Hungary
Hungary is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The capital and largest city is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, and the Visegrad Group, and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian or also, known in Hungary as Magyar, which is part of the Uralic family and is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.Following a Celtic (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (9 AD - c. 430 AD) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian ruler Arpad, whose great-grandson Saint Stephen I was crowned first king of Hungary in 1000 AD. The Kingdom of Hungary lasted for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world. After about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541-1699), Hungary was from time to time integrated with Habsburg Monarchy, and later constituted half of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (1867-1918).
A great power until the end of World War I, Hungary lost over 70% of its territory, along with one third of its population of Hungarian ethnicity, and all sea ports under the Treaty of Trianon, the terms of which have been considered excessively harsh by many in Hungary. The kingdom was succeeded by a Communist era (1947-1989) during which Hungary gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the unilateral move of opening its border with Austria in 1989, thus accelerating the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The present form of government is a parliamentary, which was established in 1989. Today, Hungary is a high-income economy and a regional leader in some regards.Hungary is one of the thirty most popular tourist destinations of the world, attracting 8.6 million tourists per year (2007). The country is home to the largest thermal water cave system and the second largest thermal lake in the world (Lake Heviz), the largest lake in Central Europe (Lake Balaton), and the largest natural grasslands in Europe (Hortobagy).
Before 895
The Roman Empire conquered territory west of the Danube between 35 and 9 B.C.E. From 9 BC to the end of the 4th century Pannonia was part of the Roman Empire, located within part of later Hungary's territory. Later came the Huns, who built up a powerful empire. After Hunnish rule, the Germanic Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Gepids, and the polyethnic Avars, had a presence in the Carpathian Basin. The land was inhabited by Avars in the late 9th century. The Avars must have formed a significant part of the population of the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 9th century; both contemporary sources and a growing number of archaeological evidence suggest that groups of the Avars survived the disintegration of their empire.
The freshly unified Magyars (Hungarians) led by Arpad settled in the Carpathian Basin starting in 895. According to linguists, they originated from an ancient Uralic-speaking population that formerly inhabited the forested area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains.
Medieval Hungary 895-1526Hungary was established in 895, some 60 years after the division of the Carolingian Empire at the Treaty of Verdun in 843, before the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Initially, the rising Principality of Hungary was a state consisting of semi-nomadic people. However, it accomplished an enormous transformation; it transformed itself into a Christian realm during the 10th century. This state was well-functioning, and the nation's military power allowed the Hungarians to conduct successful fierce campaigns and raids from Constantinople to as far as today's Spain. A later defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 signaled a provisory end to most campaigns on foreign territories, at least towards the West.
Age of Arpadian Kings
The ruling prince (Hungarian: fejedelem) Geza of the Arpad dynasty intended to integrate Hungary into Christian Western Europe. His first-born son, Saint Stephen I became the first King of Hungary after defeating his paganist uncle Koppany, who also claimed the throne. Under Stephen, Hungary was recognized as a Catholic Apostolic Kingdom.By 1006, Stephen had consolidated his power, and started sweeping reforms to convert Hungary into a feudal state. The country switched to use the Latin language, and until as late as 1844, it remained the official language of Hungary.
House of Aba - Arpad - the Second DynastyThe second royal house of Hungary was created through a marriage alliance between House of Arpas and the House of Aba. Samuel Aba ruled from his Castle Gonce and Castle Aba-Ujvar in North East Hungary, now County of Aba. Today, the county is divided between Hungary and the present-day Slovakia. Samuel Aba married his older cousin Sarolta, the youngest daughter of Prince Geza, sister of King Saint Stephen I.
