Mongol invasion of Europe

 

Introduction

 

The Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century was the conquest of Europe by the Mongol Empire, by way of the destruction of East Slavic principalities, such as Kiev and Vladimir. The Mongol invasions also occurred in Central Europe, which led to warfare among fragmented Poland, such as the Battle of Legnica (9 April 1241) and in the Battle of Mohi (11 April 1241) in the Kingdom of Hungary.

 

 

The Mongol invasions of Europe were centered in their destruction of Russian and Slavic principalities, such as Kiev and Vladimir, under the leadership of Subutai. The Mongols then invaded the Kingdom of Hungary and the fragmented Poland, the former invasion commanded by Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, and the latter a diversion commanded by Kadan, also a grandson of Genghis Khan, though both invasions were also masterminded by Subutai. Historians have debated since the thirteenth century, whether or not the Eastern European campaigns of the Mongols had macrohistorical importance. Most military historians believe they essentially were diversions, meant to frighten the Western powers sufficiently to keep them out of the Mongols' affairs in the East, specifically in Russia. The evidence does indicate that Batu Khan was primarily interested in securing the western frontiers of his Russian conquests, and only after the swift destruction of both the Hungarian and Polish armies did he begin thinking about the conquest of Western Europe. Mongolian records indicate that Subutai was planning a complete conquest of the remaining European powers, beginning with a winter attack on Austria and other states of the Holy Roman Empire, when he was recalled to Mongolia upon the death of Ögedei Khan.

 

 

To the Mongols, the European invasions were a third theater of operations, second to both the Middle East and Song China. The Mongol incursions into Europe helped to draw attention to the world beyond the European space, especially China, which actually became more accessible for trade as long as the Mongol Empire itself lasted since the Silk Road was protected and secure. In the mid-thirteenth century, as Muslim sultanates also fell to the Mongols, there was some possibility—although this did not materialize—of a Christian-Mongol alliance against Islam. To some extent, the Mongol Empire and the Mongol invasion of Europe served as a bridge between different cultural worlds.

 

The Mongols invaded central Europe with three armies. One army defeated an alliance which included forces from the fragmented Poland and members of various Christian  military orders, led by Henry II the Pious, Duke of Silesia at Legnica. A second army crossed the Carpathian mountains and a third followed the Danube. The armies re-grouped and crushed Hungary in 1241, defeating the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohi on April 11, 1241. A devastating Mongol invasion killed half of Hungary's population.The armies swept the plains of Hungary over the summer and in the spring of 1242, regained impetus and extended their control into Austria and Dalmatia as well as invading Moravia. The Great Khan died, and all the "Princes of the Blood" (of Genghis Khan) went back to Mongolia to elect the new Khan.

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Invasion of Europe (1241-1242)

 

On Christmas Day of the year 1241, Eastern Europe teetered on the brink of utter destruction. Batu, son of Ogedai Khan, successor to the Great Khan, Genghis, had destroyed Pest, the largest city in all of Hungary. Poland and Russia had already fallen, and now Batu's unstoppable Mongol war machine was poised to conquer whatever it set its eyes on. Early in the next year, the inorexable Asian horde suddenly left as swiftly as it had come upon Europe, affording the devastated realms of the Continent's eastern front a chance to reclaim and rebuild what the invaders had destroyed. It marked the end of a series of campaigns against the West that began back in 1222…

 

The leader of these Mongol expeditionary forces was Batu, a grandson of the legendary Genghis. He displayed an inheritance of his grandfather's tactical prowess, apparently suffering one known defeat throughout the entire twenty years of the campaigns. Batu first made his presence known in Russia in 1222 on the shores of the Kalka River, where he defeated a force of Russian princes and a native pagan tribe called the Cumans. Five years later, Genghis Khan died, putting Batu's father Ogedai in command of the entire Mongol nation. It is unclear when his forces finally set out, but a fairly clear marker for the beginning of the campaigns was in 1236, when Batu conquered the Volga Bulgars in southwestern Russia. The kingdom of Georgia fell in the same year. In late December of the following year, the Mongols under Batu captured the Russian city of Riazan. The city of Vladimir fell in February of 1238, and then Batu began to attack the northern realms of the Kievan Rus', one of the oldest Russian kingdoms, eventually settling his army by the River Don for about a year. Batu's lightning attacks and swift advances can be at least in part to using the climate to his advantage - he made his best progress in the winter, when the Russian rivers froze over. The crafty Mongol general used them like highways to move his army much faster than he ever could have simply shoving them through the snow. In late 1239, he was on the move again, splitting his force, sending an expeditionary force north under the command of a general named Khaidu, while he attacked the Carpathian Rus' in southwestern Russia and the present-day Balkans. Kiev, the oldest known Russian city, would fall a year later in 1240. The following year, 1241, would be a cataclysmic one for Europe. The Mongols were coming.

 

In March of 1241, it began. King Boleslav V (the Brave) of Poland was the first to meet the thundering Asian cavalry archers at the city of Krakow. The battle was a disaster, ending in the death of Boleslav and the shattering of his army, the remnants of which fled west to the city of Liegnitz, where the Teutonic Knights (a German Christian military/crusading order founded about a hundred years after the First Crusade) were desperately trying to form an army to stop the Asian advance. Khaidu, leader of the Mongol northern army, led his forces in hot pursuit. On April 9, in Anno Domini 1241, Christendom watched in horror as its proud knighthood, wearing the cross of Christ, was utterly annihilated at the hands of Khaidu. The ruler of Silesia, Grand Prince Henry II, was killed in the battle. The nearby realm of Silesia was swiftly ransacked, but the Bohemian Army finally stopped Khaidu's advance. Undeterred in the least, he merely headed south, for Hungary. The last great hope to stop the Mongols was gone, and the way lay open into Central Europe.

