When the underdog takes on the Hapsburgs and the Turks: A Hungarian AAr
Chapter I: Prologue
Chapter I: Prologue
The Christian kingdom of Hungary had been around since 1000 AD, but a nation just can't pop out of nothing and claim the territory for herself, every kingdom has a story, a great tale which is well known among its inhabitants. In fact there are numerous theories about where the Hungarians originate from, and quite a few theories about how did the Hungarians got settled in the Carpathian Basin. The most accepted settlement theory would be the “one-time home claiming” led by Árpád ,whose descendants would rule Hungary up until 1301, around 895. The Magyar armies armies managed to consolidate their position and with time they spread their sphere of influence through the whole basin. But as an aggressive tribe the Magyars just couldn't sit down and live in peace with their neighbors.
Years of offensive campaigns and pillages came, and they were quite successful. The Magyars from the Ural reached Asturias in the west, Apulia in the south, hell they even laid siege on the mighty city of Constantinapole and of course on the north, they did not leave the German territories untouched. But this warmongering policy brought its drawbacks of course. With time the Germans adopted themselves to the Hungarian tactics and eventually fought out two major victories against the Hungarians: the first at Merseburg in 933, the second at Augsburg in 955. After these crushing defeats the Hungarians did not dare to return as aggressors against the Germans.. at least in this century. However they kept attacking Byzantine but with time these had to cease the eastern campaigns too. In 972 Géza became the leader of the Hungarians, the man who realized that if his people won't convert to Christianity the expanding states of Europe will gradually annex and assimilate them. Decision was made, Hungary had to take up the one true faith. One? Faith? By those time the western Catholic and the eastern Orthodox Christianity were way too separated to call them One faith. So a hard decision had to be made. Or not hard at all? Basically the question was to which Empire would Hungary lean to, Catholicity meant the Holy Roman Empire, Orthodox meant Byzantine. And so Géza picked the one which he feared the more, Hungary had to take up Catholicity and thus developed friendly relations with western Europe. All was set for a full conversion by 997, in which year he left the living and got succeeded by his son St. Stephen.
And in short three years Hungary could be called a Kingdom, a Kingdom of the Orphan* nation of Europe. And from 1000 AD Hungary joined the big game of wars, intrigues, expands, crusades, and of course political crisis, civil wars, succeeding wars between siblings of the Feudal States. As mentioned before, the Árpád dynasty died out in 1301, the following few years were about succeeding wars and eventually two kings of the Avegin (Capet-Anjou) dynasty came to power. And after the death of the Hungarian Male branch of the Anjous, a member of the Luxembourgian dynasty, Zsigmond inherited the throne. Zsigmond who later became the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire became the King of Hungary (later King of Bohemia too) made Buda as his capitol, so with a bit exaggerating we could say that in these prosperous times Buda was the capitol of Europe. Zsigmond ruled Hungary up until 1437.
And by 1419 Zsigmond was at the half of his ruling. And thats where our story begins.
Chapter II: A quest for peace
Part I
By 1419 Hungary and her loyal vassal Croatia was at war with the doge, although the reason of the war was not clear for Zsigmond but his only bet was the mutual greed of the doge and of his vassal. Though aiding his vassal had to be waited because of the uneasy eventfully starting of the year. By the second of January Bavaria and its German alliance declared war on Hungary's ally, Luxembourg which dragged the warring Hungarians and Croats, the Bohemians and Erdély** into war in order to help out the seriously outnumbered Luxembourg. It was a difficult situation for Zsigmond because he just spent half of the treasury on the establishment of the tax collector office in the capitol. And soon his next act of Zsigmond was to gave out an order about raising the troops quality to ensure higher chances against the German lords. He then split the main army and sent 25,000 Hungarian against the Ernst Wittelbach, duke of Bavaria. With the privileges given by the Emperor title the Hungarian armies could march through Austria without any special permission from the local rule, but to ensure that the army would not suffer great attrition Zsigmond asked for military access from Albert V who humbly did as requested.
By July 25 after series of battles the remaining 21,500 soldiers under the leading of Kemény were fighting against the reserve troops in Muenchen and by July 27 the army laid siege on the castle. Encouraged by the ongoing success of the first campaign against Bavaria, Zsigmond sent out an additional army of 10,000 to capture Landshut. However even with outnumbering the German defenders the Hungarians couldn't achieve victory and were forced to join up forces with the main army in the region. These were bad news indeed, but not catastrophic like the situation in Croatia. The Venetian army managed to eliminate most of the Croatian defenders leaving only a handful soldier retreating to Slavonia. Though with the additional 12,000 Croatian troops covering and pillaging the cities of Istiria and Dalmatia one would question why would the situation be catastrophic but Zsigmond knew that the sometimes dull Croatian generals would not give up sieging their those cities even when they are not enough to start out sieging the castle so they will wait for each other's reinforcements leaving Zagreb undefended and sieged by Venetians. Zsigmond could only hope that the Croats will eventually give up their idiotism and chases the Italians out of Croatian soil.
The situation improved in Germany soon when the joint army proceeded with sieging the castle of Muenchen even though it got set back when winter collected the toll of the siege and took 4,000 life of the attackers. In order to prevent this from happening again the second army moved to Landshut and won despite they were outnumbered this time. Only one month passed after the victorious battle and another promising message came from the battlefields: in April 28th, 1420 the valorous Hungarian soldiers took the castle of Muenchen. In the following month a joint Bohemian and Hungarian army arrived in Straubing to reclaim the lost Luxembourgian castle. In July the orthodox alliance of Serbia, Moldova, Wallacia attacked Erdély and as all of the allies of Hungary except the Orders up in the north denied to give help Hungary was forced to deny help at least until closing one of the many fronts in the west. As the end of the year approached and as the Venetian siege of Zagreb did the same Zsigmond ordered the remaining forces in Hungary to aid the Croats as they seemed stubborn enough to let Zagreb fall just to maintain the pillaging of Istiria and Dalmatia. Dessewffy tried his best against the Italians but all he could manage is to reduce the Venetian army just enough to slow them a bit down. And soon it was January again and the second year of the wars brought many news, Landshut fell to the Hungarian troops so the ending of the German war was at the doorstep. Hermannstadt was about to fall to the Orthodox alliance and that meant that the military advisors could start planning a new campaign in that region the reclaim the soon-to-be-lost city, but firs they had to recapture Zagreb which finally fell to the Venetians on the last day of 1420..
*Under “orphan” I meant there are no “relatives” of the Hungarians in the region, at least some theory claims that
**Erdély -> Transylvania
