From Kalocsa, some distance inland from Nszód, on the left bank is a short branch railway line to Kis Körös, the birthplace of Alexander Petófi.
When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu journeyed with her husband to the near East, they went from Vienna to Budapest and thence to Belgrade by the land route, refusing to wait until the Danube had thawed that they might travel by boat. “Almost everybody I see frights me with some new difficulty. Prince Eugène has been so good as to say all the things he could to persuade me to stay till the Danube is thawed, that I may have the conveniency of going by water, assuring me that the houses in Hungary are such as are no defence against the weather, and that I shall be obliged to travel three or four days between Buda and Esseek, without finding any house at all, through desart plains covered with snow; where the cold is so violent, many have been killed by it.” After she had passed over this stage of her journey, she wrote, “this part of the country is very much overgrown with wood, and little frequented. ’Tis incredible what vast numbers of wildfowl we saw, which often live here to a good old age—and undisturbed by guns in quiet sleep.”
It must be remembered that the “desart” through which she passed was part of the track of the conquering Turks, and though some time had elapsed since their final expulsion, the country had by no means recovered. Now the “desart” is largely settled, and away on the left we have some of the richest corn lands of the kingdom, but still in the marsh lands we have evidence of the continued abundance of wildfowl. Indeed parts of the river below here are regarded as a happy hunting ground for sportsmen and naturalists. A careful botanist, by the way, has pointed out that while only forty-four per cent. of the flowers of the Danubian plains are perennials, there are as many as ninety-six per cent. in the Alps. If we are able to leave the river-side, we shall see in autumn about the roads of the Alföld—frequently mere cart-ways worn across the flat land—an abundance of fine giant mulleins, white daturas, bright blue chicory, and yellow toadflax, while from above the stretching acres of maize will be frequently seen great sunflower disks, suggesting that the plant has become acclimatized to the point of self sowing.
The principal town of importance on this long south-running portion of the river from Budapest to Zimony is Mohacs—the most important, at once in point of size and as a centre of historic significance. Here, on 29 August, 1526, was fought the disastrous battle which made the Turks masters of Hungary; and here the Turks were finally defeated, and so driven out of the kingdom, on 12 August, 1687.
When the Turks threatened invasion in the first-named year, King Louis of Hungary sought in vain to get foreign assistance, for his neighbours were all too busily engaged in defending their own interests. Louis then ordered a general rising to arms of all people “by sending round a bloody sabre to every house, in accordance with the ancient Scythian custom.” The gathering place was named as Tolna, some distance further up the river, near the right bank, and thither the prelates and nobles brought such forces as they could gather. When King Louis came to marshal his troops, he found that he could command but about twenty-six thousand men, and those but ill-armed and badly equipped. And the Turkish army, led by Solyman, was two hundred thousand strong and flushed with victories further east. It is said that the Hungarians—heroic in the circumstances to the point of foolhardiness—made light of the odds against them, though some of his cooler advisers suggested that King Louis should retire to the citadel of Buda. The archbishop Tomori, who was one of the leaders, thought that battle should be joined at once, and after the two armies had confronted each other on the plain by Mohacs for three days, he ordered the advance, having placed the king, surrounded by a chosen bodyguard, in the rear. The charging cavalry routed the first of the enemy’s battalions, and the king was at once told that the Turks were flying, and recommended to bring up his reserve to the pursuit. Louis galloped forward only to find the chief part of his army broken by the main body of the Turks under Solyman himself.
The Hungarians fought heroically, but their army was practically annihilated. Over twenty-two thousand men were left dead upon the field, including the ecclesiastic general Tomori, seven bishops and twenty-eight of the highest nobility of the land. All was lost, and the brave young king had to gallop off with a few friends. Crossing a marshy stream, his heavily caparisoned horse sank in the morass, and struggling to get to the bank, fell back upon its rider. A nobleman who had led the way, turned back to his sovereign’s assistance, drew him from the marsh and unbuckled his armour—but the defeated king was mortally injured and died shortly after. Before his disconsolate followers could bury Louis, the pursuing Turks came up with them, and they had to flee. Two months later the corpse was found and interred at Székes-Fehérvár (Stuhlweissenburg), an old royal town between Buda and the lake of Balaton (Platten See).
The conquering Turks swept the country after this decisive battle—“such was the terror inspired by their atrocities, that mothers killed their children and husbands their wives, to prevent them falling into their hands alive. Wherever they passed they left nothing behind but a howling waste, without food or shelter for living creature.” The battle of Mohacs has been described as even more disastrous to Hungary than was that of Flodden Field to Scotland. It decided her fate, not only in the sense of placing much of the land under Turkish dominion for generations, but in placing her also at the mercy of her Austrian neighbours. Not only did the country lose the flower of her manhood on these Mohacs plains, but the conquerors are said to have carried away over a hundred thousand prisoners. At the second battle of Mohacs, following on the recapture of Buda, the Turks were finally defeated, leaving on the field, it is said, sixty-eight guns, six hundred tents, and dead “sufficient to form quite a hill.”
The town of Mohacs lies on the right bank of the Danube, and has little beyond its battle associations to claim attention. The fact that it is a centre of the Hungarian coal industry and a river-port, gives it its modern importance. Unless we have time and opportunities for journeying inland, there are few places on the long stretch of the river which we are now following that specially invite the traveller to stay. The journey continues on through low country, now between reeds and rushes, past woodlands or willow-grown banks, with occasional glimpses of villages, but nothing that, in the broad view which we have here to take, calls for special notice. Again and again branches of the river go off, enclosing islands of various size—opposite Mohacs is one of these, about twenty-five miles in length, known as the Margaret Island, and near the further end of it, at Bezdán is the beginning of the seventy-four mile canal, which connects the Danube with the Tisza (Theiss) and forms a short-cut waterway between Budapest and Szegedin—the Alföld town to which the gondola-prowed grain barges that we saw at the capital belong. From that canal a branch goes off to Ujvidek (Neusatz.)
