A History of War in 100 Battles. Richard Overy

the English again fell back. As dusk fell, Edward ordered his army to set camp.

      There was now a marked contrast between the two forces. Bruce’s single-handed combat had inspired his men, who were now eager for the battle. Edward had misjudged the day and among his commanders there was a despondent expectation that their king lacked the flair or will for the contest. A Scottish knight, fighting with Edward, defected to Bruce that night with news that the English were demoralised by what had happened and the king uncertain of his support. On the morning of 24 June, Edward decided to avoid a fight and to move on to Stirling. The way was blocked by the Scots, who marched in formation down New Park to obstruct the only way through. Edward’s commander, the Earl of Gloucester, again preferred battle and charged at the first schiltron before the army was ready. He was among the first unseated and killed. Edward had to turn his army to face the Scots, and as he did so, the other schiltrons entered the fray. The English archers found it difficult to concentrate their fire, and feared by this time hitting their own knights in the back. Bruce ordered Keith to take his 500 horses and disperse the archers while the English knights were locked in combat. He did so effectively, pursuing them into the marshland. The schiltrons held, partly because the swampy ground hemmed in the English and made it difficult to deploy the foot soldiers behind. Then suddenly, at the height of the battle, Bruce led the islanders of Angus Óg MacDonald in a famous charge down the slope towards the English, screaming and waving their iron axes. Edward fled the field of battle to avoid capture, leaving a leaderless army which, scenting disaster, finally turned and ran, whereupon they were hunted down or drowned in the marshy ground. Bannock Burn was awash with the corpses of horses and men, many of them the noblemen who had rallied to Edward’s cause. Bruce and his commanders survived. No accurate account of the numbers killed on either side can be made.

      The battle proved decisive. Edward returned several times but was unable to overturn the rule of King Robert Bruce, now firmly ensconced as Scotland’s monarch. Edward II was murdered by his opponents in 1327, and the following year Edward III reached agreement with King Robert confirming Scotland’s independence. The Battle of Bannockburn could so nearly have been an English triumph; but Edward II could not inspire or command his army with the same energy, sympathy and tactical imagination displayed by Robert Bruce.

No. 8

BATTLE OF MOHÁCS 29 August 1526

      The role of leadership was an important one at the battle on the plain of Mohács that destroyed the Hungarian king and nobility and opened the way to centuries of Ottoman domination of south-central Europe. But it was a role shared by two very different men: the first was the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman I, scion of the Osmans, later known as the ‘Magnificent’; the second was his grand vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, a young Greek whom Suleiman had met when he was governor of Magnesia. Ibrahim became his close companion and adviser, eating at the sultan’s table, even sharing his tent. The victory over the Hungarians was celebrated as Suleiman’s triumph, but it was sealed by the two men who fought side-by-side that day.

      The conflict between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire went back many years, but by the early sixteenth century, Ottoman encroachment had become more insistent. In 1521, Belgrade fell to the sultan and regular raids were carried out further north towards the Danube. Suleiman’s reputation as a military leader to be reckoned with was secured by the capture of the island of Rhodes in 1522, but he then rested on his laurels. In 1525, the elite janissary guard staged a violent protest against the failure to make war again (for they relied on booty to supplement their meagre pay). Suleiman quelled the rebellion, distributed 200,000 ducats to his troops, and sounded the drum of conquest on 1 December 1525, summoning his people to war. He could have moved east against Persia but decided to return to Hungary; he knew that the kingdom was divided politically and that little help was to be expected from the other Christian monarchies of Europe, occupied with the crisis of the Reformation. He was impelled as Sultan to expand the territory of Islam as a step towards achieving a universal monarchy; for him, expansion against the infidel Christians was a sacred obligation.

      On 23 April 1526, Suleiman and Ibrahim left Constantinople with 100,000 men and 300 guns. It took almost three months before the cavalcade reached Belgrade. Torrential rain had swollen all the rivers, but Ibrahim pushed ahead to make sure they were bridged. Ibrahim was also trusted to sweep aside the few Hungarian troops still found on the road to the Danube. The fortress of Peterwardein was stormed and the garrison of 500 decapitated on Ibrahim’s orders. The Hungarian forces in the path of the Ottoman army, led by Pál Tömöri, the martial Archbishop of Kalosca, retreated back to the Hungarian plain. Here a waterlogged steppe 10 kilometres (6 miles) wide reached south from the small village of Mohács, ending in a line of tree-covered hills. It was there, on the edge of the plain nearest the village, that the Hungarian King Louis and the cream of Hungarian nobility set up their camp. The final number in the Hungarian force is open to conjecture, but is generally thought to be between 25,000 and 30,000, though reinforcements were arriving from Bohemia, Croatia and Transylvania, totalling perhaps 30,000 more.

      As Suleiman’s army drew up among the hills and woods on the far side of the plain of Mohács, the Hungarian nobles pressured the king to fight the battle there and then rather than wait for help. They were confident that the heavy cavalry, armoured man and horse from head to toe, would be able to smash the advancing Turks by a combination of sheer weight and their fiery élan.

      The Hungarian tactic was unsophisticated. Suleiman by contrast thought out how best to be certain of victory. The general of the akinci, the light troops and skirmishers, advised the sultan to let his front line bend inwards as the Hungarian heavy cavalry attacked. This would allow strong forces on either side of the curved line to attack the Hungarians on both flanks and eventually to encircle them. Estimates suggest that there were perhaps 45,000 fighting troops with the sultan, both cavalry and foot soldiers, and an unknown number of guns, a balance less uneven than the later Christian accounts suggested. Both armies took time to reach battle stations and the Hungarians, determined to take the offensive, finally charged the Ottoman line in the middle of the afternoon, commanded by the redoubtable Archbishop Tömöri in his golden armour.

      © The Art Archive/Alamy

      A 1588 illustration from an Ottoman manuscript shows the Ottoman cavalry at the Battle of Mohács on 29 August 1526. They pursued and butchered thousands of the fleeing Hungarians as the battle drew to a close.

      The battle details vary among contemporary accounts, but the general picture confirms that the Ottoman plan worked almost like clockwork. The Hungarian cavalry charged the first line, commanded by Ibrahim Pasha himself. The Turkish account of the battle, written by the contemporary historian Kemal Pashazade, attributed the victory to the prowess of the vizier, ‘whose lance was like the beak of the falcon in vigour and whose sword, thirsty for blood, was like the claws of the lion of bravery’. Embroidered though the account was, Ibrahim organized the fall-back that created the fatal crescent shape. When King Louis and the reserve saw the Turkish line bend, they eagerly attacked across the plain, expecting victory. They arrived just as the first Hungarian charge, which almost reached Suleiman himself, was spent. The Ottoman cannon opened a murderous fire while the Hungarian horsemen were assailed from both flanks by the light infantry and cavalry clustered around them. The doomed army fought, according to the accounts, bravely but vainly. By evening it was destroyed. Among the slain were three archbishops, five bishops, 500 Hungarian nobles and the king himself, drowned when he tried to escape across the marshy ground. His body was found a month later buried in the mud.

      © Neoneo 13

      A monument in the Hungarian town of Mohács commemorates the comprehensive defeat of the Hungarian king and army in the Battle on 29 August 1526.

      The defeat was comprehensive. Ottoman soldiers took no prisoners, meaning that more than 20,000