The Hungarian Peasants’ War or Dózsa György’s Peasants’ War was a bloody movement in Hungary that lasted only a few months (April – July 1514). The peasant crusading army, summoned by the Archbishop of Esztergom, Bakócz Tamás, against the Turks, turned against its nobility to stop the campaign. The leader of the uprising was a Székely nobleman, Dózsa (Székely) György. The peasant uprisings were not based solely on the serfs: representatives of the merchant and commodity-producing classes of the market towns and small nobles also took part in the fighting in large numbers.
After the death of King Matthias Hunyadi in 1490, Ulászló II of the House of Jagiellon, who was weaker than his predecessor, ascended the Hungarian throne. The barons managed to increase the burden of the serfs in the diets of the estates. At the Diet of 1492, the king formally renounced part of his income, since most of it already enriched the barons. They also made it compulsory to collect the crop tax.
This was fought for by the middle classes, who feared that their serfs would move to the market towns or large estates if their taxes were increased further. In 1498, a ninth tax was introduced on vines and land, which was extended to urban citizens who cultivated the land of landlords. It was also at this Diet that the exemption of the nobility and the clergy from customs duties and the thirty-fifth tax was decided.
In addition, the nobles were no longer obliged to pay taxes not only on the transportation of the goods they produced but also on the transportation of the goods they bought. In 1504, jurisdiction over the right of serfs to move was transferred to village judges appointed by the lesser nobles; the punishment of nobles who prevented the free movement of their peasants had already been considerably reduced. Other provisions included the revocation of the right of peasants to hunt and the reduction of the rights of market towns to discourage peasants from moving there.
A negative development of the time was that the Fugger family managed to gain a monopoly of the gold mines in the Szepesség (Zipt, Spiš) region and Transylvania. As in the situation before the later German Peasants’ War, the Fuggers created a disastrous economic situation in Hungary.
In 1512, Selim I became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. In the same year, the Turks conquered the Szrebernik (Srebrenica) Dukedom of Hungary, which the Hungarians failed to regain. Following further Turkish successes, Pope Leo X declared a Crusade against the Turks in 1513, in which he wanted to include Sweden, Denmark-Norway, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Russian principalities, the Teutonic Knights, the Polish-Lithuanian Union, Wallachia and the Republic of Ragusa. The organization of the war was entrusted to Archbishop (later Cardinal) Bakócz Tamás of Esztergom, and an Envoy to the Holy See. Although the nobility protested against the untimeliness and poor organization, Bakócz succeeded in having the papal bull proclaimed on 9 April 1514.
Here is more about Bakócz and his reasons: https://www.hungarianottomanwars.com/essays/cardinal-bakocz-tamas-1442-1521/
It was a good time to attack, as Selim I’s empire was at war with Persia on its eastern border. However, the Ottomans inflicted a decisive defeat on the Persians at the Battle of Chaldoran, fought just over a month after the end of the Peasant War.
Organizing the Crusader Army
Bakócz Tamás appointed deputies in each diocese to organize the Crusader army. Choosing the commander-in-chief of the army was a difficult task. What was needed was a man who had already achieved success in the field of combat and was able to inspire confidence, loyalty, enthusiasm, and discipline in the multitudes. It seemed that Bakócz had found the most suitable person when he chose Dózsa György, a Székely lieutenant from the Dálnok Clan of Háromszék, Transylvania, who had gained fame and popularity through a victorious duel with a Turkish captain and, because of his humble commoner origins, was close to those he had to lead.
Most of the recruits came from the then southern Hungarian regions of Southern Hungary, but a good number also came from Transdanubia, the Trans-Tisza Region, the Highlands, and Transylvania. In addition to serfs, the members of the Crusade Army included the remaining mercenaries of the Black Army, runaway serfs, unemployed cattle herders, discharged soldiers, priests, monks, and minor nobles.
