Volume 8 Issue 2 CONTENTS

On Two Sides of the Border: The Hungarian–Austrian Border Treaty of 1372

Renáta Skorka
Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
skorka.renata@btk.mta.hu

The present paper explores the history of the emergence of mixed Hungarian–Austrian commissions in the late Middle Ages. The history of the mixed commissions offers insights into the process during which royal power shifted, in the strategies it adopted in order to address everyday and manifold breaches and dissensions which were common along the border, by negotiations rather than by military intervention. As attested by the sources, this negotiation-based system of conflict resolution between the two neighboring countries appeared in the last decade of the thirteenth century. In the next century, the idea of dividing the Hungarian–Austrian border into sections and submitting the regulation of issues concerning the territories on the two sides of the border emerged, first in 1336 and, then, at the very end of Charles I’s reign in 1341. Under Charles’s son and successor, King Louis I, the first attempt to establish a mixed Hungarian–Austrian commission was made in 1345, resulting in a fairly complicated system. The first documented session of the mixed commission can be connected to the year 1372; it was the border settlement agreed on then that was renewed and adjusted to the requirements of his own age by King Sigismund of Luxemburg in 1411.

Keywords: Hungarian–Austrian border, fourteenth century, mixed commissions, Angevins, Habsburg, Sigismund of Luxemburg

The Western border of the Kingdom of Hungary, which ran along the eastern provinces of the Holy Roman Empire (which at the time were under Habsburg rule), is interesting from the perspective of the historian for several reasons. Not only are there numerous written sources on the history of this border, but these sources suggest that this border was often the site and subject of events which suggest that the histories of the two neighboring polities were much more connected by the border than divided. These connections included the tensions which arose in issues such as the everyday lives of the estates which stretched across the border, the leaseholders’ attempts to cultivate the vineyards and ploughlands of the neighboring countries, the nobles’ changes of allegiance to the side of neighboring rulers, the movements of thieves and rogues who were fleeing from one side of the border to the other, the long-distance traders traveling through provinces with rich stocks, the retailers with local interests, the landholders who shared utilities and owned ferries on the two banks of the border rivers, and taxpayers who paid their taxes in the currency of the neighboring country. These recurrent and, from the perspective of political history, seemingly insignificant conflicts could have had an impact on the relationship between the two countries. In settling disputes, royal power could waver between two possibilities; it could choose armed intervention, by which it could further worsen the diplomatic balance, or it could choose to solve a problem through negotiations. Because of the high number of infringements and the diversity of the cases, negotiations required permanent, recurrent, and, because of the special location, bilateral negotiations, investigations, and legal remedies, which rulers executed with the assistance of representatives. This led to the formation of the mixed Hungarian–Austrian commissions in charge of border disputes in the fourteenth century. The present study gives an overview of the stages of the formation of this commission and provides a detailed analysis of a so far entirely neglected document from 1372 which is the first evidence of a meeting of these commissions. However, as the source is known only in fragmented transcriptions, the starting point of the present work is the renewal of the treaty from 1411, the period during which Sigismund ruled.

“Antecedents” in the Sigismund Period

On October 7, 1411 in Pressburg (today Bratislava), the king of Hungary, Sigismund of Luxemburg, betrothed his two-year-old daughter Elisabeth to the eleven-year old duke of Austria, Albert V of Habsburg, who took measures actively supported by his future father-in-law to be freed from the guardianship of his older relatives, Ernest and Friedrich IV.1 Two days before this event, the king of Hungary and his young protégé issued a document in which they renewed a treaty (dieselbe ordnunge wider czu vernewen) that which was concluded by their predecessors, the late Hungarian King Louis I, and the dukes of Austria Albert III and Leopold III, but put in action by six members of the noble elites (sechs redlicher manne) from Hungary and the Habsburg provinces. The document in question, signed on October 5, 1411 in Pressburg (most probably similarly to its Angevin-period predecessor), in order to facilitate agreement and peace between the two countries, concentrated solely on the border.2 At the time of the renewal of the border agreement, Sigismund started to reclaim the strategically important castle, Devín.3 He ordered the voivode of Transylvania, Stibor, to redeem the castle that stood at the confluence of the Danube and Morava rivers and was considered one of the western gates of the Kingdom of Hungary, with its belongings along with the castle of Ostrý Kameň from Lesel der Hering, to whom it had been in pledge for a long time (vor czyten).4 We know about Hering that in 1397, as a loyal subject of the Habsburg family in Austria, he received Walterkirchen on the border of the Margravate of Moravia and Austria as a pledge from Albert IV and William, dukes of Austria5 and that, along with numerous members of the Austrian elite, he appeared at the provincial assembly of Eggenburg at the end of May 1411, where the supporters of the young Albert V secretly took an oath to support the child kept in custody,6 setting the stage for the border agreement and the betrothal in October.

The 1411 border agreement, however, probably has roots not only in the Hungarian estates pledged to Austrians. Violent acts were committed on both sides of the Hungarian–Austrian border, and the people who committed these acts spared neither the lives of the locals nor the lives of the landowners nor their wealth. The case of the Scharfenecks, who owned lands in Moson County by the border (quasi in metis seu regni nostri confiniis situate) from the first decade of the fifteenth century, offers a good example.7 Frederick von Scharfeneck and his brother, Hermann, whose father John, originating from the Electoral Palatinate, had been living in Hungary since 1376, held the castle of Kittsee beginning in 1390. In the donation charter of the castle, they obliged themselves that no matter who they pledged or sold the castle and its belongings to, namely Pama, Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge, and Hof am Leithagebirge, these lands could not be alienated from the Kingdom of Hungary and the territory of the Hungarian crown.8 The building of the castle of Scharfeneck or Sárfenék in Moson County can be associated with the two boys (hence Hungarian historiography refers to them as Sárfenekis).9 According to the sources, the estates of the Scharfenecks by the border were threatened from the Austrian territories. As is clear from an account from March 1409, two of their villages, Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge and Hof am Leithagebirge, were threatened by complete depopulation due to the raids of plunderers and rogues, in answer to which the Scharfenecks received permission to resettle them.10 Frederick Scharfeneck neither seem to have tried to keep away from a little fray himself. According to a record dating to the beginning of 1412, he made forays into Austria and plundered the land of Pilgrim and Hans von Puchheim called Seibersdorf on the right bank of the River Lajta (in German Leitha), and he set the manor on fire there, occupied their castle, and, heading towards the lower course of the Lajta, did the same with the estate of the Hundsheimers.11 These forays might have happened in the previous year, so exactly when the border agreement was concluded.

If a ruler gave away or pledged Hungarian incomes to the members of the Habsburg family, this created a hotbed of conflict in the form of enduring violations of the border. In 1402 Sigismund, in compensation for his 16,000 golden florins of debt, pledged the incomes of the thirtieth customs places of Pressburg, Rusovce and Sopron (dreissigist zu Prespurg, zu Kerphemburg und zu Ödemburg) to Albert IV, duke of Austria, so that Albert could then run with his own thirtieth collectors and staff, which means that they had the right to assess and collect the customs on foreign trade at these three places in accordance with the thirtieth and chamber laws and customs (als des dreissigisten und unser kamerrecht und gewonheit ist).12 It is probably needless to say that these kinds of positions in the economy created numerous opportunities for abuse, and the foreign toll collectors could provoke hostility among the inhabitants of the kingdom, while the relationship between the towns close to the border and the Habsburg provinces was not untroubled at all.

Sopron, which in the fourteenth-century sources is referred to as a town on the border, as a gate of the Kingdom of Hungary (civitas Supruniensis in confmio Theutonie sita, quasi porta regni),13 made a complaint in 1408 to Leopold IV, duke of Austria, because of a raid against the town (von des angriffs wegen) in answer to which the duke buffered his responsibility by remitting the case to his brother, Ernest, claiming that the burghers of Sopron themselves also believed that he may have been behind the action as initiator.14 An entirely different view is reflected in a letter of a supporter of Duke Ernest, Erhart Sechel, who informed his lord of the plunders committed by the people of Sopron and the “people from the surroundings of Sopron” (gancz gegent) in Styria and Austria. Sechel, who probably was about to come to Hungary to merchandize, did not dare travel on his own, but despite his precautions, his goods were taken from him, and he himself was caught and brought to the castle of Bernstein (Pernstein).15 Accordingly, it is likely that, in the restriction of the personal freedoms of the Habsburg subjects, the castle that stood in Vas County (certainly not in the vicinity of Sopron) and its owners, the Kanizsai family, had some role. A royal diploma dating to June 1388 indicates that at the beginning of the Sigismund period, there was a practice in place of holding up (arrestatio) merchants from Vienna and Austria (mercatores de Vienna vel de Austria) at Óvár and Győr. 16 By every indication, the town of Sopron had serious conflicts with a member of the Stuchs family (mit demselben Stüchsen), who had holdings on the other side of the River Lajta around Trautmannsdorf.17 This is why, in 1408, Leopold IV was pleased that the town planned to keep peace with him and ordered his subjects not to attack the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary.18

One further change has to be noted in the first decades of Sigismund’s reign that affected the western section of the border of Hungary, namely, the final dissolution of the Árpád era border defense system. In 1391, Sigismund made a donation to László Sárói, ispán (comes) of Temes, estates in Zaránd Country in return for his service to King Louis I, king of Hungary, Queen Elisabeth, and Queen Mary since Queen Mary’s childhood.19 The ispán then exchanged these estates with the king for the estate of Güssing and the market town of Kőszeg that year. Thanks to the exchange, Sárói had an estate complex by the Hungarian–Austrian border that held the promise of major income. In addition to the market and customs incomes of Kőszeg, he also gained possession of Őr (Ewr; present-day Oberwart), Rudersdorf (Radalfalva), Kalteneck (Hydegzeg; part of present-day Bernstein), and Heiligenkreuz im Lafnitztal (Kerezthur), along with the customs collected at these places, Stegersbach (Zenthelek), with its customs and market incomes, and twenty smaller settlements.20 Sárói’s newly acquired estate complex was bordered by the River Lafnitz, which from the Sigismund-period onwards was referred to as a border river.21 Sárói, however, was not satisfied with the size of his lands, and in November, he picked out the Őrség, the area at the headwaters of the River Zala. This time, the donation hit a snag, or moreover met with opposition. As the local community, commonly referred to as Zala-defenders (universos spiculatores nostros vulgariter zalaewr nuncupatos), whose ancestors were settled in the area before the castle system became established to act as guards by the border, did not fail to express their protest and outrage. In February 1392, their delegates visited the king, who was staying at Eisenstadt, and drew his attention to the fact that László Sárói committed violations of rights when he asked for giving these people along with their lands to him, as they had not been given away by any previous kings, and they were free and were obliged with defending the country. Accordingly, they crabbed the installing of Sárói into the land. The king brought the case to the royal council, according to the decision of which Sigismund had acted rightfully when, excusing the guards from the obligation and burden of guarding the region (a iugo, conditione et onere ipsius spiculatoris servitutis), he had given them and their lands to Sárói as a donation, as they were subjects and were some extent committed to their lord (hereditarii subditi forent et conditionaliter obligati).22 Following this, on January 20, 1393, the king turned to the chapter of Esztergom and asked it to install László Sárói under the title of the previous donation to the lands of the Zalafő (Zalafew) estate and its belongings, namely Őriszentpéter (Zenthpetur), Ispánk (Yspank), Kisrákos (Rakos), Pankasz (Pankaas), Nagyrákos (Naghrakos), including its customs income, Szatta (Zatha), Szomoróc (Zomorok; part of present-day Kercaszomor), Kapornak (Kapurnuk), Hodoš (Hodoos), including its customs, and seven further settlements, despite the fact that he did not have himself installed within the given time, not having taken into account the possible objection of the defenders.23 The fate of the speculators of the Őrség, whose settlement was made possible by the order of Stephen V issued in 1270,24 was sealed with the act in February 1393. The assessment and position of guards (who originally belonged to the group of service peoples, but whose function – officium – was not to produce material goods, but rather to guard the frontier), because of their armed service in the Árpád era, was probably better than that of most service peoples.25 Some of their groups could also maintain their favorable position during the reign of the Angevin kings. In 1355, King Louis I transcribed the privilege letter of the royal guards of Őrimagyarósd confirmed by King Charles I in 1329.26 In 1327, Charles did the same with the guards who lived and owned lands between the Güssing and Berstein castles,27 and in 1339 he confirmed the freedoms and service of the royal guards of Gattendorf (spiculatores regiae maiestatis de Katha).28 The decrease of the social status of the speculators of Zala to tenant peasants is not imperative, as we know guards whose families Ladislas IV raised from the community of guards by granting them five hides of land (de consortio et collegio ipsorum speculatorum cum quinque aratris terrarum),29 and Charles I confirmed their status at the request of their descendants.30 These people first belonged to the group of servientes regis, then to the nobility, who went to war in the army led by the king (inter nobiles regni nostri computentur sub vexillo regio militantes).31 The dissolution of the aforementioned Árpád-era relic in the first decades of the reign of Sigismund cannot be solely attributed to the personal endeavors of László Sárói, but rather to the outdating of the arms of the guards on the western confines, which were not effective in the new military challenges of the fifteenth century.32 The extent to which it posed a threat for the Hungarian king or the Habsburg dukes to give a contiguous territory along the border which previously had been in royal hands to a landlord is another question. In the history of the Hungarian–Austrian border section, it was a recurrent event that either a Hungarian oligarch, using his land of significant size by the border, raided and plundered the provinces of the Habsburg dukes for decades or a noble who owned lands by the border taking advantage of the location of his holdings, partially or fully changed, from the side of Hungarian kings and swore to serve the Habsburg dukes.33

It was a general endeavor in the first decades of the Sigismund-period to settle the question of the Hungarian–Austrian border section and the desire to maintain peace on both sides of the border. With almost no exceptions, the preference was to see disputes settled through negotiations at conference tables. In the second year of his reign, in June 1388, Sigismund informed his subjects, mostly the inhabitants of Óvár and Győr, that he and Duke Albert III had decided to send some from their lords to the border (ad confinia regni, and ad limites Austriae) to negotiate and discuss the remedy, correction, and redemption of the incursions across the border, damages, harms, and discontents of the peoples of the two countries.34 On June 4, 1389, Sigismund addressed a letter from Buda to the duke informing him of his decision to appoint István Lackfi, palatine, Imre Bebek, judge royal, Leusták Jolsvai, master of the court, and Miklós Kanizsai, master of the treasury, to participate in the negotiations in question.35 Lackfi at the time, apart from being palatine, was also ispán of Moson and Győr Counties. Kanizsai also held the countships of Zala, Vas, and Sopron.36 So, because of their positions and lands, they were involved in the circumstances of the counties along the border. The document issued after the meeting has been preserved. It informs us of the negotiations of the appointees of Albert III, Hermann, count of Cilli,37 Johann von Liechtenstein marshal, Wulfing von Stubenberg, and Johannes von Dietrichstock master of forests in Austria (magister forestariorum Austrie) with the Hungarian party, which were held in Sopron on 18 June. However, one can identify a change in the delegates of Sigismund compared to those named on June 4, as instead of Leusták Jolsvai, master of the court, János Hédervári, the bishop of Győr, was present. On the Hungarian side, a prelate became a member, which as we shall see, had a tradition. According to the agreements reached at the meeting in Sopron, both rulers had to appear in person on the Day of Saint Giles (1 September) in the towns of Pressburg, and Hainburg so that the remaining disputed questions, on which no resolution had been reached, could be investigated and settled in the coming months. The two rulers and their subjects had to keep to the resolutions of the commission. It was also stated that both parties would attest that their people would not hold the subjects of the other ruler imprisoned or impede their free movement. In Sopron, resolutions were also made specifically on merchants; it was put down in writing that whoever participated in trade (whichever accepted route he took) should be able to do so as had been customary in the period of King Louis, Dukes Albert II, and Rudolf IV. If a new inequality were to raise its head, and should it appear in Hungary, it has be reported to the palatine and the master of the treasury, and if this were to happen in the lands of the Habsburgs, Johann von Lichtenstein and Wulfing von Stubenberg should be notified, the four of whom then should meet at a given place and date, and if necessary, negotiate and settle the question.38 The meeting at Sopron clearly indicates the intention of the rulers: to speed up and automatize the investigation and the remedy of the various incursions (which as noted above were frequent) by a mixed commission and to ensure that the rulers would intervene in this process only in cases of absolute necessity. The intent in the case of Sigismund could be explained by the fact that at the beginning of his reign, in order to solidify his rule in the Hungary, he was held spellbound by more important internal political difficulties than by the incursions across the borders, and he had to consider his ambitions in foreign policy, and this of course could ease the situation of the ruling Habsburg dukes as well, who frequently came into conflict with one another. However, as we shall see below, the system of the border commissions was not a Sigismund-era innovation, but rather was part of the Angevin-era legacy, as were the permanent unresolved disputes of the Hungarian–Austrian border sections.

There is no sign of the royal meeting settled for September 1 by the meeting at Sopron in the sources, and it is certain that Sigismund resided in Buda between August 20 and September 12,39 while in all likelihood Albert III was in Vienna.40 One cannot be certain that the two rulers met at all before the death of Albert III in 1395 in order to make up for the postponed meeting to negotiate the question of the border. On October 24, 1398, however, Sigismund issued a diploma at Ilok (Neunhofen), in the southern part of the country, in which he notes his agreement with the son of Albert III, Albert IV, and his cousin, the eldest member of the Habsburg family at the time, Duke William, in order to secure peace between the Kingdom of Hungary, Styria, and Austria. According to their agreement, every inhabitant of the countries in question, whether rich or poor, prelate or noble, ordinary (unedel), merchant and pilgrim, should be able to travel from these countries to the other with their goods freely, without the hindrance of his or her person or belongings. It was also stipulated that if a Hungarian subject were to lay a claim against a subject of the dukes, he would have to bring the case to the country which was legally authorized. Sigismund assured the dukes that no attack or other kind of incursions from the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary would take place in their provinces with his consent and any Hungarian subject who did not keep this agreement would be held accountable. If domestic people or foreigners caused loss and injustice in Austria or Styria and then sought protection in Hungary, the Hungarian king forbade his subjects from giving the person refuge. It was also stipulated that a subject of the Hungarian king could only buy or hold estates as pledges in Austria and Styria from that time on with the knowledge and consent of the dukes. If this were to happen against the will of the dukes, the buyer would immediately get his money back and had to eschew the property. The holdings that had already been (altes erb) in other hands, including vineyards and plow lands, (weingerten und ekerpau) however, were exceptions and could be kept without any obstacles. Finally, the Hungarian king appointed deputies who, in his absence, were entitled to serve in his stead in the disputes of the Hungarian–Austrian border section. By the border in Pozsony County (grafschefften Prespurger), Count Péter Szentgyörgyi and András Stiborici “Podczesfi,” i.e. one of the most influential noblemen in the county and the brother of the ispán of Pozsony were appointed. By Óvár (Altenburger) (indeed Moson), Sopron (Ödenpurger) and Vas (Eisenburger) counties, the as participants of the 1389 Sopron meeting already introduced János Hédervári, bishop of Győr, Miklós Kanizsai, former master of the treasury and István Kanizsai, master of the court were in charge. It is worth remembering that the latter family played a role in holding Erhart Sechel prisoner in Bernstein in 1408. And in case of a need for action on the border of the Wendish March41 and Styria, the king appointed Eberhart, bishop of Zagreb and Miklós Garai, ban of Slavonia.42 With regard to the 1398 arrangements, which mostly but not exclusively were meant to maintain peace by the Hungarian–Austrian border, some aspects are worth emphasizing. The most important of these aspects was the lack of mutuality. The points only seem to have applied to the subjects of the Hungarian kings, and only represented their perspective. It is possible that the two Habsburg dukes also issued a document similar in content which concerned their subjects; these documents, however, did not survive (if indeed they existed). The other circumstance that is worth noting concerns not the royal appointees authorized in the border issues, but the division of the border section, which also was not an innovation introduced by Sigismund of Luxemburg (I will return to this later).

As is clear from the incidents discussed above from the first decades of the fifteenth century, the 1398 arrangements certainly did not fulfill the hopes of the parties involved. This is how, in 1411, Sigismund signed a border treaty with Duke Albert V, who was freed from the guardianship. Unlike in the cases of his previous efforts, Sigismund considered an Angevin-period document signed between the two countries as an antecedent.

Antecedents from the Angevin Era

At the beginning of this article, I noted that the border treaty signed in Pressburg on October 5, 1411 renewed a document originating from the period of Louis I, Albert III, and Leopold III. The late-Angevin-period source is almost entirely unknown to historians,43 and it is known only in eighteenth-century transcriptions. It is also important to note that none of the transcriptions preserved the text in its entirety,44 so when analyzing its contents, we can only base our conclusions on the 1411 confirmation, although there are differences between the texts of the two agreements, as I will indicate in my discussion of the relevant passages.

The border treaty in question was signed in October 1372, almost on the anniversary of the armistice between Charles IV, Holy Roman emperor, and his supporters, the Austrian dukes, and the opposing Louis I, king of Hungary and Poland and his Bavarian allies, which was in effect until June 5, 1373.45 After that, in October 1372, Louis I negotiated with Charles IV on the Hungarian–Czech border. On October 16, he sat down with the Austrian dukes, Albert III and his brother Leopold III, in Sopron to settle disputes. At the Sopron meeting in 1372, similarly to the negotiations in 1389 in the same town, the focus was on the Hungarian–Austrian border section. The rulers put down in writing their intention to prevent new incursions across the border and hostilities along the border of their countries in the future. The Hungarian king vowed that neither he nor his subjects would attack the other side of the border,46 but if that were to happen, the two dukes or a duke and his master of the horse had to inform the palatine and the bishop of Zagreb at their earliest convenience, and the palatine and the bishop of Zagreb would then have two months to investigate and rectify the case.

In addition to the plundering and incursions across the border, there were other old unresolved issued concerning the border in question. These issues were negotiated six days after the Sopron meeting on October 22, in Wiener Neustadt. In the Styrian town, the rulers were represented by appointees consisting of three persons on each side; on the side of the dukes, Heidenreich von Maissau master of the cup-bearers and master of the horse, Albert von Puchheim, master of the table, and Kadold von Eckartsau, the Elder; on the Hungarian side, István Kanizsai, bishop of Zagreb (Stephan Gottes gnaden Bischof ze Agram), Imre Lackfi, the palatine (Emerich großen graff ze Hungern), and a third person unidentifiable on the basis of the transcription.47 (Lackfi is the brother of the abovementioned István, who took part in the 1389 negotiations, and also was ispán of Vas and Sopron at the time.) Based on the Hungarian members of the border commission, by the time of Sigismund’s reign the bishops of Zagreb, the Kanizsai family, and even the Lackfis must have had some experience in settling disputes by the border. The members of the commission asked Hermann, count of Cilli in consort, to have the final word in the case of a tie. The count can certainly not be identified as Hermann, count of Cilli, who participated in the meetings of 1389. Rather, it must be his father, who lived until 1385, but the Cilli counts, who then only owned lands in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, were definitely major authorities in the questions of Hungarian–Austrian border disputes.

The decisions made on October 22, 1372 certainly addressed the issue of fishing rights (vischwaide) on the River Morava, which divided the part of Austria that fell to the north of the Danube River from Pozsony County, which according to the document on Austrian side were due to the landlords by the bank, and on the Hungarian side, the castellan of Dévénykő48 (burggraffe auf dem Tebenstain), who shared the river fifty-fifty.49 In the 1411 confirmation by Sigismund, it is clearly expressed at this point that the River Morava is the border between Hungary and Austria, and neither of the two parties can enter the territory of the other (da sol di March die grenicz und das gemerke sin zwischen Ungern und der Österreich, und sol ouch ein teyl, den andern an seinen teyle nicht ubergryffen).50 The 1372 treaty, however, held the fishing rights of those who had this privilege from ancient times. The border treaty also touched on the subjects of the dukes who owned vineyards in Hungary and put them in a position of advantage, as they did not have to pay the thirtieth on the vine they produced there, but only had to pay the tithe and the vineyard tax, (die uff dem ungrischen weingarten ligen haben, von dem das in dorynne wechset, und es sy dorinne verpawch, keinen dristigsten geben sollen, doch ussgenommen bergrecht und czehenden) which were the same as the duties paid by the Hungarian inhabitants. The arrangement made it possible for everyone who had had the right to do so from ancient times to pay the duties on vine in Viennese denars. It was also stated that the border was by the River Lajta, where the river runs along the border, but where the border and the river split, the old borders had to be kept. Hence, the order stated that no one could divert the Lajta with a ditch or dam (soll die Leutha niemand abkehrn weder mit graben noch mit wühren).51 If anyone had holdings on the Hungarian side of the border, they could not be disturbed, but if anyone had a related claim, the claim had to be made in Hungary. The same was true vice versa, i.e. the claims related to lands of the Austrian side of the Lajta had to be enforced in Austria (which reminds us of one of the points of the 1398 arrangements of Ilok discussed above). According to the treaty of 1372, the same principles were applied with regard to the fishing rights on the Lajta and other border rivers as on the River Morava. On the Hungarian side, the subjects of the Hungarian king and on the Austrian side the subjects of the dukes had the right to build mills and mill buildings (müllen und müllhäuser) by the bank. In order to provide water for the mills, the water could be backed up by dams directly upstream from the mill. However the earlier rights related to mills had to be respected. With regard to the importance of the arrangements, before 1372, there was only one treaty in the Hungarian–Austrian relationships that addressed similar questions. It was the 1225 peace treaty, which allowed Hungarian soldiers to build mills by the rivers along the border, even on both sides, but the water could not be diverted in a manner that would cause the majority of the water not to flow in the original riverbed.52 With regard to the ferry between Devín (Teben) and Rottenstein (Rotenstein), the 1372 agreement declared53 that the subjects of the Hungarian king could transport anyone and anything to the Austrian side, but they could not pick up anything or anyone at Rottenstein, as there, the men of Hans Straissing had the right to ferry to the Hungarian side, from where they could not ferry anyone or anything to the Austrian side.54 It was also stipulated that anyone had the right to choose freely what they produced on their lands. It is only included in the 1411 confirmation that punishment and fine was due if someone arrested or had somebody arrested in his lands (endhalden noch endhalden lassen soll), but in the meantime, no one could let anyone cross his lands if the man or men in question were about to threaten or attack anybody else (angryffen oder beschedigen wollte). But because of the document issued in Sopron on October 16, 1372, these stipulations may have been included in the border agreement of Wiener Neustadt as well.55 According to the 1411 confirmation, if anyone had a claim against an inhabitant of the other country, he had to announce this claim in the territory of the Hungarian and Austrian towns, according to the customs and laws, and he had to respect the laws of that country under pain of punishment. If someone failed to respect the laws of that country or committed perfidy, he joint efforts would be taken against him.56

The border treaty reached by the mixed commission in 1372 and the circumstances of its formation, namely the lack of specific regulation of the establishment and functioning of the commission, alludes to the customary nature of border commissions in settling similar disputes. Traces of this tradition go back to the last decade of the thirteenth century, to the peace treaty of Hainburg signed in 1291. The peace treaty, which put an end to the military campaign of the last Árpád ruler, Andrew III, is interesting from a number of perspectives, but in the context of the current article, the circumstances of its formation and one specific passage of the document are particular relevant.57 The treaty was reached during a meeting of a body consisting of eight representatives appointed by the two rulers on August 26 in the friary of the Friars Minor at Hainburg. Each of the two parties were represented by two clerics and two members of the lay elite.58 According to one stipulation of the treaty, the Austrian party chose two Hungarians and the Hungarians chose two Austrians and, in Styria, each party chose one person. These people were invested in the provinces in which they resided with full power to investigate, inform the ruler, chastise people who caused damages, and return the goods taken within a month of learning about the losses suffered.59 Though the text of the peace treaty indicates that four people were to be appointed at the next meeting of the two rulers, i.e. Albert I, duke of Austria, and Andrew III, there is no trace of their selection in the sources, nor is there any indication that the tasks assigned were actually performed. The plan to settle conflicts in the treaty of Hainburg can be considered a forerunner to the similar structure and purpose of the plans which were reached in the mid-fourteenth century.

The next document in chronological order which testifies to the attempts to address the issues of the Hungarian–Austrian border dates to the Angevin era. In 1336, Charles I, king of Hungary, signed an armistice with Albert II and Otto I, dukes of Austria, with the mediation of John, king of Bohemia.60 According to the document, for the period until June 8, 1337, both sides of the Hungarian–Austrian border were placed under the control of three border supervisors (tres custodes limitum), one to the north of the Danube, one to the south, and the third was in charge of the issues of the Styrian–Carniolan section of the border.61 This kind of north-south division of the border adumbrates the abovementioned 1398 Ilok arrangement of Sigismund, which basically sketched out the same triple division.

In the last years of the reign of Charles I, the conflict resolution methods envisaged by the 1291 agreement with regard to the Hungarian–Austrian border section were clearly adopted. On November 13, 1341, close to the end of his life, the king came to an agreement with Duke Albert II at Pressburg according to which they both chose three people from the counselors of the other person who would then be present on March 6, 1342 at Pressburg and Hainburg and would begin negotiations concerning the common border to investigate the losses and trespasses and remedy and make recompenses for them. The duke chose Peter, bishop of Srijem, Pál Nagymartoni, judge royal, and Tamás Szécsényi, voivode of Transylvania from the Hungarians, while the king chose Ulrich von Bergau, Ulrich von Pfannberg, and Ludwig von Otting. They also chose substitute members, Miklós Zsámboki, ispán of Turóc and Konrad von Schaunberg, so that in case of illness or absence of the members, the commission meeting would not be cancelled.62 Nagymartoni’s family had holdings in Sopron County along the border and, moreover, he had Austrian connections, as he had married the daughter of the landgrave, Albert von Pottendorf, Elisabeth.63 It is also striking that, with regard to the representatives of the king, a member of the ecclesiastic elite was on the commission. This later became a common phenomenon, while it was not characteristic of the Austrian side at all. It cannot be ruled out that the membership of a cleric on the commission was a guarantee of literacy.64 Despite the careful preparations, nothing indicates that the 1342 commission meeting actually took place.

