Bela III of Hungary (Hungarian III. Béla, Slovak: Belo III), born in 1148, was King of Hungary circa 1172_1196. He was the son of King Geza II of Hungary and Euphrosyne (daughter of Grandprince Msitislav I of Kiev). He was the great-great-great grandfather of Isabella of France, and so he is an ancestor of the present-day British royal family. Bela III succeeded his brother Stephen III of Hungary and was crowned under the influence of his father-in-law, the Byzantine EmperorManuel I Comnenus. Bela III married:
He was the son of King Geza II of Hungary and Euphrosyne (daughter of Grandprince Msitislav I of Kiev).
BelaIII succeeded his brother Stephen III of Hungary and was crowned under the influence of his father-in-law, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenus.
Initiated from childhood in all the arts of diplomacy at what was then the focus of civilization, and as much a warrior by nature as his imperial kinsman Manuel, Bela showed himself from the first fully equal to all the difficulties of his peculiar position.
It was in Bela's reign that the emperor Frederick I., in the spring of 1189, traversed Hungary with ioo,000 crusaders, on which occasion the country was so well policed that no harm was done to it and the inhabitants profited largely from their commerce with the German host.
Bela was in every sense of the word a great statesman, and his court was accounted one of the most brilliant in Europe.
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