The army was not exclusively composed of peasants of Hungarian nationality. The majority of the army, roughly 40%, was made up of Slovaks from the Highlands, Romanians from Transylvania, Serbs from the South, Ruthenians, and Germans, but the latter were very few. After Dózsa’s first victories, peasant riots took place in most places in the country, in which peasants of other nationalities, such as Slovaks, Germans, Croats, Slovenes, or Serbs, also took part. The noblemen’s army was not ethnically homogeneous either, as many German mercenaries were taken in, and the soldiers of the Borderland castles also took part, some of them Serbs, although many of these came from the ranks of the Serb peasants of the southern region.
The start and causes of the clashes
By mid-May, the peasant army had amassed in the country, numbering some 40,000 men, and the nobility was increasingly concerned about the peasants’ gathering. Because they were losing their laborers’ hands at the time of the most urgent fieldwork, their serfs were forcibly prevented from leaving. The news of this caused great agitation in the Crusaders’ camp.
In any case, no adequate arrangements were made to house, feed, and organize the assembled crusaders, which led to violations and riots, which, having gone unpunished, became more and more frequent. Note, that the money allegedly sent to this purpose from Rome had disappeared. I would say the Pope wanted Cardinal Bakócz to fail.
Attacks on noblemen’s mansions, lords’ castles, and merchants traveling to fairs became more frequent. At this time, Bakócz stopped recruiting, and later the campaign, on the news of the clashes between peasants and nobles in Mezőtúr, but Székely Dózsa György, his brother Dózsa Gergely and several Franciscan monks, led by the other leader of the army, Priest Lőrinc, disobeyed the new call and labeled the nobles and the king as pro-Turkish traitors, and considered their breakthrough as a prerequisite for victory in the Crusade. But Dózsa still stuck to the original idea and wanted to go against the Turks. He planned to unite his army with that of the Transylvanian Voivode Szapolyai János and together they would attack the Ottoman outposts.
The outbreak of the uprising
The bloodshed at Apátfalva
Dózsa György and his army soon headed from the Körös River area towards the Maros River area, because he had heard that the nobility in the area of Csanád was planning to gather a larger army, which could easily become dangerous for him, at the call of the noblemen of the neighboring counties.
So, on 23 May, Balogh István was sent in advance from Gyula to look for a ford on the Maros somewhere in the region of Csanád at Apátfalva. However, the nobles led by Báthory István, the Chief Comes of Temesvár, and Csáky Miklós, the Bishop of Csanád, ambushed the vanguard of Dózsa’s army near Apátfalva, and in the battle, which lasted about an hour, dealt a heavy blow to the fleeing peasants. After the victory, Báthory István, Bishop Csáky Miklós, Ravazdy Péter, Jaksics Péter, Szokolyi, and other nobles marched to Nagylak and stayed in the castle there.
The Battle at Nagylak
Meanwhile, Dózsa had also reached the battlefield from Gyula, and in response to the previous day’s slaughter, the peasant armies set fire to the castle of Nagylak at dawn on 24 May, upon the nobles celebrating their triumph. The noble and crusading armies then clashed on the plain between Nagylak and Csanád. The infantry of the noble army, led by Báthori István, who successfully escaped, was initially distracted by Dózsa’s cavalry attacking in a rapid charge, and the peasants fighting with scythe confused the enemy ranks.
The victory seemed to be almost decided in favor of the peasants, when Báthori’s cannons forced the peasants to flee, which turned into a counterattack when they struck the pursuers, supported by the rearguard, who had not yet taken part in the battle. Csáky Miklós fled towards Csanád, but Dózsa burned the outskirts of the town of Csanád and captured the town itself. During his escape from the castle, Csáky Miklós was captured and impaled together with some lords. Fate was kinder to Báthori, who managed to escape.
In the battle of Nagylak, Bishop Csáky Miklós, Vice Comes Ravazdy Péter, Dóczy György of Nagylucse, Torpay Miklós, Orros András of Kápolna and other nobles fell into the hands of the rebels, together with the Treasurer Telegdy István, who were impaled along with some other landlords from the area. Ravazdy Péter was dragged to the scaffold by his serf, Kis Gergely, for his past grievances and harassment.
