The History of China - #188 - Mongol 13: O Lord, Why Are Thy Judgements So Deep?

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

King Bela IV of Hungary has a bit of a barbarian problem. You see, he let in some Cumans, but now some different barbarians are demanding that he give them back. So Bela does the sensible thing: he kills the Mongol emissaries. Batu Khan and General Subotai are less than pleased... Time Period Covered: c. 1239-1242 CE Major Historical Figures: Mongol Empire: Batu Khan [c. 1205-1255] General Subotai Ba'atur ("the Valiant") [c. 1175-1248] General Khadan [d. 125?] General Shiban [d. 1266] Kingdom of Greater Hungary: King Bela III [r. 1172-1196] King Andrew II [r. 1205-1235] King Bela IV [r. 1235-1265] Duke Coloman of Slavonia [d. 1241] Archbishop Ugolin of Kaolocsa [d. 1241] Duke Palatine of Hungary [d. 1241] Bishop Benedict of Oradea [d. 1241] Templar Master Rembald de Voczon [d. 1241] Archdeacon Thomas of Spalato [1200-1268] Master Roger of Torre Maggiore, Archdeacon of Varad [1205-1266] Cuman Tribes: Chieftain Khotan [d. 1140] Austria: Duke Frederick of Austria "the Quarrelsome" [d. 1245] Holy Roman Empire: Emperor Frederick II [r. 1220-1250] Conrad IV, King of Italy, Germany, the Romans, and Jerusalem [r. 1228-1254] Roman Catholic Church: Pope Gregory IX [r. 1227-1241] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast. Hey there, everyone.

As the coronavirus continues to make its circuit of old planet Earth, I hope that we're all doing our part to aid in its containment and the protection of those around us by staying inside, washing our hands, and wearing masks if you need to, and just generally making those tough but smart decisions for the good of yourself and everyone around you. No matter where you might be from or are now, we all share one world, and the virus doesn't check passports. So to maybe help out ever so little in keeping people safely indoors, this episode on the Mongolian conquest of Hungary, which was made to be one of the bonus Mongol episodes,

will be presented in full to everyone. That way you can at least a little bit forget about the problems of your own life in lockdown, and can instead focus on the problems of the citizens of Bella IV's Kingdom of Greater Hungary in 1241-1242, and be glad, at least, that you're not in their shoes. So stay safe, stay sane, and enjoy. On with the show. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Mongol XIII

O Lord, why are thy judgments so deep? Alas, then sudden disaster struck. Oh, what dire cruelty! Free Hungary came to be tributary. Oh, what pain! I am forced to use a sorrowful tone, tearfully lamenting upon this mournful and horrible manner. I have not addressed this matter in order to denounce or dishonor anyone, but rather for the sake of instruction, so they that read may understand,

who understand, believe, who understand, believe, who believe, observe, and who observe, perceive that the days of perdition are near and that the times are running towards the end. And all should know that I am not telling this without purpose because he who should fall into the hands of the tartars it were better for him not to have been born

and he will feel that he is the prisoner not of the Tartars, but of Tartarus. And I say this as one who has known it. I was among them for a time and half a time, and during that time death would have been a solace, for life was but a torture. From The Epistle to the Sorrowful Lamentation Upon the Destruction of the Hungarian Kingdom by the Tartars, by Master Roger of Torre Maggiore, Archdeacon of Varad, circa 1244. On the eve of the Mongolian invasion of the Kingdom of Hungary in the spring of 1242, it was a nation of perhaps two million people, ranging from the Carpathian and Transylvanian On the eve of the Mongolian invasion of the Kingdom of Hungary in the spring of 1242, it was a nation of perhaps two million people, ranging from the Carpathian and Transylvanian

mountain ranges of modern Romania in the south and east, to the Transdanubian mountains of the north, and virtually all the way to the Adriatic sea coast in modern Croatia. The heart of this Eastern European kingdom was known in Hungarian as Alföld, or the Greater Hungarian Plain. The Alföld was itself the largest single component of the even vaster Pusta, or Pannonian Steppe. It has been said that to look out on the steppe is rather like looking out over a seafloor that's had the water drained away.

Flat, gently rolling, mostly treeless grassland. And in the case of the Pusta, as with many steppe regions the world over, that is literally the case. The Pannonian Steppe was, some 10 million years ago, the Pannonian Sea, an extension of the Mediterranean known as the Paratethys Sea, that over time was cut off and isolated from the larger body, and eventually evaporated, its last remnant body drying up during the Pleistocene epoch in the last two million years or so. In the course of the 9th century CE,

a confederation of semi-nomadic peoples of the Ural Mountains, led by a tribe known as the Magyar, broke from their compact with the Khazar Khanate and struck westward, eventually coming across the Pusta. Its rolling grasslands made it ideal territory for their lifestyle of raising horses and livestock, and thus they set out to conquer it from the kingdom of Greater Moravia beginning around 895. By the year 900, Byzantine sources record that the Magyar and their allies, collectively calling themselves the Ten Tribes or Onogor, had pushed their way into the Pannonian plains, assimilating or enslaving the resident Slavic populations as they did so, and made it the core of an expanding state. As mentioned before, the rolling grasslands

of Pannonia was what had largely attracted the Hungarians to the region in the first place. Now, almost three and a half centuries later, those same features would attract the attention of another people of the steppe, the Mongol hordes of Ogedei Khan, under the twin commands of Batu Khan of the Golden Horde and General Subutai Baator, the last and greatest of Genghis Khan's personal paladins. They had identified in the course of their extensive surveillance and planning of this European conquest, correctly, it might be noted, that the Pannonian steppe would provide the Mongol armies not only with a matchless base of surveillance and planning of this European conquest. Correctly, it might be noted, that the Pannonian steppe would provide the Mongol armies not only with a matchless base of operations and resupply for their mounts and herds, but also provided a route of easy travel straight into the heart of Europe itself. Frank McGlynn notes, quote,

It was therefore a key area which should have been heavily defended by the nations of Western Europe, who instead fiddled while Hungary burned. That's not to say that the Hungarian armed forces should have needed much assistance themselves, at least on paper. It boasted one of the top-tier militaries of medieval Europe. It's knights the flower of medieval chivalry. Had it been united, the Hungarian military might have been able to go toe-to-toe with even the finest forces the Mongol Khanate could send against it.

As such, the very fact that it would wither and crumble so quickly in the face of the Mongol onslaught is worth further exploration. Since its very inception as a nation in the 11th century, the Hungarian royal succession had proved a constant point of contention and weakness, leaving the kingdom open to intervention and exploitation by its larger regional neighbors, such as Constantinople or the German emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. The reign of King Bela III, from 1172 to 1196, is frequently cited as a golden age for the Kingdom of Hungary. And yet it would be none other than his very son, the frivolous and unprincipled Andrew II from 1205 to 1235, who would fritter away what strength and unity Bela's rule had gathered, and leave the nation fractious and weak on the eve of the Mongol advance into Europe. To be clear, Andrew was decidedly not his father's choice of heir, and had been safely shunted off as the governor of Croatia

and Dalmatia while his brother, Emmerich, assumed the Hungarian throne upon their father's death. This snub did not, as you might imagine for one such as Andrew, sit well, and he spent much of the subsequent four years plotting against his brother in order to take the throne away from him. This plotting culminated in 1199 in the Battle of Rad, which saw Andrew, for all his delusions of grandeur, soundly defeated by Emmerich and forced into exile to Austria. Though the two officially made up with a papal intervention the following year, it seems that it was in name only, as upon Emmerich's death in 1204,

