Welcome to the Magical and Mysterious World of the Puli
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Welcome to the Magical and Mysterious World of the Puli
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The Hungarian Puli Introduction Index
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In the time of the Roman Empire, the region west of the Danube river was known as Pannonia. After the Western Roman Empire collapsed under the stress of the migration of Germanic tribes and Carpian pressure, the Migration Period continued bringing many invaders to Europe. Among the first to arrive were the Huns, who built up a powerful empire under Attila. It is believed that the origin of the name Hungary does not come from the Central Asian nomadic invaders called the Huns, but rather originated later in the 7th century from an old Turkish word meaning the Ten Arrows.
After Hunnish rule faded, the Germanic Ostrogoths then the Lombards ruled in Pannonia, and the Gepids ruled in the eastern part of the Carpathian Basin for about 100 years, during which the Slavic tribes began migrating into the region. In the 560s, the Slavs were supplanted by a Turkic/Mongol group from Central Asia, 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 south east 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. Hungary had a larger territory than medieval France. Population of medieval Hungary was third in Europe. A defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 signalled an end to raids on foreign territories, and links between the tribes weakened. The ruling prince and overlord of all seven Magyar tribes, intended to integrate Hungary into Christian Europe, rebuilding the state according to the Western political and social model. He established a dynasty by naming his son Vajk (later called Stephen) as his successor. This was contrary to the then dominant tradition of the succession of the eldest surviving member of the ruling family. Hungary was established as a Christian kingdom under Stephen I of Hungary, who was crowned in December 1000 AD in the capital, Esztergom. By 1006, Stephen had solidified his power, eliminating all rivals who either wanted to follow the old pagan traditions or wanted an alliance with the orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire. Then he started sweeping reforms to convert Hungary into a feudal state, complete with forced Christianisation.
What emerged was a strong kingdom that withstood attacks from German kings and emperors, and nomadic tribes following the Magyars from the East, integrating some of the latter into the population. In 1241-1242, this kingdom received a major blow in the form of the Mongol invasion of Europe. After the defeat of the Hungarian army in the Battle of Muhi and a large part of the population died, leading later to the invitation of settlers from neighbours in the West and South in the ensuing destruction. Only strongly fortified cities and abbeys could withstand the assault. As a consequence, after the Mongols retreated, the construction of stone castles was ordered, meant to be defence against a possible second Mongol invasion. These castles proved to be very important later in the long struggle with the Ottoman Empire in the following centuries but their cost indebted the King to the major feudal landlords again, so the royal power was weakened. The Kingdom of Hungary reached its greatest size, the major landlords increased greatly their influence , while the Ottoman Turks, confronted the country ever more often.
The second Hungarian king in the 'Anjou' Angevin line of Italian origin Louis I the Great (I. or Nagy Lajos, king 1342-1382) extended his rule over territories from the Black Sea to the Adriatic Sea,and temporarily occupied the Kingdom of Naples (after his brother was murdered there by his wife,who was also his cousin). From 1370, the death of Casimir III the Great, he was also king of Poland. The alliance between Casimir and Charles I of Hungary, the father of Louis, was the start of a still lasting Polish-Hungarian friendship. Sigismund, a prince from the Luxembourg line succeeded to the throne by marrying Louis'daughter, Queen Mary, in 1433 even became Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor but his rule was marked by territorial losses in the South, the 1396 defeat in a late western crusade against the Ottoman Turks at Nicopolis, the open dissent of feudal landlords, the Hussite rebellion in the Czech kingdom (which was also under his rule) and partly in the territory that is now Slovakia, and a major peasant rebellion in Transylvania. The last strong king was the renaissance king Matthias Corvinus. He was the son of the feudal landlord and warlord John Hunyadi. Building on his fathers' vision, the aim of taking on the Ottoman Empire with a strong enough background, Matthias set out to build a great empire, expanding southward and northwest, while he also implemented internal reforms. His army called the 'Fekete Sereg' (Black Army) accomplished a series of victories also capturing the city of Vienna in 1485.After Matthias's death, the weak king Ladislaus II of the Polish/Lithuanian Jagiellon line nominally ruled the areas Matthias conquered except Austria, but real power was in the hand of the nobles. In 1514, two years before Ladislaus' death, there was a major