THE ANJOUS IN HUNGARY.
The male line of the house of Árpád became extinct by the death of
Andrew III. His only daughter, Elizabeth, retired to a convent, and
the nation was once more called upon to exercise its ancient right
of electing a king, and three candidates, a Czech, a German, and an
Italian, at once came into the field. Each of these claimants had a
party in the country, and not until the strength of the nation had been
wasted by internal strife and warfare during a period of eight years
did the Italian party succeed in placing on the throne Charles Robert,
who became the founder of the Hungarian Anjous. It will be our task now
to relate how the newly elected ruler, taking the reins of government
into his own hands, introduced into the country the glorious era of
chivalry. Under the reign of the Anjous we shall see the culture and
customs of Western Europe gradually taking root in Hungarian soil, the
name of Hungary becoming the object of respect and admiration abroad,
the boundaries of the kingdom extended by a powerful hand, the crown
of a brave and chivalrous neighbor, the Polish nation, placed upon the
brows of the Hungarian king, until, at last, as the Hungarian poet
Bajza sings, “the shores of three seas formed the frontier walls of the
kingdom.”
At first the Czech party was victorious. Wenceslaus, the aged king of
the Czechs, who, through the female line, was related to the house of
Árpád, not feeling equal to the task of governing Hungary himself,
offered to his party, in his place, his son and namesake, who was but
thirteen years old. On the 27th of August, 1301, at Stuhlweissenburg
the sacred crown of St. Stephen was placed on the head of young
Wenceslaus; but his reign was of short duration. The curse of the
Church of Rome was pronounced against his partisans, but the citizens
of Buda were little affected by this interdict, and caused the curse
to be hurled back on the anathematizers by their own prelates. Yet the
party of the boy-king grew so weak that his father deemed it advisable
to recall him home. Wenceslaus the elder entered Hungary, pillaged the
wealthier cathedrals, and expressed but one wish concerning his son—to
see him for once attired in the royal Hungarian robes. His adherents
complied with the wish of the old king, and, dressed in the royal
robes and bearing the crown on his head, young Wenceslaus proceeded
homeward, surrounded by his soldiers and under the protection of armed
body-guards.
The Italian party, intent upon avenging this affront, invaded the
territory of the Czechs, and by frightful massacres made the people
atone for the abduction of the king. The fierce Kuns, or Cumans,
throwing Czech children, strung together by means of holes bored
through the palms of their hands, across their saddlebows, wildly tore
through the land, devastating every thing. Very soon Albert, emperor of
Germany, with Otto the Bavarian, came to the rescue of Wenceslaus, who,
grateful for their assistance, delivered the crown to Otto.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF ÁRVA.]
The German party, in their turn, were now victorious, and obtained
possession of the crown of St. Stephen, the most sacred relic of the
nation. Otto marched into the country, but under the auspices of a bad
omen. The crown was, through some accident, lost on the road, although
his attendants discovered it afterwards, buried in the mire. Otto,
whose vanity prompted him to display, marched in a procession through
the capital, Buda, adorned with all the paraphernalia of royalty, and
from that day on, every king succeeding him has, after the coronation,
repeated this special pageant. Otto was as much the shadow of a king
as Wenceslaus had been before him. In order to consolidate his power
he asked in marriage the daughter of the most powerful Hungarian lord,
Ladislaus Apor, the _vayvode_ of Transylvania. Receiving a favorable
reply, he hastened, full of hope, to Transylvania, but on his arrival
was thrown into prison by the wily vayvode. After his liberation, which
took place soon afterward, he turned his back for ever upon Hungary,
and was satisfied with the empty title of King of Hungary. The crown,
however, remained in the possession of the vayvode.
The Italian party were now left masters of the field. The most
obstinate and uncontrollable oligarchs were by this time tired of the
disorders prevailing in the country, and all combined with a hearty
good-will to place Charles Robert, of Anjou, upon the throne of Árpád.
On the 27th of August, 1310, Charles Robert was crowned for the fourth
time, but in this instance with the sacred crown, which had been at
length obtained from Apor. Charles was now the lawful king (1309-1342),
and could, without interference, set about the task of restoring order
in the country, a work to which he proved fully equal.
The king had many difficulties in his way. The ruler _de facto_ and _de
jure_ could call but a small portion of the kingdom really his own.
The endless dividing up of the territory, which was characteristic of
Germany at the close of the last century, was to be found in miniature
also in Hungary. The disorders prevailing under the rule of the
last Árpád, and of the two kings succeeding him, had encouraged the
lawlessness of the marauding nobles. Every one appropriated as much
territory as he could, and exercised royal or princely authority in the
domains thus acquired by him. While so many had become the possessors
of large estates, the king was without any personal patrimony. These
little kings had to be reduced, one by one, to submission, and deprived
of the usurped lands. The most powerful of them was Matthias Csák of
Trencsén, and his subjection gave the greatest trouble, and consumed
the most time.
The power and territory of Matthias Csák extended from the Northwestern
Carpathians to the Theiss and Danube. The castle of Trencsén was the
seat of this petty king. From this fortified castle on the Vág, built
on a rocky eminence near the commercial road leading from Silesia to
Hungary, he was in the habit of sending his marauders to devastate the
neighboring country. He pounced like a bird of prey from his rocky nest
upon the unwary merchants who were passing with their ships below, and
the poor traders esteemed themselves fortunate if they got safely off
by leaving a portion of their wares in the freebooter’s hands. The
plunder thus got together enabled him to display royal pomp, and such
was the dazzling sumptuousness and luxury exhibited at his castle that,
compared to it, the king’s palace seemed to be but a poor hut. Csák had
his own palatine treasurer and other officers of high rank, and when he
went about he was attended by an escort of several thousand armed men.
It was only after a good deal of solicitation that Csák consented to
receive the Pope’s legate, Cardinal Gentilis, and even then the legate
had to meet Csák at the place specified by the latter, who wished this
church dignitary to understand that he should feel highly honored by
being permitted to shake his hand.
In the beginning, Csák seemed to submit to Charles, and, swearing
fealty to the king, he consented to be represented at the third
coronation. In order to win Csák’s friendship and support, Charles made
him the _Guardian of the Land_. But this new honor did not prevent him
from very soon becoming weary of his subordinate position, and when a
law had been passed ordering the restitution of the royal castles and
domains which had come into the possession of subjects or strangers,
his wish to be independent became even greater than before. An armed
contest soon ensued between the king and his powerful subject. It
was preceded, however, by a papal excommunication of Csák and his
adherents, extending even to the dead, but the impious rebel retorted
by laying waste the lands of the neighboring high prelates. Csák’s
power stood at that time at its height. He was the master of a domain
containing over thirty fortified castles, which, to this day, is called
by the people, after him, Matthias Land, and it was quite natural that
the king was reluctant to beard the lion in his own den. The king’s
troops first entered the territory of Szepes, hoping to find there the
weak point of the antagonist, but they were compelled to retreat before
the captains of Csák. The decisive battle took place in 1312, north of
the town of Kassa. The engagement was sharp and bloody, and terminated
in the defeat of Csák’s men. The ancestors of the Báthorys, Tökölyis,
Drugets, and Széchenyis, who were amongst the most powerful families
in Hungary, fought on this occasion by the side of the king. Although
humbled, Csák’s power was not greatly impaired, for we find him, a few
years later, strong and bold enough to attack John, king of Bohemia,
and take from him the fortified castle of Holics.
