The Battle of Riade or Battle of Merseburg was fought between the troops of East Francia under King Henry I and the Magyars at an unidentified location in northern Thuringia along the river Unstrut on 15 March 933. The battle was precipitated by the decision of the Synod of Erfurt to stop paying an annual tribute to the Magyars in 932.
In 924 a Magyar army invading the German duchy of Saxony defeated King Henry I in the field, but an Árpád prince—probably Zoltán—captured near Pfalz Werla allowed Henry to negotiate for terms. A truce of nine years, during which annual tribute was required of the Germans, was declared in 926.[1] During the truce, Henry reorganised the defences of his Saxonian duchy and subdued the Polabian Slavs in the east. At a 926 assembly, Henry secured the construction of new castles and the authorisation of a new form of garrison duty: the soldiery were organised into groups of nine agrarii milites (farmer-soldiers), one of which was doing guard duty at any given time while the other eight worked the fields.[1] In time of invasion, all nine could man the castles.
King Henry and the Hungarian envoys, 19th century depiction
After he believed the necessary reforms had been made, Henry secured the support of the church in reneging on tribute payments in 932. Allegedly he had a dead dog thrown down in front of the Magyar negotiators, which amounted to a declaration of war.
Battle
In preparation for the campaign, Henry levied mounted contingents from every region and stem duchy of the German kingdom, though only French chronicler Flodoard of Reims records the Bavarian presence.[2][3] The Thuringian contingent, though probably mounted, was described as inermes, or unarmed (though probably just poorly armed) by the contemporary chronicler Widukind of Corvey. His Saxon horsemen were described as armed warriors (miles armatus), but "he could not trust his horsemen, because they lacked certain skills and not enough of them were equipped as a miles armatus should be."[4]
The Hungarian campaigns of 933 against the German Kingdom and the Battle of Merseburg.
The Magyars had besieged an unknown town but attempted to withdraw in the night because Henry and his army had camped in the neighborhood at Riade. Henry sent forward a small contingent of footsoldiers with a few cavalrymen as a screen for his main army.[5] The king had learned what to expect from the preceding struggles, where the rapidity of the Magyar light cavalry and archers had brought them success. He confronted their onset with light armoured combatants at first, followed by a massed heavy cavalry attack. According to Widukind of Corvey, the Magyar forces readily fled at the coming of Henry's horsemen and the victorious German troops declared Henry emperor on the battlefield.[2]
The exact location of the battle is unknown and several municipalities in Central Germany claim to be the site of the combat, among them Kalbsrieth, at the confluence of Unstrut and Helme, and the Hunnenfeld near Riethgen. However the place of Riade rendered by Widukind denotes the army camp of King Henry, probably not identical with the battlefield.
Aftermath
In Henry's lifetime the Magyars did not dare to make a further raid on East Francia. In 954 they again invaded Germany during a rebellion instigated by Duke Liudolf of Swabia and were finally defeated by Henry's son and successor King Otto I at the Battle of Lechfeld.
Reuter, Timothy (1991). Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–1056. New York: Longman.
Santosuosso, Antonio (2004). Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels: The Ways of Medieval Warfare. New York: MJF Books.
Related Research Articles
Henry the Fowler was the Duke of Saxony from 912 and the King of East Francia from 919 until his death in 936. As the first non-Frankish king of East Francia, he established the Ottonian dynasty of kings and emperors, and he is generally considered to be the founder of the medieval German state, known until then as East Francia. An avid hunter, he obtained the epithet "the Fowler" because he was allegedly fixing his birding nets when messengers arrived to inform him that he was to be king.
The Ottonian dynasty was a Saxon dynasty of German monarchs (919–1024), named after three of its kings and Holy Roman Emperors named Otto, especially its first Emperor Otto I. It is also known as the Saxon dynasty after the family's origin in the German stem duchy of Saxony. The family itself is also sometimes known as the Liudolfings, after its earliest known member Count Liudolf and one of its most common given names. The Ottonian rulers were successors of the Germanic king Conrad I, who was the only Germanic king to rule in East Francia after the Carolingian dynasty and before this dynasty.
The Battle of Lechfeld was a series of military engagements over the course of three days from 10–12 August 955 in which the Kingdom of Germany, led by King Otto I the Great, annihilated the Hungarian army led by Harka Bulcsú and the chieftains Lél and Súr. With the German victory, further invasions by the Magyars into Latin Europe were ended.
The Duchy of Saxony was originally the area settled by the Saxons in the late Early Middle Ages, when they were subdued by Charlemagne during the Saxon Wars from 772 and incorporated into the Carolingian Empire (Francia) by 804. Upon the 843 Treaty of Verdun, Saxony was one of the five German stem duchies of East Francia; Duke Henry the Fowler was elected German king in 919.
