Pressburg > Bratislava Bratislavsky Slovakia

Arnulf, later known as Arnulf the Bad, was born into the Luitpolding dynasty.

The year of his birth is unknown, but it is said that he was the namesake of other Arnulfs and so would have been born around the time of the reign of Arnulf the seventh century bishop of Metz and the Carolingian king Arnulf of Carinthia.

Arnulf is the son of Margrave Luitpold of Bavaria and Cunigunda, daughter of Berthold I, the count palatine of Swabia.

During the Battle of Pressburg (Bratislava) in 907, the Bavarian lead forces under the command of his father Luitpold are defeated in an attack against the Magyars, who kill Liutpold and many high nobles.

The Hungarian victory stabilizes the situation of the Hungarian state.

The Germans will not attack Hungary for more than a hundred years.

The Hungarian threat to the emerging German kingdom will persist for decades.

Henry undertakes a third Hungarian campaign in 1051 but fails to achieve anything lasting.

Henry undertakes a fourth campaign against Hungary in 1052, and Pressburg (modern Bratislava) is besieged, without success, as the Hungarians manage to sink Henry’s supply ships on the Danube river.

Henry is unable to immediately continue his campaign, and in fact will never renew it.

Svatopluk has joined Henry’s expedition in Hungary, but has to return to Bohemia, where Borivoj has made an attack with the support of Boleslaw III Wrymouth of Poland, an ally of Coloman.

Henry fails to seize Pressburg and Coloman is free to devastate Moravia (part of the lands of the Bohemian Crown).

Left alone, King Henry is forced to abandon his Hungarian campaign.

The Bohemian Kingdom, the Margravate of Moravia, and Slovakia are all under Habsburg rule, but they follow different paths of development.

The defeat at Mohacs in 1526 had meant that most of Hungary proper was taken by the Turks; until Hungary's reconquest by the Habsburgs in the second half of the seventeenth century, Slovakia becomes the center of Hungarian political, cultural, and economic life.

The Habsburg kings of Hungary are crowned in Bratislava, the present-day capital of Slovakia, and the Hungarian estates meet here.

Slovakia's importance in Hungarian life proves of no benefit, however, to the Slovaks.

In essence, the Hungarian political nation consists of an association of estates (primarily the nobility).

Because Slovaks are primarily serfs, they are not considered members of a political nation and have no influence on politics in their own land.

The Slovak peasant has only to perform duties: work for a landlord, pay taxes, and provide recruits for military service.

Even under such hostile conditions, there are a few positive developments.

The Protestant Reformation brings to Slovakia literature written in Czech, and Czech replaces Latin as the literary language of a small, educated Slovak elite, but on the whole, the Slovaks will languish for centuries in a state of political, economic, and cultural deprivation.

Royal Hungary becomes a small part of the Habsburg Empire and enjoys little influence in Vienna.

The Habsburg king directly controls Royal Hungary's financial, military, and foreign affairs, and imperial troops guard its borders.

The Habsburgs avoid filling the office of palatine to prevent the holder's amassing too much power.

In addition, the so-called Turkish question divides the Habsburgs and the Hungarians: Vienna wants to maintain peace with the Turks; the Hungarians want the Ottomans ousted.

As the Hungarians recognize the weakness of their position, many become anti-Habsburg.

They complain about foreign rule, the behavior of foreign garrisons, and the Habsburgs' recognition of Turkish sovereignty in Transylvania.

Protestants, who are persecuted in Royal Hungary, consider the Counter-Reformation a greater menace than the Turks, however.

Bratislava becomes the capital of Habsburg Hungary after the Turkish capture of Buda, at which time the city is also known by its German name, Pressburg.

Bratislava is today the political, cultural, and economic center of Slovakia, and the country's largest city.

...Habsburg or Royal Hungary in the extreme north and west, with its capital at Pressburg (Bratislava); ...

The Hungarians complain that they are being ruled and exploited as a subject people by foreigners, while Vienna looks on them as truculent rebels.

Matters grow worse after the mentally unbalanced Rudolf II, whose advisers hate Hungary and its traditions, succeeds his father in late 1576 and a religious conflict supervenes on the constitutional dispute, for in the preceding half-century the Reformation has swept over Hungary.

...the Hungarian Diet in 1605 elects Bocskay prince of Transylvania.