On 29 August 1526, on the plain of Mohács, the Ottoman army of Sultan Suleiman I destroyed the army of King Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia. The chancellor István Brodarics, who was at the king's side, counted some 24,000 or 25,000 men in the Hungarian camp. Late in the afternoon the Hungarian horse charged, drove part of the Ottoman line back and was then stopped by the janissaries' fire and the guns; the battle proper, Brodarics wrote, lasted about an hour and a half. In the flight Louis drowned with his horse in a flooded hollow below the village of Csele. The road to Buda lay open, and two rival kings were elected.
Battle of Mohács, 1526: the day the kingdom of Hungary died
29 August 1526 · 500 years ago
The Ottomans won at Mohács on 29 August 1526, destroying Hungary's army in one afternoon. King Louis II died in the rout. Armies, map and the mass graves.
Read the full story of Battle of Mohács, 1526: the day the kingdom of Hungary died ›Battle of Fleurus, 1622: the mad Halberstadter breaks through
29 August 1622 · 404 years ago
In the Thirty Years' War, Córdoba's Spanish army blocked the Protestant mercenaries of Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick near Fleurus, in the Spanish Netherlands. After costly failed attacks the Protestants broke off and reached the Dutch, worn out and short of equipment.
Read the full story of Battle of Fleurus, 1622: the mad Halberstadter breaks through ›Also on this day
1862: in Virginia, John Pope's Union army attacked Stonewall Jackson's Confederates near Groveton, in the fight the Official Records list as the "Battle of Groveton, or Manassas Plains" and the National Park Service treats as part of the Second Battle of Manassas (Second Bull Run). Jackson reported his troops "along and in the vicinity of the cut of an unfinished railroad". The Park Service describes uncoordinated Union attacks all afternoon that momentarily breached his line in places but were each time forced back. The fight of the evening before is told on our 28 August page.1