his own infant son and heir, Ladislaus, did not long survive, leading to Andrew's succession to the throne at long last in May 1205. His would be an amoral, unscrupulous, and treacherous reign. Though left an enormous sum of money by his father, for instance, it had been willed to him on the sole condition that he go crusading in the Holy Land. Andrew, however, simply took the money and then repeatedly delayed going, even when threatened with excommunication by Pope Innocent III. It wouldn't be until 1216 that, at the renewed behest of the new pope, Honorius III, he was finally goaded into actually mounting said expedition to the Holy Land as part

of the Fifth Crusade, for which he became known as Andrew of Jerusalem. It almost seems that this could have been a sarcastic title, however, as McLuhan writes that Andrew, quote, had barely arrived in the Holy Land before he was homeward bound again, end quote. As a result of his marriage to Lady Gertrude of Morania, Andrew sired three sons. The eldest would be named after his grandfather, Bella. The young Bella, in spite of being the heir to the throne, nevertheless despised his father from an early age. An animus that only increased when, following the assassination of his mother Gertrude, Andrew remarried in 1215. The king's new bride, Yolanda, was the niece of Henry of Flanders, the second emperor of the short-lived Latin Empire of Constantinople,

which had been founded after the Fourth Crusade, sacking of the city and forcing the Byzantines into exile in Nicaea and Epirus until 1261. Andrew hoped that such a marriage might lead to him becoming the emperor of Latin Constantinople in due time, though this plot never bore fruit. Once he returned from his brief jaunt to Jerusalem, Andrew wasted little time in further vexing his own nobles. He managed this by attempting to increase their taxes in order to pay both for his rampant military adventures that had been ongoing for 14 out of his 15-year reign so far, as well as his own extravagant personal spending habits. Incensed, the barons rebelled and forced him to sign the Golden Bull of 1222, which was effectively Hungary's version of the Magna Carta that exempted the nobility from all taxation and from conscription into wars outside of Hungary's version of the Magna Carta that exempted the nobility from all taxation and from conscription into wars outside of Hungary's own borders. Yet, and again, much like King John of

England putting his name to the Magna Carta just seven years prior, Andrew showed little actual interest in, you know, upholding or respecting any of the Golden Bull's stipulations. Eventually, the papacy itself was sucked into the ongoing conflict, with Gregory IX forcing him in 1233 to sign a concordat, forcing Andrew to promise to pay the church huge back taxes for having employed Muslims and Jews. Yet with the document signed and sealed, Andrew, once again, commenced with simply ignoring the terms of the treaty. He escaped further punishment, probably only by the fact of his death soon thereafter in 1235. His son would succeed him

as King Bela IV. Bela, though he had long despised and even fought against his father from time to time, would prove little better as a ruler of Hungary in his early reign. He's noted as having been from the very outset, quote, a narrow-minded, pedantic, humorless, deeply conservative figure whose first instinct was to annul the golden bull and put bringing down the full wrath of the Catholic Church onto his own head, he did everything in his power to undermine it and punish anyone who dared support such strictures on his throne. The barons and nobles who had supported the edict were jailed or exiled, and one was even blinded as retribution. More generally, Bela showed his disdain for the Hungarian nobility

by barring them, one and all, the right to sit while in his royal presence. He not only lowered their incomes and failed to continue the tradition of rewarding those nobles who fought for him with lands or estates, but actively rescinded those granted them by his forebearers. As for the papacy, Bela reopened that can of worms by raging against the Holy See's policy forbidding the employment of Muslims and Jews in his household, the result of which saw many of his supporters excommunicated. Though Hungary had surely breathed a sigh of relief with the death of Andrew II, they rapidly came to despise his son, Bela IV, just as much, or even more. More than even all that, however, the Hungarians would deride King Bela for a particular foreign

policy decision made in 1239. The year prior, having escaped the slaughter and horrors of the ongoing Mongol rape of the Russian principalities, some 40,000 Cuman tribesmen, also called Polovtsi, had made off westward under the leadership of the veteran chieftain, Khotan. He and his ilk sought refuge in the kingdoms of Eastern Europe, with about 10,000 being allowed by the Emperor of Latin Constantinople to settle in Thrace, among the Bulgars already there, while the remaining 30,000 arrived at the borders of Bela IV's Hungary in 1239. There, they asked permission to enter his country and settle within, politely enough from the sounds of it,

but with the unspoken but heavily hinted-at implication that a refusal would not be turning them away. Here, Béla saw a golden opportunity, quote, to form his own Praetorian Guard as a bulwark against the hostile barons, end quote. And so he agreed to allow them into Hungary, provided they convert en masse to Catholicism, as well as for an oath of personal allegiance to him. The two delegations would meet in person in Transylvania on Easter Day 1239 to

sign the deal, of which few records were kept, and at which Bela, quote, acted as godfather at Cotan's baptism, end quote. The secrecy surrounding this was held, not unwarrantedly, as a sign to the Hungarian barons that Bella was doing little less than amassing a private army to use against him. Because, you know, he was. Once within the kingdom, however, any and all cordiality seems to have pretty quickly been forgotten by the Cuman interlopers, and they soon returned to their long-accustomed nomadic raiding practices.

From MacLynn, Bella professed himself enthusiastic about his new allies, all the more prized because of the looming Mongol threat, but Khotan and his horde requited this with cattle rustling, looting, rape, and mass destruction of orchards, vineyards, and crops. The foolish Bella had taken no thought for how nomads, used to a life of casual plunder, were supposed to coexist Both sides accused the other of making loose with their women, but 20th century historian Denis Steinar wrote that, that the ugliness of the Cuman women debarred the Hungarians from seeking compensation in kind. In any event, these quasi-uninvited guests soon wore out their already thin welcome, and the peasantry joined the nobility in their undisguised hatred of the Cuman presence in their midst. What's more, to them at least, it seemed that their king was granting their pillagers special favor and protection for their crimes at his own people's expense.

Quote, Hungarian peasants were exhorted to take all their grievances before local tribunals for judgment, but they found that Bela had stacked the deck against them with blatant favoritism. If a Cuman complained about a Hungarian, he was given full justice. But if a Hungarian brought charges against a Cuman, he was told to go away and cease being a troublemaker. If he persisted, he was treated to the lash, end quote. It was a simmering pot of misunderstanding and resentment ready to boil over, and into this stew of hatred and ethnic tension, here came the Mongols

under Batu and Subutai, willing, ready, and able to kick the entire cauldron over. It was just about this time that Hungarian envoys were relayed a message via the Grand Duke of Vladimir Suzdal, addressed to the King of Hungary himself from the Mongols, apparently from the hand of Batu Khan himself, who was at the time still overseeing preparations of the siege of Kiev. When delivered with the Mongol emissaries who bore it, one of them was apparently an Englishman who'd entered into the service of the Khan after he'd been exiled for life from his homeland, it was then painstakingly translated into Hungarian and read, whereupon it was discovered that this letter was nothing less than an ultimatum in the classic Mongol style. It read, quote,

I, Khan, emissary of the heavenly king, to whom he has given on earth to exalt those who submit to him and to cast down his adversaries. I wonder at you, king of Hungary, that although I have sent you messages thirty times, you have sent me back none of them, nor did you send me messengers of your own or letters. I know that you are a rich and powerful king, and that you have many soldiers under you, and that you govern alone a great kingdom. Therefore, it may be difficult for you to submit to me voluntarily. Further, I have learned that you keep the Cumans, my slaves, under your protection. Whence I charge you henceforward, you do not keep them with you, and that you do not make me your enemy on their account.

For it is easier for them to escape than for you, since they, having no houses and continually on the move with their tents, may possibly escape me. End quote. As such a threat, Bela could have done little but either become amused or incensed, or possibly both at once. The king of Hungary was supremely confident in the supremacy of his own forces, the blossom of Europe's knighthood after all, who could surely stand toe-to-toe with mere steppe barbarians in a pitched battle. And moreover, the Hungarian knights and infantry would be complemented by the horse archers of the Cumans in the Mongols' own preferred combat style.

