Hungary's Deathblow: Massacre At Mohács | Part 1

If I asked you to name the world powers, you'd probably say USA, China, maybe you'd say Russia,

but one country I'm sure you probably wouldn't say would be Hungary. Landlocked in Central Europe

and making up about 1% of the European economy, you'd be forgiven if you struggled to point it out

on a map. But if you lived in the 15th century, you'd have no excuse. Back then, the Hungarian

kingdom was a medieval powerhouse, the place to be in Europe. Dripping an Italian culture,

it was classy and sophisticated. It spanned almost the length of Europe from north to south.

Best of all, it was stinking rich. One third of all Europe's gold came from here. And it had an army.

I mean, a real army, not a bunch of farmers and cooks scraped together the night before battle.

Hungary had a standing army of professional soldiers!

One of Europe's first since the fall of the Roman Empire 700 or so years ago.

So what happened? Where did it all go wrong? Well, if we follow the trail of fallen dominoes,

it takes us back to a single event. Out of all the battles Western civilization has fought,

none are remembered in the same grave light as the Battle of Mohacs is for the Hungarians.

A defeat that was so crushing that it left a branding on the national psyche of Hungarian people.

You might have heard in Texas they say, remember the Alamo? Well, in Hungary they say,

more was lost at Mohacs. In other words, broke a plate, more was lost at Mohacs.

Fired from your job, more was lost at Mohacs. You get the idea.

In the year 1526 on the flat plains of Mohacs, the Ottoman Empire dealt a death blow to the

Kingdom of Hungary. The defeat was a milestone in the ongoing war between the Christian West and

the rapidly expanding Muslim East. And it had far-reaching consequences for the political,

social and cultural landscape of Europe reaching up to this very day. In just under 120 minutes,

Hungary went from being one of the greatest powers in Europe to an insignificant vassal state,

a little parcel of land to be tossed back and forth between empires for the next 500 years.

And once it finally regained that independence, it was a shadow of its former glory.

Losing almost three-quarters of its land, the Hungary you see on a map today

looks that way because of this battle. So over the next two episodes,

we'll explore the events leading up to the disastrous Battle of Mohacs.

We'll take a hop-skip and a jump through 300 or so of the most dramatic and exciting

years in Hungarian history. Starting with a scarred and fractured land in the 13th century,

we'll watch a nation go from rags to riches, and then back to rags. We'll follow the lives of

brilliant leaders, heroes of Hungary, men who built their nation into a super state, guys like

Bela IV, John Hunyadi, and Matthias Corvinus. Then we'll watch some less talented men tear it all

down. Guys like King Laszlo, who everyone called OK Laszlo because he just OK'd any demand anyone

ever made of him. We'll see the rich bully the poor enriching themselves at the expense of their

country. We'll peer over the walls of towering fortresses and watch the armies of Islam turn

from an annoyance to an existential threat. We'll watch a super state implode on itself

while a hostile army gathers on its borders. And finally, we'll pity a 20-year-old boy

who was hastily raised up as king and expected to turn back a clock.

So pour a little out for our Hungarian listeners as we get into it. The Death of Hungary and the

1526 massacre at Mohacs, part one, the Raven King.

*Music*

It's the year 1242. A weary King Bela IV surveys the wasteland that was once his kingdom.

The Mongol invasion had ravaged Hungary. Around one million people, half the population,

were destitute, enslaved, or dead. The step-archers fought in a way that no European had ever seen.

They'd annihilated Bela's army and chased him into the darkest recesses of his kingdom.

But just when it seemed all was lost, they'd retreated. Like the tide receding out to see the

Mongols had returned to the steppe, rushing back to elect a new Khan, following the unexpected

death of great Khan Ogadai. King Bela had a thin window of opportunity, and he wasn't going to

miss it. His realm was devastated. Entire cities had been scrubbed off the face of the earth.

But the wise king's eyes noticed the ones that were still standing all had one thing in common.

Walls. For all the advancements they'd made, the Mongols still struggled to besiege

European castles. And this was to be Bela's ace in the hole. Historically, the construction of

castles and fortresses was restricted by the royal court, allowing powerful families to build

fortresses posed a threat to the king's rule. After all, rebellions were much harder to quash

when the enemy could retreat to their towers and just wait for you to leave. But the facts were

right there. Castles had undeniably saved Hungary from utter destruction. If the Mongols returned,

they had to be ready for them. And return they did. 40 years later, the thundering hooves of 30,000

steppe ponies burst onto the great plains of the kingdom. The invaders were the same, but Hungary

was different. King Bela's reforms had calcified the soft green flatlands into a bristling porcupine

of fortresses. Everywhere the Mongols turned, they found another castle, another keep, another wall.

