of the population was lost, mostly in lowland areas, especially in the Alföld, in the southern reaches of the Hungarian plain in the area now called the Banat, and in southern Transylvania. With no safe place left in Hungary, Béla was chased down to Dalmatia. The royal family finally escaped to Austria to seek help from Béla's archenemy Duke Frederick, who arrested them, extorted an enormous ransom in gold and forced the king to cede three western counties to Austria. It was at this point that King Béla and some of his retinue fled southwest, through Hungarian-controlled territory, to the Adriatic coast and the island fortress of Trogir, where they stayed until the Mongols withdrew. The Mongols seized the Hungarian royal seal and used it to issue bogus decrees that kept many Hungarians vulnerable to exploitation. Meanwhile, the rest of Europe was horrified by the defeat and subsequent devastation of Hungary, creating a wave of fear and panic that spread to the Atlantic. Surviving members of the royal retinue, mostly those who had not arrived at the battle of Mohi in time to participate, along with a number of disorganized irregulars consisting mostly of armed peasants, employed guerrilla tactics to harass the Mongol troops, occasionally engaging them in open battle. However, these attempts were met by massacres by the ruthless Subutai, which stalled any guerrilla attempts in their tracks. The Mongols often bypassed strong points and devastated the nearby agricultural fields and irrigation systems, which later led to a mass starvation. Some modern historians have claimed that well-fortified castles were impenetrable to the Mongol army given that five stone castles located east of the Danube survived the invasion. Such claims were contradicted by other historians who highlighted the skill of siege warfare of the Mongol army against similar fortifications. Rather, the movement speed of the Mongol troops and the hunt for the Hungarian king did not open up possibilities for longer sieges. On the Mongol side, there were also internal frictions prior to their armies' departure after the battle. The Mongol/Chinese sources portray Batu as being a mediocre commander-in-chief who blamed Subutai for the losses at Mohi that actually occurred due to Batu's impetuosity. Batu was notably unhappy that he had lost 30+ of his baatars/ba'aturs, and one of his commanders, Bakatu, in addition to anywhere from many hundred to several thousand other soldiers, an unusually high loss for the