In the spring of 1526 came the tidings that Sultan Suleiman had quitted Constantinople, at the head of a countless host, to conquer Hungary. On the 28th of July Péterwardein, after a valiant resistance, was blown into the air. The diet, which met at Buda in hot haste, proclaimed the young king27dictator, granted him unlimited subsidies which there was no time to collect, and ordered alevée en masseof the entire male population, which could not possibly assemble within the given time. Louis at once formed a camp at Tolna, whence he issued despairing summonses to the lieges, and, by the middle of August, some 25,000 ill-equipped gentlemen had gathered around him. With these he marched southwards to the plain of Mohács, where, on the 29th of August, the Hungarians, after a two hours’ fight, were annihilated, the king, both the archbishops, five bishops and 24,000 men perishing on the field. The sultan refused to believe that the pitiful array he had so easily overcome could be the national army of Hungary. Advancing with extreme caution, he occupied Buda on the 12th of September, but speedily returned to his own dominions, carrying off with him 105,000 captives, and an amount of spoil which filled the bazaars of the East for months to come. By the end of October the last Turkish regular had quitted Magyar soil, and, to use the words of a contemporary observer, one quarter of Hungary was as utterly destroyed as if a flood had passed over it.
The Turks had no sooner quitted the land than John Zapolya, voivode of Transylvania, assembled a diet at Tokaj (Oct. 14, 1526) at which the towns were represented as well asJohn Zapolya elected King.the counties. The tone of the assembly being violently anti-German, and John being the only conceivable national candidate, his election was a matter of course; but his misgivings were so great that it was not till the beginning of November that he very reluctantly allowed himself to be crowned at a second diet, held at Székesfehérvár. By this time a competitor had entered the field. This was the archduke Ferdinand, who claimed the Hungarian crown by right ofFerdinand of Austria elected.inheritance in the name of his wife, Anne, sister of the late king. Ferdinand was elected (Dec. 16) by a scratch assembly consisting of deputies from Croatia and the towns of Pressburg and Sopron; but he speedily improved his position in the course of 1527, by driving King John first from Buda and then from Hungary. In November the same year he was elected and crowned by a properly constituted diet at Székesfehérvár (Stuhlweissenburg). In 1529 Zapolya was reinstated in Buda by Suleiman the Magnificent in person, who, at this period, preferred setting up aRival kings.rival to “the king of Vienna” to conquering Hungary outright. Thus the Magyars were saddled with two rival kings with equally valid titles, which proved an even worse disaster than the Mohács catastrophe; for in most of the counties of the unhappy kingdom desperadoes of every description plundered the estates of the gentry, and oppressed the common people, under the pretext that they were fighting the battles of the contending monarchs. The determination of Ferdinand to partition Hungary rather than drive the Turks out, which he might easily have done after Suleiman’s unsuccessful attempts on Vienna in 1529-1530, led to a prolongation of the struggle till the 24th of February 1538, when, by the secret peace of Nagyvárad,28Hungary was divided between the two competitors. By this treaty Ferdinand retained Croatia-Slavonia and the five western counties with Pressburg and Esztergom (Gran), while Zapolya kept the remaining two-thirds with the royal title. He was indeed the last national king of Hungary till modern times. His court at Buda was maintained according to the ancient traditions, and hisgyüles, at which 67 of the 73 counties were generally represented, was the true national diet, the phantom assembly occasionally convened at Pressburg by Ferdinand scarcely deserving the title. Indeed, Ferdinand regarded his narrow strip of Hungarian territory as simply a barrier behind which he could better defend the hereditary states. During the last six years (1534-1540) of John’s reign, his kingdom, beneath the guidance of the Paulician monk, Frater György, or George Martinuzzi (q.v.), the last great statesman of old Hungary, enjoyed a stability and prosperity marvellous in the difficult circumstances of the period, Martinuzzi holding the balance exactly between the emperor and the Porte withastounding diplomatic dexterity, and at the same time introducing several important domestic reforms. Zapolya died on the 18th of July 1540, whereupon the estates of Hungary elected his baby son John Sigismund king, in direct violation of the peace of Grosswardein which had formally acknowledged Ferdinand as John’s successor, whether he left male issue or not. Ferdinand at once asserted his rights by force of arms, and attacked Buda in May 1541, despite the urgent remonstrances of Martinuzzi, who knew that the Turk would never suffer the emperor to reign at Buda. His fears were instantly justified. In August 1541, Suleiman, at the head of a vast army, invaded Hungary, and on the 30th of August, Buda was in his hands. During the six following years the sultan still further improved his position, capturing, amongst many other places, Pécs, and the primatial city of Esztergom; but, in 1547, the exigenciesPartition of Hungary.of the Persian war induced him to sell a truce of five years to Ferdinand for £100,000, on auti possidetisbasis, Ferdinand holding thirty-five counties (including Croatia and Slavonia) for which he was to pay an annual tribute of £60,000; John Sigismund retaining Transylvania and sixteen adjacent counties with the title of prince, while the rest of the land, comprising most of the central counties, was annexed to the Turkish empire. Thus the ancient kingdom was divided into three separate states with divergent aims and interests, a condition of things which, with frequent rearrangements, continued for more than 150 years.
A period of infinite confusion and extreme misery now ensued, of which only the salient points can here be noted. The attempts of the Habsburgs to conquer Transylvania drew down upon them two fresh Turkish invasions, the first inSiege of Szigetvár.1552, when the sultan’s generals captured Temesvár and fifty-four lesser forts or fortresses, and the second in 1566, memorable as Suleiman’s last descent upon Hungary, and also for the heroic defence of Szigetvár by Miklós Zrinyi (q.v.), one of the classical sieges of history. The truce of Adrianople in 1568, nominally for eight years, but prolonged from time to time till 1593, finally suspended regular hostilities, and introduced the epoch known as “The Long Peace,” though, throughout these twenty-five years, the guerilla warfare on the frontier never ceased for more than a few months at a time, and the relations between the Habsburgs and Transylvania were persistently hostile.
Probably no other country ever suffered so much from its rulers as Hungary suffered during the second half of the 16th century. This was due partly to political and partly to religious causes. To begin with, there can be no doubt that from 1558, when the German imperial crown was transferred from the Spanish to the Austrian branch of the Habsburg family, royal Hungary29was regarded by the emperors as an insignificant barrier province yielding far more trouble than profit. The visible signs of this contemptuous point of view were (1) the suspension of the august dignity of palatine, which, after the death of Tamás Nádasdy, “the great palatine,” in 1562, was left vacant for many years; (2) the abolition or attenuation of all the ancient Hungarian court dignitaries; (3) the degradation of the capital, Pressburg, into a mere provincial town; and (4) the more and more openly expressed determination to govern Hungary from Vienna by means of foreigners, principally German or Czech. During the reign of Ferdinand, whose consort, Anne, was a Hungarian princess, things were at least tolerable; but under Maximilian (1564-1576) and Rudolph (1576-1612) the antagonism of the Habsburgs towards their Magyar subjects was only too apparent. The diet, which had the power of the purse, could not be absolutely dispensed with; but it was summoned as seldom as possible, the king often preferring to forego his subsidies rather than listen to the unanswerable remonstrances of the estates against the illegalities of his government. In the days of the semi-insane recluse Rudolph things went from bad to worse. The Magyar nobles were now systematically spoliated on trumped-up charges of treason; hundreds of them were ruined. At last they either durst not attend the diet, or “sat like dumb dogs” during its session, allowing the king to alter and interpret the statutes at his good pleasure. Presently religious was superadded to political persecution.