During the reign of Stephen I of Hungary, Samuel Aba became Palatine (Vice-Roy) of Hungary. After the death of Stephen I of Hungary the new ruler, Peter Urseolo (Stephen's nephew) removed Samuel from the royal court for not supporting him enough. Many Hungarians opposed Peter from the feared that he would make the Hungarian Kingdom subservient to the Holy Roman Empire; so they supported Samuel in deposing Peter.Peter fled Hungary, and Samuel became king for the entire country in1041. (From 1038 for the Eastern part of the country). However, Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, who was Peter's main ally, succeeded to overthrow Samuel in 1043. For that Peter had to pay a heavy price: Hungary lost some of its territories to Henry and had to pay tribute.Because of the annual tribute to Henry and the abolishing of taxes, Samuel had to look for sources of money elsewhere. He claimed back the donations the preceding kings gave to the Church, and made the bishops pay taxes. This was in keeping with his intentions of diminishing the role and power of the Church. (According to some sources he and his followers were excommunicated by the Pope for that).In 1044 Peter with the help of Henry, attacked Samuel, and defeated him in the Battle of Menfo, near Gyor. Contemporary sources offer two different opinions about his fate; some say he was captured and killed by Peter and Henry, others say he reached the Tisza river and was killed there by Hungarian Nobles, who opposed him. He was buried in the monastery he founded at Abasar.
Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary conquered Croatia in 1091The most powerful and wealthiest king of the Arpad dynasty was Bela III, who disposed of the equivalent of 23 tonnes of pure silver per year. This exceeded the income of the French king (estimated at 17 tonnes) and was double the receipts of the English Crown.Andrew II led the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land in 1217, setting up the largest royal army in the history of Crusades. His Golden Bull of 1222 was the first constitution in Continental Europe. The lesser nobles also began to present Andrew II with grievances, a practice that evolved into the institution of the parliament (parlamentum publicum).In 1241-1242, the Kingdom received a major blow with the Mongol and Tatar invasion. Up to half of Hungary's population of 2,000,000 were victims of the invasion. King Bela IV let Cumans and Jassic people into the depopulated country, who were fleeing the Mongols. Over the centuries, they were fully assimilated into the Hungarian population.
As a consequence, after the Mongols retreated, King Bela ordered the construction of hundreds of stone castles and fortifications, to defend against a possible second Mongol invasion. The Mongols returned to Hungary in 1286, but the new built stone-castle system, and new tactics (using a higher proportion of heavily armed knights) stopped them. The invading Mongol force was defeated near Pest by the royal army of Ladislaus IV of Hungary. As with later invasions, it was repelled handily, the Mongols losing much of their invading force.
Age of elected kingsThe Kingdom of Hungary reached one of its greatest extent during the Arpadian kings. Yet royal power was weakened at the end of their rule in 1301. After a destructive period of the interregnum (1301-1308), the first Angevin king, Charles I of Hungary - a bilineal descendant of the Arpad dynasty - successfully restored royal power, and defeated oligarch rivals, called "little kings." The second Angevin Hungarian king, Louis the Great (1342-1382) led many successful military campaigns from Lithuania to Southern Italy (Kingdom of Naples), and from 1370 was also King of Poland. After King Louis died without a male heir, the country was stabilized only when Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387-1437) succeeded to the throne. Sigismund became Holy Roman Emperor in 1433.From a small noble family in Transylvania, John Hunyadi grew to become one of the country's most powerful war lord. He was elected governor then regent. John was also a successful crusader against the Ottoman Turks. One of his greatest victories being the Siege of Belgrade in 1456.The last strong king of medieval Hungary was the Renaissance King Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490), son of John Hunyadi. His election was the first time ever that a member of the nobility without dynastic background mounted to the Hungarian royal throne. He was a successful military leader and an enlightened patron of the arts and learning. His library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles, philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second only in size to the Vatican Library. The library is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Under his rule, in 1479, the Hungarian army destroyed the Ottoman and Wallachian troops at the Battle of Breadfield. Abroad, he defeated the Polish and German imperial armies of Frederick at Breslau (Wroclaw). Matthias' professional standing army, the Black Army of Hungary was an unusually large army for its time, and it conquered parts of Austria, Vienna (1485) and parts of Bohemia.