Charles Robert then turned his attention to his other rebellious
subjects, reducing them to submission, one by one, leaving Csák to be
dealt with by Providence. He had not, however, to wait very long, for
in 1321 this great lord died. The manner of his death is described
to have been frightful. Worms generated by his own body consumed him
slowly. There was no one after his death to inherit his vast estates
and with them his great power. Matthias Land was divided up in smaller
sections, and distributed amongst the king’s favorites. The subjects of
Csák, amongst them his palatine Felician Zách, submitted at once to the
king.
The king’s attention was too much engaged by this domestic warfare to
allow him, while it lasted, to display the energy which marked the
subsequent years of his reign, an energy which was destined to make
Hungary an influential power in Central Europe. During these days of
civil strife he had his seat in Temesvár, and his household was so
little befitting royalty that its poverty frequently elicited the
complaints of the higher clergy. But matters quietly changed when
Charles transferred his residence to Visegrád, the royal palace to
which cling so many fond and sad national memories, and which in our
days still, though in ruins, looms up on the right bank of the Danube
as a monument of Hungary’s ancient power and glory. Charles was full of
ambitious schemes to raise his family to the greatest possible power,
and the extension of the power of Hungary was deemed by him to be the
readiest means of accomplishing this aim. First of all he stood in need
of money and soldiers, but his genius enabled him to procure both. He
exploited the rich mines of the country, and raised the commerce and
industry of the realm to a flourishing condition, and the wealth of the
people increased to such an extent that he felt warranted in levying
direct taxes, a mode of taxation which had before been entirely unknown
in Hungary. The manner in which he created an army bears witness to his
ingenuity. The county system had become so loose and disorganized that
no soldiers could be expected from that source. He had to look for them
in another quarter. Charles knew, very well, the chivalrous disposition
of the nation, which, in the matter of display, had still preserved its
Oriental character; he knew, too, from history, that those who appealed
to the vanity of the Hungarian were never disappointed, and he laid his
plans accordingly. He transplanted into Hungary one of the graceful
institutions of Western Europe, that of chivalry. Knights there were
in the country, but they were not numerous and had not proved to be
enthusiastic adherents of the king. Charles understood how to win
the affections of the great lords; he distributed coats-of-arms and
founded orders. In the wide courts of the castle of Visegrád, knightly
tournaments became frequent, and the new knights, with their fresh
heraldic devices, had an opportunity of meeting each other in armed
combat in the presence of their foreign king. The king’s court came to
be the resort of noble youths, and boys of noble descent became the
playmates of the royal princes. In order to rouse the warlike spirit
of his great nobles, he allowed those of them who joined in a campaign
with a certain number of soldiers, to lead their men under banners
bearing their own armorial devices.
An event, however, of most tragic issue, which has furnished a
fruitful theme to Hungarian poets and artists, almost overthrew the
effect of the king’s wise policy and endangered his life. The scene
of the occurrence, which took place on the 17th of April, 1330, was
the magnificent palace of Visegrád. The former palatine of Csák,
Felician Zách, had become one of the king’s chief councillors, and he,
with his daughter Clara, one of the queen’s maids of honor, a lady
of extraordinary beauty, resided in the king’s palace. Casimir, the
King of Poland, and the queen’s brother, was at the time a guest at
Visegrád, and during his stay there, behaved improperly towards Clara
Zách. The infuriated father, on learning this, broke in upon the royal
family sitting in the dining-hall, and intent upon avenging the affront
offered to his daughter, threatened every one in his way. He fell with
sword drawn upon the royal children and their parents. The children
remained unhurt, but the king was seriously wounded, and the queen had
four of her fingers cut off. John Cselényi, the queen’s treasurer,
finally rushed to the rescue and felled the exasperated father with
his bronze pole-axe to the ground, and the alarmed servants, who had
meanwhile hastened to the hall, gave the miserable man, in presence
of the royal family, the _coup de grace_. A frightful and most cruel
punishment was inflicted, for her father’s bloody act, on the unhappy
Clara and all the members of the Zách family. The maiden’s ears, nose,
lips, and hands were cut off, and in this condition she was tied,
together with her brother, to a horse’s tail, and dragged through
the land until both died a miserable death. The Zách family were
exterminated to the third degree, and the remoter kinspeople doomed to
slavery. Such a sentence upon those who had committed no crime was a
most vindictive and savage one, and the people saw the avenging finger
of God in the results of the unhappy campaign of that year against the
Wallachians. One of the chronicles, referring to the disastrous issue
of the war, says: “The king had hitherto sailed under favorable signs,
and cut, according to his heart’s desire, through the stormy waves with
the ship of his fortune. But changeable fortune had now turned her
back upon him. His army had been defeated, and he himself is suffering
tortures from his gouty hands and feet.”
Ban Michael Bazarád, then the ruler of Wallachia, dared to ignore
his dependence on the crown of Hungary. Charles eagerly seized the
opportunity to punish the traitorous vassal, and hoped, at the same
time, that the indignation of the people against him for his cruelty
would subside at the news of a victorious campaign against the
Wallachians. Declining the offers of peace made by the repentant ban,
Charles boldly advanced, with his spirited knights, over the impassable
and unfamiliar roads of Wallachia. He had penetrated so far into the
land that his further advance was rendered impossible by the absence
of any road, and he was determined to retrace his steps. The Hungarian
army was led astray by the Wallachian guides, and in retreating found
itself quite unexpectedly hemmed in between steep and towering rocks
from which there was no outlet. A shower of stones descended on their
heads; the Wallachians who occupied the heights sent down dense volleys
of rocks and arrows upon the doomed Hungarians. Charles himself owed
his escape to the generous devotion of Desiderius Szécsi, one of his
men, with whom he changed dresses. This brave warrior sealed his
devotion with his life. The enraged Wallachians, mistaking him for the
king, attacked him from every side, and after valiantly resisting, he
finally fell on the battle-field. His sovereign escaped in safety, and
Wallachia maintained her independence.
