Kingdom of Hungary

For nearly a thousand years, from the coronation of its first king around 1000 until 1946, a Catholic kingdom ruled the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe. At its widest the Kingdom of Hungary took in today's Hungary, Slovakia, Transylvania and other parts of Romania, and smaller areas now in Ukraine, Serbia, Austria, Croatia and Slovenia, and from 1102 it shared its king with Croatia. It was a medieval great power, was split apart by the Ottoman advance in the sixteenth century, and later formed one half of Austria-Hungary.

Hungarian tribes under Árpád occupied the Carpathian Basin in 895, and their raids into Western Europe ended with defeat by Otto I at Lechfeld. Stephen I, son of the prince Géza, was crowned at Esztergom on Christmas Day 1000 and built a Christian monarchy with strong support for the Church; he was canonised in 1083. His family, the Árpád dynasty, ruled for three centuries. Ladislaus I acquired Slavonia in 1091, and his successor Coloman was crowned king of Croatia and Dalmatia in 1102, creating a lasting union of the two crowns.

The Golden Bull of Andrew II, issued in 1222, was a charter defining the rights of the nobility. In 1241 the Mongols invaded and destroyed the Hungarian army at Mohi. Estimates suggest that 15–25 percent of the population, some 300,000–500,000 people, died during the invasion. Béla IV rebuilt the country and ordered a network of stone castles, earning the title of "second founder".

The Árpád line ended in 1301, and after years of disorder Charles I of the Angevin house was crowned in 1310. He restored royal authority, developed the gold mines that made Hungary a leading European producer, and introduced the forint. His son Louis I also became king of Poland in 1370. Sigismund of Luxembourg, king from 1387, was later Holy Roman Emperor and spent much of his reign fighting the expanding Ottomans, losing at Nicopolis in 1396. John Hunyadi led resistance in the following decades and broke an Ottoman siege of Belgrade in 1456. His son Matthias Corvinus, who reigned from 1458 to 1490, presided over what is often called the kingdom's golden age, when the kingdom fielded the mercenary Black Army and, from 1485, Matthias held Vienna.

In 1526 Suleiman the Magnificent destroyed the Hungarian army at Mohács, and the young king Louis II drowned in flight. Rival kings were elected: John Zápolya and the Habsburg Ferdinand I. After the Ottomans took Buda in 1541 the country was divided into three: Habsburg Royal Hungary in the north and west, Ottoman Hungary in the centre and south, and the Principality of Transylvania in the east. The division lasted until the Habsburgs reconquered the country after the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683.

Hungary kept its own diet and constitution but chafed at Habsburg rule, rising repeatedly, most notably under Francis II Rákóczi in 1703–1711. Latin remained the official language until 1836, when Hungarian was introduced. The revolution of 1848–49 was crushed with Russian help, but the Compromise of 1867 gave Hungary equal standing with Austria within the Dual Monarchy.

Defeat in the First World War ended the monarchy in 1918. After a brief Soviet republic in 1919, the kingdom was restored in 1920 as a monarchy without a king, with Admiral Miklós Horthy as regent. The Treaty of Trianon that year transferred 72 percent of its territory to neighbouring states, leaving over 3.3 million Hungarians outside the new borders. Seeking revision, Hungary aligned with Germany, regained land in 1938–41 and joined the war against the Soviet Union. After German forces occupied Hungary in March 1944, more than 434,000 Jews were deported between May and July, most to Auschwitz, in close cooperation between Hungarian and German authorities. Under Soviet occupation the kingdom was formally replaced by a republic in 1946.

Our 1400, 1492, 1500 and 1530 maps draw the Kingdom of Hungary; by 1530, after Mohács, the Ottoman Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy were contesting its lands, and it later formed part of Austria-Hungary. Key figures include Stephen I and Matthias Corvinus; the modern state is covered under Hungary.