Taksony (prince)

The exact date of birth of Taksonya is indicated in the Acts of the Hungarians . At the age of 16 years ( 947 ), Takshony, as the son of the suprafedelema , leads the Hungarian attack on Italy. In this campaign, the Hungarians reached Puglia , and Berengar II , the contender for the title of King of Italy , had to pay a tribute to the Hungarians to leave his kingdom alone.

Around the same time, the father of Taksonya Zholt took his bride “from the land of the Huns ( a kunok földjéről )” (“Acts of the Hungarians”). The Huns Hungarians called their eastern nomadic neighbors, so Taksony was most likely married to a cookie. ^[one]

Magyar Taksony became the great prince , most likely, in 955 , after the Augsburg defeat of the Hungarian army by the German king Otto I the Great . It is known that Taksony participated in this battle, but he was lucky to survive. The Augsburg defeat put an end to the aggressive campaigns of the Hungarians in the West and accelerated their transition to settled. However, the Hungarian robbery in Europe did not stop immediately and Taksonya’s reign only reoriented from West to South.

The Byzantine empire became a new victim of the Magyar campaigns. In 957, Emperor Konstantin VII Bagryanorodny , undoubtedly impressed by the Battle of Augsburg , stopped paying tributes to the Hungarians. However, Konstantin VII underestimated the Hungarians. Already in April 959 they besieged Constantinople. The Byzantines tried to incite the Bulgarians against the Hungarians and even paid tribute to the Bulgarians for stopping the Hungarian raids aimed at Byzantium. But in 965, the king of Bulgaria Peter agreed with the Hungarians that they would not plunder Bulgarian territory on the way to Byzantium. In return, Tsar Peter promised them an unhindered passage through their possessions. To punish the Bulgarians, the emperor Nikifor Foka called for the help of the Kiev prince Svyatoslav ( 967 ), but, instead of an ally, he ultimately acquired an even more dangerous enemy. Having conquered Bulgaria, Svyatoslav invaded the territory of the Empire (spring of 970 ), having entered into an alliance with the Bulgarians and the Hungarians, and even with his old enemies, the Pechenegs. Hungarians, according to the calculations of the Hungarian historian Ferenc Mack , accounted for up to one third of the total size of the Svyatoslav army.

The fact that the Hungarians for the second time (after 955 ) managed to gather such a significant army is explained by the ongoing processes in the Hungarian society of the consolidation of individual tribes and clans into a single nation and the strengthening of the great princely power. The second most important, after the Grand Duke, Magyar hierarchical title of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief - Gyula - was perceived by then already as the proper name of the Magyar ruler of Transylvania . Dual power took shape in Hungary: Grand Duke Taksony gradually subjugated the territory of Pannonia , Gyula ruled in Transylvania. Not having the forces sufficient to subjugate all of Hungary, Taksony preferred an alliance with Gyula, marrying his son Geza to the daughter of Gyula Charolt (c. 967 ).

The campaign of the united barbarian army to Byzantium ended in an unsuccessful battle for the Allies near Arkadiopol ( 970 ), which put an end to the history of the predatory campaigns of the Magyars in Europe. At the end of the X century, the Hungarians finally become settled, and the Magyar rulers are showing an increasing interest in the Christian religion. However, the conflict with Byzantium prevented the baptism of the Hungarians in the Greek rite. Takshon tried to be baptized by the Pope, but even here he failed. Although Pope John XII ordained a certain Zacchaeus as bishop of the Hungarians in 963 , his mission did not take place because of the opposition of Otto I, who had become shortly before (in 962 ) the German Emperor and wanted the Hungarians to receive baptism from him, and not from the pope.