Charles, upon his return home, once more busied himself with the
carrying out of his ambitious schemes for the aggrandizement of
his family, and the results of his efforts gave ample proof of his
political sagacity. He acquired for his family both Naples and Poland,
although as yet on paper only. Poland became only under his son Louis
the undoubted possession of the Hungarian king, while Naples never came
under his control. In 1335 Visegrád resounded incessantly with the din
of feasting and merrymaking; never before nor afterwards were so many
royal guests harbored within its stately walls. There were Casimir,
become King of Poland, the last descendant of the Piast family; John,
the adventurous King of the Czechs, who subsequently died the death of
a hero on the field of Crécy; his son Charles, the Margrave of Moravia,
and subsequently Emperor of Germany; three knights of the first class
belonging to the order of German Knights; the dukes of Saxony and
Liegnitz, and numerous church and lay magnates. The entertainment of
so many distinguished guests constituted a heavy draft on the royal
treasury. A contemporary chronicler states that “fifteen hundred loaves
of bread and one hundred and eighty flasks of wine were needed daily
for the court of the king of Poland.” Whilst the guests were feasting,
Charles employed all his ingenuity in shaping the destinies of Eastern
Europe. His negotiations with Casimir, the King of Poland, resulted in
an agreement that Poland should descend, after his death, to Louis,
the son of Charles. Two years later Charles had the satisfaction of
learning that the Polish nation had confirmed the private arrangement,
and had acknowledged the right of his son’s succession to the throne of
Poland. One of the finest monuments of Hungarian mediæval architecture,
the cathedral in Kassa, owed its completion to this welcome news.
Queen Elizabeth ordered it to be completed in her joy at the elevation
of her son Louis. Charles had also tried to secure Naples for his son
Andrew, by having him betrothed, at the age of six, to Joanna, the
grand-daughter and heir of the king of Naples. In July, 1333, the young
prince proceeded to Naples to take possession of his kingdom, as his
father thought, but in reality, as subsequent events proved, to the
place of his destruction. Charles died at a not very advanced age,
having brought most of his plans to a successful issue in his lifetime.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF GRAN.]
Six days after his death the crown of Hungary was placed upon the head
of his son Louis, afterwards surnamed the Great, who was then seventeen
years old (1342-1382). The young king immediately proceeded on a
pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Ladislaus, the most popular Hungarian
king, at Grosswardein. There at his grave he made a sacred vow to
govern the Hungarian nation after the example of his great predecessor.
From Grosswardein he proceeded to Transylvania to receive the oath of
fealty of the son of Michael Bazarád. Hardly returned to his palace at
Visegrád, the young king received depressing news regarding his brother
at Naples. The young Hungarian prince was looked upon with jealousy by
the numerous Italian dukes at the Neapolitan court, who tried by every
means to hinder his accession to the throne. His mother, the Hungarian
queen, at once hastened, laden with treasure, to Naples, to rescue
her son from the machinations of his enemies. The Hungarian money
had its due effect at the papal court, whose vassal Naples was at
that time. Queen Elizabeth obtained the assurance that her son Andrew
would be crowned, but she returned to Hungary before the ceremony
of coronation had taken place. At her departure her mind was filled
with evil forebodings, which were but too well justified by coming
events. The queen’s departure was the signal for fresh intrigues at the
Neapolitan court. Philip and Louis of Taranto, the sons of Catharine
of Valois, openly insulted the young prince. Joanna wickedly turned
from her husband and sided with his enemies. At length the day of the
coronation was approaching. Andrew, relying on the power he was soon to
wield, warned his enemies that he would avenge the affronts that had
been heaped upon him. His enemies were seized with terror upon seeing,
at the tournament which took place shortly before the coronation,
the axe and noose depicted beneath the arms of Andrew, floating on
high on his banner. The imminent danger rendered the intriguing dukes
desperate, and they at once determined to put Andrew out of the way.
His assassination was resolved upon, and, Joanna giving her assent to
the nefarious plan, the young prince was doomed.
On the 18th of September, 1345, the whole court, and amongst them
Joanna, proceeded to Aversa, to indulge in the merry pastime of the
chase. Andrew was accompanied by his faithful Hungarian nurse, Izolda,
who, poor creature, little dreamed that her ward was to be the object
of the chase. In the evening the whole company took up their quarters
at the convent of St. Peter. Andrew had just retired to his chamber
when a familiar voice called him into the adjoining room, in order to
discuss some grave questions. The unsuspecting youth, anticipating no
evil, left his chamber, but no sooner had he crossed the threshold when
the door was locked behind him by his secretary. The assassins lying
in wait fell upon their victim at once and strangled him; his cries
for help remaining unheeded. His dead body they then dragged to the
balcony and precipitated it into the garden below. Whilst this bloody
scene was enacted, Joanna slept soundly, undisturbed by the scuffle at
her door, and cries of distress of her husband. She afterwards gave the
explanation that she had been put under a spell by a witch.
There was mourning at the castle of Visegrád at the sad tidings.
Louis swore dire vengeance, and the nation enthusiastically took
up arms to support him. From abroad there arrived but voices of
sympathy. The Italian princes offered his armies free transit through
their territories; Louis, the excommunicated German Emperor, entered
into an alliance with the king; Edward III., the King of England,
while condoling with him, spurred him on to revenge; the Pope alone
maintained an ominous silence. This time, however, the desire for
revenge proved stronger with the king than his reverence for the
Pope, and in 1347 the Hungarian army was ready to march. To punish
a faithless woman and not to conquer Italy was the object of their
expedition, and the Italian princes were glad to afford the king’s army
every facility to reach the proposed goal.
All the great lords of the realm rallied round the king. A large
black flag was carried in front of the Hungarian army and on it was
depicted the pale face of Andrew. On two occasions they were led by
the king against Naples, and each time he was accompanied by the most
distinguished Hungarian families. Michael Kont, Andrew and Stephen
Laczfy, with Dionysius, the son of the latter, and a host of others,
brought with them their armed trains, by whose mighty blows both
Aversa, of mournful memory, and proud Naples were soon reduced. Queen
Joanna, with her second husband, Louis of Taranto, escaped beyond the
sea. Louis of Durazzo, one of the intriguing dukes who was suspected
of having been an accessory to the murder, expiated his crime by being
killed after a gay carouse and thrown down from the same balcony which
had witnessed the foul deed of the conspirators. Four other dukes were
carried to Hungary as prisoners. King Louis himself was always foremost
in battle and received grave wounds on more than one occasion. But
his chief desire—to punish Joanna—was not gratified and at length he
entrusted the Pope with the sentence to be pronounced against her. The
Pope, however, declared her innocent of the crime of murder, imputed
to her, but mulcted her in a fine of 300,000 ducats as a restitution
of the expenditures of the campaign. The chivalrous king spurned the
blood-money and left the punishment of guilty Joanna to a more upright
judge—to Providence. And Providence dealt more severely with the
queenly culprit than the successor to St. Peter’s see had done. Charles
of Durazzo, called also Charles the Little, son of Louis of Durazzo,
having conquered the throne of Naples, ordered Queen Joanna in 1382,
thirty-seven years after the commission of her crime, to be thrown into
prison, where she met her death by strangling.