Dózsa seems to have been informed by then of the cruel execution of the crusaders captured at Túr (Mezőtúr) in Buda. He was thus, in fact, retaliating against the lords; but he also hated the bishop personally, because he had opposed his being honored and rewarded shortly before.
The greatest outrage, however, was caused by the execution of the treasurer, Telegdy István, who was known and respected throughout the country. He was considered to be the most notable man after the Palatine.
The Council in Buda
When news came from all quarters that the peasants had set the country ablaze, the landlords were anxious to defend themselves against the violence of their serfs. At first, the court itself wanted to disperse the rebels, but when the peasant armies refused to obey the letters written by Bakócz Tamás on 21-22 May and the letters sent by King Ulászló II on 24 May calling for an end to the crusade, and the massacre at Apátfalva occurred, the king decided to take action.
The king summoned the high priests, barons, nobles, and dignitaries to Buda for a meeting at the end of May. The discussions began on 29 May. The King opened the meeting with a speech in which he called on the nobility to defend the throne and the country in arms. Archbishop Bakócz himself also spoke, to avoid suspicions that he was on the side of the rebels, and to take a hard line against the peasants ‘who wanted to lose the country in a terrible slave war’.
Although the nobility had little confidence in their strength and called for help from abroad, they decided to organize domestic resistance. The majority believed that Perényi Imre should be given more power than usual, almost dictatorial power, to defend the homeland.
Others thought that since Dózsa György was leading his army up the valley of the Maros to his native Transylvania, the leadership should be entrusted to the Voivode of Transylvania and the Comes of the Székely, Szapolyai János, the Voivode of Szepesség (Zipt, Spiš). The Voivode was only twenty-seven years old, had been the candidate of the national party for ten years, was the hope of the common nobility, and it seemed that the middle nobles would most willingly rally under his banner, and his Polish kinship might more easily secure foreign aid.
Báthory István, Bornemissza János, Perényi Imre, Bebek János, and Drágffy János were only mentioned as commanders of the army and as captains of the provinces entrusted to their care. According to Bornemissza János, who also spoke, he said that he and his army were ready to attack the “rogues” who were destroying and roaming around Pest if the king and his infantry and cavalry were joined by the nobles, the people of Buda and other towns. In the weeks that followed, the nobles recruited increasing numbers of German mercenaries, who were then deployed against the rebels.
Events of early June 1514
After the victory at Nagylak and the executions at Apátfalv, Dózsa György sent part of his army forward to Arad, soon followed by himself and the main army. His main objective this time was the capture of the last strait of the Maros and the castles of Solymos and Lippa built to defend it.
Lippa, the largest town in Arad County, was one of the country’s mint and salt chambers, one of the most notable ferry and customs houses on the River Maros, and one of the main places of trade in the region at the time, also because of its national fairs.
Dózsa divided his army into three parts, one part commanded by himself, the other by his brother Gergely, and the remaining by the Franciscan monk Lőrinc, and he set his hordes on both banks of the Maros towards Transylvania.
They destroyed all the noble mansions and castles whose owners resisted, but this was not the case with the castles of Csála, Lippa, and Arad, for example, which they managed to take without violence. The castle of Világos, the stronghold of Báthory András and the Báthory family, whom they hated, was also taken by a specially sent troop.
Only the castle of Solymos resisted, and Dózsa György’s first attack failed. Then the peasant leader decided to lay a “proper siege” on Solymos. The next day, some of the castle’s buildings were set on fire, and the gunpowder tower was blown up, but no major breach could be made in the walls. However, on the third day, the tenth of June, the defenders surrendered the castle on the condition that they would be given a free retreat.
