Magyar conquest.
When Arpad, the semi-mythical founder of the Magyar monarchy, at the end
of A.D. 895 led his savage hordes through the Vereczka pass into the
regions of the Upper Theiss, the land, now called Hungary, was, for the
most part, in the possession of Slavs or semi-Slavs. From the
Riesengebirge to the Vistula, and from the Moldau to the Drave, extended
the shadowy empire of Moravia, founded by Moimir and Svatopluk (c.
850-890), which collapsed so completely at the first impact of the
Magyars that, ten years after their arrival, not a trace of it remained.
The Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats and Avars in the southern provinces were
subdued with equal ease. Details are wanting, but the traditional
decisive battle was fought at Alpar on the Theiss, whereupon the victors
pressed on to Orsova, and the conquest was completed by Arpad about the
year 906. This forcible intrusion of a non-Aryan race altered the whole
history of Europe; but its peculiar significance lay in the fact that it
permanently divided the northern from the southern and the eastern from
the western Slavs. The inevitable consequence of this rupture was the
Teutonizing of the western branch of the great Slav family, which, no
longer able to stand alone, and cut off from both Rome and
Constantinople, was forced, in self-defence, to take Christianity, and
civilization along with it, from Germany.
During the following seventy years we know next to nothing of the
internal history of the Magyars. Arpad died in 907, and his immediate
successors, Zsolt (907-947) and Taksony (947-972), are little more than
chronological landmarks. This was the period of those devastating raids
which made the savage Magyar horsemen the scourge and the terror of
Europe. We have an interesting description of their tactics from the pen
of the emperor Leo VI., whose account of them is confirmed by the
contemporary Russian annals. Trained riders, archers and
javelin-throwers from infancy, they advanced to the attack in numerous
companies following hard upon each other, avoiding close quarters, but
wearing out their antagonists by the persistency of their onslaughts.
Scarce a corner of Europe was safe from them. First (908-910) they
ravaged Thuringia, Swabia and Bavaria, and defeated the Germans on the
Lechfeld, whereupon the German king Henry I. bought them off for nine
years, employing the respite in reorganizing his army and training
cavalry, which henceforth became the principal military arm of the
Empire. In 933 the war was resumed, and Henry, at the head of what was
really the first national German army, defeated the Magyars at Gotha and
at Ried (933). The only effect of these reverses was to divert them
elsewhere. Already, in 926, they had crossed the Rhine and ravaged
Lotharingia. In 934 and 942 they raided the Eastern Empire, and were
bought off under the very walls of Constantinople. In 943 Taksony led
them into Italy, when they penetrated as far as Otranto. In 955 they
ravaged Burgundy. The same year the emperor Otto I. proclaimed them the
enemies of God and humanity, refused to receive their ambassadors, and
finally, at the famous battle of the Lechfeld, overwhelmed them on the
very scene of their first victory, near Augsburg, which they were
besieging (Aug. 10, 955). Only seven of the Magyars escaped, and these
were sold as slaves on their return home.
Acceptance of Christianity.
The catastrophe of the Lechfeld convinced the leading Magyars of the
necessity of accommodating themselves as far as possible to the Empire,
especially in the matter of religion. Christianity had already begun to
percolate Hungary. A large proportion of the captives of the Magyars
had been settled all over the country to teach their conquerors the arts
of peace, and close contact with this civilizing element was of itself
an enlightenment. The moral superiority of Christianity to paganism was
speedily obvious. The only question was which form of Christianity were
the Magyars to adopt, the Eastern or the Western? Constantinople was the
first in the field. The splendour of the imperial city profoundly
impressed all the northern barbarians, and the Magyars, during the 10th
century, saw a great deal of the Greeks. One Transylvanian raider,
Gyula, brought back with him from Constantinople a Greek monk, Hierothus
(c. 950), who was consecrated "first bishop of Turkia." Simultaneously a
brisk border trade was springing up between the Greeks and the Magyars,
and the Greek chapmen brought with them their religion as well as their
wares. Everything at first tended to favour the propaganda of the Greek
Church. But ultimately political prevailed over religious
considerations. Alarmed at the sudden revival of the Eastern Empire,
which under the Macedonian dynasty extended once more to the Danube, and
thus became the immediate neighbour of Hungary, Duke Geza, who succeeded
Taksony in 972, shrewdly resolved to accept Christianity from the more
distant and therefore less dangerous emperor of the West. Accordingly an
embassy was sent to Otto II. at Quedlinburg in 973, and in 975 Geza and
his whole family were baptized. During his reign, however, Hungarian
Christianity did not extend much beyond the limits of his court. The
nation at large was resolutely pagan, and Geza, for his own sake, was
obliged to act warily. Moreover, by accepting Christianity from Germany,
he ran the risk of imperilling the independence of Hungary. Hence his
cautious, dilatory tactics: the encouragement of Italian propagandists,
who were few, the discouragement of German propagandists, who were many.
Geza, in short, regarded the whole matter from a statesman's point of
view, and was content to leave the solution to time and his successor.
Stephen I.
That successor, Stephen I. (q.v.), was one of the great constructive
statesmen of history. His long and strenuous reign (997-1038) resulted
in the firm establishment of the Hungarian church and the Hungarian
state. The great work may be said to have begun in 1001, when Pope
Silvester II. recognized Magyar nationality by endowing the young Magyar
prince with a kingly crown. Less fortunate than his great exemplar,
Charlemagne, Stephen had to depend entirely upon foreigners--men like
the Saxon Asztrik[13] (c. 976-1010), the first Hungarian primate; the
Lombard St Gellert (c. 977-1046); the Bosomanns, a German family, better
known under the Magyarized form of their name Pazmany, and many others
who came to Hungary in the suite of his enlightened consort Gisela of
Bavaria. By these men Hungary was divided into dioceses, with a
metropolitan see at Esztergom (Gran), a city originally founded by Geza,
but richly embellished by Stephen, whose Italian architects built for
him there the first Hungarian cathedral dedicated to St Adalbert. Towns,
most of them also the sees of bishops, now sprang up everywhere,
including Szekesfehervar (Stuhlweissenburg), Veszprem, Pecs
(Funfkirchen) and Gyor (Raab). Esztergom, Stephen's favourite residence,
was the capital, and continued to be so for the next two centuries. But
the Benedictines, whose settlement in Hungary dates from the
establishment of their monastery at Pannonhalma (c. 1001), were the
chief pioneers. Every monastery erected in the Magyar wildernesses was
not only a centre of religion, but a focus of civilization. The monks
cleared the forests, cultivated the recovered land, and built villages
for the colonists who flocked to them, teaching the people western
methods of agriculture and western arts and handicrafts. But conversion,
after all, was the chief aim of these devoted missionaries, and when
some Venetian priests had invented a Latin alphabet for the Magyar
language a great step had been taken towards its accomplishment.
The monks were soon followed by foreign husbandmen, artificers and
handicraftsmen, who were encouraged to come to Hungary by reports of the
abundance of good land there and the promise of privileges. This
immigration was also stimulated by the terrible condition of western
Europe between 987 and 1060, when it was visited by an endless
succession of bad harvests and epidemics.[14] Hungary, now better known
to Europe, came to be regarded as a Promised Land, and, by the end of
Stephen's reign, Catholics of all nationalities, Greeks, Pagans, Jews
and Mahommedans were living securely together within her borders. For,
inexorable as Stephen ever was towards fanatical pagans, renegades and
rebels, he was too good a statesman to inquire too closely into the
private religious opinions of useful and quiet citizens.
The county system.
In endeavouring, with the aid of the church, to establish his kingship
on the Western model Stephen had the immense advantage of building on
unencumbered ground, the greater part of the soil of the country being
at his absolute disposal. His authority, too, was absolute, being
tempered only by the shadowy right of the Magyar nation to meet in
general assembly; and this authority he was careful not to compromise by
any slavish imitation of that feudal polity by which in the West the
royal power was becoming obscured. Although he broke off the Magyar
tribal system, encouraged the private ownership of land, and even made
grants of land on condition of military service--in order to secure an
armed force independent of the national levy--he based his new principle
of government, not on feudalism, but on the organization of the Frankish
empire, which he adapted to suit the peculiar exigencies of his realm.
Of the institutions thus borrowed and adapted the most notable was the
famous county system which still plays so conspicuous a part in
Hungarian national life. Central and western Hungary (the south and
north-east still being desolate) were divided into forty-six counties
(_varmegyek_, Lat. _comitatus_). At the head of each county was placed a
count, or lord-lieutenant[15] (_Foispan_, Lat. _comes_), who nominated
his subordinate officials: the castellan (_varnagy_), chief captain
(_hadnagy_) and "hundredor" (_szazados_, Lat. _centurio_). The
lord-lieutenant was nominated by the king, whom he was bound to follow
to battle at the first summons. Two-thirds of the revenue of the county
went into the royal treasury, the remaining third the lord-lieutenant
retained for administrative purposes. In the county system were included
all the inhabitants of the country save two classes: the still numerous
pagan clans, and those nobles who were attached to the king's person,
from whom he selected his chief officers of state and the members of his
council, of which we now hear for the first time.
