Devastation of Hungary The effects of the Mongol invasion were tremendous in the Kingdom of Hungary. The worst damage was incurred in the plains regions, where 50-80% of settlements were destroyed. The combination of massacres perpetrated by the Mongols, the famines induced by their foraging, and the simultaneous devastation of the countryside by the fleeing Cumans resulted in an estimated loss of 15–25% of Hungary's population, some 300,000–500,000 people in total. The only places that held in the face of Mongol assaults were approximately eighty fortified places, including all of the few stone castles in the kingdom. Among these places were
Esztergom,
Székesfehérvár, and the Pannonhalma Archabbey. However, these places were relatively few; a German chronicler in 1241 noted that Hungary "had almost no city protected by strong walls or fortresses", so the majority of settled areas were extremely vulnerable. During the 1241-2 Mongol invasion of Hungary, Mongol mass rapes of Hungarian women were recorded by the monk Rogerius who said they "found pleasure" in the act. The mass rapes of Hungarian women by the Mongols were recalled later when the Russian empire occupied Hungary in 1849 and when the Soviet army occupied Hungary in 1945.
Rogerius of Apulia's account of devastation and slaughter the Mongols wrought upon Europeans during the Mongol invasion of Hungary and Transylvania is in his book
Carmen Miserabile.
Denis Türje fought with Hungarian King Béla IV against the Mongols at the Battle of Mohi. Experts have been attempting to reconstruct the broader picture from the available fragments, which, over time, will elucidate the extent of the Mongol devastation in Hungary by region. Regarding the final assessment of the Mongol invasion, it is impossible to provide precise statistical data. The most that can be estimated is the extent of settlement destruction, from which conclusions can be drawn. The area most affected was the central, southern, and southeastern parts of the Great Hungarian Plain, where the vast majority of villages disappeared, leaving these regions depopulated. The destruction here is estimated to have been between 80-100%. Significant damage also occurred in the eastern strip of Transdanubia along the right bank of the Danube, as well as in the region between Székesfehérvár and the Danube. In the northern areas, considerable destruction can still be observed in the valleys of the Danube's left-bank tributaries. However, it appears that the northern region of Lake Balaton and the counties of Vas and Zala experienced the least devastation. The human losses are even more difficult to assess, as no comprehensive statistical records exist, and the population of Hungary at the time is not precisely known. It is also impossible to estimate the number of individuals who managed to escape from plundered villages or towns, nor how many perished. According to Hungarian medievalist József Laszlovszky, it is not far from the truth to state that, when considering the massacred, those who fell in battle, and the victims of epidemics and famine, the death toll likely numbers in the tens of thousands, or even more plausibly, in the hundreds of thousands. Taking into account the population of Hungary during that period, this suggests that the destruction was proportionally far greater than the substantial human losses incurred during World War II. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, traces of direct, widespread destruction from the Mongol invasion have begun to emerge one after another. This was largely due to the rapidly expanding highway construction projects, which pass through areas most affected by the invasion. During the archaeological excavations carried out prior to these construction projects, numerous traces of burned-down houses, human remains, and weapons were uncovered. In the past decades, it has become typical for experts to conduct targeted research based on both sources and so-called historical indicators. As a result, even more direct evidence has emerged, primarily from the Great Hungarian Plain: traces of flight, burned buildings, massacred people, and unburied dead. In some cases, unmistakable signs of cannibalism have also been found. One of the most famous finds became known as a terrible memento of a family tragedy. The ruins of a half-buried house were uncovered near
Cegléd, with a hearth once standing in one corner. Inside the hearth, the skeletons of two children, a boy and a girl around 10–12 years old, were found, alongside their mother’s remains: only her upper body was inside the hearth, with her legs sticking out. It is believed that during a Mongol raid, the family tried to hide, but the house was set on fire, collapsed, and buried them beneath the rubble. Based on archaeological findings, the destruction was the greatest in the central regions of the Kingdom of Hungary (