The tendency, however, could have been promising, as Louis I, the successor of Charles I, already committed himself to setting up a mixed commission at the very beginning of his reign. Following the change of the ruler in the summer of 1342, the diplomatic overtures between the Austrian and Hungarian parties on the border section restarted in May 1345. In his diploma, issued at Visegrád, Louis stated to the subjects of the Austrian duke Albert II that he is open to providing compensation for the damages and losses caused by the Hungarian party.65 In the middle of December 1345, Louis I arrived for a meeting at Vienna, where he came to the conclusion with Albert II that they should continue and, furthermore, improve the negotiation system initiated in 1341. According to the decision of the Hungarian king and the Austrian duke (similarly to the armistice of 1336), the Hungarian–Austrian border section was to be divided into parts. (The division of the north-south positioned confines is not a fourteenth-century thought, as the structure decided in 1336 and is 1345 was almost identical to the territorial division of the former Carolingian marches.66) Furthermore, judges were ordered from both the Austrian and the Hungarian sides to preside over the border sections. Their task was to investigate and remedy the unlawful acts and damages of the previous period. Accordingly, people with territorial competence in the issues were appointed from the Kingdom of Bohemia to the Danube, from the Danube to Hartberg in Styria, from Hartberg to the River Drava, and from the Drava to the Wendish March (Marchia). To the section by the River Morava, on the Hungarian side Csenyik Ugodi Cseh, castellan of Červený Kameň, and Tamás Vörös, castellan of Újvár, were appointed, while on the Austrian side Konrad von Schaunberg and Leitold von Kuenring were chosen. To the section by the River Lajta, the aforementioned Pál Nagymartoni judge royal, whose family had local interests by the castles of Forchtenstein and Kobersdorf, and for the first time (but as we know not for the last time in the history of the border commissions), the Lackfi family was also represented, namely by István Lackfi, voivode of Transylvania. From the Austrian side, to the same area, Ulrich von Pfannberg and Eberhard von Wallsee were appointed. Along the river Lafnitz, on the Hungarian side, palatine Miklós Zsámboki and, again, judge royal Pál Nagymartoni were chosen, while on the Austrian, Ulrich von Wallsee and the Styrian Gottschalk von Neidberg had jurisdiction. For the southernmost border section, Miklós of the Hahót kin, ban of Slavonia and Cikó of Pomáz, castellan of Cheresig, were chosen, while the two Styrian nobles were Rudolf, count of Cilli (who also established the role of his family in issues of the Hungarian–Austrian border) and Ott von Liechtenstein. The mandate of the appointees lasted until February 2, 1346, by which time they had to investigate and remedy the previous alleged injustice. The importance of the case is indicated by the fact that on the Hungarian side, the most important office holders from among the barons also took part in the work. The rulers in December 1345 also thought of the long-term peace of the border sections. Namely, they also stipulated in writing that if in the future new damages were done, then the commission with jurisdiction in the area should reassemble and settle the case by coming to a decision within a month’s time. Prepared for everything, they also decided that if a commission would not be able to decide on the compensation correctly, the harmed person could not take the case in hand and seek redress or revenge, but rather should seek compensation from his lord.

At the Viennese meeting in December, decisions between the two rulers were made on further issues as well, namely on the issue of the Hungarian agricultural lands which were close to the border, with special regard to the Austrian lessees of vineyards.67 The question had been a source of tension between the two powers long before. In February 1324, Charles I took measures against the long-term Habsburg-subject lessees (a longo tempore retroacto) of lands in Moson and Sopron counties bordering the Duchy of Austria because the piece of lands called Alramus by the River Sár, i.e. the Lajta, was torn from the Hungarian king and the country (a nobis et regno nostro reputis metis nostris) by violating the border and was given as lease to Austrians.68 At the end of the same year, the king ordered the ispán of Sopron County and his vice-ispán to forbid the Austrians from using the lands of the country and the incomes from its crops (prohibeat quoslibet Australes ab usu et perceptione usus fructuum et utilitatum terrarum regni nostri). He also stipulated that Hungarians could not work in vineyards or forests and could not cultivate lands in the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary or by the River Lajta that are in Austrian hands by his or his predecessors’ grace and permission.69 The actions of Charles went against a system that had been in place for a long time by then, which let lands in lease, mostly vineyards by the border to Austrians for cultivation during which period upon paying the ordinary taxes the lessees could own their lands freely.70 The Habsburgs took all the measures to protect the interests of their subjects, so they could not bow to the aggravations of the Hungarian king, and in 1328, they got Charles I to accept Austrian lessees holding vineyards to continue vine cultivation on the border of the Kingdom of Hungary upon paying the usual land tax. It is also clear from the diploma of Albert II, duke of Austria, which settlements along the border were most interested in leasing vineyards in Hungary. On June 24, 1339, the duke gave permission to the burghers of Hainburg to bring the vine they produced or bought (pauwein und kaufwein) from harvest until the day of Saint Martin (November 11) from Hungary to Hainburg, but the latter they were not allowed to transport their goods any further than the town.71 Albert issued a permission with similar content to the burghers of Wiener Neustadt on November 8, 1342 allowing them to take the vine they produced in the Kingdom of Hungary through the Semmering Pass to Bruck an der Mur and Judenburg and through Schladming to Friesach and Rottenman.72 The 1345 agreement again provided the lessees of the vineyards of Devín (Dewen) Mountain with benefits, who from that time on did not have to pay more than half a Viennese denar as vineyard tax, which was the customary sum. In connection to this, one may recall the 1372 agreement, which specifically allowed the paying of the land tax in Viennese denars to those who had had the right since ancient times. The importance of the question of vine cultivators is well reflected by the fact that the decision dates to the same day and the renewal of the Hungarian–Austrian political alliance, and that rulers felt that they had jurisdiction in this issue.73

The system of mixed commissions set up in 1345, which was complicated in comparison with earlier attempts to address the issues at hand, became clearer when put into effect in 1372. The importance of the latter case is enhanced by the fact, that unlike on previous occasions, the commission was not only set up in writing but actually functioned in practice. The overview of somewhat more than a century in the history of the Hungarian–Austrian mixed commissions which were founded in order to maintain peace along the border offers insights into and examples of the process during which royal power shifted, in the strategies it adopted in order to address everyday and manifold breaches and dissensions which were common along the border, by negotiations rather than by military intervention. The stages of this practice can be identified in the Angevin era, from the change of perspective at the end of the reign of Charles I to the signing of the agreement of 1372. The points of the arrangement held true in the first decades of the fifteenth century, which is why it deserves special attention. Moreover, this is the first known document by neighboring rulers which set up a mixed commission. The text of the document has only been preserved in fragmented transcriptions, but its thanks to the renewal in 1411, it can be reconstructed. One of the lessons of the mixed commission system that was in charge of the Hungarian–Austrian border section is that while it aimed to unburden the rulers from decision making, it actually brought the two neighbors closer.

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Contextualizing the Mongol Invasion of Hungary in 1241–42: Short- and Long-Term Perspectives*

József Laszlovszky, Stephen Pow, Beatrix F. Romhányi, László Ferenczi, Zsolt Pinke

Corresponding author József Laszlovszky

Central European University

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The Mongol invasion in 1241–42 was a major disruption in the Kingdom of Hungary’s history that brought serious changes to many facets of its political, demographic, and military development. It became a long-lasting element of collective memory that influenced modern historical discourse. Nonetheless, questions remain about the level and distribution of destruction and population loss, the role that environmental factors played in the invasion, the reasons for the Mongol withdrawal, and how this episode can be used for interpreting later thirteenth and fourteenth-century phenomena. The present article aims to discuss these four issues, employing a combined analysis of the wide-ranging textual material and the newer archaeological and settlement data in their regional context.
We contend that new data supports the idea that destruction was unevenly distributed and concentrated in the Great Hungarian Plain. Furthermore, we express skepticism that environmental and climatic factors played the decisive role in the Mongol withdrawal in 1242, while we acknowledge the evidence that long-term climate change had substantial effects on Hungary’s settlement patterns and economy as early as the mid-thirteenth century. We conclude that a nuanced multi-causal explanation for the Mongol withdrawal is necessary, taking greater consideration of local resistance and the military failures of the Mongol army than has previously been represented in international literature. Lastly, we uphold a viewpoint that the Mongol invasion brought many catalysts to Hungary’s rapid development in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

Keywords: Mongol Empire, Kingdom of Hungary, Mongol invasion of Europe, Mongol invasion of Hungary, environmental history, medieval archaeology

Introduction

The Mongol invasion of 1241–42 is among the key formative episodes in Hungarian history and has long been considered a threshold dividing periods in the Kingdom of Hungary’s development. Academic research has been consistently engaged with the topic since the mid-nineteenth century, discussing not only the events themselves, but the reasons for them and their greater historical consequences. Certain contemporaries of the events recorded that the country was destroyed or that it submitted to the Mongols, and some researchers have since assumed that it may have lost a significant part of its population.1 During the last two decades, a large quantity of new data has emerged from the field of archaeology. The first significant archaeological excavations were connected to motorway construction, but later these discoveries were followed up by targeted investigations.2 The new archaeological data has been intensively discussed in Central and Eastern European scholarly circles, but it has not been very much represented in the recent wider discussions on the history of the Mongol Empire. At the same time, more than four decades after Denis Sinor first suggested ecological drivers behind the Mongol departure from Europe,3 a new environmental theory is being put forward concerning why the Mongols broke off their campaign, opting not to occupy Hungary after many military successes. Ulf Büntgen and Nicola Di Cosmo offered a viewpoint that the Mongol withdrawal in 1242 was largely driven by short-term climatic fluctuation and environmental concerns, i.e., the Mongols’ inability to properly provision their troops and animals.4 Their theory attracted mainstream global media attention in many high-profile popular publications.5 The authors of the present article responded to this new explanation in a previous article; however, we limited our arguments to the viewpoint that short-term climate was likely not behind the withdrawal without attempting to provide an alternative explanation for the mysterious event.6 This current article will move in the direction of offering an alternative explanation.

Theoretical and Methodological Issues

Our endeavor here is to seek multi-causal interpretations to the events of the invasion and aftermath, using the range of related data that is emerging. This means employing short- as well as long-term perspectives with a nuanced contextualization of textual, archaeological, climatic, and environmental data. The discussion of the events and their consequences takes into account settlement patterns, the evolving church and monastic network, material culture, building projects, etc. as indicators of ongoing economic and social processes which also shed light on the invasion and recovery. We intend to take a wider perspective, focusing not only on the short invasion itself but the whole period from 1220s until the mid-fourteenth century. This long-term perspective is crucial because of the large climatic shift that can be detected between the early thirteenth and the mid-fourteenth century.7 The long-term perspective is also essential because the crisis and recovery connected to the Mongol invasion unfolded for a long time after the withdrawal in 1242. In this respect, we pursue the path laid about by Jenő Szűcs by analyzing the economic and social transformation processes up to the mid-fourteenth century.8 While this long-term perspective has existed in previous scholarship, relevant data was unavailable. Thus, earlier viewpoints remained hypothetical and pertinent issues were only discussed in a limited way.9 Now with a new set of available data, several lingering questions should be revisited.

Discussion

In the following discussion, we will explore four broad topics related to the Mongol invasion and subsequent recovery, with the aim of incorporating data that has emerged from strengthening interdisciplinary approaches:

1. The level and distribution of destruction caused by the Mongol invasion in Hungary.

2. The impact of short- and long-term environmental and climatic changes on the Mongol invasion and Hungary’s subsequent recovery.

3. The reasons behind the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary in 1242.

4. The aftermath of 1242 and subsequent recovery of Hungary in the long-term perspective.

The Level and Distribution of Destruction in the Mongol Invasion of 1241–42

The topic of the scope of the destruction inflicted by the first Mongol invasion of Hungary has long been debated, and it carries important implications for how we conceptualize the event and its consequences. Estimates of the total population losses could range as high as 50 percent to conservative numbers of perhaps 10–15 percent.10 While this is still a very large segment of the population, one could imagine such losses being replaced by immigration and natural population growth in the long term. However, we must emphasize that there is not enough data from which to determine population losses in 1241–42, or even the population size of thirteenth-century Hungary. There quite simply exists no precise information with which to reconstruct either. Historians can use indirect evidence to glean some idea on population size and loss. Data we can use are, for example, the proportion of deserted villages, and the transformation of the monastic network. A better insight into the demographic situation of the 1330s is offered by the papal tithe list, even though some uncertainties remain.11 Also, recent research on the monastic network and parish system seems to supply better indicators of population loss than abandoned villages.12 Taking into account the small number of written sources related to one settlement or the character and dating value of archaeological finds coming from excavated deserted villages from the thirteenth century, it is not clear which villages were deserted as a result of their destruction by the Mongol army, the short-term consequences of the invasion, or the long-term social and economic changes. Only a significantly smaller part of settlements with direct written sources about their destruction or excavated sites with traces of particular destruction features and strong dating evidence (e.g., coins dated to the invasion period) can be connected to the event itself.13 Nonetheless, the endless debates about what percentage of the population died in the invasion remain purely hypothetical and thus are essentially a futile exercise. Spatial patterns of destruction, however, can give us a better idea of which areas were most heavily affected, and which areas were lightly affected.

While the exact number of victims must remain a mystery, the surviving contemporary sources clearly describe a cataclysm of unprecedented character—essentially, a wholesale destruction of the people of Hungary. Moreover, the reconstruction of the event has up to recent decades relied almost exclusively on these textual sources, mainly narratives and charters. An exceptional source, the Carmen miserabile of Master Rogerius,14 written shortly after the events, has long played a crucial role in reconstructing the story of the invasion. This work, written in Latin by a high-ranking churchman taken prisoner by the Mongols, describes a litany of atrocities committed by the invaders, violating contemporary European notions of what was permissible in war,15 with the authenticity of an eyewitness perspective. This and the other contemporary sources, including those written in other European states,16 and even far outside of Europe,17 suggested that the Hungarian Kingdom almost collapsed in 1241–42 amidst an orgy of slaughter. For instance, Rogerius wrote, “Behold, during that summer [1241] they destroyed everything all the way to the borders of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Silesia, and Cumania as far as the Danube.”18 After the Mongols managed to cross the Danube the following winter, the destruction on the other side of the river was similarly extensive if we judge solely by the account of Rogerius, which states that when the Mongols suddenly withdrew, only the citadel of Esztergom, the city of Székesfehérvár, and the monastery of Pannonhalma were still holding out: “Only these three places remained unconquered in that region.”19 Describing what he saw as a prisoner, taking part in the march back across Transylvania during the withdrawal, he wrote, “With the exception of a few castles, they occupied the whole country and as they passed through they left the country desolate and empty.”20 The image of a formerly populated and prosperous country reduced to a desert appears repeatedly, and Rogerius was not alone in offering this picture of catastrophic defeat and depopulation. Thomas of Split, another contemporary churchman, described how the invaders “wasted the whole realm of Hungary with their raging sword” and how “bodies lay scattered over the fields, and the corpses of the common people lined the roads in countless numbers” in the ensuing famine.21 Nor were the authors of the major narrative accounts solely responsible for the portrayal of the total destruction of the country and its population. Chroniclers sometimes noted in their brief entries for the year that the Kingdom of Hungary had been “destroyed” in the sense of being obliterated from continued existence. Béla IV, writing to the pope several years after the Mongol withdrawal, reported that his kingdom had been “reduced to a desert by the scourge of the Tartars.”22

The image of thorough and evenly spread destruction throughout the Kingdom of Hungary is quite pervasive in the textual records. However, new findings paint a rather different picture of a very uneven distribution of destruction throughout the kingdom, which requires us to ask why medieval authors were so keen to portray the devastation as uniform and total. It is important to remember that the authors had motivations and were often in a loose sense confined by the rules of genre. Put another way, a clergyman or king, bewailing the suffering to which he and the people of Hungary were subjected, might not take a nuanced approach in determining the exact scope of destruction afflicted on the country on a region-by-region basis. Thus, it is essential for historians to use the sources cautiously, not rejecting the textual material with the sort of hyper-skepticism that causes researchers to divest themselves of useful information for reconstructing past scenarios, but rather to use them in connection with findings from archaeological sites with destruction features, hoards, and settlement archaeology, broadening our picture of the events.

A vast number of new sites and excavated features are being discussed, with interdisciplinary approaches increasingly being used to better resolve lingering questions surrounding the process of the invasion,23 and helping to document the real evidence of its brutality.24 Recent finds show villagers seeking shelter in the oven of a house,25 unburied corpses in ditches,26 casualties of battle,27 people slaughtered regardless of age or sex, corpses buried haphazardly in the ruins of a burned house, and corpses of those who might have died of epidemics and starvation.28 Very recent finds detail the concentrated massacre of young females and evidence of cannibalism.29 The shocking brutality of indiscriminate slaughter and the resultant trauma likely drove contemporary authors to emphasize the totality of the destruction. Besides the evidence of mass-killing, many coin and treasure hoards that were discovered during the last century have been connected to the Mongol invasion.30 Moreover, research revealed another important aspect of the events, namely, that burned settlements with features of destruction and desertion processes can be connected to the hoard sites, and the spatial distribution of these areas can be interpreted in the context of the invasion because the areas in which they are concentrated are quite well-defined. (Map.1)

The discovery of coin hoards connected to the invasion is revealing about the areas most affected by Mongol attacks. Hoards are related to destruction in the sense that they were buried as a response to the invaders, but there are different kinds of hoards in the period (coin hoards, jewelry, mixed hoards, iron objects) and they represent a complex relationship to the military events. The spatial distribution of coin hoards is also a result of the scale of a money economy in an area, while other types may represent different economic and social contexts.31 Mapping the sites where they have been discovered reveals, however, that most of the hoard finds were concentrated in the Great Hungarian Plain, namely, in its northeast and central parts. The corpses that show signs of being connected to the invasion—unburied, buried offhand in hasty fashion, or victims of what appears to be mass murder32—are also concentrated in the same region. The only site in Transdanubia (the western side of the Danube) showing this type of violence that has so far been connected to the Mongol invasion, a one-time farm or manor located near Dunaföldvár,33 is also related to the concentration of other mass murder sites. It is on the right-bank part of a heavily used ford on the Danube, so the destruction there is like related to a successful Mongol attempt to cross the river. The locations where Cumans subsequently settled, as previous research has clearly demonstrated, is also connected to the most devastated areas, and beside the central part of the Great Hungarian Plain, the small eastern region of Transdanubia, where the find was made, also became a Cuman settlement.34

Regarding the spatial distribution of destruction and its concentration in certain areas of the Kingdom of Hungary, the build-up of evidence and lack of finds in certain areas continues to reinforce conclusions about an uneven pattern of destruction, concentrated heavily on the Great Hungarian Plain. Many rescue excavations were made in the last two decades in various sites, among them a large number in areas that had never been investigated previously. Thus, the lack of finds in specific regions cannot be explained any longer by a lack of research. In fact, the contemporary textual evidence supports this picture of the Mongol army mainly plundering and devastating the Great Hungarian Plain. Their details concerning the nature of the Mongol occupation, at least the account of Rogerius and a letter of Béla IV to the pope dated to January 1242,35 corroborate this version of events.36 The latter document emphasized that the Mongols had not yet crossed the Danube—mere months before their evacuation of the Carpathian Basin. This had much to do with the fact that Hungarians on the western side of the river were still capable of putting up resistance until the river froze, around the time the letter was written, enabling a crossing.

Archaeology supports another facet of the account of Rogerius. He detailed how peasants from 70 surrounding villages in the Great Hungarian Plain gathered at a “new village” called Pereg, evidently to bolster their ability to resist. The Mongols only took it after a week, having filled up the moat.37 Recently, a number of sites with enormous ditches around churches have been found in the Great Hungarian Plain.38 Evidently villagers were gathering at these sites for mutual defense, but in all cases, the settlements appear to have fallen to the invader. Sites in the open plain lacked natural defenses, and when combined with the length of the time the Mongols had to conduct their attacks on these points over the course of 1241, they proved unable to hold out. It seems that it was difficult for people in an open plain to escape. Simon of Saint Quentin, a Dominican emissary to the Mongols, detailed Mongol methods of carefully planting ambushes for fleeing refugees, blocking access to mountains and woodlands that might offer defensive hideouts.39 They employed hunting tactics in war; Rashid al-Din reported that they advanced against Europe in jerge formation, a hunting circle or battue, when the campaign commenced.40

Based on the above points-of-view we can draw a conclusion that the central parts of the country were much more devastated than other regions of the kingdom. However, the Great Hungarian Plain was likely not the most densely populated part of the country.41 Furthermore, the textual sources attest that only some of the victims of the Mongol invasion died in battle, sieges, or massacres. Many of them lost their lives while escaping or in the famine triggered by upheaval of the year-long occupation.

While population size and loss during the invasion must remain in doubt, the uneven regional distribution of both is evident. Reasons for this in part stem from the way the Mongols advanced as well as how they waged war. One viewpoint is that the Mongols confined themselves largely to advancing along the main roads of the Kingdom of Hungary, whereas another point of view contends that they did not follow roads but rather moved through the countryside.42 Our impression is that on the Great Hungarian Plain they were systematically laying waste to the entire region, going off the main roads, and thus there were few local people in the area who could escape them. On the western side of the Danube, in Transdanubia, the situation seems to have been different, judging by textual, archaeological, and settlement data. The occupation was shorter—only a few months in early 1242. Moreover, it appears that in western Transdanubia, particularly in the southwestern areas such as Somogy, along with Zala and Vas counties, the destruction afflicted by the invasion was minimal.43 In some of these areas, the dense network of local churches, particularly brick churches, is an indicator of the lower level of destruction. The majority of these buildings can be firmly dated to the thirteenth century, so before or after the invasion.44 This implies that they were either not destroyed during the invasion, or they were built afterwards, which also means that the village communities were not devastated, and they were able to build new churches or renovate wooden ones in brick. Evidently the dense woodlands in that region, which remained until the fourteenth century,45 offered refuge for the populace. We see a similar situation in the heavily wooded parts of what is today’s Slovakia—in the Spiš region, for instance. The Mongols did go into these areas, but it seems that they mainly passed through or confined their attacks to targets along the main roads, quite unlike the situation that unfolded over the Great Hungarian Plain throughout the occupation. In Transdanubia the textual sources support the findings of damage inflicted along the main road or on major targets like Pannonhalma.46

It is clear as well that southwestern Hungary was the last part to be attacked and so the damage there was, again, quite limited. One piece of evidence comes from the events that followed the Mongol withdrawal. The vigorous and effective action Béla IV took against Friedrich II Babenberg of Austria almost immediately to recover his western territories, as well as the Hungarian king’s ongoing struggle to acquire the Babenberg heritage after Friedrich’s death in 1244,47 are surprising if we imagine that Hungary’s entire military was destroyed only a few years beforehand. This suggests that Hungary still had a base of military power in the western part of the country—likely comprised of forces that had not taken part in the Battle of Muhi. Moreover, the southwest region of Hungary may have been, both before and after the Mongol invasion, the most populous part of the entire kingdom; that was certainly the case in the fourteenth century.48 This is another clue that the area had not been heavily affected by the Mongols.

In general, the level of resistance appears to have been greater than what is suggested in the main narrative sources of Rogerius and Thomas of Split. The more effective resistance in Transdanubia was made possible in large part by the Danube. A few years after the invasion, in his letter to the pope, Béla IV emphasized the strategic value of the river, noting that during the invasion it had functioned as a strong fortified line, enabling the outmatched Hungarian defenders to repel the Mongols for ten months.49 We should not think that the river by itself could have played this role since the sources from a wide range of societies attest that Mongols could cross even larger rivers without their presenting a serious problem—though, in fairness, they intentionally waited for them to freeze in their earlier campaign against the Russian principalities, as was attested by Friar Julian.50 Evidently the entire Hungarian army was not annihilated at Muhi though the losses were great and comprised important royal and ecclesiastical contingents. Yet, even Rogerius stressed how several unwilling nobles ignored the call to muster in the lead-up to the battle or managed to escape. For instance, Count Ladislaus of Somogy, who was rushing to aid of the king, received the news of the defeat and fled with his men and the contingent of the Bishop of Pécs, who narrowly escaped from the Hungarian camp.51 Bishop Benedict of Oradea also escaped with his troops across the Danube before the battle.52 The strong resistance of the citadel of Esztergom, which held out, suggests that valuable military forces remained in the country.53 Rogerius also acknowledges that the Mongols did not cross the Danube earlier than they did because the fords were vigorously defended on the other side with troops even breaking up the ice or fighting on it daily.54

The intensity of resistance and the number of fortified settlements caused problems for the Mongols even in the eastern parts of the country. Although Mongol armies are recorded to have had much experience besieging large fortifications (e.g. Kiev, Kaifeng, Baghdad), their forces in Hungary probably were not expecting a situation in which even villages, such as Pereg, were fortifying themselves and resisting. In the Great Hungarian Plain with its looser settlement network, the Mongols were forced to besiege at least five strongholds between Oradea (Nagyvárad) and Cenad (Csanád): besides the two bishopric centers, there was Tămaşda (Tamáshida), an unnamed island in the Körös River,55 and the Cistercian Abbey of Igriş (Egres). Once the Mongols crossed into Transdanubia in early 1242, the situation became considerably worse. A letter from the Hungarian defenders of many different castles, monasteries, and towns, written in 1242, asked for military aid from Rome. Nevertheless, the defenders described a well-planned defense in response to the Mongols crossing the river and voiced confidence in their ability to repel the invaders from their strategic positions.56

In general, the large narrative accounts of the invasion portray a different image of the effectiveness of resistance compared to the aforementioned letter or the charters of the king which often commemorated the heroic actions of various noblemen and the citizens of towns. Thomas of Split for instance referred to the “useless preparations” made by the citizens of Pest to defend their town against the Mongols.57 Rogerius seemed ready to describe any defeat of Hungarian forces, no matter how insignificant. Currently the big narratives, and the lamentations of rulers and clergymen over what we today would call a humanitarian disaster, seem to take precedence in international literature over the charter evidence. Yet, it is a byword of Hungarian medievalists that the country’s history is reconstructed from charters. It is our view that when these two types of documents are juxtaposed, we see a rather more balanced picture of the level of Hungarian resistance. If more emphasis is given especially to Béla IV’s brief mentions of acts of resistance,58 successful examples of people crossing the Danube to aid their countrymen,59 and otherwise unrecorded victories over contingents of the invaders,60 the image we have of the progress of Mongol invasion changes markedly.61 Furthermore, in scholarship there is a tendency to connect any sign of devastation or decline to the Mongol invasion. Deserted villages, building phases of churches, and the dating of liturgical objects from Limoges were connected directly to the devastation of Hungary.62 More recently many of the proposed connections between the destruction of the invasion and certain archaeological features have been questioned.63

The Short- and Long-Term Impact of Environmental and Climatic Changes on the Mongol Invasion and Hungary’s Recovery

The role of climate is increasingly recognized as having a major influence on historical events, and climate data is being used to offer new interpretations. Climatic connections to the development of the Mongol Empire are a topic of important recent studies.64 Recently, Büntgen and Di Cosmo offered the viewpoint that a short-term climatic fluctuation in early 1242, characterized by cold and wet weather, was the primary driver behind the Mongols’ decision to abruptly withdraw in 1242.65 We do not disagree with their interpretation of the climatic trend, but we disagree about it being the main cause for the withdrawal. While the present article does continue to look in part at the role of environmental and climatic issues connected with the Mongol invasion, the aim here is not to perpetuate a debate focused solely on a single historical episode. The recognition of the importance of exploring environmental issues related to pasturage, raised by Sinor in 1972,66 and the usage of climatic data in addressing the problem of the Mongol withdrawal, represent an intention to shed light on historical events of great significance for global history. Researchers seeking answers to complex questions (related to the level of destruction, the reasons for the withdrawal, the consequences of the invasion, etc.) obviously should use the full variety of tools and perspectives available to gain insight into the historical past.

A key issue in looking at the role of environmental influences on the events of the Mongol invasion pertains to the well-documented famine. Shortly in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion, severe famine affected the local Hungarian population and Büntgen and Di Cosmo view this as a result of the short-term wet and cold spell in 1242. As such, the issue affected the local population but also the Mongols who opted to withdraw, owing in part to the problem of feeding troops and animals alike. Taking a short-term perspective on this episode, the textual material stemming from contemporaries makes it very hard to accept that the famine was not a man-made phenomenon. Thomas of Split viewed it as the direct result of the displaced peasantry being forced to abandon their crop fields for two growing seasons—first they had been unable to harvest in 1241 and then they were unable to sow in 1242.67 Rogerius, a prisoner in the Mongol camp, noted that some peasants had been allowed to harvest certain crops but only to supply them to the Mongols in 1241.68 Jan Długosz, who wrote his chronicle much later but who recorded a number of valuable and unique pieces of information, noted that the draught animals had all been seized by the Mongols so that in the aftermath of the invasion, peasants desperately yoked themselves to ploughs in attempt to resume planting.69 Naturally if the farmers were unable to cultivate crops because they could not stay on their fields owing to the disruption and danger of the invasion, and if their draught animals had been looted, serious famine was going to set in.