During the Italian campaign Hungary was also called upon to meet
another enemy in the East. Roving populations were making constant
inroads on the eastern border, harassing the Hungarian inhabitants,
who had by this time become accustomed to the peaceful avocations
of the husbandman and tradesman. The victorious arms of King Louis
soon put an end to those lawless incursions. But one of the most
beautiful legends of Hungarian history is connected with one of the
campaigns against these marauding populations. Kieystut, the Prince of
Lithuania, after having been defeated several years before, broke into
Transylvania with an army considerably swelled by the accession of a
numerous body of Tartars. The king sent Louis Laczfy, the vayvode of
Transylvania, against him, and the brave Székely people followed in his
train. But the Hungarian army was small and the issue of the battle
remained for a long time doubtful. The legend tells that the news of
the peril threatening the Hungarian arms reached Grosswardein, where
St. Ladislaus lay buried, and that the heroic saint, leaving his grave,
bestrode the bronze horse of his own statue, which stood in the centre
of the public square, and hurried off to the relief of his distressed
countrymen. The Tartars were struck with the apparition of a warrior
“who towered over them head and shoulders,” and above whom was visible
the holy Virgin Mary, the patroness of Hungary. The pagans were seized
with terror at this sight, and the battle ended in a brilliant victory
for the Hungarians.
The arms of the king were no less successful in Servia where he was
about “to kindle the light of faith.” But the most glorious of his wars
was the one carried on against proud Venice, which continued during the
greater portion of his reign. Her enemies, especially Genoa, willingly
sided with the king of Hungary, and the ultimate result was the utter
humiliation of the city of St. Mark. At last, in 1381, one year before
the king’s death, peace was concluded between the two belligerents,
a peace of which the Hungarians had every reason to be proud, for by
its terms Dalmatia was unconditionally annexed to Hungary, and Venice
herself had to send the Hungarian king, annually on St. Stephen’s Day,
the 20th of August, a tribute of 7,000 ducats. As an indication of the
high esteem in which the name of Hungary was held at that time, it is
interesting to learn that foreign rulers sent their children to the
Hungarian court to be educated, and the inference is not a strained
one that the court of Louis must have been a centre of the European
culture and refinement of that day. The spouse selected by the king,
Elizabeth, the daughter of Stephen, the Prince of Bosnia, had herself
been sent to the court to be trained in courtly accomplishments. At
the Hungarian court also, Charles IV., the Emperor of Germany, wooed
Anna, the Duchess of Schweidnitz, his future empress. These two rulers
were united by ties of close friendship, until the discontent of the
Germans with “the stepfather of their country,” as they called Charles
IV., ripened a scheme to transfer the German crown to the Hungarian
king. Although King Louis refused to accept the crown proffered to him,
the sting remained, and his imperial friend became his deadly enemy.
The emperor persisted in indulging in his unfounded suspicions of the
king’s good faith, and so far forgot himself as to speak insultingly
of the king and his exalted mother. The Hungarian ambassadors at
the emperor’s court, incensed at the affront done to their master,
challenged the emperor to mortal combat. But he cravenly declined
to accept the challenge, whereupon they declared war in the name of
their king. Louis, who almost worshipped his mother, approved of the
proceedings of his ambassadors, and sent the emperor an insulting
letter, in which he declared that nothing better might be expected from
a drunkard. Very soon a large army of Kuns devastated Moravia, until,
at length, after a warfare of several years, the humiliated emperor
begged for peace, obtaining the Pope’s intercession in his behalf.
Peace was at last concluded, and matrimonial alliances were to make it
doubly sure. Sigismund, the emperor’s son, was betrothed to Mary, the
king’s daughter.
In the latter half of the fourteenth century Christianity in Europe was
threatened by a new foe. The warlike followers of Osman had, by the
capture of Adrianople firmly laid the foundations of their powerful
empire in Europe. Youths, forcibly taken at a tender age from their
Christian parents, and educated afterwards in implicit obedience to
the behests of the Sultan, were rigorously trained as soldiers after
the most approved fashion of the day, and the troops thus obtained
were destined to become the most formidable aid in the building of the
Ottoman power in Europe. The Eastern empire had sunk too low, at that
time, to be able, single-handed, to resist such a power, and she lost
her strongholds, one after the other. In this strait her ruler resorted
to one of those deceitful devices characterizing the policy of the
Eastern court. John Palæologos, the Eastern emperor, proceeded to the
court of the king of Hungary, at Buda, and, promising to give in his
adhesion to the Western Church, he asked the aid of Louis against the
savage enemy. The “Banner-bearer of the Church,” as the king of Hungary
was styled by the Pope, deemed it his duty, under these circumstances,
to come to the rescue of the distressed emperor, and shortly afterwards
the two kindred nations, the Turks and the Hungarians, met in hostile
array on the banks of the Maritza. This was the first warlike contest
of the two nations. It resulted in the victory of 20,000 Hungarians
over a Turkish army four times as large, a victory commemorated to this
day by the treasures and appropriate inscriptions still to be seen at
the church of Mariazell in Styria.
Casimir, the last Polish king of the house of Piast, died on the 5th of
November, 1370. His death was caused by an injury contracted in falling
from his horse during the chase.
On the 17th of the same month Louis was crowned King of Poland, at
Cracow, by the Archbishop of Gnesen. At the very moment when he was
about to reach the goal of the highest ambition of his predecessor,
and of himself, Louis seemed to waver, and to doubt the expediency
of accepting the crown. He could not help reflecting that governing
two nations, which were united by no other tie except his own person,
and defending them against their enemies, might prove a task to which
one king was not equal. He nevertheless accepted the crown, but his
sinister presentiments were fated speedily to be confirmed. The Polish
lords were not used to an energetic rule. The nobles of Little and
Great Poland were eager, each for themselves, to secure the offices of
state, but both equally hated the queen-mother sent there to rule. The
country soon fell a prey to internal dissensions and strife, compelling
the queen to fly from the land, in which a new pretender had appeared.
This pretender to the throne was a kinsman of the late king of Poland,
and had retired to a convent in France in the lifetime of Casimir. His
ambition made him exchange the cassock for armor, and a large portion
of the people of Poland very soon acknowledged him to be their king.
But his royalty was of short duration; the army of the adventurer was
scattered by the adherents of King Louis.
The Lithuanians, whom we have before mentioned as being driven back
by Andrew Laczfy, now took advantage of the disorders prevailing in
Poland, and succeeded in securing such a foothold in that country
that one of their dukes, Jagello, who was converted to Christianity,
and subsequently married Hedvig, the daughter of King Louis, became
in the course of a few years the founder of a new Polish dynasty, the
Jagellons, a dynasty of mournful memory in the history of Hungary.
