St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century

by William Godwin

I proceeded, as I had originally determined to do, to Buda, the metropolis of the kingdom. It was in the hands of the Turk. It was of little importance to me whether the monarch of the soil were a Mahometan or a Christian; my mind was engrossed by considerations of a very different magnitude. I came to relieve and assist, to the utmost of my power, the inhabitants of the country in the extremity of their distress.

I had not proceeded thus far, without bestowing a certain strictness of reflection on the subject. I easily saw that, if I would confer a substantial benefit on this unfortunate nation, I had scarcely any other means for the purpose, than that of reviving among them a spirit of industry. I was aware that, in the strictness of the term, money was not wealth; that it could be neither eaten nor drunk; that it would not of itself either clothe the naked or shelter the houseless; and that it was unable, but by a circuitous operation, to increase the quantity of provisions or commodities that the country afforded. It was my business therefore not to proceed idly in the distribution of gold, but to meditate seriously my plan of operations.

I fixed myself in a spacious and beautiful mansion in the capital. This in the present distressed and depopulated condition of Hungary, it was not difficult to procure. The house I selected had for centuries been the principal residence of the illustrious family of Ragotski; but the present representative of that family, after having seen his sons, one after another, killed in the battles of his country, and his estates ruined by military depredation, had found himself compelled to fly in his old age, and had taken refuge with a distant branch of the same house in the great duchy of Lithuania. It was not necessary for me to proceed to any great extent in the first instance in the manufacture of my wealth; I had every facility for adding to my store from time to time as circumstances should demand.

I determined to open my operations with the article of building. There was sufficient need of it. One half of the houses, through most of the districts of Lower, or Western Hungary in particular, were ruined and untenantable. I did not begin with erecting palaces; I felt that the first claimants in the present emergency were the peasant and the cultivator. I was more desirous that the rustic than the prince should be well lodged and accommodated, provided with the means of rest after fatigue, and secured against the invasion of ungenial seasons.

My reasons for beginning with building were these:—It was my purpose to stimulate and revive the industry of the nation: I was desirous of doing this with the least practicable violence upon the inclinations and freedom of the inhabitants. Had I required of those to whom I addressed myself, that they should fertilise the earth, the seeds with which it should be impregnated might be wanting: I should have a nice balance to adjust between what was necessary for immediate subsistence, and what might be applied as the basis of future; a point better left to its spontaneous level: I might be impeded and controlled by a thousand circumstances and at every step. But the materials of building are to be found in every country; no seasons can impair, no malignity of man can annihilate them. Wherever there are quarries, there is stone; wherever there is clay, there are the means of manufacturing bricks. I was anxious to leave the rest of the great process of human accommodation to its course. While I employed labourers, and paid them their wages, there would be, in the mildest and most salutary mode, a continual influx of money into the market. The increase of the precious metals would give new alacrity to the operations of traffic; the buyers would come forward with double confidence; the venders would be eager to meet the activity and spirit of the demand. Ardour and hope would revisit the human mind; and the industry I created, and the accommodations of one kind at least to which I gave birth, would inoculate the other departments of the community with a similar industry. I came into Hungary in the spring of 1560; the season was favourable to seeding and cultivation; I seemed to enter on my undertaking with the happiest auspices.

Some time however must necessarily elapse between the period of impregnating the soil, and that of the future harvest. Though I laid it down therefore as a law to myself, to commit the least practicable violence upon the genuine action of human society in pursuit of the means of subsistence, I thought proper in a certain degree to engage in the importation of corn from Poland, Silesia, and other neighbouring countries. This seemed an eligible measure, if it were only that I might show others the way, and excite them by my example. I procured agents; I extended my concerns in various directions over the navigable rivers; I formed magazines. It would have been contrary to the genius of my undertaking, either to make a gratuitous distribution of what I purchased, or to sell it at such low prices as to drive other speculators, whose spirit of enterprise might happily co-operate with mine, out of the market. However indifferent I might feel to the receipt of pecuniary compensation, it was necessary that, in the concerns of barter and trade, I should assume the exterior of a merchant.

Nor did I wholly confine my exertions within the occupations of an architect and a corn-dealer. These, or rather the former of the two, I regarded as my true and genuine province; but I did not so far enslave myself to my own maxims, as to negative in all instances the direct demands of want. I was not anxious to convert a nation or an army of men into my personal adherents and retainers: I was rather desirous to avoid this as a dangerous source of obloquy. I did not therefore always decline, by pretended loans to assist other men to employ labourers as well as myself, to act upon their own designs, and prosecute their own fortune. The cries of the poor man, the widow, and the orphan, were sometimes too importunate, and too well justified by their unquestionable necessities, to allow me to withhold from them my alms. In a few instances I conveyed my supplies anonymously to persons, whose dignity of birth or whose proud independence would have been too grievously wounded if they had known their benefactor. I was cautious and apprehensive as to the direct dispensing of money, but not entirely bent against it; I regarded it as a precarious, but in some cases a necessary interference.

The impulse which, by these various measures, I was fortunate enough to generate, seemed to have the effect, so far at least as the sphere of my activity extended, to revive the almost expiring life of the country. Dejection and hopeless indolence, when I commenced my operations, were written in every face; the miserable inhabitants crawled along the roads or the street, their hands idly relaxed by their side, and their slow and painful steps scarcely supporting their lifeless trunk. When my plan became known, and I had already in a few instances reduced my maxims into practice, it was as if the mellow and spirit-stirring blast of a trumpet had wakened their sleeping souls. Their eyes lightened with intelligence; the tear of anguish was wiped from their faded cheeks; the smile of hope slowly expelled, and faintly succeeded to, the bitter expression of despair. Busy and active thoughts gave new motion to their limbs and quickness to their steps; the labourer was seen hastening from place to place; the sound of the hammer, the saw, and the various tools of the workman, was to be heard from every side.

The conduct I pursued necessarily fixed upon me a considerable portion of public attention. I was a foreigner, destitute of connections, and having no previous acquaintance with any individual in the country. I was in appearance a mere boy, a young man in all the flower and bloom of adolescence, and who must be supposed to have just entered into possession of his patrimony. These things tended to increase the public wonder, and to render the mystery of my proceedings more perplexing and obscure. In the age of genial warmth and melting softness, I did not appear accessible to those passions which haunt the days, and too often undermine the virtues, of youth. Youth is the season of benevolence; but benevolence is rarely, as seemed to be my case, the only fruit that youth is found to produce. There was a maturity and a justness of adaptation in my plans, not less foreign from what those who surrounded me would have expected me to display. The apparent disinterestedness and modesty of my proceedings were not lost upon the spectators. The consequence of all this was, that the sieur de Chatillon, such was the name I at this time assumed, was regarded as a phenomenon which could not be too much admired, or too loudly extolled. Wherever I appeared, the people followed me with their gratitude and blessings; ballads were written in my praise; the very children were taught with their infant tongues to lisp the virtues of the saviour of Hungary. My doors were besieged; my steps were watched; I could move no where without public observation. I was importuned with petitions without end; yet, if any petitioner showed himself presumptuous and intrusive, the whole multitude of bystanders was ready to repress his indiscretion, and teach him the respect that was due to their generous benefactor, who never refused any thing, but what it would be improper and injurious to grant.