The Carolingian Age in the Carpathian Basin [Permanent exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum]

The disintegration of the Avar khaganate During the 560s, the eastern half of Europe, the area stretching from the Black Sea to the eastern Alps, was conquered at lightning speed by the Avars, tribes living a nomadic life on the steppes of Inner and Central Asia who were driven westwards before the increasing power of Turkic peoples. Along with auxiliary Slav fighters from their new homeland, they successfully pillaged the Eastern Roman Empire for decades. After an unsuccessful siege of Constantinople (626), however, they suffered significant political defeats and territorial losses. Confined behind the ring formed by the Carpathian Mountains, in the last decades of the 7th century the Avars constructed an in-depth border-defence system, i.e. marches, consisting of uninhabited swathes of land, especially in a westerly direction against the dukedom of Bavaria and the increasingly powerful Carolingian Empire which lay behind it. Around 680, they attacked and destroyed the town of Lauriacum (Lorch), extending this protective zone outwards to the River Enns, and, by so doing, probably incorporated the Slav ‘state’ of Samo. The Vinedi–Slavs who earlier on had served as a befulcus, i.e. as a type of vanguard, were again forced under Avar authority. In 692 already, this new situation was sanctioned by a peace with the Franks. After this, the Avars cease to feature in the written sources for almost 100 years, disappearing from the southern and western theatres of war. The leading dignitaries of the Avar khaganate in the late Avar age In the life of the steppe empires, division of power resulting in breakaway territories and the eventual birth of new empires was not a rare occurrence. Increasingly independent, members of the ruling dynasty who performed supervision of military and administrative tasks, and also governors placed in charge of ethnic groups within the empire, may have attempted to share out the power exercised by a single person and to break away. The process may also have been hastened by succession issues and a weakening of the charisma of the ruling dynasty. Generally speaking, one of these factors, or possibly a number of them, characterise the period which follows the victorious establishment of an empire. In such a period, lack of success on the part of the ruling dynasty eventually leads to a division of power on the basis of compromise, with two ruling princes instead of just one, or the formation of an oligarchic leading stratum, as happened among the Avars after the 680s. At the end of the 8th century, a succession of new, hitherto unknown notables emerged. As well as the principal Avar dignitary, the khagan, and his wife, the khatun, there appear the jugurrus – an official and a kind of vizier one degree below the khagan who always came from the common people – and the tudun. These were dignitaries with authority throughout the land. In addition, there were the kapkhan, the tarkhan, the župan, and the canizauci, who may have been leaders of smaller territories enjoying more limited rights. Charlemagne, the ruler of the Carolingian Empire, first met with emissaries of the Avars at the Imperial Diet convened in the spring of 782 in Paderborn, where the River Lippe rises. In view of later events in Avar history, it was of decisive significance that these negotiations were attended not only by emissaries of the khagan, but also by emissaries of the jugurrus. The official Frankish annals are silent regarding the reasons for, and consequences of, the Avar embassy. However, Bavarian monastery annals mention the marching of an Avar army along the River Enns. The Avars were probably reacting to Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria’s oath of allegiance to Charlemagne, which represented the end of Bavarian independence, using at one and the same time the indirect weapon of an embassy and the direct one of a threatening military demonstration along the border. By 788, the Bavarian principality had finally collapsed, in which process its alliance with the Avars was of no help. Having broken his oath of allegiance, Tassilo III was captured, brought before a court, and exiled to a monastery along with his children. After this, under the leadership of Grahammanus and Audaccrus, Charlemagne’s ‘emissaries’ (missi), the Franks and the Bavarians crossed the Enns border and scored a victory over the Avars on the Field of Ybbs (in campo Ibose). Then, when the Avars counter-attacked, they defeated them again, causing a great bloodbath among them. After all this, Charlemagne went to Regensburg and determined the border districts, or marches, ‘so that in the defence of the Lord they be inviolable by the Avars’ (Ann. regni Francorum a. 788). From this time on, the Avar question became acute, and more and more people urged Charlemagne to place on his agenda the final solution of it. Accordingly, in 790, Charlemagne, in Worms, received the envoys of the ‘Huns’, and dispatched envoys of his own to their ‘chiefs’ in order to agree the borders of their respective countries. According to Einhard, ‘the dispute and lack of agreement over this issue became the reason and origin of the war which he soon waged against them’ (Ann. qui dicuntur Einhardi a. 790).