Great Hungarian Plain), some areas were completely depopulated. Elsewhere, the situation was somewhat better. Recent archaeological results show that in several places, the Hungarian population took up arms to resist the overwhelming Mongol superiority. The inhabitants of individual villages fought life-and-death battles against the largest empire in the world. Archaeologists are increasingly finding evidence of these local struggles at various sites. When the people of a village took up arms, they organized their own defense and fought against the forces of the Mongol Empire. In Hungary, many of these fortifications from that time have been restored to their original condition. Those who were not killed were taken captive, the men were forced into the Mongol army and later sent to the front lines, used as "cannon fodder". Those who remained were decimated by famine and disease, struggling to rebuild their destroyed churches, homes, and farms. His prediction was ultimately correct, as the Holy Roman Empire (HRE) took little part in fighting the Mongols, bar repelling minor scouting parties in Bohemia, Moravia, Bavaria, and Austria. Emperor Frederick II, in his warning letter to
Christendom, grimly assessed the situation but also tried to use it as leverage over the Papacy. However, Frederick was well aware of the threat they posed. Even before the Pope's summons, Emperor Frederick II and his son, Conrad IV, called a Landfrieden throughout Germany. Conrad ordered the magnates to levy their armies, while Frederick II ordered them to strengthen their defenses. The states of the Holy Roman Empire intended to bog the Mongols down laying siege to thousands of castles and fortified towns and fighting thousands of small sallying forces, rather than riding out to meet the Mongols in one large field battle as the Hungarians and Poles had done. A letter written by Emperor Frederick II, found in the Regesta Imperii, dated to June 20, 1241, and intended for all his vassals in Swabia, Austria, and Bohemia, included a number of specific military instructions. His forces were to avoid engaging the Mongols in field battles, hoard all food stocks in every fortress and stronghold, and arm all possible levies as well as the general populace. Duke Frederick of Austria paid to have Austria's border castles strengthened at his own expense. In Bohemia king Wenceslaus I had every castle strengthened and provisioned, as well as providing soldiers and armaments to monasteries in order to turn them into refuges for the civilian population. In the end these preparations were unnecessary, as the Mongols never launched a full-scale invasion of the Holy Roman Empire. There were Mongol raids and sieges in the HRE border states in the aftermath of their victories in Poland and Hungary, in which Frederick's instructions seemed to have been followed, but these were minor affairs and quickly abandoned. The Duke of Austria and Styria, Frederick I, took advantage of the chaos of the invasion to occupy three Hungarian counties which he then had fortified. During the second half of 1242, following the Mongol withdrawal, the Hungarians mustered their remaining troops and invaded the disputed counties. They would be fought over infrequently for the next four years, until the
Battle of the Leitha River, where Frederick's death resulted in the counties being ceded to Hungary.
Hungarian reforms and future raids While devastated, the kingdom of Hungary was intact. Within a year of the withdrawal of the Mongols, the three westernmost counties (
Moson,
Sopron, and
Vas) that were extorted as ransom by Duke Frederick of Austria were recaptured, and a local uprising in
Slavonia was quashed. In the decades following, the khans of the Golden Horde would repeatedly demand submission from Hungary – for example, Berke demanded once in 1259 and again in 1264 that Hungary become part of his empire and contribute its army to his planned invasion of central Europe in exchange for tax exemption and a share of the plunder – but were always ignored. The threat of another Mongol invasion, this time taken seriously, was the source of national unity and provided the impetus for Béla IV's extensive expansion of Hungarian defenses, especially the building of new stone castles (forty-four in the first ten years) and the revitalization of the army, including expanding the number of heavily armoured cavalry and knights in the royal army. Béla IV is seen now as a second founder of the nation, partly in recognition of all that was done during his reign to reconstruct and fortify the country against foreign invasion from the east. These improvements were to pay off in 1285 when
Nogai Khan attempted an invasion of the country (raids along the frontier had been frequent in the intervening years, but Nogai's attack was the first major invasion since 1242). In that event, the invasion was defeated quickly, as were a number of other attacks before and after. ==See also==