Dózsa’s declaration in Cegléd
He sent the following letter all over the country:
“Székely (Dózsa) György, brave soldier, leader, and captain of the God-blessed people of the Crusaders… to the cities, towns, and villages of Hungary… collectively and individually, our greetings! You know that the treacherous nobles have risen against us and the holy assembly of our entire Crusader army with malicious intent to persecute us. . . Therefore, under penalty of banishment and eternal damnation, and the loss of your heads and all your possessions, … we command you, without delay and without excuse, to come immediately to the market town of Cegléd, as soon as you receive this letter, and hurry, so that this holy army and blessed congregation might subdue the power and authority of the unbelieving and wicked nobles. If you do so, it will be well with you, otherwise, you will suffer the punishment of the above.”
The Battle of Gubacs
Nothing could be done against Dózsa György’s army until his hordes, who had been on guard for almost two months in the Gubacs Plain near the capital, were crushed. This great task awaited Bornemissza János of Tolna (or Berzence). Bornemissza, with a thousand cavalry and many infantry, including Germans, crossed the Danube on 21 June.
He cautiously sent his vice-commander, Tomori Pál, with a troop of cavalry southwards to spy out the smaller crusader camps and positions. The peasant camp was between Szentlőrinc and the Gubacsi plain. Due to local conditions, the peasants soon discovered the attack and formed up in battle formation. To avoid a massacre, Bornemissza sent messengers and envoys to the leader of the peasants, Száleresi Ambrus, and promised them a pardon in the name of the king if they laid down their weapons, pledged allegiance to the king, and returned to their occupation.
Many laid down their arms, but 5,000 men – most of them Hajdus – chose to fight. Then Bornemisza fired a few cannons at them and their wagon camp. Tomori’s cavalry attacked them with drums and trumpets. Bornemissza himself went after them with heavy cavalry and infantry. After a short fight, the Hajdus were forced to retreat; the infantry in particular suffered heavy losses. The royalists also captured and destroyed their camp, which was surrounded by a wagon fort.
The battles of Debrő and Eger Valley
The Crusaders have suffered major losses so far at Pásztó and Gubacs. Nevertheless, in the second half of June, they continued to move and organize in Heves County, relying on the camps of the peasants in Heves and Várkony. On the day of the Battle of Gubacs, 21 June, the rebellious peasants from Heves prepared to besiege Eger via the Csörsz ditch, while the nobles advanced along the Hatvan-Gyöngyös-Verpelét road, meeting near Debrő (today’s Feldebrő), where a small hilltop fortress defended the village.
Drágffy János crushed the 7,000 crusaders who were besieging the castle of Debrő. The battle of Debrő differed from the battle fought in early July somewhere south of Eger, near Maklár, in that instead of the nobility, it was a manorial troop attack, and instead of the chief or deputy Comes, Gian Bonzagno de Reggio of Italy led the bishop’s paid army of about 300 men, joined, no doubt, by nobles. The peasants rushed upon them in wedge formation, but Bonzagno scattered the crusader infantry to the winds, mowing them down. So in two weeks, the lords defeated the Crusaders twice in Heves.
The overall situation in June 1514
While Dózsa’s army captured all the fortresses along the Maros except Gyula and Temesvár during June, the king and the barons were busy putting down the peasant revolts in the north, as during June almost the whole country was in flames and the Buda council had decided that these revolts had to be dealt with locally.
In the eastern part of the Highlands, from Ung County to Transylvania, the nobility itself was not isolated from the efforts of the peasants. Here, the peasants were mainly Ruthenian, with a few Romanians among them. There were many of them, including the peasant nobles, the serfs, and the tenant farmers, who, like the serfs, found it very difficult to live on the meager income from their land, so they joined the movement.
In Bereg County, a nobleman, Halábory János, a landowner, sided with Dózsa György. In the neighboring Ugocsa county, the revolution had taken over the whole of the county. Here, ancient nobles such as the Vethésys, Gyakfalvys and perhaps the Sásvár Weres were at the head of the movement. According to this, the center of the uprising was Sásvár on the right bank of the Tisza and Batár and Gyakfalva (today’s Nevetlenfalu) on the left bank of the Tisza, near the Batár stream. The uprising did not spare Fejér County and other parts of Transdanubia.
