béla IV was left without help, as the Austrian Prince Frederick had also withdrawn from Hungary at the same time as the Kuns.

Béla IV. the second founder of the country

In the Hungarian historical consciousness, Béla IV still plays the role of the second founder of the country. This position is based on the belief that after a year of Tatar invasion the country was almost completely depopulated and the king had to rebuild the state from scratch. In the wake of the Lamentable Song of Master Rogerius, a canon of Vratislav, who was born in southern Italy, and the letters of Béla IV, it was for a long time generally accepted in the collective memory of Hungary, and later in national historiography, that half of the country's population had perished in the Tatar invasion. This view was disputed by such eminent medievalists as István Szabó, Jenő Szűcs, Erik Fügedi, Gyula Kristó and Pál Engel. According to them, Hungary's population loss must have been 15-20%, and only in the poorly defensible lowland areas occupied for a longer period of time could it have exceeded this rate. Even so, it was the largest loss of life in Hungary's 1100-year history, comparable only to the impact of the plague epidemics that struck Western Europe in the Middle Ages.

Source of the page :

Muhi is a small settlement in the Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county of Hungary, the site of one of the most important events in Hungarian history. The name of the village is closely linked to the Battle of Muhi, which took place on 11-12 April 1241 between the Mongol Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary.

Muhi is located at the crossroads of the M30 road, next to the 35 motorway towards Tiszaújváros-Miskolc.

The monument is free to visit.

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Contact

Mayor's Office
3552 Muhi, Rákóczi street. 2.