It is significant for the whole future of Hungary that no effort was or
could be made by Stephen to weld the heterogeneous races under his crown
into a united nation. The body politic consisted, after as before, of
the king and the whole mass of Magyar freemen or nobles, descendants of
Arpad's warriors, theoretically all equal in spite of growing
inequalities of wealth and power, who constituted the _populus_;
privileges were granted by the king to foreign immigrants in the cities,
and the rights of nobility were granted to non-Magyars for special
services; but, in general, the non-Magyars were ruled by the royal
governors as subject races, forming--in contradistinction to the
"nobles"--the mass of the peasants, the _misera contribuens plebs_ upon
whom until 1848 nearly the whole burden of taxation fell. The right, not
often exercised, of the Magyar nobles to meet in general assembly and
the elective character of the crown Stephen also did not venture to
touch. On the other hand, his example in manumitting most of his slaves,
together with the precepts of the church, practically put an end to
slavery in the course of the 13th century, the slaves becoming for the
most part serfs, who differed from the free peasants only in the fact
that they were attached to the soil (_adscripti glebae_).
At this time all the conditions of life in Hungary were simple and
primitive. The court itself was perambulatory. In summer the king
dispensed justice in the open air, under a large tree. Only in the short
winter months did he dwell in the house built for him at Esztergom by
his Italian architects. The most valuable part of his property still
consisted of flocks and herds, or the products of the labours of his
serfs, a large proportion of whom were bee-keepers, hunters and fishers
employed in and around the interminable virgin-forests of the rough-hewn
young monarchy.
Geza I.
A troubled forty years (1038-1077) divides the age of St Stephen from
the age of St Ladislaus. Of the six kings who reigned in Hungary during
that period three died violent deaths, and the other three were fighting
incessantly against foreign and domestic foes. In 1046, and again in
1061, two dangerous pagan risings shook the very foundations of the
infant church and state; the western provinces were in constant danger
from the attacks of the acquisitive emperors, and from the south and
south-east two separate hordes of fierce barbarians (the Petchenegs in
1067-1068, and the Kumanians in 1071-1072) burst over the land. It was
the general opinion abroad that the Magyars would either relapse into
heathendom, or become the vassals of the Holy Roman Empire, and this
opinion was reflected in the increasingly hostile attitude of the popes
towards the Arpad kings. The political independence of Hungary was
ultimately secured by the outbreak of the quarrel about investiture
(1076), when Geza I. (1074-1077) shrewdly applied to Pope Gregory VII.
for assistance, and submitted to accept his kingdom from him as a fief
of the Holy See. The immediate result of the papal alliance was to
enable Hungary, under both Ladislaus and his capable successor Coloman
[Kalman] (1095-1116), to hold her own against all her enemies, and
extend her dominion abroad by conquering Croatia and a portion of the
Dalmatian coast. As an incipient great power, she was beginning to feel
the need of a seaboard.
Ladislaus I. and Coloman.
In the internal administration both Ladislaus I. and Coloman approved
themselves worthy followers of St Stephen. Ladislaus planted large
Petcheneg colonies in Transylvania and the trans-Dravian provinces, and
established military cordons along the constantly threatened
south-eastern boundary, the germs of the future banates[16] (_bansagok_)
which were to play such an important part in the national defence in the
following century. Law and order were enforced with the utmost rigour.
In that rough age crimes of violence predominated, and the king's
justiciars regularly perambulated the land in search of offenders, and
decimated every village which refused to surrender fugitive criminals.
On the other hand, both the Jews and the "Ishmaelites" (Mahommedans)
enjoyed complete civil and religious liberty in Hungary, where, indeed,
they were too valuable to be persecuted. The Ishmaelites, the financial
experts of the day, were the official mint-masters, treasurers and
bankers. The clergy, the only other educated class, supplied the king
with his lawyers, secretaries and ambassadors. The Magyar clergy was
still a married clergy, and their connubial privileges were solemnly
confirmed by the synod of Szabolcs, presided over by the king, in 1092.
So firmly rooted in the land was this practice, that Coloman, much as he
needed the assistance of the Holy See in his foreign policy, was only
with the utmost difficulty induced, in 1106, to bring the Hungarian
church into line with the rest of the Catholic world by enforcing
clerical celibacy. Coloman was especially remarkable as an
administrative reformer, and Hungary, during his reign, is said to have
been the best-governed state in Europe. He regulated and simplified the
whole system of taxation, encouraged agriculture by differential duties
in favour of the farmers, and promoted trade by a systematic improvement
of the ways of communication. The _Magna via Colomanni Regis_ was in use
for centuries after his death. Another important reform was the law
permitting the free disposal of landed estate, which gave the holders an
increased interest in their property, and an inducement to improve it.
During the reign of Coloman, moreover, the number of freemen was
increased by the frequent manumission of serfs. The lot of the slaves
was also somewhat ameliorated by the law forbidding their exportation.
Rivalry with the Eastern Empire.
Throughout the greater part of the 12th century the chief impediment in
the way of the external development of the Hungarian monarchy was the
Eastern Empire, which, under the first three princes of the Comnenian
dynasty, dominated south-eastern Europe. During the earlier part of that
period the Magyars competed on fairly equal terms with their imperial
rivals for the possession of Dalmatia, Rascia (the original home of the
Servians, situated between Bosnia, Dalmatia and Albania) and Rama or
northern Bosnia (acquired by Hungary in 1135); but on the accession of
Manuel Comnenus in 1143 the struggle became acute. As the grandson of St
Ladislaus, Manuel had Hungarian blood in his veins; his court was the
ready and constant refuge of the numerous Magyar malcontents, and he
aimed not so much at the conquest as at the suzerainty of Hungary, by
placing one of his Magyar kinsmen on the throne of St Stephen. He
successfully supported the claims of no fewer than three pretenders to
the Magyar throne, and finally made Bela III. (1173-1196) king of
Hungary, on condition that he left him, Manuel, a free hand in Dalmatia.
The intervention of the Greek emperors had important consequences for
Hungary. Politically it increased the power of the nobility at the
expense of the crown, every competing pretender naturally endeavouring
to win adherents by distributing largesse in the shape of crown-lands.
Ecclesiastically it weakened the influence of the Catholic Church in
Hungary, the Greek Orthodox Church, which permitted a married clergy and
did not impose the detested tithe (the principal cause of nearly every
pagan revolt) attracting thousands of adherents even among the higher
clergy. At one time, indeed, a Magyar archbishop and four or five
bishops openly joined the Orthodox communion and willingly crowned
Manuel's nominees despite the anathemas of their Catholic brethren.
Bela III.
The Eastern Empire ceased to be formidable on the death of Manuel
(1080), and Hungary was free once more to pursue a policy of
aggrandizement. In Dalmatia the Venetians were too strong for her; but
she helped materially to break up the Byzantine rule in the Balkan
peninsula by assisting Stephen Nemanya to establish an independent
Servian kingdom, originally under nominal Hungarian suzerainty. Bela
endeavoured to strengthen his own monarchy by introducing the hereditary
principle, crowning his infant son Emerich, as his successor during his
own lifetime, a practice followed by most of the later Arpads; he also
held a brilliant court on the Byzantine model, and replenished the
treasury by his wise economies.
Andrew II.
Unfortunately the fruits of his diligence and foresight were dissipated
by the follies of his two immediate successors, Emerich (1196-1204) and
Andrew II. (q.v.), who weakened the royal power in attempting to win
support by lavish grants of the crown domains on the already
over-influential magnates, a policy from which dates the supremacy of
the semi-savage Magyar oligarchs, that insolent and self-seeking class
which would obey no superior and trampled ruthlessly on every inferior.
The most conspicuous event of Andrew's reign was the promulgation in
1222 of the so-called Golden Bull, which has aptly been called the Magna
Carta of Hungary, and is in some of its provisions strikingly
reminiscent of that signed seven years previously by the English king
John.
The Golden Bull has been described as consecrating the humiliation of
the crown by the great barons, whose usurpations it legalized; the
more usually accepted view, however, is that it was directed not so
much to weakening as to strengthening the crown by uniting its
interests with those of the mass of the Magyar nobility, equally
threatened by the encroachments of the great barons.[17] The preamble,
indeed, speaks of the curtailment of the liberties of the nobles by
the power of certain of the kings, and at the end the right of armed
resistance to any attempt to infringe the charter is conceded to "the
bishops and the higher and lower nobles" of the realm; but, for the
rest, its contents clearly show that it was intended to strengthen the
monarchy by ensuring "that the momentary folly or weakness of the
king should not endanger the institution itself." This is especially
clear from clause xvi., which decrees that the title and estates of
the lords-lieutenant of counties should not be hereditary, thus
attacking feudalism at its very roots, while clause xiv. provides for
the degradation of any lord-lieutenant who should abuse his office. On
the other hand, the principle of the exemption of all the nobles from
taxation is confirmed, as well as their right to refuse military
service abroad, the defence of the realm being their sole obligation.
All nobles were also to have the right to appear at the court which
was to be held once a year at Szekesfehervar, by the king, or in his
absence by the palatine,[18] for the purpose of hearing causes. A
clause also guarantees all nobles against arbitrary arrest and
punishment at the instance of any powerful person.
This famous charter, which was amplified, under the influence of the
clergy, in 1231, when its articles were placed under the guardianship of
the archbishop of Esztergom (who was authorized to punish their
violation by the king with excommunication), is generally regarded as
the foundation of Hungarian constitutional liberty, though like Magna
Carta it purported only to confirm immemorial rights; and as such it was
expressly ratified as a whole in the coronation oaths of all the
Habsburg kings from Ferdinand to Leopold I. Its actual effect in the
period succeeding its issue was, however, practically nugatory; if
indeed it did not actually give a new handle to the subversive claims of
the powerful barons.
