Béla IV rebuilt Hungary with stone castles after the Mongols overran it
In 1241 King Béla IV of Hungary lost his army to the Mongols at Mohi and fled, pursued from town to town all the way to Trogir on the Adriatic. When the invaders unexpectedly withdrew a year later, he turned a ravaged kingdom into a land of stone fortresses and earned the title second founder of the state.
The rebuilding reversed his own earlier instincts. Early in his reign Béla had fought to claw back royal lands his father had given away, calling them useless and superfluous grants, and a chronicler said he even had the barons' chairs burned so they would have to stand in his presence. After the invasion he did the opposite, letting barons and bishops build private stone castles and raise their own troops, because wooden and earthen defences had failed. He encouraged fortified towns and welcomed thousands of settlers from the Holy Roman Empire, Poland and neighbouring lands to repopulate empty districts.
He had been warned. Around 1236 a friar named Julian returned from the east with news that the Mongols had reached the Volga and were planning to push into Europe. In December 1240 their commander Batu Khan demanded that Béla submit to the Great Khan Ögödei; Béla refused and fortified the mountain passes, but the Mongol forces broke through.
His path to power had been bumpy. Born in 1206 to Andrew II and Gertrude of Merania, he lost his mother at seven when disaffected nobles killed her, and he honoured her memory in his charters for life. Nobles had him crowned at eight against his father's wishes, and he later governed Slavonia and then Transylvania, where he backed missions that led a Cuman chieftain and his people to accept baptism. He became sole king in 1235.
Afterwards he built a defensive alliance with Polish and Ruthenian princes and a buffer zone along the southern frontier. His last years were soured by conflict with his eldest son, Stephen, which flared into civil war until 1266. He died on 3 May 1270 as a Franciscan tertiary, and three of his daughters, including Margaret, were later venerated as saints.
Source: Béla IV of Hungary