peasant rebellion in the Pannonian lowlands and parts of Transylvania, crushed barbarously by the nobles. As central rule degenerated, the stage was set for a defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. In 1521, Belgrade, as known today, fell, and in 1526, the Hungarian army was destroyed in the battle. Through the centuries the Kingdom of Hungary kept its old "constitution", based on freedom of nobles, privileged people and free royal towns. Hungary around 1550After some 150 years of wars with the Ottoman Empire in the south, theTurks conquered parts of Hungary, and continued their expansion. The next decades were characterised by political chaos and the divided Hungarian nobility. Two kings were elected, whose armed conflicts weakened the country further. With the conquest of Buda in 1541 by the Turks, Hungary fell into three parts. The north-western part (Present-day Slovakia, western Transdanubia, present-day Burgenland, western Croatia and parts of north-eastern present-day Hungary) remained under the rule of the Habsburgs, and although formally was independent, subsequently became a province of their empire under the informal name Royal Hungary. The Habsburg Emperors were crowned as Kings of Hungary. The eastern part of the kingdom (Partium and Transylvania), in turn, became an independent Principality, and a Turkish vassal state. The remaining central area (mostly present-day Hungary), including the capital of Buda, became a province of the Ottoman Empire. A large part of the area became devastated by permanent warfare. Most smaller settlements disappeared. Rural people could survive only in larger settlements owned directly and protected by the Sultan, in the so called Khaz towns. The Turks were indifferent to the type of Christian religion of their subjects and the Habsburg counter-reformation measures could not reach this area. As a result, the majority of the population of the area became Protestant (Calvinist). In 1686, Austria-led Christian forces reconquered Buda, and in the next few years, all of the country except areas near Temesvár. In the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz these changes were officially recognized, and in 1718 the entire Kingdom of Hungary was restored from the Ottomans. When Austrians crushed the rebellion in 1711, to make further armed resistance impossible, they blew up some castles (most of the castles on the border between the now-reclaimed territories occupied earlier by the Ottomans and Royal Hungary, and allowed peasants to use the stones from most of the others as building material. Much of the 18th century was characterized by a reconstruction of the country. The Habsburg rulers pursued a re-settlement of ravaged areas with new immigrants from present-day Austria and Germany, from the northern and eastern parts of the country (present-day Slovakia and Romania), and from Serbia. In the final decades of the century, influenced by the French revolution, and in response to attempts at Germanisation by Joseph II (ruled 1780-1790), there emerged a national revival movement in Hungary of the Magyars, but also of all the other non-Magyar nationalities living in the Kingdom of Hungary. During the Napoleonic Wars and afterwards, the Hungarian Diet had not convened for decades. In the 1820s, the Emperor was forced to convene the Diet, and thus a Reform Period began. Nevertheless, its progress was slow, because the nobles insisted on retaining their privileges no taxation, exclusive voting rights. The Habsburg Emperors and particularly the chancellor Metternich refused to implement reforms and this led to a national revolution. On March 15, 1848, mass demonstrations in Pest and Buda enabled Hungarian reformists to push through a list of 12 demands. Faced with revolution both at home and in Vienna, Austria first had to accept Hungarian demands. Later, under the governor and the first Prime minister, the House of Habsburg was dethroned and the form of government was changed to create the first Republic of Hungary. After the Austrian revolution was suppressed, and Franz Joseph replaced his epileptic uncle Ferdinand I as Emperor during the subsequent war, the Magyars had to fight against the Austrian Army, but also against those Serbs, Croats, Slovaks, Romanians and Transylvanian Germans living on the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, who had their own ethnic-national movements, and were unwilling to accept Hungarian dominance. To counter the successes of the Hungarian revolutionary army, Franz Joseph asked for help from the "Gendarme of Europe," Czar Nicholas I, whose Russian armies invaded Hungary. The huge army of the Russian Empire and the remnants of the Austrian forces proved too powerful for the Hungarian army, and which surrendered in August 1849. Julius Freiherr von Haynau, the leader of the Austrian army, then became governor of Hungary for a few months and on October 6, ordered the execution of 13 Hungarian leaders. The autonomy of the Kingdom was partly achieved. There was also a Hungarian-Croatian Compromise of 1868, as Croatia, an already highly autonomous part of the Kingdom, broadened its constitutional freedom. Hungarian politicians gained strong influence on the Empire's political life and successfully prevented the change of the status quo in favour of other ethnic groups, notably