Bela IV.
Stephen V. and Ladislaus IV.
End of the Arpad Dynasty.
Bela IV. (1235-1270), the last man of genius whom the Arpads produced,
did something to curb the aristocratic misrule which was to be one of
the determining causes of the collapse of his dynasty. But he is best
known as the regenerator of the realm after the cataclysm of 1241-1242
(see BELA IV.). On his return from exile, after the subsidence of the
Tatar deluge, he found his kingdom in ashes; and his two great remedies,
wholesale immigration and castle-building, only sowed the seeds of fresh
disasters. Thus the Kumanian colonists, mostly pagans, whom he settled
in vast numbers on the waste lands, threatened to overwhelm the
Christian population; while the numerous strongholds, which he
encouraged his nobles to build as a protection against future Tatar
invasions, subsequently became so many centres of disloyalty. To bind
the Kumanian still more closely to his dynasty, Bela married his son
Stephen V. (1270-1272) to a Kumanian girl, and during the reign of her
son Ladislaus IV. (1272-1290) the court was certainly more pagan than
Christian. Valiant and enterprising as both these princes were (Stephen
successfully resisted the aggressions of the brilliant "golden King,"
Ottakar II. of Bohemia, and Ladislaus materially contributed to his
utter overthrow at Durnkrut in 1278), neither of them was strong enough
to make head against the disintegrating influences all around them.
Stephen contrived to hold his own by adroitly contracting an alliance
with the powerful Neapolitan Angevins who had the ear of the pope; but
Ladislaus (q.v.) was so completely caught in the toils of the Kumanians,
that the Holy See, the suzerain of Hungary, was forced to intervene to
prevent the relapse of the kingdom into barbarism, and the unfortunate
Ladislaus perished in the crusade that was preached against him. An
attempt of a patriotic party to keep the last Arpad, Andrew III.
(1290-1301), on the throne was only temporarily successful, and after a
horrible eight years' civil war (1301-1308) the crown of St Stephen
finally passed into the capable hands of Charles Robert of Naples.
During the four hundred years of the Arpad dominion the nomadic Magyar
race had established itself permanently in central Europe, adopted
western Christianity and founded a national monarchy on the western
model. Hastily and violently converted, driven like a wedge between the
Eastern and the Western Empires, the young kingdom was exposed from the
first to extraordinary perils. But, under the guidance of a series of
eminent rulers, it successfully asserted itself alike against pagan
reaction from within, and aggressive pressure from without, and, as it
grew in strength and skill, expanded territorially at the expense of all
its neighbours. These triumphs were achieved while the monarchy was
absolute, and thus able to concentrate in its hands all the resources of
the state, but towards the end of the period a political revolution
began. The weakness and prodigality of the later Arpads, the
depopulation of the realm during the Tatar invasion, the infiltration of
western feudalism and, finally, the endless civil discords of the 13th
century, brought to the front a powerful and predacious class of barons
who ultimately overshadowed the throne. The ancient county system was
gradually absorbed by this new governing element. The ancient royal
tenants became the feudatories of the great nobles, and fell naturally
into two classes, the _nobiles bene possessionati_, and the _nobiles
unius sessionis_, in other words the richer and the poorer gentry. We
cannot trace the gradations of this political revolution, but we know
that it met with determined opposition from the crown, which resulted in
the utter destruction of the Arpads, who, while retaining to the last
their splendid physical qualities, now exhibited unmistakeable signs of
moral deterioration, partly due perhaps to their too frequent marriages
with semi-Oriental Greeks and semi-savage Kumanians. On the other hand
the great nobles were the only class who won for themselves a recognized
political position. The tendency towards a representative system of
government had begun, but the almost uninterrupted anarchy which marked
the last thirty years of the Arpad rule was no favourable time for
constitutional development. The kings were fighting for their lives, the
great nobles were indistinguishable from brigands and the whole nation
seemed to be relapsing into savagery.
House of Anjou.
Reforms of Louis I.
It was reserved for the two great princes of the house of Anjou, Charles
I. (1310-1342) and Louis I. (1342-1382), to rebuild the Hungarian state,
and lead the Magyars back to civilization. Both by character and
education they were eminently fitted for the task, and all the
circumstances were in their favour. They brought from their native Italy
a thorough knowledge of the science of government as the middle ages
understood it, and the decimation of the Hungarian magnates during the
civil wars enabled them to re-create the noble hierarchy on a feudal
basis, in which full allowance was made for Magyar idiosyncracies. Both
these monarchs were absolute. The national assembly (Orszaggyules) was
still summoned occasionally, but at very irregular intervals, the real
business of the state being transacted in the royal council, where able
men of the middle class, principally Italians, held confidential
positions. The lesser gentry were protected against the tyranny of the
magnates, encouraged to appear at court and taxed for military service
by the royal treasury direct--so as to draw them closer to the crown.
Scores of towns, too, owe their origin and enlargement to the care of
the Angevin princes, who were lavish of privileges and charters, and saw
to it that the high-roads were clear of robbers. Charles, moreover, was
a born financier, and his reform of the currency and of the whole fiscal
system greatly contributed to enrich both the merchant class and the
treasury. Louis encouraged the cities to surround themselves with strong
walls. He himself erected a whole cordon of forts round the flourishing
mining towns of northern Hungary. He also appointed Hungarian consuls in
foreign trade centres, and established a system of protective tariffs.
More important in its ulterior consequences to Hungary was the law of
1351 which, while confirming the Golden Bull in general, abrogated the
clause (iv.) by which the nobles had the right to alienate their lands.
Henceforward their possessions were to descend directly and as of right
to their brothers and their issue, whose claim was to be absolute. This
"principle of aviticity" (_osiseg, aviticum_), which survived till 1848,
was intended to preserve the large feudal estates as part of the new
military system, but its ultimate effect was to hamper the development
of the country by preventing the alienation, and therefore the
mortgaging of lands, so long as any, however distant, scion of the
original owning family survived.[19] Louis's efforts to increase the
national wealth were also largely frustrated by the Black Death, which
ravaged Hungary from 1347 to 1360, and again during 1380-1381, carrying
off at least one-fourth of the population.
Externally Hungary, under the Angevin kings, occupied a commanding
position. Both Charles and Louis were diplomatists as well as soldiers,
and their foreign policy, largely based on family alliances, was almost
invariably successful. Charles married Elizabeth, the sister of Casimir
the Great of Poland, with whom he was connected by ties of close
friendship, and Louis, by virtue of a compact made by his father
thirty-one years previously, added the Polish crown to that of Hungary
in 1370. Thus, during the last twelve years of his reign, the dominions
of Louis the Great included the greater part of central Europe, from
Pomerania to the Danube, and from the Adriatic to the steppes of the
Dnieper.
Turkish invasions.
The Vlachs.
The Angevins were less successful towards the south, where the first
signs were appearing of that storm which ultimately swept away the
Hungarian monarchy. In 1353 the Ottoman Turks crossed the Hellespont
from Asia Minor and began that career of conquest which made them the
terror of Europe for the next three centuries. In 1360 they conquered
southern Bulgaria. In 1365 they transferred their capital from Brusa to
Adrianople. In 1371 they overwhelmed the Servian tsar Vukashin at the
battle of Taenarus and penetrated to the heart of old Servia. In 1380
they threatened Croatia and Dalmatia. Hungary herself was now directly
menaced, and the very circumstances which had facilitated the advance of
the Turks, enfeebled the potential resistance of the Magyars. The Arpad
kings had succeeded in encircling their whole southern frontier with
half a dozen military colonies or banates, comprising, roughly speaking,
Little Walachia,[20] and the northern parts of Bulgaria, Servia and
Bosnia. But during this period a redistribution of territory had
occurred in these parts, which converted most of the old banates into
semi-independent and violently anti-Magyar principalities. This was due
partly to the excessive proselytizing energy of the Angevins, which
provoked rebellion on the part of their Greek-Orthodox subjects, partly
to the natural dynastic competition of the Servian and Bulgarian tsars,
and partly to the emergence of a new nationality, the Walachian.
Previously to 1320, what is now called Walachia was regarded by the
Magyars as part of the banate of Szoreny. The base of the very mixed and
ever-shifting population in these parts were the Vlachs (Rumanians),
perhaps the descendants of Trajan's colonists, who, under their voivode,
Bazarad, led King Charles into an ambuscade from which he barely escaped
with his life (Nov. 9-12, 1330). From this disaster are to be dated the
beginnings of Walachia as an independent state. Moldavia, again, ever
since the 11th century, had been claimed by the Magyars as forming,
along with Bessarabia and the Bukowina, a portion of the semi-mythical
Etelkoz, the original seat of the Magyars before they occupied modern
Hungary. This desolate region was subsequently peopled by Vlachs, whom
the religious persecutions of Louis the Great had driven thither from
other parts of his domains, and, between 1350 and 1360, their voivode
Bogdan threw off the Hungarian yoke altogether. In Bosnia the persistent
attempts of the Magyar princes to root out the stubborn, crazy and
poisonous sect of the Bogomils had alienated the originally amicable
Bosnians, and in 1353 Louis was compelled to buy the friendship of their
Bar Tvrtko by acknowledging him as king of Bosnia. Both Servia and
Bulgaria were by this time split up into half a dozen principalities
which, as much for religious as for political reasons, preferred paying
tribute to the Turks to acknowledging the hegemony of Hungary. Thus,
towards the end of his reign, Louis found himself cut off from the Greek
emperor, his sole ally in the Balkans, by a chain of bitterly hostile
Greek-Orthodox states, extending from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. The
commercial greed of the Venetians, who refused to aid him with a fleet
to cut off the Turks in Europe from the Turks in Asia Minor, nullified
Louis' last practical endeavour to cope with a danger which from the
first he had estimated at its true value.
