Hungarian

The Hungarians, or Magyars, speak a Ugric Uralic language, originating among hunter-herders east of the Urals. By the early ninth century they lived on the Black Sea steppes in Etelköz; around 895, pressed by the Pechenegs, they crossed the Carpathians into the basin left politically vacant by the fall of the Avars.

Árpád horsemen raided Italy, France and Spain until defeat at Lechfeld in 955; Stephen accepted Christianity and was crowned king around 1000. The Kingdom of Hungary became a major Central European power, though the Mongol invasion of 1241 to 1242 depopulated much of the Great Plain.

Ottoman victory at Mohács in 1526 split the kingdom into three: a central Turkish pashaluk, Transylvania, and Habsburg Royal Hungary, which kept Hungarian statehood alive through a century and a half of border war. Christian forces retook Buda in 1686 and the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 restored the realm to the Habsburg crown; the Rákóczi war of 1703 to 1711 was the last great feudal revolt, after which the plain was replanted with Magyars and settlers.