It should not surprise us that the sources testify to widespread starvation among the Hungarian population after the Mongols left if we take a broader view of the Mongol conquests beyond the borders of Hungary. Shortly after the invasion, a Dominican emissary, Simon of St. Quentin, was sent into the Mongol Empire to contact their leaders on behalf of Pope Innocent IV. He passed through many regions that had been affected recently by invasions and eventually met with the Mongols in Armenia. In his report, in a section detailing Mongol methods of waging war, he was emphatic: “In every country which the Tartars destroy, famine always follows.”70 What his report would suggest is that Mongol invasions consistently triggered famine in all the affected areas, far beyond Hungary. The famines the Mongols triggered were intentional—a sort of weapon to crush resistance. When we consider Simon’s testimony, it is hard to entertain the notion that the starvation which affected Hungary’s people in 1242 was the result of a short-term fluctuation in climate, or even a unique experience for populations that had experienced a Mongol invasion.71

Taking the long-term perspective on the impact of climate on the invasion and its aftermath, recent studies suggests that famine on such a scale was an extremely unusual phenomenon in Hungary in the period—in fact, even the Little Ice Age did not cause a countrywide famine.72 Yet, climatic and environmental changes were having an impact. The years of the Mongol invasion (1241–42) belong to a substantial transformation period of the climate regime when we detect the first traces of what has been identified as an early phase of the coolest period in written history. Tree ring-based temperature reconstruction from the Eastern Carpathians shows that summers and winters became cooler in the mid-thirteenth century for a sustained period.73 Using archaeobotanical remains, a hydroclimatic reconstruction suggests that the decades between 1241–1301 in the Great Hungarian Plain became significantly more humid than in the preceding two centuries, and this higher level of humidity was permanent during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.74 Palaeoglaciological reconstructions from the heart of the Alps reveal a warming phase with a low tide of glaciers in the mid-thirteenth century, while a cooling phase with significantly growing glaciers around 1300 marks the onset of the Little Ice Age.75 The extraordinarily cold winter of 1241–42 also speaks to the structural transformation of the climate regime in Central Europe. That a short deviation in temperatures became something of a decisive factor during the Mongol invasion in Hungary is clear. As mentioned, after the battle of Muhi, the Mongols had been blocked on the line of the Danube River for roughly nine months. Despite the efforts of the Hungarians, who defended the western part of the river and regularly broke the ice during the severe winter, the Mongols were at last able to cross the ice on horseback and resume their conquests.76 So climate is documented to have played a decisive role in the course of the invasion—it just seems to have worked to the strategic advantage of the Mongols rather than the Hungarians.

The effects of the climatic change can also be studied in a later period, which is much more characterized by economic recovery and population increase. In short critical episodes, e.g., in the 1310s77 and the 1330s,78 the evident medieval climatic change could have certainly presented serious challenges for the population, mainly related to higher floodwater levels.79 Nonetheless, Hungary lies at the western border of the steppe belt with warm summers and a relative dearth of precipitation for crop production, so that the most powerful limiting factor for agricultural production was drought, even during the Little Ice Age.80 Thus, in the long-term, the mid-thirteenth-century climatic shift provided more optimal cool and humid conditions for agriculture than earlier. This point identifies a bio-climatological factor behind the fourteenth and fifteenth century’s period of prosperity for Hungary’s agriculture and its agriculturally based economy.

The direction of the long-term transformation of climatic features in the Hungarian Kingdom had another substantial effect on social organization. Landscape historical research has demonstrated a significant rise in the altitude of settlements in various regions from the eleventh–thirteenth centuries to the fourteenth–sixteenth centuries, e.g., in the Trans-Tisza region,81 in the Kalocsa-Sárköz,82 and on the southern shore of Lake Balaton.83 Árpádian-age settlements were generally built at a lower altitude above-sea level than late medieval ones, and the areas suitable for establishing settlements shrank by the fourteenth–fifteenth century. All these phenomena and some archaeological surveys of abandoned settlements suggest that the environment could have been a protagonist among drivers behind the transformation of the settlement network in the Great Hungarian Plain and the depopulation of certain regions of the landscape.84 The massive desertion which is evident during the period could have begun as early as in the first half of the thirteenth century and the process did not end before the first half of the fourteenth century. Thus, the Mongols did not solely initiate the regional settlement changes, but they gave a very drastic impulse to what was in fact a longer transition. Otherwise, after the withdrawal of Batu Khan’s army, the Hungarian king could have carried out reforms to bring about a resettlement of the depopulated region, besides coping with the population losses and destruction.

The Reasons Behind the Mongol Withdrawal in 1242

Greg S. Rogers, noting that it was still a topic of debate which had not yielded a single, satisfying explanation, offered a systematic look at theories for the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary. Writing over two decades ago, he organized the existing theories for the withdrawal into four broad categories. First was the long-standing “political theory” that a succession crisis, precipitated by the death of Ögödei Khan in December 1241, forced the withdrawal. This is mostly based on the explanation which Carpini provided in his report, a few years after the invasion.85 Secondly, there was the “geographical theory” of Denis Sinor, which offered an explanation rooted in environmental determinism, namely, that the Mongols withdrew because the Great Hungarian Plain offered insufficient fodder for their herds, and they would have had to limit the size of their army to the point that an effective conquest was impossible.86 Then there was the “military weakness” theory which suggested that stiff resistance during the entire western campaign through Kipchak and Russian territories, and subsequently in East-Central Europe, deterred the Mongols from continuing. Rogers noted there were aspects of the literature which supported it, but also pointed out the all-too obvious reasons why this theory might appeal to some modern scholars.87 Lastly, there were ideas which can be grouped into a “gradual conquest” theory which holds that the invasion was intended as an exploratory raid rather than a permanent occupation or conquest.88 He then pointed out the criticisms levelled at each theory which showed that all had problems that prevented any uniform agreement among scholars.89

In the time since Greg S. Rogers wrote, novel theories have appeared, but they basically fall within the broad categories he established. Timothy May has suggested that in addition to the impetus to withdraw provided by the khan’s death, the Mongols had a “tsunami” strategy of conquering in a series of invasions, rather than a single one, which suggests the “limited goals” theory was at play in the case of Hungary in 1241–42.90 Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s most recent “environmental hypothesis” seems grounded on the same principles as Sinor’s theory, namely, that the environment of Hungary proved unsuitable to the Mongols for permanent occupation. The notable difference is that Büntgen and Di Cosmo suggested this resulted from short-term climate fluctuation which can be demonstrated through dendroclimatological methods, whereas Denis Sinor suggested long-term unsuitability based on a highly speculative calculation of the carrying capacity of Hungary—one that certainly is not supported by the livestock data of the Early Modern Period.91

In our view, taking a broad perspective relying on a wide range of data, any monocausal explanation appears to be insufficient to explain the withdrawal. However, what can be clearly observed is that there was more resistance to the invasion than has hitherto been acknowledged in scholarship, and a dichotomy exists between how surviving narrative sources and other textual sources, such as the rather overlooked charter evidence, present this resistance. Clearly, Mongol objectives were being foiled. Neither the king, nor even local conglomerations of peasants in many cases, submitted without fighting. By early 1242, the king had escaped to the sea and the Mongol prince, Qadan, was quite incapable of capturing him at Trogir, nor did the Mongols manage to reduce any other major strategic point in Dalmatia.92 The failure to achieve important goals and possible perceptions of the growing set of strategic problems, for instance, when they advanced into Transdanubia, may have convinced the Mongol leaders that it was best to withdraw for the time being. The fact remains that source materials, originally composed in Mongolian and surviving in the Chinese Yuan Shi, detail that the Mongols were rather fearful of the Hungarian army and their princes wished to flee from the country already during the Battle of Muhi in early 1241; they were only narrowly deterred from carrying out the plan.93 This closely corroborates Carpini’s account that the Mongols tried to flee during the battle, and were barely prevented from fleeing the country.94 It is difficult to ignore a situation where Mongol and Latin sources corroborate one another. Thus, it is a very serious oversight if modern scholarship decides to discount a priori the possibility that local resistance could have played any role in the Mongol decision to withdraw in 1242. Of course, other factors such as rumors of the khan’s illness in Mongolia and environmental factors could have played a role. Moreover, the withdrawal did not mark the end of the Mongols’ interests in Europe and Hungary. Threats and ultimatums continued, and they returned in force to the kingdom in 1285.95 The withdrawal may well have been a temporary measure initiated by a sense that the occupiers’ strategic problems were worsening in early 1242, but it hardly marked the end of the Mongols’ imperial ambitions in Europe and elsewhere. Indeed, many polities in the southeast of Europe submitted to the Mongols periodically during the second half of the thirteenth century.96

Recovery: Political, Social, and Economic Changes in the Long-Term Perspective

One of the most notable signs of recovery that began immediately and continued in the decades after the Mongol withdrawal occurred in the military sphere. Historian Erik Fügedi found many examples in the charter evidence that contained Béla’s stated intention to strengthen the kingdom and better protect its remaining people by creating policies that fostered the quick building of castles on suitable sites. While this wave of castle-building was well-known in Hungarian scholarship for at least a hundred years, Fügedi’s own work first provided specific numbers; between 147 and 172 new castles were built between 1242 and 1300, and 22 towns with privileges were established in the first three decades of this flurry of activity. Fügedi was also careful to make the distinction between the “enthusiasm” for this building activity experienced by nobles who were granted incentives, increasing their own power vis-à-vis the monarch, and the ordinary populace whose frustration at bearing the labor and tax burden sometimes comes through in the extant records.97 Moreover, his analysis, especially when manifested visually in the form of maps, reveals a rather unexpected and paradoxical trend. The vast majority of the castles built in the second half of the thirteenth century were not situated in the eastern and central plains of the country, which had borne the brunt of the Mongol occupation in 1241–42, but rather close to the western and northern borders of fellow-European rivals such as Austria and Bohemia.98 This raises questions about intentions for the castles since renewed Mongol invasions would come from the east; the Mongols had merely based themselves on the Dasht-i-Qipchaq from which they continued to issue ultimatums and threats of attack.

The puzzling phenomenon of the location of castles can be explained foremost by the phenomenon highlighted in the first point of this discussion. Destruction was severe in some areas and light in others, and the areas, i.e. the western regions, which retained a strong population and economy were the most likely to have the means and necessity to carry out the huge investment of castle building. The distribution of castles has a loose inverse relationship to the distribution of sites showing concentrated signs of Mongol destruction. A second issue relates to the strategic suitability of sites for castle-building. The lessons of the first invasion evidently informed the survivors as to which sites were defensible. For instance, Lapis Refugii in the Spiš region became the site of a later Carthusian monastery after it had proven to be a useful improvised Fluchtburg during the events of 1241–42.99 The emergence of the fortified hilltop town of Buda, as well, is one of the best indicators of this new process.100

Béla IV’s ability to wage war against his Austrian and Bohemian neighbors, and to interfere in Polish dynastic conflicts, in the immediate years after the Mongol withdrawal is not necessarily a sign that a significant depopulation did not occur during the invasion and subsequent famine, but he was still clearly capable of mobilizing sizeable military forces afterwards. A major factor in this was that he had recruited and settled large numbers of Cumans in his kingdom by 1246. The Prussian chronicler Nicolaus von Jeroschin, writing of Béla’s defeat at the hands of Ottokar in 1260, claimed that Béla’s army was composed of 40,000 knights—“mercenaries from many countries, according to what I have heard.”101 Cumans supplied a strong military presence in the kingdom in the second half of the thirteenth century. Rashid al-Din, writing under Mongol auspices, described Hungary as a massive kingdom stretching from Cumania to the domains of Aquila and that its king commanded an “innumerable army.” Nonetheless, he contended that the Golden Horde’s Noqai had managed to conquer Hungary after attacking it incessantly.102 It is significant that Rashid al-Din’s description of the Hungarians’ innumerable army refers to his own context of the late thirteenth century and the Mongol invasion of 1285. While it exceeds the scope of this work to discuss that second invasion in detail, it should be mentioned that the Mongols encountered much more effective resistance which reveals that lessons from the first invasion had been learned.103

Beyond military trends, looking at the long-term developments taking place in Hungary for roughly a century after the Mongol invasion sheds light on the events and their impact. There is a basic dichotomy in the historical interpretation of the period from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century concerning major processes taking place in Europe, particularly regarding crisis periods and the recovery following them.104 In the long-term context, significant changes took place in Hungary following the invasion. In the second half of the thirteenth century, it adopted the social and economic innovations which made possible the thirteenth-century expansion and development in Western Europe (agricultural production systems, peasant economy, urban development), and further innovations appeared in the first half of the fourteenth century (hospes population, free land, new areas for colonization, etc.), a period characterized by social and economic resilience, including in an urban context.105 The challenges of climate change in the period after the Mongol invasion remained at the local or small-scale regional level, unless man-made problems, namely, the side effects of war, contributed to the environmental stressors.106 Probably the first period of largescale animal export to southern German towns and to northern Italy (Venice) contributed to Hungary’s favorable conditions; the growth and overpopulation of urban centers elsewhere worked as a positive factor in Hungary’s development, as the relatively underpopulated kingdom started to become a major food exporter for these areas.107 Other factors, such as intensification of silver and gold mining, contributed to Hungary’s prosperity in a significant way.108 The combined elements of a strong economy, such as its mines and animal husbandry-centered complex agrarian production, coupled with a stable political system and with regional cooperation of local kingdoms, resulted in a subsequent period of rapid development.

Conclusions

Based on the preceding discussion we can draw the following conclusions:

1. Regarding the destruction inflicted by the Mongol invasion, there is little reason to persist with the debate on whether it was a very low or very high percentage of the population that died as a result. There is no relevant source material which can be discussed in such precise terms, but the events following the withdrawal of the Mongols make us rather skeptical of higher estimates. New archaeological data combined with a wide range of sources can lead to very detailed spatial analyses pertaining to the level of destruction on a regional basis, as well as characteristic features of that destruction. The number of archaeological sites and data is continuously increasing, adding to our knowledge of the course of events. From the combination of data, we have to conclude that significant parts of the country were not heavily destroyed. Research on the hoards of the period and the medieval settlement, church, and urban network also support the conclusion that the destruction of people, settlements, and infrastructure was very unevenly distributed. Furthermore, the resistance of Hungarian forces, even after the defeat at Muhi, was significantly more sustained than has been suggested by previous scholarship, particularly in the western part of the kingdom.

2. In accordance with the preceding point, some of the destruction was connected to environmental issues, and the significant famine which appeared as the Mongols withdrew in 1242. That there was a unique environmental challenge is now clearly demonstrated not only by written evidence but also by climate reconstructions. Nonetheless, the balance of evidence suggests that it was basically a man-made famine, albeit one that could have been exacerbated by environmental changes that were taking place. This conclusion is especially plausible when we consider that the natural long-term changes were much more severe in the decades following the invasion, particularly the first decades of the fourteenth century, and still they did not create the issue of an enduring countrywide famine.

3. Regarding the reasons for the Mongol withdrawal in 1242, no monocausal explanation can be offered. There were a host of factors at play, but the basic issue seems to lie with the objectives of the Mongols. As the invasion progressed, they were unable to achieve key objectives like capturing the king or obtaining his submission. Sources from a Mongol perspective correspond with European accounts that they were already considering withdrawal at the Battle of Muhi, the numbers of the enemy were a problem, and they faced the real possibility of a coordinated counterattack from other hostile parties in the region. Stiff resistance is the one explanation with which we see these textual sources fully corroborate each other at points.

4. The long-term recovery of Hungary was a complex process, and facets of it were not so much initiated as catalyzed by the invasion. The 1285 invasion shows how much was learned from the initial experience, while Hungary proved capable of economic and military growth in the aftermath. The prosperity which Hungary and the surrounding region experienced in the following century, when many other parts of Europe were in deep crisis, suggests that the destruction of Hungary was partial and rather limited in many areas.

 

In the short-term context, the Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241–42 was a brief historical episode, but one in which the nobility, clergy, and population of the country suffered an enormous shock. They encountered a little-known and poorly understood enemy—not a raiding band of steppe horsemen, but a well-organized and large army attacking the country with the intention to subjugate or destroy the population. Especially in the Great Hungarian Plain, their tactics inflicted profound destruction. Archaeological evidence now corroborates claims of mass murder affecting women and children.109 Settlements were burned, towns destroyed, and famine was intentionally caused which continued to claim casualties long after the Mongols left the country, having plundered its livestock. It is no wonder that the Mongol invasion imprinted such deep memories on the population.

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and their many insightful comments and suggestions.

The basic concept of this article was developed by J. Laszlovszky, partly as a reflection on his earlier study (1994). Historical events in the written sources on the invasion were discussed by S. Pow. The issues connected to the spatial distribution of sites were discussed by B. F. Romhányi. L. Ferenczi contributed to the collection of relevant research material. Environmental-historical issues and the impact of climatic changes were analyzed by Z. Pinke.

This work was supported by NRDIO grants K128880 and PD128970 and it is a contribution to the PAGES Landcover6k project.

 

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Szűcs, Jenő. Az utolsó Árpádok [The Last Árpáds]. Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Történettudományi Intézete, 1993.

Thackston, Wheeler. Rashiduddin Fazlullah’s Jami’u’tawarikh: Compendium of Chronicles. 2nd Edition. Cambridge, Boston: Harvard University Press, 1998–1999.

Tóth, Csaba. “A tatárjárás korának pénzekkel keltezett kincsleletei” [Coin-dated Treasure Hoards from the Period of the Mongol Invasion]. In A tatárjárás (1241–1242) [The Mongol Invasion (1241–1242)], edited by Ágnes Ritoók, and Éva Garam, 79–90. Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, 2007.

Vadas, András. “Late Medieval Environmental Changes of the Southern Great Hungarian Plain – A Case Study.” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 17 (2011): 41–60.

Vadas, András. Weather Anomalies and Climatic Change in Late Medieval Hungary: Weather Events in the 1310s in the Hungarian Kingdom. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2010.

Valter, Ilona. Árpád-kori téglatemplomok Nyugat-Dunántúlon [Arpad-period Brick Churches in Western Transdanubia]. Budapest: METEM, 2004.

Vargha, Mária. Hoards, Grave Goods, Jewelry: Objects in Hoards and in Burial Contexts during the Mongol Invasion of Central-Eastern Europe. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2015.

Vásáry, István. Cumans and Tatars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Wehli, Tünde. “A magyarországi művészet helyzete a tatárjárás körüli években” [Hungarian Art in the Period of the Mongol Invasion]. In Tatárjárás [The Mongol Invasion], edited by Balázs Nagy, 468–83. Budapest: Osiris, 2003.

Wolf, Mária. “Régészeti adatok a muhi csata történetéhez” [Archaeological Data for the History of the Battle at Muhi]. In “Carmen Miserabile:” A tatárjárás magyarországi emlékei; Tanulmányok Pálóczi Horváth András 70. születésnapja tiszteletére [“Carmen Miserabile:” Remnants of the Mongol Invasion of Hungary; András Horváth Pálóczi’s seventieth birthday memorial volume], edited by Szabolcs Rosta, and György V. Székely, 69–80. Kecskemét: Kecskeméti Katona József Múzeum, 2014.

* The research for this article has been carried out in the framework of the project “The Mongol Invasion of Hungary in its Eurasian Context” supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH, project no. K-128880).

Landscape and Fortification of Vienna after the Ottoman Siege of 1529

Heike Krause and Christoph Sonnlechner

Wien Museum and Vienna City Archives

This contribution focuses on two issues: first, the land- and waterscape of Vienna in light of modernizations to its fortification; second, the challenges faced in fortifying the city during a period now known as the Little Ice Age. The Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529 showed that new technology in warfare combined with certain topographic features represented a danger to the town. In reaction to the lasting Ottoman threat, Vienna was fortified with bastions, curtain walls, and a broad moat. The fortifications were surrounded by the glacis, which was cleared of buildings. The emperor’s military advisers and Italian fortress architects planned and created an artificial landscape oriented towards military needs. Rivers running through this area, such as the Wienfluss and the Ottakringer Bach, posed strategic problems and had to be dealt with. The Danube floodplain to the northeast of the city was an especially difficult environment to control. Solutions for the waterscape, but also for the hilly terrain in the west had to be found. The city’s Danube front was included in the fortifications. This construction took place during a severe phase of the Little Ice Age when heavy rainfall caused frequent inundation and ice jams. High water, unstable sediments, and the erosion of foundations forced planners and builders to find solutions adapted to this special environment. Highlighting these aspects of environment and war in sixteenth-century Vienna is the aim of the paper.

Keywords: Vienna, landscape, waterscape, fortification, bastionary system, early modern period, Ottoman wars, Little Ice Age, climate and history

Introduction

Since the second half of the fifteenth century, the Ottomans had been pushing ever further westward. A decisive victory over the Hungarian King Ludwig II took place at Mohács in 1526. The siege of Vienna in 1529 and the continuing threat from the Ottomans led to a transformation of the immediate surroundings of the city into a fortress and to a rearrangement of the suburbs. The medieval city wall could no longer withstand the new military technology. From 1531 to about 1564, massive fortifications with bastions, connecting ramparts, and a broad moat were built around the inner city (Fig. 1). Large areas of the former suburbs were to be cleared for these buildings, but also for the glacis, the exposed field of fire in front of the moat. In addition, large quantities of building materials and raw materials had to be procured for the extensive construction project. These included timber, such as wooden piles for the foundations and brushwood for fascines, firewood and clay for the manufacture of bricks, and stone, sand, and lime. Stones came not only from the quarries in the vicinity, but also from the demolished houses and fortifications of the suburbs. Additionally, the earthen material excavated from the moat was used for the ramparts and bastions. All of these measures changed the landscape. They affected not only the immediate physical environment of Vienna, but also had an impact on more distant ecosystems. Another aspect was the awareness of geomorphological difficulties affecting the defense of the city. Thus, the hill in the west of Vienna opposite the Hofburg near St. Ulrich was perceived as a problem that demanded a defense solution. A great deal of discussions on defense were devoted to the waterscape of the city. The river bed of the Wienfluss/Wien River, flowing close to the city wall, offered protection to attackers and represented a strategic problem, which had to be considered. The Danube, with its barrier function, was the focal point of the defense concept. Tributary rivers flowing into the Danube, such as the Wienfluss, the Ottakringer, and the Alser Bach, which flowed into the moat, and the clay extraction in the western suburbs for brick production, had a landscape-altering effect. Moreover, the Danube river bank, with its fluctuations in water level and floods, caused difficulties for the construction of the fortress. The climate of the Little Ice Age, a period of cooling in the early modern period, also had an impact. When the fortress construction of the 1550s led to a shortage of resources and provoked enormous costs, testing the budget limit, the solutions and improvements to the fortifications ultimately could not be tackled in the long term, despite numerous proposals and projects.1

Topography

When studying fortification activity in the sixteenth century, it should not be forgotten that there is a larger context to the small area being researched. Vienna was founded in a landscape that was and still is—even if it is not visible anymore—shaped by water. It is a town beside a large river: the Danube. Vienna was not located directly on the main stream but on top of an older and higher Pleistocene river terrace. The border between the so-called Stadtterrasse and the recent, post-glacial alluvium of the Danube, formed up to 12,000 years ago, coincides with the fortifications of the Roman legionary camp Vindobona and approximately with the medieval city walls. The Ottakringer Bach, a small stream flowing in from the west, passed the Roman camp directly on its western side. The deep former riverbed is still reflected in today’s Tiefer Graben. The Danube’s main course passed the Roman camp on the northern side. Lying on a terrace above the river, the drop to the Danube was immediate. In the third or fourth century the river eroded the northwestern corner of the camp, which afterwards no longer formed a square. The Danube has played an important role in Vienna’s history, as did other water courses forming the Viennese waterscape. The upper reaches of the Danube must be taken into account, as must the centuries preceding the sixteenth century. Though Vienna is situated more than 900 kilometers downstream from the Danube’s source, the river still showed a mountainous character with a highly variable flow regime, frequent flooding, and almost annual ice jams.2

The local floodplain between the different arms of the Danube consisted of morphologically different dynamic zones, relevant to diverse activities and user groups. On the one hand, there were comparatively stable islands like the central parts of the Unterer Werd, an island close to town, and separated from it by the Viennese arm of the Danube, today called the Donaukanal. On the other hand, great parts of the river landscape were characterized by large, more or less dynamic islands. The development of the highly sinuous main arm in the sixteenth century had already started by the early to mid-fifteenth century.3 During the first siege by the Ottoman army in 1529, the evolution of the river bend was already at an advanced stage. First indications of a major rearrangement of the Danube channel network are provided by complaints in the 1550s, but there are also hints from the 1530s (Fig. 2).4

This shows that the Danube had already started to shift its course southwards within the gorge known as the Wiener Pforte, a short breakthrough section upstream from Vienna and Nußdorf (Fig. 1). From the mid-1560s onward, the main discharge of the river no longer flowed through the bend called the Taborarm, but instead found its way through the northern river arms, primarily through the Wolfarm.5

Apart from the Danube and its major changes of course in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, there are other smaller rivers, streams, and aspects of the terrain which were important for strategic considerations tied to fortification. Vienna is situated at the foothills of the eastern Alps formed by the hills of the Wienerwald. Several streams spring from these foothills to the west of the town and discharge into the Danube in the Vienna area, among them the Ottakringer Bach and the Alser Bach. Both streams flow to the direct vicinity of the center of town. One river in particular, flowing in from the west, attracted the interest of the fortification planners and engineers: the Wienfluss/Wien River. This river passes the town close to the walls on the southeastern side before discharging into the former Viennese branch of the Danube (today Donaukanal). Carved into the terrain, its river bed turned out to be a problem for the defense of the city. The same was true for the sloped terrain to the west of the walled town, with the monastery of St. Theobald sitting on top of the highest hill in the direct vicinity. We will return to morphology and strategic considerations later on.

Building the Fortress

The fifteenth century had brought drastic changes in the field of warfare. Cities were now bombarded by artillery in order to breach the walls. New military techniques required new tactics. The bastionary system developed in reaction to the new weapon, in Italy in particular. However, not only the necessary adjustments to fortress construction, but also the surroundings of the fortifications had to be considered. Open spaces were created, settlements demolished, and the area flattened to deny protection to the enemy. Rivers were diverted, or their barrier function was retained and strengthened.

The Establishment of a Military Landscape Surrounding Vienna—
the Construction of the Fortifications6

Earliest construction measures (1531–1539)

A transformation in the conduct of war and in military technology took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The increasing use of firearms and the development of large caliber artillery and mines, with which walls could be demolished, led to fundamental change in military architecture.7 Until the Ottoman siege of 1529 the fortifications of Vienna were medieval in character. The city wall had been strengthened against artillery fire by earthen embankments, but with its vertical towers it remained the most important part of the fortifications and the main target of attackers.

In August 1529, immediately before the siege, Ferdinand I of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria and King of Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia, renewed his call to bring wood for the defense of Vienna as quickly as possible, in order to equip the city with fences, bastions, and bulwarks for cannon.8 The houses, churches, monasteries/nunneries, and hospitals of the suburbs were only evacuated, set alight or demolished when the Ottoman army was in their immediate vicinity. Wooden roofs in the town were dismantled in order to prevent fires spreading. Such measures were not enough, however. The strength of the attackers and their mining tactics meant that the city wall was no longer sufficient for defense. The city survived the attack only because the much more numerous enemy had supply problems and because of the very bad weather that autumn. The Ottoman retreat ruined the suburbs, and there were wide breaches in the city wall beside the Kärntnertor (Carinthian Gate), but above all the fear that it might not be possible to withstand a second attack remained. Ferdinand I and his advisors thus sought better defense solutions to combat fears about security. One year after the siege Ferdinand decided to develop the inner city as a fortress, excluding the suburbs, and to strengthen the city wall with Bollwerke (bulwarks).9 According to Ludwig Eberle, nine bulwarks were planned.10 In the first phase, several structures were to be placed against the outer side of the city wall, while in-between several elevated artillery platforms (cavaliers) would be raised inside the wall and the moat would be defended by flanking positions. The construction of the Bastei vor dem Burgtor (Bastion before the Castle Gate), the so-called Spanier (Spaniard), began at the beginning of March 1531. The demolition of walls from buildings of the medieval suburb during the excavation of the foundation trench led to higher costs than planned.11 The erection of the Bastei beim Schottentor (Bastion beside the Scottish Gate) followed soon afterwards. The new bastions jutted far out from the medieval city wall and thus extended into the former suburban area. People who lost their houses and ground in the suburbs were resettled. Those whose occupations needed running water were to be settled in the Scheffstraße area on the city side of the Wien River between the Stubentor (Stuben Gate) and the Danube. Their new houses and workshops were in future to be built not too close to the fortifications and only of wood, so that they could be removed easily in case of siege. An exposed field of fire was to be created in front of the moat (the glacis), so that the area was easily observable and offered no cover to the besieging enemy. The sources show that the ban on erecting buildings within 50 fathoms of the moat was repeatedly violated well into the 1570s.12 In October 1531, financial difficulties began and activity was on the verge of grinding to halt. The approaching winter cold was a further problem. The Viennese city council also faced high costs, caused by the demolition of (city) towers and the clearance of the moat at that time. It was making slow progress in the construction of the Bastei bei den Predigern (Preachers’ Bastion) because of a shortage of both personnel and money.13 The appearance and construction details of these bastions remain unknown, with one exception—the Bastei vor dem Burgtor. This is thought to be the first angular bastion in the German-speaking area. It survived into the seventeenth century14 and even after the new castle bastion was built to protect the Burgtor. The earliest structures of the new fortifications—called bastions, bulwarks, or “cats” (cavaliers)—appear to have been unstable and to have been rather provisional in nature. The sources imply that the activities were something of a damage limitation exercise and that a comprehensive masterplan, which took into account the strategic situation and included adequate solutions, resource management, and financing, was still absent.