Conrad I, called the Younger, was the king of East Francia from 911 to 918. He was the first king not of the Carolingian dynasty, the first to be elected by the nobility and the first to be anointed. He was chosen as the king by the rulers of the East Frankish stem duchies after the death of young King Louis the Child. Ethnically Frankish, prior to this election he had ruled the Duchy of Franconia from 906.
Eberhard III, a member of the Conradine dynasty, was Duke of Franconia, succeeding his elder brother, King Conrad I, in December 918. From 926 to 928, he also acted as ruler of Lotharingia.
Conrad, called the Red, was Duke of Lorraine from 944 until 953. He became the progenitor of the Imperial Salian dynasty.
Lehel, a member of the Árpád dynasty, was a Magyar chieftain and, together with Bulcsú, one of the most important figures of the Hungarian invasions of Europe. After the Magyar defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld, he was executed in Regensburg.
Otto, called the Illustrious by later authors, was a notable member of the Ottonian dynasty and Duke of Saxony from 880 until his death in 912. He played an important role in early medieval history of Germany during the 9th and 10th centuries, known for his military campaigns and diplomatic efforts.
Gero I, sometimes called the Great, was a German nobleman who ruled an initially modest march centred on Merseburg in the south of the present German state of Saxony-Anhalt, which he expanded into a vast territory named after him: the marca Geronis. During the mid-10th century, he was the leader of the Saxon Ostsiedlung.
Siegfried was the Count and Margrave of Merseburg from an unknown date before 934 until his death. He does not appear with the title of margrave in contemporary royal charters and diplomas, so the title was informal and never official.
The Synodof Erfurt was a church council held at Erfurt in northeastern Thuringia under the presidency of Henry I of Germany in 932.
The Battle on the Raxa river was fought on 16 October 955 over control of the Billung march between the forces of Otto I of Germany allied with the Rani tribe on one side, and the Obotrite federation under Nako and his brother Stoigniew with their allied and tributary Slav neighbours on the other. The Raxa river is identified with either the Recknitz or the Elde river. The German victory over the Slavs followed up on the August victory at the Lechfeld over the Magyars and marked the high point of Otto's reign.
Werlaburgdorf is a village and a former municipality in the district of Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, Germany. Since 1 November 2013, it is part of the municipality Schladen-Werla.
Otto I, traditionally known as Otto the Great, or Otto of Saxony, was East Frankish king from 936 and Holy Roman Emperor from 962 until his death in 973. He was the eldest son of Henry the Fowler and Matilda of Ringelheim.
The Hungarian invasions of Europe took place in the 9th and 10th centuries, the period of transition in the history of Europe in the Early Middle Ages, when the territory of the former Carolingian Empire was threatened by invasion from multiple hostile forces, the Magyars (Hungarians) from the east, the Viking expansion from the north, and the Arabs from the south.
The Battle of Rednitz on 22 June 910, was a decisive victory of the Magyar cavalry over the East Francian - German kingdoms armies. The location of this battle cannot be determined with 100% certitude. The battle happened near the River Rednitz, in Franconia, near the border with Bavaria. After the battle, the German king Louis the Child, together with the Swabian, Frankish, Bavarian, and Saxonian dukes, accepted to pay tribute to the Hungarian state.
The Battle of Püchen was fought in the summer of 919, between a Hungarian raiding army and the newly elected East Francian/German king Henry the Fowler, and ended with a Hungarian victory. This battle was a part of a long range Magyar raiding campaign, which lasted between the summer of 919 and the late winter or early spring of 920, and took part in countries like East Francia, West Francia, Burgundy and the Kingdom of Italy, resulting in victorious battles against the German king Henry the Fowler and the Burgundian king Rudolf II, while the West Francian and Lotharingian king Charles the Simple had no courage to face them.
The Battle of Lenzen was a land battle between a Saxon army of the Kingdom of Germany and the armies of the Slavic Redarii and Linonen peoples, that took place on 4 September 929 near the fortified Linonen stronghold of Lenzen in Brandenburg, Germany. The Saxon army, commanded by Saxon magnate Bernhard, destroyed a Slavic Redarii army. It marked the failure of Slavic attempts to resist German king Henry the Fowler's expansionism to the Elbe.
The Battle of Wels was fought between a joint Bavarian–Carantanian army and a Hungarian force near Wels in the Traungau, on the plain of the Welser Heide, nowadays a part of Austria. The battle took place at the height of the Hungarian invasions of Europe. The Bavarians and Carantanians were victorious under the command of the Bavarian leader Berthold. The victory is mentioned widely in contemporary histories. It is mentioned in Widukind of Corvey's Deeds of the Saxons, in Hermann of Reichenau's Chronicon and by Adalbert of Weissenburg in his continuation of the Chronicon of Regino of Prüm. It is also mentioned in the Annals of Saint Gall, the Annals of Salzburg and the Annals of Magdeburg, and in the necrology of Freising Cathedral.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