In any event, he decided to respond in the most insulting and defiant way he could, in that one way that we all know by now you definitely should not do. He killed the Mongol emissaries. Thus did Bella seal his and his kingdom's fate. For the time being, however, there was little seeming reaction from the Mongol host against Bella's insult. For the remainder of 1239, and almost through all of 1240, they remained stationary, only moving against the great city of Kiev in late November of that year, and to the shock and horror of everyone, overrunning it after a mere nine days of siege. At that point, however, dominoes began to tumble very swiftly indeed. Batu and Subutai's host had had more than a year and a half to not only rest, but to formulate their battle strategy against the Eastern European kingdoms.

And Hungary was now their prime objective. Theirs would be a three-pronged defensive, with Subutai and Batu leading the main force against Hungary, while the right flank under Orda, Baidar, and Khayran neutralized Hungary's potential allies and rescuers from Poland and Cilicia, which we covered in depth last time, before turning and rejoining the main force against King Bela. The third prong was to swoop south of the main host and circle back, but more on that in a minute. As for his own dispensations,

when word reached Bela that the Mongols were advancing against him directly, he attempted to call his levies and send troops to block the Veriki Pass of the northeastern Carpathians, the Mongols' most likely point of entry, and set up and man wooden barricades to block their way. The response to this calling for levies, however, was, from Michelin, disappointing. It was a case of crying wolf. The peasants had heard, the Mongols are coming, once too often. This was exacerbated by the untimely break between Bela's Hungarian subjects and his Cuman praetorian guard.

Though the resentments between the two populations had never died down, it's especially ironic how this final bloody break was in fact triggered. Recall that Bela had stipulated that Cotan and his nomads needed to convert to Christianity in order to enter Hungary. This was done in order to win points among the officials of the Vatican and endear the Hungarian monarch to

the papacy itself. Yet when Bello denied his Archbishop of Calixa, Ugolin, permission to leave on a long-anticipated journey to Venice for an arch-episcopal conclave, citing the eminent Mongol threat, Ugolin and his priests took deep offense, quote, irritated and exasperated at the thought that they might have to face danger instead of lolling in comfort in Venice. The divines vindictively stirred up resentment against the Cumans, end quote. Among the peasantry, the priesthood began preaching that the Cumans,

far from being the Hungarians' secret weapon, were in fact nothing more than spies for the Mongols, and who would turn on the Hungarians from within the moment their masters arrived at the gates. King Bela, they claimed, had foolishly been duped by the honeyed words and false promises of the Cumans, and it was high time to get rid of this fifth column by any means necessary. As you might well imagine, it was not too terribly difficult to get all that simmering pot of peasant resentment frothing up to a high boil, and soon the Hungarian populace was demanding the blood of these alleged foreign traitors in their midst. After all, they could scarcely be visually differentiated from the

Mongol host that even now was moving through the Hungarian outskirts, raiding and skirmishing, but still scrupulously avoiding any pitched battle. Bela at last sends a message to Chieftain Kotan, demanding that he account for himself and his people's actions in the midst of this crisis. Khotan, rightly fearing that if he tried to head for the capital himself he was liable to be attacked, sent a message to Bella, asking for an armed royal escort to the king's presence, where he would happily discuss how best to move forward. Bella did send such an armed force, but instead of escorting the Cuman chief, they arrested him and his honor guard, and then brought them all to the capital at Pest, while Bella considered how best to proceed.

While being held with his men in the king's tower, however, the dam finally burst. Convinced, perhaps, that Bella was conspiring further with the Cumans, or maybe that he had been taken captive by the barbarians on orders from some unseen hand, the peasantry of the capital stormed the palace and began to beat down the gates, demanding to be let in. For a time, Bella's palace guards, and even the Cuman honor guard, was able to keep the crowd at bay with their expert archery. In the end, however, the weight of the crowd and their fury carried the day. Bursting in, and now well and truly pissed off thanks to that expert archery they'd just been subjected to, the mob surrounded and slaughtered Khotan and his entire band,

decapitating the Cuman chieftain and throwing his severed head out of the tower window to the bloodthirsty crowd below. When news of the savage murder of their chieftain reached the Cuman tribesmen, they reacted just how you would expect. They began savagely raiding, pillaging, and slaughtering the Hungarian levies that were then moving north to fill the royal armies, while themselves moving southward along the Danube River towards Bulgaria, trying to get out while the getting was good. All this, of course, only served to further justify the charge that they were secret Mongol agents, and the Hungarians struck back forcefully, taking the line that the only good Cuman was a dead Cuman, and expelling the remaining tribesmen from the country, with at least one pitched battle.

All this, virtually just as the Mongols crested the horizon and into view. It was about as disastrous a start to the great defense of Hungary as could be imagined. The Hungarians themselves had been weakened by this infighting, while the Cumans, who remember King Bela had earned the Mongols eternal wrath by refusing to expel in the first place, were now riding off into the sunset, thank you very much, after having devastated the country, leaving the Hungarians to fend for themselves. Oops. Even so, Dennis Sainor writes, quote, Anarchy and confusion were spreading all over Hungary, where no one, not even the king, had a realistic assessment of Mongol military power. Used to earlier incursions by steppe peoples, such as the Pechenegs or the Cumans, and for centuries undefeated on their own soil, the Hungarian lords remained cocksure,

confident of their military abilities. On February 17th, 1241, as Bella attended a typically hostile negotiation at the city of Buda with his nobles about the price of their participation in this coming life-and-death struggle, word reached him that the enemy force had penetrated the outer fortifications along the Carpathians. The time for talk was suddenly over. The demons from the pit of Tartarus were now at the gates. Batu Khan and his general Subutai had proceeded at a very leisurely pace in their approach of Hungary, even engaging in a bit of cat-and-mouse play with the defenders of the land by advancing in a given direction to draw a response, only to then pull back and refuse to

engage and then go to a completely other direction. This was as frustrating as it was confusing for the Hungarians, but it was for a good reason. Batu needed to give his own flanking forces sufficient time to complete their own mission objectives and then return to his side before he launched the full invasion. When it came time to finally engage in the campaign to conquer Hungary, however, Batu knew well enough to cede the reins of command authority to his commander-in-chief, Subotai, who had planned the assault with his usual peerless strategic brilliance. He understood that in war, pacing is everything. When involved in a systemic campaign against a truly determined and entrenched foe, as he had experienced fighting against the Chinese and the Jin and Song, it was important to be deliberate, allowing their herds and supplies to keep pace

and not outrun the Mongol forces. But in all the intel and planning and now the renewed campaign against these European enemies, not a one came even close to requiring that sort of plodding forward push. Instead, a different and far older strategy, a more classically Mongol strategy, seemed much more in order. Decades prior, Subutai, Genghis, and Jeb had responded to the lightning movements and attacks of their fellow stepwriters by upping the tempo of warfare to the point where not even they could have kept pace. Though now approaching 70 himself, and no longer as spry as he had been in his prime, old Subotai the Valiant was still more than capable of putting a pell-mell force of

European knights and untrained peasant conscripts through their paces. Moreover, the purpose of Orda, Bidar, and Khaydan's flanking attack on Poland and Moravia had been to throw the region into such chaos that they could not ride in or assist the Hungarian king. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the

turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. And though surely they had wildly succeeded in that objective, the shell shock would wear off in time. Thus, it behooved Subutai to bring King Bella to a decisive battle before any one of his potential allies could sufficiently recover enough to send reinforcements. It was likewise important to their overall strategy that while

the main host drove straight for the twin capitals of Buda and Pest, the whole of Eastern Hungary was thoroughly and completely subjugated at the same time. Therefore, his previous division of his army into the three forks of a trident proved doubly well planned. As the two flanking forces raced off at top speed on their respective missions into the Pannonian plains, Subutai ensured that none was ever out of communication with the others, through the constant exchange of arrow messengers between the command staffs. His central column would proceed up the course of the Dnieper River towards Wading Buda, while the two flanking forces would arc around widely, sowing devastation across the country, before all three linked back up along the banks of the Danube.

