It has been already noticed[47] that the main geographical work of the Magyar was to cut off that south-eastern world, the world where the Greek and the Slave, struggling for its supremacy, were both swallowed up by the Ottoman, from the Slavonic region between the Carpathians and the Baltic. ♦Great Moravia. 884-894.♦ At the moment of the Magyar inroad, the foundation of the Great-Moravian kingdom, the kingdom of Sviatopluk, made it more likely than it has ever been since that the Slaves of the two regions might be united into a single power. That kingdom, stretching to Sirmium, marched on the north-western dependencies of the Eastern Empire, while on the north it took in the Chrobatian land which was afterwards Little Poland. Such a power might have been dangerous to both Empires at once; but the invaders whom the two Emperors called in proved far more dangerous than Great Moravia could ever have been. The Magyars, Ogres, or Hungarians, the Turks of the Imperial geographer,[48] were called in by his father Leo to check the Bulgarians, as they were called in by Arnulf in the West to check the new power of Moravia. They passed, from the north rather than from the east, into the land which was disputed between Moravian and Bulgarian. ♦906. Relations between Hungary and Germany.♦ The Moravian power was overthrown, and the Magyars, stepping into its place, became constant invaders of both Empires and their dependent lands. But to the west, the victories of the Saxon kings put a check to their inroads, and, save some shiftings on the Austrian march, the frontier of Germany and Hungary has been singularly abiding.
♦The two Chrobatias separated by the Magyars.♦
While the Magyar settlement placed a barrier between the two chief regions of the Slavonic race as a whole, it specially placed a barrier between the two divisions of the Croatian or Chrobatian people, those on the Vistula and those on the Drave and Save. ♦1025.♦ The northern Chrobatia still reached south of the Carpathians, and it was not until the eleventh century that the Magyar kingdom, by the acquisition of its southern part, gained a natural frontier which, with some shiftings, served to part it off from the Slavonic powers to the north of it. To the south-east an uncultivated and wooded tract separated the Magyar territory from the lands between the Carpathians and the lower Danube which were still held by the Patzinaks. ♦Geographical position of the Magyars.♦ The oldest Magyar settlement thus occupied the central part of the modern kingdom, on the Theiss and the middle Danube. There the Turanian invaders formed a ruling and central race, within a Slavonic fringe at each end. There were northern and southern Croats, Slovaks to the north, and Ruthenians to the north-west, towards the kindred land of Halicz or Red Russia.
♦Hungary a kingdom: its growth.♦
Hungary, ranking from the beginning of the eleventh century as a kingdom of Latin Christendom, presently grew in all directions. We have just seen its advance at the expense of the northern Chrobatian land. Its advance at the expense of the southern branch of that race, and of the other Slavonic lands which owed more or less of allegiance to the Eastern Empire, was still more marked. ♦Hungary and Croatia.♦ All these lands at one time or another gave royal titles to the King of Hungary, King also of Croatia, of Dalmatia, of Rama, even of Bulgaria. But in most of these lands the Hungarian kingship was temporary or nominal; in Croatia alone, though the frontier has often shifted, Hungarian rule has been abiding. Croatia has never formed an independent state since the first Hungarian conquest; it has never been fully wrested from Hungary since the days of Manuel Komnênos. In those days it was indeed a question whether Hungary itself had not an overlord in the Eastern Emperor. After the great Bulgarian revolt that question could never be raised again. But the Hungarian frontier was ever shifting towards the former lands of the Empire, Venetian, Servian, and Bulgarian. ♦Kingdom of Slavonia. 1492.♦ One part of the old Croatian kingdom, the land between Save and Drave, was cut off to form, first an appanage, then an annexed kingdom, by the special name of Slavonia, a name shared by it with lands on the Baltic, perhaps on the Ægæan.
But, from the first days of its conversion, the Hungarian realm began to advance in other directions, in lands which had formed no part of the Empire since the days of Aurelian. ♦Transsilvania or Siebenbürgen.
1004.♦ Before their Chrobatian conquest, the Magyars passed the boundary which divided them from the Patzinaks, and won the land which from its position took the name of Transsilvania.[49] Colonists were invited to settle in the thinly inhabited land. One chief settlement was of the Low-Dutch speech from Saxony and Flanders. ♦Various colonies.♦ Another element was formed by the Turanian Szeklers, whose Latin form of Siculi might easily mislead. Another migration brought back the name and speech of the Old Rome to the first land from which she had withdrawn her power.
♦Origin of the Roumans.♦
The legendary belief in the unbroken life of the Roman name and speech in the lands north of the Danube is merely a legendary belief.[50] There can be no reasonable doubt that the present principality of Roumania and the Rouman lands beyond its borders derived their present population and language from a settlement of the Rouman people further south. South of the Danube, the Rouman or Vlach population, scattered among Greeks, Slaves, and Albanians, at many points from Pindos northwards, has kept its distinct nationality, but it has never formed a political whole. ♦Their Northern migration.♦ But a migration beyond the Danube enabled the Roumans in course of time to found two distinct principalities, and to form a chief element in the population of a third. There is no sign of any Rouman population north of the Danube before the thirteenth century. The events of that century opened a way for a reversal of the ordinary course of migration, for the settlement of lands beyond the Empire by former subjects of the Empire.
♦Rouman element in the third Bulgarian kingdom.♦
We have seen that the third Bulgarian kingdom, that which arose at the end of the twelfth century, was in its origin as much Rouman as Bulgarian. ♦Cumans in Dacia.♦ By this time the rule of the Patzinaks beyond the lower Danube had given way to that of the kindred Cumans. ♦Mongolian invasion.♦ Then the storm of Mongolian invasion, which crushed Hungary itself for a moment, crushed the Cuman power for ever. But the remnant of the Cuman nation lived on within the Magyar realm, and gave its king yet another title, that of King of Cumania. ♦Rouman settlement in the Cuman land.♦ The former Cuman land now lay open to new settlers, and the Rouman part of the inhabitants of the new Bulgaria began to cross the Danube into that land and the neighbouring districts. In the course of the thirteenth century they occupied the present Wallachia, and already formed an element in the mixed population of Transsilvania. A Rouman state thus began to be formed, which took the name by which the Roumans were known to their neighbours. The new Vlachia, Wallachia, stretched on both sides of the Aluta. ♦Little Wallachia.♦ To the west of that river, Little Wallachia formed, as the banat of Severin, an integral part of the Hungarian kingdom. ♦Great Wallachia.♦ Great Wallachia to the east formed a separate principality, dependent or independent on Hungary, according to its strength from time to time. ♦Dobrutcha.♦ And, towards the end of the fourteenth century, the land south of the Danube, called Dobrutcha, passed from Bulgaria to Wallachia. ♦Moldavia. c. 1341.♦ Another Rouman migration, passing from the land of Marmaros north of Transsilvania, founded the principality of Moldavia between the Carpathians and the Dniester. This too stood to the Hungarian crown in the same shifting relation as Great Wallachia, and sometimes transferred its vassalage to Lithuania and Poland.