The days of easy plunder were gone. In the end, the invaders limped home,

lied on plunder. It should have been a time for celebrating. The Mongols, the beasts from the

east, were beaten, never again to return in any serious numbers. But already King Bela's fears

were taking shape. High up in their castles, protected by their private army, his nobles

weren't happy. Where was the royal army during the invasion? Why did we, the nobles,

have to defend your kingdom? What do we pay taxes for anyway? The kingdom of Hungary survived the

Mongol storm, and King Bela IV would be remembered as the second founder of the state. But this state

was built on foundations that were already starting to crack. Over the next few centuries, a string

of foreign-born kings dominated the Hungarian throne. As you'll come to see, the Hungarian

nobility were not too fond of foreigners. But these kings bought with them new ideas,

technical innovations, advancements in mining, agriculture, and bureaucracy all came from their

homelands. And when Hungary embraced these foreign ideas, they entered a resplendent golden age.

You know what I mean by a golden age, right? A time of good living when everyone was safe

and had enough to eat. Disobedient nobles were slapped back into place by a strong central

government propped up by that illustrious yellow medal that has fascinated mankind since the dawn

of time. Gold. Hungary was minted with gold mines. Author Paul Lenvay says that across Europe during

the 14th century, one third of all gold came from Hungary. And that's to say nothing about its huge

silver reserves. By the mid-14th century, Hungary was one of the most powerful states in Europe.

If everything remained static, the kingdom could have soon rivaled France in terms of wealth and

might. But as history shows us, nothing ever stays the same, does it? Europe was about to

be turned on its head by an unwelcome intruder to the east. In the late 13th century, a man named

Osman Gazi left behind the plains of Central Asia and ventured west. The route he took was a well

traveled one. Tales of Europe's riches had lured Turkic nomads west for centuries. But unlike his

Mongol cousins who sought only plunder, Osman and his band of warriors came looking for work. Central

Asian tribesmen were renowned for their combat prowess and given that Europe was still recovering

from the Mongol devastation two centuries ago, it's no surprise that Osman and his men found work

as mercenaries for the Eastern Roman Empire. You might have heard it referred to as the Byzantine

Empire, same thing. From his gilded throne in Constantinople, modern day Istanbul, the Christian

emperor let Osman and his archers loose on the enemies of his empire. Rewarding them with gold

and land, Osman's little band of misfits grew and grew. Within just a few decades, their strength

soon eclipsed his paymaster. The Eastern Roman Empire had no more land to give.

Slave had become master, Osman was now the one calling the shots. From a dusty tribe of pagan

vagabonds they had become a power to be reckoned with. Osman would give his name to a new dynasty,

a dynasty that would snowball into one of the greatest empires the world would ever see, the

Ottomans. Swatting the puny Roman Empire aside, the Ottomans rapidly expanded, vanquishing any

enemy that defied them, be it Christian, Muslim or pagan, all were bought low by Osman's war machine.

The might of the Mongol bow fused with the fervour of Jihad. Far from their Mongol ancestors who

conquered for the sake of plunder, the Ottomans saw themselves as successors to the Caliphates

in the early days of Islam. When they conquered a city they set up administration, a well-structured

government was put in place and a steady stream of taxation flowed back to the Sultan. Christian

Europe could only watch as, like a vine creeping up a wall, the Ottomans' borders crept closer and

closer to Europe. Nowhere was the impact of this felt more profoundly than in the great state of

Hungary. As the largest power in the Balkans, they found themselves on a collision course with the

expanding state. And at this critical juncture, the bands that held the kingdom together were

fraying. Successive kings had been put over the coals by their noblemen. The long-dead King

Bella's nightmare had come to fruition. Hungary had slid into a kind of oligarchy where 60 or so

influential families ran the show. They elected and deposed puppet kings on their whim, demanding

from the ruler tax breaks, exemptions from military service, and land, always more land.

According to author Paul Lenvay, by this point the royal household, as in the king's house,

owned only one twentieth of all land, while these sixty families owned almost half.

Without land, the king was powerless. If you can't make your nobles obey you,

where are all your soldiers going to come from? Any decision made by the king, the nobles decreed,

must first be approved by them. With the king neutered, the gaze of the elite was cast down the

social ladder, all the way to the lowest rung, the peasants. Most of these nobles owned huge

farming estates, and for their farms to be as profitable as possible, stability was vital.

The nobles passed laws that banned peasants from leaving their lord's estate.

Now, if you had the misfortune of being born as a peasant, you, your children, and your children's

children, would be shackled to your designated patch of dirt for all eternity. As the nobles

sucked hungry dry like a thousand hungry leeches, the Ottomans had begun to nip at the borders of

the kingdom. Fortresses teeded and the realm fell into civil war as two nobles made a grab for the

throne. The kingdom verged on collapse. What it needed was a hero, someone to pull it from the

corrupt quagmire it had fallen into, and it would get one. Swaggering onto the stage came John

Hunyadi, regent, general, and as a pope would later christen him, champion of Christ. Hunyadi

likely came from humble origins. From the stories we have of his childhood, he was always focused

and determined. A legend goes that while he was working as a squire for a lord, he accompanied

him on a hunting party, you know, out into the woods to go kill some deer. And as his party's

sneaking through the brush, a wolf bolts out in front of them and takes off running.

