A History of Hungary (Barta István, Berend Iván, Hanák Péter, Lackó Miklós, Makkai László, Nagy Zsuzsa, Ránki György)

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A History of Hungary
Author	Barta István, Berend Iván, Hanák Péter, Lackó Miklós, Makkai László, Nagy Zsuzsa, Ránki György
Publisher	Zrínyi Printing House
First published	1973 Budapest
Source	https://archive.org/details/HistoryHungary/mode/1up

The Origins of the Hungarian People and State

From Primitive Society to Feudalism

Ugrian Prehistory

The origin of the Hungarian people is, to this day, a matter of dispute. The most reliable clue is the linguistic evidence that Hungarian is one of the Finno-Ugrian languages. The bulk of its vocabulary, as well as its grammatical structure, is common to all Finno-Ugrian languages, particularly to the eastern, Ugrian branch. The present-day distribu¬ tion of Finno-Ugrian peoples and the occurrence of words in the Finno- Ugrian languages for botanical and zoological features that can be geographically localized has convinced philologists that the ancestors of these peoples inhabited the area between the middle Volga and the Urals, probably in the neighbourhood of the Kama river. This Finno- Ugrian community eventually split into the Finnish and Ugrian branches. Later the Ugrian branch divided into the present-day Ug- rians of the Ob valley—the Voguls and Ostyaks (Man'shi and Chanti) —and into the ancestors of the Hungarians. The division, according to the philologists, took place around 500 B.C. The fact that the Hun¬ garians belong to the Finno-Ugrian family of peoples is indisputable. The exact location of the original Finno-Ugrian homeland, as well as the process leading to the separation of the peoples, is still a matter of controversy. All the theories, however, agree on one point: during the first millennium B.C. the majority of the Finno-Ugrian peoples lived somewhere in the European part of what is today the U.S.S.R. The Ugrians lived further east than the Finns, very probably below the Volga bend and on both banks of the river. This area was still in the belt of deciduous forests but very close to the steppes.

The Finno-Ugrian peoples were already at the time skilled in pot¬ tery making, weaving and spinning. They bred livestock and tilled the land with hoes. Influenced by their neighbours, the nomadic pastoral communities of the steppes, the Ugrians learned to breed horses and, around the fifth century B.C., they began to use bronze, and later iron. Primitive agriculture and livestock breeding did not replace hunting and fishing, however, particularly as the forest region abounded in fur-bearing animals.

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The nucleus of these empires was the armed retinue of a wealthy chieftain. His retainers, recruited both from impoverished members of the clan and from outsiders, enabled him to gain control first over his own clan and then over others, sometimes speaking different lan¬ guages, until he eventually formed a tribe comprising all the clans he controlled. Finally, he became overlord of a confederation of tribes. A man of rank in the conqueror’s retinue was appointed head of each tribe. These tribal chiefs, in their turn, had their own armed retainers who enforced the obedience of the clan leaders. The ruler of the con¬ federation of tribes, or empire, ‘the king of kings’ (the khagan), sat enthroned above his subjects. He maintained his position with myths concerning his divine origin. He nominated his kinsmen as viceroys over these groups of tribes or ‘peoples’. These nomadic empires rose swiftly to power and their disintegration was no less sudden and dramatic.

From the fifth century A.D. onwards, historical evidence proves that the Hungarians were subjects of the successive empires of the Huns, the Avars, the Tu-kines, the Onogur-Bulgars and the Khazars. They were part of the Onogur-Bulgar tribal federation which was formed about the middle of the fifth century, and which during the seventh century constituted an independent, if short-lived, empire. At the end of the century, the federation was reduced to dependence upon the Khazars, who were descendants of Huns, intermingled with Alano-Sarmatian elements. Some of the Onogurs fled before the Kha- zar conquerors to the lower reaches of the Danube river, where they subsequently established an independent state. Another group of Onogurs founded the Bulgarian state of the Volga region. The name of the disintegrating Onogur federation of tribes was preserved by the Hungarian tribes, which stayed on and came under Khazar rule.

The status of the Hungarians within the Onogur tribal federation and their political organization are not known. But some information is available, from Arabic and Byzantine sources, about their life under Khazar rule. The Khazar conquerors appointed chiefs to head the Hungarian tribes; the foremost of them, the paramount chief or kende, was the third highest dignitary in the Khazar imperial hierarchy. The other chiefs, too, held office in a strictly hierarchical order. The gyula and horka were next to the kende in the hierarchy. The names of other office-bearers survived in Hungarian tribal names (e.g. Tarjan, Jeno). Each of the chiefs had an armed retinue, recruited from outside the clans. These armed retainers were called jobbagy, a term which in later feudal times came to mean ‘vassal’.

The leaders of the tribes and clans claimed hereditary rights to military and judicial offices: hence the beginnings of a hereditary aristocracy. Men of rank recruited into their service poor or impover¬ ished freemen and also made use of slaves, who had been bought or taken captive in war. The internal structure of the clan was thus transformed. In addition to the kinship-based families—of which the clan had previously consisted exclusively—there arose a new type of family: a wealthy one to which blood relations as well as some de¬ pendent freemen and slaves or bondsmen belonged (the latter two with a lower status than the kin). This wealthy family became the leader of the clan. Within the framework of the primitive community a division into classes gradually emerged.

The Hungarian Tribal Federation

In the seventh and eighth centuries the Hungarians’ neighbours, the Khazars and the Bulgars of the Volga region, gradually developed agriculture, thus laying the foundations for the transition from the tribal framework to the social and political patterns of feudalism. These changes in neighbouring territories did not fail to make an im¬ pact upon the Hungarian community.

The last group of words of Bulgar-Turkish origin incorporated into the Hungarian language are all agricultural terms, including some relat¬ ed to wine growing. The Hungarians’ gradual change-over to agri¬ culture is attested, inter alia, by Dzhaihani’s remark that they ‘have plenty of crops’. Their leaders sold furs, exacted as taxes from the peoples of the forest belt, and slaves, brought back from their cam¬ paigns, to Arabic and Byzantine traders, from whom they purchased silk fabrics, swords, armour, ornamental vessels, harness and orna¬ ments for their dress. It was noted by Dzhaihani’s informant that the latter were worn by Hungarian dignitaries, and many of these objects have been unearthed in tenth-century burial places in present-day Hungary. Although the Hungarians of the steppe remained predomi¬ nantly nomads and failed to establish towns, there is little doubt that their economy grew stronger and that the disintegration of their old social system continued unabated. They adopted the Turkish runic alphabet and adapted it to their Finno-Ugrian language. With the loosening of the bonds of the clan system, there began the process which ultimately led to the transformation of the federation of seven tribes (Nyek, Megyer, Kiirt-Gyarmat, Tarjan, Jeno, Ker and Keszi) into a united people calling themselves Magyar or Hungarian.

fhe leaders of the Hungarians, although of Khazar descent, no longer had any feeling of community with the Khazar empire, and in the early ninth century they shook off Khazar rule. Once a dignitary of the Khazar khagan, the kende now became the paramount chief of the Hungarians. Following the pattern of the dual kingship system that existed in both the Khazar and the Avar empires, he shared his rule with the gyula, who was second in rank. Although the Khazar ruling class never accepted the desertion of the Hungarians, the latter repulsed every Khazar attempt to re-establish their overlordship and even counter-attacked to such an extent that around the year 830 the Khazars were compelled to build the fortress of Sarkel in the region between the Don and Volga rivers in order to secure their communica¬ tions. The Khazars also encouraged the nomadic Pechenegs to attack the Hungarians. This device proved more effective in keeping the Hun¬ garians at bay—although in the end it proved to have been a two- edged weapon as, by enlisting the Pechenegs, the Khazars themselves opened the door to a fresh barbarian invasion, which led to the early destruction of their young steppe civilization. But a Pecheneg attack in 889 dislodged most of the Hungarians from the Volga bend and they moved to the region stretching from the Don to the lower reaches of the Danube.

Conflicting information from the available sources has inspired a variety of theories about the Hungarian migration. There have been attempts to locate Levedia and Etelkoz, mentioned in thirteenth-cen¬ tury chronicles as the homelands of the migrating Hungarians at va¬ rious dates before their conquest of present-day Hungary, at various places between the Volga and the Danube. The territory bordered by the Kuban river and the Caucasus is also believed by some historians to have been a dwelling place of the Hungarians for a while. However, the available evidence on the route that the Hungarians took from the Volga bend does not satisfactorily bear out any of the theories men¬ tioned. All that is certain is that the majority of the Hungarians did not leave the Volga before the second half of the ninth century. Here, on the banks of the Volga, a Hungarian Dominican friar called Julian, on an expedition to the East in the first half of the thirteenth century, found a few Hungarians who had been left behind when the majority began their westward trek.

When the Hungarians had already reached the region of the Dnieper river (the Etelkoz or ‘land between rivers’ of the chronicles), they met with the Slavs and became embroiled in the political struggles over the hegemony of the Middle Danube Basin. The year 892 saw them fight¬ ing, in alliance with Arnulf, king of the East Franks, against Prince Svatopluk of Moravia, while in 895, instigated by Byzantium, they attacked Czar Symeon of Bulgaria but were defeated. The Pechenegs seized this opportunity to occupy the Hungarian settlements along the Dnieper. In the absence of their best warriors the Hungarians were unable to defend themselves, and so, led by their two chiefs, Kursz&n, the kende, and Arpad, the gyula, they moved to the Carpathian Basin which they had come to know during earlier raids.

The Conquest of the Carpathian Basin

When the Hungarians invaded the Carpathian Basin, they found there no well-established state capable of offering effective resistance. At the end to the eighth century, Charlemagne had crushed the Avars who inhabited this area. The Slavic tribes, now that they were free from Avar domination, began their independent political organiza¬ tion, but these young states were compelled to defend themselves against the expansionist policy of the East Frankish Kingdom. The Slovenian principality which had been established on the territory of the former Frankish margravate, in what is today Western Hungary, had failed to attain independence, while by the later part of the, nin th century the Moravian Empire, whose control extended east of the Western Carpathians to the region of Nyitra, was on the point of disintegration, a process accelerated by the Hungarian invasion, rhe territories east of the Danube came under Bulgarian influence after the collapse of the Avar Empire, but the Bulgarians, who were locked in a struggle with Byzantium, lacked the power to establish effective control over any part of this area. Feudal anarchy was rampant in the East Frankish Kingdom under the last of the Carol- ingians; thus the Hungarians were able to conquer the Basin quickly and with comparative ease. First they subdued the vicinity of Nyitra, then, after 900, they extended their rule over Pannonia (Western Hungary), and very probably to large areas of Transylvania. Archaeo¬ logical finds indicate the early arrival of the Hungarians in these areas. In the south, the Hungarians reached the Save-Danube line.

Historical sources available contain no reliable information con¬ cerning the details of the Hungarian conquest. The Hungarian chroni¬ cles of later periods, drawing on the sagas of the tenth-century war- leaders and somewhat naive etymologies of place names, speak of Moravian and Bulgarian ‘dukes’ in parts of Hungary which were undoubtedly inhabited by Slavs during the tenth century. Some of these ‘dukes’ surrendered to the conquerors; others perished in battle and their people were subjected to the rule of the Hungarian leaders.

The Slavs living in the Basin—or at least some of them—practised relatively advanced stock farming and tillage and pursued various handicrafts. Words in Hungarian of Slavic origin dating from this period testify to this. The Slavs also had an advanced social organiza¬ tion. The clan and tribal chiefs (zhupans and voivodes) already formed a ruling class which had subjected part of the population to feudal exploitation and had built strongholds to safeguard its rule. These strongholds were in the centre of the area controlled, and the sur¬ rounding lands were tilled by slaves and dependent freemen.

After the conquest, the Hungarian chieftains with their armed retainers and bondsmen moved into the fortresses of the Slavic zhupans or else they built strongholds of their own. Those Slavic leaders who surrendered to the Hungarians were probably allowed to retain their property but the land of those who resisted passed into the hands of the Hungarian chieftains. These developments quickened the pace of Hungarian feudal evolution. Agriculture, thanks to the influence of the subject Slavs, became an increasingly important sector of the economy on the domains of the Hungarian chieftains, but the free Hungarians of the clans usually remained herdsmen.

Toponymical evidence suggests that the Hungarian conquerors occupied the Carpathian Basin as far as the beech and fir-tree belt, because the forests, lacking undergrowth, offered no grazing for their herds. The Slavs, on the other hand, kept away from the grassy plains and settled in the oak forests of the western and south-western parts of Pannonia and around the Basin, on the wooded slopes of the Carpathians, and they also penetrated the beech forests along the river valleys. The Slavs who did not live in the oak and beech forests were slowly absorbed by the Hungarians after the conquest. Recent research suggests that the number of the Hungarian newcomers was about 400,000, while the indigenous population is estimated at half that number. Until about the mid-twelfth century when the moun¬ tainous regions began to be populated, some 200,000 square kilo¬ metres (77,200 sq. miles) of the country’s area may be assumed to have been inhabited. With a population density of 3 per square kilo¬ metre, the Basin was therefore rather sparsely inhabited at that time —this estimate accords with the occupational pattern of the Hun¬ garian community, a pattern characterized by the predominance of stock breeding.

The Hungarians presumably settled in clans and tribal groups. However, as the primary function of the tribe was military, it gradual¬ ly dwindled in importance and the basic unit in society remained the clan. But the clan had by now ceased to be primarily a community of free herdsmen descending from a common ancestor. In place of kinship ties, the clan was held together by the wealth of the chief and his family, and by his power to maintain a large retinue containing both slaves and free herdsmen. The majority of the native Slavs, who were engaged in agriculture, were subjected to the Hungarian chief¬ tains, a fact which was decisive in the final transformation of the clan from an organization based on kinship into a social organization based on territory.

The leaders of the tribal federation, the tribal chiefs, were all recruit¬ ed from 40 or 50 powerful families. About the middle of the tenth century, Constantine Porphvrogenetos describes the Hungarian feder¬ ation of tribes as a loose association for the purpose of defence against outsiders. Inter-tribal relationships as well as the very structure of tribalism began to lose their importance, as, after the settlement, the most efficient fighting force was no longer the arms-bearing free tribesmen but the armed bands of the most influential chiefs. This process of tribal disintegration was so rapid that not even the names of the tribes were preserved in tradition, and the story of the military adventures of the tenth century was remembered as a series of exploits carried out by some distinguished chiefs and their armed retinues rather than as joint enterprises of some tribes.

"De sagittis Hungarorum..."

The half century following the conquest offered the Hungarian chief¬ tains unique opportunities for achieving glory and enriching them¬ selves. The anarchy prevalent in the disintegrating Carolingian empire was an open invitation to marauders. The fleet Hungarian horsemen were able to make surprise attacks on villages and cities, sack and burn them before the slowly moving armies of Carolingian armoured knights were ready to move into action against them. The Hungarians developed certain tactics for use in battle. They would make a surprise charge, then turn tail and pretend to flee. When the serried ranks of knights had broken up in pursuit, they would turn about, shower a hail of arrows upon their confused enemies, and slaughter them in hand-to-hand fighting. As early as 899-900, a large Hungarian army ravaged Lombardy for a whole year. During the following decade, the Hungarians attacked Bavaria in order to strengthen their hold on Pannonia and also to extend its western frontiers. During these cam¬ paigns, in 904, the kende Kurszan fell a victim to a stratagem planned by the Bavarian lords, who invited him to a feast and there murdered him and his retinue. The death of the kende enabled the gyula, Arpad, to seize the office of paramount chief. In 907, when the Margrave Luitpold was killed in a battle near the Enns, the Hungarians were able to seize the territory of the defunct Ostmark to the banks of the river. From this base, over the next few years, their mounted bands invaded Germany, often as allies of the Oder and Elbe Slavs in the latter’s struggle against their Saxon conquerors. They were helped by Arnulf of Bavaria, who had bought his peace from them and supported their enterprises against his great adversary, Henry I, the Fowler, King of Germany. King Berengar I, too, enlisted the services of the Hungarians to fight against his rivals and several times from 919 to 926 the Hungarians went ravaging and destroying through Italy. By this time, even the German king was reduced to paying annual tribute in return for immunity for his country from the attacks of the Hungarians.

The annual tribute received from the German and Italian rulers, together with the lion’s share of the spoils taken in treasure, cattle and slaves on the marauding campaigns, greatly increased the wealth of the chiefs. Some of this booty went to their armed retainers, who made up the bulk of the raiding armies.

According to some historians impoverished herdsmen who had lost their livelihood took part en masse in these campaigns, but it is more likely that only those who possessed the necessary horses and arms could afford to join in the campaigns and raids and thus have a chance of getting a share of the booty. The Hungarian warrior was buried together with his sabre and horse, but in a great number of tenth-century burial places so far excavated no sabres have been found. At this stage of the disintegration of the primitive community system, the abandonment of military duties was the first step along the road to loss of freedom, which was the fate of an increasing number of impoverished Hungarians at this time. Besides the subjected Slavic peasants and the imported slaves, these impoverished Hungarians swelled the ranks of servants who tended the growing herds of the wealthy chiefs and cultivated the latter’s farmlands, which were being augmented at the expense of the common land.

However, the once abundant flow of the spoils of war. which further increased the distinctions in wealth amongst the members of the clan and tribe, soon began to dwindle. The need for defence in the face of recurring Hungarian attacks helped to bring to an end the state of anarchy in Germany, which had been the prime factor in making possible the Hungarians’ initial successes. Henry the Fowler’s policy of strengthening the royal power in Germany bore its first fruit on the battlefield of Merseburg. Here, in 933, a reorganized army of German knights routed a Hungarian force that was attacking because of German refusal to continue payment of the annual tribute. For years afterwards, the Hungarian chiefs left Germany alone, taking advantage, instead, of Bulgarian-Bvzantine tension to plunder the Balkans.

Henry’s death, however, was followed by a return to anarchy and Western Europe was again open to attack by the Hungarians. The military campaigns were placed under the command of the horka Bulcsu, who for nearly two more decades made the name Hungarian a word of terror. Once again, in the churches of Christendom, terrified congregations repeated the prayer ‘De sagittis Hungarorum libera nos Domine (‘From the arrows of the Hungarians, save us, O Lord’). Hungarian armies crossed the Alps and the Pyrenees. They reached the Atlantic seaboard, the Mediterranean coast and the Bosphorus. The Byzantine emperor, as well as the German and Italian princes, now paid annual tribute to the Hungarians to gain immunity from their attacks. The horka Bulcsu went to Byzantium in 948 for peace negotiations and was converted to Christianity. He was raised to the status of patrician by the emperor. But the ‘man of blood’, as his contemporaries referred to him, was denied the chance of becoming a Hungarian Clovis. In 955 he was routed at Augsburg by an army of the German princes under the leadership of Otto I. He was taken prisoner, and hanged along with his fellow commanders. The descend¬ ants of Arpad, who still bore the title of paramount chief, although for a while eclipsed by Bulcsu, were destined to lead the Hungarians in the transformation of their society through changes in their social organization and foreign policy.

The Independent Hungarian Monarchy to the Battle of Mohács (1000–1526)

The Rise of Feudal Hungary

Conditions during the Transition to Feudalism

The disaster of Augsburg put an end to the marauding campaigns in the West. For the next ten to fifteen years Hungarian raiding parties continued their attacks on the Byzantine Empire in the Balkans, in alliance with Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev. But from 970 onwards then- way to the south too was blocked when the Byzantines succeeded in extending their frontiers to the Danube.

The political situation in the territories around the Hungarians now well established in the Carpathian Basin began to change. The power of the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars, already weakened by the at¬ tacks of the Pechenegs, was crushed by Svyatoslav’s campaigns. The Pontic steppe was once again overrun by warlike nomadic tribes, who threatened the existence of the young Kievan state. The economic and cultural ties that had linked the Hungarians, even after they moved to the Basin, to the Iranian Moslems were finally severed: burial finds dating from after the middle of the tenth century contain no Arab coins (dirhems), so frequently found in graves dating from earlier years. This indicates that the Moslem slave traders found little to interest them in this region once the Hungarians slackened off their forays for slaves. The Khazar and Volga Bulgarian towns also began to decay. Volga Bulgars and Khorezmian (kdliz) refugees and traders as well as clans of nomadic Pechenegs who moved into Hungary were to remind Hungarians for centuries to come of their one-time links with the world of the Pontic steppe. But the future of the Hungarians was to be closely linked with that of their neighbours in the south and the west.

The borders of the Byzantine Empire stretched as far as the Danube. The Holy Roman Empire had succeeded in restoring the Ostmark and, by bringing a Christianized Bohemia and Poland into feudal vassalage, was making its presence felt from the north. The Hungarian leaders realized that they would have to place their relations with their neighbours on a different footing.

The internal development of Hungarian society likewise called for a political change. The chief of the clan, now well on the way towards becoming a feudal lord, rose to be head of a province and lord over warriors who were bound to him by personal ties. He exacted a variety of sendees from impoverished freemen and slaves and from independ¬ ent cultivators who were members of his clan. Relationships based on kinship were thus replaced by a local unit whose centre was the castle inhabited by the chief of the clan.

The increasing power of the clan chiefs further weakened Hun¬ garian tribal organization; it also became the foundation of the new form of government which was evolving inevitably as a result of the development of a feudal state. A struggle for supremacy amongst the tribal chiefs ensued, which was won ultimately by the paramount chief, a descendant of Arpad. This was owing to the consistent policy of expansion initiated by Arpad himself when he seized the opportuni¬ ty of Kurszan’s death to secure for himself and his descendants the office of paramount chief and to take possession of Kursz£n’s dwell¬ ing area (situated in the vicinity of present-day Budapest). Villages named after Arpdd’s sons and grandsons are evidence that by the middle of the tenth century the lands bordering on the banks of the Danube south of the Danube bend (a little way to the north of the present capital) as well as the eastern and southern parts of Trans- danubia (the area lying west of the river) were directly controlled by the paramount chiefs family. This probably arose as die result of the practice of appropriating the possessions and offices of commanders and chiefs who were killed in campaigns abroad. The death of Bulcsu and of his fellow commanders brought the western parts of Trans- danubia under the paramount chief’s authority, and put an end to the other chiefs’ control of the middle reaches of the Danube and the area west of the river.

A similar process of expansion was taking place in the East. The gyula, second to the paramount chief in the hierarchy of the tribal federation, whose residence was in Transylvania, followed Bulcsu’s example by going to Byzantium in 950. He, too, was baptized, receiv¬ ing the rank of patrician. Greek monks carried through successful missionary work in the land of the gyula, a region which as far as can be deduced from the evidence, extended westward as far as the Tisza river, around the middle of the tenth century. The federation of Hun¬ garian tribes therefore, centred as it ivas around two seats of power, was on the point of pulling apart. This may be the reason for the practice, traceable to nomadic Turkish tradition, of distinguishing between ‘white Hungarians’ and ‘black Hungarians’—terms used in German and Russian records dating from the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries to distinguish between western and eastern Hun¬ garians

The Struggle for Power by Géza and Stephen

Geza (970-997) continued the expansionist policy of his ancestors, with its tendency to disrupt the tribal organization. He compelled the clan chiefs, by now independent heads of provinces and mostly related to him, to recognize his overlordship. A ruthless, iron-handed ruler, he brought them to heel; he appropriated for himself two- thirds of the territory controlled by them, and more if they put up resistance. He placed his own officials (called ispan, meaning sheriff or count, derived from the Slavic zkupan) in their castles and settled the area around them with warriors from various tribes (called job- bdgy, iobagiones in Latin). According to a chronicler, this ruler, who was ruthless towards his own people, but generous towards strangers, found only meagre support among the Hungarian tribal aristocracy for his efforts to organize a feudal state. The majority of clan chiefs naturally clung to their independence and only yielded to force. For this reason, the hard core of Geza’s armed force consisted of a band of retainers, whose members were recruited abroad. At first, these were Russian warriors, but in later years G&za relied more and more on German and Italian knights.

With their assistance, Geza made use of the experience gained else¬ where in organizing a feudal state. He sought to establish even closer ties with his feudal neighbours. In 973, he sent an embassy to the Emperor Otto I, offering him an alliance and asking him to send missionaries into Hungary. He thought that conversion to Christianity would strengthen the new social order and government. Moreover, this move would demonstrate to his neighbours his determination to discontinue his people’s earlier aggressive foreign policy and his desire for peace. He hoped thereby to head off a probable German attack. It was a natural course of action for Geza to seek to establish contact with the German emperor, since his rival, the gyula, was allied to Byzantium. The missionaries did arrive, but they made slow progress in their work, for the paramount chief, although he and his family were baptized, still tolerated paganism. In this respect, as in others, he did no more than prepare the ground for the transformation of his country. In the same way he took only the initial steps towards reducing the Hungarian tribes of the east to submission by taking a wife from the family of the gyula of Transylvania and by marrying one of his daughters to a tribal chief of the Upper Tisza region, a chief who owed no allegiance to the gyula. He was the first Hungarian ruler to carry his dynastic policy beyond his borders: his three other daughters were married to the doge of Venice, a prince of Poland and the son of the Czar of Bulgaria. For his son Vajk, who was baptized Stephen, he sued for the hand of Princess Gisela of Bavaria.

Stephen received his education from Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, who lived briefly in Hungary, and from Adalbert’s disciples who settled there and founded the local ecclesiastical organization.

The Hungarian chiefs, who resented Geza’s policies and clung to paganism and the old order, supported Koppdny’s succession to the throne. Kopp&ny, who ruled over the possessions of Arpfid’s family south of Lake Balaton, was the eldest male member of the family, and his accession would have been in keeping with the old nomadic order of succession. Stephen sent his German knights to subdue his ambitious kinsman. Koppdny was killed in battle, his body was quar¬ tered, and the victorious young prince caused parts of it to be nailed to the gates of three castles in the west of the country as a warning to those who opposed his rule. He sent the fourth quarter to his uncle, the gyula, in Transylvania. Stephen, having consolidated his power by force, wanted the sanction of a royal crown. Tradition has it that on Christmas Day in the year 1000, with the consent of the Emperor Otto III, he was crowned king of Hungary, with a crown received from the pope.

Kingship involved the claim to rule over the whole of the Hungarian federation of tribes, including ‘Black’ Hungary. The assertion of such a claim was made easier by the fact that the gyula of Transylvania no longer completely controlled the eastern parts of the country. In the southern part of the region east of the Tisza, on the banks of the Maros, a powerful clan chief, Ajtony, had established his rule. He was the lord of a castle built on the site where the town of Csandd was later built. He relied on the power of the Bulgars, then temporarily in the ascendant in the Balkans. He had invited Christian monks from Vidin to his lands but he himself persisted in his heathen faith and polygamous ways.

Stephen, securing the alliance of Byzantium, which had for many years been locked in a life-and-death struggle with the Bulgarians, cut off the gyula of Transylvania from his only possible supporter, thereby forcing the gyula recognize him as his superior. He then launched an attack upon Ajtony. Ajtony was killed in the ensuing battle, and his province was annexed to the Kingdom of Hungary. His clan, like the descendants of earlier rivals of the Arpads, carried on as lords over a modest region that comprised but a few villages. A German monk, writing about 1006, recorded the event: ‘King Stephen of Hungary attacked Black Hungary with his forces and, with coercion, intimida¬ tion and charity, was pleased to convert that entire land to the true faith.’ Thus the feudal Kingdom of Hungary was established and com¬ prised all the Hungarian tribes and clans. An attack launched by the Czar of Bulgaria was defeated by Stephen in alliance with Byzantium and the war was carried into Bulgarian territory. This campaign helped to hasten the eclipse of the Bulgarian state.

The Organization of State and Church under Stephen

The land formerly controlled by the clan chiefs had already become royal domain as the result of the expropriations started by the para¬ mount chief Geza. Stephen continued and completed the organizing work begun by his father: he turned the regions inhabited by the clans into the basic administrative unit of royal power, i.e. the megye or county. Two-thirds of the county’s population of freemen, villeins and slaves were placed, along with the area they inhabited, under direct royal authority. The population of Hungarian and Slavic freemen were divided into companies of tens and hundreds, under the command of jobbagys, that is, the vassals of the king. Part of this population was employed by the ispans (sheriffs or counts) now installed in command of the castles formerly owned by the clan chiefs, for services in and about the castle. Another section of the population was put to work under the charge of udvarispdns (stewards of the royal household) serv¬ ing to provision the royal household. Grants from the crown lands were made to bishoprics and monasteries which were founded in large numbers, and to high-ranking members of the king’s armed retinue. When these grants of land were added to properties taken earlier into private ownership, large feudal estates were formed. The owners of these estates formed the feudal ruling class whose members were bound to give military service and allegiance to their sovereign. In the be¬ ginning, the lands held by the lords were dwarfed by those of the king and the Church; they received, however, princely remuneration from the royal revenues in return for their services as ispans.

The laws and institutions of the feudal state thus ensured for the royal power that degree of concentration of forces, economic as well as military, without which the young Hungarian state would never have been able to develop the fabric of feudal class rule or resist its neighbours’ territorial ambitions.

The king’s efforts to consolidate law and order and to secure his frontiers, found an ideological justification in the concept of the Christian feudal kingdom. The Hungarian heathen world of beliefs had been rooted in the social conditions of tribal society, and, to¬ gether with the epic poems eulogizing the exploits of military leaders whose very names struck terror in the hearts of people throughout Christendom, helped to preserve an outlook that was diametrically opposed to the new social and political order. King Stephen did not shrink from taking ruthless measures to spread Christianity, whose doctrines preached obedience to feudal superiors and favoured a settled way of life based on agriculture rather than a nomadic pastoral life. Although the influence of native Slavic Christianity, as well as the work of Byzantine and, later on, Bavarian missionaries had paved the way for the massive conversion of the Hungarians, pagan resistance was still very strong. Those who in the process of feudal transforma¬ tion had been deprived of their power or of their freedom demonstrat¬ ed their protest by clinging to old beliefs. However, the leaders of the resistance were punished with a savagery that was meant to serve as a deterrent: for instance, Tanuzaba, a Pecheneg clan chief, was buried alive. The ispdns sent soldiers to drive the people en masse to christen¬ ing ceremonies. Royal ordinances obliged the people to build churches, provide for the sustenance of priests, attend divine services regularly, and pay tithes. The king made grants of land to the ever-increasing number of bishoprics and Benedictine monasteries, and built and fur¬ nished their churches.

The clergy and monks, whose ranks were soon swollen by local recruits, spread the culture of feudal Europe all over Hungary. The first ecclesiastical schools were founded. Gerard (Gell6rt) of Venice, tutor of King Stephen’s son and, subsequently, Bishop of Csanad, was a noted ecclesiastical author of his time. Nor did the Hungarian ruling class, in these early years, ignore the Greek culture of Byzan¬ tium. The old Basilian monasteries of the eastern parts of the country were permitted to carry on their work undisturbed until the latiniza- tion of the thirteenth century. What is more, kings, even at later dates, founded monasteries of the Eastern rite for their Byzantine or Russian queens. The first was founded by King Stephen himself, on the oc¬ casion of his son’s marriage to a Byzantine princess. Thus, the schism between Western and Eastern Christianity, which was deepening at this period, was not reflected in Hungary until many years later.

The Early Period of Feudalism (11th and 12th Centuries)

The main characteristics of the first two centuries of feudalism in Hungary were the same as those found in other European countries at that stage of development. They were a subsistence economy based on agriculture; the absence of towns and towns artisans; only limited and mainly local trade; survivals of slavery among serfs farming with tools owned by the feudal lord; and, lastly, the predominance of crown lands (together with ecclesiastical lands, which were closely bound up with the king’s domain) over other feudal holdings.

Extensive Farming

Stock breeding, a legacy of the nomadic past, continued to be the Hungarians’ chief source of livelihood, although crop growing made steady advances. Foreign travellers, even as late as the twelfth century, described the country as one vast grazing-ground broken only by scattered patches of cultivated land. However, stock breeding had by now become closely linked with agriculture. The fields, dressed with manure, were cultivated until the soil was exhausted. When this hap¬ pened another area of pasture would be tilled. The population shifted its quarters as the ploughs moved on to other parts of the land. This system of agriculture is dependent on an abundance of land being avail¬ able for farming and on huge stocks of animals. Millet was a major crop at first, although both wheat and barley, which had been known to the Hungarians in the Pontic steppe, were increasingly cultivated.

The plough had also been used in the steppe, and had since been adapted to local conditions by modelling it on that used by the native Slavic population. The Slavic names of some parts of the plough are evidence of this. The plough was usually drawn by a team of eight oxen. These were little, small-horned, thin-boned beasts, and, judging from the evidence of bone finds, they belonged to the breed indigenous to Central Europe. Horses, huge stocks of which were bred, had on the other hand been brought in from the steppe. They were not employed for ploughing and were used only to draw wagons or for riding, but their meat was eaten. They were still a small breed in the tenth century, but by the eleventh century attained the height of the Euro¬ pean thoroughbred horses. There were also large stocks of sheep and swine.

The level of farming was above average on the lord’s demesne (the telek, Latin praedium ). On this farm, a permanent area was marked off for agriculture. It was divided into two parts, which were grazed and ploughed alternately, but the change was not made each year and exhausted land was grazed for several years until it had regained its fertility. This was a step towards the time when stock breeding w'ould become subordinate to crop farming. The centre of the lord’s demesne was the manor-house (the ‘court’); all around it were fields, which were worked by slaves (servi) with close-cropped hair, using the lord’s plough and oxen. The more remote farms belonging to the lord were worked by semi-free slaves (i liberti ), who were attached to the lord. They were obliged to deliver a part (usually two-thirds) of their crops to their lord. In the same way, the slaves who tended the lord’s vine¬ yards were permitted to work on their own. The harvested crop was stacked in the fields and there the grain was threshed by the trampling of stock animals. Guibert, a French abbot travelling with an army of crusaders through Hungary, admired the tower-high stacks of grain along the Danube, containing the harvests of several years. The peasant hand-mill of early times was gradually replaced by watermills, which were mentioned in records as early as the middle of the eleventh cen¬ tury as appurtenances of manors.

Slaves, Serfs, Freemen

In essence, this system of farming corresponded to the one, then in a state of disintegration in the West, under which slaves settled on the land gradually became serfs. However, in Hungary as elsewhere, their slave origin was never forgotten. They had no right of ownership over the land they tilled or the animals they tended, and their lord was free to move them elsewhere, if he so desired. They were bought and sold together with their farm implements and draught animals, and were not allowed to leave their lord. Their condition of servitude did not change even if they were required to perform some special service, such as carting, fishing or working at a craft, instead of tilling the land.

Their services became considerably less oppressive as a result of a

gradual fusion with the class of freemen. The latter lived in villages which, as a result of the administrative division of the country into counties, became royal domain and were subsequently enfeoffed to lords spiritual or temporal, or which were formed by communities of free settlers on land in feudal tenure.

The freemen {liberi, the vulgares of King Stephen’s laws), by now forming a clearly distinct class, held shares in common fields but were required to perform various services for the king or for their lord. Their status as freemen, which distinguished them from slaves and serfs, rested on the fact that no services could be exacted from them other than those agreed upon with their lord. Freemen were employed, as a rule, as overseers of slaves and serfs, mounted messengers or as wagoners, and were required to deliver to the lord a fixed quantity, instead of a percentage, of their crops.

The lords distorted the freeman’s right to leave his holding by driv¬ ing off their land any freemen who refused to undertake ‘voluntarily’ to perform the services they demanded, however oppressive. Legal sentences and unpaid debts also reduced numerous freemen to servi¬ tude. In spite of these hardships, a large number of communities of free peasants survived on both royal and baronial or ecclesiastical lands. Their freedom was protected by the king, who exacted military service from them or made it possible for them to commute their lia¬ bility to military service into money payments.

The holdings from which freemen had been driven, sometimes entire villages, were added to the lord’s domain. Sometimes serfs were settled amongst freemen, and attempts were made to extend the services re¬ quired of them to the freemen. Mostly, however, it was the serfs who were assimilated by the freemen as the steady advance of agriculture, the improvement of its techniques, and the growth of population meant that the lord’s manor became more and more obsolete.

Menials of county castles and manors serving the provision of the royal household were better off than other classes of common folk. The jobbagys, originally armed retainers, were mostly bailiffs, stewards or other lower-ranking' officers, and were freemen. In time, some of these acquired free holdings. The more lowly castle servants ( cives, castrenses), who were bound to the royal court, lived in village com¬ munities. The vastness of the estates belonging to the castles and the court made possible an extensive differentiation of services. Certain families, often entire villages, were assigned special tasks. The in¬ habitants of one village worked as wagoners, those of another engaged in fishing, other again pursued bee-keeping for the king. Certain vil¬ lages were required to provide food, or wine, or products of domestic crafts. There were villages whose inhabitants were obliged to serve in turn at regular intervals in castles or royal households as cooks, bakers, stablemen, hunters, messengers, watchmen, armour-bearers and other house-servants. This system of domestic service evolved on the estates of the Arpad family during the first half of the tenth century and subsequently became universally adopted in the organization of county castles. Some of the inhabitants of the villages attached to the county castles, however, were only obliged to give military service. These services and dues devolved from father to son and were from time to time recorded in registers, a practice which gave these people far-reaching protection against a lowering of their status and con¬ ditions.

Handicrafts and Market Places

There was no place for towns in the economic and social system of early feudalism. With the primitive farming methods current at the time, agriculture could not produce' sufficient surpluses to support a class of full-time craftsmen. In general, towns could not develop be¬ cause comparatively large areas of land could only support a few people. Even members of the ruling class were unable to keep their personal servants, such as cooks and armour-bearers, under their roofs all the time, since the latter, if concentrated in a small area, would have found it impossible to make a living by their chief occupation of farming. The lords’ solution was to summon their servants from their distant homes for periodic spells of service. Difficulties of transport restricted the movement of farm produce to the lord and those around him from the place where it was grown. Supplying food for the large royal household was particularly difficult, so eleventh and twelfth- century monarchs used to spend only part of the year at their favourite residences (Esztergom and SztSkesfehervar). For the rest of the year, they and their household would stay at country houses (courts) on their domains, or they would pitch their tents on the crown lands and consume the food and drink that had been collected from the neigh¬ bouring villages.

The vast majority of the population lived on food they produced themselves. None but the ruling class could afford imported goods, such as spices and fine cloths. These commodities were imported by foreign merchants. Goods were traded at fairs. Although coins had been minted ever since the days of Stephen, cattle were still the princi¬ pal means of payment during the eleventh century. Market-places were designated by royal decree, for the king provided for their protection and took customs revenue from them. As a rule, fairs were held at important crossroads, often uninhabited places.

A number of foreign merchants settled in Hungary at this time. In the tenth century, some Volga Bulgars settled at Pest and, later on, Walloons and Italians (both called ‘Latins’) near the royal residences at Esztergom and Szekesfehervar. The business activity of these mer¬ chants was confined to meeting the needs of the ruling class for luxury goods, and this alone, in the absence of a class of artisans, could not lead to the growth of towns.

The first stimulus leading to the development of handicrafts separate from the peasant economy came from the system of deliveries on royal and church lands. Under the system of organization followed on the king’s domain (similar to the practice evolved in neighbouring Bohe¬ mia and Poland), specific handicraft services and mining were exacted from certain villages (or from certain families of craftsmen in those villages). These services were continued from father to son. Contempo¬ rary records tell of the existence in the tenth to twelfth centuries of communities of royal or church iron-founders, blacksmiths, armour¬ ers, potters, wood-turners, carpenters, tanners, spinners and weavers. The name of various trades and tools leads us to believe that, in the early days at least, the majority of craftsmen serfs came from the native Slavic population. As the Slavs became absorbed into the Hun¬ garian population, the techniques of peasant crafts spread. The re¬ mains of a perpendicular treadle-loom, for instance, were found in two weaving cottages during the excavations of the ruins of a twelfth- century Hungarian village along the Tisza river.

By the middle of the eleventh century, therefore, Hungarian pastoral society had become assimilated in essentials to the feudal societies of contemporary Central Europe, inasmuch as primitive agriculture and handicrafts, occupations complementary to the all-important stock breeding, had been improved through contact with the local Slavic (and, in part, Western European) skills. These more advanced tech¬ niques received a powerful stimulus for continued specialization by the division of services practised on crown and church lands.

For the time being, however, this development, which represented an outstanding improvement over the productive forces of pastoral society, was not yet considerable enough to strain the framework of a natural economy. The feudal state was capable of maintaining public order and defending itself only by concentrating its meagre surplus, and by binding the bulk of rural manpower to the castles and the royal domains.

The German Attack and the Domestic Crisis

After a long period of peace which facilitated the consolidation of the young feudal state of Hungary, it became apparent towards the close of the reign of King Stephen that the Holy Roman Empire, after bringing Bohemia and Poland into vassalage, was planning to extend its suzerainty over Hungary. An attack launched in 1030 by Conrad II, however, ended in a crushing defeat for the emperor, who was even compelled to cede part of the Ostmark to the king of Hungary.

The last years of Stephen’s reign were made difficult for him by the problem of succession. After the untimely death of his only son, Eme- ric, his nephew, Vaszoly, was in a position to lay claim to the throne. But V&szoly became the leader of those Hungarian lords who resented Stephen’s strong rule and were jealous of the king’s foreign knights. They plotted to overthrow the king but failed. Vaszoly received a horrible punishment for his part in the conspiracy: he was blinded and had molten lead poured into his ears. His sons, still minors, fled to Polish and Russian territories.

Stephen designated Peter Orseolo, the son born of the marriage of his sister and the doge of Venice, as his successor. On Stephen’s death, in 1038, Peter’s accession to the throne proceeded smoothly. The events which had preceded his accession, however, made Peter sus¬ picious of the Hungarian lords, and for this reason he tilled his en¬ tourage with Germans and Italians. Among the leading members of his household guard were two English princes, Edmund and Edward, the banished sons of Edmund Ironside; in all probability this is the first documented instance of a Hungarian-English connection. The constant influx of foreign knights contributed to the strengthening of feudalism in Hungary on the one hand, but on the other created tension between the native and foreign elements of the ruling class. This time it was King Stephen’s brother-in-law, Samuel Aba, who assumed leadership of the malcontents: in 1041, he drove out Peter and had himself crowned king of Hungary. Peter fled to the Emperor Henry III, who considered the factional struggles in Hungary an ex¬ cellent opportunity for intervention. The fear of a German attack made some of the Hungarian lords pause and consider, but Samuel Aba carried out bloody reprisals on those whose loyalty to him wavered. He sought to win the support of the freemen, who resented feudal subjection by promising to release them from feudal services. This move encouraged the adherents of the old pagan ways, until then re¬ luctant to rise in open revolt. Many dispossessed clan chiefs and free¬ men, who had been reduced to conditions of servitude, united by their hatred of the Christian Church and by their resentment of the domi¬ nance of foreigners. joined Aba. The feudal lords, Hungarians as well as foreigners, became alarmed at the mass proportion this movement began to assume. They deserted Samuel Aba, and he was routed in 1044 by the Emperor and assassinated in flight. Peter reoccupied the throne and took an oath of fealty to Henry III. The king and lords, however, weakened by conflict and with their ranks decimated by feuds, were not strong enough to prevent the outbreak of a pagan uprising.

This rebellion was organized and led by Vata, one of the dispossessed clan chiefs of Black Hungary. After the ransacking and burning of Christian churches and the massacre of priests (one of the victims was Bishop Gerard [Gellert], who was later canonized), the rebels turned against the Christian feudal lords. The lords, much afraid, left Peter to his fate and appealed to the Arpad princes, V6szoly’s exiled sons, for support. Andrew was living in Kiev, where he had married a daughter of Yaroslav the Wise; Bela had married a Polish princess, while Levente, the third son, persisted in his pagan faith. Vata and his associates also pinned their hopes on the Arp&d princes, and offered them their support against Peter in return for permission to extermi¬ nate the priests and foreigners and a pledge that tithes and feudal taxes would be abolished and the pagan faith restored. The princes returned to Hungary at the head of a Russian force but were careful not to commit themselves before Peter was decisively routed. However, after Peter was overthrown, Andrew proclaimed himself king (1046- 1060), and then proceeded to crush the Vata uprising and consolidate feudalism. He also fought himself out of German vassalage. Henry III made two attempts to assert his suzerainty by force, but the attacks were repelled thanks to Prince Bela’s military ability and to the ef¬ ficient system of castles.

These events were recorded in the Gesta Ungarorum, the first history of Hungary, written by an anonymous monk. Although this chronicle is not extant, it has been possible to piece it together, owing to the fact that it was incorporated in several other chronicles written at later dates. The author of the Gesta, who is deeply contemptuous of the pagan, nomadic past of the Hungarians, eulogizes unreservedly King Stephen’s work as founder of the Christian Kingdom of Hungary, and is full of hatred for the German expansionist ambitions which aimed to destroy the independence of the Hungarian state. German-Hunga- rian tension was reflected even in Hungary’s spiritual and cultural life. Andrew I, in his effort to repair the serious damage inflicted upon the Hungarian Church by the pagan revolt, ignored the nearby German provinces, which ought to have been the most obvious source of assistance, and enlisted instead the co-operation of the French-speaking clergy of distant Lorraine, a province that had been causing Henry III serious problems through its disobedience. Direct Lotharingian in¬ fluence can be seen in the beginnings of manuscript illumination in Hungary and in the final form of the liturgy of the Hungarian Church. Monastery libraries came to be filled with manuscripts from Lorraine.

Andrew I, continuing in the tradition of the nomadic past, or, per¬ haps, adopting the practice followed by the Slavic princes of Eastern Europe, shared his rule with his younger brother, Bela, and ceded part of the country to him along with the right of succession. After a son had been born to him, however, he changed his mind and wanted to secure the throne for his heir, Salomon. This led to an armed conflict, and in the battle Andrew was mortally wounded. Salomon sought refuge with his brother-in-law, the Emperor Henry IV. This dynastic feud provided an opportunity for the outbreak of a fresh pagan rebellion, under the leadership of Vata’s son, J&nos, who had been baptized only for appearances’ sake. A vast multitude of people assembled for the occasion of Bela’s enthronement and the old demands of fifteen years before were voiced once again. But the rising failed to find any response among the ruling class: according to the chron¬ icler’s record, only ‘villeins and servants’joined the pagan leader. The pagan ideology was now merely a cloak for spontaneous protest against oppression, and the king’s soldiers had no difficulty in dispers¬ ing the poorly armed rebels. In this the last flare-up of pagan resist¬ ance there was already a flicker of the fire of the peasant revolts of later centuries.

The Investiture Struggle and Expansion in the Balkans

The accession of Bela I (1060-1063) led to fresh fears of a German attack, but the outbreak of war was averted by the sudden death of the king, which made possible the peaceful return of Salomon from exile. Bela’s sons, Geza and Ladislas, were invested with their father’s princedom by way of compensation, an act which led inevitably to the resumption of the dynastic feud. The struggle between Salomon and his cousins, however, took place against the background of a totally new international situation—the investiture struggle—with which it inevitably became interwoven. In 1074, King Salomon was defeated and fled to Henry IV. Prince Geza, on the other hand, appealed to the Pope for assistance. Pope Gregory VII saw this as an auspicious oc¬

casion for the reduction of Hungary to papal vassalage. He hoped for the same success as he had recently achieved with the Norman principality in southern Italy and the Kingdom of Croatia. Thus re¬ ferring to an alleged offer of homage by King Stephen (an offer which had, in effect, never been made), he promised the victorious Prince Geza that he would recognize his title to the crown in return for Geza’s acceptance of papal suzerainty. But Geza thought the loss of inde¬ pendence too great a price to pay for papal recognition, and he had himself crowned king with a crown that had been sent him by the Emperor of Byzantium.

After Henry IV had done penance to Pope Gregory at Canossa, Germany was torn by internal strife, and as far as Hungary was con¬ cerned the menace of a German attack was removed. Thus G6za’s successor, Ladislas I (1077-1095), was able to make up his own mind as to which faction it was in his interest to join in the great struggle. At first he favoured an alliance with the Pope as he was interested in weakening the power of the Emperor, who was claiming the allegiance of Hungary. Ladislas, a deeply religious man, in order to enhance the prestige of the kingship and of the Church, obtained from the Holy See the canonization of King Stephen and of his son Emeric, and was himself revered as a saint shortly after his death. However, in develop¬ ing his foreign policy, he was guided by political interests rather than religious feelings; and as soon as his interests came into conflict with papal policies, he changed sides without a moment’s hesitation. This change was due to the Croatian question.

During the latter half of the eleventh century, Croatia was torn by internal strife. The mountain tribes rose to assert their independence from the feudal kingdom that had been established in the economically more developed maritime provinces. In this conflict, the king relied on the support of the wealthy merchant cities of the coastal region : Zara, Trau, Spalato and the smaller towns of Dalmatia. Although these were the last remaining islands of Roman civilization in the Balkans, where Slavic influence was rapidly increasing, they tended to offer their allegiance to the Kingdom of Croatia rather than to Venice, whose monopolistic trade policies threatened their very exist¬ ence. In 1075, Venice conquered the towns of Dalmatia; and in order to recover them. King Zvonimir of Croatia was compelled, in 1076, to place his country under papal suzerainty. Following his death, in 1089, the Croatian lords invited King Ladislas I of Hungary, brother of the widowed queen, to extend his power to Croatia and Dalmatia by right of inheritance. Ladislas accepted the invitation and occupied Slavonia, the northern part of Croatia stretching as far as the Kapela mountain range. In 1091, he extended his power over the rest of Croa¬ tia and Dalmatia. For the next three hundred years, Hungary was embroiled in a succession of wars and campaigns for the possession of Dalmatia and in related Balkan problems which became of prime importance in Hungarian foreign policy.

Hungary’s conquest of Croatia and Dalmatia incurred the hostility of Byzantium and Venice, and, as a result, Ladislas soon lost the towns of Dalmatia. It also marred his relations with Pope Urban II, who energetically pursued the investiture struggle, and refused to agree to Ladislas’s occupation of Croatia on grounds of inheritance: he wanted to confer it on him as a vacant papal fief. But Ladislas would not accept such limitation of his power, and so recognized the anti¬ pope Clement III. Ladislas was succeeded by the ecclesiastically-mind¬ ed Koloman (1095-1116), and Urban took the first step towards re¬ conciliation, as he realized that, rather than obtaining a forced oath of fealty, it would be to his advantage to have the king of Hungary as an ally by helping him to conquer Dalmatia. An alliance to serve this end was concluded with the Norman prince of Sicily, and cemented by Koloman’s marriage to a Norman princess. By the time the bride arrived on the Dalmatian coast, in 1097, the Hungarian army had captured the greater part of Dalmatia in a surprise attack, and only the cities still remained under Venetian rule.

At this time Venice was occupied with the First Crusade: she was busy providing sea transport for the crusader forces and organizing her eastern trade. Byzantium, also, became involved in wars that were to go on for centuries with the newly established crusader states. Hungary was affected by the Crusade as unruly armies made their way across the country, but Koloman was more than compensated for the damage they did by the fact that he had a free hand in Croatia. In 1102, he obtained homage from the maritime regions and, in 1105, from the towns of Dalmatia. He appointed a ban or viceroy at the head of each of the three provinces of Slavonia, Croatia and Dalmatia, and intro¬ duced into these territories a pattern of local government based on counties. His title of King of Croatia and Dalmatia was also recog¬ nized by the Pope. The Dalmatian cities on their own initiative invited Koloman to protect them from Venice, and for the next three hundred years they remained loyal to the king of Hungary. The pro-Venetian and pro-Byzantine factions remained minorities all this time and only managed to seize power briefly on a few occasions by relying on ex¬ ternal armed assistance. Koloman’s successor, Stephen 11 (1116-1131), lost Dalmatia for a decade, but Bela II (1131-1141) reconquered it and Zara alone remained under Venetian rule. Hungary’s frontiers in the Balkans were extended during this period by the annexation of Bosnia and Serbia. These territories were also organized into districts under the rule of a ban.

Hungarian-Byzantine Rivalry in the Balkans

Hungary maintained relations that were, on the whole, peaceful with the Slavic states on her northern border, that is to say the principalities of Bohemia, Poland and Russia. Marriages between members of the ruling houses were frequent and helped to strengthen the ties between the states. Kinsmen would come to one another’s assistance in the course of the frequent struggles for the thrones; thus, Bela I and his sons received assistance from the Polish princes, while successive kings of Hungary intervened in the struggles among the Russian princes. In the eleventh century marauding raids of nomadic peoples, the Pechenegs and the Cumans, presented a temporary menace. This men¬ ace was, however, averted finally by Ladislas I, whose legendary campaigns appealed to popular imagination and generated a whole cycle of sagas.

The fresh outbreak of the struggle between the Pope and the Em¬ peror which occurred about the middle of the twelfth century put Hungary in a difficult position. This time she was faced with a threat, not from Germany, but from Byzantium, which was enjoying a tem¬ porary revival under the Emperor Manuel I. Manuel was determined to recapture the Balkan provinces, which Byzantium had lost to the kings of Hungary. He even hoped to extend his influence over Hungary itself in order to safeguard Byzantine hegemony in the Balkans. Faced with this threat, Geza II (1141-1162) wanted to secure as his ally against Byzantium the Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), but the clash in 1159 between Frederick and Pope Alexander III faced him with a difficult choice. His alignment was ultimately decided by the influence of the head of the Hungarian clergy. Archbishop Lucas of Esztergom.

Archbishop Lucas had brought home from the University of Paris ideas of a universal papal power. On his return to Hungary, he spared no effort to keep the Hungarian Church, and through it the whole country, in obedience to the Pope. From the Church’s point of view there were good reasons for his policy. During the twelfth century the power and influence of the great temporal lords greatly increased. They sought to extend their possessions at the expense of the crown and church lands. Koloman had already made a law for the recovery of alienated royal estates. The clergy saw that they would only be able to retain their traditional property and political influence if the royal power was strengthened at the expense of the temporal lords, and if this was accompanied by an increase in papal influence which would force the king to respect the interests of the Church. This policy found a gifted and determined supporter in the person of Archbishop Lucas. Geza ITs eventual decision to recognize Alexander III as the legitimate pope, and, if need be, to back him by military force against Frederick, was taken under the influence of his arguments. Hungarian assistance stood the papal faction in good stead; but as the latter failed to make recompense for such assistance, Hungary was left to her own devices in her struggle with the Emperor Manuel.

The Emperor, after the death of Geza II, was able to foment fac¬ tional strife in Hungary by encouraging pretenders to the throne. Geza’s successor, Stephen III (1162-1172), was not yet of age and the country’s forces were paralysed. After securing the co-operation of Venice, the Emperor occupied Dalmatia, Croatia, Sirmium, a prov¬ ince between the Danube and the Save rivers, and the provinces of Bosnia and Serbia. Resistance was organized by Archbishop Lucas, but the danger of Byzantine conquest was not averted until 1171, when Venice, having quarrelled with Manuel, began to subject the cities of Dalmatia to her own rule. The defeat of Manuel’s ambitious designs put an end to Byzantine hegemony in the Balkans. Venice and Hun¬ gary were preparing, in rivalry with each other, to take her place in the peninsula. Manuel had to content himself with having Prince Bela of Hungary, the heir apparent, living at his court. He designated B61a as his successor, hoping to attain by this expedient his stubbornly pursued objective: the incorporation of Hungary in the Byzantine Empire. However, a son was born to him in the meantime, and in 1172 he gave Bela leave to return to his native land, as in the spring of the same year Stephen III died, and an embassy came from Hungary to take the new king home to be crowned.

B61a III (1172-1196) did not serve Byzantine policies. He gained the backing of the Pope and the Hungarian clergy, put an end to factional strife, and managed to win the loyalty of the ruling class. In 1180, on Manuel’s death, he recaptured Croatia and the Dalmatian cities. The city of Zara took this opportunity to shake off Venetian rule and put itself under the protection of the king of Hungary, which it greatly desired. In 1182, Sirmium, Bosnia and Serbia came, once again, under Hungarian rule. In 1188, Bela III, taking advantage of the internal disputes of the Russian principalities, occupied Halicz and continued to hold it for some time. His campaigns of conquest in territories within the zone of influence of the Eastern Church coincided with the ex- pansionist policies of the Papacy, then at the zenith of its power, and here, as in his domestic policies, Bela made clever use of papal support. The early feudal monarchy appeared to have attained the height of its internal and external power under Bela III. In reality, however, in¬ ternal stability was by now undermined and territorial expansion served merely as a safety valve, albeit a temporary one, for tensions generated by the domestic crisis.

Disintegration of the Early Feudal System (1196–1241)

During the second half of the twelfth century, the secular element of the Hungarian ruling class was becoming increasingly discontented with the existing arrangement under which, as ispans (counts) or castle officials, they drew only indirect benefit from the concentration of peasant manpower and feudal property within the system of castles and royal estates. Like feudal lords throughout Europe, they wanted to become fief holders and the seigneurs of the serfs settled on the lands whose management was entrusted to them. The king’s ability to resist these desires was undermined by the failure of the economic and military organization of the castles and crown lands to keep up with the development of the country. Consequently, they failed to continue to provide an adequate basis for royal power.

The slow process, which, by the middle of the thirteenth century, culminated in the disintegration of the castle system and of the royal estates, and in a complete reorganization of the social structure of their population, was set in motion by the development of agriculture, handicrafts and commerce.

The Development of Agriculture, Handicrafts and Commerce

During the twelfth century, the area of agricultural land increased. Little-used woodlands and marshy areas were now converted into arable land; and more valuable cereals, such as wheat, rye, barley and oats, were gaining ground at the expense of millet. These advances were made possible by the widespread use of heavy ploughs, drawn by teams of eight to ten oxen, that were suited to tilling hard soils. Owing to the growing need for draught animals, cattle breeding caught up with, then outstripped, the formerly predominant horse breeding. This resulted in a considerable improvement in the fertility of the soil due to increased use of manure. This was one of several conditions that made possible the introduction on the villages’ common lands, through the serfs settled on the land, of the same system of crop- pasture rotation as that used on the lord’s demesne. Wine growing, presumably of Roman origin in the country west of the Danube (Transdanubia), spread to areas north and east of the river. In the wine-producing districts of Tokaj, Eger and Nagyvarad, which became so famous in later years, viticulture was established by French settlers.

The surplus population began to spread out from earlier centres to other parts of the country. They were joined by immigrants—mainly French and German settlers ( hospites ) from the Rhineland—in intro¬ ducing new technique. The wooded, hilly border regions were settled and were organized into counties. The population of these regions to the north and east consisted of Slovaks, German immigrants, Ruthen- ian and Rumanian shepherds (the last two groups are first mentioned in thirteenth-century records). The ruling class of the areas inhabited by non-Hungarians was formed of Hungarian feudal lords enfeoffed from royal lands, free Hungarian soldiers and local leaders rising into the land-holding ruling class. About the turn of the thirteenth century, the inhabited area of Hungary was about 220,000 square kilometres (85,000 sq. miles), and the total population was around two millions, giving a population density of 9 per sq. km.

By now the rural population was producing large enough surpluses to leave substantial margins for the market after meeting the deliveries due to the lord. These surpluses were exchanged for handicrafts. Peasants possessing the skills for making commodities such as iron implements, carts, saddles and pottery, all of which were much sought after, became separated from the farming population. Villages whose population had long before begun to discharge their obligations for service in handicrafts were at a distinct advantage. They were the cen¬ tres where different crafts gradually evolved; they became settlements of craftsmen specializing in one particular product. These early crafts¬ men did not, of course, detach themselves from agriculture altogether; they only devoted part of their working hours to handicrafts.

Other centres of the emergent class of craftsmen were found in the royal, episcopal and county residences, where craftsmen supplying the upper stratum of the ruling class with certain simple products were able to trade their own handicrafts in exchange for other goods they needed. In notes on their travels made by Arabic merchants who visited Hungary about the middle of the twelfth century, several county seats are described as populous towns in whose markets slaves, cereals, animals and domestic handicrafts, as well as imported goods, were on sale. In a report that was discovered recently, an Arab merchant named Abu Hamid likened the ‘towns’ of Hungary to Baghdad and Isfahan—obviously implying a busy centre of local trade. From these documents, from the striking increase in the number of fairs held in places other than county seats, and from the increasing importance of money in the economy, it would appear that the division of labour between agriculture and craft industry had already begun in the course of the twelfth century, and that the preliminary conditions for urban development were ripening. The same Abu Hamid writes of the mining of precious metals in Hungary. Evidence of its rising output is shown in the growing improvement of the standard of coinage and the sub¬ stantial royal revenues from money exchange. During the second half of the twelfth century, this revenue nearly equalled in value the entire income from the royal lands.

The Decline of the Castle System

The organization of the royal household and court became an increas¬ ingly complex task. The Royal Council became a permanent institu¬ tion, and the duties of its members became clearly defined; new offices were also created. The nddorispdn (comes Palatinus) or Count Palatine advanced his position from the head of the royal household to the king’s deputy in juridical and military matters. His successor, the udvarbird (comes curiae) or Steward of the Royal Household, was, in his turn, soon invested with juridical duties. The Lord Chief Treasurer, Master of the Horse, Cupbearer to the King and Warden of the But¬ teries—the officers in charge of running the royal household—dele¬ gated the strictly administrative duties to some of their attendants, while they acted as political advisers to the king. The highest court dignitaries, the ispdns, the bans (viceroys) of Slavonia, Croatia, Dal¬ matia, Bosnia and Serbia, the voivode of Transylvania, as well as the Archbishops of Esztergom and Kalocsa and the bishops constituted the body that governed the country—a body which, owing to the social background of its members, represented the interests of the large land-owning class at least as whole-heartedly as those of the king. In 1181, Bela III made it obligatory for administrative matters to be put in writing and, in 1185, set up the Chancery, the office which took care of the official records.

The royal household, enlarged and increasing in pomp and splen¬ dour, now demanded more refined articles than the crude products of the peasant-craftsmen living on the crown lands, and required services more skilful than the clumsy bustling of peasant servants taking weekly turns at the court under socage. Imported luxury articles and a per¬ manent household staff of servants made the continuance of whole groups of services unnecessary. Owing to the hereditary nature of these services, however, the number of families (and even villages) whose members were obliged to perform duties by now outdated or redundant —such as cooks, scuttle-men and armour-bearers—or to supply prod¬ ucts the royal household no longer needed, had greatly increased.

The castle force of armed peasants was of little use in campaigns of conquest. What the king now needed for his wars were professional men-at-arms rather than these peasant soldiers, and Koloman did, indeed, oblige the big landlords to muster such men. However, his successors could not rely on such baronial private armies, as there had been a precedent, in the early twelfth century, of such private forces refusing to obey the king’s orders. Gradually, armed men quit the castle forces and enrolled directly in the king’s own armed following, the so-called royal servientes, which came to constitute the nucleus of the royal army. These soldiers, because of the high cost of knightly weapons and the difficulty of handling them, could not possibly con¬ tinue to live the fife of peasant soldiers and in practice became the lords of the castle bondsmen who were assigned to provide for their maintenance. The officers of the castle force also quietly turned the lands they held into fiefs, cither driving away or reducing to serfdom the freemen living there.

The widespread growth of a class of minor feudal landowners meant that large areas of land and many people were no longer under the king’s direct seignorial authority. Despite the resulting decline in the royal revenues, the ispdns carved an ever larger share of these re¬ venues to provide for their own maintenance as well as that of the castle organizations under them, that is, to swell their own power.

Meanwhile, on the large estates, secular as well as ecclesiastical, the process was completed which fused slaves and freemen into a homo¬ geneous class of serfs, who were obliged to work and to make payments in kind to their lords. At the same time, the amounts of produce due were increased. A similar process took place on the small feudal hold¬ ings that came into being on castle and crown lands, while the castle and crown lands proper, where the traditional services were preserved, yielded low incomes compared with the properties in ecclesiastic or secular tenure. Here, payments in kind were not required for the simple reason that the royal household did not need large quantities of produce. The royal household officials sought to obtain, even from the serfs living on the royal demesne, payments of money in place of farm produce, which was difficult to market, or the products of do¬ mestic crafts. As this endeavour, owing to the limited development of trade, was bound to produce unsatisfactory results, they strove to in¬ crease other cash revenues. An inventory of Bela Ill’s revenues may safely be accepted as reliable with regard to the breakdown of the various items. According to this, only half of the royal revenues came from the counties and the crown lands (and only a third of this was paid in cash); the other half was accounted for by minting profits, customs duties and tolls, the mining monopolies and the taxes paid in cash by the royal hospites. For the central power, therefore, direct control of landed property had ceased to be the only—and even the principal—source of revenue. This made it all the easier for the king to give large areas of his demesne to the land-hungry barons and lesser lords as soon as they felt strong enough to demand more than small grants of land and launched a concerted attack aimed at the destruc¬ tion of the castle system and royal estates.

Alienation of the Royal Estates

The fate of the castle system and royal estates was of interest to the Church as well. If the crown lands were to pass into the hands of the barons, the Church would be unable to acquire any more possessions. Moreover, the land-hungry temporal lords might then be encouraged to lay claim to church lands as well. But even more was at stake—the status of the Church as a political force. The Hungarian clergy made desperate efforts to assert their interests amid the economic and social changes taking place, and in these efforts they were able to rely on assist¬ ance from the papal power, then at its zenith. The two empires—the Holy Roman Empire and Byzantium—had declined, and the rise of England and France was only just beginning. In this period of tran¬ sition, the papacy was the dominant political authority in Europe. The papal writ ran in Hungary; and if the kings did not always prove readily submissive, they were careful to express their objections in none but the humblest way.

B61a Ill’s sons’ struggle over the succession provided the Pope with a welcome opportunity to intervene in Hungary. Prince Andrew mis¬ appropriated the fund his father had left for a crusade by using it for financing an army against his elder brother, King Emeric (1196-1204). In 1198, he conquered the provinces of Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Serbia and organized them into a principality. His sup¬ porters began plotting in an attempt to secure for him the crown of Hungary. But the king dealt with the plotters in good time; Bishop Boleszlo of V6c, who handled the rebels’ correspondence and funds.

was dragged from the altar of his cathedral and sent into captivity. Then the king confronted Andrew’s army, which was moving against him, and routed it in the summer of 1199. The brothers were recon¬ ciled, but Andrew’s adherents paid the penalty for their part in the con¬ spiracy. The rebellious prelates were divested of their office by the Pope, and so were the secular lords. In exchange for support from the Pope,Emeric took up the cross;but before setting out for the Holy Land, he was directed by a papal command to the Balkans, in a campaign against the Bogomil heretics.

While Emeric was busying himself in Bosnia on the Pope’s behalf, French crusaders, at the instigation of the doge, captured Zara in 1202; then, in 1204, they took Byzantium and founded the Latin Empire of Constantinople. This scandalous miscarriage of the Fourth Crusade threw cold water on Emeric’s zeal. Although the crusaders, threatened by the Pope, did evacuate Zara, a Venetian garrison stayed in the town until 1204. Before the fate of Zara was settled, Emeric could not possibly think of leaving for the Holy Land, especially as Andrew had once again taken up arms against him. In 1203 the two brothers met on the banks of the Drave. The king walked into the rebel camp, unarmed, to take his younger brother into captivity. Peace, however, was not restored, and only his untimely death saved Emeric from further bitter disappointment.

Andrew II’s reign (1205-1235) was in part taken up with a stubborn but hopeless effort to secure the Russian principality of Halicz. This campaign, costly both in human lives and money, ended in utter failure, yielding him nothing but the hollow title of King of Galicia and Lodomeria. Andrew embarked upon another senseless adventure when, in 1217, after much procrastination, he resigned himself to accepting the leadership of the crusade which the Pope had been pressing with dogged persistence. Even now it was not the desire to recapture Jerusalem for Christianity which fired him with enthusiasm, but the vacant throne of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. He plan¬ ned to win the Pope’s goodwill by first leading a crusade to the Holy Land; but because of the ineffective way he conducted the campaign he incurred the displeasure of the Holy See, which slighted him by elevating first his father-in-law, Pierre de Courtenay, then the latter’s son, Robert, to the imperial throne. The enterprise consumed huge amounts of money and also led to the loss of Zara, for Andrew was compelled to cede the town to Venice in return for the naval transport provided by the Venetians for his army. Disheartened, he returned at the end of 1218 to Hungary, where he found the situation chaotic.

The struggle for the succession between Emeric and Andrew, and their campaigns, led to the collapse of the castle system and royal demesne, already undermined from within. At first huge portions of land, later on whole counties were given as fiefs to office-holding barons and their relatives. These lords sought to introduce on their newly acquired fiefs those more exacting forms of exploitation which had been evolved on baronial demesnes—an innovation that was fiercely resisted by the peasants of the former crown lands, who clung to the traditional services. The king’s knights or servientes and the officers of the castle forces, too, sought to ensure their established rights in the face of the new fief-holders, who were trying to incorporate them in their own armed retinue. Seething revolt spread to the population of the large estates of the Church and of temporal lords alike. The courts were flooded with lawsuits to define rights; but even though a plaintiff might be able to make a good case for himself he found it difficult to enforce his right in the face of the mighty barons. Baronial factions fought one another over the disintegrating royal demesne. In 1213, during one of Andrew’s Halicz campaigns, Queen Gertrude herself fell victim to a conspiracy of the ousted palatine, the ban Bank, and his followers. The king dared not even punish the majority of the culprits, so firmly was he in the power of the rising oligarchy.

Social Struggles. The 'Golden Bull'

The king’s economic policies, intended to make up for the loss of the crown lands, did nothing but make the existing muddle still worse. Andrew IIlevied emergency taxes; as he was anxious to raise money quickly, he passed over the feudal financial machinery—too clumsy for the royal court’s needs—and adopted the practice of farming out minting and taxes, customs and mines to Moslem and Jewish money¬ lenders, who recovered their capital with interest from the population. This prelude to the introduction of a money economy permitted plenty of abuse and, under conditions of an emerging, undeveloped com¬ modity economy, imposed on the tax-payers a greater burden than they could bear. The landlords also protested at the taxes imposed upon the population of their estates, which siphoned off money on which they themselves could otherwise have laid their hands. The clergy, while they hastened to adjust themselves to the new conditions of the time by insisting on tithes being paid in cash, protested at the salt monopoly—until recently the Church’s privilege—being farmed out to moneylenders.

Open resistance was started by the servientes and the officers of the

castle forces. Like the great barons, they too claimed areas of the dis¬ integrating crown lands for themselves, oppressing the peasants they subjected; nevertheless they, like their peasants, were interested in slowing down the rapid disintegration of the old order and in curbing the great lords’ lust for land. For this reason, confident of popular support, and relying on countrywide discontent, they started a move¬ ment in defence of their threatened liberties. Their movement was taken advantage of by a group of disgruntled barons to further their own plans for seizing power. As a result of the action of this group, Andrew had to issue an edict in 1222—known from the gold seal appended to it as the Golden Bull—under which the servientes were exempted from taxation and assured protection against harassment from the great lords. Apart from these articles, the ‘Golden Bull’ furthered the barons’ effort to curtail the powers of king and Church. It extended the powers of the Count Palatine and accorded the ‘nobles’ (i.e. the barons) the right of armed resistance, should the king break his pledges. The edict banned the collection of tithes in cash and set a ceiling on the amount of money the Church could make through its salt monopoly.

The clergy were shocked at such a show of submissiveness on the part of the king and at once became alarmed at the mass movement. The Pope and the Hungarian prelates wanted to have a king who was tough in his dealings with the lay lords but obedient to the Church. They thought they had found such a monarch in the heir apparent, Prince B6la, who had already been invested with the title of ‘junior king’ and was known to be dissatisfied with his father’s policies.

Prince B6Ia was convinced by his ecclesiastical advisers of the importance of bolstering the royal power, recovering the lost crown lands and, also, taking back the leases which had been granted on various taxes. His advisers hoped thus to be able to oust the great lay lords, who had grown rich on royal grants of land, and the Moslem and Jewish moneylenders, who had acquired leases and other com¬ mercial benefits, and so recapture their former position of strength. With the help of the Pope they prevailed upon Andrew to issue, in 1231, a revised version of the‘Golden Bull’, from which the clauses the Church had found prejudicial to its interests were omitted. Included in it, however, was a provision under which the jurisdiction of church courts was extended to cover certain types of lay lav/suits. Furthermore, the resistance clause of the original edict was deleted and replaced by another one threatening excommunication of the king by the Arch¬ bishop of Esztergom for any breach of the terms of the agreement.

At the beginning of 1232, Archbishop Robert, with the authorization of the Pope, did in fact excommunicate Andrew for the latter’s continued employment of Moslem and Jewish moneylenders and for restricting the Church’s salt monopoly. The king was compelled to conclude with the Pope’s envoy the Treaty of Bereg, in which he conceded the demands of the Church.

The Hungarian clergy, under the protection of the papacy, managed to retain their power—at least for the time being—during the great social upheavals of this period.

The Invasion of the Mongols

Bela IV succeeded to the throne in 1235 and reigned until 1270. His life was one stubborn yet unsuccessful struggle to restore and pre¬ serve the royal authority in an age when economic and social develop¬ ment had already undermined the traditional basis of central power while a new basis had not yet been formed. Nearly a century had yet to pass before such a development took place; by then commodity production and a money economy would advance sufficiently for taxes, customs and other revenues to make up for the loss of income from the crown lands, and for armed retinues of lords loyal to the king to replace the soldiers from the castles. But in this period of transition, B61a IV saw no other solution to his difficulties than the restoration of the former economic basis of royal power. He set up commissions charged with the task of revising grants of land and recovering alienated castle and crown lands. In an attempt to curb the oligarchy, he went as far as to remove the chairs from the royal council hall and burned them to prevent the leading dignitaries from sitting down in his presence. His efforts to recover the crown lands, however, met with universal resistance. They not only failed to produce the desired result, but also poisoned relations between the king and the majority of the ruling class—the grave consequences of which became evident during the ensuing Mongol invasion.

In 1237, the Mongols attacked the Cuman tribes, which inhabited the area between the Dnieper and Dniester rivers. Some of the Cumans led by their King Kotony fled westwards and asked for permission to enter Hungary. B61a IV marked out a district in the region between the Danube and the Tisza for them, in the hope that the Cuman warriors would be loyal to him in his struggle with the barons. However, the Cuman herdsmen soon clashed with the neighbouring farmers, as their herds trampled over the crops. The resulting animosity provided food for agitation and the barons were quick to turn it to good advan¬ tage in their struggle against the king. They clamoured for the expulsion of the Cumans in order to remove the mainstay of the monarchy. The king, however, was increasingly reluctant to let the Cumans be expelled as he had received fresh news of the approach of the Mongols.

A few years before, a Dominican friar named Julian had travelled east to find the Hungarians who had stayed in the ancient homeland. He did, indeed, find them along the Volga river; but when he set out for a second time to make contact with them, he learnt that Mongol hordes were advancing west. Soon the news that Kiev had fallen reached Hungary. A Mongol invasion of Hungary looked imminent.

At the last moment, Bela lost even the Cumans; a mob, incited by the barons, murdered King Kotony, and the Cumans left Hungary for the Balkans, killing and ravaging on their way. A large number of barons looked on indifferently, even with hostility, at the king’s efforts to rally resistance when the Mongol hordes reached the frontiers of Hungary. Apart from the prelates, only a few barons led their soldiers to the king’s standard.

The Mongols entered Hungary at three points in the spring of 1241. From the north came hordes that had ravaged Poland and Silesia, another army advanced from the direction of Transylvania; while the main body of the Mongol force, led by Batu Khan, entered from the north-east, through the Verecke Pass, where the Hungarian horsemen had come many years before on their western migration. King Bela made an attempt to halt the enemy at Mohi, on the banks of the Sajo, a tributary of the Tisza, but was routed and fled westwards, crossing the Danube into Western Hungary and from there on to Austria, to Duke Frederick of Babenberg. Frederick, however, took him prisoner and released him only for a large ransom. Fleeing his Mongol pursuers, the king finally found refuge on the Dalmatian coast, on the offshore island of Trau.

Only a few castles were able to put up a successful resistance and the whole of the country east of the Danube fell to the Mongols. The invaders, of course, slew those who attempted resistance; but, in order to intimidate the population, they went further than that and mas¬ sacred defenceless people. No one was able to save himself except those who had hidden in good time in the forests or marshes or fled to the hills. Here, their numbers were decimated by starvation. As the Mongols had failed to take Hungary in a single assault, they were compelled to stop and to make preparations for the winter and for the conquest of the country west of the Danube. Survivors were, therefore, lured out of their hiding-places through promises of immunity so that they would work to produce the supply of food needed by the invaders.

But when the harvest was over, the unfortunate folk were ruthlessly massacred or taken into captivity by the Mongols, who were careful not to leave potential enemies in their rear when they resumed their westward march. Crossing the frozen Danube, they invaded Trans- danubia. Here, however, they found themselves faced with better organized resistance. They did not bother to break it by mustering their superior force, since their main objective was the capture of the king. This they failed to do before their withdrawal from Hungary in the summer of 1242. The reason for their sudden departure was probably the Mongol practice of contenting themselves with terrorizing the population of a country during their first visit, and leaving the final conquest to a later date. In this case, however, that final conquest never took place, owing to the disintegration of the Mongol Empire.

The Mongol invasion inflicted on Hungary serious losses in terms of human lives as well as material resources. It dealt an even heavier blow to the castle system and the royal estates, bringing nearer their inevitable disintegration. The defeat sustained by the royal army was also a defeat for the king’s policies; in this acute crisis of a devastated country, Bela was forced to reconcile himself to sharing his land and power with the barons.

The Dawn of Chivalry

Some signs of the growing self-assurance and increasing demands of the great landowners became apparent about the turn of the thirteenth century even in the sphere of culture. In earlier years, art and literature had been confined to the royal court and the Church. The earliest monasteries founded and built by baronial families date from the middle of the twelfth century; the monarchy continued to lead the way in architecture even to the end of the century: the most significant pieces of contemporary architecture—the cathedral and the royal palace at Esztergom—were built by French architects for Bela III.

French influence in Hungary reached its highest point during this period. Bela III married twice and both his queens were French prin¬ cesses, who brought with them their knights, priests and architects from France, while growing numbers of Hungarian students went to Paris to study at the university. Graduates of the University of Paris became clerks who staffed the Chancery.

One of the notaries of the royal chancery was ‘Magister P.’ (com¬ monly referred to as Anonymus), a historian who was not content to write a mere continuation of the eleventh-century Gesta Ungarorum, bringing it up to date, but brushed it aside and proceeded to write a fresh History of Hungary. He made no secret of his aim to write a genealogia nobilium which he set in the story of the Conquest of the new homeland by the Hungarians. His work embodied a wholly novel approach. Unlike earlier writers of Hungarian history, he rehabilitat¬ ed the pagan past and, by drawing liberally on popular epics and sagas, glorified the tenth-century ancestors of the baronial families of his time, stressing emphatically that they had acquired their properties by force of arms. In an attempt to justify the efforts of the aristocracy of the late twelfth century to confine the power of the king, he traced kingship back to a decision taken by the nomadic tribes to elect a prince and not to King Stephen’s triumphal subduing of the tribal chiefs. By writing a History of the Trojan War, a story much favoured by French chivalry, ‘Magister P.’ catered to the budding literary in¬ terest evinced by the upper stratum of the contemporary ruling class. He may also have been the author of a romance of Alexander the Great, parts of which exist in the body of Hungarian letters of later years. Both stories were thus available in Hungarian translations, and their influence can be seen by the popularity in Hungarian baronial families of the early thirteenth century of such classical first names as Achilles, Priam, Hector, Helen and Alexander. The earliest record of vernacular sacred literature—a funeral oration—also dates from tliis period.

Vernacular literature and a secular outlook were new to Hungarian culture; both of them were connected with the cultural and political aspirations of the secular lords. The literary education of the Western European age of chivalry also began to exert an influence upon the upper stratum of the Hungarian ruling class. Two Provencal trouba¬ dours—Peire Vidal and Gaucelm Faidit—turned up in King Emeric’s court, and Andrew II was accompanied on his crusade by two eminent German minnesingers, Neidhart von Reuenthal and Tann- hauser. About this time, too. King Ladislas I began to be regarded as an embodiment of chivalric ideals, and Bela III pressed for his canoniza¬ tion.

For some years during the first half of the thirteenth century, the secular lords set the trend in the field of architecture. The finest pieces of Late Romanesque architecture in Hungary, already showing some elements of Gothic, are the family monasteries of some of the great feudal lords—in particular those of Jdk, Leb6ny and Zsambek.

The Emergence of the Towns and the Nobility (1241–1308)

After the Mongol invasion it was imperative for Bela IV to reconsider the question of defence. In most of Europe the feudal landlords usually contributed armoured knights for this purpose. In Hungary, however, Bela’s attempts to reclaim alienated castle lands had greatly hampered a move in this direction. B61a IV was, therefore, obliged to give the Hungarian feudal|lords a free hand on their estates. In the course of reconstruction after the Mongol invasion, he granted estates to his barons with the stipulation that they erect fortresses and garrison them. The old county castles had been earthen structures, fortified by a stockade; stone castles had been the exception apart from the royal residences such as Esztergom and Szekesfehervar, which escaped capture by the Mongol invaders. B61a IV launched a campaign to build new stone castles—the Red Tower of Sarospatak and Salomon’s Tower at Visegrdd are well-known remains from this period. These castles consisted of a single keep of several storeys. The feudal barons, following the royal example, erected similar castles throughout the country during the following decades. These strongholds are examples of growing baronial power on one hand, and, on the other, of the sub¬ stantial strengthening of the country’s defences.

The final dissolution of the old order based on the county castles and royal estates was brought about not only by the emergence of a landed oligarchy, but also by the development of the middle layers of feudal society: the burghers of the towns and the smaller landowners (the so-called ‘nobility’).

The Growth of Towns

The earliest traces of urban life go back to the end of the twelfth century, when trade and agriculture began to separate and commodity production for the market began. The legal separation of the burghers from the peasantry also began through the granting of charters to towns freeing them from feudal obligations and specifying their privileges. The earliest of these charters was obtained by the citizens of Szekesfeherv&r in the middle of the twelfth century, and granted them the freedom to elect justices, market rights and immunity from customs duties.

The rights given to towns in Hungary were derived from those given to groups of foreign settlers, known as hospites. The latter had obtained the privileges of choosing their own justices, living according to their own customs, and paying taxes in money based on their holdings of land instead of a poll-tax in kind.

From the thirteenth century onwards, not only foreign settlers were called hospites, but the term was applied also to those serfs who had either escaped from their landlords or left them legally, and had become established settlers elsewhere, obtaining the privileges of the hospites.

Most of these had been peasants, with a fair number of craftsmen among them. It was in their settlements beside royal castles and the bishops’ residences that viticulture was first developed. The foreign trading settlements were also engaged in handicrafts. The Hungarians serving in the households of royal castles and episcopal estates carried on similar activities. Economic conditions were thus ripe for their assimilation with the foreign settlers when the social and political conditions were ready for such a development. This happened during the reorganization of the county castles.

B6Ia IV planned to transform the county castles into up-to-date fortresses by offering refuge to the unprotected inhabitants of the neighbouring settlements in exchange for their help in the defence and upkeep of the fortifications. Bela himself ceded his former seat, Esztergom, to the archbishopric, selecting Buda as the royal residence. The reconstruction of the city was also due to his efforts: after the Mongol invasion, he settled the surviving inhabitants of the destroyed settlements of Pest and Buda, along with a number of new settlers, on the Castle Hill, where new city walls were built and a new royal palace erected. The new settlement was given the name of Buda, while the reorganized old one was henceforth called O-Buda, i.e. Old Buda. With the reconstructed and newly populated Pest, the three settlements form the nucleus of present-day Budapest. Bela IV endeavoured to move other trading settlements into the reorganized county castles—e.g. Esztergom, Szekesfehervar, Pozsony, Sopron, Gyor and Kolozsvdr. Their populations were thus united into one community, comprising both the foreign settlers and the original castle-dwellers (cives), who were given the benefit of the formers’ privileges. The twofold social origin of the Hungarian town is clearly seen by the term cives et hospites in contemporary documents. Aside from the towns which developed from castles, other new towns grew up throughout the thirteenth century from German settlements, e.g. Nagyszeben, Brasso, Beszterce in Transylvania and Kassa, Locse, Kesmark and Bdrtfa in the north.

The Hungarian town, like its Western European counterpart, owed its freedom directly to the ruler. It was liberated from the juris¬ diction of the county and its inhabitants could dispose freely of their possessions. They no longer paid taxes on their individual holdings of land, but each town paid a lump sum to the king with each burgher contributing his share. Within the confines of the town all burghers were equal and had full rights, subject only to the jurisdiction of the town council (in matters of town property even the Church and feudal lords were subject to the town council). The town’s dignitaries assumed the hereditary title of count (comes), and were the local landlords, merchants and mine owners. They governed a population of peasants, who cultivated the land attached to the town and worked in their spare time in handicrafts or in the mines.

The development of towns in Hungary was only partly the result of local conditions: European economic development contributed to it in equal measure. In llie thirteenth century Western Europe began its economic expansion towards the east. In the north, the Hanse towns and the Teutonic Knights penetrated into the Baltic; in tire south Venice and Genoa expanded their trade into the eastern Mediter¬ ranean lands and the coastal regions of the Black Sea. Somewhat later in the same century the territory in between began to participate to a greater extent in European trade. The reasons for this expansion of trade can be explained by Western Europe’s need for precious metals, and the yearning of Eastern Europe’s ruling classes for the luxuries of life. In the second half of the thirteenth century mining for precious ores started on a large scale in the Czech, Polish and Hungarian mountains, followed by copper production in Hungary and lead mining in Poland. This contributed to an increase in trade with other coun¬ tries, including trade in agricultural products as well. Prague, Breslau, Cracow, Lemberg, Buda and other commercial centres on Hungary’s northern border were engaged in exchanging by barter mining and agricultural products and commodities, mainly for textiles from Western countries. In mining, Western capital, to a large extent Ger¬ man, shared with the Hungarian ruling classes in exploiting the country’s mineral resources. German capital helped mining towns in Eastern Europe obtain charters from their rulers for the exploitation of silver and copper. In the second half of the thirteenth century Selmecbanya, Besztercebanya, Golnicbanya and Rozsnyobanya were granted charters. Part of the ore and smelted metal obtained went as revenue into the royal treasuries, and part was used to close the gap between the value of commodities coming from the West and the limited amount of agricultural products available in exchange. Side by side with mining for copper and precious metals, a superior method of producing iron was introduced by the citizens of the new towns, who, by the end of the thirteenth century, were exceeding the output of the king’s servants with their backward methods. In the second half of the fourteenth century Hungarian iron became a well-known export commodity, especially in northern countries.

County Administration and Autonomy of the Nobility

Royal castles were rapidly turning into towns, and their inhabitants into free citizens; on the other hand, the problem of the great number of castle retainers (jobbdgy) and royal knights (servientes) living in scattered villages remained unsolved. These small feudal landlords had exercised their rights in the area around the castles and on the royal estates. But the great feudal landlords, who had obtained these lands as royal grants, had no respect for the rights of their inferiors in rank. The small landlords had to join forces to defend their inde¬ pendence. The institution of the county justice, a remnant of the castle system, seemed to them inadequate. They tried to win local autonomy by electing from their ranks their own judges who, jointly with the ispein, should have jurisdiction over the whole county, including the feudal estate population. But the first step was to establish that the small landlords had equal rights with the great feudal landlords.

After the Mongol invasion, Bela IV, in order to exercise control over the feudal oligarchy, encouraged these activities. On the one hand, he confirmed the rights of the smaller landlords by recognizing their ‘nobility’; on the other, he accepted the new county organization by issuing a decree in 1267, ordering that two or three ‘noblemen’ of each county attend the Szekesfehervar assizes which were about to develop into a national assembly or diet. By that time the great feudal landlords had come to be called ‘barons’, whereas the title ‘nobleman’ was applied to former royal soldiers who had become small and middle landlords.

By the end of the thirteenth century the new county organization was legally recognized. It was headed by a baron, appointed by the king as ispan, and under him judges and jurymen chosen from the nobility. In this way the small landlords could in the majority of cases keep their land free, and participate in the political and judicial rights of the feudal ruling class, but they could not keep themselves free from the influence of the growing power of the feudal oligarchy. Not wanting to suffer from their whims, and eager to obtain more land, the nobility offered their services to the barons as familiares , i.e. vassals, serving as administrative officers on the baronial estates or as retainers in the baronial armies. No wonder that in the course of time, county autonomy became a mere illusion, or else the tool of the feudal oligarchy.

Feudal Oligarchy versus Royal Power

Besides supporting the citizens of the towns and the autonomy of the counties, Bela IV tried to secure the help of the Cumans in order to check the expansion of baronial power. The Cumans were called back from the Balkans, given land in the region between the Danube and the Tisza, and, in order to cement their ties to the king, the crown prince, Stephen, married the daughter of their chieftain. The king also tried to obtain the assistance of the friars. From the early thirteenth century onwards, the Dominicans and Franciscans had been extremely popular in Hungary because of their eloquent preaching. The rulers of Hungary used them for converting the heretical Bogomils and the pagan Cumans, and Bdla IV tried to counterbalance the higher clergy with them.

Baronial ambitions could, for the moment, be satisfied abroad. Bela IV intervened in the dynastic struggles following the extinction of the Austrian Babenberg family. According to an agreement made with Ottokar II, King of Bohemia, Bela obtained Styria, to be governed as a duchy by Prince Stephen. Styrian lords, however, dissatisfied with Hungarian rule, expelled the Hungarians at the end of 1259, offering the duchy to Ottokar, who, after the victory of Marchfeld in 1260, took possession of the territory together with the rest of the Babenberg heritage.

For two decades at least, the forces of feudal anarchy had been tied down in rebuilding the country, sharing in the spoils of the royal estates and fighting abroad. Yet anarchy was ready to break out as soon as the feud of B61a IV and his son, Stephen, ‘the younger king’, provided the opportunity. The ruling class broke into two factions, and in the course of the struggle it soon became evident that the real masters of the country were the barons with their huge estates, and the power given them by their control of the county administration. The Pope offered to arbitrate between the two sides, hoping thereby to obtain the suzerainty so far repeatedly denied to him. Bela refused once again and in his last letters to the Pope he declared that he never had and did not expect to have help from the Holy See.

At the time of his death in 1270, papal intervention reached its highest point; while formerly pretending to support royal power, the Pope now openly joined the forces of feudal anarchy.

During the brief reign of Stephen V (1270-1272), the baronial fac¬ tions no longer endeavoured to hide behind dynastic struggles. Some of the barons managed to detach parts of the country, placing them under foreign rulers, in order to secure their support against the king. After the death of Bdla IV, the ban, Henrik Koszegi, offered his castles to Ottokar II, King of Bohemia. In the war which followed, the Bohemian army was defeated in a battle fought beside the Rdba river.

Ottokar II made his peace with Stephen, forgetting about Henrik Koszegi, who was obliged to ask his king’s pardon. He was unrepent¬ ant, however, and with the help of the queen’s favourite, the ban Joachim, carried off the young crown prince, Ladislas, in order to blackmail the king. While pursuing the traitor, Stephen V died sud¬ denly, and power passed into the hands of the queen, Joachim and Henrik Koszegi. The Csdk family organized a faction for their over¬ throw. In 1274, they succeeded in carrying away the young king and attacking their rivals. Henrik Koszegi died on the battlefield and the ban Joachim followed him in 1277. The sons of Henrik Koszegi continued the fight, and following their father’s example, asked the help of Ottokar II. This action encouraged the Csdk faction to support Rudolf of Habsburg in his fight against Ottokar for the possession of the Austrian provinces. Hungarian support secured Rudolf’s victory in the battle on the Marchfeld (1278) which also paved the way for the establishment of the future Habsburg dynasty.

When Ladislas IV (1272-1290), surnamed ‘the Cuman’, reached his adolescence, he tried to throw off the protection of the barons and establish his power with the support of the Cumans, from whom his mother descended.

The nomadic Cumans were a considerable military force. They still lived in a tribal society and observed pagan ritual, while each free member of the community performed military service. The Hungarian feudal lords tried to subject them and therefore the Cumans allied with the king against them. The feudal lords then suspended their factional struggles and joined forces against the king and the Cumans.

Their leader was Lodomer, the energetic and erudite Archbishop of Esztergom, who, considering the king’s alliance with the pagan Cu- mans a threat to the Church, appealed for papal intervention. With the help of the papal legate, the barons and high churchmen forced the king to agree to a law introducing Christianity among the Cumans and terminating their nomadic customs.

The king, however, was not willing to enforce the law extorted from him, and was excommunicated by the papal legate. Ladislas, in reply, delivered the legate into the hands of the Cumans, and went to live among them. He renounced his wife and married according to pagan ritual a Cuman woman called Edua. He was captured by the barons, who forced him to join in their warfare against the Cumans. In 1280, in the battle of H6dto, the Cumans were defeated, but Ladislas’s determination remained unbroken. In 1285, he called in the Mongols, who, joined by the Cumans, devastated the country. Only a small number of Hungarian lords remained loyal to the king, who surround¬ ed himself with Cumans, Mongols and Moslems. After sending his wife into a nunnery, he made Edua his lawful queen. Lodomer an¬ nounced a crusade against him, but before this took place, Ladislas was murdered by Cuman assassins hired by the barons to rid them of the young king, who fought for his power to the last.

The Feudal Anarchy

The grandson of Andrew II who was at that time in Venice was chosen by the barons to succeed the childless Ladislas IV. Andrew 111 (1290-1301) was just as helpless against the flourishing feudal anarchy as his predecessor had been. The country was divided into regions independent of the king, each in the hands of a baronial faction. Under their auspices neither royal nor church property was spared; they confiscated estates, and put their relatives and supporters into vacated church offices. The Church protested, seeking protection from the king, but owing to the lack of papal support Andrew was unable to intervene. At the death of Ladislas IV, the Holy See had declared Hungary a papal fief, and had granted it to the young Neapolitan Prince Charles, a member of the House of Anjou, who was related to the Hungarian royal family. Charles soon found supporters among the Hungarian barons.

Internal strife and threats from without forced Andrew III to rely upon the county administration and the diet, which had a considerable majority of rank and file nobility. The assembly of 1298 excluded the

barons. Power was taken away from the ispan, appointed from the ranks of the barons, and county administration was entrusted to the justices, representing the nobility.

This early attempt at a monarchy controlled by a diet failed, but showed that the nobility was in the ascendant. Their political con¬ sciousness was expressed by Ladislas IV’s chaplain, Simon Kezai, who confirmed that the community of the nobility was the real represen¬ tative of the country, both by Roman law and scholastic teaching. With this view in mind, he wrote a history of the Hungarian con¬ quest, adding to it the history of the Huns, as the ancestors of the Hun¬ garians. It was not the saintly King Stephen who was put before his king as a paragon, but the pagan Attila, known as ‘the scourge of God’, a defiant gesture referring to Ladislas’s attitude to the Church. K6zai openly declared himself a partisan of the nobility, and approved of the king’s alliance with them against the barons. The alliance, however, was still too feeble to contain the forces of feudal anarchy, which reached its climax in the contests after the death of Andrew III, the last Hungarian king of the fine of Arpad.

A baronial party declared the Bohemian Prince Wenceslas, Ottokar II’s grandchild, a descendant of the Arpads on the female line, king of Hungary; but he, not being able to consolidate his power, resigned and handed over the crown to his relative, Otto, prince of Bavaria. Otto was captured by the voivode of Transylvania, deprived of the crown and forced to depart in shame. Rumours spread that kingless Hungary would be divided between the duke of Austria and the king of Bohemia.

Among the claimants to the throne, Charles of Anjou seemed the most powerful. He secured for himself the support of the Hungarian high clergy, due mainly to papal protection and a substantial loan from Italian bankers. Because of the devastation caused by the baro¬ nial struggle, the country was on the brink of disaster, and the clergy, afraid to lose their possessions, were ready to support a potential protector with foreign support.

In 1308, the Pope sent Cardinal Gentile to Hungary and his surviv¬ ing correspondence gives an idea of the prevailing state of corruption. In Transylvania, the all-powerful voivode tried to force the clergy to make his son a bishop. The bishopric of Pecs was occupied by the ban, Henrik Koszegi, lord of Transdanubia; the consecrated bishop was set aside, and the clergy, after announcing Henrik Koszegi’s excommunication, were expelled. The title of ‘palatine’ was wrongly used by three barons. The southern provinces were held by Slavonic barons, each assuming the title of ban. The latter were supporters of Charles of Anjou, wanting him more as a party leader than a ruler. These barons assumed the offices of ispans —they lived in princely style, coining their own money, ravaging and pillaging the countryside and forming alliance with foreign powers. The papal legate succeeded, after prolonged negotiations, in obtaining formal recognition of Charles I (1308-1342) by the barons. Seeing, however, that papal authority was no longer sufficient to stem the anarchy, the legate withdrew in 1311, after first excommunicating the most formidable of the barons, Mate Cs&k. In reply, the latter declared himself an in¬ dependent ruler and waged war for the possessions of the Archbishop of Esztergom. As a result Charles was forced to withdraw into the southern parts of the country.

The Transformation of the Hungarian Peasantry

Feudal anarchy accelerated the gradual amalgamation of the serf and free elements of the peasantry. Growing productivity in agriculture and the ensuing development of barter trade swept away the last impediments. In the course of time, landlords came to see clearly that the lands cultivated by serfs yielded much less than those of the free peasants or hospites cultivating their communal possessions. The constant complaints of the population of the former castle lands and royal estates because of heavy taxes made the whole peasantry into a revolutionary force. In the second half of the thirteenth century there were continuous revolts, dues left undelivered, and mass escapes, growing into large-scale movements from one lord’s land to another.

The landlords who first profited from these movements were those who needed new hands for their newly granted lands. The loss in population owing to the Mongol invasion had made labour increasing¬ ly scarce. Thus it was not difficult for the escaped peasant to find better labour conditions with a new landlord. It would have been in the in¬ terests of the ruling class as a whole to stop this trend, which reduced the level of exploitation of the peasant, but they failed to halt the movement because the new barons in need of labour were ready to grant protection to the escapees. Naturally, it was first of all the serfs who tried to improve their lot, and were ready to leave at once if not granted the same privileges as enjoyed by the free peasants. As a matter of course, landlords proved willing to reduce labour services and dues in kind and institute a hereditary system of land leasing. In many cases this was equivalent to freedom of socage and of movement. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, slaves employed as domestic servants were the last to be freed. The former slave settlements became villages based on communal cultivation, but if the landlord proved too severe, no one would work on his demesne. By the first half of the fourteenth century, the former demesnes were mostly deserted and the term praedium came to denote an uninhabited place.

At the end of the thirteenth century the ruling class was obliged to recognize the peasant’s freedom to move, as well as his hereditary lease and communal use of his land. His obligations, like those of the foreign settlers, were no longer determined according to his personal status, but according to the amount of land leased from the landlord; one part of the dues owed could be paid in money, the rest in a defined quantity of goods. Some labour services remained as a legacy of serfdom, but owing to the decay of the demesne they were negligible compared with payments in money and kind. The position of the peasantry changed considerably. They were more and more generally called jobbagy. This actually meant the application to the formerly unfree peasantry of the name which in early feudalism designated freemen acting as officials in royal castles, who in the meantime had merged partly into the nobility and partly into the urban burgher population. This by itself shows that the distinction between bonds¬ men and freemen existing before feudalism ultimately disappeared, and a uniform class of tenants emerged.

Attempt at Adriatic Hegemony (1308–1437)

The Development of a New Aristocracy

The outcome of the peasants’ migration and the development of the towns was to concentrate the smaller landlords and some of the greater feudal lords around the central power in order to defend their common interests. The advantages of allying with the king were first recognized by that section of the ruling class which was unable to hold its own against the most powerful barons. The most fervent supporters of Charles of Anjou belonged to the poorer branches of the baronial families who had been pushed into the background, robbed and ex¬ pelled from their family properties by the richer members. In his first years King Charles was supported by members of these families, such as the Sz6c$enyi, Szdcsi, Bebek, Nekcsei, Garai, Lackfi and others. They and their retainers, together with other victims of the feudal oligarchy, made up the king’s armed forces. Willi this army Charles was able to fight against the overlords of the provinces. By 1321, with the death of Mate Csak, the feudal anarchy came to an end after ten years of fighting. Charles’s power was at last estab¬ lished, and he could move his seat from Temesvar to Visegrad.

After the fall of the great feudal barons, Charles regained the illegally alienated castle lands and royal estates, but still held only a small portion of what had been indiscriminately given away by his predecessors. The old castle system had been decaying, and Charles had no intention of restoring an antiquated institution. He organized the remaining royal estates around castles, and made them independ¬ ent of the county administration. The)' were governed by castellans, whose duties were more economic than military, as the latter had become more and more the right and obligation of the feudal ruling class and, to some extent, of the bourgeoisie. The royal castle was garrisoned by a small number of armed guards; the country’s stand¬ ing army consisted of a few thousand soldiers paid by the king, to¬ gether with the companies of the county militia, and secular and ecclesiastical private armies. The county and baronial armies fighting under their own banners were called banderia.

The new type of army was the logical outcome of the strengthening of the feudal system. Several hundred castles and several thousand villages were owned by a few aristocratic families who also became the temporal and ecclesiastical dignitaries of the country. A great part of the small and middle nobility who owed them fealty as familia- res (vassals) served in their armies and managed their estates.

The crushing of the great barons prevented the creation of new feudal provinces, but could not prevent the feudal disintegration into large estates. The feudal lord enjoyed not merely the dues and services of the peasantry of his estate, but also held jurisdiction over them. He collected royal taxes on his own estate and his soldiers fought under his leadership in the royal army. As voivodes, bans and ispans the barons and their officials administered the affairs of large areas not immediately under their feudal jurisdiction. In these circumstances no direct political role was left open for the nobility with small and middle-sized estates. In the fourteenth century the king held diets only on rare occasions.

Economic Policy of Charles I

Charles I tried to base his power on direct and indirect royal revenue called regalia (i.e. on taxes, customs, mine and coinage monopolies) and not on his holdings of land. His chief adviser, his childhood friend from Naples, Palatine Fiilop Druget and the second man on whom he relied, Domotor Nekcsei, Lord Chief Treasurer, were inspired by foreign example, especially by that of the more advanced Bohemia. They tried to take advantage of the demand in Western Europe for precious metal. In the second half of the thirteenth century, Hun¬ garian silver production had increased rapidly, and in the early four¬ teenth century, a more important event, the discovery of gold, had led to the founding of mining towns. Free trade in these metals lured a great number of merchants to Hungary, especially from Italy and Germany. In exchange for gold and silver, the Hungarian market was inundated by foreign luxury articles. In 1325, a monopoly was introduced as in Bohemia which made it compulsory to exchange silver and gold ore at the royal mint. In spite of the low rate of exchange it brought a good income to the mine-owners, at the same time supplying the mint with sufficient metal for coining money at yearly intervals. Foreign merchants were compelled to accept gold florins and silver denarii, instead of unminted metal, however, it was good business, because the Hungarian florin was one of Europe’s best currencies.

In order to increase his income from his metal monopoly and moneta¬ ry reforms, King Charles changed the mining law passed by Bela IV. The law had provided free mining even for foreign miners in exchange for a certain portion to be delivered to the royal treasury. The owner of the ground, should it not be the king, received nothing, but was even obliged to offer the land to the monarch. No wonder that the landlords were not eager to report finding metal ores, and prevented any attempt at mining. King Charles reversed this situation and by allowing the owner of the ground to take a share of the profit, he encouraged landowners to promote mining. The so-called ‘chambers’, offices founded during the Arpad dynasty for the administration of precious metal mining, the coining of money, the salt mines and the collection of customs revenue (the so-called thirtieth) were farmed out to foreign and Hungarian merchants.

The feudal ruling class, because of their military service, were excused from payment of taxes. The king, therefore, could obtain revenue only from the peasantry and bourgeoisie, and, occasionally, from the clergy. As money was no longer reminted yearly, the extra renewal tax was not available. To recompense himself, the king levied a new tax, called ‘chamber profit’ (lucrum camerae), and, in spite of frequent protests from the landlords, extra taxes were levied on the peasantry. The towns were also frequently overburdened by extra taxation, but they enjoyed the privilege of paying lump sums at long intervals. The towns had chiefly a financial interest for the king, and legally they were controlled by the treasurer responsible for royal revenues. Charles was also more daring than his predecessors in taxing the Church. The higher clergy were expected to pay consecra¬ tion charges, give New Year presents and send soldiers into the royal army. After the death of an ecclesiastical dignitary, his estate remained tied to the crown until a new appointment was made. The king also claimed one-third of papal tithes collected for the crusades. During the Avignon period, the popes were too weak to defend the rights of the clergy and compromised on this point.

Foreign Affairs

The foreign policy of Charles was closely connected with his plans for the economic reconstruction of the country. He did not wage war for conquest. His attempt to bring the former Cumania, in the Wal- lachian plain, formerly part of Hungary, under his control failed owing to the resistance of Bazarab, the Rumanian voivode, who during the days of feudal anarchy had made it into an independent province. Charles acquiesced, and recognized the Rumanian state. He then concentrated his attention on events of decisive importance to the future of Hungary beyond the western and northern borders.

From the second half of the thirteenth century onwards there were dynastic contests between the Austrian dukes and the Hungarian and Bohemian kings in order to unite East-Central Europe under their hegemony. Bela IV as well as Ottokar II and his successors had vainly attempted conquests. The Habsburgs who had secured the Austrian provinces and the Luxemburgs who, following the ex¬ tinction of the Premysl family, had ascended the Bohemian throne, tried to extend their powers over the German Empire by the renewal of their expansive designs against Hungary and Poland.

Charles wisely saw that it was to his interest to hinder the expansion of both German dynasties. Wladislaw Lokietek, King of Poland, was in agreement with him as he was threatened by an attack from John of Luxemburg who already held Silesia in subjection and aspired to the Polish throne. The friendly relations between Hungary and Poland were sealed by the marriage of Charles with Wladislaw’s daughter, Elizabeth. This was followed by a settlement of the Polish-Bohemian conflict at the meeting of the kings at Visegr&d in 1335, which was brought about through the mediation of the king of Hungary. John of Luxemburg was to resign his claim to the throne of Poland, and Casimir, Wladislaw Lokietek’s successor, surrendered Silesia to the king of Bohemia. Simultaneously, a treaty w^as signed between Casimir and the Teutonic Knights. The main advantage for Charles was the Hungarian-Bohemian-Polish-Bavarian alliance against the Habs¬ burgs, which enabled him to regain from them the Hungarian border territories lost during the period of anarchy. The alliance also had economic aims: Hungarian, Bohemian and Polish trade with Germany and Italy had suffered greatly from the staple right of Vienna. To circumvent this impediment, new trade routes were devised through Moravia to Buda, and to Cracow. Thereby a new road to Eastern and Central Europe was opened to South German merchants, principal¬ ly from Nuremberg, who succeeded in gaining control of the pre¬ cious metal trade through a series of privileges granted them in the following decades. Partly by squeezing out the Italians, and partly by compelling the Viennese traders to act as their agents, the South German merchants paved the way for their economic hegemony over East-Central Europe, which to a large degree contributed to the weak¬ ening of Hungary’s orientation towards the Adriatic and its gradual incorporation into the Central European system of states.

Charles had succeeded in obtaining peace and normal relations on the western and northern borders. However, he did not manage to secure the southern provinces which had been in the possession of the Arpad kings. The Croatian, Slavonian and Dalmatian areas remained in the hands of the local baronial leaders, who offered the Dalmatian towns to Venice in return for support against the king of Hungary. In order to hold Venice and its ally, Stephan Dushan, King of Serbia, in check, Charles tried to form closer ties with his Nea¬ politan relatives. His younger son, Andrew, married Joanna, the grand¬ daughter of King Robert, and successor to the throne of Naples. His elder son, Louis, inherited the crown of Hungary.

The Adventure in Naples and Expansion in the Balkans

Louis (1342-1382) was not hampered by unfavourable conditions in his efforts to build up the edifice begun by his father. He inherited a full treasury and secure western and northern borders. He himself was filled with ambition for conquest—his heroes were Alexander the Great and St. Ladislas of Hungary, who had launched the first expansion towards the South.

With the death of King Robert in 1343, the question of the succes¬ sion to the throne of Naples became acute. According to the contract made with Charles, Prince Andrew with his wife were jointly to hold the throne; but Joanna, greedy for power and detesting her husband, did not want to accept this situation. The Pope, the liege-lord of Naples, was not pleased with the idea that the Hungarian Anjous, with their claim to the Dalmatian coast, should get a foothold in Naples.

Prince Andrew was murdered with the complicity of his wife in 1345. As Joanna had been involved in her husband’s murder, Louis demanded from the Pope that she should be deprived of the throne, and Naples be ceded to him according to the family law of the Anjous. With his army reinforced by Italian and German mer¬ cenaries he invaded Italy in 1347. He occupied Naples, but the Pope, reluctant to grant it to him as his fief, turned the king of France and Charles IV, Emperor of Germany, against him. The diplomatic discus¬ sions took years, and Louis’s army in Naples crumbled in the mean¬ time. His second personal appearance on the scene in 1350 did little to help matters. Seeing that his plans for an Adriatic empire were unrealistic, Louis resigned his claim to Naples in 1352, but never recognized the legality of Joanna’s rule.

Despite his failure in Naples, Louis did not give up his attempts to secure supremacy in the Balkans and the Adriatic. The only positive feature of his policy was its connection with the Dalmatian towns’ struggles for independence. In the course of the wars with Venice which began in 1356, he not only liberated those Dalmatian towns which had once belonged to Hungary, but also extended his supre¬ macy to the hitherto independent Ragusa. In the treaty of Zara, signed in 1353, Venice resigned its rights over the Dalmatian towns.

This was the last phase in the completion of his father’s policy. In the course of centuries, the Hungarian-Croatian-Dalmatian union had grown into a political reality, its existence and security being equally desirable to the Hungarian and Dalmatian ruling class. The situation was not the same beyond the Save and in the provinces along the Lower Danube, where the interests of the Hungarian rulers clashed with those of the Serbian, Bulgarian and Rumanian ruling class, who desired political independence. After ten years of useless warfare, Louis had to accept merely formal vows of allegiance from the Serbian, Bulgarian and Rumanian rulers. Hungary’s Balkan expansion would have been justified if Louis had accepted leadership against the Turkish menace. He failed to do so and, in the seventies, the Turks subjected his Balkan vassals one by one.

In addition to the marriage settlement of Naples, Charles left his son a claim to the throne of Poland, which cost Louis substantial sacrifices. More than once, he had to render military assistance to his uncle, Casimir the Great, in his, wars against the Lithuanians. At the death of Casimir in 1370, Louis inherited the throne, adding greatly to his worries. He was unable to stem the feudal anarchy and so the Polish barons succeeded in extorting from him the first substan¬ tial concessions limiting royal powers.

The aging king again turned his attention towards the dream of his early days, Naples. He had willingly resigned the throne of his ancestors, but he could not forget the wickedness of Joanna. He adopted his cousin, Charles, Prince of Durazzo, to serve as an instru¬ ment of his revenge, and sent him with a Hungarian army to Italy to win Naples from Joanna. This was in 1378, when Louis’s diplomacy managed to bring about a coalition of Genoa, Padua, Verona and the Austrian dukes against Joanna and Venice. His fleet joined that of Genoa to besiege Venice, but they proved powerless against the deter¬ mined defence of the Venetians. In 1381, the treaty of Turin reiterated that Dalmatia was a Hungarian possession. By then Charles of Durazzo was master of Naples, and Louis, shortly before his death, had his re¬ venge, as Joanna was strangled by Hungarian mercenaries.

Seeming victories had gained for Louis the surname ‘Great’; but he had to pay dearly for it. Wars had increased feudal disintegration, and baronial power had been strengthened by the spoils of war and new royal grants. New alliances were made and new baronial families became dominant. Three factions under the Lackli, Garai and Hor- vati families struggled for power at the end of the reign of Louis.

The Loss of the Hungarian Possessions in the Adriatic

Louis I died without male issue and he desired his daughter Mary to inherit both the Hungarian and Polish crowns. She was to marry Sigismund of Luxemburg, the younger son of Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor. The planned marriage was the symbol of long-standing political aspirations in Central Europe: the union of Hungary, Poland and Bohemia. For the Polish ruling class, however, the connection with Hungary and Bohemia was not desirable, as the Luxemburg dynasty did not conceal its sympathies with the Teutonic Knights. Mary’s succession to the Polish throne had to be abandoned, and her sister Hedwig (Jadwiga) inherited the crown.

The Hungarian ruling class was no less antagonistic with regard to the new foreign policy. From among the baronial factions only that led by the Lackfis approved of the marriage of Mary and Sigismund. The Garais and Horvatis, resident in the southern parts, regarded the scrapping of the Adriatic policy as disastrous. Profiting from the baronial factional struggles, Charles of Durazzo, now King of Naples, at the invitation of the Horvatis returned to Hungary with Italian mercenaries in 1385, and was crowned king. A few weeks later, how¬ ever, he was murdered by the Palatine, Miklds Garai, who was jealous of his power. Ladislas, the young son of Charles, was declared king by the Horvatis. In order to seek peace talks, Queen Mary, her mother Queen Elizabeth, and the Palatine Garai took themselves to the south, but they were attacked, the Palatine and his retainers slaughtered, the queens captured, and Elizabeth smothered in prison. After these events the Lackfis and the younger Miklos Garai, seeking to forget past enmities, gathered around Sigismund, offering him a hard bargain. He was to make a bond with the barons: they were ready to recognize him as joint ruler with Mary, provided he promised to rule in con¬ junction with them, a promise which could be enforced by arms. This was the price he had to pay for the release of his wife, and subsequently he was crowned king in 1387.

The Turks were advancing on Hungary and a few raiders had al¬ ready crossed the frontiers by that time. King Sigismund was fully conscious that his forces were inadequate, and called for international support to help defend Hungary against the Turks. Crusades were a thing of the past, and the appeal of 1396 could only mobilize a couple of thousand adventurous Western European knights, who joined the Hungarian forces and penetrated into parts of the Balkans al¬ ready under Turkish rule. The battle of Nicopolis, a resounding vic¬ tory for the Turks, helped to renew old differences. Istvan Lackfi and his relatives considered the time ripe for seizing power, and or¬ ganized support for Ladislas of Naples, but fell victim to the snares set by Garai and his Styrian friend, Hermann Cilli, in 1397. Another baronial faction declared Ladislas of Naples king in 1403, and he was recognized by the Pope. This faction was soon crushed by Sigis¬ mund, and though he granted a universal pardon, subsequently his officials were all chosen from the Garai faction. Revenge for the papal intervention was exacted by the statute of 1404, according to which no papal edicts could be made public without royal consent (placetum regium) 4 , in practice this meant that the Pope was deprived of his right to appoint the higher clergy in Hungary. In 1417, the Pope formally recognized the Hungarian sovereign’s right to designate archbishops and bishops.

Sigismund’s rule was no longer threatened by dissenting factions and pretenders, but he greatly depended oil the Garai faction’s sup¬ port. The Order of the Dragon, founded in 1408 under the auspices of the king, comprised the members of the Garai faction and other barons who joined them. According to its rules, the king was merely the first among the knights, primus inter pares. During the thirty- odd years of Garai’s uninterrupted palatineship, the 24 barons who were members of the Dragon Order, shared the high political and military offices with the highest going to the Garai-Cilli families. A new aristocracy was recruited from the rising nobility and care was taken to see they fitted closely into the existing political structure.

The strengthening of the baronial administration was not unwel¬ come to Sigismund, as it gave him a free hand for the realization of his dreams in foreign affairs. Turkish expansion had been stopped for well over a decade by Tamerlane’s victory at Ankara and internal troubles within the Turkish Empire. The Hungarian ruling class enjoyed apparent security, and Sigismund turned all his energies to trying to solve the problems of the Holy Roman Empire and the schism in the Church. In 1410, he was elected emperor, and he did his best to rid himself of Hungarian affairs. The first result was the loss of Dalmatia. Venice bought Dalmatia from Ladislas of Naples and waged war in its cause in 1411. Sigismund pledged 13 towns in the district of Szepes to the king of Poland to pay for their defence, but (14th Century)

he cared more about being crowned emperor, so he made terms for an armistice and ceded to Venice what had been conquered. For six years he was away from Hungary, but after he had achieved the great aim of his life, mending the schism in the Church, he found himself confronted with the Hussite uprising of 1419. He thought his Bohe¬ mian throne more important than Dalmatia, and in 1420 Dalmatia was formally ceded to Venice.

More than three hundred years of involvement in Adriatic affairs

had ended for Hungary. Both political and economic affairs had The serf and the free peasant of early feudalism developed into the

tended to make Hungary give up its relatively independent position unified class of tenants and the town bourgeoisie in the fourteenth

between the Adriatic and Central Europe and become instead a part- century. These social developments were accompanied by the swift

ner in the Central European political system which was developing. growth of the forces of production and a considerable rise in the

economic and cultural level.

Mature Feudal Society (14th Century)

Beginnings of Agricultural Commodity Production

The loosening of peasant obligations in the early fourteenth century led to a considerable agricultural development. It was about this time that the three-field system of cultivation began to spread. Each of the tenants was allotted a plot of land in the open fields and could keep his animals on the common pasture. His house with garden, farmyard and plots were together called a ‘tenure* (sessio). The peasant had a hereditary right to his tenure provided he fulfilled his obligations. If he moved on, or if he died without an heir, the tenure returned to the landlord. The tenure was the basis of the peasant’s obligations to his landlord; he usually paid dues in money (census) and in kind (corn or wine), sent enforced gifts on holidays (munera) and offered labour services (at that time mostly one day a week.)

This method of cultivation aimed at self-sufficiency, but with com¬ modity production becoming more widespread, freer methods were introduced. Viticulture, which needs a lot of labour, was the first to emerge from the tenure system; once his dues in wine had been delivered to the landlord, the peasant was able to dispose freely of his vineyard by selling it or pawning it. He could also obtain extra plots for cultivation, in addition to his hereditary holding. With serfs escaping, and obtaining their freedom in ever greater numbers, the landlords were left with many untenanted holdings. These could be easily acquired by peasants with draught animals, some of whom even used hired labour. In return for extra holdings of land or vine- yards, the landlords demanded the second tithe, the first being due to the Church. The second tithe was called the ‘ninth’ (none).

The greater productivity of peasant labour made the landlords yearn to exploit the peasants more fully by obliging them to pay the ninth on their hereditary tenures as well. This would have deprived the peasant of the greatest achievement in his struggles: payment of fixed rents and dues independent of the volume of production. The payment of the ninth could only be enforced if the peasantry was deprived of its right to move where better labour conditions prevail¬ ed. Such a law was attempted after the failure of the Naples campaign and the great plague of 1349 which followed.

Nobility versus Peasants

The higher clergy and the aristocracy increased their wealth and power as the primary beneficiaries of the Naples adventure. Their noble retainers also shared in the spoils, but the nobility at home was left to bear the brunt of the expensive warfare. King Louis had managed to spend his father’s enormous wealth, and was obliged to have re¬ course to heavier taxation. The biggest burden was placed on the peas¬ antry, but affected also the yield of the feudal landlords’ estates be¬ cause the overburdened tenants were unable to render adequate service. The barons were compensated by more and more grants of land, but the nobility of small and medium means could only try to manage by raising the level of peasant services, but this was rendered more or less impossible because of the free movement of the peasants. The ravages of the plague—although much less serious than in West¬ ern Europe—also caused great movement among the peasants towards landlords offering better conditions. This meant, in effect, that the barons were the only landlords who could offer the newcomers more advantageous conditions, as only they remained unaffected by tem¬ porary fluctuations in their incomes. Moreover, the barons were pre¬ pared shamelessly to abduct peasants by force from the unarmed nobility. The nobility protested en masse and demanded equal chances in the exploitation of the peasantry, eventually forcing the king to call the long-silent diet.

The diet of 1351 extorted a number of favourable concessions from the king. With reference to their ancient rights, codified in Andrew II’s ‘Golden Bull’, the nobility demanded equal privileges (una eademque libertas) with the barons; first, that with the death of the male heir their estates should not become crown properties, but pass to their next of kin by right of descent; and, secondly, that they should be authorized to sit in judgement over their tenants, in all except criminal cases and that, in criminal cases, the county court including their representatives should pass judgement. The nobility also tacitly included among their privileges the barons’ right to be exempted from taxation. Thus, the rights of the nobility were codified, entitling them to become the future legislators of the country.

Yet the main difference between the baronage and the nobility had not been obliterated, because the barons were still able to offer more favourable terms to the peasantry. Forceful abduction was explicitly forbidden, but this did not prevent the peasant from moving himself to the landlord offering better conditions. At that time, free movement was not yet explicitly forbidden. The ruling class unani¬ mously demanded that permission to move should be withheld if the peasant had not paid his dues. This was agreed and codified by King Charles. It was not in the interest of the barons to check completely the movement of the peasant. All the nobility could achieve was that the king and the barons were obliged to collect the ninth on their estates, too, so that no peasant could be won over to another lord by remitting this burden.

It was primarily the Sekels (szekely) on the eastern border of Transylvania who succeeded in preventing the intrusion of feudal relations. The Sekels were a Hungarianized Bulgarian-Turkish tribe who had joined the Hungarians before the Conquest. Up to the end of the fifteenth century they kept up their military organization, grant¬ ed to them at the time of Geza and Stephen I, as the duty of freemen. The Sekels remained free peasants cultivating communal lands in exchange for military service. Throughout the fourteenth century their leaders were regarded as equal in rank with the nobility, but they could not subject the rank and file Sekels, and so employed prisoners of war or hired labour on their lands, and could obtain new posses¬ sions only outside the area occupied by the Sekels. The old order began to be broken up only in the fifteenth century, when the poor Sekel, not capable of rendering military service, had to work for the rich. But the majority of the Sekels remained free peasants obliged to render military service.

A similar, but quicker development may be observed among the Cumans who settled in an area surrounded by feudal estates, and the Alans (Hungarian jasz), a tribe of Caucasian origin, who had come with them. After their conversion to Christianity they gradually mingled with the Hungarians, becoming the tenants of either the king, their own chieftains, or Hungarian landlords.

The nomadic Rumanian and Ruthenian shepherds, who lived in the northern and eastern mountainous parts, had no strong organiza¬ tion like those of the Cuman and Alan tribes; thus their resistance to the internal and external forces of feudalism was weaker. The Ruma¬ nians had originally served as border guards and, in the thirteenth century, were organized into autonomous districts. At the head of their settlements stood the kenez, and at the head of the districts stood the voivodes. The majority of the voivodes and the kenez obtained noble status in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and subjected the free shepherds. The Rumanian districts were transformed into counties under the local nobility. The leaders of the Ruthenian shepherds themselves became tenants of Hungarian barons and no proper feudal ruling class could develop amongst them.

The German settlers in Transylvania and the Szepesseg (Zips, at the foot of the Northern Carpathians), called Saxons, developed the highest forms of local autonomy. Many of their village settlements grew into towns during the thirteenth century. These German towns, with the surrounding German villages, did not form part of a county administration, but came directly under royal jurisdiction. Political leadership was in the hands of town patricians, who could levy taxes but could not turn the free German peasants into their tenants.

The Growth of Boroughs

The statutes of 1351 exempted only fortified towns from the payment of the ninth. The provision seemed to be favourable to the towns but was actually weighted against them, because there were few towns fortified by walls, as most had not been rich enough to provide them.

Throughout the early fourteenth century, the king continued to issue charters to towns. The landlords, on the other hand, tried to counteract the flood of population moving into them by granting the same privileges to their own villages, provided they remained under their supremacy. More and more townships developed which were subject to landlords. Some reached a high standard of develop¬ ment (e.g. Debrecen in the fourteenth century, with its prosperous trade and commerce), but they were far behind the royal towns as far as legal and economic independence was concerned. Their own justices could not pass sentences except in minor cases; in criminal cases the landlord and his officials sat in judgement. These towns had no right of appeal to the king, the landlord being their highest judge. In addition to the legal system, the citizens were at a disadvan¬ tage because they did not pay them taxes in one sum, but were liable for taxation individually to both landlord and state.

Limited though the autonomy of these towns was, it granted their inhabitants greater freedom than in the villages, where the peasants were constantly harassed by the officers of the landlord. In addition, the landlords also granted market rights to their towns, which always acted as an incentive to agricultural production and trade. These towns generally developed within the baronial estates, because only the barons were able to turn to their own advantage the movement of the population. They could also obtain trading privileges from the king, and extend their protection to subjects trading outside the boundaries of their estates. The landlords with small and medium estates wanted to prevent the king and great landlords from exempting their unfortified towns from the ninth tax, which would encourage even greater movement among the peasantry. The ninth tax became a stumbling block to town development, and created a distinction between two types of town in Hungary: one with full autonomy (royal town), the other subjected to a landlord. In the eyes of contem¬ poraries, the town wall became the symbol of its status, which was reflected in the title given to the two types. The fortified town became known as a city (civitas), and the unfortified one was called a borough (oppidum).

The statutes of 1351 were a victory for the nobility, but in point of fact they still remained far behind the baronage. The nobleman could not oppose the baron, as he himself was usually the baron’s vassal. The nobility did not succeed either in fully exploiting the peasantry. Constant improvements in the technique of agriculture and increases in output meant that despite the higher level of taxation, the well-to-do peasant was left with a considerable surplus to sell. Increased taxes forced even the poorest peasant to consume as little as possible and take his goods to market. The right of free movement, in spite of illegal attempts to break it, made it possible for him to move into the towns. Many availed themselves of this opportunity, thus leaving more and more uncultivated strips in the village fields. The nobility’s antagonistic attitude towards the towns may have weakened, but could not prevent this development which, about the middle of the fourteenth century, intensified even in the more backward, cattle¬ raising Great Plain.

Boroughs developed in the Plain under specific circumstances. Archaeological research, examining old bones, discovered that the small cattle with fine bones and small horns indigenous to Central Europe had been reared to be 15 per cent bigger by the middle of the fourteenth century; they became the ancestor of the large, beautiful animal with enormous horns, the pride of Hungarian agriculture, and the best export commodity alongside wine for centuries to come. Although written records speak of cattle export at the end of the eleventh century, its development was connected with the rise of the flourishing South German towns in the fourteenth century, which were ready to buy any number of cattle from Hungary. Owing to geographical factors, and the relative backwardness of agriculture in the Great Plain, the demand for cattle brought new economic oppor¬ tunities which influenced the development of boroughs. During the fourteenth century the new boroughs in the Great Plain developed out of rich villages with enormous grazing lands (e.g. Debrecen, Kecske¬ met, Cegled, Nagykoros, Hodmezovasdrhely, etc.). Their peasant leaders took up the proud rank of civis or burgher and grew rich from their export of cattle.

Trade and Industry in the Royal Towns

During the second half of the fourteenth century, agricultural com¬ modity production gave impetus to the development of handicrafts. After 1370, the first guilds were formed, and by the beginning of the fifteenth century they were found in practically all of the larger towns and boroughs. The agricultural production of a great many towns had decreased, and the relative share of handicrafts had increased. In about two dozen towns, numbering over 3,000-5,000 inhabitants, 25-30 per cent were artisans, and from two-thirds to three-quarters of them were full-time craftsmen engaged in 50 to 60 trades. In the fifteenth century, handicrafts became increasingly differentiated from agriculture. A new marketing region emerged around these towns, with a radius of 50-60 kilometres. On the weekly market-days com¬ modities produced by the towns and foodstuffs produced by the villagers were exchanged. The rapid development of handicrafts threatened even the strict organization of the guilds; there were local attempts by rich merchants at organizing industrial production. The patricians of Bartfa, benefiting from the town’s privileges in linen bleaching and the output of handicrafts by urban and rural domestic workers, developed a large-scale linen industry, which, by the middle of the fifteenth century, had created its own market, producing more than the imports from abroad. By the end of the fourteenth century, merchant capital was penetrating even the copper mines of the country.

With the development of wholesale markets in certain commodities, the internal struggles of the bourgeoisie intensified. The leadership of the towns by wealthy landowners was more and more questioned by the rich merchants, one-time craftsmen themselves, who engaged in the export of agricultural goods and the import of textiles. In Buda, Pozsony, Sopron and Kolozsvar their agitations won them representa¬ tion on the councils. The artisans, who had backed these agitations, tried to seize power themselves, but the new patricians held them in check, at times invoking the help of the feudal ruling class; so the artisa ns had to be satisfied with forming ‘outer’ councils, as an appar ent check to the ‘inner’ councils of the patricians.

King Sigismund relied on the rising merchants in his policy toward the towns and supported them, approving their accession to power within the towns. In 1405, an assembly of the royal towns was called together, along with the representatives of boroughs and privileged villages, making altogether 250 settlements. As a result of the discus¬ sions, a royal decree granted freedom to towns and other settlements able to fortify themselves by walls; autonomous jurisdiction was introduced, taxes were united and town merchants exempted from payment of tolls, foreign merchants were excluded from wholesale markets. The Buda system of measures was to be adopted throughout, and the free movement of peasants into towns was confirmed. The weaving of cotton cloth was concentrated by royal decree in Kassa, and linen bleaching in Kassa and B&rtfa. These regulations, although inspired by the example of the more developed Italian and South German towns, answered the needs of local development.

Sigismund was the first, and also the last Hungarian king to re¬ cognize fully the importance of the towns, and consciously try to further their industrial growth. Contrary to the custom of the Anjou kings living in the fortified castles ofVisegr&d and Diosgyor, he moved his seat to the largest Hungarian city, Buda, making it into the capital of the country. But he expected for too much from the measures he took, and when he saw that his revenues from the towns were not increasing sufficiently he soon withdrew his support. After 1410, boroughs were granted and pledged to the barons in great numbers. Not more than 30-35 towns out of those originally receiving the priv¬ ileges of a free royal city were able to maintain their status, the rest had to accept the restricted autonomy of boroughs subjected to land¬ lords. Subsequently, only a few boroughs were granted the status of a royal town, such as Pest and Szeged, two outstanding trading centres in the Great Plain. In these circumstances the bourgeoisie had to wait a long time before it could become a distinct class. Sigismund himself gave up the idea of basing his central power on the towns, and by 1428 he had only bitter recollections of his experiment. After one abortive attempt to collect taxation he is reputed to have said: ‘I wish there were no towns at all in my empire!’

The Peasantry and the Hussite Movement

The development of craft industry and of a money economy induced the landlords to increase the burdens of the peasantry, especially their monetary obligations. The unbalanced economic policy of Sigismund, and his constant need of money resulted in the deterioration of the currency, which again hit the peasantry hardest. In answer to the new forms of exploitation, many peasants gave up their tenure, hired out their services to other land-owning peasants, or else moved into the towns. The villages abounded in untenanted land and the landlords, contrary to the royal decree, tried to force the peasants to stay.

The southern provinces, devastated during the dynastic struggles, suffered again owing to the renewal of the Turkish wars in 1416. The Turkish raiders plundered Transylvania and the southern areas year after year. The oppression of the landlords and the unceasing Turkish raids paved the way for the Hussite movement. Village and town clergy who had studied at the University of Prague began to preach the revolutionary doctrine. In 1432, peasant revolts started in the areas adjacent to Bohemia. The subsequent rising in Nagyszombat and the neighbouring countryside was organized by a Bohemian Hussite. Revolts soon broke out in the south and also in Transylvania.

At the request of the frightened ruling class, the Pope sent the Fran¬ ciscan friar James of the Marches as inquisitor to Hungary, to stem the Hussite heresy. The inquisition dealt with Hussites and members of the Greek Orthodox Church alike, as the inquisitor wanted to bring the Serbs and Transylvanian Rumanians under the Church of Rome. With the help of the feudal lords, the inquisitor succeeded in extirpating the southern Hussite movement. The Hussites, with their priests, moved into Moldavia. The first translation of the Bible into Hungarian was made there by them. In Transylvania, on the other hand, oppression and the inquisition gave rise to a large-scale peasant uprising.

From both an economic and social point of view, Transylvania was the least developed province of Hungary. Consequently, the raising of feudal obligations was doubly grievous to the peasantry there. The clergy expected the tithe to be paid in money, and in a good currency too, at a time of primitive economic conditions and deteriorating currencies. The Orthodox Rumanian peasantry were embittered because they were also expected to pay the tithe, even though strictly it was due only from Roman Catholics. It was the last straw when the Bishop of Transylvania stipulated that arrears of tithes were to be paid in a currency worth more than the previous one. Those who refused were excommunicated. In 1437, the Hungarian and Rumanian peasants of Transylvania rose in several places in protest. Antal Budai Nagy, an impecunious Hungarian nobleman, assumed lead¬ ership. An unprepared feudal army sent against them was routed, and the treaty of Kolozsmonostor laid down that there should be free movement for the peasants, changes in the system of tithes, an end to the ninth and a reduction in money obligations. The peasants were also given the right to meet yearly to check whether the landlords had kept to their promises.

The r ulin g class, on the other hand, was unwilling to see its privileges curtailed. The Transylvanian nobility, the Sekel military leaders and the German or ‘Saxon’ patricians made an agreement called the ‘Union of the Three Nations’, a treaty of the privileged classes against the peasantry. The bishop tried to separate the petty nobility from the peasantry by recognizing their exemption from tithes. In fact, many of the lesser nobles betrayed the peasants. So, too, did the citizens of the towns, who at first had sympathized with the uprising. The counter¬ attack of the nobility, however, was not wholly successful. The previous concessions to the peasantry were renewed, although with less favour¬ able conditions, and the right to arbitrate was left to the king. Sigis¬ mund had died in the meantime, and the nobility, seeing that owing to the long period of delay and uncertainty, the peasant army was beginning to disintegrate, launched a new attack. Antal Budai Nagy died in the battle of Kolozsvar, the city which sided with the uprising throughout. The other [leaders were executed and the movement ruthlessly crushed.

Gothic Art in Hungary

Economic development, increasing agricultural commodity produc¬ tion, mining and an expanding foreign trade all contributed during the fourteenth century to promote a flourishing cultural life under the influence of Late Gothic art. Cultural life in that period was still under ecclesiastical influence, mainly under that of the mendicant friars. The greatest historical work of the period, the Illuminated Chronicle, a summary and continuation of earlier historical writings, was inspired by scholastic learning, especially by that of St. Thomas Aquinas. The thirteenth-century chroniclers had mainly been interested in social conflicts, while the historians of the fourteenth century sang the praises of the alliance between king and feudal society, of established order inside, and foreign conquest outside the realm. In these works the king is presented as an absolute ruler, and also the first among the knights, enjoying the devotion and respect of his loyal barons. The first original Hungarian courdy epics known to us (which are extant only in sixteenth-century variants) recount the adventures of the knights who toured Europe as retainers of Louis I and Sigismund. A late offspring of the French chanson de geste is the story of Miklos Toldi, a warrior of great physical strength who showed his bravery in the Neapolitan campaigns, while the history of Lorinc Tar, who in 1411 visited the cave in Ireland known as the Purgatory of St. Patrick, attests to the growing interest shown by Hungarian noblemen in travels abroad.

Over and above the chronicles and songs of chivalry that were often not set down in writing but passed on orally, sermons and the legends of Hungarian saints, there were no original works of note in Hun¬ garian in the literature of the fourteenth century. The early promise of vernacular poetry developed no further. The steady hold of the Latin tongue can be explained by the fact that no lay intellectual stratum had developed as in the Western European countries. The writing necessary to administration also contributed to the cultural monopoly of the Church. The clerks of the royal chancery were recruited from the clergy, and authoritative documents were issued not by a public notary but by authorized ecclesiastic institutions, such as chapters and convents (loci credibiles).

Ecclesiastical officials were educated abroad, no longer only in Paris and Italy, but, since the middle of the century, also in the newly established Central European universities of Vienna, Prague and Cracow. Louis I established a university at Pecs in 1367, but it soon ceased to exist. The stadium generale started at Veszprem in the thir¬ teenth century, and the university of 6buda founded later by Sigis¬ mund, suffered the same fate.

Secular tendencies are more obvious in the arts. The king and the Church were responsible for the greatest number of buildings, and, after them, the feudal lords. The narrow, grim residential tower or keep was superseded by a more sumptuous building. The lord’s castle and the auxiliary buildings were defended by a surrounding wall, with small turrets. Where space permitted, the main building was rectan- gular, with a turret on each corner, and the dwelling quarters alongside the walls enclosed a large yard, which served for tournaments, very popular at the time. The castle of Didsgyor, Louis I’s favourite resort, was built on this plan, and imitated by Istvan Lackfi, the most powerful aristocrat of the fourteenth century, when he built the castle of Tata.

The burghers, too, played their part in ecclesiastical building, as a great number of Gothic parish churches were erected through their efforts. At the same time, in the larger towns there were already stone houses with storeys, built in Gothic style, with small recesses in the vaulted doorways which were used for wine-selling. Present research suggests that the style of the Hungarian peasant house as it survives today took shape in this period. The peasant cottage of the twelfth century consisted of a single room, with an open fire-place dug into the earth. It was low and sooty, and remained the dwelling of the poor after the fourteenth century, while in the new houses of the well-to-do peasants the open fire used for cooking was in a separate room and the tile stove of the ‘clean room’ was fed from the kitchen to keep the former smokeless. The country nobility occupied similar houses, built occasionally of stone instead of earth and sometimes having many rooms.

As the style of dwelling improved, furnishings and clothing became more luxurious. The upper ruling class had silk hangings round the walls and the same covering on their carved wood furniture, which replaced the old stone furniture. They had settees, chairs, beds and carpets on the floor. The clothing of the Western European knight was not entirely adopted; the country nobility continued to wear the long tunic. It was obvious that there was plenty of gold and silver in the country from the trimming on clothes; silver buttons and buckles have been recovered, even from peasant graves.

The flourishing craft of silversmiths and coppersmiths produced conditions which enabled sculpture, independent of decoration on buildings, to be developed early in Hungary. None of the life-size statues of kings by Mdrton and Gy orgy Kolozsv&ri in Nagyvarad have come down to us, but from their other surviving cast bronze works, the herma of St. Ladislas in GyoT and the statue of St. George now in Prague, we can form an estimate of the realistic art of these two gifted pioneers of the early Renaissance. Hungarian art must have had close connections with the Italian Trecento, as evidenced both in the sumptuous buildings of the Hungarian ruling class, and the paintings of the humblest parish churches, with their passionate expression of human emotions. Although none of the paintings with secular subjects that embellished the royal and feudal palaces have come down to us, their style is preserved in the miniatures of Miklos Meggyesi, the heraldic painter of Louis I, who illustrated the Illuminat¬ ed Chronicle. The artistic trends of this period created conditions which enabled Hungary to become later one of the first centres of Renaissance art in Europe north of the Alps.

The Alliance of the Monarchy with the Nobility (1437–1458)

The anti-feudal movements had convinced the barons that political rights would have to be extended to the nobility and the upper stratum of the burghers. In 1435, the barons no longer prevented the calling of a diet, nor hindered the codification of the nobles’ county jurisdic¬ tion. The development of a monarchy relying on the nobility was hastened not only by the common interests of the feudal class, but also by its internal contradictions.

Tensions between Barons and Nobility

During the fifty years of Sigismund’s rule there were tremendous changes in the pattern of land holding. On the death of Louis I, out of the roughly 22,000 towns and villages in the country, 15 per cent were owned by the king, 12 per cent by the Church, 53 per cent by the nobility, while the 60 most distinguished baronial families owned only 20 per cent. By the end of Sigismund’s reign, only the proportion held by the Church remained the same, the other ratios changed considerably: the royal holding was down to 5 per cent, that of the nobility down to 43 per cent, while the 60 baronial families had increased their holding to 40 per cent, half of which was in the hands of the Garai-Cilli families. In concrete figures 2,250 royal and 2,000 noble parishes passed into the hands of the barons. Sigismund had ceded not only most of the royal estates to the barons, but also the actual administration of the country. Acting also as voivodes, bdns and ispdns, they were permitted to collect royal taxes in their areas, and use the money for hiring mercenaries. Many new barons were created during the reign of Sigismund from among the nobility (such as Ujlaki, Thalloczi, Rozgonyi, Per6nyi, Paloczi, Hedervari, Csaki and Hunyadi). They were granted considerable possessions as a reward for their military services rendered with armies equipped from public moneys. The military and political independence of the barons was greatest in the southern part of the country, where the Turks were a threat; there power was concentrated, during the first thirty years of the fifteenth century, in the hands of a few powerful barons, notably the Garai and Cilli and the emerging Ujlaki and Cs&ki families.

The most powerful barons maintained a considerable administrative machinery, with military, economic and legal advisers, and a chancery with a large number of notaries, employed to draft documents. The latter were recruited from the educated elements of the nobility, who, like Sigismund’s retinue, accompanied their lords on their journeys as privy councillors. Sigismund’s new proposals in favour of the towns and counties and against the barons originated from his clerks who came in part from the nobility and partly from burgher families.

The raising of the cultural level of the nobility created a new educated class. The greater productivity of peasant labour, concomitant with an increasing exploitation of it, provided the material means for the middle and well-to-do nobility to buy new commodities, sometimes of foreign origin, and enabled them to send their sons to good schools at home and abroad. From the middle of the fourteenth century, three Central European universities, Vienna, Prague and Cracow, provided educational opportunities not too far from Hungary. In the early fifteenth century, many Hungarians were designated as litteratus, while others gained academic titles, i.e. baccalaureus and magister. A large number of Hungarian names appear in the university registers. The Latin schools in Hungary also provided the legal knowledge needed in municipal, county and royal offices. The better-educated nobility were granted posts in the enlarged county administration after Sigis¬ mund’s reforms, and more opportunities arose for secular notaries to find employment in the authorized ecclesiastic institutions (loci credi- biles), thus breaking the Church’s previous monopoly of education.

Though striving to obtain these new posts, the nobles directed their main energies toward the acquisition of more land. In this they were greatly hampered by the baronial expansion, which excluded them from the possibility of obtaining royal grants of land, and even threatened them with the loss of their existing holdings. The fate of the poorer members of the nobility, who lost their lands and were compelled to take the plots of the peasants and work them with the sweat of their brows, was a grave warning. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, there were thousands of such impoverished nobles; their situation was aggravated by the attitude of both Church and State, which regarded them as peasants and expected taxes from them. Some moved into the towns, working as artisans or making use of their meagre knowledge of Latin to draft occasional documents, others became itinerant clerks, constantly on the move, or else joined bands of robbers, becoming outlaws themselves.

The educated elements in the royal administration of Sigismund gave voice both to the dissatisfaction and to the ambitions of the nobility in the royal decree of 1435. Among other things it also con¬ tains a new definition of the state: ‘the whole body of the Kingdom of Hungary is represented by the high clergy, the barons and the nobility’. The protagonist of this new concept of the state was Janos Vitez, a young clerk in Sigismund’s privy chancery and the pioneer of humanis¬ tic learning in Hungary. It was mainly due to his judgement and diplo¬ matic skill that the political aspirations of the nobility were triumphant in the unruly years following the death of Sigismund. He was an advocate of the rights of the nobility but joined them in the interest of royal power, as he was convinced that the Turkish menace could only be checked by a strong centralized monarchy in union with the nobility against baronial abuse.

The Monarchy and the Estates

In 1437, Sigismund’s son-in-law, Albert of Habsburg, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, was recognized as King of Hungary without baronial opposition. But the barons exacted a severe price for withholding opposition, obtaining the right to sanction land grants, the appointment of new office-holders and the use of royal revenues, while leaving the defence of the country wholly to the king. Sigis¬ mund’s advisers, both burghers and noblemen who were retained in Albert’s service, admonished him to shake off baronial tutelage with the help of the nobility. This was the background of the diet of 1439, where the nobility, encouraged by the king’s advisers, defeated the barons and annulled the conditions under which Albert was made king. The use of the royal revenues and the appointment of office¬ holders passed back into the control of the king, with the exception of the palatine, whose appointment required the consent of both barons and nobility.

Albert was not able to avail himself of the new rights granted by the diet, as in the same year he fell victim to the same plague which foiled his campaign against the Turks. After his death, the Garai-Cilli faction supported the claims of Albert’s widow Elizabeth, and his posthumous son, Ladislas. In opposition, the new aristocracy which had emerged under Sigismund, demanded an end to the German-Bohemian connec¬ tion. which they considered a burden and no help in the wars against the Turks, and the dismissal of the Garai-Cilli faction. They invited WladislawIII, King of Poland, to the throne. In due course, war broke out between the two sides. The supporters of Wladislaw (1440-1444) won the day, but the new king remained unrecognized by the supporters of Ladislas Habsburg, who placed one part of the country under the protection of the infant Ladislas’s guardian, Frederick III, the Holy Roman Emperor, while Slavonia and Croatia were ruled de facto by Ulrick Cilli, and the northern counties by Jiskra, the Bohemian mercenary of Queen Elizabeth.

Wladislaw’s position was strengthened by the military achievements of J&nos Hunyadi. Hunyadi came from a Transylvanian Rumanian noble family, but was thought by his contemporaries to be the natural son of Sigismund. He had lived in Sigismund’s court since he was a young boy, accompanying the king on his journeys, and had spent some time in Italy as a condottiere. Well trained in mercenary warfare, he was successful against the Turks and King Albert placed him at the head of the Banate of Szoreny. Wladislaw regarded him as the real leader against the Turks and appointed him voivode of Transylvania and ispan of Temes. With the exception of Slavonia and Croatia, which was in the hands of the Cillis, the whole of the south of the country was entrusted to Hunyadi and his friend, Miklos Ujlaki, ban of Macsd.

With the consolidation of the leading role of the nobility, the political conditions for a successful resistance to the Turks had been created. J&nos Vitez, as protonotary and the real head of the royal chancery, won over King Wladislaw to the idea of an alliance with the nobility. At the diet of 1440, the king reaffirmed the political rights of the nobil¬ ity, as expressed in the more than two-hundred-year-old Golden Bull, and the legal decrees of Andrew III, Louis I and Sigismund, thus laying down the constitutional foundations of a state based on the alliance between king and nobility. From then on, the diet sat each year, or sometimes twice a year, taking over from the royal council the making of decisions on political questions. Henceforth, in royal decrees the consent of the nobility, as well as that of the high clergy and barons, is always mentioned: no law could be codified without it. The royal towns were also represented in the diet; their weight, how¬ ever, was not great, compared with that of the two feudal estates.

The order of the nobility, however, was still not an equal partner with the high clergy and baronage. Their position as vassals of the barons kept a considerable part of the nobility under baronial influ¬ ence. Neither the power nor the class-consciousness of the nobility was strong enoughTor them to take independent political action, and it was only in unison with the king that they could oppose the barons, j&nos Vitdz and his circle cultivated this alliance, but the king, deprived of resources and threatened by a rival claimant to his throne, was not strong enough to give the nobles the support needed to bring them under his influence. Compromise became inevitable; the king was forced to seek an alliance with the baronial faction which had obtained the support of the majority of the nobility. It was incontestable that in such a partnership the leading role would be played by the barons, or rather the most powerful among them.

Hunyadi's Wars against the Turks

It was fortunate for Hungary that Jdnos Hunyadi was its most power¬ ful baron. Wladislaw rewarded his commander-in-chief with unpre¬ cedented gifts, and within a short time, his wealth surpassed that of any other baron. His authority and popularity attracted the support not only of the anti-Habsburg barons, but even of the nobility. His friendship with Janos Vit6z secured him close ties with the court. After concluding an armistice with the Habsburg party based on a territorial status quo, Wladislaw could turn his attention to the Turkish war.

Hunyadi obtained neither money nor manpower from the king. He organized and equipped an army from the revenue of his own estates and from the taxes collected in the districts under his juris¬ diction. The core of his army was made up of Bohemian Hussite mercenaries. In addition, Hunyadi could rely on his own adherents, his relatives and his vassals of noble rank. As a last resort he also enlisted peasant elements in great number against the Turks. His first victory was achieved with their help against the Turkish army, which had invaded Transylvania in 1442.

Later in the same year, Sultan Murad II sent an army of hundred thousand men against Transylvania to reverse this defeat. Hunyadi crossed the Carpathians with an army of 15,000 Sekels and mercenaries and launched an unexpected attack. For the first time he employed the Hussite tactics of setting up barricades of wagons on the flanks of his army. The prolonged heavy fighting was finally decided when an attack was started on the Turkish flank by the wagons with mounted guns.

For the first time a sizable Turkish army had suffered a crushing defeat in Europe. The news of Hunyadi’s victory travelled far and the hope of final delivery for those suffering under the Turkish yoke in the Balkans was revived. Hunyadi was no longer satisfied with suc¬ cessful defence, and wanted to strike the enemy in his own home, to get to the roots of the Turkish menace. He persuaded the king himself to head the campaign. After repeated victories in the autumn of 1443, he occupied Nish, then Sofia and proceeded towards Adrianople. In the mountains he found himself face to face with the Turkish army, with the passes blocked by the enemy. The difficult terrain and a severe winter finally forced the Hungarian army to retreat. The peoples of the Balkans, hoping to be freed, awaited Hunyadi’s return, ready to join in the fighting. But the war was halted and Wladislaw signed a treaty with the sultan’s emissaries at Szeged. At the instigation of the papal legate, however, Wladislaw broke his word and launched a new attack, but foreign support failed to materialize and he was crushed by the Turks at Varna in 1444. The king fell in battle and Hunyadi himself had the greatest difficulty in escaping.

The diet of 1445 recognized the succession of Ladislas of Habsburg on condition that Frederick III release him and the crown of Hungary. Frederick, however, did not comply. The diet of the following year, due to the well-organized campaign of Janos Vitez, then Bishop of Varad, acclaimed Hunyadi as regent of Hungary. The success of the Hunyadi party and Hunyadi’s unquestioned authority were based on the support of the nobility. Hunyadi did not prove to be ungrateful. New decrees were passed by the diet to curb the power of the baronial county administration in favour of the nobility, and in the royal court new jurors from the nobility were elected. This, however, did not lead to the strengthening of the central power since Hunyadi did not possess all the royal prerogatives and even the nobility within the diet were reluctant to grant them to him. During the sessions of the diet Hunyadi was expected to divest himself of his power, and attend with the same status as any member of the baronage. He was not granted power to extort obedience from Cilli and Jiskra.

Tn those circumstances, it was impossible to concentrate sufficient strength against the Turks. Nevertheless, Hunyadi made another at¬ tempt to attack, but was defeated on the field of Kossovo in Serbia, owing to the treachery of George Brankovich, a Serbian despot who was Cilli’s father-in-law, and the delay of the Albanian leader, Skan- derbeg, in 1448. He was captured while trying to escape by Branko¬ vich, and was released only after making an agreement with him and Cilli. In 1450, the Palatine Laszlo Garai and Miklos Ujlaki joined the alliance. It was finally sealed with the betrothal of Hunyadi’s two sons, Ladislas and Matthias, to the daughters of Garai and Cilli re¬ spectively. The only advantage gained by this alliance was a successful appeal to Frederick 111, supported in 1453 by a common movement of the Austrian and Bohemian nobility, for the release of the young king, Ladislas of Habsburg.

Clash between the King and the Hunyadi Party

King Ladislas V (1440-1457) appointed Hunyadi his commander-in¬ chief and royal treasurer, and made him the beneficiary of numerous distinctions and grants. The king, however, was completely under the influence of Cilli, his relative. Jealous of Hunyadi, Cilli entered into a new alliance with the Palatine Garai and with Ujlaki, their obvious aim being the overthrow of Hunyadi. Janos Vit6z, the king’s chief chancellor, was faced with a dilemma. As a staunch opponent of ba¬ ronial power and an advocate of centralization, his position and prin¬ ciples obliged him to continue as the supporter of royal power and turn against his old friend, Hunyadi. In 1454, he drafted a scheme, authorized by the king, according to which the government of the country was transferred from the hands of the barons into the hands of a council made up of paid officials. Royal revenues were to be handled by the same body. Hunyadi protested, the plan for centrali¬ zation failed, and Hunyadi was confirmed in his old offices mainly because of the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and Sultan Mohammed II’s preparations to attack Flungary.

In 1456, a Turkish army of a hundred thousand men started to be¬ siege Nandorfehervar, the present Belgrade. The king fled abroad and the barons held back. Hunyadi with his small army went to face the formidable enemy outnumbering his troops ten to one. The Pope an¬ nounced a crusade and sent Giovanni Capistrano, a Franciscan friar, to Hungary. His moving sermons, translated by Hungarian Francis¬ cans, mobilized the people of the southern provinces. Soon some 20,000 crusaders joined Hunyadi’s army. The Turks, after first break¬ ing holes in the city walls, launched their decisive attack on 21 July. But the attack was repulsed. The following day the crusaders, eager to fight, broke out and attacked the enemy. The bloody battle con¬ tinued into the night, until at last the exhausted Turkish army abandon¬ ed their quarters and fled.

This unprecedented victory drove the Turks from Hungarian soil for seventy years, but Hunyadi, soon after his victory, fell a victim to the plague which was decimating his army. After his death, the barons allied with Cilli believed that the time was ripe for crushing the Hu¬ nyadi party. The first step was to try to get rid of Hunyadi’s sons, Ladislas and Matthias. After Ulrick Cilli fell victim to a murder at¬ tempt by members of the Hunyadi party in the spring of 1457, the Hunyadi brothers were called to Buda by ruse, and Ladislas Hunyadi, charged with complicity in the murder, was executed. Hunyadi’s widow, Erzsebet Szil&gyi, and her brother, Mih&ly Szilagyi, organized an armed opposition. Ladislas V fled from the troubled scene to Prague, taking Matthias Hunyadi with him as a hostage. Here, the young king met his unexpected death in the same year. This event cleared the way for the election of a new king in both Hungary and Bohemia.

The Hunyadi party and the nobility favoured the election of Mat¬ thias as king of Hungary. During his imprisonment in Prague he had become betrothed to the daughter of George Podiebrad, regent and later King of Bohemia, and thereby he regained his freedom. A diet met in January 1458 to elect the new king. Mihaly Szilagyi led a large army of mercenaries to Buda and on the frozen Danube the assembled nobility also moved menacingly towards the castle where the barons were meeting. The citizens cheered Matthias, and the barons, not daring to defy the consensus of opinion, elected him. The diet ap¬ pointed Mihaly Szilagyi, the uncle of the fifteen-year-old king, as regent.

An Experiment in Centralized Government (1458–1490)

The Success of Matthias Hunyadi's Policy of Centralization

The young Matthias Hunyadi had two men to support him: his uncle, MiMly Szilagyi, the regent and leader of the Hunyadi party, and his tutor, Janos Vit<5z, the chief chancellor, an old enemy of baronial policy, and an adherent of centralized government. The terms of the election had stipulated safe-conduct for the members of the Garai party and the abolition of the only considerable source of royal re¬ venue, the levying of war taxes, which had been granted from time to time by the diet. Had Matthias reconciled himself to this he would have become the prisoner of the barons. However, Vitez warily watched the first steps of his royal pupil and saw to it that he did not do so. Matthias soon forced his uncle to resign his office as regent, thus making clear that he did not wish to rule as the party’s puppet.

The barons, afraid of strong rule, united and Szilagyi, Garai and Ujlaki formed an alliance in defence of their interests. Matthias, on the other hand, was not reluctant to imprison his uncle for this re¬ bellion, and when he was released sent him against the Turks. The old warrior then atoned with his death for his misdeeds. Garai and his allies, however, continued their resistance without him and in 1459 offered the throne to the Habsburg Emperor Frederick III. Matthias won to his side those barons who feared the rise of the Garai party, and with the death of L£szl6 Garai, soon afterwards the whole con¬ spiracy collapsed.

The united forces of the ruling class were then turned by Matthias against Jiskra. The powerful mercenary, who had remained uncrushed by Janos Hunyadi, was now compelled to submit. He handed over his castles to the king and was given estates in exchange in the southern part of the country. He was subsequently able to find an outlet for his overheated ambitions in the service of the king. In 1463, Frederick III offered peace. He returned the Hungarian crown, but retained some of the border territory he had occupied and demanded the re¬ cognition of his right to the succession should Matthias die childless. This was the price paid for the security of the country, political unity within Hungary, and the possibility of attack instead of defence on the southern border.

Bosnia, a nominal dependency of the Hungarian Crown, was oc¬ cupied by the Turks early in 1463. Matthias issued orders for the baronial banderia to take up arms. To their 12,000 men he added his modest royal army of 2,500 mercenaries, and together they occupied the fortress of Jajce, thus restoring Hungarian sovereignty in the nor¬ thern part of Bosnia. In the following year Sultan Mohammed II per¬ sonally launched an attack against Jajce, but Matthias’s army forced him to retreat. At the same time Pius II announced a new crusade against the Turks under his personal leadership. Matthias was en¬ couraged to advance in Bosnia, but owing to the sudden death of the Pope, the crusaders dispersed, and the small Hungarian army was stopped by the overwhelming number of the Turks. Matthias returned from the campaign having recognized that the forces of Hungary only sufficed for defence, and that the great plan of Janos Hunyadi to expel the Turks from Europe could only be accomplished with wide European cooperation.

Matthias’s successes in foreign policy rested on the results of cen¬ tralized rule. His royal power was based on the support of the nobility against the baronage; consequently he tried to weaken the institution of vassalage (familiaritas) which had tied barons and noblemen to¬ gether. He took away the barons’ right to engage mercenaries, and prevented them from using royal taxes to recruit retainers for their private armies. Noble retainers in the baronial service were removed from baronial jurisdiction and placed under county and royal justices. He also reformed the judiciary by raising the personal jurisdiction of the king above that of the palatine and chief justice, and by appointing expert lawyers to the royal court.

A hired army and a paid administration were costly, and Matthias could only raise money by taking back from the barons royal revenues which they had either been granted or had taken by force. He was successful in the new venture. While Ladislas V’s revenues in Hungary were hardly more than 200,000 gold florins, Matthias, towards the end of his reign, was raising about one million. The treasury was run by expert officials, which put an end to baronial tax collection and em¬ bezzlement.

Nevertheless, his revenues were barely sufficient for the strengthen¬ ing of the achievements of centralized rule. Matthias, unlike absolute rulers in the Western countries, could not fall back on the financial support of the bourgeoisie. He could pay only his soldiers in money; his officials were rewarded by ecclesiastical offices and grants of land, and thus unwittingly he increased the number of feudal lords, the natural enemies of centralization.

Foreign Capital in Hungarian Trade

Matthias was fully conscious of the political and economic importance of the towns. It was during his reign that the development of the cit¬ izens of the towns into a distinct political body was completed. The seven most important royal towns, Buda, Pozsony, Sopron, Nagy- szombat, Kassa, Eperjes and Bartfa (later joined by Pest), had earlier been given separate courts of justice under the Lord Treasurer, with some members of the nobility amongst the jurors. Under a decree issued by Matthias, these courts were transformed into institutions presided over exclusively by the burghers. Other royal towns, such as Szekesfehervar, Esztergom, Loose, and later Szeged and Kolozsvar, were put under personal royal jurisdiction without any baronial inter¬ vention. It was also during Matthias’s reign that the mining towns were given corporate autonomy. Although representatives of the towns continued to play a secondary role in the diet, the towns became en¬ tirely free from baronial interference, and were directly under royal supervision. The Hungarian towns, however, needed protection not only from feudal oppression but also from the competition of foreign capital.

By the middle of the fifteenth century, the volume of imports grew considerably. After 1450, the royal revenue from customs duties on imported foreign goods grew fivefold in a period of three decades. Seventy-five per cent of the imports from Western countries were textiles and 20 per cent metal goods. Spices were also important items. Ninety-eight per cent of the Hungarian exports were agricultural and mining products, mainly cattle, wine and copper. Due to its staple right Vienna played an important part in Hungary’s foreign trade; it was there that South German cloth merchants bringing their wares met the Hungarian merchants driving their cattle and carrying copper. Hungarian trade with Northern Europe was mainly in the hands of merchants from Breslau and Cracow, interested not only in cattle and copper but also in Hungarian wine. The greatest attraction for foreign traders continued to be Hungarian gold. In the fifteenth century, the annual foreign trade deficit of Hungary averaged 200,000-300,000 gold florins, which left the country as currency and returned as foreign commodities.

Western industry, already managed at that time by capitalist entre¬ preneurs, was producing cheaper and better goods than the Hungarian guilds, which were still in the developing stage. Hungarian merchants considered it a quicker and safer investment to take part in foreign trade or to buy land than to engage in the development of domestic industry with its remote and uncertain chances of profit. Moreover, their capital, on the comparative scale of medieval trade, was small. A thousand-florin capital counted as exceptionally large in Hungary, while the 16 richest burghers of Augsburg owned capital totalling half a million. Because of this lack of capital, the Hungarian merchants had to rely for credit on the South German traders, whose money was dominant in Hungarian foreign trade, so that in point of fact the Hungarian merchant was a mere agent. About the middle of the fifteenth century, the merchants ofPozsony mortgaged their real estate to the extent of 65,000 florins; the South German credit was equi¬ valent to the combined fortunes of the bourgeoisie of the town. In 1489, about half the credit in the account books of the merchants of Cracow was lent out to the merchants of Kassa. In the circumstances it is evident that the bourgeoisie could not accumulate capital, the wealthier merchants preferring to leave the country, or buy land and become members of the feudal class.

Owing to the fact that foreign goods were reaching the country in unlimited quantities, industrialization in the Hungarian towns halted in the middle of the fifteenth century. Capitalist ventures at industriali¬ zation died off, and the domestic mining enterprises closed down one after the other. In 1475, J&nos Thurzo, in association with the mer¬ chants of Cracow and South Germany, started to free the Hungarian copper mines from flooding. During the course of this he was able to buy many mines from the impecunious owners. But even his capital was not large enough, and it was only later, in partnership with the Fuggers, that the enormous business was started which soon produced transactions in Hungarian copper running into millions on the world market. At the end of the century. South German capital, after taking over most of Hungary’s foreign trade, penetrated Hungarian mining as well.

Setback in the Development of the Towns

In the fifteenth century, agricultural production was centred around the boroughs, with produce coming in mostly from peasant tenures. There were over 800 of these boroughs and, about the end of the century, one-sixth of the peasant population, i.e. approximately half a million (out of the country’s four million inhabitants), lived in these settlements numbering about 500-1,000 each. The development of the borough out of the village was one form of the stratification of the peasantry. The landlords’ income originated first of all from taxes levied on the boroughs. In the fifteenth century, the tendency to com¬ mute taxes in kind to money rents became general. Lump-sum money payment was demanded from the boroughs, and payment by the peas¬ antry was also expected in money. The simultaneous increase in peas¬ ant production and exploitations by the landlord contributed to the break-up of the peasantry into different strata. Up to the middle of the fourteenth century, the peasant had as much land as could be worked by himself and his family, but by the fifteenth century the majority of the peasantry owned only half a tenure, or even less, and at least 20 per cent owned only a small cottage and garden. Some of the peasants were landless but for an occasional small vineyard. Those peasants who had become rich, mainly those living in the boroughs, became the upper stratum possessing an ever growing part of the means of production and employing the poorer elements of their kind as hired labourers.

The stratification of the peasantry into rich and poor created the preconditions of capitalist production in agriculture. Further de¬ velopment, however, was prevented by the decline of industrialization in the royal towns. Between 1450 and 1500, the population of the most flourishing commercial towns, such as Buda, Pozsony, Sopron, Kassa and Eperjes, decreased by 10-20 per cent, and their tax contributions declined by about 30 per cent. Less and less agricultural produce was sold on the town markets, all the more so as the townsmen were trying to make up for their losses in manufactures by becoming agricultural producers themselves. The decline of the home market for agricultural produce could not be made up by any amount of increased cattle and wine exports. The capital behind the cattle and wine export, though in the hands of the richer peasants living in the boroughs, came directly or indirectly from the South German creditors; the same was true for the cloth import. In comparison with the busy nature of commerce, there was very little circulation of money in the country. Well-to-do peasants continued to pay the wages of their labourers in kind, by a share of the produce. This considerably retarded a general commuta¬ tion of services and tithes to money rent, which was much desired by the ecclesiastical and temporal feudal lords, themselves obliged to pay for foreign goods in currency. Thus the exploitation of the peasants became greater and it was not rare to find all the inhabitants of a village leaving in order to escape from the tax collector. Matthias was per¬ suaded by the nobility temporarily to stop the free movement of the peasants by decree for a year or two, though he himself was opposed to the wish of the barons and nobility to bind the peasant to the land.

Attempts to Establish a Central European Empire

Matthias himself was not unaware that the peasantry could bear no further burdens, just as he soon came to realize that neither were the towns able to grant the financial support he expected. If not fully conscious of the momentum of South German capital penetrating into Eastern Europe, he could not help seeing that the money nec¬ essary for his plans for centralization was being taken out of the coun¬ try by the foreign merchants. It was evident where the money leaving the country could best be stopped: at the towns of Vienna and Breslau. The possession of these two towns would mean the control of the whole Central and East European trade, with a share in the profits, provided the ruler could, at the same time, master feudal anarchy in Austria and Silesia. Matthias believed himself strong enough to con¬ quer Austria and Bohemia, uniting them with Hungary in a centralized monarchy.

He was not alone among Central European rulers in his ambitions to found an empire. Casimir IV, King of Poland, the son-in-law of Albert of Habsburg, had a claim to the throne of Hungary and Bohemia, as did the Habsburg Frederick III. At that time the Central European states were already united by economic and dynastic ties, their political union was only a question of time. The majority of the Hungarian ruling class, on the other hand, did not approve of the war launched against Bohemia in 1468. It was preceded by the most severe form of taxation: Matthias imposed extra taxes upon the peasants, and loans, never to be repaid, upon the towns. The landlords, on the other hand, could not get the services from their exhausted tenants. In 1467, a baronial faction planned to depose Matthias, but the con¬ spiracy was uncovered by the king. In 1471, another, more serious con¬ spiracy, headed by Janos Vit6z, came to the same end. Six years earlier, the former tutor of Matthias had been elevated to the highest office of feudal Hungary, being appointed Archbishop of Esztergom, but after that a rift developed between the old politician and his now independent pupil. As a prelate he resented the confiscation of church revenue and extra taxation; as the ideologist of the war against the Turks, he grudged giving up what he regarded as the only just and necessary war for needless adventures. These reasons made him the head of the conspiracy which invited Casimir, a son of the Polish king, to the throne. For reasons of state, Matthias imprisoned Vitez, and then, for reasons of affection, he released him; but the aged statesman did not long survive his humiliation. After the failure of the con¬ spiracy, the Polish pretender, who had entered Hungary at the head of a small army, hurriedly left the country.

Supported by the Catholic nobility of Moravia and Silesia, Matthias was crowned King of Bohemia in 1469. In 1471, however, at the death of George Podiebrad, the Bohemian nobility recognized the Polish prince Wladislaw Jagiello,who had promised toleration to the Hussit¬ es, as King of Bohemia. He then formed an alliance with Frederick III against Matthias. In 1474, the united Polish and Bohemian armies broke into Silesia, and besieged Breslau, with Matthias behind its walls. The siege was soon given up and in 1478, in the Treaty of Olmiitz, both Matthias and Wladislaw recognized each other as Kings of Bohemia, and the country was divided, with Matthias retaining Moravia and Silesia.

Matthias succeeded through diplomacy in isolating Frederick III, owing to his friendly ties with the Swiss Confederation, the Italian princes and Ivan III, Grand Duke of Muscovy. His famous ‘Black Army’ of 20,000 horsemen, 8,000 infantry, 5,000 wagons and a newly created artillery, all in full pay, together with the banderia of the Hun¬ garian baronage, crushed Habsburg resistance in continuous and relentless siege warfare. In the summer of 1485, after half a year’s siege, Vienna fell, and, with the exception of the Tyrol and Upper Austria, the Austrian provinces of the Habsburgs fell into Matthias’s hands. He thereupon transferred his seat from Buda to Vienna.

The Programme of the Absolute Monarchy

Matthias introduced centralized administration into the newly oc¬ cupied provinces. Even the independent principalities in Silesia were subjected to the royal power. There were swift results: taxes were lowered in Hungary and political tension lessened. The way was clear for another major step in the direction of centralization: an attempt to free the royal power from the control, not only of the barons, but of the whole feudal ruling class. After 1471, the diet was called only on rare occasions by Matthias, and he exercised his authority by royal decree. In the royal council the baronial members hardly ever func¬ tioned, as matters were handled by the royal secretaries. His officials, the officers of the chancery and treasury, were by preference intellectuals of bourgeois and peasant stock, not even noblemen; his private secretaries, Peter V&radi, later chancellor, and Tamas Bakdcz, were of peasant descent; his treasurers, Gyorgy Hando and Orban Doczi, were from the towns. He also liked to employ foreigners, free of local influence.

A uniformity in outlook, characteristic of officials in Matthias’s administration, was due to their humanist culture. Many of them were actively engaged in writing fashionable humanist compositions, such as letters, occasional poems or history, while all succumbed to the passion of book collecting. They were brought up mainly in Italian schools, in that late period of humanist culture which no longer represented the uncompromisingly anti-feudal efforts of the bour¬ geoisie but tried to bring bourgeois aspiration under the wing of the feudal state power, thereby forging theoretical weapons in support of centralization, or else for absolute government. The culture of Matthias’s officials of bourgeois and peasant stock made them sup¬ porters of centralization, to which they were attached in any case by personal and class interests. Without formulating political theory, one can clearly see their views from the rules of the royal chancery, from the attitude of court historians toward the past and from record¬ ed statements of theirs.

Matthias and his humanist circle were aiming at the highest form of centralization: absolute monarchy. ‘The king himself is no slave or tool to the law, he is above it, ruling over it’—this statement was attributed by the Italian humanist Brandolinus to Matthias himself, and we have no reason to doubt its authenticity, less so as the law of 1468 clearly speaks of the absolute power (absoluta polestas) due to the king. According to Brandolinus, Matthias distinctly disapproved of the republican government of certain Italian cities and of the tyranny of rich over poor; he did not tolerate in his monarchy that anyone ‘should be unjust at the expense of others, or that anyone should form a party’. ‘In our country,’ he said, ‘no one can have too much confidence in his own power, or lose too much of his confidence due to his helplessness... No one should possess so much as to deprive others of the necessities of life, no one should abound in unnecessary things.’ The ‘social’ character of Matthias’s absolutism, although exaggerated by Brandolinus, clearly shows his desire to keep the classes counter-balancing each other.

The principle of justice was applied by Matthias in a sense un¬ known in Hungarian history. He threatened his favourite, Bishop Miklos Bathory, one of the leading Hungarian humanists, that if he did not give up torturing his tenants, he would be thrown into the Danube. This story and others like it, inspired a belief that Matthias went about in disguise to find out what wrongs had been done to the people by the barons, and the epithet ‘just’ was added to his name. ‘Governors in our country,’ he told Brandolinus, ‘are only temporary servants,’ and, indeed, he acted accordingly, by dismissing and im¬ prisoning his advisers at the summit of their powers, if they became unworthy of his trust.

Matthias's Compromises with the Ruling Class

From his plans and achievements it seems that Matthias’s absolutism was greater in theory than in practice. His economic power could only be based on his Central European empire, which in its turn depended on the Hungarian ruling class, and, as a natural consequence, he had to make concessions at the expense of absolutism. They could not be avoided, as opposition to his centralized rule never ceased to exist; it may have temporarily moved underground, but gained new force by the alliance of the newly created barons and the nobility. The fact was brought home to Matthias by the political activities of the Zapolyai family. In the field of military and financial organization, Imre Zapo¬ lyai and his brother Istvan were among Matthias’s ablest officials. As former members of the impecunious nobility, they had speedily risen to find their place amongst the richest barons. It was around them that those who were dissatisfied with the new rule by decrees gathered, hoping for a restoration of the diets. Matthias was obliged to retreat and assume a realistic position as was put forward by Janos Vit6z, consonant with conditions in Hungary. In 1486, he called a diet which voted new privileges to the nobility. County autonomy was again recognized with the stipulation that the baronial ispan should appoint his deputy from the local well-to-do nobility, and not from his own retainers. This was the first step towards making this alispdn the re¬ presentative of the nobility and not of the barons. The nobility even went a step further; although recognizing the king’s ‘absolute power’, they requested that in case of a misunderstanding between the king and the diet, the palatine should mediate the dispute. This was ac¬ corded, the palatine becoming not only the king’s deputy but the defender of the rights of the nobility. The diet appointed Imre Z&po- lyai as the new palatine.

So far Matthias had succeeded in compromising with the nobility without conceding any of his actual rights, but the new provision for the appointment of the palatine was a blow to absolutism. Matthias endeavoured to outweigh it by consolidating Hungary’s leadership in Central European political integration. In his last years he worked in that direction.

He did not succeed, however, in making himself Holy Roman Emperor; in the year following the occupation of Vienna, Maximilian I of Habsburg became emperor, having been previously ruler of Bur¬ gundy and the Netherlands. Though pushed out of one part of Austria, the Habsburgs obtained new power in the German Empire, and with Maximilian a new, energetic person began to manage the affairs of the family. Nor did Jagiello expansionism stop entirely. Both dynasties had a claim to the throne of Hungary. Left without a legal heir, Matthias appointed his natural son, Janos Corvinus, as his successor in Hungary and Bohemia, and tried to obtain Maximilian’s support by promising the return of Austria. Maximilian seemed willing to negotiate, but Matthias, although not yet fifty years old, died un¬ expectedly in Vienna in the spring of 1490.

His reign marks the zenith of Hungarian feudalism. An exceptionally gifted personality, in exceptionally favourable circumstances, he had achieved the highest form of centralization as well as extensive foreign conquests, all in three decades. After his death the political edifice collapsed, but the memory of his great achievements has survived in the creative works of the Hungarian Renaissance and humanism.

The Renaissance and Humanism in Hungary

Humanism in Hungary flourished in the royal chancery and was connected from the start with efforts toward centralization. Its originator was the outstanding Florentine humanist, Pier-Paolo Vergerio, who was active in the chancery from 1417 onwards, and greatly influenced his colleagues, especially Janos Vitez. The humanist patriotism of Vitez owes much to his initiation by Vergerio: the con¬ frontation of human values (humanitas, virtus) with birth and rank, and the identification of the defence of human values with defence against the Turks. The idea of the real patriot was enlarged and was no longer confined to the barons, but spread also to the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the peasantry, or to anybody engaged in the noble contest with pen or sword. Humanist educational ideas clearly mingle with the political, military and organizational aims of the nobility in the diplomatic correspondence and speeches made by Vit6z at home and abroad, propagating unity against the Turks. He was also the

first to be engaged in the humanist passion of collecting books for his library. An avid builder, he collected scholars and artists around him. and although he himself was never able to go to Italy, he sent many Hungarian youths there for their education.

One of these was his nephew, known as Janus Pannonius in human¬ ist literature. Son of a carpenter from the southern part of the country, he rose to become Bishop of Pecs and the first great Hungarian poet, and one of the greatest European poets of the time. With his artistic instinct, he introduced human passions and emotions into the then declining and formalistic humanist poetry. His satirical epigrams openly ridiculed fanaticism, asceticism, clerical greed and credulity, without sparing even the sanctity of the Pope. His elegies, on the other hand, bewail the fate of the poet, isolated in barbarian Scythian surroundings, but inviting the muses to the banks of the Danube. A number of other poems proudly speak of the noble task of the Hungarians as defenders of Europe against the Turks, and of the deeds of their leaders, the Hunyadis. The patriotism of Janus Pan- nonius is basically the same as that of Vitez, but he is more critical. He was also inspired by the anti-Turkish and anti-German feelings of his contemporaries, but disliked war as not being congenial to poetic inspiration. He expected speedy victory over the Turks and peace for his country to enjoy the blessings of culture. It is no wonder that Janus Pannonius was among the first to join Vit6z’s conspiracy against Matthias’s northern expeditions, and he was also the only one who did not expect mercy. He met his death while escaping in 1472.

The conspiracy of Vitez and Janus Pannonius had made Matthias for a time suspicious of the Hungarian humanists, but he did not want to miss the blessings of humanist culture. He invited foreign, mainly Italian, humanists to his court. One of them, Antonio Bonfini, wrote a history of Hungary in elegant humanistic Latin; another, Galeotto Marzio, recorded Matthias’s witty sayings. Jdnos Thuroczy, by profession a judge of the royal court, wrote a history of the period. Although a man of acute intelligence, he was only on the fringe of the humanistic court circle, his education being somewhat less refined. In his chronicle, there is a curious mixture of the humanist con¬ ception of the role of heroic virtue in opposition to fate in moulding history and the nationalism of the nobility in its xenophobia, making the Hungarians the successors of the world-conquering Scythians and Huns, and celebrating Matthias as a ‘second Attila’. Thuroczy is the representative of the class-conscious nobility, emerging victorious under Matthias from the crisis earlier in the century.

On the king’s orders, Thuroczy’s chronicle was twice reissued. Matthias hastened to make the newly invented printing press the instrument of his political propaganda. Posters were printed against Frederick III. At the instigation of one of his officials, the first Hun¬ garian press was established by Andras Hess in Buda, in 1472, its first publication being a Hungarian chronicle in Latin. The quick introduction of printing is evidence of the widening of the reading public. The development of education did not produce universities, despite the efforts of Sigismund, Matthias and Janos Vitez, yet many students, both nobles and commoners, studied at the universities of Vienna, Cracow and Prague and at Italian universities. Bibliophilism, emerging from the monasteries, had spread among the top layers of the ruling class and occasionally even among the well-to-do towns¬ people and the nobility. The largest libraries were in the possession of the humanist clergy holding high political positions, but more out¬ standing than any was the famous collection of Matthias, the Corvina library, numbering more than five hundred sumptuously produced books containing the treasures of classical and humanistic literature.

Renaissance art entered Hungary along with humanist culture. Its centre was the royal court, since Sigismund’s reign permanently established in Buda. The Gothic palace of Sigismund was expanded by Matthias in the Renaissance style, and embellished with the sculp¬ tures and frescoes of Italian masters and with products of the royal faience workshop. Exquisite summer palaces were built at Visegrdd, Tata and Kom&rom. The king’s builders and decorative artists catered to the humanist members of the Hungarian ruling class, and Renais¬ sance art penetrated into many parts of the country. Hungary became the most important centre of humanism and Renaissance art beyond the Alps, spreading its influence throughout Central Europe.

The Collapse of Royal Power (1490–1526)

Victory of Feudal Reaction

Renaissance culture was still in full bloom when its socio-political foundations collapsed. The barons, newly raised by Matthias, were anxious, as was clearly stated by the new palatine, Istvan Zapolyai, ‘to rid themselves of harassment and oppression’, which they felt they had suffered under Matthias notwithstanding the advantages they had enjoyed at the same time. There were claimants in plenty to the throne of the heir apparent Jdnos Corvinus: in addition to Queen Beatrice, there was the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian I, Wladislaw, King of Bohemia, and another Jagiello, John Albert, a Polish prince. The decision was in the hands of Palatine Zapolyai, who enjoyed the support of the nobility, and was himself in favour of the weakest pretender, Wladislaw. Janos Corvinus was isolated and had to be content with the provinces in the south and the title of ‘King of Bosnia’. He died young, in victorious warfare against the Turks in 1504. The diet proclaimed Wladislaw II (1490-1516) as King of Hungary, but severely restricted his power: he was prevented from levying extra taxes, or acting without the consent of the royal council. Wladislaw promised to marry Queen Beatrice, but the ceremony as performed by Bishop Bakocz, the king’s secretary, was deliberately fraudulent, in order to obtain the subsequent annulment of the mar¬ riage by the Pope. Queen Beatrice, deceived and defrauded of her property, eventually returned to Italy.

John Albert and Maximilian tried to enforce their claims by arms, but they were driven out of the country by Matthias’s ‘Black Army’, which thereby performed its last feat. The barons, on the other hand, felt uneasy while such a formidable striking force existed in the king’s hands, for it was likely to limit their influence and even render them superfluous. In order to end the war a treaty was signed, by which Wladislaw restored the Austrian provinces, recognized Maximilian’s right to the title of king of Hungary, and agreed to his succession if he (Wladislaw) died without an heir. The Black Army, having rendered all the services required of it, had to be destroyed. It was sent against the Turks without supplies and when the famished army began to plunder, Matthias’s famous commander, Pal Kinizsi, a hero of the Turkish wars, was sent with his baronial army to annihilate them. After this most modern army of its time had been destroyed, the barons made the diet force the king to grant regular pay to the baronial armies. This arrangement meant a return to the age of Sigismund: once again, the baronial armies were to be maintained from public funds.

The administration, the second pillar of the royal power, did not meet the fate of the royal army, for its leaders—owing to a mistake which Matthias was unable to avoid—were barons, archbishops and bishops. Tam&s Bakocz was appointed chancellor and then Arch¬ bishop of Esztergom. Instead of using the administration now under his control for the strengthening of royal power, he exploited it for his own ends, to compete with greater success for power with the barons. Royal revenues soon reverted to the barons, they were able to collect the taxes, so that the treasury became depleted even more than before Matthias’s reign, with a yearly revenue under 200,000 florins. At the same time, Bakocz’s own yearly income, with the aid of extortion and bribery, rose to 100,000 florins, and the Renaissance splendour of his palace in Esztergom outshone the royal court. Other church dignitaries and barons also succeeded in thriving at the ex¬ pense of the royal estates and revenues. In their greed, they fought each other tooth and nail. Wladislaw looked on impassively at this waste and corruption. Being a man of lazy disposition and little talent, he did not even attempt to rid himself of the tutelage of the barons and prelates. Because he approved and nodded assent to all their wishes, he obtained the name in Hungarian ‘Ladislas Dobzhe’ (Polish for ‘all right’). The expenses of the royal household were paid from his revenues from Bohemia, but he was often compelled to obtain loans at exorbitant interest rates to cover even his kitchen expenses.

The abasement of royal power was not primarily due to Wladislaw’s personal qualities, but much more to a system which enabled the most powerful baronial family to isolate the king from the nobility. The leaders of the centralized administration could not rely on the nobility against the barons, and were thus compelled to form a baronial op¬ position. Out of this cul-de-sac of power concentration, a two-party system developed under the reign of the Jagiellos: the court party, comprising church dignitaries in state employment and those barons who supported the power of the king for the sake of personal advance¬ ment, and the nobles’ party, led by the Zapolyais with the support of other barons.

The political scene was dominated by the struggle between the Court and the nobility, fought at the diets held on the Field of Rakos in the outskirts of Pest, with the intrigues of barons and prelates of both parties in the background, involving many temporary alliances and feuds. To resist the demands of the Zapolyais for the throne, ex¬ pressed in an ever more undisguised manner and with the support of the nobility, Wladislaw’s government was obliged to turn for aid to the Habsburgs, having no adequate resources at home.

After the death of Istvan Z&polyai, his elder son Janos, Voivode of Transylvania, became the leader of the nobles’ party. His cause was advanced by an unscrupulous lawyer, Istv&n Werboczi, a former clerk in Matthias’s chancery and then spokesman of the nobility in the diet. In his speeches, Werboczi often appealed to the traditional anti- German sentiment of the nobility. At the first diet of 1505, a well- armed demonstration of the nobility demanded the resignation of Wladislaw and the appointment of Z&polyai as king of Hungary. The court party, on the other hand, appealed to the Emperor Maxi¬ milian I, who threatened Zapolyai with war and forced him to retreat. The second diet of the same year, however, declared that should Wladislaw die without an heir, a ‘national’ king would be elected to rule over Hungary. In 1506, a male heir was bom to Wladislaw, so that—for the time being—Zapolyai’s hopes remained unfulfilled.

Economic Decline and Social Tension

The decay of royal power and the subsequent anarchy delivered Hungary to the Habsburgs, who in the meantime had added to their possessions the Low Countries, the Kingdom of Spain and the American colonies. Wladislaw II and the court party were entirely dependent on the Habsburgs, which enabled the Fuggers to acquire Hungarian mining interests. Towards the end of the fifteenth century. South German capitalists began to show a lively interest in the Central European metal mines. It was they who granted the necessary loans to the Austrian iron industry, but later on they found the more profitable mining of copper, lead, mercury, silver and gold more attractive. Among them the Fuggers were the most prominent. They established business connections with the Habsburgs through their silver mining activities in the Tyrol, and became their chief creditors. It was owing to the Habsburgs that the Fuggers first came to Hungary where they became partners of the Thurzos in 1494, establishing several foundries. Because lead was used for the smelting of copper ore in order to extract silver, they bought up the Austrian lead mines one after another, and in 1502 took over the gold mines of Silesia. The mines in Wladislaw’s kingdom contributed to the wealth of the Fuggers, and indirectly promoted Habsburg expansion through the unlimited credit granted to them. The alliance of the greatest political and financial powers of the age decided the fate of Hungary and Bohemia, and it was merely a question of time when the two crowns would pass from the Jagiellos to the Habsburgs.

Towns in Hungary, in these circumstances, continued to decline rapidly. It no more occurred to Wladislaw to rely on the towns against the barons than it did to protect them. In his financial straits he granted royal towns to the barons; the burghers themselves were obliged to redeem their freedom. The city of Esztergom was unable to do so and degenerated into a borough of the archbishop. The towns, trying to extricate themselves from their predicament bought peasant-villages, and tried as collective landlords to find their way into the feudal ruling class. The more the towns produced for them¬ selves, the smaller the market for Hungarian agricultural commodities became, so that the peasants earned less and less. At the same time, the landlords increased their pressure for bigger payments. The peasants who tried to improve their lot by escaping were forcibly brought back, and the nobility contemplated stopping their free move¬ ment altogether.

The great landowners were not opposed to the free movement of the peasants, because they could always direct it towards their own estates. The nobility, on the other hand, suffered by losing both the peasants who moved into the towns and those who were forcibly carried off by the unscrupulous big landlords. Finally, the efforts to restrict the free movement of the peasants proved stronger.

The boroughs enjoyed a relatively favourable form of taxation, payment in a lump sum, but the introduction of the ninth made their situation worse. Deterioration in the fife of the peasantry was responsi¬ ble for the uprising of 1514, the greatest peasant war in Hungarian history, which involved peasants throughout the whole country.

The Great Peasant War and the Mohács Disaster

Archbishop Bakocz, who headed the court party, tried to avert the danger of both internal unrest and continued Turkish raids by an¬ nouncing, with the consent of the Pope, a crusade against the Turks in 1514. Hosts of peasants joyfully moved into camp near Pest. The leadership was entrusted by the archbishop to Gyorgy Szikely (D6zsa), who had won a reputation for valour in the skirmishes with the Turks on the Hungarian border. The urban poor, artisans, students, village priests and impecunious noblemen joined forces with the peasantry. The barons, distrustful from the beginning of the idea of the crusade and scared of the armed peasant masses, persuaded the archbishop to stop further recruitments. Henceforth the landlords forcibly prevented their tenants from taking up arms and the de¬ pendents of those who had already joined the army were maltreated.

The news of the suspension of the crusade and the hostile behaviour of the landlords exasperated the peasants. Some leaders of the people in the camp considered that the opportunity was ripe to improve the lot of the peasantry by restricting the privileges of landlords. Dozsa identified himself with the peasantry, and decided to lead his army against the lords who were trying to stop the crusade. From Pest he went to the boroughs of the Great Plain and declared war against the oppressors of the people. At the same time, he sent his lieutenants to diverse parts of the country where the peasants were assembled, in order to organize and conduct them to the main force.

The peasant army crossed the Tisza and occupied one by one the fortified castles beyond the river in the southern part of the country, lstvan Bathory, a member of the court party and ispdn of Temes, was entrusted by the barons with their defence, but he was forced by the triumphant peasant army to retire into the fortified castle of Temesvar. Dozsa had Temesvar under siege when relief for the castle arrived in the form of the array of Z&polyai. Because disaster was threatening the whole ruling class, Zapolyai had come to terms with Bathory, his former enemy. Dozsa attacked Z&polyai, but his chances were small against the well-equipped, more experienced cavalry of the nobility and he was defeated after courageous fighting.

The smaller peasant armies w'ere wiped out, and ruthless retaliation followed. Dozsa was made to sit on a red-hot iron throne, with a red- hot iron crown on his head, and burnt alive. The peasants were mur¬ dered and hanged by the thousand. The diet passed an ex post facto law sanctioning the death sentences of the leaders, and decided that the peasants were to be perpetually and universally bound to the land and deprived of their right to own land. lstvan Werboczi com¬ pleted his work on Hungarian common law in the same year; the ‘Tripartitum opus iuris consuetudinarii inclyti regni Hungariae’ codified the equality of barons and nobles and listed their rights (una eademque nobilitas). It became not only a universally accepted law-book, but also the bible of the nobility, because Werboczi added to his book the retributive laws made against the peasantry. The Hungary of the coming centuries based its legal system on the joint conception of freedom for the nobility and servitude for the peasant¬ ry- ....

During the reign of Louis II Jagiello (1516-1526), conditions inside and outside the country further deteriorated. According to a double marriage and succession settlement made in 1515, Ferdinand Habs- burg. Archduke of Austria, was to marry Wladislaw’s daughter, Anne, and King Louis, Ferdinand’s sister, Mary. This agreement made final Hungary’s ties with the Habsburg dynasty on the eve of the struggle between Habsburgs and Turks for the hegemony of the Mediterranean and Central Europe. In 1519, Charles of Habsburg was elected Holy Roman Emperor, with the help of the Fugger money and the vote of Louis II as King of Bohemia, but owing to his obligations in the West and anarchic conditions within the German Empire, Charles could not engage a large force for the defence of Hungary. Ndndorfeh6rvar (Belgrade) fell in 1521, but the ruling class, bound up in their party struggles, did not worry about the defence of the country. Louis II had no other choice but to hand over the forti¬ fied castles of Croatia to Ferdinand of Habsburg, who garrisoned them with his own mercenaries. The court party, headed since the death of Bakdcz by the Palatine Istvdn Bathory, sent one embassy after another to the German imperial diet asking for help, but all in vain. In the meantime, Bdthory, accused of embezzling money col¬ lected for defence against the Turks, had been relieved as palatine by Zapolyai, and the nobility had intervened in favour of Werboczrs election. The court brought the copper mines under treasury manage¬ ment, but only deprived itself of credit from the Fuggers. The lack of funds also created critical conditions in the mines and was responsible for the rising of the miners in Besztercebdnya. Werboczi proved a worthy partner of the peasant scourge Z&polyai in his suppression of the miners in the spring of 1526. This coincided with the decision of Sultan Suleiman II, to launch his grand attack against Hungary. The small, badly organized Hungarian army was annihilated by the Turkish artillery and the assault of the janissaries on 29 August 1526 at MoMcs.

From the Battle of Mohács to 1711

The Division of Hungary into Three Parts (1526–1571)

Until the sixteenth century, the social structures of the various Euro¬ pean countries, even if they differed in level of development, still showed the same general tendencies. The increasing break-up of a self-sufficient economy, a gradual change-over to simple and later capitalist commodity production, together with attempts at centraliza¬ tion in the political sphere, were general tendencies everywhere. During the sixteenth century, however, considerable changes took place and Europe became divided into two regions, one where trade and another where agriculture was preponderant. The dividing line between the two regions, once it settled down after the initial period of changes, ran along the Elbe and the eastern foothills of the Alps.

The fate of the Central European states, among them Hungary, also depended on the economic and political changes which began in the sixteenth century. Those historic forces which had contributed to the slow emergence of the Danube monarchy of the Habsburgs, the Prussian state and the Russian empire, eroded the economic and social foundations of the independence of the Hungarian, Bohemian and Polish states. Hungary was first to meet disaster.

Two Kings

There were other reasons than military why the battle of Mohacs was more than a defeat; it was, in fact, one of the greatest disasters in Hungarian history. The military defeat brought into operation certain factors which might have emerged much later, and possibly only one by one. The first of these factors was the growing Turkish menace. Between Hunyadi’s victory at Nandorfehdrvar and the fall of the same fortress seven decades later, fighting had continued around the southern border of the country, but the Turks could not break through the Save-Danube defensive line. During the reign of Selim (1512-1520), the Turks had turned their backs on Europe, and given their attention to the occupation of Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Arabia. To offset this respite, the military bases acquired in the Middle East multiplied the strength of the Turks. The accession of Suleiman II brought a change in policy; the Turks turned again towards Europe, and owing to the turmoil in Hungary it was impossible to prepare effective defences against them. The twofold structure of the Turkish army, a massive core of spahis (cavalry) and janissaries (infantrymen) and an undisciplined auxiliary army depending upon its overwhelming weight of numbers, would have required a similar army to counter it. An army of this type had been organized by Hunyadi at Ndndorfehervdr, consisting of mercena¬ ries and crusaders. With the crushing of the‘Black Army’and Dozsa’s crusaders, the Hungarian ruling class had deprived itself both of mercenaries and of a massive force of armed peasants such as the peasant crusaders had been. The baronial and county battalions did not make up for either at Moh&cs. Nevertheless, the country had not yet been crushed. The sultan marched into Buda, but soon removed his forces from the country, fearing a counter-attack, for there was a Hungarian army intact under Zapolyai, which was late to join the battle of Moh&cs.

The country’s defence, on the other hand, could not be properly organized, because of the political situation. Louis II died on the battlefield of Moh&cs. As he was the last of the Hungarian-Bohemian branch of the Jagiello dynasty, the decree of 1505, excluding the elec¬ tion of a foreign ruler, came into force, side by side with theHabsburg- Jagiello mutual succession agreement. It provided an open field not only for the most powerful Hungarian baron with the bulk of the nobility behind him, that is to say, J&nos Zdpolyai, but also for the Habsburgs, who were striving to establish supremacy over the Euro¬ pean, and more specifically, Central European states. If the Hungarian ruling class had established a united front in favour of either of them, it would have made possible joint action against the Turks. Both parties, however, looked upon the succession as a unique chance for the consolidation of their power.

As soon as the sultan retired from the devastated country, J&nos Zapolyai (1526-1540) was crowned king by his adherents. The court party, under the leadership of the Palatine Istvan Bdthory, and the dowager Habsburg Queen Mary, summoned a counter-diet, which elected the Habsburg Ferdinand I (1526-1564), the younger brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Zapolyai asked for the support of the king of France, a deadly enemy of the Habsburgs, but he receiv¬ ed no substantial aid. Ferdinand, with money obtained from the Fug- gers, organized an army and expelled Zdpolyai from the country.

Abandoned by his adherents, Zapolyai fled to his brother-in-law, the king of Poland. The latter did not want to get involved against the Habsburgs, but the cause of Zapolyai was fervently supported by a Polish aristocrat, Hieronymus Laski. He and the French ambassador jointly advised Zdpolyai to put himself under the protection of the sultan. Suleiman II accepted Laski’s proposal, and in 1529 he personal¬ ly launched an attack against Vienna. He did not succeed in occupying the seat of the Habsburgs, but Zdpolyai was able to return under the auspices of the Turkish army, and the frightened country took him back. Ferdinand’s party dwindled and he could keep control only over the western counties.

The magic circle had closed. The Hungarian barons had to realize that they were no longer free agents in their struggles, but had become the tools of two great powers, both wishing to keep Hungary for important strategic reasons. Charles V aimed at European supremacy, in the centre of his endeavours was the possession of Italy and the ending of the German wars of religion. The Turks, on the other hand, wished to obtain supremacy in the Mediterranean and extend then- power in the Danube region. The two powers clashed in the Mediter¬ ranean ; the outcome seemed doubtful until the victory of the Habsburg fleet at Lepanto in 1571. As the king of France, the ancient enemy of the Habsburgs, was also interested in the Mediterranean, the Danube region, in spite of its importance, remained secondary. The Habsburgs could not concentrate their forces there for a decisive battle and had to satisfy themselves with defensive action in the military zone of Vienna and with maintaining their hold on the western part of Hungary. A Turkish attack launched against Hungary in 1532 exhausted itself after the siege of a few castles. Until 1683, in spite of several attempts, the Turks failed to advance as far as Vienna. This was not entirely due to the effectiveness of the castle defence system, but also to the simple fact that the supply lines of the Turkish army did not reach beyond the western frontier of Hungary.

Constant attempts by two foreign powers to conquer Hungary made the country the scene of continuous battles. Turkish armies and Habsburg mercenaries, while clashing with each other, devastated the country and plundered the inhabitants. There would not have been peace even without the foreign soldiers. Within the confines of the two parts held by the two kings, their adherents continued their incessant private warfare. They plundered the estates of supporters of the op¬ posite side, and levied taxes, tithes and all other contributions possible on the peasants to cover their own war expenditures. They frequently changed over from one side to the other, according to the opportunities offered them by one or the other king. When at long last the members of the Hungarian ruling class came to realize that the civil war ought to be stopped and one of the kings made to resign, it was brought home to them that they no longer controlled the affairs of their own country. The Turks could not accept a solution which would have turned the whole country against them, nor could the Habsburgs agree to a pro-Turkish Hungary which would be a base for the enemy in its constant raids against them. Hungary could not extricate itself from the rivalry of Vienna and Constantinople and the partition continued.

Frustrated Attempts at Union

When Zapolyai died in 1540, his infant son, John Sigismund (1540- 1571), declared king by his supporters, was besieged by Ferdinand Habsburg at Buda. In 1541, Suleiman JI personally offered help to his protege’s heir. The enemy was dispersed, but Buda and the central part of the country remained in Turkish hands. Only the parts beyond the Tisza were ceded to John Sigismund in exchange for an annual ‘defence’ tax. This arrangement, with Hungary partitioned into three, lasted for a century and a half. The largest portion was the eastern kingdom ruled by the Zapolyai dynasty; it covered about half of the country, its western border extending along the Tisza as far as Szoinok, then past Eger, Miskolc, Kassa, Eperjes and Bartfa in the north. The fall of Buda must have been a clear indication, even to the most naive, that Suleiman, in spite of his promise, would prevent and not help the union of the country under John Sigismund. The Zapolyai party thus lost the moral and political basis of its existence, and there was nothing left to its leaders but to forget its past traditions and make common cause with the Habsburgs.

The reunion of the country, by then desired by the majority of the Hungarian ruling class, was left to the ablest statesman of the time, Gyorgy Martinuzzi, a monk of Croatian origin, Bishop of Vdrad, known by his nickname ‘Friar George’.

In the last years of Zdpolyai, Martinuzzi was the most influential man at court. The dying king left the fate of his young widow, Isabella (daughter of Sigismund I, King of Poland), and his infant son in his hands. Martinuzzi tried to keep his vow, and it was he who called in Suleiman to help against the besieging Habsburgs, and so involuntarily paved the way for Turkish rule. Fie devoted the rest of his life to atoning for this mistake, and offered the eastern kingdom to Ferdi¬ nand, should he be willing to grant John Sigismund the family posses- sions of the Zdpolyais, worth any small kingdom, and compensation to Isabella. The first step was for Ferdinand to send an army strong enough to fend off Turkish intervention. This had to wait for some time, because the army sent in 1542 to recapture Buda failed and Ferdinand had neither money nor inclination for a new venture. It was Suleiman, on the contrary, who was able to attack: he captured a great number of Hungarian castles and fortifications in the following year, thus extending the Turkish domain in Hungary.

It was only in the spring of 1551 that the long-expected detachment of Ferdinand’s army set foot in Transylvania. Queen Isabella was persuaded by Marlinuzzi to resign the crown in her son’s name, and accept estates in Silesia. But the army of 7,000 hired soldiers sent under General Castaldo was—according to the sarcastic remark of a contem¬ porary—‘too large for an embassy, too small for warfare’. Martinuzzi started negotiations with the Turks to gain time till the arrival of newly promised help from Ferdinand. The help never came, and Cas¬ taldo, believing rumours and stories about Martinuzzi’s treachery and his intimacy with the Turks, became afraid of a trap and brought about the murder of the ‘friar’.

This act hastened Turkish revenge. In 1552, two Turkish armies were sent against the Hungarian border fortresses, which, in fact, were hastily fortified medieval castles, monasteries and the like. The Habsburg army and the troops of the Hungarian nobility risked only a single open battle against them; after this ended in defeat, no further attempt was made to help the besieged castles, which had to surrender to the Turk one by one. The Pasha of Buda met resistance only at the castle of Dregely, whose heroic defenders under Gyorgy Szondy, instead of surrendering, fought on in the smouldering ruins to the last man. The Grand Vizier attacked from the south and surrounded Temesv&r, the key to the east of the country. Its commander, Istv&n Losonczi, pleaded for help, but Castaldo remained unmoved. At the request of his despairing soldiers Losonczi applied for and was granted a safe-conduct, but after his surrender the Turks ruthlessly massacred the whole garrison. The Grand Vizier continued on his way to take the most important fortress guarding the crossing of the Tisza, the castle of Szolnok. After taking it, he joined forces with the Pasha of Buda and together they proceeded to besiege Eger. With the fall of Eger the north-eastern part of Hungary would have come under Turkish rule. Its small garrison, under Istvan Dobd, held out heroically for thirty- eight days against continual Turkish assaults. Autumn weather at last compelled the enemy to withdraw. The plan of uniting Hungary under Habsburg rule remained impossible for a long time.

Political System of the East Hungarian Kingdom

On the orders of the Turks the Transylvanian diet of 1556 recalled Queen Isabella and John Sigismund. The East Hungarian Kingdom of the Zdpolyai dynasty was restored, butits size was drastically reduced. The Tisza region as far as Szolnok, occupied by the Turks in 1552, was not returned to John Sigismund. Beyond Transylvania, his rule extended only to the region of the Tisza north of Transylvania, and even there how long he could remain in power depended on the attitude of the local oligarchy. In Martinuzzi’s life-time, the centre of the East Hungarian Kingdom was outside Transylvania, in the Tisza region, though Queen Isabella held her court in Transylvania, at Gyulafeh6r- v£r. After 1552, however, the southern part of the Tisza region was in Turkish hands, and the northern part up to Tokaj belonged to the Habs’ourgs; consequently Transylvania became the mainstay of the Zapolyai kingdom. This greatly influenced the future of the state and its political structure, because the social development and ethnic composition of the two parts, i.e. Transylvania and the Tisza region, were entirely different.

The Tisza region was a country of big feudal estates. The great majority of the villages belonged to the Bishop of V&rad and a few aristocratic families, and the nobility were in their service. No free town had developed in this extensive region. This was the most pronounced¬ ly agrarian part of Hungary. On the other hand, there were nu¬ merous boroughs, considerable agricultural production, cattle-breed¬ ing centres giving more freedom to the peasants than was enjoyed by the villages. This economic and social structure had transformed the Tisza region into the classic land of feudal anarchy. Had the centre of gravity of the East Hungarian Kingdom remained there, central power could not have extricated itself from the bondage of the leading local barons.

The social conditions of Transylvania were entirely different. This province had attained a less advanced form of feudal development than Hungary. The territories of the Sekels and the Saxons with the mixed Rumanian-Hungarian counties, ruled by the nobility, had form¬ ed autonomous administrative districts. The mixed Hungarian-Saxon county towns, of which the most important was Kolozsvar, had their own local autonomy. The Sekel dignitaries, the Saxon patricians and the members of the nobility, the so-called ‘three nations’, were often divided by differences, but as members of the ruling class, had in¬ terests in common in relation to the oppressed classes. In Transyl¬ vanian society the voivode, appointed by the king of Hungary, assumed the highest judicial and military power. He also balanced the political differences of the three ‘nations’, playing them off against each other if necessary. In his official capacity he was given enormous estates, compared to which everybody else seemed poor, even the Bishop of Transylvania, although he was very rich indeed. About the middle of the sixteenth century only four Hungarian aristocratic families, the B&nffys, the Kendis, the Bethlens and the Apafis, owned more than fifty villages each, and these were divided between many members of each family. In Hungary they would hardly have counted as members of the baronage, rather as well-to-do nobility.

After the return of Isabella and John Sigismund, the office of the voivode and the bishoprics of Transylvania and Varad remained vacant, their enormous estates being managed by the treasury. The king disposed of their incomes and of the church tithes. The king thus became the largest landowner, which furnished him with the basis of central power. The diet consisting of the representatives of the three ‘nations’ and the nobility of the Tisza region obediently endorsed any royal wish. The organized opposition of the nobility, so typical in Habsburg Hungary, was hardly known in the eastern kingdom (the later Transylvanian principality), and only court intrigues were record¬ ed in its history.

Queen Isabella obtained privileges, greater than any Hungarian monarch since Matthias, and greater than those of any western ruler, including the Habsburgs. The queen used her absolute power in the name of her son: she appointed her officials, mainly foreigners, without consulting the diet and she entered into negotiations with foreign powers as she pleased. She had no preconceived political conceptions, but her instinct for power coincided with certain tendencies in histori¬ cal development, resulting from the social conditions of the East Hungarian Kingdom, and unwittingly she became the pioneer of centralized government.

The New Principality of Transylvania

After the death of Queen Isabella, in 1559, the affairs of the Transyl¬ vanian court were run in the name of the helpless John Sigismund by Istvdn Bathory. 'Hie most powerful aristocrat of the Tisza region, Bathory was holder of the highest military office, the governorship of Varad. His great political ambition was to preserve the vestiges of Hungarian independence (‘our survival’, as he said) by strengthening the East Hungarian Kingdom, under Turkish protection. He hoped to win lasting peace by checking the expansion of both Habsburg and Turkish power. To this end he persuaded John Sigismund to make his peace with the Habsburgs and reconcile himself to the temporary partition of Hungary. Ferdinand I himself was not averse to the idea of a settlement and invited B&thory to negotiations in Vienna. The lengthy discussions were interrupted by the death of Ferdinand in 1564, then in 1566 by the renewed attack of Suleiman II against Hungary, which proved to be his last, and was rendered memorable by the siege of Szigetvar. The castle had been reduced to a smouldering ruin when its captain, Miklos Zrinyi, at the head of his Hungarian and Croatian soldiers, broke out and engaged the besiegers in single combat to the last man. Owing to the long delay caused by the siege and the sudden death of the sultan, the Turkish army withdrew from Szigetvdr. The new sultan, Selim II, did not continue his father’s policy of con¬ quest. The explosive force of the Turkish Empire had exhausted itself; the Turkish political system proved unable to consolidate the economic and social life of the conquered countries, and through their ruthless exploitation the sultan undermined his own power. The Turkish decline only became apparent in another hundred years’ time, but its beginning became manifest with the Treaty of Adrianople, signed by Selim II and the Habsburg Emperor Maximilian II as King of Hungary (1564-1576) in 1568, which sanctioned the partition of the country for a long time to come.

Bathory’s policy was triumphant. According to the agreement of Speyer made in 1570, John Sigismund resigned his title of King of Hungary, contenting himself with the title of ‘Prince of Transylvania and Sovereign of Parts (Partium) of Hungary’. Outside Transylvania, i.e. in the Tisza region, he could only hold territories in fief from the Habsburg king, but, owing to the Turkish control of Transylvania, this restriction had no meaning at all. The new political structure, the Principality of Transylvania, could actually fill the role allotted to it by Bathory. After the death of John Sigismund in 1571, B&thory as the newly elected prince of Transylvania, tried to establish his power.

Political System of the West Hungarian Kingdom

The western and north-western part of the country, for a longer time under Habsburg rule, became part of the Habsburg Empire as the ‘Kingdom of Hungary’, an integral section of the great monarchy, as planned by Charles V and his brother Ferdinand. The latter had tried to comply with the task allotted to him in the world-wide dynastic design of the Habsburgs: the pacification of the internal anarchy within the German Empire and the checking of the Turkish menace in the Danube region. To this end, he tried to unite countries with entirely different historical traditions and ethnic compositions, like the Austrian provinces, Bohemia and Hungary, into a Burgundian type of administrative system. In 1527, he established his central admin¬ istration, to which, in principle, the administration of each country and province was subject, but, in practice, the opposition of the nobility prevented an actually united, central government. The court council never became the leading administrative power uniting the Habsburg countries, as planned by Ferdinand I, because the appointed Hungarian and Bohemian members were reluctant to participate. In 1537, the Hungarian and Bohemian section ceased to function, and in 1556, the Austrian provinces also withdrew, and the council became an exclusively German body. Instead of central government, indepen¬ dent governing bodies functioned in each country. After 1531, Fer¬ dinand I succeeded in preventing the appointment of the leading Hungarian official, the representative of the nobility, the palatine. Instead a church dignitary was appointed as president of the Hun¬ garian council. The Hungarian governing council was reorganized after 1542 as a collegiate body. Its members, on the other hand, were recruited from the feudal aristocracy, who were not uncritical instru¬ ments of the wishes of the ruler, and, in judicial matters, were nearer to the diet. In these circumstances, the Hungarian governing council failed to act as a bridge between the monarch and the administrative bodies, which still enjoyed wide autonomy. The county officials ap¬ pointed from the nobility were able to conduct affairs with almost complete disregard of the central government.

The right of most Western central governments to interfere directly in the life of the peasants, though they were under the rule of the landlords, did not really exist in the Habsburg Empire. New taxes could only be levied on the peasantry with the consent of the nobility. The chief weapon of the nobility against centralization had always been the right to vote taxes. Jurisdiction over the peasantry had, also by feudal right, been in the hands of the landlords. The failure to establish centralization in administrative and judicial matters con¬ tributed to the decay of the court chancery, an intermediate organ between the monarch and the executive official bodies. The court chancery remained the organ for expediting business only in the Aus¬ trian provinces; Hungary and Bohemia were given chanceries of their own.

In financial and military matters, however, Ferdinand I succeeded in subjecting the fiscal chambers in the different countries to the central organs. The Hof hammer developed into a supreme authority exercising direction and supervision over the Austrian, Hungarian and Czech treasuries. Although it had jurisdiction only over the management of crown lands and the regular royal revenues, with the public revenues voted by the nobility coming under it only in exceptional cases, admin¬ istration through the fiscal chamber proved to be the most lasting result of Habsburg centralization. The realization, through the estab¬ lishment in 1556 of the War Council, a centralized supreme military administration, was of similar importance. Ferdinand only succeeded in forming one central organ that drew together all the threads of political fife. This was the Privy Council, the personal advisory body of the monarch. In the composition and operation of this body the nobility had no voice whatsoever, although admittedly it did not function as an authority at all, as its decisions reached the administra¬ tive officials as the personal directives of the ruler. Its members included aristocrats and prelates from the German Empire, Austria and—less frequently—Bohemia, and also lawyers from the German Empire. Since the Habsburg emperor had very little actual power in the German Empire, in reality the Privy Council ruled countries that were hardly represented in it, if at all. Its activities were regarded as alien rule, not only by the completely disregarded Hungarian nobility, but by the Austrian and Czech nobility as well.

The Habsburg system in the sixteenth century was characterized by a contradictory position with regard to central government, for the monarch was granted a free hand in foreign affairs and military mat¬ ters, but in administrative and judicial matters full autonomy was granted to the nobility. The policy of Charles V and Ferdinand I was not based on the mercantilist protection of their subjects for parti¬ cipation in world trade, as was that of the absolute rulers of France and England, but sought to obtain credits from South German and Italian merchant bankers, mainly Genoese, who were not even under their rule. They could not have done otherwise, as the bourgeoisie in their own countries had not advanced far enough in capitalist develop¬ ment (except in the Low Countries, the first to dissociate itself from the Habsburg patrimony) to furnish sufficient credit for the many- sided needs of Habsburg policy. Foreign credits freed the Habsburgs from the control of the nobility, but in return they were obliged to pledge their mines and a considerable portion of the royal revenues to foreign merchants, and accord them many privileges in domestic and foreign commerce, which could not but be detrimental to the internal development of trade and industry; what was more, the extension of the policy of centralization was hindered, thus paving the way for its crisis.

The Establishment of Effective Defences against the Turks

The royal income of Ferdinand of Habsburg, according to the estimates of Venetian ambassadors, amounted to three million florins, the Aus¬ trian provinces contributing one and a half million, the countries of the Bohemian crown one million and Hungary half a million. It would have been a considerable sum had half of it not been spent as advance payments on royal debts. On the death of Ferdinand I his debts amounted to seven and a half million florins. This had risen to ten millions by 1573. The annual cost of defence against the Turks amount¬ ed to an average of900,000 florins, the remainder being hardly enough for the royal household and central administration. Any expense be¬ yond the maintenance of the military and political status quo only added to the state debt, creating a growing drain on revenues. The German Empire of which Ferdinand was first king then emperor, contributed only special grants until 1556, after which regular financial aid was given. Owing to administrative difficulties in collecting the money, however, not more than half of the aid became available, about 100,000 florins around the middle of the century, and, later, 200,000- 300,000 florins. Imperial policy cost the Austrian Habsburgs much more: the election expenses to the German throne alone amounted to 350,000 florins, most of it spent as bribes to the German electors. Ferdinand was obliged to borrow from the Fuggers, and incurred new debts amounting to one million florins.

In these circumstances, notwithstanding the results of Ferdinand’s policy of centralization, the fact that the revenues coming from Habs¬ burg Hungary were greater than those from the whole country in Jagiello times, and the number of new fortifications built in the frontier district, central power never properly established itself. Local ad¬ ministration in Hungary as well as military defence v/as mainly in the hands of feudal self-government. The royal chamber officials also employed the local county administration to collect the extra war-tax (dica, a constant and increasing burden in the life of the peasantry) and the tithes, which were farmed out from the Church to the State. The final control of royal revenues was thus given over to the nobility, and because of the privilege obtained in the Jagiello period by the big landowners to keep an army of hired soldiers, they were able to ap¬ propriate illicit sums of money. Behind the fine of fortified castles controlled by the central power, there existed a series of private castles in the hands of the landlords, the garrison of which were paid partly from state money and partly from the landlords’ private income. The private feudal armies contributed considerably to the defence of the country, but even more so to the power of the aristocracy among whom only the Perenyis, Losonczis and B&thorys represented the baronial families from the period before Mohacs. The others (the Nadasdy, Zrinyi, Batthyany, Dobo, Forgach, P&lffy and Rakoczi families) were descended from military and civil office-holders, and from other elements of the nobility and townsmen who had become rich during the sixteenth century. The land-owning aristocracy filled the highest posts in the political administration and, also, claimed vacancies in the command of royal castles, judging themselves offended if the Habsburgs appointed foreign mercenaries to command the castles. The nobility, which had lost its land during the Turkish occupa¬ tion, looked for new opportunities to advance themselves by military service, but they had not yet extricated themselves directly or in¬ directly from the influence of the big landlords. Private feudal armies flourished in the sixteenth centuiy, and with the influence of the nobility dwindling in the diet, the counties became the tools of the aristocratic fdisp&m (lord lieutenants).

The actual political system of the Kingdom of Hungary was a balance between the central power, relying on foreign funds, and feudal autono¬ my. Thus the central power and the feudal ruling class were able to collaborate and ward off the Turkish menace. The line of border castles was strengthened, reaching from the Adriatic through Croatia, along the northern shore of Lake Balaton, up to the Danube bend and to the foot of the Carpathians and the Upper Tisza, and remained so in the sixteenth century. The new defensive tactics of the castle garrison, with their constant harassing assaults, forced the Turks to build their own fortifications along the frontiers. The expansion of the Turks was halted, and they could no longer reckon with any territorial gain. No more could be achieved by the joint efforts of the Habsburgs and the Hungarian ruling class. The compromise, therefore, of the Habsburg dynasty with the Hungarian ruling class began to weaken towards the end of the sixteenth century, as a result of the development of economic and social forces.

Interruption in Economic and Social Development (16th Century)

The discoveries and colonizations of the Western countries considerably increased their existing advantage in economic development over the Eastern European countries. Contrary to the general belief that Eastern Europe was isolated from world markets by changes in the routes of international trade, Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian copper, mercury and iron and Silesian and Bohemian linen reached Asia and the American colonies from the ports of Venice and Antwerp. The real reason for the economic and social backwardness of the countries of Eastern Europe was precisely their foreign trade, then- dependence on the capitalist economy of the West. Owing to this relationship, the economic and social development of the Eastern European countries stood still, and even deteriorated, compared with the West. The long-forgotten, brutal methods of feudal oppression and exploitation were renewed in the system of the so-called ‘second serf¬ dom’ which was connected with the renewal of the self-managed dem¬ esne of the landlord to the detriment of the peasant’s tenure.

In Hungary, owing to the Turkish occupation, the general Eastern European trends produced the most unfavourable economic and social structure.

The Decay of Town Markets

Large, important Hungarian towns, including Buda, Pest, Szekes- feh6rv£r, Esztergom and Szeged, became military settlements under Turkish rule, with modest local domestic industries. Nor could the towns of the Habsburg kingdom and of the Transylvanian Principal¬ ity keep up the level of development achieved in the previous century. Citizens who had escaped from Buda and Pest increased by 4,000-5,000 the number of the inhabitants of Pozsony and Nagyszombat, but most towns about the middle of the sixteenth century had an average popula¬ tion of 2,000-3,000. Not only were handicrafts stagnating in the Hun- garian towns, but their trading importance also diminished during the sixteenth century.

The structure of Hungarian foreign trade changed very little. In the middle of the sixteenth century 90 per cent of imports were manu¬ factured commodities, while 99 per cent of exports to the West were agricultural produce and metal ores. Whatever change had occurred had not been favourable. About 80 per cent of all exports were made up of cattle, the rest being copper, inconsiderable compared to previous figures. The copper mines of Besztercebanya, so flourishing at the beginning of the century, were given up by the Fuggers in 1547, because of uncertain conditions inside the country, and the more competitive price of Swedish and Japanese copper on the world markets. The importance of precious metals (gold and silver) had also diminished. About the middle of the century, the yearly production was only 500 kilogrammes of gold and 6,000 kilogrammes of silver in the whole of Hungary. The latter comprised 20 per cent of the total silver production of Central Europe, which was extremely little com¬ pared with the 200,000 kilogrammes a year produced in America, increasing by the end of the century to one and a half million kilo¬ grammes.

The majority of manufactured goods which constituted the bulk of imports came from the West. As their price rose less than that of agricultural products, the price revolution enabled Hungarian ex¬ porters of cattle and wine to buy more foreign commodities. Cloth was imported mainly from Germany, Moravia and Silesia, and partly from England, especially kersey, the typical cloth used for soldiers’ uniforms. With Turkish fashions gaining more ground, the import of eastern silks, linens and leather goods also increased. Metal goods, weapons, knives and scythes were imported mainly from Nuremberg and Styria. With rising standards of comfort and style inside the home since the Renaissance, it was not only the barons, but also the nobility and the well-to-do bourgeoisie who wanted to own a German bed and an Italian armchair in place of the bench used previously. They also wanted English, Italian, German or Turkish utensils made of lead, copper, glass and pottery, instead of wooden plates and mugs; German, Polish or Italian tapestries, Turkish rugs for the walls and floors of their rooms, Viennese locks and padlocks to secure their coins and jewellery.

The conservative guild system of handicrafts in the Hungarian towns could not successfully compete with the products of foreign workshops. In the second half of the sixteenth century, as a result of the price revolution in Europe, the prices of raw materials rose,

compelling Hungarian artisans to raise their prices. The nobility insisted on their reduction and the county administration was entrusted with the task of forcing the towns to comply with their instructions. The result could only be a further decline in handicrafts, aggravated by a new development: the landlords began to employ artisans on their estates to produce the most important commodities. The peas¬ antry did not need the superior products of the town guilds, and bought the cheaper goods of the unskilled artisans of the county boroughs.

Owing to the decline of their trade, the attraction of the markets of the royal towns diminished while the markets in the boroughs became busier, because the agricultural produce of the large estates and of the peasantry were also on sale there. By this time the royal towns had lost their former role in handling cattle exports. This was the only profitable business which fell into the hands of the well-to-do peasants and the lesser nobility. They either sold their own cattle, resold bought cattle, or else acted as agents for the big landlords.

Because of the price revolution and the decline in trade and handi¬ crafts, a shortage of food appeared in the royal towns. The first re¬ action was the thorough utilization of every bit of common land within the town boundaries for cultivation. Later the town purchased villages farmed by tenants and, like any other landlord, obtained cheap food from the tenants’ dues. Vineyards were especially favoured, but if the area bought was not suitable for wine, individual citizens, or the town itself, bought land in the Tokaj region, and produced their own wine there.

Increasing Labour Services

With the loss of an outlet to the royal towns, the landlords and the peasants competed, even if with unequal prospects, in the agricultural markets of Hungary. Though the town market was declining, peasant production continued to rise throughout the sixteenth century, due to the increase of foreign trade. From the surviving records of the land¬ lords and from the records of church tithes, it appears that a wealthy section of the peasantry was in the ascendant, producing far more grain, wine and cattle than its own needs.

In the war-torn parts of the country, the means of agricultural pro¬ duction had no chance to develop. Within the areas of the numerous destroyed villages of the Great Plain, former arable land was used for extensive cattle breeding. The peasants living inside the boroughs rented the fields of deserted villages for the breeding of thousands of oxen to be exported to Western countries. Debrecen, under the leader¬ ship of the rich cattle-merchants, developed handicrafts, and the number of its inhabitants and the rate of its trade surpassed any royal town. In other parts of the country, agriculture developed further: about the middle of the sixteenth century viticulture in the Tokaj region was reorganized with the invention of the methods to produce the sweet aszu wine, which gave new impetus to wine export to Poland. In certain wine-producing regions all other forms of cultivation were stopped by the end of the sixteenth century, and vine-growing occu¬ pied every inch of ground.

The flourishing of the cattle-breeding and wine-trading boroughs was interrupted, however, when the landlords began to market then- own produce. Figures are available on the commercial activities of the landlords in the fifteenth century and even before, although they did not produce commodities themselves, but sold those of their tenants. The demesne declined in the thirteenth century and existed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in only a few places. In the fifteenth century, it had still not been uncommon for landlords to buy their household necessities in the markets of the boroughs; but by the early sixteenth century, many landlords already produced their own wheat, wine and cattle on their newly expanded demesnes, called major (manor), sending the surplus to the market for sale. It is obvious that by then the landlord no longer bought the products of the peasants and as the town market continued to shrink there was little for the peasant to sell and even less to buy. He had little money to pay trades¬ men and merchants and even less for the landlord. About 1530 it was common custom, throughout the country, to enforce the labour serv¬ ices of the peasants on the manorial fields side by side with hired labour. By the middle of the century, one baronial manor after the other reduced hired labour by expecting more from the tenants than the weekly one-day labour service fixed by law, making it compulsory for two days, or even three days a week, on every third week, or even every other week. But this custom was soon transgressed by landlords and their officials who demanded unlimited labour services whenever it pleased them. The raising of labour services was accompanied by peasant revolts throughout the country in the 1570s.

Labour service limited the peasants’ own commodity production, although the price revolution enabled them for the time being to com¬ pete on the foreign markets. But the change in the agrarian system brought about other changes, too. About the middle of the sixteenth century, villages and boroughs were obliged to sell the landlord’s wine regularly, or else during a certain period of the year visit regularly the inn under the landlord’s management. With this arrangement wine, the most profitable commodity on the Hungarian agricultural market, became monopolized by the landlords, a tremendous blow to the peas¬ antry, who were thus deprived of the best source of their income as wine producers—the retail sale of wine. Even later, at the time of the heyday of the manorial system, the landlord’s wine monopoly was his best source of income, contributing from a half to two-thirds of the total income of the estate. The landlords obtained wine for their inns and for the ever-increasing foreign market in Poland and Silesia from the traditional ninth and by forcing the peasants to sell. These forced sales became common in other commodities too, and they were sanctioned by the diet about the middle of the century. Buying at a low price and selling some at the highest price to the peasantry, while exporting the remainder, created a comfortable market for the Hun¬ garian ruling class in exchange for the ever-shrinking market of the towns.

The Turkish Occupation and Its Effects on Economic and Social Conditions

In both the Habsburg kingdom and in the Principality of Transylvania the manor system based on labour services began to flourish, with the difference that in Transylvania the Sekel and Saxon peasants could not be compelled either by their own dignitaries or by the Hungarian nobility to perform forced labour services. In the parts under Turkish occupation, however, special conditions prevailed.

The landlords and the majority of the town bourgeoisie fled from the Turks, and the remaining village and town population became ordinary tax-payers of the sultan. The villages were given in fief to the spahis and the rest of the country—the bulk of the boroughs— paid their taxes direct to the Turkish treasury. The Turkish occupiers administered both villages and towns themselves, hiring out the col¬ lection of taxes to men appointed from their own ranks and placing jurisdiction in the hands of the kadis (judges). The level of dues did not differ from what it had been under the Hungarian lords, except for an additional poll tax on all non-Moslems, and some other special Turkish taxes. The spahis, like others who rented estates from the sultan, tried to exploit the peasants as much as possible, not knowing how long they would be allowed to stay. On the other hand, they only collected taxes and dues in kind, without expecting manorial labour services from the peasants.

During the sixteenth century, the Hungarian state and the landlords also tried to levy taxes on the peasantry under Turkish rule, a custom reciprocated by the Turks in the villages on the Turkish-Hungarian border. In the Treaty of Adrianople (1568), and in succeeding treaties as well, the arrangement known as Hungarian-Turkish condominium was formally sanctioned, meaning the sharing of taxes collected by both parties from the peasantry. The king of Hungary and the sultan mutually agreed to cede half of their tax revenues to each other, per¬ mitting the Hungarian landlords who fled beyond the border to levy taxes in their villages under Turkish rule. This right was enforced from time to time by deeds of arms by the garrisons of the border fortresses.

The border militia, who had a special reputation for bravery, rendered service in the castles of the king and the barons, and gradually rose to form a warrior elite. They assumed the special tactics of ‘offensive defence’, meaning the constant harassment of the enemy. They were obliged to do so by force of necessity, as neither king nor landlords could offer a regular pay, and their living had to come from the spoils of their raids in Turkish territories. In peacetime these raids continued incessantly, with Hungarian and Turkish warriors challenging each other to ‘friendly’ encounters during the lull.

In Western Europe this was the time of the creation of national states and national churches. In Hungary, owing to economic and social circumstances, and to the influence of the ideals of the Renais¬ sance and the Reformation, the military fighting spirit fostered na¬ tional consciousness: the idea that the Hungarian nation had the mission of defending the whole of Christianity against the pagan Turks.

Late Renaissance and Reformation

Humanist and Renaissance literature and art flourished in the country after Moh&cs, moving out of the royal court and the closed society of the high church dignitaries into the ranks of the nobility and towns¬ men. About the middle of the century, most of the writers were still churchmen, like the two outstanding writers of Renaissance memoirs, Miklos Olah and Antal Verancsics, Archbishops of Esztergom. Under the influence of Erasmus the cult of the national language began, tak¬ ing the form of Hungarian translations of the Bible which were culti¬ vated by the lesser clergy. The first church reformers also came from the ranks of Hungarian followers of Erasmus. The Reformation in Hungary took root in the court of Louis II and in the Erasmian circle of Queen Mary, and, after Mohacs, though both Ferdinand I and King John Z&polyai were devout Roman Catholics, it spread uninter¬ ruptedly. At first it was the ideas of Luther which spread, but by the fifties the teachings of the Swiss reformers prevailed in Hungary. Even the ideas of the anti-Trinitarian Servetus, burnt at Geneva, had sup¬ porters, who in Hungary combined them with Anabaptist ideas. The anti-Trinitarian movement was headed by Ferenc D&vid of Kolozsvdr; he propagated mystic teachings about the coming of the ‘thousand- year empire’ and the ruin of the ‘infidel’, along with ideas attacking the dogma of the Trinity. In 1570, the year prophesied by him, the suffering peasantry of the Tisza region, oppressed by both landlords and Turks, rose under Gyorgy Karacsony, aiming first to drive out the Turks and then to turn against the landlords. Their first venture against the Turks, however, proved unsuccessful, and the Hungarian feudal lords combined forces to suppress the rising. After this event, the anti-feudal Protestant sects could only continue in small communities, such as the Sabbatarians in Transylvania, who survived to the end of the nineteenth century.

The nobility, except for a small minority, welcomed the Reforma¬ tion. They had opportunities to receive church property, while manag¬ ing to check the revolutionary trend of the Reformation; and they forged from its democratic ideas weapons for restricting royal power. In the beginning, the preachers, mainly of peasant and urban origin, tried to raise their voices in support of the just grievances of peasantry and townspeople; they openly criticized the lords for oppressing their tenants and neglecting the defence of their country, but in the course of time, as their livelihood became threatened, they compromised and became themselves the defenders of the feudal system. The landlords managed to sponsor not only the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches, but also the anti-Trinitarian (later the Unitarian) Church as well. In the German towns and the Hungarian and Slovak parts of the north¬ western region Lutheranism won, whereas Calvinism spread mainly in parts of the country under Turkish occupation and in the Transyl¬ vanian Principality. Anti-Trinitarianism spread in the same regions as Calvinism, but on a smaller scale. The Reformation had taken a heavy toll on the Roman Catholic Church, which was reduced temporarily to a small minority of the population.

The Reformation influenced favourably the development of the Hungarian language, as the reformers preached in the vernacular. Of the numerous Bible translations, that of G&spar K&roli, which was printed in 1590, was most popular, and influenced the development of the literary medium to as great an extent as Luther’s Bible translation in Germany. Many schools and printing presses came into existence.

The famous Calvinist schools of Debrecen, Sdrospatak and Maros- vdsdrhely, and the anti-Trinitarian school of Kolozsv£r became col¬ leges as early as the sixteenth century.

In Transylvania religious toleration—unique in this^epoch—existed until 1570: the three offshoots of the Reformation, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Anti-Trinitarianism, were declared established reli¬ gions along with Roman Catholicism, but the Orthodox religion of the Rumanian peasantry was only tolerated. In this atmosphere, the more extreme proponents of the Reformation, expelled from their own countries, were given shelter, men like Blandrata, Sozzini, Paleolog and Sommer. Istvan B&thory restricted anti-Trinitarianism by permit¬ ting the Jesuits to settle and by the introduction of the Counter-Re¬ formation, but he could not limit the other Protestant religions. The only change in Transylvania in matters of religion was that, with the restriction of the anti-Trinitarians, Calvinism prevailed.

Literature also became a means for the reformers to propagate their ideas. The poems of Andrds Szkdrosi Horvdt, the plays of Mihdly Sztarai and the tales of Gaspar Heltai admonished both the Roman Church and the feudal lords for oppressing the people. After the sup¬ pression of radical trends within the Reformation, not only the subject- matter, but also the style of literature changed. Instead of religious controversy, the temporarily silent ideas of the secular Renaissance were reintroduced. In the court of the B&thorys, humanist historians, like Ferenc Forgach and Istv&n Szamoskozy, were heartily welcomed.

Patriotic ideas mingled with those of humanism and the Reforma¬ tion in the poetry of Balint Balassi. His patriotic and religious poems and his love lyrics achieved high standards of perfection in Hungarian literature.

In architecture, it was only after MoMcs that the Renaissance style finally prevailed over the Gothic. The Reformation did not inspire new church buildings, but the Turkish occupation encouraged the building of castles. The best buildings of the sixteenth century are fortresses built by Italian architects (the most advanced being those of GyoT, Komarom and Ersekujvdr in Hungary, and Vdrad, Szamos- ujvdr and Fogaras in Transylvania), residential castles built by Italian and Hungarian masters and fortified manor houses. The most typical was the quadrangle castle with four turrets, one in each corner—many of these survive in every part of the country (S&rv&r, Nagybiccse etc.).

The Crisis of Habsburg Power (1571–1606)

In the last third of the sixteenth century the power of the Austrian Habsburgs was seriously threatened. The background to the crisis was the strengthening of the feudal ruling class, which both crushed the peasantry and obstructed the life of the towns. But the compromise between the ruler and the nobility was upset only when the resources of the dynasty underwent setbacks caused by the failures of the South German merchants and the constant blows levelled at Spanish power in the Low Countries and on the English coast.

From the seventies onwards, all over the Habsburg countries, the nobility attempted to restrict central government, and their efforts, especially in the Hungarian diets, became more and more forceful. In 1576, the royal governor, speaking in the name of the Estates, called upon King Maximilian to relieve the country ‘from the slavery and tyranny introduced under his rule and formerly unknown in these parts’, meaning the absolutist provisions of central government. It was well-known in Vienna that many barons and nobles in the Hungarian kingdom adhered to the Transylvanian prince, expecting from him the reunion of Hungary and the end of Habsburg rule.

Centralization in Transylvania

Istvan Bathory (1571-1586) had brought about such consolidation in Transylvania that it was quite natural for the Hungarian ruling class, dissatisfied with Habsburg rule, to turn to him. He was the vassal of the Turks and paid taxes to the sultan but he could prevent Turkish interference in the life of the country and could act independently in foreign affairs, and it was he, not Maximilian, who secured for himself the vacant crown of the Polish Jagiellos in 1575. He appointed his brother Kristof as voivode of Transylvania, but managed the affairs of Transylvania himself through the Hungarian chancery at Cracow. The fact that the prince of Transylvania was at the same time king of Poland meant that the fate of the country was involved with the Polish-Russian-Swedish struggle for supremacy in the Baltic. Bathory and his Polish adherents fostered the idea of an Eastern European empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The plan was hardly real- istic at a time when anarchy in Poland prevented the supply of either material or military forces for a sustained campaign.

In Transylvania B&thory very shrewdly played against each other the conflicting interests of the three ‘nations’—the Hungarian nobility, the Sekels and the Saxons—and, in the meantime, created a new social basis for his power in the rising social class of the free military peasantry. Such a class had been formed earlier by the Sekels, but their unity was disrupted by the endeavours of their leaders to make them their serfs. The common people, hit also by Martinuzzi’s new taxes, rose up in defence of their liberties. The rising failed in 1562, and afterwards the mass of the Sekels became the Prince’s serfs, but the Sekel leaders were granted equal rights with the Hungarian nobles and the landlords’ rights over their Sekel servants. B&thory, in order to make up for his loss of soldiers, raised to the rank of nobility indi¬ viduals and groups of Hungarian, Rumanian and Sekel peasants, oblig¬ ing them to perform paid military service in his Russian campaign.

His officials managing the affairs of Transylvania were men of h umanis tic culture, educated at the University of Padua, who obe¬ diently executed Bathory’s orders to extort money contributions and soldiers from the reluctant Transylvanian nobility for his wars fought in pursuit of apparent Polish interests. His distant hopes of reuniting Hungary with Polish help were frustrated, however, by his premature death, when Transylvania came under the rule of his mediocre nephew, Zsigmond B&thory (1586-1598).

A New Court Aristocracy and the Fifteen Years War

The internal crisis in the Habsburg Empire had in the meantime be¬ come more acute. During the reign of Rudolf (1576-1608), the struggle between the Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian nobility, who were mainly Protestants, and the Catholic dynasty, became a religious issue. The number of aristocrats who had become rich from commodity production had grown, and in return for loans supplied by them to the dynasty during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, they took into their possession most of the treasury estates. The Austrian landed aristocracy moved into key positions in the central financial admin¬ istration, sharing the rent of state revenues with the office-holding bureaucracy and with Austrian merchant capitalists released from the South German pressure. A growing number of the landed aristocracy abandoned the camp of the opposition and took up their position in the service of the central power. This aristocracy cannot be identified with the court aristocracy of absolute monarchies in Western Europe, because they were active partners in economic life and capitalist ven¬ tures; they could rather be compared to the commercialized nobility of England. This society, however, was backward in capitalist develop¬ ment, and the feudal ruling class had not assumed bourgeois virtues; on the contrary, it was the bourgeoisie that became feudalized. The basis of power and wealth remained the feudal estate, and the rising bourgeoisie also wished to become feudal landowners.

At the end of the sixteenth century, the forces wishing to support centralization were still in a state of formation. The leaders were them¬ selves hesitating about whether to join the opposition or the central power, but favourable conditions during the fifteen years of the Turk¬ ish wars helped to show the way towards the final decision.

Tension within, and renewed attack from the Turks, forced the Habsburg court in 1591 to agree with the Hungarian nobility and start the v/ar. But the Habsburgs had so many debts that they were unable to incur new financial and military obligations, so there was no proper army to fight against the Turks, only the private armies of the Hungarian aristocracy and the castle garrisons. The war was carried on by temporarily hired foreign soldiers under mercenary lead¬ ers, dismissed and reorganized from year to year according to the amount of money available from papal and German donations. But the Turkish force was also weak and the Habsburgs could boast of some initial successes.

The cooperation of Transylvania and the two Rumanian principal¬ ities was very helpful. The adviser of Zsigmond B&thory, Istvan Bocs¬ kai, could see no other way out for the country, now deprived of its Polish backing, than alliance with the Habsburgs. He hoped to have a voice in Hungarian affairs should the war against the Turks be suc¬ cessful. In 1595, Bocskai and Michael, voivode of Wallachia, won a decisive victory over the Turks at Giurgiu, and most of the escaping Turks perished in the Danube. The Transylvanian army captured the Turkish castles along the Maros river. But the allies lost a battle at Mezokeresztes in 1596 when the sultan personally led his army. The war dragged on for another decade, with the border fortresses chang¬ ing hands several times, but neither party could get the upper hand. In between their battles, both the unpaid soldiers of the Habsburgs and the Turkish marauders plundered practically the whole country.

Zsigmond Bathory, wanting to extricate himself from this unlucky war, ceded Transylvania to King Rudolf of Habsburg. The Transylvan¬ ian ruling class, however, fearing Turkish retaliation, desired peace with the sultan. After fierce civil war, Basta, the mercenary leader of the Habsburgs, held the country in terror for years.

The ruling class of Habsburg Hungary became embittered because of the miseries of the ever-prolonged Turkish war, their inferior role to the foreign mercenaries in conducting the affairs of the war and, last but not least, because they were not able to benefit from any boom brought about by the war itself. The Hungarian commodity-producing landlords tried to get contracts with the army or offer loans against treasury security, but always found the Austrian landlords, the office¬ holding bureaucracy or their allies, the rich bourgeoisie, blocking their way.

The most typical representative of the new Austrian capitalists, Lazarus Henckel, the son of a chamber official in Hungary, started as an agent of a firm in Ulm, and went over into business on his own. During the Fifteen Years War he supplied cloth for the Habsburg army, monopolized most of the cattle trade in Hungary, and advanced loans to the court on the strength of future financial aid to come from Germany. By about 1604, the Habsburg court owed him approximately one million florins. To cover it, he was promised a share in the copper business in Beszterceb&nya, and the confiscated estates of a Hungarian magnate, Istvan Uleshazy.

Ulesh&zy himself, a one-time nobleman, had worked his way into the Hungarian aristocracy through engagement in commercial enter¬ prises and became a firm opponent of the large-scale interests of Austrian merchant capital in Hungary. He was charged with treason, not only as a means of forcing the withdrawal of an inopportune in¬ dividual, but as the first step in a general attack against the Hungarian aristocracy. The confiscation of their estates was an attempt to break the resistance of the strongest opposition to Habsburg absolutism and, also, to replenish the empty treasury of the ruler. The Austrian aristo¬ crats and bourgeois capitalists around the monarch hoped by this means to obtain estates in Hungary and the right to own commercial monopolies there. The Hungarian high court acquitted I116sh£zy, but the Habsburg court falsely condemned him to death and ordered the confiscation of his estates, so that Illeshazy was obliged to flee abroad. While the Habsburgs were engaged in preparing new charges against the Hungarian landlords. General Belgiojoso occupied the Protestant churches in the towns and confiscated the goods of resisting burghers.

The Bocskai Rising

Resistance in Hungary found a worthy leader in the person of Istvan Bocskai who, disappointed with Habsburg policy, had retired to his estates near V&rad. He was persuaded by the pro-Turkish, young lead¬ er of the Transylvanian exiles, Gabor Bethlen, to organize an uprising against the Habsburg rule with Turkish help. Belgiojoso found out about the rising and in the autumn of 1604 advanced with his army against Bocskai. Beyond the few hundred garrison guards of his castles, Bocskai had no armed forces at his disposal, as his negotiations with the Turks had only been in the initial stage. In this situation he asked for the help of the marauding soldiers of the Tisza region, and also succeeded in winning over the Hungarian mercenaries of Belgio- joso’s army.

These soldiers, called heyducks ( hajdu) were peasants who had escaped in great numbers from the Turkish devastation and the land¬ lords’ oppression and had taken up military service for hire, or else plundered the country for a livelihood. In the wars against the Turks they distinguished themselves for toughness, but in want of a standing mercenary army, only some of them could become regular soldiers. The Hungarian diet had several times ordered that they should be reinstated as peasants, or failing this, wiped out. Bocskai with his enlisted heyducks repulsed Belgiojoso’s attack and occupied Debrecen, Kassa and, after some misadventures, finally expelled Basta’s army, which was sent against him, from the country. The majority of the ruling class were forced by the peasantry in unison with the heyducks to join forces with Bocskai. The nobility of Transylvania elected him prince and the sultan offered him the crown of Hungary.

At the height of Bocskai’s power, social unrest became apparent. The Transylvanian nobility wished to restore the kingdom of Hungary under Turkish protection, but the landlords of Habsburg Hungary, headed by 1116shazy, wished for agreement with the Habsburgs, in exchange for religious toleration and autonomy. Both parties agreed on one point: that the disarming of the heyducks and the peasantry in their train was a matter of first importance, or the rising might easily rid itself of the control of the feudal lords, and break out into a real peasant war. In this situation there was nothing left for Bocskai but to attempt to open negotiations.

After long delays and discussions, a compromise was reached in 1606, and signed as the Treaty of Vienna. It recognized the independ¬ ence of the Principality of Transylvania, accorded religious toleration in the towns and frontier castles in the part of the kingdom returned to Habsburg rule, and stipulated that the government should be in the hands of appointed members of the Hungarian aristocracy and nobility. A solution to the heyduck question was suggested by Bocskai: he gave them a similar status to the free Sekel peasants doing military service. Ten thousand heyducks were offered land and exemption from feudal burdens in return for free military service. With Bocskai’s me¬ diation the Treaty of Zsitvatorok was signed in the same year by the Turks and Habsburgs; it ceded Eger and Kanizsa to the Turks, who had previously occupied them, and secured peace for the country.

The System of 'Perpetual Serfdom' and the Subjection of the Towns to the Nobility

The settling of the heyducks marked a breach in the system of op¬ pression of the peasantry by the landlord. On the other hand, all the achievements of the Bocskai rising had only strengthened the position of the ruling class against the endeavours of the central power and the struggles of the peasantry. The diet’s Act of 1608 recognized the final judicial power of the landlord over the peasantry, and the county was to be the only administrative body with power to decide the movement of the peasants. In these important matters, therefore, the intervention of the central power had been excluded.

The absolute power of the landlord was intended to secure labour services. In order to achieve it, in the seventeenth century the Hunga¬ rian ruling class established a system which enabled them to bind the peasantry by force and judicial trickery. The term used by contempo¬ raries, the so-called ‘perpetual serfdom’, is a Hungarian version of the Eastern European ‘second serfdom’. Refusal of labour services and escapes had been considered formerly as an injury to the landlord demanding compensation. Seventeenth-century legal practice distorted this principle by regarding a refusal to comply with the landlord as seditious and to be dealt with according to the landlord’s will, in¬ volving even the death sentence. The only way open to the serf to escape the death sentence was to commit himself to ‘perpetual serf¬ dom’, i.e. renounce the right to move freely and sign a declaration of obedience. Any attempt to refuse to comply was severely punished, and in the course of time the social status of the whole peasantry came to be regarded as ‘perpetually serf’. Early medieval serfdom was thus restored in a new form.

The production of the manor was based on the unpaid labour ser¬ vices of the serf, whom it was customary to regard as tied to the land in the sixteenth century and whose lack of freedom to move was de¬ finitely established by the seventeenth century. In Hungary there were slight differences from general Eastern European custom. Wheat in Hungary was a negligible item in foreign trade, being mainly bought up on the home market to meet the needs of the armies fighting in the country and in the frontier castles. Hungarian cattle, on the other hand, were exported in considerable numbers to supply Austria, Bo¬ hemia, Moravia, Silesia, the South German towns and Venice; Hun¬ garian wine was equally in demand in Poland and Silesia. Labour services could never be exploited to such advantage in cattle raising and viticulture as they were in wheat production. The manors pro¬ duced more wheat than anything else; their cattle breeding and vine¬ yards were insignificant. About the middle of the seventeenth century, as the management of manors had traditions a hundred years old to draw on, more than half of the wheat production on most estates came from the manor, whereas the peasants produced seven to eight times more wine than the landlord’s vineyards. Similarly, the animal stock of the landlord was only in exceptional cases larger than that of a well-to-do peasant.

The peasants’ own production in Hungary suffered severe setbacks, but it did not dwindle to the same extent as in other countries with similar developments, where wheat was the dominating agricultural product. A more serious blow was exerted on agricultural commodity production by the general European economic depression of the seven¬ teenth century, which diminished the buying power of both land¬ lords and peasants.

The system of ‘perpetual serfdom’ added new difficulties to the development of the towns. Indirectly it retarded progress in the towns by preventing the movement of the peasants into them, and by con¬ tributing to the backwardness of their markets. In addition, the land¬ lord’s trading and manufacturing activities crippled those of the bour¬ geoisie. More directly, the nobility inflicted several blows on the towns. Any nobleman moving into the towns was exempt from paying taxes, being outside municipal jurisdiction and regulations. The bourgeoisie lost its monopolistic position in its own markets, and the county author¬ ities even stopped their price-regulating functions by imposing their own towards the end of the sixteenth century. Thus about the middle of the seventeenth century towns in Hungary came under the control of the nobility, noblemen being elected to the councils, with decisive votes. The townspeople themselves engaged in agricultural activities; the main income of some towns came from the villages which owed labour service, and from the sale of wine. Only those towns were re- cognized as free which owned villages with serfs, i.e. acted as a col¬ lective landlord.

However heavy the feudal burden on the peasantry and towns, the ruling class was nevertheless not successful in making the system of perpetual serfdom universal. The resistance of the peasants, as mani¬ fest in the number of escapes and uprisings, led to a freer economic and social development. Movement into the boroughs did not stop; although their privileges were considerably restricted by the landlords, even so they offered better conditions than the villages. By then many serfs had obtained noble status from either the Habsburgs or the princes of Transylvania in return for their military services. The num¬ ber of noblemen holding a peasant tenure with feudal obligation, but otherwise free, rose to thousands in the seventeenth century. And the number of heyducks, exempt from feudal obligations in return for military service and receiving portions of free land, rose throughout the country.

The landlords also needed administrative and peace-keeping of¬ ficials, who were mainly recruited from the poor nobility and heyducks, regarded as the reserves of the ruling class. With the peasant burghers of the boroughs, they constituted the free—at least, comparatively free—sector of peasant production exempt from the burdens of per¬ petual serfdom. Their privileged posidon served as an example to the great masses of the oppressed peasantry.

Transylvania versus Habsburg (1606–1648)

Transylvania, the Stronghold of Resistance

Bocskai died in 1606. His last will defined the mission of the Principal¬ ity of Transylvania by instructing the prince to interfere in Hungarian affairs whenever the privileges of the Estates were being threatened by the Habsburg king of Hungary. The Treaty of Vienna, which had been signed by Bocskai as prince of Transylvania, seemed to provide scope for this activity, because it codified the privileges of the nobility. The treaty, however, was made against the wishes of Emperor Rudolf by his brother. Archduke Matthias, and the emperor did not show any willingness to sanction it.

The freedom of the heyducks, promised by Bocskai, depended on the implementation of this document. In 1607, their captains called them to arms, proclaiming their wish to have a Calvinist Hungarian ruler instead of the ‘faithless, foreign papist’, King Rudolf.

The Hungarian ruling class had no intention of breaking away from the Habsburgs but the raising of the heyducks was a good opportunity to ask for the resignation of Rudolf in favour of his brother Matthias II (1608-1619) who was willing to sanction the Treaty of Vienna. The Estates of Austria, Bohemia and Moravia soon joined the Hun¬ garians in a federation to ensure the mutual recognition of their priv¬ ileges. Some of the heyducks, satisfied with the Treaty of Vienna, happily settled down in their boroughs beyond the Tisza allotted to them by Bocskai. The majority, however, entered into the service of Gabor, the last descendant of the Bathory family, to win for him the Principality of Transylvania.

Cardinal Khlesl, Matthias II’s minister, tried to defend the key positions of the central power against the Estates. He could not de¬ pend, however, on agreements made with the Hungarian nobility as long as they had hopes of support from Transylvania. Khlesl, in order to achieve his ends, organized a conspiracy to get rid of Gabor Ba¬ thory; then, having failed, he sent an army in 1611 to conquer Tran¬ sylvania. The army of the pro-Habsburg Hungarian aristocracy suffered a heavy defeat. Bathory, however, owing to a quarrel with the heyducks, was assassinated in 1613. The court of Vienna prepared for another attack against his successor, G&bor Bethlen, but the council of the Hungarian, Austrian, Bohemian and Moravian Estates held at Linz ordered its postponement.

Khlesl, nevertheless, succeeded with his new tactics of trying to divide the ruling classes in the Habsburg countries. He tried to recruit new members into the loyal court aristocracy by gifts, offices and the propaganda measures of the Counter-Reformation. In Hungary the new policy was successfully supported by Peter P&zmany, a former Jesuit who became Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate. A distin¬ guished writer, he won over to the Roman Church a great number of aristocratic families. Owing to the institution of perpetual serfdom, which encompassed the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, this brought about the reconversion to Catholicism of the peasants de¬ pendent on the landlords.

With the rising number of converted aristocrats leaving the camp of resistance, the struggle of the remaining Hungarian Protestants for religious freedom and the right of the nobility to self-government became more difficult. The movement was headed by the Protestant landed aristocracy, who expected support from the Calvinist princes of Transylvania.

The Confederation of the Estates in the Habsburg Countries and Their Alliance with Transylvania

Transylvania emerged from the ravages of the Fifteen Years War during the rule of Gdbor Bethlen (1613-1629). The trend of Bethlen’s policy followed that of Istvan Bathory and Bocskai who had tried to organize a standing army of the free peasantry, independent of the Estates. Bethlen proceeded consciously on these lines. He gave nobility to peasants, defended the liberty returned to the Sekels by Bocskai and established new heyduck settlements in Transylvania. At the same time, he did not permit the aristocracy to acquire large new estates and ordered the return of the treasury estates which had passed into their hands in the troublesome years of the past decades.

Bethlen was not content with the resources provided by the pos¬ session of feudal estates. He instituted an economic policy far in advance of the backward Transylvanian conditions, even mercantilist in some of its features. He invited foreign craftsmen and miners to Transylvania, organized state trade based on monopolies and gave full support to the towns. He tried to make his court at Gyulafehervar

a cultural centre, and established there the first Transylvanian uni¬ versity. In strong contrast to the policy of the loyal pro-Habsburg aristocracy, he supported the peasantry by increasing the number of free peasants and, within the system of perpetual serfdom, by trying to defend the serfs from the abuses of their landlords. He made it punishable by law to stop the children of the serfs from attending school. His pro-peasant policy naturally aimed at increasing their tax- paying capacity, nevertheless it won for him the sympathy of the peasantry in Habsburg Hungary suffering from the oppression of the landlords and from the violent Counter-Reformation.

The Habsburg court anxiously watched the new consolidation of Transylvania in the economic and political field. It did not risk a frontal attack, but a number of adventurers were sent to Transylvania as pretenders to Bethlen’s throne. Bethlen easily dismissed these provo¬ cations. The outbreak of the Thirty Years War gave him an opportu¬ nity to make an open challenge.

All the international political differences emerging in the Thirty Years War produced the first all-European armed conflict. To the differences between the Austrian Habsburgs and the German princes was added the resistance of the Estates of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Hungary against Habsburg absolutism. The Habsburg- Transylvanian controversy also produced a worsening in Habsburg- Turkish relations in due course. Western European hostility to the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs revived, creating an anti-Habsburg front from England to Transylvania.

There was an indirect relationship between the struggles of the Habsburgs and their direct enemies, and the contest between Sweden, Poland and Russia for the Baltic. As long as the Swedish-Polish al¬ liance lasted, the affair could be isolated from the conflict of the Habsburgs and their enemies. During the reign of Sigismund III, how¬ ever, the Swedish-Polish relationship loosened, and the Baltic question again became acute, permitting the rapprochement of Sweden and Russia. The Polish ruling class asked for the help of the Austrian Habsburgs against a possible alliance between Sweden and Russia, thus breaking with the policy pursued by Poland throughout the six¬ teenth century and provoking an attack by the Turks, until then neu¬ tral towards Poland.

In this very complex European situation, Bethlen first tried to profit from the conflict of the Austrian Habsburgs with the Protestant princes of Germany and the resisting Estates of their countries, in order to obtain the restoration of an independent kingdom of Hungary. He first intervened with an army to help the Bohemian insurgents. It served as an encouragement to the Hungarian and Austrian Estates to renew their confederation in support of Bohemia. An army of Tran¬ sylvanians, Bohemians, Moravians, Hungarians and Austrians reached Vienna in the autumn of 1619. The power of the Habsburgs in Central Europe was in danger. The Hungarian adherents of the new Habsburg king, Ferdinand II (1619-1637), combined with an army of Polish mercenaries to attack Bethlen’s forces from the rear and the siege of Vienna was frustrated.

Habsburg centralization, however retarded, was still more success¬ ful in mobilizing its resources and gaining outside help than the weak confederation of the Estates, which was torn by internal differences. Bethlen’s attempt to involve the Turks in the conflict did not prove helpful. Neither the federation of the German Protestant princes, nor the English father-in-law of Frederick, King of Bohemia, helped the Bohemians; on the other hand the League of the German Catholic princes was more active. The League’s forces, combined with the Habsburg army, defeated the Bohemian insurgents in the battle of the White Mountain in 1620, before Bethlen’s relief force could arrive.

Ferdinand II tried to break the Bohemian ruling class by executions, the confiscation of their estates, and the introduction of absolute gov¬ ernment. The Austrian Estates also capitulated. Fifty years of econom¬ ic and social development brought about the end of the Austrian and Bohemian feudal resistance, and political leadership slipped into the hands of the Catholic court aristocracy, who held the key positions in the absolute monarchy.

Gábor Bethlen and the Anti-Habsburg European Coalitions

Hungary escaped the fate of Bohemia, but the top stratum of the Hungarian ruling class was not invited to join the new aristocracy in the Habsburg court. It also turned out that the idea of the reunion of Hungary, fostered by Transylvania, was mere illusion. The centralized Transylvanian principality was strong enough to keep the idea of re¬ sistance alive in Hungary, but hardly strong enough to restore the centralized Hungarian kingdom of Matthias Hunyadi against the wishes of both Habsburgs and Turks. After the sultan had refused his consent to the union of Hungary and Transylvania under the same ruler, Bethlen too came to realize that the idea was impossible and, although elected king of Hungary in 1620, he refused to be crowned. In 1622, he signed with the Habsburgs the Treaty of Nikolsburg which recognized the Treaty of Vienna and the ceding of seven Plungarian counties to Transylvania. Thus Bethlen’s power came to extend over half of Hungary.

Bethlen, not being able to achieve more by himself, had great hopes in the Western European anti-Habsburg powers. He arranged far- reaching diplomatic connections to organize a grand anti-Habsburg coalition. In 1623, when his hopes began to be realized, he occupied Habsburg Hungary, and encircled the imperial army in Moravia. But aid from the West never arrived, and he deemed it best to renew the old treaty. He was even prepared to give up his anti-Habsburg activ¬ ities if Ferdinand II would appoint him governor of Hungary. But Vienna would not hear of that.

Bethlen again attempted to reach an understanding with the Western powers. He joined the English, Dutch and Danish alliance. According to a common plan, the Danish were to attack in the West, and Bethlen in the East. In 1626, the allies sent the mercenary army of Mansfeld to Bethlen’s aid. Wallenstein proceeded in person to Hungary to pre¬ vent Mansfcld’s army from joining up with Bethlen, but he arrived too late. The armies of Wallenstein and those of Bethlen and Mansfeld were facing each other. Bethlen wanted to give time to Mansfeld’s army to recover from fatigue, and assumed delaying tactics. Wallen¬ stein, on the other hand, dared not follow him deep into the country, and preferred to withdraw, but owing to attacks in his rear by Bethlen’s cavalry, the withdrawal turned into a disorderly flight. Habsburg Hun¬ gary fell for the third time into Bethlen’s hands, but he was again compelled to make peace, because the Habsburgs were winning on the western front.

In the last years of his life, he made plans with Gustavus Adolphus to encircle the Habsburgs, but his death prevented him from witnessing the intervention of the Swedes.

Gábor Bethlen's Political Legacy

The widow and successor of G&bor Bethlen, Catherine of Branden¬ burg, was under the influence of a Habsburg coterie of aristocrats, and seemed willing to deliver Transylvania to the Habsburgs. It was again the heyducks who staked their lives for the independence of the prin¬ cipality. Their boroughs were situated in the seven counties which had returned to the Habsburgs with the death of Bethlen. They were afraid of losing their liberties with the return of the rule of the Hungarian aristocracy, and they refused to take the oath of fealty to Ferdinand II. The palatine, Miklds Esterhazy, set out to punish them, and at the same time conquer Transylvania. Two young Transylvanian lords, D£vid Zdlyomi and Istvan Bethlen, tried to save Gabor Bethlen’s legacy. The first thing was to help the heyducks, and they succeeded in repulsing Esterhazy’s army. They invited to the throne of Transyl¬ vania the richest Hungarian Protestant aristocrat, Gyorgy R&kdczi (1631-1648). Rikoczi moved into Transylvania at the head of the heyducks, and was acclaimed its prince by the diet. EsterMzy’s second assault also ended in failure and he was compelled to make peace. The heyducks remained under Habsburg rule, but were able to pre¬ serve their freedom.

EsterMzy, on the other hand, did not give up the idea of conquering Transylvania, and prepared for a third attack. The marauding of his soldiers induced the peasantry of the Tisza region to rise in the summer of 1631. Their leader, Peter Csdsz&r, called upon R&koczi, begging him to intervene. In the meantime, the Swedish ambassador offered a military alliance to the prince. There would have been a good chance of defeating the Habsburgs, but Rdkdczi, the landlord, had no sym¬ pathy with the peasants and stifled their rising.

R&koczi added no new bricks to the political edifice built by his great predecessor; he rather removed some. He was determined to acquire new estates, and expanded his family lands into the largest holding of that period. Bethlen’s main interest had been the develop¬ ment of trade and commerce; Rakoczi, on the other hand, based his power on his immense landed property. Bethlen had not ascended the throne as a member of the aristocracy, but worked his way upwards as a humble member of the nobility; landed property was but a means to central power in his eyes. Rakoczi, on the other hand, as the richest member of the aristocracy, looked upon land as the source of all power. He needed the labour services of the peasantry and had little sympathy for augmenting the number of free peasants performing only military service; and, instead of protecting the labouring masses, his legal measures provided for their more efficient exploitation.

His participation in the Thirty Years War had nothing to do with the distant idea of the reunion of Hungary, his main concern being the safety and further enrichment of his family estates within Hungary. In 1644, he entered into an alliance with the French and the Swedes, and set off to render aid to Tortensson during his siege of Vienna. Order¬ ed back by his Turkish protector, he was obliged in 1647 to sign the Treaty of Linz, which restored the seven counties to him. It is to his credit that he extended religious toleration to the Protestant peasantry in Habsburg Hungary, for the first time transgressing the principle of cuius regio, eius religio.

The Cultural Split

The secular culture of the Renaissance of the late sixteenth century gave way in the first half of the seventeenth to militant religious trends. In the wake of the Counter-Reformation, a new Catholic culture was in the ascendant, with the Jesuits as its pioneers, and P6ter Pdzmany foremost among them. In his literary work baroque style is first used in Hungarian literature. The establishment in 1635 of the university of Nagyszombat, which was removed to Pest in the eighteenth century, is connected with his name. The aristocracy, converted to Catholicism under his influence, became the first patrons of baroque art.

The then Protestant majority of the country remained unimpressed by baroque art. Both in literature and art, the traditions of the Re¬ naissance and the Reformation continued to prevail. In Transylvania and in the seven counties under Transylvanian rule, the cultural in¬ fluence of Bethlen flourished. Bethlen invited to his university in Gyu- lafehervar German teachers who became the spokesmen of the new Protestant ideas prevailing in England and Holland. Many Hungarian students were sent to study at the universities of England and the Low Countries. They returned enriched by the teachings of the Puritan Revolution in England, the philosophy of Descartes, and the results of the newly developing natural sciences. They became the propagators of the Puritan movement, which tried to bring about educational re¬ form side by side with democratic trends within the Church. Janos Tolnai and other Hungarian students established a Puritan League in London for the reformation of Hungarian schools based on a democratic Church. After his return Tolnai became headmaster in S6rospatak between 1639 and 1642; he insisted on the introduction of the vernacular into the schools and suggested that the Church, ulti¬ mately responsible for cultural life, should be under the leadership of an elected presbytery, representing the people. Conservative members of the Church called in the help of Gyorgy Rdkoczi I, who, afraid of another democratic insurgence, removed Tolnai from his post.

There was no way, however, of stopping the trend of Puritan ideas. Under the influence of the bourgeois revolution in England, the activ¬ ity of the Hungarian Puritans gained force. Their leaders were in constant touch with the intellectuals in Cromwell’s circle. After the death of Gyorgy Rakdczi I in 1648, Puritan ideas prevailed in schools, in both towns and villages, as a result of the teachings of progressive ministers. Gyorgy Rakoczi II (1648-1660) was no less averse to Puritan reform than his father. But the Puritans, regardless of punishment and the loss of their posts, insisted on Hungarian schools for the people, and democratic leadership in the Church. Some members of the ruling class realized that it would be useless to oppose all efforts to achieve changes; it would be meaningless to stop reforms which did not interfere with the feudal foundations of society. The dowager princess, Zsuzsanna Lorantffy, extended her protection to the disgraced Tolnai, who was subsequently invited to Sarospatak, together with the greatest educator of the period, Comenius, who taught in the school between 1650 and 1654.

In the year when Comenius departed, the most outstanding repre¬ sentative of the Hungarian Puritan movement, Janos Apaczai Csere, began his work. He consciously propagated the bourgeois ideology of the English Revolution among his students; his ideal was the educated, many-sided citizen, with a practical turn of mind. He passionately attacked the feudal backwardness of Hungary and its undeveloped industries and trade; he believed that the only hope of progress was in up-to-date education. In his Hungarian Encyclopaedia he summarized the great scientific achievements of the age, and he was the first to propagate in Hungarian the ideas of Copernicus, Descartes and Althu- sius. He had far-reaching plans to establish a secular intellectual class in a country where, as he says, ‘there are, as far as you can see, villages numbering one to two hundred families, where only the schoolmaster and the preacher are the people’s eyes, ears and tongue’. The prince seemed to hear the slogans of the English Revolution—and not without foundation—in Apaczai’s ideas, and the dangerous man was banished from Gyulafehervar to a secondary school in Kolozsvar. But Apaczai did not stop his teaching or the propagation of his ideas; nevertheless his superhuman efforts soon consumed his energy and he died young.

Apaczai’s death coincides with the end of the historic role of the Principality of Transylvania. Gyorgy Rakoczi II’s anti-Habsburg pol¬ icy led him to seek the throne of Poland. In alliance with the Swedes, he wanted to conquer Poland, but the badly organized campaign ended in a dreadful disaster in 1657. The Turks had long been suspi¬ cious of the independent political activities of the princes of Transyl¬ vania and looked for an opportunity to strike them down. Transylvania was invaded by Turkish and Tatar troops and Rakoczi himself died in 1660 fighting against the invaders.

Resistance to Hapsburg Absolutism (1648–1703)

Tension between the Habsburg Government and the Hungarian Estates

The Treaty of Westphalia shut out the Habsburgs from the German Empire, but gave them a free hand in the eastern countries. The defeat of Protestantism in Austria and Bohemia also brought to an end the resistance of the Estates in the hereditary countries of the Habsburgs, thus paving the v/ay for the emergence of absolute government. The Austrian court aristocracy was the solid foundation of absolutism. Nevertheless, the Habsburg government, afraid of the Principality of Transylvania and the Turkish power behind it, did not openly attack the Hungarian Estates and their autonomy, seemingly even respecting their right to elect a new king. The Hungarian aristocracy acknow¬ ledged with relief this attitude and gathered round the monarchy; the leading families became reconverted to Catholicism as a sign of accord.

The tensions which made the Hungarian ruling class rely on an absolute monarchy against their own serfs and the Turks created a dangerous situation, ready to explode as soon as any change came about in the foreign relations which maintained the balance. The col¬ lapse of the Principality of Transylvania after 1657 deprived the Hun¬ garian Estates of their support, and in the second half of the seven¬ teenth century Habsburg absolutism was ready for a frontal attack against the autonomy of the Estates. The Hungarian ruling class was not strong enough to defend its privileges single-handed, and was faced with the choice of seeking the support of the Turks, overtly, without Transylvanian mediation, or of some other anti-Habsburg power, or else of surrendering to Habsburg absolutism and merging with its court aristocracy.

The foundations of Habsburg absolutism had solidified during the Thirty Years War: the court aristocracy, the state officialdom and the merchant capitalists of Austria had combined to safeguard their in¬ terests. The Hungarian aristocracy did their best to become partners in the new power. Their attempt failed for more reasons than one: the court of Vienna showed reluctance to admit those Hungarians who headed the resistance of the nobility, while the Austrian aristocrats, office-holders and merchants intended to manage the foreign trade of Hungary without the participation of the Hungarian aristocracy. In addition to copper, the Austrian capitalists wanted to obtain the monopoly in the export of cattle, the other important Hungarian ex¬ port item. In 1622, a company called ‘Landsverleger Compagnia’ was established, with the exclusive right of handling the export of Hungari¬ an cattle from Hungary to Germany. The company failed in a short time, but was reorganized under the name of the ‘Kaiserliche Ochsen- handlung’ in 1651. The close relationship between the Austrian aristoc¬ racy, the merchants and the absolute monarchy was revealed by the fact that the monarch personally guaranteed the capital in return for 12 per cent interest.

These were the first signs of the protectionist economic policy of Habsburg absolutism and brought about a serious reaction in Hun¬ gary among those interested in the cattle trade. Simple traders in the boroughs and among the lesser nobility failed in due course. Aristoc¬ ratic traders, on the other hand, regarding the matter as a breach of their privileges, protested by means of statutes in the diets, and tried also to divert the cattle trade towards the Adriatic port of Buccari, in the hands of the Zrinyi family. Battles were fought between the im¬ perial army safeguarding the monopoly and the Zrinyis’ private army.

Habsburg absolutism in its fight with the Hungarian Estates con¬ ducted an economic policy which tried to exclude Hungary from the economic unity of the Empire, treating it as a sort of colonial depend¬ ency. It was only towards the end of the seventeenth century that the Austrian mercantilists tried to define the theory of this economic policy, and their practical achievements were rather modest up to the middle of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, their policy was a severe blow to the interests of the Hungarian ruling class. In addition to political and religious grievances, the diets of Hungary repeatedly dealt with economic problems, with the speakers of the opposition accusing the court of Vienna of ruining the country by making use of its money for foreign interests. The representatives of the counties belonging to the landowning nobility were the most clamorous: they were no longer the spokesmen of the aristocracy, but the defenders of their own interests, those of the Protestant nobility, who produced ‘The Grievous Complaint’ in 1655. According to this pamphlet the nobility no longer expected anything from the Habsburgs: ‘We do not expect gifts, do not ask for offices, we no longer foster any hope.’

The Economic and Political Aspirations of the Nobility

The political re-emergence of the nobility was the direct outcome of the changes in their economic and social situation. The setback in production for the market in the seventeenth century contributed to a decrease in the number of paid garrisons in the royal frontier castles and, also, of the private armies of the landed aristocracy, but the number of unpaid heyducks increased both in the royal and private landlords’ service. As part of a settlement policy, and in return for exemptions from labour services, a great number of soldiers’ villages had grown up. The nobility withdrew more and more from military service, mainly because during the seventeenth century the royal cas¬ tles employed, in addition to the free peasantry, ever greater numbers of foreign mercenaries, mostly Germans.

In the management of the great estates less and less scope was given to noble retainers; instead the landlords employed as their officials landless members of the nobility and the citizens of the boroughs. They were no longer regarded as vassals, but employees on yearly contracts. The century-old institution of the familiares declined and the nobility was no longer under the thumb of the aristocracy, but at the same time they lost the chance to make extra money in addition to their modest incomes. Many of them tried their luck and failed in trade, often in the cattle trade, which was under the curse of the general economic depression. The uneasiness of the nobility became stronger as the central power became more exacting in forcing the Counter-Reformation on them. The economic measures of Vienna made even some of the aristocracy resentful, helping the rapproche¬ ment of the Catholic aristocracy and the Protestant nobility to form a united front of resistance to absolutism. Differences with Vienna became even more pronounced owing to the Turkish threat.

There had been considerable changes in the parts of Hungary under Turkish rule now for more than a hundred years. During the Fifteen Years War the country became so impoverished that it was impossible to maintain the Turkish army and the administrative organs out of the tax contributions. As a result the castle garrisons had been reduced, many kadis recalled, and far-reaching autonomy given to the Hun¬ garian population, including legal jurisdiction and tax collection.

This lessening of Turkish control was not only welcome to the Hun¬ garian peasantry, but it also encouraged the Hungarian landlords who had fled to claim their rights in the Turkish areas. During the seventeenth century, the Hungarian landlords exercised more and more control over their estates in Turkish-occupied Hungary. They raised the contributions of the peasants and harassed them with their officials. The counties developed special administrative organs for the management of villages under Turkish rule and during the seventeenth century made it a capital offence to appeal to the Turks in legal matters.

In these circumstances the landlords of small means, living in Hungary but having landed property in the Turkish-occupied areas, developed an increased interest in those territories. During the seven¬ teenth century, they were outspoken in demanding the reoccupation of those parts and retaliation for Turkish raids and plunder. In the 1640s, while the Habsburgs had their hands tied during the Thirty Years War, the Turks began to occupy many villages on the co mm on border and, simultaneously, to restrict the rights of the Hungarian landlords. The Habsburgs, on the other hand, remained uninterested even after the Treaty of Westphalia, not wishing to interfere in Turkish affairs. They had their attention turned towards the west, and were more concerned over the expansion of the French. They had no wish to change their treaty obligations with the Turks.

The Hungarian ruling class was exasperated to see that the Habs¬ burgs did not take steps against the Turks, even forbidding private ventures by the garrisons of the frontier castles and by aristocratic armies. Contrary to the provisions of the Treaty of Vienna, the Hun¬ garian frontier castles were garrisoned by foreign mercenaries. It had been rumoured in the court of Vienna that Hungary would not be released from Turkish rule unless the Hungarian Estates pledged themselves not to secede from the Habsburg dynasty when freed from the Turks.

Miklós Zrínyi's Political Activity and His Wars against the Turks

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, it began to dawn on the nobility and some of the Hungarian aristocracy that they could not expect any change in Habsburg policy. Anti-Habsburg feeling led to a special nationalist ideology, which differed little from the primitive germanophobia of the nobility of the days of the Jagiellos. The idea of the nation had still been confined to those enjoying privi¬ leges but with the protest against the economic exploitation of the country and the insistence on the expulsion of the Turks, it assumed certain new features.

The political and military theory of an awakening national con- sciousness fills the poems and pamphlets of Miklos Zrinyi, ban of Croatia. Only one of his works appeared in print in his life-time, a heroic epic called ‘The Disaster of Sziget’. The poem celebrates the heroic self-sacrifice of his ancestor at Szigetvar in the sixteenth century as an encouragement to action against the Turks. Since his early youth he had defended his estates against Turkish raids, and could only draw the lesson that no help was to be expected from the War Council of Vienna. He turned away from the Habsburg dynasty, going first among the Hungarian Catholic aristocracy to propagate the idea of a free Hungarian state in his military treatise ‘The Coura¬ geous Commander’ (1651-3) and in his ‘Meditations Concerning the Life of King Matthias’ (1656).

In these works, circulated in manuscript, he dwelt on the traditions of centralization in Hungary and on the examples of King Matthias and G&bor Bethlen, but surpassed the latter in giving up the idea of ‘one country, one religion’, which was impossible in Hungary. His support of religious toleration paved the way for the political union of the Catholic aristocracy and the Protestant nobility, and that of the Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania. He worked for the election of Gyorgy Rikoczi II as king of Hungary, accepting for the moment the traditional Transylvanian dependence on the Turks, but with an insistence on future action against them. He urged the importance of the reorganization of Hungarian national defence, discussing its possibilities and methods from the point of view of con¬ temporary military science. As head of the opposition in the diet, he tried to realize his ideas, but the Hungarian aristocracy was not yet determined to break with the Habsburgs, and in 1655, the son of Ferdinand III, Leopold I (1657-1705), was elected king of Hun¬ gary.

The subsequent collapse of Transylvania proved to Zrinyi that his plans lacked realism. But the revival of Turkish military power and its new aggressive tendencies raised hopes in him that the Habsburgs would sooner or later retaliate. In 1661, Leopold I actually sent help to Transylvania against the Turks, but General Montecuccoli, at the head of his forces, had not reckoned with the difficulties of warfare in Hungary, and not being able to get provisions, he withdrew, leaving Transylvania to its fate. His soldiers plundered whatever was left behind by the Turks. Zrinyi’s pamphlet, ‘The Turkish Opium’, called to arms not only the Hungarian ruling class, but also the down¬ trodden people, reviving his idea of an independent Hungarian army, without producing serious reaction either in Vienna or among the Hungarian aristocracy.

In 1663, the grand vizier, Ahmed Kupriilu, waged war against the Habsburgs in revenge for their intervention in Transylvania. The Hun¬ garian army, comprising the retainers of the aristocracy and the feudal levy of the nobility, was defeated. The court, afraid of an attack on Vienna, sent Zrinyi to meet the Turks. With his rapidly organized army, Zrinyi drove the retreating grand vizier as far as Buda. Pressed by public opinion, the emperor was obliged to grant a free hand to Zrinyi, who during the winter of 1664, in a series of lightning strikes, occupied one by one the castles of the Turks along the Drave and burnt the bridge of Esz6k, the most important crossing-point of the Turkish army. In the meantime, the Habsburgs received help from the German Empire and from France, and Zrinyi could proceed to the siege of Kanizsa. Before the castle fell, the grand vizier launched another attack. The court re-appointed General Montecuccoli as commander-in-chief, and he ordered a retreat. He won the battle of Szentgotthard over the pursuing Turkish army, but in the difficult international situation, the court did not exploit the victory. The Treaty of Vasvar was signed in the same year (1664) giving up all the territories recently conquered by the Turks.

The Treaty of Vasvar exasperated the Hungarian ruling class as well as the people newly subjected to the Turks, not to speak of the garrisons of the Hungarian castles which were dismissed on the plea of peace. The treaty was, however, not unwelcome for the merchant capitalists of Austria. They exerted their influence on the court of Vienna to be lenient with the Turks because they had received priv¬ ileges from the sultan at the expense of the eastern trade of the French. To exploit these the ‘Orientalische Compagnia’ was founded with the capital of the Austrian aristocrats and merchants. It established factories for producing woollen fabrics to be exported to the Turkish Empire, and for wearing silk cloth from imported raw silk, and, last but not least, it controlled the cattle trade of Hungary. There was again a loud protest from the Hungarian merchants concerned, and even the Hungarian chamber administering royal revenues insisted on a return to free trade, because the monopolies of the Compagnia severely cut down the customs revenues.

Zrinyi was killed in 1664 by a boar while hunting. After his death, induced by the loss of territories and by renewed economic grievances, the Hungarian aristocracy and clergy, tolerant toward the Habsburgs until now, turned to Louis XIV, hoping to recover their freedom with the help of French aid.

The Conspiracy of the Aristocracy and the Kuruc Rising

The fifty-year struggle of Louis XIV against the Habsburgs offered the Hungarian ruling class the possibility of foreign aid in their struggle against the introducing of Habsburg absolutism. Leadership was in the hands of the palatine, Ferenc Wessetenyi, and after his death it fell to the temperamental P&er Zrinyi, Miklos’s brother. Their conspiracy was discovered in 1670 by the court. Some of the leaders were executed, others managed to flee to Transylvania. This was the beginning of a bloody terror. The estates of the conspirators were confiscated, Protestant preachers accused of anti-Habsburg propaganda were imprisoned and sold as galley-slaves, and the political autonomy of Hungary and toleration of the Protestants were suspend¬ ed. Towns and villages were victimized and plundered by the imperial soldiers, who came into the country in swarms. This terror achieved conditions in which the ruling class in its final plight was able to win wide support among the people for the defence of their common country.

Peter Zrinyi promised exemption from dues to any serf fighting against the Habsburgs, and the promise was repeatedly renewed by each leader of any anti-Habsburg faction. The serfs did not fight to defend the landlord’s power, but for their own interests, and to ease their feudal burdens. This was not a mere illusion, because the anti- Habsburg aristocracy and nobility, badly needing the support of the peasants, kept their promises—however reluctantly and even re¬ treating at times—so that channels were opened for the serfs to rise into the lower ranks of the nobility and into the free status of the heyducks.

The system of perpetual serfdom also began to loosen its tight grip under the effect of economic development. About the middle of the century, the peasantry began to gain some ground in its fight against labour services. Scores of serfs fled to the boroughs, while others assumed nobility and heyduck privileges. With the impoverishment of the remaining peasantry, labour service diminished until the exist¬ ence of the production system based on it was threatened. Landlords were obliged to try to employ hired labour. In the 1650s, on certain estates, it became possible for the peasantry, especially in the boroughs, to commute their labour service and contributions. From the money received, labour was engaged and oxen bought to cultivate the mano¬ rial land. Where, owing to the lack of money, it was impossible for feudal dues and labour services to be commuted collectively, the well-to-do peasants were permitted to commute their services, one byone. in a lump sum. These peasants thus fell into the category of the tax-paying, landless small nobility. Some peasant settlements were granted collective heyduck privileges. The trend of economic devel¬ opment thus coincided with the easing of the strictness of perpetual serfdom out of political necessity.

The active participation of the peasantry in the anti-Habsburg struggle started, as at the time of the Bocskai rising, through sections of the peasantry entering active military service. Then it was the hey¬ duck, now the soldier dismissed from castle service, who first joined the anti-Habsburg movement of the Hungarian ruling class. The kuruc army was organized around the nobility who had fled to Transylvania. The origin of the word kuruc goes back to the crusades against the Turks, deriving from the Latin cruciatus. During Dozsa’s peasant uprising, the name became associated with the anti-feudal peasant wars, and was used in that sense throughout the second half of the seventeenth century. The refugee armies were derisively referred to under that name by the pro-Habsburg members of the ruling class to frighten off the landed nobility from joining. The refugee leaders adopted the nickname to win the confidence of the wide masses of people, and in due course a new nickname was applied to their op¬ ponents, the pro-Habsburg party, that of labanc, deriving perhaps from the German Landsknecht.

The majority of the Hungarian ruling class, however, was more afraid of the kuruc movement than of Habsburg oppression and held aloof. The first attacks of the ‘refugees’ on the imperial armies failed. The puppet prince of Transylvania, Mihaly Apafi (1661-1690), closely controlled by the Turks, could give them hardly any help, except asylum. They knew, however, that their success would depend on considerable foreign aid. Through Transylvanian mediation they obtained help first from the Turks. Then, in 1675, Louis XIV, happy to see the Habsburgs troubled by diversions within their territories, promised material help and training officers for the kuruc movement. Turkish auxiliary troops and French money enabled the young kuruc leader, Imre Thokoly (a descendant of a peasant family which became wealthy in the cattle trade and was received into the aristocracy), to win many battles. Within a short time he occupied the north-eastern part of the country and was acclaimed prince by his adherents.

In the meantime, the social structure of the kuruc movement under¬ went considerable changes. The kuruc army became a regular merce¬ nary force, partly absorbing and partly excluding from itself those elements of the peasantry who had originally joined them for anti- feudal objectives. The kuruc state became after its foundation a feudal one. It did not ease the condition of the peasantry, and the landed nobility only fared better as long as they were actively fighting against Habsburg absolutism, in the defence of their privileges.

The Habsburg government, heavily engaged in fighting against the French, came to realize that it could not succeed against the kuruc by force, and so it decided to end its absolutist methods. In 1681, a diet was called which restored the autonomous government of the country, and also granted partial toleration to the Protestants. A general amnesty and a promise to return their estates won back the majority of the kuruc nobility to the Habsburgs. The kuruc army, on the other hand, was firmly against the armistice, fearing the loss of its livelihood, and Thokoly and some of his adherents continued to resist. The kuruc principality, however, torn by internal disunity, was swallowed up in the Habsburg-Turkish wars.

The Expulsion of the Turks and the Establishment of Habsburg Absolutism

The grand vizier, Kara Mustapha, set the Turkish army in motion against Vienna in 1683, but suffered a decisive defeat. Thokoly did not participate in the warfare, and his offer to rid the country of the Turkish army after its defeat was rejected by the Emperor Leopold. The latter was not willing to negotiate with him even at the request of John Sobieski, King of Poland, who had been responsible for the liberation of Vienna from the Turkish siege.

The international army of the Habsburgs, under the command of Charles of Lorraine, later under Eugene of Savoy, inflicted defeat after defeat on the Turks. In 1686, Buda was occupied; the following year Transylvania was invaded, and, although Turkish resistance revived from time to time, the war was concluded with the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699, when the sultan resigned his right over most of Hungary. Thokoly tried in vain to keep his camp from dissolution by promising villages to his troops for future settlement. The majority of his soldiers joined in the wars against the Turks. Thokoly, however, did not give up, and in the end differed little himself from a Turkish mercenary leader. After the treaty, with some trusted followers, he chose to live in Turkish territory until his death. His heroic wife, Ilona Zrinyi, followed him, after defending for years the last stronghold of kuruc resistance, the castle of Munkacs.

The war was used by the Habsburg government to introduce virtually absolute rule into Hungary. In 1687 a diet was called again, but only in order to proclaim, under threat of arms, the right of suc¬ cession of the Habsburgs, without election, and to abolish the right of the nobility to resist illegal actions of the king, secured to them by the ‘Golden Bull’ of the thirteenth century. Thus Hungary became legally one of the Habsburgs’ hereditary provinces, and the autonomy of the Estates, although it continued on paper, could never come into force with the country occupied by the imperial army.

The material burden of the war was borne mainly by Hungary. Supplies for the army came mostly from peasant dues, and between 1685 and 1689 a sum of twenty million forints was extorted by means of taxation from all Hungary. New forms of taxes, so far unknown in Hungary, were levied, such as purchase tax. The rise in the price of salt was a severe blow to all. The nobility were deeply concerned at the breach in their tax-free status. The diet of 1687 tried to fend off the danger by making the small nobility without serfs bear the brunt, but soon the landed nobility were also forced to pay periodic lump sums in lieu of more regular taxation.

The cherished hope of the ruling class of reclaiming their ancient lands after the expulsion of the Turks met with bitter disappointment. The Habsburg government set up a commission, known as neo- acquistica comnrissio, to deal with the problems of land ownership in the returned parts. It introduced a complicated procedure, re¬ quiring written proofs for the recognition of ownership. Most of the families who had escaped from Turkish rule had lost their documents, and with them their estates. Others were not able to pay the cost of the commission’s charges, and were compelled to sell some of their land, however low the price. In these circumstances much unclaimed land remained with the treasury; some of it was granted to the Hun¬ garian aristocracy, but most of it went to the leading members of the Austrian court aristocracy (Eugene of Savoy, the Heisslers, Starhem- bergs, etc.), and to chamber officials and army suppliers (Harruckern, Krapf, etc.).

The introduction of absolutism hit the burghers of the towns and the peasantry more acutely than the nobility. They had to bear the brunt of taxation and the billeting of soldiers; they had also been the direct objects of rape and plunder by the army. Warfare in Hungary appealed to every soldier in the imperial army, from the generals to the lowest of the rank and file, as an immediate source of riches; and plunder was the order of the day not only in the reoccupied castles, but even among the population ‘liberated’ from the Turks. In 1687, General Caraffa organized a court martial at Eperjes: wealthy citizens and members of the nobility were executed, purely for the sake of confiscating their possessions, on a charge of complicity with the Thokoly party. The city of Debrecen was obliged to pay 1,800,000 forints as war damages, which were forcibly collected. Caraffa was the most notorious, but by no means the only extortionist, the smaller ones only lacking executive powers, not insistence. The re¬ venue of the treasury was seriously threatened by the army’s abuses, until finally it was necessary to decide the rivalry for the administration of the country between the army and the civilian authorities. After 1695, civilian administration came into force, seriously restricting, if not abolishing the soldiers’ abuses.

There were many projects put forward in the Habsburg court for the new political administration of Hungary. The most notorious of the proposals was that of Leopold Kollonich, president of the chamber of accounts and Archbishop of Kalocsa. His proposals, called Ein- richtungswerk, wanted to leave the Hungarian Estates with only the shadow of their former privileges, but also suggested a number of healthy ideas, such as the development of industry and the repression of military abuses, which were hardly likely to meet with the approval of the court of Vienna. Finally, the Habsburg government in Hungary decided on leaving policy unplanned, but expanding the executive power of the chamber of accounts, and relying on haphazard manage¬ ment. What was insisted on was higher taxation and a settlement policy for the depopulated areas.

Rákóczi's War of Independence (1703–1711)

Revival of the Kuruc Movement

The country, although delivered from the Turks, was in a state of upheaval because of absolutist rule. There were scattered risings throughout, with the peasants attacking the salt and customs houses, or, occasionally, even the army. The inhabitants of whole villages fled to the woods and mountains to escape the tax-collector, while roaming bands lived by robbery and smuggling. Returning members of the Thokoly emigration sowed the seeds of a new kuruc rising among them. In 1697, a new peasant revolt broke out under their leadership in the Tokaj region, but was stifled in blood by the imperial army. Unrest, however, did not subside, and the imperial authorities, as well as the Hungarian ruling class, expected the outbreak of a general peasant war.

During the kuruc risings, there emerged a group among the peasants, who tried to link up their class interests with a national policy, developing the instinctive anti-feudalistic endeavours into a con¬ scious political conception. It dawned on these peasant leaders that it would be impossible to fight against oppression coming from the landlord and from the state at the same time.

The leaders of the Tokaj revolt selected as the leader of a general anti-Habsburg rising the richest landowner in the country, young Prince Ferenc Rakdczi II. His father, Ferenc Rakdczi I, son of Prince Gyorgy Rdkoczi II, had been elected prince of Transylvania, but pre¬ vented by the Turks from assuming his throne, had lived on his estates in the Habsburg kingdom. He had participated in the Wesselenyi rising, and was ransomed for a fabulous sum. After his death, his widow, Ilona Zrinyi (daughter of the beheaded Pdter), married Tho¬ koly. The child Ferenc Rdkoczi II was, after the fall of Munk&cs, separated from his mother, and Archbishop Kollonich, appointed as his guardian, sent him to study in a Jesuit college in Bohemia. Returning as an adolescent to Hungary, he was believed both by Vienna and by the members of the Hungarian ruling class to be one of the staunchest Habsburg supporters. He proved worthy of this trust by rejecting the appeal of the rebellious peasantry in the Tokaj region, and proceeding to Vienna to join the court. His experiences, however, of the Habsburg government and the influence of his Hun¬ garian friends, first among them the young aristocrat Miklos Ber¬ csenyi, convinced him that he could not turn his back on a mission for which he was fitted both by the traditions of his family and by his enormous fortune. He therefore set himself in the forefront of the fight against the Habsburgs, who were plundering his country and depriving the Hungarian ruling class of its hereditary privileges.

The War of the Spanish Succession seemed to provide a splendid opportunity for Rikdczi and the nobility around him to start hostilities against the Habsburgs, aiming first of all at restoring the independent Principality of Transylvania. Rakoczi appealed to Louis XIV in the capacity of the legal successor of the Transylvanian princes in their alliance with the kings of France. The conspiracy was discovered in its initial stages by the Habsburg authorities, and Rakoczi was arrested and dragged to the prison of Wienerneustadt, where his grandfather had been executed. He succeeded, however, in escaping to Poland where Bercsenyi was expecting him. His attempt to organize a revolt from beyond the frontiers proved futile, since neither the aristocracy nor the landed nobility answered his appeal.

It was again the peasantry which intervened. An outlaw leader, a former serf of Rakoczi, Tam&s Esze, got into contact with the Tho- koly emigrants, and started a kuruc rising under the joint leadership of himself and Albert Kis, a former Thdkoly officer of peasant stock. In the spring of 1703, he got in touch with Rakoczi, asking him to take over the leadership of the rising. This was the opening needed by Rakoczi to break out of his isolation, and he accepted, appealing from Brezan in Poland to all inhabitants of Hungary, noblemen and commoners, to join in defence of the liberty of the nation.

Initial Success in the War of Independence

The Hungarian ruling class received the appeal of Brezan and the arrival of the peasant troops crossing the frontier under Rdkdczi with mixed feelings. They regarded the rising as a desperate adventure by R&koczi and thought it risky to revive the peasant war. The peasant masses were not moved by being regarded as part of ‘the nation’, but Rakdczi’s promise that all those fighting against the Austrians would become free was a great incentive. In the initial stages it was not made clear if Rakoczi’s promise was valid only for the time of the fighting,

yet the peasantry regarded Rakoczi as ‘the deliverer of the poor’, and thousands of Hungarian, Ukrainian, Slovak and Rumanian peasants enlisted under banners with the slogan Pro patria et libertate. Within weeks there was a considerable kuruc army which invaded the Tisza region and the lands between the Danube and the Tisza, reached the border of Moravia by August and occupied Transdanubia early in 1704. The kuruc troops scored victories in Transylvania too. The imperial army withdrew into castles and fortified towns.

The attitude of the Hungarian ruling class was hardly affected by the unexpected kuruc victories. The nobility withdrew under the pro¬ tection of the imperial garrisons, only joining Rdkoczi from necessity with the fall of the strongholds. As time passed, more and more of the nobility began to realize that only active participation could make the movement conform to their interests. Little by little, under the in¬ fluence of Rakoczi’s personality, the nobility took the lead in the kuruc army, identifying itself with the movement and expecting the solution of its problems from the joint victory. From among their number came the best advisers of Rakoczi, the organizers of the war of independence in the military, economic and diplomatic field, with Pal Raday, the head of the privy chancery, as their leader. The majority of the aristocracy and high clergy kept aloof from the war, regarding it from the beginning as doomed to failure, and contrary to their interests. Only a minority joined Bercsenyi and Sandor Karo- lyi, Rakoczi’s first two aristocratic followers. R£k6czi was indulgent with regard to their hesitations because he always insisted that the aim of the rising was first of all to restore the political autonomy of the country under the leadership of the aristocracy. The nature of independence was first defined as under the Treaty of Vienna: Habs¬ burg rule, free of absolutist measures, and based on the autonomy of the nobility in Hungary, guaranteed by an independent Principality of Transylvania. The first step for R&koczi was to be elected prince of Transylvania.

Since the Treaty of Vienna, however, social forces had changed to the same extent as the situation in foreign affairs. The military strength of the war of independence depended on the peasantry and on the landless small nobility. They had to compromise their differences with regard to the feudal landowning classes, however, in order to enable Rakoczi to pursue the war until Habsburg policy could be forced to make concessions in a more favourable international climate. Rako¬ czi’s decree exempting the fighting members of the peasantry and their families from their feudal dues had not pleased either the landowners or the peasantry. The landowners tried to disregard the concession, while the peasantry wanted to be entirely free of obligations, not only the fighting members but their extended families, and in some cases, the whole village community. In some boroughs there were attempts to end all the landlords’ privileges and occupy the manorial lands. Rakoczi dealt severely with these attempts, but also stopped the abuses of the landlords. He succeeded in temporarily stemming the class con¬ flict and consolidating the social foundations of the war of independ¬ ence.

His expectations in the field of foreign affairs, on which an early victory depended, met with less success. Louis XIV did not deny him the financial contributions enjoyed by Thokoly earlier, but he formed no open alliance. Charles XH, King of Sweden, on the other hand, regarded the kuruc movement as an act of rebellion against the lawful ruler. Alliance with the Turks, in the given situation, was entirely out of the question. England and Holland, on the plea of support for the Protestants in Hungary, but actually to help their Austrian ally, volunteered to mediate between Rakoczi and the Habsburgs. The negotiations met with little success, as Rakoczi in¬ sisted on the recognition of the Principality of Transylvania, and the implementation of the Treaties of Vienna and Linz regarding the rights of the nobility and religious freedom. Vienna was not ready to grant either, thinking merely of amnesty and a restricted form of autonomy. Another serious blow to the independence struggle was the victory of Hochstadt won by the emperor and his allies in August 1704, which rendered a joint movement against Vienna by French, Bavarian and Hungarian forces impossible. It seemed likely that the only course was prolonged resistance.

The Crisis and End of the War of Independence

The war had to be pursued by Rakoczi and his collaborators under grave economic conditions. To safeguard the confidence of the people, the kuruc state levied no taxes, but tried to raise the full cost of an army numbering 80,000 men, and conduct diplomatic activity covering most of Europe, from customs, mine revenues and the confiscated estates of adherents of the Habsburgs. Copper coins were minted as substitutes for gold or silver coins, and a war industry, considerable by Hungarian standards, was created to supply arms and clothing to the army from state workshops. Any shortage was covered by imports managed by a state-run foreign trade enterprise. The Hungarian ruling class, while executing these grand economic projects, began to get acquainted with mercantilist principles and practice. The state administration was supplemented by new features, such as the standing economic council.

These measures made it possible for the former barefooted peasant army, fighting with axes and scythes, to become a well-clothed and fed, disciplined, relatively modern regular army. However, most of the troops were light cavalry, suitable for quick, guerrilla warfare; they could not put up a stand in battle against the regular imperial forces. They also had few well-trained officers. From among the many ignorant, inexperienced aristocratic officers Jdnos Botty&n was excep¬ tional for his military knowledge and skill. As a former imperial colonel during the wars against the Turks, he had already distin¬ guished himself. The imperial army, on the other hand, as long as the war in the west occupied its main forces, could not defeat the con¬ stantly renewed kuruc resistance, in spite of battles won.

In 1705, at the time Rakdczi held a diet in Szecseny to consolidate the kuruc state organization, the majority of the country was still in kuruc hands. A part of the nobility was inclined to proclaim Rakoczi as king of Hungary, but some kuruc aristocrats, desiring peace with the Habsburgs, were opposed to their dethronement, declared Rakoczi Hungary’s governing prince, and appointed a senate composed of nobles as his advising body. This was to be an interim measure, as Rakdczi himself had little confidence that the war could be won single-handed. As agreement with the Habsburgs seemed very un¬ likely, he wanted to invite to the throne of Hungary any member of a European dynasty hostile to the Habsburgs. The new victories of the kuruc army in Transdanubia, the temporary occupation of Tran¬ sylvania in 1706, and the defence of Transdanubia encouraged the diet of 1707 at Onod to dethrone the Habsburgs and declare Hungary an independent state.

Signs of collapse were clear, however, at the time of the 6nod diet. There emerged a peace party, openly desiring agreement with the Habsburgs, and silencing it could not help solve the economic and social troubles. The economic resources of the country had been spent: the copper coins deteriorated, the army was in tatters, unpaid and fighting with worn-out weapons. The soldiers lost hope, and not only because of financial troubles. The officers from the aristocracy and the nobility, without any consideration of the effect on the army, began to order their former serfs in the fighting force to go back home. Their dependents at home were again being obliged to render services. The social foundation of the independence struggle was crumbling.

Rakoczi did not lose hope entirely, since he still had his alliance with Czar Peter the Great, made in 1707, and connections with the court of Prussia. He offered the crown of Hungary to the Prussian crown prince. In 1708, with a desperate effort, he re-equipped his army, and tried to cross into Silesia to join the Prussian forces. His way was blocked by imperial troops, and owing to the mismanagement of his seconds-in-command, he lost the battle of Trencsen. This defeat sealed the fate of the war of independence. The act passed by the diet of Sarospatak in 1708, declaring the fighting peasant entirely free, came too late. The wavering elements became open traitors; and inertia and despair prevailed in all hearts. The kuruc forces were in constant retreat, and at the end of 1710 Rakoczi was compelled to visit Peter the Great in person to ask for immediate intervention. During his absence, his deputy, Sandor Karolyi, acting without authorization, offered peace to the Habsburgs in 1711. Rdkoczi refused to recognize the Treaty of Szatmdr, which was made against his will, and went into voluntary exile. He lived first in France, and later died in Turkey at Rodosto in 1735. Bercs6nyi and some of his other adherents followed him into exile.

The Treaty of Szatm&r promised an amnesty to all who had partic¬ ipated in the war, provided they were willing to swear allegiance to the Habsburg ruler. It also recognized the autonomy of the country.

The Baroque Culture of the Kuruc Period

Conflict between the Hungarian ruling class and then the whole people, on the one hand, and the Habsburg monarchy, on the other, co¬ incided with the introduction of the baroque style into Hungary.

Baroque style in Hungary, as throughout Europe, was character¬ istic of the Counter-Reformation. A specific feature of Hungarian baroque, however, was that national elements had the upper hand over religious ones. The two great pioneers, whose influence prevails in the intellectual atmosphere of the kuruc age, Zrinyi and Apaczai, appealed not to Catholics and Protestants, but to the whole nation, including, though still tentatively, the social classes outside the sphere of the ruling class. The most positive feature of their nationalism lay in their recognition that economic and social backwardness, reflected in inertia, internal strife, poverty and ignorance, was the most dan¬ gerous enemy—a bigger threat than the Turks or the Austrians. They wanted to remedy this backwardness and suggested military and educational ideas for reform.

The nationalism of the kuruc period deprived Zrinyi and Apaczai not of their passionate appeal, but of self-criticism in national matters. The political poetry of the nobility in the kuruc period of the 1670s recalled the example of the ancient Scythians, of Attila, Matthias Hunyadi and Bocskai in contrast to the bleakness of the present. These poets despised the Austrian oppressors and the Catholic priests, but occasionally also the peasants and their rebellion. Caught between foreign oppression and the dangers of a peasant uprising, the nobility could only desire a tolerable compromise. This accounts for the pes¬ simistic attitude of the poets, and the hedonistic passion, turning its back on insoluble political problems, which fills the pages of Istvan Gyongyosi, the most popular poet of the age.

At the end of the century, the pessimistic, yet formally over¬ decorated baroque poetry of the upper class gave way to more serious and politically more progressive trends.

The political poetry of Rakoczi’s war of independence is dominated by the verses of the outlaws, not by the poetry of the nobility. The out¬ law poets demanded in the name of the downtrodden sections of society the freedom often promised but yet ungranted to the soldiers. A new nationalism, teeming with anti-feudal ideas, confronted the nationalism of the nobility.

The nationalism of the nobility was also transcended, though differently, by the ideas of a narrow circle—that of the intelligentsia of the upper aristocracy. Ferenc Rakoczi II himself was a member of this circle, and so was Miklos Bethlen, chancellor of Transylvania. From a political point of view, both of them professed ideas favouring centralized national government. They were far more interested in economic questions than their contemporaries, and more eager for the scientific novelties of the age.

Rakoczi and Bethlen contributed to literary thought by writing political essays and memoirs. One a Catholic, the other a Protestant, both were the representatives of deep religious feeling coupled with tolerance, which springs from Jansenism on the one hand and Puri¬ tanism on the other, both essentially anti-feudal, bourgeois philosoph¬ ical trends of the age. Both were characterized by intensive self- analysis and severe self-criticism, as found in Rakoczi’s Confessions written in exile, and Bethlen’s Memoirs, written while imprisoned in Vienna. Both books are remarkable psychological records, the pioneers of psychological writing in Hungary.

In the last decades of the seventeenth century, science in Hungary made great strides forward. In the footsteps of the Hungarian Puritans, different trends of mechanistic philosophy developed in Hungary, with some original thinkers in the Protestant colleges. The most important philosopher of the time, Janos Pdsahazi, professor at Saros- patak, confronted with deep insight the teachings of the Cartesians and the Atomists. In addition to Descartes and Gassendi, the great figures of contemporary English scientific life made their influence felt: the professors at the Lutheran college of B&rtfa taught Bacon’s philosophy and propagated Atomism in the spirit of Boyle. They were the first to do so in Hungary. During the first years of its existence, the Royal Society established contact with scientists in Hungary, and in 1669 commissioned Edward Browne to study mineral resources and mining in Hungary. The book he wrote was the first in a long succession of travelogues on Hungary by Englishmen.

Science in the seventies suffered greatly from the closing of many Protestant schools. For a time Transylvania became the asylum of Hungarian Protestant culture. The great representative of old Hun¬ garian book-printing, Miklos Misztotfalusi Kis, worked in Kolozsvar, and the first Hungarian producer-playwright, Gyorgy Felvinci, also directed his secular plays in that city. The colleges of Gyulafehervar and Marosv£s6rhely welcomed the expelled professors and students of the college of Sarospatak.

One of the achievements of Rakoczi’s war of independence was to reopen the closed Protestant schools—S&rospatak being the first to open its gates. The first Hungarian physicist, Istvan Sim£ndi, taught in those years at Sdrospatak; R&koczi himself had watched his experiments. Modern history and literary criticism had its pioneers in that period. The Jesuit Gabor Hevenesi compiled a collection of historical documents in 140 volumes; a citizen of Selmecbanya, David Czvitinger, was the author of the first Hungarian bio-bibliography.

Baroque style penetrated more slowly into the arts than into literature. The first baroque buildings were Jesuit churches; the oldest which survive are in Nagyszombat and Gyor. Baroque was applied only as interior decoration in secular buildings, for castles and manor houses continued to be built in the Renaissance style—such as Miklos Bethlen’s castle at Bethlenszentmiklos, which he designed himself. The only baroque palace of the century was built by Palatine Pal Esterhdzy at Kismarton.

Habsburg Absolutism and Hungary (1711–1760)

Under the Treaty of Szatmar the Hungarian ruling class accepted a compromise with the Habsburg dynasty. In exchange for recognizing again the hereditary succession of the Habsburgs as laid down in the Act of 1687, it could remain in the possession of its estates, enjoy exemption from taxes, dispose freely of its serfs, and share in govern¬ ment through the county administration and the diet. The right of succession was extended to apply also to the female line of the dynasty with the acceptance in 1723 of the Pragmatica Sanctio, the succession settlement of the Austrian Habsburgs. Charles HI, who acceded to the throne in 1713, after the short reign of Joseph I (1705-1711), gave a solemn pledge to govern Hungary in accordance with her own laws and in agreement with the diet.

The balance between the dynasty and the Hungarian ruling class, which had been upset by the brutal absolutist measures of Leopold I, was seemingly restored. In reality, however, no effective power re¬ mained in the hands of the Hungarian Estates with which to resist the introduction of any absolute measure. The chief means of resist¬ ance, the army and the funds for its upkeep, had been placed by the diet at the disposal of the ruler. The nobility was glad to be rid of its military obligations, and the aristocracy of the cost of its private armies; all they needed was sufficient military force to keep the peasantry in check and prevent a possible attack from the Turks. The ruling class, therefore, expressly demanded the presence of the imperial army in the country. There was bargaining over questions of taxation, but the diet consented again and again to raise it to the very limit, until it reached the maximum contribution which could be ex¬ pected from the peasants. The foreign-speaking army under foreign leadership had to be billeted on the peasantry and also fed by them. At the same time the Hungarian peasants were dragged into regiments serving in other Habsburg lands, sometimes never to return. The Habs¬ burgs maintained the political partition of the country: Transylvania was governed as an independent province, separate from the Hun- garian governing council; the southern parts reoccupied from the Turks, on the other hand, were put under the direct control of the War Council of Vienna as military frontier districts.

Habsburg-Hungarian Compromise (1711–1760)

The Consolidation of the System of 'Perpetual Serfdom'

The Hungarian ruling class was determined to get rid of those free elements of the peasantry who could again threaten to become re¬ sponsible for a kuruc movement or another anti-feudal peasant war. In agreement with the government of Vienna they gradually stopped the privileges of the heyduck settlements. If the inhabitants disagreed they were entitled to take to the road, but wherever they went they could only become serfs again. Only the privileges of the heyduck towns founded by Bocskai, which were sanctioned by law, were able to survive as the last relics of a freer social trend. The free Sekel peasantry were obliged by the Habsburgs to do heavy frontier guard service from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. The medieval privileges enjoyed by the free Cuman peasants were lost in 1702, when the monarch pledged their land to a remnant of the Teutonic Order. After long struggles, the Cumans succeeded in freeing themselves and regained their privileges in 1745, at a cost of half a million florins.

The heyduck and Cuman villages which escaped serfdom developed into densely inhabited boroughs. Their example encouraged other boroughs in the Great Plain to look for ways of achieving freedom. After the expulsion of the Turks, the landlords tried to stop these endeavours, and even tried to curtail the privileges of the boroughs surviving from the Turkish era. Only the largest and richest ot them managed to pay their contributions to the landlord in a lump sum and preserve their internal autonomy. On the other hand, they suffered from the struggle of the haves and have-nots for the posses¬ sion of land. To overcome the discontent of those thirsting for land, from time to time the local authorities released plots of land for viti¬ culture to cottagers. These measures promoted viticulture by opening up new areas to cultivation in the sandy dunes of the Great Plain, but they were hardly enough for the many landless labourers who were not able to find work because industry was at a standstill. For these people the privileges of the borough simply meant that instead of ‘perpetual serfdom’ they had to hire their services at any rate to any bidder.

With the restoration of the land released from the Turks, the con¬ ditions of the village peasantry went from bad to worse. After a hundred and fifty years of Turkish occupation, living in the midst of continual wars, the population of the country hardly surpassed the four million of Matthias’s day. Scarcely more than half of these were Hungarians, as the heart of the Hungarian settlements on the Great plain and in Transdanubia had been most severely hit. The land in¬ vaded by the Turks went out of cultivation; where villages had once flourished and crops thrived, fishermen navigated the flooded rivers, and immense grazing lands fed herds of cattle and horses. The romantic beauty of the Hungarian puszta, with its mirages, is the sorry result of two hundred years of desolation.

The war had hardly ended before Hungarian and Slovak peasants from the north were settled in the depopulated areas. The restrictions of ‘perpetual serfdom’ retarded, however, the rate of growth of the new settlements. But competition among landlords for new settlers made it possible for many peasants to find better conditions with lighter contributions than formerly. The Great Plain was the first to fill up from the internal movements of the Hungarian and Slovak peasants. In Transdanubia and along the southern border, the court and the new aristocracy (Hungarians and foreigners who had bought their enormous estates very cheaply) invited in foreign, mainly German Catholic peasants (the so-called ‘Swabians’) and also Serbians.

The Hungarian and the foreign peasantry, fighting against flooding, woods and disease, transformed the savage land with tremendous effort into cultivated fields. But the land, broken and cultivated by the sweat of his brow, could not belong to the peasant. The foreign settlers enjoyed far more privileges than the Hungarians: exemption from taxes for some years, the right of free movement, and the commutation of labour services. In many instances they were even given tools and draught animals, yet for all this they were and remained serfs. The landlords only waited until their new settlers felt at home before in¬ creasing their burdens. After a few generations the foreign peasants were also considered as perpetually tied to the land, and their right to free movement stopped. New baroque residences were erected in the villages, with considerable empty land behind them, and manorial land, taken from the peasants, needed the continued labour services of the serfs.

The two centuries long struggle between the peasantry and the land¬ lords for the control of agricultural production ended in the eight¬ eenth century in favour of the landlord. The free peasant elements were suppressed and the settlers were reduced to serfdom. By checking the development of the free peasantry, the landlords successfully pre- vented peasant commodity production from developing adequately. This gave free scope to the development of capitalist commodity pro¬ duction on the manorial estate. It was not entirely accomplished in the eighteenth century, but its basic precondition, the absolute posses¬ sion of the land by the landlord and the creation of manors, happened thereabouts. By the middle of the eighteenth century, more than half of the arable soil had become the privately owned land of the land¬ lord, the foundation of the later capitalist estate system.

The real reason why the landlords wanted to set up a manor was not in order to cultivate their fields intensively; none of them engaged hired labour, relying instead on labour services. It is true that most of the manorial land was hired out to poor peasants under miserable conditions, far worse than the land allotted in tenures, but the main reason was to free the land from ordinary state taxation. The manorial land was exempt from taxation, unlike the tenures of the serfs.

Agriculture in Hungary developed a great deal in spite of heavy feudal restrictions. More and more land was cultivated and cultivation became more intensive. New plants were acclimatized, including tobacco, maize, potatoes and fodder crops. Owing to the expansion of the manorial land and the new settlements, the boroughs were left without enough grazing land on which to raise their cattle. They went over to intensive animal husbandry, wintering the animals on dry fodder. Shortage of land also forced the boroughs to produce higher yields of wheat and wine. This was supported by the Habsburg government, as Austria and the Bohemian provinces largely depended on Hungarian foodstuff. The development of agriculture, however, did not contribute to the development of industry and trade.

Agrarian Towns and Foreign Merchants

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the main income of the bourgeoisie was still derived, even in the large towns, from viticulture. Craftsmen and merchants combined their trade with cultivating their vines, while the upper ranks in the towns went in for vine growing on a large scale. They worked hand in glove with the nobility, who assumed political leadership in the town councils. Trading activity was confined mainly to the exchange of foreign commodities and Hungarian agricultural products; guildsmen sold their own goods at the fairs. The number of craftsmen amounted to only 10-20 per cent of the total population of a town. The great majority were still pre¬ dominantly farmers who on occasion engaged in trade.

The development of agriculture finally moved industry forward from its primitive position. New guilds emerged in towns, boroughs and villages, and the craftsmen supplying the local markets increased their output. Handicraft industry was circumscribed by the guild system, and only in the larger towns did it break away completely from agriculture by the middle of the eighteenth century. In not more than 20-30 towns, about the same number as before Mohacs, was the proportion of those engaged in trade and handicrafts as high as 20-25 per cent; and the number of trades was between 50 and 60, corresponding in general to the situation in the fifteenth century.

The antagonistic attitude of the Hungarian feudal ruling class was still affecting the growth of towns in the eighteenth century, and the Habsburg government did little to relieve the towns from feudal pressure. Towns had only on rare occasions been granted the title of free royal city. After the expulsion of the Turks, only Buda and Pest, and then Szekesfehervar, Esztergom and Szeged were given back their privileges. In 1693, Debrecen became a free royal city. If the land¬ lord opposed a town being granted the privileges of a free city, the court of Vienna did not interfere. Among the episcopal towns, Gyor became a free royal city in 1743 and Pecs in 1780. Ihe veto of the episcopal landlord prevented Eger and Veszprem from obtaining their much coveted liberties. Vac was held back for another reason—it could not raise the funds to pay the tax to redeem itself. Among the boroughs of the temporal lords, not a single one had gained full freedom before 1848.

In these circumstances neither the bourgeoisie of the free cities and boroughs nor any other section of Hungarian society was engaged in the trade of agricultural products, which fell into the hands of Greek, Serbian and Armenian merchants. They had gradually penetrated into Transylvania during the seventeenth century, and trade agree¬ ments made by the Habsburgs and the Turks opened the way for them into the Kingdom of Hungary. As Turkish citizens they at first only settled temporarily in the country, taking their earnings back home. Originally they had dealt in articles from the East, but their agility and diligence, and their established capital introduced them into the business life of the country. Many of them finally settled down in Hungary, in the towns along the Danube, forming auto¬ nomous trading colonies. In the second half of the eighteenth century, they were obliged by the Habsburg government to resign their Turkish citizenship and lost the privileges it had given them. Their participa¬ tion in the trade with the Turkish empire thus ended, but they contin¬ ued to play an important role in internal trade.

Aristocracy and Nobility

The temporal and spiritual aristocracy regained their much-threatened supremacy within the ruling class during Rakoczi’s war of independ¬ ence. As bishoprics and archbishoprics were allotted to the members of the Hungarian aristocracy, most of the land was concentrated in the hands of a selected few. Within the ruling class, a group of 10-20 aristocratic families became far superior in wealth to the others, possessing large, medium and small estates. The leading group com¬ prised the Esterhazy, Batthyany, Palffy, Nadasdy, Csaky, Erdody, Kohdry, Szechenyi, Forgach and Zichy families. Sandor Karolyi, responsible for the Treaty of Szatmar and rewarded with enormous estates, Antal Grassalkovich, president of the chamber, who had distinguished himself in court service and in busily building up his fortune, and Pal Festetics, a treasury councillor, w^ere newcomers to the group.

The nobility, who were mainly Protestant and numbered several hundred thousand, made up about 5 per cent of the total population. They lived within the framework of county autonomy, and ranged in wealth from the bene possessionati with hundreds of serfs, to those who were landless, impoverished and living like peasants. The Habs¬ burg absolutist government managed to breach the tax immunity of the nobility by obliging those without land or serfs to pay, but it did not manage to interfere directly with the relationship of landlord and serf. The extent of the peasants’ state contribution was regulated by bargaining between the king and the diet. The members of the lower house of the diet represented the counties (since the sixteenth century the diet had been divided into two houses: the upper house, with the aristocracy and the high clergy, and the lower house, with the rep¬ resentatives of the counties and towns). The allotment and collection of the taxes was the duty of county officials.

The king appointed the foispdn, who merely supervised the county officials. These were elected by the nobility from their own numbers. The posts of county officials were regarded as nobile officium and carried a nominal salary, not providing a livelihood. These circum¬ stances were not conducive to proper office routine. County officials acted only in the lower judicial courts, in tax administration and in the management of supplies for the army. Even if their importance in the formulation of national policy diminished, their influence on public opinion remained considerable. Public health, public works and economic development were only dealt with incidentally, from the point of view of public order. The poorer nobility had neither the means nor the knowledge to advance beyond primitive methods of cultivation; the well-to-do were hardly interested in the matter, and with good reason, because agriculture was considerably restricted by the narrow home market, the backwardness of transportation and the meagre opportunities available in a badly organized foreign trade. There was little opportunity for more than the haphazard disposal of surplus production.

Late Baroque Culture

There was nothing to promote economic progress, nor any alluring prospects on the horizon to dissolve the deep-rooted conservatism of the nobility, brought about by the bitter experience that any change would promote either absolutist measures against their privileges, or the unrest of the peasantry, desiring to be rid of their burdens. The dreary inertia of their conservatism was embellished with the slogans of the ideology of national heroism and stoic idealism. The Jesuits, the intellectual leaders of the triumphant Counter-Reformation, were their busiest propagandists. During the emergence of absolutist government and before the Catholic higher clergy were firmly back in the saddle, the Jesuits were seen as indispensable. After victory was achieved with their help, they became inconvenient, but they never¬ theless retained their influence on the nobility. With the restriction of the Protestant schools, the Jesuits had complete hold over university education (at the university of Nagyszombat and the newly founded university of Kassa), and partial hold over secondary education and book publication.

The culture disseminated by the Jesuits during their monopoly was no less old-fashioned and reactionary than the recipient Hungarian nobility. Hungary was declared ‘Regnum Marianum’: the constitution of the nobility was placed under the protection of the Virgin Mary, and her miracles were proclaimed by the establishment of a string of holy places. Fanaticism was aroused in order to convert the Protestant peasants, against their will, and the nobility itself, to the new militant Catholicism. Even the remaining Protestant noblemen were impressed by the tales of ancient national glory, the glib repetition of stories of military valour and the Jesuit gift of oratory. The new creed preached the shallow wisdom of renunciation and the pseudo-stoicism of the golden mean, adopted from Jesuit education and literature and put for¬ ward at meetings of the diet and the count}' council. The Jesuit presses reproduced century-old treaties of religious controversy, the philosoph¬ ical works of Seneca and Boethius, and the scientific works of Aristotle. Numerous books appeared giving accounts of miraculous healing at the places devoted to the Virgin. What was more, two- thirds of the books appeared in Latin, as opposed to the seventeenth century, when they were published mostly in the vernacular. The rhetorical Latin of Jesuit education and of Jesuit authors degenerated into a ‘kitchen’ Latin which became the class language of the nobility, a hindrance to the spread of modern ideas.

The Protestant schools in their desperate struggle for survival could no longer be bridgeheads for progress as they had been when pro¬ pagating Puritan and Cartesian ideas. They were more receptive to scientific thinking than the Jesuit schools, and strode forward with the introduction of experimental physics at the beginning of the century. Their dogmatic Cartesian thinking, however, placed them in as great an intellectual isolation as the neo-scholasticism of the Jesuits. The most important cultural trend was connected with the name of Matyas Bel, a Protestant educator of Pozsony. He and his associates became the pioneers of the practical trend in German pietism and of the early Enlightenment in Hungarian education and science. Bel gave the first large-scale picture of Hungary’s ethnic, economic and cultural conditions in his momentous volumes on the country: Nova Hungaria (1735-42). The first attempts at technical and welfare innovations came from pietist circles. Bel made plans for an orphanage; his friend and the map-designer of his books, the engineer S&muel Mikoviny, was the first to deal with the important question of regulating rivers. The Protestant intelligentsia, who resented the restrictions on their church and set themselves ambitious economic and cultural goals, did not command sufficient numbers or social significance to be able to realize their plans. Their protectors, the more cultivated members of the Protestant landed nobility (among them P&l Rdday, poet and founder of a renowned library) were occupied with organizing the defence of the Protestant Church against the Counter-Reformation, and had little influence in national affairs compared with the Catholic aristocracy.

Under the political system of the Counter-Reformation, in the face of the backwardness on every level, only the Catholic aristocracy, spiritual and temporal, had the means, power and political freedom to raise the level of contemporary standards by bringing them closer to the Western European scene. Most of them, however, were content to transform their immediate surroundings and adorn them with baroque splendour. Their palaces were built and embellished by out¬ standing foreign masters. Cathedrals rose in the midst of dusty villages and bleak towns. Baroque art in Hungary is represented by the buildings of Hildebrandt, the sculptures of Donner and the frescoes of Maulbertsch. The only eminent Hungarian artist of the period, Adam Manyoki, the portrait painter of leading Protestant noble per¬ sonalities, was compelled to leave the country and became a court painter in Dresden.

Aristocratic Mercantilism and the First Manufactories

There were a few Hungarian aristocrats who were able to identify the interests of their own class with those of the country as a whole. These few devoted themselves wholeheartedly to adapting mercantilist ideas to Hungarian conditions, by applying the experience gained in the course of building and defending the kuruc state and creating an independent Hungarian economic policy. It is no coincidence that after the Treaty of Szatmar the very same men who had been promi¬ nent in the Rikoczi era endeavoured to restore the economic and cultural life of the country. They compromised, accepted the amnesty and tried to increase prosperity, in order to realize part of the dream which would have been possible within a fully independent Hun¬ garian state.

Time settled many of the problems which had come to the surface during the fifty-year struggle between the absolutist government and the Estates. Both king and diet felt the need for a new political system. The diet of 1715 sent out a commission which, after years of pre¬ paratory work, drafted proposals for various fields in the life of the country. The commission had members from the aristocracy and the nobility, together with Sandor K&rolyi and Pal Raday, and other kuruc members. They proposed a central Hungarian governing body, another version of the governing council created by the Habsburgs’ centraliza¬ tion policy of the sixteenth century and abandoned after the Treaty of Vienna. The economic plan, produced entirely by Karolyi, lays down the principles and practice of Hungarian mercantilism. In order to prevent Hungarian currency from leaving the country and to in¬ crease its internal use, leather, textile and iron manufactories were to be established to process Hungarian raw materials. Craftsmen were to be invited from foreign countries and the guilds gradually abolished. Other measures to encourage trade were the establishment of uniform weights and measures, the ending of internal tariff zones, and the building of navigable canals. The draft also proposed the building of schools, the setting up of printing presses and the opening of public health institutions. The governing body’s function would have been to organize and not merely control or supervise. Its task would have been to search for foreign markets, test the quality of products, oversee the central distribution of raw materials and goods and the creation of state manufactories, and replace the Church in control of education and censorship.

The drafters of the scheme only took into consideration needs, not possibilities. The court of Vienna was wary of an independent Hun¬ garian mercantilist venture. The diet, on the other hand, was alarmed by the possible eventual cost of the scheme, and by the danger that a planned central financial fund might interfere with the nobility’s privilege of tax exemption. The governing council was actually established in 1724 in conformity with the principles of the system, but its scope, owing to the doubts of the court of Vienna and lack of confidence on the part of the nobility, was much narrower than in the proposal, and of the suggested schemes little was accomplished.

The failure to realize the schemes for the development of state-run trade induced Kdrolyi to organize it by private enterprise. With the palatine, Janos Palffy, and two of the EsterMzy counts, he establish¬ ed a Hungarian ‘Compagnia’ for running the cattle trade and for establishing manufactories. Their scheme failed owing to opposition from Vienna. But in keeping with a decree of the diet that the troops stationed in Hungary had to be clothed and equipped at home, Karolyi established the first Hungarian factory for woollen fabrics in 3722. His example was soon followed by Palffy and the Esterhazys. Until the middle of the century, the Hungarian aristocracy was engaged in schemes for creating woollen mills, iron-foundries, pot¬ teries and glass factories. The treasury also established works of its own. The number of workers was small, and instead of employing hired hands, masters from the guilds were engaged on contract. The masters brought their own tools and implements with them, maintain¬ ing their independence to a certain extent by working also for other customers outside the factory. These humble efforts did not alter the general backwardness of trade in Hungary, for most of them failed by the middle of the century.

In 1748, notwithstanding the efforts of some aristocrats to develop industry, the foreign trade balance showed the following customs items: out of total imports worth 4,360,000 forints, 56.5 per cent were textiles and metal goods; and out of total exports worth 6,050,000 forints, 55 per cent were cattle, 27.5 per cent other food stuffs and 15 per cent industrial raw materials. In comparison with the situation in the sixteenth century there were only two—rather important—dif- ferences: other agricultural goods than cattle appear in the exports, and most of the imports were now coming not from faraway Western countries but from the hereditary provinces of the Habsburgs. This was not due to far-reaching state planning but to the inner logic of economic development. The early Hungarian factories failed owing to primitive labour conditions, high production costs and bad manage¬ ment. A protectionist policy could have helped them avoid their initial failures, but this could hardly be expected either from the government in Vienna or from the officials of the nobility at home. A decisive change was to come about in the middle of the century wit h the War of the Austrian Succession.

The Use of Hungary as a Colony

With Charles III the male line of the Habsburg dynasty became ex¬ tinct. The succession of Maria Theresa (1740-1780) was challenged by a French, Bavarian and Prussian coalition. The enemy was ad¬ vancing into the Habsburg provinces when Maria Theresa entreated support for herself and for her babe in arms, later Joseph II, from ‘the gallant and courageous Hungarian nation’ at the diet of 17 m Pozsony. The nobility, moved to tears, offered their ‘life and blood (vitam et sanguinem) to her. Their emotional outburst was supported bv the sound reasoning that the monarchy in its plight might be obliged to give them more privileges. The throne ol Maria Theresa, and the Habsburg Empire for that matter, was saved by the quickly organized Hungarian regiments. Europe came to know expert Hun¬ garian commanders hitherto neglected in the imperial army. Ferenc N&dasdy, who won the battle of Kolin with a daring cavalry charge and Andres Hadik, the victor of Berlin, were not just examples of individual Hungarian bravery, but also excellent soldiers equipped with the highest accomplishments of contemporary military science. Hadik became the first Hungarian member of the War Council and

subsequently its chairman.

Maria Theresa repeatedly insisted on her indebtedness to the Hun¬ garians, but except for bestowing honours, organizing a Hungarian bodyguard and visiting Hungary, she gave no palpable signs of it. The monarchy remained firmly committed to absolute rule, and the Hungarian ruling class continued to be afraid of losing its autonomous privileges. Nothing was done to resolve other latent conflicts of interest between the industrial hereditary' provinces and agrarian Hungary. The loss of Silesia, the richest and economically most developed prov- ince, compelled the government of Vienna to put into effect new economic measures which even further aggravated the differences be¬ tween Vienna and Hungary.

The first step in the new policy was the introduction of a system of customs designed to cut off Hungary from its century-old trade with Silesia and divert it towards the hereditary provinces. The Austrian and Bohemian provinces, however, could only step into Silesia’s shoes if their industries could provide the same type of goods as Hungary had hitherto imported from Silesia. They were unable to do this unless Hungary supplied them with cheap raw materials and all competition was excluded. In 1754, prohibitive tariffs were placed on all goods imported from outside the Habsburg Empire; all goods except raw materials exported from Hungary to Austria were also heavily charged; but manufactured goods exported from Austria to Hungary enjoyed protective tariffs.

Minor changes were made in the tariffs throughout the century but there was no fundamental change. This rendered industrialization in Hungary extremely difficult. Habsburg economic policy did not treat Hungary in the same way as the Western countries treated their colonies overseas. Industrialization was not prohibited, it was even granted privileges, but the factories in Hungary were run in conformity with the interests of Austrian industry. With the end of the Silesian imports after 1750, many new industries were started. This did not lessen the colonial relationship—regarded even by contemporaries as such— established between Austria and Hungary. The attempt to confine Hungarian foreign trade to Austria, the facilities promoting the import of Austrian industrial goods, and the considerable economic difference between the western and eastern parts of the Habsburg Empire, were enough in themselves to make this relationship clear.

By 1770, 87 per cent of Hungary’s exports were going to Austria and 85 per cent of its imports came from there. The structure of this restricted foreign trade had changed little compared with former standards. In 1767, 52 per cent of Hungary’s exports consisted of cattle, 26 per cent of cereal products, mainly wheat, 16 per cent of leather and wool, and 5 per cent of tobacco. These figures show that Hungarian agriculture was becoming more intensive, but also reveal a decline in the flourishing wine trade with Poland and Silesia, and, at the same time, indicate the general backwardness of Hungarian in¬ dustry. Eighty per cent of the imports were industrial goods, of which 55 per cent were textiles; another 20 per cent comprised spices and colonial goods, tea, coffee, sugar, cocoa and fruit. There are no reliable data available showing to what extent Hungarian industry could supply the home market, but various facts suggest that both the bourgeoisie and the well-to-do elements of the peasantry regularly bought foreign commodities.

The economic dependence of Hungary on Austria reached such a degree by the middle of the eighteenth century that it formed a basis for the Habsburg administration to revive their old plan to break the resistance of the Estates, this time applying the measures of an ‘enlightened’ absolutism.

Enlightened Absolutism—Hungarian Enlightenment (1760–1790)

During the Seven Years War (1756-1763), the need to save the Habs¬ burg Empire and achieve the return of Silesia brought the government of Vienna face to face with situations which could not be solved by old political methods. In order to encourage the growth of economic resources, raise the tax-paying potential, and improve the effectiveness of the state administration, new strides forward had to be made in centralization. The advisers of Maria Theresa were men under the in¬ fluence of the French Enlightenment, who tried to persuade the monarch to introduce reforms which combine the abolition of the privileges of the Estates, and the weakening of the influence of the Church with economic and cultural benefits for the non-noble classes, in order to broaden the social and financial basis of feudal absolutism. The religiously minded queen could never entirely sympathize with the secular ideal of an enlightened absolute ruler, but she identified herself with humanitarian reforms, accepting as their basis a more centralized form of government.

The central governing body of the new regime, the Staatsrat, was established in 1760. Its leading spirit. Prince Kaunitz, regarded the autonomous rights of the Hungarian nobility, and above all their exemption from taxation, as the chief obstacle to centralization within the empire. He looked at industrial development in Hungary in the same context: if Hungary became industrially independent of the hereditary provinces, the resistance of the nobility would increase. He believed that the system of protective tariffs should continue. On the other hand, the methods of Hungarian agriculture should be improved, and with it the lot of the oppressed peasantry, because such measures would strengthen the empire from an economic point of view, thus adding to the deterioration of the political position of the nobility. This attitude determined the trend of enlightened absolutism in Hungary for the next thirty years, and the Staatsrat only made exceptions temporarily and in single instances in connection with the setting up of new industries in Hungary—permission and support be- ing given only where it would not harm the industry of the hereditary provinces.

The Urbarial Patent and Its Consequences

The central government went on to attack the privileges of the Hun¬ garian Estates with renewed vigour at the diet of 1764. The exemption of the nobility from the payment of tax was circumvented by a pro¬ posal that their military services should be commuted to a money pay¬ ment. Another attempt was made to provide for uniformity in the extent of peasant burdens. Both proposals met with violent op¬ position; the queen was compelled to give up the taxation of the nobility but insisted on the immediate reform of the serf system.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the burdens of the serfs in Hungary were generally unbearable. In the northern and western territories where the population was most dense owing to the Turkish wars, the expansion of the landlords’ manors rendered more and more peasants landless. In this situation the number of cottagers far ex¬ ceeded that of peasants with tenures. The peasantry of the former Turkish territories, on the other hand, complained at having lost their freedom, and at increases in their obligations to perform labour services. The dissatisfaction of the peasantry broke out in open revolt in the Transdanubian area in 1765. This development was welcome to Maria Theresa, who saw it as an opportunity to force the frightened Hungarian lords to accept reforms for the peasantry. The Patent of 1767 provided for the exact amount of land to be given to the peasant as a tenure, prohibited the inclusion of peasant plots in the manor and prescribed the exact obligations of the peasant in kind, in money and in labour services.

The Urbarial Patent regulating peasant burdens came into force little by little, bringing relief to the majority of the peasantry. In the long term it undid the odious law of the sixteenth century, which had stated that the peasant had no right to the land. The patent established the unalienable right of the peasantry, in theory at least, to a tenure. The feudal landlords misused the regulation in order to inflict new burdens on villages and boroughs in a more favourable position than that stipulated under the patent. Most boroughs had by then com¬ muted their obligations in kind and in labour to the payment of lump sums to the landlord; the patent, on the other hand, stipulated how much labour service was due on each tenure. Had the landlords succeeded in forcing on the boroughs the procedure stipulated for the villages, it would have meant the complete loss of their autonomy, and instead of facing the landlords as a community of peasant- citizens, they would have been split up into single individuals. The community and autonomy of the boroughs only served the interests of the citizen-farmers, and their hired labourers or cottagers felt that they had fared worse than the ordinary serf obliged to do labour services. The landlord’s policy was to incite the cottagers of the boroughs to break out into rebellion, but the rebels remained alone as soon as the landlord had raised the rents, i.e. achieved his real aim. The boroughs paid a high price to avoid a return to the status of villages obliged to render labour services. The cottagers profited little, because their poverty rose in proportion to their rising numbers within the community.

The Urbarial Patent did not stop the development of the manorial economy. The landlords did not need to resort to the confiscation of tenures for further expansion, as they already had plenty of land at their disposal. The large-scale development of wheat-growing estates started about the middle of the century, with the ploughing up of grazing land, the forced purchase of clearings from the peasant at a low rate, and, last but not least, the expulsion of the cottagers settled on manorial land. The landlords also succeeded in getting the full benefit of the labour services regulated by law. Hungarian wheat obtained constantly expanding markets owing to the war and the industrialization of the Austro-Bohemian provinces. The great land¬ lords could make large profits from the booming conditions by steadily increasing their wheat production. Between 1748 and 1782, the volume of wheat exports grew fivefold, to reach nearly 100,000 tons. Wool exports also increased considerably: between 1748 and 1764, they had not amounted to 1,000 tons, but thereafter they rapidly went up to 2,500 tons, and, by 1782, to 5,600 tons. Wool was also produced by the large estates, some of which specialized in sheep farming. The two characteristic items of peasant production for export, cattle and wine, lost ground. The majority of the slaughter animals in the export trade were no longer Hungarian, but came in transit from Poland and the Balkans. The change in the structure of agricultural exports from Hungary denoted the final triumph of manorial pro¬ duction over that of the peasants.

The Modernization of Agriculture and New Industries

The great increase in manorial production brought about the large- scale modernization of the big estates. The introduction of advanced crop rotation in place of the old two and three-field system, the regular preparation of the soil, improvements in the quality of seeds, and the purchase of breeding stocks (mainly Merino sheep) contributed to better results, side by side with the introduction of hired labour. On many estates, the new methods of cultivation produced palpable results by 1780: the yield of grain rose to seven and eight times the seed sown, compared with a maximum yield of five times on peasant farms and on the demesnes worked by peasant hands.

The development of Hungarian agriculture became the main feature in the Vienna government’s programme, and the government actively contributed to the popularization of modern methods of cultivation. Specialized books on agriculture and stock breeding by Hungarian and foreign authors were published with the help of state subsidies. In 1763, the Collegium Oeconomicum was founded at Szempc for agricultural studies, and the university, which moved from Nagy- szombat to Pest in 1777, established a chair of agriculture. In the counties, economic societies started their activities. Throughout the country the regulation of rivers produced new land for agriculture and contributed to the improvement of transportation.

Nevertheless, the modernization of agriculture did not produce changes in the structure of feudal society in Hungary. Owing to un¬ developed internal market conditions, the agrarian revolution affected only part of the large estates. The nobility of small and medium means, together with the peasantry, continued to use obsolete methods of farming.

It was Samuel Tessedik, the Lutheran minister of a borough in the Great Plain, who first attempted to raise the level of the illiterate, land-bound, backward peasant masses. He introduced the rotation of crops, tried to stabilize the sandy soil by planting acacia trees, and sought to make salty land fertile. In 1780, he established the first school of practical agriculture in the world for peasant youths. In his book about peasant life in Hungary, he emphasized the need for better treatment and more freedom of movement for the peasants. It was not only this poor preacher, living close to the life of the people, who was concerned with the fate of the peasantry, but also Andrds Hadik, the great general, the recipient of royal favours, who suggested ending the system of ‘perpetual serfdom’. In 1769, he introduced a proposal to that effect at the court of Vienna, but it was refused.

Economic changes had greatly affected the system of towns in Hun¬ gary, as borne out by the census held between 1785 and 1787. The most important change was in the western and northern frontier towns which had flourished before Moh&cs, and continued to thrive during the Turkish era, but declined rapidly afterwards. Only Pozsony, Sopron and Selmecbanya had a population between 10,000 and 30,000; Kassa, Locse, Bdrtfa and Eperjes had degenerated into small towns. Among the royal towns, only Buda, Debrecen, Szeged, Pest, Gyor and Szekesfehervar belonged to the category with a population over 10,000, along with many boroughs such as Kecskemet, Komarom, Eger, Hodmezovasarhely, Miskolc, J£szber6ny, IJjvidek, Szabadka and Zombor. Leaving aside Transylvania, which preserved its in¬ dependence even during the Habsburg rule, the greatest concentrations came into being in the central and southern parts of the country, mainly along the Danube. Changes are also clearly obvious from the concentration of trade. In 1777, there were over a thousand craftsmen in Pozsony, Debrecen, Pest, Buda, Komarom, Gyor, Sopron, Szekes- feh£rvar, Besztercebdnya, Szeged, Eger and P6cs, mainly in the central parts of the country and along the Danube. The distribution of merchants was most typical of the new pattern of towns: the greatest number of merchants in 1777 was in Pest, Buda, Debrecen, Pozsony, Gyor, Komarom, Ujvidek, Sopron, Szabadka, Szeged and Eger.

The conclusion will be obvious that the development of towns during the second half of the eighteenth century depended to a large extent on trade with Austria, mainly the grain trade along the Danube. The largest towns were those which had become the centres of the grain trade, collecting the crops of the neighbouring districts, and directing grain arriving from many parts towards Austria. Besides wheat, other agricultural produce (wine, leather, cattle and wool) followed the same course. The development of handicrafts comple¬ mented this commercial activity, expanding to cater to the population concentrated in the towns. The grain merchant began to emerge as foremost among the bourgeoisie of Hungary, developing within the next hundred years into the typical Hungarian capitalist.

The expansion of agricultural production and the growth of the export trade not only encouraged the humble guild handicrafts, but also stimulated capitalist industrial production. In the 1760s there was a spate of new factories. Apart from the aristocracy, bourgeois capital also established some of these. The new enterprises employed hired labour, together with skilled workers from abroad, and were organized as joint stock companies. Textile mills, ceramics and leather factories and larger iron works were set up. Iron foundries belonging to the treasury, later to be among the biggest in the land, were establish¬ ed at Gyor and Resica. Their up-to-date technical equipment opened new possibilities for Hungarian heavy industry. Gold and silver mining, also under the management of the treasury, achieved a high technical level. Explosives were first used in mining at Selmecbanya at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and in the 1750s the two Hells (father and son) perfected the pump worked by compressed air. Outside England, steam engines were first used in Hungary for pump¬ ing water. In the middle of the eighteenth century, gold production reached a yearly average of 500 kilogrammes; silver production had doubled since the sixteenth century to reach 13,000 kilogrammes a year; and the yearly output of copper was up to 20,000 tons. The first coal mines were opened in Hungary in 1759 at Brennberg, near Sopron.

The first, modest flourishing of Hungarian capitalist industry only marginally affected the country’s industrial backwardness. In a country of eight million inhabitants, the aggregate number of all industrial workers, including the guild craftsmen, together with the managers and workers of the manufactures, did not add up to one per cent. The towns were hostile to capitalist production because they wanted to protect guild handicrafts and so they opposed the establishment of manufactures. The nobility were indifferent to the efforts of the industrialists, many of whom failed as a result of foreign competition, poor market organization, the shortage of skilled labour, inadequate transport facilities and the lack of credit. The economic policy of Vienna was only one factor among the causes of the frequent failures; the root of the trouble was the massive feudal structure of Hungarian society.

Cultural Enlightenment

Economic measures in themselves were not sufficient to introduce far- reaching changes in this situation; it seemed equally important to obliterate the conservative attitude which was the enemy of change in all spheres. The intellectual movement of the Enlightenment reached the upper strata of the Hungarian ruling class and some members of the ecclesiastical intelligentsia in the 1760s. The new ideas penetrated directly from French literature, indirectly through the teaching of German universities. Scientific understanding of the world began to develop earlier with the introduction of Newton’s physics to replace the scholastic philosophy taught in Jesuit and Piarist schools, and the Cartesianism of the Protestant ones. In the schools of miners establish¬ ed in Selmecbanya in 1755, and at the university of Nagyszombat (later moved to the capital), modern, up-to-date physical and chemical instruction was available. Jdnos Molnar discussed Newton’s teachings in Hungarian in 1777, thus taking the first steps towards making Hun¬ garian a language of science. In 1782, an institute of the training of engineers was established alongside the university.

The ideas of the Enlightenment were coupled with national aspira¬ tions by young Hungarian guards officers in Vienna, who showed a keen interest in literature. Gyorgy Bessenyei, a guards officer, was the first to write Hungarian literary works in the spirit of the Enlighten¬ ment. He considered it his duty to serve both the interests of cultural progress and the cult of the national tongue, for, as he said, ‘no nation could believe itself to have adopted wisdom without making the sciences speak in its own language’. From the seventies onwards, a host of gifted writers enlisted their services in the cult of the mother tongue. With their translations and original works they acquired a public for this renascent Hungarian literature among the nobility and the new intelligentsia.

Official cultural policies followed, somewhat belatedly, in the footsteps of the pioneers of the Hungarian Enlightenment. The queen was not enthusiastic about the broadening of culture. Nevertheless, after the dissolution of the Jesuit order in 1773, the reorganization of public education could no longer be postponed. The attitude of the enlightened circles of the court, that education should be a state affair, prevailed, and the state accepted responsibility for the spirit and substance of instruction. In 1777, the Ratio Educationis was published; it laid down the organization and curricula of schools in Hungary, giving added emphasis to the sciences, but leaving the schools them¬ selves to be administered by the Churches, under the supervision of the state authorities.

Joseph II and His System

Maria Theresa’s successor, Joseph II (1780-1790), was a more con¬ scious representative of enlightened absolutism. His aim was the political unity of the Habsburg Empire. He considered the privileges of the Hungarian Estates as its main obstacle. Joseph refused, there¬ fore, to be crowned king of Hungary and he did not call any diet. His decrees aimed at inflicting blow after blow on the Hungarian feudal system. The Catholic Church came under state control and lost its right of censorship. Most of the religious orders were dissolved, and their fortunes were confiscated to form an educational fund. With his policy of toleration, Protestants and the Greek Orthodox could become civil servants. He won the sympathy of the Protestant nobility and the peasantry who had suffered much from the intolerant Counter- Reformation. The people were thankful for the Patent of 1785, which granted free movement to the peasant, liberty to choose his employ¬ ment and an enforceable right not to be driven away from his land. This meant the end of the institution of‘perpetual serfdom’, although the landlord’s property rights and feudal obligations continued. The nobility tried to resist, but the peasant uprising of 1786 under the Rumanian Horia in Transylvania frightened them into accepting the provisions of the patent.

The logical conclusion of Joseph II’s ideas about government would have been the termination of Hungary’s colonial dependence, the abolition of the customs barrier between Austria and Hungary and a new economic policy to end the differences between the industries of the two countries. The emperor had approvingly considered such measures, and did not hinder the development of manufactures in Hungary. This new attitude facilitated the establishment of several new factories, which came into being on the basis of bourgeois capital in the towns, mainly in Pest, which had developed into the economic centre of the country. Progress was seen not only in the number of new factories, but also in technical innovations in every field. The new textile machines of the English industrial revolution were installed a few years after their invention in textile mills in Hungary, and an attempt was made to produce textile machines inside the country.

The tariff policies, however, which prevented real progress inside Hungary, were not lifted. Joseph II, like Maria Theresa before him, insisted that it was impossible to reduce tariffs, because owing to the tax privileges of the Hungarian ruling class, Hungary provided only a small share of the financial support of the empire, and the dis¬ crepancy had to be covered through customs revenues. There is no doubt that both the tax privileges and other feudal institutions pre¬ vented Joseph II from carrying out his reform programme, which in turn hindered the development of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, the economic policy of the Habsburgs largely depended on the interests of Austrian capitalists. This seems to be borne out by a statement of Joseph II, that the treasury could not give financial aid to manufactures in Hungary because foodstuffs there were cheaper than in Austria. This could mean that the emperor was afraid that industrialization in Hungary would interfere with food supplies to Austria. But another interpretation of the emperor’s words seems to be more adequate: that Austrian capitalists were afraid of competition from factories in Hungary, where labour was cheap.

Thus Joseph II neither suppressed nor promoted the development of Hungarian industry. It would be impossible to say whether, if he had been able to end the tax exemptions of the Hungarian nobility, he would have been persuaded to change his tariff policies, because his measures against the privileges of the Hungarian ruling class became ineffective owing to their resistance. The abolition of the autonomy of the counties vis-4-vis the central power, the registration of land prior to the introduction of the taxation of the nobility, and, finally, the introduction of German as an official language instead of Latin, turned the whole Hungarian aristocracy and nobility against him. Even the Protestant elements who had whole-heartedly supported his earlier reform measures turned against him. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, the secession of Belgium became imminent, in the war against the Turks the imperial army was beaten, and Joseph II was forced to be more lenient. In 1790, a few weeks before his death, all his reform plans for Hungary' were withdrawn with the exception of his decrees for toleration and for the suppression of per¬ petual serfdom.

On the Eve of National Development

The clash between Joseph II and the Hungarian nobility, marking the end of the compromise between the monarchy and the Hungarian ruling class, was more than a mere fight between an enlightened re¬ former and feudal conservatism. The reform measures of the emperor had not contributed to the end of the colonial exploitation of Hungary. In the given circumstances the resistance of the nobility was not only an attempt to save its feudal privileges but, also, to defend the pos¬ sibility of the economic independence of the country. There were many, in those days, who regarded the latter as more important. Neither the retarding forces of the class interests of the nobility nor the absolutist ruler could prevent any longer the development of the bourgeoisie in Hungary. An economic and cultural development had begun. The ideas of the Enlightenment penetrated into the midst of Hungarian society, taking root outside the aristocracy and well-to-do nobility in the secular intelligentsia. Priests and schoolmasters, most of them descended from the peasantry, townsmen and small nobility, doctors, engineers and lawy ers introduced by Joseph’s administrative reforms into county administration, the officials of the modernized large estate, and some state officials till contributed to the development of Hungarian learning. They laid the groundwork for scientific col¬ lections and for the creation of a domestic press, and worked out a programme for the technical development of the country, all in keeping with a future independent Hungary. Reviving Hungarian nationalism not only started an offensive against feudal backwardness and Austrian oppression, but also led to a plan for the Magyarization of the non- Hungarian population of the country.

Hungarian hegemony was exercised over a population of 8 million, with Slovak, Rumanian, Croatian, Serbian, Ruthenian and German nationalities together forming an absolute majority. This hegemony was due to the Hungarian tongue of the majority of the feudal ruling class. Only the Croatian people had a feudal ruling class and a feudal autonomy of their own. In Hungary and Transylvania, the majority of the town population were German and Hungarian, in Croatia German and Croatian. Among the Serbians, the immigrant Balkan merchants, among the Slovaks the lower-middle-class elements of the towns represented the future national bourgeoisie. There were only a few Rumanian and Ruthenian elements in the Hungarian and German populations of the towns. The bourgeoisie, however, of whatever tongue, represented only a minor economic and political force. The 90 per cent peasant population, most of them serfs, represented a force in the emerging national struggles between the Hungarian and non- Hungarian bourgeois elements in the country, only because of their numbers and their linguistic and religious conservatism.

In Rakoczi’s war of independence, Slovaks, Ruthenians, Germans and Hungarians had fought side by side against Habsburg oppression. The Habsburgs themselves could only rely on the Croatians, and, after the expulsion of the Turks, on the Serbians invited to settle in Hungary. It was not language, but religious and social antagonisms which had turned them against the Hungarian nobility. In feudal Hun¬ gary, only the members of the ruling class possessed a national con¬ sciousness; the deprived peasantry were excluded from the idea of feudal nationhood; the non-Hungarian privileged classes, however, were included. The more democratic interpretation of the nation of the kuruc outlaws had long been forgotten after the compromise between the monarchy and the Hungarian nobility. The official language of the country was Latin (with the exception of Transylvania where Hun¬ garian was used from the sixteenth century onwards), and, as a matter of course, the citizens of the German towns declared themselves Hungarians and so did the Rumanian and Slovak nobility.

The significance of language became more pronounced in the course of anti-Habsburg struggles, especially when the bourgeoisie and the peasantry became more involved in the struggle. The Enlightenment further developed, both among Hungarians and non-Hungarians, the respect for the native tongue, which became the inspiration and weapon of national movements in the hands of the secular intelligentsia. The latter grew in numbers, both among the non-Hungarian peoples and among the Hungarians, and became more cultured during the eight¬ eenth century. The Toleration Act of Joseph II opened public insti¬ tutions to the non-Catholics, which contributed to the development of the Greek Orthodox Rumanian and Serbian and the Protestant Slovak intelligentsia. This new intelligentsia defined the ideology of the emerging bourgeoisie and the national aspirations of the non-Hun¬ garian peoples. The controversial and confused conditions after the death of Joseph II provided it with its first opportunities.

Towards Bourgeois Transformation, Revolution and War of Independence (1790–1849)

The Period of Neo-Absolutism (1849–1867)

The Dual Monarchy (1867–1918)

Revolution in Hungary (1918–1919)

The Horthy Regime

People's Democracy in Hungary