16: The Rule of the Hunyadi
<< 15: The House of Anjou || 17: The Sixteenth Century >>
ALL this time the pressure of the Turks upon
the southern provinces of Hungary had been continuous, but fortunately all their efforts
had so far been frustrated by the valour and generalship of the bán of Szörény, John
Hunyadi, the fame of whose victories, notably in 1442 and 1443, encouraged the Holy See to
place Hungary for the third time at the head of a general crusade against the infidel. The
experienced diplomatist Cardinal Cesarini was accordingly sent to Hungary to reconcile
Wladislaus with the emperor, The king, who had just returned from the famous "long
campaign" of 1443, willingly accepted the leadership of the Christian League. At the
diet of Buda, early in 1444, supplies were voted for the enterprise, and Wladislaus was on
the point of quitting his camp at Szeged for the seat of war, when envoys from Sultan
Murad arrived with the offer of a ten years' truce on such favourable conditions (they
included the relinquishment of Servia, Walachia and Moldavia, and the payment of an
indemnity) that Hunyadi persuaded the king to conclude (in July) a peace which gave him
more than could reasonably be anticipated from the most successful campaign.
Unfortunately, two days later, Cardinal Cesarini absolved the king from the oath whereby
he had sworn to observe the peace of Szeged, and was thus mainly responsible for the
catastrophe of Varna, when four months later (Nov. 10) the young monarch and the flower of
the Magyar chivalry were overwhelmed by fourfold odds on Turkish soil.
The next fourteen years form one of the most interesting and pregnant
periods of Hungarian history. It marks the dawn of a public spirit as represented by the
gentry, who, alarmed at the national peril and justly suspicious of the ruling magnates
unhesitatingly placed their destinies in the hands of Hunyadi, the one honest man who by
sheer merit had risen within the last ten years from the humble position of a country
squire to a leading position in the state. This feeling of confidence found due expression
at the diet of 1446, which deliberately passing over the palatine László Garai elected
Hunyadi governor of Hungary, and passed a whole series of popular measures intended to be
remedial, e.g., the decree ordering the demolition of the new castles, most of them
little better than robber-strongholds; the decree compelling the great officers of state
to suspend their functions during the session of the diet; the decree declaring illegal
the new fashion of forming confederations on the Polish model, all of which measures were
obviously directed against the tyranny and the lawlessness of the oligarchy. Unfortunately
this salutary legislation remained a dead letter. It was as much as the governor could do
to save the state from destruction, let alone reform it. At this very time northern
Hungary, including the wealthy mining towns, was in the possession of the Hussite
mercenary Jan Giszkra, who held them nominally for the infant king Ladislaus V., still
detained at Vienna by his kinsman the emperor. The western provinces were held by
Frederick himself. Invaluable time was wasted in negotiating with these intruders before
the governor could safely devote himself to the task of expelling the Turk from the
southern provinces. He had to be content with armistices, reconciliations and matrimonial
contracts, because the great dignitaries of the state, men like the palatine László
Garai, Count Ulrich of Cilli, and the voivode of Transylvania, Mihály Újlaky, thwarted
in every way the novus homo whom they hated and envied. From them, the official
guardians of Hungary's safety, he received no help, either during his governorship
(1446-1453), or when, in 1454, on the eve of his departure for his last and most glorious
campaign, the diet commanded a leveé en messe of the whole population in his
support. At the critical hour it was at his own expense that Hunyadi fortified
Nándorfehérvár (Belgrade), now the sole obstacle between Hungary and destruction, with
the sole assistance of the Franciscan friar Giovanni da Capistrano, equipped the fleet and
the army which relieved the beleaguered fortress and overthrew Mahommed II. But the nation
at least was grateful, and after his death (Aug. 11, 1456) it freely transferred its
allegiance to his family as represented by his two sons, László, now in his 23rd, and
Matthias, now in his 16th year. The judicial murder of László Hunyadi by the enemies of
his house (March 16, 1457) was therefore a stupid blunder as well as the foulest of
crimes, and on the death of his chief assassin, Ladislaus V., six months later (Nov. 23,
1457), the diet which assembled on the banks of the Rákos, in defiance of the magnates
and all foreign competitors, unanimously and enthusiastically elected Matthias Hunyadi
king of Hungary (Jan. 24, 1458).
