[16] The bán is equivalent to the margrave, or count of the marches.
[17] Andrássy, Development of Hung. Const. Liberty (Eng. trans., p. 93); Knatchbull-Hugessen, i. 26 seq., where its provisions are given in some detail.
[18] The full title of the palatine (Mag. nádor or nádor-ispán, Lat. palatinus) was comes palatii regni, the first palatine being Abu Samuel (c. 1041). By the Golden Bull the palatine acquired something of the quality of a responsible minister, as “intermediary between the crown and people, guardian of the nation’s rights, and keeper of the king’s conscience” (Knatchbull-Hugessen, i. 30).
[19] Knatchbull-Hugessen, i. 41.
[20] That is to say the western portion of Walachia, which lies between the Aluta and the Danube.
[21] Though elected king of the Romans in 1411, he cannot be regarded as the legal emperor till his coronation at Rome in 1423, and if he was titular king of Bohemia as early as 1419, he was not acknowledged as king by the Czechs themselves till 1436.
[22] In 1412 he pawned the twenty-four Zips towns to Poland, and, in 1411 he pledged his margraviate of Brandenburg to the Hohenzollerns.
[23] Some of these were of gigantic size, e.g. the Varga Mozsar, or great mortar, which sixty horses could scarce move from its place, and a ballistic machine invented by Matthias which could hurl stones of 3 cwt.
[24] We know actually of fifteen, but there may have been many more.
[25] It should be remembered that at this time one-third of the land belonged to the church, and the remainder was in the hands of less than a dozen great families who had also appropriated the royal domains.