the Czechs and the Southern Slavs. By the turn of the century, the diverse political development of the two realms raised increasing doubts about the political framework of the Monarchy. Attempts to transform the dual monarchy to a trial state or a confederacy remained futile. Besides the German-Magyar, Czech-Magyar conflicts about the future of the dual monarchy, ethnic problems escalated inside the Kingdom of Hungary. The intensifying Hungarian nationalism intended to strengthen the integrity of the Kingdom gradually alienated the non-Magyar population. As a reaction, the already significant Romanian, Serbian and Slovak nationalism further escalated. According to the census in 1910, 54% of the population of the Kingdom (excluding Croatia, mostly autonomous since 1868) used the Hungarian language. The formerly backward Kingdom of Hungary become a relatively modern, industrialised country by the turn of the century, although agriculture remained the dominant part of the economy. Many of the state institutions and the administrative system of modern Hungary were established during this period. In First World War Hungary was fighting on the side of Austria. Hungarian troops were fighting against Russians near Premsyl, in Caporetto, where they were thought to be very reliable and been on the forefront, also, Hungarians have pushed back Romanian forces from Transylvania. In 1918, by a notion of Wilson's pacifism, the army of Hungary was dismissed, leaving the country undefended. In 1918, as a result of defeat in World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy collapsed. Revolution in Budapest The new government officially declared Hungary an independent republic on November 16, after the end of the war. On 22 November 1918 the Central Romanian Council of Romanians from Transylvania announced to the Hungarian government that it had assumed control of Transylvania. On 1 December 1918 the gathering of Alba Iulia proclaimed union of Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania. By February 1919 the government had lost all popular support, having failed on the domestic and military fronts. On March 21, after the Entente military representative demanded more territorial concessions from Hungary, Károlyi resigned. The Communist Party of Hungary came to power and proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The Communists "The Reds" came to power largely thanks to being the only group with an organized fighting force, and they promised that Hungary would regain the lands it had lost (possibly with the help of the Soviet Red Army). The Communists also promised equality and social justice. In terms of domestic policy, the Communist government nationalised industrial and commercial enterprises, socialised housing, transport, banking, medicine, cultural institutions, and all landholdings of more than 400,000 square metres. Still, the popular support of the Communists proved to be short lived. In the aftermath of a coup attempt, the government took a series of reprisals. A total of 590 people were executed without trial, which alienated much of the population. Land reform took land from the nobles but did not effectively distribute it amongst peasants. The Soviet Red Army was never able to aid the new Hungarian republic. Although it did not lose any battles, the Hungarian Red Army gave up land under pressure from the Entente. All these events, and in particular the final military defeat, led to a deep feeling of dislike among the general population against the Soviet Union, which had not kept its promise to offer military assistance and the Jews (since many members of Kun's government were Jewish, made it easy to blame for the government's mistakes. The new fighting force in Hungary were the Conservative counter-revolutionaries the "Whites". Starting in Western Hungary and spreading throughout the country, a White Terror began by other half-regular and half-militarist detachments (as the police power crashed, there were no serious national regular forces and authorities), and many Communists and other leftists were executed without trial. Radical Whites launched pogroms against the Jews, displayed as the cause of all the difficulties of Hungary. The leaving Romanian army pillaged the country: livestock, machinery and agricultural products were carried to Romania in hundreds of freight cars. The estimated property damage of their activity was so much that the international peace conference in 1919 did not require Hungary to pay war redemption to Romania. On November 16, with the consent of Romanian forces, Horthy's army marched into Budapest. His government gradually restored security, stopped terror, and set up authorities, but thousands of sympathizers of the regimes were imprisoned. Radical political movements were suppressed. In January 1920, Hungarian men and women cast the first secret ballots in the country's political history. The voting was not totally democratic, because the entire left-wing either boycotted or was excluded from the voting. A large right-wing majority was elected to a unicameral assembly. In March, the parliament annulled the Compromise of 1867, and it restored the Hungarian monarchy but postponed electing a king until civil disorder had subsided. Instead, Miklos Horthy was elected Regent and was empowered, among other things, to