In less than three years the young king had justified their
confidence, and delivered his country from its worst embarrassments. This prodigy was
accomplished in the face of every conceivable obstacle. His first diet grudgingly granted
him supplies and soldiers for the Turkish war, on condition that under no circumstances
whatever should they henceforth be called upon to contribute towards the national defence,
and he was practically deprived of the control of the banderia or mounted militia.
It was with a small force of mercenaries, raised at his own expense, that the young king
won his first Turkish victories, and expelled the Czechs from his northern and the
Habsburgs from his western provinces. But his limited resources, and, above all, the
proved incapacity of the militia in the field, compelled him instantly to take in hand the
vital question of army reform. In the second year of his reign he undertook personally the
gigantic task of providing Hungary with an army adequate to her various needs on the model
of the best military science of the day. The landless younger sons of the gentry and the
Servian and Vlach immigrants provided him with excellent and practically inexhaustible
military material. The old feudal levies he put aside. Brave enough personally, as
soldiers they were distinctly inferior both to the Janissaries and the Hussites, with both
of whom Matthias had constantly to contend. It was a trained regular army in his pay and
consequently at his disposal that he wanted. The nucleus of the new army he found in the
Czech mercenaries, seasoned veterans who readily transferred their services to the best
payer. This force, formed in 1459, was generally known as the Fekete Sereg, or
"Black Brigade," from the colour of its armour. From 1465 the pick of the
Magyars and Croatians were enlisted in the same way every year, till towards the end of
his reign, Matthias could count upon 20,000 horse and 8000 foot, besides 6000 black
brigaders. The cavalry consisted of the famous Hussars, or light horse, of which he may be
said to have been the creator, and the heavily armed mounted musketeers on the
Czech-German model. The infantry, in like manner, was divided into light and heavy. This
army was provided with a regular commissariat, cannon¹ and ballistic machines and,
being constantly on active service, was always in a high state of efficiency. The land
forces were supported by a river fleet consisting (in 1479) of 360 vessels, mostly sloops
and corvettes, manned by 2600 sailors, generally Croats, and carrying 10,000 soldiers.
Eight large military stations were also built at the chief strategic points on the Danube,
Save and Theiss. These armaments, which cost Matthias 1,000,000 florins per annum,
equivalent to £200,000, did not include the auxiliary troops of the hospodars of Walachia
and Moldavia, or the feudal levies of the barons and prelates.
The army of Matthias was not only a military machine of first-rate
efficiency, but an indispensable civilizing medium. It enabled the king to curb the
lawlessness of the Magyar nobility, and explains why none of the numerous rebellions
against him ever succeeded. Again and again, during his absence on the public service, the
barons and prelates would assemble to compass his ruin or dispose of his crown, when,
suddenly, "like a tempest," from the depths of Silesia or of Bosnia, he would
himself appear among them, confounding and scattering them, often without resistance,
always without bloodshed. He also frequently employed his soldiers in collecting the taxes
from the estates of those magnates who refused to contribute to the public burdens, in
protecting the towns from the depredations of the robber barons, or in convoying the
caravans of the merchants. In fact, they were a police force as well as an army.
Despite the enormous expense of maintaining the army, Matthias after
the first ten years of his reign, was never in want of money. This miracle was achieved by
tact and management. No Hungarian king had so little trouble with the turbulent diet as
Matthias. By this time the gentry, as well as the barons and prelates, took part in the
legislature. But attendance at the diet was regarded by the bulk of the poorer deputies as
an intolerable burden, and they frequently agreed to grant the taxes for two or three
years in advance, so as to be saved the expense of attending every year. Moreover, to
promote their own convenience, they readily allowed the king to assess as well as to
collect the taxes, which consequently tended to become regular and permanent, while
Matthias' reform of the
¹ Some of these were of gigantic size, e.g., the Varga
Mozsár, 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.
