King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and his mercenary Black Army

A brief overview of the history of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, how King of Hungary Matthias Corvinus created the most powerful army in Europe in 1470s and 1480s, and how it all fell apart.

As part of my series of articles on the rise of the Habsburgs, I will also dedicate a lot of articles to their historic rivals. It is a great way to present the wider European history of late middle ages and early modern era as the Habsburg story became intertwined with so many others.

The Habsburgs were in large part defined by their centuries-long bloody rivalries with the French and the Ottomans. The conflicts they had with them are pretty well known, especially the Habsburg-Ottoman wars. The most known chapter of the wars with the Ottomans is of course the second siege of Vienna in 1683, with the famous hussar charge that drove the Ottoman besiegers away that became immortalized in popular culture.

The first Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1529 is less known in comparison even though you could argue that it was equally important from the Habsburg perspective, and it was just as hard-fought and courageous as the second one.

In any case, what stuck in the historic memory of Europeans is that the Habsburgs never lost Vienna to the Ottomans and successfully defended their city in face of a mighty army.

But there was one army that actually did manage to conquer Vienna from the Habsburgs. In 1485 the King of Hungary Matthias Corvinus and his notorious mercenary Black Army conquered the city after 4 months of siege. At the time, the Black Army was likely the strongest military force in Europe. It terrified Hungarian enemies in Central Europe and kept the Ottomans at bay for some time. How did this powerful mercenary army emerge and why did it vanish all over sudden?

First, I will have to talk about the Kingdom of Hungary a bit. Formed in 1000, it had always been a very specific kingdom in European medieval history. It traces its origins to the Magyars, a tribe which invaded Europe and conquered the Carpathian Basin by the end of the 9th century. They were a semi-nomadic people who formed the tribal alliance led by Árpád who founded the Árpád dynasty. The Árpáds led the Principality of Hungary which was still pagan at the time, staging many raids in western Europe where they were seen as enemies of Christendom. These warlike pagan Hungarians used very effective light cavalry and horse archers. But eventually the German knights figured them out and led by Otto the Great defeated them decisively at the battle of Lechfeld in 955.

Following Lechfeld, the Hungarian raids in western Europe stopped. For a brief period, Hungarians focused on raiding the Byzantine Empire to the south but the Byzantines were another powerful enemy. Ultimately, the Hungarian rulers from the Árpád dynasty realized that they were sandwiched between the two mighty Christian empires with entire Christendom seeing them as a scourge and a legitimate target. The only way Hungary could have a future in such political situation was to accept Christianity and become integrated in Christian Europe, becoming part of the “international community” of the time instead of being some sort of pariah state. Thus the Christianization of Hungary started. King Saint Stephen I of Árpád dynasty would convert to Catholicism and become the first King of Hungary. He was sent a crown by the Pope in year 1000. This marks the emergence of Kingdom of Hungary as part of Catholic Christendom.

But the Kingdom of Hungary would still have a somewhat distinct character compared to other Catholic kingdoms. It represented a borderland of Catholicism and the Latin West, a role that it would continue to play in various forms through entire middle ages, exposed to Mongol invasions and bordering the rising Muslim Ottoman Empire later on. It was also an unusually large kingdom from the start and it would soon grew in size even more after incorporating Kingdom of Croatia in 1102 in form of personal union. Rich in uncultivated lands, silver, gold, and salt deposits, Kingdom of Hungary attracted colonists from the West which pushed it further into the Western cultural sphere. However many non-Catholic minorities also inhabited in these vast lands.

And here is the important point one has to make when talking about medieval Kingdom of Hungary to modern readers. Modern people associate Hungary with the small nation state in east-central Europe that exists since the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. But the medieval Kingdom of Hungary between 1000 and 1526 was a large and at times very powerful multi-ethnic state that resembled a quasi-empire and had to be run like one as well. Since the beginning it was established in a way that would allow a centralized rule with counties as basic administrative units which were run by a royal official called ispán. This structure provided more power to the king, at least in theory. Furthermore there were no dynastic or territorial principalities inside the borders of the kingdom. This ensured the integrity of the kingdom and prevented the kind of situation that existed in neighboring Holy Roman Empire.

