Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 24. (Budapest, 1962)

The deads of the battle of Mohács

As to tne question, who performed this service, firsthand answer is to be got only from Turkish sources. In the Sultan's diary writter during the campaign by eminent Turkish historians, we read as of the date Sept. i., the day following the battle, hat the Roumelian "deftertar", a sort of executive, got orders to have the bodies of the Christians gathered in buried in one spot. The diary says further on Sept. i. that Commander in Chief Ibrahim with his adjutant and the "deftertar" "collected the dead and buried 20 000 infanterists and 4000 troopers". These data are rather unreliable as indeed all Turkish authorities are to be handled with the utmost care. Very likely the Turks buried their dead near to where they fell in battle, - maybe more or less according to the rites of the Mohammedan religion. The dead Hungarians were almost certainly robbed by the Turkish "tcharkadshis" who perhaps even interred a few hundred of these - according to their belief - "dirty dogs", but this is rather unlikely. More credit may be given to Kemalpasazade, the famous contemporary historiographer who may have been in contact with eyewitnesses and who tells us that "corpses of big and small were left to be devoured by wolves and birds of prey invited to the horrible feast".

1 Besides the contemporary Turkish historians also an eye-witneess tells us further that on the third day of the battle the Sultan held a magnificent pageant, a "diwan" on the plain. To the accompaniment of victoriously rolling drums and between a row of Hungarian flags put upside down into the soil, 2000 prisoners were led before the Sultan and all but a few were put on the scaffold as "preys to glittering swords and scintillating Turkish weapons". In other words, they were beheaded. The head of Tomori and other Hungarian chiefs were equally paraded before the Sultan on spearheads, taken around the camp and finally erected before the "diwan". On the Sultan's order "three great cupolas" were built of the heads of the slaughtered Christians. Antal Verancsics, the contemporary Hungarian historian means probably the same event when writing, "the Turkish emperor had the bodies gathered into theree heaps".

2