Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/70

The Magyars, like the Germans, are fanatical enemies of the Czechoslovak nation. That is not our fault, but it is due to the Magyars themselves. There is nothing in history to indicate that between the Czechoslovaks and the Magyars friendship or even sympathy had been the rule, but neither are there evidences of chronic hatred. Only in the last fifty years have the relations of the two nations been marked with downright hostility.

Almost eleven hundred years ago, in the center of Europe to the east of German territories, there was growing up in Moravia a political organization of West Slav tribes who later formed the Bohemian-Moravian state. Among these tribes were the Slovaks, both those living in Moravia and those settled under the Carpathians. The Great Moravian realm of the Mojmir dynasty enjoyed favorable conditions of development and would have grown into a powerful state, if it had not been for the invasion of migratory Magyar hordes which at the end of the ninth century penetrated into the plains between the Danube and the Tisza, captured Pannonia and about the year 906 destroyed the Great Moravian empire.

The Pannonian plains seem to have been destined by nature for the stamping ground of various Asiatic hordes. History speaks of several Turanian races holding sway over what later became Hungary. First came the Huns, then the Avars and finally the Magyars. All of these races were extremely backward culturally and maintained their rule over subjugated European peoples through violence and a better military organization. But force and military discipline did not save the Asiatic hordes from defeat. Huns and Avars were destroyed, and the Magyars who for half a century sent out robber expeditions from Pannonia into the neighboring lands as far as France, suffered signal defeat in 955.

Their bellicoseness was greatly moderated by this slaughter. At the end of the 10th century Christianity began to take roots among them, and their first Christian king, St. Stephen, may be considered the real founder of the Hungarian state.

The country received the name of Hungary after the people who established here a new state, for Magyars were called by their neighbors Huns. Their own name for their nation is derived from the name of the principal of the seven tribes into which they were divided.

By accepting Christianity and the fruits of European culture Magyars saved their nation from extinction. Their number was not great; according to tradition recorded in their chronicles the Magyar nation was composed of eight tribes of which seven were properly Magyar and one was Chazar or Kuman. These tribes again were divided into 108 families or clans, so that their total number could have hardly exceeded 200,000 souls. About one-fourth or one-fifth of it made up the army. In view of the constant robber expeditions which the Magyars carried on during the first fifty years it may be safely stated that during the first century of their settlement in Hungary the number of Magyars did not increase, but rather diminished. Thus it is not strange that St. Stephen in establishing a Christian state had to lean on all the nations of Hungary, and primarily upon those who communicated culture to his barbarian kinsmen.

Among these men were Germans both those settled in Hungary and to the West, and of the Slavs especially Slovaks, Slovenians and Croatians; this is proved by the Magyar scholar Jan Melich from Magyar Christian terminology. Further proofs are found in Magyar political and legal institutions taken over from Germans and Slavs, as is evident both from their substance and their names. The higher cultural level of the Slavs furnishes the explanation, why a full third of Magyar vocabulary is derived from Slav roots; many Magyar local names and especially names of Hungarian castles indicate that the Slavs had well-developed political institutions before the Magyar invasion. Magyars found a complete system of Slav castles or forts which they took over without materially changing the names. Thus in Slovakia we find Nitra, Hlohovec, Bečkob, Trenčín, Novohrad (Nograd), Všehrad, etc., in other