Famous medieval battles -pls contribute with a battle

[Odovacar]

Upon seeing how much cloud covers medieval warfare in general, and how much silly imagination is around, I think its a good idea to start a topic about famous battles. In this topic we can describe the exact events of battles, and from it analyze why either side won, and the other was defeated.
If you have an interesting battle that sheds light to medieval warfare in general, or to a territory's warfare in particular, please post it.
No more ironside cavalry vs. mongols.. time to go historical!

My first battle will be the battle of Hod-lake which is unknown almost every non hungarian medieval scholar, but shows many interesting possibilities about medieval warfare.

[Numenor]

Since i'm portuguese, I'm going show the battle of Aljubarrota. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aljubarrota <- for more details. fair fight or not?

[Markas]

No more ironside cavalry vs. mongols.. time to go historical!

Thankyou

My first battle will be the battle of Hod-lake which is unknown almost every non hungarian medieval scholar, but shows many interesting possibilities about medieval warfare.

Cool. I'll post one when I get home from work.

[Kara Kolyo]

Reading the thread about Medieval vs Shogun and the Cuman discussion in it i'll try to contribute with the battle of Adrianople in 1205 when emperor Baldwin was captured.
This will happen maybe tomorrow since i have to find Geodfrois de Willardouhin's book. had a link somewhere but have to dig it out

[Odovacar]

The battle of Hód-lake.

I: The Causes

Today, the city near to Hód-lake (hód=castor, but Hód was likely a person) is called Hódmezővásárhely, and is in Southeast-Hungary, on a lowland.

In 1282 King László IV (László the Cuman) had to do a battle against cumans.
King László, was a son of a cuman chiefs (Sejhán) daughter, Erzsébet, and István V., the warlike but very short lived king.
László spent childhood under very hard circumstances. He was kidnapped by a disloyal vassal (to which his own mother helped) and his father died besieging the castle in which he was kept. Contemporaries said that King István died because his heart was broken, seeing the treachery of his own wife, for whom he endured much against his own father.

But after his death two noble parties ruled Hungary, the Csáks and the Kőszegi family. At first the Csáks controlled the infant king.

With the their leading King László's troops (as László was still a teenager) defeated King Otakar Premysl at the battle of Dürnkrut, together with Rudolf von Habsburg.
Grown up, King László sought to boost his power, by his own people, the cumans. He had a cuman lover (Édua at first but later two other) and he was spending all day with this woman who rode horses, shooted with a bow like men. László was losing a christian king's behaviour and adapting a cuman chieftains behavior.

Meanwhile he enclosed his wife, Isabelle d' Anjou, into a closter, but attacked the closter in which his sister was, and forcefully grabbed her out of it, to the great joy of that woman. (László's sister was wild as he was, and openly admitted that she want to marry a mongol, or at least a pagan. Later he married a checz nobleman, and as Bohemia was Hungary's adversary it was still an insult.) László answered the attacks of clericals having claimed that one day 'I will wipe out the whole priesthood till Rome, with mongol swords'

The nobles and the priests increasingly worried because of the situations. In 1280 Philipp, a legate arrived from Rome, and commanded László to create cuman laws, which will force cumans to take up christianity and christian behaviour. László at first kidnapped the legate (as he excommunicated his friend, a very extravagant and cuman-lover priest, and when the priest died shortly after, the legate has thrown his body into a pit)
The cumans got the legate from László, and prepared to pepper him with arrows. But the governor of Transylvania, Flinta, took the king as a hostage and forced him to release the legate and obey Rome. The cumans released the legate, and László created the laws to control the cumans.

After then, -disappointed- the cumans rebelled against king László.

[Odovacar]

II: The battle

The disappointed cumans, leaded by Oldamir, their high cheiftain, begun to raid the surrounding territories. Later sources say that they got aid from their brothers from Vallachia or some other cuman territory. But this is hard to tell. As usual in time of war the whole cuman populace has taken up arms. They could be numbered cica 20 000 warrior, or slightly more. As they later remained a force to be counted with, and they had large territories in Hungary, they must had a considerable force.
King László's army could be an equal in numbers. László was widely unpopular, excommunicated, and a person against whom a crusade was recently called,
so the mainly disloyal nobles were unlikely to help him.

