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Hungary The Medieval Period
Before the Magyar tribes conquered the Carpathian Basin
in
896, they lived a seminomadic life on the Russian steppe
(see Early History
, ch. 1). Their military organization and
weaponry
resembled those of various Bulgar-Turkish tribes who also
inhabited the steppe at that time. Riding on swift steppe
ponies,
the Magyar horsemen used recurved bows for battle at long
distance, and they used sabers, short lances, axes, and
clubs for
hand-to-hand combat. In the ninth century, Arab historians
wrote
that the Magyars could muster 20,000 horsemen for battle.
In the mid- to late ninth century, the Magyar tribes
inhabited the territory lying to the north of the Black
Sea
between the lower Don and lower Dnepr rivers. From there
they
made armed forays against kingdoms to the west, first
against the
Bulgars on the lower Danube in 839 and then in 862 against
Pannonia (see Glossary),
which at that time was part of the eastern Frankish Kingdom.
In the last decade of the ninth century, the Magyar
tribes engaged in a series of military actions that culminated in
their
conquest of the Carpathian Basin. From 892 to 894, they
raided
Moravia (in what is today the central part of
Czechoslovakia) and
Pannonia, gaining valuable knowledge about the fortified
passes
in the Carpathian Mountains, the natural defenses of their
future
homeland. In 894-95 three Magyar forces were operating in
the
Danube Basin--one allied with Byzantium against the
Bulgars in
the south, one allied with the Franks against the Moravia
in
Pannonia, and a third that was invading what is now the
TransCarpathian oblast in the Soviet Ukraine. With most of
their armed
men away in battle, the Magyars remaining in the
Dnieper-Dnestr
region could offer little resistance to the Pechenegs, a
steppe
people who attacked them from the east. Suffering great
material
losses, the Magyars on the steppe fled westward, through
the
Carpathian mountain passes, into their future homeland.
Even though their conquest of the Carpathian Basin was
not
yet complete, in 899 the Magyars launched their first
plundering
expedition against the rest of Europe. Terrorizing Europe
for
more than half a century, the Magyar raiders reached
southern
Italy, France, Spain, northern Germany, Greece, and even
the
gates of Constantinople. However, the raids against
Western
Europe ended when in 955 the Magyars suffered a disastrous
defeat
near Augsburg (in Bavaria) against a coalition headed by
the Holy
Roman Emperor, Otto II.
Hungary was one of the strongest military powers in
Europe
for nearly 250 years following its establishment as a
kingdom in
A.D. 1000
(see Medieval Period
, ch. 1). Engaging in small
wars
for either territorial or dynastic reasons, the country
successfully resisted German and Byzantine attempts to
meddle in
its internal affairs. However, Hungarian armies could not
stop
the Mongols, who invaded the country in 1241. Although the
attack
was expected and the border fortifications reinforced, the
Mongols easily swept through the Carpathian passes into
the
Danube Plain in March 1241. In April the Hungarian army
met one
of the Mongol armies in the area between present-day
Leninvaros
and Miskolc. The Hungarian force was surrounded and
totally
annihilated at Mohi, but Hungary's King Bela IV managed to
elude
the Mongols and escape.
The Mongol occupation was brief but devastating, wiping
out
at least half the population. The country soon recovered
economically but remained militarily weakened until the
beginning
of the fourteenth century. Charles Robert (1308-42), the
first
Anjou king of Hungary, required the nobles to maintain
small
armed units, or banderia, which served as a reserve
force
in addition to the nobility and mercenaries serving in the
royal
army. This renewed military strength, combined with the
fact that
Hungary's neighbors were either militarily weak or
preoccupied
elsewhere, helped create a relatively peaceful Eastern
Europe in
the fourteenth century. Even the increasing threat from
the
Ottoman Turks, starting in the 1360s, was successfully
resisted
during this time.
Data as of September 1989
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