The Reformation had at first produced little effect on Hungary. Except in the towns, mostly of German origin, it was generally detested, just because it came from Germany. The battle of Mohács, however, severely shook the faithEffect of Reformation.of the Hungarians. “Where are the old Magyar saints? Why do they not defend the realm against the Turks?” was the general cry. Moreover, the corrupt church had lost its hold on the affections of the people. Zapolya, a devout Catholic, is lauded by Archbishop Frangipan in 1533 for arresting the spread of the new doctrines, though he would not allow Martinuzzi to take the extreme step of burning perverts at the stake. These perverts were mostly to be found among nobles desirous of amassing church property, or among those of the clergy who clamoured for communion in both kinds. So long, however, as the old national kingdom survived, the majority of the people still clung to the old faith. Under Ferdinand the parochial clergy were tempted to become Lutherans by the prospect of matrimony, and, in reply to the remonstrances of their bishops, declared that they would rather give up their cures than their wives. In Transylvania matters were at first ordered more peaceably. In 1552 the new doctrines obtained complete recognition there, the diet of Torda (1557) going so far as to permit every one to worship in his own way so long as he did not molest his neighbour. Yet, in the following year, the whole of the property of the Catholic Church there was diverted to secular uses, and the Calvinists were simultaneously banished, though they regained complete tolerance in 1564, a privilege at the same time extended to the Unitarians, who were now very influential at court and converted Prince John Sigismund to their views. In Turkish Hungary all the confessions enjoyed liberty of worship, though the Catholics, as possible partisans of the “king of Vienna,” were liked the least. It was only when the Jesuits obtained a footing both at Prague30and Klausenburg that persecution began, but then it was very violent. In Transylvania the princes of the Báthory family (1571-1604) were ardent disciples of the Jesuit fathers, and Sigismund Báthory in particular persecuted fiercely, his fury being especially directed against the queer judaizing sect known as the Sabbatarians, whose tenets were adopted by the Szeklers, the most savage of “the three nations” of Transylvania, many thousands of whom were, after a bloody struggle, forced to emigrate. In royal Hungary also the Jesuits were the chief persecutors. The extirpation of Protestantism was a deliberate prearranged programme, and as Protestantism was by this time identical with Magyarism31the extirpation of the one was tantamount to the extirpation of the other. The method generally adopted was to deprive the preachers in the towns of their churches by force, Italian mercenaries being preferably employed for the purpose. It was assumed that the Protestant nobles’ jealousy of the burgesses would prevent them from interfering; but religious sympathy proved stronger than caste prejudice, and the diets protested against the persecution of their fellow citizens so vehemently that religious matters were withdrawn from their jurisdiction.
This persecution raged most fiercely towards the end of what is generally called “The Long War,” which began in 1593, and lasted till 1606. It was a confused four-cornered struggle between the emperor and the Turks, theThe “Long War.”Turks and Transylvania, Michael of Moldavia and Transylvania, and Transylvania and the emperor, desultory and languishing as regards the Turks (the one notable battle being Sigismund Báthory’s brilliant victory over thegrand vizier in Walachia in 1595, when the Magyar army penetrated as far as Giurgevo), but very bitter as between the emperor and Transylvania, the principality being finally subdued by the imperial general, George Basta, in August 1604. A reign of terror ensued, during which the unfortunate principality was well-nigh ruined. Basta was authorized to Germanize and Catholicize without delay, and he began by dividing the property of most of the nobles among his officers, appropriating the lion’s share himself. In royal Hungary the same object was aimed at by innumerable indictments against the richer landowners, indictments supported by false title-deeds and carried through by forged or purchased judgments of the courts. At last the estates of even the most devoted adherents of the Habsburgs were not safe, and some of them, like the wealthy István Illesházy (1540-1609), had to fly abroad to save their heads. Fortunately a peculiarly shameless attempt to blackmail Stephen Bocskay, a rich andStephen Bocskay.powerful Transylvanian nobleman, converted a long-suffering friend of the emperor into a national deliverer. Bocskay (q.v.), a quiet but resolute man, having once made up his mind to rebel, never paused till he had established satisfactory relations between the Austrian court and the Hungarians. The two great achievements of his brief reign (he was elected prince of Transylvania on the 5th of April 1605, and died on the 29th of December 1606) were the peace of Vienna (June 23, 1606) and the truce of Zsitvatörök (November 1606). By the peace of Vienna, Bocskay obtained religious liberty and political autonomy, the restoration of all confiscated estates, the repeal of all unrighteous judgments and a complete retrospective amnesty for all the Magyars in royal Hungary, besides his own recognition as independent sovereign prince of an enlarged32Transylvania. This treaty is remarkable as being the first constitutional compact between the ruling dynasty and the Hungarian nation. Almost equally important was the twenty years’ truce of Zsitvatörök, negotiated by Bocskay between the emperor and the sultan, which established for the first time a working equilibrium between the three parts of Hungary, with a distinct political preponderance in favour of Transylvania. Of the 5163 sq. m. of Hungarian territory, Transylvania now possessed 2082, Turkish Hungary 1859, and royal Hungary only 1222. The emperor, on the other hand, was freed from the humiliating annual tribute to the Porte on payment of a war indemnity of £400,000. The position of royal Hungary was still further improved when the popular and patriotic Archduke Matthias was elected king of Hungary on the 16th of November 1608. He had previously confirmed the treaty of Vienna, and the day after his election he appointed Illesházy, now reinstated in all his possessions and dignities, palatine of Hungary.33In Transylvania, meantime, Gabriel Bathóry had been elected (Nov. 11, 1608) in place of the decrepit Sigismund Rákoczy, Bocskay’s immediate successor.
For more than fifty years after the peace of Vienna the principality of Transylvania continued to be the bulwark of the liberties of the Magyars. It owed its ascendancy in the first place to the abilities of the two princes whoTransylvanian Hegemony.ruled it from 1613 to 1648. The first and most famous of these rulers was Gabriel Bethlen (q.v.), who reigned from 1613 to 1629, perpetually thwarted all the efforts of the emperor to oppress or circumvent his Hungarian subjects, and won some reputation abroad by adroitly pretending to champion the Protestant cause. Three times he waged war on the emperor, twice he was proclaimed king of Hungary, and by the peace of Nikolsburg (Dec. 31, 1621) he obtained for the Protestants a confirmation of the treaty of Vienna, and for himself seven additional counties in northern Hungary besides other substantial advantages. Bethlen’s successor, George I. Rákoczy, was equally successful. His principal achievement was the peace of Linz (Sept. 16, 1645), the last political triumph of Hungarian Protestantism, whereby the emperor was forced to confirm once more the oft-broken articles of the peace of Vienna, to restore nearly a hundred churches to the sects and to acknowledge the sway of Rákoczy over the north Hungarian counties. Gabriel Bethlen and George I. Rákoczy also did much for education and civilization generally, and their era has justly been called the golden era of Transylvania. They lavished money on the embellishment of their capital, Gyulafehérvár, which became a sort of Protestant Mecca, whither scholars and divines of every anti-Roman denomination flocked to bask in the favour of princes who were as liberal as they were pious. Yet both Bethlen and Rákoczy owed far more to favourable circumstances than to their own cunning. Their reigns synchronized with the Thirty Years’ War, during which the emperors were never in a position seriously to withstand the attacks of the malcontent Magyars, the vast majority of whom were still Protestants, who naturally looked upon the Transylvanian princes as their protectors and joined them in thousands whenever they raided Moravia or Lower Austria, or threatened to advance upon Vienna. In all these risings no battle of importance was fought. Generally speaking, the Transylvanians had only to appear, to have their demands promptly complied with; for these marauders had to be bought off because the emperor had more pressing business elsewhere. Yet their military efficiency must have been small, for their allies the Swedes invariably allude to them as wild and ragged semi-barbarians.
