After Hunnish rule faded, the Lombards and the Gepids ruled in Pannonia for about 100 years, during which the Slavic tribes began migrating into the region. In the 560s, the Slavs were supplanted by the Avars, who maintained their supremacy of the land for more than two centuries. The Franks under Charlemagne from the west and the Bulgars from the southeast managed to overthrow the Avars in the early 9th century. However, the Franks soon retreated, and the Slavonic kingdom of Great Moravia and the Balaton Principality assumed control of much of Pannonia until the end of the century. The Magyars migrated to Hungary in the late 9th century.
Magyar tradition holds that the Country of the Magyars (Magyarország) was founded by Árpád, who led the Magyars into the Pannonian plain in 896 AD. The "Ten Arrows" mentioned above referred to ten tribes, the alliance of which was the foundation of the army of the invading Magyars.
The Kingdom of Hungary was established in 1000 by King Saint Stephen. Originally named Vajk, Stephen was a direct descendant of Árpád, and was baptised as a child. He married Giselle of Bavaria, the daughter of Henry II, Duke of Bavaria in 996, and after the death of his father Prince Géza in 997, he assumed the mantle of ruler and became the first Christian king of Hungary.
St. Stephen I received his crown from Pope Silvester II in 1000. As a Christian king, he established the Hungarian Church with ten dioceses and the royal administration of the country that was divided into counties (comitatus or vármegye). Hungary became a patrimonial kingdom where the majority of the land was the private property of the ruler. In 1083, he was canonized along with his son, Imre of Hungary.
Anyone who want to learn more from hungarian history, recommended to go to a video guided tour and if you don't have a place to sleep you can rent a studio of Budapest, it's not expensive and really comfortable.
Initially, Hungarian history and politics developed in close association with that of Poland and Bohemia, driven by the interventions of various Popes and Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Between 1241–1242, under King Béla IV, Hungary was devastated, suffering great loss of life at the hands of the Mongol (Tatar) armies of Batu Khan who defeated the Hungarians at the Battle of Muhi. Despite the victory, the Mongols did not occupy Hungary, but withdrew shortly after upon the news of the death of Ögedei Khan, leaving behind a country in ruins.
Gradually Hungary, under the rule of the dynasty of the Árpáds and even before it (since the 9th century), joined the greater West European civilizations. Ruled by the Angevins since 1308, the Kingdom of Hungary slowly lost control over territories later called Wallachia (1330) and Moldavia (1359).
János Hunyadi, the Regent of Hungary fought defensive wars against the invading Ottoman Empire. The custom of sounding the noon bell is closely related to an important battle against the Ottomans that took place on June 29, 1456, at Nándorfehérvár.
His son, King Matthias Corvinus, ruled the Kingdom of Hungary from 1458 to 1490. He strengthened Hungary and its government. Under his rule, Hungary became an important artistic and cultural centre of Europe during the Renaissance. Matthias, whose wife was Italian, imported artisans from Italy and France. Likewise, Hungarian culture influenced others, for example the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. King Matthias Corvinus was also successful in many battles against the Ottoman Empire.
The forthcoming two centuries were dominated by the constant warfare against the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans gained a decisive victory over the Hungarian army at the battle of Mohács in 1526. The next decades were characterised by political chaos; the divided Hungarian nobility elected two kings simultaneously, Ferdinand Habsburg (1526-1540) and János Szapolyai (1526-1540), whose armed conflicts weakened the country further. After the conquest of Buda by the Ottomans in 1541, the Kingdom of Hungary came to be divided into three parts: one third of Hungary fell under Ottoman rule; one third (in the West) remained under Habsburg rule Kings of Hungary); the third part in the east (originally supporting János Szapolyai), remained independent (the Principality of Transylvania) and subsequently become a semi independent, vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. It was only more than 150 years later, at the end of the 17th century, that Austria and its Christian allies regained the territories of the Kingdom from the Ottoman Empire.
