The story of Hungary

by Ármin Vámbéry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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