A History of Central Eastern Europe

skills of the Germans to exploit the mining and manufacturing possibilities of the area. These
German towns were granted royal and ducal charters that allowed Germanic Law to predominate
in land ownership, professions, guilds and all matters of law while the residents were royal
hospes (guests). An elected Count ruled over an industrious and independent German population
of farmers, artisans, traders & burghers resulting in an explosion of Gothic cathedrals, gabled
townho uses, and terraced beer gardens.
In 1241 C.E. the
Mongol horde called
Tartár advanced on the
Carpathian basin allegedly
by some, in search of the
remnants of the Hunin.
The goal was the
elimination of the entire
tribe and, when found,
they were slaughtered.
While this is open to
speculation, ÁRPÁD’S 7
tribes of the Magyars were
apparently, selective
spared massacre.
There was an unprecedented extinction of principal reigning families of middle Europe in
the 14 th century: the Hungarian ÁRPÁD went extinct in 1301; the Czech PREMYSLID in 1306; the
Polish PIAST in 1370; and the Serb NEMANYA went extinct in 1371. This loss resulted in the
oligarchy inviting the ANJOU, already based in Naples since 1268, to fill the vacuum. The
Angevin advance through Greece, Albania, Hungary and Poland was not the “puppet-Monarch”
hoped for. CHARLES ROBERT OF ANJOU (1288 - 1342) was sent to Hungary by his grandfather
CARLOS II (1226 – 1285), King of Naples at the age of 12. You may remember him from A
History of Il Regno by this author. Though crowned KÁROLY RÓBERT I, King of Hungary in
1301, the period under his rule began much later. Possessing the crown (and it wasn’t even the
Crown of Saint Stephen) did not automatically correspond with the possession of power. First
there were rival claimants to the throne followed by the barons who opposed him despite being a
matrilineal ÁRPÁD descendant. It wasn’t until 1312 that CHARLES I defeated the Hungarian
baronial army at the Battle of Rozgony, a victory made only possible with the cavalry and
infantry supplied by the Zipserbund towns. As a sort of prelude to the Dual Monarchy of Austro-
Hungary of the 19 th century, a similar, but reversed version existed in which the two crowns
united in a single person was realized but the dominant partner was Hungary, not Austria
Two dynasties provided more than 80% of Hungary’s kings: the ÁRPÁD and the
HABSBURG. The country has had slightly more than a thousand years of kings; the ÁRPÁD
account for 434 years while the HABSBURG place second with 395 years!
OTTOMAN HUNGARY
The irruption of the Ottoman forces through the Danubian plain in 1526 was the start of
almost 2 centuries of warfare. The power vacuum left when the Ottoman troops withdrew
created two rival kings. A Royal Hungary in the west ruled by FERDINAND I, HABSBURG (1503 –
1564), and the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom under JÁNOS I ZÁPOLYA (1487 – 1540). The Eastern
Kingdom covered today’s Romania and the western Ukraine. In 1536 the Hungarian capital fled
Budapest for Bratislava where it would remain until 1783. The new capital soon lost its Slovak
. 3
7