The lord commanded his squire to chase down and capture the wolf. So Hunyadi follows the thing.

He pursued the elusive creature with unwavering persistence, chasing it through the countryside,

over hills, through forests, and even swimming across a river until the exhausted creature just

succumbed. Returning to camp late into the night, soaked and muddy, the determined teenager presented

the wolf's carcass at his master's feet. With a raised eyebrow, the lord remarked, quote,

this young man will go a long way. In his first few command roles, Hunyadi has a kind of Julius

Caesar vibe. He was the leader who shared the hardships of his men. In the battle he'd be

where the danger was greatest, and after the fighting was done, you'd find him in the muddy

campsites, sharing a cup of cheap wine with his soldiers. The artwork that exists of him always

has him decked out in heavy plate armour. Thin and waif-like, he sports a very long,

skinny moustache with a high hairline and stern facial expression. After proving he could hold

his own in battle, Hunyadi was rewarded with a patch of land in Transylvania, modern-day Romania.

But Hungary was still in the midst of a civil war, and the land was bristling with soldiers loyal to

the other king. He was essentially presented with a garden overrun by brambles and weeds and told,

hey, if you can clear them out, it's all yours. And he did just that way quicker than anyone

expected. As the flames of civil war scorched the rest of Hungary, Hunyadi's little patch

was stable and prosperous. It thrived to such an extent that he took the extraordinary step

of initiating war against the Ottomans, challenging their expanding power head-on.

In 1441, Hunyadi beat back two Ottoman raiding parties that were headed into his lands.

So the sultan stepped things up, authorising an enormous 80,000 strong army to take down

the audacious knight, supposedly assuring his commander that the mere sight of his turban

would send Hunyadi running. Once again, Hunyadi emerged victorious. His approach to warfare was

novel, it was unique, and the Ottomans struggled to deal with it. A heavy cavalry flanked by

light cavalry on the wings was fairly standard, but what made his army really stand out were his

wagon forts. When a few thousand peasants join your army, and all they've got is an old spear and

a family heirloom helmet, apart from being cannon fodder, they're not much use, right?

Peasants typically arrived en masse, travelling in large wooden caravans, you know, wagons.

So Hunyadi transformed these wagons into medieval armored cars. He bulked them up with layers of

wood and built in firing slits down the sides. Arranging them in a circle, they became little

wooden fortresses that were very difficult to assault head-on. With a few planks of wood,

Hunyadi transformed the cannon fodder of his army into his secret weapon.

Although he suffered setbacks, Hunyadi's continual defeating of much larger and better

equipped Ottoman forces inspired the resistance of many other landholders across the Balkans.

Hoping to bottle the lightning and capture the energy, the Pope began recruiting for a new crusade,

one that was to be led by Hunyadi. Fanatical preachers gesticulated and rhapsodised in town

squares and markets about the need to drive the heretical Ottomans out of Europe. This specific

period, the 1440s in Eastern Europe, is one of my favourite in all history. It's the origin of

stacks of Balkan heroes whose names are still huge in their countries today. In 1443, at the

head of a multinational crusader army, Hunyadi vanquished an Ottoman coalition that was led

by several commanders. One of those commanders was an Albanian named George Castriotti.

The defeat would inspire Castriotti to defect from the Ottomans. Returning home to Albania,

he would become Skanderbeg, one of the greatest military leaders of all time,

and the subject of our very first episode. Recommend you checking that one out.

As the Ottomans were learning, reputation was a fickle thing. When an aura of invincibility

is lost, it's not easy to get back. Shortly after, two Ottoman diplomats would arrive at the

residence of a certain Count, deep in the forests of Transylvania. They were there to

confirm the Count's loyalty to the Sultan. The Count opened his door and greeted them warmly.

As per Romanian custom, removing one's hat before entering someone's house is what's expected,

and the Count, a certain Vlad de Daculia, politely requested his guests to do so,

but they declined, explaining that wearing their turbans was a religious requirement.

The Count shrugged, as you wish. He then ordered his guards to nail the turbans to the men's heads,

so they'd never have to remove them again. Drawing inspiration from the defiance shown by

Hunyadi, the Count later had Ottoman diplomats impaled, roasted alive, and disemboweled.

And these gruesome stories, exaggerated or not, gave rise to one of the greatest monsters of our

time, Vlad the Impaler, Count Dracula. Over the next 10 years, Hunyadi's proactive

campaigning kept the Ottomans guessing. As long as John Hunyadi lived, Central Europe was off limits

to the Ottomans. As enthusiasm for a new crusade waxed and waned, Hunyadi's bands of mercenaries,

largely paid for out of his own pocket, were the bulwark of Europe's Eastern flank.

