Returning from a four-month tour in America, the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga (1871–1940) stopped for a few days in Switzerland, on his way home. On May 7, 1930, he gave a lecture in Bern on medieval peasants and their struggle for freedom in the 14th century. Peasants against feudal armies inspired memories from America. However, Iorga, who was at the time preoccupied with questions of world history and comparative research, did not simply associate the War of Independence with the victory of the Swiss “peasants” at Sempach against Duke Leopold III of Tyrol.Footnote 1 He drew a parallel between the military success of the Eidgenossen of 1386 and the defeat inflicted 56 years earlier upon the king of Hungary, Charles I, by Romanian peasants. The battle, on the 600th anniversary of which Iorga delivered his lecture, was illustrated in the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle. The Romanian historian was convinced that the illustrator had been an eyewitness or, at least, somebody informed by a participant.Footnote 2 There is no mention of peasants in the text of the Chronicle, but on the basis of the last illuminations in the manuscript, Iorga thought he could recognize the dress of the Romanian peasants of his own time: the woolen hat (căciulă, a sort of Phrygian cap); the long, braided hair; the leather jacket doubled with wool; the leggings; and the leather sandals (opinci).Footnote 3 The Romanians fought like peasants as well: they cut trees in the forest, which they then pushed over King Charles and his heavy cavalry.Footnote 4 Iorga did not find this detail either in the text or in the illuminations of the Hungarian Chronicle. He got it from the Chronicle of the Prussian Land by Peter of Dusburg, although that source is not mentioned in the lecture.Footnote 5
Iorga was most likely aware that Peter of Dusburg had explicitly called “peasants” (rustici) those who had obtained the victory in 1330 against King Charles I of Hungary and his men. However, his 1930 interpretation of the battle was very influential, and most Romanian historians of later generations were encouraged to imagine that the Hungarians had been defeated by an army of peasants, largely on the basis of the illuminations in the Chronicle.Footnote 6 Only recently has that idea been linked to the continuator of Peter of Dusburg and his intention to attribute the defeat of the Hungarians to God's punishment for their arrogance. The idea that those winning over the proud knights were peasants must therefore have originated in Hungary, as an explanation for the battle of 1330, which must have accompanied the news reaching the shore of the Baltic Sea.Footnote 7 The information in the Chronicle of the Land of Prussia thus gained an even greater significance, since that source is some 40 years earlier than the Illuminated Chronicle. Because of the extraordinary influence of Iorga, to this day, no Romanian historian has explicitly acknowledged that the Chronicle of the Land of Prussia is in fact the earliest narrative source to refer to the battle of 1330. If victory in that battle was won by peasants, as Iorga had it, then it is the Chronicle of the Land of Prussia that needs scrutiny, not only the Illuminated Chronicle. Did the information in the former source originate in Hungary? If so, how did it reach Prussia within a very short time? What exactly was the point about making the successful adversaries of King Charles I look like peasants? In this paper, we will attempt to provide some plausible answers to those questions. In doing so, we intend to approach the deeper meaning of a curious theme that appears in 13th- to early 15th-century, Latin sources of Central Europe: armed peasants.
“God took revenge on the Hungarians”: Peter of Dusburg, his continuator, and Nicolaus of Jeroschin
Peter of Dusburg was a priest and chronicler of the Order of the Teutonic Knights, a military monastic order founded in the Holy Land in 1190 at the Siege of Acre.Footnote 8 He composed the Chronicle of the Prussian Land (Chronica terrae Prussiae) in 1326, the definitive historical account of the conquest of the lands in the present-day territory of northeastern Poland and the Kaliningrad exclave of Lithuania.Footnote 9 There is no manuscript of this text that could be dated before 1550.Footnote 10 Christoph Hartnoch produced the first edition in 1679, based on a manuscript still kept in Toruń.Footnote 11 The intended audience of the chronicle remains a matter of much debate. Most scholars agree that the use of Latin excludes the brothers of the Order, who primarily spoke Middle High German. Because of that, the Chronicle was composed to reflect a culture of reform within the Order to outside audiences in Europe, Rome, or perhaps even to (some) priests working in Prussia.Footnote 12
In light of the importance of his text as a historical source, it is surprising how little is in fact known about Dusburg himself. Based on his name, scholars have proposed two possible places of origin. The first is Duisburg, in the Duchy of Cleve, about 70 km north of Cologne (i.e., in the Rhineland). This idea was favored by such 19th-century Prussian historians as Johannes Voigt (1786–1863) and Max Pollux Töppen (1822–1893). It was Töppen, in fact, who edited the Chronicle and published it in 1861.Footnote 13 Later scholars argued that Peter came from Doesburg, about 90 km east of Utrecht (where the Teutonic Order had a bailiwick from 1270). The most detailed study of Dusburg's life and the first to connect him to the Netherlands is that of Marzena Pollakówna (1926–1971).Footnote 14 Klaus Schulz and Dieter Wojtecki, who edited and translated Dusburg's chronicle in 1984, reached a similar conclusion, and this continues to be the accepted view concerning Peter and his origins.Footnote 15
In the first few sentences of the chronicle, the author calls himself “brother Peter von Dusburg, a priest and brother of the Order.”Footnote 16 Some believe that he wrote the chronicle in Marienburg (Pol. Malbork), the headquarters of the Teutonic Knights from 1309 until 1466.Footnote 17 Others prefer Königsberg (Rus. Kaliningrad), the seat of the marshals of the Order and the point of departure for Litauerreisen – seasonal crusades led by the Order against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from 1304 to 1422.Footnote 18 If Dusburg was chaplain to the Grand Master, then he resided in Marienburg. Because his chronicle includes several incidents that point to a familiarity with affairs in and around Königsberg, Peter must have stayed in that region for a considerable time, if not permanently.Footnote 19 For example, he recounts a series of stories about the brothers and commanders living in Königsberg, including digressions on their piety and accounts of miraculous visions of the Virgin Mary (the Order's patron saint).Footnote 20
Dusburg wrote his chronicle at the request of the Grand Master Werner of Orseln (1324–1330). His purpose was to show “the signs and wonders of God,” carried out by the brothers of the Teutonic House in Prussia, immediately linking the Order's presence in the region to a Biblical passage.Footnote 21 Dusburg's chronicle has traditionally been treated as an important record of an entire century in the history of Prussia, from the arrival of the Teutonic Knights in 1230 up to 1330. It is thus a crucial source for examining the ways in which the Teutonic Order understood itself and, particularly in the wake of the loss of Acre in 1291, how it justified its existence to Christianitas in the wake of several internal and external crises.Footnote 22 In other words, his chronicle is a product of reform.