Thus we know only about lesser nobles fighting for László. For this battle the king could not use the cumans (as for every battle since 1250) and this was another odd. Still László had a formidable force enough to seek battle with the enemy, as was his duty.

Alas, the sources are very short, so we lack details about the battle.
There were no advantageous positions on the field, so its likely that they both started on equal terms. The cumans had mainly horse archers and a few heavy lancers. The hungarians had knights and lightly armed horseman, prepared for melee.

The battle begun with a skirmish, or series of duels in which Tamás, son of Lóránt, killed some cumans with his lance.
After the initial prelude, the cumans tried to employ their hit and run tactics.
Time time, however heavy rains fall from the skies, ice rained. The terrain became very muddy, and the bows received too much rain, so the strings became loosened.
As a result the cumans were unable to shoot arrows or to move quickly. The hungarians perceived the situation, and jumped from their horses, advancing on foot. Melee begun, and the unprepared cumans were beaten, and decimated.
Never again took they arms up against the king.
A great massacre followed their routing. Many of the cumans leaved Hungary in haste, and the remaining ones yielded to the king.

The chronicler of Chronica Pictum wrote: 'They who put their hopes in their bows and arrows-because of the heavy rain-became like the mud of earth'

[Odovacar]

The battle of Rozgony/Rozhanovce 1312

You may had enough of hungarian battles but I haven't
I cannot resist my evil self who commands me to post another battle story. I pomise I will do some foreign battles later, so the thread can continue being international, as it was intended to be.
This is my favorite battle. I wrote a novell about the time of Interregnum back when I was around 18.

The battle of Rozgony (Rozhanovce, Slovakia) was fought at
1312 Juni 15.

King Charles Robert de Anjou faced the united army of Aba family and Máté Csák.
Earlier, the citizens of Kassa killed Amadé, from de genus Aba, in a street fight over the control of the city. Amadé was a strong local noble, sort of the lords, who were called 'little kings'. Amadé however, always supported King Charles. When he arrived in Hungary he gave the king his own castle to live in, and there Charles had a solid and safe base. Amadé supported the king against internal and external enemies. Yet he continued to usurp royal income and castles. His intention was to maintain his power.

Although Amadé was his greatest help, King Charles was not thankful.
When Amadé, a tyrannous man, was ruthlessly killed, his sons were forced to abandon every intention of subduing Kassa, and they even had to give several dozens of their supporters as hostages to the city. Among these hostages even kinsman. The sons of Amadé agreed to give royal castles and wealth back to the king. King Charles did not anything to support them, he supported the city, knowing this is his best interest.

The sons of Amadé were eager for revenge. They bowed before Máté Csák.
Máté, was the most powerful of the 'little kings'
He held territory unparalelled by any lord in Hungary. Those, who opposed him simply vanished from history.
Certain nobles complained about his cruelty in forcing them to serve him, and even fought back against him. Years later their names do not appear again.
Máté's vassals burned the houses of his enemies, raped their women, and killed the protesters. Several one of them had a large bounty on their heads.

Máté himself was excommunicated by the papal legate Gentilis, but his clergy continued to pray mass. They had to, if they wished to live. Máté himself took a holy oath to help the king, giving him back whats due to him, yet he lied.
He even withstand the combined attack of King Charles and King John of Bohemia. He ruled from the castle of Trencsén (Trencin) over a large territory.

[Oswald von Wolkenstein]

Here's some of my favs (most of which have been preserved in literary monuments)

Battle of Maldon
Battle of Hafrsfjord
Battle of Stamford Bridge
Battle of Fontenay-en-Puisaye
Battle of Lechfeld
Battle of Hastings
Battle of Ayn Jalut
Battle of Nicopolis

[Odovacar]

The battle

In 1312, King Charles attacked Máté Csák's territories. His forces laid siege to the castle of Sáros. They siege continued for two weeks, till a relief force appeared from the north. Máté sent an army that had superior number than that of Charles. Charles withdraw from the castle, and marched into Szepes county, where free nobles joined him in large numbers. These were the so called 'lanceman nobles of Szepes'.

