The Battle of Mohács

Norm: The bones of Eighteen Thousand Soldiers and the Soul of the Hungarian Nation lie buried beneath this sod near Mohács. The battle is called the Battle of Mohács but it was fought several kilometers away at Sátorhely, where this Memorial Site is located.

 

Heather: On August 29th 1529 the Hungarian army of 18,000 led by King Louis II waited for the Turkish forces of Suleiman the Magnificent. Suleiman had arrived the day before after a long grueling march through swampy terrain with his army of 80 to 90,000. In a little over 2 hours the battle was over with 20 year old Louis II and his army dead on these fields. The dead were buried here by Dorottya Kanizsai the mistress of the castle of Siklós and her serfs in a common grave. The artistic wooden figures are tradtional Hungarian wooden crosses and Transylvanian headboards. There is a magnificent bronze gate at the entrance of the Site made with 28,000 rivits to represent the approximate number of soldiers killed that dreadful day. Unfortunately, the area around the gate was under construction and we could not get a good picture.

This fountain represents the nation of Hungary after that battle. The country was broken into three sections and lost its national independence from then until really just the late twentieth century. To the Hungarian soul "Mohács is the burial ground of our national greatness."
May better and greater things come to this wounded land and its heroic people.