From St. Leon I proceeded to the kingdom of Hungary. To complete this
journey I must pass through near twenty degrees of longitude. But that
was a trivial consideration: what I most desired was to gain a new
situation, and enter upon an untried scene. I had determined in my next
experiment upon the endowments of the stranger, to make no half-formed
efforts, and to suffer no mischiefs that drew their source from my own
irresolution. I determined, as I have said, to forestall all opposition
by my firmness, and to silence all objectors by the display of a more
than princely magnificence. I thought it therefore eligible to remove
to a scene, where no encounter with any one I had ever known might
abash me, and no relation of any adventure I had ever met should follow
me. The change of my figure, it is true, would render an encounter of
this sort of little moment to my liberty or my reputation; but I was a
new man, and I was desirous to engross and to feel the benefits that
attend upon novelty.
There was another motive however secretly working at my heart, of a
grander and more exalted cast, that made me prefer Hungary to all the
countries of the earth. Hungary had been now, for upwards of a century,
the great frontier of the Christian world,--the theatre upon which
the followers of Mahomet contended against the followers of Jesus for
destruction and for empire. My mind had from time to time brooded
over this picture in the solitude and forlornness of my dungeon. I
ruminated on all the calamities of Hungary, from the battle of Warna in
1444, to the battle of Mohacz in 1526; in both of which this generous
nation had unsuccessfully achieved prodigies of valour, and, even by
their defeats, had protracted the date of their own independence,
and co-operated for the defence of the population and arts of Europe
against a barbarous and blood-delighting foe. My thoughts dwelt with
rapturous admiration upon the exploits of the heroic Huniades and
his greater son. In the course of my many-coloured experience I had
seen something of war, and was not totally unacquainted with its
never-failing consequences. Meditating as I had done in the dungeons
of the inquisition, if ever I recovered my personal liberty and my
freedom of action, a journey into Hungary, my imagination had grown
familiar with captured towns and smoking villages; with the gallant
soldier stretched lifeless on the plain, and the defenceless mother and
her offspring brutally insulted and massacred; with fields laid waste,
and a people lifting up their hands for bread. Determined as I was to
open at once all the stores of my wealth, I thought I could not find
a nobler scene for its display. I resolved to pour the entire stream
of my riches, like a mighty river, to fertilise these wasted plains,
and revive their fainting inhabitants. Thus proceeding, should I not
have a right to expect to find myself guarded by the faithful love
of a people who would be indebted to my beneficence for every breath
they drew? This was the proper scene in which for the possessor of
the philosopher’s stone to take up his abode. He who could feel his
ambition satisfied in a more straitened field would, by so doing, prove
himself unworthy of the mighty blessing.
Nothing occurred to me in my journey of importance enough to obtain a
place in this history. When I arrived, I found the condition of the
inhabitants even more wretched than the lawlessness of my imagination
had represented it. In the battle of Mohacz the last of the line of
their native sovereigns, together with the flower of his nobility,
had fallen a victim to the merciless plague of war. What survived of
eminent persons in the state assembled soon after in national diet, and
elected, as they had been accustomed to do, one of the most illustrious
among themselves to preside over the councils and to conduct the
battles of their country. But the princes of the house of Austria,
ever on the watch for the aggrandisement of their family, seized the
opportunity of their disastrous situation to enslave the Hungarians
to their sceptre. Charles the Fifth caused his brother Ferdinand,
whose consort was only sister to the deceased monarch, to advance his
claim to the vacant throne, and to enter the country with an imperial
army. The native and elected sovereign found himself, in the weakened
condition of his realm, unable to resist the Austrian arms, and was
finally driven to the desperate expedient of calling in the Turk to
his assistance. From this time, for now upwards of thirty years, the
kingdom had been a prey to two foreign invaders, alternately taking
and retaking her most considerable towns, and distributing with the
strictest impartiality the miseries of war to her devoted inhabitants.
Solyman the Magnificent, the present Ottoman emperor, in no long time
threw off the mask; and, like his rival Ferdinand, professed to fight
only for the enlargement of his own dominions; while the claims, the
liberties, the constitution, and the prosperity of Hungary, were alike
trodden under foot in the protracted and sanguinary struggle.