The strengthening of the fortifications on the Wien River side of the city took place between 1536 and 1539.15 Work is mentioned in the sources at the Biberbastei,16 on an earthwork (Wasenbastei) beside Stubentor,17 at the earthwork known as the Heynersbastei, and at a further small earthwork that lay between these last two18 and which appears to have been a predecessor of the later Untere Paradeisbastei (Lower Paradise Bastion).19 The use of the word Wasen (= Rasen = turf) indicates that the structures largely consisted of earth with a covering of turf. Nevertheless, stone from the abandoned suburban defenses and buildings was also salvaged and reused in the new fortifications.20 In 1539 a ship—a so-called Siebnerin21—was bought for the purpose of sinking it in the Danube somewhere between two city towers, the Salzturm (Salt Tower) and the Rotenturm (Red Tower).22 It was probably intended to help strengthen the river bank or as the foundation of a built structure. Between 1540 and 1543 there are no sources which tell us about any significant progress in the construction of the fortifications. Intensive enlargement work took place later after the appointment of Italian fortification specialists. Bastions were then built which were so strong and large that they remained in use into the nineteenth century.

The construction of five large bastions and the broadening of the moat (1544–1555)

This phase saw the planned extension of the bastion system in the Italian manner and is characterized by a new type of bastion: the bastions are clad in masonry, larger and stronger, and include open flankers (recessed artillery emplacements) for the better protection of the moat area. Between 1544 and 1555 five such bastions were erected, which flanked each other on the landward side of the town. The bastion between the Burgtor and the Schottentor (later known as the Löblbastion) was built between 1544 and 1548. In response to the hill beside St. Ulrich in front of the fortifications, thought to be a potential problem in the case of siege, the bastion was equipped with a particularly high artillery platform (cavalier). A crack in the masonry opened up at an early stage and necessitated repairs.23 Similar problems developed at the bastion beside the Schottentor. The subsoil had not been sufficiently strengthened to support the large, heavy walls. At almost the same time another new bastion was being erected on the other side of the city beside the Stubentor in place of the earlier Bastei bei den Predigern. It is also referred to as the Town, Burghers’, Hollerstauden, or Dominican bastion. The Italian fortifications engineer Dominico Illalio (Domenico dell’Allio, born c. 1515, died 1563) designed the bastion in 1544 and marked out its outline on site.24 A cavalier behind the bastion was begun in 1545, which was raised up with earth from the city moat.25 The stone bastion with recessed, open flankers, and including the cavalier, which appears to have been finished in 1546,26 seems to have been something of a prototype for further bastions.

Nevertheless, the system of bastions in the Italian manner remained unfinished and in some places the fortifications would not have been secure if a new siege had taken place.27 Finances were insufficient, leading to a delay in the completion of the section between Stubentor and the Biberbastei.28 The new bastions extended far out into the approaches of the medieval city wall and thus occupied very much space, so much that the surrounding moat had to be broadened with a great deal of effort.29 The material thus extracted was piled up to create the body of the bastions.

Francesco de Pozo was the responsible master builder for the Bastei beim Kärntnertor (Bastion beside the Carinthian Gate), which was erected 1548–1552. The excess earthen material from the foundation trenches was to be brought out of the city to the gardens and cemeteries and spread out there, while buildings on the construction site were to be demolished.30 Subsidence in the area of the casemates of the bastion led to instability. Again, it would appear that the foundations and/or the subsoil below could not carry the weight demanded.

The so-called Obere Paradeisbastei (Upper Paradise Bastion)31 stood on the other side of the Kärntnertor on the Wien River. This was Vienna’s largest bastion. It was erected in this phase in place of the earlier Heynersbastei. The structure appears to have been built very quickly and to have been finished by 1551.32 It took its later name Wasserkunstbastei (Waterworks Bastion) from a pumping station on top of the bastion that pumped water from the millstream into the city.33 In this case the new fortifications served the needs not only of defense, but also of supply.

The Kleine Wasenbastei, which was built on the Wien River side of the city apparently in the place of the Untere Paradeisbastei, and which was also called Jakoberbastei (Jacobean Bastion) and later Braunbastei, was completed in 1555.34

Great numbers of bricks were needed for these projects, necessitating the construction of new brickworks in 1547.35 Brick production relied on large amounts of firewood, which were to be brought in from the floodplain along the Danube.36 In 1549 bricks from a total of ten kilns were available for the buildings alongside sufficient lime, sand, and stone.37

Most clay was extracted to the west of the city on a hillside called Laimgrube (Clay Pit) on the northern side of the Wien River. A view by Hans Sebald Lautensack, dated 1558/59, shows the drying sheds and the cut edge created by clay extraction (Fig. 3). In 1548, further north from the Laimgrube, the Ottakringer Bach—referred to as “a little stream from St. Ulrich”—flowed to the stone bridge at Kärntnertor. Flooding created at that point an undesirable, elevated Gstätten, by which is presumably meant a deposit of sediment and other material carried by the stream. In order to prevent the enemy entrenching themselves behind the cover that this deposit provided, it was to be removed and the water diverted into the city moat, as had previously been the case and from which point it could flow into the Danube.38 These measures led to landscape changes in front of the city. The substantial, protruding fortifications also meant that houses, gardens, and outbuildings in the vicinity, both within and without the city, were adversely affected and sometimes had to be removed.39

The plans by Bonifaz Wolmuet and Augustin Hirschvogel, from 1547 and 1549, respectively, reflect developments towards an overall concept for the fortifications (Fig. 4). They show both those bastions that already existed, and also those which were still in the planning phase. Initially, the course of the medieval city wall was maintained and the bastions were built against the wall. This was still a long way off from an ideal fortification, i.e., a regular, polygonal plan. The terrain, climate problems, the urban landscape, and fear of the likely high costs delayed or prevented the realization of more ambitious plans. The new bastions in this phase served to protect the city gates on the landward side. The integration of the Danube riverbank into the new fortifications and the necessary changes involved were to take place in the coming years.

 

 

Fortification of the Danube riverbank and erection of the curtain walls (1557–1563)

The last construction phase under Ferdinand I was marked by acute financial problems, but at the same time by professional planning and attempts to build long-lasting structures appropriate to “modern” military technology. The superintendent of works, Hermes Schallautzer, and following his death in 1561, Thoman Eiseler, as the highest-ranking engineer, were responsible for the construction work between 1557 and 1563. Concepts, estimates, reports, bills, and sketches have survived from this period. The section of the fortifications from Schottentor along the Danube to the Biberbastei was now to include “modern” bastions and an arsenal. The moat was widened in many places. From 1560 onwards curtain walls were built in front of, sometimes substantially before, the medieval city wall. They were broad ramparts clad in masonry, which connected the bastions. Masonry-clad curtain walls were not erected everywhere, however. Some stretches of the medieval city wall remained intact. New buildings, such as armories, foundries, an arsenal, and a storehouse, were designed directly behind the curtain walls, which served the supply and accommodation needs of the military, but also the storage and repair of military equipment. Work began on the later so-called Lower or Imperial Armory c. 1558.40 This stood in the area east of the street Seilerstätte on the medieval city wall, which at this point followed the undercut former bank of the Wien River, which swung inwards toward the town in a great bow.41 The new curtain wall between the Untere and Obere Paradeisbastei was built in a straight line well to the east of the old wall so that the area of the bow was absorbed into the fortifications. The bastion beside the Schottentor, which was still not in a satisfactory condition, was to be renewed. Two high cavaliers were being built behind it.42 Buildings had to be demolished as part of the preparation of the building sites for the Elendbastei and the Donaubastei (Danube Bastion, also called the Neutorbastei) and for the arsenal between them.43 The arsenal was to be erected outside the medieval city wall beneath the escarpment of the Danube,44 connected by a canal to the river and to house shipyards, workshops, and a small fleet.45A new storehouse was to be erected on the site of newly demolished buildings to the south of the arsenal, close to the Salzburger Hof.46 By 1561 building work on the two bastions and on the arsenal appears to have been largely completed.47 An undated perspective sketch, which was copied by Albert Camesina in 1879, but is now lost, shows the progress of the building work on the house for the officers and the commander of the arsenal and also on a neighbouring wall, including the former area of those houses which had been demolished to make room for the fortifications.48 The transformation of the Danube front began towards the end of this phase. A piattaforma (platform, Fig. 5) and a new bastion, on the site of the older Biberbastei, were to be built, although unstable subsoil, a high water table, and unfavorable weather made the implementation of the projects very difficult. Another negative factor was the precarious financial situation, which deteriorated from 1561 onwards and led to the possibility that work on the fortifications and on other imperial buildings in and around Vienna would not be able to continue at a reasonable pace.49 The reason for the financial crisis was the enormous costs, which the fortifications against the Ottomans, particularly in Hungary and Croatia involved.50 In Vienna work came to a temporary halt more or less at the time of the death of Emperor Ferdinand I in 1564. In the following decades we know of suggested improvements by fortifications specialists such as Bartholomeo de Rocchi, Carlo Theti, and Daniel Specklin, but these were not realized.51 Only in the seventeenth century, in particular under Leopold I (1640–1705), did a further enlargement of the fortifications take place through the addition of ravelins, a covered way, and places-of-arms on the counterscarp. Later still, in the eighteenth century, a system of countermines below the glacis was among the measures taken.52

Climate and seasonal construction works

As far as we can tell from the sources and from literature, the timespan between 1547/48 and 1572 in particular brought years of heavy flooding and regular ice jams, both of which caused severe damage. The years from 1565 to 1571 seem to have been the worst in this respect.53 This period corresponds with the Grindelwald Fluctuation, the first extreme phase of the Little Ice Age lasting from the 1560s to the 1620s.54

Assessing the influence of climate change on the changes and dynamics of the Viennese Danube in the sixteenth century is difficult, but embedding the findings into the larger frame of a central European climate history helps interpret the dramatic changes taking place in the riverscape during those years. The ice jam flood in 1565 and several severe winter and summer floods in 1566 can be seen as the turning point in the hydromorphological history of the Viennese Danube. At that time, the river definitively relocated its main current to the northern Wolfarm. Both sudden erosion processes and gradual channel shifting contributed to the overall instability of the Viennese floodplain and caused numerous disputes concerning land properties and problems with transport routes and infrastructure in the riverscape.

Weather and climate (change) were of great significance for the construction of the fortifications on the Danube front. As early as 1531 the Imperial Military Council emphasized that fortification work would go ahead despite the cold and temperatures below freezing point, thus revealing one of the problems facing the construction work: the rigors of the weather.55 In 1537 and again in 1546 the mayor and the city council complained to Ferdinand I that the Danube bridges were damaged or had been torn away by the heavy rain and ice flooding.56 The staff available for repairs was overworked. Apparently the flood had also damaged parts of the fortifications at the Salztor (Salt Gate) and Rotenturmtor (Red Tower Gate) near the Danube.57

The fortification works were obstructed in 1549 by a high water table, which rose steadily in heavy rains. In a desperate step, the builder planked the entire surface of the building and tried to expel all the water. The cost of this measure was considered too high.58

A letter dated December 20, 1561 from Thoman Eiseler to the Emperor gives us a glimpse of the seasonality of construction activity, which was only able to progress when the Danube’s water level was low, as was normally the case in winter. Eiseler expressed his hope that the water would remain low for two months, which would allow him to complete the work. The Danube and its variability had to be considered in planning and determined the seasonal course of work.59 It soon became clear that this hope had been in vain. On St. Thomas’s Day, December 21, the water began to rise. On January 5, the groundwater level had dropped again, so that Eiseler tried to resume work on the Piattaforma. But on the night of the 10th of January and again on almost the entirety of the following day it again rained very heavily. Eiseler knew about the connection between rain in the upper reaches of the Danube and the swelling of the river and feared that it might have rained a lot in the catchment area of the Danube, provoking a renewed expansion of the river. In the spring of 1562 Eiseler urged the emperor to settle the outstanding claims of all contractors so that the workers would be able to take advantage of a potential low water period and proceed with the fortifications.60 On May 26, he mentions in a letter to Maximilian II three times klaihn wasser, i.e., a low water table, as the framework for a reasonable deployment of personnel. A low groundwater level was obviously a prerequisite for good construction progress.61

The management of natural dynamics was carried out with appropriate precautionary measures. Construction had to be based on the water and not on the favorable season from the workers’ point of view. They had to work in extreme summer heat and in icy winter cold, just as the river allowed.

Strategic challenges to the fortification work caused by topography

Fortifying the city was challenged by environmental prerequisites. As already mentioned, the hilly terrain to the west of the city and also the waterscape caused problems. Clearing the area immediately in front the fortifications from buildings and settlements was one thing. Coping with the terrain was another. The hill close to St. Ulrich in particular, where the monastery of St. Theobald was located (today in the 6th district of Vienna), formed a perfect location for the firing of artillery at the town. This can be found in considerations of the authorities.62 The well-known fortification architect and engineer Carlo Theti (1529–1589) dealt with this subject. He seems to have offered the emperor and his military council a solution to the strategic problem. Two plan sketches by Carlo Theti were recently published.63 The first includes the design of a citadel in exactly the place described, west of the city near St. Ulrich, and also an additional fortress wall protecting the Imperial castle. The second reflects the state of the Vienna fortifications. These sketches accompanied Theti’s elaborating manuscript from 1576, “Discorsi vari in materia di fortificazione per Vienna, con disegni,” which has survived in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan64 (Fig. 6). The citadel was never built.

 

The second major strategic problem was the Wien River/Wienfluss. The river itself flowed in from the west in a wide gravel bed, in some areas with several branches, and passed the walls southwest of the city. It took a winding route, especially with the bend called Ochsengries. From 1529 the Wien River was a frequent topic in the discussions of the military about the defense of the city.65 Particularly noteworthy are the statements of the military councilors during the deliberations on the fortifications along the Hungarian, Italian, and Croatian borders in August and September 1576, which were presented to the emperor and his councilors from October to December 1576.66 The military discussed the problem of the half-filled urban moat, which was not a proper barrier, and the broad river basin of the Wien River, which offered the enemy an opportunity to find shelter when attacking the town. A look at the two Angielini plans handed down in Karlsruhe and Dresden also shows the quite steep edge of the terrain, in particular from the Ochsengries in the south—that section of the Wienfluss where its course turns 90 degrees to the north—to the area of the Stubentor in the north.67 A particular problem for the military were the settlements in the area between the Wienfluss and the moat and city wall. In particular, the millstream with its mills and stone weirs, which feature prominently in the Karlsruhe and Dresden “Angielini” plans, were to be removed and the technical installations destroyed. The entire area should be levelled as far as possible. Even the deviation of the Wien River into the town for cleaning purposes was considered.68

A third major obstacle for the fortification works were the waters of the Danube. As described earlier, the water level varied. The climatic extremes of the Little Ice Age made the work even more complicated. The foundations were the most difficult problem. In 1559 trees in the woods belonging to the Scottish Abbey were to be felled to create construction piles for the foundations of a building planned between the Biberbastei and the Donaubastei.69 Whether this is a reference to the preparation of the ground for the construction of a curtain wall and/or for the so-called Piattaforma is not clear. A dispute among Imperial engineers about the composition of parts of the Piattaforma, which was built directly on the bank of the Vienna arm of the river, shows how systematically the appropriate construction methods were discussed. The construction of the masonry part of the Piattaforma, which following the opinion of master builder Francesco Theobaldi (died 1569) was to be built without Orillons (ear-shaped plan), was underway in 1561.70 A drawing copied by Albert Camesina reveals the progress of the construction, including of what the mathematician and cartographer Tilemann Stella (1525–1589) called “corners” on the wall,71 protruding parts which served as cutwaters (starlings) (Fig. 5). The high water table and problems to do with the foundations meant that water had to be constantly bailed out and also that wood for ever more and longer wooden piles had to be felled. The piles beneath the curtain walls elsewhere could be driven in much deeper than was possible around the Rotenturmtor, where they had to tipped with iron. Wooden piles with iron tips were discovered during the construction of an underground car park at Morzinplatz, the former site of the Piattaforma, in 1972 (Fig. 7). The last datable tree ring from such a pile was dated to 1554, proving that the object did indeed originate in the period of construction mentioned in the sources. 72 We do not know when exactly the Piattaforma was completed, but by 1563 it was sufficiently finished to begin the construction of the flanking positions.73 The structure was later replaced by the Great Gonzagabastei, completed in 1664.74 The square platform known as the Biberbastei, which was built against the eastern corner of the city wall at the confluence of the Wien River with the Danube, was replaced by a large new structure with casemates and recessed flankers between 1561 and 1563. Work on the foundations ran into difficulties because of the high water levels in the immediate vicinity of the Danube then as well.75 The site had to be bailed out constantly. The area around the Biberbastei was incorporated into the moat, while the river front was not equipped with such a ditch.

Surveying the Waterscape in Order to Resettle the Suburbs

In June 1569 we read of a military project to relocate the suburbs to the Unterer Werd. On 4 June of that year, the court military councilor Franz von Poppendorf wrote to tell the emperor that there was a great deal of “disorder” in the suburbs. The suburbs and gardens posed a danger. The inhabitants would have to be removed, but they should be offered replacement land on the island called Unterer Werd between Schlagbruecke and Alter Tabor. Areas had already been marked out. The inhabitants of the suburbs could be relocated within a two-year period.76

In December 1577 the emperor commissioned Poppendorf to make a draft plan. Poppendorf inspected the Tabor with the fortress architect and engineer Ottavio Baldigara. Baldigara sketched the situation and surveyed the “island” in the Danube.77 His conclusion was that part of the island would have to be raised to keep it dry and habitable. Any potential settlers who were concerned about the situation should look to the recently built house of Wolff Fischer as a model for all future houses. Fischer had built up the ground so high that the water was not a danger.

The emperor obviously had doubts about the safety of the new urban settlement between Schlag- and Taborbrücke. In particular, the emperor asked whether the “new town”78 would not in fact serve the enemy, and thus be harmful to the city. Poppendorf outlined strategic considerations for the defense of cities and the specific problems of the case of Vienna: the main point of a fortress was that all places around it were cleared and that the enemy was thus deprived of the benefits of settled areas. He can therefore not approach the fortress and is not able to entrench his army or artillery. The enemy must, as far as possible, be stopped outside the city, fought and decimated. Another advantage of stopping him in front of the city was that it would then be possible to observe where he planned to attack the fortification. One must hold off the enemy for as long as possible, so that he would begin to run out of provisions and be forced into a war of attrition. Some drawbacks cannot be averted, he wrote, but the suburbs and gardens, which are detrimental to fortification, should be removed, trenches and cellars filled in, and a flat space established around the city. The suburbs were to be relocated to the island—the Unterer Werd.79 The disadvantages of such a new town would not be comparable to those of the previous condition; there was no advantage for the enemy. Even if the island were not fortified, the enemy would have no advantage over the current situation. If the old city were lost, the new one could decide whether to defend itself or to withdraw the inhabitants across the Danube and destroy the bridges behind it.

The populated and fortified island also had the advantage that the enemy would have to split up his camp, with one part south and one part north of the Danube. He would have to divide his Janissaries—that is, the Ottoman elite troops, of which there were generally about 10,000— because he would be forced to attack two cities at once. He could only build his camp in the floodplains on flood-prone terrain, which would be to his disadvantage. In addition, he could not use cavalry in those areas, as they were swampy and crisscrossed by ditches.80 The planned relocation of the suburban population into a fortified new town would, according to the military council, be the only sensible solution to the problems.81 Nevertheless, this fortress was not realized in the way the military councilors had proposed.

The waters, especially the Danube as a barrier on the one hand, and the populated and unpopulated Danube floodplains on the other, played a significant role in the deliberations of the military council.

Conclusion

The Ottoman siege of 1529 changed the perception of the town. Its inhabitants had painfully experienced the opportunities inherent in new military technology and control of the Danube. The Viennese were lucky to have beaten back the aggressors. As a consequence a new type of fortification was built: the Italian bastion system. Building materials like wood, clay, or stone were taken from the surroundings of the city leading to further changes in the landscape. The immediate vicinity of the walls was totally cleared of settlement. Planners and engineers presented concepts dealing with fortifying floodplain areas and heights overlooking the city after having studied the strategic risks inherent in the land- and waterscape. The process of building the fortifications, which lasted for the entirety of the sixteenth century and beyond, was impeded by the terrain, especially on the side of the city exposed to the Danube. Structures were eroded and seasonal variation of water levels caused problems. The movement of the Danube away from the town in combination with heavy flooding in the years of the Little Ice Age was clearly observed by the engineers. Several measures were taken to convert the Viennese environment into a military landscape, including the strategic use of natural terrain.

Bibliography

Archival sources

Alte Feldakten [AFA]

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv [FHKA]

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Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv [KA]

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv, Alte Hofkammer, Hoffinanz, Niederösterreichische Herrschaftsakten [NÖHA]

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Finanz- und Hofkammerarchiv, Alte Hofkammer, Hoffinanz, Niederösterreichische Kammer [NÖK]

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Oberkammeramt, B1/1. Reihe, Oberkammeramtsrechnungen [OKAR]

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Camesina, Albert. Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte Wien’s im XVI. Jahrhundert. Vienna: A. Hölder, 1881.

Eberle, Ludwig. “Wien als Festung (1530–1740).” In Geschichte der Stadt Wien, vol. 4, 218–82. Vienna: Verlag des Alterthumvereines zu Wien, 1909.

Glaser, Rüdiger. Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas: 1000 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen. Darmstadt: Primus, 2008.

Hohensinner, Severin et al. “Changes in Water and Land: The Reconstructed Viennese Riverscape from 1500 to the Present.” Water History 5, no. 2 (2013): 145–72.

Jeitler, Markus. “Schriftquellen zur Bauorganisation der Wiener Stadtbefestigung im 16. Jahrhundert: Neue Überlegungen zum Bau der Burg- und Löblbastei.” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Denkmalpflege 64, nos. 1–2 (2010): 45–52.

Jeitler, Markus. “Die Burgbastei.” In Die Wiener Hofburg 1521–1705: Baugeschichte, Funktion und Etablierung als Kaiserresidenz, edited by Herbert Karner, 176–83. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014.

Jeitler, Markus. “Historische Quellen zur Elendbastion.” In Von der mittelalterlichen Stadtmauer zur neuzeitlichen Festung Wiens Historisch-archäologische Auswertung der Grabungen in Wien 1, Wipplingerstraße 33–35, edited by Sylvia Sakl-Oberthaler et al., 215–21. Vienna: Phoibos-Verlag, 2016.

Krause, Heike. “Der Stadtgraben und das Glacis der Festung Wien: Die Grabung Wien 1, Weihburggasse.” Fundort Wien. Beiträge zur Archäologie 14 (2011): 32–70.

Krause, Heike. “Die Erste Türkenbelagerung von Wien im Jahr 1529 und ihre städtebaulichen Folgen.” In Von der mittelalterlichen Stadtmauer zur neuzeitlichen Festung Wiens Historisch-archäologische Auswertung der Grabungen in Wien 1, Wipplingerstraße 33–35, edited by Sylvia Sakl-Oberthaler et al., 162–90. Vienna: Phoibos-Verlag, 2016.

Krause, Heike, and Christoph Sonnlechner. “Wien wird Festungsstadt – Der Ausbau nach der Belagerung von 1529 bis in die Mitte der 1560er Jahre.” In Wien als Festungsstadt im 16. Jahrhundert: Zum kartografischen Werk der Mailänder Familie Angielini, edited by Ferdinand Opll, Heike Krause, and Christoph Sonnlechner, 147–220. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2017.

Liepolt, Reinhard. Limnologie der Donau. Stuttgart: Schweizerbart‘sche Verlagsbuch­handlung, 1965.

Mader, Ingrid, ed. Die Residenzstadt Wien an der Donau: Die Geschichte der Stadtbefestigung am Beispiel der Neutorbastion. Festungsforschung 10. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2018.

Mollo, Giuseppe. “Carlo Theti: i ‘Discorsi delle fortificationi´di un ingegnere militare del XVI secolo.” In Storie e teorie dell’architettura dal Quattrocento al Novecento, edited by Alfredo Buccaro, Gaetana Cantone, and Francesco Starace. Quaderni di storia dell’Architettura 1. 83–132 Pisa: Pacini Editore, 2008.

Opll, Ferdinand. Alte Grenzen im Wiener Raum. Kommentare zum Historischen Atlas von Wien 4. Vienna, Munich: Jugend und Volk, 1986.

Opll, Ferdinand, Heike Krause, and Christoph Sonnlechner. Wien als Festungsstadt im 16. Jahrhundert: Zum kartografischen Werk der Mailänder Familie Angielini. Vienna, Cologne, Weimar: Böhlau, 2017.

Pálffy, Géza. “Der Preis für die Verteidigung der Habsburgermonarchie: Die Kosten der Türkenabwehr in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts.” In Finanzen und Herrschaft: Materielle Grundlagen fürstlicher Politik in den habsburgischen Ländern und im Heiligen Römischen Reich im 16. Jahrhundert, edited by Friedrich Edelmayer, Maximilian Lanzinner and Peter Rauscher, 20–44. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 38. Vienna, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2003.

Perger, Richard. Straßen, Türme und Basteien Das Straßennetz der Wiener City in seiner Entwicklung und seinen Namen: Ein Handbuch. Forschungen und Beiträge zur Wiener Stadtgeschichte 22. Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1991.

Pfister, Christian. “Climatic Extremes, Recurrent Crises and Witch Hunts: Strategies of European Societies in Coping with Exogenous Shocks in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries.” The Medieval History Journal 10, no. 1–2 (2007): 1–41.

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Pfister, Christian. Wetternachhersage: 500 Jahre Klimavariationen und Naturkatastrophen (1496–1995). Bern: Haupt Verlag, 1999.

Reichhalter, Gerhard. “Von der Ringmauer zum Festungswall.” In Von der mittelalterlichen Stadtmauer zur neuzeitlichen Festung Wiens: Historisch-archäologische Auswertung der Grabungen in Wien 1, Wipplingerstraße 33–35, edited by Sylvia Sakl-Oberthaler et al., 149–53. Vienna: Phoibos-Verlag, 2016.

Sakl-Oberthaler, Sylvia et al., Von der mittelalterlichen Stadtmauer zur neuzeitlichen Festung Wiens: Historisch-archäologische Auswertung der Grabungen in Wien 1, Wipplingerstraße 33–35. Monografien der Stadtarchäologie Wien Bd. 9. Vienna: Phoibos-Verlag, 2016.

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Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees? Ottoman-Hungarian Wars and Forest Resources*

András Vadas and Péter Szabó

Eötvös Loránd University / Central European University and Czech Academy of Sciences

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The present paper analyzes the relationship of the Ottoman wars to the loss of forests in the Carpathian Basin. An important thesis of twentieth-century scholarship was that the Ottomans were to be blamed for the crash of the so-called “traditional” landscape of the lowlands of the Carpathian Basin. The paper argues that this view needs serious reconsideration, especially in light of research into two interconnected aspects found in a Hungarian region, Transdanubia, that is the focus of the paper. First, we estimate the amount of woodland before and after the Ottoman occupation. Second, we quantify the role military fortifications may have played in wood consumption (and therefore potentially in deforestation). We focus on the central parts of the Transdanubian region. The counties to be examined in more detail (Vas, Veszprém, and Zala) were among those most significantly impacted by the continuous wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This area arguably could be indicative of processes in other lowlands and hilly areas in the Carpathian Basin, though bearing in mind that forest regeneration may have been fundamentally different in the territories of lowlands, hilly areas, and mountain ranges.

Keywords: environmental history, Ottoman Hungary, forest cover, timber consumption, earth and wood fortifications

Introduction

The political changes of the sixteenth century significantly transformed the spatial and economic structure of the Carpathian Basin. The Ottomans’ gradual occupation of the Great Hungarian Plain and the Transdanubian region (lands to the south and west of the Danube) in the aftermath of the battle of Mohács (1526) led to both settlement concentration and desertion. In this period, Hungarian humanist authors as well as folk songs and other literary sources frequently recall the time before, during the Middle Ages, when the land of Hungary was rich and fertile. It is juxtaposed to the recent devastation of the country.1 This narrative has proven to be a lasting one. Research conducted in the interwar era perceived the Ottoman period (which lasted until the end of the seventeenth century) as one of complete devastation or at a minimum a deep crisis of the land. The most important thesis was that the Ottomans were to be blamed for the crash of the so-called “traditional” landscape of the lowlands of the Carpathian Basin. Two prominent historians of the interwar period, Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfű, echoed this view in their Hungarian History. In Szekfű’s chapter on the seventeenth century, the Great Hungarian Plain was characterized in apocalyptic terms:

The running wild of the Hungarian landscape (…) is the direct consequence of the desertion of the areas south of the Győr–Budapest–Debrecen line. (…) Villages were destroyed, people and livestock left the area; they fled or were taken into Ottoman captivity. As we shall see, instead of twenty-five or thirty villages, only one mid-sized market town was left, the inhabitants of which possessed 2–300,000 acres of uninhabited wasteland [puszta]. With people leaving, the reign of grasses started. Lands became covered in grass; here it became a sand dune, and there it turned into salt marsh. The whole plain became fallow, the remaining forest could no longer provide enough moisture, [and] with the loss of moisture the wasteland started to expand again, which the Hungarians of the previous centuries thought to have cast away for good from Hungarian soil. (…)2

The image of settlements being abandoned due to Ottoman plundering, and forests and plowlands becoming wastelands, was later criticized by ecologists, historians, and archeologists. Forestry experts were critical of this theory already in the interwar era.3 In more recent literature, the period features not so much as one of crisis but more as a time of changes necessitated by the presence of the Ottomans. Nonetheless, because of the political situation and climatic processes (which included some of the harsher phases of the Little Ice Age), scholarship indirectly describes this period through a narrative of decline.4 One of the cornerstones of this decline narrative is the loss of forests in the Great Hungarian Plain and Transdanubia and the expansion of marshes in the lowlands. Referring to the loss of forests is especially prevalent in the context of the frontier zones of Ottoman-Hungarian wars, where in many cases the literature assumed total deforestation.

