Cumans flee Mongols into Hungary

1237

Tens of thousands of Cuman nomads, shattered by Batu Khan's westward advance, fled across the Carpathians into Hungary. King Bela IV settled them on the Great Plain as border guards, but their pagan customs and livestock trampled Hungarian fields, provoking riots that nearly started a civil war. The Cumans would eventually convert and assimilate, their descendants visible in the place-names and bloodlines of the Hungarian plain.