[9] Although he was obliged to pay tribute to East Francia under the peace treaty concluded at Forchheim (Germany) in 874, he was able to expand his territories outside the Franks' sphere of interest in the following years.

[12] Svatopluk seems to have wanted to appease the German clergy who opposed the conducting of the liturgy in Old Church Slavonic, and he expelled the disciples of Methodius from Moravia in 886, after their teacher's death.

[15] Not long after his death Svatopluk's realm of Great Moravia collapsed in the midst of a power struggle between his sons and the intensifying Hungarian raids.

[6] His father's name was Svetimir, according to the late 12th-century Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, a medieval historical work long dismissed as a collection of fact and fiction.

[20][21] According to the unproven later Moravian tradition of Tomáš Pešina z Čechorodu (17th century), who fulfilled the family tree of the House of Mojmír, Svatopluk was the son of a certain Bogislav.

[5] The Life of Methodius relates that Svatopluk and his uncle jointly asked the Byzantine Emperor Michael III to send missionaries who were familiar with the Slavic tongue to Moravia.

[28] And it came to pass in those days that the Slavic prince Rostislav together with Svatopluk sent emissaries from Moravia to Emperor Michael, saying thus: "We have prospered through God's grace, and many Christian teachers have come to us from among the Italians, Greeks and Germans, teaching us in various ways.

"By the time Svatopluk first appeared in a Frankish sources (the Annals of Fulda) in 869, he was ruler of his own "realm" (regnum, implying autonomous or semi-autonomous land) within Great Moravia.

[5][6][33] Svatopluk's "realm" was invaded and plundered in 869 by Bavarian troops led by Carloman, the eldest son of Louis the German, King of East Francia.

But by the just judgment of God he was caught in the snare he had set, for he was captured by his nephew, bound and brought to Carloman, who sent him under guard of soldiers to Bavaria least he should escape and had him kept in prison until he could be brought to the king's presence.As a reward for capturing Rastislav, Carloman allowed Svatopluk to retain his principality, but the rest of Great Moravia was placed under the control of two Frankish lords, William and Engilschalk.

[19][34] Carloman's forces also captured Methodius, whom Pope Hadrian II had earlier appointed Archbishop of Sirmium with jurisdiction over the realms ruled by Rastislav and Svatopluk.

Immediately he denied his fidelity and forgot his oath, in Slavic fashion, and turned his thought and his powers not to driving out Sclagamar but to revenging the injury which Carloman had done him.

[43] Louis the German realized the grave threat posed by Svatopluk[43] and assembled forces for a multipronged expedition with pincer movements advancing on Moravian territory from several directions in 872.

[46][47] The second army, composed of Franconians under Bishop Arn of Würzburg and Abbot Sigihard of Fulda, experienced mixed results: although their forces fought well, the majority of the men were killed, and only a handful of survivors returned to East Francia.

[48][49] Svatopluk, however, soon assembled a large army and attacked the Bavarians who had been left behind under the command of Bishop Emriacho of Regensburg to guard ships on the bank of the river Danube.

[52] After his meeting with the Pope at Verona (Italy), Louis the German went to Forchheim where, according to the Annals of Fulda, "he received the legates of Svatopluk asking for a peace treaty".

[52] The exact terms of their agreement are not known, but it seems to have been a compromise: Svatopluk was forced to make an annual payment of tribute to Louis the German, who agreed to avoid any hostile acts against Great Moravia.

[13] For instance, there is little clear archaeological or written evidence of a permanent extension of Moravian power in Lesser Poland or to the west in Silesia, or in Pannonia, as is suggested in earlier historical works.

[59] For instance, according to his Life, Methodius promised Svatopluk that if the Prince would celebrate Saint Peter's Day in the Archbishop's church, "God will soon deliver" his enemies to him, and "so it came to pass".

[57][65] Your predecessor /Pope John VIII/ ordained Wiching bishop at the request of Duke Zwentibald; however, he never sent him into the ancient bishopric of Passau but to a newly baptized people whom that duke had defeated in war and converted from paganism to ChristianityAt the time when Charles the Fat became the sole ruler of East Francia in 881, the sons of Wilhelm and Engelschalk, the one-time commanders of the Bavarian forces occupying Moravia in 870–871, began to conspire with various Bavarian magnates in order to eject Arbo, the margrave Louis the German had appointed to command a key part of East Francia's frontier on the Danube.

[12] The pope also sent a letter (Quia te zelo) to Svatopluk, urging him to accept the addition of filioque to the Creed and to give up such peculiar Byzantine practices as fasting on Saturday.

[11][82] Saint Clement of Ochrid said: The Prince, however, understood very little of what was said, as he was too completely and utterly dumb to comprehend any divine matter; he was brought up in a sheer barbaric manner, briefly said, with no education whatsoever, and also [...] because vicarious pleasures rid him of all his sense.

[84] According to the late 12th-century Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, Svatopluk had been crowned "king in the Roman fashion on the field of Dalma" in the presence of a papal legate, cardinals, and bishops.

[91] First the king met with Braslav, the Slavic dux on the river Sava, then raised an army of Franconians, Bavarians and Alamanni, and also recruited Hungarians to join his campaign.

[93] Meanwhile, Arnulf, the strongest king of the nations living below the star Arcturus, could not overcome Sviatopolk, duke of the Moravians, who we mentioned above, with the latter fighting back in a manly way; and – alas!

– having dismantled those very well fortified barriers which we said earlier are called "closures" by the populace, Arnulf summoned to his aid the nation of the Hungarians, greedy, rash, ignorant of almighty God but well versed in every crime, avid only for murder and plunder; if indeed it can be called "aid", since a little later, with him dying, it proved to be grave peril, and even the occasion of ruin, for his people alongside the other nations living in the south and west.Arnulf's invasion started in July 892, but he failed to defeat Svatopluk.

[95] This was the year of Svatopluk's "most unlucky death", according to the Annals of Fulda, which implies that he met his end in some kind of mishap, the sort that occurs in war.

[97] Zwentibald, the dux of the Moravians and the source of all treachery, who had disturbed all the lands around him with tricks and cunning and circled around thirsting for human blood, made an unhappy end, exhorting his men at the last that they should not be lovers of peace but rather continue in enmity with their neighbors.Simon of Kéza recorded that he died in battle near Környe.

[23] Following Svatopluk's death, Great Moravia, which had achieved its maximum territorial extension, and exercised its greatest influence in his reign, ceased to be a political factor in Central Europe.

By means of this illustration he exhorted them and said: "If you remain undivided in concord and love, you shall be unconquered by your adversaries and invincible; but if strife and rivalry come among you and you divide yourselves into three governments, not subject to the eldest brother, you shall be both destroyed by one another and brought to utter ruin by the enemies who are your neighbors."