The Hungarian Breed

• Historical Horses
  

Horses have played a great role in the history of Hungary, and the history of the country vitally influenced the breeding and use of horses.

In the year 896 AD the seven Hungarian nomadic tribes crossed the Carpathian mountain range from the east. Theirs was the last move of the "great migration" which had begun in 400 AD. They arrived in the area which was to become Hungary (as it was before the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 ceded two thirds of Hungary’s territory). Sitting on horseback they elected Arpad to be the leader of their tribal federation, and founded a dynasty.

Their oriental horses originated at the Mongolian plateau, north of the Himalaya, and developed in the Ural-Altai plain. The area between the Caspian Sea and the Kazakh Hills had and has noble oriental horses, and while the Hungarians camped there, their breed was influenced by these horses. By 750 AD the Hungarian tribes were between the Don and the Dneper River, an area also known for oriental horses.

The Hungarian horses were small, about 14 hands, but the people were also much smaller than today. The horses were elegant, frugal, and hardy and had great endurance. Each family had about eleven horses. They provided transportation: men and boys rode, and the women followed in horse-drawn carriages. The lactating mares were milked and blood was drawn from geldings for human consumption. Horsemeat was aged under the saddle. The same kinds of horses were ridden in Europe by the Huns around 375 -450 and later by the Tatars around 1240. The Schweiken, a similar oriental type in East Prussia, was the foundation stock of the Trakehner breed.

After the Hungarians settled in 896 A.D. in Hungary, they kept some of their nomadic habits: they plundered cities as far as Italy, Germany, France, and Spain. Having no industry and little agriculture, looting was an economic necessity.

Their way of fighting demanded great agility of horse and rider. A small unit charged the lined-up defenders of the city, showering them with arrows, then turning and "fleeing" towards the main group. As the enemy followed them the Hungarian horsemen were shooting backwards and as they reached the main force a hail of arrows hit the enemy.

(You need two hands to shoot. The riders had to control their mounts only with their legs and seat. I always wondered whether such mounted archery is possible. In 2003 at a show in Babolna, Hungary’s Lajos Kassai demonstrated that it is. Cantering, his reins lying in front of him, he was shooting at standing and moving targets everywhere around him. He never missed...)

In 955 Emperor Otto I and the Bishop of Augsburg and their allies decisively defeated the Hungarians near the Lech River. They were sent home with ears or noses cut off. That stopped the raiding campaigns.

In 1001 Hungary became a Christian kingdom and German knights coming with Queen Margarita brought in their big German horses, but they had no influence on the general horse population.

By 1241 the Hungarians had learned farming and lost some of their mounted warrior skills when the Tatars coming from Mongolia invaded Hungary. The Tatars devastated the country but left in 1242, leaving horses (and horse genes) behind, when the news of the death of Batu Khan reached them.

By the fourteenth century Hungary bred and exported horses to most European countries, particularly Italy. Hungary’s vast stretches of rolling grasslands were ideal for livestock, and influenced the development of endurance and soundness in the local horses.

King Mathias (1458-- 1490) reorganized his “ black” royal cavalry and occupied Vienna, Austria for a while.

In 1526 the Ottoman Turks invaded Hungary riding oriental horses, which were coming via Arabic speaking regions and were called Arabian or Turkish. The central part of Hungary was under Ottoman occupation for 150 years. Transylvania, the eastern part of Hungary, became semi-independent and allied to Turkey. Using imports from Turkey the nobility developed their outstanding lines of light horses. The designation Erdelyi, meaning Transylvanian, can frequently be found in old pedigrees.

The seventeenth century found Europe at peace. The court and the aristocrats were imitating western fashions and introduced Spanish and Neapolitan stallions to breed bigger, more elegant riding and coach horses. The Spanish imports of the time looked more like Lipizzans or the Khladrub carriage horses than today’s refined Andalusians or Lusitanos. The ruling class neglected the breeding of the native horses, and the farmers were breeding small horses because they were not drafted by the military.

By the middle of the eighteenth century Empress Maria Therezia, the Queen of Hungary (1740-1780), realized that Hungary could not supply enough horses for the imperial army and issued a number of directives to remedy the situation: stallions from the imperial stables gave free service to farmers, the army paid more for good horses, mares were loaned to farmers to breed, and breeding by hand was introduced.

By 1784 Joseph II Maria Therezia's son realized that these measures were not sufficient and ordered Cuirassier Captain Joseph Czekonics to establish a stud farm at the 16.000 ha royal estate in Mezöhegyes, South East Hungary. In 1789 Babolna was founded, and in 1853 Kisber.

( For similar reasons the Austrians founded Lipizza 1580, Kladrub 1579, Radautz 1792, and Piber 1798, the Prussians founded Neustadt Dosse and reorganized Trakehnen 1787, and the Hanoverian Celle was founded in 1735.)