Another fortunate accident which favoured the hegemony of Transylvania was the temporary collapse of Hungary’s most formidable adversary, the Turk. From the peace of Zsitvatörök (1606) to the ninth year of the reign ofTurkish conflict.George Rákoczy II., who succeeded his father in 1648, the Turkish empire, misruled by a series of incompetent sultans and distracted by internal dissensions, was unable to intervene in Hungarian politics. But in the autumn of 1656 a great statesman, Mahommed Kuprili (q.v.), obtained the supreme control of affairs at Constantinople, and all Europe instantly felt the pressure of the Turk once more. It was George Rákoczy II. (q.v.) who gave the new grand vizier a pretext for interference. Against the advice of all his counsellors, and without the knowledge of the estates, Rákoczy, in 1657, plunged into the troubled sea of Polish politics, in the hope of winning the Polish throne, and not only failed miserably but overwhelmed Transylvania in his own ruin. Kuprili, who had forbidden the Polish enterprise, at once occupied Transylvania, and, in the course of the next five years, no fewer than four princes, three of whom died violent deaths, were forced to accept the kaftan and kalpag of investiture in the camp of the grand vizier. When, at the end of 1661, a more stable administration was set up with Michael Apaffy (1661-1690) as prince, Transylvania had descended to the rank of a feudatory of the Turkish empire. On the death of Mahommed Kuprili (Oct. 11, 1661) his son Fazil Ahmed succeeded him as grand vizier, and pursued his father’s policy with equal genius and determination. In 1663 he invaded royal Hungary, with the intention of uniting all the Magyars against the emperor, but, the Magyars steadily refusing to attend any diet summoned under Turkish influence, his plan fell through, and his only notable military success was the capture of the fortress of Érsekujvár (Neuhäusel). In the following year, thanks to the generalship and heroism of Miklós Zrinyi the younger (q.v.),Peace of Vasvár, 1664.Kuprili was still less successful. Zrinyi captured fortress after fortress, and interrupted the Turkish communications by destroying the famous bridge of Esseg, while Montecuculi defeated the grand vizier at the battle of St Gothard (Aug. 1, 1664). Yet, despite these reverses, Kuprili’s superior diplomacy enabled him, at the peace of Vasvár (Aug. 10, 1664) to obtain terms which should only have been conceded to a conqueror. The fortress of Érsekujvár and surrounding territory were now ceded to the Turks, with the result that royal Hungary was not only still further diminished, but its northern practically separated from its southern portion. On the other hand the treaty of Vasvár gave Hungary a respite from regular Turkish invasions for twenty years, though the border raiding continued uninterruptedly.
Of far more political importance than these fluctuating wars ofinvasion and conquest was the simultaneous Catholic reaction in Hungary. The movement may be said to have begunCatholic reaction.about 1601, when the great Jesuit preacher and controversialist, Péter Pázmány (q.v.), first devoted himself to the task of reconverting his countrymen. Progress was necessarily retarded by the influence of the independent Protestant princes of Transylvania in the northern counties of Hungary. Even as late as 1622 the Protestants at the diet of Pressburg were strong enough to elect their candidate, Szaniszló Thurzó, palatine. But Thurzó was the last Protestant palatine, and, on his death, the Catholics, at the diet of Sopron (1625), where they dominated the Upper Chamber, and had a large minority in the Lower, were able to elect Count Miklós Esterházy in Thurzó’s stead. The Jesuit programme in Hungary was the same as it had been in Poland a generation earlier, and may be summed up thus: convert the great families and all the rest will follow.34Their success, due partly to their whole-hearted zeal, and partly to their superior educationalPázmány’s work.system, was extraordinary; and they possessed the additional advantage of having in Pázmány a leader of commanding genius. During his primacy (1616-1637), when he had the whole influence of the court, and the sympathy and the assistance of the Catholic world behind him, he put the finishing touches to his life’s labour by founding a great Catholic university at Nagyszombát (1635), and publishing a Hungarian translation of the Bible to counteract the influence of Gaspar Károli’s widely spread Protestant version. Pázmány was certainly the great civilizing factor of Hungary in the seventeenth century, and indirectly he did as much for the native language as for the native church. His successors had only to build on his foundations. One most striking instance of how completely he changed the current of the national mind may here be given. From 1526 to 1625 the usual jubilee pilgrimages from Hungary to Rome had entirely ceased. During his primacy they were revived, and in 1650, only seventeen years after his death, they were as numerous as ever they had been. Five years later there remained but four noble Protestant families in royal Hungary. The Catholicization of the land was complete.
Unfortunately the court of Vienna was not content with winning back the Magyars to the Church. The Habsburg kings were as jealous of the political as of the religious liberties of their Hungarian subjects. This was partlyHabsburg repression.owing to the fact that national aspirations of any sort were contrary to the imperial system, which claimed to rule by right divine, and partly to an inveterate distrust of the Magyars, who were regarded at court as rebels by nature, and therefore as enemies far more troublesome than the Turks. The conduct of the Hungarian nobles in the past, indeed, somewhat justified this estimate, for the fall of the ancient monarchy was entirely due to their persistent disregard of authority, to their refusal to bear their share of the public burdens. They were now to suffer severely for their past misdoings, but unfortunately the innocent nation was forced to suffer with them. Throughout the latter part of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, the Hungarian gentry underwent a cruel discipline at the hands of their Habsburg kings. Their privileges were overridden, their petitions were disregarded, their diets were degraded into mere registries of the royal decrees. They were never fairly represented in the royal council, they were excluded as far as possible from commands in Hungarian regiments, and were treated, generally, as the members of an inferior and guilty race. This era of repression corresponds roughly with the reign of Leopold I. (1657-1705), who left the government of the country to two bigoted Magyar prelates, György Szelepesényi (1595-1685) and Lipót (Leopold) Kollonich (1631-1707), whose domination represents the high-water mark of the anti-national regimen. The stupid and abortive conspiracy of Peter Zrinyi and three other magnates, who were publicly executed (April 30, 1671), was followed by wholesale arrests and confiscations, and for a time the legal government of Hungary was superseded (Patent of March 3, 1673) by a committee of eight persons, four Magyars and four Germans, presided over by a German governor; but the most influential person in this committee was Bishop Kollonich, of whom it was said that, while Pázmány hated the heretic in the Magyar, Kollonich hated the Magyar in the heretic. A gigantic process against leading Protestant ministers for alleged conspiracy was the first act of this committee. It began at Pressburg in March 1674, when 236 of the ministers were “converted” or confessed to acts of rebellion. But the remaining 93 stood firm and were condemned to death, a punishment commuted to slavery in the Neapolitan galleys. Sweden, as one of the guarantors of the peace of Westphalia, and several north German states, protested against the injury thus done to their coreligionists. It was replied that Hungary was outside the operation of the treaty of Westphalia, and that the Protestants had been condemned notex odio religionisbutcrimine rebellionis.
But a high-spirited nation cannot be extinguished by any number of patents and persecutions. So long as the Magyar people had any life left, it was bound to fight in self-defence, it was bound to produce “malcontents”Hungarian resistance.who looked abroad for help to the enemies of the house of Habsburg. The first and most famous of the malcontent leaders was Count Imre Tököli (q.v.). Between 1678 and 1682 Tököli waged three wars with Leopold, and, in September 1682, was acknowledged both by the emperor and the sultan as prince of North Hungary as far as the river Garam, to the great relief of the Magyar Protestants. The success of Tököli rekindled the martial ardour of the Turks, and a war party, under the grand vizier Kara Mustafa, determined to wrest from Leopold his twelve remaining Hungarian counties, gained the ascendancy at Constantinople in the course of 1682. Leopold, intent on the doings of his perennial rival Louis XIV., was loth to engage in an eastern war even for the liberation of Hungary, which he regarded as of far less importance than a strip or two of German territory on the Rhine. But, stimulated by the representations of Pope Innocent XI., who, well aware of the internal weakness of the Turk, was bent upon forming a Holy League to drive them out of Europe, and alarmed, besides, by the danger of Vienna and the hereditary states, Leopold reluctantly contracted an alliance with John III. of Poland, and gave the command of the army which, mainly through the efforts of the pope he had been able to assemble, to Prince Charles of Lorraine. The war, which lasted for 16 years and put an end to the Turkish dominion in Hungary, began with the world-renowned siege of Vienna (July 14-Sept. 12, 1683). There is no need to recount the oft-told victories of Sobieski (see John III. Sobieski, King of Poland). What is not quite so generally known is the fact that Leopold slackened at once and would have been quite content with the results of these earlier victories had not the pope stiffened his resistance by forming a Holy League between the Emperor, Poland, Venice, Muscovy and the papacy, with the avowed object of dealing the Turk thecoup de grâce(March 5, 1684). This statesmanlike persistence was rewarded by an uninterrupted series of triumphs, culminating in the recapture of Buda (1686) and Belgrade (1688), and the recovery of Bosnia (1689). But, in 1690, the third of the famous Kuprilis, Mustafa, brother of Fazil Ahmed, became grand vizier, and the Turk, still further encouraged by the death of Innocent XI., rallied once more. In the course of that year Kuprili regained Servia and Bulgaria, placed Tököli on the throne of Transylvania, and on the 6th of October took BelgradeLiberation from the Turks.by assault. Once more the road to Vienna lay open, but the grand vizier wasted the remainder of the year in fortifying Belgrade, and on August 18th, 1691, he was defeated and slain at Slankamen by the margrave of Baden. For the next six years the war languished owing to the timidity of the emperor, the incompetence of his generals and the exhaustion of the Porte; but on the 11th of September 1697 Prince Eugene of Savoy routed the Turks at Zenta and on the 13th of November 1698 a peace-congress was opened atKarlowitz which resulted in the peace of that name (Jan. 26, 1699). Nominally a truce for 25 years on theuti possidetisbasis,Peace of Karlowitz.the peace of Karlowitz left in the emperor’s hands the whole of Hungary except Syrmia and the territory lying between the rivers Maros, Theiss, Danube and the mountains of Transylvania, the so-called Temesköz, or about one-eleventh of the modern kingdom. The peace of Karlowitz marks the term of the Magyar’s secular struggle with Mahommedanism and finally reunited her long-separated provinces beneath a common sceptre.