But over in the Ottoman courts, there was a new man in charge. The old sultan had been replaced

by his fiery young son, Mehmet II. Mehmet was perhaps the most ambitious sultan the Ottomans

had ever seen. He had a vision of how he wanted to shape his empire, and nothing, not his family,

not the law, not the Roman Empire, and certainly not Hungary, would stifle that ambition.

Just two years into his reign, the young sultan had accomplished something that

every Muslim ruler stretching back to the Prophet himself had yearned for. He had conquered

Constantinople. Under the thunder of his enormous cannons, the mighty walls that had

defended the city for over 1,000 years crumbled. The new Rome was now in the hands of a Muslim power

for the first time in history. Feeling invincible, sultan Mehmet II, now known as

the Conqueror, set his sights on Hungary, leading his army with the same cannons that had sealed

the fate of the Roman Empire. In these cast iron monstrosities, Mehmet had seen the future.

He recognized earlier than others that gunpowder was as essential to an army as cavalry and

infantry. If he could blast his way through Hungary, Western Europe was open to the Ottomans,

open to Islam. In 1454, Mehmet marched his army into Serbia and crushed the last remaining Serb

Lord who'd refused to submit to him. Outside the fortress walls, he met Hunyadi, who'd rallied

his forces and merged them with the battle-hardened remnants of the Serb army. Together, they inflicted

a humiliating defeat on the young sultan, forcing him to retreat. Mehmet would not forget this

humiliation. Hunyadi had beaten the father and now he'd defeated the son. The loss was a wake-up

call to the young sultan. Europe, as fractured as it was, could still pack a punch. Two years later,

he set off again. Determined to finish off his father's rival once and for all, he told a close

friend that Hungary would fall in two months, and afterwards he'd be able to eat his dinner quietly

in Buda. Hunyadi scrambled to prepare. He was hoping to receive reinforcements from

the Albanian warlord Skanderbeg, but the sultan had dispatched another army to Albania that kept

him occupied. Hungarian nobles too were unhelpful. During the period between the wars, Hunyadi's

heavy taxes had turned them against him. Now, many of them were happy to hang him out to dry

and let the sultan have him. Meanwhile, the Hungarian king pretended that he had an urgent

hunting expedition he needed to leave for immediately. He fled his capital of Buda and

hunkered down in neighbouring Austria. With Skanderbeg preoccupied, the nobles uncooperative,

and the Hungarian king too scared to show himself, the burden of defending the entire kingdom

fell on Hunyadi's shoulders. In the final days before the battle, his numbers swelled with tens

of thousands of peasants. The peasants had been rallied by a travelling preacher in preparation

for a new crusade. Sick of having their land ravaged by Ottoman raiders, their morale was high,

and when their landlords tried to force them back onto their farms, well, they were told

exactly where to shove that order. It was a motley group for sure. Twenty thousand or so men armed

with cudgels, staves and slings against 60,000 of Mehmet's professional soldiers. But what they

lacked in weapons they made up in spirit. The preacher had implored them that their eternal

soul depended on this victory. Both Hunyadi and Mehmet understood that the fate of the war

hinged on the fortress of Belgrade, the modern-day capital of Serbia. Situated at the confluence

of two rivers, if Mehmet could take Belgrade, Ottoman power would be secured in the troublesome

region, and Hunyadi knew it too. Hunyadi and his peasant army marched with all the haste for the

city, but by the time he arrived, bobbing Ottoman tents dotted the landscape as far as the eye could

see. The Sultan was already preparing his cannons, and, crucially, his navy had blocked the rivers,

preventing further supplies from getting into Belgrade. Undeterred, Hunyadi hastily assembled

makeshift navy, made up of transports and galleys, anything that could float.

Under the cover of darkness, his shabby navy silently floated towards the Ottoman flotilla.

By the time Mehmet's sailors realized what was happening, Hunyadi's peasants were already on

them. Echoes of the dead and dying rang throughout the night, and, supposedly, the river ran blood

red for miles downstream. With the blockade broken, Hunyadi could resupply the city. Mehmet had lost

the initiative at sea, so on land he pushed harder. Day and night his cannons roared,

pounding the walls into mush. These were very early cannons that were prone to cracking and

misfiring or straight up exploding, so a rolling artillery barrage like this was as much a psychological

weapon as a physical one. Inside the fortress, the church bells rung every day at noon,

reminding the Christians to pray for their salvation. Large gaps began to appear in the wall,

and Mehmet ordered a general assault. His elite troops, proving their worth,

they overwhelmed the defenders. As the troops poured in, Ottoman flags began to appear on the

outer walls. Just as everything seemed lost, Hunyadi ordered sulfur-coated bundles of wood

thrown from the inner walls. As the sulfur was lit, an enormous inferno engulfed the advancing

Janissary Army. The fire split the attackers, half were pushed inside and half were pushed back out.

