Читать книгу Walking in Hungary. 32 routes through upland areas онлайн
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The turning point for Hungarian history was the year 955 at the Battle of Augsburg, when Emperor Otto I defeated the Magyar light cavalry forcing the fledgling Hungarian state to align itself with Western Europe. In 972, Géza, great-grandson of Árpád, converted to Christianity, and in 1001 István was crowned with papal approval and laid the foundations of the Hungarian state.
In 1241 the Mongols swept through Hungary and defeated the Hungarian army at the Battle of Muhi. King Béla IV and the remnants of his shattered army retreated through the hills of the Bükk and sought refuge on the Dalmatian coast. There was famine and epidemic, but on his return Béla ordered the building of stone castles to replace the hilltop stockades. The Mongols did not return, but during the fifteenth century the castles served as strongholds for Hussite rebels.
It was King Matthias who drove the Hussites out of the northern hills. The rule of this clever king is considered to be Hungary’s Golden Age, but he was also an expansionist, and with the help of a mercenary army ruled an enlarged kingdom stretching, for a while at least, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. After his death, Hungary was weakened by a succession crisis and a failed peasant uprising and fell easily to Suleiman the Magnificent at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. For 150 years Hungary was divided between the Austrian and Ottoman empires, and during intermittent periods of warfare the hilltop strongholds frequently changed hands. The defeat of the Ottomans at the end of the seventeenth century was followed by Hungarian uprisings against the Habsburg occupation, and for a while the rebels held much of the country and dominated the northern hills. After their defeat the lands of the rebellious nobles were confiscated. German and Slovak Catholics and other ethnic groups were settled in the hills to manage the forests, run the glass foundries and also stem the advance of the Reformation. Those hilltop castles still standing lost strategic importance, and for a while the highlands no longer played a large part in Hungary’s history.