At the period at which I entered this unfortunate realm, the Turk
was in possession of Buda, Gran, Temeswar, and many of the most
considerable cities; and Ferdinand, who had now succeeded Charles
in the imperial dignity, had been obliged to withdraw the seat of
the national government from the first of these towns, the ancient
metropolis, to the comparatively insignificant city of Presburg. The
war between the two parties had more than once been interrupted; not
indeed by the more stable accommodations of a treaty of peace, but by a
truce variously concluded for the terms of six or of eight years. Short
as was the period assigned to the suspension of arms, it was never
suffered to reach its natural termination; but, after the interval of
one or two summers, hostilities did not fail to break out again, with
aggravated symptoms of resentment and animosity. The warfare that was
now carried on had more in it of passion than vigour: it was of little
moment to the interest of either of the princes under whose banners
it was conducted; but it was not on that account the less, but rather
the more, vexatious and distressing to the Hungarian people. It obeyed
no rule; it operated in every direction; no place, no province, no
town,--neither the church nor the palace, neither the cottage nor the
castle,--could assure safety to those who sought its protection. A
flying party, which was to-day in the west, would almost the next day
make its appearance in the eastern extremity of the kingdom. Arts
were neglected; civilisation was destroyed; the stern and haughty
baron, free from restraint, would sally from his castle, sometimes in
pursuit of plunder, sometimes of private resentment and revenge; the
starving peasantry gladly enlisted in the band of a ferocious partisan
for bread; the gangs of robbers, which the vigilant policy of better
times had almost annihilated, rose again in importance, and swelled
into regiments; and, while they assumed at pleasure the denomination
of adherents to Ferdinand or to Solyman, perpetrated every species of
excess with impunity. When a reflecting spectator surveys a country in
a condition like this, he is tempted to wonder that the inhabitants
still retain the courage to bestow on their fields any sort of
cultivation, and that the licensed or the unlicensed robber still finds
something over which to extend the fangs of his rapacity.
I had not long passed the gates of Vienna, before I began to observe
the symptoms of that, which I had come from the Pyrenees and the
Garonne to visit. The farther I advanced, the more melancholy was the
scene I beheld. The country in some places entirely deserted; villages
laid in ashes; cities reduced to the dimensions and insignificance
of villages; fields fertilised or made rank with the manure of human
blood; the roads broken up; the erections of human ingenuity almost
obliterated; mills thrown down; rivers choked up and rendered stagnant;
a few solitary plots of cultivation scattered amidst the mighty waste.
The inhabitants I saw, appeared terrified, sickly, dejected, and
despairing; there was scarcely one who earlier or later had not lost a
father or a brother, whose wife had not been made the victim of brutal
lust, or who had not seen his children butchered before his face.
Persons of the more opulent classes could not travel the country in
safety, without being armed and associated in companies and caravans.
I was myself obliged to obtain the protection of parties of soldiers,
who from time to time happened to be marching in the route I pursued.
The savage neglect into which every thing was declining, produced in
repeated instances a contagious air and pestilential diseases; while
dearth and famine unrelentingly haunted the steps of those whom the
sword and the pestilence had spared. Such is war: such are the evils
nations willingly plunge into, or are compelled to endure, to pamper
the senseless luxury or pride of a Ferdinand and a Solyman!
I proceeded, as I had originally determined to do, to Buda, the
metropolis of the kingdom. It was in the hands of the Turk. It was
of little importance to me whether the monarch of the soil were a
Mahometan or a Christian; my mind was engrossed by considerations of a
very different magnitude. I came to relieve and assist, to the utmost
of my power, the inhabitants of the country in the extremity of their
distress.
I had not proceeded thus far, without bestowing a certain strictness
of reflection on the subject. I easily saw that, if I would confer a
substantial benefit on this unfortunate nation, I had scarcely any
other means for the purpose, than that of reviving among them a spirit
of industry. I was aware that, in the strictness of the term, money was
not wealth; that it could be neither eaten nor drunk; that it would not
of itself either clothe the naked or shelter the houseless; and that it
was unable, but by a circuitous operation, to increase the quantity of
provisions or commodities that the country afforded. It was my business
therefore not to proceed idly in the distribution of gold, but to
meditate seriously my plan of operations.
