In the beginning of spring 1242 Batu Khan stops fighting and leaves frightened and confused Europe. This in many respects has generated in historiography the most various versions, including very flattering for us: the Mongols were afraid to leave behind unconquered Russia!
Now one of the most accepted hypothesis — the death of the Great Khan Ugedei was the main reason for the cessation of further conquests in Europe — the heirs were going to share the great empire!
But 40 years later, the Mongols campaigned again. They invaded Hungary in 1285 under the command of Talabuga Khan and his allies with three tumens (30,000 men). A little less than Batu Khan and the Chingizid princes, who forty-three years earlier during the Western campaign had passed through Russia and reached the Adriatic Sea. The Mongols this time intended to conquer Hungary, turn the Hungarian steppe into a fodder base for their cavalry and then continue the conquest of Europe. The Mongols devastated Hungary in 1241-1242 under the leadership of Batu Khan and his great generals Subudai and Jebe and attacked Poland and Germany quite successfully, but finally returned to their steppes in 1243.
The light cavalry of the Mongols
King Bela IV of the Hungarians survived the first invasion, though he lost his army then, and rebuilt Hungary after the invaders left. Bela remembered well how he ran and hid all over his country and neighbors to avoid being caught by the invaders and not to be mauled by Batu Khan’s nukers, and he did a lot to make the new meeting with the Mongols different.
He learned a lesson: to stop the Mongols, you need fortifications in the form of castles, which the Mongols could not storm (you can talk about Chinese stone throwers, but the Mongols were coming to once again chase the weak Europeans who do not know how to fight), you need heavy knights’ cavalry and crossbows for infantry. Many castles were built during the reigns of Béla and his son Stephen (István) V.
The Hungarians themselves were nomads for a couple of centuries before that, and they were well aware that their former neighbors on the Asian steppe would not leave them alone and would return to crush them completely. But these were not those Hungarians, before whom Europe trembled 2 centuries ago — there was no more that energy, fury, which led the Magyars to Germany and Italy, when the chronicler wrote: «Before us there are cities without citizens and fields without farmers, the plains are white from the dry bones of the dead». Time passed, nomads got fat, loved cozy houses and grape wine.
Figure in the chronicle: King Bela flees in panic
In the battle of Szajó in 1241 the Mongols defeated the Hungarian army of Bela, supported by the Croatian Duke Koloman, incredibly quickly, within two hours, and then for 6 days they literally chased the Hungarians and Croats, cutting down those fleeing, then without a fight they occupied Pest — the capital of King Bela. The king himself barely escaped.
When the invasion receded, Bela found a way out: he called the Polovtsians into the army. How did they end up here?
The Polovtsian Khan Kotyan before the Mongol invasion of Russia fled, brought about 40 thousand tribesmen to King Bela and asked to become a subject, fearing the Mongols. L.N. Gumilev argued that one of the main goals of the Mongol campaign to the west in the early XIII century was the total extermination of the Polovtsians, whom the Mongol khans considered their competitors in the Great Steppe, and then the search for the «last sea». And even in Russia the Mongols went only then to get in the rear of the Polovtsians, and those capitals of the principalities from which the Polovtsians received help during the battle of Kalka were destroyed.
King Bela IV accepted the Kipchaks as subjects, and Kotyan and his army were baptized. Bela was so interested in the steppe cavalry that he announced the engagement of his son Stephen and Kotyan’s daughter, in baptism Elizabeth.
Khan Kotyan
But Bela’s cronies, dissatisfied with the strengthening of the king and his host (feudalism! The king is only the first among equals and should not be the strongest!), convinced Bela that Kotyan would betray when the Mongols appeared, and then killed both Kotyan and his sons-heirs. The outraged Polovtsians went to the Bulgarian tsar Koloman.
After Mongols have drifted away, Bela the first thing has returned back Kipchaks from Bulgaria, thus it has married the only son Stephan on daughter Kotyan with which the latter was engaged.
Here is what English researcher James Chambers (1941-2012) writes about this in his book The Devil’s Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe: «King Bela invited new Kuman immigrants to replace the army that had been lost, and married his Stefan to a Kuman princess.»
Béla realized that the Hungarians who survived the massacre of Szajó could tell their children and grandchildren only one thing: how they fled in terror, and the terrible invincible Mongols chopped them down, chopped them down…. There was a need for a new army, which did not know the horror of defeat — Cumans, but well armed, and Hungarian blacksmiths received a «state» order: armor!
When Bela died in 1270, Stephen V ruled for only two years, then the throne passed to his ten-year-old son Ladislas IV, who was a Cumans by mother, so he rejected all the Western orders of his courtiers and became known as «Ladislas Kuman».
He recruited the army, especially the command staff, from the Cumans; a Hungarian could only become a private.
László «Kipchak», taking advantage of the support of the Kipchak community of the country, and ordinary Hungarians, began to conduct an independent policy from the Pope, began to increase and strengthen the army, to build castles, to arm and train a kind of «self-defense units», composed of peasants.
It was the Kipchaks, conscious that only the king was the guarantor of their life in the country, who formed the core of the royal army, always loyal to the king and opposing all external enemies without exception and suppressing the separatism of rebellious magnates.
Now, in 1285, the Mongols returned: they needed the fertile Hungarian plains as fodder for their cavalry.
When the Mongols came again, they were met by another army. V.O. Kliuchevsky speaks of the importance for Russia of the rule of Ivan Kalita and Simeon the Proud, who provided a «respite» from the invasions: «In these quiet years had time to be born and grow two generations, to whose nerves the impressions of childhood did not instill an unaccountable terror of fathers and grandfathers before the Tatar: they went to the Kulikovo field».
The same happened with Europe: new people, new army, new tactics — Europe drew conclusions! If Russian princes decided: the Mongols are invincible, it is pointless to resist, it is necessary to recognize their power and survive, then the European rulers also drew conclusions: it is impossible to fight according to the rules of the Mongols — so they will always win, so it is necessary to impose their own rules.
The first to do this was Laszlo «Kipchak».
Hungarian (Cumans) warrior
When the second time the Mongols came from the east, again, as before, 3 tumens, then Laszlo IV, grandson of the wise Béla, a Cumans by mother, did not take any risks. He used castles to hold the territories and save the population. The peasants did not just hide — they took away both bread and forage, stole cattle.
Laszlo himself, retreating, led the Mongols to the banks of the Danube, in the area near Buda, where the open, flat terrain was very favorable to the actions of heavy cavalry of the Hungarians. He positioned his troops before the battle in such a way that one of the flanks rested in the river: the Mongols were deprived of their favorite technique — covering the flanks. The crossbows with which the Hungarian warriors were equipped shot noticeably farther than even the superior Mongol composite bows, and this was a significant tactical advantage: all attacks of the light Mongol cavalry were met by heavy crossbow bolts, and then the heavy cavalry struck. The Mongols were pressed to the river and defeated.
In Budapest there are monuments to King Béla IV, who by his wise domestic policy ensured his grandson’s victory over the invaders.
Two years later, the Mongols tried again, now in Poland, but here too.
the Poles used the same tactics as the Hungarians in 1285: powerful stone fortresses, heavy cavalry, and not a militia of men, but armored infantry.
The halo of invincibility of the Mongols was dispelled. Never again did they become a serious threat to Hungary, Poland and the rest of Western Europe. Yes, there were raids, but that was it — swoop, grab, quickly escape. Europe learned how to win.