The story of Hungary

by Ármin Vámbéry

The feud between the two brothers broke out immediately after the death of Béla III. Andrew collected troops for the pretended purpose of executing the last will of his father, but in reality to employ them against his own brother. He succeeded in defeating the army of King Emeric, who was taken unawares, and was, besides, vacillating and incapable, and, after occupying Croatia and Dalmatia, to which he added fresh territory, he proclaimed himself, in 1198, Duke of Croatia, Dalmatia, Rama, and Chulmia (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Emeric vainly urged Innocent III., the most powerful pope since Gregory VII., to compel the rebellious duke to carry out the pious vows of his father. Andrew did not stir one step towards the Holy Land, but, persevering in his sinful perverseness, continued to repeat his attacks against the lawful king. At last, during one of his outbreaks, he was overtaken by an avenging Nemesis.

The armies of the two brothers confronted each other on the banks of the Drave. The camp of Andrew was stirring with a strong and numerous army which, in anticipation of a certain victory, was loudly revelling and making merry. King Emeric’s eyes sadly surveyed his own scant following, whose devotion and determination, great as they were, did not seem sufficient to make up for the deficiency in numbers. The collision between the opposing armies was inevitable, and the king felt that his utter discomfiture would be the result of the battle. His desperate condition inspired him with a sudden resolution, and, without communicating his intention to any one, he went into the enemy’s camp, dressed in kingly state, and, sceptre in hand, made straight for his brother’s tent. The revelling warriors, in surprise, were struck with awe at the marvellous spectacle suddenly bursting in upon their dazed eyes. “I wish to see the man who will dare to raise a sinful arm against his king and master,” were the magic words which opened him the way through the gaping multitude. Upon arriving in his brother’s tent he seized the rebellious duke’s hands and led him captive to his own camp. The above narrative of the event, as gleaned from the chronicles, may not agree in every particular with the actual occurrence, but Duke Andrew became the king’s prisoner, and remained captive until the latter called him to his deathbed, generously confiding to his care his infant son, Ladislaus, who had already been crowned king.

Andrew proved as faithless a guardian as he had been a false brother. He could not restrain his ambition, but deprived Ladislaus of his crown, and drove him and his mother from the court. Shortly afterwards, the unhappy youth died, and Andrew could, at last, in 1205, ascend the throne he had so long coveted, and whose possession he had attempted to achieve by means in the choice of which he never consulted his conscience.

The reign of Andrew II. (1205-1235) deserves a conspicuous place in the history of Hungary, not for its beneficence, but for its weakness and shortcomings. The never-ending civil wars of the last century, especially the internecine struggle between the two brothers, had the effect of weakening the kingdom, lowering the royal power and authority, and, as a consequence of the decay of the latter, of increasing the overbearing spirit of the oligarchs. Andrew II. could not escape the condign punishment brought upon himself by his own acts. His whole reign was a series of feeble attempts to free himself from the entangling web caused by his own faults and the licentiousness of the oligarchy. He presented the spectacle of a man whose ambition was greater than his abilities, and whose levity equalled his ambition. In the beginning of his reign he was completely under the influence of his wife, Gertrude, who was of Tyrolese descent, and who suffered the country to become a prey to her foreign relations and favorites. Yet when the great and powerful lords rose against the plundering foreigners, the licentious court, and the tyrannical and wicked queen, killing the latter in her own palace, Andrew had neither the courage nor the power to exert his royal authority against the rebels, but was rather glad that the storm had passed over his head and had not singled him out for its victim. Instead of resenting the injury done to him, he conciliated his enemies by presents and gifts, and indulged in schemes of a new matrimonial alliance. He was fond of pomp, splendor, generous expenditure, and the ostentatious display of the court, but the royal revenues soon proved inadequate to pay the sums thus squandered, reduced as the royal domains had been by grants of entire counties. The king, in order to raise the revenues, mortgaged the imposts and tolls, and, by debasing the coinage, dishonestly added to his resources. The din of the revels of the court prevented the loud complaints of the people, who were oppressed and worried in a thousand ways by the oligarchs and the tax-and toll-gatherers, from reaching the ears of the king. At times his restlessness and ambition still involved him in adventurous enterprises. Thus he wished to elevate his son, Duke Béla, to the throne of Galicia, but lacked the strength to accomplish his scheme. The campaign against Galicia only added to the expenditures of the country, and, indeed, it happened that the king with his son and the whole army were in the most imminent danger of destruction. His mind was also disturbed by his failure to carry out the wishes of his father, and, at last, he determined, in 1217, to march an army to the Holy Land. In order to raise the money necessary for the campaign he plundered the churches and monasteries, and sold to Venice the city of Zara, the bulwark of the Dalmatian seashore. He finally left the country with the army thus collected, but while he was roaming about in the Holy Land without aim or purpose, the orphaned country was reduced to the brink of misery. “When we returned home from our expedition,” complained the king himself, in a letter addressed to the holy see, “we found that both the clergy and the laymen had been guilty of wickedness such as surpasses all imagination. All the treasure of the country we found squandered, and fifteen years will not suffice to restore our land to her former better condition.” The condition of the country must have been sad, indeed, if the state the king had left her in might be called good in comparison with it, and however heavily the responsibility of the fresh calamities rested upon the king, his truthfulness in this instance cannot be doubted.

The gloomy rule of Andrew II. was relieved by one cheering event which contained the germ of a better future. The gentry, comprising in its ranks the largest part of the freeholders of the country, unable to bear longer the weak government of the king, the violence of the oligarchy, and the scourge of the army of extortionate gatherers of taxes and tolls, at last lifted their heads and asked the throne to listen to their complaints and to remedy their wrongs. Béla himself, the king’s son, whom Andrew II. had caused to be crowned before going to the Holy Land, was the leader and spokesman of the nobility, who had stood up in defence of the sacredness of the constitution, and who now urged the return to the rule of law in the land.

Their wrongs, and the remedies exacted by the gentry were set forth in the following strain: The king should not, at the expense of the patriots, bestow favors upon foreigners, nor elevate them to dignities, and distribute among them the domains of the country; entire counties or dignities of state should not, as a practice, be granted in perpetuity, and he should not suffer avaricious nobles to grasp a greater number of offices than they could efficiently administer. He should guard the ancient immunities of the nobles, so that they might freely dispose of their property, and not be molested in their persons without lawful judgment, and should not be burdened with taxes or extortionate exactions of any kind. He should take care that the tax-and toll-gatherers and other officials be taken from the ranks of the gentry, and should remove from his service the Ishmaelites and the Jews. Every thing opposed to these requirements he should at once bring to an end. The county estates, granted away to the injury of the land or dishonestly obtained, should be taken back by the king, and he should, in pursuance of the ancient custom of the country, every year, on St. Stephen’s day, convoke the diet, whose duty it was to act upon the complaints of the nation and to defend her liberty when attacked.

The king, however, moved neither by the voice of truth, nor by the misery of his people, refused to accede to these requests. In the breast of Andrew II., who, during his whole reign, had utterly neglected the duties coupled with his exalted station, awoke on the present occasion a feeling of injured royal dignity. But the gentry were determined to enforce their demands, and, gathering around the heir to the throne, they took up arms in order to obtain by force the concessions they deemed necessary for the good of the country. Father and son with their armies were already confronting each other, when the chief prelates interfered, and prevailed upon Andrew to listen to the wishes of the gentry. The concessions were drawn up in form of a royal letter and the king bound himself and his successors by oath to observe the stipulations contained in it. Posterity has given this royal letter the name of the Golden Bull, owing to the fact that the seal appended to it by a silk string rests in a box made of gold.

This remarkable document, which terminated the internal strife extending over a period of a hundred years, and to which for six centuries the past generations of Hungary were in the habit of proudly referring as the foundation of the constitution of the Hungarian nobility, reads, omitting passages of minor importance, as follows:

“In the name of the Holy Trinity and of the indivisible Unity, Andrew, by the grace of God, hereditary king of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, Rama, Servia, and Galicia: Whereas the nobles and others in our realm have suffered detriment in many parts of their liberties, as established by King St. Stephen, through the power of some kings—who, either from anger revenged themselves, or listened to the counsels of wicked advisers, or sought their own advantage,—and our nobles have frequently appealed to our Majesty’s and our ancestors’ ears with petitions and complaints concerning the amelioration of our land—we, therefore, as in duty bound, desirous of satisfying their request, grant to them as well as to the other inhabitants of our realm the liberty granted by the sacred king, and we further ordain other matters pertaining to the improvement of the land in this wise: We ordain that we are bound annually to celebrate the day of the sacred king at Stuhlweissenburg and that, if we should be prevented from being present, the palatine shall be there in our place and shall hear the causes as our representative, and all the nobles may freely assemble there according to their pleasure. It is also our will, that neither we nor our successors shall detain or oppress the nobles on account of any powerful person, unless they be first summoned and sentenced by due process of law. Further we shall not cause taxes to be collected on the estates of the nobles or of the clergy of the Church. If a noble shall die without male issue his daughter shall be entitled to one fourth of his property; as to the rest he may dispose of it as he pleases, and if death should intervene before his doing so it shall descend to his nearer relatives, and if he is absolutely without kin then the inheritance shall go to the king. If the king is desirous of taking troops out of the country the nobles shall not be bound to go with him unless at his expense; if, however, an army should invade the country all the nobles are bound to go. The palatine shall be judge over all the people of our realm without distinction; but in capital cases and matters of property which concern the nobles the palatine shall not decide without the king’s knowledge. If foreigners come to the country they shall not be elevated to dignities without the consent of the council of the realm; land shall not be given to those who are strangers to the realm. The king shall not grant entire counties or offices of any kind in perpetuity. Officers of the treasury, salt bureaux, and customs must be nobles of our realm; Ishmaelites and Jews shall be incapable of holding such offices. Excepting these four great lords, the palatine, the banus, the court judges of the king and queen, no one shall have two dignities at the same time. Should, however, we, or any of our successors, at any time be disposed to infringe upon any of these our orders, the bishops as well as the other lords and the nobles of the realm, shall be at liberty, jointly or singly, by virtue of this letter, to oppose and contradict us and our successors, forever, without incurring the penalty of treason. Given by the hand of Kletus, the chancellor of our court, in the year of grace one thousand two hundred and twenty-two.”