In the regions of Fehérvár, Veszprém, and the Bakony, Sós Demeter robbed and murdered the nobility. There were also uprisings at the Lower Danube: Herkulesfürdő, Orsova, and Szörénytornya, in which quite many Serbs took part. There were also isolated fights and looting in the regions of Torontál, Csanád, and Temes counties, where Serbian peasants fought alongside the Hungarians. In Torda county, the Torda people themselves joined the uprising.
The rebels also took the town of Toroszko (now Torockó) and the castle of Torockószentgyörgy. The town was a center of the iron industry, full of blast furnaces and ironworks. The rebels, after the town had been ransacked, entered the castle, set fire to the roof and the combustible parts of the castle, and forced the castle to surrender with the help of the serfs inside.
In Kolozs County, the rebels gathered around Kolozsvár. For the third time in two decades, this city showed its solidarity with the people. At first, it seems, they attempted to resist, but in the end, for the sake of the 6 or 7 nobles whose families had sought refuge in Kolozsvár, they refused to destroy their city and made a pact with the rebels. The center of the movement in Inner-Szolnok was Dés itself, the seat of the county, which had joined the crusading captain Nagy János. Many peasants of Romanian nationality also fought in the Transylvanian uprisings.
The Battle of Temesvár
Dózsa György set off from Lippa with his large army directly towards Temesvár and arrived under the castle on 15 June. From a military point of view, Temesvár was built on the most well-chosen spot in southern Hungary, where the waters of the Great and Little Temes (today’s Béga) flowed together and the marshes made the castle and the town almost inaccessible.
The siege of Temesvár
On 15 June, Dózsa György and his hordes set up camp northwest of the new castle of Temesvár, in the great field of Ulics. The next day, 16 June, Dózsa pushed closer to the city from the fields of Ulics. He built a bridge over the Temes (Béga) river so that he could cross it with his whole army into the great palisade and began to fire his wheeled cannon at the walled city and castle, which he had been besieging heavily from that day on.
To gain access to the walls from all sides, Dózsa had to divert the waters of the Temes (Béga) and drain the marshes surrounding the castle. This met with little resistance from the defenders, who stormed out of the castle several times but eventually succeeded. At the same time, to divide the attention of the besieged, he intensified the siege and brought out larger cannons.
The intervention of Szapolyai János
Báthori István, since the troops ordered by the king did not arrive, urgently asked for help and the relief of the castle, and in his desperation he decided to turn to the king’s new chief captain, Szapolyai János, the Transylvanian voivode, for help. It must have cost him no little self-denial; for they were personal enemies of each other.
Szapolyai lived up to expectations. Regarding the rebellion of the rebels in Kolozsvár and the county of Kolozsdoboka as secondary, he turned his attention entirely to the suppression of the main rebel forces in southern Hungary. He would have denied his political past and future if he had not helped the strangled nobility, who looked to him alone for their deliverance. Szapolyai resolved to attack, and equipped his army at his own expense; but first he obtained assurances that his money would be repaid by the country.
The clash of the armies of Dózsa György and Szapolyai
On 15 July 1514, Szapolyai János arrived in Temesvár with his relief army. His army numbered 20,000 men and consisted predominantly of light cavalry Székelys and cavalrymen from the province of Transdanubia, some of whom were of Serbian nationality, although many Serbs also fought in Dózsa’s army. Dózsa’s army of about 40,000 men was assembled with himself in the center, his brother Dózsa Gergely leading the right flank, and Lőrinc the left. Szapolyai, on the other hand, deployed his army in a long line so that he could attack the center and the flanks simultaneously.
He remained in the center with his knights, Székelys, and cavalrymen from the Borderland of the region, entrusting the right wing to Bánffy Jakab of the Bánffy family of Zala, and the left wing, where his seasoned soldiers were stationed, to Kismarjay Lukács. The battle broke out, in which the peasants proved to be much more persistent than expected.