treasury, which was now administered by specialists with separate
functions, was economically of great benefit to the state. Yet Matthias never dispensed
with the diet. During the thirty-two years of his reign he held at least fifteen diets,¹
at which no fewer than 450 statutes were passed. He re-codified the Hungarian common law;
strictly defined the jurisdiction of the whole official hierarchy from the palatine to the
humblest village judge; cheapened and accelerated legal procedure, and in an age when
might was right did his utmost to protect the weak from the strong. There is not a single
branch of the law which he did not simplify and amend, and the iron firmness with which he
caused justice to be administered, irrespective of persons, if it exposed him to the
charge of tyranny from the nobles, also won for him from the common people the epithet of
"the Just." To Matthias is also due the credit of creating an efficient official
class. Merit was with him the sole qualification for advancement. One of his best
generals, Pál Kinizsy, was a miller's son, and his capable chancellor, Péter Várady,
whom he made archbishop of Kalocsa, came of a family of small squires. For education so
scholarly a monarch as Matthias naturally did what he could. He founded the university of
Pressburg (Academia Istropolitana, 1467), revived the declining university of Pécs, and,
at the time of his death, was meditating the establishment of a third university at Buda.
Unfortunately the civilizing efforts of Matthias made but little
impression on society at large. The bulk of the Magyar nobility was still semi-barbaric.
Immensely wealthy (it is estimated that most of the land, at this time, was in the hands
of 25 great families the Zápolyas alone holding an eighth of it), it was a point of
honour with them to appear in public in costly raiment ablaze with silver, gold and
precious stones, followed at every step by armies of retainers scarcely less gorgeous. At
the same time their ignorance was profound. Many of the highest dignitaries of state did
not know their alphabet. Signatures to documents of the period are rare: seals served
instead of signatures, because most of the nobles were unable to sign their names.
Learning, indeed, was often ridiculed as pedantry in a gentleman of good family.
The clergy, the chief official class, were naturally less ignorant
than the gentry. Some of the prelates - notably János Csezmeczey, better known as Janus
Pannonius (1433-1472) - had a European reputation for learning. The primate Cardinal,
János Vitéz (1408- 1472), at the beginning, and the primate, Cardinal Tamás Bakócz, at
the end of the reign were men of eminent ability and the highest culture. But the moral
tone of the Magyar church at this period was very low. The bishops prided themselves on
being great statesmen, great scholars, great financiers, great diplomatists - anything, in
fact, but good Christians. Most of them, except when actually celebrating mass, were
indistinguishable alike in costume and conduct from the temporal magnates. Of twelve of
them it is said that foreigners took them at first for independent temporal princes, so
vast were their estates, so splendid their courts, so numerous their armed retainers.
Under such guides as these the lower clergy erred deplorably, and drunkenness, gross
immorality, brawling and manslaughter were common occurrences in the lives of the parish
priests. The regular clergy were if possible worse than the secular, with the exception of
the Paulicians, the sole religious order which steadily resisted the general corruption,
and whose abbot, the saintly Gregory, was the personal friend of Matthias.
What little culture there was outside the court, the capital and the
palaces of a few prelates, was to be found in the towns, most of them of German origin.
Matthias laboured strenuously to develop and protect the towns, multiplied municipal
charters and materially improved the means of communication, especially in Transylvania.
His Silesian and Austrian acquisitions were also very beneficial to trade, throwing open
as they did the western markets to Hungarian produce. Wine and meat were the chief
exports. The wines of Hungary were already renowned throughout Europe, and cattle-breeding
was conducted on a great scale. Of agricultural produce there was barely sufficient for
home consumption, but the mining industries had reached a very high level of excellence
and iron, tin and copper were very largely exported from the northern counties to Danzig
and other Baltic ports. So highly developed indeed were the Magyar methods of smelting,
that Louis XI. of France took the Hungarian mining system as the model for his
metallurgical reforms, and Hungarian master-miners were also in great demand at the court
of Ivan the Terrible. Moreover, the keen artistic instincts of Matthias led him to
embellish his cities as well as fortify them. Debreczen was practically rebuilt by him,
and dates its prosperity from his reign, Breslau, his favourite town, he endowed with many
fine public buildings. Buda he endeavoured to make the worthy capital of a great realm,
and the palace which he built there was pronounced by the papal legates to be superior to
any in Italy.
