(2) Hungary: Military History and Notable Events

1241 - Battle of Mohi (All Facts)

• Battle in which Batu Khan and the Mongols defeated King Bela IV of Hungary and his forces during the First Mongol Invasion of Hungary

• Battle in which King Bela IV had been chased across the frozen Danube River into Croatia, while the main invading Mongolian army occupied his country with chilling brutality

• Battle after which Batu Khan and his Mongol forces withdrew from Hungary and Dalmatia, to cross the Carpathian Mountains, and return to the lower Volga River

1366 - 1526 - Hungarian-Ottoman Wars (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts which ended with the Battle of Mohacs

1441 - Battle of Smederevo (All Facts)

• Battle in which Janos Hunyadi and his forces defeated Ishak Bey and the Ottoman Turks in modern-day Serbia during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

1442 - Battle of the Iron Gate (All Facts)

• Battle in which Janos Hunyadi and his forces defeated Mezid Bey and the Ottoman Turks in modern-day Romania during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

1444 - Battle of Varna (All Facts)

• Battle in which General Janos Hunyadi and King Wladyslaw III and their forces were defeated by Murad II and the Ottoman Turks on the shores of the Black Sea in modern-day Bulgaria during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

• Battle which allowed the Ottoman Turks to enter Constantinople and which failed to prevent further Ottoman expansion into the Balkans

• Battle after which King Wladyslaw III vanished

1448 - Battle of Kosovo (All Facts)

• Battle in which Janos Hunyadi and his forces were defeated by Murad II and the Ottoman Turks in modern-day Serbia during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

1456 - Siege of Belgrade (All Facts)

• Battle in which Janos Hunyadi and his forces defeated Mohamed II and the Ottoman Turks in modern-day Serbia during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

• Battle which took place on the Danube River

• Battle in which Hunyadi and his forces were outnumbered by but nevertheless defeated the larger Ottoman army and navy

• Battle before which Hunyadi gathered some 60K men, mostly volunteers and peasants, and a much smaller fleet

• Battle prior to which Mohammed II was able to prepare in secret and muster some 150K men and 60 ships to blockade the namesake city

• Battle in which the Ottoman Turks had some 300 siege guns, including 27 giant cannons and catapults and other weapons

• Battle in which huge boulders were hurled at the namesake fortress but were ineffective because of a successful warning system employed by the Hungarians involving bells

• Battle in which after Hunyadi’s navy broke the blockade, his troops relieved the namesake fortress and blunted a series of Ottoman attacks until the siege guns were overrun and they stormed to victory

1515 - First Congress of Vienna (All Facts)

• Meeting attended by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and the Jagiellonian brothers, King Vladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia, and King Sigismund of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania where they all forged an alliance with one another

• Meeting in which Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian married off his children Ferdinand and Mary to King Vladislaus II of Hungary and Bohemia’s children Louis and Anne

• Meeting in which the Kingdom of Hungary, given its absence of a direct heir to King Louis II, was inherited to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and the House of Habsburg

  • This partially protected them from the Ottoman Empire

• Meeting after which the hereditary territories of the Habsburgs were united amongst Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary

1521 - Siege of Belgrade (All Facts)

• Battle in which Suleiman and his Ottoman forces defeated and conquered the namesake city within the Kingdom of Hungary, during the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

• Battle before which the Hungarian’s pleas for help from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his forces went unnoticed given the Holy Roman Emperor’s issues in Germany due to the Protestant Reformation

• Battle in which the defenders of the namesake city had no answer to the Ottoman mines and cannon bombardment from an island in the Danube River

• Battle in which the namesake city fell and its Hungarian inhabitants were massacred while its Serb inhabitants were imprisoned in Istanbul

• Battle after which the Danube River became unreliable line of defense for the Kingdom of Hungary and Kingdom of Serbia, exposed to the Ottoman advance

• Battle after which Christian forces tried to regroup against the Ottomans but fell apart

• Battle which forced the Republic of Venice to anxiously negotiate peace with the Ottoman Empire

1526 - Battle of Mohacs (All Facts)

• Battle in which Suleiman and his Ottoman forces defeated King Louis II and his Hungarian forces, ending the Hungarian-Ottoman Wars

• Battle which was one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles in its day, in which King Louis II and 20K of his men died

• Battle which is considered one of the worst tragedies to befall the Hungarians to which they still mourn to this day

• Battle during which the Hungarian forces were subject to internal bitter rivalries and disputes in which

  • no effort was made to hold the line of Drava River

  • the Hungarian nobles rejected all delaying actions which might have enabled reinforcements to arrive

• Battle during which successive frontal assaults by the Hungarian forces were met by heavy artillery fire and superior numbers by the Ottoman forces

• Battle in which any Hungarian survivors that remained were massacred

• Battle after which Hungary split into three parts:

  • Habsburg Hungary, which ruled the west and north

  • Ottoman Hungary, which ruled central Hungary around the city of Buda and was a province of the Ottoman Empire

  • Transylvanian Hungary, which ruled east and southeast Hungary and was a vassal of the Ottoman Empire

• Battle after which the Ottoman forces were just over 100 miles from Vienna (in Austria)

1529 - 1533 - First Habsburg-Ottoman War (All Facts)

• War which saw

  • The Siege of Vienna

  • The Siege of Kőszeg

1531 / 1538 - Treaty of Nagyvárad / Treaty of Grosswardein (All Facts)

• Truce made between Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand and John Zapolya, both claimants to / holders of the Hungarian throne at the time

1532 - Siege of Kőszeg (All Facts)

• Battle in which Hungary and Croatia of the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire defeated Suleiman and his Ottoman forces during the Hungarian-Ottoman War

1533 - Truce of Constantinople (All Facts)

• Truce made by Suleiman of the Ottoman Empire and Holy Roman Emperor and King Ferdinand of Hungary, which ended the First Habsburg-Ottoman War

• Truce after which Hungarian rule remained divided between Holy Roman Emperor and King Ferdinand and John Zapolya of Transylvania

1540 - 1547 - Third Habsburg-Ottoman War (All Facts)

1541 - Siege of Buda (All Facts)

• Battle in which Suleiman and his Ottoman forces defeated Holy Roman Emperor and Hungarian King Ferdinand in the namesake Hungarian city during the Third Habsburg-Ottoman War

• Battle after which Hungary became a (Turkish) province of the Ottoman Empire

1541 - Treaty of Gyalu (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between John Zapolya’s widow Isabella (of the House of Jagiellon) and Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand, which ceded the Kingdom of Hungary to Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand