Battle of Mohi (1241): The Mongols Devastate Hungary

The Battle of Mohi, also called the Battle of the Sajó River, was fought on 11 April 1241 between the Mongol army of Batu Khan and the army of King Béla IV of Hungary. The Mongols, guided by their veteran general Subutai, surrounded the Hungarian camp and destroyed the royal army. For the next year Hungary was occupied and ravaged, in one of the worst disasters in the kingdom’s history.

Background: the Mongols move west

Between 1237 and 1240 Batu’s armies conquered the Rus principalities, ending with the fall of Kyiv in December 1240, as told in the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus. Hungary was the next target. The Mongols regarded it as a refuge for their enemies, because in 1239 Béla had admitted the Cuman khan Köten and tens of thousands of his people, who had fled from the steppe.

The Mongols sent demands for Köten’s surrender, which Béla ignored. The Cumans’ arrival also caused trouble inside Hungary. Their herds damaged farmland, and many Hungarian nobles distrusted them. Béla himself was unpopular with the nobility, because he was trying to recover royal estates given away by his father, Andrew II, the king who had issued the Golden Bull of 1222.

The invasion of 1241

The Mongols attacked Central Europe on a broad front. While a smaller force raided Poland and won the Battle of Legnica on 9 April, the main army entered Hungary. On 12 March 1241 it broke through the Verecke Pass in the Carpathians and defeated the palatine Denis, who had been sent to block it. Other columns crossed further south through Transylvania.

Béla gathered his army at Pest. In mid-March a mob there, believing the Cumans were Mongol spies, murdered Köten. The furious Cumans left the kingdom, plundering as they went, depriving Béla of his best light cavalry. Mongol vanguards reached Pest and then pulled back, drawing the Hungarians east after them.

The battle at the Sajó River

In early April the Hungarian army, perhaps 15,000-30,000 strong, reached the Sajó River near the village of Muhi. The king’s brother Coloman, Duke of Slavonia, Archbishop Ugrin Csák of Kalocsa and Archbishop Matthias of Esztergom were among its leaders. The army camped on the plain west of the river, inside a ring of wagons chained together, and posted a guard on the only bridge.

On the night of 10-11 April the Mongols tried to cross the bridge. Coloman and Ugrin, with a force that included Knights Templar, drove them back. Before dawn the Mongols returned and cleared the bridge using stone-throwing siege engines, an unusual use of such weapons in an open-field battle. At the same time Subutai led another column across the river further south, probably over a temporary bridge or a ford.

By morning the Hungarians were attacked from two sides and pressed back into their crowded camp. The Mongols showered it with arrows and burning missiles. They then left a deliberate gap in their encirclement. Many Hungarians fled through it and were cut down by Mongol horsemen during a pursuit that lasted for miles.

Among the dead were Archbishop Ugrin, Archbishop Matthias of Esztergom, several bishops and many leading barons. Béla escaped with a small escort, reportedly with help from loyal nobles who gave him fresh horses. The Mongols, too, suffered real losses, especially at the bridge. The Yuan shi, the official Chinese history of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, records that Batu blamed Subutai for the slow crossing, and that Subutai replied that the delay had been caused by Batu’s own column.

Why the Hungarians lost

Historians point to several reasons for the defeat. Béla’s army was large but poorly united: many nobles resented the king, and the loss of the Cumans had removed the troops best able to fight the Mongols on their own terms. The Hungarian camp, packed with tents and wagons, made it hard for knights to form up and charge, and turned into a trap once surrounded.

The Mongols, by contrast, were veterans of twenty years of campaigning from China to the Volga. Their scouts gave them good information about the Hungarian position, their commanders coordinated widely separated columns, and they combined archery, siege engines and manoeuvre in a way European armies had not seen. Subutai’s flanking crossing was the decisive move.

Key people

• Béla IV (ruled 1235-1270): King of Hungary, who escaped from the battle and later rebuilt the kingdom.
• Coloman (Kálmán): Béla’s brother and Duke of Slavonia, who fought bravely at the bridge; he was badly wounded and died of his wounds a few weeks later.
• Ugrin Csák: Archbishop of Kalocsa, killed in the battle.
• Batu Khan: grandson of Genghis Khan and commander of the Mongol western campaign.
• Subutai: the Mongol general whose river crossing decided the battle.
• Master Roger (Rogerius): an Italian churchman in Hungary who was captured by the Mongols and later wrote an eyewitness account, the Carmen miserabile.

Occupation and withdrawal, 1241-1242

Béla escaped to Austria, where Duke Frederick II of Babenberg forced him to give up money and border counties, and then to Zagreb and the Dalmatian coast. The Mongols occupied the land east of the Danube and treated it as conquered territory, killing, enslaving and burning, but also organising local administration.

When the Danube froze around Christmas 1241, the Mongols crossed it, sacked Esztergom and spread into the west. A force under Kadan pursued Béla to the Adriatic, where the king took refuge on the island town of Trogir in March 1242. Kadan could not take it. In spring 1242 the Mongols withdrew through Serbia and Bulgaria to the steppe, taking captives with them.

The traditional explanation is that news of the Great Khan Ögedei’s death on 11 December 1241 called Batu home. Historians now add other reasons: losses in Hungary, the lack of pasture for Mongol horses, the strength of stone castles they could not take, and Batu’s interest in building his own realm on the Volga.

Consequences

The human cost was enormous. Contemporary writers describe burned villages, unburied dead and the famine of 1242-1243. Modern estimates of the total loss of population range widely, often from 15 to 50 percent, and are uncertain. The Great Plain suffered most; the west and parts of the north were less affected.

Béla IV is remembered as the kingdom’s “second founder”. He learned that wooden and earth forts were useless against the Mongols, while stone castles and walled towns had held out. He encouraged nobles and towns to build stone fortifications, invited German and other settlers, granted privileges to towns such as Buda, and recalled the Cumans. When the Mongols invaded again in 1285-1286, they were driven off.

Timeline

• 1239: Béla IV admits the Cumans under Köten into Hungary.
• 1240, 6 December: Kyiv falls to Batu’s army.
• 1241, 12 March: The Mongols break through the Verecke Pass.
• 1241, mid-March: Köten is murdered at Pest and the Cumans leave Hungary.
• 1241, 9 April: A Mongol force defeats Henry II of Silesia at Legnica.
• 1241, 10-11 April: The Battle of Mohi; the Hungarian army is destroyed.
• 1241, 11 December: The Great Khan Ögedei dies in Mongolia.
• 1241-1242, winter: The Mongols cross the frozen Danube and sack Esztergom.
• 1242, March: Kadan’s force fails to reach Béla at Trogir.
• 1242, spring: The Mongols withdraw from Hungary.

Why it matters

Mohi was the greatest Mongol victory in Central Europe and nearly destroyed the medieval Hungarian kingdom. Its aftermath transformed Hungary into a land of stone castles and walled towns that could withstand later invasions.