[Illustration: CASTLE OF BETZKÓ.]
The last days of Louis were embittered by the disorders in Poland.
He who had succeeded everywhere else failed there. Disappointment
shortened his life; upon returning to Tyrnau on the 11th of September,
1382, from attending the Polish diet convened in Hungary, he was
taken ill, and breathed there his last. The Hungarian nation lost in
him one of their greatest kings. His reign was stormy but glorious.
The Hungarian banner floated always victoriously on his numerous
battlefields, and he humbled the enemies of the nation. In spite
of his many wars, Louis found leisure to devote his time to the
cultivation of the arts of peace. He gave laws to his country, which
secured her permanence, and remained in force up to the most recent
ages. He brought order into the affairs of the Church, and into the
administration of justice. He was a zealous patron of learning, and
established a university at Fünfkirchen (Pécs). His court, the seat of
which he fixed at Buda, was brilliant; the Western customs, brought
over from Italy, prevailing there. In times of peace magnificent
tilts and tournaments at home took the place of the bloody game of
war abroad, and the distribution of arms and knightly distinctions
introduced by his father continued during his reign on even a larger
scale. On all occasions Louis showed himself to be a brave, wise,
and pious king, whose long rule is described by an eminent Hungarian
historian as proving “a continued blessing” for his nation.
Dark days succeeded the glorious reign of Louis. The Hungarian
nation was eager to testify their gratitude to their great king
by a concession made to his dynasty—notwithstanding its foreign
origin,—which they had refused to make to the glorious dynasty of
the native Árpád family. After the king’s death his daughter Mary
was proclaimed queen and the crown conferred upon her. But the crown
brought little joy to Mary, for the festivities of the coronation
were hardly finished when she was menaced by dangers coming from two
sides. The Poles hated Sigismund, to whom Mary was affianced, and
insisted also that their ruler should live amongst them. Elizabeth,
the queen-mother, in order to conciliate the opposition of the Poles,
and not to risk the loss of Poland, offered them, as a substitute for
Mary, her younger daughter Hedvig. The Poles agreed to this compromise,
upon the condition that they should select a husband for Hedvig, their
queen. It was a great trial for Hedvig to part from William, Duke of
Austria, to whom she was betrothed, but her choice lay between him
and the crown of Poland. The allurements of the latter prevailed,
and in February, 1386, the Polish nation celebrated the nuptials of
their queen with the Lithuanian duke, Jagello, recently converted to
Christianity, whom they had chosen for her husband. This marriage put
an end to the union of the two countries, and Poland had once more a
ruler of her own.
There was greater danger threatening Hungary from the south. The
nobles of Croatia were dissatisfied with female rule. There were some
ambitious men who were incensed to see themselves excluded from the
royal court, whilst a man of low descent, like Garay, the palatine,
took the lead there. They were intent upon destroying the government in
order to remove the queen. In Charles of Durazzo, who owed the throne
of Naples to Louis the Great, they found a man who was willing to
become a candidate for the throne of Hungary. The traitors, however,
on the appearance in their midst of the energetic Garay, accompanied
by the queen and the queen-mother Elizabeth, kept quiet for a while.
But no sooner had the royal party left Croatia, when these men, who
all owed their honors to the favor of the late king, resumed their
machinations, and prevailed upon Charles of Durazzo to perjure himself
and to break the oath he had pledged to the late king not to disturb
his daughter Mary in the possession of her throne. In 1385, undeterred
by the warnings of his wife, he arrived in Croatia.
Meanwhile the marriage of Mary and Sigismund had taken place. The
latter, in order to collect an army with which he should be enabled to
oppose the advancing enemy and defend the rights of his royal spouse,
hypothecated a portion of the country to raise the necessary funds.
This ill-timed transaction increased the chances of his opponent, for
the nation saw with indignation that Sigismund, in the capacity of
“the guardian of the realm” only, without possessing any royal rights,
began his guardianship by thus disposing of Hungarian territory. Such
a disgraceful transaction was unknown in the history of the country,
and it was not long before Charles could enter Buda, without let or
hindrance; disguising, however, even then, his lawless aspirations, by
pretending to have only come to make peace between the nation and her
queen. But Charles was not long in showing his true designs. On the
31st of December, 1385, the cathedral of Stuhlweissenburg witnessed
a most moving scene. The coronation of the usurper Charles was to
be solemnized; the church was crowded, to its remotest corner, with
sumptuously dressed lords. The widowed queen and her daughter Mary were
also in attendance. The customary question was asked of the magnates
of the land, by the Primate of Hungary, whether they wished Charles
to be their king. The enthusiastic acclamations of assent became, at
the Primate’s third appeal, feebler and feebler as the piteous sobs of
the two queens, who had sunk upon their father’s and husband’s grave,
resounded in the church. The coronation proceeded nevertheless, and
whilst the archbishop sent up his prayers of grace to heaven, the
widowed queen was silently vowing desperate vengeance at the grave
of her husband. Bad omens followed the pageant; during the solemn
procession the banner of St. Stephen split into pieces, and as the new
king entered the gates of his palace at Buda, its walls were shaken
to its very foundations by a tremendous thunder-storm. Charles had
occupied the throne thirty-nine days only, when he was summoned by the
widowed queen, residing under one roof with him, into her presence
to settle some grave matters of state. The king obeyed the summons,
and was humbly received by Garay the palatine, Blasius Forgách the
lord cup-bearer, Thomas Szent-Györgyi, the ban of Croatia, and the
other lords present. The council had hardly commenced when, at a hint
from the palatine, Forgách got behind the king and struck him on the
head with his pole-axe. The blow inflicted a mortal wound and the
king fainted away. The assassins had made careful preparations for
the bloody event. Whilst Forgách was doing away with the king in the
council-chamber, his Italian soldiers, in the palace, were disarmed by
Garay’s men. Charles was taken to Visegrád, where he was thrown into
prison and afterwards strangled.
The news of the king’s assassination stirred up fresh discontents
in Croatia, where his party had been most numerous. Garay imagined
he could quell the rebellion again by appearing amongst them. The
two queens approved of his scheme, and proceeded, in his company, to
Croatia. This time, however, their going to Croatia was to prove fatal
to them. The queens, travelling with a small escort, were surprised by
John Horváthy, one of the rebels, near Diákovár, and a mortal struggle
ensued between the rebels and the queen’s escort. Garay and Forgách
fought with exasperation in defence of the queens. Garay, pierced by
arrows, set his back against the coach, valiantly selling his life,
and not allowing the enemy to approach his royal charges except
across his dead body. All this heroism was wasted in the face of the
overpowering number of the rebels, and the dreadful spectacle was soon
presented to the queens of having the heads of their faithful defenders
cut off before their very eyes. The queens themselves were placed in
confinement at Novigrad, on the sea-shore. The long series of deaths by
violence, which appeared to persecute the Anjou race like a curse, was
destined to have one more added to it at Novigrad. The widow of Louis
the Great was, after a short imprisonment, strangled by one of the
rebels before the eyes of her unfortunate daughter.