Politically Matthias raised Hungary to the rank of the greatest power
in central Europe, her influence extending into Asia and Africa. Poland was restrained by
his alliances with the Teutonic Knights and the tsardom of Muscovy, and his envoys
appeared in Persia and in Egypt to combat the diplomacy of the Porte. He never, indeed,
jeopardized the position of the Moslems in Europe as his father had done, and thus the
peace of Szeged (1444), which regained the line of the Danube and drove the Turk behind
the Balkans, must always be reckoned as the high-water mark of Hungary's Turkish triumphs.
But Matthias at
¹ We know actually of fifteen, but there may have been many
more.
least taught the sultan to respect the territorial integrity of
Hungary, and throughout his reign the Eastern Question, though often vexatious, was never
acute. Only after his death did the Ottoman empire become a menace to Christendom.
Besides, his hands were tied by the unappeasable enmity of the emperor and the emperor's
allies, and he could never count upon any material help from the West against the East.
The age of the crusades had gone. Throughout his reign the Czechs and the Germans were
every whit as dangerous to Hungary as the Turks, and the political necessity which finally
compelled Matthias to partition Austria and Bohemia, in order to secure Hungary, committed
him to a policy of extreme circumspection. He has sometimes been blamed for not crushing
his incurably disloyal and rebellious nobles, instead of cajoling them, after the example
of his contemporary, Louis XI., who laid the foundations of the greatness of France on the
rule of the vassals. But Louis XI. had a relatively civilized and politically developed
middle class behind him, whereas Matthias had not. It was as much as Matthias could do to
keep the civic life of Hungary from expiring altogether, and nine-tenths of his burgesses
were foreigners with no political interest in the country of their adoption. Never was any
dominion so purely personal, and therefore so artificial as his. His astounding energy and
resource curbed all his enemies during his lifetime, but they were content to wait
patiently for his death, well aware that the collapse of his empire would immediately
follow.
All that human foresight could devise for the consolidation and
perpetuation of the newly established Hungarian empire had been done by Matthias in the
last years of his reign. He had designated as his successor his natural son, the highly
gifted János (John) Corvinus, a youth of seventeen. He had raised him to princely rank,
endowed him with property which made him the greatest territorial magnate in the kingdom,
placed in his hands the sacred crown and half-a-dozen of the strongest fortresses, and won
over to his cause the majority of the royal council. How János was cajoled out of an
almost impregnable position, and gradually reduced to insignificance, is told elsewhere.
The nobles and prelates, who detested the severe and strenuous Matthian system, desired,
as they expressed it, "a king whose beard they could hold in their fists," and
they found a monarch after their own heart in Wladislaus Jagiello, since 1471 king of
Bohemia, who as Wladislaus II. was elected unanimously king of Hungary on the 15th of July
1490. Wladislaus was the personification of helpless inertia. His Bohemian subjects had
long since dubbed him "King All Right" because he said yes to everything. As
king of Hungary he was, from first to last, the puppet of the Magyar oligarchs, who
proceeded to abolish all the royal prerogatives and safeguards which had galled them under
Matthias. By the compact of Farkashida (1490) Wladislaus not only confirmed all the
Matthian privileges, but also repealed all the Matthian novelties, including the system of
taxation which had enabled his predecessor to keep on foot an adequate national army. .
The virtual suppression of Wladislaus was completed at the diet of 1492, when "King
All Right" consented to live on the receipts of the treasury, which were barely
sufficient to maintain his court, and engaged never to impose any new taxes on his Magyar
subjects. The dissolution of the standing army, including the Black Brigade, was the
immediate result of these decrees. Thus, at the very time when the modernization of the
means of national defence had become the first principle, in every other part of Europe,
of the strongly centralized monarchies which were rising on the ruins of feudalism, the
Hungarian magnates deliberately plunged their country back into the chaos of medievalism.
The same diet which destroyed the national armaments and depleted the exchequer confirmed
the disgraceful peace of Pressburg, concluded between Wladislaus and the emperor
Maximilian on the 7th of November 1491, whereby Hungary retroceded all the Austrian
conquests of Matthias, together with a long strip of Magyar territory, and paid a war
indemnity equivalent to £200,000.