The literature traditionally used two kinds of evidence. Medieval sources, especially foreign narratives, almost always referred to the richness of forests in the Carpathian Basin. Nonetheless, this richness has to be considered in context. Most chroniclers came from Western Europe, especially from the northern parts of present-day France, the Low Countries, and present-day Germany.5 Compared to these areas, the Carpathian Basin was relatively rich in forests. By contrast, accounts from the Early Modern Period refer to huge wastelands, probably exaggerating the devastation by the Ottomans. The low proportion of the forests in the Great Hungarian Plain that is evident in all historical material from the eighteenth century onwards coupled with the traditional anti-Ottoman viewpoint resulted in the attribution of a major loss of woodland to the Ottoman presence. Changes in the function of woodlands in this area are clear from a number of sources,6 but changes in the extent of woodlands are hard to demonstrate based on the archival sources available for either the pre- or the post-Ottoman period. As a result, a comprehensive reevaluation of landscape changes in the areas affected by the Ottomans either by their constant presence or through occasional plundering remains to be done.7

Within the limits of the present paper, we cannot attempt to offer a complete evaluation of the consequences of the Ottoman occupation for Hungarian landscapes or even for forests. Instead, we will focus on two interconnected aspects in a single, spatially limited area. First, we will try to estimate the amount of woodland before and after the Ottoman occupation. Second, we will quantify the role military fortifications may have played in wood consumption (and therefore potentially in deforestation). We will focus on the central parts of the Transdanubian region. The counties to be examined in greater detail (Vas, Veszprém, and Zala) were among those most significantly impacted by the continuous wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This area arguably could be indicative of processes in other lowlands and hilly areas in the Carpathian Basin, but one should bear in mind that forest regeneration may have been fundamentally different in areas of lowlands, hills, and mountain ranges.

Changes in Woodland Cover in the Ottoman Period

The easiest way to assess the direct impact of the Ottoman occupation for woodland cover in the Carpathian Basin would be to compare solid quantitative data from the early sixteenth and the late seventeenth centuries. This, however, is not possible. Late medieval data, as we shall see, is highly fragmented and can be at most indicative of the general situation. At the other end, there are probably more data for the late seventeenth century, but these data remain unprocessed. The first reliable account of woodland cover in the Carpathian Basin is from the 1780s, almost a century after the Ottomans were driven out of the area.

For the Middle Ages, the best available sources to describe the proportions of different land-uses are the so-called estimations. An estimation was a legal procedure during which the lands of a noble landlord were appraised to establish their monetary value. Because different land-uses had different values, the resulting surveys included data on the amount of arable land, meadows, woods, pastures, vineyards, etc. within various administrative units. One of us compiled a database of late medieval estimations in the early 2000s.8 This database contains material for approximately one percent of the territory of the Carpathian Basin. The database is undoubtedly in need of updating and with all medieval charters now available in a digital form (which was very much not the case when the database was originally compiled), probably significantly more estimations could be found. However, this additional work still remains to be done and for the present we have to make do with the existing database. At least some data are available for eight counties in Transdanubia (either partially or entirely): Veszprém, Zala, Vas, Esztergom, Baranya, Sopron, Komárom, and Tolna. There is no data for Somogy, Fejér, Pilis, Győr, or Moson counties. Taken as a whole, the data show that Transdanubia was 56% wooded before the Ottoman occupation (33,117 ha. of woodland out of a total of 59,573 ha. of land with data). And yet the actual woodland cover in the period and region likely has to be estimated downward because less wooded counties (e.g., Fejér, Győr, Komárom, Tolna) contributed little or no data to these high percentages. Most of the data comes from a handful of wooded counties, and the most wooded parts of those counties. Thus if we average the percentages recorded for separate counties, we end up with a figure of 39%.

If we turn our attention to the counties of Veszprém, Zala, and Vas, we see high percentages: 82% for Vas (18 settlements with data), 58% for Veszprém (16 settlements with data), and 47% for Zala (8 settlements with data). Even in the case of these three counties, which are relatively well covered by estimations compared to the other counties in Transdanubia, data is available for less than 5% of their territories. Nonetheless, the estimations suggest that Vas County was the most wooded. The county in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was defined by the frontier protection system usually referred to in the scholarly literature as gyepű.9 This area was settled somewhat later than most lowlands of the Carpathian Basin, which may explain why there were more woodlands here than for instance in Veszprém County. However, more than three-quarters woodland cover may be somewhat exaggerated. This may stem simply from the fact that the few villages described by the estimations lay in more forested areas. Veszprém County had fewer forests, but that still meant almost 60%. Most of the county lies in a hilly region dominated by the forested slopes of the Bakony Mountains. Bakony was among the Royal Forests dating back to the Árpádian period. Until the late medieval period the Forest was scarcely settled because of its use as a hunting ground. From the fourteenth century onwards the administrative structures of the Royal Forest gradually disappeared and woodland cover probably decreased.10 Zala was the least wooded of the three counties as suggested by the estimations. Its still significant woodland cover may be partly explained by the fact that until the twentieth century the county included large parts of the Bakony Mountains. In sum, the data provided by estimations are anything but precise. They indicate that the three counties under study were well-wooded, but this really only means the Bakony Mountains for certain, where most of the available data come from. Overall, woodland cover in the counties was most probably lower than percentages shown the by estimations, but it would be difficult to say by how much.

As mentioned above, the first comprehensive dataset about woodland cover in the Carpathian Basin originated in the 1780s, when most of the territory of the Habsburg Empire (including Hungary) was mapped for military purposes. The research potential of the sheets of the First Military Survey was amply demonstrated for example in the Great Hungarian Plain.11 As the present study focuses on Transdanubia, which lacks a similar study, we chose to analyze forest cover in the region including the three counties of Vas, Veszprém, and Zala. Altogether 1,453 sheets were prepared for Hungary, Transylvania, and the Temes region.12 From these sheets 235 cover the territory of Transdanubia. The method we chose to estimate woodland cover is relatively simple. Each sheet was divided into a grid of 6x4, after which each grid was further divided into 3x3 smaller cells, resulting in altogether 216 cells per sheet. Each cell represents approximately 1 km2. We estimated whether forests or other land uses were dominant in each cell. The number of forested cells represented woodland cover for each map sheet. This is not the most sensitive or sophisticated method to estimate woodland cover, but the results can be considered reliable at the given resolution. The whole territory of Transdanubia consists of ca. 42,700 cells, of which approximately 15,000 cells comprised the counties of Vas, Veszprém, and Zala. Overall forest cover in Transdanubia in the 1780s appears to have been around 32%. The three counties analyzed here had somewhat more forests than the region as a whole (Vas 37%, Zala 38%, and Veszprém 39%). In general, lowland areas everywhere in the Carpathian Basin had fewer forests than uplands and mountain areas, hence the higher proportion of woodlands in these counties than for instance in the neighboring Somogy, Győr, or Moson counties.

When comparing late medieval and late eighteenth-century data, there is an apparent loss of woodland. For the whole of Transdanubia, late medieval estimations show ca. 56% woodland cover as opposed to 32% in the 1780s. For the three counties of Vas, Zala, and Veszprém, a similar decrease can be observed. It should also be noted that whatever differences existed between the three counties around 1500, they were gone three centuries later. It would be easy to interpret the above percentages at face value and ascribe the effect to the Ottoman occupation. However, there are good reasons to be cautious. As for Transdanubia as a whole, we have argued above that the ca. 56% woodland cover recorded in late medieval estimations was almost certainly too high, and a different interpretation of averages indicate a 39% woodland cover. This means that the actual difference in medieval and late eighteenth century woodland cover was in all probability considerably less than 24%, and much closer to 10%. This holds true for Vas, Veszprém, and Zala counties as well. The other reason for caution is that the First Military Survey did not record the situation right after the Ottoman occupation but an entire century later. This century was a time of large-scale rebuilding and recolonization. Between 1711 and 1790, Hungary’s population increased more than twofold, from ca. 4 million to ca. 10 million, and in the case of these three counties more than threefold.13

The two main processes that concern us in this paper are settlement abandonment and (re)colonization. It is beyond doubt that many settlements were abandoned during the Ottoman occupation, especially in the frontier zone between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, where continual warfare made settled agriculture highly risky. That said, it would be difficult to estimate the rate of settlement desertion partly because of the difficulties in comparing Hungarian and Ottoman sources and partly because ‘desertion’ itself is a complicated term and what was referred to by this word had been widespread in Hungary already before the Ottoman period.14 Nonetheless, at least in Transdanubia, settlement abandonment implied reforestation. Any piece of land left by human inhabitants quickly turned into scrubland and then into forest. This is typical of the hilly areas where woodland regeneration can take place easily, especially compared to the lowlands such as the Danube–Tisza Interfluve. The other process was (re)colonization after the Ottoman period. This concerned areas of former settlements as well as areas without former inhabitation. In these territories, forests had to be cleared to make space for people and arable lands.15 There were at least three different forms of forest clearance to which seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Transdanubian sources refer. In areas with larger trees, the most effective form of clearance was cutting the trees with axes and then getting rid of the stumps and the remaining scrub with grub axes. This has been identified by research to have been present in many areas in Transdanubia. Another common form of forest clearance was ring-barking (in Hungarian kerengetés or aszalás). Settlement and place names as well as other sources attest to the existence this form of clearing also in Transdanubia.16 The process itself was rather slow. The bark, cambium, and sapwood of individual trees were damaged in a circle to the extent that the tree could no longer transport enough water and nutrients in its tissues. This resulted in the drying out and eventual death of the trees. The quality of these trees was usually good, because the timber did not warp. The third and fundamentally different form used in Transdanubia for woodland clearance was burning.17 This may have been used in a rather limited area as less income could be generated by the burning of the standing trees than by harvesting and selling them.

As an example of the resettling process, we will briefly discuss the above-mentioned Bakony Mountains. The area was very much affected by the Ottoman wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After Székesfehérvár, in the center of Transdanubia, fell to the Ottomans in 1543, there were repeated Ottoman military campaigns and raids in and around the Bakony. Many of the settlements either shrank in size or were abandoned in the course of the sixteenth century. Unlike other regions that were under permanent Ottoman control, the area north of Lake Balaton experienced fewer military campaigns and raids in the seventeenth century. This resulted in an earlier resettling of the area. Resettlement was also more gradual than in areas that were under Ottoman control for one-and-a-half centuries. This is visible in the forms of forest clearance as well. The sources here do not mention clearance by burning, but often refer to ring-barking.18 A number of new settlements emerged from the mid-seventeenth century onwards.19 This was not unique to this area: similar processes may be identified, of course with some chronological differences, in other areas of the middle mountain range of Transdanubia. As has recently been shown, in the areas under permanent control by the Ottomans, i.e., the southern half of Transdanubia, the resettlement process started only after the Ottomans were expelled or only after the end of Rákóczi’s War of Independence (1703–1711).20 The examples from this region very clearly point to a loss of forests in the eighteenth century via systematic clearances.21 The transformation of forests into arable land was a rather slow process. This was shown in the most detailed manner through the example of Várong, a small village in the hills of Tolna County in the southeastern part of the Transdanubia.22 It took almost a century for the people who settled here to reintroduce the two- and three-field systems that had been widespread by the late medieval period. It took also surprisingly long for the settlement itself to settle on a fixed location. In addition to forest clearance through settlement, the rebuilding of the country’s infrastructure—roads, bridges, embankments, water regulation works, etc.—required massive amounts of timber.23 Nonetheless, and in spite of complaints to the contrary, until the end of the eighteenth century, wood was probably not a scarce resource in the areas that the Ottomans wars had previously affected.24

Military Defense and Timber Consumption in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries in Central Transdanubia

One of the most prevalent motifs in discussions about the effects of the Ottoman occupation on Hungarian woodland is timber consumption for military purposes, especially for palisade fortifications. A number of works suggested that the construction of hundreds of new fortifications from the 1540s onwards as well as their maintenance for one-and-a-half centuries represented significant pressure on forests and was one, if not the most important, cause of deforestation. Other scholars voiced more cautious opinions.25 Our main goal is to reconsider how much timber was used for the building and maintenance of the numerous fortifications and fortified watchtowers (also referred to in the literature as palisades, earth and wood fortifications, and palankas) that stood in the three analyzed counties of Transdanubia in the Ottoman period. We will attempt to achieve this goal by quantifying and comparing consumption (the number of fortifications and the amount of timber needed to build and maintain them) and production (the woodland area necessary to produce the given amount of timber).

Two basic types of sources are available to study timber consumption: written and archeological. As to the first type, Sándor Takáts published dozens of works on the history of the Ottoman period based on archival research he carried out in Vienna at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. In the absence of later systematic research on this issue, scholars ever since have used his data to demonstrate large-scale timber and fuel wood consumption during the Ottoman period in the fortifications of the border defense systems.26 In addition to being highly scattered both geographically and temporally, the numbers provided by Takáts are difficult to use as they always describe wood consumption for one single fortification in a single year, which tells nothing about the details or breakdown of consumption. István Sugár followed a different approach in the 1990s. He studied the timber acquisitions of the castle of Eger, one of the most significant border castles on the northern edge of the Great Hungarian Plain, in the mid-sixteenth century. He looked at the supply zones for different types of wood. He showed that timber was usually brought to the castle from the neighboring forests, but the data also show the acquisition of wood from as far away as Maramureş, some 300 kilometers east of Eger. This latter piece of information cannot be taken as a sign of the lack of wood in the neighborhood as in most cases the castle was supplied from within a radius of a dozen kilometers.27 Regarding archeological data, archeologist Gyöngyi Kovács and paleoecologist Pál Sümegi recently published a short but important study.28 By examining the physical remains of palisades, they attempted to calculate the amount of timber needed to build such fortifications. In our view, the best approach to understanding the impact of the military constructions on forest cover is a combination of such archeological data with a reasonably comprehensive view on the number and types of fortifications.

Relatively little attention has been paid to palisade fortifications until recently, because they were believed to have been quite simple architecture,29 and only a few of them had been properly excavated.30 From the point of view of our goal, the most important question is the structure of the walls. When trying to estimate the amount of timber used to build and maintain various fortifications, one of the basic features is the number of logs used per meter of wall.

Before giving a brief overview of the fortification types it is important to note that there was no major difference between the building techniques used by the Ottomans and the Hungarians (Habsburgs).31 The scholarly literature usually refers to three major types of fortifications. The first, the so-called latorkert, may have been the simplest solution to provide a building with at least some protection. It was basically a palisade created by logs driven in next to each other at small intervals and had a wattling to connect these logs. This did not require much technological knowledge from the builders and was used frequently to provide protection to watchtowers (the górés), manor houses, late medieval palace buildings, or churches. It was also used as an exterior defense line for more elaborate earth and wood fortifications. The amount of timber needed for these fences was relatively high compared to their limited defensive role, as the logs were driven in at narrow intervals.32

More elaborate types of wooden fortifications had logs driven into the ground in two parallel lines. The two lines were formed by logs at somewhat greater intervals than in the case of simple palisades. In order to strengthen the structure, the logs were joined by branches. The best type of wood for connecting the logs was probably willow, but it seems that all kinds of branches were used to strengthen the structure of the walls.33 Earth was filled in between the two lines of logs, which gave considerable thickness and strength to the walls and provided much better protection than simple wooden palisades. The amount of earth likely required was a huge quantity, as in some cases the two lines of logs were relatively distant from each other, sometimes well over a meter. In some cases, as it has been recently demonstrated by the example of the fortifications of the town of Szécsény in the northern Hungary, besides the two lines of logs, there was a thick embankment erected that was also strengthened with logs.34 The third type of fortification that has been identified in the scholarship is similar to the previous one, except that the logs in these fortifications were joined not only by branches but also by iron bands, making the fortification even more difficult to besiege.35

As a starting point in providing an estimate of the wood consumption of Ottoman-period fortifications in Vas, Veszprém, and Zala counties, a database of all the defensive structures had to be created. At least a few parameters had to be defined in order to calculate the timber needed for a specific fortification: first, its size and shape; second, its structure. It is to be noted here that the calculations provided below could not include the timber consumption related to buildings inside the various fortifications. These buildings inside the walls were also significant consumers of wood. However, partly because we lack comprehensive research on these buildings, any estimates would well exceed the uncertainties connected to calculating the fortification walls themselves. In any case, probably the most important consumers were the fortification walls, and these had to be maintained more regularly than the timber used in buildings. It should also be noted that in a number of cases, combinations of palisades and stone fortification existed: there was a palisade that encircled a large area, inside this perimeter there was an earth and wood defensive wall to protect the inner stone or brick castle. For instance, in the case of the castle of Kanizsa, one of the most significant fortifications in western Transdanubia, there were at least three parallel walls protecting the stronghold.36

Different numbers of logs were needed for a castle that stood for a decade compared to one that was in use for the more than 150 years of Ottoman presence in Transdanubia. Fortifications also had to be reconstructed on a regular basis because of the natural deterioration of the materials as well as damage from sieges, fires, and so on. It is challenging to estimate how long logs could last on average, how often the branches had to be repositioned, and how frequently minor earth filling works were conducted.

Some of these problems are easier to deal with than others. There is little chance of knowing what type of fortifications stood in different places. In some cases written evidence gives detailed insights into the structure and size of fortifications, such as in Körmend, Kanizsa, Győr, Pápa, Bajcsavár, and about a dozen others. However, there were many more small watchtowers and minor castles about which little is known apart from their approximate location. Similarly, the length of time fortifications were in operation is difficult to ascertain. In some cases there are precise data on the beginnings of the fortification in a certain place, on extensions during the wars, etc. In other cases, either because of the lack of research into a fortification, the loss of sources, or simply because of its short existence, there are only a few references, or just single one, to a fortification. This is especially true for small fortifications similar to górés or small watchtowers surrounded by a wooden fence.

These points set a number of barriers to a reliable calculation of the timber consumption of the fortifications in Transdanubia, but our goal is to achieve a rough understanding of the scale of timber consumption in order to evaluate how important the Ottoman period and the military activities may have been in the change of forest cover in Transdanubia.

We had to make a number of methodological decisions and restrictions in order to arrive at some conclusions. We had to accept that it is impossible to collect all archeological and historical data on each of the fortifications as part of the present research. We had to find a way to make some generalizations. Three major tasks had to be accomplished to achieve this. First, we had to estimate the average perimeter of fortifications at different levels of importance; second, we had to decide whether to assume a single palisade or a more complex earth and wood fortification wall; and third, we had to estimate how long the timber of the fortifications lasted, i.e., approximately how often logs had to be replaced by new logs.

Thanks to the meticulous research of the past few decades, one can attain a relatively precise view of the size and perimeter of a number of fortifications and also the size of the garrisons that were ordered by the Ottoman and the Habsburg–Hungarian military administrations to man them.37 In cases where scholarly literature referred to the size of the fortifications, our task was relatively easy. However, in the majority of the cases, only the size of the garrisons ordered in different years was available. In order to estimate the number of logs used for fortifications of unknown size, we looked at data on garrisons to gauge an average size for the fortifications. Our assumption is that the number of men in a garrison had some correlation with the size, but of course this was not always straightforward. Another problem, discussed below, was the fact that the same fortification had garrisons of very different size in different periods of the Ottoman wars, even though according to the present state of scholarship many of these fortifications themselves did not change much in size. Despite these not negligible shortcomings, our solution still appears best suited to estimate the scale of the perimeter of these fortifications.

We also had to estimate the wood consumption of the three different basic types of fortifications. One meter of the wall in different earth and wood fortifications required different amounts of wood. We tried to estimate both the average consumption of simple fences and of the fortification that had logs palisaded in two parallel lines.

The former is relatively easy. The post holes at the different fortifications suggest that 20- to 30-centimeter diameter logs were prevalent in these constructions. Estimating using the smaller version and relatively limited, ca. 10-centimeter gaps between logs, a meter of these walls consumed ca. 3 logs. The log consumption of more complex fortifications is somewhat less evident. The logs used here were basically the same size, but their intervals varied more. Recent research has produced important results in identifying the number of logs used for building these earth and wood fortifications. Based on the examples of the fortifications of Barcs, Bajcsavár, and Szécsény, the interval between two logs may have varied between 40 and 60 centimeters.38 Estimating similarly with the smaller, 20-centimeter logs, set at 40 centimeter intervals to identify the greatest possible consumption, each meter of earth and wood fortification needed 3.2 logs for the more complex fortifications that had the logs in two parallel lines (1.6 for both line of logs). Because of the fairly close results in the case of the log demand of fences and earth and wood fortifications, we chose to calculate with three logs per meter for all types of structures. Some fortifications had inner and outer walls, or at least an outer palisade in addition to an earth and wood wall, but this only modified the calculation in a few individual cases.

As noted above, the size of the garrisons stationed in the fortifications varied significantly in different years on both sides of the frontier. When data are available, we used numbers based on the sixteenth-century garrisons from the earliest sources published by Klára Hegyi on the Ottoman side of the frontier and the sources published mostly by Géza Pálffy, László Vándor, and József Kelenik on the Hungarian side. We tried to avoid the most important biases, the large garrisons during the Fifteen Years’ War, as well as the slightly lower mid-seventeenth century numbers. We used the earliest possible data. Based on the garrisons of the fortifications, we identified three categories. The smallest fortifications had fewer than 50 men. The size of fortifications with a small but continuous presence of troops could, of course, differ significantly in wood consumption from a mere watchtower. Based on the size of well-studied fortifications in Transdanubia (Csány, Főnyed, Szentgyörgy, Szenyér, and Tótfalu39), and assuming two logs from a single tree,40 ca. 300 trees might have been enough to build the fortifications of a castle or watchtower of this scale. Castles with between 50 and 199 troops must have been larger based on the fortifications held by the Ottomans (Vál, Paks, Újpalánk, and Dombó41) and the Hungarians (Babócsa, Lenti, Fonyód, and Csákány42). The average number of trees required for these fortifications may have been ca. 600 trees. It has to be noted, however, that the numbers are not always straightforward; just to note one problem, some of the fortifications in the largest category, forts with more than 200 troops, were no larger or only slightly so than those with sometimes significantly smaller garrisons. The category with the most troops (200 and above) is more problematic than the smaller ones. They often housed not only troops but had significant civil populations as well. This makes the estimates less accurate, but because most fortifications in Transdanubia fell into the first and second categories, i.e., housed less than 200 troops, this problem does not significantly affect our calculations. Based on the size of some of the fortifications that fell into the third category, Berzence, and Paks43 on the Ottoman side, and Körmend, Egerszeg, Kiskomár, and Bajcsavár44 on the Hungarian side, we estimated that ca. 1,000 trees were required for their construction.

If precise data are available for individual fortifications, we of course used these data rather than the standardized sizes. In some cases the two are clearly different; one example is the town Keszthely, which had a relatively small garrison, around 100 people, but as the fortification surrounded the town’s houses, it required significant amounts of wood. The area that the earth and wood fortification surrounded was ca. 400x500 meters.45 The structure in this case was more elaborate than of just a wooden palisade: it had two parallel lines of logs with earth filled in-between them. Building this fortification probably required ca. 5,400 logs, i.e., 2,700 felled trees. There are examples of the opposite situation as well, when a large military population was ordered to defend a rather small fortification. This was possible because many of the troops did not actually live inside the encircled areas except during war conditions. A good example of this is the well-studied fortification of Bajcsavár. The fortification’s size and shape is well documented. The pentagonal fortification, partly brick, partly earth and wood, required less than 800 trees or 1600 logs but housed as many as 550 men.46

A follow-up problem is to find out how often logs had to be replaced in fortifications. There are a number of sources on reconstructions, for instance, in the case of the fortifications at Körmend and Csákány. The reconstructions in lucky cases even refer to the number of logs used to replace the decomposing ones, but the data in the sources are usually not precise enough to create a clear picture of the speed of the decomposition process. The data available are also controversial. In the case of Körmend and Csákány, the reconstruction works probably were not very frequent, but when the fortifications were rebuilt and its logs were replaced, the sources refer to major quantities of material.47 At Bajcsa the picture is somewhat different. Here, probably due to the unstable foundations, continuous re-building activities are suggested by the sources with sometimes huge quantities of logs.48 At Kecskemét, a town in the central part of present-day Hungary, the local judge or his representative had to check the ditches and the earth and wood fortification four times every year by perambulating the town.49 This probably is a good indication of how fast the material of wood fortifications could deteriorate. This does not mean, however, that almost all of the material of fortifications was replaced every once in a while. For Körmend and Csákány, sources also refer to works when only a few logs were replaced.50 The sources suggest that generally such work was necessary on a regular basis not in order to replace the logs but to bring in new branches and an earth filling to strengthen the braid. Major rebuilding works at these fortifications probably took place only a few times during the Ottoman period. Similar conclusions were drawn by archeological observations and written sources at one of the most important fortifications in the frontier zone east of the Danube, in Szécsény. Here the excavations show that some of the logs were never replaced in the fortification during the entirety of the Ottoman wars, but there were a number of smaller maintenance works. One rebuilding is worth noting. The castle changed hands three times during the Ottoman period; it was in Ottoman hands for a short period during the Fifteen Years’ War and then after 1663 and 1683.51 After the second occupation the walls had to be rebuilt because the fortifications had been set on fire by the fleeing Hungarians. The data are somewhat controversial because some sources suggest that the rebuilding only required smaller works, but an Ottoman source suggests something entirely different. According to an order sent to the beylerbeyi of Eger on the materials needed for the reconstruction of Szécsény, quantities almost unheard of were mentioned, and these numbers are of interest even if the fortification itself is not in the geographical focus of the present work.52 According to the estimate of the Ottoman janissaries, the beylerbeyi should have sent 10,000 logs for the inner and outer tower, a further 5,000 for the four sides, as well as 4,000 deck-planks for the foundations. In addition, for the rebuilding of a bridge that led to the castle, they required 1,000 special planks, along with 4,000 further bridge deck-planks. Although probably the quantities were intentionally over-exaggerated, they are nonetheless huge. This is difficult to reconcile with the data from Csákány or Körmend, for instance.

In the end we decided to calculate a 10-year cycle of reconstruction, which means that during the Ottoman period each log was replaced by a new one every ten years. Some logs probably lasted much longer than 10 years, but those affected by water had to be replaced almost annually.53 This calculation probably overestimates the speed of replacement of logs in earth and wood fortifications, but as the aim is to understand the possible scale, it is better to use a relatively higher frequency than to underestimate the amount required.

The next step in the reconstruction was to find out how long the different fortifications were in operation in the Ottoman period. Some of them changed hands between the Hungarians and the Ottomans a number of times and were used by both parties. Some had short occupations and were probably in operation no more than a few years or a decade. Where we found references to the length of their operation, we obviously used that. In every other case we estimated that the fortification was in existence throughout the entire period discussed here. This leads to numbers higher than the reality, which nonetheless allows for the calculation of the upper limit of timber consumption, and can possibly compensate for fortifications for which no written or archeological data exist. We included each fortification in the list only once (either as Hungarian or Ottoman), even if it changed hands several times.

Based on this methodology, the approximate demand for timber in the different fortifications can be reconstructed with a large margin of error. Our aim, however, was to identify the scale of the use of forest resources rather than the precise number of trees or square kilometers of woodland that had to be managed for this purpose. The calculation offered here is by no means precise enough to argue for or against a change in the extent of woods in Transdanubia as a consequence of the Ottoman period, but it can be a step in identifying whether building a significant number of new fortifications could have consumed large quantities of woodland resources.

The database gathered in the three Transdanubian counties of Vas, Zala, and Veszprém includes 138 fortifications, castles, watchtowers, and fortified palaces on the Hungarian side and only about 8 on the Ottoman side (of which, with the exception of Kanizsa, none were in Ottoman hands for more than a few years; see Fig. 1). Because of the difference in numbers and the nature of Ottoman sources, the list may be more complete for Ottoman fortifications than it is for Hungarian ones. We did not systematically include fortified—walled—towns in the three counties. Some of the towns had stone walls dating back to the Middle Ages. These in some cases were also augmented by new outworks of timber, and the foundations of stone fortifications also used major amounts of wood.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1. Ottoman-period fortifications in Vas, Veszprém, and Zala counties
(drawn by Béla Nagy)

According to our calculations, the roughly 150 fortifications in Vas, Veszprém, and Zala counties needed yearly on average a few hundred trees for the Ottoman side and ca. 5,000 trees for the Hungarian/Habsburg side. In other words, fewer than two or three hundred and 10,000 logs, respectively, were needed in each year during the 150 years between 1541 and 1690. This adds up to ca. 25,000 and 750,000 trees, respectively, altogether. It is important to emphasize two things. First, these numbers represent only the amount consumed for constructing the walls of the earth and wood fortifications themselves; they do not include the amount used in castle buildings, fortified palaces, and various other buildings, such as stables, barns, storage houses, etc. Second, fortification works were not distributed evenly throughout the period of Ottoman presence in the area. The 1540s and especially the 1550s certainly brought a major rise in the demand for wood, and wood was probably consumed less cautiously in these periods than from the 1560s and 1570s onwards, when a more refined defense strategy came into effect. In the early years, probably many more than 5,000 trees were felled yearly to build fortifications in Transdanubia, while in the 1670s, for instance, there may have been a significantly smaller demand for timber.54

The most important question has yet to be answered: How much area was required to provide 5,000 trees annually? There is limited information on the yields of medieval forests, but there are many studies on nineteenth- and twentieth-century forest management that, of course with some restrictions, can be used for comparison. Nowadays, in intensive timber-oriented forests thousands of saplings are planted on every hectare. Most of these young trees perish through competition and targeted cuttings that leave only the most promising individuals. How many trees grow up into full-sized individuals depends on the species and location. For the purposes of this paper, we calculate using a relatively open stand where trees are spaced out 5 meters from each other. One hectare of such high forest provides 400 trees. This means that on an annual basis, 12.5 hectares of forest had to be clear cut to provide timber for the walls of fortifications in Vas, Veszprém, and Zala counties. Considering that the trees in these palisades were relatively young (20–30 centimeters in diameter, ca. 50 years old), the same woodlot could have gone through approximately 3 cycles during the 150 years of Ottoman wars. In sum, ca. 625 ([12.5*150]/3) hectares or 6.25 km2 of woodland had to be managed in order to build and maintain all the fences and outworks of the fortifications in the region. We can also consider coppice-with-standard management rather than high forests. In this management system, timber was combined with firewood. Average numbers of timbers are hard to calculate because of the high variability recorded in historical sources.55 For the present, we can use 35 standards per hectare. This adds up to ca. 7,100 hectares of managed coppice woodland to provide 5,000 logs annually. These forests would have been organized primarily for firewood production with timber trees as a by-product.