Batu's brother, Shiban, would lead the right flank up north, back towards Poland and Moravia, and then move west past the Carpathian Mountains. Its objective was to block any potential attempt by the Duke of Austria to send aid to the Hungarian king. The left wing was commanded by Karan, and it moved off in a sweeping southeasterly arc through the Borgo Pass before charging into Wallachia and Transylvania and following the course of the Tica River back towards Pest. Matu and Subotai's own direct path led them to their first encounter with Hungarian troops on the far side of the Vereki Pass, defended by Duke Palatine of Hungary and his soldiers. In short order, they were swept aside, with Palatine himself forced to tuck tail and gallop back to the capital to report his own failure to hold the outer fortifications. MacLean writes, quote, remarkable, for roads in Hungary were then virtually non-existent, and Bela had prepared a labyrinth of obstacles for any invader approaching through the Veriki Pass. Ditches,

trenches, felled trees, all designed to funnel invaders into well-guarded gates. It was said that by 1241, Hungary's few roads were so overgrown with weeds and thorns that travelers had to navigate from village to village by ascending high ground and plotting a route from one church steeple to the next, end quote. This might have been thoroughly off-putting to most would-be invaders, but to a Mongol, such as Subutai, who was of the generation that had seen Genghis in 1219 order his men to literally chop a road through a frozen Siberian forest just to punish a rebellious tumad queen, and only hadn't gone and done it himself because his advisors convinced him it wasn't worth the energy, weeds and brambles were little object indeed. He simply sent ahead of the main force teams of pioneer corps to clear the way for the

main force's passage. Of the three forks of the Mongol trident, the most action-packed and devastating was certainly the southern expedition into Transylvania, commanded by Kharan. I mean, it better be, right? You can't say that the Mongols go to Transylvania and then we don't talk about it, right? Soon after entering the region, the Mongol column came upon an enclave of Germano-Saxon silver miners at the town of Rodna. Meeting the Mongol outriders heavily armed, the Germans quickly drove the scouts off, and they turned tail and fled. Exalted in such an easy victory,

the miners held a celebratory feast with copious accompanying drink. They had single-handedly beaten back the mighty Mongol menace. They partied well into the evening, at last collapsing into a drunken stupor virtually to a man, at which point the main Mongol force, which had received their outriders' reports and made their approach to the village, then entered Rodna unopposed and slaughtered the Saxons to a man while they slept. Hearing of this grisly slaughter, another 600 German miners promptly made for Khadon's forces, not to fight, but to surrender. Khadon gladly accepted their surrender, and then, in classic Mongol fashion, duly turned all 600 men around and had them join his own front lines. Khadon's army would cut a bloody swath through Transylvania, which became infamous even in that region's own blood-soaked

history and legends for its cruelty and wanton carnage. The citadel city of Oradea became a notable example of the horrors to follow. While the city's defenders held fast within, the Mongols devastated the city outside, sparing not a soul. The women were gang-raped in the city square, mass beheadings occurred outside the city walls, several unfortunate souls were locked within the city cathedral, which was then set alight to burn them all alive. When it seemed that there was little else to plunder, rape, or kill, the Mongol force at last rode off to leave the fires to gutter into embers and the dead to rot. In due course, the citadel's defenders, who had just watched this horror unfold before them and been unable to intervene, lest they join the unfortunate town

folk, were finally able to leave their fortress to assess the damaged rot, and it was total. Over the course of that night, we can only imagine the stunned grief of those left alive, and what they must have felt as they stumbled around through the gutted city streets and found the mutilated bodies of their friends and family members. But they wouldn't have too much time to wallow in that grief or misery, for as dawn broke on the next morning, the Mongol force, which had retreated only just out of sight some five miles away,

as a variant of their favorite false flight tactic, came storming back into the ruins of Oradea to butcher any and all still left standing. A few were left alive and then taken captive for further torture, and a few others managed to scramble back inside the citadel and once again bar the gates. Now, however, the time for tricks had passed, and Karan ordered his men to assemble the siege trebuchets. The citadel's end arrived swiftly, along with everyone within. Soon,

an overpowering stink and miasma of the rotting dead forced Karan to order his men to evacuate the now depopulated town. Yet he still wasn't certain that he had accounted for quite all of the Hungarian villagers. His men, therefore, lay in wait in the regions surrounding the town, and as survivors crept back in to assess the destruction, they would be swooped down upon and slaughtered en masse. The local bishop of Oradea, Benedict, had been off amassing an army on Bella's orders to stave off the Mongol advance against Buda. Yet when he heard of the havoc being wreaked on his own hometown, what could he do but wheel his force around and attempt to defend his hamlet? As the Hungarian army approached, Karan, having been told that his force was outnumbered, ordered his men to

construct hundreds of dummies and then have them mounted on the Mongols' spare horses. Once completed, he had this straw cavalry, hidden out of sight, to be brought out at the right time. When the two armies encountered one another, the Mongols turned and fled, as if in panic, up into the hills, and the Hungarians pursued. All at once, a second Mongol force appeared on the crests of the hills, by all appearances ready to spring a well-devised ambush. Bishop Benedict's soldiers, fearing the worst, wheeled about and fled before this new cavalry unit could storm through their ranks and cut them down. The phantom force of Dummius remained on the hill crests where they had been led, but the

real Mongols completed their false retreat and then turned around, now in hot pursuit of their routing enemy, slaughtering them to a man. The fate of Oradea tells the tale of every city in the wide sweep of Karan's thorough and brutal pillaging of the Transylvanian countryside. Some of the only people spared, in fact, were those who managed to flee into the dubious safety of a nearby marsh where the Mongol horses refused to follow. Certainly, Karan and his men enjoyed an extended season of conquest and plunder. Which is doubly curious, considering Shiban's own strict orders in the north were specifically to not stop or raid on any account. In fact, some accounts claim that Kharan only ever sent a portion of his army on to aid Batu and Subutai at the siege of Buda,

and himself stayed in Transylvania to oversee the region's thorough ransacking. In any event, Shiban's northern sweep would link back up with the central Mongol column on March 17th, just after completing their one and only city-sacking of Vak. Kadan's army, meanwhile, with or without him, arrived more than a half month later in early April. Shiban and his men had made excellent time in their blitzkrieg across the northern Hungarian borderlands, averaging more than 50 miles of riding per day over difficult country. Thus, after having reprovisioned themselves off the hapless citizens of Vak, they moved into position just north of Batu's main force outside

of the awaiting Buddha. Impressive as Shiban's ride had been, however, it pales in comparison to Subutai's. Quote, he covered 180 miles in three days, riding through deep snow and barely stopping for food. End quote. Once he had arrived personally at the Danube and the awaiting Mongol host, without even pausing to rest, the aged general would lead his men straight into the thick of a battle. He managed to lure out a cavalry force under the command of Archbishop Yugalin of Kaluska, who thought he could cut Subotai's contingent off from the main body as it approached. Yet Yugalin too fell for the feigned flight, and his men soon wound up bogged down in a swamp and little more than target practice for Suvati's expert archers. Rather amazingly, the archbishop and a few of his loyal retainers somehow managed to scramble free and escape with their lives. When he heard of Ugolin's rash action and its terrible cost, King Bela was, of course, enraged at such foolishness.

