King László IV (Kun) (5 August 1262 – 10 July 1290) was a ruler of the Árpád dynasty between 1272 and 1290. His father was King István V, his mother was Princess Erzsébet (the Cuman) of Hungary. In his charters, King László called himself László III, as László II, the opposing king during the reign of István III, was not recognised as a legitimate ruler at the time.
The name Kun (Cuman), however, was not given to him because of his mother’s origin, but was attached to him during his lifetime. He was kidnapped as a child by the power-seeking overlords led by Bán Joachim to keep her father at bay. The enthroned László continued to be at the mercy of the lords, and this contributed greatly to his growing up preferring to be with his ‘beloved Kuns’ rather than among the Hungarians. He almost completely identified with them, adopting their way of life and their customs.
Because of his father’s and grandfather’s struggles, László witnessed and even suffered violence, which certainly influenced his later personality. Although King Béla IV and King István V the Younger concluded a peace treaty in Pozsony in the very year of László’s birth, the antagonism between the two parties again escalated into armed conflict in 1264. Barely two years old, László and his mother were taken prisoner by his grandfather in Sárospatak and imprisoned in Turóc Castle.
In March 1265, István V finally won a decisive victory over the army of Béla IV at the Battle of Isaszeg. The internal war ended with the peace treaty signed on 23 March 1266 on the island of Nyulak (today’s Margaret Island), and László was freed. However, the peace of Nyulak Island did not end the division of the country, and it accelerated the growth of the great estates and the dramatic decline of royal authority. Loyalty was divided, bartered, and had to be bought with land donations.
There were exceptions, however. The leaders of István V’s party, Péter and Máté of the Trencsén branch of the Csák clan, are not included in István V’s 1264 account of the lords to be bribed and rewarded, together with the gifts they received to remain or to convert to István V’s allegiance. The Csák family of Trencsén stood firmly by István V, and the Kőszegi family, led by Henrik the Great of Kőszeg, by Béla IV. Of course, the Csák family could count on receiving the highest offices and the bounties that came with them after István V came to power. The real problems arose after the deaths of Béla IV and István V.
After 1265, László’s father pursued an independent foreign policy. In 1269, he betrothed his daughter, Isabella (known as Erzsébet in Hungary), to King Charles I of Sicily (brother of King Louis IX of France), and the daughter was brought to Hungary in 1270. The official marriage was not celebrated until a few years later (1276 at the earliest), when the parties reached the age required by church law: Elizabeth was 12, and László was 14. This political marriage of children was typical of the Middle Ages.
As long as István V was king, he ruled the country with a firm hand, but he could not stop the negative trends. His short reign was ended by an unprecedented scandal and became the opening of a new political era. In the summer of 1272, the king and his court were on their way to Dalmatia to meet Charles I, but on 24 June, the Slavonic Bán (Duke) Joachim of Gutkeled kidnapped László at the town of Bihács and took him to the castle of Kapronca.
Shocked and embroiled in the scandal, István sent his army against Kapronca, returned to Hungary, and died on 6 August 1272. According to a charter of 1285, his death was considered by his contemporaries to be a milestone – the date after which ‘the disturbances in our country began to break out’.
After the death of István V, Queen Erzsébet hurried to meet Joachim, who had brought László from Slavonia to Székesfehérvár, and together they prepared the coronation ceremony for August. The former party of Béla IV, which was sidelined by István V, mainly Finta of the clan of Aba and his relatives Egyed and Gergely of the clan of Monoszló, tried to prevent the coronation, probably preferring to see the twenty-year-old Prince Béla of Macsó on the throne rather than the ten-year-old László.
They first captured László and then raided the queen’s quarters. However, the queen’s supporters, led by Miklós of the Pok clan, repelled the attack. Among the rebels, Egyed and Gergely fled to the court of King Ottokar II of Bohemia, having passed Pozsony Castle into the hands of the Czech king, where there were already Hungarian barons who had fled from István V, including the greatest, Henrik the Great of Kőszeg, who were pro-Béla IV. Egyed was warmly welcomed by Ottokar, who gave him many estates. Henrik the Great was so offended that he left Ottokar and came to the Hungarian court to offer his services, where he was warmly received.
