Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II

by G. R. Gleig

We approached Presburg by a good macadamized road, which follows the course of the river, on the opposite bank from that along which the city is built. It was very little thronged either with carriages or horses, and gave few indications, in other respects, that a large, and, as we had been assured, a bustling town, lay but a short way ahead of us. This was the more surprising, that we could discover no evidences of any transfer of the line of commerce from the land to the water; for there was neither barge nor steam-boat to ruffle the bosom of the Danube. But the unfavourable impression created by such an air of stillness was not destined to remain. There is a long bridge of boats, which connects the opposite banks of the river, and affords facilities to the inhabitants of Presburg for passing and repassing. We saw, as we drove on, that it was crowded with people, in their best attire; and the sounds of music, which rose from an inclosure hard by, sufficiently pointed out the nature of the attraction. We had come on a lucky day, for it was a festival, and all the world was abroad, to enjoy the delights of a calm and delicious evening amid the shady walks of the public gardens.

He who goes to Presburg without venturing further, need not flatter himself that he has made any, even the slightest acquaintance with the manners and usages of the Hungarians. The town is not a Hungarian, but a German town; the people are Germans, the language is German, and the style of living is German. It is true, that the historical associations connected with the place are all as thoroughly Hungarian as are those which greet you at Ofen or at Graan; but the living men and women seem to have striven, and striven successfully, to lay aside all the peculiarities which could, by possibility, connect them with the tales of other days. So far we profited by the circumstance that we found at the Sun excellent accommodations; and excellent accommodations are not to be procured at all the hotels in Hungary; yet were we, on the whole, dissatisfied with it. We desired to study human nature under a novel garb, and we found it still clothed as it had been in Austria. Nevertheless, the visits which we paid to the Old Palace, to the Cathedral, and the Königsberg, were highly interesting, because of the important page in Hungarian story which they may be regarded as illustrating. What that page contains, it may not be amiss if I take the present opportunity of stating.

It is the peculiar boast of the Hungarians, that they live under what they are pleased to term, a free constitution. Subject to the sway of the house of Hapsburg only through the accidental lapse of the crown into the female line, they utterly eschew all dependence upon Austria, and would turn with indignation from him who should insinuate that over them the laws of the empire exercise the slightest authority. They are fellow-subjects with the Austrians and Bohemians only so far that the imperial and the regal crowns happen to be worn by the same individual. But there is this marked difference in their respective situations, that whereas over Austria and Bohemia, the emperor exercises an absolute sway, in Hungary he has his prerogatives, beyond the limits of which he is not permitted to pass. He cannot, of his own will and pleasure, enact a new law; he cannot interfere with the privileges of his nobles; he cannot levy a tax, nor impose a new burden upon the nation, till the parliament, or estates, have given him authority to do so. It is because at Presburg the parliament meets, and that there also the ceremony of the coronation is carried through, that I have selected this stage in my narrative for the statement of matters which were not rendered familiar to me till a protracted sojourn in the country gave me opportunities of collecting information, both from its living inhabitants, and from the treasured archives with which its libraries abound.

The tract of territory which, on our maps, we describe as Hungary, is peopled by two distinct races of men;—the Hungarians, who inhabit the great plain of the Danube, of which Cormorn may be regarded as the centre; and the Slavonians, by whom the mountain districts are occupied, as well in Carpatia and Transylvania, as in Croatia and the rugged districts that border upon Styria. Of these, the Hungarians are not considered to amount to more than four millions of souls at the utmost; whereas the numbers of the Slavonians fall not short of six millions.

As is the case elsewhere, however, so has it happened here; the political institutions of the few have been imposed with a strong hand on the many; for the laws that prevail, as well as the machinery created to enforce them, are alike Hungarian. Yet the Hungarians are, so to speak, mere strangers in the land, who owe their original settlement there to the edge of the sword, and by the edge of the sword were long compelled to maintain it.

It seems now to be admitted, that the theory which once connected the conquerors of Pannonia with the Huns, is entirely without foundation. The Hungarians are the descendants of one of those eastern hordes whom the Mongols, in their progress southward, drove from their homes; and who, breaking through Russia, and traversing a large extent of Poland, won a settlement for themselves late in the ninth century, near the sources of the Theiss. Their legends say, that by lineage, they are Magyars, and that they obtained the name which they now bear through an accident. There stood, near the spot where they first permanently encamped, a castle, called in the language of the country, Hung-var, which the strangers won, and converted into a sort of capital. As often as they sallied forth from that castle on predatory or other expeditions, the Slavonians were accustomed to exclaim, "Here come the Hung-varians," and the title thus given at first as a term of mere derision or hostility, came, by-and-by, to be accepted as a national distinction.

