Magyars

MAGYARS. - An Eastern people that at the end of the 9th century settled in the country which took from them the name of Magyarország, or Hungary. Historians and ethnographers are divided as to their origin: Hunfalvy believes them to be a Finnic tribe, Vambery makes them of the Turkish race, a Ural-Altaic tribe. Various elements are found in their language. At present there is a tendency to judge them to be of Ugro-Finnic origin: Turkish cultural influence would have acted vigorously upon their civilization.

At the beginning of the 9th century they would have emigrated from the steppes between the Urals and the Caspian toward the Black Sea, some moving south into the Persian regions, others north, settling between the Don and the Dnieper. After 880 the advance of the Pechenegs and the Cumans, pressed in their turn by the Ghuzz, forced the M. to cross the Don, settling in the regions of present-day Bessarabia and Moldavia: they called the country Atescuzu or Atelkör (=land between the rivers); then the pressure of the Pechenegs drove them to cross the Carpathians, and they occupied the country as far as the Tisza. The crossing of the mountains took place around 895-96; in the following years the Danube was crossed and the Magyar population occupied the country as far as the Rába. Their civilization was primitive; they were animists, they buried the dead with their horses and slaves, they were shepherds and hunters, they lived as nomads first on carts, then in villages of huts. Their furnishings and weapons show their Eastern origin, and Eastern is the style of their silverware. They were divided into tribes, governed by chiefs called gyula.

Around 860 their first contacts with the civilized Western zone began, with lightning raids into the Danubian lands. The raids intensified after their settling in the Hungarian plain: they threw themselves upon Moravia, in 890 they entered Italy and reached the Brenta; the following year they invaded a great part of Lombardy, defeating King Berengar. They returned to Italy in 920-22 and pushed as far as Apulia; the burning of Pavia dates to 924. More terrible were the incursions into Germany, where feudal anarchy left them freedom of action. It may be said that there was no year in which the M. did not launch themselves across the Germanic regions; Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony were repeatedly plundered. In 915 they reached as far as Bremen. The secret of their success was their method of fighting: rapidity of attack, the ability to move lightning-fast from place to place, light armament which facilitated the attack upon the Western forces, made up of slow and heavy cavalry. Even their war cry acted upon men's spirits in a depressing way and determined general flights.

Western Europe was disarmed in the face of the savage M. until the pitched battle on the Lech, where Otto I defeated them in 955. However, for some decades, both in Italy and in Germany, people had begun to build castles and to equip themselves to repel the invaders; after 934 the M. had begun to take the route of the Balkan regions, threatening the Byzantine Empire, now in agreement, now in conflict with the Pechenegs.

It may be said that after the middle of the 10th century the aggressiveness of the M. is in decline. Their tactics are well known and no longer serve: the Slavic populations, among whom they live, influence them, steering them toward higher conditions of civilization. They leave their huts and pass to permanent houses; they begin agriculture, and Christianity too penetrates among them. Their prince Geza around 973 begins agreements with Otto I; in 985, under the influence of his consort, the Polish Adelaide, he passes to Christianity; his son Stephen is crowned in 1000 in the cathedral of Gran with the famous crown sent to him by Pope Stephen II. Thus begins the history of the Kingdom of Hungary, destined in its turn to become a barrier of Christian civilization against Eastern barbarism.

Francesco Cognasso