page_title: Battle of Pressburg
section_title: Battle
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Pressburg / Battle
caption_attribution_description: English: Image about the Battle of Lechfeld (Augsburg) from 955, showing the death of Conrad the Red, Duke of Lorraine, and the victorious Otto.
context_page_description: The Battle of Pressburg or Battle of Pozsony, or Battle of Bratislava was a three-day-long battle, fought between 4–6 July 907, during which the East Francian army, consisting mainly of Bavarian troops led by Margrave Luitpold, was annihilated by Hungarian forces.
  The exact location of the battle is not known. Contemporary sources say it took place at "Brezalauspurc", but where exactly Brezalauspurc was is unclear. Some specialists place it in the vicinity of Zalavár; others in a location close to Bratislava, the traditional assumption.
  An important result of the Battle of Pressburg was the Kingdom of East Francia could not regain control over the Carolingian March of Pannonia, including the territory of the later marchia orientalis, lost in 900.
  The most significant result of the Battle of Pressburg is that the Hungarians secured the lands they gained during the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, prevented a German invasion that jeopardized their future, and established the Kingdom of Hungary. This battle is considered one of the most significant battles in the history of Hungary, and marks the conclusion of the Hungarian conquest.
context_section_description: Contemporary European sources give little detail of the battle, only that it occurred, and the Bavarian army was annihilated, but they are silent about the sequence of events, the fights, and the skirmishes that led to the battle's conclusion. The Bavarian Renaissance humanist, historian and philologist Johannes Aventinus (1477–1534), 600 years after the events, in his work Annals of the Bavarians (Annalium Boiorum, volume VII), basing on documents and chronicles from the 10th century which no longer survive, wrote a fairly detailed description of the battle.
  Since the Hungarians knew about the attack well before the German army advanced, they probably evacuated all the inhabitants from the march areas, called gyepű in Hungarian, between the rivers Enns and Pressburg to the east. As the Hungarians were still nomadic, it was much easier to accomplish this than for a settled society. They took livestock with them and destroyed food they could not take, thus using the scorched earth tactic, which denied the enemy anything useful. This tactic was used very often by the nomadic states and tribes, even in the ancient times. For example, the Scythians against Darius I and Alexander the Great, or the Avars against Charlemagne, and more than 100 years after the Battle of Pressburg (1030), Hungary's first king, Stephen I defeated the invasion of the German Emperor Conrad II, using scorched earth, causing famine among the enemy soldiers. In the same way king Andrew I of Hungary defeated another German invasion led by the emperor Henry III in 1051 using the same scorched earth tactic. Even after the establishment of the Christian and feudal state of Hungary, the principles of nomadic warfare were still used as an effective way to defeat huge imperial armies.
  Aventinus wrote that after the German army crossed the Hungarian border, the Hungarian commanders sent small, lightly armored mounted archer formations to disrupt the Germans communications lines, kill their envoys to each other, and harass the army groups. This put the Germans under constant pressure and in a continual state of combat readiness, causing fatigue and demoralisation, then lured them into battle. It is likely when the Hungarian archers attacked, the Bavarians gave chase, but they rode away unharmed on their horses, since unlike the Bavarians, they were much faster due to having very little or no armor and no weapons other than bows and arrows, no other weapons (although some troops, who fought in hand-to-hand combat in the main parts of the battle were much better equipped, so heavier, with curved sabre, lance, battle axe, mace, mail, lamellar armour), The pursuing Bavarian cavalry was heavily armored, and this slowed them significantly. The constant harassment by the Hungarian mounted archers slowed the movement of the Bavarian army even more, forcing them to stop to defend themselves, thus demoralizing them prior to battle. This is why it took the Germans 18 days (between 17 June - 4 July) to cover 246 km from Ennsburg to Pressburg, an average of 14 km per day. This delaying tactic made it possible for the Hungarians to pick where and when the battle would be fought. They concentrated their troops near Pressburg, because of its favourable conditions for a nomadic army.
  The Hungarians continued to harass the Germans as they marched east, which distracted them from the main attack by the bulk of the Hungarian army. The attack started on 4 July, concentrated on the southern shore of the Danube and attacked the southern army group led by Archbishop Dietmar.
  The attack started with the Hungarian archers riding towards the troops led by the archbishop, shooting a "shower of arrows" from their "horn bows" (corneis arcubus - which refers to the famous composite bows of the nomadic Hungarians, made of wood, bone, and horn) on the moving German army group. Taken totally by surprise, the Germans retreated. Even when the Germans were able to enter into battle order, the Hungarians repeated these attacks. They seemed to appear from nowhere employing terrain, river beds, woods
caption: Peter Johann Nepomuk Geiger: Luitpold's last stand
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