Mongol incursions in the Holy Roman Empire took place in the spring of 1241 and again in the winter of 1241–1242. They were part of the first Mongol invasion of Europe.
The Mongols did not advance far into the Holy Roman Empire and there was no major clash of arms on its territory. Rather, the army that had invaded Poland, after harassing the eastern borders of the Kingdom of Germany, crossed the March of Moravia in April–May 1241 to rejoin the army that had invaded Hungary. The Mongol army was composed mainly of Cuman and Russian auxiliaries, whose homelands had been conquered by the Mongols. During their transit, they laid waste the Moravian countryside but avoided strongholds. King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia was joined by some German princes, but he monitored the Mongols in Moravia without seeking battle. There were more significant skirmishes in the north of the Duchy of Austria a month later that left several hundred dead, but there was no cooperation between the Austrians and Hungarians.
In response to the Mongol threat, the imperial church and the imperial princes held assemblies to organize a military response. Pope Gregory IX ordered the preaching of a crusade and from Italy Emperor Frederick II issued an encyclical to that end. A crusading army under the command of King Conrad IV of Germany mustered on 1 July 1241, but was disbanded a few weeks after setting out because the danger had passed.
Although there was no major military action in the Empire, rumours that the Mongols had been checked there spread far beyond the Empire's borders. There are records in several languages from Spain to Armenia of the Bohemian or German king defeating the Mongols and forcing their retreat. In Moravia, a supposed victory over the Mongols took on legendary proportions. In Germany, some contemporary writers attributed the Mongols' general retreat from Europe to the intimidating crusading army. In reality, the Mongols likely spared most of Germany because their primary objective was to punish the Hungarian king for supporting the Cumans.
The Mongols raided eastern Austria and southern Moravia again in December 1241 and January 1242. A century later, in 1340, they raided the March of Brandenburg. Anti-Mongol crusades were preached within the Empire's borders several times between these two raids, and even as late as 1351.
Background
The general view in western Europe, since at least 1236, was that the Mongols' ultimate goal was the Holy Roman Empire. This was based partially on intelligence, but mainly on prevailing interpretations of apocalyptic literature. The arrival of the Mongols on the eastern border of the Empire presented the first serious external threat it had faced since the Hungarian invasions in the 10th century. The Empire was not well positioned to meet it. The emperor had been excommunicated since 1239 and the pope was arranging a political crusade against him in Italy.
In 1237, King Béla IV of Hungary received a Mongol ultimatum demanding his submission. According to Aubry of Trois-Fontaines, a similar ultimatum was received at the court of Emperor Frederick II in 1238, although this is not recorded by anyone else and no such document has survived. Frederick supposedly responded that he would gladly resign his crown if he could become the khan's falconer. The Annales Sancrucenses record that the Mongols also sent ambassadors to Duke Frederick II of Austria demanding his submission.
In his Chronica majora, Matthew of Paris records that rumours about the Mongols had spread into the empire by 1238, for which reason the fishmongers of Frisia were unwilling to go to England. He is also the source for the rumour that the Mongols were the Lost Tribes of Israel and were assisted by Jews smuggling arms out of Germany in wine barrels. The Jewish merchants were said to claim that the barrels were filled with poisoned wine for the invaders. Owing to these rumours, Jews were killed at several customs posts.
News of the Mongol invasion of Georgia reached the papal court in late 1239 or early 1240. Queen Rusudan and her son, the future King David VI, requested the preaching of a crusade, but Pope Gregory IX rejected the request on the grounds that the church was already overcommitted with crusades in Spain and the Levant as well as against heresy and apostasy in Occitania and Bosnia.
The Mongols entered Hungary on 12 March 1241. Béla IV immediately sent a letter requesting assistance to Duke Frederick. The duke arrived in Pest in the last weeks of March or the first week of April with a small contingent of poorly armed men. Frederick quickly won a small victory, killing two spies attached to the contingent under Shiban. Soon after the Cuman leader Köten was killed. Although the role of Frederick in this is uncertain, he left Pest not long after on bad terms with the Hungarian king.
