Download File Now - onlysaytheword.com

5
TABLE OF CONTENTS
OUR HUNGARIAN HERITAGE
PART II
Page #
The battle of Mohács
1
The Impact of the Ottoman Rule on Hungary
2
John Zápolya (Szapolyai János)
4
1526-1540
5
Who will be king?
Ferdinand I
John Sigismund Zápolya
1526-1564
1540-1551&
1556-1570
Protestantism in Hungary
6
8
10
Maximilian II
1563-1576
11
Rudolf
1572-1608
11
The 16th century
12
The Protestant Reformation
13
The land beyond the woods and its Princes
14
Matthias II
1608-1619
16
Ferdinand II
1618-1625
16
Ferdinand Ill
1625-1657
19
Ferdinand IV
1647-1654
20
Leopold I (I. Lipót)
1655-1705
21
22
The battle of Buda
23
Leopold’s wives and issues
Ferenc Rákoczi, a reluctant warrior
25
Vak Bottyán
Joseph I (I. Jozsef)
1687-1711
The 17th century
Charles Ill (III. Károly)
23
26
27
1711-1740
31
Remarks
6
Maria Theresa
1740-1780
32
1780-1790
35
1790-1792
36
Joseph II
Leopold II
The 18th
century
37
The American revolution
41
The French revolution
41
Francis II
1792-1835
42
Ferdinand V
1835-1848
43
The Hungarian revolution of 1848
43
Revolt, rebellion and revolution
44
Preliminaries to the rebellion of 1848
45
The rise of nationalism
45
Hungarian reform
46
Yearning for independence
46
The case against the Austrians
47
Major figures in the Hungarian rebellion
47
March 15, 1848, a historic day in Hungary
50
The sad end
53
Franz Joseph (Ferenc Jozsef)
1848-1916
56
ADDENDUM: The House of Habsburg, pages 1-7
Turbulent times, page 8
Prelude to World War I,page 8
The assassination, page 9
A personal remark, page 12
Hungary in the 19th century
58
7
Demographics
58
Reformist efforts
58
Music and musicians
58
Enlightenment trickles down
59
8
The Chain bridge
60
Hungarian revolution of 1848
61
The battle of Solferino
61
The Red Cross
62
The compromise of 1867
62
Ethnicity
62
Rapid development
64
Royal passings
66
...and elsewhere in the world in the 19th century
Bonaparte making hay
66
68
Trivia at its best
69
Hungary in the early 20th century
72
...and elsewhere in the world
73
Preliminaries to World War I
75
Royal succession
75
World War I
76
1915-1916
76
Charles IV (IV. Károly) 1916-1918)
78
The war and its aftermath
78
1917-1918
79
The red menace rises
80
IV. Károly's attempts to retake the crown
82
Remembering Trianon
84
Commentary
86
Paganism
86
Christianity
87
Royal succession
88
Who shall be king?
89
St. Stephen's Admonitions to his son, Emeric
89
9
The coat of arms of Hungary
90
The flag of Hungary
90
The scorecard
91
Validation
91
SUPPLEMENT - Hungarian royal succession tables 1through 7
The battle of Mohacs
Where were the Christian countries who failed to come to Hungary’s assistance? Well, France’s Francis
I had lost a battle at Pavia with Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and was forced to sign a treaty
in Madrid in February 1525 after suffering months of imprisonment. Desperately looking for an ally,
Francis signed an alliance with Ottoman Sultan Suleiman which caused a scandal in Christian circles. To
top it off, Francis asked Suleiman to wage war on Charles V to even things out for France. Suleiman’s
ultimate ambition had been to take Vienna, so he agreed to the French request. The only problem was
that the road to Vienna led through Hungary.
The Turks wasted no time as they proceeded to approach Hungary from the South. This time they were
victorious at the fortress of Nandorfehervar (today’s Belgrade), which they could not conquer in 1456
when its defender was Janos Hunyadi. The loss of this fort in 1521 finally rang alarm bells with Hungary’s
leaders. The king hastily put together a force of 60,000 and took off for the Southern borders, while
“forgetting” to take food along to feed his troops. As a result, the army spontaneously disbanded as
hunger and disease weakened their ranks.
As news of the fall of Nandorfehervar and the launching of a massive armada from Istanbul in April 1526
under the command of Sultan Suleiman made war preparations urgent, the Hungarian nobles still would
not heed the King’s call to report for duty. When they finally assembled, they hastily headed for the
southern city of Mohacs along the Danube without waiting for reinforcements, - only a few days’ march
away, - to join them. The battlefield was not an optimum choice as it was not level but consisted of
rolling land making a clear site for the artillery difficult. For cavalry, too, an uphill charge did not bode
well. Finally, the battlefield is bordered by a swampy area toward the Danube river, which curtails any
strategic movement of not only the enemy but our own forces, too.
Researching this critical battle, I remembered from my younger years that I had read an account of it in
the periodical “Magyar Cserkesz”, Hungarian Scout. The paper listed several sources for its reference,
among them “A Magyar nemzet haditortenelme” (The military history of the Hungarian nation) by Jozsef
Banlaky-Breit which puts the reader right in the middle of the action.
One of the Hungarian units with 2000 horsemen under the command of Archbishop Paul Tomory was
near the chosen battlefield at Petervarad in June where he had several encounters with Suleiman’s
forces in an attempt to delay their progress. In time, Tomory’s forces would grow to 6000 men, but they
were still facing a formidable Turkish army. The Hungarian king’s forces accounted for about 25,000 of
which about two-thirds were Hungarian, the others were Croatians, Poles, Germans and many others as
mercenaries. Half the force consisted of cavalry, the others were archers and bowmen, whereas the
Turks numbered over 60,000 cavalry and 12,000 foot soldiers. Suleiman had 160 artillery versus the
Hungarians’ 53.
The Hungarians couldn’t agree on a battle plan even as late as the night before the encounter. As a
result, they had to resort to impromptu decisions as reports of the Turks’ advance reached the Hungarian
lines at 5 o’clock in the morning of August 29. The Hungarians formed two lines: the first consisted of
cavalry dressed mostly in heavy armor, with artillery and infantry behind them. The second line under
the command of King Louis II consisted of mostly cavalry. As the lines began to move forward, they left
a small unit to defend their camp site. A considerable force of 8 to 13,000 men under the command of
the Transylvanian governor John Zapolya was still nowhere to be had.
The Turkish forces formed 3 lines. The rear was made up by the artillery and the cavalry commanded
by the Sultan himself. In the middle was Behram pasha with his forces from Anatolia, while the front
lines were represented by Chief Ibrahim’s elite Janissaries. It took the Turkish forces nearly all day to
move into position under a hot sun from a cloudless sky. Suleiman, surveying his tired soldiers, decided
to postpone the battle until the next day and at 3 o’clock in the afternoon ordered his forces to stand
down.
The Hungarians mistook the movement of 10,000 cavalry moving into camp, while another force
appeared to threaten the right wing of Paul Tomory’s front lines. The commanders of those Turkish
forces had not yet gotten Suleiman’s orders to return to camp and seemed to be an easy prey for Tomory
who ordered 200 cavalrymen to stage the initial attack. By the time, however, the artillery was able to
fire the first round, the clock advanced to 4 PM. The Turks were surprised by the unexpected fierce
sortie and backed up, giving false impression to Tomory that he had an advantage. He sent word to the
King to launch a full attack on the main Turkish force. The King’s second line appeared to have dislodged
the Anatolian division until they executed a diversionary move trapping the Hungarians in the
devastating barrage of 160 cannons from behind an impenetrable line of earth mounds fortified with
sharpened sticks.
The Hungarian forces panicked and engaged in disorganized valiant efforts to silence the Turkish
artillery. Louis II and Tomory gave commands which no one obeyed. At this point Ibrahim’s Janissaries
and the Anatolian cavalry threw themselves into the melee and massacred the retreating Hungarians.
By 6 o’clock the king’s forces were in a headlong retreat, leaving behind 14,000 dead, including a
thousand of the Hungarian nobility. The king himself was also killed when his horse stumbled as it was
trying to ford the shallow Csele brook, throwing the rider and burying him under the weight of its armor.
Suleiman was so surprised by the small size of the army which attacked him, then frantically retreated,
leaving Suleiman a virtually open road to the capital. The defeat at Mohacs meant the end of
independent Hungary. There is a phrase which had entered our language. When someone complains
of having lost something or if something unfortunate has happened to them, the response is generally:
“Tobb is veszett Mohacsnal!” (More was lost at Mohacs!).
In the chaos which followed Mohacs, the divided nobility elected two kings simultaneously: John Zapolya
of Transylvania in 1526 and Ferdinand of Austria in 1527. The Habsburgs ruled the Northern and
Western part of the country while the Turks occupied central Hungary and held suzerainty over semiindependent Transylvania headed by Zapolya. The ensuing constant warfare between the Habsburgs
and the Ottomans over the next century and a half turned Hungary into a perpetual battlefield. The
population of the so-called Transdanubia (Dunantul), in Western Hungary, at the end of the 15th century
was 900,000, whereas in the 17th century it dwindled to 300,000. In 15th century Somogy county near
Lake Balaton the population was 55,000, of which only 500 remained by 1598. And in the southern
county of Bekes which was in the direct path of the Turkish invasion, only 2 (!) Hungarians would be
found by the census following the expulsion of the Turks.
“The Impact of the Ottoman Rule on Hungary”
That is the title of a study by Geza Palffy, whose work I had used for occasional reference to illustrate
the effects of Mohacs on the strategic realities of Central Europe. The presence of the Ottomans under
Sultan Suleyman I for more than a century and a half constituted “a major and constant threat to the
whole of Europe.” Besides their land forces, the Turks also operated a formidable fleet in the
Mediterranean which menaced the provinces of the Spanish Habsburgs. To contain the advance of the
enemy, the Habsburgs launched efforts which required “close political, military and financial
cooperation among the Habsburg possessions in Central Europe, governed from Vienna.”
The massive military campaigns flowing back and forth across Hungarian soil had devastating effects on
the population and the production of food. Plantings were interrupted by warfare, whatever was edible
was requisitioned by the occupying armies, the people who worked the land were either killed or
abducted and many villages burnt to the ground. As Palffy’s study suggests: “Both the troops and the
local population were easily struck by famine.” The weakened humans were struck by diseases such as
the plague, dysentery, typhoid fever and even malaria which added to the human and natural calamities
that befell these areas. And often to clear strategic areas for the benefit of one or the other armies,
populations would be forcefully resettled in other localities.
The Turkish occupation had a curious effect on religion in Hungary. It is an accepted fact that the centers
of spiritual and cultural life in medieval times were the monasteries. Many of these centers of
knowledge were destroyed by the enemy and its occupants often migrated to the area of Hungary which
was under Habsburg rule, the so-called Royal Hungarian side. In the diocese of Veszprem, for example,
about 100 monasteries had completely disappeared and out of 600 parishes only a few dozen remained
functioning. The Catholic Church had suffered great losses under the Turkish occupation. The Ottomans
contributed greatly to the spread of Reformation in the 16th century precisely because the Catholic
Church had been weakened. The resettlement of Greek Orthodox Serbs, for example, further changed
the picture of the former dominance of Catholic Hungarians.
Hungarians in pre-Mohacs times lived mostly in the plains between the Danube and Tisza rivers ,
whereas minorities, such as Serbs and other Slavic people, tended to live on Hungary’s periphery, which
was more sheltered, mountainous and more easily defended. Whereas it was the ethnic Hungarians
who suffered most of the losses from the Ottoman war, these ethnic minorities experienced a
population growth. The depopulated areas welcomed the settlement of South Slavic immigrants, among
them about 200,000 Serbians in Southern Hungary to replace workers/serfs on large estates who had
fallen victim to the Turks. The sharp difference of ethnicity of these folks would make assimilation
unlikely and as Palffy points out, “the affected Hungarian territories lost their Hungarian character
completely.” A similar trend of population shift was evident in other parts of the mother country as
Croatians came by the thousands to Transdanubia, whereas Slovaks settled the northern parts of the
country and Romanians from Wallachia and Moldavia changed the ethnic makeup of Transylvania.
All these factors and others had written themselves into the fabric of Hungarian history. Hungarians
may have “gained” some Ottoman words especially relating to agriculture, and later benefited by
architectural remnants of the Turkish occupation, such as mosques and Turkish baths, let me use Geza
Palffy’s conclusion to the effect that “for Hungary the Ottoman rule had been an unmitigated tragedy.”
Suleyman proceeded up the Danube to conquer Buda, which he found practically abandoned when he
got there on September 11th. King Louis II’s widow, Queen Mary had taken refuge in Pozsony (today’s
Bratislava) near the Austrian border, as did the most of the inhabitants of the capital. The Turks were
surprised at their military success and proceeded to loot or destroy everything that could be moved.
Turkish barques were loaded to the hilt and much of the treasures ended up in Constantinople. After a
brief period of occupation Suleyman ordered his troops to withdraw after putting the torch to the city,
and left only a small contingent at Buda as well as at other fortresses he had previously subdued.
Vacating Buda may have been a great strategic error, because when Suleyman found it necessary to
move against Vienna in 1532, he had to fight every step of the way. But let’s take these events in
chronological order.
JOHN ZAPOLYA, JOHN 1 (Szapolyai Janos, or Zapolya Janos, 1526-1540)
His birthplace was in Szepes Castle which is today in Slovakia. He claimed to have a letter from Beatrice,
widow of King Matthias, which stated Matthias’ wish to have John Zapolya succeed him on the
Hungarian throne. John Zapolya was appointed voivode (governor) of Transylvania in 1511 and as such
he had a part in defeating the peasant rebellion of Gyorgy Dozsa in 1514. He was well known to the
nobility in Hungary.
As we had seen earlier, Zapolya was, or may have been, en route to the Mohacs battlefield when King
Louis II was killed. When the Turks withdrew from Hungary following the sacking of Buda, there existed
a political vacuum as the leaders of the nobility had given their lives at Mohacs. Zapolya was no stranger
to the aristocrats and he had a large army at his command. Although a small minority of the aristocrats
sided with Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the late king’s brother-in-law of the Habsburg dynasty,
Zapolya had himself proclaimed king by the diet at Szekesfehervar in November, 1526 and was duly
crowned as King John I of Hungary.
A month later Archduke Ferdinand had himself proclaimed king by another diet in Pressburg (Pozsony)
which cancelled out Zapolya’s efforts to create an Austro-Hungarian alliance against the Turks.
Ferdinand also gained the kingdom of Bohemia in December, 1526. In July the following year Ferdinand
ordered an army of German mercenaries into Hungary who marched into Buda, defeating Zapolya’s
regime. The following year Zapolya fled to Poland and from that post he proposed to the Ottomans that
Hungary should be a vassal state and asked for Suleyman’s support. The Sultan accepted and invaded
Austria but could not win a decisive victory against Ferdinand. In 1533 they signed a peace treaty with
Austria and ceded Western Hungary (much of Transdanubia) to them. Under pressure, Zapolya
designated Ferdinand to be his successor after his death as he was childless at that point in 1538.
However, a year later he married Princess Isabella Jagiello of Poland and had a son by her named John
Sigismund. Zapolya died 9 days later. His son would be a contender for the Hungarian throne.
Who will be king?
It is hard to beat Stephen Sisa in story-telling, so I am going to rely on his account related in “The Spirit
of Hungary”. In the previous segment of my study I mentioned the clearly unethical and possibly
treasonous proposal which Zapolya made to Sultan Suleyman, offering Hungary as a vassal state in
return for his support of his right to the throne. To make his offer even sweeter, Zapolya offered 40,000
gold pieces to Grandvezir Ibrahim to conclude this alliance. Ibrahim swore on the Prophet’s beard to
protect Zapolya against all enemies and ordered Suleiman to return to Buda with his troops in
September, 1529 to put Zapolya back in power. To top it off, Zapolya offered the position of Governor
of Hungary to one of Ibrahim’s sidekicks, Louis Gritti, an Italian renegade and illegitimate son of the Doge
of Venice. Gritti occupied the post of Governor for 3 years as a “cruel despot bent on killing and
extortion.”
Suleyman’s ultimate goal was the capture of Vienna, so he embarked on an unsuccessful campaign
against Vienna, but ultimately was compelled to sign a treaty with Ferdinand in 1533. Ferdinand was
also obligated to pay tribute money to the Sultan, allowing Ferdinand to rule over Western Hungary.
The Turks thus were the protectors of Zapolya and also were friends, - by treaty, - of Ferdinand. All that
remained was for Ferdinand and Zapolya, as King John I, to come to terms with each other. With the
help of a colorful character in Hungarian history, the Bishop George of Nagyvarad whom Hungarians
know as “Frater Gyorgy”, the two kings concluded the treaty of Nagyvarad in February, 1538, recognizing
each other’s territorial rights. They also agreed that on the death of King John, whether he had children
or not, Hungary would revert to Ferdinand and his heirs.
Soon, however, complications arose as Bishop George arranged a marriage between Zapolya and
Princess Isabella, daughter of Sigismund, the king of Poland. One of the clauses of the agreement was
that King John must also be recognized by Charles V, Emperor of Germany and Spain. With all objections
supposedly cleared, Isabella married King John, 30 years her senior, and she bore him a son in 1540, with
the name of John Sigismund (Janos Zsigmond).
As we have seen, Zapolya died 9 days after the birth of his son. Bishop George, in clear repudiation of
the Nagyvarad treaty, wanted to cut Ferdinand out of his right to the throne of Hungary and induced the
king-makers to proclaim the baby John Sigismund as their choice. The Turks were confused by the turn
of events and sent a delegate to have an audience with Zapolya’s widow. Upon entering the throne
room, Beg Rustem found Isabella breast-feeding her baby. The Beg was so moved, he kissed the feet of
the baby and threw the Sultan’s support behind him. Ferdinand, however, wasn’t moved and sent his
General Roggendorf with 40,000 troops to conquer Buda. Bishop George turned to the Sultan for help.
The Sultan asked to see the infant John and his mother. The reception was cordial, - perhaps too cordial
and lasted into the night, - for a reason. As Stephen Sisa explains:
“While the reception and feast was in full swing, the impregnable fortress of Buda was infiltrated by
innocent-looking Turkish “sightseers”, who, at a given signal, revealed themselves as Janissaries. Three
cannon shots fired from Buda signaled the successful coup to Suleyman that Buda had become part of
the Ottoman Empire.” The Sultan rode into the city on horseback, said a prayer in the Church of the
Virgin Mary which had been converted into a mosque and sent Isabella, her infant son and Bishop
George to Transylvania. The Queen’s general, Balint Torok, for whom a city is named in today’s Hungary,
was taken to the Galata prison for life. Hungary’s three-way division was complete 15 years after the
Mohacs disaster.
Illustration of tripartite Hungary under Habsburg and Turkish rule plus Transylvania
FERDINAND I (1526-1564)
His parents each had a strange moniker added to their name. Ferdinand was born in Spain in 1503 into
the royal household of Habsburg Archduke Philip “the Handsome” and Infanta Johanna “the Mad”. At
age 12 in 1515, he was engaged to Hungarian king Louis II’s daughter Anne Jagiellonica with the longterm plan in mind that he would eventually become King of Hungary. When he was merely 16 years old,
his 19-year-old brother, Charles V acceded to the grandfather Maximilian’s title of Holy Roman Emperor,
while Ferdinand was entrusted with governing Austria and Slovenia. When his brother would retire from
his post in 1556, Ferdinand assumed the title of Holy Roman Emperor (Elect). Prior to that, with the
death of his brother-in-law Louis II at Mohacs, Ferdinand also became king of Hungary, Croatia and
Bohemia*, but because of the succession controversy with John Zapolya he was only crowned in
November, 1527 at Szekesfehervar.
*It is worthwhile to note that whereas the Bohemian diet elected Ferdinand to the throne, the Diet
refused to recognize Ferdinand as hereditary lord of the kingdom. On the other hand, the Croatian
nobles elected Ferdinand unanimously and confirmed the succession to the throne to him and his heirs
while the king promised to respect the historic rights, freedoms, laws and customs of Croatia.
Hungary was divided in their choice for king. As we have seen earlier, the Diet of the lesser nobles
elected John Zapolya and crowned him on November 11, 1526, whereas the higher nobility elected
Ferdinand in December of the same year (and crowned him a year later). With the support and help of
his brother, Emperor Charles V, Ferdinand fought two battles with Zapolya, defeating him at both Tarcal
in September 1527 and at Szina in March 1528. Zapolya was forced to flee to Poland, from where he
asked Sultan Suleyman for support and offering Hungary (while he was really only in charge of
Transylvania) an Ottoman vassal state.
Suleyman responded to Zapolya’s request and in 1529 organized a massive assault on Vienna which sent
Ferdinand to seek refuge in Bohemia. Suleyman tried again in 1533 which resulted in a peace treaty,
splitting Hungary into three sections (see the map above). In the 1538 treaty of Nagyvarad, as we have
seen earlier, Zapolya was “induced” to name Ferdinand and his heirs successors to the Hungarian throne,
while fate intervened in 1540 when Zapolya and his wife had a boy born to them, named John II
Sigismund. With the death of Zapolya 9 days later, the Diet elected the infant to be their king. Ferdinand
responded to the controverting of the Nagyvarad treaty and invaded Zapolya’s kingdom with 40,000
troops. The regent, the colorful and resourceful bishop George Martinuzzi used Suleyman to eject
Ferdinand from the central regions of Hungary (the “Alfold” or Low Lands), forcing Ferdinand to pay
tribute to Suleyman for ruling Western Hungary.
We shall deal with the events in Transylvania and eastern Hungary under John II Sigismund in a separate
section of this study.
Ferdinand’s rule over Western Hungary (known as Royal Hungary) conformed to what he had introduced
in Bohemia and Austria as “absolute monarchy.” The king published a constitution for these inherited
lands, but enforcement presented a problem as they resisted the autocratic rule from Vienna. To be fair
to Ferdinand, we must point out that he tried to keep his oath to respect the Hungarian constitution.
He appointed Count Istvan Bathory as Palatine who maintained good relations between the King’s Court
and the Hungarian Council. Ferdinand appointed the Council members to help the Palatine govern
Hungary and did not interfere with the conduct of their business. He reserved two places for Hungarians
as his cabinet advisors but the Hungarians failed to take up the offer. He also provided secretariats for
Hungarian affairs in his ministries which were not subject to the orders of the Austrians, only if they
came directly from the king. Ferdinand convoked the Diet (national assembly) regularly, levied no taxes
without the Diet’s consent and usually deferred to its opinion.
Ferdinand had other major issues at his hand regarding religious disturbances which do not directly jive
with the ultimate purpose of this study. Nevertheless, we shall deal briefly with the incursion of the idea
of Reformation into daily life in Hungary; and largely bypass Ferdinand’s struggles in governing his
empire after his brother Charles’ abdication (and Ferdinand’s succession to) the duties of Holy Roman
Emperor.
As a final note on Ferdinand’s era, the Ottoman invasion of Hungary also affected Szekesfehervar, the
traditional city of royal coronations. Thus, in 1536 the Diet moved its meeting place to Pressburg
(today’s Bratislava, but to Hungarians it remains forever as Pozsony).
As we noted from Ferdinand’s childhood that as an infant he was betrothed to Anne Jagiellonica,
daughter of Hungarian king Louis II, whom he married in 1521 in Linz, Austria. They had 15 children (4
boys and 11 girls) of whom 13 reached adulthood. One of those, Maximilian II would become Hungary’s
king in 1563.
Ferdinand died in Vienna in 1564 and is buried in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.
JOHN SIGISMUND ZAPOLYA (Szapolyai Janos Zsigmond, 1540-1551 & 1556-1570)
As noted earlier, he was born July 7, 1540 in Buda, Hungary. His father, King John Zapolya died 9 days
after his birth. The Diet elected the infant to rule over Eastern Hungary (Transylvania), with his mother,
Anne Jagiellonica as regent. The principal “regent” and adviser was whom Hungarians know as Frater
Gyorgy, or George Martinuzzi, bishop of Nagyvarad. John Sigismund’s election to the throne was clearly
against the Treaty of Nagyvarad (1538), and King Ferdinand of Royal Hungary came to enforce his rights
in 1541. The regent George asked Sultan Suleyman to protect the kingdom, which the Turks did
spectacularly by ejecting Ferdinand but also seizing Buda in the process.
“Frater Gyorgy” (Brother George) who had a pivotal voice in the affairs of 16th century Transylvania,
deserves a line or two. He is known officially as Cardinal Martinuzzi, diplomat whose wheeling/dealing
puzzled his contemporaries. He was indeed “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” He was
brought up in John Zapolya’s castle as a stoker of the fireplaces, with access to all rooms where he
overheard confidential conversations and seen the “bare truth” including Zapolya’s sister standing nude
in front of a mirror. Warned by a servant that there was a man in the room, Princess Borbala replied:
“He is not a man, he is only a servant.”
George was born into a noble family; his father’s name being unpronounceable (Utyessenovics) he used
his mother’s maiden name as Martinuzzi. After having seen the princess in her birthday suit, he fled to
the Pauline Monastery in Buda. (I had served there in the church carved into Mt. Gellert as an altar boy.)
No doubt he was intelligent as he could converse in 5 languages and added Latin while serving with the
Pauline fathers. For his abilities he was appointed Abbot at Sajolad in Northeastern Hungary where John
Zapolya had sought his advice while being en route to exile in Poland. George decided to accompany
his former master. He recruited and organized a small army which managed to defeat Ferdinand’s army
at Sarospatak. Having gotten rid of Ferdinand, George set out to keep the Turks at a distance by
proclaiming his strategy of keeping the Turks away by applying soothing words and goodwill.
George’s strategy was to approach the Turkish Grandvezir Ibrahim through shady insiders in his court
and offer him 40,000 gold pieces in exchange for Turkish support for Zapolya. The plan worked and
Ibrahim had Sultan Suleyman take over Buda and put Zapolya on the throne on September 7, 1529. The
king appointed the Italian-born Gritti, one of Ibrahim’s shady characters to the post of Governor of
Hungary. In that position Gritti liquidated most of Zapolya’s enemies over the next three years. In the
confusion, Gritti’s men murdered the Bishop of Nagyvarad, which cost Gritti dearly as he was duly
beheaded.
It flowed naturally that George would take over the vacant position at Nagyvarad where he engineered
the treaty of 1538 between Zapolya and Ferdinand whereby Zapolya proclaimed Ferdinand and his heirs
the due successors after Zapolya’s death. He obviously didn’t figure that soon he would be the proud
father of the baby John Sigismund, who, following Zapolya’s death, was duly crowned and pronounced
the new king of Hungary. Queen Isabella would act as regent while John Sigismund was growing up.
As related earlier, an envoy of the Sultan saw Isabella breastfeeding little John and was moved to grant
the Sultan’s support to the new king and his mother. When Ferdinand sent 40,000 troops to retake
Buda, the Turkish Sultan ejected them and made Transylvania a “little gift” to King John Sigismund while
the real governing was done by Bishop George Martinuzzi. He made peace pacts with both Ferdinand
and Suleyman but managed to procrastinate in fulfilling them with excuses which both accepted as
reasonable as long as bribes, flattery, gifts and annual tributes kept coming.
All was not well, though, in the royal household. George Martinuzzi and Queen Isabella were at odds
with each other. The queen’s constant hostile intrigues and the difficulty of dealing with the Moslem
Ottomans made him re-think his position and made overtures to Ferdinand to come take over Eastern
Hungary.
Queen Isabella welcomed the prelate’s suggestion that she should move to Austria where she and her
son would be more comfortable, aided by 100,000 gold pieces which Friar George offered to her. On
the Friar’s invitation, Ferdinand sent an army to accomplish the royal move and also to betroth
Ferdinand’s infant daughter to John Sigismund, age two. The move also technically transferred
Transylvania and Eastern Hungary to the possession of Ferdinand, provided that Friar George could keep
the Turks away. The Pope, sensing the historical significance of the action, elected him to cardinal,
naming him the Primate of Hungary under the name of Cardinal Martinuzzi.
The predictable Turkish reaction was to attack but Cardinal George counseled Suleyman to withdraw in
anticipation of superior forces mounted by Ferdinand. During their withdrawal some of the Turkish
forces were attacked by Ferdinand’s troops despite promises of free passage by George. His doubledealings came to light and the Austrian officers surprised him in his room as he was offering his morning
prayers, killing him. As Stephen Sisa remarked: “Frater Gyorgy lay unburied on the porch of his castle
in the cold of winter for 60 days until some priests happened by and placed him in a crypt at
Gyulafehervar. The engraving on his tombstone reads: “Omnibus moriendum est (We are all mortals.)“
_______
Since Hungary had become cut into three different and distinct parts, its history and its leadership also
tripled, which makes our job a bit more difficult to keep the reader engaged without losing his or her
interest. We must now return briefly to John Sigismund, king of Transylvania and Eastern Hungary.
In 1549 George Martinuzzi suggested to John Sigismund to abdicate and turn over the country’s fate to
Emperor Ferdinand. At this point a power play began, because up till this moment it was agreed that
John Sigismund would rule Transylvania at the pleasure of the Turks. Seeing their conquest slipping out
of their hands, the Turks attacked Ferdinand’s troops and held on to their possession. As Martinuzzi’s
double-dealing became obvious, he was suspected of treason and was assassinated by the Austrians as
mentioned above. After five years of hostilities, in 1556 the Diet restored John Sigismund to the East
Hungarian throne. When his mother, the dowager Queen Isabella died in 1559, John Sigismund
continued his reign until 1570.
One of his accomplishments was to issue the Edict of Torda, the first such decree of religious freedom
in Europe at the time of the Reformation. The king supported the establishment of the Unitarian Church
in Transylvania and permitted, in fact encouraged a dialogue between the Catholics and all Protestant
churches. Other religious groups, such as Moslems and Jews, were not guaranteed religious freedom.
When Ferdinand died, John Sigismund abdicated in favor of Ferdinand’s successor, Emperor Maximilian
II. In 1571 king John died, while childless, at Gyulafehervar. However, his succession did not go
smoothly. The Diet elected Stephen Bathory as Prince of Transylvania and got the region involved in a
brief civil war. Since Transylvania represented a third of tripartite Hungary, we shall deal, - however
briefly, - with Hungarian history’s “3 B’s”, Stephen Bathory, Stephen Bocskay and Gabor (Gabriel)
Bethlen, at a later time.
________
At this point it might sound premature for us to deal with the role of Protestantism in Hungary, since its
main effect would not occur until the 16th century. Yet, considering that Holy Roman Emperor and King
of Hungary Ferdinand was rather involved in decades of religious and political unrest in the German
states under his brother, Charles V, while he was trying to keep the Ottoman Turks from engulfing
Hungary and threatening Austria, we need to deal with the subject.
When Charles V convened a general parliamentary meeting in Augsburg in 1555, he named his brother.
Ferdinand as his representative in charge of settling disputes over religion and authority. Ferdinand
promulgated three principles. First, the one called “cuius regio eius religio” (whose realm, his religion),
provided that the religion of the prince in charge of the territory dictated the leading religion of the state
and its inhabitants. Those who could not or would not conform, would be allowed to leave and resettle
elsewhere, thus permitting and encouraging migration.
The second principle concerned the religious leader’s choice of religion. If the prelate changed from
Catholicism, for example, to another “reformed” religion, the residents of the state did not have to do
so. The third principle, promulgated by Ferdinand as his own, exempted some of the knights and some
cities from religious uniformity, provided the “new religion” had been practiced there since the mid1520s, which allowed for mixed cities where Catholics and Lutherans could live together in peace.
The failings of this so-called Augsburg Peace became apparent when Reformation sprouted a diversity
of religions, led by Martin Luther’s Lutheran church, the Swiss John Calvin’s Reformed Church and
followers of Zwingli in local European areas, some of which were considered heretical.
In Hungary’s western areas the Catholic Habsburgs ruled, whereas in Eastern Hungary and particularly
in Transylvania different regions lived under the religion of its different elected princes. The Catholic
Church, in many instances, had a rather pronounced stranglehold on peoples’ lives. Hungarians looked
sympathetically at new religious movements which gave them more freedom and independence. The
serfs welcomed the Reformation because it spoke to them in the vernacular versus the Catholic religion
being enshrouded in Latin. It also had fewer rules and taxes. The gentry was more aligned with Calvinism
which seemed to justify local autonomy. By the end of the 17th century Transylvania had almost totally
supplanted Catholicism by other reformed religions.
Unitarianism was “locally made”, founded by Ferenc David around 1560 in Transylvania. This religious
belief was based on the concept of God in one person, not as a Trinity and was tolerant toward all other
religions. As we had seen earlier, King John Sigismund supported this concept and the national assembly
at Torda in 1557 and 1558 declared asylum for people of religious persecution. Protestantism, but
particularly Calvinism, was an effective opposition to the ruthless Counter-Reformation driven by the
Catholic Habsburgs in later years.
________
MAXIMILIAN I (1564-1576)
He was the son of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and his wife Anna. Born in Vienna in 1527, he was
educated in Italy and served in his uncle Charles V’s military campaign against France in 1544. At the
age of 21 in 1548 he married his cousin Maria, the daughter of Charles V. His father-in-law wished his
son Philip to succeed him as Emperor to which his brother Ferdinand (king of Hungary) objected. This
upset the harmony between two branches of the Habsburg family and Maximilian in 1552 may have
been poisoned by Philip (by then king of Spain). Maximilian survived and became king of Hungary on his
father’s death in July 1564, but crowned already on September 8, 1563.
As Archduke of Austria previous to becoming king of Hungary, his main responsibility was the
governance of Austria and its defense against the Turkish threat of invasion. He was greatly influenced
by a Lutheran minister which gave the Court concern that he would abandon his Catholic faith. He
remained a Catholic while assuring his protestant electors that he would abide by the rules of the
Augsburg Peace treaty. In 1566 he formed a large army to march against the Turks on his eastern flanks,
but the campaign resulted in no action against the Turks. In fact, Maximilian continued to pay tribute
to the Sultan as the price of peace, while Hungary remained tripartite.
The Emperor’s power was limited as his estates were unwilling to strengthen the imperial authority. In
1571 a coalition of fleets of Catholic seaside states defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman empire at
Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth off Greece. ( It was the last naval battle using galleys!) Pope Pius V asked
Maximilian to join in an attack on the Turks following the victory of Lepanto, but Maximilian remained
unwilling or unable to make a move. He died in October 1576 in Regensburg while preparing to invade
Poland, ruled by the Hungarian prince, Stephan Bathory of Transylvania. He refused to receive the last
sacraments of the Catholic Church. He is buried in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.
Maximilian and his wife had 16 children, two of whom would eventually end up on the Hungarian throne.
RUDOLF I (1572-1608)
Rudolf was the third child and oldest son of Maximilian and Maria (of Spain, a daughter of Charles V).
He was born in Vienna in 1552, but spent his teen years in Spain at the court of his maternal uncle. He
adopted an aloof and stiff manner which he maintained throughout his life. He detested traveling and
taking care of everyday government matters. Rudolf was rather interested in occult matters and
astrology and suffered from periodic bouts of depression. This did not bode well for a Holy Roman
Emperor.
He never married and was said to be a bisexual whose partners were his court chamberlain and other
valets. He had affairs with women and sired illegitimate children with his mistress, Catherina Strada.
One of those children was the schizophrenic Julius (Caesar) who was sent to Bohemia where he was
condemned for murdering a barber’s daughter. Before sentencing he died of a ruptured ulcer.
Raised a Catholic, Rudolf was tolerant of other religions and in death denied sacramental rites. He
fantasied that he could save Christendom by organizing another crusade against the Turks. He started
a 13-year war in 1593 with undetermined results. Hungarians, led by Stephen Bocskay revolted against
this long war. Rudolf was forced to cede control of Hungarian affairs to his younger brother Archduke
Matthias who would eventually succeed him on the Hungarian throne. He died in January, 1612, buried
in Prague.
THE 16th CENTURY
It was in this century when mankind had lost 10 days from the calendar. Authorities of the day decided
that we were out of kilter with the calendar, so they advanced the days by ten in October, 1582. Not
every country in the world followed suite (Britain in 1752, Russia in 1918!), but eventually we all dropped
the so-called Julian calendar on Thursday, October 4th, 1582 and converted to the Gregorian, trusting
that Pope Gregory had it right by declaring Friday, October 15, 1582 the first day of the new calendar.
Spanish and Portuguese explorers crossed the oceans and opened new markets. The first
circumnavigation of the earth took place from 1519 to 1522 under the command of Ferdinand Magellan
of Spain. He lost his life in battle for the Philippines. The Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano explored the
Atlantic coast of America in 1524. Sir Francis Drake of England (1540-1596) was the first English captain
to sail around the world and survive. The Portuguese Vasco da Gama (1469-1524) was the first to sail
around the Cape of Good Hope.
The Roman Catholic Church has had its critics practically since its founding, but it was in the 16th century
that the Protestant Reformation rose up against the Pope’s authority. The Church fought back with
untold severity in the Inquisition. In 1531 the Church of England broke away from the Roman Catholic
Church over the Pope’s refusal of granting a divorce to King Henry VIII. - For us, Hungarians, and for
many peoples across the Balkans, the rise of the Ottoman Turks was traumatic as they overwhelmed the
opposition and occupied new territories, including a third of Hungary, for long decades to come. By and
large they left devastation in their wake. - In the Americas the Spanish Francisco Pizarro led the conquest
of the Inca Empire.
Major revolutions in astronomy changed the way we consider ourselves positioned in the universe. In
1543 Copernicus proposed the theory about the Earth no longer being the center, but the Sun is, around
which the planet revolve. The view of Aristotle and other scientists and philosophers, including that of
the Church, was challenged.
Michelangelo started work in 1501 on his signature creation, the statue of David. And 2 years later
Leonardo da Vinci started painting the portrait of Mona Lisa on which he worked for several years. In
literature, Machiavelli’s The Prince, a treatise on political philosophy was published in 1513. In 1517
Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of a church in Saxony and the Protestant Reformation
was launched.
The great powers of Spain and Germany defeated France in 1525 in the battle of Pavia. In 1526 the
Turks defeated Hungary’s best, including its king at the battle of Mohacs and advanced to Vienna where
they suffered defeat in 1529. In 1541 the Turks returned and captured Buda, occupying a third of
Hungary, which fell into three parts with different rulers over each.
In 1547 Grand Prince Ivan the Terrible was crowned tsar of all Russia. The plague broke out in England
in 1563, claiming 80,000 victims. Rio de Janeiro was established in 1565 by Estacio de Sa. The Spanishled navy and the Papal States destroyed the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto off Greece, curtailing further
expansion by the Turks into Europe.
The 16th century also brought to life writers, artists and musicians, including the above-mentioned
painter and sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564); the Spanish El Greco (1541-1614), architect
of the Spanish Renaissance; Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) whose architectural drawings Thomas
Jefferson used to build his mansion of Monticello; Italian painters Raphael and Titian (died 1520 and
1576, respectively), and Leonardo da Vinci, most famous artist and inventor who died in 1519. Among
musicians da Palestrina (1525-1594) is the most outstanding, while the Spanish Cervantes (1547-1616),
the Italian Machiavelli (1469-1527), and English playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) are best
known as writers.
The world of science owes gratitude to Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer (1546-1601), to the Polish
astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), to the Tuscan Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) father of the
scientific revolution in the 15th century, to Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594) for a
better understanding of the shape of our planet, and to many others. Kind of on the light side I might
mention that in 1591 the first flush toilet was introduced by Sir John Harrington of England, a design
published under the title of “The Metamorphosis of Ajax.” Remember that when you go to “the John”
next.
THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION
It is undeniable that the Roman Catholic Church and the religion which the Church and its adherents
profess has been subject to an almost continuous attack, - or at least harassment nearly from the early
stages of its founding. This is not the place to recount all of its enemies and the heroes and heroines
who gave their lives in sacrifice for its teachings. But over time, since the Church is run by men,
corruption and various kinds of overreach have eaten into its fabric. In the 15th century one of the
earliest “protesters” was Jan Hus, a Check priest who founded an early protestant church today known
as the Moravians. Hus paid for his “unrepentant heresy” by being burned live at the stake. I believe
that was a bit of an overreach, something which may have given Jesus Christ a disapproving look,
especially since it was followed by the devastation of the Hussite Wars.
The 16th century brought to life a much more serious movement, aimed at reforming the Roman Catholic
Church and its religious practices. The German Augustinian theologian priest Martin Luther summarized
his protestations in 95 theses which he nailed on the door of his church in the university town of
Wittenberg for everyone to see. Almost simultaneously, in Switzerland Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin,
while in England and Scotland the British king, Henry VIII himself and others got on the bandwagon.
The early protests were against the Church selling “indulgences” (so many days of hell or purgatory
forgiven for sins against a payment of set fees), but later on certain key tenets of its faith also came
under scrutiny. Luther maintained that faith alone (sola fide) is sufficient for salvation, whereas the
Church taught that good works and sacraments were necessary as well. The reformers also relied
almost exclusively on the teachings of the Bible, holding that it is correct and its teachings are to be
taken literally. The presence of Christ in the Eucharist also came under scrutiny as the religious service
(The Holy Mass) is only a commemoration of the Last Supper without transubstantiation of the bread
and wine into Christ’s body and blood.
It didn’t take long for Martin Luther to be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. All others
were condemned and a Counter-Reformation movement had started. The reformed movement
rejected the universal authority of the Pope. This started a religious upheaval throughout Europe, which
would spread to Hungary as well. Transylvania, especially, which had been all-Catholic, switched to the
reformed faith within the course of 100 years mostly in the form of Calvinism. The States of the Holy
Roman Empire tore Europe apart and the so-called Thirty-Years’ War (1618-1648) had religious
overtones, leaving Germany fragmented for two more centuries.
My readers will forgive me if I say no more. While acknowledging that this merely scratches the surface,
let this be sufficient information about a taste into philosophical movements which had shaped the 16th
century.
THE LAND BEYOND THE WOODS and its Princes
Transylvania, or “Erdely”, as its name indicates, is a territory with a sylvan nature. It is self-contained,
protected at least on two sides by the great Carpathian mountains. Its oldest inhabitants are the
Szeklers (Szekely), whose history possibly stretches back to Attila’s Huns, but more probably they are
descendants of the Avars. Following the devastation of the Tatar invasion in the 13th century, Germanspeaking Saxons also settled in this area who today constitute the “burgher” class of people. The
Wallachians, or Wlachs, arrived from the Balkans, eventually growing to about half the population. As
the Turkish occupation decimated the indigenous Hungarian population, more Wlachs, later called
Romanians, joined in to enjoy the riches of Erdely. For the better part of the early history of this area,
Transylvania was ruled by a voivode, or governor, under the sovereignty of the king of Hungary.
In order to form a better understanding of this land and its people, let me introduce you to some of its
leaders.
Istvan Bathory was a noble man from an old noble family whose estates were in the area then called
Somlyo in Transylvania. Born in 1533, in his youth he spent some time in Italy. Outside of that very little
is known about his childhood. He served under Emperor Ferdinand and was captured by the Turks in a
military campaign. Ferdinand, however, refused to pay a ransom to free him, so he switched allegiance
to the Zapolya side and supported John Sigismund’s administration. Bathory became voivode of
Transylvania and in 1571 was elected by the national assembly (Diet) as Prince of Transylvania. He ruled
officially for 10 years, although in 1575 Bathory transferred some of his duties to his brother Christopher
and moved to Poland to marry the Polish Queen Anna Jagiellon, the sister of former Polish king
Sigismund Augustus. Subsequently he was crowned King of Poland and the Lithuanian Commonwealth
as well. This position gave him an opportunity to form a large enough Polish/Hungarian army to face
the Turks. His memorable military triumph was to repulse an invasion of Poland by Russian tsar Ivan the
Terrible. His early death in 1581 due to kidney disease prevented him to accomplish his dual goal of
driving the Turks out of Hungary and then from that platform to get rid of the Germans as well. Istvan
Bathory is buried in Lithuania, which is now part of Belarus.
Zsigmond (Sigismund) Bathory came from a different branch of the noble Bathorys in Somlyo. He was
born in 1572 and was an active supporter of the Roman Catholic Church. He was elected Prince of
Transylvania at age 9, with his mother being regent during his youth. Zsigmond Bathory answered the
German Emperor and king of Hungary Rudolph’s call to drive the Turks out. He conducted a 15-year war
against the Turks and his successes prompted the Wallachians and Moldavians to join his ranks, too. His
40,000-man army liberated Bucharest and Wallachia in 1595. With age, his mental state had
deteriorated. Suspecting enmity even within his own family, he went on a rampage to murder his
opposition. He was separated from his wife Maria Christina of Austria and kept fighting his own demons.
In this state of mind he lost a major battle against the Ottomans at Mezokeresztes in October 1596,
forcing him to abdicate, then resume power and again abdicate, flagellating himself for the defeat.
Emperor Rudolph ordered his general Giorgio Basta to restore order, which he accomplished with
mercenary troops, causing great suffering among the Transylvanian population. With his murdered
mother’s curse ringing in his ear, Zsigmond Bathory died in 1613 and is buried in Prague.
Istvan Bocskay was a Calvinist nobleman, born in Kolozsvar in 1557. He spent his youth in Vienna as an
apprentice in the Emperor’s Court. Bocskay quickly became disenchanted by the way Emperor Rudolph
treated Transylvania, especially in his vicious attacks against Protestants. Returning to his home, he
became the principal advisor to Prince Zsigmond Bathory. He also witnessed the dastardly actions of
General Giorgio Basta and protested it to the Court. For this the king tried to exile him to Prague, but
Bocskay fought back and from the ranks of emancipated peasant warriors, called Hajduk, organized a
mercenary army. In time the force grew to 10,000 desperate men to fight the oppression. By this time
the ruling king Rudolph became mentally ill who considered Hungary as a “distant and foreign land
infected with Protestantism.”
Bocskay issued a proclamation to the nation, announcing that he was ready to fight for constitutional
and religious liberty. He launched a war which marked the beginning of an uprising against Habsburg
oppression. He pursued his enemy as far as Pozsony where he took possession of the Holy Crown in
February 1605. He was then pronounced Prince of Transylvania and soon thereafter Prince of Hungary
with royal prerogatives, but never crowned. In 1606 Emperor Rudolph was forced to sign the Treaty of
Vienna which redressed all previous grievances and announced the independence of Hungary with total
religious freedom. Regrettably, however, Bocskay died unexpectedly in December, 1606, believed to
have been poisoned by his own secretary, Mihaly Katay. The alleged murderer was then hacked to
pieces by Bocskay’s soldiers.
Gabor (Gabriel) Bethlen was a Calvinist, born in 1580 in Marosillye. He was educated at the Lazar Castle
in care of his uncle, Andrew Lazar. Later Bethlen was sent to the Court of Zsigmond Bathory whom he
accompanied on a campaign to Wallachia. Bethlen had a fallout with the Prince and fled to the Ottoman
Empire with whose support he was installed as Prince of Transylvania and got the endorsement of the
Diet as well as recognition by Emperor Matthias II of royal Hungary. He was a patron of the arts and of
the Calvinist church. His rule was enlightened, given the times, but absolutist. He encouraged foreign
trade and developed industry, including mining. He kept a mercenary army with which he invaded Royal
Hungary in August 1619 and occupied the city of Kassa and northern Hungary. In October of the same
year he was in Pozsony where the Hungarian Palatine ceded the Holy Crown of St. Stephen to him. He
negotiated a peace agreement with the Habsburg Court which gave him 13 counties, and on August 20,
1620 he was crowned King of Hungary.
In time, the Habsburgs resumed their campaign against Bethlen and by 1621 they were in possession of
Pozsony. Bethlen renounced his crown and royal title provided that Protestants would gain religious
freedom. Bethlen received more territory in Eastern Hungary and a duchy in Silesia. After his first wife
died, he married Catherine Brandenburg, sister of the King of Sweden. He died in 1629 at the age of
forty-nine.
_________
MATTHIAS II (II. Matyas 1608-1619)
A member of the Habsburg dynasty and Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias was born in 1557 in Vienna, son
of Emperor Maximilian II and his wife, Maria of Spain. Matthias married the Archduchess Anna of
Austria, daughter of his uncle Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria. Their marriage produced no surviving
children.
These were the troubled times of the Protestant Reformation which produced widespread rebellions in
the provinces and states held under the Holy Roman Empire. Matthias was invited to work with religious
factions in the Netherlands and was successful in producing a document in 1579 guaranteeing religious
peace in the region. In 1793 he was appointed by his brother Emperor Rudolf II to be governor of Austria.
In this position he was associated with Melchior Klesl, the Bishop of Vienna who became his closest
adviser. Matthias asked the ailing Emperor Rudolf to let him handle the Hungarian Protestant rebels.
His work, as we have seen under discussion about Istvan Bocskay, Prince of Transylvania, resulted in the
Treaty of Vienna in 1606, guaranteeing religious freedom in Hungary and independence for Transylvania.
Considering his brother, Emperor Rudolf’s illness, in 1608 Matthias forced him to yield the estates of
Hungary, Austria and Moravia to him. He was crowned king of Hungary and Croatia in the same year.
Matthias’s army held Rudolf prisoner in his castle in Prague for 3 years until the Emperor ceded the
crown of Bohemia to him as well. Next, he gained accession as Holy Roman Emperor, but his conciliatory
policies were opposed by the Habsburg family, who would have preferred Archduke Ferdinand to deal
with these issues. When Protestant revolt broke out in Bohemia in 1618, the elderly Matthias was
unable to stop the takeover of his position by Ferdinand. Matthias died childless in Vienna in 1619.
FERDINAND II (1618-1637)
Born in Graz in 1578, Ferdinand was the son of Charles II, Archduke of Austria and his wife Maria Anna
of Bavaria. He was educated by the Jesuits and also attended Catholic University at Ingolstadt. The
Hungarian Estates elected him king in 1618 and crowned him in Pressburg. He was a devout Catholic
and resented the rising Protestant movement in the lands under his command. This made him rather
unpopular even among the nobles who had converted to the new religion. In Bohemia a revolt broke
out in 1618, which is considered the first step of the so-called Thirty Years War (which we’ll discuss
shortly). Ferdinand led troops against it and smashed the rebels. Ferdinand ordered a massive effort to
convert his subjects to Catholicism.
All this cost the royal coffers dearly, despite subsidies received from Spain and the Pope. He was forced
to cede command of his war on Protestants to Albrecht von Wallenstein, one of the richest men in
Bohemia, who mustered an army of 30,000 (later expanding it to 100,000), and ruthlessly carried out
the campaign against the Protestants. The subdued opposition turned to Gustavus II, king of Sweden
for help. The Swedes marched through Northern Germany toward Austria, causing heavy civilian loss of
life. Ferdinand switched commanders, giving Belgian General Tilly the command, who suffered a
substantial defeat in Breitenfeld in 1631. When Tilly died, Wallenstein was recalled but was ineffective,
which probably resulted in his assassination in 1634 likely ordered by Ferdinand himself.
King Gustavus of Sweden died, leaving his forces weakened. The European countries were watching the
emergence of a strong Habsburg reign. The French, led by Louis XIII entered the war on the Protestant
side. In 1635 Ferdinand signed the Peace of Prague document, but it did not end the war. Ferdinand
died in 1637, leaving the Empire to his son, Ferdinand III. In a strange act, his father’s heart was interred
in Herzgruft cemetery of the Augustinian Church, whereas the body rests in Graz.
Ferdinand had been married twice. His first wife was Maria Anna of Bavaria with whom they had 7
children, among them Ferdinand III, born in 1608, who would marry three times in his life.
What about Hungary during this time?
Well, certainly, looking at the history of our rulers, the Habsburgs were just “too busy” elsewhere to
spend much time with Hungarian affairs. Some of them were nice enough to delegate matters to the
Diet (national assembly), some appointed representatives of the king to be a “go-to” between the king
and the legislators. History’s conclusion is that the Habsburgs placed the interest of European issues
ahead of that of the Hungarian Kingdom.
But while Vienna was busy handling religious uprisings, Hungarians were busy trying to keep the Turks
away from Vienna. The high nobility asked the Emperor(s) for help against the overwhelming hordes of
the Ottoman machine, Emperor Charles V gave evasive answers. The Chancellery was often short of
cash and fighting the Turks took money. Charles, as Holy Roman Emperor, was hoping to get financial
support from the Pope. But time was of the essence and Suleyman’s troops seemed unstoppable. On
August 29, 1541 Buda castle fell again.
Hungary’s defense against the Turks consisted mostly of about 125 fortresses along its southern borders,
called “vegvar”, or castles at the periphery. The military serving in those fortresses were mostly
mercenaries, often from other countries in the Balkans and in Western Europe. One of those played a
significant role in preventing Suleyman from reaching Vienna.
The fortress of Koszeg near the Austrian border bravely held off for 25 days in August, 1532 while the
Turks kept attacking it with artillery and wave after wave of assaults on its ramparts. Fort captain Miklos
Jurisics had 200 defenders against Suleyman’s 80,000 troops. They held on until the Turks undermined
and blew up one of the fort’s inner towers and fought their way in through the crumbling walls. Jurisics
and his soldiers perished in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. Exhausted from the long siege and
short of supplies, Suleyman gave up the idea of conquering Vienna on this campaign, and retreated.
I am sure each one of those fortresses had its own story to tell. I just want to highlight a couple more as
an illustration of the desperate struggle Hungarians put up against the Turks to defend Christianity in
Western Europe. One of the favorite novels of my youth was “Egri csillagok”, the Stars of Eger, written
by famed novelist Geza Gardonyi. The battle for the fort of Eger, gateway to Northern Hungary, lasted
from September 9 to October 18, 1552. Two large Turkish armies totaling 70,000 men joined forces to
conquer the fort under the command of Istvan Dobo. Dobo’s fighters were greatly assisted by brave
women who boiled tar to pour on the heads of Turks climbing the walls of the fort and dumped rocks
and barrels of oil on the enemy for 6 weeks, suffering greatly from the firestorm of arrows and the
bombardment by 120 Turkish cannons (versus the Hungarians’ nine!). At the end of the long siege of
38 days and the loss of 8,000 Janissaries, the Turks pulled out overnight, leaving the scene until their
return at a much later time when, regretfully, the Stars of Eger could no longer help the survival of this
fort.
Szigetvar is along the Southern border of Hungary with Croatia. In August 1566, 90,000 Turks bested
Miklos Zrinyi’s 2500 Hungarian fighters and conquered Szigetvar. Back in 1556 Ali Pasha had tried to
take the fort, but lost 10,000 men without putting a foot in the fort. Suleyman the Magnificent , the
victor of Mohacs, arrived at Szigetvar in August, 1566 on the way to trying to capture Vienna. He had
300 cannons in his command as he expected he would be met by Emperor Maximilian’s 80,000 strong
army stationed a 100 kilometers past Szigetvar.
Count Zrinyi was Viceroy of Croatia, who took command of the city and the fortress. Szigetvar is normally
surrounded by marshes, but the dry summer dried up most of those, and the Turks drained the moats
around the fortress. On the first day of the battle the Turks lost 3,000 men and the defenders lost 300.
On subsequent days they even lost Ali Pasha of Buda, and seeing the devastation among his men,
Suleyman himself suffered a stroke and died. The Turks tried to conceal his death by seating him in a
chair in front of his tent, dressed in imperial robes. Zrinyi was at the end of his supplies and down to
300 fighters left after the Turks undermined the fort and blew it up in a vast explosion. Zrinyi gathered
his troops and saying goodby he ordered the gates open. While two cannons shot nails point blank at
the enemy, Zrinyi and 300 of his men dashed out in a desperate last-minute battle in which only 3 men
survived. Hungarian history books commemorate this moment as “Zrinyi kirohanasa”, or Zrinyi’s sortie.
Istvan Sisa, in his book The Spirit of Hungary wrote about the battle of Szigetvar. The story is about a
young Hungarian woman, hiding in an underground ammunition chamber, who threw a flaming torch
into the gunpowder. The explosion caused the death of 3,000 Janissaries. The sad final note on this
battle is that Maximilian’s 80,000 troops waited not far away and refused to come to Zrinyi’s assistance
despite pleas to the imperial commander.
The drawing illustrates one of those fortresses.
In the meantime, while practically no one was watching over the approximately 1 ½ million citizens living
under the Emperor’s rule in Royal Hungary, they were enterprising enough to develop a profitable and
robust export of cattle. Records show that upwards of 100,000 cattle were driven under trying
circumstances to Austria’s markets every year.
An active commerce between Austria and Hungary necessitated the availability of transportation. It is
a curious fact that it was during this time that the village of Kocs was the birthplace of the Hungarian
invention of a traveling (stage) coach which provided transportation for a number of passengers and
covered the distance between Buda and Vienna, with several changes of horses, in a day and a half. It
is said that the English word, coach, got its name from this invention which Hungarians call “kocsi.”
In those confusing times the system of taxation somehow survived. Taxes were collected in all three
parts of tripartite Hungary, but it was most efficient in the royal sector under the Emperor’s tax
collectors. The serfs were hit hard by paying annual dues to their landlords, to the Church, and to the
State tax collector as well. Central Hungary under Turkish rule suffered from a disorderly system of
taxation depending on the whim of the Turkish pasha in charge of each locality. In many instances
taxation consisted of produce, or physical labor offered to the administration, - for example at the time
of harvest or when community labor was required to contain a flood. In Transylvania, which the Turks
considered a vassal state, bribery and a mix of cash and physical labor constituted the State’s obligation
toward the Ottoman rulers.
One would think that all parts of Hungary suffered enough already following the Mohacs disaster. Much
additional suffering and hardships were brought by the counter-reformation movement which would
require a separate study I am not prepared to present. Let me just point out that the central figure of
this effort centered around the Protestant-born but Jesuit-converted cleric Peter Pazmany (1570-1637)
who attained Cardinal rank as he served in the post of Archbishop of Esztergom. Pazmany’s significant
success culminated in the conversion of most of the aristocracy to Catholicism. Today, the Pazmany
Peter University in Budapest is a prestigious place of learning.
Another tremendous calamity suffered by Hungarians was the semi-crusade devised by the Emperor to
drive the Turks out of Hungary. The constant hostilities lasted 15 years from 1593 to 1606 and
accomplished little except destruction and death mostly in the Hungarian population as those from
neighboring territories (Slovaks, Wallachs, Croats) took refuge in the mountainous regions away from
the action. The mercenaries employed in the fifteen-year war abused the local population as provisions
were lacking for their quarters, food and pay.
FERDINAND III (1625-1657)
He was the eldest son of Emperor Ferdinand II of Habsburg. Although he became King of Hungary upon
his father’s death in 1625 and ruled for thirty-two years, not much can be said about his influence over
Hungarian affairs. By and large, he let the Hungarian Palatine do his stuff without much heed given to
the edicts coming down from Vienna.
Ferdinand’s main activity centered around the military leadership of the Imperial Army in the Thirty
Years War (1618-1648). The war was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. It
involved most of the great powers in Europe, although it started out as a Protestant uprising against the
Catholic Habsburgs’ rule. Ultimately, though, the age-old conflict between France and Germany was the
main issue.
Germany, guided by the 1555 Augsburg Treaty authored by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, guaranteed
the right to the 224 German States to choose whether they wanted to be Lutheran or Catholic. The
problem was that the principle of “cuius regio cuius religio” required the population to adopt the religion
of the head of each State. Adding to the stressed situation was the spread of Calvinism, which further
fragmented the issue.
Other powers, such as Spain, France and Italy also got involved while Sweden and Denmark were
interested in gaining control of the northern provinces of Germany. Because the Holy Roman Emperor
also ruled Austria and Hungary with the Catholic Habsburgs being in charge, this became a nearly
impossible not to solve. In the last phase of the war, Ferdinand III gave the right to all rulers of German
states to conduct their own foreign policy and determine the religion in their respective territories.
Hostilities associated with the Thirty Year War finally ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
As C.A. Macartney summarized in his book, Hungary, a short history, “Hungary escaped almost entirely
the inhuman enforcement of the Counter-Reformation under which Bohemia suffered so terribly, and
was also spared the worst ravages of the Thirty Years War.” To be sure, Cardinal Peter Pazmany had a
lot to do with enforcing internal religious peace, yet, on the other hand, since the upper classes, the
magnates, reverted to Catholicism and the lower nobility remained Protestant, tolerance suffered a bit
and the antipathy for each other grew significantly. Again, as Macartney mentions elsewhere, the
Protestants in Royal Hungary and in Transylvania “took especial delight in burning the castles and
ravaging the lands of Catholic Hungarians…” Hungary exhibited cleavages, both horizontal and vertical,
which kept eating away at its national fabric.
Ferdinand III’s largely offhand handling of Hungarian affairs didn’t make many friends for him. Border
skirmishes with the Turks continued. In fact, at St. Gotthard the Turks suffered a significant defeat on
August 1, 1664, yet the Austrians did not follow through on their victory. Instead, Ferdinand concluded
a treaty with the Sultan which recognized his gains in Transylvania and even submitted to paying the
Turks an indemnity. The Hungarians were embittered against the Habsburg rule and even the Palatine,
Ferenc Wesselenyi, tried to reach out to other Western powers to help Hungary relieve itself of both the
Turks and the Austrians. This did nothing but aggravate the Court. Following the liberation of Hungary
by the end of the century (which we shall deal with shortly), the Constitution was suspended and the
1687 Diet made the succession of the Habsburgs hereditary in the male line. Vienna now showed its true
teeth: Ferdinand’s rule was nothing but a malevolent dictatorship. 44,000 German soldiers were left in
Hungary to “show the flag”, housed and fed by local Hungarians; the population shrank by 1.5 million,
the remainders were “ravaged and raped at will”, subject to extortion in taxes and often accused of
conspiracy.
Ferdinand III was married three times. His first wife was Maria Anna of Spain, Ferdinand’s first cousin.
They had six children. His second wife was Archduchess Maria of Austria, again first cousins. They had
one son. The third wife was Eleanora Gonzaga, with whom they had four children. Ferdinand III was a
patron of music and a noted composer. The Emperor died in April, 1657.
FERDINAND IV (1647-1654)
Eldest son of Ferdinand III, born in 1633, he was made King of Hungary at age 14 in 1647, crowned in
Pressburg (Pozsony), ruling coincidentally with his father, predeceasing him by 3 years. He died of
smallpox, leaving his younger brother, Leopold as heir apparent.
LEOPOLD I (Lipot I, 1655-1705)
He was the second son of Ferdinand III. When his elder brother Ferdinand IV died prematurely, he
became eligible for the Hungarian throne as well. Fluent since childhood in Latin, Italian, German, French
and Spanish, he was intended originally for serving the Church. But fate intervened and he had to
shoulder other responsibilities. In addition to Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia also elected him for their
king, a kingdom which was marked by life-long rivalry with France’s Louis XIV, the Sun-king. This rivalry
was complicated by Spain, whose king, Charles II, was a Habsburg, related by marriage to the Austrian
branch, while a similar family tie bound him to the French royals. Charles II was feeble, considered
insane and childless, so the other Europeans jumped on him and his rule, trying to divide his extensive
kingdom.
Charles died in November, 1700 and left his crown to Philippe, a grandson of Louis XIV. This angered
Leopold and with the help of British king William III they resorted to armed conflict with France. (As a
side remark, it was during one of these conflicts that in 1704 the British seized the Spanish possession
of Gibraltar, gateway to the Mediterranean.)
This gets to be too complicated under the collective name of the War of the Spanish Succession, so we’ll
leave it at that. What concerns us is the fate of Hungary during Leopold’s time.
Although Leopold had his hands full with Western European rivalries, it was Hungary which gave him a
monumental headache. We had earlier referred to a shameful “peace treaty” (the Treaty of Vasvar)
between the Turks and the Emperor following the Christian victory at St. Gotthard, whose terms turned
Hungary against Leopold. Leopold had instituted a country-wide reprisal against those who had
participated in the so-called Wesselenyi conspiracy, which sought the assistance of France and the
Ottomans to get rid of the Austrian autocratic rule. Thousands were arrested and executed, their
properties confiscated and trampled upon by mercenary troops of the Emperor. Since many of the
conspirators happened to be Protestant, it came in handy for the Habsburgs to couple this with religious
persecution of Protestants.
Imre Thokoly and the kuruc uprising
Many of the persecuted sought refuge in Transylvania, among them a 13-year old boy named Imre
Thokoly. As time passed, the boy grew up and in January 1680 appeared on the national scene as the
elected leader of a group of guerillas, political refugees, who fought the Imperial forces wherever they
found them. He made national news when his group, called “kuruc” (quruts) stirred up trouble for the
Habsburgs in Hungary. Enjoying the (tacit) support of the French and as well the Turks, after winning
engagements in Northern Hungary, Thokoly made incursions into Austrian territory to annoy Leopold’s
Court. Vienna had to listen and they did, - sort of. They reinstated the Hungarian constitution and
promised the national assembly that they would redress all political and religious grievances.
Enter Kara Musztafa, the new Turkish Grandvizier, who was emboldened by Thokoly’s success against
Austria, took a large army to Vienna and laid siege to the city in 1683. Leopold now had the support of
the Holy League which came to his aid and routed the Turks from the city. The defeat so upset the
Turkish Sultan that he had the Grandvizier strangled before the eyes of his troops. But this was only the
beginning of the end for the Turks. The imperial forces won victory over victory and in January 1699 the
Sultan signed the treaty of Karlowitz by which he admitted the sovereign rights of the Habsburgs over
Hungary, including Serbian Vojvodina.
At the risk of taxing your patience, let me interject “the rest of the story” (as Paul Harvey would have
said) about Imre Thokoly and his new wife, Ilona Zrinyi, the widow of Ferenc Rakoczi I, whom he married
in 1682, the year before his incursion into Austria. Ilona Zrinyi, was a dark-haired beauty, twelve years
older than Thokoly, and the mother of a young boy who would eventually play a major role in Hungarian
history: Ferenc Rakoczi II and his sister, Julianna.
Ilona was the hostess of the Castle of Munkacs up in Northern Hungary, now part of Carpathian Ukraine.
When the Turks were on the run following the loss of Buda, the Sultan wanted to make a scapegoat out
of Thokoly for their bad fortune. While he was a dinner guest of Pasha Ahmat’s at Nagyvarad (now
Oradea, Romania), Thokoly was taken prisoner and bound hand and foot was delivered to Chief Pasha
Ibrahim’s headquarters at Belgrade. The news of Thokoly’s arrest disheartened his kuruc troops who
disbanded and joined the imperial forces of Emperor Leopold. When the Sultan heard of Thokoly’s
arrest, he condemned his own leaders and had Pasha Ibrahim strangled and rehabilitated Thokoly.
Leopold’s imperial forces and the Holy League were under the Munkacs fortress of the defiant Ilona
Zrinyi who swore resistance. The ensuing siege of the Munkacs fortress lasted an incredible three years
and won the admiration of foreign leaders, including France’s Louis XIV who wrote rapturous letters
about this legendary woman. Exhausted of supplies, the fortress fell in 1688 to the Emperor who
sentenced Ilona and her 12-year-old son, Ferenc Rakoczi, to captivity in Vienna. (Leopold condemned
Ilona’s other child, a daughter, to become a nun.) Imre Thokoly, with renewed energy and at the head
of 15,000 cavalry men, won a battle against the imperial army in Transylvania in 1691. An exchange of
prisoners was arranged and Ilona joined her husband at Palanka by the lower Danube river. Their son,
however, could not be freed. He was sent to Bohemia, never to see his mother again.
Pressured by Vienna, the Sultan sent the couple to a modest residence in the tiny village of Bythinia in
the Turkish province of Nikodemia in Asia Minor where Ilona died in 1703 at age 60, and Imre Thokoly
died two years later at age 48. Thus ended one of the charming love stories in Hungarian history.
The battle of Buda
The liberation of Hungary from the Turks after more than a century and a half cannot be left without
telling the story of the Battle Buda.
As you recall, Buda was conquered by the Turks and occupied permanently in 1541, even though the
victorious Turks had occupied it earlier following the battle of Mohacs, but abandoned it shortly
thereafter. Buda stayed under Turkish occupation for 145 years. After the siege of Vienna the Pope
urged the Christian rulers to put together an army to rid Europe of the Turks. Thus, the Holy League was
formed, consisting of about 38,000 men who, under the command of Charles V, the Duke of Lorraine,
crossed the Danube at Esztergom on June 13, 1684. They proceeded to the castle town of Visegrad and
attacked Esztergom on June 16th which led to its capitulation in a day and a half. - The town of Vac was
defended by 17,000 Turkish troops, but could not resist the cannon fire of the Imperials and fell to the
attackers.
On June 30 the imperial army entered Pest on the left bank of the Danube which had been destroyed by
flames set by the Turks in anticipation of an attack. Across the river, Buda was defended by 10,000
Turks. The Holy League opened fire with 200 canons on July 14. Through July and August the attacks
on Buda castle were repelled by the Turkish defenders.
The morale of the imperial army suffered and the number of soldiers fit for service shrank to 12,500,
with many troops suffering from dysentery in epidemic proportions. When a Turkish relief column
arrived, the battle see-sawed but went nowhere. On October 30th, after 109 days of siege, the imperial
army withdrew.
Two years later the Holy League forces grew to 80,000 men including many Hungarians and men from
most of the European countries. The Turks had 7,000 men to defend Buda castle. The second siege
began in June, 1686 and on July 27th they attempted to scale the castle which cost the lives of 5,000
soldiers. Finally, despite some heroic efforts by Turkish reinforcements, the imperial army entered the
city. A horrible mass slaughter ensued as the victors plundered the castle and killed many of its
inhabitants, including 3,000 Ottoman troops and massacred half the Jewish population as “heathens.”
The Holy League went after the rest of the retreating Turks and won a great victory at the second battle
of Mohacs in 1687 and another at Zenta (near my father’s birthplace) an incredible 10 years later in
1697, until the above-mentioned Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 acknowledged the sovereign rights of the
house of Habsburg over Hungary. Tragically, the year after the battle of Buda, the Hungarian diet at
Pressburg changed the Hungarian constitution and gave the right to the Habsburgs for succession to the
throne without election.
______
Leopold’s wives and issues
Leopold was married 3 times. The first wife was Margarita Teresa of Austria, daughter of King Philip IV
of Spain. She was a blonde princess and both the niece and first cousin of Leopold. After giving birth to
four children, she died at age twenty-one. The second wife was Archduchess Claudia of Austria. She
and her two infant daughters died within two years. The third wife was Eleonore Magdalene of Neuburg,
who gave birth to ten children. The first son, Joseph, would become Leopold’s successor. - A talented
composer, Leopold had written the requiem mass for his first wife and other compositions were
described as “works of exceeding high merit.”
Leopold died May 5, 1705, buried in Vienna.
Ferenc Rakoczi II, a reluctant warrior
A few pages earlier we wrote about romance between Imre Thokoly and Ilona Zrinyi, mother of Ferenc
Rakoczi II. He was born on March 27th, 1676 in Borsi (now Slovakia). By his father’s rights, Ferenc was a
nobleman and a Prince of Transylvania. Today he is a national hero of Hungary.
His family owned considerable amounts of land which made him the richest landlord in Hungary. His
father, Ferenc Rakoczi I, was involved in the Wesselenyi conspiracy against the Emperor, in which many
of his partners lost their lives. He was released only against the impossibly large ransom of 400,000
Thalers. (The Thaler, a silver coin weighing 28 grams was the official currency of Germany and Austria.
In the 1700s 400,000 Thalers would have been the equivalent of about 300,000 U.S. Dollars. As a
Counselor in Weimar the writer von Goethe earned 1400 Thaler a year.)
When Ferenc was only 4, his father died. Incredibly, by the father’s request the Emperor gained
guardianship of the Rakoczi children, Ferenc and Julianna. Their mother, Ilona Zrinyi, would marry Imre
Thokoly, an aspirant to the throne of Hungary and a warrior against the Austrian rulers.
Ilona made the family’s home in Munkacs castle (in today’s Carpathian Ukraine), which would be
attacked in 1686 by Imperial forces. As we had seen earlier, the siege lasted 3 years, but Ilona had to
capitulate in 1688, and was forced to take her children to Vienna. Forced to abandon his family, young
Ferenc was enrolled in a Jesuit college in Bohemia. He never saw his mother again. The Court’s purpose
was to totally assimilate him and neutralize his Hungarian sentiments and patriotism. Ferenc continued
his education at the University of Prague. His sister, Julianna, escaped from the convent and married
the Austrian General Aspremont, who was twice her age.
Back in Vienna, in 1694 Ferenc married Princess Amelia, the 15-year-old daughter of the Duke of Hessen
and a descendant of Hungary’s Saint Elizabeth. The young couple moved to his estates at Sarospatak in
Hungary. Nearly unable to speak the language, Rakoczi tried to stay out of politics until, in 1697, a
peasant rebellion broke out on his property at Tokaj. The rebels occupied the castle at Tokaj and as well
the Rakoczi castle in Sarospatak, and asked Rakoczi to be their leader. To avoid trouble with Vienna,
Rakoczi escaped to Vienna, but he was not welcome there. The imperial circles regarded Hungary and
Hungarians as a vanquished foe. The official policy, credited to Cardinal Kollonich was “to make
Hungarians first beggars, second Catholics and finally Germans.”
Returning to Hungary, he could no longer be silent about conditions there. Rakoczi made contact with
the French, as France was looking for allies in its fight against Austrian hegemony. An Austrian spy
intercepted the correspondence and brought it to the attention of the Emperor. Rakoczi was arrested
in April, 1700 and imprisoned in the fortress of Wiener Neustadt, but fortune shone upon him. Six weeks
later, with the help of the sympathetic prison commander he managed to escape and flee to Poland.
Here he met with his neighbor, the Count Miklos Bercsenyi, the third richest man in Hungary, who
brought with him monetary help from the French. The War of the Spanish Succession, to which we
referred earlier, forced some of the Austrian forces to leave Hungary. Taking advantage of the situation,
kuruc forces (of Imre Thokoly) began a new uprising.
In June, 1703 Rakoczi accepted to lead the fight for national liberation. 3000 armed men joined him in
Poland and Bercsenyi brought 600 Polish mercenaries with him. Rakoczi failed to gain the support of
the Hungarian nobility, as they considered it a mere peasant uprising. But when Rakoczi’s forces
liberated Transdanubia (the west side of the Danube), his forces grew to 70,000 and the Austrians
started to pay attention. On May 5, 1705 Emperor Leopold I died. His successor, Joseph I, mustered an
80,000-man army and marching across Hungary occupied Transylvania. This was a major blow to the
Hungarians.
By 1706 Rakoczi had 116,000 men under his command. Fighting under the banner of “Cum Deo pro
patria et libertate” (With God for country and liberty), Rakoczi issued a solemn manifesto in Latin and in
French, calling the world’s attention to the plight of the Hungarian people. The problem was that the
War of the Spanish Succession occupied the French army, which failed to join the Hungarians. Supplies
dried up. Negotiations stalled. Although the Hungarian Diet of September, 1705 elected Rakoczi as the
country’s “vezerlo fejedelem” (leading prince), peace talks didn’t go anywhere. The Diet declared to
depose the House of Habsburg from the Hungarian throne, but French King Louis XIV withdrew his
support.
The imperial Court proposed a cease-fire in May, 1706 and used Rakoczi’s wife, Amelia, to intercede
with the Hungarian leader to accept the proposal. Emperor Joseph I was said to be sympathetic to the
Hungarians and to Rakoczi. He offered Rakoczi two principalities in Austria with hereditary rights, if he
would terminate the war and swear loyalty to him. Rakoczi’s conditions for an independent Transylvania
and guarantees of honoring the treaty were not acceptable to Joseph. Amelia left Rakoczi alienated
from her husband. The Emperor then sent Rakoczi’s sister, Julianna, to deliver the new terms, but the
Hungarian leader rejected them as well. The fighting resumed.
At the battle of Trencsen in August 1708 Rakoczi’s horse stumbled, throwing him off. The fall knocked
him unconscious. Thinking that he was dead, the kuruc forces fled and asked the Emperor for clemency.
Rakoczi’s recovery went slowly. Finally, in February of 1711 he left Hungary and went to Poland. While
he was away from Hungary, Count Sandor Karolyi was named commander of the Hungarian forces and
negotiated peace. (Rakoczi himself considered this an act of treason.) 12,000 men laid down their arms
and swore allegiance to the Emperor in May 1711 at Majteny in Szatmar county. Rakoczi was offered
an asylum in Poland and the Polish crown. In April, 1711, Emperor Joseph died. Rakoczi rejected the
idea of a peace treaty which, signed after the Emperor’s death, he considered null and void.
The following year Rakoczi went to England to ask Queen Anne for her help. The Queen, under Habsburg
pressure refused even to meet with him. From England he sailed to France and confronted Louis XIV,
but the king was too busy with writing the treaty which ended the War of the Spanish Succession.
Rakoczi was ignored. When Louis XIV died in September, 1715, Rakoczi accepted the invitation of the
Ottoman Empire to move there. He left France in September, 1717 with an entourage of 40 people. The
Austrians were pressuring the Turks to extradite the exiled Hungarians, but the Sultan refused.
Ferenc Rakoczi and his group of Hungarians were settled in the town of Tekirdag (called Rodosto in
Hungarian) in Northwest Turkey by the Sea of Marmara. One of the settlers was the Hungarian writer
Kelemen Mikes, who became Rakoczi’s chamberlain, wrote: “I had no special reason for leaving my
country, except that I greatly loved the Prince.” During the ensuing years Mikes would write countless
letters, telling the story of the exiles, which became a treasured legacy of Hungarian literature. Upon
Rakoczi’s death in 1735, Mikes petitioned the Empress Maria Theresa to allow him to return to Hungary.
The Empress denied the request, writing across the paper: “Ex Turcia non est redemptio.” (Out of Turkey
there is no redemption.) This has, over the centuries, become a byword: Once one has committed to a
path, there is no turning back, no redeeming, no mercy.
Rakoczi and the exiles lived in Rodosto for 18 years, never to return to their beloved Hungary. The Prince
died April 8, 1735 at age 59. His internal organs were buried in the Greek church of Rodosto, while his
heart was sent to a monastery in Gros-Bois, France, according to his last wishes. (He had resided there,
enjoying gardening, while living in France.) Rakoczi’s body was buried in Saint Benoit Jesuit church in
Galata, next to his mother, Ilona Zrinyi. Ultimately, his remains and those of his mother were moved in
October, 1906 to St. Elizabeth Cathedral in Kassa (now Kosice, Slovakia).
The Rakoczi war of liberation cost 85,000 Hungarian lives and nearly bankrupted the Austrian treasury.
But its spirit comes to life every time the Rakoczi March, composed by Hector Berlioz, sounds off.
Rakoczi was indeed a reluctant warrior. Out of necessity, he rallied the forces behind him, but did not
have the magnetism to lead them. Constantly battling an internal conflict within himself, he seemed to
be asking for God’s mercy for having put him in that position. Ultimately, he lost his wife, his country
and the cause for which so many sacrificed.
Janos Bottyan, a.k.a. Vak Bottyan
As a child, living in Budapest, my home address was Vak Bottyan utca 6. Often people would ask me
where the street name came from. Here is the answer.
Although initially the nobles were not thrilled to join Rakoczi’s liberation movement, eventually more
and more of the nobility signed up and attained high military rank. One of Rakoczi’s generals was John
Bottyan the Blind, who had started out on the side of the government but soon defected to join the
revolutionary forces. He was in his 60s by that time, yet, he was one of Rakoczi’s most valued military
leaders. Bottyan came from peasant stock, but earned the respect of all the kuruc forces. Rakoczi’s
trusted friend, Bottyan the Blind died in 1709. Budapest honored the old fighter by naming a street
after him.
One more remark concerning Sandor Karolyi, who was one of the signers of the Peace Treaty of Majteny
(or Szatmar) in May, 1711. With the war over, Karolyi returned to his home estate at Szatmar in the
Northwest corner of Transylvania. Finding his fields barren for lack of laborers, he issued an invitation
to residents of Germany to come and settle there. That is how my ancestors, the Wilhelms from Bavaria,
came to Hungary in 1721, settling in nearby Mezofeny.
According to a legal document which survived, the settlers received a 3-year tax exemption from the
landlord and 6 years from the county of Szatmar. During this time they could not be conscripted into
the army. At the end of 3 years they were required to work for the landlord as serfs or vassals. The
landlord would hire a priest for them, and they could elect their own German administrators. Each
settler got two oxen, one milk cow and 12 bushels of seeds. The price of these items was to be repaid
to the landlord over a period of time either in cash or in kind. They would also receive one Rheiner
Forint (roughly the equivalent to a Hungarian crown) for the reimbursement of their travel expenses.
While they were working for the landlord’s harvest, they got full board and provisions.
This will bring the story of Rakoczi’s time up close and personal for most of my readers.
JOSEPH I (1687-1711)
He was the eldest son from Emperor Leopold's third marriage, born in 1678. He was crowned king of
Hungary already at age 9 and succeeded his father in 1687. Unfortunately for him, he lived in the middle
of the War of Spanish Succession against Louis XIV of France, trying to make his brother Charles the king
of Spain. Of course, in addition to his Western adventures, he had to look out on his Eastern portico,
because Hungary was embroiled in a war of liberation under Ferenc Rakoczi II.
He can be characterized as a forward-looking, innovative ruler. He tried to stream-line the bureaucracy
of the Court in Vienna and had to rebuild the country’s finances, having splurged it on the long wars
both West and East. When the Hungarian revolt came to a halt, he was fair enough not to execute the
leaders but offer them clemency, provided they swore allegiance to him.
In 1699 he married Wilhelmine of Brunswick-Luneburg, a descendant of previous Holy Roman Emperors.
They had two daughters and a boy, but the boy died of hydrocephalus in his first year of life. Joseph had
many affairs outside his marriage. Somehow he avoided having illegitimate children, but caught syphilis
which he passed on to his wife. Producing an heir became impossible.
The dreaded plague, the Black Death, affected much of Europe. The Emperor, too, was infected and
died in 1711. He is buried in Vienna and one of the city’s districts, Josefstadt, was named for him.
His reign reached into the early beginnings of the 18th century. Let us first acquaint ourselves with an
overview of the 17th which has just closed.
THE 17th CENTURY
I like to review the passage of time by looking at timelines, which bring to parallel the political, cultural,
artistic and scientific categories. These events, sampled one by one, obviously do not make history. A
comprehensive study of their relations is what ties everything together. The only thing that a timeline
of history provides is the chronology of events. Without reading the full (and relevant) story, these
excerpts from happenings worldwide mean little to most people.
Writing this work on the political decision-makers of Hungary, I have to be extra selective in trying to
give a “flow” to the events which were relevant to my subject. We are unashamed to focus on Europe,
although we realize that the founding of Jamestown in Virginia cannot be ignored, knowing that
eventually hundreds of thousands of our Hungarian countrymen would seek their fortune in the
expanded colony, which is the United States of America. An achievement may be great, but what
residual benefit did it serve regarding Hungary? In China, for example, the collapsing Ming Dynasty was
challenged by the Manchus and in 1615 Panembahan ing Alaga of Mataram conquered the Eastern
Salient of Java. Are you impressed?
Sandor Marai, the celebrated 20th century Hungarian author, remarked that “history brews in small
mugs.” Often events look insignificant at the outset, but then someone (and it is always an individual)
fills the mug and lights the fire under it, which launches discoveries, invents beneficial (or murderous)
craft, starts wars, makes peace, creates beautiful things or tramples on God’s creation. The 17th century
was not exempt from such things, so let us take a look.
With the ongoing Turkish occupation of Hungary in the 17th century, it is difficult for a historian to give
an overview of Hungarian history when the country had been hacked into three very different parts.
Our first king of that century was the Austrian Matthias II who had the good intentions of granting
religious freedom for those under his rule and independence to Transylvania (Treaty of Vienna, 1606).
The Habsburg family looked askance at his conciliatory policies. Whereas two of the torn parts from the
political body, Transdanubia (under the thumb of Austria) and the Great Plains (under the Turkish fez))
couldn’t or wouldn’t produce a leader, Transylvania took center place with Princes Istvan Bathory, Istvan
Bocskay and Gabor Bethlen. Eventually the entire country fell under the spell of the great patriot and
statesman Ferenc Rakoczi II.
Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II’s rule was overshadowed by the 30-years-war, which started in
Prague where, in 1618, two Regents were thrown from the windows of Hradcany Palace in a rebellious
act called “defenestration.” Hungary was spared the worst damages of the Thirty Years War, but suffered
the nearly total neglect of the divided nation by the warring parties. The long war, posing Protestants
and Catholics, - both Christians, - against each other, was followed by the counter-reformation
movement. In Hungary one of its main proponents was Cardinal Peter Pazmany 1570-1637). Politically,
the Treaty of Vasvar in 1664 dumped Central and Eastern Hungary (Transylvania) into the lap of the
Ottomans and turned Hungarians into puppets of the Habsburgs’ whim. Under pressure, the national
assembly (Diet) tragically made the Habsburg succession hereditary in the male line.
The second part of the century was mostly engrossed in the War of Spanish Succession. Again, this had
to do with the royal families, not the people under their yoke. The Turks, emboldened by Imre Thokoly’s
military success against the Austrians, laid siege to Vienna in 1683 but they were routed by combined
Christian armies led by Leopold I, which forced the Turks to sign the Treaty of Karlowitz, granting
sovereign rights to the Austrians over Hungary. After 145 years, Buda Castle was liberated.
The peasant uprising at Tokaj got Hungary’s major landlord, Ferenc Rakoczi II involved in a war of
liberation. He had a large following and even enlisted the promise of help from French King Louis XIV
against the Habsburgs. The war raised the consciousness of Hungarians who elected him their Leading
Prince. A mishandled cease-fire proposal sidelined the issue and the Austrians came out on top. Rakoczi
went into exile in Poland, and resettled in Turkey. The Treaty of Szatmar in May, 1711, sealed the fate
of Hungary under the Habsburgs, and Transylvania was given a measure of independence.
It was during this century that the colonization of the American continent began. Capt. John Smith
became the legendary leader at the founding of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Because there is a slight
connection here with Hungary, let me touch on that briefly. John Smith was born in 1580 in Lincolnshire,
England. After his father’s death, he set off to sail at age 16. First he was a mercenary under the French
fighting pirates, the Turks and others, ending up in Hungary as an officer in the Habsburgs’ army against
the Turks. For his bravery, the Transylvanian Prince Zsigmond Bathory knighted him.
Later in a battle he was captured and sold as a slave. His Turkish master sold him to his Greek mistress,
from where Smith escaped, went to Crimea and from there returned to England in 1604. Two years later
he sailed for Virginia with the colonists. En route he was charged with mutiny and barely escaped
execution. The Virginia Company put him in charge of Jamestown. The colonists had a tough first winter,
losing about half their numbers to starvation and cold. He befriended the Indian princess Pocahantas,
who warned him against a conspiracy. When he was captured by the Indians, Pocahantas threw herself
across Smith’s body and begged her father to have Smith escorted to Jamestown. Captain Smith
eventually returned to England, never to see Virginia again. (Pocahantas would marry John Rolfe in
1614, but died 3 years later.)
Elsewhere in the world the Gobelin family of dyers opened a factory in France in 1601 where workers
from Flanders made tapestries, which became major decorations of high class homes and palaces. The
first authorized version of the King James Bible was published in 1611. Several expeditions of discovery
took place. Among them Henry Hudson sailed up the river that would later bear his name and discovered
Hudson Bay in 1609. In the same year the Dutch East India Company shipped tea to Europe, which
became a staple in homes for rich and poor alike.
In Constantinople, six years of construction began on the Blue Mosque in 1609. Not to be confused with
the neighboring Hagia Sophia, this mosque was named after Sultan Ahmed after the Turks were routed
from their occupation of Hungary. Built on the site of the palace for Byzantine Emperors, it has a main
dome, 6 minarets, 8 smaller domes, 200 windows and is decorated with 20,000 blue tiles.
The Russian Romanov dynasty was established in 1613 when Michael Romanov, son of the Moscow
patriarch, was elected Czar of Russia.
I want to include here a figure who was born in the 16th century, but became a leading figure in politics,
exploration and intrigue, giving his life to the executioner in 1618. Sir Walter Raleigh was an English
aristocrat, born around 1554 to a Protestant family in Devon, England. Early in life he took part in
suppressing rebels in Ireland, later becoming a landlord of property which had been confiscated from
the rebels. He was one of Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite and was knighted in 1585. He was granted a royal
patent to colonize the English colony in Virginia, but drew the ire of the Queen when he secretly married
the queen’s lady-in-waiting. The couple were sent to the Tower of London and barely escaped
execution. He then sailed to South America and wrote legends about his findings there. Again
imprisoned for a plot against King James I, but was sent on a second exploration to South America. The
Spanish called for his head for ransacking a Spanish outpost. He was arrested again and executed in
1618. He had been a most notable figure of the Elizabethan era.
The 17th century produced many outstanding artists and musicians. One of them was the musician
Claudio Monteverdi, who was made maestro di cappella at St. Mark’s, Venice, in 1613. One of the other
artists was Bernini, a baroque Italian sculptor whose magnificent works, including David, decorate
Florence’s Uffizi Palace museum. Bernini designed the colonnade in front of St. Peter’s and decorated
the ape of the cathedral. The famous main altar of St. Peter’s was Bernini’s work.
It is interesting to consider that in this century England’s political system became rather unique in that
the monarch was a symbolic figure and Parliament dominated the political scene. This was in sharp
contrast with France, where royal absolutism was the norm. This does not mean, however, that the
British system was without its ups and downs. In fact, the period we call “The English Civil War” started
in 1642 and produced some remarkable leaders, such as Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was born at the
end of the 16th century in 1599 and died in 1658. He was a military man, born into the middle gentry
class. As a 40-year old, he underwent a religious conversion and took a tolerant view toward the
Protestant sects. As a member of Parliament he became one of the principal commanders of the Army
and played an important part in defeating the royalist forces.
He was in command of the English campaign in Ireland ending the Irish confederate wars. Penal laws
were passed against the relatively few Catholics living in Ireland, Scotland and England and their land
holdings were confiscated. From December 1653 Cromwell was invited to be Lord Protector of Britain.
He died in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his body was desecrated by the royalist forces
as they dug him up, hung him in chains and beheaded him. Whereas he was considered by some as a
hero of liberty, his measures against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland were genocidal.
The country was split between the supporters of King Charles I and those supporting Parliament. We
must consider that whereas the civil war went on for over 6 years, because of weather and the condition
of the infrastructure, armies could not freely or easily travel. That is one reason why there were only
three major standing battles: Edge Hill in 1642, Marston Moore in 1644 and Naseby the next year. The
nobility and the Anglican landowners were on the side of Charles I, whereas city dwellers supported
Parliament. At the last battle Charles suffered a major defeat and surrendered to the Scots but the Scots
sold him to Parliament for 400,000 pounds. He was tried in 1649, found guilty of “traitorously and
maliciously levying war against the present Parliament and the people therein represented” and was
executed.
We seem to be streaming away from causes which our noble Hungarian leaders represented. Hungary
being part of the Holy Roman Empire, we must consider some of the history of its neighbor countries.
We will probably write extensively of developments in France in the upcoming centuries, nevertheless,
it is appropriate to say a few words about an outstanding Frenchman, Cardinal Armand Richelieu. Born
in 1585, he became a clergyman and rose to be a noble statesman. By 1616 he became Secretary of
State for France (First Minister to the King) and was promoted to Cardinal in 1622. He served King Louis
XIII and helped the king consolidate royal power while restraining the power of the nobility. He was a
great opponent to the Austro-Spanish Habsburg dynasty and played a major role in international politics
until his death in 1642. Louis XIII, of course, was followed by Louis XIV, the “Sun King” who ruled France
for 72 years, longer than any other monarch. He became king at the age of 5 in 1643 and typified the
concept of absolutism, summing up his position as “L’etat c’est moi”, the State is me. The state that he
left behind was troubled and impoverished. But you wouldn’t know the extent of poverty by admiring
the Palace he built at Versailles. The chateau actually began taking shape under Louis XIII when the king
obtained the seigneury from the Albert Gondi family to build a hunting lodge. This became the core of
the future grand palace which became the residence of the royal family until the French Revolution.
Nearly everyone knows about the Passion Play which citizens of Oberammergau, Bavaria, put on every
10 years. But what was the incentive to do so? Well, in 1633 an outbreak of the plague in Bavaria led
the people to promise to reenact the play if only God would take away this awful illness.
England provided many scientists and scientific achievements to mankind. To mention just two, here is
Dr. William Harvey, who in 1619 announced the results of his study about the circulation of blood in the
human body. And the other major figure was Isaac Newton, born in 1642 in Lincolnshire. Physicist and
mathematician, he is recognized as one of the key figures in the scientific revolution. He and fellowscientist Gottfried Leibniz invented calculus. Newton published his theory about the laws of motion and
gravity in his book “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton also built the first reflecting
telescope and wrote about the characteristic of prisms which decompose white light into a wide
spectrum of color. He died at age 84 in 1727.
The façade of St. Peter’s was finished in November, 1626 and consecrated by Pope Urban VIII. Here is
an abbreviated version of the study I wrote about the basilica in the Christmas edition of “In translation”,
2010. Emperor Constantine started to build a huge basilica in 326 A.D. on the site of Nero’s Circus
Maximum. 1200 years later, when the old structure was already in ruins, the new St. Peter’s started to
take shape under the architect Donato il Bramante (1444-1514). Michelangelo picked up the work in
the 16th century and finally Lorenzo Bernini put the finishing touches on it. Construction of the dome
took 6 years to complete and Bernini’s altar consumed 186,000 lbs (about 95 tons) of bronze. When
visiting it on one of our trips, we traced St. Stephen’s Basilica of Budapest with measurements of
287x180 feet. St. Peter’s is so huge, the Budapest basilica would fit inside comfortably 7 times. Bernini
received 500 pieces of gold for his work; the total cost is estimated at 4 billion, 680 million dollars.
Another world-famous structure, the Taj Mahal of Agra, India, was built between 1628 and 1650. It is a
white marble mausoleum built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, the Persian
Princess Mumtaz Mahal. She died giving birth to their 14th child. The Taj is a precious world heritage
and I am forever grateful for the memories its visit generates.
Budapest University was established in 1635. You have probably heard the expression: ”Cogito ergo
sum” (I think, therefore I am) traced back to Rene Descartes of France, the father of modern philosophy,
they say. He pronounced this in his 1644 book: Meditationes de prima philosophia. And speaking of
famous people, the residence of the Dalai Lama was being built in 1645 in Llasa, Tibet. The Italian
Antonio Stradivari first initialed his famous violin in 1666.
We should give time and space to the brave people who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 from Plymouth,
England to the New World, seeking religious freedom. 65 days later they landed in what is now Cape
Cod Bay in Massachusetts and formed the nucleus of the United States. In 1625 New Amsterdam was
established by the Dutch, which would become New York, supposedly bought for $24 from the Indians.
For the sake of saving time and space, I must be very selective in naming the artists and musicians whom
the 17th century produced. We have already featured a few, including Monteverdi, Bernini and
Michelangelo. Two of the greatest musicians ever were born in the same year: 1685. They were J. S.
Bach and G. F. Handel. Other outstanding figures included Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741, The Four
Seasons), van Rijn Rembrandt (1606), Daniel Defoe (1660-1731, Robinson Crusoe), Moliere (1622-1673,
Tartuffe), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), John Milton (1608-1674,
Paradise Lost), , Henry Purcell (1659-1695), Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), Johann Pachelbel
(1653-1706) and many others.
There is one more fascinating item recorded in this century. In 1697 Peter the Great of Russia, calling
himself Peter Michailoff, set out on a year-and-a-half journey to Prussia, Holland, England and Vienna to
study European ways of life. I am sure he had a full notebook to take back with him to Russia.
________
CHARLES III (III. Karoly,) 1711-1740
Succeeded his older brother Joseph who died without a male heir. (Both were sons of Emperor Leopold
I and his third wife.) His marriage to Elizabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel produced two
children, both girls: Maria Theresa (the last Habsburg sovereign) in 1717 and Maria Anna in 1718. Their
third child, a boy, died in infancy.
Leopold I, the father of the brothers Joseph and Charles, had made them sign a pact whereby, if neither
had a male heir, the daughters of Joseph would have preference for royal succession. When Charles
accessed the throne, changed the document in 1713 and issued the so-called Pragmatic Sanction,
putting his own children ahead of Joseph’s. He sought the approval of other European governments,
but they exacted difficult terms from him. Britain demanded that Austria abolish its overseas trading
company, and other governments voiced misgivings. In the end France, Spain, Poland, Bavaria and
Prussia refused to agree.
Upon the death of the king of Spain in 1700, Charles simply announced himself a successor, since both
were Habsburgs, and sailed to occupy the Spanish throne. This declaration produced the War of Spanish
Succession, pitting France’s Philip, Louis XIV’s grandson against Charles, which lasted for 14 years.
Members of the Holy Roman Empire were on the side of Charles, although Great Britain later withdrew
its support. The Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 gave Spain to Philip, but created more confusion about dividing
the countries of Europe between Spanish and Austrian interests.
The Pragmatic Sanction abolished male-only succession in all the Habsburg-controlled countries except
Hungary which had always permitted female succession (see Maria of Anjou in the 14th century).
Charles was involved in conducting several wars. The Austro-Turkish war of 1716 lasted until 1718. Its
terms were favorable for the victorious Austrians, who annexed the Banat region by the lower Danube
to Hungary, and placed Serbia and parts of Wallachia under Austrian rule. The War of Quadruple Alliance
involved the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia and Sicily, but had nothing to do with Hungary, so we
won’t detail it here. (Another war about Polish succession also involved Austria vs. France as supporters
of two candidates for the Polish throne.) The last military action for Austria took place in 1737 when
Charles partnered with Russia against the Turks, again. It was a costly war which Austria lost, giving back
Serbia to the Turks. The Austrian Treasury was nearly empty. Charles still had two daughters to give
away in marriage.
Maria Theresa was first engaged to Leopold Clement of Lorraine, but the gentlemen died of smallpox in
1723. Next to come knocking was Clement’s brother, Francis Stephen. Enter France, which demanded
that Francis surrender his hereditary domain, Lorraine. Trying to avoid a confrontation with France,
Charles made Francis comply, saying: “No renunciation, no archduchess.” That worked. He and Maria
Theresa were married in February, 1736. The Emperor died in October, 1740, the cause of death
believed to be poisonous mushrooms. As we shall see later, Maria Theresa had to resort to arms to
defend her rights to the throne, based on the Pragmatic Sanction. Her enemies formed a coalition of
France, Prussia, Poland and Spain and assaulted the Austrian frontier within a few weeks after the
Emperor’s death.
Of all her possible defenders, it was the Hungarians who came to her aid.
MARIA THERESA (Maria Terezia, 1740-1780)
The story of Maria Theresa can run into pages. So let’s start with the essentials and then, if you are
interested, we can go into more detail about this woman, this Empress, whom they called: “The only
man in the Habsburg dynasty.”
Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the older daughter of Emperor Charles (VI in the West, III
in Hungary). She was the only woman in the House of Habsburg who was sovereign of Austria, Hungary,
Croatia, Bohemia, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria, Galicia, Parma and the Austrian Netherlands. By marriage
she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empress to top it off. (In case
you are wondering where some of these places are: Mantua is in the Po valley in Northern Italy; Parma
is in the region of Milan, and Lodomeria in only on paper, representing Eastern Poland.)
The Pragmatic Sanction paved her way to get to the top and as soon as father Charles died, the states
opposed to the royal succession of this Habsburg branch started tearing down its boundaries. When
Prussia went after mineral-rich Silesia, it started a 9-year conflict called the War of Austrian Succession.
The other antagonists acted similarly, causing Maria Theresia major headaches which, ultimately, the
Hungarians came to soothe.
She and her husband, Francis of Lorraine, whom she married in 1736 when she was 19, had sixteen
children. Francis and one of her sons, Joseph, were officially her co-rulers in Austria and Bohemia, but
otherwise Maria Theresa was an absolute monarch. Her achievements include the propagation of
financial and educational reforms, development and modernization of agriculture and strengthening the
military. She was criticized for being somewhat bigoted toward other than Roman Catholicism.
Obviously, she was educated by Jesuits. What set her apart, as Wikipedia points out, was that neither
of her parents, nor her grandparents were closely related to each other, “making her one of the few
members of the House of Habsburg who was not inbred.”
The first few months of her reign started with war with Prussia which, as mentioned above, wanted
mineral-rich Silesia for itself. When King Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia, a life-long enmity started
between the two rulers. The Austrians suffered a crushing defeat in the Battle of Mollwitz in April 1741.
France became bloodthirsty and drew up a plan to partition Austria. She needed help and the only noncombatant happened to be Hungary, to whom she turned in desperation. I am quoting Istvan Sisa (The
Spirit of Hungary, page 124):
“Maria Theresa decided to appear before the Hungarian nobles of the Diet in Pozsony. Dressed in black
and holding her infant son in her arms, she made a spectacular entry before the all-male Diet. Then,
with tears in her eyes, she appealed (I assume in German):
“The clouds of danger gather above us from all directions. I do not want to hide this fact from my
beloved Hungarians as you also are affected by it. The Holy Crown is in danger. I am in danger with my
child and – abandoned by all others – I solicit the help of Hungarian arms whose fame shines throughout
history. I appeal to the well-known gallantry of the Magyars and in to their loyalty. It is in this fidelity
that I herewith lay my future and my child’s future.”
The next scene is described by the Hungarian novelist Mor Jokai: “At this moment all those present
forgot past and current grievances, all the wrongs the Habsburgs had done to the Magyars… All they
saw in this moment was the injustice done to a lonely woman, a woman who, after all, was their
Queen…. (They) unsheathed their swords and broke out in one voice, crying: Vitam et sanguinem pro
Regina nostra! (Eletunket es verunket a kiralynonkert! – Our life and blood for our Queen!).”
These words had to be followed by deeds. In the meantime, in October, the Elector of Bavaria captured
Prague and declared himself King of Bohemia. To make matters worse, Charles Albert was unanimously
elected Holy Roman Emperor in January 1742, a position which Maria Theresa wanted for herself badly.
Hungary came through with 80,000 men by the end of the year. They kicked Charles Albert out of
Munich and forced Frederick of Prussia to conclude a treaty with Austria. The French were forced to
give up Bohemia and in 18 months of fighting Maria Theresa’s empire was whole again, except for minor
skirmishes. Charles Albert died in January, 1745 and was replaced by Maria Theresa’s husband, Francis
Stephen as Holy Roman Emperor.) - The Hungarians swung into action again in 1743 when Frederick
tried his tricks anew and in 1757 when the 7-year Austro-Prussian war started. In that war, Hungarian
general Count Andras Hadik captured the German capital of Berlin with a unique march of 32 miles a
day (vs. the normal 12). Hadik achieved this with 4300 men, including 1160 hussars and exacted 245,000
thalers from the vanquished Prussians. The names of the Hungarian generals sound like precious bells
to us: Eszterhazy, Batthanyi, Nadasdy, Festetich, Gillanyi and Hadik.
The visitor to the Castle District in Budapest, while walking toward the famed Ruswurm Patisserie, would
pass by the statue of Andras Hadik on horseback. For good luck, students on the way to school would
touch and rub the testicles of Hadik’s horse shiny. This, obviously, has no historical significance, but
provides comic relief, - for some.
Now it was time for Maria Theresa to show her gratitude toward Hungary. The Queen was keenly aware
of the value which her Hungarian subject can provide for her. For her coronation in St. Martin’s
Cathedral, Pressburg (Pozsony), on June 25, 1741, she spent months honing her equestrian skills
necessary for the elaborate ceremony. In gratitude for the Hungarians’ generous offer she granted
favors to noblemen and invited their sons for special educational opportunities to Vienna where they
would meld into the glamorous high society and not return to Hungary. The problem was that the lower
social strata saw relatively little of the Empress’ generosity. But she gave Hungary an Adriatic port by
re-annexing Fiume (now Rijeka) and extended the Hungarian borders southward into the Temes Bansag.
Her donations of large estates went to loyal nobles, but she was jealous of Hungarian industry which
could have been competing with Austria. Transylvania was kept as an Austrian colony, kept separate
from Hungary.
Hostilities started again when Frederick of Prussia invaded Saxony in August, 1756 and attacked Bohemia
as well. This war would last 7 years and even reached across the Atlantic Ocean. It is fascinating to
contemplate the formation of alliances between former antagonists. The power struggle was between
two groups of countries: Austria, France, Russia and Sweden on one side, opposed by Great Britain,
Hanover (Germany) and Prussia on the other. The Battle of Kolin was a decisive victory for Austria as
Frederick lost a third of his troops. On the other hand, France, which was on Austria’s side this time,
suffered a crushing defeat in June 1757. When the Russian Empress Elizabeth died, Peter III became her
successor and withdrew his support from the coalition. The upshot of this whole see-saw war was that
the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763, giving Canada to Britain, Spain received Louisiana and France lost
much of her territory west of the Mississippi. And all this commotion was on Maria Theresa’s shoulders
as she was giving birth to one child after another, a total of 16 children, of which 13 survived infancy.
Of all those children, five were boys: Joseph (co-ruler with her mother), Charles Joseph (died of
smallpox), Leopold (married to Maria Louisa of Spain and successor to his brother Joseph), Ferdinand
(married to Maria Beatrice d’Este, heiress of Modena) and Maximilian Francis who became an
archbishop.
Maria Theresa was a doting mother, who wrote to her children every week. Nearly everyone remembers
the story of Maria Antonia, her youngest daughter, who became engaged to Louis, Dauphin of France
and moved to Versailles, where she was known as Marie Antoinette. Her mother kept writing to her,
scolding her for her frivolity and laziness. On Maria Theresa’s 50th birthday she contracted smallpox
from her daughter-in-law, Maria Josepha of Bavaria, who would die from the disease. Maria Theresa
survived, but lost one of her other daughters to smallpox as well.
Maria Theresa was a devout Catholic who managed to keep the Vatican at arms’ length. She was
determined to convert non-Catholics to her faith, and carried prejudices against those who would not.
Jews and Protestants were regarded as “dangerous” for the State. At one time she wrote: “I know of no
greater plague than this race which on account of its deceit, usury and avarice is driving my subjects into
beggary. Jews are to be kept away and avoided.” She taxed Jews especially at a high level and she also
taxed the nobility which had never paid taxes before.
In her administration, which instituted a reform in Prussian-style education, she made it mandatory for
all children between the ages of 6 and 12 to attend school. Some of the farming community resented
it, because they lost farm workers to the school. Having learned her lesson with the smallpox epidemic,
she instituted inoculation for all children.
Her husband, Francis I, died in August, 1765, which greatly depressed the Empress. She wore nothing
but black from there on and kept to herself in the Palace. Her health may have been affected by the
brush of smallpox as she was sickly for the remainder of her 15 years of widowhood. She died at age 63
on November 29, 1780. Her son and co-ruler, Joseph II, became her successor for the next 10 years.
JOSEPH II (1780-1790)
He had been co-ruler on the Austrian throne and Holy Roman Emperor since 1765. Through his father,
who descended from the hereditary domain of Lorraine, Joseph is considered a ruler from the Habsburg-
Lorraine line (or von Habsburg-Lothringen in German). He was a shining example of an Enlightened
monarch (together with Catherine II of Russia and Frederick II of Prussia). Joseph was committed to
reforms, the implementation of which caused problems for him and his administration.
Joseph married Princess Isabella of Parma in 1760, hoping to strengthen the relationship with France as
Joseph’s mother-in-law was the daughter of the king of France. Their marriage produced one daughter,
named Maria Theresa. The birth was particularly difficult for Isabella and subsequently she suffered two
miscarriages. She then became pregnant again and at 6 months she contracted smallpox and gave
premature birth to a daughter who died shortly thereafter. Isabella died a week after her child passed
away.
Under political pressure, Joseph found it necessary to marry his second cousin, Princess Maria Josepha
of Bavaria. This marriage was unhappy and lasted but two years. Maria Josepha also died of smallpox.
Joseph didn’t even attend her funeral. He would never remarry. His only child, Maria Theresa, at the
age of 7 in 1770, became ill with pleurisy and died. This left Joseph devastated.
His joint rule with his mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, was not without problems. Joseph was
tolerant toward other religions whereas Maria Theresa was not. He was anxious to institute policies to
reduce the financial federal burden on the peasantry. He was disappointed in the negative reception
which his ideas generated. At times he quarreled with his mother. Contrary to his mother, Joseph was
intellectually in favor of the partition of Poland, arguing that Russia and Prussia was going to do it
anyway. Austria took action and acquired Lodomeria, the eastern part of Poland. Joseph also laid claim
to Bavaria in order to expand his dominion.
The death of Maria Theresa allowed Joseph to proceed with his “enlightened” governing style without
hindrance from his mother. Relatively little preparation was put into these measures which was the
main reason for its half-measure of success. He did well on the education front, modernizing teaching
methods and setting new standards of learning. He issued over 6,000 edicts of his own and had 11,000
new laws passed, including abolishing the death penalty and ending censorship of the press. His efforts
toward the emancipation of the peasantry were commendable. He abolished serfdom and ordered that
the peasants would have to be paid in cash rather than in exchange for their labor. This was greatly
resented by the landlords and the nobility. The harsh rule of making German the official language
throughout his multi-tongued empire was not only unreasonable but it certainly did not promote unity,
which was the primary reason for the edict. Happiness on the “Josephinist” model did not suit everyone.
The Hungarian national assembly was especially hard hit by these demands of the Court and the Diet
wasn’t even called together for discussion. Of the 5 million Hungarians, 40,000 were nobles of whom
about 4,000 were large land owners, perpetuating feudalism until 1848, when Hungarians took up arms
against the Austrian rulers.
And Joseph had a time constraint, because in 1789 the French revolution got under way. You’ll recall
that his sister, Marie Antoinette, was married to King Louis XVI of France and was at great risk in
confrontation with the masses. Louis XVI did not want to appear as the fugitive king. In June, 1791, a
rescue attempt was made, but failed because King Louis was recognized from his picture on a coin.
The relations between the Catholic church and Joseph’s administration became constrained when
Joseph tried to keep the Church’s dependence on the Pope at arm’s length. Joseph made the bishops
take an oath of allegiance to him and abolished some 700 contemplative orders which he deemed
unproductive, reducing greatly the number of monks and nuns. Joseph was influenced by Freemasonry
but never joined a lodge. Pope Pius VI visited with Joseph but could not change his mind in these
matters.
Hungarians were especially unhappy with the system which seemed to regulate their everyday life.
Nobles and city folks alike disliked the many new rules from taxation to administration. In a final assault
of Hungarian sensitivity, Joseph ordered St. Stephen’s crown to be transported to Vienna where it was
locked up, the keys given to an Austrian and a Hungarian guard. The reaction was great enough to force
the return of the Crown to Hungary in 1790.
By 1788 Joseph was a beaten man. Too many people in too many locations rose up against his reforms,
challenging his administration. While his troops were concentrated in the East trying to keep the Turks
in line, his Western frontier crumbled. The Belgians revolted and the Hungarians were on the edge of
revolt. Joseph died on February 20, 1790. He is buried in the imperial tomb in Vienna. The inscription
on his crypt reads: “Here lies Joseph II who failed in all he undertook.” And a further note along these
lines: although he was a supporter of Mozart and commissioned the German-language opera Die
Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, Joseph’s funeral cantata was commissioned to be written by Beethoven. The
irony of the matter is that the Cantata could not be performed because of its technical difficulty.
His brother, Leopold II, became his successor.
LEOPOLD II (II Lipot, 1790-1792)
Leopold was the third son of Emperor Francis I and his wife Empress Maria Theresa. He was 43 when he
was crowned king of Hungary. At age 6 in 1753 he was engaged to Maria Beatrice d’Este, heiress of the
Duchy of Modena, but the marriage never took place. Maria Beatrice married Leopold’s brother,
Archduke Ferdinand instead. Leopold married the Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain in 1764. They created 16
children, plus possibly many illegitimate ones as Leopold was famous for his extra-marital affairs.
As Grand Duke of Tuscany, he ran an efficient administration but could not generate loyalty among the
Italians who had been used to favoritism under the Medicis. His policies regarding religious matters is
said to be the precursor to the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1778, which was written by Thomas Jefferson.
He introduced many political and economic reforms and despite his tender relations with his brother,
Joseph, he wanted to keep his administration at arms’ length, not to be identified by Joseph’s failures.
Upon taking over from Joseph, Leopold pacified the Hungarians and Bohemians, and conceded reforms
to insurgents in the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium). But he was threatened by the growing revolt
in France, and also by the aggressive ambition of Catherine II of Russia, as well as threats coming from
Prussia. The Russians wanted Leopold to take his eyes off Poland so as to make it possible for them to
annex it in total. Leopold interfered with that aggression. He stayed away from getting involved in
matters involving France, despite pressures from French emigres in his administration.
Leopold died suddenly in Vienna in March of 1792, although rumors persist that he was poisoned or
murdered.
THE 18th CENTURY (and the people that made it fascinating)
The 17th century closed with the Treaty of Karlowiz (Karloca in Hungarian), whereby Austria received
Hungary from Turkey, liberating Hungary from 145 years of Turkish rule, but excluding the possibility of
an independent Hungary until the uprising of 1848, a century and a half away. For historical accuracy,
let me add that the Empire fought two major battles against the Turks in 1715 and 1716 which finally
liberated the South, including Belgrade (the former Nandorfehervar of 1456 fame). The war ended with
the Turks when the Treaty of Pozsarevac was concluded in 1718.
Early in the 18th century Hungary was embroiled in the Rakoczi uprising against the oppressive Austrian
rulers whose proclaimed goal under Emperor Leopold I for Hungarians was to “make them first beggars,
then Catholics and finally, Germans”. Rakoczi’s banner of “Cum Deo pro patria et libertate” carried his
troops to the gates of Vienna, which was immersed in the War of Spanish Succession. Alas, the wheels
of fortune turned at the battle of Trencsen in August 1708, forcing a harsh treaty on Hungarians and
lifelong exile for Rakoczi.
Emperor Joseph I is characterized as a forward-looking, innovative ruler, who was kindly toward
Hungarians. His successor, Charles III was involved conducting several wars. His victory over the Turks
(as mentioned above) annexed the Banat-Temesvar region of southern Hungary which would now be
part of Greater Hungary until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. His death in 1740 opened the way
for his daughter, Maria Theresa to succeed him. Opposed to the principle of the Pragmatic Sanction
dealing with female royal succession in Austria, neighboring states, including Prussia, attempted to tear
down the empire’s boundaries. It was the Hungarian Diet which proclaimed help for the embattled
Empress, crying “Vitam et sanguinem” in support of their queen.
The last twenty years of the 18th century produced many changes under the enlightened governing style
of Maria Theresa’s son Joseph III, many of those creating more friction than good. Some of the
innovations, such as the emancipation of serfs, were resented by the nobility and caused bewilderment
among the peasantry. The universal use of the German language produced resentment against the
Court in Vienna without proper representation by the Hungarians. The non-compromising rule of Joseph
III was followed by Leopold II who conceded reforms and made an effort to pacify his dominion at a time
when the winds of revolution were blowing ever harder from France.
Looking at the map today, one would be surprised to learn that at the turn of the 17th to the 18th
centuries Sweden was a major power to deal with, which Russia, together with Poland, resented, fearing
control of entrance to the Baltic. In the year 1700 the so-called Great Northern War broke out when
armies of Denmark, Saxony and Russia invaded different parts of the Swedish empire. Sweden, under
Charles XII, countered with an invasion of its own. The war lasted nearly 21 years, ending with major
gains for Czar Peter the Great, who took the site from Sweden where he would build his capital, St.
Petersburg. He also acquired territories which today comprise Estonia and Latvia.
An interesting and significant event took place in 1701, when Austrian Emperor Leopold I, in need of a
friendly country to the North, allowed Frederick III, the elector of Brandenburg to call himself King of
Prussia as Frederick I. His descendants will turn Prussia into the most efficient fighting machine in
Europe in the coming years. Frederick the Great is an ascending star.
In 1707 an Act of Parliament was passed in Britain and in Scotland, formally uniting the two countries as
Great Britain with one Parliament but separate legal systems and Churches.
By the last quarter of the previous century, the 17th, it was France, under the absolute monarch Louis
XIV, which was considered the most prestigious and most powerful in Europe. The main concern for
European powers was the issue of the Spanish Succession, which gendered a war between three men
who claimed the right to the throne, each being related to the insane Charles II of Spain through the
female line. Charles wanted Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV to succeed him on the throne. Rulers
of Austria, the Netherlands and England favored the Archduke Charles of Austria, son of Holy Roman
Emperor Leopold I. There was also a third candidate: Leopold’s grandson, the Prince Elector Joseph
Ferdinand of Bavaria. Austria’s allies wanted to prevent France from gaining excessive power in Europe.
The fighting produced several battles not only in Europe but also in North America, while the British
seized Gibraltar in 1704 from the Spaniards. The Treaty of Utrecht ended the war in 1713. Philip got
the throne of Spain, England gained Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in Canada from France and Gibraltar
at the entrance to the Mediterranean from Spain.
________
Let me stop here for a minute, for I feel my readers are asking: what is it to us whether Philip or Charles
sits on the Spanish throne? And I say it is material because there was a time when Hungary mattered,
when Hungary set the tone, when to be Hungarian meant something to be proud of, despite its linguistic
isolation. It is precisely because of our central location in the Carpathian basin where East and West
meet that we must reach out and find our connection to the rest of Europe, to the rest of the world. It
matters what the main preoccupation of our neighbor is. If they are concerned mostly about royal
succession, then there may not be time enough to deal the cards which would support Hungary in the
shadow of our huge neighbors. Hungarians have always been generous in giving “vitam et sanguinem”
to save Western civilization from the onslaught of foes. That is our moral capital. We must be vigilant
to see that it is well spent.
One more thing to consider: for hundreds of years Hungary was considered to be an “appendage” to the
Turkish Sultan’s design, or to the Austrian Emperor’s breadbasket, or lately, in the 20th century, to the
ill-fated aggression of Hitler on the West and Stalin on the East. We are woefully alone within the
Carpathians and unable to make the storms of history to stop at our borders. That is why we must reach
out, be aware and be weary of friends and foes, know who is knocking on our doors and why. It matters
to know history, for not knowing it we might repeat it.
________
Because of our geographical location and due to circumstances beyond our control, there is not much
Hungary could have done to oppose and resist the Austrian Emperor’s plans for us. Two examples come
to mind. Austria wanted to demilitarize Hungary so that Vienna would no longer be threatened by a
restless satellite. The order came down in 1702 to destroy the hundreds of fortresses which had stood
in the way of the Turkish invasion and served as an obstacle course for our enemies on their way to
Vienna. Fortunately, the order could not be executed in its entirety, because the Fortress of Eger, for
example, would have required 35 tons of ammunition and hundreds of horse-drawn wagons to carry
the rubble away.
The other Imperial order shows clearly how the Vienna Court planned to deal with Hungary; not as an
independent entity but as an appendage to the Austrian empire. The Emperor, always short of funds,
offered three counties in the center of Hungary, called the Jaszkunsag, in a pawn game with the Teutonic
Order of Knights. This pledge was apparently unacceptable to the Germans and that’s the only reason
why it wasn’t carried out.
Nevertheless, Leopold arranged for a loan from the Netherlands and gave in return 400,000 kilos of
copper per year taken from Hungarian copper mines. It seems that with the Turks having withdrawn
from Hungary, the country’s welfare is no longer of interest to the Emperor.
Elsewhere in Europe, in 1707 the Parliaments of Scotland and England agreed to a union to be called
Great Britain with a single Parliament but legal systems and separate religions. - The musical scene was
made richer in 1709 with the invention of the pianoforte by Bartolomeo Cristoforo, the Italian
harpsichord maker. - In 1714 the Polish Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer where
the freezing point is at 32 degrees and the boiling point of water at 212 degrees. The Swiss astronomer
Anders Celsius invented the centigrade thermometer in 1742, with freezing point being at 0 and boiling
point at 100. – In order to win favors with King George I, the German musician George F. Handel
composed and performed special festive music in 1717, called Water Music for the king’s river party on
the river Thames. He would become a British subject in 1726. Much later, in 1741, Handel composed
the oratorio called “Messiah” in a mere 17 days.
Johann Sebastian Bach, a most prolific German composer, was 36 years old when he composed his
famous Brandenburg Concertos in 1721. Years later he composed the St. John Passion and the
monumental B minor mass. Born in 1685, Bach was orphaned at age 10 and went to live with his organist
brother, from whom he learned to play the organ and the piano (harpsichord). At age 22 he married his
cousin Maria with whom they had 7 children. He was appointed organist in the court of Weimar, where
he composed many of his finest works. His next position was with Prince Leopold who was a Calvinist,
which gave Bach more time to compose rather than perform liturgical duties on his job at church. This
is where the Brandenburg Concertos were created. After 12 years of marriage, his wife Maria died. He
remarried and with his new wife Anna they had 13 more children, but many died in infancy. The Bach
family moved to Leipzig where his musical life was frantic, writing for four churches and conducting at
St. Thomas church. He contracted an eye disease and died shortly thereafter in 1750.
The Irish author Jonathan Swift wrote “Gulliver’s Travels” in 1726 as a great satire “to vex the world,”
he said.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the future American president Thomas Jefferson was born in
1743. In the fall of 2008 I wrote a study on Jefferson’s ancestry. I traced it back to 7 generations in
Wales, when the name was written as Jeaffreson. (The study, under the title of “A long way to
Jefferson”, is on file at the Kenwood Library of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.) Two generations of
Jeaffresons, born in England, had also tried their fortune in the West Indies, however, it was Jefferson’s
grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Sr, who was the first American-born of the family in 1677. Thomas
Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence and a prominent leader in the Continental
Congress. He served in several elective and appointive offices, including Governor of Virginia,
Ambassador to France, Secretary of State under George Washington and later Vice President under John
Adams, before becoming the 3rd President of the United States 1801-1809. During his presidency the
so-called Louisiana Purchase took place as territories extending to the Pacific Ocean were acquired from
Napoleon for 15 million dollars, thereby nearly doubling the size of the United States. His home, called
Monticello near Charlottesville, VA, is a World Heritage Site. He died at age 83 in 1826.
The greatest poet and dramatist of German literature, Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born in 1749. His
masterpiece, of course, is his version of Faust on which he worked most of his life. This is the story of a
German magician who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power. Goethe died in
1832. - In 1756 the world became brighter when one of the greatest musicians of all time, Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria.
Leopold Mozart, the father of Wolfgang, was a musician. He and his wife had 7 children of whom only
two lived to maturity. The 4th child, Maria Anna, was born in 1751 and the 7th and last child was Wolfgang
Amadeus, born in 1756. As soon as Wolfgang’s musical talents as a pianist and composer became
evident, Leopold became his son’s promoter. Wolfgang gave concert tours already at age 6. His mother
died on one of his concert tours in Paris. Mozart was a prolific composer, having written 626 pieces in
30 years of his musically productive life, including several operas. He married Constance Webber of the
musician Webber family and moved to Vienna, where he became a Court musician, which provided him
with a living wage. He died most likely of rheumatic fever in 1791 and was buried during a thunderstorm
during which his pallbearers scattered and Mozart’s coffin was never found.
In 1751 one of Hungary’s wealthiest, Pal Eszterhazy, offered a contract to Joseph Haydn for a position
as house musician at Eisenstadt (Kismarton in Hungarian), and later at the Esterhazy family estate at
Eszterhaza, Hungary. Franz Joseph Haydn was born in 1732 in Austria. In his youth he was a freelance
musician and started to compose sacred music. He was to hold twice weekly concerts for the
Eszterhazys. His forte was writing symphonies, of which he wrote 104. From time to time he could
travel to Paris and London as well. Haydn died in 1809 in Vienna. Haydn had met some famous visitors
at Eszterhaza, among them the Empress Maria Theresa in 1773.
To quote from Haydn’s biographer Karl Geiringer: “The Eszterhazys stood at the very top of the powerful
Hungarian nobility. They were the oldest and wealthiest magnates of the country and had the longest
record of zeal in promotion of music and the fine arts. In their Eisenstadt estate, a splendid baroque
building with four towers, there were no less than 200 rooms for guests, a beautiful reception hall with
frescoes, a chapel, a library and an immense park surrounding the castle. The Eszterhazys also owned
21 other castles, 6 towns and 414 villages in Hungary alone.”
Quoting from the Age of Elegance by Edward Downes, Professor of Music History: “The Eszterhazys’
dazzling rococo domain (at Eszterhaza) was conjured out of the Hungarian plain, modeled on the palace
and gardens of Versailles. Like its model, Eszterhaza was a world apart: an aristocratic preserve of
glamour, grace, wit, beauty and conspicuous consumption based on apparently limitless wealth”. The
anonymous book of Prince Nikolaus himself enumerates the exquisite palace furnishings, its 126 richly
gilded and paneled guest rooms, its art gallery, hothouses, orangeries, its immense park and game
preserve. It must have been the perfect place for Joseph Haydn to compose fabulous music.
The world of music got infinitely richer in 1770 when Ludwig van Beethoven was born. Unlike composers
before him, Beethoven was not a purveyor of music to the nobility, but to the general public. He was
the son of a musician father in the service of the Court; but lost his mother early in his teen years. Moving
to Vienna, he at first studied with Haydn, but their temperaments didn’t match. Beethoven made his
living as a virtuoso pianist; composition came later, and so did – at age 32 – his continually failing hearing.
It is therefore even more amazing that he wrote his dazzling 9the (choral) symphony to Schiller’s Ode to
Joy, while totally deaf. In 1799, when Beethoven was 29 years old, he stayed in the estate of the Brunsvik
family in Hungary. Their two daughters became his pupils. He promptly fell in love with one of them,
as he pined after so many other ladies who rejected him, - “this argumentative, ugly, pockmarked and
slovenly man.” Later in life he won custody of his dead brother’s son, Karl. In 1826 he caught a cold
which turned into pneumonia which killed him in March, 1827. 20,000 people attended his funeral.
The French writer, philosopher and historian Marie Arouet would not be known to us had he not used
the pen name of Voltaire (1694-1778). His literary output played a large part in events leading up to the
French Revolution. He spent some time in prison for having written critical and satirical works about the
members of the French royal court. He was even exiled to England for a while, where he was impressed
by the free thought and free life of the Britons. Returning to France, he continued his work on behalf of
the rights of man. - Working along the same lines was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), an
influential Frenchman born in Geneva, Switzerland of Protestant parents. He worked as a music teacher,
but his greatest influence was expressed in his work Social Contract (1782).
The American Revolution
In 1765 things changed dramatically between the mother country England and its American colony. The
British parliament passed the so-called Stamp Act, which was yet another tax on the American settlers,
including a stamp on imports and publications and legal documents. Three years later British troops in
Boston fired on a group of citizens, killing five people. In 1773, when the British required yet another
tax on imported tea, Boston citizens dumped the shipment in the harbor. The incident is recorded as
the Boston Tea Party. The First Continental Congress was convened in Philadelphia in protest for the
British actions. They announced a ban on purchasing English goods. England hired 29,000 German
mercenaries to contain the rebellious Americans. The outcome would be the American War of
Independence, in which 13 of Britain’s colonies in North America broke away from the rule of the mother
country (1775-1783), culminating with the Declaration of Independence, written mostly by Thomas
Jefferson, in July, 1776. In 1787 the new United States of America signs its new Constitution and elects
George Washington as its first president.
The French revolution
The success of the American war of independence may have given the world’s oppressed hope, but it
definitely inspired and encouraged the French Revolution which started in 1789. The revolution didn’t
only affect France; it transformed and shook up the Establishment throughout Europe. The cause of the
revolution included the vast gap between the lifestyle of the rich nobility and the general public. The
French Treasury was faced with bankruptcy and King Louis XVI faced rebellion. He called on the national
parliament (Estates General), which had not met since 1614, to find a solution.
The composition of the Parliament included about 300 noblemen, 300 clergy and 600 commoners.
Fearing that the high social classes have an advantage, the mobs on the Paris streets stormed the
Bastille, a prison on July 14, 1789, with the purpose of freeing political prisoners. The Estates General
proposed to write a new constitution, which Louis XVI is compelled to accept in 1790.
The king and his family conspire to escape from the country in 1791 but are recognized in disguise and
are returned to Paris. The National Assembly is dissolved. Power passes to a radical group called the
Girondists, then the Jacobins as the two extreme groups eradicate each other on the guillotine. The king
is tried and executed in 1793; Marie Antoinette is beheaded. Committee of Public Safety, under
Maximilien Robespierre takes charge of the country and declares France a republic. A bloodbath of
opponents takes place, called the Reign of Terror until Robespierre himself is guillotined in 1794.
France declares war on Austria and Prussia. Military leader Napoleon Bonaparte emerges and is
appointed Commander in Chief. After a series of victories over Austria, in 1797 he advances to Vienna.
In 1798 Napoleon captures Rome and sends an expedition to Egypt where he wins the battle at the
Pyramids. Returning to Paris he overthrows the Directory and becomes First Consul of France. Peace
treaty drawn up at Luneville between France and Austria marks the end of the Holy Roman Empire in
1801. Napoleon would eventually make himself Emperor in 1804, but that is a story we’ll look at when
tackling a review of the 19th century.
________
FRANCIS II (I. Ferenc, 1792-1835)
His predecessor, Leopold II, like his parents before him, had 16 children. The eldest son, Francis, born
in 1768, became Leopold’s successor. When Austria suffered a defeat by Napoleon at Austerlitz in
August, 1806, Francis dissolved the Holy Roman Empire and founded the Austrian Empire, but became
Apostolic King of Hungary earlier, in 1792. To maintain peace with France, he gave his daughter Marie
Louise of Austria to Napoleon. She became Empress of France. Francis was born in Florence where his
father reigned as Grand Duke before becoming Emperor of Austria. He gained his education in Vienna.
He was regarded as “strange” by the Court, as Francis was a bit backward in “bodily deportment” and
exhibited signs of a spoiled child. To improve his upbringing, he was sent to an Army regiment in
Hungary. When his father died at age 44, Francis became a 24-year-old Emperor.
Napoleon’s manner of running France frightened Francis. The French had guillotined his aunt Marie
Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, but Francis was not moved enough to negotiate for her release even
though George Danton, a leader of the French revolution, tried to obtain concessions from him.
Napoleon meted him a severe lesson in the battle of Austerlitz, after which he was forced to redraw
Germany’s borders as Holy Roman Emperor along Napoleon’s demands. Francis abdicated as Holy
Roman Emperor. He had to fight four battles against Napoleon at different times but was only successful
on the fourth try which defeated Napoleon. The German Confederation was the successor to the Holy
Roman Empire which was created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
Francis was greatly impressed by the gains of the French Revolution (traces of which were found even
in the Hungarian army, where two officers were hanged for it). To counter a possible revival of the
revolution, Francis set up a system of police spies and censors to monitor dissent. To make it look more
transparent, he made himself available two mornings a week to meet his subjects regardless of rank.
He contracted a mysterious illness and died in Vienna in 1835 at age 67. He had been married four
times. His first wife was Elizabeth of Wurttemberg from 1788 to 1790. Next he married his first cousin
Maria Teresa of the Two Sicilies and they had 12 children (but only 7 reached adulthood). The wife died
in 1807. His third wife was another first cousin in the person of Maria Ludovika of Austria. Married from
1708 to 1816, they had no issue. Finally, the 4th wife was Karoline Charlottes of Bavaria, whom he
married in 1816, but had no children with her.
His successor would be Ferdinand V, the eldest son of Francis II.
FERDINAND V (1835-1848)
Although he became King of Hungary at his father’s death in 1835, he was already crowned in 1830 in
Pressburg. He was the eldest son of Francis II. His parents’ genetic closeness as first cousins may have
caused Ferdinand to suffer from epilepsy, hydrocephalus, speech impediment and neurological
problems.
Incapable of ruling because of mental deficiency, he had to consult Archduke Louis and Foreign Minister
Prince Metternich on every aspect of royal business. He married Maria Anna of Savoy, but had no issue
as he could not consummate the marriage. When the Hungarian revolution of 1848 started, Ferdinand
abdicated in favor of his nephew Franz Joseph, and moved to Hradcany Palace in Prague until his death
in 1875. (His younger brother Franz Karl waived his succession rights in favor of his son, who would sit
on the Austrian throne for the next 68 years.)
Strangely, despite his mental deficiency and sometimes as many as 20 seizures a day, he kept a coherent
and legible diary. Two sayings remain from him. The first is when his cook told him he could not have
apricot dumplings because they were out of season, he exclaimed: Ich bin der Kaiser und ich will Knodel!
(I’m the Emperor and I want dumplings!). And the other is from 1848, when he was told that the
Hungarian revolutionaries are marching on the palace, he said: “Ja, durfen’s den das?” (But are they
allowed to do that?)
THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION OF 1848
This section is taken in part from my study of August, 2011 entitled: Cause and effect: The Hungarian
Revolution of 1848.
In a college paper on REVOLUTION in 1963 I observed the following, based on the works (L’Homme
Revolte) of French philosopher Albert Camus: “The history of man is the sum total of his successive
rebellions.” While rebellion is limited in scope, revolution is a movement that describes a complete
circle after a complete transition. In the historical and sociological sense, a revolution involves a change
of government, accompanied by radical political, social and economic changes. Camus states that while
rebellion may kill man (and men), while revolution destroys both man and principles.
Crane Brinton, eminent scholar and historian, author of “The anatomy of revolution”, maintained that
reforms, without a corresponding change in government, often incite rebellions, and rebellions, in turn,
are compelled to turn to arrogance, culminating in revolution.
Thus, the event in Hungarian history of 1848 falls more in the category of a rebellion than a revolution,
because after it completed its historic “full circle”, it failed to achieve its goals. As a matter of fact, under
Brinton’s terms, it may qualify also as an abortive uprising, where “oppressed nationalities after a few
heroic uprising attain a pitch of exalted patriotism and self-pity that makes them almost unbeatable.”
Indeed, as we shall see, the oppressed minority of Hungarians under Austrian (Habsburg) rule sought to
bring about reforms. The Hungarian poet Sandor Petofi cries out: “Talpra Magyar, hi a haza!” (Rise up,
Magyar, the country calls you!) The unmet demands culminate in heroic armed uprising. This was then
followed by ultimate failure as the rebellion collapsed, leaving in its aftermath a pitch of exalted
patriotism, as expressed in Mihaly Vorosmarty’s poem: “Hazadnak renduletlenul legy hive oh Magyar.”
(Keep steadfastly the trust of your country, oh Magyar). And elsewhere: “Itt elned, halnod kell!” (Here
to live and die you must.) And again, quoting from Petofi’s poem “Egy gondolat bant engemet” (One
thought bothers me):
“…. S holttestemen at fujo paripak szaguldjanak a kihivott diadalra, S ott hagyjanak engemet
osszetiporva.” (“….and full gallop ahead to the victory won and there shall I lie to be trampled upon.”
Revolt, rebellion and revolution.
Without putting man on a special pedestal, let’s face it: man is the only creature who refuses to be what
he is. Social conditions, economic conditions, political conditions can incite a rejection in men that which
it considers intolerable. He is convinced of an absolute right to change things around for the common
good, with which he can identify. “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” were the words which sealed the fate of
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, while “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” launched the American
Revolution (as it changed conditions radically), and “Proletariat of the world unite” launched
Communism.
The American sage and statesmen, Thomas Jefferson, writing the lyrical document called “A declaration”
(of independence) began with this sentence:
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the
separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation.”
And he continued: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their
powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive
of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it…..”
Written in 1776, seventy-two years before events which hurled Hungary toward a life-defining conflict
with Austria, the Declaration of Independence gives God-given rights to the people for an uprising
against their government. I wonder if Hungary’s leaders at the time had read, and if so, were inspired
by Thomas Jefferson’s document to launch the revolt of 1848?
***
Preliminaries to the rebellion of 1848
It is a well-known fact that people who are facing starvation are more inclined toward revolution than
those with a full belly. In Hungary the weather-related disasters of the pre-1848 years may have
contributed to the causes of discontent and ultimate rebellion. (The following data is taken from the
authenticated statistical work of Elek Fenyes, published in 1848.)
In 1846 the winter was extremely harsh, which was then followed by drought throughout the growing
season for wheat and other farm products. When the time was ripe for harvest, tremendous rain storms
swept the country, ruining the crop. Famine was country-wide mostly in the farming communities.
Hungary’s population reached 13 million in the 1840s, including the population of Croatia and
Transylvania, but only 4.8 million (38%) considered themselves Hungarian. The rest were minorities,
including 2.2 million Romanian (17%), 1.7 million Slovak (13%), 1.27 million German (9.8%), 1.25 Serbian
(9.7%) and other minorities totaling about 1.5 million, including 244,000 Jewish. While the general
population grew only minimally, the Jewish population grew considerably due to immigration from
Galicia on the Northeastern borders.
Out of 1000 newborn, 288 died before reaching the age of one, while only 471 reached the age of 10.
Life expectancy averaged 39 years. There were only 640 medical doctors in the entire country.
Healthcare and hygiene was sadly neglected to the detriment of the country and its citizens. Conditions
in the upper class families were vastly different from the general population and from the peasantry,
but even the titled families suffered the consequences of the lack of cleanliness as we know it today.
Children between the ages of 6 and 12 were obligated to attend elementary school, yet only 40% of the
children in this category attended school. The best schools were run by religious orders, while children
of the aristocracy were often sent abroad to acquire their education.
In the hierarchy of the population there were 500 high aristocratic families while the lower nobility’s
numbers were around 550,000 persons. Four-fifth (80%) of the nation’s population consisted of agrarian
(peasant) families. Nearly 48% of the population, about 6.1 million, were Roman Catholics, 18% (2.3
million) Greek Orthodox, 14% (1.85 million) Protestants, 10% (1.3 million) Greek Catholics, 8% (1 million)
Lutheran and the rest represented in much smaller numbers.
The rise of nationalism
Nationalistic tendencies started to emerge from the various minorities in the political union in which
Hungary represented the majority. These sentiments were primarily evident in Slovakia. In August,
1845 in Pozsony (today’s Bratislava), where the Hungarian Parliament held its sessions, the Slovenskje
Narodnje Novini, the newspaper of the Slovak national movement began its reformist agitation.
One of the factors which enabled Hungarians to develop and to profess their pride and patriotism was
the official switch, with the latent approval of the Vienna government, from Latin to the vernacular
Hungarian in state and local affairs. Magyar language in politics and business was formally introduced
in 1833 and universally used within the following decade. The Hungarian State, situated in the middle
of the encroaching circle of Slavic people in the North and South, Romanians in the East and Germans
(Austrians) to the West was a sore and sour point for the minorities in the Habsburg Empire, because
Hungary prevented the unification of Slavs in Central Europe in a homogeneous Slavic state.
The Habsburgs played one nationality against the other. In 1784, some 60 years prior to the 1848
rebellion, Wallachian peasant broke out in a bloody revolt in what is today Voyvodina (the Hungarian
Banat), ruthlessly torturing, maiming and killing thousands of Hungarian men, women and children.
Austrian troops finally restored order, but the villages where Hungarians had been decimated were given
by government decree (!) to the Wallachians who did the killing. Romanian-Hungarian relations have
never been good, and acts like the above seem to justify Hungarians’ antipathy for their neighbors.
The official response of Emperor Leopold II to the Wallachian request of sovereignty contained the
following nonsense:
“The Crown recognizes its subjects as having only different tongues and denominations, but not
different nationalities.”
Hungarian reform
As proven by the above quotation from Leopold, the Hungarian nation, per se, simply did NOT exist in
the eyes of the Crown. This had to be changed and it was about to be manifested.
The bold new political trend was represented by the new conservative movement under the leadership
of Count Aurel Dessewffy, which published its program in November, 1846. The Conservative Party,
under the leadership of Count Lajos Batthyany was officially formed in June, 1847. The Party’s
representative in the Parliament for the county of Pest became Lajos Kossuth. The struggle to reassert
a Hungarian national identity emerged under Lajos Kossuth, Istvan Szechenyi and Miklos Wesselenyi,
who worked for reform against the stagnant Austrian government.
The last meeting of the Hungarian Parliament, consisting mainly of members of the nobility, met on
November 11, 1847 in Pozsony (now Bratislava) under tense circumstances. Among other
proclamations, it called for the elimination of tariffs between Hungary and other countries and provinces
under the Emperor’s crown. It sought an end to the absolutist feudal political system.
Yearning for independence
Hungarians weren’t the only ones clamoring for independence. As early as 1831 the Polish Diet declared
independence, only to be defeated by the Russians. The revolt collapsed but was revived in 1846 when
Austria intervened and crushed it again. In 1832 Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) founded the youth
movement called “Giovina Italia” with the aim of achieving national independence for Italy. The
composer Giuseppe Verdi got caught up in this movement and his music rallied the crowds yearning for
independence. And across the ocean, among other events, Texas declared its right to secede from
Mexico, which resulted in a war between the two countries (“remember the Alamo!”), concluding with
victory and independence for Texas. In 1844 Karl Marx met Friedrich Engels in Paris, - and we know the
disastrous outcome as being their brainchild.
Throughout the European continent reform movements became active, culminating in the uprising in
Paris on February 24, 1848, which dethroned King Louis Philippe and proclaimed France as a Republic.
Within weeks similar activity reached its climax in Munich, Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Pest-Buda.
The case against the Austrians
In early March, 1848, Joseph Irinyi published his Twelve Points, containing the main grievances against
the government in Vienna and proposed their resolutions.
These were: 1. Freedom of the press and abolition of censorship; 2. The establishment of a responsible
and responsive government Ministry in Pest-Buda for Hungarian affairs; 3. Annual meeting of the
Hungarian Parliament in Pest, elected by universal suffrage; 4. Equality under the law in matters of civil
and religious issues; 5. The formation of a National Guard; 6. Common and universal taxation including
the clergy and the nobility; 7. The elimination of manumission compensation, liberation of the serfs and
suppression of feudal rights; 8. An elected jury system; 9. Creation of a Hungarian National Bank; 10.
Swearing of allegiance to Hungary by the military; 11. Amnesty for political prisoners; 12. Liberty,
equality, fraternity in the Union of Hungary and Transylvania.
Lajos Kossuth, delegate of the Conservative Party, presented these 12 points in a great speech in front
of the Diet on March 3, 1848, in Pozsony, demanding sweeping reforms. It was translated into German
and distributed in Vienna, meeting with great sympathy from the general population which,
coincidentally, demanded similar reforms of its own. Ten days later, on March 13th, a full-fledged revolt
broke out in Vienna, forcing Prince Metternich, head of the Austrian government, to flee for his life.
The Upper House of the Hungarian diet formed a delegation to take the Twelve Points to the throne of
King Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria.
Major figures in the Hungarian rebellion
The following is taken from my college paper: “A study on revolution”, written in 1963 and edited to fit
the present space:
“Emotions of men in groups, whether in England, in America, in France, Russia or Hungary, and the
rhetoric of individual leaders to bring them out, are uniform features in nearly all revolutions. (We must
admit) that the proletariat cannot lift itself by its own bootstraps and that its leaders must, therefore,
come from classes sufficiently privileged to have had an education fitting them to interpret the subtleties
of revolutionary theory.” (A quotation from C. Brinton.)
This seems to confirm that the spirit and the means to launch such an event lie with the intellectuals.
Jefferson in America, Rousseau in France, Lenin in Russia and Kossuth in Hungary were just such
individuals.
LAJOS KOSSUTH was born on September 19, 1802 in Monok, Hungary, county of Zemplen in the
Northern part of the country. He was the oldest of four children of a Lutheran noble family. His father
was a lawyer and considered a member of the lower nobility. Despite being Protestant, Kossuth studied
at the Piarist College of Satoraljaujhely, then at the famous Calvinist college of Sarospatak and Pest
University. In his early twenties Kossuth was appointed Deputy to Count Hunyadi at the National Diet,
but being of lower nobility, he had no vote in the proceedings.
Kossuth’s written reports about the order of business at the Diet were considered incendiary by the
Austrian government and distribution of the manuscripts was forbidden. As a matter of fact, the Diet
was dissolved in 1836 and Kossuth was arrested in May, 1837, together with Wesselenyi and others,
charged with high treason. While in prison, Kossuth acquired a thorough knowledge of English by
reading Shakespeare’s works. Upon his imprisonment, he married Teresa Meszleny, who had frequently
visited him in prison. They had three sons. When the government relented and Kossuth was released
in 1840, he became a national hero.
Kossuth was appointed the editor of Pesti Hirlap, a liberal newspaper and gained immense stature.
Kossuth wrote extensively in favor of abolition of the feudal system, of taxation of the nobles and
separation from Austria. He also asserted Hungarian superiority to the Slavonic minority, which greatly
antagonized the Slavs.
In 1847 he was elected to the new Diet as the delegate from Pest. Lajos Batthany , Prime Minister of
the new Hungarian government, appointed him the Minister of Finance. Kossuth continued with his
incendiary speeches, in many ways alienating some Hungarian patriots, including Szechenyi. Kossuth
issued new Hungarian currency and by popular acclamation created an army of 200,000 called Honved,
or Home Defender. The response of the Austrians was to use the sensitivities of other minorities as
allied against the Magyar uprising. The Croatian chief Josip Jelasic marched against Pest, forcing
Kossuth’s government to retreat to Debrecen in the Eastern part of the country. Batthany resigned and
all power became concentrated in the hands of Kossuth in the newly created position of Governor of
Hungary. Elements of the Army, which had sworn allegiance to the Crown, balked at his supremacy.
General Arthur Gorgey in particular, refused allegiance.
Other details of Kossuth’s life and his role in the rebellion will be discussed as we consider successive
events of the 1848 revolution.
SANDOR PETOFI was born on January 1, 1823 in Kiskoros, in the Hungarian Great Plains between the
rivers Danube and Tisza. His family ancestry was Slovakian or Serbian, the original name being Petrovics,
which he changed to Petofi. His father was a village butcher and innkeeper. In 1838 the family lost its
fortune due to the Danube floods. He had to cut his high school education short and held small jobs in
the theatres of Pest. Ultimately, Petofi would enroll at the college in the city of Papa in Transdanubia
(Dunantul) where he first published his poetry. His poems became extremely popular after he managed
to have them published. Especially popular were his poems in the folklore style, including Janos Vitez
(Sir John).
Petofi married Julia Szendrey in 1847 in Transylvania. Petofi was possessed of the idea of a global
revolution and joined an intellectual circle which met at the Café Pilvax in Pest. He was pivotal in the
launching of the 1848 rebellion, especially having co-authored the Twelve Points and having written the
revolutionary poem “Nemzeti Dal” (National Song). After a fall-out with the Batthany/Kossuth
government, Petofi joined the army in Transylvania and was last seen alive in the battle of Segesvar on
July 31, 1849. It is believed that his remains are somewhere in Siberia, where 1800 Hungarian war
prisoners were marched after the war was lost. (This was denied by the Soviet occupiers following World
War II).
LAJOS BATTHANY was born in Pozsony on the Western edge of Hungary on February 10, 1807. His father
was Count Jozsef Batthany. His mother moved the children to Vienna after her divorce from her husband
when Lajos was 5. The child was sent to a boarding school and grew up without further contact with his
mother. At age 16 he was accepted to the Academy of Zagreb in Croatia, and later got his law degree in
Italy. In 1830, by virtue of his heredity, he took his seat in the Upper House of the Parliament. In
December 1834 he married Antonia Zichy (a distant relative) and they had 3 children.
By 1840 Batthany became the leader of the Opposition Party and drew up the party’s platform. Together
with Istvan Szechenyi, he promoted the concept of new reforms led by the nobility. He criticized the
Habsburgs’ internal affairs and foreign policy. He participated in the delegation which presented the
Twelve Points to the Emperor. On March 17, 1848 the Emperor assented to his demands and Batthany
became Prime Minister of the first free Hungarian government.
He was devoted to the constitutional monarchy and was not in favor of separation from the Crown.
After setting up an independent Hungarian Revolutionary Army, he asked the Emperor to stop the
Croatians from invading Hungary. When that failed, he resigned his post, only to be reappointed by
Archduke Istvan, the Governor of Hungary, but not recognized by the Emperor. Following a subsequent
resignation, he joined the Army, which defeated the Croats within two weeks of their invasion. Batthany
was elected to the Hungarian Parliament. In January 1849 he was captured and imprisoned and finally
executed on October 6, 1849.
Count ISTVAN SZECHENYI was born on September 21, 1791 in Vienna, Austria. His father, although
traditionally loyal to the Habsburgs, was an enlightened aristocrat who founded the Hungarian National
Museum and National Library. Szechenyi’s mother was Countess Juliana Festetics. Istvan Szechenyi was
the youngest of five children. He spent his youth in Vienna and at the family’s estate in Nagycenk,
Hungary. He was educated privately, then joined the Austrian army and served in the Napoleonic wars.
Szechenyi recognized the gap between his native Hungary and the more developed Western Europe,
and made it his life’s duty to reform. Standing by his word, he donated his annual income to the
establishment of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He also organized the National Casino which
provided a forum for political dialogues. Szechenyi was also the motivator behind the building of the
Chain Bridge which connected Pest and Buda.
In a series of published works he addressed the Hungarian nobility, urging reform and encouraging them
to end feudal privileges. He was opposed to radicalism and was not in favor of the nationalistic
movement which he wisely considered dangerous for Hungary’s multiple minorities.
Szechenyi devoted time and resources in the regulation of the flood-prone Danube and Tisza rivers and
initiated the development of Buda and Pest. As mentioned, he supported the construction of the first
permanent bridge, the now famous Chain Bridge, across the Danube which would unify the city. He
became Minister of transportation.
Szechenyi did not share Kossuth’s revolutionary ideas and after the failure of the rebellion he suffered a
mental breakdown, with a long stay at an asylum in Austria. He committed suicide on April 8, 1860.
Szechenyi was, and in many circles still is widely considered the “Greatest Hungarian.”
Baron MIKLOS WESSELENYI was born on December 20, 1796 in Zsibo (Jibon), Transylvania and received
private education at his father’s castle in a liberal and patriotic vein. He inherited his father’s exceptional
physical strength and was an avid sportsman. Wesselenyi entered politics in 1818 and made his maiden
speech in the Diet in precise Hungarian, demanding its use in public affairs. Challenging the Crown, he
said: “I hope that the king of the Hungarians would not object to his Magyars addressing him in their
own language. “ This was tantamount to a slap in the face for the king. Wesselenyi befriended Istvan
Szechenyi with whom he made a grand European tour. The two men realized from first-hand
observation the need of Hungary to catch up to Western Europe. He became a national hero when,
during the March 1838 flood of the Danube, he personally saved the lives of 600 inhabitants of Pest by
rowing his rescue boat for 72 hours straight.
The Habsburgs, as expected, treated any native reform movement with deep suspicion, curbing its
expressions wherever they surfaced. Wesselenyi started his personal reform at his own estates by
abolishing feudal laws. He freed his serfs and turned his 27,000 acre estate into a model farm where he
trained thoroughbred horses. He also took up the cause against the forceful recruiting of 50,000
Hungarian serfs into the imperial army which the Emperor demanded. He bought a printing press and
began distributing the secret records of the Diet’s proceedings, for which he had to stand trial and was
sentenced to 3 years in prison. During his imprisonment he suffered an eye disease to which he lost his
sight. In his illness he was attended by the 16-year-old Austrian Anne Lux, whom he married. They had
two sons after he was released from prison.
Retired from public duty, he nevertheless addressed the Transylvania Diet and persuaded them to join
Hungary in its war of independence. Wesselenyi died of a lengthy illness on April 2, 1850, at the age of
54. Two years prior, at the outset of the war, he made a speech in Pest, saying:
“It is God who will decide whether our nation shall live or perish. But it is we who hold in our
hands the honor of Hungary. Let us live or die for it, but we must remain Hungarians and a free nation
up to our last breath.”
March 15, 1848: a historic day in Hungary
The particulars in this account are taken from Erzsebet Blajer’s article in the March 4, 2006 edition of
“Magyarsag.” The timelines are from the 1996 publication “A magyarok kronikaja” (The chronicle of
Hungarians) under the auspices of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
On March 3rd, 1848, Lajos Kossuth addressed the Diet, suggesting that a proclamation should be sent to
the Emperor demanding the formation of an independent Hungarian national government. Kossuth
emphasized that for three centuries the Hungarian people could not live a constitutional existence
because all decisions were made by the imperial government in Vienna which was not in harmony with
the needs of the people.
The Diet accepted Kossuth’s proposition and prepared the proclamation which, when delivered to the
Emperor, created havoc in the Court. On March 13th, several thousand Austrians gathered in Vienna in
protest of their government. The military guard fired into the crowd, killing several protesters, which
then proceeded to the royal palace. As a result of a meeting with Prince Louis, the government agreed
to stop the censorship of the press and the Court promised to prepare a separate constitution for each
of the country’s provinces.
As noted above, in Hungary, Joseph Irinyi (with co-authorship by Sandor Petofi) prepared a petition with
twelve points of various demands, which was to be forwarded to the Emperor. On March 15th university
students gathered at the Fillinger (later known as Pilvax) coffee house in Pest where the Twelve Points
were read to them by the literary figure Mor Jokai. Petofi had prepared his National Song (Nemzeti dal)
which he delivered first at Pilvax, and later on the steps of the National Museum. The throng grew to
several thousand as they listened to the uplifting stanzas of the poem, repeating its refrain:
“A magyarok Istenere eskuszunk, eskuszunk, Hogy rabok tovabb nem leszunk!”
“By the God of Hungarians we swear, we swear, That servile chains we will no more bear!”
The crowd then marched to the nearest print shop where Petofi’s poem and Irinyi’s Twelve Points were
printed without being censured by the government. Next, despite the heavy rain, they marched to
Castle Hill on the Buda side and freed political prisoner Mihaly Tancsics, spokesman of the serfs.
Historians always point this out as a parallel with the storming of the Bastille to liberate French political
prisoners. The irony is that in both cases there was just a single person involved, yet moral victory had
been won by the action of the people.
March 16: a delegation led by Nador (Governor) Archduke Istvan went to Vienna where the king agreed
to abide by their demands. On the following day, the 17th, Archduke Istvan, with the approval of the
Court, appointed Lajos Batthany as Prime Minister of the new Hungarian government.
The Vienna Court was frightened of setting up the independent ministries of finance and defense, fearing
that they would undermine the monarchy. As a result, on the arrival of news about the king changing
his mind, there were mass demonstrations in Pest on March 29th, which lasted for several days. What
complicated the situation were the separate demands which the Croats and the Serbs raised toward the
Hungarian government for their own separate, national governments. Perhaps regrettably, but in any
case forcefully, Lajos Kossuth rejected their demands and threatened the minorities with possible
military intervention, saying: “Ez esetben a kard for donteni”, - in this case the sword will decide.
April 14: After the Diet was dissolved by royal decree the Hungarian government moved its seat from
Pozsony to Pest. The king declared Kossuth and the Hungarians as rebels and ordered the Hungarian
army to obey the orders of Prince Alfred Windischgratz, head of the Austrian military. The Hungarians
ignored the order.
May 10: The Slovak national movement at their assembly on that day demanded equal representation
in the Hungarian parliament. And three days later the Serbian national congress demanded autonomy
for the areas under their control. On May 15th the Romanian National Committee was formed which
also demanded equal or proportional representation in the Hungarian Parliament. On May 30 th
Transylvania declared its union with Hungary. The Batthany government issued a decree for the
recruitment of a Hungarian army of 200,000 volunteers.
Miklos Wesselenyi cautioned moderation and suggested allegiance to the Crown. However, Kossuth
insisted that until the king does not pledge his oath to the Hungarian constitution and has himself
crowned as king of Hungary, Hungarians cannot abide by his orders. Anyone who disagreed was
declared a traitor. Amidst this great controversy the Batthany government resigned on September 11th,
but Governor Istvan requested Kossuth to form a new government in contradiction with Parliament
which granted Kossuth full authority to govern.
On September 11th, the 51,000 man Croatian army with 48 guns crossed the Drava River and marched
on Hungarian soil toward Lake Balaton. On September 29th the new Hungarian army defeated the
Croatians at Pakozd and Sukoro near Szekesfehervar. (My cousin Baba’s husband, Ivan, took us to see
the memorial on top of the hill overlooking Sukoro.) The remnants of the invaders sought refuge in
Austria and were welcomed there.
December 2: Emperor Ferdinand abdicated the throne. His place was taken by 18-year-old Archduke
Franz Joseph I, who declared himself Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. On December 13 th the
first units of Windischgrats’s army crossed the Hungarian border and were headed toward the city of
Gyor. When the Hungarian army under the command of General Arthur Gorgey was unable to stop the
Austrians, Kossuth asked for mediation by Mr. Stiles, the American enjoy to Hungary, to no avail.
Kossuth’s government sent a delegation to Windischgrats requesting an armistice, which the Austrian
commander rejected, demanding unconditional surrender from the Hungarians.
Kossuth and his government moved St. Stephen’s crown and the Treasury to Debrecen on the eastern
plains of Hungary and told Gorgey to defeat the foreign invaders before they reached Pest. Gorgey, on
the other hand, had different ideas and marched northward instead toward Vac in the Danube bend,
leaving Pest defenseless. On January 5th, 1849 Windischgratz occupied the capital. The occupation also
caused the execution of those Hungarian patriots who embraced the cause of freedom. Lajos Batthany
was also arrested.
On March 6th Emperor Franz Joseph negated all concessions that had been made by his predecessors
and issued a new constitution for the Habsburg Monarchy in which Hungary ceased to exist as an
independent state.
The “Honved” army, after suffering several defeats in battle, finally came to life. In Transylvania Kossuth
appointed the legendary exiled Polish General Joseph Bem as commander in chief. The diminutive
general drove 25,000 Austrians over the Carpathians into Bukovina. In the great plains of Hungary
General Janos Damjanich (a Serbian by birth!) defeated Austrian General Ottinger’s cavalry at Szolnok
by the Tisza river. On March 20th Arthur Gorgey began his spring offensive chasing the enemy nearly to
the Austrian border.
April 14: Emboldened by the military victories and in response to the new Emperor’s March 6 declaration
regarding Hungary being an Austrian province, the Diet in Debrecen formally dethroned the Habsburg
Dynasty. Kossuth got his way, while more moderates in the country were shocked at the turn of events.
Gorgey wanted to pursue the Austrian armies to Vienna, but Kossuth who was not a military strategist,
countermanded Gorgey and ordered the liberation of Buda instead. Gorgey’s troops fought for 17 days
to wrest Pest from the occupying Austrians. The ultimate outcome on May 21st proved to be a Pyrrhic
victory. On June 5th Kossuth and his government moved back to Pest.
Feeling threatened in Vienna, Emperor Franz Joseph asked his cousin, Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, to
help him put down the Hungarian rebels. On June 15th, 1849 Russian Cavalry General Rudiger crossed
into Hungary and joined the Austrians to defeat the Hungarians. The 200,000 Russians attacked from
two passes in the Carpathian mountains to the north and the east supported by 1192 canons. The joint
offensive mounted 370,000 men against 152,000 Honveds with only 450 guns.
Gorgey’s plans called for concentrating his troops north of Pest in the vicinity of Komarom, whereas the
Council of Ministers ordered him to Szeged in the south to form a line of defense. Gorgey refused the
Council’s orders and on July 1st he was removed from command. His place was assumed by Lt. Gen.
Lazar Meszaros. Gorgey continued to win battles against the enemy in the Komarom area, but on July
2nd he suffered a severe head wound in a cavalry assault. Gorgey was vindicated in his decision not to
risk a major battle at Szeged when, on August 2nd Austrian General Haynau’s troops ran over the
defenseless city.
On August 9th General Bem was wounded in a battle at Temesvar in what today is Voyvodina, which was
lost to Baron Haynau. Two days later Kossuth resigned the governorship of Hungary and symbolically
transferred the power to Arthur Gorgey. Realizing the futility of further resistance, on August 13th
Gorgey, with 30,000 troops surrendered to Russian General Rudiger at Vilagos (Siria in today’s Romania)
in the country of Arad on the Transylvanian border. Gorgey was assured clemency for his men by the
Russian General Fjodor Vasziljevics Rudiger, but typical of Russian perfidy, the general betrayed Gorgey
and turned over his prisoners to the Austrian prosecutor, the blood-thirsty and vindictive Baron Julius
von Haynau. Kossuth, on the other hand, together with 4,000 Hungarian fugitives, managed to escape
to Turkish-held territory at Orsova in Voyvodina. Kossuth secretly buried St. Stephen’s crown under a
willow tree.
But the war was not completely over. For seven more weeks the 20,000 troops of General Gyorgy Klapka
held off 50,000 besiegers of Komarom. When he finally capitulated in October, he forced the hand of
Haynau to grant amnesty to his soldiers, a month’s pay in Austrian currency for his troops and the
equivalent of half a million Forints to pay off the financial obligations of the city’s siege. Klapka himself
went into exile.
The sad end
Czar Nicholas, acquiescing to Franz Joseph’s request for military assistance, set conditions for his
intervention in Hungary. First, he demanded separate command for his army from the Austrians.
Secondly, the Czar did not insist on compensation for his costs of the war. (He used this as an excuse to
keep the seething Polish population from starting its own revolution. Indeed, he named the Polish Prince
Paskievics as general commander of his invading army.) Thirdly, Nicholas presented Franz Joseph with
a bill for the cost of feeding his troops on Hungarian soil.
The Hungarian government was greatly disillusioned when none of the Western powers, including
France and England, raised an objection to the subjugation and defeat of Hungary. History must also
acknowledge the cruelty of Romanians who, when reinforced by Russians, destroyed at least ten
Hungarian villages, murdering their population, including women and children.
The legendary General Bem nearly lost his life when, on July 31, 1849, his carriage turned over in a ditch
at Segesvar, Transylvania. Bem pretended to be dead only to fool the enemy and barely escaped from
the battlefield. The poet Sandor Petofi is likely to have died in the same battle.
There were some disappointing events and acts which need to be acknowledged. On January 20, 1849,
the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Council issued a document to be read at all Masses, urging the population
to support (!) the Emperor’s army under the command of Windischgratz. Another shameful act was
committed by the Kossuth government when, on August 10, 1849 offered St. Stephen’s crown to the
Czar! Failing the negotiations, the government issued its preference for laying down its arms to the
Russians rather than to the Austrians.
Kossuth’s flight from Hungary took him through Bulgaria where he and his entourage was considered a
guest of the Sultan. Soon other emigres joined the group, including General Bem. When news of
Kossuth’s whereabouts reached Constantinople, Russian and Austrian ambassadors demanded his
extradiction. To escape such a fate, the Turks suggested their conversion to Islam, which 95% of the
escapees refused. Bem converted and became governor of Aleppo in today’s Syria. A few weeks later
Austria offered amnesty to most of the emigres who returned to their native countries. Austrian forces
on the Turkish border tried to persuade the Sultan to extradite Kossuth and his immediate group. To
discourage the Austrians, 24 British and French warships materialized at Istanbul to protect the Turks
from an Austrian invasion. Kossuth was taken into protective custody by the Sultan. Even his wife and
three children were allowed to join him in January, 1850. Ultimately, the U.S. Senate issued an invitation
for him to visit the United States and sent the USS Mississippi to bring him and his followers to America.
The US Naval vessel stopped first at Marseilles, but Kossuth was denied debarking by the Paris
government.
London.
Kossuth then requested to leave the ship at Gibraltar and travel by other means to
His reception by the Lord Mayor of London was enthusiastic, but produced no concrete results. The
Queen remained aloof to the idea of a revolutionary courted by her Prime Minister. Kossuth then
continued to America, arriving in New York harbor on December 6, 1851, received by a 100-gun salute.
He was received in the White House by President Filmore and addressed the Congress, too, being only
the second person after Lafayette to be honored to do so. During his travels in America, Kossuth
delivered 500 speeches in six months urging intervention of the U.S. and Britain against absolutist
Austria. Some members of Congress, who were non-interventionist and feared Russia’s 3:1 advantage
in naval strength, were not among his supporters. Neither was the Roman Catholic clergy which was
pro-Habsburg at the time.
Kossuth’s triumphant tour of the West raised money and support for the Hungarian cause, but failed to
generate any international action. He returned to England for five more years. His final refuse became
Turin, Italy, where he died on March 20, 1894 at the age of 94. His remains were later interred in
Budapest.
Haynau proceeded to wage a reckless and cruel war on the Hungarians. On October 6, 1849, Lajos
Batthany was executed in Pest, while 12 of his ablest generals of the war of liberation were shot or
hanged in Arad, and some of the Ministers in Kossuth’s government, such as War Minister Laszlo Csany,
Senate leader Zsigmond Perenyi and others met their similar fate on October 10th. Arthur Gorgey, on
the other hand, was pardoned by both the Czar and the Emperor. Let me add a note on Batthany: first
condemned to the gallows, he foiled his executioners’ plans by stabbing himself in the throat the night
before with a dagger smuggled in by his wife. Nevertheless, he survived and was shot by firing squad
the next morning. Some of the executions of the generals in Arad were gruesome. One victim, Erno
Kiss, survived the first volley; he then called out the order to fire the second volley which was fatal.
Hanging the two tallest generals was agonizing as the gallows were built too low for them to fall and
break their neck. But perhaps the most macabre event of the day was the hanging of a dead man.
General Ignacz Torok, lined up for execution, had been shouting at the commandant when he suddenly
collapsed and died from a stroke. He was hanged, nevertheless.
On November 21st the new Chain Bridge opened to traffic between Buda and Pest. The year ended with
the despicable election of three of the enemy generals, namely Haynau of Austria, Jelacic of Croatia and
Paszkevics of Russia as honorary citizens of the city of Pest.
Eighteen years later, on June 8, 1867, Buda-Pest received Emperor Francis Joseph with a 21-gun salute
to be crowned King of Hungary. The Emperor’s most beautiful wife, Elizabeth, stole the show when she
arrived at Matthias Coronation Church riding in a gilded carriage drawn by eight white horses. Elizabeth
(nicknamed Sissi) was sympathetic to Hungarians and became a friend of Hungary, enhanced by her
special friendship with Hungarian Foreign Minister Count Andrassy.
Hungarians loved the pomp and circumstance of the big event when Francis Joseph was crowned King
of Hungary on June 8th, 1867. But they will never forget the two days which emerged from the past:
March 15, 1848 as the proclamation of the rebellion and October 6, 1849, a day of mourning for the
martyrs of a lost cause.
________
My own view, as expressed in an article I had written in June, 1956 under the title: “St. Stephen’s heirs
in America”, also touches on the role of Lajos Kossuth as a symbol of the 1848 rebellion. Two figures
emerge initially who stand out from that era. One is Istvan Szechenyi, a man of reason who cautioned
the sanguine Lajos Kossuth against unreasonable steps against the Hapsburg leadership, knowing that
Hungary at that time was not in a position to stand up to the much more sophisticated and powerful
Austrians. Nevertheless, Kossuth dethroned the Emperor even though initially he managed to evoke
some semblance of sympathy for the Hungarian cause. The act drove a chasm between Kossuth and
Szechenyi. Szechenyi and others had counselled for requesting autonomy under the auspices of the old
dynasty. Dethronement made any compromise with the Habsburgs impossible.
The other remark is that when waging war, civilians should set the general course but stay out of the
daily operation of conducting it. In other words, strategy and tactics are two separate things and each
requires different skills. General Gorgey may have had a better understanding of his own forces and the
opportunities which the battlefield dictates. He was embedded with his troops, whereas Kossuth
governed from the safety of an armchair. The results were calamitous for Hungarian independence.
And thirdly, while touring America, Kossuth failed to realize the importance of directing (or giving
strategy for direction of) the fate of post-1848 emigrants. Instead, he hurried back to Europe chasing
the dream of a community of Danubian peoples. Had he realized the leading role of the United States
in a revolutionary world, and especially later, in the struggle of ideologies, Kossuth should have urged a
portion of Hungarian aristocracy to emigrate to America where they could have provided a strong and
influential social layer, a hundred times more successful in the cause of Hungary than the heroic death
of Colonel Kovats, or the bravado of the “Justice for Hungary” ocean fliers, and even the martyrdom of
Cardinal Mindszenty. Who knows, perhaps today there could be a Magyar descendant in the White
House!
_________
Since Hungary and Hungarians were ruled by the Habsburg dynasty for hundreds of years, it is
appropriate that I provide a cross-section of the men who made the decisions for my forebears. For
twelve pages in the periodic correspondence with my children, called “In translation”, I featured the
Habsburgs in detail. I will include copies of those pages as an attachment to this work for those who
wish to know more in detail than the parameters of this project could provide. Hope you enjoy it.
_______
FRANZ JOSEPH I (I. Ferenc Jozsef, 1848-1916)
His predecessor, Emperor Ferdinand I resigned (or was forced to resign) his post by abdicating in
December, 1848. His brother, Archduke Franz Karl, refused to be crowned and turned over the reign to
his son, Franz Joseph, who was only 18 at the time. In addition to the Hungarian uprising, the Austrian
Empire had had a bad time with its claim to the Lombardy/Venetian possessions, - and years later would
lose even more territory under the reign of Franz Joseph. The only adversary which he could keep at
arms’ length was Prussia even though the Austrians fought a war with Prussia and were defeated in the
question of German unification in 1866.
Franz Joseph was troubled by nationalism. To calm Hungarian sentiments, he concluded an agreement
called Ausgleich (Kiegyezes) in 1867, which calls for a separate paragraph or two as we review history
(see Hungary in the 19th century). The main trouble concerned the Balkans, a hotspot of international
tension where Austria and the Russian Empire had conflicting interests. The whole affair would have a
catastrophic finish, ending with World War I. But let’s start at the very beginning.
Franz Joseph was born in the gorgeous Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna. His father, as mentioned above,
was Archduke Franz Karl and his mother was the ambitious Princess Sophie of Bavaria. At the age of
only 13, Franz Joseph started his army career as a Colonel. For the rest of his life he would be dressed
in an army uniform. In 1848 he was sent to the Italian front joining Field Marshal Radetsky where Franz
Joseph got his first experience in battle. (The Radetsky march, composed by Johann Strauss Senior to
commemorate the Field Marshal remains a concert favorite to this day.) Franz Joseph’s family,
meanwhile, fled Vienna for the safety of Innsbruck in Tyrol, fearing an uprising in Austria. Franz Joseph
was recalled from the front to join his family. It was here that he first laid eyes on his cousin, Elizabeth,
age 10, who would end up being his wife much later. The imperial family returned to Vienna only to
have to flee it again, this time for Olmutz in Moravia.
It was in Olmutz that Franz Joseph became Emperor of Austria upon the abdication of his uncle
Ferdinand. His first challenge was a renewed Italian unrest, plus the successes of Hungarian General
Gorgey against the Austrian forces during the Hungarian uprising of 1848. The Emperor reached out to
Russian Tsar Nicholas I, as he said “to prevent the Hungarian insurrection developing into a European
calamity.”
His formidable mother wanted to strengthen the relationship between the Habsburgs and the
Wittelsbach family from whom she descended. That is why she insisted on matching Franz Joseph with
her sister Ludovika’s eldest daughter, Helene. But when the Emperor visited in Innsbruck again at a later
time, he fell in love with Helene’s sister, sixteen year old Elizabeth. They were married in Vienna on April
24, 1854.
As discussed above, the Russians crushed the Hungarian revolt and the Italians were also defeated by
Austrian troops. In the Emperor’s view his parliament did a poor job, so he suspended the constitution
and launched his absolutist rule under the guidance of Alexander Bach, his Interior Minister. His Prime
Minister, Prince Schwarzenberg died in 1852 and the Emperor, not finding suitable replacement, took
over that post as well. On February 18, 1853, while taking a stroll, Hungarian nationalist Janos Libenyi
attempted to assassinate the Emperor by sinking a knife into his neck, but the high military collar saved
the Emperor’s life and he survived the attempt to kill him.
Austria had several difficult situations to overcome in the 1850s. Without going into too much detail,
there was the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856, involving Turkey, Britain and France against Russia, which
was resolved by the Treaty of Paris under the Austrian threat of attack. Austria remained neutral, but
sent occupational forces to Moldavia and Wallachia, causing a conflict with Russia. Austria suffered a
defeat in the second Italian war of independence and was bested in the war with Prussia over primacy
in the attempt to form a German Federation. Finally, the Hungarian question was more or less resolved
with the so-called Ausgleich, or Compromise of 1867, which we will discuss under another heading (see
Hungary in the 19th century).
On June 8, 1867, Franz Joseph and his wife, Elizabeth, were crowned as king and queen of Hungary, to
the delight of the Hungarians and the satisfaction of the royal couple. The significance of this is pointed
out in the following chapter. In the dual role of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Hungary had a
crowned head to hold up its share in independent domestic affairs while foreign affairs were handled
by Austria’s Imperial Court for the Monarchy as a whole.
Franz Joseph’s ambitious goal was to unify all Germans under a Federation where Austria’s Habsburgs
would rule. The problem was that the Emperor also wanted to retain his non-German holdings in
Hungary, in the Balkans and elsewhere, which was objectionable for the Prussians. A brief military
conflict ended the grand plan; Austria was to be left out of German affairs, - until Adolf Hitler’s
appearance on the world stage in the 20th century. Nevertheless, Franz Joseph had still other questions
to resolve, including political changes in Bohemia where Czech leaders were asserting themselves. The
Croats and Serbs were subdued with death penalties for their restless leaders; Bosnia and Herzegovina
were quietly absorbed/annexed into the Empire, while Russia was provided with free movement from
the Black Sea through the Bosporus. The annexation ruffled many nationalistic feathers in Serbia.
The marriage of Franz Joseph and Empress Elizabeth was not without problems. Elizabeth, or Sisi as they
called her, was a free spirit who liked to travel and was seldom seen in Vienna. Their first daughter,
Sophie, died as an infant, and their only son, Rudolf the Crown Prince, died by suicide in 1889 in the
infamous Mayerling incident. (Please refer to it in the attachment: House of Habsburg, pages 6 & 7.) The
Emperor himself got himself a girlfriend in the person of Katharina Schratt who became his confidante
but probably not more than that. Nevertheless, the Emperor provided her with a small palace in Vienna
and another home in Bad Ischl.
Sadly, Elizabeth was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist while she visited Geneva in 1898. The
Emperor never fully recovered from the loss of his wife. In June, 1914, Franz Ferdinand and his
morganatic (not of royal aristocratic standards) wife were assassinated on a visit to Sarajevo, which
would be the opening shot for the First World War.
In November, 1916, while the war was at its peak, the Emperor caught a cold which developed into
pneumonia, killing him.
For details about the fascinating HOUSE OF HABSBURG, please refer to the following addendum of 12
pages.
THE HOUSE OF HABSBURG
_Let the story start with the early 19th century, when Archduke Franz Karl of Austria and
his bride Sophie of Bavaria (Germany) produced 5 children, one of whom became
Emperor of Austria, - and after the defeat of the Hungarian revolution of 1848 and the
formation of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, also king of Hungary. His name was
Franz Joseph. Here is his picture:
Franz Joseph had 4 siblings, one of whom was the
Archduke Karl Ludwig. He and his wife produced
4 children. One of them was Franz Ferdinand , who,
after the death of his father, became heir to the
throne. Fate intervened as he was assassinated in
Sarajevo which ultimately gave an impetus for World
War I to break out.
Franz Ferdinand's brother, Otto Franz and his wife
produced 2 children. One of them was Charles, born
in 1887, who became Emperor in 1916 when Franz
Joseph died and ruled as Charles I of Austria and
Charles IV (Karoly IV) of Hungary. Well, not for long,
because the war ended in 1918 and he was deposed.
Give the man a medal, because he was spunky enough to try twice to regain the
throne of Hungary in 1921. Both times he was rejected by then-Governor Nicholas
Horthy who decided that Hungary had enough of the Habsburgs. Although Horthy
reinstated the country as a kingdom (based on the fact that St. Stephen's crown was
physically situated within the country), but without a king.
When I was still in the travel business, I came to know the Hungarian gentleman
Guido Gorgey who was working for another travel agency. He was also a talented
writer and his travelogues appeared in trade magazines. After retirement, when I
subscribed to the Hungarian newspaper MAGYARSAG, I was happy to see one of
his articles published in the paper under the title: A kiraly nadragja, or The
king's pants. I will try to give you excerpts from the article as it relates to Charles
IV, pretender to the throne of Hungary. Guido writes:
"...... My father was a military officer who fought in the First World War and
following the war was serving in Szombathely (on the Austro-Hungarian border) as
Captain in the Hungarian Army. It was on Holy Saturday, March 26, 1921, when
King Charles IV and his entourage arrived by train from Switzerland where the king
had been exiled. Having spent the night in Szombathely, the king continued to
Budapest on Easter Sunday to meet with Regent Nicholas Horthy, to demand the
reinstatement of his status as King of Hungary. The meeting apparently didn't go
well, because by Sunday evening Charles was back in Szombathely. The next
morning the king named my father his Adjutant, working with the king on military
matters during his stay in Hungary the following week.
House of Habsburg (continued)
The king had arrived in Hungary practically without luggage, wearing his military
uniform as his only clothing. My father, being of the same stature as the king,
offered his own uniform pants to him which the king gratefully accepted. Charles
obviously had made plans for a subsequent return to the country, because when he
left Szombathely, he asked Colonel Lehar (brother of Franz Lehar the composer)
to keep his uniform for him.
In October of the same year, 1921, Charles and his entourage again attempted to
regain power and entered Hungary this time with a substantial Austrian military
escort. On his stopover, he requisitioned his old uniform from Colonel Lehar, and
dressed in my father's pants he continued by train to Budapest. Surprisingly, he was
welcomed by dignitaries at cities along the way, and even some of the Hungarian
military units swore allegiance to him, joining the royal train.
Horthy got word of the usurper's approach and ordered his troops to stop the king
on the outskirts of the capital at Budaors. Horthy's troops fired on the train. The
king's defenders returned the fire. Charles, seeing the possibility of spilling blood,
stopped the skirmish and gave himself up. He was escorted first to the Abbey at
Tihany by the Balaton where his wife, Zita, also joined him. (Those two rooms in
the cloister would be a tourist attraction until 1945!) Subsequently, Charles and Zita
were taken to Baja by the Danube where a British warship awaited them to escort
the royal couple down the Danube to the Black Sea. Eventually they ended up in
exile on the island of Madeira.
They were unable to find a suitable and inexpensive home in the capital city of
FunchaI, so they opted for a drafty house on the hilly and unhealthy Quinta do
Monte. The house didn't even have heat. Soon their_ children, including Crown
Prince Otto Habsburg, joined them from Switzerland. In April of the following year
the king, walking to town on a rainy, cold day, contracted pneumonia, of which he
died within a month.
When I had a chance to visit the church of Igreja do Monte where the royal
couple is buried, I was wondering if Charles had been dressed in his military
uniform, wearing my father's pants, as he was laid to eternal rest?...."
We shall return to some tidbits about the Habsburgs on the following pages.
House of Habsburg
(The crack) House of Habsburgs As it often happens with aristocratic
families where intermarriages take
place, the mixing of blood over the centuries produces (mildly speaking) ”odd"
progeny. The Habsburg family was no exception to that. I have selected a few juicy
details from some of their representatives for your enjoyment.
Let’s start with the patriarch, Franz Joseph I of Austria. Because his uncle,
Emperor Ferdinand was so-to-speak weak-minded and his father didn't care about
affairs of State, his mother, Sophie of Bavaria, brought him up strictly to prepare
him for the role. He was already a Colonel in the Austrian Army at age13! He never
shed his uniform throughout his reign, which began in 1848 when Franz Joseph was
only 18years old. As you may know, the Hungarian revolution broke out on March
15, 1848, demanding a loosening of ties with the Habsburg rulers. His uncle, the
mentally unfit Emperor Ferdinand got cold feet at first and agreed to many of the
demands made on the royal house. While this was going on, Franz Joseph was sent
to the Italian front where he distinguished himself fighting along Field Marshal
Radetzky. (That's where the Radetzky March, composed by Johann Strauss the
Senior, comes from!)
Following the abdication of Ferdinand, Franz Joseph was crowned Emperor in
December of 1848 and adopted a rigid style dealing with the minorities under his
realm which did not endear him to Hungarians, either. The only saving grace
was his marriage, in 1854, to Princess Elizabeth of Bavaria, who loved the
Hungarians and even learned to speak our language. As a reward, a bridge
(Ferenc Jozsef hid) was named after Franz Joseph, which has nowadays morphed
into the Szabadsag hid, or Freedom bridge, opposite the Gellert Hotel, connecting
Buda with Pest.
At one point it looked like the Hungarians were winning their freedom fight and
might even break into Vienna. Franz Joseph then asked Russian Czar Nicholas for
help. The Czar sent 200,000 troops against Hungary which crushed the revolution.
On October 6, 1849, twelve of its leading figures were put to death at Arad,
Transylvania. This date has been remembered by Hungarians ever since. Four years
later a Hungarian nationalist struck the Emperor from behind with a knife, but the
thick broadcloth of his uniform saved his life. You'd think that an Emperor would
be wearing some fine, silky material! That was not the case, as the Hungarian
novelist Lajos Zilahy points out in his novel, The Dukays which I found to be a
fascinating piece of literature. Zilahy leads us into the Emperor's night chamber,
where he nervously struggles with the cloth (zippers have not yet been invented) to
get to his "family jewels" upon the appointed hour when his mistress, the actress
Katharine Schratt shows up. Yes, despite having married a world-class beauty in
Elizabeth, the old man maintained his liaison and even built a villa for her at Bad
Ischl.
Franz Joseph died in 1916, at age 86, his 68-year reign being the third longest after
Louis XIV of France and Johannes II of Liechtenstein.
House of Habsburg (continued)
Now, if you remember your visit to Budapest, next to the Franz Joseph/Freedom
bridge you'll find the graceful span of the Elizabeth bridge across the Danube,
connecting the area of St. Gellert's Statue with the beginning of Vaci utca, the
premier shopping street of Budapest. Elizabeth, or Erzsebet, bridge was named
after the bride of Franz Joseph, the beauteous Princess Elizabeth of Bavaria.
The Emperor's formidable mother, Sophie of Bavaria,
was hoping that she could match him up with her
sister Ludovika's eldest daughter, Helene. Instead,
Franz Joseph became besotted with Helene'syounger
sister, Elizabeth. Born in Munich, she attracted the
attention of the Emperor at the resort of Bad Ischl, the
same place where he had built a villa for his lover....
(The first time they had met she was only 10 and made
E l i s a b e t h ,
D u c h e s s
i n
B a v a r i a
Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary
no impression on him, but by 1853, when she was 16, he
fell in love and proposed to marry her the following year.)
An independent soul, Elizabeth had difficulty adapting
to the strict etiquette of the Habsburg court where she was
denied raising her own children who were raised by her
mother-in-law Sophie. She gave birth to 4 children daughter Sophie lived but 2 years, then came Gisela,
followed by the tragic crown prince Rudolf (we'll talk
about him later) and a decade later Marie Valerie.
Elizabeth's marriage fell apart, undone partly by the
death of son Rudolf and by her own erratic behavior.
Before we go on, note the interesting first name of her
mother, Ludovika, after whom Hungary's "West Point"
military academy was named, whose graduates included
my Uncle Kornel and his son-in-laws Ivan Salacz and
Istvan Horvath.
Elizabeth, or Sissi as she was known, tried to drown her pain by traveling
extensively and by preserving her beauty with all sorts of regimens. She had a 20inch waistline and was probably an anorexic. She packed her face with slices of
veal, then squeezed the meat juice to boil and to drink. She had absolutely
gorgeous, long dark hair which she brushed separating it to spread over her pillow
so as not to mess up the strands by morning. I wish I had been there to help
her...
She was also suspected of taking on lovers, among them George Middleton,
reputed to be the father of Clementine Ogilvy Rozier, the future Mrs. Winston
Churchill. She learned to speak Hungarian fluently and in that effort she was
helped by Count Andrassy, Franz Joseph's Hungarian Foreign Minister, with
whom she maintained probably more than a Platonic relationship. (Platonic love is
like visiting a wine cellar to smell but not to taste the wine...) She continued
House of Habsburg, page 8
traveling on her Mediterranean yacht, spending time on the Riviera and the island
of Corfu as if she were trying to escape from herself. She also maintained a
summer residence at Godollo, Hungary, which my wife and I had the pleasure of
visiting while it was being restored following its brutal destruction by the
Communists. The fabulous Godollo castle later became the hunting lodge of
Regent and Mrs. Nicholas Horthy.
On September 10, 1898 she was in Geneva when she was fatally stabbed by an
anarchist using a knitting needle. The strong pressure from her corset disguised
the fatal injury to the heart until the corset was removed. Her last words to her
Hungarian escort, Countess Sztaray, were: "Mi tortent velem?" (What happened
to me?). She was buried in the Imperial crypt in Vienna.
It is interesting to consider the parallel between her life and that of Diana, Princess
of Wales. Both were free spirits, trying to unbind themselves from conventional
court protocol. There is another connection for us with "Sissi", and that is a movie
starring Romy Schneider, entitled "Forever my love", which we saw on April 15,
1962 when our daughter Edith first gave notice of wanting to emerge from her
mother's womb. - Sissi was also related to "mad" King Ludwig II of Bavaria who
was her cousin. My wife and I were fortunate in having visited Ludwig's castle,
Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. Musically speaking, Fritz Kreisler composed an opera
about Elizabeth in 1932, while Ava Gardner played the Empress in the 1968 film
"Mayerling."
**
Elizabeth and Franz Joseph had four children. Their third child, born in
1858, was a son, Archduke Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, Hungary
and Bohemia. He grew up to have quite liberal views with regard to the
minorities and Austrian affairs of state, thus straining the relationship
with his father, the Emperor. His relationship with his mother was also
cold and distant. At age 23 Rudolf married Princess Stephanie, the
daughter of Leopold II, king of Belgium. Elizabeth never liked her
daughter-in-law. Two years later they had a daughter, but by that time
the couple drifted apart. Rudolf started drinking and womanizing.
Rudolf bought Mayerling and made it into a hunting lodge where, among others,
the 17 year old Hungarian Baroness Marie Vetsera became his consort and lover.
The Emperor demanded that the couple end the relationship. Soon thereafter, in
January 1889, the couple was found dead at Mayerling, supposedly as part of a
suicide pact, where Rudolf may have shot his mistress in the head, then killed
himself. The Crown Prince was officially declared to be in a state of mental
imbalance so that he could be buried according to Catholic church rules. Vetsera's
body was smuggled out of Mayer1ing at night to be buried at an Abbey in
Heiligenkreuz, which the Emperor quickly converted into a convent for Carmelite
nuns who daily pray for the lovers.
House of Habsburg, page 8
The affair does not end there. There have been accusations that their death was a
political assassination plot committed by the French; another postulates that the
lovers had a violent struggle, or that they were victims of a third party attack. In
any case, in order to get permission of the church for Rudolf s burial, Franz
Joseph wrote to the Pope, giving some details of his son's death. There are
suggestions that Rudolf may have been asked to become the king of an independent
Hungary which the Austrians uncovered. All this remains a mystery until the Papal
Archives decides to release the Emperor's letter. Just recently, in December, 1992
the remains of Baroness Vetsera were stolen from the cemetery. When recovered,
her skull showed no evidence of bullet holes. A separate report on Rudolf’s body
showed evidence of a struggle. The gun found on the premises, which did not
belong to Rudolf, showed all six barrels had been fired. So what did the lovers die
of? The story of Mayerling just goes on and on....
&&&&&
If you look at the family tree I prepared, the next in line of succession to the throne
would have been Franz Joseph's eldest brother, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian,
but he died in 1867 as Emperor of Mexico, - another disaster of its own. Next came
Archduke Karl Ludwig, who renounced his succession rights in favor of his son,
Franz Ferdinand. We will pick up his story after talking about "Ferdi" first.
The Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian came into this world two years after Franz
Joseph, in 1832. It is reported that he may have had the genes not of the Habsburgs
but one of the Napoleon brothers, Louis Bonaparte, whom he resembled to a tee. In
fact, following a military revolt in Mexico Napoleon III's troops captured Mexico
City in 1863 and proclaimed Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian as Emperor. He and
his wife Carlotta (or Charlotte) of Belgium accepted the Mexican crown. Alas, the
happy union didn't last long. Napoleon had a change of heart and 4 years later
withdrew his troops from Mexico, leaving it open for an uprising. Charlotte managed
to escape but Maximilian was caught, tried and executed by the Mexicans. A tragic
end to another Habsburg...
&&&&&
The third child of the royal couple Franz Joseph and Elizabeth was Archduke
Karl Ludwiq, born in quick succession in 1833, and became "heir presumptive"
to the throne. He had three marriages. The first time he married into the Duchy
of Saxony, but the wife died without bearing a child. Karl Ludwig's second wife was
Maria Annunziata of the Two Sicilies who bore 4 children, one of them being the
noted Franz Ferdinand, born in 1863, famous for being instrumental in starting
World War I. When Maria Annunziata, too, died, Karl Ludwig married again, this
time into the Portuguese aristocracy. And that is kind of the short story of the
third Habsburg brother. And now it's time to pose for a little historical
background surrounding the role of his son Franz Ferdinand.
House of Habsburg, page 8
Turbulent times
One tends to compare today's confounded world in the
21st and the just concluded 20th centuries with earlier
times which are thought to be more peaceful, more laidback than our modern world. One look at the timelines of
history, though, and one quickly realizes what a turbulent
world it was in the 19th century!
The world had barely had time to recover from the French Revolution begun in
1789, Napoleon's military exploits into Italy, Austria, Spain and Russia, the end
of the Holy Roman Empire, when the focus shifts to the Americas where Simon
Bolivar emerges as dictator of Venezuela and Colombia, the U.S. declares war on
Britain, then Wellington defeats Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, banishing him to
St. Helena. The Turks and Greeks are at each other's throats by 1822; the
Egyptian fleet is destroyed at Navarino, Russia invades Armenia (then called
Erivan) and declares war on Turkey. In 1830, as Franz Joseph is born, the
nationalist revolution in Paris launches the continent-wide insurrections with the
Poles rising against the Czar, the Italians rising for national independence and
the mix of nationalities in the Balkans itching for trouble. Davy Crockett is killed
at Alamo, Britain is engaged in the first opium war with China and wins
HongKong as a peace prize. Lajos Kossuth leads the Hungarian revolution
against the Habsburgs in 1848 and Karl Marx meets Friedrich Engels in Paris.
And that sets the tone for the world to really turn topsy-turvy.
Prelude to World War I
In the Balkans Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austria by the Turks
following their disastrous war with Russia. Bosnia was populated by three ethnic
groups: Croats, Serbs and Muslims. As these territories were annexed into the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, nationalistic unrest broke out, fueled mainly by the
Serbian group called the Black Hand. When they learned that the heir- apparent to
the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand, was about to visit Sarajevo in
June of 1914, they decided to assassinate him.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand (born in 1863) became heir to the imperial throne
when his cousin, the Crown Prince Rudolf died in 1889 and his father, Karl
Ludwig died in 1896. Franz Ferdinand (or FF as is commonly noted) was not a
very nice man. He was rough-and-tumble, uncultured with a short temper and a
suspicious nature. His staff couldn't stand him. Furthermore, he became even
more reclusive following his morganatic marriage to Sophie Chotek von Chotkova
in 1900. (Morganatic is defined in the dictionary as marriage between a noble
person and a person of inferior rank. In this case the marriage partner does not
assume the rank of his or her partner and even the children do not inherit the
title, nor the property the higher-ranked member.) FF and Sophie did have
children who remained commoners for the rest of their lives.
House of Habsburg, page 9
Franz Ferdinand had a different view of the Monarchy from his uncle, the Emperor
Franz Joseph. His vision was, once becoming Emperor, to replace the AustroHungarian dual monarchy with a format which would allow the Slavs to have an
equal voice. Another idea was to form a federation of all nationalities under the
Emperor. While this may have saved the Empire, many of the minorities, but
especially the Serbs, had autonomy on their agenda and resented any association
with members of the Monarchy.
The Court in Vienna decided that Franz Ferdinand had to be paraded among the
people to make him "look imperial." They sent him to inspect the armed forces at
Sarajevo. On June 28th, 1914, while riding in a motorcade through the streets of
Sarajevo, FF and his wife Sophie were shot and killed by a member of Black Hand,
Gavrilo Princip and his conspirators. As for Shopie, back in Vienna she would not
even be allowed to ride in the same car as her husband because of his morganatic
marriage, but in Sarajevo they made an exception being that it was the couple's
14th wedding anniversary. The motorcade consisted of 6 automobiles and was
supposed to take the imperial couple from the army barracks to City Hall. FF and
Sophie were in the second car.
The assassination
The crowds along the way were festive, cheering the Habsburg heir and his wife.
There were seven members of Black Hand mixed in the crowd, stationed strung
along the parade route. As FF's car passed the first assassin, the Muslim
Mehmedbasic, got cold feet and did nothing. The next man in line, Cabrinovic,
took the bomb from his pocket, struck it against a lamp post to charge it and threw
the bomb directly at Franz Ferdinand. The driver, seeing the black object hurtling
toward them, stepped on the accelerator. FF also saw it coming and raised his
arm to deflect it from his wife sitting next to him. The bomb glanced off of his
raised arm and landed on the pavement The explosion injured a dozen
spectators. The dignitaries quickly assessed the situation and decided to proceed.
Cabrinovic swallowed a cyanide tablet, but the poison was old and instead of
killing him, it made him vomit He tried to escape by jumping in the Miljacka
river, which, to his chagrin, was only a few inches deep. He was arrested. The
motorcade proceeded to City Hall where there was a reception. One of the
conspirators, Gavrilo Princip, strolled into Moritz Schiller's food store to buy a
sandwich. After the reception the party took off for the governor's residence, supposedly
taking a different route but failed to tell the specifics to the drivers.
When General Potoirek, riding in the front seat of FF's car, realized the mistake, he
told the driver to reverse direction. The car backed up, stopping directly in front
of Schiller's food store, a mere 5 feet from Princip, munching on a
sandwich.
Princip pulled a pistol from his pocket and fired twice, then turned the gun on
himself, but was mobbed by the crowd. He swallowed his poison which came
from
same
batch as his conspirator's and made him violently ill but did
House of Habsburg
(continued)
not kill him. Franz Ferdinand's car was speeding toward the Governor's residence,
with blood streaming from FF's mouth. He had been hit in the neck. Sophie was
hit in the abdomen and sank from her seat. The royal couple exchanged glances
and died.
The stage was set for World War I.
&&&&&
Franz Ferdinand's brother, Otto Franz had died in 1906, 8 years prior to FF's
assassination. The House of Habsburg had to look for an heir presumptive to the throne
of Franz Joseph. That person was Karl Franz Josef Ludwig Hubert Georg Maria von
Habsburg-Lothringen, known simply as Charles I of Austria, born in 1887. When
Emperor Franz Joseph died in the middle of World War I in 1916, Charles took over
the reins of government and also had himself crowned as IV. Karoly of Hungary. That is
why in the family tree he is shown as Emperor Charles I/IV. Shortly after
assuming his role, he entered into secret negotiations with the French for a separate
peace, but the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau backed out. By this time
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was wracked by inner turmoil, with various ethnic
groups creating the tension. Charles I was sensitive to their needs and took steps
toward meeting their demands, however, things spiraled out of control and the
Emperor's government was forced to ask for an armistice.
On October 31, 1918 Hungary officially pulled out
of the Monarchy and the war ended on the 11th of
November, a day we still celebrate every year.
Charles fled to Switzerland but did not abdicate
the throne, because he considered his duty as a
mandate from God. Instead, he tried to restore
the Monarchy and, as noted in our story entitled:
"The king's pants", he entered Hungary only to be
rebuffed twice by Regent Nicholas Horthy's regime.
As related earlier, Charles was banished to Madeira
where he died in 1922. His remains, except for his
heart and the heart of his spouse the Empress Zita
which repose in the Loreto Chapel, are still kept on
the island. Throughout his life Charles was devoted
to the Blessed Sacrament and Pope John Paul II,
recognizing his exemplary life, beatified him on the
4th of October, 2004. The "'miracle" necessary for the
beatification occurred when a Brazilian nun
recovered from a debilitating illness as she prayed
for his intervention. Another miracle is needed for
Charles to be canonized as a saint of the Roman
Catholic Church.
House of Habsburg, page 11 (
By now you are comfortable with the fact that the House of Habsburg was indeed
a colorful "house", with each of its "inhabitants" contributing something
memorable, something weird, something tragic, something funny and, indeed, even
something holy to their story. Before we conclude our little visit with the
Habsburgs, let me say something about Charles' father, the Archduke Otto Francis.
who was known as "Otto der Schone", or Otto the Handsome. Indeed, he is
remembered for a caper in a hallway of the Hotel Sacher (the birthplace of the
famous Sacher torte!), where he was spotted entering a lady's room wearing nothing
else but a sword... Alas, Otto's last two years of life were raked with illness and he
completely withdrew from public life.
As you can see from the family tree, Emperor Charles I/IV and Zita of BourbonParma had 8 children (the biographies acknowledge only five boys, the so-called
"issues", but there were another 3 girls as well). As a conclusion for our story, I want
to say something about their oldest, the first-born Otto von Habsburg , Crown
Prince of Austria, godson of Emperor Franz Joseph. (His name had come up earlier
on these pages when I spoke about playing the "wrong hymn" on the organ at Mass
when he came to visit our church of St. Stephen of Hungary.)
I had met the gentleman twice in my life. The first time, when he came on a visit to
Toledo, Ohio in the early 1950s, our very wonderful old friend, Dr. Geza Farkas and
my father, representing the city's Hungarian population, escorted Otto throughout
the city and there was a reception for him at one of the hotels where I was introduced
to him and we shook hands. The second time was in New York when Father Emeric
Szlezak, O.F.M., asked me (why me? I don't remember) to escort two of the lovely
young ladies to a formal reception at a hotel to meet the man. Since Margie
Paszkoncza and Emese Polgari were rather nice looking, I was happy to accept my
role in this "patriotic duty." Otto von Habsburg is indeed a very well educated,
multi-lingual (including fluent Hungarian) person, who was then a member of the
European Parliament and President of the International Pan-European Union. His
very eloquent and incisive articles appear to this day in the newspapers. Many of
them have been translated into Hungarian, including one written on his 9oth
birthday, which I clipped for my own files. Otto died July 4, 2011.
Otto lived in Bavaria as a citizen of Germany. Austria forbids the use of noble
titles and the preposition "von" by the Habsburgs, even if one is pretender to the
throne of Austria and of Hungary as well. His family, as you recall, was exiled to
Switzerland at the end of World War I, and after his father's unsuccessful effort to
enter Hungary (in my friend Guido Gorgey's father's pants, no less...), the family
retreated to Madeira. When Charles I died there in 1922, the 10-year-old Otto
became heir to the Habsburg legacy. Eventually, he would graduate from a
Catholic University in 1935, but when Hitler's Nazi regime annexed Austria in
1938, Otto protested it and for that he was sentenced to death in absentia. He,
together with his mother and other family members eventually escaped to spend
the war years in Washington D.C. In 1966 he was allowed to return to his home
country, where Otto became an advocate of the European Union and
instrumental in Hungary's entry. Otto would have made a fine King of Hungary!
House of Habsburg, page 12
Otto married the Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen and they had seven children.
When my wife and I were in Hungary, one of his 23 grandchildren was married
in Matthias Coronation Church in Budapest.
+
He is a constant reminder for us of the role which the new Russia under Vladimir
Putin is pursuing. He opined recently: "Yeltsin was chaotic, but at least he still had
some democratic principles. Putin, a former secret policeman from the age of
twenty-three, has a completely different mentality. We don't take proper notice of
it. Once again, one doesn't learn from history....!" The Archduke was convinced
that Putin might become a tyrant, something between a new Hitler or Stalin. And
on that point we certainly agree.
A personal remark ...
Reviewing what I have just written and discussing it with the family, we sadly
noted that there was not a drop of Hungarian blood in all of these Habsburgs, yet
they ruled Hungary (and Austria and a number of other smaller countries) for
centuries. How tragic that we, as a nation, could not produce a king acceptable to
Hungarian standards, except for the Hunyadi brothers involved in battling the
Turks, and thus keeping them from the portals of Vienna, of all places, while
shedding Hungarian blood in their defense!
And to finish... To round out the list, let's not forget about the last two Habsburg
siblings, Nos. 5 and 6 on the family tree. Maria Anna, born in 1835 lived a short 4
years. Archduke Ludwig Viktor, born in 1842, remained a bachelor, despite his
mother's efforts to marry him off. However, as a result of his very public
homosexuality, his brother, the Emperor Franz Joseph, forbade him to stay in
Vienna. He was also a transvestite and such he was banished to Klemheim Palace
near Salzburg where he lived to be 76.
So there you have it. You may be wondering why am I doing all this writing?
St. Bernard on knowledge Recently, I came across a brief essay on
knowledge by St. Bernard, founder of the Cistercian Order. Here is a synopsis:
"There are some who want to know for the sake of knowing something. That is
cheap curiosity. Then there are others who want to know something so others can
admire them. That's ugly vanity! Others want to acquire knowledge so that they can
sell it for money or for fame. That's profiteering. And then there are those who want
to learn to serve and enrich others. That is love. There are also those who want to
know so that they can better themselves. That's wisdom. These last two are the
only ones which do not exploit their knowledge."
I would like to be considered among them, although I truly had fun delving into
subjects like the one about the Habsburgs which we explored together. And I hope
we all gained enjoyment out of it.
74
HUNGARY IN THE 19th CENTURY
Demographics
In order to better understand the various social strata in Hungary, we will consider an article referring to
early 1767, in the 18th century. Peasantry in Hungary had several strata, serfdom (jobbagysag) being the
lowest level. The serfs represented a minority within the peasantry. These serfs had a house and certain
land/property which they received from a landlord (usually of nobility status) against a commitment of
cash, produce or physical labor on the landlord’s property. The size of their property, until the time of
Maria Theresa’s ruling in 1767, had not been fixed and depended on the generosity of the landlord. The
1767 law determined the size of such property as 7 to 10 hectares where 1 hectare equaled 2.471 acres.
Thus, a serf could have been given from 17 to 25 acres to work on, generally with 4 horses or cattle
included. Additionally, they raised pigs, poultry and other animals as well. Estimates call for about
110,000 families who would fall within this category.
In the early 18th century many of the serfs (around 35% of them) were either unable or unwilling to commit
to such property ownership. They were called “zseller”, or cotter, who sometimes rented a piece of a
serf’s property, or worked for wages clearing forests or tending vineyards. Approximately 400,000
families were in the cotter category. More disturbing is the fact that nearly 1 million families fell below
the property-owner status. These agrarian workers were landless indigents whose status did not change
for the better even after the liberation of serfdom in 1849. Moreover, moving up within this social
structure was cumbersome for descendants of this generation.
Not having reliable population data for the 19th century, I must refer to a census ordered by Maria
Theresa’s son, Emperor Joseph II in 1784-87. According to these figures, 6.5 million people were counted
as Hungarian, 650,000 as Croatian and 1.5 million as Transylvanian. Of these figures, about 400,000 fell
into the “titled” status of the nobility, with close to 500 families being members of the aristocracy. The
top 80 families included names such as Eszterhazy, Batthany, Erdody, Palffy, etc.
Reformist efforts
The political and social changes brought about by the French Revolution, coupled with the reformist
efforts of Emperor Joseph II caused many benefits to trickle down through subsequent generations in
Hungary. The road system saw major improvement, making it more accessible for produce to reach
various markets from the farms to the cities. Traditionally, many of Hungary’s roads and adjacent
territories would be under water each spring as flood waters inundate much of the land. A proponent for
regulation of the waterways was Count Istvan Szechenyi whose efforts brought about major changes in
flood control, providing benefits for the rural economy. Specific regulation of the Danube river took on
urgency when, in the spring of 1838 the level of flood waters in Pest reached 927 cm (31 feet), causing
the collapse of 2200 houses in the city. Frank Liszt gave a benefit performance in Pozsony to help the
victims of the flood.
Music and musicians
Speaking about music and musicians, the Eszterhazys offered Joseph Haydn a permanent place for
creating and performing music. Franz Liszt composed his Hungarian Rhapsodies in which he reached into
the Hungarian folk music for ideas. Liszt, who gave his first public concert at age 12, was often invited to
the social affairs given by Count Apponyi. In the course of these musical soirees he had, on many
75
occasions, an opportunity to see Hungarian folk dances performed by Hungarian noblemen and women
in costumes. He transcribed compositions by the celebrated Hungarian gypsy musician Janos Bihari, who
had great influence over the music of such luminaries as Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven and
others. Bihari’s chief contribution was his music in the “verbunkos” style, or recruiting song. (The word
has its origins in the German “Werbung” for recruiting.)
Enlightenment trickles down
Count George Festetich established an agricultural school called “Georgicon”, which boasted to have 96
professors and more than 1100 students. - Healthcare needed attention as out of 1,000 newborn babies
288 died before the age of 1. Life expectancy was a mere 39 years.
In the spirit of Enlightenment, the Hungarian Diet (national assembly) published its 1825-27 assembly in
the Hungarian vernacular. Use of the Hungarian language proliferated, feeding the rising nationalistic
sentiment throughout the region as neighboring countries, like the Croats and Serbs were also
encouraged to use their vernacular in place of the formerly official German. An outstanding guardian and
promoter of modern Hungarian was the writer Ferenc Kazinczy (1759-1831).
The invention of steam powered engines affected daily life and economic development in the 19th century.
They were transplanted to Hungary as trains and river boats revolutionized transportation. The first train
connection between Pest and Vac in the Danube bend opened in 1846.
The first Hungarian military academy under the name of Ludovika, - named after Empress Elizabeth’s
mother - had its cornerstone laid in 1830, but its language remained German until 1872. - Napoleon
attempted an incursion into Hungary in the early part of the first decade, but was confronted by 21,000
noblemen at the city of Gyor and was forced to abandon his expansionist plans in Hungary.
In 1848 Jozsef Katona wrote the historical drama “Bank ban”, which had anti-imperialist implications and
could not be performed in Buda theaters until 1835, five years after the death of its author. As we pointed
out on page 38 of this work in connection with King Andrew II, Katona’s stage play was put to music by
Ferenc Erkel, the composer of the Hungarian national anthem.
The story of the Hungarian national anthem is reproduced on a separate sheet enclosed herewith. It is
from the 1990 Spring edition of IMPROMPTU, a circular newsletter I used to send out periodically to
former members of the Voice of Faith Choir in New York City.
And while we are telling “stories”, let me include here the strange and unique story of Joseph Simonyi,
son of a butcher from Nagykallo, who enlisted in the army at age 16 as a private to fight Napoleon’s troops
in Austria. He displayed unusual bravery, for which he was promoted to sergeant in the cavalry and
through further wartime successes he attained the rank of lieutenant. In 1802 he was decorated with the
newly created Order of Maria Theresa and two years later he became a Baron. In the 1807 National
Assembly he appeared as a member of the nobility, then continuing his military career, an enemy bullet
struck him in the chest, but his cigarette case saved him from death. Settling down in Transylvania he
married into a rich family and as commander of an army division, wrote his memoirs. In 1828, for reasons
which remain murky, he lost his position, his rank and was incarcerated in a fortress where he died at age
61. In recognition of his service to the Empire, he was reinterred as a hero in Budapest in 1903. His son
became a cabinet minister in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
76
Until 1837 all matches used in Hungary (and in Europe) had a tip of sulphur which, when rubbed against
rough surface, would ignite. In that year, the Hungarian professor John Irinyi, teaching chemistry at Berlin
University invented a new match with a phosphorous head, much easier to ignite and not having the smell
of sulphur after ignition. Irinyi established his match factory in Budapest in 1839 but became vexed by
the competition and sold it five years later.
To assure domestic peace, the Gendarmerie was established in 1881 with 8,000 fearless-looking
members. They were on foot-patrol in most rural communities and were the long arm of the law, police,
jury and judge combined. This was a very effective and respected force because they knew their individual
charges in the villages. However, as the Nazi-driven demands of WWII increased, the gendarmerie was
regretfully involved in rounding up innocent people who became victims of the Holocaust.
The first telephone exchange was placed in operation in Budapest in May, 1881, with 500 initial
subscribers. A bank of telephone operators would connect the lines by hand in the central office. The
title for inventing the switchboard belongs to Tibor Puskas who built the first prototype in 1879 while
working in Paris.
Another milestone was the licensing of the Hungarian Broadcasting Company in 1880 which provided
cable connections to major European offices, including Reuter’s in London. The company later expanded
into providing radio transmissions and a new era was born.
The Chain bridge
The first permanent bridge across the Danube opened for traffic on November 21st, 1849. Called the Chain
Bridge, or Lanc Hid, it replaced the unreliable pontoon bridge over the Danube and had a major role in
uniting the two parts of the capital on the banks of the river in 1873. The idea was proposed by Count
Istvan Szechenyi, who had been stranded on the Pest side when his father died in Vienna 1820 and
Szechenyi was unable to cross the river to get to his funeral. Frustrated by the inadequacy of the pontoon
bridge (which was out of commission due to ice on the river at the time), Szechenyi commissioned the
Englishman Clark who had designed two suspension bridges across the Thames in London. Most of the
funds were provided by Salamon Rotschild. The bridge was designed by Thierney Clark, and the chief
engineer in charge of construction was called Adam Clark. The bridge became the emblematic structure
of the city.
As I pointed out in my article dated June, 2008 (In translation, page 95), there was violence against the
bridge two times during the bridge’s existence. First, the Austrians attempted to blow it up during the
1848/9 revolution, but the explosives failed to ignite. The second time the Germans destroyed it during
the siege of Budapest in 1945. - Another story has to do with the sculptor John Marschalko, an ancestor
of the Marschalkos who had sponsored my immigration to the United States in 1951. The ancestor John
had sculpted the two lions for the bridgehead. At the opening ceremony a little boy climbed the
superstructure of the bridge and clinging to the lion’s head cried out in a loud voice: “The lion has no
tongue!” Surely, the sculptor had neglected to carve out the tongue. When the crowd joined the boy in
laughter, John Marschalko became so distraught with shame that he flung himself off the bridge into the
river and committed suicide.
77
Hungarian revolution of 1848
As pointed out earlier in this study, following the outbreak of the French revolution in February, 1848,
revolutionary leaders of Hungary were hoping to seize the moment and addressed the Emperor,
requesting a new Constitution for Hungary with several new freedoms specified in a Declaration of Twelve
Points. The document, a work of Janos Irinyi (not the inventor of the new match) and Sandor Petofi, was
printed without permission of the Austrian censors, read to the public on March 15th, 1848 and taken to
Vienna by a parliamentary delegation the very next day. The Emperor seemed to have caved in to the
demands and promised to issue a new Constitution for all nations under his reign. Lajos Kossuth, one of
the leaders of the opposition, persuaded imperial governor Archduke Istvan to appoint Lajos Batthany as
Hungary’s new Prime Minister, which the Emperor acknowledged and approved.
These were the initial moments of the 1848/49 Hungarian revolution, which is discussed in more detail in
an earlier chapter. With the tragic end to the Hungarian cause, the 1850s developed a “national passive
resistance”, of which one of the major representative was Ferenc Deak, former Minister of Justice who
managed to survive the post-revolutionary revenge of the Austrian government. This resistance
movement manifested itself in refusing to pay taxes until forced, refusing to “understand” commands in
the German language, demanding translators in courts and in offices, answering questions with “I don’t
know”, responding to inquiries with “I didn’t see it” or “didn’t hear it”, and developing obstructionism in
all demands coming from Vienna.
The battle of Solferino and its consequences
The battle of Solferino has something to do with Hungary, so let me tell you about it. Until 1848, Italy
had not achieved independence. It was divided among foreign rulers, primarily between Austria and
France. The Austrians crushed a rebellion in 1849, but ten years later Piedmontese Prime Minister, the
Conte di Cavour, declared war against Austria. Some Hungarian military units also participated in the
battle of Solferino near Lake Garda between Milan and Verona. Cavour wanted to unify Italy and formed
an alliance with France. This battle was the last major battle in history where all the armies were under
the personal command of their monarchs. The 130,000 Austrian troops were led by 29-year-old Emperor
Franz Joseph I, while the 140,000 French were commanded by Napoleon III. Austria suffered a major
defeat on June 23, 1859, suffering thousands of casualties and the loss of Lombardy. Within a few years
thereafter, with the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy gained its independence.
The significance of this defeat for Hungary was that following the experience, Emperor Franz Joseph eased
his absolutist rule over Hungary and promised a new constitution. His concept of unifying the two
countries with a central federal parliament was strongly opposed by Hungarian leaders, including Ferenc
Deak and his Conservative Party, maintaining that Hungary wanted a freedom of choice based on the 1848
constitution. Deak’s impressive reasoning concluded with the statement: “The constitutional freedom of
(Hungary) is not one over which we can freely dispose. The nation had entrusted us with its preservation
because what power can take away, time and favorable fortune can return. But whatever the nation,
fearing suffering and hardships, abandons, its return is always difficult and doubtful.”
No wonder then that Ferenc Deak earned the moniker of being “The Wise Man of the Homeland” (A haza
bolcse).
78
Red Cross
As a side issue, but a very real one for my family, - as my father had spent a lifetime in the service of the
Red Cross, - the battleground at Solferino portrayed the worst human disaster of the era. The Swiss citizen
Henri Dunant visited the battleground and was shocked by what he had seen. He founded the
International Red Cross whose purpose was (and is) to ease the suffering of wartime civil populations, to
care for the wounded and in peacetime to help on an international scale. Its operation is based on the
1864 Geneva Convention (modified in 1906 and 1929), according to which the wounded are considered
neutral, and everything and everybody displaying the Red Cross flag is inviolable. In the Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy the Hungarian Red Cross was founded in 1881.
The Compromise of 1867
Following a regretful period of passive resistance, Hungarian leaders and the Emperor came to an
agreement as to acknowledging Hungary’s sovereignty, but confirming its union with Austria regarding
foreign affairs, defense and finances culminating in the “personal union” under the reigning Emperor. The
agreement, called “Kiegyezes”, or Compromise, was the work mainly of Ferenc Deak. He also inserted
into the document the necessary clause of “revision” every ten years, which permitted meeting the needs
of future eventualities. The new Hungarian government of 1867 featured Count Gyula Andrassy as the
country’s Prime Minister, followed by Kalman Tisza from 1875 to 1890. When Hungarians spoke of
“happy peacetime”, they were referring to Tisza’s government which found the happy medium in all
issues.
Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elizabeth came to Budapest on June 8th, 1867 for the Emperor’s
coronation in Mathias Coronation Church as Hungary’s king and queen.
Istvan Szechenyi, still lingering in a mental institution, protested the Emperor’s absolutist rule and was
against the Compromise. To give testament to his beliefs he committed suicide on April 8, 1860.
Minorities of the countries neighboring Hungary shared these views with Szechenyi, because in the
Compromise they saw the strengthening of the Hungarian hegemony and the lessening of influence for
minority interests. The nationality law, enacted in 1868, dealt with some of these issues and specifically
empowered the nationalities living within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to use their own language in
petitions and in the lower Courts. They could freely dispose over their own schools and religion and the
official language used in their towns and villages was determined by majority decision of each settlement.
The Compromise brought radical changes in Austria as well. One of its major points required the Emperor
to maintain a constitutional parliamentarian reign, which was until that time missing in Austria’s
experience. This was thought to guarantee the operation of government on similar basis in both Hungary
and in Austria.
Ethnicity
“It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see”, - said Henry David Thoreau. Merely looking
at the Austro-Hungarian compromise, one may conclude that it was an inevitable “band aid” without
which neither country could have achieved its greatest potential. But “seeing what we look at” brings to
light the shortcomings which caused its eventual demise.
79
The problem with the concept of the “Compromise” was that within the “body politic” of Hungary, ethnic
Hungarians represented less than half of the total. The rest of them were ethnic Slovaks, Romanians,
Serbs and Croats, who had nothing common with the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy except for the
artificially imposed “personal union” under the Emperor. In time, Hungary was compelled to conclude
separate documents of compromise with the Croats and others as the ethnicity of our neighbors was
greater than their loyalty to the Crown. And here lies the time bomb which erupted in World War I some
37 years later. The ethnic countries, - each a minority of the whole but a majority when taken together, wanted to have a piece of Hungary but not a piece of Austria. As a matter of fact, in the terms of the
Peace Treaty following WWI, Austria itself received 4,020 square kilometers from Hungary (her “partner”
in the Monarchy!) with a population of 292,000, mostly ethnic Germans!
Ethnicity has always played, - and probably will always play, - a major role in the interrelations of countries.
The world faulted Adolf Hitler for promoting abhorrent ethnic cleansing, but had it not been perpetrated
so brutally against Jews and other racially “different” groups of people, ethnic cleansing was an age-old
socio-political “solution” to irritants of the majority. These symptoms can be found throughout history.
Gypsies, for example, never could properly fit into other societies, hence their peregrinations from India
to Western Europe as vagabond musicians, - the only virtue which provided tolerance toward this ethnic
group. On a small scale, families can exhibit a dislike for each other to the point where one family member
is not welcome at the table on festive occasions, but when the venom penetrates one tribe against
another, such as we are witnessing in Africa, the result is bloodshed and persecution.
And when ethnicity is combined with religion, the outcome is bound to be deadly. This is true of highly
civilized countries, such as between Anglicans and Catholics in the old British Isles, as well as Christians vs.
Moslems in post-Tito’s Yugoslavia in the Balkans.
In the modern European Union state boundaries have fallen, permitting individuals to seek a better
fortune in another country than their own. The French are now complaining about the influx of
immigrants from their former colonies in Africa who carved out whole sections of cities for themselves,
excluding even French people native to that area. Even police are reluctant to enter such enclaves as the
immigrants have their own code of ethics. And a Norwegian coworker of ours is shocked at how gypsies
from Eastern Europe have taken over parts of Oslo, immediately applying for social assistance without
bothering to look for work. I maintain that mixing ethnicities is a poor political choice.
As nations ventured onto the oceans and established colonies in Africa and in the Americas, the obvious
difference in physical appearance and dress set the conquerors apart from the local population. Such
differences are often a cause for conflict and the outcome depends largely on who has the greater firepower. Thousands of American Indians fell prey to the conquistadors and even in the eventual United
States the Indians were driven into conclaves or reservations, where mixing of ethnic groups could not
and would not take place. Today we are seeing the re-emergence of African groups which rise up against
their white oppressors, landlords and business owners. The colonizers thus displaced don’t necessarily
have to have been “guilty” of anything outside of being ethnically different.
In terms of 21st century scenery, the Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims as sub-sets of Islam are fighting
not only themselves but are determined to convert Christians and others to their set of beliefs. Tolerance
for each other is non-existent, violence in the name of Allah, their God, is not a recipe for peaceful
solution. One would think, - and hope, - that the difference between these two groups could be easily
bridged, given that their difference lies mainly as to which descendant line from the Prophet Mohammed
80
is the true one. Without adequate historical background, the British authorities, who combined these
two groups in post-WWI Iraq, committed a great mistake. Keeping the two religiously ethnic groups
separate may have avoided the great divide between centuries-old enemies in the 21st century.
A great historical divide exists between Arabs and Jews, even though both can be traced to the same
ancestor through the biblical Abraham. The Arabs are said to be descendants of Abraham’s son Ishmael
by a slave woman, whereas Jews are descendants of Abraham’s son Isaac, the “promised son” (Genesis
21:1-3). An angel was supposed to have said that Ishmael would be the father of a great nation (Genesis
21:18), whereas Ishmael would be “a wild donkey of a man, his hand will be against everyone and
everyone’s hand against him and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12). If one is
inclined to believe the biblical story, then one can witness the earliest “ethnic cleansing” between these
two brothers, one of whom, Ishmael, was being sent away with contempt in his heart against Isaac.
Today, we are witnessing the tragic outcome of an age-old hatred which might inflame the world one
more time before God might say: Enough already!
Getting back to reality: Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union in the 20th century gobbled up several countries with
different ethnic backgrounds. When the USSR fell apart, most of those countries, except the core Russian
complement, wanted to go their own way, - and many have. Now, in the 21st century as Vladimir Putin is
attempting to build back the Soviet Empire, Moscow’s rule doesn’t look so appetizing to the members of
the former federation. And there is a lesson to be learned here. I used to conduct a church choir where
the members sang with soprano, alto, tenor and base voices. Each voice had its own sheet music, each
had its own role to play/sing. Taking their individual voices away from them, or have a tenor sing soprano
and a base sing alto, would have resulted in cacophony. Ultimately, they would have attacked the
conductor.
Similarly, having the Emperor “conduct” the Monarchy without acknowledging and developing the role of
each member state could only lead to catastrophe when the opportunity presented itself. And we didn’t
have to wait long for that to happen.
Rapid development
The second half of the 19th century saw an incredible rush of development in all matters in Hungary. For
those of my readers who have been to today’s Budapest, the following recitation of specific projects, in
no particular order, might be of interest. For me it holds great fascination. The opening of the Chain
Bridge was followed by the Margaret bridge in 1876, and the Ferenc Jozsef (later Liberty) bridge in 1894.
The Arpad bridge and Horthy Miklos (later Petofi) bridges came along in the 20th century. - The country
gained access to world-wide commerce and transportation when a new seaport was built in Fiume
(today’s Rijeka) on the Adriatic. It operated regularly scheduled voyages to the major ports in Europe, but
transatlantic trips were made available only by the introduction of steam-powered vessels in 1891,
replacing ships with sails.
The Vienna World’s Fair opened in 1873 and has 12.5 million visitors. Hungary’s main exhibit at the fair
consisted of porcelain products from its Zsolnay factory, and a steam locomotive featuring a new design
by the Ganz factory, which later became a new standard throughout Europe.
Budapest, as the capital of Hungary, underwent rapid development with the construction of major
boulevards on which electric trolleys operated by 1889 following the horse-drawn era. Adult tickets cost
81
6 cents, children 4 cents. The capital’s sewer system dates to that time, as well as the organized garbage
collection (in open horse-drawn carts), and electric lamp posts (operated at first with gas) on the streets.
1884 saw the opening of the Opera, a marvelous architectural wonder built by Miklos Ybl. The opera had
1250 seats, most of them too expensive for the average citizen. The Bohemian Gustav Mahler became
one of the opera’s first conductors, raising its standards and attendance. (Mahler moved on to the Vienna
Opera, which objected to him being Jewish, so he converted to Catholicism.)
Hungary introduced its new currency, the gold-based Korona (Crown) in 1892, replacing the silver-based
Forint. One kilogram of gold bought 3,280 Koronas. The new currency stabilized international commerce
and was widely recognized and accepted throughout Europe. Two of the beneficiaries of the industrial
revolution were Berthold Weiss and his brother Manfred, who opened a factory manufacturing canned
food. The brothers then invested the profits in Budapest real estate and when Vienna gave in to the
Parliament’s demand to establish Hungary’s own military in 1893, they built a munitions factory,
employing some 5,000 workers on Csepel island of the Danube River. The Weiss brothers joined
Hungary’s moneymen, the Rothschilds, Zsigmond Kornfeld and Ferenc Chorin, who became the founders
of Hungarian capitalism. The initial labor laws specified 16-hour days over 7 days, which was then reduced
to 10-hour days with Sundays off.
The first automobile, a German-made Benz which appeared on Budapest streets was bought by the
optician Bela Hatschek in 1895. The carburetor was the design of inventors Donat Banki and Janos
Csonka. Thereafter, the Csonka Machine Works would be a phenomenon well into the 20th century.
Lajos Kossuth, who died in Torino (Turin), Italy, was buried in Budapest on April 12, 1894. Despite an
official denial to cover the costs of the funeral, the Parliament arranged to declare a day of mourning for
that day with businesses closed and provided a proper place for Kossuth’s final resting place.
The first subway of the European continent opened for service in May, 1896. Built by the Siemens
company, its rails cover 3,688 meters under the length of Andrassy Street. It is still in operation today.
Anyone who has ever visited Budapest marvels at the huge iron structure at the base of Liberty bridge,
housing an indoor market on several floors, built in 1897 and called the “Vasarcsarnok” (market gallery).
Anything and everything can be found in that place as the aroma of fresh-baked goods tickles the buyers’
nose and delights the eye.
The country’s millennium in 1896 was celebrated with elaborate arrangements and by the presence of
the Emperor and the Empress. Franz Joseph and Elizabeth were treated to military parades, an exhibition
featuring the country’s 1000-year history, folk dance presentations and a performance at the Opera
house. A memorial Mass was celebrated at the Mathias Coronation church and fireworks were displayed
from the top of Gellert Mountain. For this occasion, the capital’s main square, called Heros’ Square, had
been readied and the famous new Parliament, of which only the main entrance and cupola had been built,
was inspected by the royal couple.
Everything looked promising. But was it?
82
Royal passings
Little did anyone suspect that Hungary’s beloved Queen would be dead within two years? Elizabeth, who
was unhappy with life in the stuffy Vienna Court, loved to travel. She was an inveterate traveler and
fashion maven. In 1898 she traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where, on September 10th, Luigi Lucheni, an
Italian anarchist stabbed her to death simply because he just wanted to kill a member of royalty. She was
buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna.
Elizabeth had kept her distance from the Emperor, especially after his dalliance with a lover became an
open book. The Emperor was responsible for giving his wife venereal disease, which was treated with
mercury, discoloring her teeth. Her bitchy mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie suggested that Elizabeth
should refrain from smiling, lest her discolored teeth would show. She should have suggested instead to
Franz Joseph not to fool around with shady women! Nevertheless, in August, 1858 she gave birth to a
son, who was Archduke Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria, heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne.
Initially, Rudolf (Crown Prince Rezso in Hungarian) and his older sister Gisela were close, but at age six
Rudolf began his imperial training and Gisela would become the wife of Prince Leopold of Bavaria.
Rudolf entertained liberal views which were contrary to his father’s. His relations with his mother were
strained after he became suspicious, or perhaps jealous, of Elizabeth’s jolly relations with her horse
trainer. Rudolf killed him, making Elizabeth resentful of her son.
In May, 1881 Rudolf married Princess Stephanie of Belgium against his mother’s objections. Elizabeth
didn’t think the Princess measured up to Rudolf’s intelligence and status. She was right. The marriage
drifted apart after their only child, Elisabeth, was born in September 1883. Rudolf found an “out” in drink
and affairs. For a hiding place, Rudolf bought the Mayerling hunting lodge in 1887 where he would take
the 17-year-old Hungarian Baroness Marie Vetsera. He was 13 years her senior.
Emperor Franz Joseph objected to the relationship which cast an adverse shadow on the royal household.
Desperately in love, Rudolf and Marie planned a suicide pact. He shot her first on January 30, 1889, then
killed himself. This morbid affair didn’t end there. Please find the story on page 7 of the addendum
“House of Habsburg.”
Similarly, page 8 of the same Addendum, briefly recounts the historical events of those turbulent times.
…and elsewhere in the world in the 19th century:
While some of the former “Empires” collapsed, the 19th century provided a new beginning for other
countries to grow into the role. The Spanish and French empires suffered the consequence of the collapse
of the Napoleonic ambitions, while the German empire grew out of the Holy Roman Empire and the British
boasted an unchallenged expansion into Canada, Australia, South Africa and India. By the end of the
century, the Brits controlled a fifth of the land and a quarter of the population of the world. On the
American continent the United States doubled in size, immigration of Europeans into America providing
most of its growth.
83
Advances in all fields of science were responsible for discoveries in medicine, electricity and other
technologies, including the rapid advances in telecommunication and the expansion of railroads and
steam-powered transportation which, in turn, helped to increase commerce while the telegraph and
telephone led to a better and faster exchange of ideas. The 19th century also awoke the nationalist
sentiment resulting in protests against existing regimes growing into full-blown revolutions, such as the
ones in France and Hungary in 1848.
These developments regrettably always led to or started wars of liberation. In India, for example, the East
India Company controlled the British possessions, in many cases embittering the locals by the foreign
expansion and the consequences of westernization replacing ancient customs. In May, 1857, soldiers
mutinied in the Delhi area, killing the British until the loyal Punjab and Bombay came to the help of the
colonizers and took over control from the East India Company. - The Crimean War of 1854-56 was fought
by an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, helped by Britain and France against Russia. The Turks controlled
the Dardanelles Strait, which Russia wanted to open up for access to the Mediterranean. Sebastopol was
a naval base for Russia, which was attacked by the Allies to cripple the Russian Navy. The “Charge of the
Light Brigade” dates from this event when they were sacrificed to Russian artillery due to mistaken and
confused commands. Disease caused huge casualties, which led the nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale
to set up proper hospital care for the British wounded.
The wave of demand for liberty swept over Italy as well. Under control mostly of Austria, the Italian
rebellion suffered a defeat in 1849, but 9 years later Piedmont mobilized and with French help dislodged
the Austrians as we wrote above concerning the battle of Solferino. In 1860 the Italian patriot Giuseppe
Garibaldi overthrew the Kingdom of Naples and declared the Kingdom of Italy under King Victor
Emmanuel. - On the American continent the U.S. went to war against Britain in 1812 over issues of
freedom on the seas and other affronts to American pride. The war didn’t achieve anything and things
returned to the status quo. Much different and greatly more tragic was the American Civil War between
North and South, fought ostensibly for the liberation of African slaves in the South, whereas President
Lincoln’s main objective was to prevent the secession of 11 states from the Union. The 4-year war
between April 1861 and April 1865 cost 618,000 lives. But troubles continued with the Indians who gained
victory over General George Custer in the battle of Little Big Horn, under Chief Sitting Bull, in 1876. - In
1866 Austria fought a 7-week war with Prussia over Schleswig-Holstein, ending with German victory. The French resented the growing power of Prussia and declared war against the newly anointed Kaiser
William in 1870. A 6-week war ensued with the capture of French Emperor Napoleon III. France gave
the German Reich the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and paid an indemnity of 5000 million francs to
the delight of German Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck.
In the 1880s the major European powers began a mad rush to establish colonies in Africa. The British,
French, Belgian and German powers had unbridled ambitions, eventually gaining Cameroun, Namibia and
Tanzania for Germany, the Congo (now Zaire) for Belgium, the Ivory Coast and Madagascar for France,
while the British established Nigeria, Botswana, Rhodesia, Zanzibar, Uganda and today’s Kenya. The
Dutch had established the Boer (Dutch) Transvaal and defeated the British in 1881. The Boers declared
war again in 1889, but were unsuccessful and fought guerilla warfare which prolonged the hostilities into
the 20th century. Britain established the Cape Colony and Natal to form the Dominion of South Africa.
There were many other skirmishes as the European powers tried to exert their influence over the mineral
and ivory resources of Africa. There was tension also in other parts of the world, including the 1895 war
84
between China and Japan over Korea; the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Turkey at
Constantinople (which Turkey denies to this day); Greece and Turkey fought over Crete; war between the
United States and Spain over Cuba, which forced Spain to cede Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to
the U.S. in 1898 and finally the so-called Boxer rebellion in China as the pages of the calendar turned to
the 20th century. The Chinese objected to Western influence and an uprising broke out between European
settlers and the fanatical sect known as “The Society of Harmonious Fists”, loosely translated as “Boxers.”
The rebellion lasted but 55 days, while the Chinese murdered thousands of Christian Chinese as well as
about 200 Europeans.
Before we turn to other events in the 19th century, there was one curious (and sad) incident which had
implications for events in the 20th century. It was called the Dreyfus Case. In 1894, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus,
a French army officer of Jewish extraction, was accused of giving military secrets to Germany. He was
tried and sentenced to imprisonment for life on Devil’s Island off French Guiana. The affair looked like
Dreyfus was railroaded and a campaign was started for a new trial. In 1897 Dreyfus’ brother, Mathieu
discovered that the document on which his brother was convicted may have been written by Major M. C.
Esterhazy which brought another ancient and distinguished Hungarian name into the confusing affair. In
1898 the novelist Emile Zola published an open letter entitled “J’Accuse” to the French President. Zola
was sentenced to a year in jail for libel, but escaped to England. At that point one of Dreyfus’ accusers,
Colonel Hubert Henry, admitted that he had forged the documents perhaps for reasons of anti-Semitism
and committed suicide. It took for an appeals court until 1906 to clear Dreyfus’ name, who returned to
his army career and fought with distinction in WWI. He died in obscurity in 1935, just around the time
when Jews were starting to be persecuted by Hitler’s Germany.
With all the above horrors, we must consider how lucky Hungary was to have survived the 1848/9
revolution and come to an understanding in the Compromise of 1867, which laid out a peaceful and
productive future for the country.
Bonaparte making hay
The century started out with Napoleon Bonaparte making trouble. Although the British fleet under
Horatio Nelson defeated his navy in the Battle of the Nile in 1798, he still invaded Egypt, then returning
to France he engaged and defeated Austria and by 1804 crowned himself Emperor. France suffered
another defeat at the hands of Nelson in October 1805 when, in the battle of Trafalgar, the British fleet
destroyed the French and Spanish naval armada. Yet, later in the year Napoleon entered Vienna
(Beethoven composed his Eroica symphony #3 in his honor!), then pursued the Austrians and Russians to
Austerlitz in Moravia and delivered a stunning victory. Napoleon lost 9,000 men while the allies had
15,000 dead and 11,000 captured. In the following year he also defeated Prussia, while in 1808 he forced
Spain and Portugal to their knees, installing his brother as King of Spain. Napoleon was also determined
to crush Russia and in June 1812 he invaded with 550,000 men and managed to capture Moscow in the
dead of winter. (Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture is a testimony to the magnificence of Russia’s counter
attack.) Forced to retreat, Napoleon’s army dwindled to 20,000 men due to the severity of the winter, to
disease and hunger. When allied forces entered Paris in March, 1814, Napoleon abdicated and was exiled
to the island of Elba. The following year he escaped from Elba and returning to Paris organized his army
to meet the combined British and Prussian forces at Waterloo, 9 miles south of Brussels. The battle took
place in June, 1815 and ended with a final defeat for Napoleon, ending his 100-day resurgence. Napoleon
85
abdicated and attempted to catch a ship to America. He was intercepted and exiled to St. Helena island,
where he died in 1821. He is buried in Paris in a monumental crypt called Les Invalides, dedicated to his
memory.
Trivia at its best
Most of what follows hereunder is trivia, but significant if one wants to get under the skin of the 19 th
century. The problem is that as we get closer and closer to our own slice of history, more and more things
happen at greater speed than previously. One cannot do justice to all of the events, so our readers must
excuse our selectivity of reporting even at the exclusion of many worthwhile happenings. As an example,
let me suggest such an issue in the field of music, with which I am most familiar. One hundred twenty of
the world’s 300 most notable musicians were born during the 19th century, including such luminaries as
Brahms, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Wagner. Sixteen of the 120 were born in Hungary,
including Liszt, Lehar, Dohnanyi, Bartok and Kodaly. It is a pity that time and space imposes a limit on
what we have to report and what we regretfully have to pass over.
In America, Thomas Jefferson started his presidency in 1801. One of his major accomplishments was to
have the foresight to send explorers Lewis and Clark to scout the western part of the continent. After
their return, Jefferson’s presidency bought Louisiana and the western part of the continent from the
French for 15 million dollars, doubling the size of the country. Jefferson governed from the new capital
of Washington D.C.
Disenchanted with Napoleon when French guns were rolling through Vienna, Beethoven composed the
lovely “Moonlight Sonata” in 1802. (The famous 5th symphony would come along 6 years later.) - The
Englishman Robert Fulton invented the steam-powered engine in 1803, subsequently used to power river
boats and even ocean-going vessels. Furthermore, a year later the first steam-powered locomotive was
put into service. Inventions and creations of all kinds appear on the market now, including the book Pride
and Prejudice written in 1813 by Jane Austen. - Francis Scott Key wrote the poem “Defence of Fort
McHenry” in 1814 while watching the bombardment of the fort by British naval vessels in Chesapeake
Bay. The poem was put to the music of John Stafford Smith, originally written as “Anacreontic Heaven”.
Changed to The Star-Spangled banner, it became the official United States national anthem in 1931. Joseph Mohr, a priest in Oberndorf near Salzburg, Austria, wrote a Christmas poem called “Stille Nacht,
heilige Nacht” (Silent night). In 1818 he asked his organist, Franz Xavier Gruber to set it to music. The
melody and text was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO as the most popular Christmas
song. - The German poet Goethe published his masterwork “Faust” in 1829.
Louis Lebar of France built the Notre Dame cathedral in 1823. - Piano virtuoso Chopin debuted in Vienna
in 1829. In the same year Rossini’s opera William (Guilleaume) Tell debuted in Paris. - The Society of
Latter Day Saints, otherwise known as the Mormons, was founded in 1830 in Fayette, New York. - Victor
Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame became a bestseller in 1834. - In 1836 Texas won
independence from Mexico. As a new republic, its first President was General Sam Houston. On May 24,
1844 the first telegram was sent from Baltimore to Washington at public expense. The message was:
“What has God wrought?” The cost was $30,000! - The Irish potato famine prompted many Irishmen
and their families to immigrate to the United States.
Here is a particularly cute story: In 1840, under the threat of French invasion, the Swabian merchant, 21year-old Max Schneckenburger wrote a poem “Wacht am Rhein” (Watch on the Rhein). It was set to
86
music 14 years later by the conductor Carl Wilhelm and became Germany’s most popular patriotic song
in the days of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.
Eighteen-year-old Victoria (1819-1901) became Queen of Great Britain in 1837. - The American Charles
Goodyear invented vulcanization for rubber tires in 1839. In the same year Scottish Kirkpatrick Macmillan
invented the first bicycle. - The London House of Parliament began taking shape in 1840, completed
twenty years later. Its architect was Sir Charles Barry. – British sovereignty was proclaimed over Hong
Kong in 1841. - Louis Kossuth became Hungary’s revolutionary leader and guided the country through the
1848/9 war of independence. - Czar Alexander of Russia died in 1845, succeeded by Czar Nicholas, who
would be called upon by the Austrian Emperor to help put down the Hungarian uprising in 1848. - Also in
1848, the Communist Manifesto “Workers of the world, unite!” was published by German Jewish
philosophers Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). The Manifesto urged revolution
by workers against the ruling classes. Marx, owner of a newspaper, was expelled from Germany and lived
in exile in London, supported by Engels, a manufacturer who is the author of Das Kapital. Communism
owes its origin to the work of these two men.
Most of us use Listerine as a mouthwash, so keep in mind that in 1865 the American Joseph Lister
discovered the benefits of antiseptic surgery with carbolic acid, while a year later the Norwegian scientist
Alfred Nobel invented the dynamite. To counter the destructive dynamite, Nobel also established a prize
bearing his name rewarding the inventors and discoverers of more worthwhile subjects.
Russia decided to sell Alaska to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million dollars. Across the world on the
other side of the Atlantic Ocean couples were dancing to Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz.
Pope Pius IX chaired the first Vatican Concil in 1869, dealing with papal infallibility. The Pope, however,
had nothing significant to add to the discovery, in 1868, of the skeleton of a Pro-Magnon man in France,
who would be the successor of the Neanderthal species representing the first homo sapiens. - The
Russian scientist Dimitri Mendeleyev formulated the “periodic table” in 1869 for classification of the
elements based on their increasing atomic numbers (protons in the nucleus) and other specifics.
(Hydrogen is No.1)
If someone wanted to charicature America at any age, one would draw a picture of a bottle of Coca Cola
and a package of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. The pharmacist Dr. John Cumberton developed a sweet cola
in 1886. Adding carbonated water to it, his accountant pronounced it very tasty and named it Coca Cola.
The drink now sells close to 2 billion servings per day (!) worldwide and we have no figures on the number
of chewing gums which are defacing the world as they are disposed of while stuck under the surface of
furniture on display or stuck on the sole of unsuspecting pedestrians’ shoes. The Wrigley Company, which
created it in 1891, first started out by selling soap and baking powder, but later concentrated on the gum
which is now an icon.
I picked a small number of literary achievements despite an impressive number which appeared on the
market in the 19th century. One of those books was written by Jules Verne in 1872 with the title “Around
the world in 80 days.” - The first commercially produced typewriter was the Remington brand, which
appeared on the market in 1873. - Three cities in Hungary formed the unification of Budapest, the
Hungarian capital. - Giuseppe Verdi composed his monumental Requiem in 1874 to commemorate the
death of political leader Alessandro Manzoni.
87
Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” was published in 1875. Alexander Graham Bell invented the
telephone in 1876. The first skyscraper was built in 1883 in Chicago and the Statue of Liberty in New York
harbor was dedicated in 1883. The statue is the work of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, it was made in France
and shipped to the United States where 120,000 donations were solicited by publisher Joseph Pulitzer to
have the statue erected.
As a monumental opening pavilion for the world’s fair in Paris, engineer Gustave Eiffel designed an 81storey-tall steel tower in 1889 which, for a while, held the title of the world’s tallest building with its 1063
foot height. - Another easily recognizable institution which opened in 1889 is the Moulin Rouge night
club in Paris.
Who wouldn’t recognize the rousing rhythm of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture composed in 1882, and the
sweet melodies of the Nutcracker Suite, which opened in St. Petersburg in 1892?
The California gold rush began in 1848. - The novel Moby Dick was published by Herman Melville in 1851,
and in 1859 Charles Darwin published “On the origin of species.” Victor Hugo wrote “Les Miserables” in
1862. - Construction was started in 1859 on the Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean, particularly
the Nile river, - and the Red Sea, shortening the route from Europe to India by 4,300 miles. The
construction took 10 years. Originally, the canal was 102 miles long and 26 feet deep, but was later
expanded to 120 miles in length, 79 feet in depth and 673 feet in width. It is single lane with a couple of
passing zones, with a capacity of less than 50 ships at one time. The current changes its direction with
the tides at Suez. (In 2014 a second (partial) canal would be started to double the capacity.)
French novelist Dumas, pere, published his bestseller in “The Count of Monte Cristo in 1844, while
Mendelssohn composed his outstanding violin concerto in E minor. The first propeller-driven ship, the
s.s. Great Britain sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to America in 1843. The world’s first sewing machine,
still pumped by foot, was invented in 1846 by Elias Howe, with great improvements added 5 years later
by I.M. Singer. 1847 saw two remarkable books appear in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte
Brunte’s Jane Eyre. The great achievement of his short life (1818-1865) was the Hungarian I.T.
Semmelweiss’ 1847 discovery of the cause of childhood fever and puerperal infection. He earned the
Nobel prize for that.
Henry Steinway and three sons began producing pianos in 1853 in New York City. In 1854 Pope Pius IX
declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary as an article of faith. The Pope also
issued the encyclical Syllabus Errorum condemning socialism and liberalism. - Franz Liszt composed the
symphonic poem Les Preludes in the same year. In 1856 the 13.5 ton bell was mounted at the British
Houses of Parliament. It is now known as Big Ben. In 1858 the Virgin Mary made several appearances to
farm children in Lourdes, France. The village and its miraculous healing waters became a destination for
pilgrimages of the faithful.
In America, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederacy surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at
Appomattox, VA, on April 4, 1965. The Civil War officially ended on May 26, 1865. President Abraham
Lincoln was assassinated on April 14. The game-changing battle at Gettysburg, PA, July 1-3 1863, resulting
in the death of 6,158 men, would inspire President Lincoln to write his memorable Gettysburg Address
dedicating a military cemetery on Nov. 19, 1863. The brief speech has gone down history as one of the
finest example of English public oratory, to wit:
88
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can
long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final
resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we
should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather,
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government
of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
Darwin published his book entitled “On the origin of species by natural selection”, in 1859. - Work on the
Suez Canal and the London underground began in the same year. - Victor Hugo’s book, Les Miserables,
became a bestseller in 1862. - 1866 brought the dissolution of the German Federation and the opening
salvo of Prussia leading to the foundation of Germany which was to play a pivotal role in European history
within two generations.
Tolstoi’s War and Peace was published in 1864. - Louis Pasteur invented the process of pasteurization the
same year. - George Eastman marketed the first Kodak box camera in 1888. - Archduke Rudolf, the
Crown Prince of Austria and Hungary, committed suicide on January 30, 1889 in the Mayerling hunting
lodge. - Rudyard Kipling wrote my childhood’s favorite, “Jungle Book” in 1894, while the Czech Anton
Dvorak composed his incredible “From the new world” symphony in 1893.
The Andrassy Street in Budapest has always been a trendsetting residential area. Construction of a tram
or horse-drawn transportation was not permitted in this prestigious location, yet, mass transportation
was needed between the heart of the city and Hero’s Square. The capital authorized the construction of
Europe’s first subway (previously only London possessed such a train) and gave the German Siemens
company the go-ahead to build it. The subway line over its 3,688 meter length opened on May 2nd, 1896.
The Duchess Elizabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, born on Christmas Eve, 1837,
died on September 10, 1898 while on vacation in Geneva, Switzerland. She was stabbed by an anarchist
using a knitting needle wanting to kill another royalty. The Queen, or Sisi, as she was lovingly called,
simply was at the wrong place at the wrong time. The whole Empire mourned her.
As the pages of the 19th century slowly turned to close, Wilhelm Rontgen invented the X-rays in 1895,
which would play an important role in medical diagnosis. X-rays of a different kind would be needed to
examine Europe’s sickening history rushing toward the crevasse of World War One.
89
Hungary in the early 20th century
The government of Hungary set three immediate goals for its administration in the first decade of the 20th
century. First, the sustenance of the existing Hungarian nation. Second, the guarantee of harmonious
cooperation between the Hungarian nation and its king. Third, the strengthening of the Hungarian
character of the national government. This period fell in a brief era called “secessionist”, or Art Nouveau,
which put its stamp on construction style, fashion and art. It sought to bring uniformity and harmony into
culture based on nationalistic roots. The most successful theatrical production became the folksy “Janos
vitez” (Brave John), based on Sandor Petofi’s story and Pongracz Kacsoh’s music.
Briefly free of wars, the nation developed a need to participate in politics. The new Parliament, which
opened in 1902, encompassed 7 political parties, including the National Work Party with 256
representatives, the Kossuth Party with 51, the Independent Justh Party (44), the Peoples Party (13), the
Smallholders Party (5), the Democratic Party (2) and the Christian Socialist Party (1). Interestingly, only
6.8% of the population had the right to vote, totaling 1,272,755 voters in 1914.
Another look at Hungarian society is provided by the preferred requirements for beauty contestants. The
young ladies should be charming, exhibiting feminine characteristics whose physical attributes would not
be overwhelming, yet reflect a higher standing of our national beauty. She should be preferably blonde,
a bit rotund with full cheeks and lips the shape of small strawberries, smiling constantly.
The labor market, except for the construction of monumental buildings in Budapest in the art nouveau
style, did not show much improvement. The decade started with strikes in nearly all branches of work,
including a nationwide strike of railroad workers. At the beginning of the century, there were 82,000
people out of work in Budapest, representing about 20% of the work force. Seeking a better future, the
first decade saw 860,000 people emigrating from greater Hungary, with 740,000 headed to the United
States. It is significant, though, that of the total emigrants only a third were Hungarian. The rest came
from ethnic minorities. About a quarter of those who emigrated would later return to their country of
birth. Celebrities who visited Hungary included Buffalo Bill in June 1905, while Conan Doyle who was
celebrated for his Sherlock Holmes character, spent a day in Budapest in 1907. In April, 1910 Robert
Peary, explorer of the North Pole visited in Budapest.
The bishop Ottokar Prohaszka (1858-1927) gave a voice to modern Catholicism. He was a virtual apostle
of Christian Socialism in Hungary, who became one of the party’s representatives in parliament. Reflecting the era’s secessionist trends, folk music gained national prominence in the works of Zoltan
Kodaly and Bela Bartok as they traveled far and wide collecting authentic folk music not only from
Hungarian villages but from the treasure trove of neighboring minorities.
In 1910, the population of greater Hungary encompassed 20.9 million residents. Of the country’s total
population 54.5% declared themselves Hungarian, the balance made up of the minorities of neighboring
countries. (The capital’s population was 86% Hungarian.) Smallpox no longer featured as a main cause
of death. In its place tuberculosis became a leading cause of death and out of 1,000 newborn only 206
reached their first year. Life expectancy was around 40 years of age. 50% of the population was Roman
Catholic and 62% came from farming families. The intelligentsia represented a mere 4% of the country’s
90
population. Of the Hungarian and German (Swabish) nationalities 20% was illiterate, whereas up to 70%
of other minorities could not read or write.
Emperor Franz Joseph died on November 21, 1916 at age 86 of pneumonia. His 68-year reign is the thirdlongest in the recorded history of Europe. He was succeeded on the throne by his grand-nephew Karl.
…and elsewhere in the world:
King Umberto I of Italy was murdered by anarchists in 1900, succeeded by his son, Victor Emanuel III.
In 1901 Queen Victoria died and was succeeded by her son, Edward VII. In the U.S., President McKinley
was assassinated in the same year. - In 1902 the U.S. assumed perpetual control over the Panama Canal,
and work began on it 2 years later. The volcano at St. Pierre, Martinique, erupted in 1902, destroying the
entire population of the village except one person, a prisoner who survived in his cell. In 1903 Henry Ford
founded his motor company with $100K. General Motors started up in 1908.
Puccini’s opera, Madam Butterfly was heard for the first time in Milan, Italy, in 1904. - The brothers Orville
and Willow Wright manage to fly a powered plane over a North Carolina beach in 1904. This is the
beginning of the new era of flight. - The operetta “Merry Widow” of Hungarian composer Franz Lehar
debuts in 1905. - Albert Einstein formulates his relativity theory in the same year. The future Soviet leader Josef Stalin robbed a train of 375,000 rubles to help the revolution. - The Boy
Scout organization is founded by Baden Powell. - The favorite novel of my youth, Winnetou, written by
Karl May, is published in 1910. - Sun Yat-sen appoints Chiang Kai-shek as his adviser in 1911. - The big
story of 1912 is the accidental sinking of the “Titanic” in its encounter with an iceberg, in which 1,513
passengers and crew died.
Russia has, for a long time, wanted to have access to the Mediterranean from the Black Sea via the Straits
of Bosporus to which Turkey had objected. Austria’s foreign minister, allegedly without the knowledge of
Russian Tsar Nicholas II, made a secret deal with his Russian counterpart in which the Russians would not
oppose the Monarchy’s annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in exchange for Russia’s use of the
Dardanelles and the Bosporus Straits. The Monarchy has kept troops in those two countries since 1878,
claiming that the occupation was temporary. (This sounds eerily the same as the Soviets claimed following
WWII, when their troops were given permanent quarters during their temporary occupation of Hungary.)
On October 5, 1908, Emperor Franz Joseph announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part
of the Monarchy, to which Serbia vehemently objected. War threatened to break out and was prevented
only by the influence of Germany which took the Monarchy’s side. The struggle to maintain its identity
while seemingly guaranteeing the identity of all those neighboring countries with different ethnicity
consumed Hungary’s internal as well as foreign policies and often projected an unpleasant reflection
toward its Western neighbors. The only notable exception was Theodore Roosevelt, who spent some
time in Hungary during his European peregrinations in 1910. He wrote:
“I was struck in Hungary by the fact that I was really more in sympathy with the people whom I met than
with the corresponding people of the larger continental nations. Their ways of looking at life were more
like mine, and their attitude toward the great social and economic questions more like those of my friends
in America. The Hungarian women, for instance, were almost the only women of Continental Europe, with
91
whom I could talk in the same intimate way that I could with various American and English women whom
I have known. The Hungarian women are charming. They seemed to have the solid qualities of the North
Germans and yet to have the French charm which the Germans so totally lacked. I greatly liked the
Hungarian men. I met an unusual number who were interesting and interested in things that were worth
while and who were keenly alert about political and economic matters, and were enthusiastic sportsmen
or were well-read or had other interests that were not merely stodgy. Altogether, I could not overstate
how thoroughly at home I felt in Hungary….”
These excerpts were taken from B. J. Bishop’s Theodore Roosevelt and his time (New York, 1929).
I am pretty certain that Mr. Roosevelt had spoken to a fair cross-section of Hungarian society, - and hope
that some of those were Jewish, because the Jews were the only group which took to heart the
liberalization and embraced the Educational Act which served their purpose. The Jews were more or less
emancipated following the 1848 revolution and many of them fought against the Austrians. According to
Professor Arthur J. May as quoted by Istvan Sisa, the Hungarian Jews advanced the material and
intellectual life of the country, being fervent apostles of “Magyarization”. The largest part of the
Hungarian press was owned by Jews which supported chauvinism and assimilation. By 1900 their number
increased to 830,000 from 366,000 fifty years earlier. Around the turn of the century, 42% of journalists,
45% of lawyers and 49% of doctors were Jewish. These advances by this segment of the population
engendered sporadic anti-Semitic outbursts. Many of the Jews were immigrants from Galicia and Russia,
quickly rose to prominence and found Hungary to be a heaven for them until Nazi influences changed
things in the 1930s.
To govern a nation of such diversity must have been difficult, to say the least. The Nationalities Act
stressed the political unity of the Empire, while it tried to provide national minorities and ethnicities farreaching rights in education and the use of their own language. The problem was that those very same
nationalities were not interested in being members of the Monarchy but were entertaining dreams of
independence and autonomy. The Nationalities Act seemed to have backfired. To balance things out, the
government now swung in the other extreme and wanted to make “Magyarization” (of names and
customes) the standard. Prime Minister Istvan Tisza, who governed Hungary in the years leading up to
World War I, represented the newer trend while one of his predecessors, Count Gyula Andrassy
conducted a balancing act. Andrassy could be seen walking arm in arm with his Russian counterpart.
When he was chided for doing so, he countered, saying: “When someone wants to push you down a
precipice, the best policy is to hold tightly onto his arm.”
Preliminaries to World War I
As a preliminary to World War I, Italy won its war on Turkey in October, 1912. Montenegro took
advantage of the momentary opportunity and launched an attack on Turkey. Bulgaria’s attack on Turkey
approached Istanbul within 30 miles with the help of Serbia and Greece in June of 1913. In the ensuing
peace treaty Turkey relinquished its European holdings. The victors then turned against each other and
Bulgaria capitulated in July, 1913. This is regarded as a preliminary to World War I as a measure of the
Balkan’s unsettled situation and strength.
As each nationality gained some strength over the years, it was Croatia which attempted to coalesce
Dalmatia, Slovenia and Bosnia into a third partner into the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This seemed to
92
agree with the plans of the Austrian heir Francis Ferdinand, who hated the Hungarians and sought to
break the relative influence of Hungary over the above states in the Balkan area.
Royal succession
Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife Elizabeth had 4 children, of which Archduke Rudolf would have been
next in line for the throne of the Emperor. Rudolf killed himself in 1889. Next in line would have been
the Emperor’s eldest brother, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, but he died in 1867 as Emperor of Mexico.
Next came the Emperor’s second brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, who renounced his succession rights in
favor of his son, Franz Ferdinand.
As the territories of Bosnia, Croatia, Herzegovina and Serbia were annexed into the Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy, nationalistic unrest broke out in the Balkans, fuelled mainly by the Serbian group called the
Black Hand. When those groups learned that the heir-apparent to the Austrian throne, Franz Ferdinand
and his wife were about to visit Sarajevo in June of 1914, they made plans to assassinate them. Franz
Ferdinand was married in a morganatic union to Sophie Chotek von Chotkova. Morganatic is defined as
a marriage between a noble person and a person of inferior rank. In this case the marriage partner does
not assume the rank of his or her partner and even the children do not inherit the title, nor the property
of the higher ranked member. Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, had children who remained
commoners for the rest of their lives.
The Court in Vienna decided that the heir apparent had to be paraded among the people to make him
look imperial. One of the heir-presumptive’s pronouncements was a direct attack on Hungary, saying: “I
shall find ways and means to wipe present-day Hungary off the map.” Although Franz Ferdinand’s views
differed from that of the current Emperor, - in fact showed favoritism toward the Slavs versus the
Hungarians, - nevertheless, the minorities, especially the Serbs, had autonomy on their agenda and
resented any association with members of the Monarchy.
On June 28, 1914, while riding in a motorcade through the streets of Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand and his
wife were shot and killed by a member of Black Hand, Gavrilo Princip and his conspirators. The whole plot
is detailed on page 9 of the addendum to this study following page 57, titled “House of Habsburg.”
Those shots were the opening salvo of World War I.
World War I
Franz Joseph was on vacation in Bad Ischl when the news of the assassination reached him. He interrupted
his vacation and returned to Vienna, but only for a short while, leaving all decision-making in the hands
of Foreign Minister Count Leopold Berchtold. Nearly a month after the assassination, the cabinet sent a
severe ultimatum to the Serbs, demanding to have Austrian control over bringing the Serbian
revolutionaries to task. Since the Serbs, as an autonomous country, ignored Vienna’s demands, on July
28th Austria-Hungary declared war on the Serbs. Most of the nations in the world took the part of one or
the other of the antagonists, so the Monarchy found itself battling the Russians, the French and British,
while Germany declared its support for Franz Joseph and his Empire and called themselves the Central
Powers, while the other side would be called the Allies. Somewhat later Italy, Japan and the United States
(in 1917) joined the Allies, while Turkey and Bulgaria took the side of the Central Powers.
93
1915 - 1916
The initial move for Austro-Hungarian forces was to invade Serbia, then face Russia which came out on
the side of Serbia, eventually into Russia through Poland, while Germany invaded Belgium on the way to
France, which drew Britain into the conflict. Just to clarify Hungary’s position on the side of the Central
Powers, we must acknowledge that Hungary was one member of the dual Monarchy, which compelled
the country to side with its partner. And the reason for our support of the Germans was best explained
by Hungary’s Premier Count Khuen-Hedervary to the French Ambassador. He said: “The German alliance
for Hungary is a rampart against the Slavs whom Hungarians have to fear the most.” Istvan Tisza, too,
made it clear to the Imperial Counsel that the only condition he would agree to the war was if at the end
the Monarchy would acquire no territory from Serbia. There was no logical reason for grabbing more
territory.
Certain tears appeared in the fabric of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Early in the war, the emigration’s
Czech leaders, Tomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes, openly broke any affiliation with the Monarchy and
took up the cause of the Slovak nation as well. Their representation of the Czechoslovak cause served
them well against Hungary in the post-war peace treaty negotiations.
Warfare took on a new and dangerous turn as the Germans used mustard gas in Belgium in 1915 and
German airplanes dropped bombs on Paris in the initial phases of the German invasion of France. Having
broken through the French Maginot line, the Germans were well on their way to Paris, but encountering
heavy resistance the invasion bogged down. Tanks were used for the first time by Britain in 1916, whereas
the new weapons on the high seas were the newly launched submarines, some of them made in Fiume
(today’s Rijeka), where my godfather, naval engineer Stephen Schuller worked as a consultant. A new
weapons factory opened in Budapest which manufactured mainly the Mannlicher rifle invented in the
1880s as well as the Frommer-Stop pistol.
In any case, the invasion of Serbia ended in a draw as a quarter of the force of 100,000 was lost to Serbian
resistance. When the focus became the Russian invasion of Hungary, the Hungarian army lost 100,000
men in Galicia, just North of the Carpathian mountains. It is interesting to consider that my uncle, Frigyes
(Frederick) Vallay, was taken prisoner by Russians in the very first weeks of the conflict and ultimately
suffered captivity in Siberia until the end of the war four years later. The account of his exposure to the
people and geography of this vast land makes for fascinating reading. (See “Frici bacsi’s story”, IN
TRANSLATION, November 2007.) My uncle was one of 600,000 Hungarians who, over the years, would
become Russian POWs. Altogether, the Monarchy had 4.5 million soldiers of whom 1.1 million were killed
in the war, while 3.6 were wounded. Hungary’s losses were 661,000 killed, 743,000 wounded and
734,000 taken prisoner.
In May, 1915, Italy entered the war on the side of the Allied Powers, formally known as the Entente, which
forced the transfer of Hungarian divisions from the Carpathians to the Italian front. For months the front
would be weaving back and forth along the Isonzo river, until leadership passed to the Germans who were
able to clean up the campaign. The twelve battles of Isonzo were some of the inconclusive events of
World War I which demanded a high price in lives lost.
Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza never had any trust in the Romanians who took up a wait-and-see
attitude in the early months of the war. In fact, the Romanians worked out a secret pact with the Allied
leadership in which half of Hungary east of the Tisza river was promised to them as a prize for joining in
94
on the side of the Allied. Romania declared war on the Central Powers in August, 1916 and crossed the
Carpathians to enter defenseless Transylvania. The joint Austro-Hungarian forces chased them back to
the Romanian capital of Bucharest.
With Bulgaria’s entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers, the Balkans were subdued. Turkey
came to the side of the Monarchy in October, 1915, declaring war on the Entente.
On the Western front, Germany launched a war under sea and caused the loss to the Allied Powers of one
million tons of merchant ships. They also launched the first bombing of London by Zeppelin airship.
Another piece of big news was the sinking of the Cunard liner “Lusitania”, causing the death of 1,198
passengers and crew, including 128 Americans. The ship was torpedoed on May 7, 1915 eleven miles off
the southern coast of Ireland. The Germans suspected that she was carrying ammunition among its cargo.
The longest battle of the war took place from February 21 to December 18, 1916 at Verdun, in
Northeastern France on the banks of the Meuse river. Essentially a battle fought in the trenches, the front
line weaved back and forth and caused some 714,000 casualties.
The civilian population suffered greatly, too, as a result of the war. Rationing was introduced for the major
food items. Potatoes became so expensive and became so scarce, stands were set up on street corners
in Budapest selling baked potatoes to passers-by, while lard, flour and bread and later sugar could only
be purchased against rations. Meat of any kind would not be available for purchase on Tuesdays and
Fridays. All men between 18 and 55 years of age were required to serve in the armed forces, greatly
reducing manpower in agriculture.
The Central Powers had their troops on enemy territory when Emperor Franz Joseph died in November,
1916. Why would the incoming Emperor Charles send out feelers for an armistice? Apart from the fact
that the United States would not enter the war until April of 1917, all seemed going according to schedule.
Or was it?
CHARLES IV (IV Karoly of Hungary) (Charles I of Austria)(1916-1918)
As explained above, upon the death of Emperor Franz Joseph on November 21, 1916, his grand-nephew
succeeded him on the Austrian throne. He was officially crowned king of Hungary on December 30, 1916,
in Budapest. He would be Hungary’s last king. He reigned until November 16, 1918 when he renounced
participation in state affairs, although he did not abdicate. Charles attempted to restore the monarchy
until his death in 1922.
Charles IV was a man of good will, although he was not a decisive leader. Soon after taking power, he
tried to put out feelers for peace. His wife Zita was of the Bourbon-Parma family and had two brothers,
the Princes Sixtus and Xavier, who fought on the other side. Charles tried to use them as intermediaries
in his quest for peace. In spite of this effort having been rejected, Hungarian Premier Istvan Tisza wrote
to the American Ambassador in Vienna, fearing that continued warfare would bring the U.S. into the
conflict.
First, we shall deal with the affairs surrounding the First World War; then the access to the throne of
Hungary of Admiral Nicholas Horthy who represented the Monarchy until its dethronization by Parliament
95
in 1921. Embedded in that story is Charles’ two attempts to recover the throne of Hungary by royal coups
d’etat. The best version I have read was published by Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org) and I
encourage you to read it in its entirety. To include its pages in this study would be pure plagiarism, so I
can attempt to summarize the events but the “flavor” of it comes only through reading the published
version.
The war and its aftermath
We should remember that this is not meant to be a history book. The original concept of my writing was
to emphasize the individual’s role in making decisions. It intentionally left out major events in the
summary of the centuries and makes no apologies for it. The chief determinant of the course of history
for Hungary, - unless it was occupied by a foreign power, - was the legally chosen king. This study began
with our first king, St. Stephen, and will end with its last, Charles I, with a small view ahead to Regent
Horthy who never abused his role as “representative” of the Crown and tried to forge a viable nation out
of Hungary devastated by a world conflagration.
1917-1918
The First World War took a more somber turn on April 6, 1917, when the United States crossed the Atlantic
to help France in its struggle against the German invasion. This was largely in response to Germany’s
announcement of conducting an unlimited submarine war, in which British shipping suffered a million and
half ton loss in 1916 alone, with much more to come, including the sinking of the Lusitania with American
citizens aboard.
There are many accounts of World War I and the intention of this study is not to present and analyze its
many minutiae. However, to illustrate the desperation with which both sides fought the war, I have picked
a couple of instances for our better understanding. One such prolonged battle was at Passchendaele near
Ypres in Belgium between British and German forces. It started in July of 1917 and lasted until November,
continuously changing hands at great human cost. Bad weather and confused military command decisions
delayed decisive action for 5 months and became a classic example of the war’s conduct in and out of
trenches. The other characteristic event happened on the Italian front in October 1917. With the battle
of the Isonzo river, to which we had alluded earlier, wasting many lives on both sides, the German
commander Paul von Hindenburg decided to enter the fighting directly on the sides of the Monarchy. The
site of the Caporetto river (in today’s Slovenia) was chosen for a suitable gas attack. At 2 A.M. on October
24th 894 metal tubes were triggered electronically to deliver chlorine and phosgene gases over the Italian
trenches, causing a deadly cloud of poison spreading over the valley. 600 men died, the rest of them fled
for their lives as their gas masks would only protect them for 2 hours. The Austro-Hungarian forces,
reinforced by German units, advanced 25 kms (16 miles) that day, which was the 12th battle of the Isonzo.
Before we turn to other matters of the war, let me insert two items which caught my interest. One is the
so-called Balfour declaration, and the other is the fascinating female spy Mata Hari.
Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour of Britain wrote to Jewish leader Baron Rothschild, on November 2, 1917,
a letter to be transmitted to the Zionist organization, saying that the British government would support
the establishment of Palestine following the war. The territory, we know, had been under Ottoman
occupation but would undergo a revision of borders, creating new nations in the Middle East. The Balfour
96
Declaration had long-term implications as it would encourage the Zionists to claim and later establish
what we now know is the State of Israel.
Mata Hari was born in the Netherlands in 1876 as Margaretha Zelle. When she turned 18, she married a
Dutch Army officer 21 years her senior. He was transferred to Java where the marriage quickly went awry,
although it produced 2 children. Returning to Holland in 1902, Margaretha reinvented herself as an Indian
temple dancer trained in erotic dancing. Changing her name to Mata Hari she became sensational in Paris
and other European capitals. With the outbreak of World War I, the French secret service became
suspicious of Mata Hari’s liaisons with German political and military figures. The French wanted to make
use of her “expertise” and sent her to Madrid to establish relationships with German military attaches at
the Embassy. Mata Hari carried her trade too far and became a double agent, for which she was arrested,
convicted and sentenced to death when she returned to Paris.
The execution took place in a French Army barracks by firing squad on October 15, 1917, which was
reported by British reporter Henry Wales. When awakened in her cell, she commodiously got dressed in
a fur-lined long black velvet cloak and high-heeled slippers and fur collar. She was beautiful still to behold.
Her thick black hair was coiled in braids. She pulled on a pair of black kid gloves and said to her
executioners: “I am ready.”
The red menace rises
A major upheaval started in St. Petersburg, Russia on March 10th following widely held strikes organized
by the Social Democrats and Bolsheviks. The strikers demanded the abdication of the Tsar and the
establishment of a republic. Strangely, the Hungarian Parliament congratulated the Russian revolution.
Since Charles I himself wanted to introduce some political changes in the countries under his rule, on May
23, 1917, he forced the resignation of Hungarian Premier Istvan Tisza, who did not agree with his king.
His place would be taken over by the inexperienced Count Moric Esterhazy, but he resigned by August 19.
His successor, Sandor Wekerle, only held the post for a year when the final loss of the war compelled him
to withdraw from politics.
On November 7th, 1917, Communist revolution broke out in St. Petersburg led by Lenin. The mob
demanded an immediate armistice and wanted to form a populist government.
On January 8, 1918, American president Wilson published his 14 points, defining his reasons for America’s
role in the world war and his vision of post-war order in the world. Among others, he suggested the
withdrawal of all foreign troops from Russia, allowing the country to make its own independent decisions.
His 10th point significantly wanted to have autonomy for Austria and for Hungary, and finally, Wilson
suggested the formation of a world council, or League of Nations organization. Partially in response to
Wilson’s points, a general strike was organized in Budapest with hundreds of thousands participating to
protest the continuation of the war.
On September 28, 1918, Bulgaria laid down its arms which was an unexpected blow to the Central Powers.
They appealed to the Allied forces for peace, which met with President Wilson’s outright rejection and
reiterated his demands for the breakup of the Monarchy in its present form. In the wake of expecting the
Monarchy to fall apart, its member nations in the Balkans formed National Committees representing
Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bohemia and a newly created Poland as independent states. As noted above,
Hungary’s Wekerle government tendered its resignation, turning the reins over to the new National
97
Council formed on October 23, 1918. Count Michael Karolyi was chosen to become the head of the
Council. Karolyi, because of his socialist views, earned the title of “voros grof” (red count). The National
Council under his leadership published a program favoring a much-overdue land reform, demanding new
general elections based on universal suffrage and a series of socio-economic reforms for the working class.
Emperor Charles issued a proclamation announcing the formation of an Austrian Confederation to
replace the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. In Prague the formation of the new Czechoslovak state was
announced. In the evening hours of October 30 an increasingly large public demonstration took place in
Budapest. The throngs of people marched on all the main thoroughfares of the capital and came to the
Astoria Hotel which the National Council had designated as its headquarters. More and more military
personnel could be seen among the marchers who gradually took over control of the Danube bridges, the
radio station and the post offices. In one case the crowd immobilized two military trains ready to leave
for the front and dispersed the soldiers who gladly joined the demonstrators. There were a few volleys
of fire to assure order, but a sudden heavy rainstorm soon dispersed the crowds. Karolyi and the National
Council barricaded itself in the Hotel Astoria afraid of their act being labeled as treasonous. In the
afternoon of October 31 four unidentified soldiers confronted Premier Istvan Tisza in his rented villa and
following some argumentation executed him. He was, it was said, the sole victim of the Socialist takeover
in Hungary.
In this chaotic situation the only steady message came from a descendant of the Hapsburg dynasty.
Archduke Joseph, who claimed the title of Governor of Hungary representing the Emperor, summoned
Karolyi to the Royal Castle to form a new government. Karolyi, a “radicalized aristocrat”, was a dreamer
with little political sense. The first Hungarian People’s Government quickly started work on preparing a
request for armistice. The war came to an end for Hungary when the Armistice of Padua was signed with
the Allied Powers, permitting Hungary to retain its full territorial integrity at that point. The French
General Franchet D’Esperay was put in charge of the armistice and became the guardian of the treaty.
The Karolyi government included Defense Minister Bela Linder. In the terms of the armistice, Hungarian
troops began returning home from the battlefields. Linder made the army lay down their arms,
announcing: “Nem akarok tobbe katonat latni!” (I don’t want to see soldiers any more!). This laid
Hungary’s borders open to foreign incursions which began almost immediately from all sides, including
from Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Slovakia. The Karolyi government could not take the pressure and
resigned March 20, 1919, letting Bela Kun, a disciple of Lenin sent from Moscow take over the
government. Kun proclaimed a dictatorship of the proletariat in the new Hungarian Soviet Republic with
the sadistic Tibor Szamuely and Otto Klein in charge of the red terror.
It is appropriate to mention here that out of the 45 Communist commissars 32 were Jewish. Revenge on
them and excesses on many of the Jewish race took place under the so-called white terror, which soon
followed the Kun regime. The Kun dictatorship lasted for a mere 133 days. The remnants of the Hungarian
army, reorganized by Admiral of the former Monarchy, Nicholas Horthy, began forming in the southern
city of Szeged and bore the approval of the French General D’Esperay. The Horthy forces started moving
northward while Romanian forces moved Westward, eventually reaching Budapest by August 4th, 1919.
Under such pressure Bela Kun resigned on August 1st and escaped to Austria where he sought political
asylum. Kun’s place was taken for 5 days (!) by an unknown by the name of Gyula Peidl, head of the
printers’ union, but his government was also toppled with the arrival of the Romanians in Budapest.
98
The Romanians stayed for 3 and a half months robbing and pillaging, plundering and looting everything
that could be moved. Interestingly, the National Museum was saved from the marauding Romanian
soldiers by a member of the Allied Commission, the American General Harry Hill Bandholz who took up a
lonely position outside the gates armed with nothing but his riding whip. He brushed aside the Romanian
guard and pinned a note on the door of the museum which he promptly sealed. In gratitude for his action,
in 1936 the Hungarian nation erected a bronze statue to him on Liberty Square in Budapest.
The afore-mentioned Archduke Joseph once again interceded, claiming to carry the authorization of King
Charles to appoint Admiral Nicholas Horthy as head of the armed forces. As Romanian troops started to
leave Budapest, Horthy approached the capital, and finally, on November 16, 1919, retook it from all
foreign occupants, riding on his white horse at the head of an army of 30,000 Hungarian officers and
soldiers. As 1920 rolled around, the Hungarian Parliament proclaimed Hungary still a kingdom without a
king and appointed Admiral Horthy as Regent. He remained in that post as “Kormanyzo” nearly until the
end of World War II.
IV. Karoly’s attempts to retake the crown
The (former) Emperor was convinced that the loyalists in Hungary would welcome him back if the
opportunity arose. Holy Saturday, March 26, 1921 may have been that moment.
Charles put out some feelers in diplomatic circles in Switzerland and decided to stage his return to the
throne. Shorn of his mustache and armed with a forged Spanish passport, he took a train to Szombathely,
a city of significant size on the Austro-Hungarian border. Count Janos Mikes must have had advance notice
of his coming because he put up Charles for the night. One of the legitimists, Col. Antal Lehar (a relative
of the famous composer) placed his military unit at Charles’ disposal. It so happened that Prime Minister
Pal Teleki was also spending the Easter weekend in Szombathely. Charles rang him up at 2 AM, asking the
Premier to arrange a meeting with Nicholas Horthy.
Teleki left his house at 6:30 in the morning but supposedly “lost his way” to Budapest, so Charles and his
entourage, who left an hour later, arrived at Horthy’s residence in Budapest unannounced. Horthy was
having his Easter dinner when his military aid told him who was at the door. The two-hour meeting, which
Horthy describes in his memoirs as a “thoroughly odious experience”, ended with an agreement to delay
the decision for three weeks. Neighboring countries got wind of Charles’ visit and immediately announced
that the restoration to the throne would constitute a cause for war. The local newspapers were not in
favor of the king’s return. Charles retreated to Switzerland. Teleki resigned and Horthy appointed the
legitimist Istvan Bethlen to be the next Prime Minister.
Some loyalist circles in Hungary remained in favor of the king’s return, giving false hopes to Charles. On
October 20th Charles and his wife Zita took a risky flight, landing in western Hungary in the fields of Count
Joseph Cziraky. From there they made their way to Sopron where an armoured train was being assembled
while the local garrison swore allegiance to Charles of Habsburg, King of Hungary. The troops were told
they were needed to restore order in Budapest where a Communist uprising was taking place. As the
train left for Budapest, local officials along the way took the oath of loyalty. Horthy got wind of the king’s
approach late on October 21st and decided to send troops to stop him. His military officers were
ambivalent about serving Horthy while their previous oath to the head of the Monarchy was still in effect.
99
By October 23rd, Hungary was on the brink of civil war. Martial law was declared in the capital as Charles
approached within 20 miles of the city. The British envoy (remember that Hungary still had not signed
the peace treaty!) Thomas Hohler announced that Britain would never permit the return of the Habsburgs
and would not recognize Charles as king. Horthy went to the railway station to exhort the ragtag troops
to fight for Hungary’s independence. Sporadic gunfire broke out, claiming the life of 14 Hungarian
defenders and 5 Austrian troops in the skirmish at Budaors. Charles began to negotiate for a truce, but
harsh terms were set for the royal couple. When stray bullets started to hit his train, Charles ordered his
troops to surrender.
The King and Queen, temporarily sheltered on the Moric Esterhazy estate, were arrested at the town of
Tata and escorted by military to the monastery in Tihany by Lake Balaton. Edvard Benes, foreign minister
of Czechoslovakia gave an ultimatum threatening to invade Hungary unless the Habsburgs were
dethroned. On November 3rd the British gunboat Glowworm picked up the royals at Baja by the Danube
and took them to Galati, Romania. The Allied command forced Charles into exile in Madeira.
As my account on the “House of Habsburg” concludes on previous pages, the royals were unable to find
a suitable and inexpensive home in the capital city of Funchal, so they opted for a drafty house on the hilly
and unhealthy Qinta do Monte. The house didn’t even have heat. Soon their children, including Crown
Prince Otto Habsburg, joined them from Switzerland. In the following year the king, walking to town on
a rainy, cold day, contracted pneumonia of which he died on April 1, 1922.
A memorial service was held for Charles at Matthias Coronation Church, with Regent Nicholas Horthy in
attendance. Let it be said also that son Otto Habsburg renounced all claims to the Austrian throne on
May 31, 1961, but did not renounce all claims to the Hungarian and Bohemian thrones. Otto passed away
on July 4, 2011, leaving his son, Charles V, as incumbent.
100
101
Remembering Trianon
The next two paragraphs are quoted from Istvan Sisa’s book entitled: “The Spirit of Hungary”, as follows:
“Everything happened at Trianon that Hungary’s enemies wanted to happen. The terms of the “Peace”
Treaty were dictated to Hungary rather than negotiated with her representatives. The successor states
of Czechoslovakia, Serbia, Romania had already taken military possession of all the territories they
coveted. The thousand-year-old Hungarian kingdom was no more.”
“When the Hungarian delegation to the Peace Conference arrived in Neuilly (a suburb of Paris) on January
7, 1920, its members were promptly interned in a building called the Chateau de Madrid and guarded by
police. They were forbidden to communicate with others attending the Conference except in writing.
Deprived of personal contact, the delegates wrote memorandum after memorandum, submitting
enormous volumes of maps and figures. However, all their work was in vain because everything had been
arranged in advance and the Hungarian input was not taken into account at all. While the Hungarians
were practically imprisoned, their antagonists had free access to the delegates of the Peace Conference.”
When Andre Tardieu, who had been called the Father of Trianon, took over as chairman of the peace
committee, he declared: “No pity must be shown to Hungary.” The French journalist Henry Pozzi wrote
in his book “Les Coupables” (The Guilty): “The peoples’ right to self-determination proclaimed by the Allies
during the war turned out to be merely a deceitful formula used as a rallying call during times of acute
danger. The peace, such as bad been promised, was never made, and the ideals for which so many men
had laid down their lives, were betrayed by the negotiators of the treaties.”
A virtual blockade surrounded Hungary by the so-called successor states. Hungary was starving. The
United States, alone, set up the so-called “Hoover kitchens” which provided meals for about 100,000
Hungarian children in Budapest and more meals elsewhere. There was nothing to do but sign the Treaty.
The government appointed former Ambassador Alfred Drasche-Laszar and Welfare Minister Agoston
Benard to sign it on June 4th, 1920, sealing the fate of Hungary forever. The country lost 89,700 square
miles (71.4%) out of its former 125,600, and more than 3.5 million Magyar nationals as well as 17.5 million
other nationals (63.6%) were detached from the old country, leaving Hungary with 7.6 million population
and 35,900 square miles of territory.
Let it be said for the record that the United States refused to sign the Treaty, concluding a separate peace
on August 29, 1920. Hungary remained a kingdom without a king, led by an Admiral without a sea. Adolf
Hitler, in the early days of World War II, did prevail on our neighbors to return some of the territories to
Hungary with purely Magyar population, but the price was terribly high. It meant sending an Army to the
Eastern front to fight the Soviet Union. We lost 200,000 in that effort and at the end of the war lost all
the territories as well which reverted to our neighbors.
The sad fact is that the dismembered country, - and its neighbors, - would not be able to stand in the way
of the encroaching Communism which would crumble them all like pieces of dominoes and hold them in
its grip for nearly half a century following World War II. This is the ultimate lesson of the treasonous Peace
treaty. The answer to a question concerning our neighbors is deeply etched in history which began with
a declaration of war by a foreign Habsburg king to revenge the life of his nephew who hated the Magyars,
a war which cost the lives of 661,000 Hungarian soldiers and at the end paid for this adventure with the
102
dismemberment of a 1000-year old kingdom, handed over generously by foreigners to Hungary’s
neighbors.
And those neighbors set out to make the life of the Hungarian minority unbearable, conducting “ethnic
cleansing” in its most drastic form. Therefore, remembering Trianon, a French palace where the fate of
Hungary was sealed and buried is bitterly justified.
103
COMMENTARY
Most works of this nature would have a chapter entitled CONCLUSION at the end. Since history is an
ongoing affair, I opted for the word “Commentary” instead. The Commentary includes not only my own
opinion or explanation in support of what I had written, but it also branches out into items and titles that
have come to my attention since the work had begun. The subjects I will discuss herein are neither in
the order of importance, nor are they chronological. They are a compendium of things I felt I had to write
about in anticipation of your questions or to enhance your (and my) knowledge of various subjects.
So, let us begin.
Paganism
The ancient form of religion practiced by Hungarians was a form of “Tengrism,” which they most probably
adopted from the several different tribes and nations they had encountered on their journey to the
Carpathian basin. Tengrism can be found in the ancient customs of Turkic and Mongolian peoples and
others they may have encountered in the Uralic region of Asia. Some writers say that Zoroastrianism was
mixed in with their beliefs which they may have picked up from Persians, or even from the very origin of
their journey from Mesopotamia. It is also to be noted that the Huns and Scythians who had migrated
prior to the Hungarian journey have several legends which are identical to the myths which Hungarians
had developed over the centuries.
The basic tenet of the Hungarians’ pagan beliefs was that the world is divided into three spheres: the
Upper, the Middle and the Underworld. They are interconnected much like the branches, trunk and root
system of a tree. The mythical “Turul” bird, resembling a falcon, resides in the upper branches together
with other gods, the chief god among them is “Isten” (Eeshten). The stars are holes in the firmament
through which Isten and the other gods watch the two other worlds and guide their movements.
In terrestrial dimensions, here on earth the role of the “shaman” was filled by a “taltos”, a wise man who
had access to all three worlds and who presided at animal sacrifices and other ceremonies such as burials.
Their belief system included the cult of the dead and belief in life after death, where the deceased was
provided with sufficient provisions for the long journey ahead.
In Part I, page 4 of this study I had referred to the miraculous stag, or Csodaszarvas which was to guide
the brothers Hunor and Magor to the present home of the Hungarians. Hunor and Magor were sons of
the Scythian kings Gog and Magog. Scythians were encyclopedic names for a nomadic people who
migrated to the area of the Black Sea. That would fit the identity of the Magyar tribes. On the other
hand, Gog and Magog were biblical names depicting future foes of God’s people. What is amazing is that
there is a reference to these kings in rabbinical literature as well as in the New Testament’s Revelations,
chapter 20, verses 6, 7 and 8:
“…They shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. Now, when the
thousand years have expired, Satan will be released from his prison. And will go out to deceive the nations
which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle, whose
number is as the sand of the sea…” Modern Hungary is celebrating its 1000-year existence. Can we take
the Bible literally, meaning that with the expiration of 1000 years Satan is released to “deceive” all
104
nations? Does this refer to the two world wars in the 20th century and the horrors which still await us in
the twenty-first?
Sources for this additional information include “Remnants of shamanistic beliefs in Hungarian folklore”
by Vilmos Dioszegi.
Christianity
Christianity’s history in Hungary needs more explanation than the couple of paragraphs I accorded myself
in depicting St. Stephen’s main achievement. The pagans, as explained above, followed a polytheistic
religion, but with the introduction of Christianity, those who did not acknowledge the God of the Bible,
were regarded as heathens. And heathens were not in the best interest of young Hungary, so, as we were
told in school, when Stephen became king, the country adopted the Christian religion. It simply was not
the whole story.
There were nests of Christians scattered in the Roman province of Pannonia in Transdanubia. And they
survived the successive, - and very destructive, - rules of the Huns, the Goths and the Avars. One of
Hungary’s saints (with some stretch of the imagination), Marton, was born in Szombathely (the Romans
called it Savaria) in the 4th century. Marton was a Roman soldier (as was his father) whose military duties
took him to France, where he converted to Christianity and became a bishop! The French appropriated
him as their own saint when Marton got canonized. He is venerated as Martin of Tours, patron saint of
France. (A Benedictine monastery is dedicated to St. Martin at Pannonhalma.)
Initially, the Byzantine Christian church sent out missionaries who would eventually convert Prince Geza,
head of the Hungarian tribes in the 9th century, shortly after their arrival in the Carpathian basin. Why
would Byzantine missionaries “pick” Hungary? As Bill O’Reilly explains in his book “The killing of Jesus”,
the resurrection of Jesus imbued Christians with such missionary spirit that the apostles themselves
traveled from Israel beyond Rome to Greece, the Ukraine, India, Egypt and Turkey. Some of the
missionaries found fertile ground in Hungary. But it is interesting to note that while Christianity in Hungary
was loyal to Rome, on the other hand Romania, - right next door, - adopted Greek Orthodox ties and
became loyal to Byzantine tenets.
There were, of course, attempts by other missionaries to spread the word. St. Adalbert, born in the Czech
kingdom with the original name of Vojtech Libicenszky, became the bishop of Prague and engaged in
missionary work in Hungary. Prince Geza asked him for the sacrament of baptism. No wonder then that
Hungarian words like kereszteny (Christian), pogany (pagan), pap (priest) and oltar (altar) were borrowed
from Slavic. A number of relics from the early Avar period (568-650) point to the existence of Christian
culture in Southwestern regions of Transdanubia. In a fort at Fenekpuszta near Lake Balaton a basilica
with three aisles was erected in the second half of the 6th century and Christian burial places were found
dating to the early 9th century.
After his conversion, Prince Geza played it safe and while officially a Christian, he paid tribute to pagan
rituals as well. Chief Bulcsu, a senior leader of the Hungarian tribal federation received baptism in
Constantinople as early as 948; the second most senior tribal chief, Gyula, was baptized there as well.
John Skylitzes, in “A Synopsis of Byzantine History” wrote that after his baptism Gyula “took back with him
105
a monk named Hierotheos, ordained as a bishop (and) converted many from the barbaric fallacy to
Christianity.” They must have traveled with the consent of the tribal council, including Prinze Geza.
But when Geza’s son, Stephen (originally Vajk) was elected to the post, he created legislation which
enforced Christianity on the nation even at the expense of some brutal punishment. In time, Hungary
became a bulwark of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, saving the West from the assault of Ottoman
and Slavic forces. (As a side remark, though, it is interesting to consider that the first Magyar translation
of the Bible was prepared in the 1430s by Hussite preachers, whose leader, Jan Hus, eventually would
turn out to be a heretic.)
Stephen’s efforts to convert his country to Christianity, and his wisdom to see its benefit for the nation,
must be applauded, even if some of the methods used in those days, abhorrent as they seem, were the
most effective to accomplish his goal within a mere 38 years of rule.
Royal succession
This study revealed the story of 57 kings. There may have been several others, such as kings from the
time Hungary was divided into three parts during the 150-year Turkish occupation, such as John Zapolya
of Transylvania. In such cases, though, often the ruling party would acquire the crown, - the sacred symbol
of royalty, - but was not actually crowned with it by the Archbishop. Peter Orseolo occupied the throne
twice with a short intermission, but was counted once. John Hunyadi ruled in place of the king as
governor, but was not crowned. He was not counted.
The average length of rule was 17.5 years. Emperor Franz Joseph ruled the longest, for 68 years from
1848 to 1916, whereas Sigismund in 1387 and Leopold I in 1655 occupied the throne for 50 years each.
The shortest reign belongs to Stephen IV, one of three brothers, who ruled from January to June of the
year 1163 as usurper of the throne held by his brother. Defeated in battle with his brother, he was
poisoned by his own troops.
Quite a few were crowned as children, even as infants, their Queen mother governing until the child
attained maturity. Others shared the throne with their father and either died before the older king, or
automatically took over when the father died. Fifteen kings ruled for one, two or three years. Most
were men, except Mary of Anjou, (1382-1395) whose husband, Sigismund, was her co-ruler and survivor,
and Maria Theresa (1740-1780) of Habsburg.
Most shared the Hungarian crown with other countries, such as Bohemia, Poland, Galicia, Moldavia,
Wallachia, Bosnia, Croatia, Dalmatia, as well as Austria. And this brings us to another comment.
The main obsession of Hungary’s rulers was to gain assurance that their progeny will continue in their
place, but also to engage in warfare with neighboring countries in order to expand their holdings. Such
attempts (many of them successful) at enlarging the territories over which they ruled, were not only
unnecessary but wasteful and counterproductive. How many lives would have been saved had it not
been for the self-absorption and ambition of the kings?
As I proposed in my essay about ethnicity (Part II, page 62), the ethnic makeup of a conquered country
made for a forced, artificial union under the crown of St. Stephen. The ethnicity of the newly subdued
countries was greater than their loyalty to the crown. They constituted a ticking time bomb for which the
106
king often had to fight again and again. But was this necessary for the survival and/or the flourishing of
Hungary?
Who shall be king?
Many efforts at succession on the part of the ruling king culminated in violence such as when Coloman
had both his brother Almos and Almos’s infant son Bela blinded in order to eliminate them as aspirants to
the throne. And this was just one of several dastardly acts to ensure the continuation of the family blood
line on the throne. Looking at the purity of those blood lines, even if we admit that most of the Arpad
dynasty descended from father to son, the issue (child) resulting from the royal couple was a half-breed
because none of our kings had married a true-blood Hungarian. (Betrothals and marriages could take
place either before or after the groom was crowned king.) Most of the royals married the children of
foreign potentates in order to secure the country’s ties with its neighbors. Starting with Stephen’s wife,
Gizela of Bavaria, through the Angevins and finally the paper-issue transfer of the bloodline to the
Habsburgs, the wives of our kings came from foreign countries and in many cases remained loyal to their
roots rather than blend in with the Magyar throne which they served.
Nevertheless, I must grant my appreciation and compliments to those who married our kings. To be
uprooted from a country where the bride was in familiar surroundings and transplanted to a sort of “wild”
setting with a tongue-twisting language, culture and cuisine must have been heart-wrenching. The king
calling on the palace asking for her hand may not have been looking like the Prince who came to whisk
Snow White away. With or without her consent, the bride was committed to a rough transition, whose
main objective was to bear an heir to the king. Giving birth under those circumstances must have been
the ultimate sacrifice, of which many of our queens died.
Some of the marriages were between close relatives, cousins and nieces, giving concern to in-breeding
which had already infected the aristocracy and would affect royalty with long-range prospects of mental
illness in present and future generations.
Kingship was a “dangerous profession.” Some died of natural causes. Others were trampled by horses in
battle, blinded and murdered, poisoned, abducted and assassinated and from other causes, including
dysentery, leukemia, smallpox, alcoholism and syphilis. It would take another year of study and many
volumes of writing to delve into the personalities of our royals. But as the biographer of Coco Chanel
wrote: “no one ever built an empire by being nice.”
St. Stephen's Admonitions to his son, Emeric (excerpts)
Although I had referred to this in the chapter dealing with Hungary’s first king, I now have a greater
appreciation and deeper reverence for a royal father’s concern which prompted Stephen to compile
guidelines for his son who was to take his place at the helm.
107
108
The scorecard
In relatively recent times, monarchies have been replaced by republics. The role of the king (not even
speaking of the emperor) has been shrinking and fulfills the role of figurative head of the state while a
president or prime minister has taken over the representation and administration of the government.
Nevertheless, the position of the king or queen still provides continuity and stability, - unless the royalty
is forcibly removed from that post. In the history of Hungary stability was provided not so much by the
often unworthy bearer of the crown, but by the crown itself. Legitimacy of a king was prescribed not only
by blood relations with its predecessor(s), but a strict process had to be followed as required by the
location and the administration of the crowning ceremony.
Be it far from me to be as bold as to judge the kings (and 2 queens) of Hungary, nevertheless, it seems to
be appropriate to leave my readers with a general sort of “ranking”. For support of this audacious move,
let me lean on the historic figures the nation erected at its millennial monument on Heros’ Plaza in
Budapest.
First and foremost is King (Saint) Stephen (997-1038) who settled the seven Magyar tribes and elevated
Hungary to the status of kingdom by accepting the crown from the Pope. Converting the people to the
Christian religion, Hungary gained respect as a European nation regardless of their Middle Eastern origin
and long peregrination en route to the Carpathian basin.
King (Saint) Ladislas (1077-1095) clearly
established the country’s position and reputation gained by the king’s character and the noble intention
which guided his military exploits. The annexation of Croatia and Dalmatia established the nation’s
territorial claims while creating a source of contention for its subsequent kings.
The country found its identity with its Christian belief when King Andrew II (1205-1235), author of the first
Golden Bull in Europe led a European force in one of the Crusades as a testimony to and devotion to
Christianity. King Bela IV (1235-1270) undertook the heroic task of rebuilding the country following the
devastation of the Mongol invasion of 1241/2. King Charles Robert (1308-1342) faced internal dissent
and external threats and ably guided the country through a difficult part of its history.
King Louis I the Great (1342-1382) spearheaded the greatest territorial expansion in the nation’s history.
Not represented at Heros’ Plaza is King Sigismund (1382-1437) who also attained the title of Holy Roman
Emperor. The ensuing years were some of the toughest for Hungary as the Turks were on the move to
conquer Vienna and had to trample Hungary in order to get there. The Austrian capital was saved by the
sacrifices of Hungarians on the ramparts of Europe. One of those was Governor John Hunyadi (14461456), the hero of the Battle of Nandorfehervar (Belgrade) in 1456. His son, King Matthias Corvinus (14581490) was Hungary’s great Renaissance ruler who reflected the nation’s cultural contribution to the
Enlightenment.
The period following the 1526 defeat at Mohacs was devastating for Hungary as the Turks and the
Habsburgs partitioned the country among themselves. Hungarians found fortitude in Transylvania which
provided such leaders as Ferenc Rakoczi II to keep resistance alive against the forces lined up against her.
In a moment of levity, King Matthias made a comment to Ferdinand I of Austria saying that if Matthias
was unable to squire a son, the Austrian Habsburg dynasty can take over Hungary. Ferdinand cashed in
on that remark and ruled from 1526 to 1564. He shared power with the Turks on the one hand and the
109
rulers of Transylvania on the other. The disastrous Turkish rule extended from 1526 to the fall (or
liberation) of Buda castle in 1686 and beyond to 1697 when the Turks finally left Hungarian soil. During
this time “Hungary had to resort to waging its own battles for self-preservation.” (See the fortress of
Eger.) Hungary rebelled against the Habsburg rule under Ferenc Rakoczi II and Imre Thokoly’s kuruc
forces. It was Charles III (1711-1740) who fashioned the so-called Pragmatic Sanction, abolishing the
male-only succession in vogue at that time, making it possible for Queen Maria Theresa (1740-1780) to
govern more or less even-handedly. Hungarian blood (Vitam et sanguinem!) saved Austria against Bavaria
and Prussia. It was during the reign of her third son, Leopold II, that the Crown of St. Stephen was rightfully
returned from Vienna to Hungary.
The longest ruler was Emperor Franz Joseph (1848-1916) who started during the Hungarian uprising of
1848 and came to a compromise with the Hungarians in 1867 which gave impetus to unprecedented
growth in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Emperor’s stunning wife, Queen Elizabeth, was a staunch
friend of Hungary, smoothing relations between the two countries.
Regrettably, the assassination of the Emperor’s nephew in Serbia swept Hungary into World War I (19141918) with the disastrous consequences of the Treaty of Trianon. The inequities of that sort of peace
launched World War II within one generation, ending in the long and cruel occupation by Soviet forces.
Their departure in 1991 made it possible for Hungary to try to find its own way.
________
It is difficult to say whether history would have taken the same, - or similar, - course had Hungary been
ruled by a dictator, a tribal chief, an elected minister or a military hero instead of a king, especially when
more than half of the country’s history was only an appendage to the ambitions of a foreigner. It is well
for us to consider that no matter what road Hungary would have chosen (or given to endure), in the words
of Thomas Carlyle, biographer of Frederick the Great, “the history of the world is but a biography of great
men.” And women, I should say.
And that is what I had tried to do in presenting Our Hungarian Heritage.
Validation
“History is not happenstance”, the comic George Carlin once said. “It is conspiratorial, carefully planned
and executed by people in power.”
If I failed in my objective, please “pass my imperfections by”, as in the words of David Everett, for “large
streams from little fountains flow, tall oaks from little acorns grow.”
*****
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H.G. Wells: The Outline of history, DoubleDay
A magyarok kronikaja, Officnia Nova
The timetables of history, Bernard Grun, Simon & Schuster 1963