But this did not always prevent nobility gaining a lot of power like elsewhere. Already during the reign of the first king Saint Stephen, he had to put down several pagan rebellions incited by nobility. In a kingdom as large and as diverse as medieval Hungary, it was hard to keep the nobility in various vast territories in check all the time. In 1222, the nobility would even force the Golden Bull similar to the English Magna Carta, limiting the power of the monarch. But for the most part the king was the uncontested lord of his realm in Hungary, and some kings were able to use this power to the fullest extent, turning Hungary into one of the most powerful kingdoms at certain times in European history.

The military development of Hungary was also very specific. The original Hungarians were light cavalrymen and horse archers, but as they settled down and became part of the Latin West, they started to gradually adopt Western European style of warfare. This would first start by adopting Western weapons and equipment while still using their old tactics. Western style of knightly culture would only start to slowly appear in 13th century. But it happened much too slow as in 1241 Hungary would be invaded and devastated by the Mongols.

At the time, Hungary had no means to defend itself against the powerful Mongols. They were in a very bad situation militarily, a sort of transition period. The Hungarians had largely abandoned their old style of warfare while still not adopting the contemporary Western style of knights well enough to make it effective. They also did not have stone fortifications like Western castles yet. All this led to the disastrous defeat at Mohi in 1241 where the Mongols led by the famous Subutai annihilated the Hungarian force and plundered the kingdom at will, causing huge devastation.

But the Mongols left and ultimately the defeat at Mohi would prove to be some sort of blessing in disguise for Hungarians. It was a wake up call. They started fully adopting the Western style of warfare, building stone castles and adopting Western tactics. Tournaments became popular among knights. The Mongols would invade for the second time in 1285 but by then Hungary was ready for that, and the Mongol force was not as powerful either. It was easily repelled.

This westernization of military also led to Hungarian aristocracy fully adopting Western knightly culture. The aristocracy essentially became fully westernized and a lot of powerful families were of foreign origin, just like elsewhere in Europe. The Kingdom of Hungary would develop a heavily Latin character as an outpost of the West and of Catholicism, with the aristocracy coming from diverse linguistic backgrounds communicating in Latin language as well. There would be kings of Hungary who wouldn’t speak Hungarian at all.

In 1301 the male line of the Árpád dynasty that founded the kingdom died out and a period of interregnum followed. The powerful nobles took the first opportunity to assert themselves and Kingdom of Hungary was disintegrated for a brief period as the powerful lords split the kingdom between them and ruled their territories independently. But royal power was eventually restored under King Charles I of the Capetian House of Anjou. An outsider with loose dynastic ties to the last Árpád king through his grandmother Mary of Hungary who was his cousin, Charles arrived from Naples to take the throne in 1308 and fought bitterly against the powerful “oligarchs” from the nobility, slowly reclaiming the kingdom for royal authority. Among other things he won the bloody battle of Rozgony in 1312 where he defeated the rebellious magnates.

Under the powerful Angevin kings Charles I and his son and successor Louis I of Hungary who ruled from 1342 until 1382, the Kingdom of Hungary experienced a period of might and splendor. It firmly established itself as a Catholic kingdom with Western chivalric culture, ruled by a family that originated in the heart of it, France. In 1326 Charles I established the chivalric Order of Saint George. The purpose of this secular order was to instill a sense of brotherhood and loyalty to nobility and keep the loyal nobles close to him. The Angevin kings of Hungary rewarded the loyal nobles and kept the aristocratic baronial armies under close royal control. This warrior nobility was supplemented by levies and mercenaries like in the Western armies, although Hungary had access to some of the mercenaries not available in the West such as the pagan Cumans who served as light cavalry and horse archers. The bulk of the army was the heavy cavalry of knights.

After Charles I dealt with the troublesome nobles at home, his successor Louis I was able to conduct wars outside of the borders of Kingdom of Hungary. He led several campaigns in Naples, conquered Dalmatian cities from Venice, invaded Bosnia and Wallachia, fought against Bulgarians and Lithuanians, organized an expedition against Golden Horde and planned to organize a crusade. While not all campaigns were successful, prestige and borders of Hungary enlarged during the reign of Louis I and he is also sometimes called “the Great” for that same reason. Most importantly, Hungary was able to choose its wars during his reign instead of being pushed into wars by others as would happen later. The kingdom had a lot of resources from gold mines and the vast royal domains owned directly by the king, similar to royal demesne in France.

