Remember everlastingly; they strike
Remorselessly, and ever like for like.
By their great memories the Gods are known.”
KOSSUTH
The history of Hungary is in this respect unique: it records the career of an alien tribe which, cutting its way from Eastern Asia to the heart of Europe, founded there a nation, and this nation, after the friction of a thousand years, still preserves its racial characteristics. In 894 Duke Arpád led his horde of Magyars—whose earlier kinsmen were Huns and Avars—up the valley of the Danube. Long were they a terror to Europe; then, gradually, they had to content themselves with Hungary as their home. They became Christians; they adopted a monarchical government; alongside of their Aryan neighbors, they took on mediæval civilization. Europe, unable to expel or to destroy, acknowledged them as citizens. The time came when the Magyars, in a conflict lasting fivescore years, defended Europe against the invasion of another horde of Asiatic barbarians; till, unsupported by their neighbors, the Magyars succumbed to the Turks in the battle of Mohács in 1526. Afterwards, for one hundred and fifty years, Hungary herself writhed in the hands of the Mussulman; when that bondage ceased, she had a different oppressor,—Austria.
The Hungarian monarchy was elective, and after the battle of Mohács the Magyars chose for their king the sovereign of the Austrian states. The succession continued in the House of Hapsburg, becoming in fact hereditary; but, before the Magyars accepted him as king, each Hapsburg candidate must be ratified by the Hungarian Diet, and must swear to uphold the Hungarian Constitution. When, however, the expulsion of the Turks, at the end of the seventeenth century, left the Austrian sovereigns free to exercise their authority, they set about curtailing the ancient liberties of Hungary. Throughout the eighteenth century that process went on: the Magyars protested; the Emperor-King encroached, or, when the protests threatened to pass into insurrection, he paused for a while and gave fair promises.
Such was the situation when the French Revolution, followed by Napoleon’s colossal ambition, startled Europe. During the quarter century of upheaval, the Magyars, still pouring their grievances into Vienna, remained loyal to their King. After Napoleon’s downfall, the Old Régime being firmly reëstablished, Emperor Francis not only failed to keep his promises towards Hungary, but revived the old policy of Austrianization, which meant the substitution of German for Magyar officials, and the removal of the chief branches of government to Vienna. Again the protests became angry, until Francis, baffled and alarmed, convened the Diet. With the year 1825, when that Diet met, began the modern struggle of Hungary to recover that home rule which one after another of her Hapsburg kings had solemnly sworn to respect, and had as perfidiously disregarded. Thus the seed of the Magyar revolution was sown, like that of so many others, in a demand for the restoration of acknowledged rights, and not in a demand for innovation. Home rule,—Hungary to govern herself, instead of being bullied by foreigners who happened to be also subjects of her Emperor-King,—that seemed an object as simple and definite as it was just. Experience soon showed, however, that this cause was not simple; that it no more could be attained alone than gold can be taken from quartz without crushing the quartz and separating the silver and lead, and the crushed quartz itself, from the desired gold. For Hungary was imbedded in an old civilization, which must be broken up before home rule, and many another modern ideal, could be attained.
Imagine a country having an area about as large as the State of Colorado, inhabited by people sprung from four different races,—the Magyar, the Slav, the German, and the Italian: imagine, further, these races subdivided into eight different peoples,—Magyars, having poor kinsmen called Szeklers; Slavs, sending forth four different shoots, Slovaks in the North, Croats in the Southwest, Serbs in the South, and Wallachs in the East; imagine this motley population holding various creeds,—Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Unitarian: imagine not merely each race, but each people, cherishing its own language, its own customs, its own ambitions, which inevitably clashed with those of its neighbors: and having imagined all this, you have not yet come to the end of Hungary’s complex organism. Beside the conflicts of race and creed, there were political and social complications.
The dominant race was the Magyars, who numbered, however, only a third of the total population; their prevailing system was the feudal. A few hundred great nobles, or magnates, a considerable body of small nobles and a multitude of artisans, tradesmen, and peasants made up the social strata. Every Magyar who could trace descent to Arpád and his followers—though he were but a peasant in condition—was a noble: members of all the other races had no political rights. Hungary proper comprised fifty-two counties, each of which had its local congregation or assembly, which met four times a year, and sent suggestions or bills of grievances to the Central Diet, composed of the Table of Magnates and the Table of Deputies. A Palatine or Viceroy, representing the Sovereign, was the actual head of the kingdom. Outside of Hungary proper, the Croats had their local Diet at Agram, and Transylvania had hers; both also chose representatives to the Hungarian Diet. In a measure, therefore, we may call Hungary a federation, not forgetting, however, that it was a federation in which one race, the Magyars, domineered. The Latin language was the common medium of communication between Hungary and Austria, and among the diverse peoples.