I am not prepared to avow either my own acceptance, or my own rejection, of this mode of accounting for the origin of the Hungarian name. There is no good reason to be assigned one way or the other; for nations, like individuals, generally owe their designations to some cause equally simple; but that the Magyars, or Myars, brought with them the elements of that constitution under which it is the boast of their descendants that they still live, is just as easily proved as that we owe our most valuable institutions to the customs and usages of our Saxon forefathers. The Myars, like the Saxons, appear to have lived, during seasons of peace, in obedience to a whole host of petty and independent chiefs. If war broke out, or a foreign expedition was resolved upon, the heads of clans made choice of one of their order to command the rest;—when the exigencies of the moment ceased to operate, the commander fell back into his proper place among his equals. Seven of these tribes are stated to have taken part in the earliest attack on Pannonia. They were led by one Almus, a brave and successful warrior; and soon spread themselves over the whole of the plain; but not for many generations could they count on a permanent cessation from the hostilities with which the mountaineers, driven back, yet unsubdued, continued to harass them. The results were precisely such as occurred in Normandy and England, and every where else, where tribes advanced to a similar pitch of civilization, won settlements by the sword. Arpad, the son of Almus, was chosen to succeed his father; and the foundations were laid both of an hereditary monarchy, and of a power able and willing to place limits to that of the crown.

The best historians inform us, that between Arpad and the heads of tribes, a solemn compact was entered into, which, in addition to other and less important stipulations, contained the following. It was agreed that the order of succession to the throne should be hereditary; that the male line should have the preference; the female not being excluded; but that the inalienable right of the people to elect their own sovereign, should never be called in question. Accordingly, in cases where there is no break in the chain, and the son mounts the throne which the father has bequeathed to him, certain forms are enjoined, of which it cannot be said that they are mere idle ceremonies. The king's title to govern must be solemnly acknowledged by the states; and oaths are at his accession administered, any refusal to accept which would lead to his rejection. Moreover there is an article in this treaty which, in the event of a failure in the royal line, secures to the nation the right of free and unrestricted choice, and the right in question was exercised, to its fullest extent, so early as the beginning of the twelfth century, when the house of Arpad became extinct, and Charles of Anjou, called to the throne by the free voice of the people, laid the foundations of a new dynasty.

While they thus consented, as a measure of prudence, to the establishment among them of an hereditary throne, Arpad's peers were not willing that it should be filled by an absolute monarch. They claimed for themselves, and for their children after them, the right of counselling the prince in every emergency. They stipulated, that neither their persons nor their property, should be at the prince's disposal. Military service they were, indeed, bound to pay; that is, it was their duty to appear in the field when lawfully summoned, and to defend the country from foreign invasion, or internal revolt. But even military service, in the advancement of schemes of conquest, the king could not exact from them; he had no power to lead them across the border, except with their own consent. Then, again, within the limits of their respective estates, each noble was independent; while all situations of general trust and authority under the crown, were claimed by them as their birth-right. Hence the establishment of the palatinate in Hungary Proper, of the ban in Croatia and Slavonia, of the Vayvode in Transylvania, and of the great functionaries, by whatever title designated, each of whom appears to have enjoyed in his own province, rather the privileges of a feudal sovereign, than the powers of a high officer of state.

Such were the commencements of the Hungarian constitution,—an unbending aristocracy from the outset, into the forms of which time has doubtless introduced many changes,—but of which the spirit and the principle continue to this day, precisely what they were nine centuries ago. The first of these innovations occurred when Stephen ascended the throne; and by the open profession of Christianity, gave a different character to the whole order of society. His predecessors had never worn a title more imposing than that of duke; Stephen received from the pope both a royal crown, and the style and dignity connected with it. Moreover, Stephen, by creating bishoprics, and richly endowing both them and the monasteries, very much widened the circle of the nobility; which by the creation of new offices, and the granting of fiefs both by prelates and princes, received from time to time large accessions to its numbers. Then began distinctions to be claimed and recognised, even in the rights and privileges of the privileged classes. The nobles were divided into princes, prelates, barons of the kingdom, and magnates, whose rights, though in some trifling respects different, were yet so much akin as to permit their being treated as political equals. Next to them, yet claiming the essential privileges of nobility, came the king's chief retainers, with the holders of fiefs under the princes and prelates, and the principal retainers of the magnates; and finally, a humbler class followed, who, corresponding to our territorial but untitled aristocracy, are now content to bear the appellation of eidelmen, or gentry. All of these were, in the strictest acceptation of the term, freemen. They owed to the sovereign their right hands in war; and when the exigencies of the state required, such aids in money as they themselves might vote, but without such vote, in solemn comitia granted, there was no authority anywhere to exact from them either a blade of corn, or the most minute coin of the realm.