Louis I was also fervently pushing the Catholic cause, trying to convert his non-Catholic subjects and reform Hungary into the bulwark of Catholic Christendom. He was loyal to the crusader cause of his borderland kingdom. For his efforts, the Pope awarded him the prestigious title Athleta Christi, literally “the athlete of Christ”. In many ways the rule of Louis the Great represented the height of medieval Hungarian power in terms of prestige and the power it projected.

But the fortunes of a monarchy can change quickly if succession crisis appears. This is exactly what happened to Hungary after Louis died in 1382. He had no male heirs and nobility didn’t want to accept his daughter Mary. Ultimately Mary’s husband Sigismund of the House of Luxembourg came to the throne in 1387, but he received the kingdom in a much weakened condition. Powerful factions of nobles had formed and he had to make a lot of concessions to consolidate his power. He had to give away a large part of royal domains to appease them. Also the external enemies would become stronger. Hungary could no longer choose its wars but the wars would knock on its doors instead at the most inconvenient times.

Ottomans were the biggest threat. Sigismund organized a crusade against them but it ended in disaster at the battle of Nicopolis in 1396. The crusader army suffered a heavy defeat and Sigismund himself barely escaped alive. There was a backlash from nobility because of this debacle which further weakened his position. To regain some power and legitimacy, Sigismund founded the chivalric Order of the Dragon in 1408 to rally the nobility together in a similar fashion Charles I did with the Order of Saint George. Sigismund’s Order of the Dragon would also include Orthodox Christians such as Stefan Lazarević, Despot of Serbia, who was one of the founding members, and Vlad II Dracul, the father of the famous Vlad the Impaler who received his nickname “Dracula” from his father’s association with the order, “dracul” meaning dragon. The purpose of this Order was to rally the Christendom together against the rising Ottoman Empire.

The Ottomans were an obvious threat, but Sigismund also realized that presenting himself as the leader of the Christian cause helped him to increase his prestige as his ambitions shifted northwards. In 1410 he was elected King of the Romans in the Holy Roman Empire and in 1433 he would be crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by the Pope. Establishing himself as one of the most eminent rulers in Christendom, he was one of the driving forces behind the Council of Constance (1414–1418) that ended the Papal Schism. This was a huge diplomatic success but unfortunately for Sigismund another event happened at Constance that would come back to haunt him - the Bohemian religious reformer Jan Hus was burned as heretic, causing future Hussite Wars which would be another military disaster for Sigismund.

In 1419 Sigismund’s brother Wenceslaus IV who was King of Bohemia died and Sigismund became the titular King of Bohemia. But the Hussite movement following the teachings of the executed Jan Hus was already very strong and outraged at what happened. Rebellion had already begun. Sigismund was in turn outraged by this heretical movement and was authorized by the Pope to start a crusade against them. This would lead to the long Hussite Wars that lasted from 1419 to 1434. Once again, Sigismund’s crusading would fail badly. Three campaigns were led against the Hussites and they all ended in disaster.

Ultimately Sigismund’s reign was a mixed success. While he held the prestigious titles of King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, he wielded much less actual power. On the other hand, he did manage to keep Hungary together, albeit giving away a lot of royal domains and his reign also saw Venice reclaim Dalmatia. He put attention to the Ottoman problem in Central Europe and the Balkans by leading a crusade. Even if his military campaign wasn’t successful, the ideals of the Order of the Dragon he founded would remain.

As for his military failures, it was not solely his blame. He was simply unfortunate that the military development made the kind of chivalric warfare Hungary had conducted in the 14th century increasingly dated. The recruiting system was also insufficient. It was similar to Western Europe where it was organized in “lances”. A knight would have to bring a certain number of troops in his retinue to form a “lance”. In Hungary this was often called “bandiera” (from the Italian word for banner) or “banderium” in Latin. This is because these troops would come under a banner of a specific nobleman. These levied troops would usually largely consist of “mounted archers”, light cavalrymen who also carried bows besides swords and would dismount in battles to fire more accurately. They should not be confused with skilled horse archers of nomadic warrior cultures such as Mongols or Hungarians of the past. In Hungary a recruitment system called militia portalis was used whereas for every 20 plots of land, an archer had to be raised to serve in the royal army. But these troops were of low quality. The lack of big towns and cities also meant a lack of skilled urban militias like Western European armies had.