But the liberation of Hungary from the Turks brought no relief to the Hungarians. The ruthless suppression of the Magyar malcontents, in which there was little discrimination between the innocent and the guilty, had so crushed the spirit of the country that Leopold considered the time ripe for realizing a long-cherished ideal of the Habsburgs and changing Hungary from an elective into an hereditary monarchy. For this purpose a diet was assembled at Pressburg in the autumn of 1687. It was a mere rump, for wholesale executions had thinned its numbers and the reconquered countries were not represented in it. To this weakened and terrorized assembly the emperor-king explained that he had the right to treat Hungary as a conquered country, but that he was prepared to confirm its constitutional liberties under three conditions: the inaugural diploma was to be in the form signed by Ferdinand I., the crown was to be declared hereditary in the house of Habsburg, and the 31st clause of the Golden Bull, authorizing armed resistance to unconstitutional acts of the sovereign, was to be abrogated. These conditions the diet had no choice but to accept, and, in October 1687, the elective monarchy of Hungary, which had been in existence for nearly seven hundred years, ceased to exist. The immediate effect of the peace of Karlowitz was thus only to strengthen despotism in Hungary. Kollonich, who had been created a cardinal in 1685, archbishop of Kalocsa in 1691 and archbishop of Esztergom (Gran) and primate of Hungary in 1695, was now at the head of affairs, and his plan was to germanize Hungary as speedily as possible by promoting a wholesale immigration into the recovered provinces, all of which were in a terrible state of dilapidation.35
The border counties, now formed into a military zone, were planted exclusively with Croatian colonists as being more trustworthy defenders of the Hungarian frontier than the Hungarians themselves. Moreover, aneo-acquisita commissiowas constituted to inquire into the title-deeds of the Magyar landowners in the old Turkish provinces, and hundreds of estates were transferred, on the flimsiest of pretexts, to naturalized foreigners. Transylvania since 1690 had been administered from Vienna, and though the farce of assembling a diet there was still kept up, even the promise of religious liberty, conceded to it on its surrender in 1687, was not kept. No wonder then if the whole country was now seething with discontent and onlyFrancis Rakóczy.awaiting an opportunity to burst forth in open rebellion. This opportunity came when the emperor, involved in the War of the Spanish Succession, withdrew all his troops from Hungary except some 1600 men. In 1703 the malcontents found a leader in Francis Rakóczy II. (q.v.), who was elected prince by the Hungarian estates on the 6th of July 1704, and during the next six years gave the emperor Joseph I., who had succeeded Leopold in May 1705, considerable anxiety. Rakóczy had often as many as 100,000 men under him, and his bands penetrated as far as Moravia and even approached within a few miles of Vienna. But they were guerillas, not regulars; they had no good officers, no serviceable artillery, and very little money; and all the foreign powers to whom Rakóczy turned for assistance (excepting France, who fed them occasionally with paltry subsidies) would not commit themselves to a formal alliance with rebels who were defeated in every pitched battle they fought. On the other hand, if the Rakóczians were easily dispersed, they as quickly reassembled, and at one time they held all Transylvania and the greater part of Hungary. In the course of 1707 two Rakóczian diets even went so far as formally to depose the Habsburgs and form an interim government with Rakóczy at its head, till a national king could be legally elected. The Maritime Powers, too, fearful lest Louis XIV. should materially assist the Rakóczians and thus divertPeace of Szátmár, 1711.part of the emperor’s forces at the very crisis of the War of the Spanish Succession, intervened, repeatedly and energetically, to bring about a compromise between the court and the insurgents, whose claims they considered to be just and fair. But the obstinate refusal of Joseph to admit that the Rakóczians were anything but rebels was always the insurmountable object in all such negotiations. But when, on the 7th of April 1711, Joseph died without issue, leaving the crown to his brother the Archduke Charles, then fighting the battles of the Allies in Spain, a peace-congress met at Szátmár on the 27th of April, and, two days later, an understanding was arrived at on the basis of a general amnesty, full religious liberty and the recognition of the inviolability of the ancient rights and privileges of the Magyars.
Thus the peace of Szátmár assured to the Hungarian nation all that it had won by former compacts with the Habsburgs; but whereas hitherto the Transylvanian principality had been the permanent guardian of all such compacts, and the authority of the reigning house had been counterpoised by the Turk, the effect and validity of the peace of Szátmár depended entirely upon the support it might derive from the nation itself. It was a fortunate thing for Hungary that the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession introduced a new period, in which, at last, the interests of the dynasty and the nation were identical, thus rendering a reconciliation between them desirable. Moreover, the next century and a half was a period of domestic tranquillity, during which Hungary was able to repair the ruin of the long Turkish wars, nurse her material resources, and takeCharles III.the first steps in the direction of social and political reform. The first reforms, however, were dynastic rather than national. Thus, in 1715, King Charles III.36persuaded the diet to consent to the establishment of a standing army, which—though the diet reserved the right to fix the number of recruits and vote the necessary subsidies from time to time—was placed under the control of the Austrian council of war. The same centralizing tendency was shown in the administrative and judicial reforms taken in hand by the diet of 1722. A Hungarian court chancery was now established at Vienna, while the government of Hungary proper was committed to a royal stadholdership at Pressburg. Both the chancery and the stadholdership were independent of the diet and responsible to the king alone, being, in fact, his executivePragmatic Sanction, 1723.instruments. It was this diet also which accepted the Pragmatic Sanction, first issued in 1713, by which the emperor Charles VI., in default of his leaving male heirs, settled the succession to his hereditary dominions on his daughter Maria Theresa and her heirs. By the laws of 1723, which gave effect to the resolution of the diet in favour of accepting the principle of female succession, the Habsburg king entered into a fresh contract with his Hungarian subjects, a contract which remained the basis of the relations of the crown and nation until 1848. On the one hand it was declared that the kingdom of Hungary was an integral part of the Habsburg dominions and inseparable from these so long as a male or female heir of the kings Charles, Joseph and Leopold should be found to succeed to them. On the other hand, Charles swore, on behalf of himself and his heirs, to preserve the Hungarian constitution intact, with all the rights, privileges, customs, laws, &c., of the kingdom and its dependencies. Moreover, in the event of the failure of a Habsburg heir, the diet reserved the right to revive the “ancient, approved and accepted custom and prerogative of the estates and orders in the matter of the election and coronation of their king.”
The reign of Charles III. is also memorable for two Turkish wars, the first of which, beginning in 1716, and made glorious by the victories of Prince Eugene and János Pállfy, was terminated bythe peace of Passarowitz (July 21, 1718), by which the Temesköz was also freed from the Turks, and Servia, Northern Bosnia and Little Walachia, all of them ancient conquests of Hungary, were once more incorporated with the territories of the crown of St Stephen. The second war, though undertaken in league with Russia, proved unlucky, and, at the peace of Belgrade (Sept. 1, 1739), all the conquests of the peace of Passarowitz, including Belgrade itself, were lost, except the banat of Temesvár.
