Hungarian Military Organization, 1387–1526

Chapter 1 Hungarian Military Organization, 1387–1526

The first Ottoman raids in the last decade of the fourteenth century gave the Hungarian political elite a new problem. For most of its previous history as an independent kingdom, Hungary had been – and had been perceived as – an aggressive power that waged largely successful wars against practically all of its neighbours, and even the occasional defeat failed to have serious consequen ces for its internal political stability. The only clear exception to this pattern was the Mongol invasion of the realm in the middle of the thirteenth century. The Mongol offensive caused immense loss of life, exterminating up to 30 per cent of the country’s population, and profoundly transformed the settlement pattern of some regions.1 Yet the quick and definitive departure of the invaders less than two years after made rapid recovery possible. One and a half centuries later, the Muslim Ottomans arrived less unexpectedly, and the damage they did was initially more restrained (at least in terms of the regions affected), but, as it soon appeared, they established a presence near the Hung arian borders that was to be much more permanent. The first Ottoman raids into southern Hungary must have presented an especially sharp contrast with the glorious reign of Louis i (“the Great,” 1342–82), when Hungarian armies not only domi nated in south-eastern Europe but also intervened successfully in distant Italy and provided a sizeable part of the mercenary forces that subsequently played such a conspicuous role in warfare throughout that peninsula.2 The mere fact that, between 1389 and 1395, King Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387–1437) had to take to the field in person every single year, either to confront

1 For a modern assessment of the Mongol invasion and its consequences see Pál Engel, The Realm of Saint Stephen. A History of Medieval Hungary 895–1526 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 98–105. 2 On the offensive wars of Louis i see ibid., 159–67. On the Hungarian mercenaries in Italy see William Caferro, John Hawkwood. An English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Balti more: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 63–66 and passim, where the person re ferred to as “Nicholas Thod” is Miklós Toldi, a Hungarian knight who had probably become the hero of legends already in the Middle Ages. On Toldi see Elemér Mályusz, “A Toldi-monda történeti alapja,” in idem, Klió szolgálatában. Válogatott történelmi tanulmányok ed. István Soós (Budapest: MTA Történettudományi Intézete, 2003), 108–29. Cf. also Attila Bárány, “The Communion of English and Hungarian mercenaries in Italy,” in János Barta and Klára Papp (eds), The First Millennium of Hungary in Europe (Debrecen: Debrecen University Press, 2002), 126–41.

Hungarian Military Organization 9 the Ottomans directly or in order to strengthen Hungarian influence over neighbouring Christian principalities, was a clear indication that the situation had changed radically. Thereafter, the Ottoman military presence along the southern marches of Hungary remained constant, apart from a rather short break after 1402, until the very end of the medieval kingdom in 1526. Great battles and major offensive campaigns launched under the Ottoman sultan’s personal leadership or, conversely, by the king (or governor) of Hungary, were not the primary feature of the warfare that never entirely ceased between the expanding Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary. With the exception of four great pitched battles (1396: Nicopolis; 1444: Varna; 1448: Kosovo Polje; 1526: Mohács) and some major sieges (1456, 1521: Belgrade; 1463: Jajce; 1475–76: Šabac), the military confrontations were carried out primarily by irregular troops on the Ottoman side and by variously-organized defensive forces on the Hungarian.

During the centuries of expansion, the Ottomans waged an almost con tinuous kleinkrieg along the frontiers of the Empire, which continued even during periods of formal peace. Characteristic of this mode of war fare were raids and counterraids across the frontier in pursuit of plunder, especially of slaves and animals.3

Deeply rooted in the unique structure of Ottoman society, it was this kind of constant crossborder kleinkrieg that gradually undermined the vitality of the Hungarian kingdom and had prepared its collapse by the second decade of the sixteenth century. The most destructive features of the Ottoman raids were the lack of any sea sonal pattern and their consequent unexpectedness. While the organization of a major offensive campaign took considerable time even for the highly effec tive Ottoman military administration, and news about it would reach the Hun garian government weeks, sometimes months before it was actually started, 1,000 or so lightly-armed cavalry could be assembled by the Ottoman warlords based at Smederevo, Nicopolis, Vidin, and later in Bosnia, in a matter of days. Having completed their raiding, they could easily return to Ottoman territory before any resistance was organized. Hot, rainless summers and extremely cold winters, which seem to have been frequent in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, were especially dangerous, as they rendered the big rivers passable

3 Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650. The Stuctures of Power (London: Palgrave Mac millan, 2002), 254.