The fate of the fight was decided in the middle. The better-armed and more skilled knights and the Székely light cavalry, together with the Borderland warriors on horseback, attacked with such force that, although Báthory did not support him by breaking out of the castle at the same time, the Crusader troops suffered increasing losses and gradually began to retreat.
The kinsman of the voivode, Petrovics Péter, who was only at the beginning of his military career, spotted Dózsa and galloped towards him. Following the orders of the Voivode, he took Dózsa György prisoner, sparing his life. Almost at the same time, the leader of the right-wing, Dózsa Gergely, was taken prisoner. The leaderless army, of course, was soon disoriented. The battle turned into a savage massacre. The nobility, with their bloodshot eyes, showed no mercy to anyone. The failure was mainly due to the fatal omission of Dózsa György, who had not counted on the army of Szapolyai János, numbering some 20,000 men.
The collapse of the insurrection
At the same time as the siege of Temesvár, Priest Lőrinc’s offensive in Transylvania collapsed. At the end of July 1514, during the siege of Bihar, his army was destroyed in the battle with Tomori Pál, and Priest Lőrinc was also taken prisoner and, as the leader of the uprising, burnt at the stake. The Hungarian Peasants’ War of 1514 ended with this battle. But with Dózsa, the nobility wanted to make an example, so that the peasants would be discouraged from protesting for the rest of their lives.
The retaliation
Retaliation for the peasant war of Dózsa György was not very bloody, because the nobility also had an interest in keeping the productive forces, so only the chief leaders were executed. According to contemporary writings, Dózsa was executed in the following way:
“First he was crowned with a fiery iron, and then, while still alive, naked, bound by the feet, his soldiers, commonly called Hajdús, whose deeds had brought so many horrors…, tore him to pieces with their teeth and devoured him.” (Note: those who ate from him were released home.)
The body was then cut in four and hung on a gallows. In October 1514, the Diet passed some laws against the serfs as a result of the Peasants’ War. As a result of these events, the Diet abolished the free (liber) status of serfdom within the Kingdom of Hungary, which had until then allowed serfs to move with their belongings to wherever they wished in the country after paying their land rent and other current debts. All the peasants in the country, except those who lived in the royal towns, were punished with imprisonment, that is, they were not allowed to move freely.
The serf owed 52 days’ work per parcel, 1 forint census, nine tithes, and precisely defined gifts (chicken, pig, deer, etc.) for all the land the nobleman had given him for cultivation and possession. However, a large part of the law was not put into practice. Nor was it possible to enforce the law banning free movement and settling, the maintenance of which was primarily in the interest of the smaller landowners, since the large estates continued to welcome and protect the resettlers.
However, the peasant tenancy system remained intact (especially in the vineyards), and the market towns developed even more dynamically after 1514 than before. The nobles who took part in the peasant rebellion were punished by the loss of their estates, and it was also decreed that the king should grant them to those whose fathers or brothers had been executed by the peasants, and who had served the king and country faithfully in war, or who, despite their peasant origins, had sided with their masters in the rebellion. Finally, churchmen who took part in the peasant war were condemned by law to life imprisonment.
After the uprising, the LXth article of 1514 forbade priests, students, peasants, and Hajdús to bear arms, some of them under the penalty of castration, beheading, or amputation of the right hand.
The so-called witch laws (bloody laws) were amended several times in the following decades, sometimes to the benefit and sometimes to the detriment of the subjects. The articles of the above-mentioned laws were also included in the Tripartitum of Werbőczy István, which was published in 1517 and became the basic law of noble rights for a long time, and which determined agricultural production and its legal and human conditions until April 1848, and then until the Habsburg serf patent.
The most important consequence was that the country did not reform after the Peasants’ War, but remained a rigid, still badly governed country with less and less possibility of stopping the Turks. However, the peasants who had fought in Dózsa’s army, joined forces with Szapolyai when the Serbian uprising of Cserni Jovan broke out in 1527.
You can read more about the Serbian uprising on my page:
https://www.hungarianottomanwars.com/1490-1541/1527-cserni-aka-black-or-nenad-jovans-uprising/
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