Treaty of Trianon

The Treaty of Trianon was a treaty drawn up by the Allied powers with Hungary following World War One. Hungary was seen as one of the successors of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (The other being Austria, dealt with in the Treaty of Saint-Germain) and like Austria, had to be treated accordingly.

Hungary’s internal situation, acommunist dictatorship followed by a Romanian invasion, in turn followed by a series of unstable governments) ensured that the treaty would not be drafted until January 16, 1920. Hungary disagreed on many counts, but a treaty was eventually signed, in the Grand Trianon at Versailles, on June 4, 1920.

Transylvania and most of the Banat had to be ceded to Romania; the rest of the Banat, Bácska, the Prekmurje and all of Croatia Slavonia was ceded to Yugoslavia; Slovakia (with the adjacent Spisz and Orawa districts) and sub-Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to Czechoslovakia; part of western Hungary went to Austria; and Fiume went to the Allied and Associated powers (Their decision on where it would go was, at the time of the treaty, still under consideration)

Hungary was reduced in area from nearly 109,000 square miles (125,000 square miles, if Croatia-Slavonia be included) in 1914 to less than 36,000 square miles after the treaty. Hungary saw its traditional economy dislocated; and despite the ethnic principles professed by the peacemakers, some 1,750,000 Magyars were transferred by the treaty to Romania and more than 1,000,000 to Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, Hungary’s armed forces were restricted to 35,000 men.