History of Hungary - Pre WWII

The Celts occupied Hungary in the 3^rd century BC but were conquered by the Romans around the beginning of the Christian era. Until the early 5^th century AD, all of Hungary west of the Danube (an area knows as Transdanubia) was included in then Roman province of Pannonia. The Roman legion stationed at Aquincum (Budapest) guarded the north-eastern frontier of the empire. The pleasure-loving Romans planted the first vineyards in Hungary and built baths near the region’s thermal waters. They were forced to abandon Pannonia in 451 by the Huns, whose short-lived empire was established by Attila. The Huns were followed by Goths, Lombards, and finally the Avars, a powerful Turkic people. They in turn were subdued by Charlemagne in 796.

Seven Magyar tribes under the leadership of Arpad – the gyula (chief military commander) – swept in from beyond the Volga River in 896 and occupied the Danube Basin. The Magyars terrorised Europe with raids as far as Spain, northern Germany and southern Italy until they were stopped by the German king, Otto I, at the battle of Augsburg in 955 and subsequently converted to Christianity. Hungary’s first king and patron saint, Stephen I (Istvan), was crowned on Christmas Day in the year 1000, marking the foundation of the Hungarian State. Medieval Hungary was a large and powerful state which included Transylvania (now in Romania), Slovakia and Croatia. The capital shifted from Szekesfehervar near Lake Balaton to Visegrad, Esztergom and Buda. The so – called Golden Bull, a kind of Magna Carta limiting some of the king’s powers in favour of the nobility, was signed at Szekesfehervar in 1222, and universities were founded in Pecs (1367) and Buda (1389).

In 1456 at Nandorfehervar (now Belgrade) Hungarians under Janos Hunyadi stopped the ottoman Turkish advance into Hungary and under Hunyadi‘s son, Matthias Corvinus (ruled 1458-90), Hungary experienced a brief flowering of Renaissance culture. Then in 1514 a peasant army that had assembled for a crusade against the Turks turned on the landowners. The serfs were eventually suppressed and their leader, Gyorgy Dozsa, was burned alive on a red/hot iron throne, but Hungary was seriously weakened. In 1526 the Turks defeated the ragtag Hungarian army at Mohacs.

After Buda Castle capitulated in 1541, Hungary was divided into three parts. Though heroic resistance continued against the Turks, most notably at Koszeg (1532), Eger (1552) and Szigetvar (1566), the division would remain intact for a century and a half. The central part was in Turkish hands while Transdanubia and what is now Slovakia were governed by Austrian House of Habsburg assisted by the Hungarian nobility based in Pozsony (Bratislava). The principality of Transylvania, east of the Tisza River, prospered as a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire.

When the Turks were finally expelled in 1686 through the combined efforts of the Austrian, Hungarian and Polish armies, Hungary was subjected to Habsburg domination. From 1703 to 1711 Ferenc Rakoczi II, Prince of Transylvania, led a war of independence against the Austrians, but the Hungarians were eventually overcome through force of numbers.

Hungary never fully recovered from these disasters. Most of the country’s medieval monuments had been destroyed, and from the 18^th century onwards Hungary had to be rebuilt almost from scratch. But under the ‘enlightened absolutism‘ of the Habsburg monarchs Maria Theresa (1740-80) and her son Joseph II (1789-90), the country made great steps forward economically and culturally.

ln the 1820s the ’Reform Era’ dawns heralding a Hungarian national awakening. In 1848 a bloodless revolution ends feudalism. The liberal and democratic revolution led by Lajos Kossuth and the poet Sandor Petofi against the Habsburgs escalated into a war of independence. Although it was put down just a year later, the uprising shook the oligarchy. In 1866 Austria was defeated by Bismarck’s Prussia and the next year a compromise was struck between Austrian capitalists and Hungarian landowners, and a dual Austro - Hungarian monarchy was formed. Although this partnership stimulated industrial development, it proved unfortunate in the long run because Hungary came to be viewed by its neighbours as a tool of Habsburg oppression.

The WWI brings the ’Golden Era’ to an end. In 1918 Austria-Hungary lost the war and collapsed, Hungary became independent, but the 1920 Trianon Treaty stripped the country of 68% of its territory and 58% of its population. Many of the problems it created remain to this day, and it still colours Hungary’s relations with some of its neighbours.

In August 1919, an indigenous and short-lived Communist government led by Bela Kun was overthrown by counter-revolutionary forces and thousands were killed, imprisoned or forced to flee the country. In March 1920, Admiral Miklos Horthy established a rightist regime that would last almost 25 years.

In 1941 Hungary`s desire to recover its lost territories drew it into war alongside the Nazis. When Horthy tried to make a separate peace with the Allies in October 1944, the occupying Germans ousted him and put the fascist Arrow Cross Party in power , which immediately began deporting Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and other labour camps, Up to 560,000 Jews were brutally murdered, starved or succumbed to disease. In October 1944, after the Red Army crosses onto Hungarian soil, Horty proclaims an armistice but is immediately deposed in a German-led coup. The Res Army launches a siege of Budapest on Christhmas 1944. The city is devastated after resistance from German and Hungarian forces. Nationwide, the guns fall silent in April 1945, the entire country is in Soviet hands. The Soviets begin mass deportations to Siberia.