Battle of Mohács

Battle of Mohács, decisive defeat of Hungary, led by King Louis II, by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire, led by Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. This victory at Mohács on August 29, 1526, marked the effective destruction of the Hungarian monarchy and paved the way for Habsburg and Turkish domination in Hungary.

In order to expand the Ottoman Empire into the heart of Europe, Süleyman would have to conquer the kingdom of Hungary. The first stage to accomplishing this goal was the capture of Belgrade in 1521. Süleyman could then use Serbian territory to launch an invasion, subjugating Hungary and then moving on to the more valuable prize of Vienna.

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The Hungarians knew that an attack was coming but could not win any support from other Christian powers, and, having suppressed a peasant uprising two years before, had little popular support in the countryside; the nobility was divided as well, and many refused to obey the 20-year-old Louis’s orders. Süleyman’s army was able to make an uncontested crossing of the Drava River on a pontoon bride, which took five days, while King Louis waited to face the invaders on a large marshy plain at Mohács, which lies on the west bank of Danube River just above the point where Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia meet. Rather than wait for reinforcements that would have added 15,000 soldiers to his ranks, Louis ordered an attack. The Hungarians intended to rely upon the shock effect of their charging armored knights, but Süleyman had better balanced forces, including infantry Janissaries armed with arquebuses, sipahi light cavalry, and formidable banks of some 300 cannon against the Hungarians’ 50.

The charge of the Hungarian cavalry caused serious casualties to the Ottoman vanguard, but Süleyman’s elite Janissaries pushed back the Hungarians, who were also torn apart by Turkish cannon fire. As the Hungarians fell back, they were outflanked and encircled by the fast-moving Ottoman light cavalry. The Hungarian force was annihilated. King Louis of Hungary was thrown from his horse and killed as he tried to escape the carnage (an alternate version holds that he drowned while fording the Csele River). Süleyman proceeded into Buda on September 10, but then withdrew from the country, taking more than 100,000 captives with him.

The defeat at Mohács was a disaster that ended the existence of Hungary as an independent united kingdom. A prolonged civil war (1526–38) ultimately resulted in the incorporation of the central and southern two-thirds of Hungary into the Ottoman Empire (1547) and in the establishment of Transylvania and the eastern Hungarian provinces as an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire.

In 1976, the Hungarian government established a memorial encompassing much of the battlefield.

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Losses: Ottoman, 2,000 of 60,000; Hungarian, 18,000 of 35,000.