appoint Hungary's Prime Minister, veto legislation, convene or dissolve the parliament, and command the armed forces. Hungary's signing of the Treaty of Trianon on June 4, 1920, ratified the country's dismemberment. The territorial provisions of the treaty, which ensured continued discord between Hungary and its neighbours, required Hungary to surrender more than two-thirds of its pre-war lands. Nearly one-third of the 10 million ethnic Hungarians found themselves outside the diminished homeland. The country's ethnic composition was left almost homogeneous, Hungarians constituting about 90% of the population, Germans made up about 6%, and Slovaks, Croats, Romanians, Jews and Gypsies accounted for the remainder. New international borders separated Hungary's industrial base from its sources of raw materials and its former markets for agricultural and industrial products. Minister in July 1920. His right-wing government issued a numerus clausus law, limiting admission of "political insecure elements" (these were often Jews) to universities and, in order to quiet rural discontent, took initial steps toward fulfilling a promise of major land reform by dividing some larger estates into smallholdings. Prime Minister Bethlen dominated Hungarian politics between 1921 and 1931. He fashioned a political machine by amending the electoral law, providing jobs in the expanding bureaucracy to his supporters, and manipulating elections in rural areas. Bethlen restored order to the country by giving the radical counterrevolutionaries payoffs and government jobs in exchange for ceasing their campaign of terror against Jews and leftists. In 1921, he made a deal with the Social Democrats and trade unions (called Bethlen-Peyer Pact), agreeing, among other things, to legalize their activities and free political prisoners in return for their pledge to refrain from spreading anti-Hungarian propaganda, calling political strikes, and organizing the peasantry. Bethlen brought Hungary into the League of Nations in 1922 and out of international isolation by signing a treaty of friendship with Italy in 1927. The revision of the Treaty of Trianon rose to the top of Hungary's political agenda and the strategy employed by Bethlen consisted by strengthening the economy and building relations with stronger nations. Revision of the treaty had such a broad backing in Hungary that Bethlen used it, at least in part, to deflect criticism of his economic, social, and political policies. The Great Depression induced a drop in the standard of living and the political mood of the country shifted further toward the right. In 1932 Horthy appointed a new prime-minister, that changed the course of Hungarian policy towards closer cooperation with Germany and started an effort to magyarize the few remaining ethnic minorities in Hungary. A trade agreement was signed with Germany that drew Hungary's economy out of depression but made Hungarydependent on the German economy for both raw materials and markets. Adolf Hitler used promises of returning lost territories, and threats of military intervention and economic pressure to compel Hungarians into supporting Nazi policies, including those related to Jews. In 1935, Hungary's leading fascist party, Arrow Cross, was founded. An attempt to appease both the Nazis and Hungarian antisemites was made by passing the First Jewish Law, which set quotas limiting Jews to 20% of positions in several professions. The law satisfied neither the Nazis nor Hungary's own radicals. While Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, Hungary declared war on 26 June, entering World War II. In late 1941, the Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front experienced success at the Battle of Uman. By 1943, after the Hungarian Second Army suffered extremely heavy losses at the river Don, the Hungarian government sought to negotiate a surrender with the Allies. On 19 March 1944, as a result of this duplicity, German troops quietly occupied Hungary in what was known as Operation Margarethe. But, by now it was clear that the Hungarians were Germany's "unwilling satellite". On 15 October 1944, Horthy made a weak effort to drive the country out of the war. This time the Germans launched Operation Panzerfaust and Horthy was replaced by a puppet government under the pro-German and his pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party remained loyal to the Germans until the end of the war. In late 1944, Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front again experienced success at the Battle of Debrecen. But this was followed immediately by the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the Battle of Budapest. During the German occupation in May-June 1944, the Arrow Cross Party and Hungarian police deported nearly 440,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz.Over 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, as well as tens of thousands of Romani people. Hundreds of Hungarian people were also executed by the Arrow Cross Party for sheltering Jews. The war left Hungary devastated destroying over 60% of the economy and causing huge loss of life. On 13 February 1945, the Hungarian capital city surrendered unconditionally. On 8 May 1945, World War II in Europe officially ended.
Hungarian Pulis
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