These numbers are remarkably low. Even if the results are greatly underestimated—and because of a number of factors listed above they may be—and in reality ten times more woodland had to be managed to produce the trees necessary for the earth and wood fortifications, which we believe is unlikely, the forest area needed to supply the construction of palisades would have still been a relatively limited area compared to the territory of the three counties. This is surprising in view of existing scholarship, which in many cases refers to the newly built fortifications as one of the most important reasons for deforestation in the Ottoman period both on a regional scale and at individual sites as well.56

Although a systematic collection of the written evidence on the problem has yet to be carried out, we will mention some general observations which can strengthen our assessment of wood consumption. Source material originating from western Transdanubia—mostly Vas County—makes hundreds of references to the problem of water;57 only a handful of sources refer in any way to the problem of forest resources. Although there is scattered evidence of bringing supplies of wood and timber from longer distances, both Hungarians and Ottomans in the frontier zone brought wood to the fortifications from short distances.58 Ottoman and Hungarian sources refer frequently to the need for rebuilding the palisades and fortifications, but there is seldom a reference in these sources to a lack of timber.59 Although data are limited, timber does not seem to have been an expensive material at the time. An example is the Ottoman fortification of Gradişka on the Sava River, even though its distance from Transdanubia limits its relevance as a comparison. Nevertheless, during the construction of this fortification, almost four times as much was spent on the ropes that held the logs together than on the logs themselves.60 All this, however, does not mean that there was never an occasional local shortage of timber in Transdanubia in the Early Modern Period. Such cases may have been connected to a specific species of wood or to timber suited to a certain use. Changes in the waterscape should equally be considered in the context of the Ottoman wars. The landscape in the surroundings of fortifications may not have been affected only by the use of trees close-by, but was also by the flooding of areas that surrounded these buildings.61

Limitation of the Results and Perspectives

The data discussed here focused on Transdanubia. The validity of the results outside this region is an important issue. Central Transdanubia in the Ottoman period was probably the area with the densest network of fortifications. The forest cover at the beginning of the Ottoman period in Transdanubia was probably several times greater than that in the Great Hungarian Plain. In addition, ecological conditions are rather different in the two regions. Much of the Great Hungarian Plain belongs to the forest-steppe region where forest regeneration is a complicated process, which was certainly influenced by the significant upswing in extensive animal pasturing that was, at least partly, a consequence of socioeconomic changes brought about by the Ottoman occupation. This means that the validity of our data for the Great Hungarian Plain is far from self-evident. One should also keep in mind that pressure on forest resources needs to be interpreted within the context of availability. In areas with highly limited woodland resources, such as the central plain areas of the Carpathian Basin, spatiotemporally intense pressure could easily have created local wood shortages.

Furthermore, in evaluating the pressure the Ottoman presence in the Carpathian Basin exercised on woodlands, one should consider all fields of consumption. This of course would require a set of studies dedicated to other spheres of military consumption, such as roads, bridges, temporary camps, siege machines, mines, cannon founding, saltpeter production, etc. However, these issues are beyond the scope of this paper and quantifying them at this point would be even more speculative than what has been presented above. The same holds true for the proportion of the wood consumption of the fortifications compared to other spheres of military and civic activities.

There is one sphere of consumption where we may offer brief quantitative data that can be compared to the timber consumption of fortresses: the general firewood consumption of the population. Three basic kinds of data are required to do so: population numbers, per capita consumption, and wood production. In the first case, there are relatively reliable data for the late medieval period (1494/1495), the late sixteenth century (1598), and the period of the reign of Joseph II (1780–1790).62 Per capita annual consumption and per hectare wood production are of course less exact, but there is considerable literature that addressed the issue.63 Applying an average of 1.5 m3/person of annual firewood consumption and 3 m3 of firewood produced by one hectare of coppice forest annually, in 1494/1495 less than 6%, in 1598 less than 7%, and in 1787 less than 21% of the territory of the three counties had to be managed as coppice forests (Fig. 2). These numbers need to be interpreted in relation to woodland cover. The first two suggests that only a small proportion of the woodlands had to be managed to provide firewood, but by the late eighteenth century the majority of forests were probably used for providing the population with firewood. When compared to the woodland needed to provide timber for fortifications, the differences are great: for example in 1598, 96,000 hectares were needed to provide firewood to the three counties, which is some 150 times greater than the average amount we estimated for provisioning fortresses with timber.

Conclusions and Outlook

In the first half of this paper we have shown that woodland cover in Transdanubia was relatively high both in the Late Middle Ages and at the end of the eighteenth century. Overall, our results suggest that woodland cover decreased during the three centuries that separate the two datasets. However, this decrease cannot simply be attributed to the Ottoman wars. The decrease itself has been exaggerated because medieval percentages were biased in favor woodland and also because the post-Ottoman data are not from the immediate aftermath but includes the entire eighteenth century, which was a time of recolonization, significant population growth, and therefore woodland clearance too. This woodland clearance went on well into the nineteenth century. In order to test the prevalent assumption that the Ottoman period brought a decrease in forest cover in the frontier zone between the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary (and thus the entirety of Transdanubia), we examined the sphere of consumption. The construction of earth and wood fortifications is usually associated with the largest woodland loss. Our results show that these may have had a less significant impact on forests and forest cover than has been hitherto suggested. When arguing for the loss of woodlands due to the construction of these fortifications, Hungarian research has usually drawn attention to decrees and other documents that concerned the protection of forests from the Early Modern Period onwards, and attributed the appearance of these mandates to the scarcity of forest resources.64 However, most of these documents, for instance, those published in the most important related source collection, the Magyar erdészeti oklevéltár (Cartulary of Hungarian Forestry), do not mention a lack of woodland, neither do they refer to a scarcity of firewood or timber.65 Such documents were usually meant to regulate the use of local forests and should not be regarded as proof of resource scarcity. They rather documented an increasingly diverse forest administration.66 The brief comparison of the timber consumption of fortresses with general firewood consumption by the population also suggests that military activities did not present an overly significant pressure on woodland resources. Nevertheless, it is clear that future research will need to discuss further aspects of wood consumption in Early Modern Transdanubia. Considering all the possible woodland uses connected to military activities may raise consumption in this sphere to much higher levels. One must take into account, however, that the many spheres of military as well as civic consumption are rather difficult to quantify. Previously neglected sources may shed more light on woodland consumption and the land-use patterns in Early Modern Transdanubia.67 Though a precise quantitative reconstruction of woodland cover and consumption for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is still far from being complete, our study has uncovered a general trend in Transdanubia that rebuts the idea of forest scarcity and which might even have reverberations in other parts of Hungary.

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Vadas, András. “Vízgazdálkodás és háborús védekezés: Csákány és a Vas megyei Rába-mente a kora újkorban (1600–1658)” [Water management and border protection at Csákány and along the Rába in Vas County between 1600 and 1658]. In Víz és társadalom Magyarországon a középkortól a XX. század végéig [Water and society in Hungary from the Middle Ages to the end of the 20th century], edited by Gergely Krisztián Horváth, 207–45. Budapest: Balassi, 2014.

Vadas, András. “A River Between Worlds: Environment, Society and War Along the River Raab/Rába (c. 1600–1660).” In Man, Nature and Environment Between the Northern Adriatic and the Eastern Alps in Premodern Times, edited by Peter Štih, and Žiga Zwitter, 242–58. Ljubljana: Ljubljana University, 2014.

Vadas, András. Körmend és a vizek: Egy település és környezete a kora újkorban [Körmend and the waters: A settlement and its environment in early modern times]. (ELTE BTK Történelemtudományok Doktori Iskola. Tanulmányok – konferenciák, 5). Budapest: Történelemtudományok Doktori Iskola, 2013.

Vági, István. “Van-e hazánkban ezeréves puszta, vagy azt a török hódoltság okozta? Megváltozott-e a Nagy-Alföld éghajlata a török hódoltság miatt aszályosabb irányban, továbbá a talajok is alig javíthatóan megromlottak-e a valóságban” [Was there a millennial puszta in Hungary or was it caused by the Ottomans? Did the climate of the Great Hungarian Plain become as a consequence of the Ottoman Empire and were soils indeed devastated to a barely amendable state?]. Erdészeti Lapok 73 (1934): 670–82.

Vándor, László. “A zalai végvárrendszer a 16–17. században” [The frontier fortification system of Zala County in the 16th–17th centuries]. In Zala megye ezer éve: Tanulmánykötet a magyar államalapítás milleniumának tiszteletére [Millennium of Zala County: Studies in honor of the millennium of the Hungarian state foundations], edited by László Vándor, 89–96. Zalaegerszeg: Zala Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, 1996.

Végh, Ferenc. Birodalmak határán – Balaton partján: Keszthely végvárváros a XVI–XVII. században [At the border of empires – by the Lake Balaton: Keszthely the fortified frontier town in the 16th–17th centuries]. Disszertációk a társadalomtudományok köréből, 1. Budapest: Históriaantik Könyvesház, 2007.

Végh, Ferenc. Egerszeg végvár és város a 17. században [The borderline fortification of Egerszeg and the town in the 17th century]. Zalaegerszegi füzetek, 10. Zalaegerszeg: Millecentenáriumi Közalapítány: 2010.

Weidlein, János. “A dűlőnévkutatás történeti vonatkozásai” [Historical applications of research into field names]. Századok 69 (1935): 665–92.

 

* The research done by András Vadas was supported by the ÚNKP-17-4 New National Excellence Program of the Hungarian Ministry of Human Capacities. The research done by Péter Szabó was supported as a long-term research development project no. RVO 67985939 from the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Year	Indicators	Vas	Veszprém	Zala	Sum	% of area to be coppiced
	area in km2	4482.99	4080.91	5881.64	14,445.54
1494/5	population	49,675	33,818	87,938	171,431
	firewood consumption in m3	74,512.5	50,727	131,907	257,146,5
	woodland needed in ha	24,837,5	16,909	43,969	85,715,5	5.9
1598	population	84,000	30,000	78,000	192,000
	firewood consumption in m3	126,000	45,000	117,000	288,000
	woodland needed in ha	42,000	15,000	39,000	96,000	6.6
1787	population	227,174	140,789	228,415	596,378
	firewood consumption in m3	340,761	211,183.5	342,622.5	894,567
	woodland needed in ha	113,587	70,394.5	114,207.5	298,189	20.6

 

Figure 2. Estimated population and firewood consumption in relation to production in the three counties in 1494/1495, 1598, and 1787

How to “Ravage” a Country: Destruction, Conservation, and Assessment of Natural Environments in Early Modern Military Thought

Jan Philipp Bothe

University of Göttingen

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This article examines the practice of “ravaging” the countryside as a part of Early Modern military thought. It analyses the arguments for destroying or conserving cultivated natural environments and how they were integrated into the emerging theoretical framework on war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I argue that depriving the enemy of local natural resources by consuming or destroying them was an extreme form of exercising control over an area which was used to exert control over both the supplies for an enemy army and the use of land by the local population. To legitimize this practice, specific arguments were used: destruction was meant to “shorten” a war, and gradually use of this tactic was confined to the home country and defense against enemy invasions. In addition, it was important which resources were targeted: while the destruction of forage and harvests was seen as a form of short-term damage, cutting down trees counted as a form of lasting damage that was undesirable. Some authors of works on military strategy started to argue that devastating the land in the enemy’s country was unpractical, and that (forced) contributions from locals were far more useful. Thus, while authors of works on military strategy did make arguments against “scorched earth” warfare and the “ravaging” of the countryside, they did so purely out of practical considerations which rested on notions of utility, rather than out of any humanitarian considerations.

Keywords: early modern period, environment, warfare, military thought, wartime destruction

During the winter months of 1688 and 1689, much of the land in the territory of the Electoral Palatinate was in flames. After the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War and the Dutch War earlier in the century, the border region along the Rhine again had become a major gateway for French troops traveling towards the German Empire at the outbreak of the Nine Years’ War. The roots of this conflict lay not only in the events leading to the Glorious Revolution in 1688, but also in King Louis XIV’s fear that a strong Habsburg Empire might be able to contest the territorial gains that he had achieved during the Reunions.1

As the bulk of the German armies was still fighting the Ottoman Empire in the Great Turkish War, Louis XIV’s forces met with little resistance when occupying a large part of the Palatinate. Important cities and fortresses of the area, like Heidelberg (the seat of the Elector of the Palatinate), Mannheim, Worms, Kaiserslautern, and Speyer, surrendered within weeks.2 But the French did not enjoy a quick and decisive victory. German princes continued to put up resistance. They soon opposed the French troops, together with the forces of the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I. After the Glorious Revolution, the Generalstaaten and England under William of Orange also joined the conflict. In the autumn of 1688, the Minister of War François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, and the king’s consultant Jules-Louis Bolé, Marquis de Chamlay suggested to put the Palatinate and other occupied areas to the torch after having collected large amounts of contributions. By demolishing major cities and strongholds in the region, Louvois hoped to slow down any progress of German forces against French borders.3 At its core, this was a defensive strategy. The act became known as the infamous “devastation of the Palatinate,” as it was characterized in various pamphlets which were intended to foment a sense of scandal. The destruction of the Palatinate became a media event.4

The French army was not the first and not the last to use this tactic.5 Nevertheless, the “burning of the Palatinate” was a prominent example of a tactic put to use in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that has been called “scorched earth warfare.”6 Both major cities but the surrounding countryside suffered as a consequence of efforts to transform the region into a “logistic obstacle.”7 In this article, my intention is to demonstrate that this devastation was not simply an act of desperation, but rather was a tactic which drew on an element of Early Modern military thought.

Most handbooks and memoirs concerning the art of war included examples of when and how to “ravage” a country. These reflections also underline that this type of “scorched earth warfare” not only targeted towns and villages by burning down buildings and driving off or killing their inhabitants, but also targeted the cultivated nature of the countryside. By consuming or destroying forage and crop yields, this tactic of attrition was used, as Lisa Brady has noted in the case of the American Civil War, to sever the connection between the rural civilian population, the enemy army and the land on which both depended for sustenance on the other.8 It was thought to be possible to starve out an enemy and to exercise control over the enemy’s use of land in a radical way: by destroying it.

Examining this aspect of Early Modern military tactics and its consequences for the natural environment as a part of military knowledge, I aim to contribute to fields of research for environmental historians and historians of warfare. As a synthesis, this environmental history of warfare focuses not only on the environmental impact of war, but also, as Richard Tucker has pointed out, on the ecological settings of war through history.9 As J. R. McNeill has observed in a study on the history of woods and warfare, scorched earth tactics like destroying natural resources are “as old as war itself,” and Emmanuel Kreike underlined the importance of environmental warfare as a colonial war practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.10 An examination of this form of warfare as a part of the emerging theoretical framework on war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries furthers an understanding of environmental warfare as a special field of military knowledge.

The article consists of three sections. Initially, I sketch an episode of the devastation of the Palatinate with a focus on the local consequences of this type of warfare to highlight its impact on civilian use of land. The efforts of the French armies were intended to ensure not only the demolition of fortifications and towns, but also the consumption of as much forage as possible. This deprived enemy troops and the local population of a vital natural resource. I then analyze the idea of “ravaging” a region in Early Modern military thought as a legitimate modus operandi that was addressed in certain contexts. Finally, I briefly examine the idea of protecting the countryside during wartime, as violence against the rural population and their local resources was also connected to ideas of “just war” and legitimate versus illegitimate conduct of warfare. This protection, as I will argue, was meant to ensure the effectiveness of one’s own army and did not entail the idea of a humanization of warfare; rather, in the discourse of military thought and theory, utilitarian arguments prevailed.

The Hunger for Forage: The Case of Baden-Baden 1689

Fernand Braudel once called the times before the nineteenth century and the beginning of the consumption of large amounts of fossil fuels the “Old Biological Regime.”11 One key implication of this term is its focus on energy production: Before large amounts of energy began to be drawn from the use of fossil fuels (an “underground forest,” as Rolf-Peter Sieferle has put it),12 the “Old Biological Regime” was mainly bound to organic sources of energy. Wood for fires and food for both man and animals alike were subject to the biological laws of fertility and plant growth. John Landers has described this configuration as an “organic economy,” its limitations having a direct impact on the military logistics of pre-industrial Western societies. As Landers suggests, the dependence of this “organic economy” on large rural areas meant that military forces could only advance if armies and military administrations were able to make use of local agricultural resources. Depriving an enemy of this resource, thus, was often the only way to win a war.13

This perspective proves exceptionally interesting if one considers the ways in which Early Modern armies ensured their mobility. Often, it has been noted that winter campaigns were uncommon in Early Modern Europe and that warfare was typically bound to the seasons, just like agriculture. If military operations dragged on into the harsh winter months,14 this was considered especially problematic. One of the main reasons for this limitation was the dependency on forage. Grass growth determined the point of time armies could leave their winter quarters. Without this “fuel,” no army could be expected to move anywhere. The cavalry needed a daily portion of forage to feed their horses, as did all the other animals used in convoys for supplies or to transport baggage and heavy and expensive siege weapons, which were very important in an age of fortress warfare.15

As John Lynn has argued, drawing on the example of the French Army, a force of about 60,000 soldiers could easily muster about 40,000 horses, 20,000 for the cavalry and another 20,000 used for logistical tasks. As the amount of forage for troops in winter quarters was quantified in Réglements, it is possible to estimate at least the amounts of dry forage that a body of troops like this would consume on a daily basis. The Réglement of the French Army in November 1665, for example, prescribed a ration of 20 pounds of hay for each horse. For the cavalry alone this would have meant that about 200 tons of dry forage were needed to sustain about 20,000 horses, if these estimates are accurate.16 The problem with forage was that it effectively could not be procured from distant regions via carts, as this again would require the use of horses, which would also need to be fed. Dried forage was vital for troops in their winter quarters, but the same problems arose as in the case of fresh forage. Furthermore, it proved complicated to dry fresh forage in the field, as it rotted very quickly. Thus, the subsistance militaire was divided into food for soldiers and food for animals.

This tactic sheds some light on the core problem of logistics that was connected to military tactics in the Early Modern era. Military strategy and military organization changed between the Thirty Years’ War and the French Revolution. This can only be briefly covered here: out of the mercenary armies of the early seventeenth century emerged more or less permanent forces with an aristocratic officer class more closely bound to the military hierarchy and the authority of the sovereign; soldiers were gradually subjected to harsher forms of drills, as the ideal tactic of linear warfare of the early eighteenth century to maximize firepower demanded even greater discipline; the ever-present army “tails,” still known in the early seventeenth century, consisting of the women and children of mercenaries who occasionally even outnumbered the armed forces, declined in the late seventeenth century as the supply of soldiers increasingly became a matter of a military administration. At the same time, European armies experienced a dramatic growth, fostered by changes in recruiting and supply practices.17

The supply of troops underwent a major transformation since the end of the Thirty Years’ War.18 As for the French example, the growth of the army was to a large part only possible because of reforms under Le Tellier and his son Louvois. These reforms were reactions to the increasing problem of providing adequate supplies for a large force without actually having the funds to purchase food for the troops directly. By institutionalizing the establishment of magazines using private contractors, the French administration tried to improve army supply and reduce damage dealt to the home country. In theory, food could then be carted from the magazines towards the field of operations.19

In contrast to these obvious changes, however, there remained certain key problems of Early Modern warfare. Often, forage had to be obtained in the field as a local resource, either by requisition or by purchase.20 “Foraging” was the most basic daily routine for armies.21 However, concentrating large quantities of dried forage in magazines could also become a major advantage, as this would allow an army to take to the fields early. Under Le Tellier and his son Louvois, this became one of the key factors in the quick successes of the French army during the Dutch War, as the troops could draw on substantial stocks of hay and straw that had been established at major fortresses along the Rhine. The river was used to transport the enormous quantities of forage.22

This shows two main factors that also played a key role during the devastation of the Palatinate. First, forage was one of the main resources that an army needed to keep itself mobile, and it was also a resource of which one could deprive one’s enemy only by consuming or destroying it. As it was a local resource, the availability of which was bound to its own growth time, keeping an enemy away from forage could potentially slow down his operations. Also, a considerable advantage was to be obtained if one could concentrate large amounts of dried forage in magazines. This concentration of forage could be achieved by drawing on contributions from the enemy territory, which were to be paid both in money and “in natura.”23 It became common practice to obtain these “contributions” as a mixture of taxes and extortion not only for the French, but for all European armies after the Thirty Years’ War, and this remained common practice until the end of the eighteenth century. This method of sustaining an army in enemy territory was a vital part of financing warfare, and levying contributions was legitimate in terms of military law. The collection of this “war tax” was relatively orderly most of the time, as commanders even worked together with the civil administration of occupied regions to raise the required sums or the required amounts of foodstuffs and fodder. So-called contributions were often seen, in comparison to pillaging and looting, as a lesser evil. If a town or region failed to pay, however, armies could burn villages and towns as a form of rightful punishment.24

Yet, the burning of the Palatinate in the winter months of 1688 and 1689 was not done as punishment for failure to pay the increasing sums demanded by French intendants. Instead, this common practice provided the pretext for a plan that had been designed very early on.

The example of the fate of Baden-Baden, a small county south of the Electoral Palatinate which also was partly occupied by French forces and compelled to make contributions (as were most territories on the Upper Rhine), sheds light on what this practice meant for civilian populations.25 Demands were being made not only for considerable sums of money, but also for forage to supply French troops in their winter quarters. For the territory of Baden-Baden, these demands were sent by Jacques La Grange, who had been the intendant of Alsace since 1674 and had served in the Nine Years’ War as the intendant of Alsace, Brisgau, and the French army in Germany.26

In a letter to the Baden-Baden officials written on February 7, 1689, he elaborated on the consequences the county would face if his demands were not met. “I have heard that of the 20,000 rations of forage, which have been imposed on you for our part of the contribution, you have only paid 600 so far.”27 If this did not change quickly, he threatened to “burn without consideration.”28 Eleven days later, La Grange issued yet another official letter to levy new contributions, demanding 1,500 sacks of oats for the cavalry.29

While it was a common practice to draw upon enemy resources to sustain one’s own army, especially during winter, the motive in early 1689 was not only subsistence. As John Lynn has pointed out, there had been plans to demolish not only fortifications, but also towns on the Upper Rhine as early as the end of October 1688. In a letter to Louvois, Chamlay suggested completely destroying the town of Mannheim. In a letter from Louvois to the Lieutenant General Joseph de Montclar written on December 18, the Minister of War ordered Montclar to destroy all settlements along the Neckar completely so that German troops would find neither food nor forage.30 This included consuming or destroying forage before retreating to the left side of the Rhine, as Montclar wrote in an order concerning the French officer Peyssonel in 1688: his troops should consume all forage if possible and burn the rest.31 It is not unlikely that this is the context in which the repeated demands for new deliveries of substantial amounts of forage from the county of Baden-Baden to Strasbourg is to be seen: as an attempt to consume the fuel available and establish a logistical obstacle for the German forces.

This tactic seemed to work, as reports by Baden-Baden councilors to Count Hermann of Baden-Baden in Regensburg suggest.32 In a report dated to January 24, 1689, an official wrote about destruction around the town of Pforzheim, but also about raiding parties that took forage and grains. The “conservation of the country” was at risk, as many of the subjects had already fled the surrounding countryside.33 To ease the burden of contributions, especially that of providing forage, a letter directly addressed to La Grange himself34 tried to dissuade the French official from demanding copious amounts of hay and straw: “The supply of grains and forages is absolutely impossible, as it is completely consumed by the billeting and continued passages of the royal troops.”35 According to the letter, the financial and ecological limits of the small territory had been reached, and during winter it was simply not possible to grow more forage.

One could contend that these sources are not entirely reliable, since the councilors and officials may have exaggerated the situation in Baden-Baden to persuade the French to relieve the burdens of war or to persuade Hermann of Baden-Baden to force the Reichstag in Regensburg to respond to the French more quickly. However, another document supports the conclusion that the description of the situation given by the councilors in their reports was accurate. In a record dated March 24, 1689, several Baden-Baden officials discussed the next response to the growing French threat.36 Even though the governor of Strasbourg Count Chamily had given an order allowing the contribution in forage to be paid in money, the councilors found this obligation impossible to meet. In addition, the document illustrates the growing sufferings endured by the civilian population and the damage done to their methods of land use. Again, they wrote that “a large share of fruits and forage” had already been consumed “in natura,” and soon there would be nothing left. Many subjects, they contended, had fled the territory because of famine, and the lack of forage had led to the slaughter of a large part of the remaining cattle.37 As the subjects had neither grain nor forage left, they could hardly sell them to meet the demands in money.

While this kind of shortage was common if an enemy army was present in a territory, the authors linked it to the tactic of consuming everything so that German commanders would find nothing with which to feed their troops and mounts, even though this hardly made any sense to them. As they wrote, the French insisted on their demands “even though the German troops quartered in this county do not get their supplies from our land…”38 Thus, the shortage was to some degree artificial and intentional, a tool of war meant to constrain German forces.

This brief example shows the importance of a local resource like forage in keeping an army supplied, a resource that was “natural” because it followed its own biological mechanisms and rhythms.39 While military organization and tactics gradually changed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this factor remained a critical logistical problem that was examined writings on military theory. If all dried forage had been consumed in a region during winter, there was simply no other solution than to wait for fresh grass to grow again or to engage in large-scale logistics operation, procuring large quantities of hay and straw via rivers. Also, this understand of the importance of forage and the shortage of it in a given territory clarifies the meaning of the term “logistic obstacle.” By consuming (or destroying) this necessary fuel, the army directly impacted the use of local land, the inhabitants of which needed forage, for example, to keep cattle. This shortage, together with the burning of villages and all sorts of violence against the civilian population, drove the subjects from the territory. This in turn meant that in some areas, there was nobody left to cultivate the land so it would again yield grains or forage, thus making it difficult to supply an army in the region.40 This impact on land use by a large military force was not always accidental, nor was it always a result of faulty organization. Rather, sometimes it was used as a way of depriving an enemy of supplies. This warfare of attrition, which has been seen as characteristic of the wars under Louis XIV,41 was widely discussed in contemporary military thought, both before and after the reign of the sun king.

“Ravaging” a Country as a Part of Military Thought

The devastation of the Palatinate also became a topic in Early Modern military theory. One example is Hanns Friedrich von Flemings “Der vollkommene Teutsche Soldat,” an encyclopedic effort to summarize the state of the art of war in the early eighteenth century. The author placed particular emphasis on the wars of Louis XIV and the destruction wreaked in the course of these wars. This included burning down houses, poisoning wells, and desecrating graves, actions that were seen as a violation of the “divine law or the law of nations.”42 Flemings’ accusations repeat claims found in leaflets in which the French conduct of war was presented as scandalous. However, it is telling that he used this example in a chapter in which he discussed the theory of a “just war” and laws during wartime in general. In this context (of course from a German perspective), French actions served as an example of misconduct.

Flemings’ compilation also shows the specific nature of military discourse of the period. In the appendix, he included a list of examples of “soldiers who distinguished themselves both by sword and scholarship.”43 The list was meant to illustrate one of Flemings’ key points, which he made clear on various occasions in his work: officers should educate themselves to master the art of war.

This points towards an emerging new ideal of educated officers and the idea that war itself could be controlled and systematized by reducing it to certain basic principles. As Azar Gat and other scholars of the “military enlightenment” wrote, military thought did not remain untouched by processes and currents in the general spirit of the age, which has been dubbed (at least by its European heirs) the “Enlightenment” and the “Age of Reason.”44 The doctrine of natural law combined with a general search for rules and principles in the arts, together with the “gospel of Newtonian science,”45 created a particular intellectual atmosphere. However, many modern scholars of the Enlightenment argue that this cannot be summed up as a “revolution” or the personal project of few “enlightened” thinkers, but rather as a large-scale process of losing and questioning traditional orders and thus a resulting concentration of communication.46

The study of these general principles of warfare and sharing them with young officers and interested amateurs alike were key factors in the establishment of “military science” and a “military enlightenment.”47 Ever since Niccolò Machiavelli’s “Dell’Arte della Guerra” (1521), a new genre of printed texts emerged that focused on how to wage war, primarily drawing on examples borrowed from Ancient authors like Vegetius, Caesar, and Onasander.48 It has been argued that the influence of Antiquity on military treaties remained very high until the end of the eighteenth century, with most authors following technically outdated formations and ideals of warfare, with only few exceptions.49 While it is indeed true that Ancient authors, primarily Vegetius but also Caesar’s “De Bello Gallico,” were frequently referenced in nearly all works on the art of war of the period, it is also important to consider the changes to the discourse on military theory during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Gradually, writings about European warfare came to adopt a more skeptical perspective that emphasized the experiences of the authors and made references to recent events, especially after the Seven Years’ War, while occasionally drawing on the authorities of Antiquity.50 As a genre, writings on the Art of War tried to give the reader examples of the best practices in nearly every field of military life, making the knowledge of the Ancients and the knowledge of great commanders available, but also commenting on it in an increasingly reflective manner.