Following the Battle of Mohi on 11 April 1241, the defeated king of Hungary fled to Austria, crossing the border at Pressburg. Initially welcomed by his erstwhile ally, Duke Frederick lured the king into the castle of Hainburg and extorted the repayment of an indemnity he had been forced to pay the king six years earlier. Béla handed over all the wealth he had with him, including the crown jewels, and was still forced to pawn three counties to the duke. These were probably the three westernmost counties of Moson, Sopron and Vas, which had large German populations. After he was freed, Béla headed for Croatia. At the same time, Béla sent a letter to King Louis IX of France requesting help and another to the Emperor Frederick offering to submit Hungary to the Empire in exchange for military support. The emperor responded in a letter that he could not assist until his quarrel with the pope was resolved and directed the Hungarian king to request aid from Conrad IV, who had formally been ruling Germany since 1237. The king, however, was a child of thirteen and power was exercised by Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz as Reichsgubernator.
Incursions
Northeastern Germany
As early as 10 March 1241, Henry Raspe, Landgrave of Thuringia, wrote to Duke Henry II of Brabant detailing the Mongols' movements across the border in Poland. An early form of the antemurale christianitatis ('bulwark of Christianity') metaphor is found in this letter, where Henry refers to Poland as his "wall". After the Battle of Chmielnik on 18 March 1241, the Polish duke Bolesław V fled to Moravia.
Following their victory over Duke Henry of Silesia in the Battle of Legnica on 9 April 1241, Mongol detachments entered the marches of Meissen and Lusatia in eastern Germany, advancing as far as the Elbe. Their attacks are recorded in the Annales sancti Pantaleonis, which states that "during their march they also crossed into the diocese of Meissen and slew many people there." According to a letter from Bartholomew of Trent to Bishop Egino of Brixen, the Mongols "attacked the borders of Bohemia and Saxony".
King Wenceslaus of Bohemia, who had raised an army of 40,000, retreated into Germany to join his forces with Thuringian and Saxon reinforcements. He avoided giving battle, although his cavalry may have beaten off the Mongol vanguard near Kladsko. He had earlier ordered the fortification of his major cities, including Prague, possibly in response to the report of the fall of Kiev in 1240. The fortification work is recorded in the Chronicle of Dalimil.
The Mongols did not continue their westward advance into Germany, but turned back east. They did not invade Bohemia. This has been attributed to their losses at Legnica being too heavy for them to confront the Bohemian army; to Wenceslaus' proximity from Legnica—he was only a day's march away—deterring the Mongols from pressing their luck; or to the mountains of the Bohemian Massif, which formed the natural northern boundary of Bohemia. According to Wenceslaus, who wrote letters to the princes of Germany informing them of the Mongols' progress, they were moving at a pace of 40 miles (64 km) per day away from the Bohemian border. At the Moravian Gate, they turned south and passed between the ranges of the Sudetes and Carpathians, entering Moravia near Opava.
Moravia
The Mongol army at Legnica had been under the command of Orda, Baidar and Kadan. It has been estimated at 8,000 strong. The army as it entered Moravia must have been somewhat smaller. Uriyangkhadai, the son of Subutai, was also at Legnica. According to the Chinese History of Yuan, the official history of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Uriyangkhadai took part in the invasion of Poland and the land of the Nie-mi-sz', which word is derived from a name for Germans.
The Franciscan vice-minister in Bohemia, Jordan of Giano, who wrote letters from Prague while the Mongols were in Moravia, indicates that they had passed through the Moravian Gate before 9 May. Other sources place Orda in Hungary by late April, so the transit of Moravia seems to have lasted less than a month. The speed of the transit is mentioned by two other sources: Roger of Torre Maggiore remarks on it and the Annales sancti Pantaleonis note with hyperbole that, whereas it should have taken four days, the Mongols crossed Moravia in one day and night. The Mongols probably exited Moravia through the Hrozenkov pass, what Roger of Torre Maggiore calls the Hungarian Gate. The path they took through Moravia is unknown. They rejoined the main force under Batu Khan outside Trenčín in Hungary.
