Local response in April 1241 A letter from the master of the French
Templars to the French king at about this time noted that if the armies of Bohemia and Hungary "should be defeated, these Tartars will find no one to stand against them as far as" France.
Baldwin of Ninove records that the Mongols caused panic in
Flanders. The historian
Peter Jackson agrees with the Templar master that had the Mongols launched a serious invasion of the Empire in the spring of 1241, "it is unlikely that they would have encountered coordinated opposition." In response to the Mongol threat, German church leaders held several councils in April 1241, issuing calls for a crusade against the Mongols and enjoining fasting and processions for the defence of Germany and Bohemia. A princely assembly was held at
Merseburg on 22 April to raise troops and coordinate efforts, according to the
Sächsische Weltchronik and the
Annales breves Wormatienses. There is no record of who attended, but Duke
Albert of Saxony and Bishop
Conrad of Meissen had mustered an army and joined Wenceslaus at
Königstein by 7 May. In late April, another assembly was held at
Herford (or perhaps
Erfurt) under the presidency of the acting regent in Germany, Archbishop Siegfried, but it did not lead to the formation of an army.
Emperor Frederick's response The ongoing quarrel between the excommunicated emperor and the pope hampered the imperial response to the arrival of the Mongols on the empire's eastern border. In May 1241, representatives of the emperor and the pope met to negotiate an end to their dispute in order to sustain a common front against the Mongols. The talks came to nothing. In Italy,
Filippo da Pistoia, the
bishop of Ferrara, circulated a letter he claimed to have received showing that the Emperor Frederick II had sent envoys to the Mongols and was in league with them. The pope's agents spread similar rumours in Germany. The
Epistola prudenti viro, a false letter purportedly addressed to Frederick's astrologer
Theodore of Antioch, was circulated in opposition to such claims. The emperor remained in Italy throughout the crisis. From there, in either May or June, he sent a short list of seven instructions for countering the Mongol threat to Germany. He specifically ordered the use of crossbows, which were regarded as sparking terror in the Mongols, who did not possess the technology. The same advice was repeated a few years later in the
Tartar Relation. On 20 June in
Faenza, the emperor issued the
Encyclica contra Tartaros, an encyclical letter announcing the
fall of Kiev, the invasion of Hungary and the threat to Germany, and requesting each Christian nation to devote its proper quota of men and arms to the defence of Christendom. According to Matthew of Paris's copy of the encyclical, it was addressed to the Catholic nations—
France,
Spain,
Wales,
Ireland,
England,
Swabia,
Denmark,
Italy,
Burgundy,
Apulia,
Crete,
Cyprus,
Sicily,
Scotland and
Norway—each addressed according to its own national stereotype.
Richard of San Germano states that copies were sent to all the princes of the West and quotes the start of the letter to the French king. In the encyclical, Frederick indicated he had accepted Hungarian submission. On 3 July, Frederick II addressed a letter to his brother-in-law, King
Henry III of England, informing him of the Mongol threat. The emperor had seemingly just received letters from Conrad IV, the kings of Hungary and Bohemia and the dukes of Austria and Bavaria informing him of the Mongols' progress. Béla IV's letter was delivered by Bishop
Stephen of Vác, who carried another letter to Pope Gregory IX.
