After a brief moment of panic, the nomads regained their nerve and began constructing more scaling ladders.
They had migrated all the way from the northern shores of the Black Sea. Their former grazing lands had already been seized by neighboring tribes, leaving them with no road back. If they wanted to survive, they would have to fight to the death in Wallachia.
September 20, AD 874
The sky was overcast, and cold winds swept across the plain.
Under the cover of archers, two thousand nomads rushed toward the walls carrying scaling ladders.
The stone walls stood roughly six meters high, with a three-meter-deep moat surrounding them.
Ignoring the rain of crossbow bolts from above, the attackers quickly erected their ladders.
"Get up there! Cut down those cowards!"
Waving curved sabers and round shields, they climbed upward.
Most were shot down by militia crossbowmen before reaching the top.
The few who made it onto the battlements immediately found themselves surrounded by armored veterans and were swiftly hacked to pieces.
Standing atop the watchtower, Alfred watched calmly, as though observing a play that had nothing to do with him.
A nearby knight spoke up.
"My lord, the men are getting exhausted. Should we use... our special measure?"
Alfred slowly shook his head.
"Not yet."
"The nomads keep slaves."
"A tribe this large usually owns two or three thousand of them."
"They do the hard labor in peacetime, and in war they're pushed to the front to soak up our arrows."
"No matter how many slaves die, the tribal chiefs won't care."
"We'll wait."
"When the ordinary tribesmen and the elite warriors join the attack..."
"...then I'll give them a lesson they'll never forget."
After more than half an hour of fighting, the nomads withdrew.
The slowest fugitives were cut down.
The survivors were rounded up and forced to lead the next assault.
At eight o'clock, the second wave began.
This time, alongside the surviving slave troops, ordinary tribesmen and iron-armored elite warriors also entered the battle.
The assault proved far more effective.
Within minutes, a nimble young nomad vaulted onto the battlements.
He hacked down the nearest crossbowman with one swing, sending two nearby militiamen fleeing in terror.
Elite Frankish infantry rushed over and skewered him with their spears.
But by then, even more nomads were pouring onto the walls through the same breach.
The defenders formed spear lines, attempting to force the attackers back over the edge.
The nomads fought in groups of three or five, standing back-to-back while buying time for more comrades to climb onto the walls.
Alfred remained silent atop the tower, carefully observing both the eastern and southern walls.
Every reserve had already been committed.
Even so, they could only hold for so long.
An endless stream of nomads continued climbing upward.
Finally, Alfred murmured,
"It's time."
The knight beside him seized a black flag and waved it frantically toward the defenders stationed north of the city.
A small river flowed north of Buzău.
Someone had once proposed diverting the water into the moat.
At the time, Alfred had rejected the idea.
Instead, he had ordered the construction of two sluice gates.
Now, seeing the signal, the defenders northwest of the city threw their weight against massive capstans and slowly opened the floodgates.
The next instant—
the river burst into the moat.
Roaring water mixed with mud and debris, becoming an unstoppable torrent.
The first victims were the warriors climbing the ladders.
The current slammed into the ladder bases.
Hundreds of ladders instantly lost their balance, toppling into the moat with the men still clinging to them.
Not long afterward, the northeastern floodgate was opened as well.
Water rushed from the northwest, flowed counterclockwise around the city walls, swept up countless panicked nomads, and poured out through the northeastern gate before rejoining the river downstream.
"Water!"
"The moat is full of water!"
Panic spread throughout the besieging army.
Large numbers of nomads came to an abrupt halt at the moat's edge, staring helplessly at the five-meter-wide stretch of rushing water.
The defenders' morale soared.
"Push them into the river!"
The nomads already atop the walls suddenly found themselves completely isolated.
Turning around, they saw that the dry moat had transformed into a raging river.
No reinforcements could possibly cross it.
Gradually they were surrounded and cut apart.
Some fought to the death.
Others leaped from the walls, attempting to swim back across, only to be riddled with crossbow bolts.
Out of all of them, only fifty survived.
After two failed assaults, the attackers had lost:
1,400 slave auxiliaries
500 ordinary tribesmen
500 armored elite warriors
Their morale collapsed.
The tribal chief had no choice but to suspend the assault.
Standing atop the tower, Alfred finally smiled.
"Tell the interpreters to shout this to them."
"If they've got the guts, let them come again."
"I've got plenty more surprises waiting."
Ever since the remnants of the Frankish army had retreated into Italy, Charles the Bald and his nobles had immersed themselves in books.
At first they studied military treatises.
Then engineering.
Then alchemy.
Some even secretly read pagan texts banned by the Church, hoping to uncover the secrets of legendary black magic.
Over years of reading, Alfred had accumulated an astonishing breadth of knowledge.
It wasn't enough to defeat the Vikings.
Against steppe nomads, however—it was more than sufficient.
Giving up on Buzău, the tribal chief sent scouts farther south.
They discovered that the local inhabitants had withdrawn into ten fortified settlements.
The countryside had been completely abandoned.
There wasn't a single sack of grain left to plunder.
What now?
The chief couldn't hide his bitterness.
If those towns weren't eliminated, then by spring the defenders would begin sending out light cavalry to harass every grazing ground.
The tribe would never again enjoy a moment's peace.
Eventually, starvation would destroy them.
Five days later, scouts returned with welcome news.
Southwest of the Carpathian Mountains lay an immense plain—
large enough to support the entire Magyar people.
"Are you certain?"
The chief dispatched over a hundred additional riders to verify the report.
The detailed intelligence proved astonishing.
The land had once served as the pasturelands of the Avar Khaganate.
Decades earlier, that mighty empire had been destroyed by even stronger enemies.
Its grazing lands had become ownerless.
Best of all—
there were none of those infuriating stone-walled towns.
(In the sixth century, the Avars had been defeated by the Göktürks and forced westward onto the steppes north of the Black Sea. Exploiting political chaos within the Carpathian Basin, they flooded into the region, where the vast open grasslands perfectly suited their nomadic lifestyle. The Avar Khaganate lasted more than two centuries before finally being destroyed by Charlemagne and Bulgaria.)
Furthermore, the Carpathians were far from an impassable mountain barrier.
Numerous low passes and river valleys allowed relatively easy crossings.
Presented with a better homeland, the chief no longer had any interest in fighting the Wallachians.
He sent envoys to negotiate with Charles the Bald.
The offer was simple:
The Magyars would leave immediately—
provided the Franks supplied them with grain and hay.
"Why should I?"
Charles exploded with anger.
"What if you take the grain and attack our towns anyway?"
"Unless you hand over hostages!"
Unexpectedly, the chief—Bolsho—agreed without hesitation.
He allowed Frankish officials to enter the camp and select two hundred hostages.
Even when two of his own daughters were chosen, he never objected.
What was going on?
Charles instinctively suspected a trick.
He questioned the five clerks responsible for selecting the hostages.
"Were you fooled?"
"Did you just bring back a bunch of worthless slaves?"
"Impossible!"
one clerk replied, pointing toward the captives.
"Just look at them."
"No common slave could have physiques or complexions like these."
Half convinced, Charles agreed to deliver five hundred wagonloads of hay immediately.
The remaining hay and grain would only be handed over once the Magyars had completely left Wallachia.
Two days later, word arrived.
Bolsho had lifted the siege of Buzău.
The nomads dismantled their tents and resumed their long migration.
The Franks delivered another shipment of hay while dispatching riders in every direction.
The reports all confirmed the same thing.
The Magyars had told the truth.
They were crossing the Carpathian Mountains.
October winds swept through the mountain passes.
—------------------------------
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