Hungary [antikvár]

A Little Bit of HistoryHungary is a country of encounters, therefore a country of conflicts. Her geographical situation almost predestined the land, and the peoples who settled here one after the other, to this fate. Here, even the forces of nature clash and fight for hegemony. From north-west, the oceanic air currents break into the Carpathian basintaking a round about way because of the Alpsthose of the Mediterranean arrive from south, and the continental influences from east or south-east; now one wins, now the other: the Hungarian meteorologist can never be sure of himself. None of these influences can conquer the land for good, and none of them withdraws defeated for good; the surrounding climatic zones have been struggling for thousands of years for possession of the Carpathian basin, each of them from its own position of strength on this small area.Hungary is a historical crossway too. Here the highroads of many peoples meet. Today's highways, airways, and the lines of the nine express trains that cross Budapest can be traced back as far as one or two thousand years. The two important transcontinental-intercontinental roads of the Roman age, the Silk Road which connected the West and the East, and the north-to-south Amber Road which connected Italy and the Baltic, met in Transdanubia.Yet not only roads that connect peoples passed through this land but also fronts that separate peoples, and this also for thousands of years: at least since the watch-towers were built along the limes of the Roman empire to hold back the incessant, formidable attacks of barbaric tribes along the Danube.One can hardly count how many times the region of the middle course of the Danube has been the battlefield of East and West; how many times the Romans, Huns, Avars, Magyars, Mongols, Turks, Germanic and Slavic peoplesor if you prefer: civilized and barbaric, pagan and Christian, Catholic and Protestant, revolutionary and anti-revolutionary, Magyar and Magyarhave clashed on the banks of the Danube.The land has been inhabited since ancienttimes. Traces of the oldest European human settlement were found in the Vértes mountains in Transdanubia, and they are estimated to be half a million years old. Primitive man dwelt in the caves of its karstic regions: then came the thousands of years of nomadic tribes. But no really significant culture had developed until the Roman conquest. Part of the territory of Hungary then became a province of the Roman empire under the name Pannónia. Afterwards the waves of invaders swept away the province of Pannónia, together with the traces of the Sarmatians, Gepids and Celts; Huns, Ostrogoths, Longobards, Avars chased each other across the land, Slavic tribes settled down, and as long as the Frankish empire remained strong, incursions from the west also reached the land.The Magyar Conquestso we call the last years of the ninth century, when the Magyar confederacy of tribes, with an army of 108 families, invaded the Carpathian basin. But the most difficult undertaking was yet to come: to gain a foothold, to settle down for good on this draughty land which had changed hands so many times.