Louis the Great left two infant daughters: Maria, who was to share the
throne of Poland with her betrothed, Sigismund of Pomerania, and Hedwig,
better known by her Polish name of Jadwiga, who was to reign over
Hungary with her young bridegroom, William of Austria. This plan was
upset by the queen-dowager Elizabeth, who determined to rule both
kingdoms during the minority of her children. Maria, her favourite, with
whom she refused to part, was crowned queen of Hungary a week after her
father's death (Sept. 17, 1382). Two years later Jadwiga, reluctantly
transferred to the Poles instead of her sister, was crowned queen of
Poland at Cracow (Oct. 15, 1384) and subsequently compelled to marry
Jagiello, grand-duke of Lithuania. In Hungary, meanwhile, impatience at
the rule of women induced the great family of the Horvathys to offer the
crown of St Stephen to Charles III. of Naples, who, despite the oath of
loyalty he had sworn to his benefactor, Louis the Great, accepted the
offer, landed in Dalmatia with a small Italian army, and, after
occupying Buda, was crowned king of Hungary on the 31st of December,
1385, as Charles II. His reign lasted thirty-eight days. On the 7th of
February, 1386, he was treacherously attacked in the queen-dowager's own
apartments, at her instigation, and died of his injuries a few days
later. But Elizabeth did not profit long by this atrocity. In July the
same year, while on a pleasure trip with her daughter, she was captured
by the Horvathys, and tortured to death in her daughter's presence.
Maria herself would doubtless have shared the same fate, but for the
speedy intervention of her _fiance_, whom a diet, by the advice of the
Venetians, had elected to rule the headless realm on the 31st of March
1387. He married Maria in June the same year, and she shared the sceptre
with him till her sudden death by accident on the 17th of May 1395.
Sigismund.
During the long reign of Sigismund (1387-1437) Hungary was brought face
to face with the Turkish peril in its most threatening shape, and all
the efforts of the king were directed towards combating or averting it.
However sorry a figure Sigismund may have cut as emperor in Germany, as
king of Hungary he claims our respect, and as king of Hungary he should
be judged, for he ruled her, not unsuccessfully, for fifty years during
one of the most difficult crises of her history, whereas his connexion
with Germany was at best but casual and transient.[21] From the first he
recognized that his chief duty was to drive the Turks from Europe, or,
at least, keep them out of Hungary, and this noble ambition was the
pivot of his whole policy. A domestic rebellion (1387-1395) prevented
him at the outset from executing his design till 1396, and if the hopes
of Christendom were shattered at Nicopolis, the failure was due to no
fault of his, but to the haughty insubordination of the feudal levies.
Again, his inaction during those memorable twelve years (1401-1413) when
the Turkish empire, after the collapse at Angora (1402), seemed about to
be swallowed up by "the great wolf" Tamerlane, was due entirely to the
malice of the Holy See, which, enraged at his endeavours to maintain the
independence of the Magyar church against papal aggression (the diet of
1404, on Sigismund's initiative, had declared bulls bestowing Magyar
benefices on foreigners, without the royal consent, pernicious and
illegal), saddled him with a fresh rebellion and two wars with Venice,
resulting ultimately in the total loss of Dalmatia (c. 1430). Not till
1409 could Sigismund be said to be king in his own realm, yet in 1413 we
find him traversing Europe in his endeavour to terminate the Great
Schism, as the first step towards uniting Christendom once more against
the Turk. Hence the council of Constance to depose three rival popes;
hence the council of Basel to pacify the Hussites, and promote another
anti-Moslem league. But by this time the Turkish empire had been raised
again from its ruins by Mahommed I. (1402-1421), and resumed its
triumphal progress under Murad II. (1421-1451). Yet even now Sigismund,
at the head of his Magyars, thrice (1422-1424, 1426-1427, and 1430-1431)
encountered the Turks, not ingloriously, in the open field, till,
recognizing that Hungary must thenceforth rely entirely on her own
resources in any future struggle with Islam, he elaborately fortified
the whole southern frontier, and converted the little fort of
Nandorfehervar, later Belgrade, at the junction of the Danube and Save,
into an enormous first-class fortress, which proved strong enough to
repel all the attacks of the Turks for more than a century. It argued no
ordinary foresight thus to recognize that Hungary's strategy in her
contest with the Turks must be strictly defensive, and the wisdom of
Sigismund was justified by the disasters which almost invariably
overcame the later Magyar kings whenever they ventured upon aggressive
warfare with the sultans.
Feudal system.
Hussites.
A monarch so overburdened with cares was naturally always in need of
money,[22] and thus obliged to lean heavily upon the support of the
estates of the realm. The importance and influence of the diet increased
proportionately. It met every year, sometimes twice a year, during
Sigismund's reign, and was no longer, as in the days of Louis the Great,
merely a consultative council, but a legislative body in partnership
with the king. It was still, however, essentially an assembly of
notables, lay and clerical, at which the gentry, though technically
eligible, do not seem to have been directly represented. At Sigismund's
first diet (1397) it was declared that the king might choose his
counsellors where he listed, and at the diet of 1397 he invited the free
and royal towns to send their deputies to the parliament. Subsequently
this privilege was apparently erected into a statute, but how far it was
acted upon we know not. Sigismund, more fortunate than the Polish kings,
seems to have had little trouble with his diets. This was largely due to
his friendly intimacy with the majority of the Magyar notables, from
among whom he chose his chief counsellors. The estates loyally supported
him against the attempted exactions of the popes, and do not seem to
have objected to any of his reforms, chief among which was the
army-reform project of 1435, to provide for the better defence of the
land against the Turks. This measure obliged all the great dignitaries,
and the principal towns also, according to their means, to maintain a
_banderium_ of five hundred horsemen, or a proportional part thereof,
and hold it ready, at the first summons, thus supplying the crown with a
standing army 76,875 strong. In addition to this, a reserve force called
the _telekkatonasag_ was recruited from among the lesser gentry
according to their _teleks_ or holdings, every thirty-three _teleks_
being held responsible for a mounted and fully equipped archer.
Moreover, river fleets, built by Genoese masters and manned by Servians,
were constructed to patrol and defend the great rivers of Hungary,
especially on the Turkish frontier. Much as he owed to them, however,
Sigismund was no mere nobles' king. His care for the common people was
sincere and constant, but his beneficial efforts in this direction were
thwarted by the curious interaction of two totally dissimilar social
factors, feudalism and Hussitism. In Sigismund's reign the feudal
system, for the first time, became deeply rooted in Magyar soil, and it
is a lamentable fact that in 15th-century Hungary it is to be seen at
its very worst, especially in those wild tracts, and they were many, in
which the king's writ could hardly be said to run. Simultaneously from
the west came the Hussite propagandists teaching that all men were
equal, and that all property should be held in common. The suffering
Magyar multitudes eagerly responded to these seductive teachings, and
the result was a series of dangerous popular risings (the worst in 1433
and 1436) in which heresy and communism were inextricably intermingled.
With the aid of inquisitors from Rome, the evil was literally burnt out,
but not before provinces, especially in the south and south-east, had
been utterly depopulated. They were repeopled by Vlachs.
Yet despite the interminable wars and rebellions which darken the
history of Hungary in the reign of Sigismund, the country, on the whole,
was progressing. Its ready response to the king's heavy demands for the
purpose of the national defence points to the existence of a healthy and
self-sacrificing public spirit, and the eagerness with which the youth
of all classes now began to flock to the foreign universities is another
satisfactory feature of the age. Between 1362 and 1450 no fewer than
4151 Magyar students frequented the university of Vienna, nearly as many
went by preference to Prague, and this, too, despite the fact that there
were now two universities in Hungary itself, the old foundation of Louis
the Great at Pecs, and a new one established at Buda by Sigismund.
Like Louis the Great before him, Sigismund had failed to found a
dynasty, but, fifteen years before his death, he had succeeded in
providing his only daughter Elizabeth with a consort apparently well
able to protect both her and her inheritance in the person of Albert V.,
duke of Austria. Albert, a sturdy soldier, who had given brilliant
proofs of valour and generalship in the Hussite wars, was crowned king
of Hungary at Szekesfehervar (Stuhlweissenburg) on the 1st of January
1438, elected king of the Romans at Frankfort on the 18th of March 1438,
and crowned king of Bohemia at Prague on the 29th of June 1438. On
returning to Buda in 1439, he at once plunged into a war with the Turks,
who had, in the meantime, captured the important Servian fortress of
Semendria and subjugated the greater part of Bosnia. But the king got no
farther than Servia, and was carried off by dysentery (Oct. 27, 1439),
in the forty-second year of his age, in the course of the campaign.