I fixed myself in a spacious and beautiful mansion in the capital. This
in the present distressed and depopulated condition of Hungary, it was
not difficult to procure. The house I selected had for centuries been
the principal residence of the illustrious family of Ragotski; but the
present representative of that family, after having seen his sons, one
after another, killed in the battles of his country, and his estates
ruined by military depredation, had found himself compelled to fly in
his old age, and had taken refuge with a distant branch of the same
house in the great duchy of Lithuania. It was not necessary for me to
proceed to any great extent in the first instance in the manufacture
of my wealth; I had every facility for adding to my store from time to
time as circumstances should demand.
I determined to open my operations with the article of building. There
was sufficient need of it. One half of the houses, through most of
the districts of Lower, or Western Hungary in particular, were ruined
and untenantable. I did not begin with erecting palaces; I felt that
the first claimants in the present emergency were the peasant and the
cultivator. I was more desirous that the rustic than the prince should
be well lodged and accommodated, provided with the means of rest after
fatigue, and secured against the invasion of ungenial seasons.
My reasons for beginning with building were these:--It was my purpose
to stimulate and revive the industry of the nation: I was desirous of
doing this with the least practicable violence upon the inclinations
and freedom of the inhabitants. Had I required of those to whom I
addressed myself, that they should fertilise the earth, the seeds with
which it should be impregnated might be wanting: I should have a nice
balance to adjust between what was necessary for immediate subsistence,
and what might be applied as the basis of future; a point better left
to its spontaneous level: I might be impeded and controlled by a
thousand circumstances and at every step. But the materials of building
are to be found in every country; no seasons can impair, no malignity
of man can annihilate them. Wherever there are quarries, there is
stone; wherever there is clay, there are the means of manufacturing
bricks. I was anxious to leave the rest of the great process of human
accommodation to its course. While I employed labourers, and paid
them their wages, there would be, in the mildest and most salutary
mode, a continual influx of money into the market. The increase of the
precious metals would give new alacrity to the operations of traffic;
the buyers would come forward with double confidence; the venders
would be eager to meet the activity and spirit of the demand. Ardour
and hope would revisit the human mind; and the industry I created,
and the accommodations of one kind at least to which I gave birth,
would inoculate the other departments of the community with a similar
industry. I came into Hungary in the spring of 1560; the season
was favourable to seeding and cultivation; I seemed to enter on my
undertaking with the happiest auspices.
Some time however must necessarily elapse between the period of
impregnating the soil, and that of the future harvest. Though I laid
it down therefore as a law to myself, to commit the least practicable
violence upon the genuine action of human society in pursuit of
the means of subsistence, I thought proper in a certain degree to
engage in the importation of corn from Poland, Silesia, and other
neighbouring countries. This seemed an eligible measure, if it were
only that I might show others the way, and excite them by my example.
I procured agents; I extended my concerns in various directions
over the navigable rivers; I formed magazines. It would have been
contrary to the genius of my undertaking, either to make a gratuitous
distribution of what I purchased, or to sell it at such low prices as
to drive other speculators, whose spirit of enterprise might happily
co-operate with mine, out of the market. However indifferent I might
feel to the receipt of pecuniary compensation, it was necessary that,
in the concerns of barter and trade, I should assume the exterior of a
merchant.
Nor did I wholly confine my exertions within the occupations of an
architect and a corn-dealer. These, or rather the former of the two,
I regarded as my true and genuine province; but I did not so far
enslave myself to my own maxims, as to negative in all instances the
direct demands of want. I was not anxious to convert a nation or an
army of men into my personal adherents and retainers: I was rather
desirous to avoid this as a dangerous source of obloquy. I did not
therefore always decline, by pretended loans to assist other men to
employ labourers as well as myself, to act upon their own designs, and
prosecute their own fortune. The cries of the poor man, the widow, and
the orphan, were sometimes too importunate, and too well justified by
their unquestionable necessities, to allow me to withhold from them my
alms. In a few instances I conveyed my supplies anonymously to persons,
whose dignity of birth or whose proud independence would have been too
grievously wounded if they had known their benefactor. I was cautious
and apprehensive as to the direct dispensing of money, but not entirely
bent against it; I regarded it as a precarious, but in some cases a
necessary interference.
