Chapter II: History (1)

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.