1440
Of all the possessions of the old kingdom of Hungary, none was more
valued than what was called the Crown of St. Stephen, so called from
one, which had, in the year 1000, been presented by Pope Sylvester II.
to Stephen, the second Christian Duke, and first King of Hungary. A
crown and a cross were given to him for his coronation, which took place
in the Church of the Holy Virgin, at Alba Regale, also called in German
Weissenburg, where thenceforth the Kings of Hungary were anointed to
begin their troubled reigns, and at the close of them were laid to
rest beneath the pavement, where most of them might have used the same
epitaph as the old Italian leader: 'He rests here, who never rested
before'. For it was a wild realm, bordered on all sides by foes, with
Poland, Bohemia, and Austria, ever casting greedy eyes upon it, and
afterwards with the Turk upon the southern border, while the Magyars, or
Hungarian nobles, themselves were a fierce and untameable race, bold
and generous, but brooking little control, claiming a voice in choosing
their own Sovereign, and to resist him, even by force of arms, if he
broke the laws. No prince had a right to their allegiance unless he
had been crowned with St. Stephen's Crown; but if he had once worn
that sacred circle, he thenceforth was held as the only lawful monarch,
unless he should flagrantly violate the Constitution. In 1076, another
crown had been given by the Greek Emperor to Geysa, King of Hungary, and
the sacred crown combined the two. It had the two arches of the
Roman crown, and the gold circlet of the Constantinopolitan; and the
difference of workmanship was evident.
In the year 1439 died King Albert, who had been appointed King of
Hungary in right of his wife, Queen Elizabeth. He left a little daughter
only four years old, and as the Magyars had never been governed by a
female hand, they proposed to send and offer their crown, and the hand
of their young widowed Queen, to Wladislas, the King of Poland. But
Elizabeth had hopes of another child, and in case it should be a son,
she had no mind to give away its rights to its father's throne. How,
then, was she to help herself among the proud and determined nobles
of her Court? One thing was certain, that if once the Polish king were
crowned with St. Stephen's crown, it would be his own fault if he were
not King of Hungary as long as he lived; but if the crown were not to be
found, of course he could not receive it, and the fealty of the nobles
would not be pledged to him.
The most trustworthy person she had about her was Helen Kottenner, the
lady who had the charge of her little daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and
to her she confided her desire that the crown might be secured, so as
to prevent the Polish party from getting access to it. Helen herself
has written down the history of these strange events, and of her own
struggles of mind, at the risk she ran, and the doubt whether good
would come of the intrigue; and there can be no doubt that, whether the
Queen's conduct were praiseworthy or not, Helen dared a great peril for
the sake purely of loyalty and fidelity. 'The Queen's commands', she
says, 'sorely troubled me; for it was a dangerous venture for me and my
little children, and I turned it over in my mind what I should do, for
I had no one to take counsel of but God alone; and I thought if I did
it not, and evil arose therefrom, I should be guilty before God and the
world. So I consented to risk my life on this difficult undertaking; but
desired to have someone to help me.' This was permitted; but the first
person to whom the Lady of Kottenner confided her intention, a Croat,
lost his color from alarm, looked like one half-dead, and went at once
in search of his horse. The next thing that was heard of him was that
he had had a bad fall from his horse, and had been obliged to return to
Croatia, and the Queen remained much alarmed at her plans being known
to one so faint-hearted. However, a more courageous confidant was
afterwards found in a Hungarian gentleman, whose name has become
illegible in Helen's old manuscript.
The crown was in the vaults of the strong Castle of Plintenburg, also
called Vissegrad, which stands upon a bend of the Danube, about twelve
miles from the twin cities of Buda and Pesth. It was in a case within a
chest, sealed with many seals, and since the King's death, it had been
brought up by the nobles, who closely guarded both it and the Queen,
into her apartments, and there examined and replaced in the chest. The
next night, one of the Queen's ladies upset a wax taper, without being
aware of it, and before the fire was discovered, and put out, the corner
of the chest was singed, and a hole burnt in the blue velvet cushion
that lay on the top. Upon this, the lords had caused the chest to be
taken down again into the vault, and had fastened the doors with many
locks and with seals. The Castle had further been put into the charge of
Ladislas von Gara, the Queen's cousin, and Ban, or hereditary commander,
of the border troops, and he had given it over to a Burggraf, or
seneschal, who had placed his bed in the chamber where was the door
leading to the vaults.
The Queen removed to Komorn, a castle higher up the Danube, in charge
of her faithful cousin, Count Ulric of Eily, taking with her her little
daughter Elizabeth, Helen Kottenner, and two other ladies. This was the
first stage on the journey to Presburg, where the nobles had wished to
lodge the Queen, and from thence she sent back Helen to bring the rest
of the maids of honor and her goods to join her at Komorn. It was early
spring, and snow was still on the ground, and the Lady of Kottenner and
her faithful nameless assistant travelled in a sledge; but two Hungarian
noblemen went with them, and they had to be most careful in concealing
their arrangements. Helen had with her the Queen's signet, and keys;
and her friend had a file in each shoe, and keys under his black velvet
dress.