The disorders had now reached their climax; one of the crowned rulers
of Hungary, Charles, had been assassinated, the other, Mary, was a
prisoner at Diákovár. The rebels were preparing to bring the son of
the usurper Charles into the country, while another party had cast
their eyes upon Ladislaus Jagello, the husband of Hedvig, as an
available aspirant to royal honors. The Prince of Servia was arming
to attack Hungary from the south, and Poland was preparing to invade
the country from the northeast, whilst the princes of Wallachia and
Moldavia, vassals of Hungary, declared their independence. So many
disasters demanded a prompt remedy, and the nation, in their distress,
decided to accept as their ruler Sigismund, the queen’s husband. He
was acknowledged as king, and the crown of St. Stephen was placed
on his head by Benedek, the bishop of Veszprém, in March, 1387, and
his reign lasted until 1437. To these melancholy circumstances did
Sigismund, of the house of Luxemburg, owe his elevation to the throne
of Hungary. It was a heavy burden that he had taken upon his shoulders,
the task of bringing order into the affairs of the distracted country.
His first and foremost duty was to liberate his august wife from her
imprisonment, but it must be reluctantly admitted that he exhibited
little zeal in the accomplishment of this. While he was travelling
leisurely from place to place without seemingly heeding the danger of
delay, Venice came to the rescue. The statesmen of the city of St.
Mark had watched with jealousy the union of Naples and Hungary in the
hands of one ruler, and to obviate this danger to their own city, they
sought the friendship of Sigismund, and sent vessels of war against
his rebellious subjects. John Palisna, in whose charge the imprisoned
queen had been placed, readily delivered her up to John Barbadico,
the captain of the republic, stipulating only for himself the right
of leaving without molestation. In July, 1388, husband and wife met
near Agram (Zágráb), and Sigismund made up for his former laxity by
sumptuously rewarding the Venetians who had liberated his queen.
The newly elected king had on the very threshold of his reign a
twofold difficulty to face. He had to quell the rebellion, which in
the southern part of his dominions was still active, and to arrest the
encroachments of the Turkish power. He succeeded in putting down the
rebellion. He marched into Croatia and Bosnia, pursuing the rebels to
their mountain fastnesses, and after many years of varying fortunes
of war he reduced them to obedience. The survivors of the scattered
rebels sought refuge in the wild forests of Syrmia. A small band of
thirty men rallied round Stephen Kont of Hédervár, the son of the
famous palatine Michael, a man noted for his bravery. Sigismund charged
Vajdafy, one of his trusty men, with the reduction of this band. He
found it, however, impossible to get near them, and finally resorted
to a stratagem. Vajdafy promised them a free pardon from Sigismund if
they surrendered and came up to Buda with him. The thirty-one warriors
accepted this proposal, but on their way the treacherous Vajdafy
ordered them to be placed in chains. They were so incensed at this
disgraceful treatment, that they determined not to do homage to the
king when brought into his presence. They refused to bend their knees
before him. The king did not reflect long, but ordered the thirty-one
gallants to be taken to St. George’s Place in Buda, where they met
their death at the hands of the executioner. Kont was the last to lay
his head on the block. His faithful page Csóka burst into tears at the
bloody sight. Sigismund comforted the youth, telling him he would be a
better master to him than Kont was. “I shall never serve thee, Czech
hog,” was the boy’s reply, a reply which cost him his life, for he was
immediately executed. This barbarous and illegal act of the king would
no doubt have provoked, in ordinary times, a rebellion in the country,
but the general attention was just then absorbed by the encroachments
of the Turks.
Servia had already become a vassal state of the Turks, and was
compelled to swell with her army the power of the mightiest foe to
Christianity. The last victory won by the Servians over the Turks was
in 1387, when they mowed down two thirds of the Turkish army, numbering
20,000 men. Sultan Murad invaded Servia in 1389 to avenge the disgrace
of defeat. He was met in June by Lazarus, the last independent Prince
of Servia, on the Kosovo (blackbird) field, called in Hungarian the
Rigómezö. The engagement was a bloody one, and disastrous to the
rulers on both sides. Sultan Murad received his death wound from the
dagger of a Servian soldier, whilst Prince Lazarus was delivered by
his own son-in-law, Vuk Brankovitch, into the hands of the Turks and
into the jaws of certain death. With Lazarus was lost the independence
of Servia, and his scattered army fled in dismay from the ill-fated
battle-field. This victory had brought the Turks one step nearer to the
borders of Hungary, and added further to the fear of their victorious
arms in that Bajazet, the successor of Murad, surnamed the “Lightning,”
was known to be eager for new conquests. Two years after the battle of
Kosovo we find the Turks already on Hungarian soil. Sigismund tried, at
first, negotiations. Viddin, Nicopolis, and Silistria, which belonged
to Hungary under Louis the Great, had recently fallen into the hands
of the Turks. Sigismund sent an embassy to Bajazet calling upon him to
surrender these cities to their rightful owner. The sultan received the
embassy at Brussa, and, conducting them into a hall ornamented with
arms and weapons of every description, he pointed at these, saying: “Go
back and tell your king that, as you see for yourself, I have a good
enough title to these lands.” Sigismund rightly understood this to be a
declaration of war. He at once summoned the chivalry of Europe to take
part in a crusade against the infidels, and entered into an alliance
with Manuel II., the Emperor of the East. Many knights from England,
France, and Italy responded to the call.
Meanwhile, Mary, the wife of Sigismund, died in 1395. It was to her
that Sigismund owed his throne, and now that she was no more, there was
nothing to keep up the ties of affection between the people and their
restless and inconstant king. Sigismund hoped to dazzle the nation
by the glory of a successful war. In 1396 he marched the assembled
crusaders to Nicopolis against the Turks. The king, surrounded by the
chief captains of the army, was merrily feasting when the news was
brought that Bajazet, the “Lightning,” was approaching. Both armies
were eager for the contest. The French knights, in spite of Sigismund’s
protests, claimed the privilege of the first attack. Ignorant of the
Turkish system of fighting, which consisted in sending the weakest and
least-disciplined troops to the fore, to bear the brunt of the first
attack, the French rushed with their united strength upon the enemy.