After the final retreat of the Ottomans, struggle began between the Hungarian nation and the Habsburg kings for the protection of noblemen' rights (thus guarding the autonomy of Hungary). The fight against Austrian absolutism resulted in the unsuccessful popular freedom fight led by a Transylvanian nobleman, Ferenc II Rákóczi, between 1703 and 1711. The revolution and war of 1848–1849 eliminated serfdom and secured civil rights. The Austrians were finally able to prevail only with Russian help.
Thanks to the victories against Austria by the French-Italian coalition (the Battle of Solferino, 1859) and Prussia (Battle of Königgrätz, 1866), Hungary would eventually, in 1867, manage to become an autonomous part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (see Ausgleich). Having achieved this, the Hungarian government made an effort to nationally unify the kingdom by Magyarisation of the various other nationalities. This lasted until the end of World War I, when the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed. On November 16, 1918, an independent Hungarian Republic was proclaimed.
Following World War I, Romania occupied Transylvania and Eastern Hungary, Czechoslovakia Upper Hungary. The joint Serb and French army occupied Southern Hungary. The Entente backed the subsequent annexations of these territories.
In March 1919 the communists took power, and in April, Béla Kun proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. This government, like its predecessor, proved to be short-lived, despite some initial military successes against the Czechoslovak army.
On 13 June the Peace Conference in Versailles ordered the evacuation of the northern territories by Hungary together with the evacuation of the Tiszántúl by Romania. Hungary fulfilled the request on 30 June but the Romanian army remained in the Tiszántúl.
The ensuing war between Hungary and Romania led to the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet army. By August more than half of present-day Hungary, including Budapest, was placed under Romanian occupation, which lasted until November. Rightist military forces, led by the former Austro-Hungarian Admiral Miklós 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, and Admiral Horthy was subsequently elected Regent, thereby formally restoring Hungary to a kingdom, although there were no more Kings of Hungary, despite attempts by the former Habsburg king to return to power. Horthy continued to rule with autocratic powers until 1944.
On June 4, 1920 the Treaty of Trianon was signed, establishing Hungary's new borders. Compared with the pre-war Kingdom, Hungary lost 71% of its territory, 66% of its population, and with the new borders about one-third of the Magyar population became minorities in the neighbouring countries. Hungary also lost its only sea port in Fiume (today Rijeka). Therefore, Hungarian politics and culture of the interwar period was dominated by irredentism ( the restoration of historical "Greater Hungary").
The country became allied with the Nazi Germany in the 1930s, in the hope of revising the territorial losses that had followed World War I. The alliance did lead to some territories being returned to Hungary in the two Vienna Awards. Hungary then assisted the German occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, occupying the Backa, stepping into World War II in 1941, fighting against the Soviet Union. After its heavy losses in the Soviet Union the Hungarian government sought negotiations with the Allied leaders. As a consequence German troops occupied the country on the 19th of March in 1944 (Operation Margarethe), while the pro-western Horthy was replaced by a coup supported by German commandos on October 15th (Operation Panzerfaust). The Nazi puppet government lead by Ferenc Szálasi and his Arrow Cross Party kept the country on Germany's side until the end of the war.
Hungary was the first modern nation to pass distinctly anti-Semitic laws; the "numerus clausus" laws of the early 1920 were aimed at restricting the access of Jews to higher education. In the late 1930s, more specifically anti-Semitic laws followed. Some massacres of Jews by Hungarian forces took place in the early part of the Second World War, but Hungary initially resisted large scale deportation of its Jewish population. Ultimately, however, during the German occupation, the Arrow Cross Party and government authorities participated in the Holocaust: in May and June 1944, Hungarian police deported nearly 440,000 Jews in more than 145 trains, mostly to Auschwitz. Ultimately, over 400,000 Jews in Hungary were killed during the Holocaust, as well as tens of thousands of Roma people. Hundreds of Hungarian people were also executed by the Arrow Cross Party for sheltering Jews, among them Sister Sara Salkahazi. Foreign heads of states and diplomats who helped save the lives of many include the later Pope, Cardinal Roncalli John XXIII. , Raoul Wallenberg, and Carl Lutz.
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