Henry II the Pious

Henry II the Pious was High Duke of Poland and Duke of Silesia, and he was killed at Legnica in the only pitched battle a Mongol army fought against a western European force. He inherited a genuine project rather than only a title: his father Henry the Bearded and his mother Hedwig of Andechs, later canonised, had spent decades gathering the fragmented Piast duchies back together, encouraging German settlement, founding towns on Magdeburg law and building up Silesian mining. Henry succeeded in 1238 and was in negotiations for the Polish crown when the Mongols arrived. The invasion of 1241 was a flanking operation: while Batu and Subutai destroyed Hungary, a smaller force under Baidar and Kadan swept through Poland to prevent it reinforcing the Hungarians. Henry gathered what he could - Silesian and Polish levies, Templars, Teutonic Knights and German miners from Goldberg, perhaps 8,000 men - and chose to fight at Legnica on 9 April 1241 rather than wait two days for Wenceslaus I of Bohemia, who was approaching with a substantial army. The Mongols drew his heavy cavalry forward with a feigned retreat, separated it from the infantry, and destroyed both with arrows and smoke. Henry was caught trying to escape the field and beheaded, and his head was carried on a lance to the walls of Legnica. His mother identified the body by its six toes on the left foot. The Mongols turned south to join the main army days later and never returned to Poland in force, and Henry's unification of the Piast lands died with him for another sixty years. Silesia broke into ever smaller duchies after his death and drifted into the Bohemian orbit, which is where it still was six centuries later when Prussia took it from Austria.

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