The controversial video of the Battle of Bratislava of 907 AD has led many to ask: why didn’t we learn about this battle in school? “There was an ideological reason why the events that stoked national pride” were missing from the curricula, said faor instance history teacher Gergely Czuczor, chairman of the Fidesz Group in Budaörs, in February 2020, adding that “the current curriculum highlights the series of lost battles, the Battle of Merseburg, the Battle of Augsburg, but the Battle of Bratislava is not mentioned.” (As already mentioned, this is not entirely true, since the battle was actually included in the former six-grade secondary school curriculum, and some textbooks also mentioned it.) The communists were also credited with “hushing up” the victory by writer Gábor Czakó in 2019.
It is true that the battle was not properly appreciated until the 21st century, for example, it was only in 2008 that a scholarly publication was published (A forgotten triumph. HM Military History Institute and Museum. Edited by Béla Gyula Torma and László Veszprémy.)
Yet, the Battle of Bratislava was certainly not “hushed up” by the communists, who could not have done so, among other reasons because they were in power only throughout a tiny, 40-year fragment of the 1100 years during which the event was continuously neglected.
The story of the battle’s sinking into oblivion began with the fact that not a single medieval Hungarian source mentioned it. The Hungarian chronicle literature, from Anonymus to Bonfini, including the Chronicon Pictum, did not waste a single word on it. Its significance and details were first described by a Bavarian humanist, Aventinus, in a book written in 1522, more than six centuries after the event. Consider: the date when Aventius wrote his account is actually closer to our time than to the date of the battle, and most of its claims cannot be supported by contemporary sources.
However, before accusing the Hungarian medieval chroniclers of unpatriotic behaviour, it should be said that these relatively late chronicles (dating from 13th-15th centuries) could not have been based on written documents from around 907, since at that time hardly any such documents in Hungary were created. Looking back centuries later on the events of the time, they relied on legends handed down by word of mouth, and, which might be pure coincidence, there were no such colourful stories surrounding the Battle of Bratislava as the legend of Botond or Lehel. As it is, only a few lines referring to the battle in Western yearbooks have survived. As the military historian Lászó Veszprémy writes in the above-mentioned volume, this lack of medieval sources was the fundamental reason why ‘for long periods even the fact that the battle took place was doubted, both in Hungary and in the German-speaking world’.
The first Hungarian work to mention the battle was written only 140 years after Aventinus, in 1663, referencing him. However, its author, János Nadányi, credited Aventinus with what today’s experts consider a falsification: claiming that the army of Louis the Child was made to flee after the battle of Bratislava.
Although 18th-century historians began to appreciate the significance of the Bratislava victory, it was the emergence of modern source criticism in the 19th century that disproved this claim. Gyula Pauler (1841-1903) studied at the Piarist monastery, was the first chief archivist of the Hungarian National Archives, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a member of its board of directors and chairman of its history department. He was partly responsible for editing and publishing the sources on the Magyars’ arrival in the Carpathian basin. This strict historian-archivist, who insisted on data-oriented, professional source criticism, declared Aventinus’s description to be a fabrication. He did not doubt that the battle had indeed taken place, but, unlike Aventinus, he placed the site of the battle near Bánhida, on logical grounds.
But today’s experts believe he was wrong both in his criticism and concerning the geographical location of the battle, although he was not to be blamed for this. Aventinus’ placing the event at Bratislava was corroborated by old Salzburg yearbooks, which only came to light 18 years after Pauler’s death, in 1921. The growing knowledge on the military technology of the period also corroborated parts of Aventinus’ account, confirming the suspicion that the 16th century humanist may have been working from a number of 10th century sources that are no longer known to us.
According to Veszprémy, “the image that Aventinus left us … could be compared to a renovated façade … where the work of the craftsmen who had worked on it before can be found in the invisible layers, but is no longer visible to the naked eye”.
However, research on the battle was hindered even after 1921, because “by 1921, most of the Hungarian historical source publications and manuals had already been completed”, and this affected later work. But Veszprémy also lists other possible reasons for the ‘Bratislava oblivion’, e.g. that “its location is outside present-day Hungary, therefore the event failed to capture historiens’ imagination”, or that “the battle took place at a time when Hungarian armies were winning victories, and so the battle was not considered to be of such unique importance”. Historiens were more interested in the deaths of Kursan and Árpád, two events close in time to the battle, and the riddle of the whereabouts of Árpád’s tomb. Bálint Hóman’s Hungarian History, published in 1928, for example, contains a few lines about a decisive battle in 907, but places it near Ennsburg – he makes no mention of any “battle of Bratislava”.
Thus, even after 1945, historians did not research the battle: neither did the “bourgeois” György Györffy nor the Marxist Gyula Kristó, although the latter, following Aventinus, devoted three pages to the battle in a book published in 1980. Their oeuvre in general can’t be described as belittling the deeds of medieval Hungarians either. (Besides, it is a mistake to think that the ideological aim of the communist era was to conceal the Hungarian past – just look at the manuals and films about these periods made during the harshest years of Soviet occupation and oppression. The Habsburg statues in Heroes’ Square were also replaced by those of the independence fighters in this period.)
The archaeologist István Bóna drew attention to the importance of the battle in 2000, ten years after the regime change, and to the fact that “it is a great injustice on the part of Hungarian historical memory that the most significant battle in Hungary is still considered to be the >Bánhida battle<, which is known to be a fabrication in Simon Kézai’s chronicle. This is a consequence of the period when, until the end of the 19th century, full credit was given to the Hungarian-Hun kinship and his chronicle records.” In other words, according to Bóna, it is precisely the hype around the alleged Hun-Hungarian kinship that may have indirectly led to the neglect of the Battle of Bratislava.
The battle has finally taken its rightful place in Hungarian historography, while many bizarre myths and pseudo-facts (e.g. that the invaders wanted to exterminate all Hungarians, or that American officers were taught about the battle at West Point Academy, etc.) are still associated with it.
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