The main force of such army were the heavy cavalry knights but the problem with them was that they lacked offensive variety. Against a disciplined and well motivated infantry in a defensive position, it was always a gamble. The Hundred Years’ Wars and the failures of French knights showed that in Western Europe, while in Central Europe Sigismund faced a difficult enemy in Ottomans and Hussites. Both of these two evolved their tactics to face exactly the kind of army Sigismund had. At Nicopolis, Ottomans employed stakes to guard their lethal archers and were able to withstand the onslaught of chivalric cavalry, while the Hussites pioneered a new type of tactic, using wagon forts and gunpowder artillery to create a seemingly impregnable defensive fortress on the battlefield.

In a way, Sigismund’s failed campaigns were another wake up call for Hungary in the same way the defeat to the Mongols at Mohi was centuries ago in 1241. Things needed to change if Hungary wanted to win future wars against their powerful neighbors.

Another problem of Sigismund’s reign was that just like Louis the Great, he didn’t have any male heir. When he died in 1437, instability followed again as rival factions of nobility were once again looking for an opportunity to advance their own interests. Sigismund was succeeded by Albert of Habsburg, husband of his daughter Elizabeth. But Albert would die soon in 1439 and was succeeded by his not yet born son Ladislaus who would end up being called “the Posthumous”. The weak position of Posthumous resulted in part of the Hungarian nobility pushing their own pretender to the throne King Vladislaus of Poland. A civil war ensued.

But the most important part of this period of Hungarian history was the rise of the brilliant commander John Hunyadi, the father of Matthias Corvinus, who would become legendary for his battles against the Ottomans. A veteran warrior, he already had much experience in different styles of warfare as he served two years in Italy as a mercenary for the Duke of Milan. He was also part of Sigismund’s retinue and accompanied him to Bohemia where he observed the Hussite tactics and learned from them. But his roots were from the southern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary which were threatened by the Ottoman advance, and he would become most known for fighting against them.

In 1441 and 1442, Hunyadi led offensive efforts in borderlands against the Ottomans. His victories in these skirmishes seemed to have instilled new enthusiasm for a crusade. The two rivals for Hungarian throne Ladislaus the Posthumous and Vladislaus of Poland made truce so that the latter could raise an army for Hunyadi’s crusade. Money was raised for mercenaries. This would lead to the Crusade of Varna of 1444. Even though it ended with an Ottoman victory, it showed the improved military tactics of the crusader army which was able to do well against the larger Ottoman force. Hunyadi’s tactics were inspired by the Bohemian Hussite-style warfare, using a defensive wagenburg, or wagon fort, to draw the Ottomans in and picking them apart from a well defended position with gunners and crossbowmen. Unlike the Hussites, he would also have a cavalry of his own to counter attack. The heavy cavalry consisted of German mercenaries, while local mercenaries would provide a light cavalry from which the hussars would eventually evolve. Hunyadi also recruited peasant levies who were inspired by religious fervor of crusades. At Varna, King Vladislaus died fighting the Ottomans, leaving his rival Ladislaus the Posthumous as the undisputed king. However Hunyadi’s power inside the kingdom grew sufficiently. He was also learning from his defeats.

Hunyadi’s next campaign against the Ottomans also ended in failure as he lost the second battle of Kosovo in 1448. But once again he was facing a larger army and lessons were learned. Finally, John Hunyadi would achieve a monumental victory against the Ottomans at the siege of Belgrade in 1456 where he relieved this city from a large Ottoman army. This battle would prove significant as it would halt the Ottoman advance for a considerable time and presented a seemingly unexpected setback for the Ottomans after their huge victory at Constantinople in 1453. Hunyadi’s victory at Belgrade was also important for morale and gained him prestige and glory in entire Christendom. The fame and power Hunyadi achieved with his victories would also be a factor in election of his son, Matthias Corvinus, as the new king of Hungary.

