27.4 Europe: a.d. 1201 to 1300  (Page 5/14)

Hungary

Hungary's written constitution, "The Golden Seal", dates from 1222. It limited the king's royal powers and was comparable to the English Magna Carta. The royal authority decreased even more with the long reign of a silly king, Andrew II. His brighter son, Bela IV, was trying to recoup the royal influence before the calamity of the Mongol invasion. He had more or less graciously received the Cumans, who were fleeing ahead of the advancing Mongols and he had even taken title as King of the Cumans. The Cuman Kotian and his last 40,000 warriors had sought asylum in Hungary in return for conversion to Christianity. By 1240 the Mongols were ready to move again and within a few weeks southern Russia had been destroyed and the Mongols had reached the Carpathians surrounding Hungary. In the following year the Hungarian campaign began under General Batu. Bela appealed to the pope for aid, but as we noted earlier he was busy defending himself against the Holy Roman Emperor and sent no help. While part of the invading army turned north to take Lithuania and Poland and then wheeled south to enter Hungary from the north, the main Mongol army came straight west through the Carpathian passes while still others came up from the south. Towns were burned, churches pillaged and women raped. The main army came down from the mountains through the snow at 60 miles a day' King Bela fought but his Cuman allies, after some misunderstanding, would not help him and neither would Austria. It followed that with their usual trickery and superior tactics the Mongols soon surrounded Bela's 100,000 men and killed 60,000 of them. This Mongol slaughter and the famine which followed cost Hungary 1/2 of its population. After his defeat King Bela IV fled through the mountains toward Austria but then was taken prisoner by Duke Frederick because of past differences. His freedom cost the Hungarian king all the money he had, the Hungarian crown jewels and three of his western "departments". Only then could Bela and his family travel south to the safety of Croatia. The neighboring Bulgarian King Koloman had also fled to Croatia where he subsequently died of wounds incurred in a brief skirmish with the Mongols as they went through his country. The slaughter in this entire region Europe ended only with the Asiatics' withdrawal at the end of 1241. (Ref. 27 )

After the Mongol retreat the country of Hungary was gradually re-peopled in part with Germans, Slovaks, Croats, Vlachs and Russians, although the basic population still remained essentially Magyar. King Bela IV eventually returned with more Cumans and some Romanians and he attempted reconstruction along with the building of forts for defense. Bela's son, Stephen, had married a Cuman princess to cement the Cuman relationship and when Bela died in 1270 the young man reigned as Stephen V for only two years. He was succeeded by Ladislas IV, who rejected western ways and was known as "Ladislas the Cuman". When the barons and bishops passed a law requiring the king to convert his Cumans truly to Christianity, he arrested the papal legate and married two Cuman princesses from the court of Nogai of the Golden Horde in Russia. The Mongol armies returned to Europe in 1285, attacking both Poland and Hungary but the attacks failed due to poor conception and disorganization. Although the countrysides were sacked, the cities held. Ladislas, the last of the Arpad Dynasty, was assassinated in 1290, dying without male issue. (Ref. 27 , 126 )