Albert left behind him two infant daughters only, but his consort was
big with child, and, in the event of that child proving to be an heir
male, his father's will bequeathed to him the kingdoms of Hungary and
Bohemia, under the regency of his mother. Thus, with the succession
uncertain, with the Turk at the very door, with the prospect, dismal at
the best, of a long minority, the political outlook was both
embarrassing and perilous. Obviously a warrior-king was preferable to a
regimen of women and children, and the eyes of the wiser Magyars turned
involuntarily towards Wladislaus III. of Poland, who, though only in his
nineteenth year, was already renowned for his martial disposition.
Wladislaus accepted the proffered throne from the Magyar delegates at
Cracow on the 8th of March 1440; but in the meantime (Feb. 22) the
queen-widow gave birth to a son who, six weeks later, as Ladislaus V.
(q.v.) was crowned king of Hungary (May 15) at Szekesfehervar. On the
22nd of May the Polish monarch appeared at Buda, was unanimously elected
king of Hungary under the title of Wladislaus I. (June 24) and crowned
on the 17th of July. This duoregnum proved even more injurious to
Hungary than the dreaded interregnum. Queen Elizabeth, aided by her
kinsmen, the emperor Frederick III. and the counts of Cilli, flooded
northern and western Hungary with Hussite mercenaries, one of whom, Jan
Giszkra, she made her captain-general, while Wladislaus held the central
and south-eastern parts of the realm. The resulting civil war was
terminated only by the death of Elizabeth on the 13th of December 1443.
John Hunyadi.
All this time the pressure of the Turks upon the southern provinces of
Hungary had been continuous, but fortunately all their efforts had so
far been frustrated by the valour and generalship of the ban of Szoreny,
John Hunyadi, the fame of whose victories, notably in 1442 and 1443,
encouraged the Holy See to place Hungary for the third time at the head
of a general crusade against the infidel. The experienced diplomatist
Cardinal Cesarini was accordingly sent to Hungary to reconcile
Wladislaus with the emperor. The king, who had just returned from the
famous "long campaign" of 1443, willingly accepted the leadership of the
Christian League. At the diet of Buda, early in 1444, supplies were
voted for the enterprise, and Wladislaus was on the point of quitting
his camp at Szeged for the seat of war, when envoys from Sultan Murad
arrived with the offer of a ten years' truce on such favourable
conditions (they included the relinquishment of Servia, Walachia and
Moldavia, and the payment of an indemnity) that Hunyadi persuaded the
king to conclude (in July) a peace which gave him more than could
reasonably be anticipated from the most successful campaign.
Unfortunately, two days later, Cardinal Cesarini absolved the king from
the oath whereby he had sworn to observe the peace of Szeged, and was
thus mainly responsible for the catastrophe of Varna, when four months
later (Nov. 10) the young monarch and the flower of the Magyar chivalry
were overwhelmed by fourfold odds on Turkish soil. (See HUNYADI, JANOS;
and WLADISLAUS III.)
The next fourteen years form one of the most interesting and pregnant
periods of Hungarian history. It marks the dawn of a public spirit as
represented by the gentry, who, alarmed at the national peril and justly
suspicious of the ruling magnates, unhesitatingly placed their destinies
in the hands of Hunyadi, the one honest man who by sheer merit had risen
within the last ten years from the humble position of a country squire
to a leading position in the state. This feeling of confidence found due
expression at the diet of 1446, which deliberately passing over the
palatine Laszlo Garai elected Hunyadi governor of Hungary, and passed a
whole series of popular measures intended to be remedial, e.g. the
decree ordering the demolition of the new castles, most of them little
better than robber-strongholds; the decree compelling the great officers
of state to suspend their functions during the session of the diet; the
decree declaring illegal the new fashion of forming confederations on
the Polish model, all of which measures were obviously directed against
the tyranny and the lawlessness of the oligarchy. Unfortunately this
salutary legislation remained a dead letter. It was as much as the
governor could do to save the state from destruction, let alone reform
it. At this very time northern Hungary, including the wealthy mining
towns, was in the possession of the Hussite mercenary Jan Giszkra, who
held them nominally for the infant king Ladislaus V., still detained at
Vienna by his kinsman the emperor. The western provinces were held by
Frederick himself. Invaluable time was wasted in negotiating with these
intruders before the governor could safely devote himself to the task of
expelling the Turk from the southern provinces. He had to be content
with armistices, reconciliations and matrimonial contracts, because the
great dignitaries of the state, men like the palatine Laszlo Garai,
Count Ulrich of Cilli, and the voivode of Transylvania, Mihaly Ujlaky,
thwarted in every way the _novus homo_ whom they hated and envied. From
them, the official guardians of Hungary's safety, he received no help,
either during his governorship (1446-1453), or when, in 1454, on the eve
of his departure for his last and most glorious campaign, the diet
commanded a _levee en masse_ of the whole population in his support. At
that critical hour it was at his own expense that Hunyadi fortified
Belgrade, now the sole obstacle between Hungary and destruction, with
the sole assistance of the Franciscan friar Giovanni da Capistrano,
equipped the fleet and the army which relieved the beleaguered fortress
and overthrew Mahommed II. But the nation at least was grateful, and
after his death (Aug. 11, 1456) it freely transferred its allegiance to
his family as represented by his two sons, Laszlo, now in his 23rd, and
Matthias, now in his 16th year. The judicial murder of Laszlo Hunyadi
(q.v.) by the enemies of his house (March 16, 1457) was therefore a
stupid blunder as well as the foulest of crimes, and on the death of his
chief assassin, Ladislaus V., six months later (Nov. 23, 1457), the diet
which assembled on the banks of the Rakos, in defiance of the magnates
and all foreign competitors, unanimously and enthusiastically elected
Matthias Hunyadi king of Hungary (Jan. 24, 1458).
Matthias I.
In less than three years the young king had justified their confidence,
and delivered his country from its worst embarrassments. (See MATTHIAS
I., king of Hungary.) This prodigy was accomplished in the face of every
conceivable obstacle. His first diet grudgingly granted him supplies
and soldiers for the Turkish war, on condition that under no
circumstances whatever should they henceforth be called upon to
contribute towards the national defence, and he was practically deprived
of the control of the _banderia_ or mounted militia. It was with a small
force of mercenaries, raised at his own expense, that the young king won
his first Turkish victories, and expelled the Czechs from his northern
and the Habsburgs from his western provinces. But his limited resources,
and, above all, the proved incapacity of the militia in the field,
compelled him instantly to take in hand the vital question of army
reform. In the second year of his reign he undertook personally the
gigantic task of providing Hungary with an army adequate to her various
needs on the model of the best military science of the day. The landless
younger sons of the gentry and the Servian and Vlach immigrants provided
him with excellent and practically inexhaustible military material. The
old feudal levies he put aside. Brave enough personally, as soldiers
they were distinctly inferior both to the Janissaries and the Hussites,
with both of whom Matthias had constantly to contend. It was a trained
regular army in his pay and consequently at his disposal that he wanted.
The nucleus of the new army he found in the Czech mercenaries, seasoned
veterans who readily transferred their services to the best payer. This
force, formed in 1459, was generally known as the _Fekete Sereg_, or
"Black Brigade," from the colour of its armour. From 1465 the pick of
the Magyars and Croatians were enlisted in the same way every year,
till, towards the end of his reign, Matthias could count upon 20,000
horse and 8000 foot, besides 6000 black brigaders. The cavalry consisted
of the famous Hussars, or light horse, of which he may be said to have
been the creator, and the heavily armed mounted musketeers on the
Czech-German model. The infantry, in like manner, was divided into light
and heavy. This army was provided with a regular commissariat,
cannon[23] and ballistic machines, and, being constantly on active
service, was always in a high state of efficiency. The land forces were
supported by a river fleet consisting (in 1479) of 360 vessels, mostly
sloops and corvettes, manned by 2600 sailors, generally Croats, and
carrying 10,000 soldiers. Eight large military stations were also built
at the chief strategic points on the Danube, Save and Theiss. These
armaments, which cost Matthias 1,000,000 florins per annum, equivalent
to L200,000, did not include the auxiliary troops of the hospodars of
Walachia and Moldavia, or the feudal levies of the barons and prelates.
The army of Matthias was not only a military machine of first-rate
efficiency, but an indispensable civilizing medium. It enabled the king
to curb the lawlessness of the Magyar nobility, and explains why none of
the numerous rebellions against him ever succeeded. Again and again,
during his absence on the public service, the barons and prelates would
assemble to compass his ruin or dispose of his crown, when, suddenly,
"like a tempest," from the depths of Silesia or of Bosnia, he would
himself appear among them, confounding and scattering them, often
without resistance, always without bloodshed. He also frequently
employed his soldiers in collecting the taxes from the estates of those
magnates who refused to contribute to the public burdens, in protecting
the towns from the depredations of the robber barons, or in convoying
the caravans of the merchants. In fact, they were a police force as well
as an army.
Despite the enormous expense of maintaining the army, Matthias, after
the first ten years of his reign, was never in want of money. This
miracle was achieved by tact and management. No Hungarian king had so
little trouble with the turbulent diet as Matthias. By this time the
gentry, as well as the barons and prelates, took part in the
legislature. But attendance at the diet was regarded by the bulk of the
poorer deputies as an intolerable burden, and they frequently agreed to
grant the taxes for two or three years in advance, so as to be saved the
expense of attending every year. Moreover, to promote their own
convenience, they readily allowed the king to assess as well as to
collect the taxes, which consequently tended to become regular and
permanent, while Matthias' reform of the treasury, which was now
administered by specialists with separate functions, was economically of
great benefit to the state. Yet Matthias never dispensed with the diet.
