Scorched Earth (disambiguation)
Scorched earth is the military strategy or operational policy of destroying everything useful to the enemy in areas that cannot be defended.
Battle of Pressburg
Since the Hungarians knew about the attack well before the German army advanced, they probably evacuated all the inhabitants from the march areas, called "gyepű" in Hungarian, between the rivers Enns and Pressburg to east. As the Hungarians were still nomadic, it was much easier to accomplish this than for a settled society. They took livestock with them and destroyed food they could not take, thus using the scorched earth tactic, which denied the enemy anything useful. This tactic was used very often by the nomadic states and tribes, even in the ancient times. For example, the Scythians against Darius I and Alexander the Great, or the Avars against Charlemagne, and more than 100 years after the Battle of Pressburg (1030), Hungary's first king, Stephen I defeated the invasion of the German Emperor Conrad II, using scorched earth, causing famine among the enemy soldiers. In the same way king Andrew I of Hungary defeated another German invasion led by the emperor Henry III in 1051 using the same scorched earth tactic. Even after the establishment of the Christian and feudal state of Hungary, the principles of the nomadic warfare were still used as an effective way to defeat huge imperial armies.
Aventinus wrote that after the German army crossed the Hungarian border, the Hungarian commanders, sent small light armored mounted archer formations to disrupt the Germans communications lines, kill their envoys to each other, and harass the army groups. This put the Germans under constant pressure and in a continual state combat readiness, causing fatigue and demoralisation, then lured them into battle. It is likely when the Hungarian archers attacked, the Bavarians gave chase, but they rode away unharmed on their horses, since unlike the Bavarians, they were much faster due to having very little or no armor and no weapons other than bows and arrows, no other weapons (although some troops, who fought in hand-to-hand combat in the main parts of the battle were much better equipped, so heavier, with curved sabre, lance, battle axe, mace, mail, lamellar armour), The pursuing Bavarian cavalry was heavily armored, and this slowed them significantly. The constant harassment by the Hungarian mounted archers slowed the movement of the Bavarian army even more, forcing them to stop, defend themselves, thus demoralizing them prior to battle. This is why it took the Germans 18 days (between 17 June - 4 July) to cover 246 km from Ennsburg to Pressburg, an average of 14 km per day. This delaying tactic made it possible the Hungarians to pick where and when the battle would be fought. They concentrated their troops near Pressburg, because of its favourable conditions for a nomadic army.