Four books comprise the Chronica terrae Prussiae. The first narrates the foundation of the Order in the Holy Land and lists the Grand Masters of the Order beginning with Hermann von Salza (1210–1239).Footnote 23 Book Two concerns the arrival of the brothers in Prussia, beginning with an account of the Prussian raids on the Kulmlerland (De vastacione terre Culmensis per Pruthenos).Footnote 24 It describes the papal confirmation of the Teutonic Knights’ wars in Prussia, before proceeding to an allegory of the “new war” (novum bellum) waged by the Knights.Footnote 25 Book Three is the longest of all and may be compared to a war report (Kriegsbericht).Footnote 26 Made up of 362 chapters, the book describes the establishment of the Order's early castles and towns, and the continual struggles between the Teutonic Order and the Prussians. The book concludes with the conquest of the Prussians in 1283 and the wars against Lithuania to 1326. Throughout the chronicle, in the margins are “happenings” (incidentia) highlighting the elections and death of kings and Holy Roman Emperors, natural phenomena such as earthquakes and comets, as well as a lament for the Holy Land following the loss of Acre in 1291.Footnote 27 These comprise Book Four.
Appended to the chronicle is a supplement (Supplementum), which narrates events in Prussia between 1326 and the death of Werner of Orseln in November 1330.Footnote 28 When exactly was this supplement written, and by whom? Some believe that it must have been after Dusburg's own death.Footnote 29 Others pointed out that the supplement is closely associated with Nicolaus of Jeroschin's translation and could have been written during Dusburg's lifetime.Footnote 30 If so, the supplement was written by another churchman active in Sambia. The text begins with Werner of Orseln's addition of the in principio erat verbum to the daily prayers of the Order and proceeds to list the castles at Morungen (Pol. Morąg), Christmemel (Lit. Skiersemune) and a few others in Lithuania. The supplement also describes the conflict between the Teutonic Knights in Livonia and the citizens of Riga.Footnote 31 Then comes the account of how the King of Poland, Władysław Łokietek, invaded the Kulmerland in 1330 with the help of mercenaries (milites stipendarii) from Hungary.Footnote 32
At this point in the text, the Virgin Mary appears to a “captain” of the Hungarian troops named William. She admonishes him for the destruction of her “land, planted with the blood of so many Christians.”Footnote 33 She also warns William that if he does not cease from destroying her land, he will soon “die a terrible death.”Footnote 34 Following that, the author of the supplement introduces an episode entitled “the vengeance of the Lord” (de vindicta Domini):
At the same time as the Hungarians were destroying the Kulmerland, the King of Hungary went out with a great army against a certain king who was subordinate to him. While he invaded that kingdom, the peasants (rustici) of the region sawed in half the trees of the forest through which the Hungarians would be forced to return, so that when one of them would fall, by means of striking the other, the remainder would fall in succession. And so it came to pass that when the Hungarians entered the forest on their way back, the peasants pushed the trees, one striking the other, and so coming down on both sides they fell upon a great multitude of Hungarians. Behold how the nature of God is good, mild and merciful.Footnote 35 He is gracious and compassionate, as in the words of prophet Nahum: The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents his wrath against his enemies.Footnote 36 How was the Lord able to endure in patience and mercy as the King of Hungary released his men for the destruction of the land of Christ, of His mother, and of the brothers living there, who were prepared every day to put their possessions and bodies at riskFootnote 37 so that they might avenge the injury done to the crucified Christ?Footnote 38 Surely the Lord was not able to permit this to happen without retribution.Footnote 39
Although Charles Robert's adversary is not named, “a certain king” is most likely the ruler of Wallachia at that time, Basarab I (ca. 1320–1351/2). This is implied by the previous account of the alliance between Łokietek, the enemy of the Order, and Charles Robert. The chronology is quite clear: although the attack on Basarab took place at the same time as Łokietek's invasion of Kulmerland, the defeat of the Hungarians took place after the destruction inflicted upon the lands of the Teutonic Knights, because the former is presented as the retribution for the latter. However, Basarab does not seem to be responsible for the defeat of the Hungarians. Instead, those responding to the invasion of Wallachia were local peasants, who, instead of engaging in battle, cut the trees in the forest, but left them in place, in order to topple their trunks unto the Hungarian soldiers, once they would enter the forest. A great number of Hungarians is said to have died, but the exact location of those events is not mentioned; it is simply a forest like many others. However, the fact that the trees came down upon the enemy forces suggests that they had grown on slopes on both sides of the road on which the troops of Charles Robert returned home. Much more remarkable is how this episode is framed by two Biblical quotes, one being a call to repentance (Joel 2:13), the other a prophecy regarding the fall of Niniveh (Nahum 1:2). Both quotes are very much in line with other exempla in Dusburg's chronicle and clearly show that his continuator (the author of the supplement) used the defeat of the Hungarian troops in Wallachia as God's punishment for the Hungarian king harming the Order's land and the brothers therein, who gave their lives and goods for its protection. The defeat at the hands of the (Wallachian) peasants is retribution for the destruction inflicted upon “the land of Christ, of His mother, and of the brothers living there.” In other words, the peasants (rustici) are an instrument of God's wrath. To quote Prophet Nahum, in this case, the Lord took vengeance but chose peasants to drive out His enemies.
