Austria-Hungary

by G. E. Mitton

The palace of Matthias was enriched by the work of the best sculptors of the time, and his library was continually increased by the labour of copyists, whom he employed to transcribe manuscripts in Italy. It was the Golden Age in Hungary, and the chivalrous and strong monarch attracted to himself poets, painters, and literary men from all the civilised countries of Europe. Among other things he founded an academy of letters. These indications of a scholarly mind would have been of no avail in that rude age unless there had been strong physical prowess behind them; a weakling, whatever his intellectual calibre, would have been scorned. King Matthias, however, was one of those unusual men who combine mental and physical qualities of the highest order. He was as much a soldier as a scholar, and he asked no luxury in the camp or on the battlefield, content to share in all the hardships imposed upon his men. His courage was proverbial, and his heedlessness of danger so great that he was supposed to bear a charmed life, though not invulnerable, as numerous scars testified.

In person Matthias was tall and broad, with a massive head and keen eyes. He gave the most scrupulous and impartial justice to all his people alike, so that he was surnamed “The Just,” and when he died there was a current saying, “King Matthias is dead and justice is no more.” His death was due to apoplexy, and he left no legitimate son to succeed him.

By this time the House of Hapsburg had come to the fore. They had originally held possessions in Switzerland and later gained position and power as Dukes of Austria, Styria, Carniola, etc. When the German Emperor Conrad died in 1254 there was no successor until Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected to fill the vacant place. The German Emperor, or “King of the Romans,” as he was called, was always elected, and the honour was not hereditary, hence it did not pass of right to Rudolph’s descendants, though some of them were subsequently chosen for the position.

While Matthias was on the throne of Hungary Frederick III. of Hapsburg was ruling in Austria. Matthias attacked him and drove him out of Vienna; but Matthias was short-lived, dying at the age of forty-seven, and his successors were feeble and unable to hold what he had gained.

For generations back the Turks had been a thorn in the side of Hungary and had worried the kings by their constant incursions. They persecuted the land much as the Danes harried Britain, and thirty-six years after Matthias’ death the culmination came in a terrific battle fought at Mohács, where the Turks, in prodigious force and fury, almost wiped the Hungarian nation off the face of the map. The reigning King, Louis II., was but a boy, and his army of 25,000 men was practically annihilated by one twelve times as great, under Suleiman the Turk. Seven archbishops and bishops and thousands of nobles laid down their lives on the field that day, and the defeat was to the nation as poignant and humiliating as the battle of Flodden Field was to Scotland. The Turk has always stood out conspicuously as the only Mussulman power in Europe, and in our time we have seen slice after slice cut away from his territory and set up as independent kingdoms. The time is surely not far distant when the Ottoman power will be pushed across into Asia, to which it so much more fitly belongs; in fact, only the jealousies of the great nations adjacent have so long delayed this consummation.

The Hungarians, driven frantic by their disasters, appealed to the Kings of the House of Hapsburg for help, and accepted them as rulers, alien though they were in blood and race. The solution was accepted loyally by the majority of the people, but it led to little relief, for even the Hapsburgs could not hold back the savage Turks, who overran the great plain of Hungary, and were accepted as suzerains by the people of Transylvania. For a century and a half before the year 1686 the Hungarian capital was in the hands of the Turks. Such divisions and dissensions tore the nation in pieces, and there was nothing but misery for the people.

“But,” writes the distinguished Hungarian, Dr. Julius de Vargha, already quoted, “it was the national disaster that displayed the heroic valour and ardent patriotism of the Hungarian nation. Such splendid instances of intrepid bravery, undaunted self-sacrifice and chivalrous virtues brighten these dark pages of our history, that we may justly call this period the heroic age of the Hungarian nation. But it was not only military prowess that preserved the national character of this country, torn, as it was, to pieces and bleeding from a thousand wounds. It is remarkable that just at this very period a rich and flourishing national literature sprang into being. During the reign of Matthias humanistic literature and culture took deep root in the country; its tongue however was not Hungarian but Latin. The intellectual movement of the Reformation made the soil of Hungary, that had already been cultivated, bring forth a national literature, which the struggle evoked by the anti-Reformation succeeded in fostering to a higher development.”

Successive rulers of the Austrian House of Hapsburg were chosen as German Emperors too, and the effect of this was to make Hungary seem to them insignificant, and they tried to incorporate it as a part of their dominions without recognising the Hungarian people as a strong nation which had freely invited them to rule.

However, when the Turks were driven out of Buda, and the nation had time to settle her internal affairs, things began to look better. The Hungarians voluntarily gave up their right of election in the case of their kings, and settled the succession in the House of Hapsburg; unfortunately, it was only a short time after this that the then reigning monarch, Leopold I., treated them with such disdain that they arose against him in fury, and made war on him, a struggle which continued for eight years and was ended by an honourable peace in 1711, when the constitutional independence of Hungary was fully confirmed.

In 1740 the Emperor, Charles VI., died, and left an only daughter, but before his death he had done his best to secure her inheritance to her by inducing the Pragmatic Sanction in 1723 to extend the right of succession to the female line. She was only twenty-three at the time of her accession, and had four years before married Francis Stephen of Lorraine, who became Grand Duke of Tuscany. Though the way had been cleared for her, yet on her father’s death a host of claimants for the inheritance sprang up. The Prussian, Bavarian, French, Saxon, Spanish, and Neapolitan rulers all wanted what she had got! The chivalry of the Hungarians was called to the surface by her position, and when she appeared at Pressburg (called by the Hungarians Pozsony), then the capital, with her infant son in her arms she was greeted by the loyal and splendid cry, “Moriamur pro reges, Maria Teresa,” which has rung down the ages. Her accession welded the nations together as nothing else could have done. She proved a popular monarch and conciliated the Hungarians with womanly tact; she had sixteen children, of whom her eldest son Joseph succeeded her as Joseph II. and became also Emperor. One of her daughters was the beautiful and unfortunate Marie Antoinette.