Lawrence I Aba
[1] At his young age, Lawrence fought in the disastrous Battle of Mohi on 11 April 1241, where King Béla's royal army were severely defeated by the invading Mongols.
The young Lawrence entered court service there and remained a member of the escort in Dalmatia, where Béla and his family took refugee in the well-fortified towns on the coast of the Adriatic Sea.
[4] It is plausible that Lawrence participated in the royal campaign in the second half of 1242, when Béla IV invaded Austria and forced Duke Frederick II to surrender the three counties ceded to him during the Mongol invasion.
[4] It is also possible that Lawrence was actively involved in the various military expeditions to Austria in the 1240s (for instance, Battle of the Leitha River) and 1250s, which also led to the Hungarian occupation of the Duchy of Styria in 1254.
When an influential lord, Conrad Győr defected to the court of Duke Stephen and allegedly swore loyalty to Hungary's archenemy, Ottokar II of Bohemia, the monarch confiscated his landholdings in Moson and Pozsony counties in 1260, and handed over a large portion of this wealth to Lawrence Aba, including Óvár Castle and the right of patronage over the Lébény monastery.
According to historian Gyula Kristó, the resistance of the local castle warriors, who refused to give up their privileges, was behind the difference between the texts of the two royal charters.
The borders of Lawrence's acquired lands were determined by Herbord Osl, who acted as pristaldus (royal commissioner or "bailiff") on behalf of Béla.
In addition to the castle of Lánzsér, which became Lawrence's permanent seat thereafter, the villages of Lók, Nyék, Derecske, Récény, Haracsony, Dobornya and Nyujtál (Unterfrauenhaid, Neckenmarkt, Draßmarkt, Ritzing, Horitschon, Raiding and Neutal in modern-day Austria, respectively), among others, also belonged to the Locsmánd lordship.
Lawrence Aba obtained the right of patronage of the Cistercian Klostermarienberg Abbey (Borsmonostor, today part of Mannersdorf an der Rabnitz, Austria) from Béla IV in 1268.
His daughter, Anna, Duchess of Macsó, who was a key opponent of his brother Stephen during the 1260s conflict, seized the royal treasury and fled to Bohemia.
He still stayed in Hungary even after Stephen's coronation, when a certain Thomas, one of his servants handed over a portion of Nyujtál on behalf of his lord to certain local caste warriors in exchange for their military service.
After that, he resided in Vas County and attempted to reconcile his late father's old partisans, including Henry Kőszegi and Lawrence Aba, and appointed royal castellans to the border forts due to the threat of war with Bohemia.
However, one of the local lords, Nicholas Hahót garrisoned Styrian soldiers in his fort at Pölöske, and made plundering raids against the nearby villages.
Although his rebellion was crushed within days by late November, historian Attila Zsoldos argues the revolt and its suppression resulted that, instead of peaceful conciliation, several lords, who possessed lands along the border, including Henry Kőszegi, Lawrence Aba and Nicholas Geregye, followed Duchess Anna into exile to Bohemia and handed their castles to Ottokar II, who placed the treasonous nobles under his protection.
His lands in Sopron County were increasingly threatened by the expansionist efforts of the Kőszegi family since the 1270s, which elevated into a large-scale contiguous and coherent territorial province in Western Transdanubia.
Although Peter Csák liberated the king and his mother in a short time, the two powerful lords captured Ladislaus' younger brother, Andrew, and took him to Slavonia, the centre of their political basis.
[14] The king also confiscated some of Joachim Gutkeled's lands outside Slavonia, including Málca in Zemplén County (present-day Malčice, Slovakia), which was given to Lawrence Aba.
Gyula Kristó considered Lawrence had attempted to establish a local territorial domain independently of the royal power with that step, similarly to the Csáks and the Kőszegis, although to a lesser extent.