With Maria Theresa (1740-1780) began the age of enlightened despotism. Deeply grateful to the Magyars for their sacrifices and services during the War of the Austrian Succession, she dedicated her whole authority to the good of theMaria Theresa.nation, but she was very unwilling to share that authoritywiththe people. Only in the first stormy years of her reign did she summon the diet; after 1764 she dispensed with it altogether. She did not fill up the dignity of palatine, vacant since the 26th of October 1765, and governed Hungary through her son-in-law, Albert of Saxe-Teschen. She did not attack the Hungarian constitution; she simply put it on one side. Her reforms were made not by statute, but by royal decree. Yet the nation patiently endured the mild yoke of the great queen, because it felt and knew that its welfare was safe in her motherly hands. Her greatest achievement lay in the direction of educational reform. She employed the proceeds of the vast sums coming to her from the confiscation of the property of the suppressed Jesuit order in founding schools and colleges all over Hungary. The kingdom was divided into ten educational districts for the purpose, with a university at Buda. Towards all her Magyars, especially the Catholics, she was ever most gracious; but the magnates, the Bátthyanis, the Nadásdys, the Pállfys, the Andrássys, who had chased her enemies from Bohemia and routed them in Bavaria, enjoyed the lion’s share of her benefactions. In fact, most of them became professional courtiers, and lived habitually at Vienna. She also attracted the gentry to her capital by forming a Magyar body-guard from the cadets of noble families. But she was good to all, not even forgetting the serfs. Theúrbéri szabályzat(feudal prescription) of 1767 restored to the peasants the right of transmigration and, in some respects, protected them against the exactions of their landlords.
Joseph II. (1780-1790) was as true to the principles of enlightened despotism and family politics as his mother; but he had none of the common sense which had led her to realize the limits of her power. Joseph was anJoseph II.idealist and a doctrinaire, whose dream was to build up his ideal body politic; the first step toward which was to be the amalgamation of all his dominions into a common state under an absolute sovereign (seeAustria-Hungary; andJoseph II., Emperor). Unfortunately, the Hungarian constitution stood in the way of this political paradise, so Joseph resolved that the Hungarian constitution must be sacrificed. Refusing to be crowned, or even to take the usual oaths of observance, he simply announced his accession to the Hungarian counties, and then deliberately proceeded to break down all the ancient Magyar institutions. In 1784 the Language Edict made German the official language of the common state. The same year he ordered a census and a land-survey to be taken, to enable him to tax every one irrespective of birth or wealth. Protests came in from every quarter and a dangerous rebellion broke out in Transylvania; but opposition only made Joseph more obstinate, and he endeavoured to anticipate any further resistance by abolishing the ancient county assemblies and dividing the kingdom into two districts administered by German officials.
In taking this course Joseph made the capital mistake of neglecting the Machiavellian maxim that in changing the substance of cherished institutions the prince should be careful to preserve the semblance. In substance the county assemblies were worse than ineffective: mere turbulent gatherings of country squires and peasants, corrupt and prejudiced, representing nothing but their own pride of race and class; and to try and govern without them, or to administer in spite of them, may have been the only expedient possible to statesmen. But to the Magyars they were the immemorial strongholds of their liberties, the last defences of their constitution; and the attempt to suppress them, which made every county a centre of disaffection and resistance, was the action not of a statesman, but of a visionary. The failure of Joseph’s “enlightened” policy in Hungary was inevitable in any case; it was hastened by the disastrous Turkish war of 1787-92, which withdrew Joseph altogether from domestic affairs; and on his death-bed (Feb. 22, 1790) he felt it to be his duty to annul all his principal reforms, so as to lighten the difficulties of his successor.
Leopold II. found the country on the verge of revolution; but the wisdom of the new monarch saved the situation and won back the Magyars. At the diet of 1790-1791 laws were passed not only confirming the royal prerogativesLeopold II., 1790-1792.and the national liberties, but leaving the way open for future developments. Hungary was declared to be a free, independent and unsubjected kingdom governed by its own laws and customs. The legislative functions were to be exercised by the king and the diet conjointly and by them alone. The diets were henceforth to be triennial, and every new king was to pledge himself to be crowned and issue his credentials37within six months of the death of his predecessor. Latin was still to be the official language, but Magyar was now introduced into the university and all the schools. Leopold’s successor Francis I. (1792-1835) received a declaration of war from theFrancis I., 1792-1835.French Legislative Assembly immediately on ascending the throne. For the next quarter of a century he, as the champion of legitimacy, was fighting the Revolution on countless battle-fields, and the fearful struggle only bound the Magyar nation closer to the Habsburg dynasty. Ignaz Jozsef Martinovics (1755-1795) and his associates, the Hungarian Jacobins, vainly attempted a revolutionary propaganda (1795), and Napoleon’s mutilations of the ancient kingdom of St Stephen did not predispose the Hungarian gentry in his favour. Politically, indeed, the whole period was one of retrogression and stagnation. The frequent diets held in the earlier part of the reign occupied themselves with little else but war subsidies; after 1811 they ceased to be summoned. In the latter years of Francis I. the dark shadow of Metternich’s policy of “stability” fell across the kingdom, and the forces of reactionary absolutism were everywhere supreme. But beneath the surface a strong popular current was beginning to run in a contrary direction. Hungarian society, not unaffected by western Liberalism, but without any direct help from abroad, was preparing for the future emancipation. Writers, savants, poets, artists, noble and plebeian, layman and cleric, without any previous concert, or obvious connexion, were working towards that ideal of political liberty which was to unite all the Magyars. Mihály Vörösmartyo, Ferencz Kölcsey, Ferencz Kazinczy and his associates, to mention but a few of many great names, were, consciously or unconsciously, as the representatives of the renascent national literature, accomplishing a political mission, and their pens proved no less efficacious than the swords of their ancestors.
It was a direct attack upon the constitution which, to use the words of István Széchenyi, first “startled the nation out of its sickly drowsiness.” In 1823, when the reactionary powers were meditating joint action to suppress theHungarian revival.revolution in Spain, the government, without consulting the diet, imposed a war-tax and called out the recruits. The county assemblies instantly protested against this illegal act, and Francis I. was obliged, at the diet of 1823, to repudiate, the action of his ministers. But the estates felt that the maintenance of their liberties demanded more substantial guarantees than the dead letter of ancient laws. Széchenyi, who had resided abroad and studied Western institutions, was the recognized leader of all those who wished to create a new Hungary out of the old. For years he and his friends educated public opinion by issuing innumerable pamphlets in which the new Liberalism was eloquently expounded. In particular Széchenyi insisted that the people must not look exclusively to the government,or even to the diet, for the necessary reforms. Society itself must take the initiative by breaking down the barriers of class exclusiveness and reviving a healthy public spirit. The effect of this teaching was manifest at the diet of 1832, when the Liberals in the Lower Chamber had a large majority, prominent among whom were Francis Deák and Ödön Beöthy. In the Upper House, however, the magnates united with the government to form a conservative party obstinately opposed to any project of reform, which frustrated all the efforts of the Liberals.
The alarm of the government at the power and popularity of the Liberal party induced it, soon after the accession of the new king, the emperor Ferdinand I. (1835-1848), to attempt to crush the reform movement by arresting and imprisoning the most active agitators among them, Louis Kossuth and Miklós Wesselényi. But the nation was no longer to be cowed. The diet of 1839 refused to proceed to business till the political prisoners had been released, and, while in the Lower Chamber the reforming majority was larger than ever, a Liberal party was now also formed in the Upper House under the brilliant leadership of Count Louis Batthyány and Baron Joseph Eötvös. Two progressive measures of the highest importance were passed by this diet, one making Magyar the official language of Hungary, the other freeing the peasants’ holdings from all feudal obligations.
