Pál Tomori

George of Brandenburg, by the further appropriation of the Duchy of Jägerndorf, comes into possession of all Upper Silesia.

As the owner and mortgagee of these territories, he prepares the way for the introduction of the Protestant Reformation, here in Hungary as well as in his native Franconia.

Earlier than any other German prince or any other member of the Hohenzollern line, including even his younger brother Albert, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, he turns his eyes and heart to the new faith proceeding from Wittenberg.

The loss of Belgrade (Nandorfehervar) in 1521 had caused great alarm in Hungary, but the too-late and too-slowly-recruited sixty-thousand strong royal army—led by the king—had forgotten to take food along, so the army therefore disbanded spontaneously under the pressure of hunger and disease without even trying to recapture Belgrade, the southern key of Hungary, from the newly installed Turkish garrisons.

In 1523, Archbishop Pál Tomori, a valiant priest-soldier, is made Captain of Southern Hungary.

The general apathy that had characterized the country forces him to lean on his own bishopric revenues when he starts to repair and reinforce the second line of Hungary's border defense system.

King Francis I of France had been defeated at the Battle of Pavia on February 24, 1525 by the troops of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. After several months in prison, Francis had been forced to sign the Treaty of Madrid.

In a watershed moment in European diplomacy, Francis had come to an understanding with the Ottoman Empire, which has led to a formal Franco-Ottoman alliance.

The objective for Francis I is clearly to find an ally against the powerful Habsburg Emperor, in the person of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman.

The Ottoman-French strategic, and sometimes tactical, alliance will last for about three centuries.

It does, however, cause quite a scandal in the Christian world.

To relieve the Habsburg pressure on France, Francis has asked Suleiman to make war on the Holy Roman Empire, and the road from Turkey to the Holy Roman Empire leads across Hungary.

The request of the French king coincides nicely with the ambitions of Suleiman in Europe and gives him an incentive to attack Hungary in 1526.

The Ottomans see the growing alliance between Hungary and Bohemia and the Habsbugs as a threat to their power in the Balkans and have worked to break this alliance.

After Suleiman I came to power in 1520, the High Porte had made the Hungarians at least one and possibly two offers of peace.

It is unclear why King Louis refused the offer.

It is possible that Louis is well aware of Hungary's situation (especially after the Battle of Chaldiran and Polish-Ottoman peace from 1525) and he believes that war is a better option than peace.

Even in peacetime the Ottomans raid Hungarian lands and conquer small territories (with border castles), but a final battle still offers a glimmer of hope.

To such ends, an Ottoman army had set out from Istanbul on April 16, 1526, led by Suleiman the Magnificent personally.

In the Hungarian kingdom, riven by social and national divisions stimulated by the Reformation, a general call to arms is proclaimed, but the most important forces—those from Transylvania and Croatia—are late in obeying it.

Louis hurriedly assembles a force of some sixteen thousand men and advances from Buda to meet the Turks.

The Hungarian nobles, who still do not realize the dimensions of the approaching danger, do not heed their King's call to arms.

Louis II orders them to encamp on July 2 but no one reports on this day—not even the King.

Only when Louis himself furnishes an example with his appearance in the camp do things start to move.

The Hungarian war council—without waiting for their reinforcements only a few days march away—makes a serious tactical error by choosing the battlefield near Mohács, an open but uneven plain with some swampy marshes.

The Hungarian army is divided into three main units: the Transylvanian army under John Zápolya, charged with guarding the passes in the Transylvanian Alps, with between eight thousand and thirteen thousand men; the main army, led by Louis himself (beside numerous Spanish, German, Czech and Serbian mercenaries); and another smaller force, commanded by the Croatian count Christoph Frankopan, numbering around five thousand men.

Due to geography, the Ottoman army's ultimate goal could not be determined until it was crossing the Balkan Mountains.

Unfortunately for the Hungarians, by the time the Ottoman army had crossed, the Transylvanian and Croatian army was further from Buda than the Ottomans were.

