892 - Arpad
Tradition holds that the Magyar clan chiefs chose a chieftain named Árpad to lead the migration and that they swore by sipping from a cup of their commingled blood to accept Árpad's male descendants as the Magyars' hereditary chieftains. The Magyars probably knew of the lands in the Carpathian Basin because from 892 to 894 Magyar mercenaries had fought there for King Arnulph of East Francia in a struggle with the duke of Moravia. Estimates are that about 400,000 people made up the exodus, in seven Magyar, one Kabar, and other smaller tribes. In the four centuries after their migration into the Carpathian Basin, the Magyars gradually developed from a loose confederation of pagan marauders into a recognized kingdom. This kingdom, which became known as Hungary, was led by the Árpad Dynsaty and was firmly allied to the Christian West. Eventually the Árpad line died out, however, and Hungary again descended into anarchy, with the most powerful nobels vying for control.
When Arpad, the semi-mythical founder of the Magyar monarchy, at the end of AD 895 led his savage hordes through the Vereczka pass into the regions of the Upper Theiss, the land, now called Hungary, was, for the most part, in the possession of Slavs or semi-Slavs. From the Riesengebirge to the Vistula, and from the Moidau to the Drave, extended the shadowy empire of Moravia, founded by Moimir and Svatopluk (c. 850-890), which collapsed so completely at the first impact of the Magyars that, ten years after their arrival, not a trace of it remained. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats and Avars in the southern provinces were subdued with equal ease.
Details are wanting, but the traditional decisive battle was fought at Alpar on the Theiss, whereupon the victors pressed on to Orsova, and the conquest was completed by Arpad about the year 906. This forcible intrusion of a non-Aryan race altered the whole history of Europe; but its peculiar significance lay in the fact that it permanently divided the northern from the southern and the eastern from the western Slavs. The inevitable consequence of this rupture was the Teutonizing of the western branch of the great Slav family, which, no longer able to stand alone, and cut off from both Rome and Constantinople, was forced, in self-defence, to take Christianity, and civilization along with it, from Germany.
During the following seventy years next to nothing is known of the internal history of the Magyars. Arpad died in 907, and his immediate successors, Zsolt (907-047) and Taksony (047-972), are little more than chronological landmarks. This was the period of those devastating raids which made the savage Magyar horsemen the scourge and the terror of Europe. An interesting description of their tactics came from the pen of the emperor Leo VI, whose account of them is confirmed by the contemporary Russian annals. Trained riders, archers and javelin-throwers from infancy, they advanced to the attack in numerous companies following hard upon each other, avoiding close quarters, but wearing out their antagonists by the persistency of their onslaughts.
Scarce a corner of Europe was safe from them. First (908-910) they ravaged Thuringia, Swabia and Bavaria, and defeated the Germans on the Lechfeld, whereupon the German king Henry I bought them off for nine years, employing the respite in reorganizing his army and training cavalry, which henceforth became the principal military arm of the Empire. In 933 the war was resumed, and Henry, at the head of what was really the first national German army, defeated the Magyars at Gotha and at Ried (933). The only effect of these reverses was to divert them elsewhere. Already, in 926, they had crossed the Rhine and ravaged Lotharingia. In 934 and 942 they raided the Eastern Empire, and were bought off under the very walls of Constantinople. In 943 Taksony led them into Italy, when they penetrated as far as Otranto. In 955 they ravaged Burgundy.
The same year the emperor Otto I. proclaimed them the enemies of God and humanity, refused to receive their ambassadors, and finally, at the famous battle of the Lechfeld, overwhelmed them on the very scene of their first victory, near Augsburg, which they were besieging (Aug. 10, 955). Only seven of the Magyars escaped, and these were sold as slaves on their return home.
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