The story of Hungary

by Ármin Vámbéry

Joseph sincerely wished for peace, and, convinced of the mistakes of the policy of his father, he did all in his power to allay the apprehensions of the rebels, but his constitutional sentiment failed to efface the baneful effects of his predecessor’s misgovernment and duplicity. Nor was it possible for him, either, to accept the terms of the rebels, and thus it came to pass that the dynasty of Hapsburg was dethroned in Hungary, during the reign of this upright monarch, in 1707. This was a great mistake on the part of the rebels, but Joseph had now the advantage of being able to show his respect for the liberties of the nation, under the most adverse circumstances, and he thus, by slow degrees, won the confidence of the people. The French had, meanwhile, been thoroughly defeated, and Joseph was thus enabled to oppose larger forces to the rebels, while the latter could not secure aid from any quarter. The rebels, exhausted with the protracted struggle, met with repeated defeats, and, to add to their distress, the black plague made its appearance and fearfully thinned the ranks of their troops. The king, however, did not abuse his increasing power. He granted an amnesty to all, without exception, who were willing to return to their allegiance; he governed constitutionally, remedied the ills inflicted upon the country by his predecessors, and finally placed a Hungarian commander-in-chief at the head of the army. His earnest and sincere endeavors were at last rewarded by peace. The issue of the various negotiations was the compact of Szatmár, concluded in 1711, by the terms of which a general amnesty was granted, and constitutional and religious liberty secured.

This peace was a grateful conclusion to the sad days which had been weighing down Hungary for two hundred years, a period during which both Turks and Austrians were compassing the ruin of the country. The former were perpetually threatening her territorial integrity; the latter, her political liberties, and the nationality to which those liberties were closely wedded. By dint of rare courage, an undying love of liberty, and acute statesmanship, they succeeded in preserving both their territory and their liberties. The sad events of those two centuries had put the endurance and energies of the nation to the severest test, but, in the end, she triumphantly passed through the cruel ordeal.

A new era now dawned in the history of Hungary. Wars no more threatened the territory of the country, and her liberties and nationality were no longer exposed to stubborn violence. Yet the dangers to her national life were not yet quite removed, for what the sword and brute force had been unable to accomplish during the preceding centuries, the eighteenth century attempted to achieve peaceably by means of the Western civilization.

Charles III. (Charles VI. as Emperor of Germany), the brother and successor of Joseph, inaugurated this new policy, and his daughter, Maria Theresa (1740-1780), continued to pursue, during her long reign, with great success, the course traced by her royal father. The protracted wars, whilst laying waste the country and reducing her population, had also retarded her culture, and it became now necessary to find means to remedy both evils. Attempts were made to supply the lack of population by colonizing. The Alföld, the special home of the Hungarian race, was particularly depopulated, and there we see the work of establishing new settlements most zealously carried on during the whole century. The Slavs from the Upper Country, the Servians from the South, and multitudes of German-speaking peoples from the West, soon spread over the great plain, and the numerous villages of the last could be met with at every step. The government was especially solicitous in promoting German colonization, partly because these settlers were industrious, and partly because this course favored the Germanization of the country. But soon the Hungarians, who had been crowded back into the hilly regions of the country, returned to their beloved Alföld, and for a while a regular hand-to-hand fight ensued between them and the strangers for the possession of the broad acres of the fertile plain. Hardly one generation passed and all those motley populations became Magyarized, and proudly proclaimed themselves to be members of the Hungarian community. Only there where the foreign element had settled in compact masses, they remained strangers still, but the national encroachment on their borders went constantly on. In connection with the colonization was also carried on the work of draining the swamps and improving the soil, and we see the population day by day increasing in numbers and wealth.

Great changes, too, were effected in the country by means of legislation. Successive Diets endeavored to remedy the many palpable defects, and it may be said that the tribunals existing up to 1848 originated in the time of Charles III. At this period, also, was introduced the system of a standing army and with it that of permanent taxation. Both soldiers and taxes are still granted by the Diet, yet, not for special emergencies only, as they arise, but until the next Diet is convoked. About this time the relations between Hungary and the Austrian provinces were more clearly defined by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1723. By it Hungary and the Austrian provinces were declared inseparable, and the ruler of both was always to be one and the same person from the Hapsburg dynasty, in the regular order of succession in the male and female lines; but, otherwise, Hungary was to remain perfectly independent, and was to be governed by her own laws.

The nation was offered an opportunity to prove by her alacrity in complying with the wishes of Charles in regard to a change in the order of the dynastic succession, that his kind feelings towards the country were fully reciprocated by the trustfulness of the people. The right of succession was thus extended to the female line too of those very Hapsburgs, whose dynasty the nation, not many years before, had declared to have altogether forfeited their right to the throne. The country was soon called upon at Maria Theresa’s accession to the throne to prove by deeds its attachment and gratitude. The young queen was attacked by all Europe, the enemy being eager to rob her of the fairest portions of her Austrian possessions. In this extreme danger she appealed to chivalrous Hungary for protection, and the nation, forgetting the old quarrels, exclaimed with one voice: “Vitam et sanguinem! moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresia!” Eighty thousand soldiers went into the war to meet the queen’s enemies, who were anxious to divide the spoils of the empire, and during a combat of eight years the Hungarians, whilst defending their Pragmatic Sanction, upheld, at the same time, the integrity of the Austrian possessions. The dynasty had thus won in Hungary, by a spirit of conciliation, a country upon which it could count as a trusty support in case of danger from without.

HUNGARIAN PEASANT.

Maria Theresa showed herself grateful for the sacrifices and devotion of the nation. The district of Temes, which had been retaken from the Turks by her father, was re-annexed to the kingdom of Hungary, and it was Maria Theresa who gave Hungary the city of Fiume, in order that the country might have a seaport town to promote her commerce and industry. A great deal, too, was done by her, in many ways, to improve the material condition of the country, and still more for the advancement of higher culture through the erection of churches and the foundation and organization of schools. In a word, she always remained, to her end, the “gracious queen” of the nation.

A great social revolution had also taken place during the reigns of Charles and Maria Theresa. The magnates of the country deserted in the piping times of peace their eagle’s nests on the rocky crests of the hills and descended into the smiling valleys below, building there palaces for themselves after foreign patterns. Life in those rural abodes, owing to the lack of pastimes and refinement, soon became dull to the great lords, and, as there was no national capital to offer distraction, they went abroad, and soon came to like the foreign mode of life better than the lawlessness of their country homes. The Viennese court bade them welcome, overwhelmed them with distinctions, and Maria Theresa, especially, understood the art of fascinating them. Gradually they became foreigners in their dress and manners, and all the Hungarian that was still preserved by these absentees was their names and the estates they possessed in Hungary, the revenues of which they spent abroad. The atmosphere and the graces of court life succeeded in doing what the sword and violence had failed to accomplish. The great lords became estranged from their country and thoroughly Germanized.