The story of Hungary

by Ármin Vámbéry

CATHEDRAL OF GRAN.

Six days after his death the crown of Hungary was placed upon the head of his son Louis, afterwards surnamed the Great, who was then seventeen years old (1342-1382). The young king immediately proceeded on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Ladislaus, the most popular Hungarian king, at Grosswardein. There at his grave he made a sacred vow to govern the Hungarian nation after the example of his great predecessor. From Grosswardein he proceeded to Transylvania to receive the oath of fealty of the son of Michael Bazarád. Hardly returned to his palace at Visegrád, the young king received depressing news regarding his brother at Naples. The young Hungarian prince was looked upon with jealousy by the numerous Italian dukes at the Neapolitan court, who tried by every means to hinder his accession to the throne. His mother, the Hungarian queen, at once hastened, laden with treasure, to Naples, to rescue her son from the machinations of his enemies. The Hungarian money had its due effect at the papal court, whose vassal Naples was at that time. Queen Elizabeth obtained the assurance that her son Andrew would be crowned, but she returned to Hungary before the ceremony of coronation had taken place. At her departure her mind was filled with evil forebodings, which were but too well justified by coming events. The queen’s departure was the signal for fresh intrigues at the Neapolitan court. Philip and Louis of Taranto, the sons of Catharine of Valois, openly insulted the young prince. Joanna wickedly turned from her husband and sided with his enemies. At length the day of the coronation was approaching. Andrew, relying on the power he was soon to wield, warned his enemies that he would avenge the affronts that had been heaped upon him. His enemies were seized with terror upon seeing, at the tournament which took place shortly before the coronation, the axe and noose depicted beneath the arms of Andrew, floating on high on his banner. The imminent danger rendered the intriguing dukes desperate, and they at once determined to put Andrew out of the way. His assassination was resolved upon, and, Joanna giving her assent to the nefarious plan, the young prince was doomed.

On the 18th of September, 1345, the whole court, and amongst them Joanna, proceeded to Aversa, to indulge in the merry pastime of the chase. Andrew was accompanied by his faithful Hungarian nurse, Izolda, who, poor creature, little dreamed that her ward was to be the object of the chase. In the evening the whole company took up their quarters at the convent of St. Peter. Andrew had just retired to his chamber when a familiar voice called him into the adjoining room, in order to discuss some grave questions. The unsuspecting youth, anticipating no evil, left his chamber, but no sooner had he crossed the threshold when the door was locked behind him by his secretary. The assassins lying in wait fell upon their victim at once and strangled him; his cries for help remaining unheeded. His dead body they then dragged to the balcony and precipitated it into the garden below. Whilst this bloody scene was enacted, Joanna slept soundly, undisturbed by the scuffle at her door, and cries of distress of her husband. She afterwards gave the explanation that she had been put under a spell by a witch.

There was mourning at the castle of Visegrád at the sad tidings. Louis swore dire vengeance, and the nation enthusiastically took up arms to support him. From abroad there arrived but voices of sympathy. The Italian princes offered his armies free transit through their territories; Louis, the excommunicated German Emperor, entered into an alliance with the king; Edward III., the King of England, while condoling with him, spurred him on to revenge; the Pope alone maintained an ominous silence. This time, however, the desire for revenge proved stronger with the king than his reverence for the Pope, and in 1347 the Hungarian army was ready to march. To punish a faithless woman and not to conquer Italy was the object of their expedition, and the Italian princes were glad to afford the king’s army every facility to reach the proposed goal.

All the great lords of the realm rallied round the king. A large black flag was carried in front of the Hungarian army and on it was depicted the pale face of Andrew. On two occasions they were led by the king against Naples, and each time he was accompanied by the most distinguished Hungarian families. Michael Kont, Andrew and Stephen Laczfy, with Dionysius, the son of the latter, and a host of others, brought with them their armed trains, by whose mighty blows both Aversa, of mournful memory, and proud Naples were soon reduced. Queen Joanna, with her second husband, Louis of Taranto, escaped beyond the sea. Louis of Durazzo, one of the intriguing dukes who was suspected of having been an accessory to the murder, expiated his crime by being killed after a gay carouse and thrown down from the same balcony which had witnessed the foul deed of the conspirators. Four other dukes were carried to Hungary as prisoners. King Louis himself was always foremost in battle and received grave wounds on more than one occasion. But his chief desire—to punish Joanna—was not gratified and at length he entrusted the Pope with the sentence to be pronounced against her. The Pope, however, declared her innocent of the crime of murder, imputed to her, but mulcted her in a fine of 300,000 ducats as a restitution of the expenditures of the campaign. The chivalrous king spurned the blood-money and left the punishment of guilty Joanna to a more upright judge—to Providence. And Providence dealt more severely with the queenly culprit than the successor to St. Peter’s see had done. Charles of Durazzo, called also Charles the Little, son of Louis of Durazzo, having conquered the throne of Naples, ordered Queen Joanna in 1382, thirty-seven years after the commission of her crime, to be thrown into prison, where she met her death by strangling.

During the Italian campaign Hungary was also called upon to meet another enemy in the East. Roving populations were making constant inroads on the eastern border, harassing the Hungarian inhabitants, who had by this time become accustomed to the peaceful avocations of the husbandman and tradesman. The victorious arms of King Louis soon put an end to those lawless incursions. But one of the most beautiful legends of Hungarian history is connected with one of the campaigns against these marauding populations. Kieystut, the Prince of Lithuania, after having been defeated several years before, broke into Transylvania with an army considerably swelled by the accession of a numerous body of Tartars. The king sent Louis Laczfy, the vayvode of Transylvania, against him, and the brave Székely people followed in his train. But the Hungarian army was small and the issue of the battle remained for a long time doubtful. The legend tells that the news of the peril threatening the Hungarian arms reached Grosswardein, where St. Ladislaus lay buried, and that the heroic saint, leaving his grave, bestrode the bronze horse of his own statue, which stood in the centre of the public square, and hurried off to the relief of his distressed countrymen. The Tartars were struck with the apparition of a warrior “who towered over them head and shoulders,” and above whom was visible the holy Virgin Mary, the patroness of Hungary. The pagans were seized with terror at this sight, and the battle ended in a brilliant victory for the Hungarians.

The arms of the king were no less successful in Servia where he was about “to kindle the light of faith.” But the most glorious of his wars was the one carried on against proud Venice, which continued during the greater portion of his reign. Her enemies, especially Genoa, willingly sided with the king of Hungary, and the ultimate result was the utter humiliation of the city of St. Mark. At last, in 1381, one year before the king’s death, peace was concluded between the two belligerents, a peace of which the Hungarians had every reason to be proud, for by its terms Dalmatia was unconditionally annexed to Hungary, and Venice herself had to send the Hungarian king, annually on St. Stephen’s Day, the 20th of August, a tribute of 7,000 ducats. As an indication of the high esteem in which the name of Hungary was held at that time, it is interesting to learn that foreign rulers sent their children to the Hungarian court to be educated, and the inference is not a strained one that the court of Louis must have been a centre of the European culture and refinement of that day. The spouse selected by the king, Elizabeth, the daughter of Stephen, the Prince of Bosnia, had herself been sent to the court to be trained in courtly accomplishments. At the Hungarian court also, Charles IV., the Emperor of Germany, wooed Anna, the Duchess of Schweidnitz, his future empress. These two rulers were united by ties of close friendship, until the discontent of the Germans with “the stepfather of their country,” as they called Charles IV., ripened a scheme to transfer the German crown to the Hungarian king. Although King Louis refused to accept the crown proffered to him, the sting remained, and his imperial friend became his deadly enemy. The emperor persisted in indulging in his unfounded suspicions of the king’s good faith, and so far forgot himself as to speak insultingly of the king and his exalted mother. The Hungarian ambassadors at the emperor’s court, incensed at the affront done to their master, challenged the emperor to mortal combat. But he cravenly declined to accept the challenge, whereupon they declared war in the name of their king. Louis, who almost worshipped his mother, approved of the proceedings of his ambassadors, and sent the emperor an insulting letter, in which he declared that nothing better might be expected from a drunkard. Very soon a large army of Kuns devastated Moravia, until, at length, after a warfare of several years, the humiliated emperor begged for peace, obtaining the Pope’s intercession in his behalf. Peace was at last concluded, and matrimonial alliances were to make it doubly sure. Sigismund, the emperor’s son, was betrothed to Mary, the king’s daughter.

In the latter half of the fourteenth century Christianity in Europe was threatened by a new foe. The warlike followers of Osman had, by the capture of Adrianople firmly laid the foundations of their powerful empire in Europe. Youths, forcibly taken at a tender age from their Christian parents, and educated afterwards in implicit obedience to the behests of the Sultan, were rigorously trained as soldiers after the most approved fashion of the day, and the troops thus obtained were destined to become the most formidable aid in the building of the Ottoman power in Europe. The Eastern empire had sunk too low, at that time, to be able, single-handed, to resist such a power, and she lost her strongholds, one after the other. In this strait her ruler resorted to one of those deceitful devices characterizing the policy of the Eastern court. John Palæologos, the Eastern emperor, proceeded to the court of the king of Hungary, at Buda, and, promising to give in his adhesion to the Western Church, he asked the aid of Louis against the savage enemy. The “Banner-bearer of the Church,” as the king of Hungary was styled by the Pope, deemed it his duty, under these circumstances, to come to the rescue of the distressed emperor, and shortly afterwards the two kindred nations, the Turks and the Hungarians, met in hostile array on the banks of the Maritza. This was the first warlike contest of the two nations. It resulted in the victory of 20,000 Hungarians over a Turkish army four times as large, a victory commemorated to this day by the treasures and appropriate inscriptions still to be seen at the church of Mariazell in Styria.