Читать книгу Walking in Hungary. 32 routes through upland areas онлайн

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By the end of the fourth century AD the elite of Rome had retreated, leaving a partly urbanised population practising viticulture and Christianity. Germanic tribes swept south to exploit the power vacuum, but in turn were defeated by Attila the Hun, who harried settlements as far west as the Rhine. After the Huns came Teutonic Longobards, proto-Slavs and Turkic- Bulgars, but they were held in check by another nomadic people from the East, the Avars, who for 250 years ruled over a multi-ethnic empire anticipating the shape of modern-day Hungary.

In the ninth century the Carpathian Basin was divided between the Moravian and East Frankish empires. Large areas of the disputed marches were sparsely populated, and in the year 896 there was little resistance when the Magyar chieftan Árpád led the ancestors of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin. In 906 they destroyed the Moravian Empire and in 907, after defeating Gemanic tribes, occupied Pannonia. In the manner of the Huns before them the Magyars used the region as a base to raid for booty and slaves, and their forays, as far afield as France and Spain, prompted the western prayer: From the arrows of the Hungarians, save us Lord.