Cut off from reinforcements, the peasant crusaded rushed the forward group and butchered them.

The cheers of the Christians intermingled with the hideous screams of burning Ottoman troops.

Unable to find a way for his men to pass through the flames, Mehmet ordered a retreat.

The next day, some of Hunyadi's peasants noticed a section of the Ottoman siege camp had been left

vacant. A couple of men snuck out and began snatching up whatever treasure the soldiers had

left behind. A little fight broke out as a couple of the camp guards returned, but to everyone's

surprise, the peasants held their own. Mehmet dispatched additional troops to finish them off,

but again, the peasants squared off and beat them back. Hunyadi, though he'd ordered no one to

leave the fortress, seized the opportunity. The little skirmish rapidly snowballed into a colossal

battle. At the head of his militia, a firebrand preacher charged into the clash, bellowing out

to his followers, quote, the Lord who made the beginning will take care of the end.

The clash of steel echoed through the air as Hunyadi's forces clashed fiercely with the

Ottoman army. The peasant soldiers fought with a fervour born out of desperation,

their makeshift weapons striking down seasoned Ottoman warriors. As the Ottomans gave ground,

the Hungarians came across their deserted cannons and turned the Iron Beasts back on them.

Mehmet ordered his men to retake the cannon at all costs, but Hunyadi did not give an itch.

Under a hail of grapeshot and cannon fire from their own cannons,

the sultan's best troops, his janissaries, fell in droves. Beside himself with fury, Mehmet

ordered the janissaries to advance and retake the artillery, but even these men had their limits.

They refused to obey. Only when the sultan himself was shot through the thigh with an arrow did he

finally concede the loss. The victory was miraculous. Genuinely, it must have seemed like a miracle.

Again, Hunyadi had been pitted against the endless resources of the Ottoman empire

and came out victorious. He had given them such a thrashing that an Ottoman army of this size

would not return again for 70 years. It's easy to see why this victory is still celebrated annually

by Hungarians today. Europe was jubilant. The ringing of church bells at noon became a tradition

that is still practiced in many cities of Europe today. The pope declared Hunyadi a champion of

Christ, calling him one of the greatest men to have ever lived. Hungarians were hailed as the

most noble of all Europeans, the bulwark of Christendom. Talk of crusades were renewed,

and in the alehouses of Europe, people spoke of retaking Constantinople, maybe even Jerusalem.

But all was not well. As the victory parade continued through Belgrade, the man of the hour

was suspiciously absent. The 50-year-old regent was bedridden, tossing and turning, gripped by

bouts of sweating and fevers that he couldn't shake. The putrefying bodies and open wounds of

the battlefields had bought with them the plague which John Hunyadi had caught. Just one month

after his greatest victory, he was dead.

John Hunyadi, though never a king, had earned a reputation that resonated throughout Europe.

There was scarcely a ruler who hadn't heard of him. Against the relentless Ottoman Empire,

Europe had been like a concrete dam, patched up again and again by one man, and now he was gone.

Before his body was even cold, parts of Hungary began to break away. Without his

mailed fists to hammer them back into place, nobles found their voice and clamoured for more

tax breaks and more land. Again, the fabric of Hungary seemed ready to rip. In the wake of the

childless old king's death, rival groups and nobles agreed on a compromise to end the civil war.

As part of the compromise, the last surviving son of the great John Hunyadi would be their new king.

A 14 year old boy named Matthias Corvinus, sometimes called the Raven King, as Corvin means

Raven in Latin. The teen's short life had mostly been spent at a Romanian court where

some of the most learned men passed through. And through this revolving door of intellectuals,

Corvinus soaked up knowledge, becoming fluid in most of European languages by his mid teens.

Nourished by the tales of his father's brilliance, Matthias internalised his legacy.

He took the throne with the help of his uncle, but just two weeks into the job,

he dismissed him. He decided he didn't need any help running the country.

The boy knew who his father was and who he was. Driven and self-assured, he would usher in another

Hungarian golden age, and he would do it with or without his nobles' help.

Unlike his father, whose talents were solely on the battlefield, Corvinus was intelligent,

charming and likable. There were quite a few portraits painted of him, so we have quite a

good idea of what he looked like. He has a large face, a sloping brow and long dark hair,

and just for that little nod to the ancients, a floral wreath bounced atop his head.

