Although it is not officially a national mourning day, every Hungarian who's graduated from high school knows (well, at least in principle) why and what a grief-stricken day August 29th is. The Battle of Mohacs, known in Hungary as the catastrophe of Mohacs, took place on this day in 1526, nearly half a millennium ago. The big battle ended with Sultan Suleiman of the Ottoman Empire inflicting a crushing defeat on the Hungarian army defending their homeland – and Christian Europe.
In our national mythology, the topos that Hungary is "a nation of catastrophes" still exists, with Muhi, Mohacs, Majteny, Vilagos and Trianon marking the symbolic main stages. Many believe that the ultimate cause of the heartless and senseless dismemberment of our country and nation by the Treaty of Trianon goes back to the disaster at Mohacs.
Mohacs is an eternal symbol, a reference point and a grievance for all Hungarians with national sentiments, who are interested in their past, and perhaps want to learn from it in the spirit of the maxim that history is the teacher of life.
The 500th anniversary upcoming in three years' time, will obviously once again draw attention to one of the most significant – and controversial – turning points in Hungarian history. For now, however, I would just like to point out that 29 August is a special, symbolic day in our history, apart from and beyond Mohacs. For example, five years before the fateful Battle of Mohacs, on this very day, Suleiman occupied the southern gateway of the Kingdom of Hungary, Nandorfehervar (present-day Belgrade, Serbia), whose heroic defenders successfully beat off two previous attacks on this key stronghold in 1440 and 1456. Also on this very day in 1541, fifteen years after Mohacs, he occupied Buda, the country's capital, not with cannons and swords, but by trickery.
Thus, 29 August became Suleiman's lucky day and a day of mourning for our nation.
That this was hardly a coincidence, cultural historian Sandor Ozsvath proposes an interesting theory : in Christian culture, 29 August is the day of the beheading of the prophet John the Baptist - the forerunner and baptiser of Jesus - and highly-educated Suleiman was well aware of this. It is also interesting that the world-conquering sultan launched all his campaigns on (or around) St. George's Day from the European (Balkan) rallying point. The siege of Koszeg also ended on 29 August in 1532 after Suleiman, leading his army towards Vienna, failed to conquer the small border fort (Kingdom of Hungary) and had to content himself with Captain Miklos Jurisics placing the horse-tail standard (with the banner saying "There is one God and Muhammad is his prophet") on top of the ruined fort. At 11 am on 29 August, the Ottoman army retreated from the fort and the bells in Koszeg are rung at 11 am to this day.
During the Fifteen Years War in 1602, it was also on this date that Grand Vizier Hassan retook Szekesfehervar from the emperor’s troops. For the sixth time, however, 29 August was unlucky for the Turks, because in 1686, relying on the power of the symbolic date, the troops of Grand Vizier Suleiman Sari tried in vain to enter the castle of Buda, which had been besieged by the Christian allied armies since mid-June. They were repulsed and the Turkish defenders tried in vain to escape. Thus
four days later, Buda was freed from 145 years of Ottoman rule, and this great victory was compared throughout Europe with the triumph of Janos Hunyadi at Nandorfehervar on 22 July, 1456.
Less well known is the fact that 29 August is also linked to the national day of mourning on 6 October. It was on this day in 1849 that Emperor Franz Joseph Hapsburg (then the illegitimate king of Hungary), who had just turned 19, decided that the political and military leaders of the Hungarian Revolution should be subjected to widespread and severe reprisals. On 29 August as supreme commander, he authorized General Haynau, who had been appointed to high command Hungary and given full powers, to take merciless reprisals, abolished the obligation to submit death sentences in advance, and the vengeful General was only obliged to report to the Emperor afterwards on the persons on whom the death penalty had been carried out. Thus,
although Haynau became the executor of the reprisals, it was Franz Joseph who actually ordered and approved them.
According to Sandor Ozsvath, it could not have been a coincidence that after the Treaty of Trianon came into force in July 1921, the Hungarian authorities had to hand over to the Austrians the old Hungarian territory they had called Burgenland, including Sopron and its surroundings, on 29 August. However, this was prevented by the uprising in western Hungary started by the 'Rongyos garda' (Scrubby Guard) led by Pal Pronay and Ivan Hejjas. Thanks mainly to this
the inhabitants of Sopron and the surrounding eight villages were able to decide their fate in a referendum, and the result of the vote on 14-16 December 1921 – the first revision of the Treaty of Trianon! – an area of about 300 square kilometers with 50,000 inhabitants was returned to Hungary.
So there is much for us to think about and commemorate on 29 August from the "stormy centuries of the Hungarian people".
Cover photo: The body of King Louis II is found after the Battle of Mohacs (painting by Bertalan Szekely) (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