Meanwhile, the coronation of László took place in the days before 3 September 1272, performed by Archbishop Philip of Esztergom of the noble family of Türje. His contemporaries called him László III because his rival, László II, was not included in the queen’s name. After the coronation, the court moved to Buda, where in the autumn they often had a good time on the Island of Nyulak. On one of these occasions, Henry the Great of Kőszeg accused Prince Béla of treason, and during the ensuing argument, he drew his sword and hacked the prince up so badly that his sister Margaret, who lived in the convent on Nyulak Island, and the other nuns picked up the pieces. Béla was buried in the monastery.
There was fierce competition among the noble classes for national, court, and local dignities. The transitional character of the period is shown by the fact that, although the aim of the lords was to become independent of royal power, the struggle was still for the offices of central power. At that time, it was not yet clear which circle of lords could act on any matter with royal authority.
Eventually, two groups emerged that played a significant role in national politics, one headed by Henry the Great of Kőszeg and Joachim of the Gutkeled family, the other by Máté of the Csák family – the uncle of Máté of Csák, the lord of the province during the future reign of King Károly Róbert – and his brother Péter of the Csák family – the father of Máté of Csák. Both parties had estates in Western Hungary, and both wanted to build their territorial power there. In the years that followed, these two parties alternated frequently in government, depending on the balance of power at the time. The 10-year-old László could not influence the course of events.
Kőszeg-Gutkeled’s dominion (autumn 1272 – spring 1273)
In the autumn of 1272, Henry the Great of Kőszeg reconciled with Joachim of the Gutkeled nobility and, after the death of Prince Béla, they divided the Banate of Macsó. Henrik became the Ban (Duke) of Só and the Ban of Ozora until March 1273. Péter of the Csák clan, István’s greatest supporter, was forced out of power and lost some of his estates. His brother Máté became a Slavonic ruler until March 1273.
Csák rule (Spring 1273 – December 1273)
Péter was compensated with the estate of Szenic in Nyitra County, which included customs revenue, and his brother Máté was a magistrate from August to December. In March, Henry the Great replaced Máté as the Ban of Slavonia, a position he held until September 1274.
Kőszegi-Gutkeled power (December 1273 – autumn 1274)
Miklós of Gutkeled nobility replaced Máté as the king’s magistrate. Henrik the Great of Kőszeg was also a Croatian-Slavonian Ban until September. In 1274, a group of Henry the Great of Kőszeg took the young king prisoner, and after the Csák had freed him, they set up a counter-king in the person of Prince András (brother of László). In the battle fought between 26 and 29 September 1274 near Polgárdi in Fejér County, Péter of Csák’s clan defeated Henrik and Joachim’s army. Henrik the Great of Kőszeg was killed, but his sons continued his policy.
Csák power (Autumn 1274 – Summer 1276)
Péter became the Comes of Sopron and Somogy until the summer of 1275, then he didn’t hold office for half a year, but from December he was the Palatine until the summer of 1276. Máté was voivode of Transylvania and count of Szolnok from September 1274 until autumn 1275, and he was also master of the household and Comes of Bánya until the summer of 1276.
In 1275, their brother István was the count of Trencsén and Barsi. From December to mid-1276, he was the master of the table, and in the meantime, he was the count of Barsi, of Bánya, and Szolgagyőr. Meanwhile, Miklós of the Gutkeled family was the Bán of Slavonia from June to October 1275. In March 1276, Palatine Csák Péter invaded Veszprém, where Kőszegi Péter was the bishop. The Veszprém chapter school, one of the most prestigious educational institutions in Hungary at the time, was also a victim of the destruction.