Contemporary historical records, though sparse, indicate that Louis preferred a plan of retreat, in effect ceding the country to Ottoman advances, rather than directly engaging the Ottoman army in open battle.

The Hungarian forces choose the battlefield, an open but uneven plain with some swampy marshes near Mohács leading down to the Danube.

The Ottomans had been allowed to advance almost unopposed.

While Louis waited in Buda, they had besieged several towns and crossed the Sava and Drava Rivers.

Louis has assembled around twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand soldiers (with Croatian and Polish contingents and about eight hundred to one thousand soldiers of the Papal States) while the Ottoman army was long thought to have numbered around fifty thousand.

However, military history books from the twenty-first century will calculate the number of the Ottoman Army around one hundred thousand men.

In addition, the Ottoman forces have up to one hundred and sixty cannon.

Most of the Ottoman Balkan forces registered before this battle are labeled as Bosnians or Croats, as a designation of the territory in which they had been they were recruited.

The Hungarian army is arrayed to take advantage of the terrain and hopes to engage the Ottoman army piecemeal.

The only advantage the Magyars have is that their troops are well-rested, while the Turks have just completed a strenuous march in scorching summer heat.

Rather than attacking their fatigued enemy, however, the Hungarians merely watch as they struggle through the marshy terrain.

It would be "unchivalrous" to attack the enemy when they are not yet ready for battle.

Hungary has built up an expensive but obsolete army, structured similarly to that of King Francis I at the Battle of Pavia mostly reliant on old fashioned heavily armored knights on armored horses (gendarme knights).

The Hungarian line consists of two lines, the first with a center of mercenary infantry and artillery and the majority of the cavalry on either flank.

The second line is a mix of levy infantry and cavalry.

The Ottoman army is a more modern force built around the elite, musket-armed Janissaries, and artillery.

The rest of the army consists of feudal Timari cavalry and conscripted levies from Rumelia and the Balkans.

Like the uncertainty over the number of actual combatants, there is debate over the length of the battle.

Its starting time is generally placed between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM, but the endpoint is difficult to ascertain.

As the first of Suleiman's troops, the Rumelian army, advance onto the battlefield, they are attacked and routed by Hungarian troops led by Pál Tomori.

This attack by the Hungarian right is successful in causing considerable chaos among the irregular Ottoman troops, but even as the Hungarian attack presses forward, the Ottomans rally with the arrival of Ottoman regulars deployed from the reserves.

While the Hungarian right advances far enough at one time to place Suleiman in danger from Hungarian arrows that strike his cuirass, the superiority of the Ottoman regulars and the timely charge of the Janissaries, the elite troops of the Ottomans, probably overwhelms the attackers, particularly on the Hungarian left.

The Hungarians take serious casualties from the skillfully handled Turkish artillery and musket volleys.

The Hungarians cannot hold their positions, and those who do not flee are surrounded and killed or captured.

The result us a disaster, with the Hungarians advancing into withering fire and flank attacks.

The king leaves the battlefield sometime around twilight but is thrown from his horse in a river at Csele and dies, weighed down by his heavy armor.

Some one thousand other Hungarian nobles and leaders are killed also.

It is generally accepted that more than fourteen thousand Hungarian soldiers were killed in the initial battle.

The Ottoman army does not retreat from the field and enter camp after the battle; instead, they remain on the field all night without food, water, or shelter.

Given that the Ottoman historians all note that it was raining, it seems likely that had the battle been short and ended early in the afternoon, by 5:00 PM at the latest, when the Sultan would have ordered his army to camp or at least to return to their baggage.

The few reliable sources indicate that Louis left the field at twilight and made his escape under cover of darkness; since the sun would not have set until 6:27 PM on August 29, 1526, this would imply that the battle lasted significantly longer than two to three hours (perhaps as long as four or five).

The Turks have also suffered heavy losses, particularly among the sultan’s elite Janissary corps, but Süleyman regroups his forces and advances on Buda.

Suleiman cannot believe that this small, "suicidal" army is all that the once powerful country could muster against him, so he waits at Mohacs for a few days before moving cautiously against Buda.