Five hundred years ago, on the low-lying plains that run eastwards from the River Danube, near the town of Mohács, an army of 20,000 Hungarian soldiers led by Louis, the 20-year old king, faced an Ottoman army, estimated at 100,000 men, led by Suleiman the Magnificent, Sultan of Turkey. King Louis II of Hungary was married to Marie, who was the younger sister of Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, and his brother Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria. Louis and Ferdinand had pleaded with Charles to send more troops to halt the Turkish advance, and had even suggested a temporary cessation of hostilities with the German Protestants, to allow them to recruit a mercenary army to defend European Christendom from the infidels. Charles declined to support his brother-in-law, preferring to concentrate his military resources on his war with France, by which he hoped to secure Burgundy and much of Northern Italy for the Habsburgs. Although Francis I, the French king, was betrothed to Charles’s elder sister, Eleanor, Charles viewed Francis as untrustworthy and referred to him as “the tiresome Turk”.
Despite being heavily outnumbered, Louis II engaged the Ottoman army in battle: he was killed, along with many leading Hungarian nobles, and most of his army. Two weeks later, Suleiman entered the city of Buda and appointed John I, as the vassal King of Hungary, determining that an annual subsidy would be paid to Istanbul. Ferdinand claimed the crown of Hungary for himself, and set about rallying the Christian kings of Europe to form an alliance and raise an army to drive the Turks out of central Europe. His pleas were ignored, not least because most of Europe was more concerned about the territorial ambitions of Charles than of Suleiman. The French, English, Venetians, Milanese, and the Pope all joined together to form the League of Cognac, established to resist the Habsburgs threat, and Buda remained firmly under the control of the Turks. When John I died, in 1540, Ferdinand disputed the succession of the Hungarian crown to his young son, John II, and raised his own army of Austrian and German troops, which was dispatched to Buda to liberate it from Ottoman control. This army, once again around 20,000 in number, was crushed by Suleiman’s troops along the banks of the Danube, and Turkish control of Hungary was once again confirmed. The Ottomans remained in charge for almost 150 years until, in 1686, a Habsburg army finally wrested back control, first of Buda and then the lands to the south and east.
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