Not long after the supplement was written, the Chronicle of the Land of Prussia was translated into Middle High German by another author. Nicolaus of Jeroschin, who was a chaplain of the Order, wrote his Kronike von Pruzinlant between 1331 and 1341, on commission from the Grand Master Luder of Braunschweig (1331–1335).Footnote 40 Unlike Peter of Dusburg, Nicolaus of Jeroschin was writing for the brothers of the Order.Footnote 41 With that audience in mind, he manipulated the original text, which he sometimes abbreviated and at other times expanded; he also omitted parts of the Latin text, especially details of religious and ecclesiastical nature.Footnote 42 The episode of the “divine vengeance” is a good illustration of Jeroschin's narrative strategy:
While these Hungarians were laying waste to the Kulmerland, the king of Hungary himself set off with his army on a campaign against a king who owed him allegiance. The Hungarians had to travel across high mountains and along narrow tracks to enter the king's land because there was no way of going round them. When the Hungarians arrived to wage war and moved around, ransacking the country at will, the local peasants became aware of them and were very angry. They fled to the hills with all their households and wherever they came across big trees near the paths they cut them through the middle. Afterwards, when the Hungarians decided to return home, and had reached the mountains, the peasants chose their moment to push over the trees on both sides of the paths. Crashing down, they toppled one after the other and fell onto the army. They could not defend themselves and most of them were killed. So God took revenge on the Hungarians for the anguish they had inflicted on His Mother's land, sending his people there to take it out of the control of the Teutonic Brethren, who are brave enough to risk life and possessions to protect Christians against the Lithuanians, in praise of the Virgin, pure as crystal, who gave birth to Christ, our true bright sun.Footnote 43
Jeroschin gives many more details about landscape and geography than Dusburg had in his account of the ambush. Dusburg has only a forest and its trees (arbores sylvae), while Jeroschin has “high mountains” and “narrow paths” (ein gebirge daz was ho / vil enge wege in daz lant), in addition to hills. While neither mountains, nor hills could have meant much to the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, narrow paths and forests were major logistical issues for crusading armies in the Baltic.Footnote 44 Equally significant in that respect is the addition that Jeroschin made to Dusburg's account. Once they get to Wallachia, the Hungarians begin to move around and ransack the country at will, a direct parallel to the Hungarian troops laying waste to the Kulmerland, as mentioned in the beginning. Moreover, Jeroschin's peasants (lantgebûr) are not simply getting into action. Before that, they show emotions, for their anger at the Hungarians is explicitly mentioned (want di waren sûre). Jeroschin then describes a general withdrawal to the hills, men “with all their households.” Instead of a particular place where the peasants cut the trees, they do that along every path that the Hungarians could have followed to return home. They also cut the trees through the middle, a detail absent from Dusburg. Very interesting is also another detail that Jeroschin added, namely that the Hungarians could not defend themselves against the attackers, implying that at least in principle, this was a battle, not just an ambush. Perhaps the mention of the Lithuanians as the enemies of the Teutonic Knights is meant to give precision to the story, since those suffering at the hands of the Hungarians troops allied with Łokietek were protectors of Christians. The final part of the passage reminds one that Jeroschin's text was not written in prose, but in rhyming couplets (as opposed to prose). He had a metrical format within which to fit the content of Dusburg's chronicle, and that had a significant impact upon his choice of words.Footnote 45
The Illuminated Chronicle: text and image
One of the most important sources for the history of medieval Hungary, the Illuminated Chronicle (Chronicon Pictum) was composed in 1358 or shortly after that, at the court of King Louis I (1342–1382). This was a compilation of earlier chronicles, many of which are now lost. To that compilation, the unknown author added a section that brought the narrative to 1330, even though the text is interrupted in the middle of a sentence. The probable redactor of the compilation, as well as author of the last section, is Mark of Kalt, a Franscican friar who was canon of the cathedral in Székesfehérvár at the time he wrote the Chronicle.Footnote 46 The text was accompanied by illuminations, the last of which were most likely finished at some point between 1370 and 1373.Footnote 47 Both text and illuminations show that the audience of the Chronicle was the king himself, as well as the members of the highest echelon of the Hungarian aristocracy, who surrounded the king. It is therefore surprising to note that the portrait of King Louis's father, Charles I (Charles Robert), who is the last king of Hungary mentioned in the Chronicle, is not entirely positive.Footnote 48 No other episode illustrates that ambiguity better than the account of King Charles's campaign against Basarab I, the prince of Wallachia, which constitutes chapter 209, the last in the Chronicle.