Despite Flemings’ harsh judgment concerning the destruction wreaked by the French, there indeed was a place in this discourse for the planned devastation of a country by an army through the destruction of forage and harvests. Thus, the French officials drew on an idea that was already present in military thought and remained part of it even after the Nine Years’ War. A French example that was written before the outbreak of the Nine Years’ War and was broadly published and read illustrates this.

Henri II, the duke of Rohan, was one of the most reputable French authors on military theory of the seventeenth century. Born in 1579 to an old and powerful protestant family, de Rohan served in campaigns against Spanish forces in Flanders under King Henry IV. Due to his close relationship to the king, Rohan could hope to rise rapidly into the highest circles of power. However, the assassination of Henry IV in 1610 shattered his hopes, and soon he found himself the leader of protestant resistance in France and in opposition to the ruling Marie de’ Medici and Louis XIII. In the following uprising of the Huguenots, Henri de Rohan played a key role in repeatedly defeating larger royalist forces until the peace of Alès in 1629. He was then ordered by Louis XIII to become his ambassador in the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft. There, he fought a campaign in Valtellina in an offshoot of the Thirty Years’ War. He was mortally wounded at the siege of Rheinfelden in 1638, were he had fought in the army of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar.51

In 1636, Henri de Rohan published a translated extract from Julius Caesar’s “De Bello Gallico,” “Le Parfaict Capitaine.” Combined with this however, Rohan published his own “Traité particulier de la Guerre” in which he sought to adjust the “good maxims” of the Ancients to the new art of war.52 In his treatise, he wrote that he wanted to show that “despite the difference in our arms to those of the Ancients, we should not ignore their orders.”53 The reference to Antiquity was his main source on which he drew for illustrations.

However, Henri de Rohan was also a practitioner of warfare in the early seventeenth century, which bore witness to the rising importance of siege warfare. In the chapter dedicated to defending a country against enemies, he addressed the question of the proportion of fortresses to an army in the field to defend a territory. At this point, he also wrote about the tactic of wearing out an enemy by entrenching large garrisons in strong fortresses. He warned that this would threaten the land itself, as it would be desolated by the besieging armies. Without a force to counter the besiegers, “you put the means to keep an army in the field at risk; and the damage to two or three harvests will put your neck in the noose.”54

Nonetheless, a few pages later, Henri de Rohan explicitly suggests laying waste to the lands. If a territory is attacked by a larger force, there is only one option: “consume the enemy [consommer l’enemy]”55 and cut off his food supply: “In this case, it is necessary to leave the country and burn all sustenance which you cannot contain in your fortresses, and also all towns and villages that you cannot defend: because it is better to defend oneself in a ruined land than to conserve it for the enemy.”56 According to his reasoning as a practitioner of warfare during the Thirty Years’ War, destroying forage and harvests and displacing the local population (even if it were one’s “own” population) were legitimate means of starving out an enemy, justified by the reference to the common good.

Henri de Rohan’s works were widely published and translated, and many authors of the later seventeenth and eighteenth century alluded to his “Le Parfaict Capitaine” as an influential treaty on warfare, mainly a work which offered a better understanding of warfare in Antiquity.57 This does not mean, however, that Rohan was the inventor of this tactic, nor was he the only author suggesting its use. In fact, other contemporary authors had similar views. Many quoted the famous Roman author Vegetius as the main Antique authority on warfare:58 in his general rules of war he wrote that “everything that is of use for you harms your enemy; everything that is of use for him is harmful to you.”59 According to this logic, it was “a great deed to fight your enemy with hunger rather than with the sword.”60 This, together with Henri de Rohan’s work, shows that laying waste to a region and destroying or consuming forage and food were well-established elements of military strategy before the Nine Years’ War.

Perhaps more surprising is the fact that many authors still supported this tactic after the Nine Years’ War, partly drawing on their experiences in that conflict. Even though the reputation of Louis XIV suffered because of the burning of the Palatinate, which also failed to bring the war to a quick end, the approach of devastating a region which should be defended remained part of various treatises.

One telling example is that of the French nobleman and officer Antoine de Pas, Marquis de Feuquières. Born in 1648, Feuquières served in nearly all the wars of Louis XIV. During the Nine Years’ War, he commanded a regiment and contributed to the French victory at Neerwinden in 1693.61 He was also one of the French officers who led raids deep into German territory, demanding large sums of contributions. After the Nine Years’ War, Feuquières fell from Louis’ grace, and the War of Spanish Succession was launched without him as a member of the king’s army.62 During this time, he wrote his memoirs, in which he commented (often in a harshly critical manner) on many operations that had been led by French and German officers.

His work was published in 1711, the year of his death, and it instantly became a popular lecture as the various reprints and translations into English and German suggest. Again, in his chapter dealing with defensive wars, Feuquières concerned himself with the possibilities of waging war against an enemy that had invaded a territory by surprise. It was “very difficult to prescribe, by general maxims, how to wage this war.”63 But as a general maxim, Feuquières again suggested that the countryside should not be spared: “The rural countryside should not be conserved. It is imperative that one take everything possible into the best fortresses and consume, even by fire, all grains and forage which one cannot take to a safe place, as to diminish the subsistence of the enemy army.”64 Local resources that were not controlled by one’s own troops were a threat to the region and to one’s own army. Thus, if necessary, they were to be destroyed. The phrase “even by fire” suggests that simply burning everything was a matter of last resort, however. Preferably, forage and grains were to be consumed.

Even after considerable time, this rationale of disrupting land use to deplete local natural resources was an element in the discourse of military theory. The time of the great encyclopedias, which were meant to gather and systematize all forms of knowledge for the use of mankind (most prominently, the “Encyclopédie” of Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert) also saw a fair share of efforts to put together encyclopedias and dictionaries specializing in military knowledge.65 One of the best-known examples is the “Dictionnaire Militaire” by German officer and engineer Jacob von Eggers. Eggers was born in 1708 and was active in the Swedish service, where he received an education in military engineering and the building of fortifications. In 1737, he joined the army of Saxony. During the War of the Austrian Succession, Eggers fought on the side of the Saxon army, securing river crossings by building field fortifications. After the war, Eggers was promoted to the serve as the head of the Saxon corps of engineers. He became the educator of the princes of Saxony and was admitted to the Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1751, he published his “Dictionnaire Militaire.” Until his death in 1773, Eggers was mainly the commanding officer of the city of Gdańsk (Danzig), where he built up an impressive library specializing in military science.66

Eggers was the prototype of the “enlightened” officer: well-educated (partly due to his specialization in military engineering) but also with experience in the field. His efforts as a military writer and collector of books on military science make him one “of the educated officers of the eighteenth century who laid the foundation for the rationalization of warfare,” as Daniel Hohrath puts it.67 Still, in his dictionary there is an entry for “to ravage [ravagiren]”: “ravage, is the act of troops ravaging a province or region where they cannot hold out against an enemy by burning and pillaging and taking everything with them if possible.”68 In his entry concerning the “le plat pais” (the rural countryside), Eggers noted that it was common to lay waste to most of these kinds of lands due to problems with discipline or due to enemy raids.69 It is striking that for Eggers, the option of “ravaging” a country was not bound to war on friendly territory, but yet was a defensive measure that deserved to be mentioned in his dictionary, thus making this tactic a codified part of military knowledge. However, the idea of desolating an area to gain advantages remained an element of military knowledge that was repeatedly mentioned in writings on the subject until the end of the eighteenth century.70

The destruction of the countryside was justified as a defensive measure that was meant to ultimately protect the “common good,” even though nearly all of the authors in question mentioned this tactic in reference to friendly territory. If an enemy army would otherwise use a resource to its own benefit, it was better to destroy it and to deprive him of this opportunity. Thus, exercising control over the use of local resources was the main motive. What is important in the case of each of these examples is the way in which military land use and civilian land use were related to each other. To all military writers, the primary focus lay on the use of the rural countryside for the armies. Food and especially forage were broadly mentioned as targets along villages, resources that could be of direct use to anyone controlling a territory. By consuming or destroying as much as possible, one could at least keep the enemy at a safe distance while harming him indirectly due to the lack of supplies. Also, the use of fortresses as key factors of resource mobilization becomes clear. This tactic was related to the fact that campaigns were fought following the seasons. Depriving an enemy of sustenance was confined locally and possibly lasted until the following spring, but this meant that it lasted until the next campaign. Thus, it could be used to exert at least some degree of control over the movement of the enemy army and its use of local resources. If a region simply could not sustain an army any longer, it was unlikely that the region would be the next theatre of operations. The displacement of the local population could worsen the situation, as locals were needed to cultivate the land and to harvest grains and forage.71 However, there also were instances of authors arguing against the idea of devastating the land. Their arguments reveal the utilitarian point of view that was prevalent in military theory regarding the destruction of the rural countryside and natural resources.

Conserving Local Resources as Military Rationality

In fact, there was a prominent reference in one of the most important texts on international law to both the destruction and the conservation of local, natural resources. The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, who is often considered one of the founders of international law and the law of war, also dealt with the damage done to the countryside during conflicts. In his “De Iure Belli ac Pacis” from 1625, Grotius made a considerable contribution to the discussion of the theory of a “just war” and “just warfare,” drawing on scholastic and humanist traditions. Devised by St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century and St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, the theory of “just” war played a vital role as a background for international laws of war for the whole Early Modern period. While the area of the jus ad bellum addressed the causes to declare war, the category of jus in bellum regulated the conduct of warfare. The theory of just causes for war, however, outlawed wars of aggression or out of motives like greed, expansion, and the like and emphasized that war was to be used as a means of reestablishing order against a perpetrator.

While this setting of laws and rules worked well as legitimization for campaigns against non-Christian enemies and “outlaws” (like bands of criminals or marauders),72 this focus on just causes was subjected to scrutiny by Gentili and Grotius. The question of what was, precisely, a “just” cause for war had become problematic. The notion of sovereignty proposed by Hobbes and Bodin meant that the emerging state was regarded as the only legitimate actor that could rightfully set rules and use force to establish them. Thus, conflict between two states posed a problem, as both parties claimed to have “just” causes for their military actions. In this problematic setting, Gentili and later Grotius emphasized the ius in bellum as regulation of the conduct of warfare; while war was accepted as a way of settling disputes between two sovereigns, the notion of ius in bellum at least offered some hope of mitigating its worst effects.73

In this context, Grotius addressed the question of damage done to cultivated natural resources.74 In the twelfth chapter of the third book in “De Iure Belli ac Pacis,” he explicitly wrote about the importance of moderation when it came to efforts to “desolate or ravage the enemy country.”75 Firstly, Grotius noted that the destruction of the “fruits of the land” was not necessarily an illegitimate tactic. As he explained, destroying land and the goods of an enemy was not unjust if the destruction was necessary. Alluding to Ancient authorities like Polybius and Onasander, he stated: “A general will remember to desolate an enemy’s land and to burn it to devastate it; because if the enemy is lacking the fruits of the land and money, the war will be halted […] So desolation is permitted if it can force the enemy to make peace quickly.”76 But as he mentioned, this kind of desolation happened “commonly out of wrath and resentment or out of the desire for bounty”77 rather than for strategic reasons.

However, Grotius also explicitly stated that there were indeed limits on the justifications for attacking natural resources. Referring again to writers of Antiquity like Plato, he illustrated that devastating a country was not necessary in most cases. If an army had already occupied an enemy territory so that the enemy “cannot use the fruits of it,”78 this was a reason for sparing the countryside. Furthermore, Grotius mentioned “divine law,” which compelled armies attacking cities to use only the “wild trees” for earthworks and to spare the “fertile trees,” because “the trees cannot rise up against us and give battle.”79 Quoting the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, Grotius wanted to spare “fertile fields” for the same reasons: “Why do you want to vent your anger on inanimate things, which are themselves gentle by nature, and bear fruits?”80

The example of Grotius shows two important arguments that provide some theoretical context for the deliberate destruction of the countryside as part of military campaigns and strategy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the one hand, Grotius argued that special necessities could arise in warfare that made destroying forage or harvests a viable tactical option. On the other, however, this argument of necessity meant that any act of destruction that was “unnecessary and useless” was illegitimate. If the enemy could not reasonably be expected to gain any use from the resources because he had no control over them, then there was no legitimate reason to destroy them. Interesting is the specific mention of fruit-bearing trees, which are used as an example. With this reference to Ancient authors, Grotius condemned the useless destruction of resources that needed a lot of time to regrow, meaning that destroying them was not simply a matter of gaining an advantage during a war, but was also a means of inflicting damage that was out of proportion.

Several military writers brought up this argument of utility, especially since the beginning of the eighteenth century. One example is the well-known French military writer Jean Charles, Chevalier de Folard. Born in 1669 to a clerical noble family in Avignon, Folard received his education at a Jesuit college. His first experience of the military was under the command of Duras in the fall campaign of 1688, precisely in the context of the Nine Years’ War and the destruction of the Palatinate. Later, he fought under the Swedish king Charles XII, where he started to develop his own system of military thought during his time at Stockholm. As an expert on classical Roman and Greek warfare, Folard tried to draw on Antiquity while at the same time presenting a new system of military theory derived from Classical sources. In his “Nouvelles Découvertes sur la guerre, dans une dissertation sur Polybe” and his “Histoire de Polybe,” he made contributions to many spheres of Early Modern military thought, one of the most controversial being the idea of using the formation of columns as a form of attack.81

Despite his sometimes seemingly eccentric ideas, he was not an “armchair general.” He had served in the French and Swedish armies and had participated in several campaigns. In his “Histoire de Polybe,” Folard commented on contemporary examples of warfare. In fact, other authors repeatedly quote him not for his disputed ideas concerning column tactics but for his original thoughts on war in mountains, the “coup d’oeil” in warfare, and for his critical approach, which emphasized the search for general principals in war.82 He also wrote on the question of destroying forage and harvests.

While he at one point explicitly quoted Vegetius with reference to his maxim of starving an enemy by burning forage as “admirable,”83 he later criticized this practice. While devastating one’s own territory seemed like a necessary evil, Folard deemed destroying enemy territory as unnecessary and ineffective. Here, he quoted Raimondo Montecuccoli, one of the most important Habsburg generals of the seventeenth century:84 “The raids of armies or a large part of troops into enemy territory do not yield any advantage if they are not part of a considerable operation: because nothing is better suited to ruin an army. This kind of enterprise, which consists solely in ravaging and doing damage far away from a border, is hardly useful […] If we have no other intent than to destroy a certain portion of land, one deprives oneself of contributions one could collect. […] These kinds of invasions are not useful except for during the time of the harvest, and this is precisely the time which should be chosen […].”85

These remarks show that the decision to burn forage and harvests or at least to consume them to gain an advantage implicitly included civil land use, as his suggestion concerning the proper season for an attack suggests. However, two factors made this tactic unfavorable. First, the advantage gained by destroying forage only lasted for a short while, and it furthermore only worked at the expense of the rural population. It was not necessarily compassion for the fate of displaced and impoverished peasants that made Folard disdain this tactic; rather, he argued from an utilitarian perspective. Exploiting the population by demanding contributions (which, as pointed out before, were also paid in natura) promised far greater incomes in the end. Remarks that went into detail concerning compassion for the local population or, simply, addressed humanitarian concerns were not decisive. Rather, this emphasis on the importance of conserving natural resources and sparing the local population originated in a military rationality that emphasized the role of the enemy countryside as an economic factor.

This economic argument, which rested on the idea of necessity and the proportionality of force, was raised in works by other authors.86 The idea that enemy territory should be conserved not only as a possible territorial gain after the war but also as a possible theatre of operations for future campaigns is echoed in several writings, but it was always part of the effort to ensure military effectiveness. As such, it can be seen as analogous to the shift from irregular looting to the rather orderly process of collecting contributions and the efforts to outlaw looting in general in order to avoid driving off the local population, which proved vital as a workforce for any army in a region.

However, it is important to note that the authors of works on military theory saw looting and ravaging the lands as concepts that were related but not essentially the same. Ravaging the land meant targeting the enemy’s rural infrastructure and local resources in a planned and orderly fashion, while looting was the outright loss of all discipline. In practice, of course, the two could not be so clearly or easily separated. As John Lynn has put it, it was scarcely possible to order a soldier to burn down a farm and at the same time prevent him from simply taking everything that was inside or abusing the inhabitants.87 The option of destroying a region that could not be protected against an enemy remained a discussed and viable option until the end of the eighteenth century,88 but it slowly came under scrutiny after the Seven Years’ War, as two final examples illustrate.

When the English officer and engineer Henry Lloyd issued his “Military Memoirs” in 1781, he also touched on the subject of conserving enemy territory. Lloyd, who has come to be known as one of the most important military theorists of the second half of the eighteenth century alongside the French officer Guibert, had a long history of military service. Born presumably in 1720, Lloyd got his education at the Oxford Jesus College, where he acquired a high degree of skill in geometry and cartography.89 Having left England in 1741, Lloyd served with the French during the War of the Austrian Succession. After having caught the attention of Maurice de Saxe during the battle of Fontenoy (1745), Lloyd was recommended to different generals as a skilled engineer and officer, and he served in Prussian, French, Austrian, and Russian armies before returning to England.

His “The History of the Late War in Germany,” in which he described his experiences and the general setting of the Seven Years’ War, became widely known and read. In his “Military Memoirs,” this experienced and educated soldier also wrote about the habit of detaching forces from the main army to raid a country: “To force the enemy to battle, or to the clearing of the land, one naturally has to put the whole force to use together, and one may not occupy oneself with detachments, raids, or similar: because this weakens the army; the detachments risk being cut off, and they devastate the country that one has to preserve if one wants to stay there.”90 In this rather general remark, which made no direct mention of the old practice of burning forage, Lloyd emphasized the later use of a region by one’s own army as an argument against devastating an area by detaching too many troops. However, his formulation “if you want to stay there” suggests that this was generally bound to strategic plans rather than to moral imperatives. Few authors identified the “ravaging” of a countryside as something that was generally unwanted and morally deplorable.

One of the authors who commented on this practice in a critical manner was the French lieutenant-colonel Paul-Gédéon Joly de Maizeroy. He was a recognized student of warfare in Antiquity and due to this was admitted to the French Royal Academy of belles-lettres. But he also became known as a military writer himself, having published his “Cours de tactique” in 1766, which was reprinted twice and translated into German in 1767. In 1777, he completed his work on tactics with his “Théorie de la Guerre.”91 In this, he scorned the light cavalry and troops of the “small war,” such as Hussars, Croats, and Pandures, who were employed excessively during the Seven Years’ War by both the Austrian and the Prussian armies. His disdain for these kinds of troops was prompted in part by the fact that the “small war” waged by raiding parties of light troops basically consisted of forays in the course of which these troops “ravaged” the areas.92 For Paul-Gédéon Joly de Maizeroy, though, this constituted a considerable disadvantage for both armies and was a feature of a “barbaric” way of war: “and this apparent advantage can even turn against him, if one abandons the devastated land. In general, this barbaric manner of waging war is detrimental to both parties.”93 He had moral disdain for the practice of “ravaging” a country as barbaric, and this sentiment explains in part his criticism of the widespread use of light troops.

The practice of laying waste to the countryside was often summed up with the term “ravaging” or “ravager,” but the explicit mentioning of burning forage or harvests gradually declined in the writings by military theorists until the end of the eighteenth century, which could be interpreted as a form of marginalization in the discourse. Still, even if the tactic of destroying villages and local resources and the pillaging and displacement of the population gradually became something the authors were more inclined to discourage, the reasons for this were almost always utilitarian. In their writings, they rarely expressed pity for suffering peasants. Rather, it was important to point out that one’s own army might suffer dire consequences if lands were made “sterile” and “unfertile” by war.

Conclusion

The tactic of depriving an enemy of local natural resources by consuming or destroying them was part of Early Modern military thought. This tactic was intended not simply to reduce or eliminate supplies for the enemy army. Rather, it also targeted local populations and their use of land as a way of creating artificial shortages of food and forage. When and how to “ravage” a country was discussed in various texts that dealt with the theory of how to wage war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this discourse, four factors stand out as main motives and categories of thought.

First, in order for efforts to destroy forage and harvests and “ruin” a country to be seen as legitimate, they had to be presented as necessary. This notion of necessity was often based on Ancient axioms of warfare or arguments in favor of “shortening” a war. Second, however, it seems to have been extremely important where this tactic was used. Military thinkers explicitly wrote about this tactic of “scorched earth warfare” in the context of enemy invasions that were unforeseen or simply overwhelming. In these cases, desolating one’s own country was discussed as a defensive method to starve out an enemy. Paradoxically, these same thinkers tended to suggest that enemy territory should be treated carefully, as it was more practical to extort contributions, a perspective that somewhat economized military land use. Third, to some degree the authors explicitly assessed which resources should be targeted and why. “Devastating” the countryside meant that not only villages were burned, but also forage and harvests, which were seen as directly useful for the enemy troops. However, as Grotius suggested, there were limits to this logic. Trees, for example, were never mentioned in the context of “ravaging” a country and starving out an enemy. Forage could be grown again for subsequent campaigns, but cutting down useful trees was seen as a form of lasting damage.94 Fourth, the factors of duration and effectiveness played a role in the reflections of the authors. Some of them considered the usefulness of “devastation” by raiding parties as minimal and something that did not last long enough to be worthwhile. In addition, again the practice of extorting contributions promised a more effective source of income in the end. These arguments of utility were used to criticize the tactic of “scorched earth warfare” and the “ravaging” of the countryside, while the authors on military theory seldom touched on humanitarian concerns.

While I have focused in this article on ideas and categories prevalent in military thought, it is also important to consider that the practical side of warfare often followed its own rationalities. Often, the devastation of the countryside was not the effect of a conscious decision by generals or officers, but a consequence of mismanagement and logistical shortages. Even in the middle of the eighteenth century, these kinds of problems could lead to armies doing substantial damage to the countryside, as the aftermath of the Battle of Warburg on July 31, 1760 illustrates. There, the British army remained in the area for nearly three months, and it used anything and everything that could be burnt as fuel, including fruit-bearing trees, hedges, and even wooden statues of saints.95 In order to explore further the effects of Early Modern armies on the natural environment in wartime, case studies for regions that frequently became the theatre of war could prove exceptionally fruitful.

In the end, this poses the critical question of the place of military theory in relation to military practice and, on a larger scale, in relation to warfare and the environment as a whole. While military theory certainly provided a framework for discussion of scorched earth tactics, an explicit reference to theoretical texts is hard to grasp in military practice itself: French officials did not quote de Rohan every time they ordered the destruction of villages and forage. However, even if works on military theory presented idealized versions of how their authors thought war should be waged, they often included examples of contemporary warfare. While military theory certainly does not reflect military practice itself, it forms a special discourse in which these practices are described and situated in an argumentative context. Thus, the treatises make it possible to analyze the special discourse on war and the systems and categories in which military knowledge was conceived and presented. As far as the relationship between warfare and the environment is concerned, this means that violence against the natural environment was a defining part of Early Modern military knowledge, and even at the end of the eighteenth century it had not vanished from the discussions. Rather, it remained embedded in contemporary conceptions of “just” war and the “right” and “rational” conduct of operations.

When Carl von Clausewitz, sometimes regarded as the “prophet“ of modern warfare, worked on his influential opus magnum “On War,” he drew on a vast body of works by military theorists like Feuquières, authors whose writings were available to him in the Prussian royal library.96 It would certainly be an exaggeration to draw a clear line from Clausewitz to Agent Orange. But the Early Modern military theory on which Clausewitz at least partially relied reminds us just how deeply embedded environmental warfare was in military thought well before the of armies of the post-industrial age developed their now infamous capabilities of mass destruction.

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Peacetime Changes to the Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Transylvania: Attempts to Regulate the Mureş River and to Eliminate Its Meanders in the Josephine Period

Dorin-Ioan Rus

University of Graz

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The article focuses on the attempts of Habsburg authorities in eighteenth-century Transylvania to regulate the Mureş River and eliminate its meanders in order to improve salt and timber transport to Hungary and the Banat region. These attempts ultimately led to changes in the landscape of the province by reshaping riverbanks and removing their vegetation. These changes were prompted by the need to change the type of transport vessel as a result of the timber crisis. To this end, specialists from Upper Austria were brought to build the new softwood vessels that were cheaper and corresponded with the characteristics of the Mureş River. The engineer Mathias Fischer was appointed project leader. He also initiated and planned cleaning operations on the river. The article also presents the work methods and machines employed during these operations and discusses the failed operation to eliminate the meander at Ciugud. In addition, the efforts of the Transylvanian Gubernium and Salt Office led to the accelerated development of towns such as Alba Iulia and Topliţa.

Keywords: environmental history, river regulation, landscape changes, early modern era, timber trade, salt trade

In the eighteenth-century, many West European states initiated canal building and river regulation projects. They were promoted and carried out in order to increase agricultural output as well as to protect agricultural land and human settlements from floods. In addition, they played a significant role in preventing and reducing the spread of epidemic diseases among humans and animals alike.1

Navigable rivers played an important role in transportation. The expansion of internal waterways was an essential requirement for the economic development of pre-industrial societies. Before the planned expansion of the road network and the emergence of railways, rivers and canals had been the main transportation routes for natural products and resources. Transportation costs over water were cheaper than over land, especially given that the poor state of roads was a serious hindrance to traffic.

River regulation and river bank stabilization greatly contributed to the expansion of internal waterways. Thus, many river sections were straightened by eliminating meanders and deepened by removing sediment through dredging, and river banks were stabilized, which not only made the passage of ships smoother, faster, and safer, but also reduced the risk of floods.

The main focus of this study is how the landscape of the Mureş River changed in the context of the eighteenth-century timber crisis and the efforts made by the Habsburg state—central and local authorities alike—to achieve this change, and how it impacted economic growth and human settlements.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Transylvania went through a timber crisis. Due to the reduction of wood resources and an increase in their price, the Transylvanian Gubernium decreed that, instead of hardwood, softwood should be used in shipbuilding. The new task of shipbuilding was given to Upper Austrian masters.2 One of the most critical measures that the Gubernium took was to regulate the Mureş River based on the model of the Traun River in Upper Austria. Austrian specialists viewed this river as a model for Transylvania because its course and discharge were similar to those of the Mureş River.3 Their aim was to accommodate the new salt ships made of softwood timber. As a result, significant material efforts were made to eliminate all potential obstacles and meanders on the river, which could damage the salt ships and implicitly their precious cargo, as well as hinder the transportation of other resources from Transylvania to Hungary, such as timber and military matériel.

The first part of the article deals with the technologies used in the cleaning of the Mureş River in 1779, discussing the issues that emerged during this operation and its environmental impact. In parallel with this dredging operation, they also attempted to improve the waterway by stabilizing the riverbanks and removing obstacles, such as rocks, trees, mills, and bridge ruins. The navigable section of the Mureş River extended from Mirislău (Miriszló in Hungarian) to Zam (Sameschdorf in German, Zám in Hungarian) where it left Transylvania, flowing into the region of Banat. This operation involved the local town halls from the provinces adjoining the Mureş River, such as Transylvania, the Banat, and Hungary, as well as engineers, a local workforce, and representatives from Vienna.

The final part discusses the operation to eliminate meanders, which mainly targeted the area around Ciugud (Schenkendorf in German, Csügöd in Hungarian), close to the Alba Iulia fortress, in 1786. The so-called “Limba” (Tongue) meander was the first to be eliminated. However, because there was no hydrotechnician to run the operation, it was carried out inexpertly and in an improvised manner, which ultimately made it unsuccessful. In the end they were forced to move the village instead. These operations, apart from their primary target of eliminating meanders, also focused on the removal of vegetation from the river banks, more precisely brush and smaller wooded areas that could potentially hinder work and transportation.

State of the Art

This topic on the changes to the landscape that occurred following attempts to regulate the Mureş River has not yet been tackled either by Romanian historiography or Hungarian historiography. Works dealing with transportation on the Mureş River tend to focus on the history of salt mining. Given the interdisciplinary character of this topic, which brings together knowledge and perspectives from the fields of history and geography, one should take a brief look at the scholarly works that have touched upon it.

The subject was briefly approached in a recently published monograph on forests in eighteenth-century Transylvania, more precisely in the chapter dealing with knowledge transfer from Austria to Transylvania and the search for solutions to the timber crisis that affected inland navigation in this province.4 Given that a detailed approach to the issue of forestry would go beyond the limits this paper, only one of its aspects will be analyzed in this article.

in the eighteenth century, Transylvania and Europe witnessed an acute timber crisis, principally caused by overharvesting. At the time, wood was the main energy source in industry. The increase in the price of timber strongly impacted each economic sector. As for the military, the oak timber crisis affected the construction of fortifications, transport vessels, and bridges. As a result, Transylvanian town halls regulated the access of individuals as well as goats and cattle to forests and the harvesting of certain tree species, restricted construction, replaced timber with brick, stone, and roof tiles as primary building materials, and introduced fast-growing tree species.

