AD 800-1250 Medieval

In AD 800, much of the south-west of this region was united under the firm rule of the Frankish king and emperor, Charlemagne (reigned 771-814). After his death, his heirs began feuding and the empire fragmented. Viking raiders from Scandinavia invaded in the north and west. In 895, the Magyars, who had taken over the Hungarian plains, began to invade the eastern regions of Moravia, Bavaria and Saxony, and across the Empire.

The ferocity of the Magyar onslaught had the effect of uniting the Germans who finally defeated them in 955 at the battle of Lechfeld, led by Otto I of Saxony. He became emperor in 962. The Ottonian dynasty and its successors (1024-1125) consolidated imperial power in Germany and extended imperial rule eastwards. Civil war among powerful nobles followed until peace was restored under the powerful Hohenstaufen dynasty, which held the imperial crown from 1138 to 1254.

The pagan Scandinavian countries became Christian kingdoms between the 10th and 11th centuries. Scandinavian Vikings reached northern Russia and the Ukraine and founded city states at Novgorod and Kiev. Between 800 and 1100 Christianity was firmly established in the east with Poland, Bohemia and Hungary adopting Roman Catholicism and the kingdom of Kievan Rus’ accepting the Orthodox faith. In 1221-2, some of the eastern states were overrun when the Mongols invaded from the steppes of Central Asia, beginning a period of terror that lasted for decades.