The Hungarian king is said to have marched with a large army, but ”not all his forces, for he had sent many warriors on divers expeditions against enemies on the frontiers of the realm.”Footnote 49 Charles's intention was to drive out Basarab from his land or to grant that land to one of the instigators of the expedition – either Thomas, the voivode of Translyvania, or Denis, son of Nicholas, the master of the butlers.Footnote 50 After the king took Severin and gave it to Denis (who was now ban), Basarab dispatched envoys to Charles promising to recompense the king for his efforts with 7,000 marks of silver. He also promised to hand over Severin “in peace” (pacifice), with all that belonged to it, even though Charles had taken that into his hands ”by force” (pro potentiam).Footnote 51 Moreover, Basarab promised to pay faithfully (fideliter) every year the tribute due to Charles's crown, and to send one of his sons to serve at the king's court at Basarab's charge and expense.Footnote 52 In exchange, he asked the king to return home in peace (in pace), which would keep him and his men safe from danger. To that, Basarab did not hesitate to add a threat: ”if you come farther, you shall not escape dangers.”Footnote 53 Stung by the threat, Charles was roused (elata mente) and told the envoy: ”Say this to Basarab: he is the shepherd of my sheep, and I will drag him by his beard from his lair.”Footnote 54 The count of Zólyom and Liptó, a nobleman named Dancs Zólyomi, told Charles that Basarab had addressed him through his envoy with “great humility and respect” (cum magna humilitate vobis et ad honorem vestrum). However, the angry king repeated the proud and threatening words (verbum superbie et commminationis) that he had already uttered.Footnote 55
Soon after that, realizing that he could not accomplish his initial goal, Charles made a truce with Basarab. The Wallachian prince “pledged his word that he would obey the king,” would show him the way back home and would secure the safety of the royal army. At this point, the chronicler intervenes again in the narrative to place a judgment on Charles: he erred again, because he trusted someone who was nothing but a “perfidious schismatic” (confidens de fide perfidi scismatici).Footnote 56 Forewarning his audience about Basarab's true intentions, the chronicler then describes the battle which took place in a “defile where the road was surrounded on either side by steep slopes; and ahead where it broadened out, the way was blocked by strong barriers, which the Vlachs had set up at many points.”Footnote 57 Meanwhile, the Vlachs, in great numbers (Vlachorum multitude innumerabilis), were running back and forth, hurling down missiles (discurrendo iacula iacientes) upon the royal army.Footnote 58 For a second time, the chronicler intervenes in the narrative to help his audience imagine the scene: the road was like “the narrow hold of a ship, in which fighting men and strong horses were so pressed against each other that everywhere they fell to the ground.”Footnote 59 Because of that, the king's men could not go up the cliffs against the Vlachs. Nor was it possible to move forward, in order to escape, because of the barriers set up (propter indagines ibi factas) at the point of exit. A third intervention follows, by means of another comparison: if the royal army as a whole was like the narrow hold of a ship, the soldiers in that army were “like fishes trapped in a weir or caught in a net” (errant omnino sicut pisces in gurgustio vel in rethe comprehensi). The strongest warriors were helplessly thrown one against the other, like babies rocked in a cradle or reeds trembling in the wind.Footnote 60 That the soldiers are compared to fish, babies, or reeds is more than a literary figure: the meaning of this triple comparison is that they were all powerless, stripped of all their abilities to defend themselves, at the mercy of their enemies. Indeed, the chronicler mentions immediately after that the great number of Hungarian prisoners, both wounded and uninjured. Moreover, the Vlachs took from the bodies of those killed many weapons, precious raiment, “money in silver and gold, costly vessels and baldrics, many purses heavy with coins, and many horses and bridles.”Footnote 61 All of that was taken to Basarab, but what exactly the Wallachian prince did with the booty after the battle remains unknown.
Returning to the battle scene, the chronicler, having described the soldiers in the royal army as fish, now compares the Vlachs to “a pack of dogs” set upon the “Christian people,” falling around the army “like flies spoiling the sweetness of the ointment.”Footnote 62 That dogs and flies serve to describe the Vlachs is only a way to prepare yet another intervention of the chronicler: “How many Vlachs were there killed by the Hungarians is known only to the subtle keeper of the reckoning in hell.”Footnote 63 Far from being an attempt to avoid acknowledging ignorance in terms of the number of casualties, this intervention is meant to suggest that the souls of the Vlachs who died in the battle went straight to Hell. Moreover, this is not just a post-factum smear campaign. The chronicler explains that the disaster he described befell the Hungarians, “lest their many victories might make them proud, or rather in order that having become proud, they should be chastised, so that they might learn and teach humility” (emphasis added).Footnote 64 Given that the first mention in chapter 209 of superbia was about the king, it is likely that the last comments that the chronicler made in that chapter must be understood in reference to Charles, and not only to Hungarians in general. In the chronicle, superbia is also a characteristic of an enemy of the Hungarians – Osul, the leader of the Cumans defeated by Solomon at Chiraleș.Footnote 65 That Basarab, another enemy of the Hungarians is by contrast characterized by magna humilitas is remarkable, the more so that the battle in chapter 209 is similar in many respects to the battle scene in chapter 102. Like the Vlachs, the Cumans are shooting down arrows at the Hungarians from the top of the mountain. However, unlike the soldiers in the army of King Charles, who are like fish trapped in a weir, ”King Solomon was possessed with an audacity of fury, and by an ascent so steep that he had almost to crawl he climbed up with his men towards the pagans.”Footnote 66
The Vlachs are mentioned earlier in the text of the Chronicle. First in chapter 22, Szeklers are said to have moved ”among the mountains on the border with the Vlachs.” They learned how to use and adopted the writing of the Vlachs, with whom they mingled.Footnote 67 The Vlachs are then mentioned in chapter 23, along with Slavs, Greeks, German newcomers and Moravians, as inhabitants of Pannonia before the arrival of the Magyars.Footnote 68 Basarab, the Vlach ruler, never appears in the narrative, although he speaks through his envoy, as well as, indirectly, when making a truce with King Charles. He is given such qualities as great humility, even though Charles calls him a shepherd, which is undoubtedly meant to be an insult. The Vlachs, on the other hand, are not his, but Charles's sheep. In the eyes of the chronicler, however, the Vlachs are like dogs. Similarly, besides being a shepherd, Basarab is described as ”perfidious schismatic,” perhaps in an attempt to explain his supposed lack of fealty by means of heresy. Therefore, one cannot trust him, and the king should have known better. Basarab promises many things and pledges his word, but none of those things actually happens. His name is last mentioned as recipient of the booty collected by the Vlachs. There is however no actual description of the Vlachs, either collectively or of particular individuals. However, unlike Basarab, the Vlachs are visible: one can see them up on the cliffs, even if one cannot climb to fight them, and they hurl missiles upon the Hungarians from above. They also set up barriers to block the access of the enemy. They come in great numbers, but they fall (dead) like flies when approaching the royal army. Nonetheless, they are somehow able to take prisoners and to plunder the bodies of the dead Hungarians, before taking all that booty to their ruler.
