The story of Hungary

by Ármin Vámbéry

Báthory, afflicted with the gout, rode with the king along the line of each troop, addressing words of encouragement to the men. The whole army impatiently looked forward to the moment when the battle should begin, and, finally, at five o’clock in the afternoon the Turks advanced. It was remarked that the king, on the silver helmet being placed on his head, became deathly pale, as if in anticipation of the near danger, but while it shocked the attendants, it by no means disheartened them.

The first onslaught came from the Hungarian horse, who rushed upon the enemy in front of them and drove them back. The Turkish troops thus attacked retreated without offering any resistance to the body of the army. The Hungarians, shouting victory, pressed on in hot pursuit, little dreaming that they were running into the jaws of sure destruction. The retreat was but a feint, for when the Hungarian army had been drawn on near enough to the Turkish centre, the retreating troops opened their ranks, and, through the gap left open, three hundred cannon and several thousand Janissaries poured a murderous fire on the advancing troops. The slaughter was dreadful; a large portion of the troops, including their commander and their standard bearer, fell at the first fire. The rest fled in every direction, but were greatly impeded in their retreat by a violent shower of rain which suddenly burst on the fugitives, among whom was also the youthful king. As he was trying to cross the Csele, a small brook, swollen by the rain, the horse, after reaching the opposite bank, stumbled backward into the waters below, and buried his rider under him.

The prophecy of Perényi was fulfilled. Twenty thousand martyrs strewed the field of Mohács, and among them was the witty prophet himself. The Hungarians paid the heavy penalty of thirty-six years’ misrule and disorder, but the worst was yet to come. On the 10th of September there passed again a brilliant procession through the gates of Buda. This time it was not the crowned king of Hungary who made his entry into the fortress, but Solyman, who delivered it up for pillage to his soldiers. On this occasion was destroyed the famous library of Matthias.

CHAPTER XII.
THE TURKISH WORLD AND THE RISE OF PROTESTANTISM IN HUNGARY.

While Islam was rapidly losing ground, and hurrying to irretrievable destruction on the peninsula south of the Pyrenees, it obtained a fresh foothold on another southern peninsula of Europe, in the regions of the Balkan washed by the Mediterranean Sea, and became there so powerful as to influence, for nearly five centuries, the political destinies of the Western world. At the same time that the power and culture of the Moorish state was declining in Spain, Europe found itself assailed by another Mohammedan nation, the Turks, who, taking up the standard of the crescent, attempted to force upon the Christian world their new ideas, religious, political, and social. On the first appearance of the Turks on the Balkan peninsula, they were met by the two states which opposed their further advance, and the struggle with these began at once. The first, the Byzantine empire, was, however, at this time already an effete and tottering organization, an ancient and venerable ruin, and it was able to make but a feeble resistance. It retreated step by step before the Asiatic conquerors, who got possession, first, of its entire outlying territory, and finally captured (in 1453) the seat of government, Byzantium, the renowned city of Constantine. The second opponent which withstood the advance of the Turks was Hungary, a state which, though still young, had shown a sturdy national vitality, and successively reduced to vassalage the countries of the Balkan, and was steadily engaged in extending its influence and authority towards the East. The Turks could not dispose of Hungary as easily and quickly as of the enfeebled Byzantine empire. More than a century of nearly constant conflict had to elapse before the Hungarian supremacy in the regions of the Balkan was put an end to, and the Turks were able to penetrate as far as Mohács, and there to inflict a mortal blow on the independence of Hungary. During this struggle of a century and a half the name and fame of Hungary were perpetuated by many a brilliant feat of war, and by many glorious victories, and when John Hunyadi, the most formidable foe of the Turks, died, all Europe mourned his death as the loss of the great champion of Christianity. His son, Matthias the Just, one of the greatest kings of Hungary, whose memory is held in pious reverence by the Hungarian people to this day, following in the footsteps of his illustrious father, through his many triumphs, made his own name, too, hardly less formidable to the Turks. But Hungary, as the offspring of the Western Church, the Church of Rome, turned her looks, at that time, to the West rather than to the East, and Hungarian statesmanship was far more intent upon humiliating the emperor of what was then known as the Roman empire, than upon breaking down the power of the Turks. King Matthias captured Vienna, and made large conquests at the expense of the German empire, but he chastised the Turks only now and then, and never seriously thought of endeavoring to thoroughly crush the Turkish power. Under his feeble successors, the Turks, who easily recuperated from the losses of single battles, grew into a formidable power, which soon brought Hungary to the verge of ruin. We have described, in the preceding pages, the fatal battle of Mohács, fought on the 29th of August, 1526, in which the youthful King Louis II. opposed an army of hardly 25,000 men to Solyman’s 300,000, to be swept away by the torrent of overwhelming numbers. To give an adequate idea, however, of this awful catastrophe in the annals of Hungary, we will add here that seven bishops and archbishops, thirteen lords of the banner, five hundred magnates, and many thousand nobles laid down their lives on the bloody battle-field.

The nation was seized with indescribable terror on learning the details of this dreadful calamity; entire villages were deserted by their inhabitants, who scattered in every direction. The widowed queen, finding herself utterly deserted in Buda, fled to Presburg, and the capital of Hungary, one of the finest cities of Christendom, which but a little more than a generation before had been made one of the chief centres of European learning and culture, passed, in less than two weeks after the fatal day of Mohács, without any resistance, into the hands of the victorious Solyman. The Turks sacked and set fire to the beautiful city, and all its magnificent buildings, save the royal palace, were destroyed by the flames. The victorious enemy met with as little opposition in ravaging and massacring in the country as they had encountered at the capital. There was no one to stay their devastations. The miserable peasantry still made some feeble attempts at defence; here and there a few thousand men collected at some fortified position to protect themselves and their families. Thus some 20,000 men retreated into the Vértes mountains, and, under the leadership of Michael Dobozy, entrenched themselves near the village of Marót, in a camp fortified by a barricade constructed of wagons. But the Turks had their guns carried up to the nearest eminence, and opened a fire on the occupants of the improvised wall. The peasants were struck with terror, and the undisciplined boors, the wailing women and children, deserted their sheltering wagons in despair. Dobozy, seeing that all was lost, mounted his gallant steed, and placing his young wife on the saddle before him, he sought safety in flight. The elated Turks fell upon the flying Hungarians, frightfully massacring their ranks. Among the fugitives, Dobozy especially attracted the enemy’s attention, owing to the superiority of his armor, indicative of gentle blood, and more particularly because of the young woman he carried in his arms. They pursued him like bloodhounds. The distance between the pursuers and pursued gradually diminished, and Dobozy’s horse began to show signs of exhaustion under the double burden. Wife and husband saw the fierce forms, eager for prey, draw nearer and nearer. Still there was a gleam of hope for them if they could reach the near brook, cross the bridge, and destroy it before their pursuers came up with them. They succeeded in gaining the bridge, but, alas, the flying peasants had already broken it off, and there was no other thoroughfare to the opposite bank.

All was lost now. Dobozy told his wife to fly by herself, whilst he would remain and stay with his own breast the progress of their pursuers. But the young spouse would not part from her loving husband, not even in death, and besought him to kill her rather than to expose her to the chance of falling into the hands of the pagan enemy. The desperate husband, seeing the Turks quite near to them, stabbed his youthful wife with his own dagger, and then, turning upon his adversaries, dearly sold his life. The spot where Dobozy and his faithful wife lost their lives is, to this day, called Basaharcz (the Pasha struggle).