page_title: Battle of Püchen
section_title: Battle
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Püchen / Battle
caption_attribution_description: English: The Hungarian campaign of 919-920, in many of the countries of the Christian Europe (East Francia, West Francia, Burgundy, the kingdom of Italy), which resulted the Hungarian victories of Püchen against the king of East Francia and of 920 against the Burgundian king from 920 in Italy.
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: In Saxony, Henry's army faced the Hungarians at Püchen. Unfortunately, we do not have a detailed account of the battle from the Chronicon of Thietmar (the only contemporary source which mentions the battle), which reports only that King Henry wanted to stop them at Püchen, but was defeated and barely saved his life by fleeing to the above-mentioned city.
  However, a secondary source can enlighten us about some aspects of the battle. Liutprand of Cremona, when he describes the Battle of Riade fought in 933 in which the same King Henry defeated the Hungarians, writes down the speech which the king delivered to his soldiers before the battle. Henry instructed his cavalry to attack the Hungarians in a single unbroken line, holding their shields to ward off the arrows of the enemy, and then to charge them without breaking ranks. Thus the Hungarian archers would be prevented from nocking their arrows and shooting again, and the lightly armored Magyars would not be able to withstand the charge of the German heavy cavalry. For this reason, Henry advised his heavy cavalry to attack in unbroken lines the Hungarians at their first attack, driving them from the battlefield without letting them regroup and attack again. This early attack of the Germans, unusual in their warfare, prevented the heavy losses provoked by the Hungarian arrows in a long fight, which also prevented the dissolution of their battle order, while the light armored enemy had no chance of success against their advancing wall of shields and spears of the heavy cavalry. This shows that in 933, Henry the Fowler had deep knowledge about the nomadic war tactics of the Hungarians, based on disrupting the enemies' battle order, then "covering" the tangled enemy lines with their arrows, which without their battle order suffered heavy losses. He could acquire this knowledge only from the battles he fought against the Hungarians. According to the sources, the last battle which he fought against them was the battle of Riade. It is very likely that he used his experience gained from the tactics of the Hungarians seen in this battle, and based on this, he found an effective solution for countering these tactics. The solution used thus by King Henry reflect the tactics used by the Hungarians in the battle of Püchen.
  Based on this secondary source, we can conclude that in the Battle of Püchen, the Hungarians used their most known war tactic:
  The Hungarian army had units which attacked and shot from distance at the German lines, which defended themselves using their shields.
  At one moment the attacking Hungarian units feigned retreat, luring the Germans after them into a place where the main Hungarian forces waited, encircling the now disintegrated German battle lines, which because of this, could not be controlled anymore. After launching storms of arrows upon them from all directions, the Hungarians at last finished the job in close combat with their swords and lances.
  As mentioned before, the king escaped in the city of Püchen. Because of his escape, he gave to the people of Püchen great privileges, which were the biggest in the country, and besides this, gave them presents too. These great privileges and rich presents show that king Henry was in great danger to lose his life, so his defeat and losses had to be heavy. From Annales Corbeienses, we know that after the battle, the Hungarians "cruelly plundered Saxony", and took a large amount of plunder. We do not know if this battle had other consequences, e.g., the restarting of the payment of the tribute from the German king. However, in 924, after another campaign in Saxony, when the king, still remembering his defeat at Püchen and feeling himself too weak to resist further, retreated into the castle of Werla. Subsequently, the accidental falling of an important Hungarian prince or commander into the Germans' hands induced the Magyars to negotiate with Henry, after which a peace treaty was concluded in which the king accepted to pay tribute to the Magyars for nine years.
caption: The Hungarian campaign in Europe of 919-920, which resulted in the Hungarian victories of Püchen against the king of East Francia and of 920 against the Burgundian king from 920 in Italy.
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