The time has come for revenge for the sons of Amadé. The two young man gathered their vassals (familiars using the correct term) and attacked the city of Kassa/(Kosice). On their way they united with the army of Máté Csák.
Seeing this, King Charles marched against them to stop them before they could reach the city.

Máté and the Amadé-sons had a large army. Máté sent much of his vassals to aid the Aba family, as well as 1700 checz knights, he hired from the neighbouring Bohemia. The army had two commanders: Aba, called Great
(Aba dicitur Magnus) and Demeter Balassa.

The army of King Charles had less warriors. It was led by the young King himself, on his side with a french knight from Neaples, Philipp Drugeth.
Drugeth was an experienced knight who thaught Charles to swordfight and tactics. His family later became a foremost baronal family in Hungary.
The hospitaliers knights (commonly referred as crusaders) aided the king as well.
A formidable army of infantrymen, hungarian, saxon, slovakian was in the army. There is no account on cuman horse archers although the king probably had a few hundred.

Aba, the enemy leader, took an advantageous position, on a hill, besides the stream of Tarcza. The king had to move his troops into a disandvantageous position, where they could be monitored by Máté's army.

The battle opened with the charge of Máté's army. They charged down from the hills onto the royal army. The attack pulled back the royal battle lines, and the attackers reached the king himself. His flag bearer, Gyurke, (whose daughter was the king's lover) was killed, and King Charles personally fought in melee for a while, defending his on life, when most of his bodyguard has been slain.

At this time the hospitaliers gathered around the king to save him. Still Máté's warriors not far from routing the royalists. They were pulled back, but King Charles lost so much men...
Eventually a further aid reached the battlefied. It was a saxon army from the city of Kassa, which came to help the king. The saxon heavy infantryman attacked in the rear Máté's nearly victorious knights and warriors, and annihilated them.

The Amadé sons died on the battlefield, as Demeter Balassa, and Aba Great.
Máté's army suffered a terrible defeat, which was a warning to every little king.
Even decades later, Aba's sons were not forgiven because of their fathers deeds, and retained their dishonest status.
Máté himself hardly felt the loss. Surely, his hired knights vanished, as many of his vassals and allies. But he himself lost no territory. And he could extort his subjects enough to gather money again.

Before 1321 when he died peacefully he could not be moved from his power, yet his successor lost all of his territories in months.

[Eric]

The Battle of Dorylaeum
(Credit is due to wikipedia for the information)

Background:
The crusaders had left Nicaea on June 26, with a deep distrust of the Byzantines, who had taken the city without their knowledge after a long siege. In order to simplify the problem of supplies, the Crusader army had split into two groups; the weaker led by Bohemund of Taranto, his nephew Tancred, Robert Curthose, Robert of Flanders, and the Byzantine general Taticius in the vanguard, and Godfrey of Bouillon, his brother Baldwin of Boulogne, Raymond IV of Toulouse, Stephen, and Hugh of Vermandois in the rear.

On June 29, they learned that the Turks were planning an ambush near Dorylaeum (Bohemund noticed his army being shadowed by Turkish scouts). The Turkish force, consisting of Kilij Arslan I and his ally Hasan of Cappadocia, along with help from the Danishmendids, led by the Turkish prince Ghazi ibn Danishmend, the Persians, and the Caucasian Albanians, numbered about 150,000 men according to Raymond of Aguilers (Fulcher of Chartres gives the exaggerated number of 360,000). Contemporary figures place this number at between 25,000 - 30,000.

In addition to large numbers of noncombatants, Bohemund's force probably numbered about 10,000, the majority on foot. Military figures of the time often imply perhaps several men-at-arms per knight (i.e., a stated force of 500 knights is assumed to contain perhaps 1,500 men-at-arms in addition), so it seems reasonable that Bohemund had with him approximately 8,000 men-at-arms and 2,000 cavalry.

On the evening of June 30, after a three-day march, Bohemund's army made camp in a meadow on the north bank of the river Thymbres, near the ruined town of Dorylaeum (Many scholars believe that this is the site of the modern city of Eskişehir).

