"The Mongol threat to the Latin West down to 1323" Topic

"In its interventions in each of these areas, the Golden Horde was active on behalf of, or exerting pressure upon, schismatic rulers, and hence constituted an additional obstacle to the ambitions of popes and Western secular princes. But to what extent did the Mongols threaten the security of Latin states themselves? The incidence of Mongol raiding during the first two decades after 1260 is difficult to gauge: as we saw, even when the Tartars are expressly mentioned this does not necessarily indicate operations by the forces of the Golden Horde. Hungary may have suffered a series of raids from the Horde after 1272, since Andr¨¢s III¡¯s charter of liberties (1291) tells how the Mongols and Cumans had taken advantage of the minority of his predecessor, L¨¢szl¨® IV, to attack the kingdom on frequent occasions. For what it is worth, Rash¨©d al-D¨©n¡¯s informants around the turn of the century were likewise under the impression that Noghai had launched repeated inroads into Hungary.

These were probably only minor raids; but the mid-1280s appear to have witnessed a shift in policy, with major attacks upon both Hungary and Poland in succession, which as we saw coincided with advances in the Balkans and should possibly also be viewed against the background of the Golden Horde¡¯s relations with other Mongol powers. In Hungary, the dispute between King L¨¢szl¨® and the Church, and subsequently the upheavals caused by the Cuman revolt, furnished new opportunities for the Mongols to exploit, and in the fourteenth century it was believed that they had been summoned by elements among the defeated Cumans who had taken refuge among them. The khan may also have been provoked by King L¨¢szl¨®¡¯s action, during the campaign to suppress the Cumans, in leading his forces into what would later become Wallachia ¨C in the sonorous words of his charter, ¡®beyond the mountains, around the confines and frontiers of the Tartars, which none of our predecessors had penetrated¡¯…."
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