The results of the diet of 1839 did not satisfy the advanced Liberals, while the opposition of the government and of the Upper House still further embittered the general discontent. The chief exponent of this temper was theKossuth.Pesti Hirlap, Hungary’s first political newspaper, founded in 1841 by Kossuth, whose articles, advocating armed reprisals if necessary, inflamed the extremists but alienated Széchenyi, who openly attacked Kossuth’s opinions. The polemic on both sides was violent; but, as usual, the extreme views prevailed, and on the assembling of the diet of 1843 Kossuth was more popular than ever, while the influence of Széchenyi had sensibly declined. The tone of this diet was passionate, and the government was fiercely attacked for interfering with the elections. Fresh triumphs were won by the Liberals. Magyar was now declared to be the language of the schools and the law-courts as well as of the legislature; mixed marriages were legalized; and official positions were thrown open to non-nobles.
The interval between the diet of 1843 and that of 1847 saw a complete disintegration and transformation of the various political parties. Széchenyi openly joined the government, while the moderate Liberals separated from the extremists and formed a new party, the Centralists. Immediately before the elections, however, Deák succeeded in reuniting all the Liberals on the common platform of “The Ten Points”: (1) Responsible ministries, (2) Popular representation, (3) The incorporation of Transylvania, (4) Right of public meeting, (6) Absolute religious liberty, (7) Universal equality before the law, (8) Universal taxation, (9) The abolition of theAviticum, an obsolete and anomalous land-tenure, (10) The abolition of serfdom, with compensation to the landlords. The ensuing elections resulted in a complete victory of the Progressives. All efforts to bring about an understanding between the government and the opposition were fruitless. Kossuth demanded not merely the redress of actual grievances, but a reform which would make grievances impossible in the future. In the highest circles a dissolution of the diet now seemed to be the sole remedy; but, before itRevolution of 1848. The March Laws.could be carried out, tidings of the February revolution in Paris reached Pressburg38(March 1), and on the 3rd of March Kossuth’s motion for the appointment of an independent, responsible ministry was accepted by the Lower House. The moderates, alarmed not so much by the motion itself as by its tone, again tried to intervene; but on the 13th of March the Vienna revolution broke out, and the king, yielding to pressure or panic, appointed Count Louis Batthyány premier of the first Hungarian responsible ministry, which included Kossuth, Széchenyi and Deák. The Ten Points, or the March Laws as they were now called, were then adopted by the legislature and received the royal assent (April 10). Hungary had, to all intents and purposes, become an independent state bound to Austria only by the fact that the palatine chanced to be an Austrian archduke.
In the assertion of their national aspirations, confused as these were with the new democratic ideals, the Magyars had had the support of the German democrats who temporarily held the reins of power in Vienna. On the other hand,The non-Magyar races.they were threatened by an ominous stirring of the subject races in Hungary itself. Croats, Vlachs, Serbs and Slovaks resented Magyar domination—a domination which had been carefully secured under the revolutionary constitution by a very narrow franchise, and out of the general chaos each race hoped to create for itself a separate national existence. The separatist movement was strongest in the south, where the Rumans were in touch with their kinsmen in Walachia and Moldavia, the Serbs with their brethren in Servia, and the Croats intent on reasserting the independence of the “Tri-une Kingdom.”
The attitude of the distracted imperial government towards these movements was at first openly suspicious and hostile. The emperor and his ministers hoped that, having conceded the demands of the Magyars, they wouldJellachich.receive the help of the Hungarian government in crushing the revolution elsewhere, a hope that seemed to be justified by the readiness with which Batthyány consented to send a contingent to the assistance of the imperialists in Italy. That the encouragement of the Slav aspirations was soon deliberately adopted as a weapon against the Hungarian government was due, partly to the speedy predominance at Pest of Kossuth and the extreme party of which he was the mouthpiece, but mainly to the calculated policy of Baron Jellachich, who on the 14th of April was appointed ban of Croatia. Jellachich, who as a soldier was devoted to the interests of the imperial house, realized that the best way to break the revolutionary power of the Magyars and Germans would be to encourage the Slav national ideas, which were equally hostile to both; to set up against the Dualism in favour at Pest and Vienna the federal system advocated by the Slavs, and so to restore the traditional Habsburg principle ofDivide et impera. This policy he pursued with masterly skill. His first acts on taking up his office were to repudiate the authority of the Hungarian diet, to replace theMagyarofficials with ardent “Illyrians,” and to proclaim martial law. Under pressure from the palatine of Batthyány an imperial edict was issued, on the 7th day of May, ordering the ban to desist from his separatist plans and take his orders from Pest. He not only refused to obey, but on the 5th of June convoked to Agram the Croatian national diet, of which the first act was to declare the independence of the Tri-une Kingdom. Once more, at the instance of Batthyány, the emperor intervened; and on the 10th an imperial edict stripped Jellachich of all his offices.
Meanwhile, however, Jellachich had himself started for Innsbruck, where he succeeded in persuading the emperor of the loyalty of his intentions, and whence, though not as yet formally reinstated, he was allowed to return to Croatia with practically unfettered discretion. The Hungarian government, in fact, had played into his hands. At a time when everything depended on the army, they had destroyed the main tie which bound the Austrian court to their interests by tampering with the relation of the Hungarian army to the crown. In May a national guard had been created, the disaffected troops being bribed by increased pay to desert their colours and join this; and on the 1st of June the garrison of Pest had taken an oath to the constitution. All hope of crushing revolutionary Vienna with Magyar aid was thus at an end, and Jellachich, who on the 20th issued a proclamation to the Croat regiments in Italy to remain with their colours and fight for the common fatherland, was free to carry out his policy of identifying the cause of the southern Slavs with that of the imperial army. The alliance was cemented in July by a military demonstration, of which Jellachich was the hero, at Vienna; as the result of which the government mustered up courage to declare publicly that the basis of the Austrian state was “the recognition of the equal rights of all nationalities.”This was the challenge which the Magyars were not slow to accept.
In the Hungarian diet, which met on the 2nd of July, the influence of the conservative cabinet was wholly overshadowed by that of Kossuth, whose inflammatory orations—directed against the disruptive designs of the Slavs andJellachich invades Hungary.the treachery of the Austrian government—precipitated the crisis. At his instance the diet not only refused to vote supplies for the troops of the ban of Croatia, but only consented to pass a motion for sending reinforcements to the army in Italy on condition that the anti-Magyar races in Hungary should be first disarmed. On the 11th, on his motion, a decree was passed by acclamation for a levy of 200,000 men and the raising of £4,500,000 for the defence of the independence of the country. Desultory fighting, in which Austrian officers with the tacit consent of the minister of war took part against the Magyars, had already broken out in the south. It was not, however, until the victory of Custozza (July 25) set free the army in Italy, that the Austrian government ventured on bolder measures. On the 4th of September, after weeks of fruitless negotiation, the king-emperor threw down the gauntlet by reinstating Jellachich in all his honours. Seven days later the ban declared open war on Hungary by crossing the Drave at the head of 36,000 Croatian troops (seeAustria-Hungary:History). The immediate result was to place the extreme revolutionaries in power at Pest. Széchenyi had lost his reason some days before; Eötvös and Deák retired into private life; of the conservative ministers only Batthyány, to his undoing, consented to remain in office, though hardly in power. Kossuth alone was supreme.
