page_title: Great Moravia
section_title: Decline and fall (894–before 907)
hierarchical_section_title: Great Moravia / History / Decline and fall (894–before 907)
caption_attribution_description: English: Svatopluk I with three twigs according Legend of Svatopluk's twigs and his three sons Mojmír II, Svatopluk II and Predstav. This sgraffito style work is in Prostějov Castle and is a 1900-1901 creation. Čeština: Kníže Svatopluk I. podle legendy se třemi svázanými pruty a jeho tři synové Mojmír II., Svatopluk II. a Predstav. Sgrafito je z let 1900-1901 na prostějovském zámku.
context_page_description: Great Moravia, the Great Moravian Empire, or simply Moravia, was the first major state that was predominantly West Slavic to emerge in the area of Central Europe, chiefly on what is now the territory of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and perhaps Serbia. The only formation preceding it in these territories was Samo's Empire known from between 631 and 658 AD. Great Moravia was thus the first joint state of the Slavic tribes that became later known as Czechs and Slovaks and that later formed Czechoslovakia.
  Its core territory is the region now called Moravia in the eastern part of the Czech Republic alongside the Morava River, which gave its name to the kingdom. The kingdom saw the rise of the first ever Slavic literary culture in the Old Church Slavonic language as well as the expansion of Christianity after the arrival of St. Cyril and St. Methodius in 863 and the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet, the first alphabet dedicated to a Slavic language. Glagolitic was subsequently replaced by a simpler Cyrillic. The Cyrillo-Methodian cultural mission had significant impact on most Slavic languages and stood at the beginning of the modern Cyrillic alphabet.
context_section_description: Svätopluk – "a man most prudent among his people and very cunning by nature", according to Regino of Prüm – died in the summer of 894. He was succeeded by his son, Mojmir II, but his empire shortly disintegrated, because the tribes subjugated to Svätopluk's rule by force started to get rid of Moravian supremacy. For instance, the Bohemian dukes (based in the Prague region) accepted King Arnulf's suzerainty in June 895, and Mojmír II attempted to restore his supremacy over them without success in the next two years. On the other hand, he succeeded in restoring the Church organization in Moravia by persuading  Pope John IX (r. 898–900) to send his legates to Moravia in 898. The legates in short order installed an archbishop and "three bishops as his suffragans" in Moravia.
  Conflicts emerging between Mojmír II and his younger brother, Svätopluk II, gave King Arnulf a pretext to send his troops to Moravia in 898 and 899. The Annals of Fulda writes that the "boy" Svätopluk II was rescued by Bavarian forces "from the dungeon of the city in which he was held with his men"  in 899. According to Bartl, who wrote that Svätopluk II had inherited the "Principality of Nitra" from his father, the Bavarians also destroyed the fortress at Nitra on this occasion.
  According to most nearly contemporaneous sources, the Hungarians played a prominent role in the fall of Moravia. For instance, Regino of Prüm writes that Svätopluk I's "sons held his kingdom for a short and unhappy time, because the Hungarians utterly destroyed everything in it". The Hungarians started their conquest of the Carpathian Basin after their defeat in the westernmost territories of the Pontic steppes around 895 by a coalition of the Bulgars and Pechenegs. Only a late source, the 16th-century Johannes Aventinus, writes that the Hungarians had by that time controlled wide regions to east of the rivers Hron and Danube in the Carpathian Basin.
  A letter of Theotmar of Salzburg and his suffragans evidences that around 900 the Moravians and the Bavarians accused each other of having formed alliances, even by taking oaths "by the means of a dog and a wolf and through other abominable and pagan customs", with the Hungarians. According to Liudprand of Cremona, the Hungarians already "claimed for themselves the nation of the Moravians, which King Arnulf had subdued with the aid of their might" at the coronation of Arnulf's son, Louis the Child, in 900. The Annals of Grado adds that a large Hungarian army "attacked and invaded" the Moravians in 900. Facing the threat of further Hungarian attacks, Mojmír II concluded a peace treaty with Louis the Child in 901.
  Due to the lack of documentary evidence, the year in which Moravia ceased to exist cannot be determined with certainty. Róna-Tas writes that the Hungarians occupied Moravia in 902, Victor Spinei says that this happened in 903 or 904, while according to Spiesz, the Moravian state ceased to exist in 907. The Raffelstetten Customs Regulations, which was issued in the years 903–906, still refers to the "markets of the Moravians", suggesting that Moravia still existed at that time. It is without doubt that no Moravian forces fought in the battle at Brezalauspurc, where the Hungarians routed a large Bavarian force in 907.
  The Moravian land, according to the prophecy of the holy archbishop Methodius, was promptly punished by God for their lawlessness and heresy, for the banishment of the orthodox fathers, and for the torments inflicted on the latter by the heretics with whom they acquiesced. In a few years the Magyars came, a people of Peonia, sacked their land and devastated it. But [Methodius's disciples] were not captured by the Magyars for they fled to the Bulgarians. However, the land remained desolate under the rule of the Magyars.
  — First Legend of Saint Naum
caption: Svätopluk I with three twigs and his three sons – Mojmír II., Svätopluk II. and Predslav.
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