During the thirty-two years of his reign he held at least fifteen
diets,[24] at which no fewer than 450 statutes were passed. He
re-codified the Hungarian common law; strictly defined the jurisdiction
of the whole official hierarchy from the palatine to the humblest
village judge; cheapened and accelerated legal procedure, and in an age
when might was right did his utmost to protect the weak from the strong.
There is not a single branch of the law which he did not simplify and
amend, and the iron firmness with which he caused justice to be
administered, irrespective of persons, if it exposed him to the charge
of tyranny from the nobles, also won for him from the common people the
epithet of "the Just." To Matthias is also due the credit of creating an
efficient official class. Merit was with him the sole qualification for
advancement. One of his best generals, Pal Kinizsy, was a miller's son,
and his capable chancellor, Peter Varady, whom he made archbishop of
Kalocsa, came of a family of small squires. For education so scholarly a
monarch as Matthias naturally did what he could. He founded the
university of Pressburg (Academia Istropolitana, 1467), revived the
declining university of Pecs, and, at the time of his death, was
meditating the establishment of a third university at Buda.
Unfortunately the civilizing efforts of Matthias made but little
impression on society at large. The bulk of the Magyar nobility was
still semi-barbaric. Immensely wealthy (it is estimated that most of the
land, at this time, was in the hands of 25 great families, the Zapolyas
alone holding an eighth of it), it was a point of honour with them to
appear in public in costly raiment ablaze with silver, gold and precious
stones, followed at every step by armies of retainers scarcely less
gorgeous. At the same time their ignorance was profound. Many of the
highest dignitaries of state did not know their alphabet. Signatures to
documents of the period are rare; seals served instead of signatures,
because most of the nobles were unable to sign their names. Learning,
indeed, was often ridiculed as pedantry in a gentleman of good family.
The clergy, the chief official class, were naturally less ignorant than
the gentry. Some of the prelates--notably Janos Csezmeczey, better known
as Janus Pannonius (1433-1472)--had a European reputation for learning.
The primate Cardinal, Janos Vitez (1408-1472), at the beginning, and the
primate, Cardinal Tamas Bakocz (q.v.), at the end of the reign were men
of eminent ability and the highest culture. But the moral tone of the
Magyar church at this period was very low. The bishops prided themselves
on being great statesmen, great scholars, great financiers, great
diplomatists--anything, in fact, but good Christians. Most of them,
except when actually celebrating mass, were indistinguishable alike in
costume and conduct from the temporal magnates. Of twelve of them it is
said that foreigners took them at first for independent temporal
princes, so vast were their estates, so splendid their courts, so
numerous their armed retainers. Under such guides as these the lower
clergy erred deplorably, and drunkenness, gross immorality, brawling and
manslaughter were common occurrences in the lives of the parish priests.
The regular clergy were if possible worse than the secular, with the
exception of the Paulicians, the sole religious order which steadily
resisted the general corruption, of whose abbot, the saintly Gregory,
was the personal friend of Matthias.
What little culture there was outside the court, the capital and the
palaces of a few prelates, was to be found in the towns, most of them of
German origin. Matthias laboured strenuously to develop and protect the
towns, multiplied municipal charters, and materially improved the means
of communication, especially in Transylvania. His Silesian and Austrian
acquisitions were also very beneficial to trade, throwing open as they
did the western markets to Hungarian produce. Wine and meat were the
chief exports. The wines of Hungary were already renowned throughout
Europe, and cattle breeding was conducted on a great scale. Of
agricultural produce there was barely sufficient for home consumption,
but the mining industries had reached a very high level of excellence,
and iron, tin and copper were very largely exported from the northern
counties to Danzig and other Baltic ports. So highly developed indeed
were the Magyar methods of smelting, that Louis XI. of France took the
Hungarian mining system as the model for his metallurgical reforms, and
Hungarian master-miners were also in great demand at the court of Ivan
the Terrible. Moreover, the keen artistic instincts of Matthias led him
to embellish his cities as well as fortify them. Debreczen was
practically rebuilt by him, and dates its prosperity from his reign.
Breslau, his favourite town, he endowed with many fine public buildings.
Buda he endeavoured to make the worthy capital of a great realm, and the
palace which he built there was pronounced by the papal legates to be
superior to any in Italy.
Power in Europe.
Politically Matthias raised Hungary to the rank of the greatest power in
central Europe, her influence extending into Asia and Africa. Poland was
restrained by his alliances with the Teutonic Knights and the tsardom of
Muscovy, and his envoys appeared in Persia and in Egypt to combat the
diplomacy of the Porte. He never, indeed, jeopardized the position of
the Moslems in Europe as his father had done, and thus the peace of
Szeged (1444), which regained the line of the Danube and drove the Turk
behind the Balkans, must always be reckoned as the high-water mark of
Hungary's Turkish triumphs. But Matthias at least taught the sultan to
respect the territorial integrity of Hungary, and throughout his reign
the Eastern Question, though often vexatious, was never acute. Only
after his death did the Ottoman empire become a menace to Christendom.
Besides, his hands were tied by the unappeasable enmity of the emperor
and the emperor's allies, and he could never count upon any material
help from the West against the East. The age of the crusades had gone.
Throughout his reign the Czechs and the Germans were every whit as
dangerous to Hungary as the Turks, and the political necessity which
finally compelled Matthias to partition Austria and Bohemia, in order to
secure Hungary, committed him to a policy of extreme circumspection. He
has sometimes been blamed for not crushing his incurably disloyal and
rebellious nobles, instead of cajoling them, after the example of his
contemporary, Louis XI., who laid the foundations of the greatness of
France on the ruin of the vassals. But Louis XI. had a relatively
civilized and politically developed middle class behind him, whereas
Matthias had not. It was as much as Matthias could do to keep the civic
life of Hungary from expiring altogether, and nine-tenths of his
burgesses were foreigners with no political interest in the country of
their adoption. Never was any dominion so purely personal, and therefore
so artificial as his. His astounding energy and resource curbed all his
enemies during his lifetime, but they were content to wait patiently for
his death, well aware that the collapse of his empire would immediately
follow.
Period of decline.
Wladislaus II.
All that human foresight could devise for the consolidation and
perpetuation of the newly established Hungarian empire had been done by
Matthias in the last years of his reign. He had designated as his
successor his natural son, the highly gifted Janos (John) Corvinus, a
youth of seventeen. He had raised him to princely rank, endowed him with
property which made him the greatest territorial magnate in the kingdom,
placed in his hands the sacred crown and half-a-dozen of the strongest
fortresses, and won over to his cause the majority of the royal council.
How Janos was cajoled out of an almost impregnable position, and
gradually reduced to insignificance, is told elsewhere (see CORVINUS,
JANOS). The nobles and prelates, who detested the severe and strenuous
Matthian system, desired, as they expressed it, "a king whose beard they
could hold in their fists," and they found a monarch after their own
heart in Wladislaus Jagiello, since 1471 king of Bohemia, who as
Wladislaus II. was elected unanimously king of Hungary on the 15th of
July 1490. Wladislaus was the personification of helpless inertia. His
Bohemian subjects had long since dubbed him "King All Right" because he
said yes to everything. As king of Hungary he was, from first to last,
the puppet of the Magyar oligarchs, who proceeded to abolish all the
royal prerogatives and safeguards which had galled them under Matthias.
By the compact of Farkashida (1490) Wladislaus not only confirmed all
the Matthian privileges, but also repealed all the Matthian novelties,
including the system of taxation which had enabled his predecessor to
keep on foot an adequate national army. The virtual suppression of
Wladislaus was completed at the diet of 1492, when "King All Right"
consented to live on the receipts of the treasury, which were barely
sufficient to maintain his court, and engaged never to impose any new
taxes on his Magyar subjects. The dissolution of the standing army,
including the Black Brigade, was the immediate result of these decrees.
Thus, at the very time when the modernization of the means of national
defence had become the first principle, in every other part of Europe,
of the strongly centralized monarchies which were rising on the ruins of
feudalism, the Hungarian magnates deliberately plunged their country
back into the chaos of medievalism. The same diet which destroyed the
national armaments and depleted the exchequer confirmed the disgraceful
peace of Pressburg, concluded between Wladislaus and the emperor
Maximilian on the 7th of November 1491, whereby Hungary retroceded all
the Austrian conquests of Matthias, together with a long strip of Magyar
territory, and paid a war indemnity equivalent to L200,000.
