WRATH OF THE DOG
The first Mongol invasion is well covered, with detailed contemporary overviews, supporting sources from across the Mongol Empire, and extensive archaeological explorations in Hungary. In comparison, the later invasions can only be partially reconstructed through scattered mentions from Mamluk chronicles, Hungarian charters, and brief statements from several (often much later) European letters and chronicles. Archaeologists have pointed to potential sites of Mongol sieges in Slovakia from 1285. In the absence of more detailed accounts, popular speculation has generally dismissed the later assaults as utter defeats, where lightly armoured Mongols were overrun by European heavy cavalry. Yet the surviving materials paint a different picture.
Europe did not have to wait long for the return of Mongol troops. In 1259, the veteran commander Burundai was moved to the Golden Horde’s western border to put an end to a Galician rebellion. After overruning Galicia, Burundai then marched into Poland in November 1259. Crossing the frozen Vistula River, the Mongols ravaged the Polish countryside, sacked several towns, including Sandomierz, and withdrew in April 1260 with a great collection of prisoners and booty. The fifteenth-century Polish chronicler Jan Długosz asserted that Burundai’s three months in Poland wreaked more destruction than the 1241 campaign.
This was the last foreign campaign
