August 10 - Battle of the Lechfeld

Yet another battle, and this time there is no Byzantine in sight.
It�s another of the great moments in German history, of which, as you all know too well, there are too many to mention!

On August 10, 955, Otto I (912-973), Duke of Saxony and King of the Germans, defeated the Magyars, led by their Harka Bulscu, in the Battle of the Lechfeld, near Augsburg in southern Germany.

The Magyars, a Finno-Ugric nation, had come from that sheer inexhaustible reservoir of people, the Central Asian Steppes to Europe and had settled at the end of the 9th century under the leadership of their King Arpad in Pannonia ( roughly today�s Hungary). From there they had embarked on numerous raids through the whole of Central Europe, leading them as far as the Iberian Peninsula in 924, or to Orleans and Paris in 937.
But the German Kingdom had always been their favourite target, and the Magyars had raided the country more than once, and in 954 they saw another chance.

In 936 Otto of Saxony had been unanimously elected and crowned King of Germany, succeeding his father Heinrich I (876-936). But only three years later a number of German Dukes, rulers over their territorial and still tribal fiefdoms, and helped by Otto�s own brother, had risen in rebellion against the new King, and had only been beaten after the decisive battle of Andernach in 939.
Otto�s position still remained vulnerable and in 953 it started all over. The Dukes of Lorraine and Swabia, his own son Luitdolf, revolted, and the Magyars saw this as the perfect opportunity to raid Germany once again.
Encouraged by the internal brawls, and allied with the rebellious Dukes, the Magyars invaded the South of Germany with an Army of up to 50.000 and began a siege of the Bavarian town of Augsburg, where they met with unexpectedly strong resistance.
It gave King Otto the time he needed to convince the squabbling German Dukes to unite (at least temporarily) and rally together against the foreign invaders. Otto went South to Augsburg�s rescue and on August 9, the combined armies of the Franks, Saxons, Swabians and Bavarians, 10.000 in all, met the Magyars on the Lechfeld, a plain north-east of the city.
Otto�s force consisted almost entirely of heavy armoured cavalry, and after initial losses, they smashed their way through the Magyars ill-disciplined ranks of light cavalry and horse archers.
King Otto achieved a decisive victory, the Magyars suffered enormous casualties, and on the battlefield the German Dukes acclaimed their King �Roman Emperor�, a title that been vacant for thirty years. In 962 Otto I was officially crowned �Imperator Augustus� by Pope John XII.

The Battle of Lechfeld is a pivotal event in German history, but even more important for the European or the history of the Magyars. It marked the end of their raids into Europe, and possibly the end of the last chapter of the �Great migrations� in Central Europe.
After 955 the Magyars began to settle down in the Pannonian plains, began to adopt European culture and in 1001 their King Stephan I and his people officially converted to Christianity.
For Germany , the victory meant a (temporary) suspension of inter-tribal conflicts and thus a (temporary) strengthening of the position of the King and Emperor, and Otto I made the most of it. In the last decade of his reign the Holy Roman Empire appeared once again, and for the first time after Charlemagne, as a unified and strong factor in European politics, and that�s probably the reason the Germans call him� Otto the Great�.



What else happened on this day?


      
1628 The Swedish warship "Vasa" capsized and sank in Stockholm harbour on her maiden voyage, and twenty-five sailors drowned. "Vasa" was the most expensive and richly ornamented warship of its time in Sweden. The wreckage was found in 1956 , recovered in 1961 and is now part of the Vasa museum in Stockholm.



Vasa Museum in Stockholm


1792 The Tuileries Palace is stormed by the people of Paris. King Louis XVI of France and his family are arrested and imprisoned.

     
1920 Ottoman Sultan Mehmed VI's representatives sign the Treaty of Sevres which was to divide former territories of the Ottoman Empire between the Allies. (It wasn�t however recognised by the Turkish Republic under Kemal Ataturk and a new treaty was negotiated and signed in Lausanne in 1923)

Full list:

Wikipedia



Edited by Komnenos

There are countless reconstrution of this battle. The one I think the more probable speaks 4000 germans and 8-12 000 hungarians.

By the way the importance of this battle usually overrated. This was not the begining of the hungarians settle down, and not the main element of finishing the raids to the west. (These raid called adventuring in Hungarian)

THe most important consequence of this battle: the �rp�ds seized the territories of the tribes defeted in this battle, and this was a main element in the unification of Hungary.

August 10th, 1945 - following Russia's declaration of war two days earlier, Mongolia declares war on Japan, Manchukuo and Mengjiang.

Komnenos:

Naturally. It is a fictional story in order to compensate the tragic defeat. the above horn was latter associated with the story. It shows how impressive was the defeat. (According to an other story only seven Hungarian managed to survived.)