This was doubly true, as he had already given express orders for all of his commanders to mass at Pest and prepare for a single, unified strike against the Mongol invaders. None of this individual, glory-seeking, sideshow nonsense. Another of the commanders to deliberately breach these standing orders was none other than the Duke of Austria, Frederick. Frederick attacked a lone Mongol foraging party, claimed a great

victory for himself, and then packed up his men and went home. Truly, Frederick, your heroism knows no bounds. Diversions and minor clashes aside, the main bodies of the two opposing hosts assembled on opposite sides of the Danube, within full view of one another for the first time. Though Batu attempted to lure the Hungarian king into fording the river to attack, Bela at least knew enough about warcraft to know that trying to cross a river into the teeth of a formidable enemy was a fool's errand. Therefore, when the Mongol commander realized that his enemy counterpart was not going to take the bait, Batu and Subutai at last ordered their forces to retreat eastward away from the river.

For six days of forced marches, the Mongols retreated further and further, with Bela and his host near Gidi with the exciting prospect of having his foe on the run, following them closely. After crossing the Sajo River, the Mongols at last turned and drew to a halt, with the Hungarian forces pulling up on the far bank. On the far side of this particular stretch of plains, called Mohi, there was a marsh in flood, and Bela ordered the construction of a fortified camp there, ringed by heavy wagons and loggered together in a circle of steel. MacLean notes darkly that, quote, this would certainly keep most enemies out,

but of course, in the event of a reverse, it could also keep his own men in. In any event, this would be where the great contest between Bello IV of Hungary and Batu Khan would take place. Numbers for the respective forces, as is typical, vary considerably. Pre-modern accounts often list figures such as 70,000 Hungarian soldiers against 40,000 Mongols, whereas modern, revised estimates tend to place it closer to 25,000 Hungarians and 20,000 Mongols. But in either case, both remain best guesses. Neither side seems to have been particularly confident in the outcome of the battle. Morale among Bella's men was tamped down,

and even the king's attempt at arousing speech is said to have fallen flat. As for Batu, he went so far as to ascend a nearby mountain and pray to Tangri for advice and aid, while directing the Muslims among his soldiers to pray to Allah for their success in the battle to come. Interestingly, just the day prior to this battle of Mohi, the Mongol commanders in Poland had smashed the assembled army of Henry the Pious at Lignis, and owing to the Mongols' lightning-fast arrow messengers keeping the far-flung forces constantly in contact with one another, it is possible that word of the victory might have even reached Subutai and Batu by this point. Regardless, as darkness fell over the two opposing armies on April 10th,

a lone figure came stumbling into the Hungarian camp, a deserter from the Mongol lines. Possibly a captured Russian escaping his allotted fate as aerosponge, or maybe a Ruthenian slave who'd finally just had enough of bondage. He came bearing vital news. By this point, it was widely known and understood that the Mongols typically did not like and tried their best to avoid fighting at night. So much so that they would even break off pitched battles at dusk, only to resume them the following dawn. This wasn't news to the Hungarian host. Rather, the deserter claimed that Subotai,

understanding that his foe would never expect their Mongol enemy to willingly attack at night, planned to do exactly that. He planned to turn this long-standing battlefield-received wisdom to his own advantage, quote, by launching a surprise night attack across the bridge over the river Sajo, commanded by Batu, preparatory to a dawn assault on Bela's camp. He, meanwhile, intended to find a way across the river lower down and come on the Hungarians from the rear. It was therefore essential that Batu not attack prematurely. To counter this strategy, Archbishop Jugulin, Templar Master Remboldt de Vauxon, and Bella's own younger brother, Coloman, the Duke of Slavonia,

set out with a large infantry force through five miles in the darkness to counter this looming threat, reaching the bridge over which Batu was to attack around midnight. They found on arrival that indeed the Mongols had already launched their assault across the bridge and were halfway to the other side. The Hungarian crosswomen, firing at nearly point-blank range as the Mongols neared their side of the river, ripped through the front lines of the Mongol assault and threw them back into a full retreat. Thinking that that was all there was and that they had successfully defended the crossing, by 2 a.m. it's reported that the soldiers had begun to celebrate their great victory, completely unaware that the assault they'd thrown back was only the first of three such planned forays across the bridge. Matu had also sent a subsidiary force under the command

of Shiban even further north along the river to find a crossing there and then attack from these defenders' flanks. And at 4am, just as the sky was beginning to lighten into pre-dawn, Batu himself led his contingent of cavalry charging across the bridge, but not without first clearing out those pesky assembled Hungarian crossbowmen by having his heavy catapults fire massive stones directly into their ranks. Pressed by this renewed assault on their position, and with news reaching them that Shiban's force had found a way across the river to the north and were preparing to attack them from the rear, the Hungarian forces at last ceded the bridge crossing to Batu's army and

withdrew back to Bela's main camp. Shiban and Batu pressed the attack towards the fortified enemy base, but because of the unfavorable marshy terrain, they were unable to deploy in their usual formations, and took heavier-than-expected losses during the assault. Batu lost at least 30 of his elite guard in this one attack. Things were a little better within the Hungarian camp, however, as the commanders had begun finger-pointing at each other for having failed to hold the bridge crossing, and also at Bella's own perceived incompetence at not having a backup plan in case they had lost the bridge.

Meanwhile, to the south, Suvatai had finally made good his own force's river crossing by building and then using an improvised floating pontoon bridge. Thus, as the battle between Batu and Sivan against the Hungarians raged on indecisively, Subutai made his approach on the encampment's rear. At last, the defenders' morale splintered and their nerves failed. Maclean writes, Now, attacking from three directions, using flaming arrows and a range of new weapons, including gunpowder, primitive firearms, and naphtha bombs, the Mongols began to eat up their opponents.

They overwhelmed the loggers with showers of arrows, described as being like swarms of locusts or grasshoppers. Now, the ring of wagons walling them in ceased to be a means of protection, and instead became a pin in which the Hungarian troops were hemmed. In the restricted space, neither Bela nor his commanders could properly deploy their troops, and also quickly tired out because of the heat of so many sweating bodies packed so tightly together. The assault lasted from that morning until noon, with a tremendous slaughter.

Kalamin and Bella were at last able to break through the Mongol encirclement and made their escape on swift horses, but Archbishop Ugalin and most of the rest of the command staff would meet their fate with their common soldiers that day. One of the favored tactics by the Mongols in both their great hunts and in moments of warfare such as this was to wring their prey off, but then deliberately leave a conspicuous gap in their tightening encirclement. They did this because they knew that whether it was a deer or a wolf or a man,

a trapped animal without hope would fight tooth and claw to the bitter end, making it exceptionally dangerous. Conversely, even the possibility of escape unfailingly evaporated any thought of bravery or fighting. All mental and physical effort would be used to simply get away. Weapons and arms would be thrown down, horses and supplies forgotten and left behind. Here, this broken ring strategy was employed again, and with perfectly predictable effect. The broken and demoralized Hungarians streamed through this apparently forgotten hole in the Mongol noose about their necks. And then, once they were on the run, they were easy prey. Interestingly, Batu himself did not initially want to pursue the fleeing Hungarians.

This was because he was apparently more than a little dismayed by his own losses that they'd suffered in the earlier stage of the battle. Subutai, however, overruled the Khan, stating that he would not cease the attack until he had reached the gates of Pest, then taking command of the horde and charging after their routing foe. Now free of the constraints of the closed-up marshland, the Mongols were able to ride down the fleeing Hungarians with murderous ease. This was made even worse for them, as recent rainfall impeded their already laborious retreat, turning the ground beneath them into sticky, cloying mud. Archdeacon Thomas of Spolato, a contemporary historian who would experience the Mongols' hospitality personally in the year to come, wrote of this horrible scene. The Tartars did not pursue the Hungarian army with all their force, but followed them cautiously onto two sides, not allowing them to turn aside. All over the paths lay the wretched Hungarians' valuables, their gold and silver tableware, their crimson garments, their wealth of arms.

