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

The deads of the battle of Mohács

In 1926 the commemoration of the battle of Mohács came about. The city of Mohács built a new votive church on this occasion and proposed to bury in its crypta the ashes of the heroes; this crypta too remained empty. After a prolonged period of inactivity the Society "Janus Pannonius" of Pécs took up the work again in 1959. We hope to have made it clear that in trying to solve the task before us we started from the assumption that it is impossible to ascertain the battlefield's position without first solving the riddle of the village mentioned by Brodarics and further, without having found at least some of the mass-graves. We are also in patriotic duty bound to locate these graves, to find the spot on the great plain, this last resting place of those who met their heroic death in the great fight, of those who were led by destiny to this ultimate gaol. After countless wanderings all over the area, after having questioned field-labourers without number, our first excavation could finally be started on the territory of the village Nagynyárád, near Sátorhelypuszta, on Sept. 19, i960 and thus we found the first two of the massgraves we were looking for.-' The spot of the first excavation had already been marked out in April with the help of a certain Márton Koller, coachman on the state-farm Sátorhely. On this same spot, in the course of agricultural labours eight years ago blached bones were found scattered on the earth's surface. This was the first clue. The exact spot lies about the middle of the road already mentioned, bordered by horse-chestnut trees, stretching southward between Fekete kapu and the farm Sátorhely at a distance of about 150 m. On the first day we started to dig a long trench in the middle of which and in a depth of about 1 m we found a medley of broken, bruised human banes. Between them we also found a patina-covered lump of 8 silver coins. Even without cleaning them thoroughly the dates were easily legible: 1516, 1517, 1518, 1519, 1520, 1522, 1523. Next day another trench was dug, parallel to and westwards from the first, in a distance of about 9 m. In a depth of only 40 cm a wellpreserved human skull came to light, later also the bones belonging