Only a few of those descriptive elements appear in the accompanying illuminations.Footnote 69 There are in fact two illuminations showing the defeat of the Hungarians at the hands of Basarab's Vlachs (Figs. 1–2).Footnote 70 Because the tenth quire of the manuscript was the last, and the text was interrupted in the middle of a sentence, a decision was taken to have a closing picture after the unfinished sentence. That is why the illustrator repeated the illumination of the defeat.Footnote 71 Although there is no explicit mention of mountains in the text, the illustrator chose a rocky landscape, which is simpler in the first illumination, with three types of trees. Those on the left upper corner are shown against a dark background, which is probably meant to render the darkness of the forest. Their leaves are clusters of red and white dots. By contrast, the trees on the rocks have bunches of leaves. Finally, there is a tall tree with long branches behind the hidden Vlachs. In the second illumination, there is only one kind of trees, namely the ones with bunches of leaves. Moreover, there is an additional mountain at the horizon. Much more interesting is the treatment of the frame in both illustrations, as if the landscape spilled over the page. In the first illumination, there is a Vlach wearing a long, pointed hat and hurling a rock. His head, hat, raised arms, and the rock are all painted onto the frame, much like the heads of the horses running to the right in the second illumination, a way to signal the escape from the enclosed space (not just of the gorge, but of the picture as well).Footnote 72
Chronicon Pictum, 14th-century illuminated manuscript now in the National Széchény Library in Budapest, page 143, with illumination showing the battle between the Hungarian army of King Charles I and the Vlachs (1330). Source: Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository.
Chronicon Pictum, illumination on page 146 showing the battle between the Hungarian army of King Charles I and the Vlachs (1330). Source: Wikimedia repository.
There has been no systematic study of the landscape in any of those illuminations, but their influence upon the historiography has been considerable. The implicit interpretation of the landscape in both illuminations is that the battle took place in a mountain pass, even though no mention of that is made in the text. Moreover, the trees depicted against a darker background in the first illumination are believed to be the deep forests of the Carpathian Mountains. However, trees depicted against a dark background with leaves rendered as clusters of red and green dots appear also in the illumination at the beginning of chapter 104.Footnote 73
The first illumination has eleven Vlachs, three of them on the rocks, and the others hiding behind them. Only one of those Vlachs is an archer: his hair is braided under a hat and he wears a long shirt, the sleeves of which are decorated with red ornament, as well as a woolen tunic with long, split sleeves hanging from the left hand holding the bow. Another, mustachioed Vlach holding a rock is dressed similarly. He too wears a white (linen?) shirt underneath, with sleeves decorated with a red ornament, while his collarless tunic reaches to his knees. The split, long sleeves of that tunic may be seen on the left arm. A third Vlach is dressed in a red tunic with a belt at the waist. He wears a pointed hat, much like that of another Vlach hiding behind the rocks, with a beard.Footnote 74 In front of him is another Vlach wearing a white shirt with sleeves decorated with red ornament and a woolen tunic on top. Although there is no mention in the text of rocks or stones hurled against the royal army, this Vlach is shown throwing a rock.Footnote 75 Another bearded Vlach is behind the one with the pointed hat and he wears the same woolen tunic. Farther in the background is another Vlach dressed in a red tunic, like the rock-hurling Vlach on the mountain. The head of yet another bearded Vlach peeks from behind the rocks.
In the second illumination there are only nine Vlachs, two of them archers. The one at the center of the upper part imitates the archer of the first illumination, but has multiple braids on the back, and no linen shirt, as if wearing his woolen tunic directly on the skin. Only one part of the split sleeves is shown. The other archer is dressed in a green tunic with a belt at the waist. He has no hat. Behind him is another Vlach dressed also in a green tunic hurling a rock.Footnote 76 This man has a hat, but the other rock-hurling Vlach next to him, dressed in the woolen tunic, is without a hat. The rock-thrower at the top still wears a red, long-sleeved tunic, as well as a hat. A character below him may be another similarly dressed Vlach, but his hat looks very much like a bishop's miter. Two more Vlachs appear to the left of the rock-thrower at the top. Both wear red tunics, and one of them has a hat.
Much like the landscape, the dress of the Vlachs in the two illuminations has never been studied systematically. Nonetheless, those illuminations formed the basis for Iorga's influential suggestion that those who defeated King Charles I in 1330 were peasants. Iorga interpreted the pointed hats as căciuli, and therefore believed to have recognized in the Illuminated Chronicle the Romanian peasants of his age. However, as Ernő Marosi has long noted, to claim that costumes in the Illuminated Chronicle represent reality is a hypothesis built upon petitio principii.Footnote 77 Few have noted, for example, that the miter-looking hat of the Vlach below the rock-thrower in the second illumination is very much like the miter of the “archbishop of the Arians” in Ravenna, who is mentioned in chapter 17.Footnote 78 Moreover, the hair braided on the back, like that of the Vlach in the first illumination also appears in another picture at the beginning of chapter 25, in the central scene of Árpád tasting the water of the Danube.Footnote 79 The character in question (probably a Magyar) is shown in blue tunic, to the right of the man holding the flask for Árpád. Long, split sleeves like those of several Vlachs in the first illumination typically appear with female costumes, for example at the center of the illumination at the beginning of chapter 66 (which deals with St. Stephen's victory over Kean).Footnote 80 Finally, the woolen hats of the Vlachs look very much like those worn by four soldiers shown behind the Hungarian archer in a battle scene (Menfő, 1044) at the beginning of chapter 75.Footnote 81 Such hats are also depicted on the heads of those in attendance in the scene of King Andrew I's coronation at the beginning of chapter 86.Footnote 82 The same type of hat appears also on the head of the Hungarian archer at the front of the army chasing the Cumans in the illumination at the beginning of chapter 102.Footnote 83 Finally, the Rutheni coming to submit to King Ladislas in the illumination at the beginning of chapter 138 wear hats like those of the Vlachs in the last two illuminations of the Chronicle.Footnote 84 As Hugo Buchthal has demonstrated, such hats are in fact a misinterpretation of Phrygian hats going back to an illustrated manuscript of Vergil.Footnote 85 Iorga was right about the hats of the Vlachs being like the Phrygian caps, but not in the way he meant it. All in all, there is absolutely nothing in those two pictures that could indicate that the illustrator's intention was to depict the Vlachs as peasants. In reality, as in other cases in the Chronicle, the costumes in the last two illuminations are meant to create a distance from the past, which may be best described as an incipient historical awareness.Footnote 86 The Vlachs as enemies appear as dogs and (dead) flies in the text, and as a combination of historical characters known to illustrators at that time. To regard them as peasants is not only a form of wishful thinking, but also a gross mistake, for such an interpretation ignores the subtlety of the visual language employed by the illustrator.Footnote 87
Where did the chronicler find his information about the war between Charles I and Basarab? The mention of Thomas, the voivode of Transylvania, and of Denis, who became ban of Severin, suggests that Mark of Kalt had access to royal charters and perhaps oral information from survivors. However, the information of the surviving charters does not match the account in the Illuminated Chronicle.Footnote 88 Nowhere is that more apparent than in the description of the landscape in which the battle took place.
