For the next 500 years, Hungary contended with invasions from the Mongols and the Ottomans, crises of succession and political games between the Habsburgs, the Polish and the semi-independent area in the west of the country, Transylvania. This brings us to 1458, when the second of the great kings of Hungary was crowned: King Matthias Corvinas. As the Ottomans pillaged westwards into Europe, King Matthias fortified a military front along the southern and eastern borders to stop the Ottomans from advancing further. He expanded the land of the Hungarians, entering what is known as the Hungarian Renaissance period. This period rivaled the Italian Renaissance in terms of how much art, culture and science exploded in Hungary. Unfortunately, it is not remembered the same way because a full-scale invasion of the Ottomans ended Hungary’s “Golden Age.”
King Matthias died in 1490, and the king that followed did not have the same military might that Matthias did. The Ottomans crushed the Hungarian army in the early 1500s, and after a key battle in 1526, the country was ruled by two kings. During the period between 1526 and 1867 (known as “The Kingdom of Hungary”), Hungary was split. The Habsburgs took over the northwest part of Hungary, and the eastern part of the country remained Hungarian. The Habsburgs, like the Hungarians, had been fighting the Ottomans, too. Hungary's economic advantage, left over from their Renaissance, made it easier for the Habsburgs to keep the Ottomans from invading further into Europe. This did help them to keep the Ottomans from advancing, it turns out. The area that we know of today as Hungary was occupied in 1541 by the Ottomans, but they could not go any further west.
