Almost all the smaller Hungarian towns and boroughs had (before the Revolution) the right of judging and executing the persons who were within their jurisdiction. Capital executions were frequent, as is always the case when the power over life and death is given into the hands of small and close corporations; but still, though a large number of people were hanged each year, the executions which fell to the share of each individual town and borough were few and far between. In cases of this kind the poorer communities were frequently at a loss to find an executioner; for they could not afford to maintain one merely for the chance of employing him once or twice every three years.
The greatest difficulty was usually experienced in a case of Statarium; for if the sentence was not executed within a certain time, it was annulled, and the prisoner came within the jurisdiction of the common courts. There was, therefore, no time left to send for an executioner to one of the larger towns; and it was a common occurrence that a gipsy was induced, by threats and promises of reward, to discharge the odious functions of an executioner.
Justice in a fix was the more prone to appeal to the help of the Bohemian population, from the vagrant habits of the gipsies, which prevented the man who volunteered as a hangman suffering from the odium which would have fallen to the share of a resident of the place, and from the fact that the extreme jealousy of the wealthier corporations made it by no means an easy matter to borrow a hangman. It is on record that the inhabitants of Kesmarkt, in the Zips, sent an envoy to the magistrates of the city of Lutshau to ask for the loan of their hangman, a request to which their worships gave an indignant refusal. "For," said they to the negotiator, "tell your masters we keep our hangman for ourselves and for our children, but not for the people of Kesmarkt!"
[Note IX.]
HASZONTALAN PARASZT.
The phrase of "good-for-nothing peasant" was, at one time, frequently used by the privileged classes. M. Kossuth's party succeeded in turning the odium of that phrase against those who employed it.
[Note X.]
BATTLE OF MOHATSH.
The city of Mohatsh, in Lower Hungary, was the scene of a terrible battle between the Hungarians and the Turks. Solyman the Magnificent succeeded his father Selymus on the Ottoman throne in the year 1520. After quelling an insurrection in Syria, and establishing his power in Egypt, he resolved to turn his arms against the Christian nations. His great-grandfather had endeavoured, without success, to obtain possession of Belgrade,—a city in which were deposited most of the trophies taken by the Hungarians in their wars with the Turks. The Sultan, having rapidly moved his army towards the frontiers, arrived in Servia before the Hungarians were even aware of his approach.
At this period the Hungarian power had greatly declined. The throne was occupied by Louis II., a young and feeble sovereign, who had no means of raising an army sufficient to contend against his powerful and ambitious enemy. "His nobility," says the quaint historian Knolles, "in whose hands rested the wealth of his kingdom, promised much, but performed, indeed, nothing. Huniades, with his hardy soldiers,—the scourge and terror of the Turks,—were dead long before; so was Matthias, that fortunate warrior: after whom succeeded others given to all pleasure and ease, to whose example the people, fashioning themselves, forgot their wonted valour."
Belgrade fell almost without resistance.
Solyman, having gained his immediate object, broke up his army, returned to Constantinople, and employed himself in fitting out a fleet for the conquest of Rhodes, which he also effected towards the end of the year 1522. Having devoted the three following years to the organisation of a large army, he resumed his designs against Hungary, taking advantage of the distracted state of Europe in consequence of the Italian campaign of Francis I. against Charles V.