The story of Hungary

by Ármin Vámbéry

The immense Turkish army spread all over the country, everywhere plundering, ravaging, and destroying defenseless lives, and reducing, in a war of a few months’ duration, the population of the country by nearly 200,000 souls. The capital in ruins, hundreds of other places deserted and laid waste, the country without a king, the church without any higher clergy, the greater part of the nobility, used to arms, killed—such was the condition in which Hungary was left by the Turks at the departure of Sultan Solyman. In October, 1526, he left the doomed country, having first laden his ships, sailing for Constantinople, with the treasures of the palace of King Matthias—its rare curiosities, its bronze statues, and a portion of the famous Corvinian library.

The fatal day of Mohács had entirely overturned the order in the state, and amongst the magnates who survived it party strife soon broke out. One party, acting upon the conviction that enfeebled Hungary was unable to resist, unsupported, the overwhelming power of the Turks, elected a Hapsburg archduke, Ferdinand of Austria, a brother of Charles V., the Roman emperor, king of Hungary, and since that time the royal crown has, in fact, remained in possession of the Hapsburgs. It was through this dynasty that the Hungarian people endeavored to secure the aid of the German empire against the Osmanlis. But another party amongst the great lords pursued an opposite course. In their opinion a native dynasty and peaceful relations with the invincible Turks were the means of rescuing the country from her pitiable plight. These patriots, therefore, elected as king of Hungary, John Szapolyai, the vayvode of Transylvania, and the most powerful lord in the country, and thus the nation had now two kings in the place of the one who had fallen at Mohács.

But neither of these parties nor their royal representatives could save the country from the Turks; on the contrary, the continual rivalries between the two kings not only demoralized public virtue and upset all law and authority within the kingdom, but they assisted not a little the foreign enemy in getting into their possession, by slow degrees, the larger part of Hungary, and enabled the Turks, within a brief period, to float their crescent on the towers of Buda, and there, to the ruin of the nation, and to the perpetual terror of the Christian world, it continued to wave for nearly one hundred and fifty years. The history of the Hungarian nation during this entire period is sad in the extreme—a tragedy, the scenes of which are supplied by an uninterrupted series of trials and sufferings. Owing to the incapacity of the leading statesmen and generals, the ruin of the country became more and more irretrievable. Yet, however dark and forlorn this period may seem, the national sufferings of those days are relieved and brightened by the glorious heroism and patriotism displayed by the people. The Hungarians, although menaced, in their very existence, by many enemies, by party strife, and religious dissensions, exhibited such rare moral courage, heroism, devotion, self-denial, and manliness, that the memory of the generations of that melancholy era will remain forever hallowed. Heroes arose on every side, and the struggle, sustained by the nation for nearly a century and a half against the oppressive power of the Turks, reminds one, in many of its features, of the protracted contest between the Spaniards and the Moors, and, like it, abounds in poetry, romance, and those noble examples of patriotism and loftiness of soul which kindle the human heart, arouse the sympathies of the poet, and are treasured up by the piety of after-ages as glorious relics of the past.

Solyman’s ambitious schemes looked for still wider fields of conquest, and in 1529 he marched towards Vienna, in order to attack King Ferdinand in his own capital. The city, however, was successfully defended. In 1532 Solyman advanced again upon Vienna. The sultan’s progress was unopposed until he reached Köszeg (German, Güns), in the neighborhood of the Austrian frontier. The keys of sixteen fortresses and fortified cities lay at his feet; Köszeg alone refused to do homage, and arrested the sultan’s triumphal march. Michael Juricsics was its commander; he was just about to remove his small garrison, consisting of twenty-eight hussars and ten cuirassiers, to Vienna, for whose defence all the available forces were being called in, when the Turks appeared beneath the walls of Köszeg. On beholding the approach of the immense Turkish army, Juricsics took a bold and noble resolution. He determined to hold the fortress, and to die rather than surrender it to the enemy. He immediately took measures to defend the place; he repaired the walls and bastions, armed seven hundred peasants who had sought refuge in the city, and purchased with his own money gunpowder and provisions. The Turkish army arrived under the walls of Köszeg on the 5th of August, 1532; a few days later the sultan himself joined them, and the siege was prosecuted at once with the utmost energy. The outer fortifications had already fallen into the hands of the enemy, the guns and mines had effected a breach sixteen yards wide in the main wall of the citadel, of its seven hundred defenders half had fallen, and on the 24th of August Juricsics had but one hundred weight of gunpowder left. Yet the plucky reply he gave to the sultan’s summons to surrender was: “As long as I live I will not surrender.” The Turks thereupon directed a fresh assault upon the citadel, and the garrison again lost many lives, while Juricsics himself was wounded. The Turks pressed into the city, but the inhabitants, at their approach, broke out into such dreadful howling and wailing that the frightened assailants retreated, and the city was once more miraculously spared. But Juricsics himself saw now the impossibility of further resistance; he had no more gunpowder, and most of the garrison were like himself wounded. For the purpose, therefore, of sparing the lives of the remaining inhabitants, he finally permitted the Turkish flag to be hoisted over the city. Solyman, seeing the Turkish flag floating over Köszeg, thought he had captured the citadel, and retired from under the walls on the 31st of August. But it was not towards Vienna that he directed his steps, but homeward. He had been delayed nearly four weeks near Köszeg, and during this time a powerful army had been collected in Vienna which the sultan had not the courage to face. Juricsics had thus, by his heroism, saved Vienna from a siege, the issue of which might have been calamitous to that renowned city of Christendom.