The advance of Jellachich as far as Lake Balaton had not been checked, the Magyar troops, though—contrary to his expectation—none joined him, offering no opposition. The palatine, the Austrian Archduke Stephen, after fruitless attempts at negotiation, laid down his office on the 24th of September and left for Vienna. One more attempt at compromise was made, General Count Lamberg39being sent to take command of all the troops, Slav or Magyar, in Hungary, with a view to arranging an armistice. His mission, which was a slight to Jellachich, was conceived as a concession to the Magyars, and had the general approval of Batthyány. Unhappily, however, when Lamberg arrived in Pest, Batthyány had not yet returned; the diet, on Kossuth’s motion, called on the army not to obey the new commander-in-chief, on the ground that his commission had not been countersigned by a minister at Pest. Next day, as he was crossing the bridge of Buda, Lamberg was dragged from his carriage by a frantic mob and torn to pieces. This made war inevitable; though Batthyány hurried to Vienna to try and arrange a settlement. Failing in this, he retired, and on the 2nd of October a royal proclamation, countersigned by his successor, Recsséy, placed Hungary under martial law and appointed Jellachich viceroy and commander of all the forces. This proclamation, together with the order given to certain Viennese regiments to march to the assistance of Jellachich, who had been defeated at Pákozd on the 29th of September, led to theémeute(Oct. 3) which ended in the murder of the minister of war, Latour, and the second flight of the emperor to Innsbruck. The fortunes of the German revolutionaries in Vienna and the Magyar revolutionists in Pest were now closelyFall of Vienna.bound up together; and when, on the 11th, Prince Windischgrätz laid siege to Vienna, it was to Hungary that the democrats of the capital looked for relief. The despatch of a large force of militia to the assistance of the Viennese was, in fact, the first act of open rebellion of the Hungarians. They suffered a defeat at Schwechat on the 30th of October, which sealed the fate of the revolutionists in Vienna and thus precipitated a conflictà outrancein Hungary itself.
In Austria the army was now supreme, and the appointment of Prince Felix Schwarzenberg as head of the government was a guarantee that its power would be used in a reactionary sense without weakness or scruple. The AustrianFrancis Joseph.diet was transferred on the 15th of November to Kremsier, remote from revolutionary influences; and, though the government still thought it prudent to proclaim its constitutional principles, it also proclaimed its intention to preserve the unity of the monarchy. A still further step was taken when, on the 2nd of December, the emperor Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his nephew Francis Joseph. The new sovereign was a lad of eighteen, who for the present was likely to be the mere mouthpiece of Schwarzenberg’s policy. Moreover, he was not bound by the constitutional obligations unwillingly accepted by his uncle. The Magyars at once took up the challenge. On the 7th the Hungarian diet formally refused to acknowledge the title of the new king, “as without the knowledge and consent of the diet no one could sit on the Hungarian throne,” and called the nation to arms. Constitutionally, in the Magyar opinion, Ferdinand was still king of Hungary, and this gave to the revolt an excuse of legality. Actually, from this time until the collapse of the rising, Louis Kossuth was the ruler of Hungary.
The struggle opened with a series of Austrian successes. Prince Windischgrätz, who had received orders to reduce Hungary by fire and sword, began his advance on the 15th of December; opened up the way to the capitalWar of Independence.by the victory of Mór (Oct. 30), and on the 5th of January 1849 occupied Pest, while the Hungarian government and diet retired behind the Theiss and established themselves at Debreczen. A last attempt at reconciliation, made by the more moderate members of the diet in Windischgrätz’s camp at Bieské (Jan. 3), had foundered on the uncompromising attitude of the Austrian commander, who demanded unconditional submission; whereupon the moderates, including Deák and Batthyány, retired into private life, leaving Kossuth to carry on the struggle with the support of the enthusiastic extremists who constituted the rump of the diet at Debreczen. The question now was: how far the military would subordinate itself to the civil element of the national government. The first symptom of dissonance was a proclamation by the commander of the Upper Danube division, Arthur Görgei, from his camp at Vácz (Jan. 5) emphasizing the fact that the national defence was purely constitutional, and menacing all who might be led astray from this standpoint by republican aspirations. Immediately after this proclamation Görgei disappeared with his army among the hills of Upper Hungary, and, despite the difficulties of a phenomenally severe winter and the constant pursuit of vastly superior forces, fought his way down to the valley of Hernád—and safety. This masterly winter-campaign first revealed Görgei’s military genius, and the discipline of that terrible month of marching and counter-marching had hardened his recruits into veterans whom his country regarded with pride and his country’s enemies with respect. Unfortunately his success caused some jealousy in official quarters, and when, in the middle of February 1849, a commander-in-chief was appointed to carry out Kossuth’s plan of campaign, that vital appointment was given, not to the man who had made the army what it was, but to a foreigner, a Polish refugee,Battle of Kápolna.Count Henrik Dembinski, who, after fighting the bloody and indecisive battle of Kápolna (Feb. 26-27), was forced to retreat. Görgei was immediately appointed his successor, and the new generalissimo led the Honvéds from victory to victory. Ably supported by Klapka and Damjanich he pressed forward irresistibly. Szólnok (March 5), Isaszeg (April 6), Vácz (April 10), and Nagysarló (April 19) were so many milestones in his triumphal progress. On the 25th of May the Hungarian capital was once more in the hands of the Hungarians.
Meanwhile, the earlier events of the war had so altered the political situation that any idea which the diet at Debreczen had cherished of a compromise with Austria was destroyed. The capture of Pest had confirmed the Austrian court in its policyProclamation of a united empire.of unification, which after the victory of Kápolna they thought it safe to proclaim. On the 7th of March the diet of Kremsier was dissolved, and immediately afterwards a proclamation was issued in the name of the emperor Francis Joseph establishing a united constitution for the whole empire, of which Hungary, cut up into half a dozen administrative districts, was henceforth to be little more than the largest of several subject provinces. The news of this manifesto, arriving as it did simultaneously with that of Görgei’s successes, destroyed the last vestiges of a desire of the Hungarian revolutionists to compromise, and on the 14th of April, on the motion of Kossuth, the diet proclaimed the independence of Hungary, declared the house of Habsburg as false and perjured, for ever excluded from the throne, and elected Kossuth president of the Hungarian Republic. This was an execrable blunder in the circumstances, and the results were fatal to the national cause. Neither the government nor the army could accommodate itself to the new situation. From henceforth the military and civil authorities, as represented by Kossuth and Görgei, were hopelessly out of sympathy with each other, and the breach widened till all effective co-operation became impossible.
Meanwhile the humiliating defeats of the imperial army and the course of events in Hungary had compelled the court of Vienna to accept the assistance which the emperor Nicholas I. of Russia had proffered in the loftiestIntervention of Russia.spirit of the Holy Alliance. The Austro-Russian alliance was announced at the beginning of May, and before the end of the month the common plan of campaign had been arranged. The Austrian commander-in-chief, Count Haynau, was to attack Hungary from the west, the Russian, Prince Paskevich, from the north, gradually environing the kingdom, and then advancing to end the business by one decisive blow in the mid-Theissian counties. They had at their disposal 375,000 men, to which the Magyars could only oppose 160,000. The Magyars, too, were now more than ever divided among themselves, no plan of campaign had yet been drawn up, no commander-in-chief appointed to replace Görgei, whom Kossuth had deposed. Haynau’s first victories (June 20-28) put an end to their indecisions. On the 2nd of July the Hungarian government abandoned Pest and transferred its capital first to Szeged and finally to Arad. The Russians were by this time well on their way to the Theiss, and the terrible girdle which was to throttle the liberties of Hungary was all but completed. Kossuth again appointed as commander-in-chief the brave but inefficient Dembinski, who was utterly routed at Temesvár (Aug. 9) by Haynau. This was the last great battle of the War of Independence. The final catastrophe was now unavoidable. On the 13th of August Görgei, who had been appointed dictator by the panic-stricken government two days before, surrendered the remnant of his hardly pressed army to the Russian General Rüdiger at Világos. The other army corps and all the fortresses followed his example, Komárom, heroically defended by Klapka, being the last to capitulate (Sept. 27). Kossuth and his associates, who had quitted Arad on the 10th of August, took refuge in Turkish territory. By the end of the month Paskevich could write to the Emperor Nicholas: “Hungary lies at the feet of your Imperial Majesty.”
