Rustics as instruments of God's wrath. News about the battle of “Posada” in the Ordensland of Prussia

Returning from a four-month tour in America, the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga (1871–1940) stopped for a few days in Switzerland, on his way home. On May 7, 1930, he gave a lecture in Bern on medieval peasants and their struggle for freedom in the 14 th century. Peasants against feudal armies inspired memories from America. However, Iorga, who was at the time preoccupied with questions of world history and comparative research, did not simply associate the War of Independence with the victory of the Swiss “peasants” at Sempach against Duke Leopold III of Tyrol. He drew a parallel between the military success of the Eidgenossen of 1386 and the defeat inflicted 56 years earlier upon the king of Hungary, Charles I, by Romanian peasants. The battle, on the 600 th anniversary of which Iorga delivered his lecture, was illustrated in the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle . The Romanian historian was convinced that the illustrator had been an eyewitness or, at least, somebody informed by a participant. There is no mention of peasants in the text of the Chronicle , but on the basis of the last illuminations in the manuscript, Iorga thought he could recognize the dress of the Romanian peasants of his own time: the woolen hat ( căciulă , a sort of Phrygian cap); the long, braided hair; the leather jacket doubled with wool; the leggings; and the leather sandals ( opinci ). The Romanians fought like peasants as well: they cut trees in the forest, which they then pushed over King Charles and his heavy cavalry. Iorga did not find this detail either in the text or in the illuminations of the Hungarian Chronicle . He got it from the Chronicle of the Prussian Land by Peter of Dusburg, although that source is not mentioned in the lecture

Ancient history · Battle · Political science · Historical and Cultural Studies of Poland · History · Medieval European History and Architecture

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