He was soon married to a high-born Italian teenager named Betris. When his new wife arrived at the

king's court, she bought a little slice of Italy with her, and young Matthias found himself

swept off his feet. Not necessarily by Betris herself, but by her culture. The young king

became intoxicated with the Italian Renaissance. Renaissance, which means rebirth, was an era

of rediscovery. Italians were turning their back on the old superstitions in stuffy church rules

in favour of classical art and literature. Ancient tomes from classical Greece or ancient Rome were

plucked from the shelves and studied with fascination. Statues of Dionysus, Apollo and Hercules dotted

the streets of Italy, and wealthy families employed translators to resurrect the lost

poetry of Plato, Archimedes and Homer. Sprawling red brick villas, theology, law, medicine,

the king was soon dizzy with Renaissance fever, and caught up in this fervour, Matthias encouraged

his nobles to get with the program, and even though a few did and followed suit, most of them

despised the Italian influence that was permeating the Hungarian court. They questioned the abandonment

of Hungarian culture, sarcastically wondering if they were all to become Italian. Though his nobles

might grind their teeth, the king was unbothered, spending enormous sums translating, binding,

and reprinting ancient books. The stack of books became a chest, the chest became several,

and before he knew it, the collection spanned several rooms. His library became known as

the Bibliotheca Corviana, the biggest library in Europe, apart from the popes.

When we talk about old libraries, you're probably picturing a bunch of old Bibles in that

off camo green you see at thrift stores for a couple of bucks, right? Well this was so much

more than that. With the fall of Constantinople, ancient fragile manuscripts that had once rested

in the great city since time and memorial were strewn throughout Europe like trading cards.

These irreplaceable works, some of which were the only copies in existence, found a new home in the

Bibliotheca Corviana, where they were cataloged, translated, and archived. Something like a

iCloud backup of the 15th century. One man who visited the sprawling halls was overcome by the

sheer variety of topics. Writing of his visit, he said, quote, I saw such a plenty of Greek

and Hebrew volumes, which King Matthias purchased with immeasurable money after the fall of Byzantium

and many other Greek cities, releasing them from their shackles as if they'd been slaves.

As King Matthias and Queen Betris walked the ornate halls of the library, it was akin to

being inside a beehive. In a flurry of activity, dozens of scribes hunched over desks, murmuring

quietly to themselves. An ancient manuscript to their left and a fresh sheet of parchment to

their right, with each day they rediscovered lost medical techniques, banned pagan philosophy,

and forbidden Islamic arithmetic. For the first time in a thousand years, Europe was alive again.

Hunyadi was Europe's new Renaissance king, but he was also, as his nobles like to point out,

an outsider. His father, John Hunyadi, was probably of Transylvanian stock,

and xenophobia ran hot in Hungary, particularly among the elite. This was important because,

apart from Matthias himself, there were a couple of other people who had a claim to the Hungarian

throne, and one of them actually possessed it, as in they held the physical crown of Hungary.

According to Hungarian law, a ruler could not become king until he held this specific crown,

which left Corvinus technically squatting on the throne. As he worked to clean up his realm,

trouble began to brew on Hungary's western border. The Ottomans bordered Hungary in the east,

but to the west was the land of the Holy Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire was a kind of

German confederation of microstates that spanned all across central Europe. That's not a great

explanation, but it'll do. Anyway, the man in charge of them was the same guy who had his

greasy fingers wrapped around Corvinus' crown. His name was Emperor Frederick III,

but behind his back, his nobles called him Arch Sleepyhead Frederick III.

Isn't that such a quintessentially German insult? Arch Sleepyhead, I love that.

How did he get that name, you might ask? Well, a someone who met him observed,

quote, the emperor aimed to rule the world, but wanted to do so without leaving his chair.

Slow and entitled, Frederick had the habit of signing any document with a mysterious acronym,

A-E-I-O-U. Everyone always asked him what it meant, but thinking he was pretty clever,

Frederick refused to tell. It stood for Austria S. Imperati Orbi Universo.

Austria will rule the world. Sounds like something you'd do as a 10-year-old

writing in your little secret diary, doesn't it? A bit of a loner and clearly a little odd.

If you met the Arch Sleepyhead at a party, you probably wouldn't remember him.

Well, maybe you would, because he usually wouldn't shut up about astrology.

From battles to marriage consummation, Frederick set his calendar against the cosmos.

But as you know, stars take many years to align, and because of this, Frederick had

learnt to be very patient. Looking over at the smoldering Hungarian kingdom about to rip itself

apart with another civil war, the Arch Sleepyhead probably thought, let the new guy exhaust himself,

I've got his crown, I can wait as long as it takes. Corvinus didn't have that luxury.

All the books in the world were nothing if he didn't have that crown.

I'm sure you're probably thinking, but what about the Ottomans,

surely then it's just sitting quietly? Well, you're right.

With Corvinus focused on his succession, the Ottomans were finishing off any resistance between

their empire and the Hungarian kingdom. They were besieging one of the last independent kingdoms

left, Bosnia. In desperation, the Bosnian king reached out to Corvinus for assistance, but

as his troops were tied down in the west, although he wanted to help, he couldn't

scramble an army in time. Mehmet the Conqueror marched in and easily defeated the Bosnians.

