his reign, ceased to be a political factor in Central Europe. Among the conquered peoples, the Czechs were the first to withdraw in 895. Although—at least, according to the testimony of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus—Svatopluk had made a deathbed request to his sons, Mojmir II of Moravia and Svatopluk II, that they remain united, after his death internal disagreements between them were fostered by Arnulf. Finally Moravia collapsed in the first decade of the 10th century due to the invasion of the Hungarians. According to Hungarian legends, the Hungarians purchased the country from Svatopluk in a symbolic act of exchange: they sent a white horse with saddler to Svatopluk in return for some earth, water and grass, supposed to represent his country itself. Svatopluk allegedly disavowed this "contract" and then drowned in the Danube in flight from the Hungarians. The legend, in fact, seems to merely describe a common pagan rite of concluding alliances which might refer to Svatopluk's alliance with the Hungarians in 894. Historian Ryszard Grzesik says that the ruler Menumorut, mentioned in the 13th-century chronicle Gesta Hungarorum was the "personification" of Svatopluk I of Moravia. Nevertheless, in 1722 Michael Bencsik, a professor of Hungarian law at the University of Trnava, suggested that the nobility and the whole population of Trencsén county within the Kingdom of Hungary were "the remnants of Svatopluk who sold his country to the Hungarians, and thus the Slovak people, into eternal serfdom". In response, Ján Baltazár Magin, the Roman Catholic pastor of Dubnica, wrote the oldest known defense of the Slovak nation in 1728. Next another Catholic priest, Juraj Fándly, completed a history in Latin entitled Compendiata historia gentis Slavae ("A Brief History of the Slovak Nation") in which he depicted Moravia as a state of Slovaks and Svatopluk as their king. In 1833 the poet Ján Hollý published a poem entitled Svätopluk, the first of a series of epic poems dealing with the past of the Slovak people. See also Alternative theories of the location of Great Moravia Arnulf of Carinthia Great Moravia Louis the German Mojmir II Saints Cyril and Methodius Svatopluk II Notes References Skvarna, Dusan; Bartl, Július; Cicaj, Viliam; Kohutova, Maria; Letz, Robert; Seges, Vladimir (2002). Slovak History: Chronology & Lexicon. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. . Sommer, Petr; Třeštík, Dušan; Žemlička, Josef; Opačić, Zoë (2007). Bohemia and Moravia. In: Berend, Nora (2007); Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia,