Chapter VII: The Kings of the House of árpád (2)

King Andrew, who had to be compelled by force to issue the Golden Bull, could, however, not be coerced by any power to observe the promises he had made therein. The exertions of the heir presumptive and the nobility as well as the wrath of the pope were of no avail. Nine years later he confirmed its contents by a fresh oath, but hardly two years elapsed when he incurred the curse of Rome for again disregarding his oath. Struggles, extending over many centuries, were necessary to realize the words of the Golden Bull. Time had then already effaced the memory of Andrew’s follies and frailties, and posterity saw him only in the reflected light of the great concessions made by his royal missive. The estates of the diet which met at Rákos in 1505 spoke of him in terms of extravagant praise as the king “who had made the Hungarians great and glorious, and had raised their fame to the very stars.”

The struggles which resulted in the issuing of the Golden Bull were by no means over. The nobility had obtained from royalty the concession of their rights, but were lacking the power to maintain them, and to secure their permanency. The very charter of their liberties furnished matter for fresh disputes and dissensions. In these contests, however, the nobility now seldom attacked royalty, the weakening of which would have proved injurious to their own interests, but they usually allied themselves with the kings against the oligarchs, who treated with contempt both law and right, having no need of the protection of either, and who indulged in tyrannical violence against the throne as well as the nation. The licentiousness and increasing power of the oligarchs were the sore spot in the body politic during the period of the last Árpáds, and in a greater and lesser degree, now apparently healed, now more envenomed than ever, it continued to be for centuries a disturbing element in the public life of the country.

The struggle between royalty, supported by the nation, and the unruly great lords had just commenced, when the storm of the Mongol invasion broke loose upon the country, shaking it to its very foundations. When the storm subsided only the weak ones were found to have suffered, the strong ones came out of the nation’s calamity more powerful than ever. The national misfortunes only served to advance the interests of the oligarchs, who, about this time, began more frequently to surround the crests of the mountains with stone walls, and, dwelling in their rocky nests, defied royalty with increasing boldness, and oppressed the people with greater impunity than ever. The chroniclers in recalling this period mourn with bitter wailing the gloom which had settled upon the country, the incapacity of the kings, the pride and violence of the lords, and the miserable condition of the people. That the power of the nation was not entirely gone, however, was shown by the cheering fact, casting a ray of light into the gloom of those days, that at the very time when the authority of royalty had sunk to the lowest ebb, the Hungarian arms were able to cope with the powerful Slavic empire ruled by Ottokar, king of Bohemia, and to assist in establishing the power of the Hapsburgs. Unfortunately the national strength was for the most part divided against itself, and the very triumph of the Hungarian arms against Ottokar proved injurious to the nation at large, for it redounded only to the glory of the oligarchy, and tended to confirm their power.

After the death of Andrew II., his son, Béla IV. (1235-1270), devoted himself with youthful energy to the task of restoring the ascendancy of the royal power and authority, of insuring respect to the laws, and of humbling the pride of the oligarchy. He removed the evil counsellors of his father, sent the principal ringleaders to prison, surrounded himself with good patriots, and where gentle words proved inefficacious he resorted to arms in order to obtain possession of the royal domains and county lands which single oligarchs had contrived to acquire by grant during his father’s life or from his ancestors, or which had been lawlessly appropriated by them. The efforts made by the youthful king were, however, of no avail. The very successes which attended here and there his policy served only to excite to a higher pitch the anger and resentment of the great lords, and deepened the estrangement between them and the throne. The disaffected oligarchs, whose selfishness was not tempered by patriotism, and whose passions did not know the bridle of the law, were so base as to elevate a foreign prince, Duke Frederic of Austria, to the throne, in opposition to their lawful king. The watchfulness of Béla alone prevented the royal inheritance from passing, at that time already, from the Árpáds into foreign hands. Béla succeeded in driving back Frederic, and in defeating the treasonable schemes of the oligarchy, but he became, at the same time, convinced that until he was able to present to the opposing lords a more formidable front he would have to renounce the realization of the fond hopes of his youth.

Béla looked about him for fresh resources to strengthen his authority and to add to his power. Pious Dominican monks, just then returning to the country from the regions of the Volga, told the tale that in the far east, along the banks of that river, they met with that fraction of the Hungarians who, during the period preceding the occupation of Hungary, had parted from their brethren near the Black Sea, where the latter continued their march westward. These accounts suggested to Béla the scheme of inviting the distant Eastern brothers to settle in his realm, hoping to augment the royal power by the aid of the new settlers, and to be thus enabled to resume successfully his contest with the proud lords. This scheme, however, failed, but the same circumstances which frustrated his plans as to his countrymen near the Volga, assisted him in obtaining aid from another quarter. The Mongol hordes, which came rushing from Central Asia toward the western world, swept in their impetuous onward march the Hungarians near the Volga out of existence; but the same wild current drove also the Kuns (Cumans) out of their habitations near the Black Sea, and the latter, after having roamed about homeless for a time, and then reached the frontiers of Hungary, begged of King Béla to allow them to come into the country and to settle there. Forty thousand families were in search of a new country, and forty thousand fierce warriors offered their services to King Béla. The people of Hungary were averse to receiving immigration on so large a scale, and the great lords loudly protested against the reception of the new comers, being convinced that the latter would only enhance the king’s power, and become instrumental in humbling their order. The king, however, considering the good of the country only, braved the opposition, and admitting Kuthen, king of the Kuns, with his people, into the land, assigned to them as their future abode the plain of the Theiss. Nor did he forget to make their conversion to Christianity a condition of their admission. The good effects Béla had anticipated from his new colony were slow in showing themselves, but the evil consequences of the recent settlement became manifest at once. The great numbers of this rude and barbarous element, who were as little disposed to live in fixed habitations as to embrace Christianity, soon disgusted the people by their lawlessness, violence, unruliness, and the devastations committed by them amongst the Hungarian population. The complaints of all classes, without distinction, which reached the king’s ear, became daily louder. Béla was unable to come to the relief of the people, for to have turned against the Kuns, as he was asked to do, would have shaken them in their fidelity to him. But by showing a preference for the new comers he also forfeited the affection of his old adherents, the good patriots who had firmly stood by him, hitherto, in all his troubles. Dissensions arose between the king, who was animated by the purest intentions, and his people, who were unable to fathom the patriotic motives of his actions; and they were at their highest when the hurricane which had swept away the Hungarians on the banks of the Volga, and driven the Kuns to the plains of the Theiss, reached at last the crests of the Carpathian mountains.

The successors of Jenghis Khan, wishing to extend the frontiers of their vast Asiatic empire toward the west, crossed the Volga, overran the Russian steppes, and reduced Moscow to ashes in 1238. Proud and beautiful Kiev was soon after, in 1240, humbled by their victorious arms. The Hungarians were aware of the approach of the formidable foe, but their internal dissensions, and their troubles with the Kuns and with their king, made them forget the imminence of the danger that menaced them. They indulged, besides, in the hope that the mighty Carpathian mountains would arrest the fierce current in its onward course. But the nation was soon roused from its fancied security and awoke to a dread sense of the true situation. The mournful fate of Kiev, the sufferings of the Polish people, and the threatening language of the embassy sent by Batu Khan, the general of Oktai, the Great Khan, who had been the terror of the Russians, dispelled the illusions, of the most sanguine.

The mind of King Béla was beset with anxious thoughts, but his courage did not fail him. Although it was rather late for efficient military preparations, he labored day and night to put the country into a state of defence against the coming peril. He demolished the forests, and barricaded with the timber thus obtained the Carpathian passes. He invited his adherents to take counsel with him, and called to arms the ecclesiastical and lay lords, the soldiery of the counties, and every man in the country capable of bearing arms. According to ancient custom he caused the bloody sword to be carried about throughout the land. His active zeal was not confined to his realm alone, but, sending his ambassadors to the western courts, he instructed them to beg, admonish, and urge the rulers of the West, in the name of Christianity, to come to his aid. It was all in vain. The foreign courts did not stir, and the Hungarian lords, in their surprise and dismay, instead of devising means to meet the danger, were wildly looking about them for some one to be made responsible for the coming peril, and to serve as a victim of their anger. They turned with passionate hatred upon the king and the Kuns, saying that he with his Kuns should defend the country, and that the king need not count upon them in this emergency. The spring of 1241 was already nearing, and still the royal banner, floating over Pesth, proclaimed to the world the absence of troops and the defencelessness of the country. The Mongolian armies had, meanwhile, already begun to press forward. Their right wing marched on Poland and Silesia, in order to effect an entrance into the country from the north-west; the left wing, passing through Moldavia, approached the snowy mountains of Transylvania; whilst the army of the centre was led by Batu Khan himself across the northwestern Carpathians to the pass of Bereczke. Thus the two arms of the Mongol armies were preparing to crush, in a deadly embrace, the doomed country.

Batu Khan crossed the Carpathians on the 12th of March, 1241, and, having dispersed the troops of Palatine Héderváry, at the foot of the mountains, the active Mongol cavalry troops overran with such suddenness the plain watered by the Theiss, that four days later the smoke of the burning villages, set on fire by the ruthless enemy, could be discerned from the walls of Pesth. The Hungarian lords, even at this critical moment, failed to arrive with their contingents, and those who were under arms near Pesth nursed their wrath, not against the enemy, but against the hated Kun immigrants whom they denounced as the spies and allies of the Mongols, and as traitors to Hungary. They rushed upon the unsuspecting Kuns with savage rage, massacring their king, Kuthen, together with his household, at his quarters in Pesth. The Kuns, incensed at this treachery, were not slow to retaliate. One portion of them left the country, killing, burning, and devastating every thing before them, whilst the other joined the Mongols in order to avenge more thoroughly their unjust persecution.

Towards the latter end of March, Béla, inspired by despair rather than by any hope of success, led the royal army which had gathered around Pesth, and numbered altogether from 50,000 to 60,000 warriors, against the Mongols. This scanty force was all that the Hungarian nation, shorn of its valor and sadly wanting in public spirit, opposed to the invading enemy. The Mongol army retreated before Béla as far as the Theiss, and there Batu Khan, falling back with both wings of his army, pitched his camp in the angle formed by the Sajó and the Theiss. King Béla was intent upon reaching the same point, and placed his forces on the plain extending along the right bank of the Sajó, opposite the Mongol camp. Here on the plain of Muhi took place the dreadful conflict between the two armies. From the dawn of day to late in the night lasted the bloody engagement which ended with the complete annihilation of the Hungarian army. On the fated battle-field perished the chief prelates of the church, the highest dignitaries of the state taken from the ranks of the best patriots, thousands of the gentry, and the hope and last prop of the nation, her only army. Only few amongst those who did not fall amidst the shock of battle could escape with their lives. The pursuing enemy was everywhere close upon the track of the fugitives. “During a march of two days,” says Rogerius, a contemporary writer, who had been an eye-witness of these horrors, “thou couldst see nothing along the roads but fallen warriors. Their dead bodies were lying about like stones in a quarry.”

Yet, amidst all these misfortunes, there was one gleam of comfort in store for the nation. Every thing, indeed, was lost, but her king was saved, and whilst he lived the nation still kept up her hopes and faith in a better future. A few devoted followers had rescued Béla from the perils of the bloody engagement near the banks of the Sajó, and the fugitive king, wandering for a while amidst the mountains of Upper Hungary, finally arrived at the court of Frederic, Duke of Austria, to whom he had previously sent his family and royal treasures. Here, however, instead of meeting with hospitality, he was made prisoner, and succeeded in regaining his freedom only by abandoning to his avaricious neighbor, who turned Béla’s misfortunes to his profit, his treasures, his crown, and the possession of three counties. Béla then sent his family to the Dalmatian seashore, whilst he himself hurried back to his unfortunate land, to the region near the Drave, in order to save what could yet be saved. The Danube alone interfered with the further advance of the Mongols. Two thirds of the realm had already fallen a prey to the fierce rage, greed, and brutal passions of the enemy. Whilst the Mongol Khan was dividing one half of the country, as conquered territory, into hundredths and tenths, and the people, lured from their hiding-places, lowered their necks, terror-stricken under the new yoke, Béla collected anew an army in the western part of the realm, and despatched ambassadors to the rulers of the western states. But before he could yet see the results of his renewed exertions, the severity of the winter, by covering the Danube with ice, afforded the Mongols an opportunity to penetrate into the Western half of the country. The places which guarded the most sacred memorials of Hungarian royalty and Christianity, became a mass of smouldering ruins. The waves of the Mongolian inundation closed now upon the entire land. Béla was again compelled to seek safety in flight, and, mistrusting the continent, he sought a refuge near the sea. He retired, together with his family, first to Spalato, and subsequently to his fortified castle Trau, which was defended on almost every side by the sea. But his pursuers, who seemed to look upon their victories as incomplete as long as the king was not in their power, were on his track even there, and, devastating the seashore, as far as Ragusa, they, at last, desperate with rage, laid siege to Trau.

The last hopes of the nation had centred upon the sea-fortress, and now these hopes, too, seemed to vanish, when suddenly, as by a miracle, the besiegers ceased their hostilities, folded up their tents, and departed for the East. At the command of Batu Khan the whole Mongolian army, with all their followers, left the razed country, the flood of the invaders receding to the banks of the Volga, whence it had come. Oktai, the Great Khan, was dead, and Batu Khan hurried back to be present at the funeral feast, and to make his powerful voice, emphasized by the arms of his entire army, felt in the election of the new ruler.

After the Mongols had withdrawn, King Béla returned, in company of a few of his trusty followers, to his desolated land. He tottered under the weight of the misfortunes and woes of his people. To use the words of a contemporary writer and eye-witness describing the scene of desolation which met Béla’s eyes: “Here and there a tower, half burnt and blackened by smoke, and rearing its head towards the sky, like a mourning flag over a funereal monument, indicated the direction in which they were to advance. The highways were overgrown with grass, the fields white with bleaching bones, and not a living soul came out to meet them. And the deeper they penetrated into the land, the more terrible became the sights they saw. When at last those who survived crept forth from their hiding-places, half of them fell victims to wild animals, starvation, and pestilence. The stores laid up by the tillers of the soil, the year before, had been carried away by the Mongols, and the little grain they could sow after the departure of the enemy had hardly sprung up when it was devoured by locusts. The famine assumed such frightful proportions that starving people, in their frenzy, killed each other, and it happened that men would bring to market human flesh for sale. Since the birth of Christ no country has ever been overwhelmed by such misery.”

Great deeds spring up in noble souls harrowed by misfortune. Béla showed himself greatest in the extreme misery of his nation. In order to relieve the wants of the people and to enable them to till the soil, he caused to be imported seed for sowing and draught cattle from the neighboring countries. He colonized with new inhabitants the depopulated regions, held out inducements to German artisans, miners, and traders to settle in towns, and invited again the Kuns, who were roaming in the regions of the Lower Danube, to return to their former habitations on the rich lands of the Theiss. He bestowed especial care upon the cities, founded new ones, and granted additional privileges to the old ones. He was also the founder of Buda, which stands to this day. He ordered the larger cities to be surrounded by walls, caused forts, built of stone, to be erected in the neighborhood of more important roads, and encouraged the great lords to build similar forts. He was careful to guard the eastern frontiers, but remembering that the durability of the internal order was as powerful a support of the security of the land as well defended frontiers, he was bent upon making the laws respected. Hardly five years had passed since Béla engaged in his arduous task, and already the country recuperated to such an extent that the nation could receive with composure the news that the Mongols were making fresh preparations for a second attack, and was even, for years, able to turn the weight of her whole power against the Western states.

The nation which stood in such great need of peace, was unfortunately doomed never to enjoy its blessings. Béla himself, as soon as he had gained sufficient strength, deemed it his first duty to punish Frederic, the faithless Austrian duke, and to recover the treasures retained by the latter’s treachery. The war between the two neighbors began in 1246. The contest in itself was of no great significance but its consequences were highly important. Béla achieved, with the help of his Kun warriors, a complete triumph over Frederic, who lost his life on the battle-field. Frederic was the last of the Babenberg line, and the inheritance of the Babenbergs, the Austrian principalities, were, through his death, left without a master. Béla coveted for himself the masterless countries, but was opposed in his schemes in that direction by Ottokar, the powerful king of Bohemia, who then already labored for the realization of his ambitious dream, the founding of a great Slavic empire. The Hungarian king could not expose his country to the dangers involved in the erection of such a Slavic empire along the western borders, and was therefore opposed, from the beginning, to Ottokar’s aspirations. The contest between Hungary and Bohemia was at first waged for the Babenberg possessions, but its original cause was lost sight of, and the war continued for many years, to terminate only with the overthrow of Ottokar and the ruin of his empire. Béla was engaged in these wars during the last years of his reign, and they were continued by his son Stephen V., and his grandson Ladislaus IV.

These wars brought into a community of interests the kings of the house of Árpád and the Hapsburgs, whose first great ancestor, Rudolph, ascended in 1273, the German imperial throne, the stability of which was endangered by Ottokar. The latter had seceded from the German empire, and was now building up at its expense his own great Slavic kingdom. It was quite natural, therefore, that Ladislaus IV., King of Hungary, and Rudolph of Hapsburg, should enter into an armed alliance for the purpose of combating the common enemy, who, confident in his power, threatened both his eastern and his western neighbor. Twice they led their joint armies against Ottokar, and, at last, in the course of the second campaign in 1278, they completely routed the Czech armies near Stillfried and Diernkrut in the plain of the Morava, or March. Side by side with Rudolph’s ten thousand men fought forty thousand Kun warriors against Ottokar, the preponderance of the Hungarian arms securing at last the triumph of the allies. Ottokar’s power was overthrown and he himself fell, buried beneath the ruins of his kingdom. Rudolph strengthened the German throne, whose fate the events of subsequent centuries closely identified with that of his family, and the Austrian principalities became the hereditary provinces of the Hapsburgs. Hungary derived but an unequal benefit from this triumph. To be sure the gratitude of the ally, freed from a formidable enemy, was fervent, and his vows of friendship (not always respected by his successors) most earnest. Thus Rudolph writes to Ladislaus IV.: “Tongue cannot tell, nor pen describe, the immense joy we feel at your having risen with so powerful a force to avenge our common injuries. Wherefore, glorifying God, we express the greatest gratitude of which we are capable to your Majesty, and loudly promise that no vicissitude shall shake us in the indissoluble alliance which we have vowed to you.” The booty, gratifying the avarice of a few and the vanity of the nation, could also hardly be reckoned a solid advantage. One important result accrued, undoubtedly by the triumph of the allies, also to Hungary, in the destruction of Ottokar’s Slavic kingdom. In other respects the victory proved rather a disadvantage, for, instead of strengthening the power of the state, it relieved the minds of the powerful lords in the land, who now, freed from anxiety, once more indulged their self-seeking propensities, and labored to ruin the country.

Ladislaus IV. (1272-1290) not only did not possess the qualities which might have enabled him to oppose the corruption of his age, but, by his levity, undermined even the last remnant of the royal authority which had become more and more feeble in the course of the last century. The king, unmindful of his crown, and indifferent to the interests of the nation, deserted his ancestral court, and, pitching his residence amongst the tents of the Kuns, passed there his life in the society of his boon companions in riotous living and revels, destructive alike of his dignity as a man and king, and detrimental to the hopes of the nation. The great of the land imitated the example set by their king. They were led exclusively by their insatiate self-indulgence, and neither the law of the land nor the commands of the Church, the voice of faith or morality, could prevail upon them to respect themselves, and to have regard for the rights of others. The weak became the victims of the strong, and the most powerful were making preparations to divide amongst themselves the masterless and defenceless country. The Brebiris along the sea-shore, the Németujváris beyond the Danube, the Csák family in the regions of the Vág, and the Apors in Transylvania, were in reality the little kings of the country. They broke off a piece from the domain of St. Stephen whenever it suited them, and of the size they wanted. They let their troops loose upon the people, and carried on wars in their own way with one another, and with the neighbors. And if any thing escaped the greed of the oligarchs, it fell into the hands of the Kuns, who, trusting in the protection and favor of the king, plundered and devastated the land like marauding armies. “Then descended,” says the chronicler, “Hungary from the grandeur of her glory. Owing to the domestic wars the cities became deserted and the villages reduced to ashes, peace and harmony were trampled upon, the wealthy became impoverished, and the nobles, in their misery, turned peasants. It was at this period that the two-wheeled cart got the name of St. Ladislaus’ wagon, for owing to the universal plundering of the draught-cattle, the number of the latter had decreased to such an extent that people were compelled to draw these carts themselves.”

The country before long, however, was free from the misrule of Ladislaus, but his death did not extricate it from the misery into which he had plunged it. A number of Kun youths, apparently from motives of private vengeance, assassinated him in his tent. The death of Ladislaus became a new source of trouble to the country, for there was now but one male descendant of the house of Árpád to ascend the throne, Duke Andrew, the grandson of Andrew II., the king who had given the Golden Bull to the Hungarians. Stephen, the father of Duke Andrew, had left Hungary early in life, and, settling in Venice, married there Tomasina Morozzoni, a lady descended from a distinguished patrician family.

Andrew III. (1290-1301), the last king of Hungary of the Árpád line, was born in Venice, where he received his education and remained until he attained the age of manhood. Hitherto he had lived entirely a stranger to the events which had plunged the country with rapid strides into the uttermost misery. There were many within the land, and among the neighbors abroad, who did not look upon him as a genuine Hungarian and who refused to acknowledge his right to the inheritance of the Árpáds. During his brief reign he gave, nevertheless, ample proofs of possessing abilities befitting an eminent ruler, and no blame can attach to him for having been unable with his inadequate strength and power to contend against the difficulties of that period. To put down the little kings in the country, and to keep away from the borders those foreign powers who, under the pretence of kinship and led by unblushing avariciousness, announced their claims to the inheritance at this early date, was a task to which Andrew III. was not equal. But he struggled bravely and manfully against the difficulties that beset his royal path. He opposed to the oligarchs the gentry, whose ancient immunities he confirmed, and whom he attached to his person by granting them new ones. Duke Albert of Austria, the son of Rudolph of Hapsburg, who was the first to claim the throne, was driven from the country, but the diplomacy of Andrew turned him subsequently from an enemy into a friend and ally. He entered upon the contest with the Neapolitan Anjous, who, being the descendants in the female line of the Árpáds, were the most pressing and determined claimants to the throne. But at the very outset of the struggle, when the shock of the collision of hostile interests is generally most severe, and just as Andrew was preparing to enter upon the campaign against Charles Robert of Naples, death suddenly took him in 1301. The chronicles contain traces of a suspicion that he died by poison administered by his Italian cook, who had been hired for that foul purpose by the Neapolitan party, and that thus, the doom of the house of Árpád was sealed by the wiles of an assassin. The sun of the Árpáds set amidst dark and storm-portending clouds, and the new dynasty of Anjou inherited the great task of reconciling the oligarchs with the gentry, and both classes with the crown, and thus of restoring the ancient power and splendor of the Hungarian kingdom.