Kőszegi-Gutkeled rule (summer 1276 – summer 1277)
Kőszegi Miklós was the Palatine, and the Treasurer was Kőszeg Iván.
Csák power (Summer 1277 – 1279)
In May 1277, the Diet of Rákos crowned the 15-year-old László IV. Péter was the Palatine from August 1277 until the end of the year, then István was master of the table for half a year and the Comes of Pozsony, and Péter was Palatine again from the spring of 1278 until the end of the year, when he handed over the office to Máté. Péter then became master of the table and Comes of Pozsony and Moson until 1279, when he ceased to hold political office. Miklós of Gutkeled became a Slavonic Bán (Duke) from 1278 to 1279.
The Hungarian-Bohemian War of 1273
Hungarian internal political relations inevitably had consequences in foreign policy as well. Ottokar II, the greatest ruler in the history of the Czech Přemysl dynasty, saw the time as right to extend his power to Hungary: in April 1273, he took Győr Castle with a small army. For a short time, the external threat forced the lords to act together, and the Hungarian army retook Győr in mid-June after a bloody battle.
The Hungarian army was led by Henrik Kőszegi against the Bohemian and Austrian troops, who were outnumbered about twice. No battle took place; the Hungarian troops achieved temporary success in Moravian territory and then withdrew. Ottokar was able to occupy the key border castles and counties of Óvár, Moson, Győr, and Sopron without any significant resistance. The conflict ended without any meaningful Hungarian counterattack or peace treaty. The Kőszeg group used the armed force under its leadership to regain control of the Diet.
Turning point in foreign policy: the alliance between László IV and Rudolf Habsburg
On 1 October 1273, the princes of Germany elected Rudolf Habsburg, until then little known, as King of Germany in Frankfurt against the Bohemian Ottokar. As the Bohemian king refused to accept the election, the Imperial Assembly of Nuremberg on 19 November 1274 authorised Rudolf to deprive Ottokar of his provinces. Neither side was indifferent to which side Hungary sided with, because the country’s military strength was considerable despite its internal problems. It was therefore an opportunity to regain the territories lost in the 1273 war. However, the two alternating parties in power were not united in their foreign policy orientation.
The Csák clan wanted to accept Ottokar’s peace offer of 6 October 1275, while the Kőszegi clan and Joachim Gutkeled saw the Habsburg alliance as the right policy for their interests. The fact that the Hungarians ultimately sided with the Germans in the conflict was determined by the fact that it was the Kőszeg party that was in power when Rudolf attacked in the autumn of 1276.
The Hungarian army, led by Joachim Gutkeled and the then fourteen-year-old Hungarian king, marched towards Vienna to join Rudolf’s forces, but only got as far as Sopron when Ottokar retreated and swore allegiance to Rudolf. In the peace treaty of 21 November, Ottokar also committed himself to the return of the conquered Hungarian territories, but except for the Sopron parts, this did not materialise.
The domestic political significance of the campaign was that, on the one hand, it allowed László to be seen as the liberator of Sopron and, on the other hand, it became necessary to declare László of age, because only in this way could an alliance treaty be concluded with Rudolf at the appropriate level.
The Diet of 1277 at Rákos
In 1277, László was only fifteen years old, although according to the traditions of the House of Árpád, the age of sixteen, or rather eighteen, was a prerequisite for the ability to rule. The dysfunction of the feudal state, however, set in motion the forces that had an interest in reasserting royal power. Such forces included the church leadership, which had been almost completely excluded from political life, and the nobility, which had hitherto been excluded from political life.
At the initiative of some of the bishops, in particular Archbishop Báncsa István of Kalocsa, Bishop Fülöp of Vác, Bishop Ladomér of Vác, and Bishop Timót of Zagreb, a national assembly was convened in late May 1277 on a field near Rákos, the purpose of which, according to the documents, was to restore the ‘common good’ and to discuss the ‘damage and destruction caused to the country and the churches’.
