The Danube Cycleway Volume 2. Mike Wells

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      Árpád, leader of the Magyars, is commemorated in Ráckeve (Stage 1)

      Hungary and the Magyars

      The Magyars, led by Árpád, settled Hungary between various tribal groups. The conversion to Catholic Christianity in 1000 of King Istvan I (Stephen I), who was canonised as Szent Istvan, and adoption of western European script and methods of government, established the country as a European nation. Over the next 500 years a succession of kings steadily expanded the Greater Hungarian Kingdom and by the beginning of the 16th century in addition to Hungary and Transylvania (northern Romania) it included all of modern day Slovakia, much of Croatia plus parts of Austria, Poland, Serbia and Ukraine. However a peasants’ revolt in 1514 and disputes between the king and his nobles left the country in a weak position between two other powerful empires, the Ottoman Turks and Austrian Habsburgs.

      Ottoman Turks

      Having captured Bulgaria in 1396 and the Byzantine capital Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) in 1453, the Islamic Ottoman Turks continued to move north. In 1525, as part of long held ambitions to extend their territories across the Balkans into central Europe, they formed an alliance with France aimed at confronting the power of the Habsburg-dominated Holy Roman Empire. After taking Belgrade (1521), then a Hungarian city, the Turks were well placed to march upon the Habsburg capital, Vienna. To do so they first had to conquer Hungary. In 1526 the advancing Turks routed a Hungarian army, commanded by King Ladislaus II, at the Battle of Mohács (Stage 5), and although the King managed to escape he drowned crossing the river. Many Serbs and Hungarians fled before the arrival of the Ottomans who captured Budapest unopposed and went on to lay siege to Vienna in 1529, although they failed to capture it. The death of King Ladislaus, who had no heir, marked the end of the independent Hungarian Kingdom, the crown passing by marriage to the Austrian Habsburgs, who ruled what was left of the country from Pressburg (modern day Bratislava). Southern Serbia was annexed by the Ottomans in 1540.

      For nearly 160 years the Turks controlled the lower Danube basins, ruling over a mainly empty land, the Christian population having either fled or been slaughtered. A number of attempts to push further into western Europe were unsuccessful, culminating in defeat at the second siege of Vienna (1683), a battle that was hailed by the Catholic Church as the deciding victory of Christianity over Islam in Europe. The Turks were gradually pushed back through Hungary by Habsburg forces, before being expelled from Hungarian territory after the Battle of Belgrade (1688). They did however retain control of southern Serbia, Wallachia (southern Romania), Dobruja (Danube Delta) and Bulgaria.

      The battlefield at Mohács where defeat by the Ottoman Turks ended the Hungarian Kingdom (Stage 6)

      The Habsburgs

      The House of Habsburg, which originated in 11th-century Switzerland, came to prominence when Rudolf von Habsburg became king of Germany (1273) and Duke of Austria (1282). After becoming the dominant force in the Holy Roman Empire, a series of dynastic marriages expanded Habsburg power over Spain and its American colonies, Burgundy, the Netherlands, Bohemia and much of Italy. Along the Danube they controlled Austria itself, the Austrian Vorland (modern Württemberg) and Slovakia after 1526. When Prince Eugene of Savoy, commanding Habsburg forces, drove the Turks out of Hungary in 1687, Hungary and its territories in Croatia, Vojvodina (northern Serbia) and Transylvania (northern Romania) all came under Habsburg rule. The Habsburgs repopulated the empty lands with returning Hungarians and Serbs plus large numbers of Swabian Germans who had been displaced from Germany by the Thirty Years War. The Danube was the major transport corridor linking this empire together.

      Independence movements

      In 1848 the Austrians put down a violent uprising, seeking Hungarian independence. However, the Hungarians did gain a measure of self-government under the overall rule of the emperor, with the Habsburg possessions being rechristened in 1867 as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the same time there were unsuccessful uprisings by the Serbs in Novi Sad against their Austrian rulers and by Romanians in Wallachia against Ottoman rule. Although these were put down by a combination of Russian and Turkish forces, they started a process by which Wallachia and Moldavia gained independence (as Romania) from Turkey during the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–1878. This same war also saw Bulgaria and Serbia escape from Turkish rule and represented the beginning of Russian interest and influence in the region.

      The First World War and its consequences

      The shots that started the First World War (1914–1918) occurred in Sarajevo (Bosnia) when a Serb nationalist assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Austria retaliated by attacking Serbia, starting a snowball effect in which a series of alliances drew almost all of the nations of Europe into the conflict.

      From Zemun (foreground) the first shots of the First World War were fired at Belgrade (far distance) across the River Sava (Stage 11)

      The Treaties of Versailles (with Germany), St Germain (with Austria), Trianon (with Hungary) and Sevres (with Turkey), which followed the war in 1919–1920, had an enormous effect on both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Turkish empires. The Habsburgs lost their throne after over 600 years and their empire was dismantled with Romania gaining Transylvania and Slovakia becoming part of the new country of Czechoslovakia. Hungary and Austria were left as two small independent nations. In Turkey, the Ottomans were removed and their empire dismantled. The new kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which included Serbia and territories once controlled by both Austro-Hungarians and Ottoman Turks, gained the most. In 1929 it assumed the name of Yugoslavia (literally ‘land of the south Slavs’). There was an extensive movement of peoples, particularly of Hungarians leaving Transylvania and Vojvodina.

      In Germany the effect was mostly economic, large reparation payments and inflation leading to national bankruptcy and political unrest. The Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, took advantage of this upheaval, taking power in Germany in 1933 with a policy that included overturning Versailles and expanding German territory. A referendum in Austria (1938) led to the Anschluss, political union between Germany and Austria СКАЧАТЬ