Corvinus had lost his last buffer state. Ottoman lands now directly bordered Hungary.

The dam that Corvinus's father had maintained was leaking and about to burst.

Once a distant threat, the Ottomans were now lapping at the doors of Hungary.

The time for action was now, but the king knew as soon as he moved troops from his western border,

Frederick would invade. He was trapped between a rock and a hard place. He could only defend one

border at a time. With the Pope's mediator, Corvinus and Frederick made terms. The arched

sleepyhead handed over the Hungarian crown in exchange for some cash. The Pope wanted these

two powerful magnates to play nice with each other. He was hoping they had crusades started and wanted

these guys on the same team, but there was just too much bad blood. Before the ink had even dried,

Frederick gave a little wink and a nudge to his raiders, who continued to raid into Hungary.

Corvinus accused him of breaking the treaty and Frederick said something like,

hey, I can't control every single man in my empire, can I? The arched sleepyhead wasn't

trustworthy. The scroll of parchment they'd signed meant virtually nothing. So Corvinus took

things into his own hands. He chose the only option he had left and made peace with the Ottomans.

He may have felt backed into a corner on this one, but his decision was not popular.

To the rest of Europe, it was acknowledging that Islam was here to stay, legitimizing its

conquests on European soil, something his father would have never done. With the East secure,

he threw all his weight against the West. Emperor Frederick and his puppet rulers

had stirred up trouble in Hungary for too long. If the emperor wanted a war, he'd give him one.

But there was another problem. Since the days of John Hunyadi,

roaming bands of mercenaries had plagued Hungary's Northwest. Paid by the state's enemies, like the

emperor, to cause trouble and plunder, these well-trained soldiers, without a water fight,

had turned the region into a no-go zone. Corvinus approached the bandits with an intriguing offer.

Join him. Not just for a battle or a campaign, forever. He wanted them to be armed and assembled,

ready to act at a moment's notice. He wanted them to be his army.

The mercenaries agreed, and why wouldn't they? These were troubled times, and Corvinus was offering

them permanent, stable employment. If he kept up his side of the deal, they'd keep up theirs.

With a handshake, Corvinus transformed these bandits into an army. They would come to be known,

rather ominously, as the Black Army, either due to the color of their armor or, more likely,

because of the surname of one of their first captains. The Black Army would be one of the

first standing armies in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire nearly a thousand years ago.

Soon, the very mention of the Black Army would have peasants' knees rattling. These guys were

brutal and merciless, but man, did they get the job done. Matthias' court biographer described them,

saying, quote, In no other nation can one find soldiers who bear heat, cold, work, labor,

and effort so lightly, carry out tasks so willingly, and head into battle and death

more joyfully. They are braver and more persevering than Spartans.

With the troubled region beginning to recover, Hunyadi led the Black Army across the border.

Let's see how you like it, Frederick. The invasion was Hunyadi's first test in combat.

He'd spent days immersed in studying the translated works of Caesar's Gallic Wars,

Alexander the Great's invasion of Persia, and Hannibal's Punic War,

but on the battlefield itself, he was fairly green. Very quickly, though, he proved he was

his father's son. Bohemia, Modentcetia, fell quickly and over the next few years he pushed

deeper into Frederick's kingdom. The dawdling emperor was not ready for a war where things moved

so quickly. Citadel after Citadel fell to Corvinus and soon his armies surrounded the

very capital of Frederick's empire, Vienna. Frederick looked to the cosmos, but even his

astrologist couldn't see a way out of this one. He and his men fled Vienna and Matthias entered in

triumph. Not a drop of blood was spilt, instead he bought in wagons of food for the besieged city,

a nice little PR move. With no other options, the emperor was forced to the negotiating table.

He was forced to formally recognize Corvinus' conquests. The Raven King had set up to secure

his western border and instead had annexed a swathe of new territories. The arch-sleepy

head had been put to bed, now for the Ottomans. From the snow-capped hills of Austria to the

dark forests of Transylvania and the shores of the Black Sea, all bowed to the Raven King.

Hungary had reached its largest territorial extent in history, but it had come at a cost.

The invasion had drained the kingdom's treasury. Now the government had to pay for the Black

Army and the garrison of castles in new territory. Corvinus found himself effectively paying for

two standing armies. He needed cash and lots of it. Clawing back many of the privileges and

tax breaks the nobles had extracted from weaker kings, his income tripled to almost 750,000

florins. The nobles, lacking the muscle to defy him because of his Black Army, were enraged.

Many of them won the Brink of Rebellion and the peasants, who often found the king's tax burden

forced down onto them, were equally livid. But even with all this new revenue, Corvinus

still struggled to pay the bills, drowning in debt bought upon by his quest for glory.

