Battle of Legnica

On 9 April 1241, a Mongol army destroyed a Polish and Moravian force led by Duke Henry II the Pious of Silesia at Legnickie Pole, a village about 10 kilometres south-east of Legnica in south-western Poland. Henry was killed and his army wiped out. The battle, also called Liegnitz or Wahlstatt in German, was part of the Mongol invasion of Europe and came just two days before the larger Mongol victory over the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohi.

The campaign began over the Cumans, nomads whom the Mongols regarded as their subjects but who had fled into Hungary. When King Béla IV refused to hand them over, the general Subutai planned an attack on Hungary. While the main armies under Batu and Subutai struck Hungary itself, a smaller force under the princes Baidar, Kadan and Orda was sent into Poland to keep northern rulers from coming to Hungary's aid.

The Mongols moved fast through a Poland then divided among rival dukes. They sacked Sandomierz, won battles at Tursko on 3 March and Chmielnik on 18 March, and burned Kraków on 24 March. Failing to take Wrocław, and hearing that King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia was approaching with a much larger army, they turned to catch Henry's forces before the two could join.

Numbers are uncertain. Some medieval writers claimed more than 100,000 Mongols, far more than the whole Mongol force in Europe. Contemporary accounts suggest about 10,000 horsemen entered Poland, perhaps 8,000 after earlier losses. Estimates for Henry's army range from about 2,000 to 8,000. It included his own Silesian troops and mercenaries, men from Greater Poland and Kraków, Duke Mieszko II of Opole's contingent, Moravians, mostly untrained miners from Złotoryja and a small band of Knights Templar. Later stories of Teutonic Knights and Hospitallers at the battle are probably inventions.

Henry divided his army into four groups. Accounts of the fighting differ in detail, but they agree that the Mongols used their usual tactics. Their lightly armed vanguard attacked and then pretended to flee, drawing the Polish horsemen away in pursuit and leaving the foot soldiers exposed. Mongol riders then struck from the flanks while archers poured arrows into the European ranks. One account says a smokescreen hid their movements, and another that a shout of "Run!" in Polish led Mieszko to pull back his men. The knights were separated from the infantry and defeated in turn.

Henry was killed trying to escape the field, and the Mongols are said to have carried his head on a spear before Legnica. Estimates of the dead vary from 2,000 to 40,000, which amounts to saying that almost the whole army was lost. Mongol losses are unknown.

Wenceslaus, only a day away, withdrew to collect more troops, and his cavalry later beat a Mongol detachment at Kłodzko. Since their task was to distract, Baidar and Kadan avoided his larger army, raided towns and villages, and then turned south to join Batu and Subutai in Hungary. Mongol armies raided Poland again in 1259–1260 and in 1287, but Poland, like Hungary, stayed outside the control of the Golden Horde, the western branch of the Mongol Empire.

Legnica is remembered in Poland as a national sacrifice. It is one of the battles named on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, with the inscription "LEGNICA 9 IV 1241".

Our 1200 map shows the Polish lands, then split among duchies, before the invasion, and our 1279 map shows the Golden Horde to the east. For the region today, see Poland.