John Hunyadi died of plague soon after the battle of Belgrade. A year later in 1457, the young king Ladislaus the Posthumous also died childless. This meant that the nobility had to elect a new king. In a rather extraordinary turn of events, they elected John’s 14-year-old son Matthias, who would become known as Matthias Corvinus (from Latin corvus, meaning raven, the symbol of the Hunyadi family), as the new King of Hungary. This was rather weird as Matthias Corvinus was essentially just a “random” nobleman who had no ancestral ties to the previous king, and it was the first time something like this happened in the long history of Kingdom of Hungary. But ultimately this seemed to be the only way to avoid a devastating civil war, and nobody wanted that especially in light of the ever increasing Ottoman danger. The young Matthias was supported by the powerful faction of nobility his father gathered around him during his lifetime. His uncle Michael Szilágyi arrived with a large contingent of soldiers which intimidated other nobles. As I already mentioned, the reputation of his father also played a role. Matthias was supported by the Papal legate Cardinal Juan Carvajal who was an admirer of his father for his anti-Ottoman efforts.

In the years that followed, Matthias would consolidate his rule in face of many treacherous nobles. His vision would soon become clear. He wanted to impose his authority to keep the nobility in check and generate more taxes from them. But to do that, he would need to keep Hungary in an almost permanent state of war. He would usually be the aggressor, but the first war he engaged in was forced on him. The Ottomans occupied the fort of Guberac in Serbia in 1458, pushing their borders dangerously close to Hungary and eliminating the buffer zone of vassals in between. A reaction was necessary. Matthias mobilized his nobility and made some successful raids into Ottoman territory, giving conquered lands to his Bosnian vassals, continuing the old Hungarian strategy to keep vassal Christian buffer states between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

But the main problem Matthias faced early in his reign was from his Christian neighbors. There was a legitimacy problem. Frederick III of Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor and Duke of Austria, was the guardian of the previous King of Hungary Ladislaus the Posthumous. After the latter died, Frederick had a valid claim to become the next King of Hungary. He not only had support from part of Hungarian nobility but also held the physical crown of Hungary in his possession. In the Upper Hungary, mercenary commander John Jiskra swore loyalty to Frederick. This region was plagued by bands of Hussite Czechs marauders and Matthias Corvinus had no real control over it. Matthias eventually solved this problem with money, buying the crown from Frederick for a big amount of money and agreed a truce with him. He also had Jiskra swear loyalty to him. Through Jiskra, Corvinus would also come in contact with Czech Hussite mercenaries from Upper Hungary. These skilled hardened warriors would become an important part of his future mercenary “Black Army”.

Meanwhile the Ottomans conquered Bosnia and Matthias had to shift his attention to this powerful enemy again, as the Ottoman threat was coming closer and closer. He assembled an army and conquered Jajce in 1463. The Ottomans tried to reclaim it a year later, but Matthias assembled an army again and forced them to lift the siege. Matthias tried to push further into Ottoman territory but as he heard a large Ottoman army was arriving, he wisely backed off. He realized that if he wanted to push deeper into Ottoman territory, a substantial aid would be needed from other Christian powers in both money and men. But since no such aid could be expected at the time, Matthias abandoned his ambitions to invade the Ottoman Empire and signed a peace treaty with them in 1466. A year later he invaded Moldavia but was defeated at the battle of Baia in 1467 where he also suffered injuries and had to be carried from the battlefield on a stretcher. However he made a good peace treaty with the Moldavian ruler Stephen the Great and later assisted him with his soldiers in the spectacular Moldavian victory over Ottomans at Vaslui in 1475.

During the mid-1460s, Matthias did not yet have a mighty mercenary army under his control. In these campaigns he probably realized the necessity of creating one. He also started imposing new taxes on the nobility to greatly increase the royal income. Much of his extraordinary taxes were raised for war but he also made certain unpopular reforms that would increase the royal revenue during peace time. Several revolts of dissatisfied nobles had to be crushed.