During their transit, the Mongols devastated all of Moravia "except for the castles and fortified places", according to the Annales sancti Pantaleonis. The only evidence relating to a specific place is a charter of 1247 in which Margrave Ottokar gave the city of Opava some privileges because of the damage the Mongols had caused in the region. All the other charters relating to the destruction of towns and monasteries were forged in the 19th century.
No archaeological evidence of the brief Mongol presence in Moravia has yet come to light, nor is Moravia mentioned explicitly in any eastern sources. According to Siegfried of Ballhausen, many Moravian refugees appeared in Meissen and Thuringia. Many others fled into the hills, woods and marshes and hid in caves. In a letter of 25 May, Bishop Henry of Constance urged the Franciscans to preach the crusade in his diocese because the Mongols had "attacked the borders of the Diocese of Mainz", referring to the dioceses of Prague and Olomouc, which were subject to Mainz.
Austria
The Mongol raiding parties entered Austria in late May or early June, either from Hungary or from Moravia on their way to rejoin the main Mongol army in Hungary. They did not cross the Danube in Austria, but they sacked Korneuburg to its north. The Mongols were probably in Austria as late as July, although already in that month Duke Frederick II was occupying the Hungarian counties that Béla IV had pawned him.
Duke Frederick detailed the situation in Austria in letters to the pope and the emperor. In a letter to Conrad IV dated 13 June 1241, he reports on the damage the Mongols inflicted on Austria and estimates that he killed 300 of them on the banks of the Morava. A week later, in a letter to Henry of Constance dated 22 or 23 June 1241, Frederick revises his estimate of casualties upwards to 700 and puts his own dead at 100. This incursion into Austria is also mentioned in the Annales Garstenses, Annales Zwetlenses and Annales Sancrucenses. The first two annals record that the Mongols left Austria unscathed, while the Sancrucenses assign them many dead.
Matthew of Paris quotes a letter from a certain Ivo of Narbonne, an eyewitness, who credits King Wenceslaus, Duke Frederick, Patriarch Berthold of Aquileia, Duke Bernard of Carinthia, Margrave Herman V of Baden and the "prince of Dalmatia" with the relief of Neustat from a besieging Mongol army that came from Hungary. Neustat is usually identified with Wiener-Neustadt. Such an attack is implausible but not impossible. The Mongols are not otherwise known to have crossed the Danube before the winter of 1241/42. It has been suggested that the enemy at Wiener-Neustadt was in fact a band of unruly Cumans who had left Hungary following the death of Köten. Neustat, however, may be the aforementioned Korneuburg.
Ivo describes the siege of Neustat and the ravaging of the countryside by the Mongols. He records that the garrison amounted to "no more than fifty knights along with twenty crossbowmen". The letter attributes cannibalism to the Mongols, although this appears to be an addition by Matthew of Paris, who is known to have added material of his own fabrication to his letters. They are said to have tortured and eaten civilians regardless of their age, sex, fortune or class. They ate deformed and old women right away, but beautiful women "they suffocated ... under a mass of rapists as they cried out and wailed." They cut the breasts off of virgins, reserving them for their leaders before eating the rest of their bodies. Ivo credits the prince of Dalmatia—possibly Duke Otto II of Merania—with capturing eight of the enemy, including an Englishman who had served the Mongols for years and under interrogation revealed much that was not previously known in the West.
The Tewkesbury Annals and the Chronique rimée of Philippe Mouskès report a victory over the Mongols by Duke Otto II of Bavaria, which nonetheless probably involved no more than a Mongol raiding party. In May 1241, with the Mongol threat still on his doorstep, Duke Otto of Bavaria expelled the Papal legate Albert von Behaim from Bavaria in an act of solidarity with Conrad IV and Frederick II amidst their conflict with the Papacy. In late May, Bishop Conrad of Freising wrote to Henry of Constance about the Mongol threat in the Danube valley. He reported that Wenceslaus was avoiding battle with the Mongols because he had been advised to do so by the king of Hungary.
A Mongol army entered western Hungary, eastern Austria and southern Moravia again in late December 1241, as recorded in a letter dated 4 January 1242 from a Benedictine abbot in Vienna, quoted by Matthew of Paris.