The Diet declared the king of legal age and gave him the government of the country, while approving the treaty of alliance with Rudolph of Habsburg. The king swore an oath to declare armed rebellion against the “desecrators” of the country. Never before in Hungarian history had the king, the high priests, the barons, the nobility from all counties, and the leaders of the Kuns met in a meeting to assess the state of the country, approve foreign policy, or oblige the king to do certain things. This assembly, which could be seen as a forerunner of the later Estate assemblies, failed at last to have a decisive influence on events.
László IV’s attempt at stabilisation
In the middle of 1277, László IV moved quickly and decisively to implement the decisions of Rákos and achieved significant results. The royal armies led by Aba Finta and Baksa György defeated the rebels from the Szepes Region, while under the leadership of Kán Miklós, the Geregye brothers broke the emerging provincial power in Bihar. In the autumn of the same year, László marched west with a considerable number of his troops.
At Hainburg on 11 November 1277, he confirmed the alliance treaty with Rudolph and then attacked the castle of Kőszeg, but the siege was unsuccessful for lack of suitable devices. Around May 1278, at the Diet of Várad, held for the seven counties of the Trans-Tisza Region, László condemned the Geregye brothers and declared his intention to rely on the county nobility to settle the situation in the region.
Although the success was not complete, by the summer of 1278, László had implemented a significant part of the decisions of the Diet of Rákos. The king also proved to be a skilful politician in his subsequent actions. Gutkeled Joachim was killed in April 1277 in a battle against the Babonics clan in the south, and the Kőszegi clan concluded an alliance with Babonics István in the Treaty of Dubica on 20 April 1278, dividing the Sava River’s tributaries among themselves.
The Kőszeg clan was intended to set up an opposing king in the person of Prince Endre (later King Endre III), and the Treaty of Dubica was also concluded in the spirit of “the will and consent of Prince Endre”. The treaty was detrimental to the interests of Joachim Gutkeled’s brothers, and László sought to exploit this by elevating the Gutkeled brothers to the national office.
The other political tool against the Kőszeg clan was the renewed conflict between Rudolf and Ottokar. On 26 August 1278, at the Battle of Dürnkrut, Rudolf and László’s armies inflicted a crushing defeat on Ottokar, in which the Bohemian king also fell. The Hungarian forces, including the Kuns (Cumans), played a decisive role in the victory. The Kőszeg clan was forced to send Prince Endre back to Venice, and in early 1279, they declared their loyalty to the king.
The King sought to use his increased prestige to complete the consolidation, the royal commissioners acted with effective rigour in the county assemblies, the settlement of the status of the shattered royal estates began, and the revision of the young king’s underage gifted estates was put on the agenda. As a clear sign of the growth of his authority, in 1279, King László IV imposed a military levy on all those who failed to appear at the gathering of the national army, valid for the whole country.
The papal legate and the laws on the Kuns (Cumans)
On 22 September 1279, Pope Nicholas III appointed Bishop Philip of Fermo as his legate to Hungary with full authority. The reason for the appointment was that at this time Rome was receiving many complaints about the internal war. The legate’s alleged purpose was to ‘confirm the status of the king’, but the mandate gave Philip the right to act in secular matters as well as ecclesiastical, meaning that the Holy See saw the time as ripe to intervene in Hungary’s internal affairs. The royal power was already in control of its resources, the work of consolidation was just beginning, and the king was worried about the coming of the legate and tried to prevent it.
The Hungarian chronicle states that the papal envoy came to Hungary in early 1279 because Laszlo “lived in the manner of a Kuman and not according to Catholic custom”, but there are several papal documents concerning the appointment of the legate, none of which indicate that the king’s behaviour or customs were objectionable. The subsequent unworthy conduct of King László IV was therefore not a cause but a consequence of events.
The legate arrived in the country at the beginning of 1279 and soon turned his attention entirely to the settlement of the “Kun problem”, even though the Kuns had not been the central issue in the turmoil of the past. On 23 June 1279, Philip presented a detailed proposal to the royal council (erroneously called the first law on the Kuns), which included a preliminary recognition of papal supremacy in principle, followed by decrees concerning the Kuns and the king. With some modifications, the law was finally adopted by the Diet of Tétény, held between 12 and 25 July 1279.