Ultimately it came down to this: Matthias needed a strong army that he could rely on, a mercenary army. To field a strong mercenary army he needed a lot of money. To get the money he needed to increase taxes. To justify increased taxes he needed wars. In this way, wars enabled him to create a strong army and this strong army kept the nobles in fear of him and paying taxes. This is how Matthias Corvinus eventually turned Kingdom of Hungary into a war machine and pushed it to the limit. In the 1470s and 1480s, he would be able to field the strongest army in Christendom.

But there was a problem. Waging wars against Ottomans was something that Matthias wanted to avoid. If he wanted to really bring the war to the Ottomans, he would have to invade their territories and besiege their fortresses. But the Ottomans could raise a strong army to relieve these sieges. This would either put Matthias and his army in risky confrontations with the strongest empire at the time, or force him to abandon campaigns and waste money and lose face. When it came to Ottomans, Matthias took the defensive approach, sustaining a large enough force to defend the border and engage in skirmishes while signing peace treaties and truces with the Ottoman Sultan whenever he could.

Because of these reasons, the expansionist and aggressive politics of Matthias Corvinus were directed against Christian realms in Central Europe where he would be in continuous war from 1468 to 1488, waging the Bohemian War from 1468 to 1478 and Austrian–Hungarian War from 1477 to 1488. In these wars, he would strengthen his dreaded mercenary Black Army into the premier army of Europe and expand the borders of his kingdom greatly.

Waging long wars against other Christians while the Ottomans were endangering his kingdom and other lands of Christendom was not a popular move, but Matthias Corvinus had his own grand strategy in mind. He wanted to forge a powerful Central European empire through a greatly enlarged Kingdom of Hungary and then face the Ottomans with his increased royal power and even greater tax revenues, creating an even greater army.

But how did his Black Army look like and what made it so powerful? Its greatest strength was that it was an elite army. It was quality over quantity, but quantity also became considerable over time. The Black Army had a variety of elite mercenary military units. It had a great cavalry, consisting of both heavy and light cavalry, while also using a very disciplined and versatile infantry, combining Hussite gunpowder weapon tactics with a powerful armored infantry.

The heavy cavalry was formed out of noble knights who either came from well motivated, loyal and warlike Hungarian nobles who were looking for money and career or were hired mercenary knights from other backgrounds such as mercenary German knights that John Hunyadi also used in his crusades decades ago. The light cavalry consisted of hussars, the predecessors of the famed Polish hussars. Many of these light cavalrymen were of Serbian origin, including Serbian refugee nobles such as Vuk Grgurević, titular despot of Serbia from 1471, or the Jakšić family. They were greatly influenced by Ottoman light cavalry tactics and excelled in raiding and skirmishes. The Black Army also used mounted crossbowmen. The invention of cranequin enabled them to reload their crossbows on horses. They added some firepower to cavalry.

Melee infantry was divided into the armored units called armati and the shield-bearing clipeati. The armati fought with a variety of melee weapons and provided both the heavy infantry to fight other infantrymen and polearm infantry to deal with cavalry from close range. The clipeati protected the formation with large pavise shields. Together they formed what Matthias Corvinus described as “fortress”. This infantry fortress also included gunners, crossbowmen and archers. It was similar to Hussite wagenburg tactics but instead of war wagons it preferred the protection of pavise shields. This gave the Black Army infantry more mobility and more offensive opportunities. And while it was more open to enemy cavalry charges, it had its own cavalry for protection.

In fact, cavalry would form the majority of the Black Army. However infantry was for the most time just as important and Matthias described it in this way in one of his private letters, “The large shields set together in a circle present the appearance of a fort and similar to a wall in whose defense the infantry and all those among them fight almost as if from behind bastion walls or ramparts and at the given moment break out from it.” This fortress provided a central rallying point and could also draw out the enemies and provide opportunities for cavalry counter-attacks. This was similar to the tactics Matthias’ father John Hunyadi used. The experienced armored mercenaries were also able to withstand pressure and were instructed to never give up their place. Matthias also described the importance of infantry in a letter to king Ferdinand I of Naples, “We regard the armored heavy infantry as a wall, who never give up their place, even if they are slaughtered to the last one of them, on the very spot they are standing.”