But the Tartars, with their unparalleled savagery, paid little heed to all this rich plunder, intent only on human carnage. Then they saw their enemies were exhausted from running, and unable to stretch out their arms to fight, or legs in flight. They began to rain spears down upon them on all sides, and cut them down with swords, sparing no one, and butchering them like animals. Left and right they fell like leaves in winter. The whole way was covered with their wretched bodies. Blood flowed like the streams of a river. The hapless country far and wide was red, stained with the blood of her sons. Then the pitiful multitude, those whom the Tartar sword

had not yet devoured, by necessity came to a certain marsh. They were not given the chance to take a different way. Pressed on by the Tartars, almost the whole of the Hungarians entered the swamp, and were there dragged down into the water and mud, and drowned almost two men. There perished the most illustrious Ugrinus. There perished Matthias of Erzum and Bishop Gregoy of Gior. There many a prelate and crowd of clerics met their fate. Alas, Lord God!

Why, alas, did you bring such a bitter end to men bearing offices of the church and appointed to your ministry? Why condemn them to such an ignoble burial? Truly, why are thy judgments so deep? End quote. Still others managed to reach the ferry point across Danube, back to the relative safety of Pest, only to find that the ferry was nowhere in sight. In desperation, many jumped into the currents and sought to swim across, only to inevitably be sucked down by the swift torrent

and drowned. Between the battle itself and then the relentless pursuit thereafter, in all, perhaps as many as 30,000 Hungarians were slaughtered that April day on the fields of Mohi. Knights, soldiers, non-combatants, and camp followers alike. With them perished the flower of Hungarian chivalry, and quite possibly the best chance Europe had at stemming the Mongol tidal wave crashing down upon it. The tens of thousands dead were largely simply left to be picked apart by animals, or, especially in the cases of those who had been burned to death, simply wrought in the elements,

giving rise in time to the further hazard of pestilence. Though King Bela managed to escape without notable injury, his younger brother, Koloman, was not as fortunate. He too was able to flee the battlefield, but not before receiving a serious injury. Though he would manage to rejoin Bela at Zagreb, he would shortly thereafter succumb to his wounds. For the Mongols, of course, the day had been a great victory, worthy of celebration. Indeed, the outcome at Mohi was a near textbook example of a victory via total envelopment, the oft-dreamed-of military tactic that is typically used to sort the merely average commanders from the truly spectacular

Miltiades at Marathon, Hannibal at Cannae, Napoleon at Austerlitz, just to name a few. MacLynn sums it up as, quote, Simply put, the Mongols outclassed the Christian armies at every level. Discipline, organization, speed, mobility, disinformation, deception, and even weaponry. From China, they had brought the gunpowder technology that so startled the Hungarians. Their superiority in archery was such that their arrows penetrated all Western armor, while their own repelled all Western shafts except the crossbow quarrels fired from very close range. And surely, none could deny that Subutai rightly deserved his place at the very top of that list.

Not only had he annihilated the cream of Hungarian and European resistance in a stroke, but had done so without even so much as a substantial infantry force to cover his cavalry's action. None could question Subutai the Valiant's deeds. Indeed, this was his 65th battle in 65 years, and his 60th victory at that. None, that is. Except for his nominal co-commander, Batu. In stark contrast to the positive and extremely effective partnership between Subutai's strategic genius and Jeb's tactical domination during the Great Cavalry Raid two decades prior, Subutai and Batu's relationship was an unhappy affair from the very outset.

In spite of the outrage it had caused at the time, of the insults hurled at Batu by Goyuk and Buri at the feast in Russia that had turned into a drunken brawl and finally led to the arrest and deportment of the two offenders, the assertion that Batu was little more than a glory hound riding on Subutai's military coattails might have hit a little closer to home than Batu liked. The losses his force in particular had sustained in the course of the Battle of Mohi, combined with his personal sense of command inadequacy and deep-seated jealousy of the legendary commander, now led Batu to blame Subutai for what he deemed an unacceptably high Mongol casualty rate, that he

had taken far too long in crossing the river downstream of the Hungarian camp, and that his wasting of such precious time had cost invaluable Mongol lives. Subutai himself, irked more than a little bit at Batu's general churlishness and defeatism, countered calmly that while Batu had been able to cross the river at its shallowest and easiest to forward point, and there was a bridge there and everything, Subutai hadn't had such an easy time of things, by design. He'd been forced to, you know, construct a floating bridge, on the fly, just to get his men across the river. So yeah, it might have taken a little longer than he had initially thought, but they'd made the best of it that they could in that situation. And in any event, a victory is a victory, so maybe just take

a seat, kid. Relax. At this, Batu announced that he intended to take his ball and go home. He would claim this victory here, but he had decided that this was enough for him to have done, and he intended to withdraw back to Russia. In response to this, and in full earshot of all the other assembled Mongol nobility, Subutai icily replied that Batu could, of course, do whatever he wanted. But as for the old general, he fully intended to cross the Danube, with or without Batu, along for the ride. Not just the Danube. Subutai, in fact, intended to see the fabled Atlantic Ocean with his own eyes. It was a withering public shaming for the young Khan, who found himself suddenly and quite completely deflated. The upshot of all this, however, was that as the

two Mongol commanders bickered and argued, King Bela was able to slip away and make for the promise of safety. His first stop was Bratislava, and there he accepted the Duke of Austria's invitation to take refuge in his own domains. Now, this Duke, Frederick, was known for reasons that will momentarily become quite clear as der Zeitbare, meaning the quarrelsome one. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877. From Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman.

To Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. To Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era, when a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans.

Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Bella's decision to accept Frederick's invitation would quickly prove to have been a poor decision. Once in the Duke's power, Bella was almost immediately made a prisoner in all but name by the hateful Frederick, who intended to exact the full measure of vengeance for previous injustices prosecuted against him by Bella during his haughtier years and his father Andrew before him. Roger of Arad lamented Bella's situation, quote, Alas, the poor king was like a fish,

who, in seeking to escape from the frying pan, leaps into the embers of the fire and is rusted. End quote. Frederick unleashed his own armies against Bella's holdings across Western Hungary, annexing three counties and going so far that, when the defenders of the garrison at

Gyor resisted, the Austrian soldiers burned the castle to the ground along with everyone inside and then announced that he would be seizing the totality of the Hungarian nobility's values of those seized counties as payment for the necessary cost of policing Western Hungary. Then Frederick demanded that before being allowed to leave, Bela would need to go ahead and repay him in full that large loan that was outstanding. Bela said, wait a second, what loan? I don't owe you a loan. And Frederick said, oh yes, yes you do. The loan that Frederick was referring to was, of course, no loan at all. Rather, it had been part of a penalty indemnity payment forced on the Duke by Bella's father, King Andrew, at the conclusion

of the Austro-Hungarian War of 1235. But no, that was now a loan, and it needed to be repaid in full right now. Oh, and also it would have retroactive interest applied. With little else he could very well do other than remain Frederick's prisoner indefinitely, Bella capitulated and agreed to the terms of this gentrified highway robbery. When Bella did manage to scrape together the gold, silver, jewelry, and other valuables to repay his host, Frederick once again put his finger on the scale, this time pretty much literally. Quote, Frederick was able to cheat him. He took a ludicrously low valuation on Bella's treasures against the mark. Whereas the true value of the items was around 6,000 marks, Frederick valued them at 2,000, then presented an account tricked

out with compound interest, which brought their total ransom to 7,000 to 10,000 marks. Somehow or another, Bela was able to come up with the payoff for this naked extortion, and was finally allowed to leave Austria, though he was forced to leave his wife behind in the Duke's care. Frederick's comeuppance would come in due course in 1246, when not only would Bella's army defeat their Austrian foes at the Battle of Leyta River, but would kill Duke Frederick in the field after taking a Hungarian lance through the jaw. For now, however, it was all Bella could do to flee south to Zagreb in modern Croatia, and once ensconced within, write a series of desperate

