Filters:
Group: Punjab Province
People: Hammurabi
Topic: Ottoman–Hungarian Wars

Ottoman–Hungarian Wars

Years: 1366 - 1526

The Ottoman–Hungarian Wars are a series of battles between the Ottoman Empire and the medieval Kingdom of Hungary.

Following the Byzantine Civil War, the Ottoman capture of Gallipoli and the decisive Battle of Kosovo, the Ottoman Empire seems poised to conquer the whole of the Balkans.

However, the Ottoman invasion of Serbia drives Hungary to war against the Ottomans, competing for the vassalship of the states of Serbia, Wallachia and Moldavia.Initial Hungarian success culminates in the Crusade of Varna, though the Hungarian, without significant outside support, are defeated.

Nonetheles,s the Ottomans suffer more defeats at Belgrade, even after the conquest of Constantinople.

The infamous Vlad the Impaler of Wallachia, with limited Hungarian help, resists Ottoman rule until the Ottomans place his brother, a man less feared and less hated by the populace, on the throne of Wallachia.

Ottoman success is once again halted at Moldavia due to Hungarian intervention, but the Turks finally succeed when Moldavia then Belgrade fall to Bayezid II and Suleiman the Magnificent, respectively.

In 1526, the Ottomans crush the Hungarian army at Mohács with King Louis II of Hungary perishing along with fourteen thousand to twenty thousand of his foot soldiers.

Following this defeat, the eastern region of the Kingdom of Hungary (mainly Transylvania) becomes an Ottoman tributary state, constantly engaged in civil war with Royal Hungary.

The war continues with the Habsburgs now asserting primacy in the conflict with Suleiman and his successors.

The northern and western parts of Hungary manage to remain free from Ottoman rule, but the Kingdom of Hungary, the most powerful state east of Vienna under Matthias II, is now divided and at constant war with the Turks.

"Biology is more like history than it is like physics. You have to know the past to understand the present. And you have to know it in exquisite detail."

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980)