Konrad Müller5 was the first to approach the subject from the perspective of the history of transportation in his work on the Habsburg economic policy before and during the reign of empress Maria Theresa. Müller discusses, among others, the efforts of the Salt Office, Treasury and Gubernium to modernize transportation by land and by water alike. His work, largely based on documents from the State Archives in Vienna, provides an overview of the aforementioned modernization efforts. Mercantilist policies in Transylvania were principally focused on the exploitation of natural resources. Maria Theresa’s reforms offered the province the much-needed opportunity to develop its economy. However, their implementation was hindered both by underpopulation and resistance from the aristocracy and landed nobility.

In the category of works on the history of transportation one should also mention the authors who approach the history of salt mining and timber rafting. Thus, authors such as Beniamin Bossa,6 Ioan Dordea,7 Volker Wollmann,8 Harald Heppner,9 Viorica Suciu and Gheorghe Anghel,10 Dorin-Ioan Rus,11 and Dorel Marc12 discuss ethnographic and historical aspects of transport by water without approaching the issue of the regulation of the Mureş River.

One should also mention the most recent approaches concerning the regulation of the Tisa (Tisza) River and the Danube. For the first case, Linda Szücs’s study13 focusing on the impact that the regulation of the Tisa River had on the agriculture in the surrounding areas is notable. Edit Király’s work,14 despite mainly focusing on the regulation of the Danube and its perception in the nineteenth century, provides many pieces of relevant information on the eighteenth century as well.

Transylvania’s Rivers and Their Role in Salt Transportation

Transylvania’s navigable waterways (Mieresch/Maros/Mureş, Samosch/Samos/Someş, Alt/Olt, partially Arieş/Aranyos and Körös/Criş) had been used for salt transportation since the Roman period. The earliest plans to render navigation easier, which were included into larger projects for the reorganization of salt mines, can be dated back to the time when the province was an autonomous Principality (1541–1688).15

River projects in Transylvania trace their origin to the issue of efficient salt transport. In 1699, shortly after Transylvania came under Habsburg rule, the Aulic Chamber reorganized the salt monopoly as well as the main warehouse located at Partoş (Alba Iulia) where a dockyard for the building of ships, ferries, rafts, and other types of vessels needed for the transportation of salt and other goods on the Mureş River operated in the eighteenth century. The main task of the Salt Office, whose headquarters were located in Alba Iulia, was to organize the transportation of salt and other goods on the Mureş River, which required the hiring of an ever-growing number of rafters and crews for ships.16 Ordinarily, the Office carried out the transport of salt, but it also often carried out the transport of various other goods, such as grain, foods, wine, iron, lead, copper, lumber, boards, and building stones, to the western areas of Transylvania, the Banat, and Hungary. In 1788, following the outbreak of the Austro-Russo-Turkish War (1787–91), the Office became involved in the transport of war matériel too. On 28 January 1788, the Transylvania Gubernium requested the Salt Office to put at the Army’s disposal 25–30 pontoons needed by troops to build bridges for crossing rivers and streams.17

In 1786, the Austrian hydrologist François Joseph Maire describes in his work the empire’s great waterways and the economic advantages that their navigability could bring. Regarding raw materials and goods that could be more cheaply transported by water from Transylvania, Maire mentions salt, antimony, grain, tobacco, hemp, wine, horses, sheep, leather, wax, and honey. Salt played a crucial role within trade. Hungary, Slavonia, and Croatia were supplied with Transylvanian salt, the quantity delivered annually reaching 600,000 quintals. As for goods that could be transported to Transylvania by water, he mentions manufactured products, sugar, coffee, and luxury items.18

In 1772, the Office at Partoş owned 262 vessels, but the transport to Szeged (Seghedin) of the necessary 600,000 quintals of salt (30,000 tons) required at least 400 vessels. In 1778, 92 vessels were brought back from Arad to Partoş for reuse, while in 1780 the number of vessels included in the Office’s inventory reached 300.19

Measures for the Navigability of Transylvanian Rivers
in the Eighteenth Century

After Habsburg authorities took control of Transylvania, they started to draft plans to render the rivers navigable again, given that they had been used for salt transport in Roman times (106–275 AD). In 1700, Count Johann Friedrich von Seeau submitted such a plan for the Someş and Olt rivers,20 but it failed for same reason as later plans, because of a lack of qualified personnel and technology. For example, a 1771 project aimed to bring ship crews from the German states and regulate the Mureş and Arieş rivers with the help of modern machinery brought from the German states. Although the plan was approved, it was ultimately abandoned21 likely because of the devastation caused by floods that year,22 which prompted the Financial Directorate to reallocate the funds to flood relief efforts.

Throughout Maria Theresa’s reign, new river regulation projects were submitted in order to improve navigation on the Monarchy’s main rivers.23 One of them was Maire’s ambitious project to create a waterway connecting Sibiu and Trieste. The first step was to link up the Olt and Mureş rivers at Sibiu, thus creating easier access to the Danube. Then, this waterway was to be unified with another one that linked Szeged to Pest, thus allowing Austria access to West European markets by water. In Maire’s vision, a logical consequence was to link up the Mureş and Someş rivers as well, which would hasten Transylvania’s economic progress.24 Colonel Jean-Baptiste Brequin de Demenge’s 1766 plan,25 which aimed at linking the provinces of Croatia, Transylvania, Hungary, and the Banat to the Drava River in order to facilitate trade by water, was ultimately abandoned.26

According to a mercantilist-inspired transport system in Europe, navigation on internal waterways was seen as the best quality means of transportation. Certainly, transport by land was not neglected either. The developmental potential of navigation on internal waterways was especially significant in this time period. Wherever opportunities for economic development arose, the use of waterways was always taken into account. However, this development was somewhat slowed down due to the limited territory of many states, and their separation by trade barriers and customs.27

Under the influence of mercantilist theories, absolutist rulers improved transport conditions by promoting navigation on internal waterways in order to increase the economic power of their states, and started the systematic reorganization by connecting the various fluvial transport systems. Thus, in Western Europe numerous plans to regulate rivers and to build canals between the main navigable rivers were drawn up. In 1770, the Austrian government issued a navigation ordinance for the Danube (Donau-Schifffahrtsordnung) and initiated the systematic regulation of navigable rivers.28 Although certain mercantilist states also expanded their road infrastructure, in most states transport was moved on internal waterways. For instance, during the Russo-Austro-Turkish conflict, war matériel was mostly transported by water. The era of mercantilism witnessed a wave of canal building in Central Europe too. Absolute monarchs perceived transport policies, which included the planning and construction of canal networks, as a means to further unify their state. Canals were also supposed to stimulate trade and bring together economic zones. Canal building also contributed to the transformation of the landscape with the aim of achieving economic unity.29

In 1773 Count Auersperg, who was at the time Governor of Transylvania, claimed that the regulation of the three rivers would be very costly, which is why the Diet ultimately rejected the project.30 Navigation on the Mureş River was hindered by numerous obstacles that caused material and human losses. For example, in 1771 several vessels sank, and total material losses were estimated at 1,165 florins. In 1774, a tower located in the village of Folt collapsed into the river and prevented navigation. Vessel owners and inhabitants of surrounding villages were ordered to clear the riverbed of stones and fallen trees, and remove sunken vessels and rafts.31

The value of canals was recognized from the early eighteenth century when numerous plans were drawn up. Their implementation, however, generally failed due to financial constraints. In Transylvania, several military and civil engineers, such as Fischer, Croner, Mraz, and other scientists participated in the mapping of the province initiated during the reign of Joseph II. Their river measuring and mapping endeavors laid the foundations for the 1779 Mureş River regulation project.

Canal building targeted the removal of all obstacles and the creation of a safe environment for the transport of timber and salt with the new types of vessels on the Mureş River. The documents sent by Viennese Court to the Treasury and the War Council in June 1781 reveal a plan for the comprehensive regulation of the Mureş River.32 According to a 1775 report and its annexed map, which has since been lost, there were 96 meanders along this river, 87 of them quite large, which had to be partially straightened. In addition, all the points of entry and exit from the old riverbed had to be sealed off. Given that the total length of the meanders measured 3,532 lines,33 the Financial Directorate in Vienna proposed shortening it to 1,620 lines (calculated in Viennese feet34), which would cut the distance by 1,912 lines. Thus, many dangerous obstacles would be eliminated and the duration of the trip would be reduced by half. By increasing transport speed, they would be able to reduce the size of the vessels and consequently keep the amount of “material losses to a minimum, which would increase the yearly revenues of the Imperial Treasury” (“auch das Schwenden selbst des Materials auf geringerer Prozent heruntersetzt, damit dem königlichen Ärarium jährlich großen Nutzen zuwenden würde”).35

In 1786, the engineers Fischer, Mraz, and Croner were entrusted with planning the regulation of the Mureş, Someş, and Olt rivers, respectively. The greatest technical challenge that the engineers faced during the regulation of these rivers was the elimination of the numerous rocks and meanders that required many machines and specialists.36 They had to report on the obstacles that hindered navigation on the aforementioned rivers, on how they could be eliminated, and on the number of specialists that would be required to carry out the task.37

The 1779 Regulation Plan

The 1779 plan drawn up by the Salt Office envisaged the regulation of the Mureş River and the introduction of new types of softwood vessels. It was arguably one of the most ambitious landscape transformation projects in eighteenth-century Transylvania. It required the dredging and cleaning of the Mureş River, and its regulation through the elimination of its meanders, with the aim of making navigation easier. Carrying out this project would require the transfer of experts and technology and the professional training of local specialists, which counted as something new for Transylvania. The greatest hurdle, however, was technical. The main reason for commencing this project was the rising price of oak timber needed in shipbuilding due to the aforementioned over-harvesting crisis starting in the mid-eighteenth century.38 The previous source for hardwood timber had been the Hungarian state forests in the area of Arad, more precisely in Vărădia de Mureş (Waradia or Totvărădia / Tótvárad), (Fig. 1) from where it was brought to Partoş.39 The price of softwood for vessels was considerably less, and varied according to dimensions and furnishing. A softwood vessel without a roof cost 83 florins and 13½ kreutzer, while the price of one with a roof could reach 101 florins and 16¾ kreutzer. The cost price of an oak ship reached 125–140 florins.40

In December 1778, the navigation engineer Fischer, head of the Mureş River project, sent the Treasury a proposal for the building of softwood vessels. According to Fisher, the length, width, and depth of these ships would make them more efficient. They could also sail on rivers with lower water levels. The test ship measured 10 klafter in length,41 15–16 Austrian ft. in width, 2 ½ Austrian ft. in height. Soon after it was built, the Treasury approved a pilot trip on the Mureş River between Maros-Portu and Szeged.42 The minutes of the discussions following the test reveal that the engineers Fischer and Hubert were satisfied with the outcome. They argued that the vessel’s slight bent forward was no reason for concern, but still recommended that the vessels be covered with canvas instead of wood.43

Figure 1. Salt mines and waterways in Transylvania (made by Bianca Tămăşan)

 

Because the new vessels built from softwood were less resistant to accidents than those built from hardwood oak, the Treasury ordered at its meeting held in Lugoj on 13 February 1778 a new cleaning operation of the Mureş River, the demolition of floating mills, and the removal of logs, broken bridge pillars, and other elements that could potentially jeopardize navigation. At the same meeting, the Treasury also decided on what type of machinery was necessary and set the summer of 1778 as starting date of the operation so that the new ships would be serviceable by the spring of 1780.44 The engineers Samuel Nazdroviczky and Fischer, upon testing each machine, comparing prices, and evaluating maintenance costs, gave a professional opinion in favor of the windlass (Erdwinde in German) for the Transylvanian sectors of the river. According to the two engineers, this machine was used the following way: (1) if placed on a ship, it could easily be attached to any part of a log; (2) in order to better attach the logs to the machine, Wallachian workers would be hired due to their ability to stay longer underwater; (3) once the log was taken to the riverbank and attached to it, it could be conveniently redirected and easier unattached; (4) the machine’s force could be increased with the help of a tackle; (5) if the riverbank was uneven, the logs could be removed with various lifting machines, which, required more work; and (6) experience showed that with the help of the windlass even larger tree trunks with branches could be removed. Both Commissions representing the regions of the Banat and Hungary, respectively, agreed with the two engineers’ technical proposal. The wooden debris removal operation started on 11 August and ended on 1 October 1778 with the removal of 117 logs and tree branches of various sizes.45

On 27 February 1779,46 the Financial Committee in Vienna (Wiener Finanzkommission) approved the plan drawn up in Sibiu (Nagyszeben/Hermannstadt) and tasked the engineer Hubert with building the new ships projected to be 100 feet long, 15–16 feet wide, and with a total depth of 2½ feet (= 28.35/4.5–5/0.75 m.). As for the width of the Mureş River, it reached 150 paces at Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár), 200 paces at Deva (Déva), Şoimuş (Marossolymos), and Ilia (Marosillye), while in the flatland, as it slowed down, it reached up to 300 paces. As for its average depth in the navigable sector that started at Alba Iulia, it reached at least 1 fathom or even more.47

On 27 March 1779, the Viennese Financial Directorate set the production cost for each new ship at 83 florins and 13½ kreutzer. The timber would be brought from the Giurgeu Mountains in the Eastern Carpathians.48 The engineer Karl Loidl was tasked with building a sawmill in the mountains to mill planks and beams for shipbuilding.49 As for the building technique, the Viennese Aulic Chamber proposed the use of the same methods as navigators in Upper Austria because the Traun River had a similar course and flow speed to the Mureşin Transylvania. In addition, they recommended the adoption of Austrian shipbuilding methods and ordered the relocation of several masters from Upper Austria to Alba Iulia in order to create a shipyard.50 Finally, the Commission sanctioned the building of a road that ran parallel to the Mureş River in order to facilitate the traction of ships with the help of oxen and horses. The road was to be built with the help of peasants from villages along the river.51 With the new ships, the Transylvanian Treasury was aiming for higher revenues, given that they were more spacious, required only a small crew, and their maintenance costs were low in comparison to the older hardwood ships.

The navigation engineer Fischer was tasked with organizing the transport of logs in the river, beginning in December 1778, for the building of the new vessels. Upon conducting field research, Fischer reported first in February and then in May to the Financial Directorate that it was necessary to build a canal at the confluence between the Topliţa stream and the Mureş River. In his opinion, it would be an easy task because it merely required the removal of a few rocks that hindered transport. In addition, he also considered that in order to facilitate transport up to the sawmill at Ditrău (Ditró/Dittersdorf) (Fig. 1), it would be necessary to build a road that would cost an estimated 100 florins.52 On 23 May 1781, the Transylvanian Treasury submitted to Vienna a protocol on the cost of building the waterway on the Topliţa stream, which amounted to 633 florins. According to the same document, the logs moved on this waterway would be used to mill planks.53

This politically directed transformation of salt transport by changing the type of ships required not only the regulation of rivers, but also the dredging of riverbeds. Thus, in December 1779,54 the General Staff in Sibiu considered the possibility that the 2nd Wallachian Border Guard Regiment could take over this task on the Someş and Tisa rivers where the new ships would operate. The experience of the cleaning operation on the Mureş River from the summer and autumn of 1778,55 when an insufficient workforce was recruited from among local peasants, provided the Financial Directorate with the opportunity to make the above decision. In February 1780, they informed Colonel Enzenberg, commander of this regiment in Năsăud, that border guards could now use larger ships for salt transport on the Someş River.56

On 5 August 1780, the Financial Commission in Vienna sent their approval to the Gubernium in Sibiu of the sum of 8,760 florins for the shipyard at Maros-Portu, of which 4,261 florins were allocated for the building of 31 ships (each cost 137 florins and 47½ kreutzer). The remaining sum was allotted to auxiliary buildings.57 In addition, on 2 December 1780, the Commission allotted an extra 1,873 florins and 20 kreutzer for the construction of 10 wintering places for ships.58 According to Fischer’s plan, these places were to be built beyond the river, in an area protected from floods (Fig. 2).59

The plan followed the design of wintering places for salt transport vessels at Salzkammergut (on the Traun River, especially at Wels) conceived by the imperial and royal cameral engineer Hubert in 1776.60 Hubert had already provided technical instructions regarding these places as well as other similar designs for the region of Banat.61

The aim of this measure was to reduce travel time to Szeged by a third, which meant that each round-trip salt transport, which had required five weeks until then, would now require about three weeks without pause. This also meant that several shipments of salt could be moved by the newly-built ships over a short period of time. As a result, lower quantities of timber would be used, which would bring more revenues to the Imperial Treasury; however, the quantity of timber to be used depended on the ship’s size and furnishing. In order to build the a along the river, arable lands had to be reduced, brush and forest surplus on riverbanks had to be cut. In addition, the construction work required timber, stone, as well as skilled and manual laborers, carts, and various tools. In order to carry out the first set of requirements, the engineer Fischer made the following proposal:62 (1) landowners had to build levees and embankments wherever banks were sunken or uneven in order to protect villages and lands from floods; (2) cavities located next to riverbanks had to be filled up or crossed by a bridge; (3) brush and trees along riverbanks had to be cut; (4) garden fences along riverbanks had to be torn down so that ships could be hauled upstream; (5) mill owners had to erect tall and strong protection bars around mills, which were obstacles to navigation of rivers. In 1771, the Mureş River alone numbered 186 mills that had to be bypassed. The projected demolition of these mills caused an uproar among owners.63

Unfortunately, Fischer’s plan to render the Mureş River navigable with softwood vessels, which can be considered very ambitious for the prevailing technical conditions in Transylvania, was ultimately abandoned for lack of qualified personnel.

According to the 1779 plan to regulate the Mureş River, wherever the river had two branches, one of them had to be closed off. For this they adopted a holistic approach, meaning that every angle and aspect was taken into account, from the width, length, and depth of the waterway to safety measures for ships as well as the adjoining roads, agricultural lands, and human settlements.

While choosing the trajectory and outlining the scope of the regulation work, Fischer started from certain principles that reflected the necessity to maintain a stable riverbed: (1) respect for the natural evolution tendency of the riverbed and creation of favorable water-flow conditions; (2) preservation of floodwater flow direction and water transport capacity by avoiding flow blockages; and (3) regulation works carried out in stages by following the evolution in time and space of morphological phenomena and by avoiding unwanted effects.

As we indicated above, the works to protect the banks of the Mureş River had to be conducted according to the particularities of its flow, the necessity of these works being closely connected to the regulation solutions. Because riverbank protection works were costly as they absorbed a significant amount of building materials, the Viennese Financial Directorate wanted them reduced to the required minimum. In any case, cutting through the meander neck required at least two consolidation points (upstream and downstream). However, there was the risk that calibration works could destroy natural consolidations (Fig. 3). It was also stipulated that levees should be built in certain sections near the riverbanks for their protection.

This planned transformation of the landscape could also appear as an attempt by the Financial Directorate to improve transportation by water and riverside living conditions alike.64 In this time period, the custom of regulating internal waterways within ample projects in order to facilitate transport, to ensure protection against floods, and to prevent the outbreak of epidemic diseases was always linked to centralizing interests of state power.65 This implies the existence of a political-economic will, as well as a group of advisers and specialists that perceived the transformation of the landscape as an impetus for agriculture and for economic progress in general.

The new transformation of the landscape was based on the use of techniques and work methods theretofore unknown in Transylvania. They represented the best premise for carrying out projects on river regulations, canal building, and draining operations. The great technical projects were not carried out simply by bringing or importing know-how, but also by connecting them with institutions, scientific ideas, and technical procedures.66 A novel element of this project was that it placed the landscape within the general context of its use, thus serving economic interests, such as the promotion of transport. Secondly, it relied on extensive mapping and surveys, which helped engineers eliminate risk factors. The technical plan was accompanied by mission statements, financial proposals, as well as revenue and expenditure estimates.

Impact on Human Settlements

By building new transport routes in the era of mercantilism, the transport reorganization plan created the premise for the economic development of regions rich in raw materials or located in the proximity of waterways, also giving an impetus for the structural transformation of human settlements and landscapes alike. The fact that transportation by water played a substantial role is also demonstrated by the presence of human settlements along the rivers. Among them, those situated at each end of a route or at the intersection of major waterways and roads acquired greater significance. Because waterways were used only for a short period in a year, travelers and traders had to stop over in these settlements for a longer time and then continue their journey by land. This had a positive impact on the local economic and cultural life.

This is also how the settlement of Partoş developed. The local Naval Office contracted annually administrative personnel and ship crews, who lived in the neighborhood close to the port. Moreover, this area of town hosted many shipbuilders. There three plans for the fortress and town of Alba Iulia from this time period that describe the main salt warehouse and the shipyard, both located on the right bank of the Mureş River between the bridge over the river and the mouth of the Mureş Canal, known as the “sanitary canal” in the nineteenth century. The plans were drawn up by the Fortress’s Corps of Engineers.

Figure 4. Maros-Portu in the year 1740
(Suciu and Anghel, “Mărturii,” 367–87.)

 

The first plan was drawn up in 1740 and entitled “Situation Plan for the Alba Iulia Fortress in Transylvania” (“Situations Plan der Festung Carlsburg in Siebenbürgen”). On the south side, one can distinguish the course of the Mureş River, the bridge with the customs office, and the road that links Alba Iulia to Sibiu via Sebeş. On the same bank is also located the mouth of the Mureş Canal and the salt warehouse (Salzniederlag). The latter, comprising a total of nine buildings, stretched along the right bank of the Mureş River for around 300 meters. The buildings of the salt warehouse were placed on the western side of a rectangle (Fig. 4).

Figure 5 Maros-Portu in the year 1771
(Muzeul Naţional al Unirii Alba Iulia, fond “Colecţia de documente,” no. 7409.)

 

The second plan was drawn up in 1771 and illustrates only the town’s main elements: streets, canals, churches, as well as the salt warehouse at Partoş. They also marked the locality Maros-Portu on the right bank of the Mureş River. Apart from the 20 houses, one can also notice that the location of the buildings of the salt warehouse is identical to that from the previous plan (Fig. 5).67

The Mureş River project was also the source of demographic growth in Topliţa. In 1750 it counted 50 households,68 and by 1785 their number reached 227, with a population of 1,470 inhabitants.69 Work at the Austrian sawmill and in timber rafting increased the town’s population as more individuals found employment there (Figs. 6 and 7).70

The River Regulation Attempt at Limba

The 1786 operation to eliminate meanders on the Mureş River started with the so-called “Limba” (The Tongue) meander, close to Alba Iulia. This operation included technical measures that Transylvanian Treasury were ultimately unable to implement properly due to lack of experience and inadequate equipment. The flawed intervention combined with eroding riverbanks resulted in the flooding of Ciugud. As a result, its population had to be evacuated and moved elsewhere.

The navigation engineer Fischer submitted to the Magistrat in Alba Iulia a formal request for the relocation of the inhabitants of Ciugud and for 300 laborers needed for the hydro-technical works.71 On June 14, 1786, during the preparation stage for this operation, Fischer was asked the following questions: “where and how was the sector of the Mureş River, that was assigned to him, navigable, if meanders prevented safe navigation, […] and whether circumstances required the employment of personnel.”72

Fischer explained that the Mureş River was navigable from Mirislău, a locality upstream from Aiud (Enyed/Strassburg am Mieresch), where navigation was surely possible in springtime, even with a 5–600 quintal cargo on a type of vessel built straight and wide in order to be useful on lower-depth waterways. On deeper waterways, such as the Danube, larger and heavier cargo ships could navigate, which was important to the economy of the province as local produce could be moved easier, safer, and in larger quantities. On the lower course of the Mureş River up to Arad or to the Tisa River, navigation was possible until June.

In relation to the numerous meanders, small islands, and other obstacles hindering easier and safer navigation, Fisher maintained that the greatest issue was the dispersal of the current. This dispersal meant that the river, at higher current velocity, rather eroded the riverbank, which consisted mostly of soft earth, than deepened the rocky riverbed. He then proposed several measures to improve the course of the Mureş River, such as the improvement of the riverbed, the building of roads with effective drainage along the riverbanks, the protection of side valleys from floods, the regulation of mills and weirs, the construction of bridges over dangerous places, and the installation of water conveyance systems or similar objects that could be useful for the local population.

For the elimination of the meander he proposed: (1) building adequate machinery for the river; (2) the prior cleaning of the riverbanks and of the river sector; (3) cutting through the neck of the meander; (4) securing the lower part of the riverbanks; (5) sealing off the free branch; and (6) eliminating the possibility of floods.

They intended to cut through the neck of the meander at the point opposite Ciugud, namely, at the village of Drâmbar (Drombár), which meant building a canal between the two points. Then, Fischer argued, the population of Ciugud had to be relocated (Fig. 8).73

In a report dated 5 April 1786, Fischer asked the Transylvanian Treasury when it could finance the improvement of navigation and hydraulic issues. He explained that, similarly to Hungary, each county should employ an engineer specialized in hydraulic issues so that several works could be executed at the same time. In addition to this, he suggested that it would be very useful if they also conducted research and drew up future improvement plans with the help of a hydro-technician who was able to implement them and who was familiar the country’s particularities as well as its problems.74 Following this request, Transylvania’s Gubernium approved on 2 July 1787 the payment of 1,397 florins and 20½ kreutzer to the Transportation Office at Partos for the execution of hydro-technical works at Ciugud.75

The resolution of these issues required the employment of experienced personnel, especially laborers who had previously worked on similar building projects, such as the improvement of road infrastructure, the renovation of public buildings, etc. These projects were ultimately abandoned, either for technical or financial reasons. The year 1786 was especially difficult for Transylvania due to a devastating earthquake,76 numerous floods, and an epizootic outbreak,77 which compelled the Gubernium in Sibiu to redirect financing towards the affected areas and to postpone the planned regulation of the Mureş River.

Three-quarters of a century later, on 6 May 1850, another project for the regulation of the Mureş River was submitted by the deputy Military Commissar of the Alba District, Dimitrie Moldovan, to the General Staff in Sibiu. The plan targeted rendering this river navigable for steamboats, but it was ultimately rejected.78 The idea of regulating the Mureş River would be reexamined almost a century later, during the communist period.

The following question arises: How did the regulatory works influence the lowland downstream settlements? As we have seen, the policies to improve transportation on the Mureş River, which included its regulation, led to the further development of the town of Alba Iulia, the prime example of this study. Similar developments can be noticed in other towns, such as Deva and Arad, while the operation near the village of Ciugud, which ended in failure, caused the relocation of its entire population. It is certain, however, that river regulation operations reduced the risk of flooding generally. Another example is the successful operation on the Târnava Mare River at Dumbrăveni (Ebesfalva in Hungarian/Elisabethstadt in German), which took place in 1771.79

Conclusions

The plans to regulate navigable rivers can be considered a novel element within the evolution of navigation on internal waterways in the early stages of Transylvania’s industrialization in late eighteenth century. Industrial growth was a decisive factor in waterway regulation and the reorganization of timber and salt transport. This induced numerous changes in the natural environment and prompted the development of human settlements.

The Mureş River plan consisted of: (1) rethinking the timber and salt transport system on the internal waterways, which was determined by the acute shortage of oak timber needed in shipbuilding; (2) building softwood vessels according to the design of those used in Upper Austria; (3) regulating the channel of the Mureş River by straightening and reinforcing its banks as well as by eliminating menders; and (4) building canals for moving timber to the specially constructed sawmills.

The following changes were made to the landscape: (1) reinforcement of riverbanks; (2) building of a road which ran parallel with the Mureş River for the traction of vessels upstream; (3) building of the sawmill at Ditrău; (4) construction of the canal at Topliţa; (5) rearrangement of the shipyard at Partoş; and (6) growth of towns and villages in the proximity of logging sites (for example Topliţa) and of the sailors’ neighborhood in Alba Iulia.

These projects aimed at reshaping the landscape and subordinating it to the economic imperatives of the Viennese Court. The centrally planned regulation of the Mureş River in Transylvania was meant to make the downstream transportation of goods (primarily salt) easier and more cost-efficient. In addition, this project was beneficial not only for the local labor market, given that the dredging, cleaning, and building works required a considerable number of skilled workers and manual laborers, but also for local industry and commerce as more goods could be moved.

Moreover, these operations had an environmental impact as they reduced ground water levels and the average discharge of the Mureş River. One should also add, however, that constant and long-lasting tree harvesting in the area and climate change, as well as increasing demand for water in the fast-growing towns and in agriculture, may have very well contributed to this.

The poor state of roads meant that the expansion of internal waterways (regulation of rivers and construction of canals) became a necessity. In comparison to roads, which became unusable in bad weather, waterways were much more reliable and cost-efficient. The latter were better suited for moving heavier cargo, especially salt. Around ports located alongside waterways, several towns grew and thrived as a result of commercial and shipping activities.

Novel for Transylvania was the dissemination of technical innovations as well as the rethinking of the shipbuilding system that was achieved by bringing specialists from Austria. There were, however, several obstacles that had to be overcome, such as cost, safety issues, and lower water depths. Revolutionary for the province was also the progress of institutional structures and infrastructure. Further improvements to infrastructure involved the facilitation of water transport through the building of a new type of vessel, adopting a new navigation system, and expanding the Maros-Portu port.

The geographic distribution of salt and timber resources required the design and promotion of new cargo vessels. Topographic difficulties and landscape particularities propelled the improvement of these means of transportation and of the infrastructure. The development of the “salt industry” led, on the other hand, to the creation of new economic centers in areas where timber was used in construction.

Towards the mid-eighteenth century, transport over waterways had become a major revenue source for the state. During this century, states were willing to invest heavily in the expansion of internal waterways and to encourage the creation of transregional waterway networks in order to move larger quantities of goods and to increase their revenues. As for Transylvania, the measures that central authorities took were revolutionary for the time since they transformed the landscape by expanding and improving transport routes and by rethinking transport over water and ways to conserve timber. According to a 1791 report, approximately 500,000 quintals of salt produced from the mines at Turda, Cojocna, and Ocna Sibiului were transported on the Mureş River annually.80

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