The attack, as usual, was favorable to the French arms, but hardly had
they dispersed the inferior troops when they found themselves face
to face with the serried ranks of the Spahis and Janissaries. The
hot-blooded Frenchmen were no match for these incomparable soldiers,
and a large portion of them fell on the battle-field while the
remainder were taken prisoners. This discomfiture had a depressing
effect on the other crusaders, and their army scattered in disorderly
flight. Sigismund, himself, escaped only with great difficulty, and
took refuge on a ship on the Danube which brought him to Constantinople.
This unlucky campaign proved a fresh source of trouble to the country,
for the king, keenly feeling the disgrace of his defeat, stayed away
from Hungary for over half a year. The southern part of Hungary
was again in rebellion and many, believing in the false report of
the king’s death, were desirous of proceeding to the election of a
successor. The king, apprehensive of losing his throne, came back and,
in his own fashion, rewarded his friends and punished his opponents.
In order to add to the number of his adherents he distributed amongst
them, in defiance of an ancient law, the crown-lands. He filled the
highest positions in the state with foreigners. This was more than
the Hungarian lords would submit to, especially after the disgraceful
defeat the king had just suffered on the battle-field. The impatient
magnates, weary of his inglorious rule, entered upon a conspiracy to
overthrow the king. On the 28th of April, 1401, a number of the great
lords of the land assembled at Buda and requested the attendance of
the king, in order to take counsel on affairs of state. The Garays,
the unflinching adherents of the king, knew what was going to happen,
but did not dare to divulge or oppose the plans of the conspirators.
Sigismund appeared among the assembled magnates, but only to find
out, too late, that he was, in fact, their prisoner. He was taken
to Visegrád and confined in its castle. Another king had now to be
elected. Three claimants were on the field—Ladislaus Jagello, William
of Austria, and Ladislaus, the son of Charles the Little. It was
fortunate, however, for the king that no election could be agreed upon;
and, while the magnates were taking counsel with each other, the Garays
succeeded in liberating the king and took him to Siklós, one of their
own fortified castles. His followers, meanwhile, took up arms in his
cause and succeeded in placing him again on the throne, after he had
been a prisoner for four months. But before doing so they obtained
his promise not to punish or molest the conspirators. Michael Garay
was generously rewarded for his exertions on behalf of Sigismund; he
received annually a pension of one thousand ducats, and was appointed
to the dignity of a palatine. The severe lesson was of benefit to the
king. He appeared totally changed after his experience in prison.
He faithfully kept the promise he had given, and did not molest the
rebellious lords, but rather sought their friendship, and, making
union with them, seriously endeavored by legal means to improve the
government of the country.
He had hardly seized the reins of government with firm hands, when the
cry of battle called him again away. Having no son, Sigismund tried
to secure the throne for his daughter Elizabeth. She was affianced to
Albert of Austria, and the king prevailed upon one hundred and ten
lords to sign a document by which his daughter’s husband would, after
the king’s demise, become entitled to wear the crown of St. Stephen.
The Neapolitan party was roused into rebellion by this arrangement,
and Ladislaus of Naples penetrated into the interior of the country.
The primate of the realm, the archbishop of Gran, sided with the
rebels and placed the crown of Hungary upon the head of the invading
foreigner. Sigismund, who was just then amongst the Czechs, whose
crown he coveted, hastened home upon learning the peril with which
he was menaced. The followers of Ladislaus were soon put down, and,
being assured of the king’s pardon, they all gave in their submission.
Ladislaus, fearful lest the fate of his father, Charles the Little,
should overtake him, left the country, and henceforth dared not to
question the right of Sigismund to the crown. In the course of the
years that followed some wise measures were introduced concerning the
privileges and franchises of the cities, and regulating the relations
of the Church of Hungary to the Vatican. The Pope having been the most
zealous partisan of Ladislaus of Naples, a law was enacted putting an
end to the Pope’s right of interference in the affairs of the Hungarian
Church.
The king formed again new marriage ties, and took Barbara, the daughter
of Count Arminius Cilley, the powerful lord of the Styrian castle of
Cilli, for his wife. The new queen added but little to his happiness.
The king established the order of the dragon in commemoration of his
wedding. The insignia of the order were a red cross with a gold dragon
who twisted his tail in a circular shape around his own neck. The
membership was confined to twenty-four, who bound themselves to defend
the Christian faith against the Turks. The king and queen were the
first members of the order, the remaining members were selected from
among the highest dignitaries of the land. A high distinction fell
to the lot of the king of Hungary on the 20th of September, 1410.
Ruprecht, who had been elevated to the imperial throne of Germany,
after the deposition of Wenceslaus the drunkard (the half insane
brother of Sigismund), was now dead. Wenceslaus was now striving
to regain the lost dignity, but in this he was opposed by his own
brother Sigismund. The electoral princes voted for the latter. This
was the first time that a similar distinction had been conferred upon
the wearer of the crown of St. Stephen. The nation felt proud of the
exaltation of their king, but the nation as well as the king found
subsequently ample reason to regret their premature rejoicing. Indeed
the fears of St. Ladislaus and Louis the Great, who had declined the
imperial crown lest they might, accepting it, be caused to neglect the
affairs of Hungary, proved but too well founded. The business of the
emperor required his presence elsewhere, and while he was absent for
years from the country, matters at home visibly went to rack and ruin.
The emperor-king could not spare time to attend to the most important
duty of his reign, the driving back of the Turks, and, there can be no
doubt, that it was owing less to the civil wars of that period than
the lukewarmness of Sigismund in the face of the Ottoman advances
during the last years of his reign, that it became possible for the
Moslem power to obtain possession, a century later, of the stronghold
of Christianity. The signs of the coming life-and-death struggle
became already apparent—and once the struggle begun there was no way
to destroy the Ottoman power, nor could a favorable opportunity, once
missed, return again.
The fortunes of war were once more propitious to the Hungarians—in
their war against Venice—but for several years afterwards history
records nothing but a long series of uninterrupted disasters. The
war with Venice was carried on to get possession of the littoral
islands and cities. Venice was shamefully beaten, and the peace-suing
ambassadors of the proud city of St. Mark had to undergo the
humiliation of seeing before their very eyes nineteen of their flags
torn to pieces in the streets of Buda. But the new banners of Venice
were soon destined to be victoriously planted on the Hungarian littoral
territory, and Sigismund was compelled to sign a peace by which the
nation lost her seacoast possessions. And while the power of Venice
was curtailing the country in the south, the richest towns in the
north were being lost through the recklessness of Sigismund. In order
to extricate himself from financial embarrassments he hypothecated
to Ladislaus, the king of Poland, thirteen of the wealthiest cities
of the Szepes country, which was largely settled by German merchants
and tradesmen. These places remained hypothecated until the first
partition of Poland, 1772, when Hungary was reinstated in the full
possession of the mortgaged towns. After arranging these affairs the
king went abroad, where he remained for six years. During his absence
the country, owing to the despotic rule of Barbara, his queen, became a
prey to disorder. It would cover pages unprofitably to give a detailed
account of the private affairs of the wanton queen, and, passing over
these, we shall accompany her royal husband on his journey to the
Council of Constance.