The numbers of the Black Army vary depending on the campaign, but it is reported that at the height of its power in 1487, it fielded 20,000 cavalry and 8,000 infantry. These numbers were absolutely huge for a European army at the time, especially since these were elite veteran mercenary units which costed a lot of money. Matthias spared no expenses. He paid his soldiers more than they would normally receive for their job. His heavy cavalrymen were paid 5 florins a month compared to the normal rate of 3 per month for this type of military unit. According to the wages he stated himself in his letters, it is calculated that Matthias spent more than half of his annual royal revenue for this 28,000 strong mercenary army in 1487.

The Black Army of Matthias Corvinus was truly ahead of its time. Even the most wealthy states in Europe at the time such as France and Burgundy still used a system of “lances”, which they called ordonnances. This was essentially the same system as the old banderium was in Hungary, albeit better organized and done on a bigger scale. For example one Burgundian lance consisted of a gendarme heavy knight who would bring with him a coustillier (light cavalry), a page, three mounted archers, a handgunner , a crossbowman and a pikeman. 100 of such lances together would constitute a compagnie d'ordonnance. At the height of its power under Duke Charles the Bold (ruled from 1467 to 1477), the powerful and immensely wealthy Burgundian State could bring together a considerable number of such ordonnances and fielded mighty armies. But this army still had similar deficiencies as the banderium levies in Hungary at the time of Sigismund did. There was no real tactical depth to it as such levied army was just a collection of different units and was not drilled to fight together as a cohesive army. And while the mounted archers who formed the bulk of the army were able to fight in multiple ways individually, they were not elite in anything. They carried a bow and a sword and could dismount to shoot or to fight as infantry, or use their horses for mobility and act as light cavalry. But once they faced a disciplined and drilled army of elite specialist units such as the Swiss pikemen in the Burgundian Wars of 1474-77, these badly motivated “jack of all trades, master of none” levied troops folded. The French at the time had similar units called franc-archers and they also performed badly, losing to the Habsburg Duke Maximilian at the battle of Guinegate in 1479 which I covered in one of the previous articles. The French would learn from this and eventually create a mercenary army of their own for invasion of Italy in 1494 in a similar manner as Matthias, although using different type of troops employing the famed Swiss mercenaries as infantry. This is how far ahead Matthias Corvinus was - in the 1470s he was already using the kind of mercenary army that more wealthy and more advanced Western European realms would only begin to use since mid-1490s. And even then many would not catch up such as the once powerful Italian republics which folded in the Italian Wars as their armies could not keep up with military development. Black Army could perhaps be considered as the first modern standing army in European history. Even though it was still largely raised on a campaign-to-campaign basis and many troops were disbanded when not needed anymore, the constant wars during the reign of Matthias made it a permanent force.

But you can also imagine just how expensive this was for a kingdom like Hungary. Even more so because Matthias had to essentially sustain not one but two separate armies. While he was waging wars in Central Europe, the long southern border of his kingdom still had to be defended against the Ottomans. He had to finance the border garrisons and defenses. During his reign, the war against Ottomans revolved around raiding and skirmishes. For this “little war” on the borders, Matthias used almost exclusively cavalry troops. He had no intention of besieging fortified Ottoman fortresses or towns as he did not want to risk engaging Ottomans in open battles which would inevitably follow such an invasion. Therefore infantry was of little use beyond small garrisons that were defending fortifications. It would only slow down the movement and expose the skirmish parties to Ottoman cavalry.

But there would eventually also be an open battle against the dreaded Ottomans. In 1479 the Ottomans invaded Transylvania but the Hungarians defeated them at the battle of Breadfield. It was another great military achievement of Matthias’ reign. He wasn’t present at the battle but his legendary general Pál Kinizsi defeated the larger Ottoman force with a cavalry counter-attack. This battle showed that the Hungarian cavalry was now able to match the Ottoman one, using a powerful mixture of heavy and light cavalry. Kinizsi was also an example of the kind of capable military man that rose in Matthias Corvinus militarized kingdom. He was a talented commander and a powerful warrior who rose to prominence fighting in numerous battles for his king. Matthias promoted and rewarded men like him who were competent and loyal to him, men who were able to defend the interests of the kingdom and the king even when he wasn’t around.