On arriving in the evening, they found that the Burggraf had fallen
ill, and could not sleep in the chamber leading to the vault, because it
belonged to the ladies' chambers, and that he had therefore put a cloth
over the padlock of the door and sealed it. There was a stove in the
room, and the maidens began to pack up their clothes there, an operation
that lasted till eight o'clock; while Helen's friend stood there,
talking and jesting with them, trying all the while to hide the files,
and contriving to say to Helen: 'Take care that we have a light.' So she
begged the old housekeeper to give her plenty of wax tapers, as she had
many prayers to say. At last everyone was gone to bed, and there only
remained in the room with Helen, an old woman, whom she had brought with
her, who knew no German, and was fast asleep. Then the accomplice came
back through the chapel, which opened into this same hall. He had on his
black velvet gown and felt shoes, and was followed by a servant, who,
Helen says, was bound to him by oath, and had the same Christian name as
himself, this being evidently an additional bond of fidelity. Helen, who
had received from the Queen all the keys to this outer room, let them
in, and, after the Burggraf's cloth and seal had been removed, they
unlocked the padlock, and the other two locks of the outer door of
the vault, and the two men descended into it. There were several other
doors, whose chains required to be filed through, and their seals and
locks broken, and to the ears of the waiting Helen the noise appeared
fatally loud. She says, 'I devoutly prayed to God and the Holy Virgin,
that they would support and help me; yet I was in greater anxiety for my
soul than for my life, and I prayed to God that He would be merciful to
my soul, and rather let me die at once there, than that anything should
happen against his will, or that should bring misfortune on my country
and people.'
She fancied she heard a noise of armed men at the chapel door, but
finding nothing there, believed--not in her own nervous agitation,
a thing not yet invented--that it was a spirit, and returning to her
prayers, vowed, poor lady, to make a pilgrimage to St. Maria Zell, in
Styria, if the Holy Virgin's intercessions obtained their success, and
till the pilgrimage could be made, 'to forego every Saturday night
my feather bed!' After another false alarm at a supposed noise at the
maiden's door, she ventured into the vault to see how her companions
were getting on, when she found they had filed away all the locks,
except that of the case containing the crown, and this they were obliged
to burn, in spite of their apprehension that the smell and smoke might
be observed. They then shut up the chest, replaced the padlocks and
chains with those they had brought for the purpose, and renewed the
seals with the Queen's signet, which bearing the royal arms, would
baffle detection that the seals had been tampered with. They then took
the crown into the chapel, where they found a red velvet cushion, so
large that by taking out some of the stuffing a hiding place was made in
which the crown was deposited, and the cushion sewn up over it.
By this time day was dawning, the maidens were dressing, and it was the
hour for setting off for Komorn. The old woman who had waited on them
came to the Lady of Kottenner to have her wages paid, and be dismissed
to Buda. While she was waiting, she began to remark on a strange
thing lying by the stove, which, to the Lady Helen's great dismay, she
perceived to be a bit of the case in which the crown was kept. She tried
to prevent the old woman from noticing it, pushed it into the hottest
part of the stove, and, by way of further precaution, took the old woman
away with her, on the plea of asking the Queen to make her a bedeswoman
at Vienna, and this was granted to her.
When all was ready, the gentleman desired his servant to take the
cushion and put it into the sledge designed for himself and the Lady of
Kottenner. The man took it on his shoulders, hiding it under an old
ox-hide, with the tail hanging down, to the laughter of all beholders.
Helen further records the trying to get some breakfast in the
marketplace and finding nothing but herrings, also the going to mass,
and the care she took not to sit upon the holy crown, though she had to
sit on its cushion in the sledge. They dined at an inn, but took care
to keep the cushion in sight, and then in the dusk crossed the Danube on
the ice, which was becoming very thin, and halfway across it broke under
the maidens' carriage, so that Helen expected to be lost in the Danube,
crown and all. However, though many packages were lost under the ice,
her sledge got safe over, as well as all the ladies, some of whom she
took into her conveyance, and all safely arrived at the castle of Komorn
late in the evening.
The very hour of their arrival a babe was born to the Queen, and to her
exceeding joy it was a son. Count von Eily, hearing 'that a king
and friend was born to him', had bonfires lighted, and a torchlight
procession on the ice that same night, and early in the morning came the
Archbishop of Gran to christen the child. The Queen wished her faithful
Helen to be godmother, but she refused in favor of some lady whose
family it was probably needful to propitiate. She took off the little
princess Elizabeth's mourning for her father and dressed her in red
and gold, all the maidens appeared in gay apparel, and there was great
rejoicing and thanksgiving when the babe was christened Ladislas, after
a sainted King of Hungary.