Conrad IV's anti-Mongol crusade On the advice of the secular princes, Archbishop Siegfried promulgated instructions for the
Dominicans and
Franciscans to preach a crusade against the Mongols on 25 April, after the assembly in Herford. This was an unprecedent usurpation of what was by then a papal prerogative. Little seems to have come of it immediately. Preaching did take place in the archdioceses of
Mainz,
Cologne and
Trier; the diocese of
Constance and that of
Augsburg, where Bishop
Siboto commissioned the friars to preach; and the city of
Strasbourg. According to the
Annales sancti Pantaleonis, the crusade was preached throughout all of Germany by the Dominicans and Franciscans: "many friars Preachers and Minors ... have armed clergy and laity throughout almost all Germany against the aforesaid barbarians with the sign of the cross." On 19 May, with the assistance of Siegfried, the 13-year-old Conrad IV held an assembly at
Esslingen, where he took the
vow of a crusader. His vow committed him only until 11 November 1241, although Béla IV warned him that the Mongols planned to invade Germany at the beginning of winter in 1241–42. At Esslingen, Conrad proclaimed a
Landfrieden (territorial peace) for all of Germany so that forces could be concentrated against the Mongols. Bishops solicited donations for the cause throughout Germany. Conrad IV set 1 July as the date for the army to assemble at
Nuremberg. In June, Pope Gregory IX wrote to several bishops in Germany promoting the preaching of the crusade, retroactively authorizing what local authorities and the king had already begun. The abbot of
Heiligenkreuz and the prior of the Dominicans in Vienna were also ordered to preach the crusade in their provinces. The Dominicans and Franciscans preached throughout Germany. According to the
Annals of Stade, Gregory had received appeals for the full
crusade indulgence from the dukes of Austria and Carinthia. On 19 June, referring to the letter he had received from Duke Frederick, he issued a formal indulgence for the defence of Germany and Bohemia, as he had three days earlier for Hungary. Among those known to have taken a crusader's vow and joined the imperial army are Duke
Otto of Brunswick, Archbishop
Conrad of Cologne, Count
Albert IV of Tyrol, Count
Ulrich of Ulten and Count Louis of
Helfenstein. The geographical spread of these names suggests that the call for a crusade was widely heeded across Germany. In his letter of 13 June, Duke Frederick explained that he would not join the crusade because he was already engaged with the Mongols, whom he described as a "hurricane". He asked Conrad IV to have
crossbows brought to Germany. He also advised him to bring knights from Swabia, Franconia, Bavaria and the Rhineland to Austria and direct the knights of Saxony, Meissen and Thuringia to Bohemia. The crusader army assembled as planned at Nuremberg and had advanced as far as
Weiden by 16 July. It is unclear if Conrad was marching toward Bohemia or Austria. By this time the Mongols were no longer threatening Germany and consequently the crusade broke up. It did not make contact with the Mongols. The latest indication that the crusade was ongoing is a charter issued by the count of Tyrol on 20 July. According to the
Chronicon Wormatiense and the
Gesta Treverorum, most of the bishops and princes divided the money collected for the crusade between themselves. The exception was Bishop
Landolf of Worms, who, according to the
Chronicon, returned the donations after the crusade was called off. The rebellion of Conrad's regent in Germany, Siegfried of Mainz, who defected to the papal party, was probably the immediate cause of Conrad's decision to end the crusade. Although the crusade had not met the Mongols in battle, the
Annales sancti Trudperti, followed by the
Annales Zwifaltenses, attributes the Mongols' subsequent retreat from Europe to the intimidating German army. Nationalist modern historians in Germany or Austria have also fallen on such explanations. In reality, the Mongols probably did not invade Germany in force because their objective was merely to punish the Hungarian king for giving protection to the Cumans.
Reports of victory Despite the lack of contemporary evidence for a major German victory over the Mongols, the rumour that they had received such a check spread as far as Egypt, Armenia and Muslim Spain. It is recorded in the
History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and the
Chronological History of
Mekhitar of Ayrivank. The ''Flor des estoires de la terre d'Orient
of Hayton of Corycus states that the duke of Austria and the king of Bohemia defeated the Mongols on the Danube and Batu drowned. The Liber secretorum fidelium crucis of Marino Sanudo the Elder also alludes to an Austrian victory on the Danube. The Kitāb al-jughrāfiyya'' of
Ibn Saʿīd al-Maghribī records that a joint German–Hungarian army defeated the Mongols near
Šibenik. Matthew of Paris claims that Conrad IV and his brother, King
Enzo of Sardinia, defeated a Mongol army on the banks of the river Delpheos (possibly the
Dnieper). In later Moravian historiography, the Mongol invasion of 1241 was conflated with the Hungarian invasion of 1253, which was part of the
War of the Babenberg Succession. On the latter occasion, the Hungarian army included pagan Cumans, who were confused with Mongols. The Hungarians besieged
Olomouc. They defeated a relief army before lifting the siege. In the
Czech Chronicle of
Václav Hájek (1541), the Hungarian victory before Olomouc is transformed into a defeat and the leader of the Moravians is . The actual lord of
Sternberg Castle at the time was
Zdeslav, whose son Jaroslav was probably too young to participate in military action. In the
History of the Kingdom of Bohemia of
Johannes Dubravius (1552), the siege of Olomouc is moved to 1241 and attributed to the Mongols. Jaroslav of Sternberg was transformed into a national hero who defeated the Mongols before Olomouc and killed Baidar in the
Dvůr Králové manuscript literary hoax in the 19th century. In fact, Baidar was still alive in 1246. ==Later crusades==