The financial strain of the war machine that Matthias created was enormous and he basically took everything he could from nobility to finance it. It was a system pushed to its limits. But as long as victories were coming, the system worked. The Austrian war in particular was going very well for Matthias. There Matthias did not have to worry about the poor Habsburg Archduke of Austria Frederick III assembling an army to match his in the open, and he could take his time besieging Austrian fortresses and towns one by one. Matthias was waging a war of attrition that Frederick couldn’t afford. Even though he was a Holy Roman Emperor, he did not wield nearly enough power to extract the kind of resources needed to push back Matthias.

In 1485, Matthias conquered Vienna. He entered the city in triumph, leading his Black Army as the most powerful Christian monarch at the time in spectacular style. It would go down as the crowning achievement of his reign. Frederick III had already fled to Wiener Neustadt, but this too was taken by the Hungarians in 1487. The humiliated Emperor Frederick had to keep fleeing from the onslaught of the Black Army, first to Graz and then to Linz, as a large part of Austria fell into the hands of his powerful rival Matthias Corvinus. This was arguably the lowest point in the history of the Habsburgs, and the highest point in the history of the Kingdom of Hungary.

But the reason why the reign of Matthias Corvinus is highly praised and became inspiration for legends were not just his military achievements but also his contributions to culture. He embraced Renaissance culture from Italy, patronized art and sciences and turned his royal library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, into one of the largest collections of books in Europe. In many ways, he was a prototype of future renaissance and early modern monarchs. His vision was that of a modern state inspired by examples of classic antiquity. Matthias imagined himself as a Julius Caesar like figure.

But it would all end soon. Matthias Corvinus died at the height of his power in 1490. His only heir was his illegitimate son John Corvinus who didn’t have a strong enough position to continue his father’s work. The nobles saw the reign of Matthias as one of oppression as he took so much from them, and they were determined to get everything back. Instability and infighting followed. The royal power greatly diminished over night and so did the tax revenues. The expensive Black Army was the first thing that had to go. The unpaid and disorganized mercenaries would start to pillage the land and Pál Kinizsi had to assemble an army to stop them. The military abilities of Hungary were greatly diminished and the conquests of Matthias were lost very soon. The Habsburgs rapidly recovered everything. The nobility regained its power and paid much less taxes. Practically everything that Matthias Corvinus created died with him. The Kingdom of Hungary was now just as weak as it was before him, while the enemies were stronger than ever before.

Not only did the Black Army disappear but the philosophy behind it was also abandoned. Hungary went back to relying on nobility and levies. It went from having the strongest military in Europe to one of the weakest over night. Such weakened Hungary would last for few more decades but in 1526 it would be decisively defeated by the Ottomans at the battle of Mohács. King of Hungary Louis II died in this battle and caused another succession crisis. This defeat was the end of medieval Kingdom of Hungary in a form in which it had existed for centuries. It became split between the Habsburgs, who claimed the throne of Hungary for themselves, and Hungarian nobility loyal to pretender John Zápolya, and the Ottomans who occupied a large part of Hungary. In the decades that followed, Hungary would be turned into a war zone between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, with Hungarian nobility fighting on both sides. And while the Habsburgs would eventually reunite the Kingdom of Hungary by 1699, it would never function as an independent entity again.

And this is how everything Matthias Corvinus worked for was destroyed. But his legacy would remain and he would become remembered as the legendary King Matthias, featured in folk tales as “Matthias the Just”. Even during the dark days when the territories of his Kingdom of Hungary were devastated and reduced to the military frontier between his bitter enemies Hasburgs and Ottomans, people of various ethnic groups he ruled over still remembered the days of might and splendor, the days when King Matthias put everyone before him to rout with his mighty Black Army and the glorious banner of the black raven flew all over Central Europe and the Balkans in triumph.

As for the name Black Army, where did it come from? No one knows the exact origin, just like no one knows the origin of the mysterious symbol of the black raven that the Hunyadi family used and from which Matthias Corvinus got his name. Like with every legendary king, a lot of things will always remain shrouded in mystery.