His money woes began to transform him from the Pope's darling to its harshest critic.

Over and over he wrote to the Pontiff, effectively telling him,

look you want us to defend Europe from the Ottomans? Can't do it alone, need money.

His marriage too was on the rocks. In the beginning, Patricent Matthias had been,

well I don't know if I'd say they were in love, but they were definitely good to each other.

But now as the couple posed for another portrait to line their library walls,

it was obvious something was missing. An heir. Tries she might over the years of marriage,

no matter how many fertility shrines the queen visited, she wasn't able to conceive.

And it led to her rift forming between the two. Matthias, now in his early 40s, began grooming

his bastard son, John, to succeed him. Meanwhile, Betrice, in what can only be described as a

fantasy, raised up her own candidate, her nephew, to a throne that didn't belong to her.

A weird kind of cold war started where husband and wife were courteous to each other in person,

but schemed behind the other's backs to push their own plans for succession in private.

Betrice held her head high at ceremonies where lords were made to swear before Corvinus' bastard

son. Meanwhile, Corvinus humoured Betrice, attending the outlandish and costly ceremonies

that she'd organised for her nephew. The fun fact, the nephew, Ippolito, was the brother of

Isabella De Este, who we covered in our Sack of Rome episode. Anyway, when his wife was out of

earshot, Matthias wrote letter after letter to her family in Italy, urging her father to reign her in.

Quote, The Hungarian people are capable of killing up into the last man

rather than submit to the government of a woman. We must add, in all frankness,

that the Queen is scarcely loved by our subjects, which we realise with grief,

but the Queen does not try to gain their affections.

Betrice had never made much of an effort to integrate into Hungarian society. She came in

with her Italian retinue, Italian painters and Italian food, and had been lucky enough to find

a husband willing to indulge her. But that was during the honeymoon of their marriage,

now the Queen was finding herself increasingly isolated. Matthias' popularity was lagging,

and his courtiers scowled and whispered about her as a pastor in the palace.

Even her operas and fancy dress balls didn't cheer her up. It was as if, overnight, the golden

light that had shone in their kingdom had shifted, leaving her in the dark. The stress of their

personal life aged the couple prematurely. Betrice was a far cry from the lie, the vivacious and

bubbly teenager who'd arrived at the courts originally. At just 28 years old, she was arthritic,

overweight and regularly bedridden for days on end. Actually, Matthias wasn't that much better.

At just 41 years of age, the rich Italian food he loved so much had taken its toll.

High blood pressure and regular fevers forced him to bow out of state affairs for days on end.

Even when he could move, he was plagued by gout and often needed to be carried on a litter due

to the intense pain in moving his legs. The end was near. And though, in bouts of lucidity,

the Raven King promised another crusade, everyone knew it wasn't going to happen.

For the time being, his Black Army kept the Hungarian planes free of the Ottomans,

but it was clear that the King was approaching his end.

After recovering from a particularly nasty fever, Corvina seems to have had the same revelation.

Everything he worked for, everything his father worked for, balanced precariously on his sickly

body. He dedicated his fading mind to succession. Haemorrhaging money on these expensive border

forts, he decided to open up negotiation with his old rival, Emperor Frederick.

The fact that his son, John, was a bastard complicated things greatly.

Many treaties Matthias had signed were based on him having a legitimate heir,

which John wasn't. In desperation, Corvina's agreed to return all the lands he'd conquered

if the Emperor could overlook this issue. The ever-patient Emperor must have been ecstatic.

As usual, his indecision had paid off, another problem solved by doing nothing.

A-E-I-O-U. Damn, it was good to be the Emperor.

As their treaty neared towards the final stages of negotiation,

Corvinus slipped into another fever. This time he didn't wake up.

King Matthias Corvinus, the Raven King, died on the 6th of April, 1490. He was just 47 years old.

As his Queen sobbed over his lifeless body, the question on everyone's lips,

from the Ottoman Sultan to the court nobles, was, what would happen now?

As much as he had tried to fix everything towards the end, the fact of the matter was that Matthias

Corvinus left a grand kingdom teetering on the edge of total collapse. Despite visitors' amazement

at the glistening halls and palaces, the government's treasury was completely empty,

saved for a few loan slips. The population was more divided than ever before. The lords hated

the nobles, the nobles hated the peasants, and the peasants, well, they hated just about everyone.

Worst of all, the Ottomans had a new Sultan. Right now he was called Suleiman, just Suleiman,

but soon the world would know him by another name, Suleiman the Magnificent, one of the brightest

and most able sultans to ever sit upon the throne. And I bet you can guess where he was heading first.

And that's where we pulled the plug this week. Did you enjoy Hungary's golden age? I hope so,

because it's not coming back. The next episode is one long slide into the muck,

and you're not going to want to miss it. I'm sure King Matthias had a secretary to remind him

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