Decline of Hungary (1490-1526)Matthias died without lawful sons. In 1514, the weakened old King Vladislaus II faced a major peasant rebellion led by Gyorgy Dozsa, which was ruthlessly crushed by the nobles, led by Janos Szapolyai. The resulting degradation of order paved the way for Ottoman pre-eminence. In 1521, the strongest Hungarian fortress in the South, Nandorfehervar (the Hungarian name of Belgrade, Serbia) fell to the Turks. The early appearance of Protestantism in the country took place during this period as well.
Ottoman wars 1526-1699
After some 150 years of wars with the Hungarians and other states, the Ottomans gained a decisive victory over the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526, where King Louis II died. Amid political chaos, the divided Hungarian nobility elected two kings simultaneously, Janos Szapolyai and Ferdinand I of the Habsburg dynasty.With the conquest of Buda by the Turks in 1541, Hungary was divided into three parts and remained so until the end of the 17th century. The north-western part, termed as Royal Hungary (picture), was annexed by the Habsburgs who ruled as Kings of Hungary. The eastern part of the Kingdom became independent as the Principality of Transylvania. The remaining central area, including the capital Buda, was known as the Ottoman Pashalik of Buda.In 1686, the Holy League's army, containing over 74,000 men from various nations, re-conquered Buda from the Turks. After some more crushing defeats for the Ottomans in the next few years, the entire Kingdom of Hungary was removed from Ottoman rule by 1718. The last Tatar raid into Hungary took place in 1717. The constrained Habsburg Counter-Reformation efforts in the 17th century reconverted the majority of the Kingdom to Catholicism.
From the 18th century to World War IBetween 1703 and 1711 there was a large-scale uprising led by Francis II Rakoczi, who after the dethronement of the Habsburgs in 1707 at the Diet of Onod, took power provisionally as the Ruling Prince of Hungary for the wartime period, but refused the (picture) Hungarian Crown and the title "King." After 8 years of war with the Habsburg Empire, the Hungarian Kuruc army lost the last main battle at Trencsen (1708).
The Period of ReformsDuring the Napoleonic Wars and afterwards, the Hungarian Diet had not convened for decades. In the 1820s, the Emperor was forced to convene the Diet, which marked the beginning of a Reform Period (1825-1848, Hungarian: reformkor).Count Istvan Szechenyi, one of the most prominent statesmen of the country recognized the urgent need of modernization, and his message got through. The Hungarian Parliament was reconvened in 1825 to handle financial needs of the state. A liberal party emerged and focused on providing for the peasantry. Lajos Kossuth - a famous journalist at that time - emerged as the leader.
Revolution and War of IndependenceOn 15 March 1848, mass demonstrations in Pest and Buda enabled Hungarian reformists to push through a list of 12 demands. Under governor and President Lajos Kossuth and the first Prime Minister, Lajos Batthyany, the House of Habsburg was dethroned.The Habsburg Ruler and his advisors skillfully manipulated the Croatian, Serbian and Romanian peasantry, led by priests and officers firmly loyal to the Habsburgs, and induced them to rebel against the Hungarian government. In July 1849 the Hungarian Parliament proclaimed and enacted the first laws of ethnic and minority rights in the world. Many members of the nationalities gained the coveted highest positions within the Hungarian Army, like General Janos Damjanich, an ethnic Serb who became a Hungarian national hero through his command of the 3rd Hungarian Army Corps.Initially, the Hungarian forces (Honvedseg) defeated Austrian armies. To counter the successes of the Hungarian revolutionary army, Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph I asked for help from the "Gendarme of Europe," Czar Nicholas I, whose Russian armies invaded Hungary. This made Artur Gorgey surrender in August 1849. The leader of the Austrian army, Julius Jacob von Haynau, became governor of Hungary for a few months, and ordered the execution of the 13 martyrs of Arad, leaders of the Hungarian army, and Prime Minister Batthyany in October 1849. Lajos Kossuth escaped into exile.Following the war of 1848 - 1849, the whole country was in "passive resistance."