The peril was, however, far from ended; for many of the Magyars had no
notion of accepting an infant for their king, and by Easter, the King of
Poland was advancing upon Buda, to claim the realm to which he had
been invited. No one had discovered the abstraction of the crown, and
Elizabeth's object was to take her child to Weissenburg, and there have
him crowned, so as to disconcert the Polish party. She had sent to Buda
for cloth of gold to make him a coronation dress, but it did not come in
time, and Helen therefore shut herself into the chapel at Komorn, and,
with doors fast bolted, cut up a rich and beautiful vestment of his
grandfather's, the emperor Sigismund, of red and gold, with silver
spots, and made it into a tiny coronation robe, with surplice and
humeral (or shoulder-piece), the stole and banner, the gloves and shoes.
The Queen was much alarmed by a report that the Polish party meant to
stop her on her way to Weissenburg; and if the baggage should be seized
and searched, the discovery of the crown might have fatal consequences.
Helen, on this, observed that the King was more important than the
crown, and that the best way would be to keep them together; so she
wrapped up the crown in a cloth, and hid it under the mattress of his
cradle, with a long spoon for mixing his pap upon the top, so, said the
Queen, he might take care of his crown himself.
On Tuesday before Whit Sunday the party set out, escorted by Count
Ulric, and several other knights and nobles. After crossing the
Danube in a large boat, the Queen and her little girl were placed in
a carriage, or more probably a litter, the other ladies rode, and the
cradle and its precious contents were carried by four men; but this
the poor little Lassla, as Helen shortens his lengthy name, resented so
much, that he began to scream so loud that she was forced to dismount
and carry him in her arms, along a road rendered swampy by much rain.
They found all the villages deserted by the peasants, who had fled into
the woods, and as most of their lords were of the other party, they
expected an attack, so the little king was put into the carriage with
his mother and sister, and the ladies formed a circle round it 'that
if anyone shot at the carriage we might receive the stroke'. When the
danger was over the child was taken out again, for he would be content
nowhere but in the arms of either his nurse or of faithful Helen, who
took turns to carry him on foot nearly all the way, sometimes in a high
wind which covered them with dust, sometimes in great heat, sometimes
in rain so heavy that Helen's fur pelisse, with which she covered his
cradle, had to be wrung out several times. They slept at an inn, round
which the gentlemen lighted a circle of fires, and kept watch all night.
Weissenburg was loyal, five hundred armed gentlemen came out to meet
them, and on Whitsun Eve they entered the city, Helen carrying her
little king in her arms in the midst of a circle of these five hundred
holding their naked swords aloft. On Whit Sunday, Helen rose early,
bathed the little fellow, who was twelve weeks old that day, and dressed
him. He was then carried in her arms to the church, beside his mother.
According to the old Hungarian customs, the choir door was closed--the
burghers were within, and would not open till the new monarch should
have taken the great coronation oath to respect the Hungarian liberties
and laws.
This oath was taken by the Queen in the name of her son, the doors were
opened, and all the train entered, the little princess being lifted
up to stand by the organ, lest she should be hurt in the throng. First
Helen held her charge up to be confirmed, and then she had to hold him
while he was knighted, with a richly adorned sword bearing the motto
'Indestructible', and by a stout Hungarian knight called Mikosch Weida,
who struck with such a goodwill that Helen felt the blow on her arm, and
the Queen cried out to him not to hurt the child.
The Archbishop of Gran anointed the little creature, dressed him in the
red and gold robe, and put on his head the holy crown, and the people
admired to see how straight he held up his neck under it; indeed, they
admired the loudness and strength of his cries, when, as the good lady
records, 'the noble king had little pleasure in his coronation for he
wept aloud'. She had to hold him up for the rest of the service, while
Count Ulric of Eily held the crown over his head, and afterwards to seat
him in a chair in St. Peter's Church, and then he was carried home in
his cradle, with the count holding the crown over his head, and the
other regalia borne before him.
And thus Ladislas became King of Hungary at twelve weeks old, and was
then carried off by his mother into Austria for safety. Whether this
secret robbery of the crown, and coronation by stealth, was wise or just
on the mother's part is a question not easy of answer--though of course
she deemed it her duty to do her utmost for her child's rights. Of Helen
Kottenner's deep fidelity and conscientious feeling there can be no
doubt, and her having acted with her eyes fully open to the risk she
ran, her trust in Heaven overcoming her fears and terrors, rendered her
truly a heroine.
The crown has had many other adventures, and afterwards was kept in an
apartment of its own, in the castle of Ofen, with an antechamber guarded
by two grenadiers. The door was of iron, with three locks, and the
crown itself was contained in an iron chest with five seals. All this,
however, did not prevent it from being taken away and lost in the
Revolution of 1849.