The location
One of the earliest sources to refer to the war between Charles I and Basarab is a royal charter of November 2, 1332 for Count Nicholas, son of Urbanus of Perveyn, in which the battle is described as happening in a place that was “dark and wooded” (in quodam loco nemoroso et silvoso), closed by several barriers (indaginumque densitate firmato).Footnote 89 Two months later, in a charter for Master Mark, vice-castellan of Unguraș and for Thomas, his brother, the place is described as narrow and dark (in quodam loco condenso et obscuro).Footnote 90 “Narrow,” “wooded,” and “(surrounded by) barriers” are also the main descriptors in the royal charter of May 19, 1333 for Master Thomas, the castellan of Chokaw (in quibusdam locis districtis et silvosis… indaginibusque firmis).Footnote 91 Maria Holban's detailed analysis of the language employed by the royal charters showed that the initial insistence upon a dark and forested landscape, combined with the presence of barriers blocking the exit, was later reduced to only two traits – dark and narrow.Footnote 92 The latter is the link to the description in the Chronicle, where the adjective applies to the ship used for comparison, not to the landscape. The barriers also appear in the Chronicle, along with such new traits as steep slopes and cliffs.Footnote 93
The vagueness of all those descriptors explains why the location of the battle between Charles I and Basarab has long been the subject of much debate in the Romanian historiography. Most historians agree that Basarab ambushed the Hungarian army while King Charles was crossing the Carpathian Mountains from Wallachia, but exactly where the battle took place is still a matter of dispute. There are three possible routes, from west to east: along the valley of the river Cerna, along the valley of the river Olt, and through the Rucăr-Bran pass.Footnote 94 No source mentions the location, but on the basis of an analogy with another battle between Sigismund of Luxembourg and Vlad I, which took place in 1395 in a mountain pass called Pazata, Nicolae Iorga decided that the 1330 battle also happened at Posada.Footnote 95 In Romanian, the word posadă is a common noun and refers to a mountain pass or to a river ford.Footnote 96 No evidence exists that a place named Posada existed in 1330 either at the location “chosen” by Iorga or anywhere else.
Others have advanced the idea of the Perișani-Pripoare pass on the road from Curtea de Argeș (Basarab's residence) to the valley of the river Olt.Footnote 97 If Curtea de Argeș is the only firm basis for narrowing down the whereabouts of the royal army before returning to Hungary, there is no indication that the battle took place in a mountain pass, even though the Chronicle has the Vlachs on a position on the cliffs that was not accessible to the soldiers in the royal army. More often than not, historians forget that the illuminations in the Chronicle are not based on first-hand reports from participants but are in fact free interpretations of the text. Few acknowledge the apparent contradiction between the accounts of the battle in the supplement to the chronicle of Peter of Dusburg and in the Illuminated Chronicle, respectively. Because of its richness of detail, the latter is always preferred and forms the basis of any modern account of the war between Charles I and Basarab. Romanian historians have used Peter of Dusburg only sporadically, and then only for details. Some believe that the trees that the peasants cut, according to Peter of Dusburg, were used to build the barriers mentioned in the Illuminated Chronicle. Footnote 98 Others link the role of the woods in Dusburg's account to other military victories obtained by Romanians in the Middle Ages, none of which took place in the mountains.Footnote 99
Rustici and a shepherd
A few have noted that the unknown continuator of Dusburg drew a sharp contrast between the large royal army (maximus exercitus) and the ”peasants of that country” (rustici illius regionis).Footnote 100 Even fewer have noted that the background of the account in the supplement to Dusburg's chronicle is confirmed by contemporary sources from Hungary. Dusburg claims that the battle of 1330 was a form of divine vengeance for the military support that the Hungarians had given to Władysław Łokietek against the Teutonic Knights. The Virgin Mary appeared in a dream to a Hungarian captain, threatening him with a terrible death. This man also appears in Nicolaus of Jeroschin's translation. That an army of 8,000 men was sent from Hungary to assist Władysław Łokietek against the Teutonic Knights during the Polish-Teutonic war for Pomerelia (1326–1332) results from the royal charter of November 29, 1330 for Michael, the provost of the Premonstratensian house in Jasov (now in eastern Slovakia), which mentions the participation of noblemen of the Abaúj county in the expedition.Footnote 101 The commander of the Hungarian troops was the count of Újvár and Szepes, a man named William Druget(h). This strongly suggests that the troops were recruited in northeastern Hungary.Footnote 102
Count William may have been a participant in the negotiations that led to a temporary peace between the Teutonic Knights and Władysław Łokietek in 1330. This was confirmed at the castle of Leipe (Pol. Lipienek) on October 30, after Łokietek unsuccessfully attempted to take the Dobrin (Pol. Dobrzyń) and Kulm (Pol. Chełmno) lands.Footnote 103 However, he could not have been the one who brought to Prussia the news about the defeat of the Hungarians in Wallachia, for he returned to Hungary after the truce at Leipe, at about the same time as events were unfolding in Wallachia. On the other hand, news of those events had already reached Prussia by the time the supplement to Peter of Dusburg's chronicle was finished. Since that supplement appears together with the chronicle of Nicolaus of Jeroschin in a manuscript from the Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart (Cod. HB V 95), which is dated to the second quarter of the 14th century, the short continuation of Peter of Dusburg's work must have been written at some point between 1330 and 1350, most likely in the late 1330s or in the 1340s. If so, information about the defeat of the Hungarians in Wallachia may have reached Prussia after the death of King Władysław Łokietek in 1333 or even that of King Charles I in 1342. In other words, the circumstances in which the news about the disastrous war between King Charles and Basarab reached Prussia may have been the equally disastrous expedition against the Lithuanians that was organized in 1344 by King John of Bohemia in cooperation with the Teutonic Knights and the new king of Hungary, Louis I.Footnote 104 This could help explain a number of surprising parallels between the accounts of the events of 1330 in the supplement to Dusburg's chronicle and in Nicolaus of Jeroschin, on one hand, and the Hungarian charters. The latter insist on the narrow and densely forested environment of the ambush. The supplement mentions the forest, and Jeroschin the narrow tracks. Narrow is also the ship used for comparison in the Illuminated Chronicle. Because both the supplement and Jeroschin refer to Charles's enemy as a king that owed him allegiance, one is tempted to attribute the concomitant absence of Basarab from the account of the supplement and the emphasis placed on peasants in Jeroschin to a pro-royal version of events meant to justify the defeat. However, there is absolutely no evidence in any sources that either in 1330 or later anyone in Hungary was thinking of placing the blame of the military disaster on the peasants of Wallachia. It is more likely that it was in Prussia that peasants became the agents of divine vengeance.