Austria-Hungary 1867-1918
Because of external and internal problems, reforms seemed inevitable and major military defeats of Austria forced the Habsburgs to negotiate the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, by which the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary was formed. This Empire had the second largest area in Europe (after the Russian Empire), and it was the third most populous (after Russia and the German Empire). The two realms were governed separately by two parliaments from two capital cities, with a common monarch and common external and military policies. Economically, the empire was a customs union. The old Hungarian Constitution was restored, and Franz Joseph I was crowned as King of Hungary.
World War I 1914-1918After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austriain in Sarajevo, on 28 June 1914, the Hungarian prime minister Istvan Tisza and his cabinet tried to avoid the outbreak and escalating of a war in Europe, but their diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful.Austria-Hungary drafted 9 million (fighting forces: 7.8 million) soldiers in World War I (over 4 million from the Kingdom of Hungary) on the side of Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey. The Central Powers conquered Serbia. Romania declared war. The Central Powers conquered Southern Romania and the Romanian capital Bucharest. In 1916 Emperor Franz Joseph died, and the new monarch Charles IV sympathized with the pacifists. With great difficulty, the Central powers stopped and repelled the attacks of the Russian Empire.The Eastern front of the Allied (Entente) Powers completely collapsed. The Austro-Hungarian Empire then withdrew from all defeated countries. On the Italian front, the Austro-Hungarian army made no progress against Italy after January 1918. Despite great Eastern successes, Germany suffered complete defeat on the more important Western front.By 1918, the economic situation had deteriorated (strikes in factories were organized by leftist and pacifist movements), and uprisings in the army had become commonplace. In the capital cities, the Austrian and Hungarian leftist liberal movements (the maverick parties) and their leaders supported the separatism of ethnic minorities. Austria-Hungary signed a general armistice in Padua on 3 November 1918. In October 1918, Hungary's union with Austria was dissolved.
Between the World Wars 1918-1941The success of the 1918 Aster Revolution, or Chrysanthemum Revolution in Budapest brought Mihaly Karolyi to power as Prime Minister and later the President of the first Republic of Hungary. A devotee of Entente. Karolyi ordered the full disarmament of Hungarian Army, thus Hungary remained without national defense.Romania took control over Transylvania and other parts of eastern Hungary. Czechoslovakia took control over the northern parts (also known as Upper Hungary - present day Slovakia), and a joint Serbian and French army took control over the southern parts. These territories had a majority population of the respective occupying nations. However territories were occupied further than the ethnical borderlines, so each had significant Hungarian population as well. The post-War Entente backed the subsequent annexations of these territories.In March 1919, the Communists took power in Hungary. In April, Bela Kun proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Kun's government, like its immediate predecessor, proved to be short-lived. This was despite some initial military successes against the Czechoslovakian Army.
On the 4th of June 1920, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, which established new borders for Hungary. Hungary lost 71% of its territory and 66% of its population. About one-third of the ethnically Hungarian population (3.4 of 10 million Hungarians) became minorities in newly created neighboring countries. The new borders separated Hungary's industrial base from its sources of raw materials, and Hungary also lost its only sea port at Fiume (today Rijeka). The revision of the Treaty of Trianon rose to the top of Hungary's political agenda. Some wanted to restore the full pre-Trianon area, others only the ethnically Hungarian majority territories.Rightist Hungarian military forces, led by the former Austro-Hungarian Admiral Miklos Horthy, entered Budapest in the wake of the Romanian army's departure and filled the vacuum of state power. In January 1920, elections were held for a unicameral assembly. Admiral Horthy was elected Regent, thereby formally restoring the monarchy to Hungary. However, there would be no more kings of Hungary despite attempts by the former Habsburg ruler Charles IV to return to his former seat of power. Horthy ruled as Regent until 16 October 1944. Hungary remained a parliamentary democracy. But after 1932, autocratic tendencies gradually returned as a result of Nazi influence and the Great Depression.
World War II 1941-1945European UnionIn a 1997 national referendum, 85% voted in favor of Hungary joining the European Union, which followed two years later. In 1998, the European Union began negotiations with Hungary on full membership. Hungary voted in favor of joining the EU, and became a member on 1 May 2004.
Map of Hungary
