Louis II of Hungary

Louis II was king of Hungary at the time of the first battle of Mohács, fought on 21 Dhu 'l-Qa'da 932/August 1526 against the army of Süleyman I. ¹ The Encyclopaedia of Islam does not give a biography of him; it names him in the article on Mohács, and this card follows only what that article and the Ibrahim Pasha article say about his part in the war.

The article explains that Hungary had once been a strong, centralised kingdom under Matthias Corvinus, 1458-90, and under the Jagiellons gradually lost wealth and political power, mainly because of the heavy burdens of continuous warfare with the Ottomans. ¹ Seeking a way out, Louis II was drawn into a quarrel with Süleyman over the peace treaty and the detention of the sultan's envoy, and this led to the siege and capture of Belgrade, the key fortress of the southern marches. ¹ The page text is damaged here, so the exact sequence of the quarrel is read with care. In the years that followed Louis II and his entourage could not obtain the necessary international help, and the country had to face the Ottomans almost wholly by its own means. ¹

At Mohács the sovereigns of the two countries headed their armies, but the article says the actual leadership lay with Pál Tomori, Archbishop of Kalocsa and chief commandant of Lower Hungary, on the Hungarian side and with Ibrahim, the new grand vizier, on the Ottoman side. ¹ Ibrahim Pasha's own article records that he was appointed serdar for the great Hungarian campaign of 932/1526. ² Since no muster was made on either side, numbers can only be estimated: about 60,000 regular soldiers and timariots could be mobilised for the Ottomans, with a possible equal number of irregulars, while the lowest accepted figure for the Hungarians is 25,000 men and others argue for 40,000 or more. ¹

Tomori decided on a mounted attack against the Turks as they came down a slope, which caused serious confusion for a short time, but the steadiness of the Janissaries and an unexpected side attack by Bali Beg's forces turned the battle. In about an hour and a half the Hungarian army was completely beaten, losing its most prominent ecclesiastic and political leaders, including the king, who drowned in the Csele stream. ¹

The article calls the defeat a turning point in Hungarian history. The king's death opened a long period of anarchy, and the loss of Sirmium made the borders impossible to defend; the country became a battlefield between two world powers and was split into three zones, Ottoman, Habsburg and Transylvanian, a division that lasted more than 150 years. ¹ Süleyman entered Buda without resistance; he did not attach Hungary to his empire, but regarded it as his own possession from then on, and soon afterwards accepted John I on the Hungarian throne as a vassal. ¹ See the museum's card for the battle, Battle of Mohács, and the kingdom, Kingdom of Hungary.

This card rests on the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, whose page text here is damaged in places. The article gives neither his birth date nor the dates of his reign, and the museum does not supply them.