The account provided in the supplement and translated by Jeroschin contains a number of details that cannot be found anywhere else. The supplement has peasants sawing trees in half, while Jeroschin's peasants flee to the hills with all their households. To be sure, rustici appear two more times in the Chronicle of the Land of Prussia. One of those instances is also related to a vision of the Virgin Mary on the eve of the battle of Durbe (July 13, 1260). In a vision, a thresher (rusticus triturator) who is a righteous and God-fearing man, sees in the sky the Teutonic Knights and the Lithuanians engaged in battle, and calls his family to witness it as well. He also sees the Virgin Mary, as well as holy virgins and angels taking the souls of the fallen brethren with them to heaven.Footnote 105 Elsewhere, rustici of uncertain origin plot to rise against the Knights at the same time as the Sambians.Footnote 106 They were bent to kill their nobles, just as the peasants angry at the sight of Hungarians ransacking the country are bent on taking revenge. The angry peasants of 1330 withdraw to the hills and begin cutting trees through the middle along the route of the royal army returning from Wallachia. Those were not trees felled to provide timber for barriers, but instead heavy trunks that the peasants then pushed onto the royal army, once it got closer.
It is therefore wrong to associate the account in the supplement to Dusburg, translated and enriched by Jeroschin, with the Vlachs of the Illuminated Chronicle supposedly dressed like peasants. In the Chronicle, King Charles tells Basarab, through his envoy, that he is the shepherd of the king's sheep. He also promises to drag him by his beard out of his lair. Could the Vlachs wearing woolen tunics in the last two illuminations of the Chronicle be interpreted as shepherds, perhaps in an attempt to develop the pastoral theme in the text? In our opinion, the answer must be negative, for the illustrator must have been aware of the very different meaning of the words that the chronicler put in King Charles's mouth. To say that Basarab was the king's shepherd was to say that his job was to feed the king's sheep, which hints at John 21:17 (pasce oves meas). Much like Peter was expected to love the Lord and obey Him, so was Basarab expected to be loyal to Charles. In other words, he ruled over the Vlachs only because he had been entrusted with that job by Charles – he was Charles's shepherd. However, since he had not been loyal, Charles was now about to drag him out of the place where he was hiding, and to do so by pulling his beard. The latter detail is meant to emphasize a direct violation of Basarab's honor, as pulling a man's beard was a great insult. There is therefore no one-to-one connection between the angry answer that King Charles gave to Basarab's envoy and the Vlachs dressed in woolen tunics in the illuminations accompanying the text. Why then did the Teutonic sources turn the Vlachs into peasants?
Rustics as instruments of God's wrath
“Sancho Panza, exemplar of the rustic amusingly and unsuitably thrust into adventure, has an extensive ancestry.”Footnote 107 Armed peasants were feared in the 13th and 14th century. For Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, who wrote at some point between 1232 and 1241, Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, oppressed the nobles when arming peasants (rusticos armis induebant) and preferring them to soldiers.Footnote 108 King Christopher I of Denmark waged war in 1258 against peasants, who were presumably armed.Footnote 109 The Ghibelline Annals of Piacenza (which were finished in 1284 or shortly thereafter) mention that in 1267, a Veronese army returning from a campaign against Cremona was ambushed at the crossing of a river and 200 soldiers were captured a rusticis Brixie et Mantue.Footnote 110 Chronica de gestis principum, which was written in 1327 or 1328 by a monk of the Cistercian abbey of Fürstenfeld, notes that in 1320, on the eve of a battle against Frederick the Fair, King Louis IV refused to dismount his men and confront an army of pedestrians, who fought like peasants.Footnote 111 John of Winterthur, who stopped writing in his chronicle when he died in 1348, tells the story of how robbers descended upon Nuremberg in 1346.Footnote 112 A soldier gathered a large number of armed peasants and stormed the robbers’ den, seizing them all and presenting them as prisoners to the citizens of Nuremberg. In the conflict with Berthold II of Buchock, the princes of Alsace allied themselves in 1338 with the peasants. As the army of the bishop came to a narrow place, the knights attacked it with arrows and lances, while peasants hurled stones from the top of the mountains.Footnote 113 Peasants are urged to return to the plow cheerfully in a 14th-century allegorical interpretation of the Book of Daniel composed in Prussia. If they return, they will go to heaven:
A 16th-century composition celebrating the victory that the Forest Cantons and Lucerne obtained against the Habsburgs at Sempach (1386) – the battle that Iorga compared to the war between Charles I and Basarab – mocks the Austrians for their arrogance in believing that they could easily quell peasants.Footnote 114
There is therefore clear evidence that, far from being isolated, the emphasis on peasants in the account of the Hungarian campaign in Wallachia echoes a certain preoccupation with peasant uprisings and armed peasantry, which seems to be a characteristic of the late 13th- and 14th-century sources in Central Europe.Footnote 115 It is perhaps not an accident that Jeroschin directs his audience's attention towards the anger of the peasants: they are not afraid of the royal army, they are angry because of it.Footnote 116 It is also important to note that Jeroschin's peasants do not simply flee to the mountains, together with their households. They are able to predict what the royal army would do and what route it would use to return home. Certain trees on the side of that road are therefore chosen for being cut through the middle, to be pushed at a later moment over King Charles's men. In other words, unlike the Illuminated Chronicle, Jeroschin depicts the adversary of the Hungarian king not as sub-human (dogs, flies), but as capable of emotions (anger) and calculations (preparations for the ambush). In that respect, his account is very similar to that of John of Winterthur.