The laws that were enforced did not contain any nonsense. The Kun territories were indeed a foreign body in the middle of Christian, feudal Hungary. The process of feudalisation of the Kuns had in fact already begun, because some of their nobles were already landowners. The free nomadic Kuns naturally had to be forced to settle, but this was not the main problem facing the country in the late 1270s.
The issue ultimately caused the failure of consolidation, because the Kuns had an important role to play in the governance mechanism outlined in 1277. They were the military force – the king’s military ‘escort’, the Kun host – which the royal power could call upon against the imperious overlords if necessary, and it is not unreasonable to suspect that the Kun issue was fomented at the suggestion of some overlord interest group. By issuing the Kun laws, László found himself in a situation of conflict in which he had no good choice, and this presumably triggered his unseemly behaviour.
The failure of consolidation, the death of László
The legate had already reprimanded the king in September for delaying the implementation of the Kun laws. This aggressive intolerance provoked the king’s aggression, and in early October 1279, legate Philip declared an ecclesiastical interdict on the king and his kingdom. The Pope called and authorised the country to rise up against the king. In response, László had the legate captured at the end of the year and handed him over to the Kuns, whereupon Aba Finta had the king himself taken prisoner.
Eventually, both the legate and the king were freed. László began to enforce the laws of the Kuns, but the Kuns rose against him and began to ravage the Tisza-Körös-Maros region. László IV defeated their forces at Lake Hód near present-day Hódmezővásárhely in the summer of 1282. Philip left the country before the battle at the end of 1281. The legate, who had come to ‘confirm the king’s status’, had succeeded in turning the king’s supporters into a real national menace, and the king was forced to launch a campaign against them.
The king, who had lost his ground and had been humiliated many times over, was only interested in revenge when the legate left. Against his captors and humiliators, he allied himself with his most powerful enemies, the Kőszegi clan, and in the summer of 1281, he made Kőszegi Iván a Palatine. Internal affairs in Hungary were thus reduced to the level they had been before the Diet of Rákos in 1277.
In the last years of his short, turbulent life, he was comforted by his Cuman mistresses Édua, Köpcsec,s and Mandula. He had intercourse with his favourite concubine, Édua, in front of others, according to Archbishop Lodomér of Esztergom. By this time, he was performing less and less of his basic duties as ruler; he was merely marching with his remaining Kuns, becoming an increasing burden on the country. A dual power began to emerge in the country. The idea of a crusade against Hungary was repeatedly raised in the mind of the Pope.
It is the culmination of the personal tragedy of László IV that he was eventually killed by the Kuns. On July 10, 1290, at the castle of Körösszeg, the Kun nobles of Árbóc, Törtel, and Kemence attacked and killed László, who was sleeping in his tent. The exact cause of the murder is unknown, and it is not unfounded to suspect that the nearby lord of the castle, Borsa Kopasz, was involved in the murder. The king’s body was received in the Cathedral of Csanád. No particular condolences could have accompanied the death of the last tragic monarch, certainly considered the last member of the Árpád dynasty.
Source: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/IV._L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_magyar_kir%C3%A1ly
Dear Readers, I can only make this content available through small donations or by selling my books or T-shirts.
Please, support me with a coffee here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/duhoxoxa
You can check out my books on Amazon or Draft2Digital. They are available in hardcover, paperback, or ebook:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/198020490X or at https://books2read.com/b/boYd81
My work can also be followed and supported on Patreon: Become a Patron!http://Become a Patron!
Become a Patron! Donations can be sent by PayPal, too: https://tinyurl.com/yknsvbk7
https://hungarianottomanwars.myspreadshop.com/all
Subscribe to my newsletter here: https://tinyurl.com/4jdjbfkn