The thirty-six years which elapsed between the accession of Wladislaus
II. and the battle of Mohacs is the most melancholy and discreditable
period of Hungarian history. Like Poland two centuries later, Hungary
had ceased to be a civilized autonomous state because her prelates and
her magnates, uncontrolled by any higher authority, and too ignorant or
corrupt to look beyond their own immediate interests, abandoned
themselves to the exclusive enjoyment of their inordinate privileges,
while openly repudiating their primal obligation of defending the state
against extraneous enemies. During these miserable years everything like
patriotism or public spirit seems to have died out of the hearts of the
Hungarian aristocracy. The great officers of state acted habitually on
the principle that might is right. Stephen Bathory, voivode of
Transylvania and count of the Szeklers, for instance, ruled Transylvania
like a Turkish pasha, and threatened to behead all who dared to complain
of his exactions; "Stinking carrion," he said, was better than living
Szeklers. Thousands of Transylvanian gentlemen emigrated to Turkey to
get out of his reach. Other great nobles were at perpetual feud with the
towns whose wealth they coveted. Thus the Zapolyas, in 1500 and again in
1507, burnt a large part of Breznobanya and Beszterczebanya, two of the
chief industrial towns of north Hungary. Kronstadt, now the sole
flourishing trade centre in the kingdom, defended itself with hired
mercenaries against the robber barons. Everywhere the civic communities
were declining; even Buda and Pressburg were half in ruins. In their
misery the cities frequently appealed for protection to the emperor and
other foreign potentates, as no redress was attainable at home. Compared
even with the contemporary Polish diet the Hungarian national assembly
was a tumultuous mob. The diet of 1497 passed most of its time in
constructing, and then battering to pieces with axes and hammers, a huge
wooden image representing the ministers of the crown, who were corrupt
enough, but immovable, since they regularly appeared at the diet with
thousands of retainers armed to the teeth, and openly derided the
reforming endeavours of the lower gentry, who perceived that something
was seriously wrong, yet were powerless to remedy it. All that the
gentry could do was to depress the lower orders, and this they did at
every opportunity. Thus, many of the towns, notably Visegrad, were
deprived of the charters granted to them by Matthias, and a whole series
of anti-civic ordinances were passed. Noblemen dwelling within the walls
of the towns were especially exempted from all civic burdens, while
every burgess who bought an extra-mural estate was made to pay double
for the privilege.[25] Every nobleman had the right to engage in trade
toll-free, to the great detriment of their competitors the burgesses.
The peasant class suffered most of all. In 1496 Varady, archbishop of
Kalocsa, one of the few good prelates, declared that their lot was worse
than that of brute beasts. The whole burden of taxation rested on their
shoulders, and so ground down were they by ingeniously multiplied
exactions, that thousands of them were reduced to literal beggary.
Yet, despite this inward rottenness, Hungary, for nearly twenty years
after the death of Matthias, enjoyed an undeserved prestige abroad, due
entirely to the reputation which that great monarch had won for her.
Circumstances, indeed, were especially favourable. The emperor
Maximilian was so absorbed by German affairs, that he could do her
little harm, and under Bayezid II. and Selim I. the Turkish menace gave
little anxiety to the court of Buda, Bayezid being no warrior, while
Selim's energies were claimed exclusively by the East, so that he was
glad to renew the triennial truce with Hungary as often as it expired.
Hungary, therefore, for almost the first time in her history, was free
to choose a foreign policy of her own, and had she been guided by a
patriot, she might now have easily regained Dalmatia, and acquired
besides a considerable seaboard. Unfortunately Tamas Bakocz, her leading
diplomatist from 1499 to 1521, was as much an egotist as the other
magnates, and he sacrificed the political interests of Hungary entirely
to personal considerations. Primate of Hungary since 1497, he coveted
the popedom--and the red hat as the first step thereto above all
things,--and looked mainly to Venetian influence for both. He therefore
supported Venice against her enemies, refused to enter the League of
Cambray in 1508, and concluded a ten years' alliance with the Signoria,
which obliged Hungary to defend Venetian territory without any
equivalent gain. Less reprehensible, though equally self-seeking, were
his dealings with the emperor, which aimed at a family alliance between
the Jagiellos and the Habsburgs on the basis of a double marriage
between the son and daughter of Wladislaus, Louis and Anne, and an
Austrian archduke and archduchess; this was concluded by the family
congress at Vienna, July 22, 1515, to which Sigismund I. of Poland, the
brother of Wladislaus, acceded. The Hungarian diet frantically opposed
every Austrian alliance as endangering the national independence, but to
any unprejudiced observer a union with the house of Habsburg, even with
the contingent probability of a Habsburg king, was infinitely preferable
to the condition into which Hungary, under native aristocratic misrule,
was swiftly drifting. The diet itself had become as much a nullity as
the king, and its decrees were systematically disregarded. Still more
pitiable was the condition of the court. The penury of Wladislaus II.
was by this time so extreme, that he owed his very meals to the charity
of his servants. The diet, indeed, voted him aids and subsidies, but the
great nobles either forbade their collection within their estates, or
confiscated the amount collected. Under the circumstances, we cannot
wonder if the frontier fortresses fell to pieces, and the border troops,
unpaid for years, took to brigandage.
Peasant Rising, 1514.
The Tripartitum.
The last reserves of the national wealth and strength were dissipated by
the terrible peasant rising of Gyorgy Dozsa (q.v.) in 1514, of which the
enslavement of the Hungarian peasantry was the immediate consequence.
The "Savage Diet" which assembled on the 18th of October the same year,
to punish the rebels and restore order, well deserved its name.
Sixty-two of its seventy-one enactments were directed against the
peasants, who were henceforth bound to the soil and committed absolutely
into the hands of "their natural lords." To this vindictive legislation,
which converted the labouring population into a sullenly hostile force
within the state, it is mainly due that a healthy political life in
Hungary became henceforth impossible. The same spirit of hostility to
the peasantry breathed through the famous condification of the Hungarian
customary law known as the _Tripartitum_, which, though never actually
formally passed into law, continued until 1845 to be the only document
defining the relations of king and people, of nobles and their peasants,
and of Hungary and her dependent states.[26]
Subjection by the Turks.
Wladislaus II. died on the 13th of March 1516, two years after the
"Savage Diet," the ferocity of whose decrees he had feebly endeavoured
to mitigate, leaving his two kingdoms to his son Louis, a child of ten,
who was pronounced of age in order that his foreign guardians, the
emperor Maximilian and Sigismund of Poland, might be dispensed with. The
government remained in the hands of Cardinal Bakocz till his death in
1521, when the supreme authority at court was disputed between the lame
palatine Istvan Bathory, and his rival, the eminent jurist and orator
Istvan Verboczy (q.v.),--both of them incompetent, unprincipled
place-hunters,--while, in the background lurked Janos Zapolya (see JOHN
(ZAPOLYA), KING OF HUNGARY), voivode of Transylvania, patiently waiting
till the death of the feeble and childless king (who, in 1522, married
Maria of Austria) should open for him a way to the throne. Every one
felt that a catastrophe was approaching. "Things cannot go on like this
much longer," wrote the Venetian ambassador to his government. The war
of each against all continued; no taxes could be collected; the holders
of the royal domains refused to surrender them at the command of the
diet; and the boy king had very often neither clothes to wear nor food
to eat. The whole atmosphere of society was one of rapine and
corruption, and only on the frontier a few self-sacrificing patriots
like the ban-bishop, Peter Biriszlo, the last of Matthias's veterans,
and his successor the saintly Pal Tomori, archbishop of Kalocsa, showed,
in their ceaseless war against the predatory Turkish bands, that the
ancient Magyar valour was not yet wholly extinct. But the number of the
righteous men was too few to save the state. The first blow fell in
1521, when Sultan Suleiman appeared before the southern fortresses of
Sabac and Belgrade, both of which fell into his hands during the course
of the year. After this Venice openly declared that Hungary was no
longer worth the saving. Yet the _coup de grace_ was postponed for
another five years, during which time Suleiman was occupied with the
conquest of Egypt and the siege of Rhodes. The Magyars fancied they were
safe from attack, because the final assault was suspended; and
everything went on in the old haphazard way. Every obstacle was opposed
to the collection of the taxes which had been voted to put the kingdom
in a state of defence. "If this realm could be saved at the expense of
three florins," exclaimed the papal envoy, Antonio Burgio, "there is not
a man here willing to make the sacrifice." Only on the southern frontier
did Archbishop Tomori painfully assemble a fresh army and fleet, and
succeed, by incredible efforts, in constructing at Peterwardein, on the
right bank of the Danube, a new fortress which served him as a refuge
and sally post in his interminable guerilla war with the Turks.
In the spring of 1526 came the tidings that Sultan Suleiman had quitted
Constantinople, at the head of a countless host, to conquer Hungary. On
the 28th of July Peterwardein, after a valiant resistance, was blown
into the air. The diet, which met at Buda in hot haste, proclaimed the
young king[27] dictator, granted him unlimited subsidies which there
was no time to collect, and ordered a _levee en masse_ of the entire
male population, which could not possibly assemble within the given
time. Louis at once formed a camp at Tolna, whence he issued despairing
summonses to the lieges, and, by the middle of August, some 25,000
ill-equipped gentlemen had gathered around him. With these he marched
southwards to the plain of Mohacs, where, on the 29th of August, the
Hungarians, after a two hours' fight, were annihilated, the king, both
the archbishops, five bishops and 24,000 men perishing on the field. The
sultan refused to believe that the pitiful array he had so easily
overcome could be the national army of Hungary. Advancing with extreme
caution, he occupied Buda on the 12th of September, but speedily
returned to his own dominions, carrying off with him 105,000 captives,
and an amount of spoil which filled the bazaars of the East for months
to come. By the end of October the last Turkish regular had quitted
Magyar soil, and, to use the words of a contemporary observer, one
quarter of Hungary was as utterly destroyed as if a flood had passed
over it.