From October 1849 to July 1850 Hungary was governed by martial law administered by “the butcher” Haynau. This was a period of military tribunals, dragooning, wholesale confiscation and all manner of brutalities.40FromThe “Bach System.”1851 to 1860 pure terrorism was succeeded by the “Bach System,” which derives its name from the imperial minister of the interior, Baron Alexander von Bach. The Bach System did not recognize historical Hungary. It postulated the existence of one common indivisible state of which mutilated Hungary41formed an important section. The supreme government was entrusted to an imperial council responsible to the emperor alone. The counties were administered by imperial officials, Germans, Czechs and Galicians, who did not understand the Magyar tongue. German was the official language. But though reaction was the motive power of this new machinery of government, it could not do away with many of the practical and obvious improvements of 1848, and it was not blind to some of the indispensable requirements of a modern state. The material welfare of the nation was certainly promoted by it. Modern roads were made, the first railways were laid down, the regulation of the river Theiss was taken in hand, a new and better scheme of finance was inaugurated. But the whole system, so to speak, hung in the air. It took no root in the soil. The Magyar nation stood aloof from it. It was plain that at the first revolutionary blast from without, or the first insurrectionary outburst from within, the “Bach System” would vanish like a mirage.
Meanwhile the new Austrian empire had failed to stand the test of international complications. The Crimean War had isolated it in Europe. The Italian war of 1859 had revealed its essential instability. It was felt at courtThe October Diploma, 1860.that some concessions were now due to the subject nationalities. Hence the October Diploma (Oct. 20, 1860) which proposed to prop up the crazy common state with the shadow of a constitution and to grant some measure of local autonomy to Hungary, subject always to the supervision of the imperial council (Reichsrath).42This project was favoured by the Magyar conservative magnates who had never broken with the court, but was steadily opposed by the Liberal leader Ferencz Deák whose upright and tenacious character made him at this crisis the oracle and the buttress of the national cause. Deák’s standpoint was as simple as it was unchangeable. He demanded the re-establishment of the constitution of 1848 in its entirety, the whole constitution and nothing but the constitution.
The October Diploma was followed by the February Patent (Feb. 26, 1861), which proposed to convert the Reichsrath into a constitutional representative assembly, with two chambers, to which all the provinces of the empireThe February Patent, 1861.were to send deputies. The project, elaborated by Anton von Schmerling, was submitted to a Hungarian diet which assembled at Pest on the 2nd of April 1861. After long and violent debates, the diet, on the 8th of August, unanimously adopted an address to the crown, drawn up by Deák, praying for the restoration of the political and territorial integrity of Hungary, for the public coronation of the king with all its accompaniments, and the full restitution of the fundamental laws. The executive retorted by dissolving the diet on the 21st of August and levying the taxes by military execution. The so-calledProvisoriumhad begun.
But the politicians of Vienna had neither the power nor the time to realize their intentions. The question of Italian unity had no sooner been settled than the question of German unity arose, and fresh international difficultiesThe Austro-Prussian War of 1866.once more inclined the Austrian government towards moderation and concession. In the beginning of June 1865, Francis Joseph came to Buda; on the 26th a provisional Hungarian government was formed, on the 20th of September the February constitution was suspended, and on the 14th of December a diet was summoned to Buda-Pest. The great majority of the nation naturally desired a composition with its ruler and with Austria, and this general desire was unerringly interpreted and directed by Deák, who carried two-thirds of the deputies along with him. The session was interrupted by the outbreak of the Austro-Prussian War, but not before acommittee had been formed to draft the new constitution. The peace of Prague (Aug. 20, 1866), excluding Austria from Italy and Germany, made the fate of the Habsburg monarchy absolutely dependent upon a compromise with the Magyars. (For the Compromise orAusgleich, seeAustria-Hungary:History.) On the 7th of November 1866, the diet reassembled.The Compromise of 1867.On the 17th of February 1867 a responsible independent ministry was formed under Count Gyula Andrássy. On the 29th of May the new constitution was adopted by 209 votes to 89. Practically it was an amplification of the March Laws of 1848. The coronation took place on the 8th of June, on which occasion the king solemnly declared that he wished “a veil to be drawn over the past.” The usual coronation gifts he devoted to the benefit of the Honvéd invalids who had fought in the War of Independence. The reconciliation between monarch and people was assured.
Hungary was now a free and independent modern state; but the very completeness and suddenness of her constitutional victory made it impossible for the strongly flowing current of political life to keep within due bounds.Parties in Independent Hungary.The circumstance that the formation of political parties had not come about naturally, was an additional difficulty. Broadly speaking, there have been in Hungary since 1867 two parties: those who accept the compromise with Austria, and affirm that under it Hungary, so far from having surrendered any of her rights, has acquired an influence which she previously did not actually possess, and secondly, those who see in the compromise an abandonment of the essentials of independence and aim at the restoration of the conditions established in 1848. Within this broad division, however, have appeared from time to time political groups in bewildering variety, each adopting a party designation according to the exigencies of the moment, but each basing its programme on one or other of the theoretical foundations above mentioned. Thus, at the outset, the most heterogeneous elements were to be found both on the Left and Right. The Extreme Left was infected by the fanaticism of Kossuth, who condemned the compromise and refused to take the benefit of the amnesty, while the prelates and magnates who had originally opposed the compromise were now to be found by the side of Deák and Andrássy. The Deák party preserved its majority at the elections of 1869, but the Left Centre and Extreme Left returned to the diet considerably reinforced. The outbreak of the Franco-German War of 1870 turned the attention of the Magyars toAndrássy.foreign affairs. Andrássy never rendered a greater service to his country than when he prevented the imperial chancellor and joint foreign minister, Count Beust,43from intervening in favour of France. On the retirement of Beust in 1871, Andrássy was appointed his successor, the first instance, since Hungary came beneath the dominion of the Habsburgs, of an Hungarian statesman being entrusted with the conduct of foreign affairs. But, however gratifying such an elevation might be, it was distinctly prejudicial, at first, to Hungary’s domestic affairs, for no one else at this time, in Hungary, possessed either the prestige or the popularity of Andrássy. Within the next five years ministry followed ministry in rapid succession. A hopeless political confusion ensued. Few measures could be passed. The finances fell into disorder. The national credit was so seriously impaired abroad that foreign loans could only be obtained at ruinous rates of interest. During this period Deák had almost entirely withdrawn from public life. His last great speech was delivered on the 28th of June 1873, and he died on the 29th of January 1876. Fortunately,Kálmán Tisza.in Kálmán Tisza, the leader of the Liberal (Szabadelmü,i.e.“Free Principle”) party, he left behind him a statesman of the first rank, who for the next eighteen years was to rule Hungary uninterruptedly. From the first, Tisza was exposed to the violent attacks of the opposition, which embraced, not only the party of Independence, champions of the principles of 1848, but the so-called National party, led by the brilliant orator Count Albert Apponyi, which aimed at much the same ends but looked upon the Compromise of 1867 as a convenient substructure on which to build up the Magyar state. Neither could forgive Tisza for repudiating his earlier Radical policy, the so-called Bihar Programme (March 6, 1868), which went far beyond the Compromise in the direction of independence, and both attacked him with a violence which his unyielding temper, and the ruthless methods by which he always knew how to secure victory, tended ever to fan into fury. Yet Tisza’s aim also was to convert the old polyglot Hungarian kingdom into a homogeneous Magyar state, and the methods which he employed—notably the enforced magyarization of the subject races, which formed part of the reformed educational system introduced by him—certainly did not err on the side of moderation.44Whatever view may be held of Tisza’s policy in this respect, or of the corrupt methods by which he maintained his party in power,45there can be no doubt that during his long tenure of office—which practically amounted to a dictatorship—he did much to promote the astonishing progress of his country, which ran a risk of being stifled in the strife of factions. Himself a Calvinist, he succeeded in putting an end to the old quarrel of Catholic and Protestant and uniting them in a common enthusiasm for a race ideal; nominally a Liberal, he trampled on every Liberal principle in order to secure the means for governing with a firm hand; and if the political corruption of modern Hungary is largely his work,46to him also belongs the credit for the measures which have placed the country on a sound economic basis and the statesmanlike temper which made Hungary a power in the affairs of Europe. In this latter respect Tisza rendered substantial aid to the joint minister for foreign affairs by repressing the anti-Russian ardour of the Magyars on the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78, and by supporting Andrássy’s execution of the mandate from the Berlin Congress to Austria-Hungary for the occupation of Bosnia, against which the Hungarian opposition agitated for reasons ostensibly financial. Tisza’s policy on both these occasions increased his unpopularity in Hungary, but in the highest circles at Vienna he was now regarded as indispensable.