 

 

Invasion of Hungary

 

Around 1241, Hungary looked much like any other feudal kingdom of Europe. Although the throne was still inherited by the successors of Árpád, the authority and power of the king was greatly curtailed. The rich magnates cared less about the national security of the whole kingdom than about petty feudal quarrels with their fellow landlords. The Golden Bull of 1222 authorized the magnates to rebel against the king in some circumstances, and made the king only "primus inter pares," first among equals. Bela IV tried to restore the king's former authority and power without much success. Thus, Hungary lived in a state of feudal anarchy when the Mongols began to expand toward Europe.

 

The Hungarians had first learned about the Mongol threat in 1229, when King Andrew granted asylum to some fleeing Russian boyars. Magyars, left behind during the main migration to the Pannonian basin, still lived on the banks of the upper Volga River; in 1237, a Dominican friar, Friar Julian, set off on an expedition to lead them back, and was sent back to King Bela with a letter from Batu Khan. In this letter, Batu Khan called upon the Hungarian king to surrender his kingdom unconditionally to the Tatar forces or face complete destruction. Bela did not reply. Two more Mongol messages were brought to Hungary: The first, in 1239, by the defeated Cuman tribes, who asked for and received asylum in Hungary, and the second, in February, 1241, by the defeated Polish princes.

 

Only now did King Bela call his magnates to join his army in defense of the country. He also asked the papacy and the Western European rulers for additional help. Foreign help came in the form of a small knight-detachment under the leadership of Frederick, Prince of Austria, but they were too few to influence the outcome of the campaign. The majority of the Hungarian magnates did not believe in the seriousness of the Mongol danger; some of them perhaps even hoped that a defeat of the royal army would force Bela to discontinue his centralization efforts and, thus, strengthen their power.

 

Although the Mongol danger was serious and real, Hungary was not prepared to deal with it, as in the minds of the people (who had lived free from nomadic invasions for the last few hundred years) a new invasion seemed impossible. The population was no longer a soldier population. Only the rich nobles were trained as heavy-armored cavalry. The Hungarians had long since forgotten the light-cavalry strategy and tactics of their ancestors, which were almost the same as those now used by the Mongols.

 

The Hungarian army (some 60,000 on the eve of the Battle of Mohi) was made up of individual knights without tactical knowledge, discipline, or talented expert commanders. Inasmuch as the Hungarian army was not expert in nomadic warfare, King Bela welcomed the Cuman king, Kotony, and his fighters. Soon a rumor began to circulate in Hungary that the Cumans were the agents of the Mongols. On the other hand, Batu Khan himself justified his invasion of Hungary because Bela had given asylum to the Cumans who were regarded as rebels and traitors in the Mongol Empire.

 

If this was true, then King Bela had taken an unnecessarily great risk which proved to be detrimental to his plans. When some hot-headed Hungarians attacked the Cuman camp and killed their king, the Cumans escaped to the south, looting, ravaging the countryside, and slaughtering the surprised Magyar population. The Austrian troops moved back to Austria shortly thereafter to "enlist more Western help." The Hungarians remained alone.

 

Arriving at the Hornád river without having been challenged to a fight by the Mongols, the army encamped on April 10, 1241. The Mongols began their attack the next night. Soon, it was clear that the Hungarians were losing the battle. The king escaped with the help of his faithful and brave bodyguard, but the rest of the army was either killed without mercy by the Mongols or drowned in the rivers while attempting an escape.

 

Two days after the disaster at Liegnitz, Batu himself crushed the army of Hungary at the city of Mohi, on the banks of the River Sato. The same day, the Croatians frustrated him at the city of Grobnok. Undiscouraged, he headed south again. The next two blows would fall in December, with the destruction of the city of Lahore on the 22nd, and culminating in the destruction of the great city of Pest on Christmas Day. With a string of terrible defeats behind them and a new year soon approaching, Europe was in serious trouble.

 

 

 

The Mongols now systematically occupied the Great Hungarian Plains, as well as the slopes of the northern Carpathian Mountains, and Transylvania. Where they found local resistance, they mercilessly killed the population. Where the people did not offer any resistance, they forced the men into servitude in the Mongol army and the women and children were killed or carried off. Still, tens of thousands avoided Mongol domination by taking refuge behind the walls of the few fortresses or by hiding in the huge, jungle-like forests or the large marshes alongside the rivers. The Mongols, instead of leaving already defenseless and helpless peoples behind and continuing their campaign through Pannonia to Western Europe, spent the entire summer and fall securing and "pacifying" the occupied territories. Then, during the winter, contrary to the traditional strategy of the nomadic armies which started campaigns only in springtime, they crossed the Danube and continued their systematic occupation including Pannonia. They eventually reached the Austrian borders and the Adriatic shores in Dalmatia.

 

 

 

 

However, the expected apocalypse was not to be, for in early 1242, word reached Batu of the death of his father, the Great Khan. Tradition demanded that a successor be chosen, and Batu and Khaidu were forced to return to the capital in Krakorum. They were forced to pull out of Europe, and the decimated nations of Eastern Europe were given a chance to rebuild their homes. Christendom may owe its existence today to the death of an old Asian war chief back in 1241.