The impulse which, by these various measures, I was fortunate enough
to generate, seemed to have the effect, so far at least as the
sphere of my activity extended, to revive the almost expiring life
of the country. Dejection and hopeless indolence, when I commenced
my operations, were written in every face; the miserable inhabitants
crawled along the roads or the street, their hands idly relaxed by
their side, and their slow and painful steps scarcely supporting their
lifeless trunk. When my plan became known, and I had already in a few
instances reduced my maxims into practice, it was as if the mellow
and spirit-stirring blast of a trumpet had wakened their sleeping
souls. Their eyes lightened with intelligence; the tear of anguish was
wiped from their faded cheeks; the smile of hope slowly expelled, and
faintly succeeded to, the bitter expression of despair. Busy and active
thoughts gave new motion to their limbs and quickness to their steps;
the labourer was seen hastening from place to place; the sound of the
hammer, the saw, and the various tools of the workman, was to be heard
from every side.
The conduct I pursued necessarily fixed upon me a considerable portion
of public attention. I was a foreigner, destitute of connections, and
having no previous acquaintance with any individual in the country. I
was in appearance a mere boy, a young man in all the flower and bloom
of adolescence, and who must be supposed to have just entered into
possession of his patrimony. These things tended to increase the public
wonder, and to render the mystery of my proceedings more perplexing
and obscure. In the age of genial warmth and melting softness, I did
not appear accessible to those passions which haunt the days, and
too often undermine the virtues, of youth. Youth is the season of
benevolence; but benevolence is rarely, as seemed to be my case, the
only fruit that youth is found to produce. There was a maturity and a
justness of adaptation in my plans, not less foreign from what those
who surrounded me would have expected me to display. The apparent
disinterestedness and modesty of my proceedings were not lost upon
the spectators. The consequence of all this was, that the sieur de
Chatillon, such was the name I at this time assumed, was regarded as a
phenomenon which could not be too much admired, or too loudly extolled.
Wherever I appeared, the people followed me with their gratitude and
blessings; ballads were written in my praise; the very children were
taught with their infant tongues to lisp the virtues of the saviour of
Hungary. My doors were besieged; my steps were watched; I could move
no where without public observation. I was importuned with petitions
without end; yet, if any petitioner showed himself presumptuous and
intrusive, the whole multitude of bystanders was ready to repress his
indiscretion, and teach him the respect that was due to their generous
benefactor, who never refused any thing, but what it would be improper
and injurious to grant.
Such was the treatment I experienced in Buda and the neighbouring
districts. Whether I looked within or without, I was equally
presented with incitements to self-approbation. I sent forth labour,
accompanied with her best and loveliest companions, plenty and health,
congratulation and contentment, to scatter blessings through the land.
I felt that I was prompted to this conduct by none of the motives of
vulgar ambition. I desired neither lordships nor estates, neither
elevation of rank, nor extension of prerogative. Sufficient to myself,
if I effected the happiness of the people, and they confessed me their
benefactor, my every passion would then be gratified. The utmost
boundary of my personal wishes proceeded no farther than this, that I
might be honoured and loved. What I desired, I obtained; the youth I
had procured to myself through the medium of the _opus magnum_, was
like what we are told of the youth of Job:--“When I went out through
the gate of the city, the young men saw me and hid themselves, and the
aged arose and stood up; the nobles refrained from talking, and the
princes laid their hands upon their mouths. When the ear heard me, then
it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to my actions.”
Here it may be thought I had ascended to that sphere which it was fit
the possessor of the philosopher’s stone should fill, and reaped the
rewards to which a man thus endowed ought to be forward to entitle
himself. Nor will I affirm that I was insensible to the gratifications
of my present situation. Though I sought to escape from the applause
that pursued me, yet there is something in the nature of the human
mind, that makes it impossible for us to hear it without complacence.
It was not however a boisterous and obtrusive acclamation that
satisfied me. A certain inwrought modesty of nature made me listen to
noisy commendations with a sentiment of shame. They seemed to be more
than any thing I had done could deserve; or they seemed to be in a tone
from which the delicacy of a virtuous mind shrinks back displeased.
They were so obstreperous, as to take from me the power of hearing the
sweeter verdict of my own conscience. No; it was the unbidden tear that
glistened in the eye of my beneficiaries; the tongue that faltered
beneath the essays of gratitude; the overwhelmed heart that had no
power to express itself; the hand of the parent that was stretched out
to his children, and dumbly said, These, these shall thank you!--it
was these things, that I felt within as the balsam of my life, and the
ambrosia of heaven.