John Zapolya elected King.
Ferdinand of Austria elected.
Rival kings.
Partition of Hungary.
The Turks had no sooner quitted the land than John Zapolya, voivode of
Transylvania, assembled a diet at Tokaj (Oct. 14, 1526) at which the
towns were represented as well as the counties. The tone of the assembly
being violently anti-German, and John being the only conceivable
national candidate, his election was a matter of course; but his
misgivings were so great that it was not till the beginning of November
that he very reluctantly allowed himself to be crowned at a second diet,
held at Szekesfehervar. By this time a competitor had entered the field.
This was the archduke Ferdinand, who claimed the Hungarian crown by
right of inheritance in the name of his wife, Anne, sister of the late
king. Ferdinand was elected (Dec. 16) by a scratch assembly consisting
of deputies from Croatia and the towns of Pressburg and Sopron; but he
speedily improved his position in the course of 1527, by driving King
John first from Buda and then from Hungary. In November the same year he
was elected and crowned by a properly constituted diet at Szekesfehervar
(Stuhlweissenburg). In 1529 Zapolya was reinstated in Buda by Suleiman
the Magnificent in person, who, at this period, preferred setting up a
rival to "the king of Vienna" to conquering Hungary outright. Thus the
Magyars were saddled with two rival kings with equally valid titles,
which proved an even worse disaster than the Mohacs catastrophe; for in
most of the counties of the unhappy kingdom desperadoes of every
description plundered the estates of the gentry, and oppressed the
common people, under the pretext that they were fighting the battles of
the contending monarchs. The determination of Ferdinand to partition
Hungary rather than drive the Turks out, which he might easily have done
after Suleiman's unsuccessful attempts on Vienna in 1529-1530, led to a
prolongation of the struggle till the 24th of February 1538, when, by
the secret peace of Nagyvarad,[28] Hungary was divided between the two
competitors. By this treaty Ferdinand retained Croatia-Slavonia and the
five western counties with Pressburg and Esztergom (Gran), while Zapolya
kept the remaining two-thirds with the royal title. He was indeed the
last national king of Hungary till modern times. His court at Buda was
maintained according to the ancient traditions, and his _gyules_, at
which 67 of the 73 counties were generally represented, was the true
national diet, the phantom assembly occasionally convened at Pressburg
by Ferdinand scarcely deserving the title. Indeed, Ferdinand regarded
his narrow strip of Hungarian territory as simply a barrier behind which
he could better defend the hereditary states. During the last six years
(1534-1540) of John's reign, his kingdom, beneath the guidance of the
Paulician monk, Frater Gyorgy, or George Martinuzzi (q.v.), the last
great statesman of old Hungary, enjoyed a stability and prosperity
marvellous in the difficult circumstances of the period, Martinuzzi
holding the balance exactly between the emperor and the Porte with
astounding diplomatic dexterity, and at the same time introducing
several important domestic reforms. Zapolya died on the 18th of July
1540, whereupon the estates of Hungary elected his baby son John
Sigismund king, in direct violation of the peace of Grosswardein which
had formally acknowledged Ferdinand as John's successor, whether he left
male issue or not. Ferdinand at once asserted his rights by force of
arms, and attacked Buda in May 1541, despite the urgent remonstrances of
Martinuzzi, who knew that the Turk would never suffer the emperor to
reign at Buda. His fears were instantly justified. In August 1541,
Suleiman, at the head of a vast army, invaded Hungary, and on the 30th
of August, Buda was in his hands. During the six following years the
sultan still further improved his position, capturing, amongst many
other places, Pecs, and the primatial city of Esztergom; but, in 1547,
the exigencies of the Persian war induced him to sell a truce of five
years to Ferdinand for L100,000, on a _uti possidetis_ basis, Ferdinand
holding thirty-five counties (including Croatia and Slavonia) for which
he was to pay an annual tribute of L60,000; John Sigismund retaining
Transylvania and sixteen adjacent counties with the title of prince,
while the rest of the land, comprising most of the central counties, was
annexed to the Turkish empire. Thus the ancient kingdom was divided into
three separate states with divergent aims and interests, a condition of
things which, with frequent rearrangements, continued for more than 150
years.
Siege of Szigetvar.
A period of infinite confusion and extreme misery now ensued, of which
only the salient points can here be noted. The attempts of the Habsburgs
to conquer Transylvania drew down upon them two fresh Turkish invasions,
the first in 1552, when the sultan's generals captured Temesvar and
fifty-four lesser forts or fortresses, and the second in 1566, memorable
as Suleiman's last descent upon Hungary, and also for the heroic defence
of Szigetvar by Miklos Zrinyi (q.v.), one of the classical sieges of
history. The truce of Adrianople in 1568, nominally for eight years, but
prolonged from time to time till 1593, finally suspended regular
hostilities, and introduced the epoch known as "The Long Peace," though,
throughout these twenty-five years, the guerilla warfare on the frontier
never ceased for more than a few months at a time, and the relations
between the Habsburgs and Transylvania were persistently hostile.
Probably no other country ever suffered so much from its rulers as
Hungary suffered during the second half of the 16th century. This was
due partly to political and partly to religious causes. To begin with,
there can be no doubt that from 1558, when the German imperial crown was
transferred from the Spanish to the Austrian branch of the Habsburg
family, royal Hungary[29] was regarded by the emperors as an
insignificant barrier province yielding far more trouble than profit.
The visible signs of this contemptuous point of view were (1) the
suspension of the august dignity of palatine, which, after the death of
Tamas Nadasdy, "the great palatine," in 1562, was left vacant for many
years; (2) the abolition or attenuation of all the ancient Hungarian
court dignitaries; (3) the degradation of the capital, Pressburg, into a
mere provincial town; and (4) the more and more openly expressed
determination to govern Hungary from Vienna by means of foreigners,
principally German or Czech. During the reign of Ferdinand, whose
consort, Anne, was a Hungarian princess, things were at least tolerable;
but under Maximilian (1564-1576) and Rudolph (1576-1612) the antagonism
of the Habsburgs towards their Magyar subjects was only too apparent.
The diet, which had the power of the purse, could not be absolutely
dispensed with; but it was summoned as seldom as possible, the king
often preferring to forego his subsidies rather than listen to the
unanswerable remonstrances of the estates against the illegalities of
his government. In the days of the semi-insane recluse Rudolph things
went from bad to worse. The Magyar nobles were now systematically
spoliated on trumped-up charges of treason; hundreds of them were
ruined. At last they either durst not attend the diet, or "sat like dumb
dogs" during its session, allowing the king to alter and interpret the
statutes at his good pleasure. Presently religious was superadded to
political persecution.
Effect of Reformation.
The Reformation had at first produced little effect on Hungary. Except
in the towns, mostly of German origin, it was generally detested, just
because it came from Germany. The battle of Mohacs, however, severely
shook the faith of the Hungarians. "Where are the old Magyar saints? Why
do they not defend the realm against the Turks?" was the general cry.
Moreover, the corrupt church had lost its hold on the affections of the
people. Zapolya, a devout Catholic, is lauded by Archbishop Frangipan in
1533 for arresting the spread of the new doctrines, though he would not
allow Martinuzzi to take the extreme step of burning perverts at the
stake. These perverts were mostly to be found among nobles desirous of
amassing church property, or among those of the clergy who clamoured for
communion in both kinds. So long, however, as the old national kingdom
survived, the majority of the people still clung to the old faith. Under
Ferdinand the parochial clergy were tempted to become Lutherans by the
prospect of matrimony, and, in reply to the remonstrances of their
bishops, declared that they would rather give up their cures than their
wives. In Transylvania matters were at first ordered more peaceably. In
1552 the new doctrines obtained complete recognition there, the diet of
Torda (1557) going so far as to permit every one to worship in his own
way so long as he did not molest his neighbour. Yet, in the following
year, the whole of the property of the Catholic Church there was
diverted to secular uses, and the Calvinists were simultaneously
banished, though they regained complete tolerance in 1564, a privilege
at the same time extended to the Unitarians, who were now very
influential at court and converted Prince John Sigismund to their views.
In Turkish Hungary all the confessions enjoyed liberty of worship,
though the Catholics, as possible partisans of the "king of Vienna,"
were liked the least. It was only when the Jesuits obtained a footing
both at Prague[30] and Klausenburg that persecution began, but then it
was very violent. In Transylvania the princes of the Bathory family
(1571-1604) were ardent disciples of the Jesuit fathers, and Sigismund
Bathory in particular persecuted fiercely, his fury being especially
directed against the queer judaizing sect known as the Sabbatarians,
whose tenets were adopted by the Szeklers, the most savage of "the three
nations" of Transylvania, many thousands of whom were, after a bloody
struggle, forced to emigrate. In royal Hungary also the Jesuits were the
chief persecutors. The extirpation of Protestantism was a deliberate
prearranged programme, and as Protestantism was by this time identical
with Magyarism[31] the extirpation of the one was tantamount to the
extirpation of the other. The method generally adopted was to deprive
the preachers in the towns of their churches by force, Italian
mercenaries being preferably employed for the purpose. It was assumed
that the Protestant nobles' jealousy of the burgesses would prevent them
from interfering; but religious sympathy proved stronger than caste
prejudice, and the diets protested against the persecution of their
fellow citizens so vehemently that religious matters were withdrawn from
their jurisdiction.