Editing Battle of Mohács (section)

===The loss of Belgrade===
[[File:Lajos II.jpg|thumb|[[Louis II of Hungary]], who died at the Battle of Mohács, painted by [[Titian]]]]

The Hungarians had long opposed Ottoman expansion in southeastern Europe, but in 1521 the Turks advanced up the Danube River and took [[Nándorfehérvár]] (present-day [[Belgrade]], [[Serbia]]) – the strongest Hungarian fortress on the Danube – and Szabács (now [[Šabac]], Serbia). This left most of southern Hungary indefensible.

The loss of Nándorfehérvár caused great alarm in Hungary.

On 18 October 1523, the Hungarian aristocrats united for the recapture of Belgrade, pledging funds that would support an army of 60,000 troops and 100 cannons—an undertaking that was an unprecedentedly huge and costly military force by contemporary European standards.

{{Blockquote|The opinion of the papal legate in the Hungarian royal court, January of 1524<br><br>
I note that by raising an army of 60,000, the Hungarian government effectively scored an 'own goal', losing numerous financial supporters from Western Europe. Even the papal legate, by the end of January 1524, denied the disbursement of the aid funds he had brought, arguing that:<br><br> ''"if the Hungarians were capable of assembling such an enormous force, then they had no need for the money."''<ref>András Kubinyi (2006) (Hungarian): "The Magnates of Hungary and the Turkish Threat in the Jagiellonian Era (1490-1526)." In *Central Europe's Struggle Against the Turks in the First Half of the 16th Century*, edited by István Zombori. Budapest, 2006, pp. 127-130.[https://catalog.library.hnm.hu/en/record/-/record/withLayout/MNMKVT74375/solr?p_auth=Lg51kQFd]</ref>}}

The huge 60,000-strong royal army – led by the king, but recruited too late and too slowly – neglected to take food along and bad organization of logistics.  Therefore, the army disbanded spontaneously under pressure from hunger and disease without even trying to recapture Belgrade from the newly installed Turkish garrisons. In 1523, Archbishop [[Pál Tomori]], a valiant priest-soldier, was made captain of Southern Hungary.