letters to the Pope as well as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick II, begging both seats of power to aid him against the demonic barbarians that now plagued his land. Pope Gregory died that August before being able to draw up any formal response, and thus making any means of assistance from the Vatican impossible during the interregnum until the election of his successor. Emperor Frederick responded positively to Béla's pleas and began to prepare a large German army under the quote-unquote command of his son and heir, the 13-year-old King of the Romans and of Italy, Conrad IV. However, by the time this German army had prepared to roll out and assist the besieged Hungarian kingdom, they would find themselves as thoroughly confused as everyone else

to learn that the Eastern menace had quit the country entirely and seemingly vanished into thin air. Over the summer and autumn of 1241, Subutai oversaw the consolidation of his Mongols' iron grip on Eastern Hungary through a systematic program of atrocities and extermination. Here, we see the old general's truly old-school Mongol instincts in full view. Subutai had been restrained by no less than the command of the great Khan Ogedei himself during his operations in South China against the remnants of the Jin and then Southern Song. Such as the siege of Kaifeng, when under pressure from sniveling, self-serving weaklings like Yeleu Chutsai, he'd been forbidden from totally exterminating the Chinese capital's

populace. Here in Hungary, however, he was more than 4,600 miles from Ogade or his Chinese advisors, and as such, there was no such restraint in his tactics. Mass public rapes and mass slaughters were the watchwords of Mongol domination over Hungary, as well as the all-too-common tactic of using honeyed words, followed by errant treachery. False orders from supposedly Hungarian officials, either using a captured royal seal or alternately just quizzling puppets within the government itself, that warned Hungarian civilians not to flee their homes, but instead remain in place, only to inevitably await the imminent arrival of the Mongol host at their doorstep.

Other tactics included false promises of leniency and amnesty for surrender of cities or displaced populations, followed by total slaughter. The heavy artillery would be brought to full bear against any town or city stupid enough to put up any show of resistance at all, and the Mongols seemed to take a particularly fiendish delight in specifically targeting the churches and monasteries. Quote, the task was relatively simple when compared with China, for there were no cities or forests with strong walls as Jin or Song had possessed. End quote. Raiding parties fanned out all over the country and beyond, sowing terror and destruction as far away as townships just south of Vienna, Austria, by July. Meanwhile, Batu had dispatched his lieutenant, Karan, to ruthlessly hunt down the escapee, King Bela. News had reached their ears that the fleeing monarch had arrived at Zagreb, and they hoped to duplicate Jeb and Subutai's chase to death of the Khwarazmian Shah Muhammad back in 1227. The winter of 1241-42 was particularly bitter,

which would have meant a seasonal reprieve from any typical invading forces advance. As we're all now well aware of, though, bitterly cold winters had the opposite effect on Mongol activities. When the Danube River totally froze over in midwinter, Suvati began to wonder if his armies could go ahead and just ride right on across it over into western Hungary and then continue their conquest unimpeded. Batu, however, feared that the ice might not be thick enough and that any attempt to cross it en masse could result in thousands of soldiers breaking through to drown and freeze. At last, a solution was reached. They would hold a little experiment to test the strength

of the river ice. Gathering up a number of their sturdy horses, the Mongols brought the animals out to the banks of the frozen river and then just left them there for three days. To any European eyes, it would have appeared that this little herd had wandered off from whoever they belonged to, and were therefore kind of up for grabs. All the while, hidden scouts observed these quote-unquote abandoned horses, and sure enough, a group of Hungarians took notice of the unattended horses on the far side of the river, crossed the river on foot, and then brought the whole herd back over to the far side with them. The ice was indeed thick enough to make a safe crossing, and the Mongol cavalry wasted no time in advancing across it and into the west in February of 1242,

undoubtedly taking their horses back from the peasants who had brought them across. On the other side, Matu and Subutai were rejoined by Kharan, who woefully reported that he had so far been unable to catch the slippery King Bela, and required more men to complete the task. Lhikan therefore divided his own army into halves, and gave one of them over to Karan to continue his royal pursuit. Karan would resume tracking his quarry with renewed vigor, but Bela, much like the Shah Muhammad,

decided that an island refuge would be his safest bet. He therefore fled all the way to the Adriatic coast, to a tiny island fortress, where he would ultimately hide and wait the Mongols out, all the way up until their departure in May of that year. What this meant for the main Mongol force, however, was that its strength was much diminished in western Hungary. Moreover, the fact of the matter was that, thanks largely to the Cumans, who had rampaged their way through the western half of the country

as they left their erstwhile allies to their fates, there was actually precious little left standing enough to loot or burn. Finally, within a week of the great Khan Ogedei's death on December 11th, 1241, Matu himself was informed of his passing, and all bets were off. For generations thereafter, the death of Ogire was understood as the ultimate reason for the Mongols' withdrawal from Eastern Europe. This telling stems from the account given by Giovanni de Pian del Carpine, or John of Plano Carpini, who wrote that the Kayan's death necessitated the withdrawal of the commanders to participate in the Karaltai, which would ultimately elect the next emperor. That sounds good, but upon closer inspection, it doesn't hold water as an explanation.

Firstly, the great Kuril Tai that would ultimately confirm Batu's hated nemesis, Guyuk, to the throne wouldn't wind up being held for more than four and a half years after Ogaday's death. And that was largely because, quite the opposite of hurrying on back to participate, Batu would actively avoid returning to Mongolia or participating in the ceremony. In fact, he would remain holed up at his fortress Russia until 1247 for fear of Guyuk's retribution once he was elected. Moreover, it actually wasn't strictly necessary for all battlefield commanders to be recalled. Another example is the commander of the Mongol expedition in Iraq, named Baiju, against the Seljuk Turks between 1241 and 1243. And I mean, he certainly wasn't pressured to

pause his string of epic victories to hustle on back to Karakorum or anything. As for Batu's command, he certainly didn't seem to feel any particular rush to wrap things up on account of Uncle Ogedei's death either. Ogedei died on December 11th, and Batu had certainly been made aware before Christmas Day of that year, well before his army had even crossed the Danube and into Western Hungary to continue the destruction the following February. Then they would maintain that rampage in the west for a further three months before finally pulling back in May. So news of the Great Khan's death obviously wasn't some drop-everything moment for Batu.

Far more likely, though admittedly less romantic, than sweeping political mandates from 5,000 miles away saving Europe from utter annihilation, is that the Mongol decision to pull back from Hungary was based on boring old logistics. Even though Hungary's Pannonian Plain was a Central Asian steppe in miniature, its relative smallness, a mere one-seventh the size of their homeland steppe, limited the force strength the empire could bring to bear in Eastern Europe. And it was the only such pocket of uninterrupted grassland suitable for grazing large herds of horses all the way up until you hit the Atlantic Ocean. Seynour calculated that on the completely unrealistic condition that all Hungarian pastureland was devoted only to

grazing Mongolian horses, given the minimal requirement that each soldier have four to five mounts, the 42,000 square miles of the Pannonian would have been able to support at maximum about 83,000 Mongol warriors for any significant period. Any force strength beyond that maximal hard cap would either require prohibitively expensive mass grain shipments from Mongolia itself consistently thereafter, or the Mongol armies would have to radically alter the composition of their armies to make much heavier use of infantry, turning it, in many ways, into just another medieval European-style army and give up almost entirely the one great advantage they possessed, which was their speed and tactical maneuverability.

