centuries. Originally nomads who raised (and rode) horses, the Magyars spoke a
language unrelated to any other in Europe (except Finnish). Known as effective
warriors, they were employed by Arnulf, king of the East Franks (r.887–899), when
he fought the Moravians and by the Byzantine emperor Leo VI (r.886–912) during
his struggle against the Bulgars. In 894, taking advantage of their position, the
Hungarians, as we may now call them, conquered much of the Danube basin for
themselves.
From there, for over fifty years, they raided into Germany, Italy, and even
southern France. At the same time, however, the Hungarians worked for various
western rulers. Until 937 they spared Bavaria, for example, because they were allies
of its duke. Gradually they made the transition from nomads to farmers, and their
polity coalesced into the Kingdom of Hungary. This is no doubt a major reason for
the end of their attacks. At the time, however, the cessation of their raids was widely
credited to the German king Otto I (r.936–973), who won a major victory over a
Hungarian marauding party at the battle of Lechfeld in 955.
PUBLIC POWER AND PRIVATE RELATIONSHIPS
The invasions left new political arrangements in their wake. Unlike the Byzantines
and Muslims, European rulers had no mercenaries and no salaried officials. They
commanded others by ensuring personal loyalty. The Carolingian kings had had their
fideles—their faithful men. Tenth-century rulers were even more dependent on ties
of dependency: they needed their “men” (homines), their “vassals” (vassalli).
Whatever the term, all were armed retainers who fought for a lord. Sometimes these
subordinates held land from their lord, either as a reward for their military service or
as an inheritance for which services were due. The term for such an estate, fief
(feodum), gave historians the word “feudalism” to describe the social and economic
system created by the relationships among lords, vassals, and fiefs. Some recent
historians argue that the word “feudalism” has been used in too many different and
contradictory ways to mean anything at all. Was it a mode of exploiting the land that
involved lords and serfs? A condition of anarchy and lawlessness? Or a political
system of ordered gradations of power, from the king on down? All of these
definitions are possible. Ordinarily we may dispense with the word feudalism, though
it can be very useful as a “fuzzy category” when contrasting, for example, the
political, social, and economic organization of Antiquity with that of the Middle Ages.
Lords and Vassals