At his premature birth in Buda on 1 July 1506, the court doctors kept him alive by slaying animals and wrapping him in their warm carcasses as a primitive incubator.

In 1515 Louis II was married to Mary of Austria, granddaughter of Emperor Maximilian I, as stipulated by the First Congress of Vienna in 1515.

His guardians, Cardinal Tamás Bakócz and Count George Brandenburg-Ansbach, shamefully neglected him, squandered the royal revenues and distracted the whole kingdom with their endless dissensions.

Rather, Çavuş was kept waiting years, virtually imprisoned in Buda, by way of revenge for Suleiman's father, Selim I, who from 1513 to 1519 had forced the Hungarian envoy Barnabás Bélayban, Ban of Serim, to travel with him on his campaigns into Persia and Egypt, and to find time to ask for financial help from western countries against the Ottomans.

The king's finances were a shambles; he borrowed to meet his household expenses despite the fact that they totaled about one-third of the national income.

The Ottoman Empire declared war on the Kingdom of Hungary, Suleiman postponed his plan to besiege Rhodes and made an expedition to Belgrade.

Ferdinand dispatched 3,000 infantry troops and some artillery while preparing to mobilize the Austrian estates, while Sigismund promised to send footmen.

Mary, although a determined leader, caused distrust by relying on non-Hungarian advisors while Louis lacked vigour, which his nobles realized.

[7][8] The Austrian military aid, although seemingly strengthening the border, even had the undesired effect of dissolving the unified leadership that the ban had held until that time.

This was disastrous for Louis' kingdom; without the strategically important cities of Belgrade and Šabac, Hungary, including Buda, was open to further Turkish conquests.

During the retreat, the twenty-year-old king died when he fell backwards off his horse while trying to ride up a steep ravine of the Csele stream.

Upon encountering the lifeless body of King Louis, the Sultan is said to have lamented: "I came indeed in arms against him; but it was not my wish that he should be thus cut off before he scarcely tasted the sweets of life and royalty.

[13][14] Although Louis II's marriage remained childless, he probably had an illegitimate child with his mother's former lady-in-waiting, Angelitha Wass.