The Battle
On July 1 Bohemund's force was surrounded outside Dorylaeum by Kilij Arslan. Godfrey and Raymond had separated from the vanguard at Leuce, and the Turkish army attacked at dawn, taking Bohemund's army (not expecting such a swift attack) entirely by surprise, firing arrows into the camp. Bohemund's knights had quickly mounted but their sporadic counterattacks were unable to deter the Turks. The Turks were riding into camp, cutting down noncombatants and unarmoured foot soldiers, who were unable to outrun the Turkish horses and were too disoriented and panic-stricken to form lines of battle. To protect the unarmoured foot and noncombatants, Bohemund ordered his knights to dismount and form a defensive line, and with some trouble gathered the foot soldiers and the noncombatants into the centre of the camp; the women acted as water-carriers throughout the battle. While this formed a battle line and sheltered the more vulnerable men-at-arms and noncombatants, it also gave the Turks free reign to maneuver on the battlefield. The Turkish mounted archers attacked in their usual style - charging in, firing their arrows, and quickly retreating before the crusaders could counterattack. The archers did little damage to the heavily armoured knights, but they inflicted heavy casualties on the horses and unarmoured foot soldiers. Bohemund had sent messengers to the other Crusader army and now struggled to hold on until help arrived, and his army was being forced back to the bank of the Thymbris river. The marshy riverbanks protected the Crusaders from mounted charge, as the ground was too soft for horses, and the armoured knights formed a circle protecting the foot soldiers and noncombatants from arrow fire, but the Turks kept their archers constantly supplied and the sheer number of arrows was taking its toll, reportedly more than 2,000 falling to horse-archers. Bohemund's knights were impetuous - although ordered to stand ground, small groups of knights would periodically break ranks and charge, only to be slaughtered or forced back as the Turkish horses fell back beyond range of their swords and arrows, while still firing at them with arrows, killing many of the knights' horses out from under them. And although the knights' armour protected them well (the Turks called them 'men of iron') the sheer number of arrows meant that some would find unprotected spots and eventually, after so many hits, a knight would collapse from his wounds.

Just after mid-day, Godfrey arrived with a force of 50 knights, fighting through the Turkish lines to reinforce Bohemund. Through the day small groups of reinforcements (also from Raymond, and Hugh, as well as Godfrey) arrived, some killed by the Turks, others fighting to reach Bohemund's camp. As the Crusader losses mounted, the Turks became more aggressive and the Crusader army found itself forced from the marshy banks of the river into the shallows. But the Crusaders held on, and after approximately 7 hours of battle, Raymond's knights arrived (unclear if Raymond was with them, or if they arrived ahead of Raymond), launching a vicious surprise attack across the Turkish flank that turned them back in disarray and allowed the Crusaders to rally. The Crusaders had formed a line of battle with Bohemund, Tancred, Robert of Normandy, and Stephen on the left wing, Raymond, Robert of Flanders in the centre and Godfrey, Robert of Flanders, and Hugh on the right, and they rallied against the Turks, proclaiming "hodie omnes divites si Deo placet effecti eritis" ("today if it pleases God you will all become rich"). Although the ferocity of the Norman attack took the Turks by surprise, they were unable to dislodge the Turks until a force led by Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, the Papal legate, arrived in mid-afternoon, perhaps with Raymond in the van, moving around the battle through concealing hills and across the river, outflanking the archers on the left and surprising the Turks from the rear. Adhemar's force fell on the Turkish camp, and attacked the Turks from the rear. The Turks were terrified by the sight of their camp in flames, and by the ferocity and endurance of the knights, since the knights' armour protected them from arrows and even many sword cuts, and they promptly fled, abandoning their camp and forcing Kilij Arslan to withdraw from the battlefield.

Aftermath
The crusaders did indeed become rich, at least for a short time, after capturing Kilij Arslan's treasury. The Turks fled and Arslan turned to other concerns in his eastern territory, and the crusaders were allowed to march virtually unopposed through Anatolia on their way to Antioch. It took almost three months to cross Anatolia in the heat of the summer, and in October they began the siege of Antioch.

[Mishu]

Here's one great battle won by my people:
Battle of Vaslui

check it out!

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Welcome to TWC!

First off, please don't post in threads 2 years old...