The Napoleonic Wars around 1800 and the Hungarian Revolution in 1848 had a negative influence on horses and breeding.

The 1867 "Compromise" gave Hungary an equal standing in the Austrian Empire. The Imperial Stud Farms situated in Hungary were turned over to the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture, but the Military Stud Farm Service continued to administer the stud farms.

In the following we are giving a general overview of breeding in Hungary from the establishment of these farms until 1943.
How a Chief Stallion was and is selected I discuss in the Kisber section. His own successes in competition, the conformation of his progeny, or the successes of his progeny could lead to his promotion to Chief Stallion. Every year in fall there were drag hunts organized by the Stud Service. Only stallions were ridden. It was an important society affair. High-ranking officers, civil servants and aristocrats were invited – you had to be a good rider to participate. It also was an important way to test endurance and manners of a stallion.

C. G. Wrangel in 1898 published four volumes on "Breeding Horses in Hungary" (Ungarns Pferdezucht in Wort und Bild, 1895 Stuttgard, as quoted in Dr. Walter Hecker, A Babolnai Arab Menes, and paraphrased by Egon Kamarasy). Here we find his report on evaluating all horses in the state stud farms:

“Early in June Francis Kozma of the Ministry of Agriculture invites hyppologues to the yearly inspection. They start in Babolna, then go to
Kisber, Mezohegyes end end up in Fogaras in Transylvania.
They start with three-year-old mares. They are led in groups of six. A sergeant reads their breeding and history. They are led at walk and trot, and then, let go free, are driven by the Csikos in canter and full gallop. Mr. Kozma listens to his advisors, notes are made in the stud book, and he decides: brood mare or prepare her for the fall auction. Then two- and one- year-olds are presented the same way. The weanlings only are not driven by the cowboys. The young stallions are shown the same way and those who are not of the demanded quality are castrated and sold.
At a similar inspection in October Mr. Kozma decides the distribution of stallions and the pairing of mares. The sale of stallions to foreign countries is also decided here. In 1898 Japan was one of several countries which bought stallions. They were shipped from Trieste on the Mediterranean to Yokohama, Japan.

Babolna has sent every year two mares to the Institute for the Training of Military Riding Instructors. Here is an example of their report. This report was entered in the Studbook and was read at the inspections of # 148, the dam of Gazlan ( Gazal ), 59 Shagya X :
“From September 6 to November 20 1886 she has participated in many fox hunts, some drag hunts and 5 Stag hunts. Has excellent, fast canter, great endurance, jumps well. Excellent hunt horse.” Each spring the mares were raced at the Babolna track, and only the best were kept for breeding.”

Since 1867 the Ministry of Agriculture took over budget and breeding decisions, but the administration of the farms and many day-to-day decisions remained with the Army's Stud Service. This strange division of power worked in exemplary fashion. Stud Service officers were mostly from the nobility, and all had to be very good riders. Most of them rode daily to inspect different outlying farms. One story (from Dr. Frielinghaus) tells of a Lt. Kis who made a bet he could ride to the second floor of the Babolna commander’s office and descend without any trouble. He won the bet.
General Tibor von Petko Szandtner, a stud service officer, was in the 1930s frequently the winner of pair and team (4-in-hand) driving in Aachen and other competitions. (This tradition was continued by Imre Abonyi, who from 1967 to 1973 was first in Aachen, Apeldoorn, Windsor, and Hamburg driving competitions.)

All mares at stud farms were first ridden, and then driven in pairs. The speed and condition on those drives were noted and presented at the inspections described above. So were participation in hunts, events, shows etc. All this gave the people selecting brood mares and stallions more information than can be gathered at a 100-day testing.

The Hungarian breeding program was similar to the programs of other nations at the time, as all were managed to serve army needs. The difference was or is the original oriental horse the Hungarians brought from the east, and supplemented with horses of Turkish and imported Arab blood.
The similarity with Trakehnen comes to mind. However, the other German breeders started with a draft or carriage horse and used Thoroughbreds and Arabs on those heavy mares to produce an army mount.
Note that German officers also used Hungarian horses for endurance rides.
Hungary had and has some cold blooded horses owned sometimes by German-speaking farmers. These horses are called Murakozi after the river Mura near the Austrian border. Some Ardenne, France and Belgian horses were imported to improve the breed. The army had no use for them, and most Hungarian farmers wanted a faster horse to drive from the village where they lived to the fields they cultivated.
Thus the Hungarian-bred cavalry riding horses came from lighter, hotter lines and were not classified as “warmbloods” (a term which refers to a cross between heavy, draft-type “coldbloods” and the Thoroughbred, Turkish, or Arabian “hotbloods”).

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