Béla IV of Hungary
Béla IV was king of Hungary when the Mongols came in 1241, lost his army and half his population in a year, fled to an island off the Dalmatian coast with Mongol horsemen behind him, and came back when they left to rebuild the kingdom in stone, which is why he is called its second founder. He was born in 1206, the son of Andrew II and of the queen the magnates murdered, and spent his youth as his father's opponent, made to govern Slavonia and then Transylvania and taking back the estates his father had given away. He succeeded in 1235 and went on taking them back, with a commission that reviewed every grant since 1196, and had the nobles' chairs removed from the council chamber so that they would stand in his presence. When forty thousand Cuman families fleeing the Mongols asked for refuge in 1239 he let them in as a future army and the nobles hated them. The Mongols under Batu and Subutai crossed the Carpathians in March 1241, the Cumans' khan was lynched in Pest and the Cumans left, and on 11 April at Mohi on the Sajó the Hungarian army was surrounded in its wagon fort and destroyed. The king escaped through the gap the Mongols left, was pursued through Austria, where Duke Frederick robbed him, and down the Adriatic to Trogir, and the Mongols were on the shore opposite when the news of the Great Khan's death took them east in the spring of 1242. What he came back to was a country with perhaps half its people dead or gone. He did what the year had taught. Stone castles came first, which he ordered the nobles to build and gave land to anyone who would, so that a hundred stood where a dozen had, then walled towns with charters, Buda founded on its hill in 1247. The Cumans were invited back and his son married to a Cuman princess, settlers came from Germany, and the Knights of St John were put on the lower Danube. He fought Austria for Styria and lost it, fought Bohemia, and spent his last years at war with the son he had made co-ruler. He died in May 1270 and the dynasty lasted thirty years more.
- Lived: 1206 CE – 1270 CE
- Nationality: Hungarian
- Roles: king, monarch