Sainar writes, Instead, they did what they usually did. Even though their campaign season was radically different from any other army of the time, there was definitely a Mongol campaign season, from late autumn to about mid-spring, and then there was definitely an off-season, summer. In the summertime, the Mongol armies traditionally had withdrawn to the steppes in order to allow their herds time to fatten back up and to breed, while their masters waited out the height of the summer heat. That traditional rhythm, though incomprehensible to the Europeans at the

time who witnessed it, at least partially explains the events of May 1242. What does seem clear, however, is that the decision by Batu to not resume the Western campaign the following autumn was a straw that finally broke the back of the ever-strained relationship between him and Subutai. Batu seems to have decided, as he'd threatened earlier, that he had sufficiently reduced to cinders and rubble any potential threat to his own Ulus of the Golden Horde in Russia. He didn't need the rest of Europe. He didn't particularly want it either, and likely could read the changes in the political wind well enough to know that Guyuk was a shoo-in to be the new Great Khan, and that he had better well and truly prepare himself for that unhappy eventuality.

Subutai, meanwhile, dreamed of seeing the Atlantic with his own eyes before he died. He was a conqueror, first and foremost, by both nature and profession, and whatever political squabbling Batu was worried about back home simply did not seem to be a good enough excuse to release Europe from his stranglehold. Instead, when Batu decided to pull back into Russia, Subutai quit him altogether, cutting off all ties with him and making immediately back for Mongolia, thereafter openly supporting Guyuk's claim to the title of Great Khan against Batu and the Golden Horde of House Jochi. He was joined in that long-term goal of total domination of the continent, not only by Ogre, but ultimately by his successor and supporter, Guyuk Khan. A goal

that, had it been followed through on as Subutai desired, historians then and now almost universally agree would have succeeded, but only on the condition that the entire empire remain united and singular in vision toward the completion of that distant but ultimately attainable objective. With the death of Ogedei, however, the reality was clear to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear it. The Yekia Mongol Ulus was fracturing from within, and only the barest threads of unity tied the divergent and now mutually belligerent great houses of Genghis together. Soon the last of those threads would be severed, and the united Mongol nation would shatter into civil war that had long been brewing just beneath the surface. From McLynn,

Ogedei's death really signaled the end of the Mongol Empire that Genghis had striven so hard to found, though the formal structure continued in existence until the end of the 1250s, end quote. As the Mongol forces began to pull back and wrap up their operations in mid-1242, they certainly didn't let up on any of their cruelty. Transylvania would feel once again the full measure of the Horde's vengeance, as would Bosnia, Serbia, and even the armies of the Latin king of Constantinople, Baldwin II, all of whom were reminded in no uncertain terms that this was due punishment for having dared defy the Mongols' orders to not aid or shelter the Cuman tribes. Along the way, as usual, prisoners would be taken and then used as frontline shock troops for the next battles.

But when it came time to head home to Russia, those thousands of captives that were deemed not useful enough to remain on as slave labor were told that they were being freed, only for the Mongol cavalry to then ride them all down as they departed and slaughtered a lot of them under the cynical justification of having been killed while trying to escape. In military terms, the Mongols could feel justifiably proud of their campaign. Beginning in 1236 to now in 1242, they'd marched at least 16,000 miles in total from Karakorum. As for Hungary, the devastation was beyond reckoning. For years after 1242, widespread famine and heavy mortality among the peasants would play havoc with the Hungarians' ability to even feed themselves

or plant crops. This disrupted crop cycle would in fact trigger even more waves of mortality, sickness, and famine. Some estimates say that the death toll from pestilence and disease as a result of this interrupted crop cycle was even greater than the losses inflicted by the Mongols themselves. For decades, if not centuries thereafter, the ruins of abandoned villages, churches, and despoiled monasteries remained as haunting reminders of what the Mongols had done. For the survivors and generations thereafter of the 1260s and 1270s, the time of the Tartars was spoken of in hushed whispers and terrified stories, much like wartime was for the Britons who lived during World War II. Still, it's not accurate to lay the sum total of the devastation at the Mongols' feet.

We have to remember that the Cumans played their own significant role in devastating the Hungarian countryside and population. It's impossible to know the total death toll of the Mongols' rampage through Hungary. For one thing, as usual, medieval chroniclers and historians are notably fuzzy on population numbers in general. We can estimate, however, at least a range. At the high end of this range is about 25% of the total population of Hungary, or about half a million people killed between 1241 and 1242. Quote, This is particularly the case if we consider that few of the prisoners taken by the Mongols would have survived,

apart from the mass killing in Wallachia before Batu left for Russia. Large numbers of them, pressed into service in the front rank, would have been counted among Mongol casualties. Those who survived the battle would not have lasted long on the diet permitted by their captors, largely the intestines, feet, and heads of butchered animals. End quote. So half a million is the higher range. The mid to lower range that most modern historians tend to hover around is a bit lower, about 15% of the Hungarian population or a mere 300,000 dead. There was also the brain drain as the Mongols would take skilled artisans and craftsmen captive and transport them back to Mongolia or their own Khanate. Even so, it's pretty amazing to read about the way that Europeans described this campaign

after the fact. Not the tales of horror and mass destruction, although there definitely are those, but of the ways that the European monarchs and potentates deluded themselves into thinking that somehow they'd actually won. These kingdoms and nations and European empires would compete with one another over who had the honor of having repelled the Mongols. The Hungarians, for instance, claimed that they'd only lost Mohi by the barest of margins, and it was just bad luck. That was the only reason they lost. They almost had it. In Poland, they contended that, well, they might have lost at Legnitz, but they'd so exhausted Mongol strength that that had been ultimately what had caused the invasion to run out of steam. And then, of course, there was the Germans, who never really truly engaged the

Mongols at all, and yet somehow maintained for centuries thereafter that German military might was so impressive and overwhelming that the Mongols knew they couldn't possibly stand against it and so turned and fled before having to even so much as face European knights. And all of these are just completely bogus. Even the Russians tried to, when they weren't just studiously pretending that nothing ever happened, get in on this clown show by claiming that the Mongols had lost too many men during their conquest of Russia, and therefore they could not have possibly conquered Europe. As MacLynn puts it, quote, this after-the-event vainglory is more redolent of boasting in a pub

by a loudmouth than of serious historical analysis, end quote. So Hungary, devastated, ruined, with 15% to a quarter of its population dead and many more to follow in the years and decades to come, was physically destroyed but not politically destroyed. Politically, it remained intact. And in fact, one of the true long-term beneficiaries of the Mongol terror wound up being King Bela IV himself. Once the Mongols had finally turned around and

re-destroyed Transylvania and gone back to Russia, Bela was able to come out of hiding on his island and resume the throne. In fact, in spite of his kingdom's sorry state, he was able of mustering sufficient force to fight against and finally kill Duke Frederick of Austria in 1246. Bela took to heart a valuable lesson that he would remember for the rest of his reign. Quote, that it was in vain for Hungary to expect any help from the West. End quote. And so he spared no expense in trying to fortify his nation against a seemingly inevitable future incursion. All over Greater Hungary, he constructed castles and forts out of solid stone, and cultivated a near-obsessive, and one can claim perfectly justified, fixation on learning everything he could about the Tartars. In time, he became widely regarded as an expert on them

by much of the rest of Europe. In 1245, Bela actually allowed the Cumans back into Hungary, and then began the process of fusing them together with the Knights Hospitaller as the country's reformed military bulwark against invasion. He also took well to heart the lesson that he really shouldn't be such a colossal jerk to his own dukes, as they might just wind up being the only thing standing between him and total annihilation when the Tartars appeared once again. Bela IV would reign for nearly 30 more years, dying in 1270 at age 65, and coming to be regarded not only as the great survivor of the Mongols' wrath, but as the second founder of the Hungarian nation.

And so, next time, we'll be taking a ride back to Mongolia, alongside a Franciscan friar given the journey of a lifetime, and to a very very contested convention at the Great Carle Ty of 1246. Thanks for you. Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid? Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tutankhamun? Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti?

If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture. The History of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of Ancient Egypt.