Morgarten and Posada: a German pattern?
Little can be established with certainty about the final battle in the war between Charles I and Basarab. The exact location, the number of troops on both sides, the number of casualties, the participation of other allies on Basarab's side, and the weapons or armor used by both sides – all those aspects are still a matter of scholarly debate. However, exactly the same aspects are also in dispute among historians dealing with another battle that took place in the Swiss Alps 15 years earlier. On November 15, 1315, the men of Schwyz, together with their allies from Uri and Unterwalden, inflicted a disastrous defeat upon the Austrian army of Duke Leopold I of Austria.Footnote 117 One of the earliest sources to describe the battle is the chronicle that John, Abbot of Viktring, wrote in 1340–1341 and which he dedicated to Albert II of Austria. He is the first author to locate the battle at Morgarten (on the southeastern shore of Lake Ägeri, not far from Einsiedeln) in a valley, although later sources moved it to a mountain pass or on a mountain slope. According to John, the Swiss were mountain people, who hurled stones and thus killed many in the Austrian army.Footnote 118 Even more interesting is the account of John of Winterthur, a Franciscan who wrote a chronicle in the 1340s in the Abbey of Lindau. He opposed the superbia of Duke Leopold to the humilitas of the Swiss, much in the same way as Mark of Kalt put King Charles's superbia in contrast to Basarab's magna humilitas. Moreover, the Swiss descended from their lair to attack the duke, just as Charles wanted to drag Basarab out of his hiding place. Nonetheless, the Austrians were caught like fish in a net and killed without being able to resist their enemies. Both the language and the situation described by John of Winterthur are strikingly similar to those of the Illuminated Chronicle.Footnote 119 Neither John of Viktring, nor John of Winterthur mentions anything about peasants.Footnote 120 The Swiss are compared to the ibex because of residing in the mountains, and in order to explain why their weapons of choice were rocks hurled from the top of the mountain onto the Austrian duke's army. There is also no association made between the victors at Morgarten and the woods. It was only the chronicle of Eberhard Wüest, written between 1442 and 1444, that mentioned tree trunks being rolled over the Austrians from the mountain top, along with stones.Footnote 121
It is important to note that mountains appear both in the chronicle of Nicolaus of Jeroschin and the illuminations of the Hungarian Chronicle. While it is tempting to explain them by means of a common source, it is quite clear that the images have nothing to do with the text of the Chronicle, and much more with the conventional representation of a “wild” landscape. However, it is perhaps not an accident that in the case of both battles – “Morgarten” and “Posada” – mountains are added to the account only in relatively later sources. That a regular army is caught in a narrow passage – be that through the forest, in a valley or in a mountain pass – is also the main theme of the accounts for both battles. If Jeroschin brought the mountains into the account of the events of 1330 from a source written in the German lands shortly before or after 1300, then he must have done so because he wrote in vernacular for an audience of German speakers. Drawing from John of Viktring or John of Winterthur is also impossible, because of chronological reasons. The remarkable parallels between those texts can only be explained in terms of the stories possibly circulating about the events of 1315. In the 1340s, the memory of those events must have been still quite fresh, which is why tropes could be transferred from one story to another, as needed.
Conclusion
Far from being an illustration of the struggle for freedom in the 14th century, the earliest accounts of the military events taking place in Wallachia in 1330 to be found in the supplement to the chronicle of Peter of Dusburg and in its translation by Nicolaus of Jeroschin highlight an unusual chain of communication between the Ordensland in Prussia and the Kingdom of Hungary, which predates the coronation of the Hungarian king Louis I as king of Poland by a few decades. The news about the defeat suffered by Louis's father, Charles I, at the hands of the Vlachs may have reached Prussia through aristocratic, if not royal mediation, which explains such details as the name of the Hungarian captain to whom the Virgin Mary appeared in a vision. On the other hand, the received news was recast in a version that put to good work some of the main themes in the current-event reports at that time. Particularly important in that respect is the attempt to explain the defeat as resulting from tactics used by unworthy combatants – peasants – who preferred an ambush in a narrow place to a pitched battle in a field. The theme of the angry and armed peasants was one more time adapted to a moral story, for the one defeated in Wallachia was the enemy of the Teutonic Knights. Iorga's intuition was right, insofar as images of peasants defeating “feudal armies” could be turned into useful material for the nationalist imagination of the modern era. However, he was wrong about the attention that late medieval sources paid to such images. Peter of Dusburg and Nicolaus of Jeroschin's contemporaries in the Ordensland did not care about Phrygian caps or braided hair. To them the disaster inflicted upon a haughty king by angry peasants was simply a sign that God chose the latter to teach humility to the former. As instruments of God's wrath, peasants may have an impact upon historical events. However, it was dangerous to allow them to be armed or to contemplate behaving like soldiers. Against Leopold I of Austria or Charles I of Hungary peasants do not act like an army, and cannot fight by regular means. It is only when cutting trees through the middle or hurling stones from mountain tops that they can be accepted as agents of divine wrath.
