Man, Past and Present

by A. H. Keane

Avars and Magyars.

In the same region, but farther north[731], lay also a "Great Hungary," the original seat of those other Ugrian Finns known as Hungarians and Magyars, who followed later in the track of the Bulgars, and like them formed permanent settlements in the Danube basin, but higher up in Pannonia, the present kingdom of Hungary. Here, however, the Magyars had been preceded by the kindred (or at least distantly connected) Avars, the dominant people in the Middle Danube lands for a great part of the period between the departure of the Huns and the arrival of the Magyars[732]. Rolling up like a storm cloud from the depths of Siberia to the Volga and Euxine, sweeping everything before them, reducing Kutigurs, Utigurs, Bulgars, and Slavs, the Avars presented themselves in the sixth century on the frontiers of the empire as the unwelcome allies of Justinian. Arrested at the Elbe by the Austrasian Franks, and hard pressed by the Gepidae, they withdrew to the Lower Danube under the ferocious Khagan Bayan, who, before his overthrow by the Emperor Mauritius and death in 602, had crossed the Danube, captured Sirmium, and reduced the whole region bordering on the Byzantine empire. Later the still powerful Avars with their Slav followers, "the Avar viper and the Slav locust," overran the Balkan lands, and in 625 nearly captured Constantinople. They were at last crushed by Pepin, king of Italy, who reoccupied Sirmium in 799, and brought back such treasure that the value of gold was for a time enormously reduced.

Magyar Origins and early Records.

Then came the opportunity of the Hunagars (Hungarians), who, after advancing from the Urals to the Volga (550 A.D.), had reached the Danube about 886. Here they were invited to the aid of the Germanic king Arnulf, threatened by a formidable coalition of the western Slavs under the redoubtable Zventibolg, a nominal Christian who would enter the church on horseback followed by his wild retainers, and threaten the priest at the altar with the lash. In the upland Transylvanian valleys the Hunagars had been joined by eight of the derelict Khazar tribes, amongst whom were the Megers or Mogers, whose name under the form of Magyar was eventually extended to the united Hunagar-Khazar nation. Under their renowned king Arpad, son of Almuth, they first overthrew Zventibolg, and then with the help of the surviving Avars reduced the surrounding Slav populations. Thus towards the close of the ninth century was founded in Pannonia the present kingdom of Hungary, in which were absorbed all the kindred Mongol and Finno-Turki elements that still survived from the two previous Mongolo-Turki empires, established in the same region by the Huns under Attila (430-453), and by the Avars under Khagan Bayan (562-602).

After reducing the whole of Pannonia and ravaging Carinthia and Friuli, the Hunagars raided Bavaria and Italy (899-900), imposed a tribute on the feeble successor of Arnulf (910), and pushed their plundering expeditions as far west as Alsace, Lorraine, and Burgundy, everywhere committing atrocities that recalled the memory of Attila's savage hordes. Trained riders, archers and javelin-throwers from infancy, they advanced to the attack in numerous companies following hard upon each other, avoiding close quarters, but wearing out their antagonists by the persistence of their onslaughts. They were the scourge and terror of Europe, and were publicly proclaimed by the Emperor Otto I. (955) the enemies of God and humanity.

This period of lawlessness and savagery was closed by the conversion of Saint Stephen I. (997-1038), after which the Magyars became gradually assimilated in type and general culture, but not in speech, to the western nations[733]. Their harmonious and highly cultivated language still remains a typical member of the Ural-Altaic family, reflecting in its somewhat composite vocabulary the various Finno-Ugric and Turki elements (Ugrians and Permians from the Urals, Volga Finns, Turki Avars and Khazars), of which the substratum of the Magyar nation is constituted[734].

"The modern Magyars," says Peisker, "are one of the most varied race-mixtures on the face of the earth, and one of the two chief Magyar types of today—traced to the Arpad era [end of ninth century] by tomb-findings—is dolichocephalic with a narrow visage. There we have before us Altaian origin, Ugrian speech and Indo-European type combined[735]."

Politically the Magyars continue to occupy a position of vital importance in Eastern Europe, wedged in between the northern and southern Slav peoples, and thus presenting an insurmountable obstacle to the aspirations of the Panslavist dreamers. The fiery and vigorous Magyar nationality, a compact body of about 8,000,000 (1898), holds the boundless plains watered by the Middle Danube and the Theiss, and thus permanently separates the Chechs, Moravians, and Slovaks of Bohemia and the northern Carpathians from their kinsmen, the Yugo-Slavs ("Southern Slavs") of Servia and the other now Slavonised Balkan lands. These Yugo-Slavs are in their turn severed by the Rumanians of Neo-Latin speech from their northern and eastern brethren, the Ruthenians, Poles, Great and Little Russians. Had the Magyars and Rumanians adopted any of the neighbouring Slav idioms, it is safe to say that, like the Ugrian Bulgarians, they must have long ago been absorbed in the surrounding Panslav world, with consequences to the central European nations which it would not be difficult to forecast. Here we have a striking illustration of the influence of language in developing and preserving the national sentiment, analogous in many respects to that now witnessed on a larger scale amongst the English-speaking populations on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Austral lands. From this point of view the ethnologist may unreservedly accept Ehrenreich's trenchant remark that "the nation stands and falls with its speech[736]."

FOOTNOTES:

[671] Natural History of Man, 1865 ed. pp. 185-6.