The Tenth Century

The Magyars

Some time in the 9th century, a Turkish people from the steppes of Asia, known as the Magyars, began migrating westward. Like other people from this region, they were a horse people, semi-nomadic, and ferocious warriors. They arrived on the wide plains of Hungary in 895 where they were joined by what was left of the Avars, whom Charlemagne had crushed.  Hungary was a perfect home--surrounded by mountains but with wide plains well suited for horse breeding. 

The Magyars raided Europe for over fifty years. They invaded Bavaria in 900. They returned year after year, plundering and looting. By 905 they had reached as far as Saxony and for the next twenty years their depredations were especially fierce. They raided into the Rhine valley and into Alsace. They got as far as Reims, in France, in 937.  

But by that time, Otto I was king of Germany. As he consolidated his power, he made defeat of the Magyars one of his most important objectives. In 955 in southern Germany, about 50 miles from Munich, Otto defeated the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld. He inflicted such casualties that the Magyars never again raided in force into Germany. Instead, they settled down in Hungary where they became the ruling class. They remained the aristocracy of that country down to the twentieth century, and Hungary is still a land of horse breeders.

History of Western Civilization

E.L. Skip Knox
Boise State University

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