Hello guys.

I was reading something about Polish hussars and i was told that ther were Hungarian hussars too. I asked my friend and he told me that those hussars fought at Mohacs. So, my question is, How XVI century Hungarian Heavy cavalry looked like? Did they used hussars or they used a condottieri or gendarme like cavalry? What about their weponry?

Thanks.

I've seen an Ottoman miniature painting which shows the Hungarian cavalry as men-at-arms wearing full plate armour and either close helmets or burgonets.

Click on the thumbnail please:
[ Linked Image ]

The Hungarians fielded both men-at-arms equipped in the Western style as well as large numbers of hussars who were light cavarly, primarily horse archers.

Daniel says it all--the Hungarians had both light and heavy horse, and their "hussars" at this time were actually Serbo-Hungarian gusar fighting as light cavalry. Their armament varied widely, since some are known to be horse archers and others obviously carried shield and light lance. This wargaming page might have some useful information for you:

http://www.warfareeast.co.uk/main/Hungarian_Composition.htm

Hi

A couple of pics, Im starting to develop a interest in this period myself. I have what I think is a later Hungarian hussar and a Ukrainian hussar.

Forgive me if Im wrong.

N

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Hungarian late

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Well, Daniel was incorrect only insofar as he mentioned the gusar as being largely horse archers. Some of them were horse archers, some of them lancers, and most did not seem to have had any problems transitioning between the two roles. And he is entirely correct in saying that the Hungarian heavy horse at Mohacs were predominantly men-at-arms since by this time the phenomenon of the heavy husaria was still largely restricted to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I actually heard some historian mentioning that Mohacs was an important factor in the decline of the men-at-arms in the Hungarian military establishment and their replacement partly by Polish-style heavy hussars and partly by German-style reiters.

How effective were those men-at-arms at Mohacs?
I was told that they could ¨defeat¨ Turkish infantry men, but they were defeated by light cavalry. Is it true?

Maybe I did confuse the gusars with the Hungarian light cavalry bands in general. The correction is appreciated--though are you entirely sure of the Christian hussars not carrying bowcases and quivers? I recall that some of the Latin records from the 15th century at least seem to indicate that many of them got extra pay for bringing bows and arrows and for being able to use them. The custom might have died out by the 16th century, though.

As for Rodolfo's question about the effectiveness of the Hungarian men-at-arms, I don't think we can answer it in terms of such one-on-one matchups. Against the Turkish sipahi and timariots, there were some occasions where they won and some others where they lost big time; same against the Turkish light cavalry and infantry. And we can never lose sight of the number variable, since at Varna the same royal bodyguards who had routed the Turkish horse earlier in the day were quickly overwhelmed by the Janissaries when they broke alone and unsupported into the Turkish camp.

BTW, I've checked Perjes's monograph and it seems like that, while his strategic and political analysis are highly plausible, he sort of misses the point when he compared the Ottoman and Hungarian tactics--especially because he only compared the tactics of individual troop types, not the grand tactics of the armies as a whole. In this respect both Ottoman and Hungarian grand tactics were a great deal more sophisticated than what he said in the earlier chapters of his work, and his detailed description of the battle of Mohacs in the later chapter actually displays this complexity very well indeed.

Mounted crossbowmen? Hm...weren't these one of Matthias's imports from the German tactical system? His Black Army clearly included large number of mounted German mercenaries, and these would have included significant contingents of mounted crossbowmen in their deep battlefield wedges.

[quote="Lafayette C Curtis"]Mounted crossbowmen? Hm...weren't these one of Matthias's imports from the German tactical system?
more like his Hussite, and Silesian and Moravian subjects :)
and perhaps his Transylvania Saxons ...
I dare say that the mounted crossbowmen had been included in the knight's lance (retinue) ever since 14th century as their usage became common under t the Angevin kings - king Louis the Great.

Hm. Yes. I forgot that--and all those "Saxons" settled in Hungarian lands. What I was wondering, though, was the large-scale adoption of mounted crossbowmen. It sounds like something that would have been more the style of Matthias or his father.

And I noticed that we're beginning to veer off-topic, though perhaps not so much if we consider that the mounted crossbowmen were part of the Hungarian heavy cavalry formations--and might have spawned the reiters that also became popular there later on.