Many were still found in other parts of the country to follow the stirring example set by Juricsics, but unfortunately success but rarely attended their devotion. Most of them were fated only to be martyrs to the sacred cause, shedding their blood on the altar of their tottering country. The farther the Turkish conquests extended the more precarious and perilous became the position of the isolated commanders of the Hungarian border fortresses. The safety of a whole territory or country often depended upon the possession of one of these strongholds. Thus were the wealthy mining towns and the entire Hungarian mining region protected by the fortified place of Drégel, and it naturally attracted the attention of the Turks, always thirsting for plunder, who hastened to lay siege to it, hoping, by its possession, to open the road to the mines. Gallant George Szondi, the commandant of the fortress of Drégel, was a determined and magnanimous man who, fully conscious of the great importance of the place, was ready to defend it with his life. The fortress itself was not one of the first order, and was guarded only by a small garrison.

In July, 1552, a Turkish army numbering about 10,000 appeared under the walls. Ali, the Pasha of Buda, himself a chivalrous and noble-minded soldier, stood at the head of the besiegers, and, under the fire of his guns, the bastions crumbled to dust in the course of a few days. When the great tower too, was but a heap of ruins, and the walls were showing wide gaps everywhere, and all hope of being able to continue the defence seemed to have vanished, Ali sent a message to the commandant of Drégel. He employed a clergyman by the name of Márton, the parish priest of a neighboring village, to go to Szondi and to tell him that: “Ali reverently bowed before Szondi’s bravery and determined spirit, the report of which had reached him long ago, and of which he had had good occasion to convince himself during the present siege, but as the position could be held no longer, Szondi ought to preserve his heroic life and to surrender the crumbling fortress, and if this were done free departure should be guaranteed for himself and his people.” Szondi silently listened to the message of Ali, whom he knew to be a noble and chivalrous foe, but manfully declined to lay down his arms. He was resolved to defend the place to his last breath, and rather bury himself under its ruins than negotiate with the enemy. But he in turn asked now a favor of Ali Pasha, not for himself, but for two youthful troubadours, two young bards who were in the fortress, and for whom the Hungarian hero wished to provide before his death. He had the youths dressed in purple velvet and sending them, under the care of Father Márton, to Ali Pasha, he requested the latter to take these youths—some say they were his own sons—into his service, as he himself would not be able to bring them up, and to make brave men of them. Then summoning into his presence two Turkish captives remaining in the fortress, he bestowed upon them rich presents and allowed them to depart.

As soon as Márton had left with his youthful charges Szondi felt that the supreme moment, the moment of a glorious death, was near at hand. He ordered his money, his clothes, and all his valuables to be taken into the courtyard of the citadel, and, for fear they might fall into the hands of the enemy, he himself set fire to them and saw them reduced to ashes. Then he directed his steps to the stables, and thrust with his own hands his lance through his horses, his noble war steeds. Hastening now to his few remaining soldiers he addressed to them touching words of farewell. Outside, the approach of the Turks, preparing for the assault and shouting Allah, was already heard. Szondi, at the head of his two companies, rushed to the citadel gate and there laid down his life after heroically defending himself. A ball having penetrated his foot, the dying man sank on his knees and continued the fight to his last breath. He was finally cut down by the Turks, who surrounded him on all sides; his head was placed on a lance and carried in triumph to the victorious Ali. The generous Turk was deeply moved by this noble example of self-sacrifice, and, having given orders to seek out Szondi’s body, he caused his remains to be buried with great military pomp, in a neighboring hill. For a long time the spot where Szondi was laid into the grave was marked by a pike and a flag. One of the greatest poets of modern Hungary, John Arany, has perpetuated Szondi’s story in a beautiful ballad, and contemporary piety has just erected amidst the ruins of Drégel a chapel in memory of the departed hero.

Stephen Losonczy, another Hungarian hero, who shared Szondi’s fate a few days later, had no such noble opponent as Ali to deal with. Temesvár, the largest fortress in the country, was entrusted to his care. Fifty thousand Turks marched on Temesvár, and having quickly reduced all the smaller fortified places and cities near it, they reached the fortress in an over-confident mood. Losonczy immediately sallied out to meet the enemy, and so intimidated them that they soon gave up the siege and left the neighborhood. Yet only for a short time; they returned in greater numbers under the leadership of Ahmed Pasha. The latter at once called upon the Hungarian commandant to surrender the fortress. Losonczy collected in the public square the garrison which numbered altogether 2,200 soldiers, of whom 1,300 were Hungarians and the remainder Germans, Czechs, and Spaniards, and asked them if they were ready to defend to death the fortress in their charge. The enthusiastic shouts of the soldiers—that they were ready to die rather than yield up the place—was the answer he received. Losonczy at once swore in his men, and immediately answered the summons of the Turkish pasha by a sally from the fortress, driving the enemy from the vicinity of the trenches.

The Turks now proceeded to lay regular siege to the fortress—a branch of military science in which they were highly accomplished. They were masters in the art of reducing fortified places, in the mining works, and in the handling of the great battering guns. Thirty-six guns of heavy calibre soon poured their shots into the fortifications, which after a couple of days exhibited such breaches that the pasha thought the time for an assault had arrived. Thousands of brave Janissaries rushed at the tottering walls. There, however, they were met by the guard, who, themselves ready to die, made a frightful havoc amongst their assailants. The assault was repulsed in a few hours, the trenches were filled with the Turkish dead, and many a distinguished bey and officer of high rank was left lifeless on the scene of the sanguinary contest.