The condition of the Church of Rome was at that period a most
lamentable one. The question of reforms within the Church became from
day to day more pressing. Wycliffe, the Englishman, had the boldness to
assume the rôle of a heretic. John Huss, the rector of the university
of Prague, soon became a zealous propagator of his teachings. The
majority of the inhabitants of Bohemia embraced the new tenets,
assuming, after their leader, the name of “Hussites.” One of the chief
objects of the Council of Constance—1414-1418—was to extirpate heresy,
and to exterminate its votaries. Numerous ecclesiastical and lay lords
gathered at Constance to advise together under the guidance of the
emperor-king, who presided. The attending Hungarian magnates deemed
it due to their fame and dignity to indulge in the most extravagant
luxury. The emperor-king felt constrained to eclipse his subjects in
sumptuous display on such an occasion, and, in order to accomplish
this, he had to sell Brandenburg to Frederick of Hohenzollern, and
there can be no doubt that through this sale he unwittingly contributed
to the future greatness of the present imperial dynasty in Germany. We
will not attempt to describe here the Council of Constance, but need
only mention that it was the treachery and bad faith of Sigismund which
caused the tragic end and martyrdom of John Huss. His disciples vowed
vengeance, and Hungary, of all the dominions of the emperor-king, was,
during many years, most exposed to their cruel devastations.
After an absence of six years, during which Sigismund had visited
Germany, France, Italy, and England, he at length returned to Hungary.
He found the country unsettled, and menaced on two sides by powerful
enemies. Having sent his wife, the cause of the internal disorders,
to prison, he led an army against the Turks, who were threatening the
southern portion of the country. Before describing the events of that
campaign let us cast a rapid glance at the condition of the Moslem
world in Europe. A dreadful blow had fallen on the Ottoman empire in
July, 1402. Timur, the Central-Asian conqueror, destroyed the Turkish
army near Angora, and captured the person of the redoubtable Bajazet
himself. The impaired power of the Ottoman empire was still more
weakened by the internecine strife between Bajazet’s sons. Mohammed I.
emerged at last as the victorious sultan, and in his person the warlike
qualities of his ancestors reappeared once more on the throne of the
Osmanlis. The rulers of Servia and Moldavia very soon acknowledged his
sovereignty. Hervoja, the Bosnian _boyar_, followed their example. The
three captains of Sigismund, John Maróty, John Garay, and Paul Csupor,
marched against the latter. The engagement resulted in the victory of
Hervoja. Csupor was taken prisoner, while his fellow-captains sought
safety in an ignominious flight. Csupor, years ago, had scoffingly
greeted Hervoja, when at the Hungarian court, by bellowing like an ox,
and the victor, now remembering the affront put upon him, revenged
himself by having the ill-fated captain sewn into an ox’s skin, and
telling him: “Now thou canst bellow as much as thou likest; thou hast
also the shape of an ox.” He caused him to be thrown into the water,
where he was drowned.
Meanwhile Stephen Lazarevitch, the Prince of Servia, became weary
of the Turkish alliance, and with a view to securing to his nephew,
George Brankovitch, the succession in Servia, he sought the aid of
Sigismund, offering to surrender to him several important fortified
places along the Danube for his services. The Prince of Servia died in
1428, and Sigismund claimed the possession of the places promised to
him. The Servian commander of Galambócz, one of the strongest of these
fortresses, however, treacherously allowed it to pass into the hands
of the Turks. It was to re-possess himself of this fortress, which he
could not permit to remain in Moslem hands, that Sigismund marched
against the enemy. He had nearly succeeded in capturing it, when news
reached him that Sultan Murad II. was approaching. Sigismund did not
dare to engage in battle with such overpowering numbers, and having
stipulated for himself and his army free passage, he pusillanimously
gave up the siege. Yet the Hungarians were just beginning to cross
the Danube, when the Turks, breaking faith, attacked them. Sigismund
himself was in great danger, and he owed his escape only to the heroism
of Cecilia Rozgonyi, the wife of the captain-in-chief, who facilitated
his flight in a galley steered by herself. This was Sigismund’s last
armed encounter with the Turks, and its issue did by no means add to
his laurels.
The remaining years of Sigismund’s reign were taken up with the
organization of the defences of the country and with continual warfare
against the Czech Hussites in the north. Wenceslaus, the king of
Bohemia, died in 1419, and Sigismund endeavored to obtain his brother’s
crown. The Czechs hated the executioner of their beloved spiritual
teacher, and conceded to Sigismund the Bohemian crown only after a hard
and protracted struggle. Hungary had to suffer for the ambition of her
king, for, during these struggles, the exasperated Czechs, on more than
one occasion, laid waste her territories in the north-west. Sigismund,
however, did not allow himself to be deterred from pursuing his aim.
Acting upon the principle of _divide et regna_, he very sensibly
conciliated a portion of the Czechs by granting them religious reforms,
and whilst the people were desperately fighting among themselves he
succeeded in securing the crown of Bohemia.
Sigismund may be said to have reached the goal of all his wishes.
He united on his head the crowns of imperial Germany, Hungary, and
Bohemia. Yet, on the whole, he was not a happy man. His wife Barbara
had regained her freedom and was embittering the last days of the
sickly monarch. This ambitious woman coveted the crown of Hungary,
and in order to obtain it she was scheming, first of all, to hinder
the succession of Albert, the son-in-law of the emperor-king. With
this view she entered into negotiations with Ladislaus III., the
king of Poland, the purport of which was that he should marry her
after Sigismund’s demise, and thus unite the dominions of the king of
Hungary with Poland. The arrangement was nearly concluded when these
intrigues were discovered by Sigismund. He deprived his wife once
more of her liberty, and hastened from Bohemia to Hungary to prevail
upon the Estates to accept Albert’s succession, and then to turn his
steps towards Transylvania to put down the rebellion that had broken
out there. The peasantry of Transylvania, having a leaning towards
the teachings of Huss, were exposed to constant persecutions. They
were also oppressed by burdensome taxes, and finally, goaded on by
their unhappy condition, they rose in arms against their tyrants.
The massacred nobility and burning villages bore witness to the
exasperation of the peasantry. Fate prevented Sigismund from either
meeting the estates or quelling the Transylvanian rising. He was
overtaken by death at Znaym, in Moravia, in December, 1437. His dead
body and the captive queen arrived in Hungary one week later. His
remains were conveyed from Presburg to Grosswardein to be placed there
by the side of his first wife, Mary, and at the feet of St. Ladislaus.
It is rather saddening to reflect that, after a reign of fifty years,
his funeral procession should have been lighted by the glare from the
burning villages of Transylvania, set on fire by her own peasantry.
[Illustration]