The thirty-six years which elapsed between the accession of Wladislaus
II. and the battle of Mohács is the most melancholy and discreditable period of Hungarian
history. Like Poland two centuries later, Hungary had ceased to be a civilized autonomous
state because her prelates and her magnates, uncontrolled by any higher authority and too
ignorant or corrupt to look beyond their own immediate interests, abandoned themselves to
the exclusive enjoyment of their inordinate privileges, while openly repudiating their
primal obligation of defending the state against extraneous enemies. During these
miserable years everything like patriotism or public spirit seems to have died out of the
hearts of the Hungarian aristocracy. The great officers of state acted habitually on the
principle that might is right. Stephen Báthory, voivode of Transylvania and count of the
Szeklers (Székelys) for instance, ruled Transylvania like a Turkish pasha, and
threatened to behead all who dared to complain of his exactions; "Stinking
carrion," he said, was better than living Szeklers. Thousands of Transylvanian
gentlemen emigrated to Turkey to get out of his reach. Other great nobles were at
perpetual feud with the towns whose wealth they coveted. Thus the Zápolyas, in 1500 and
again in 1507, burnt a large part of Breznóbánya and Beszterczebánya, two of the chief
industrial towns of north Hungary. Kronstadt, now the sole flourishing trade centre in the
kingdom, defended itself with hired mercenaries against the robber barons. Everywhere the
civic communities were declining, even Buda and Pressburg were half in ruins. In their
misery the cities frequently appealed for protection to the emperor and other foreign
potentates, as no redress was attainable at home. Compared even with the contemporary
Polish diet the Hungarian national assembly was a tumultuous mob. The diet of 1497 passed
most of its time in constructing, and then battering to pieces with axes and hammers, a
huge wooden image representing the ministers of the crown, who were corrupt enough, but
immovable, since they regularly appeared at the diet with thousands of retainers armed to
the teeth, and openly derided the reforming endeavours of the lower gentry, who perceived
that something was seriously wrong, yet were powerless to remedy it. All that the gentry
could do was to depress the lower orders, and this they did at every opportunity. Thus,
many of the towns, notably Visegrád, were deprived of the charters granted to them by
Matthias, and a whole series of anti-civic ordinances were passed. Noblemen dwelling
within the walls of the towns were especially exempted from all civic burdens, while every
burgess who bought an extra-mural estate was made to pay double for the privilege.¹
Every nobleman had the right to engage in trade toll-free, to the great detriment of their
competitors the burgesses. The peasant class suffered most of all. In 1496 Várady,
archbishop of Kalocsa, one of the few good prelates, declared that their lot was worse
than that of brute beasts. The whole burden of taxation rested on their shoulders, and so
ground down were they by ingeniously multiplied exactions that thousands of them were
reduced to literal beggary.
Yet, despite this inward rottenness, Hungary, for nearly twenty years
after the death of Matthias, enjoyed an undeserved prestige abroad, due entirely to the
reputation which that great monarch had won for her. Circumstances, indeed, were
especially favourable. The emperor Maximilian was so absorbed by German affairs that he
could do her little harm, and under Bayezid II. and Selim I. the Turkish menace gave
little anxiety to the court of Buda, Bayezid being no warrior, while Selim's energies were
claimed exclusively by the East, so that he was glad to renew the triennial truce with
Hungary as often as it expired. Hungary, therefore, for almost the first time in her
history, was free to choose a foreign policy of her own, and had she been guided by a
patriot, she might now have easily regained Dalmatia, and acquired besides a considerable
sea-board. Unfortunately Tamás Bakócz, her leading diplomatist from 1499 to 1521, was as
much an egotist as the other magnates, and he sacrificed the political interests of
Hungary entirely to personal considerations. Primate of Hungary since 1497, he coveted the
popedom - and the red hat as the first step thereto above all things - and looked mainly
to Venetian influence for both. He therefore supported Venice against her enemies, refused
to enter the League of Cambray in 1508, and concluded a ten years' alliance with the
Signoria, which obliged Hungary to defend Venetian territory without any equivalent gain.
Less reprehensible, though equally self-seeking, were his dealings with the emperor, which
aimed at a family alliance between the Jagiellos and the Habsburgs on the basis of a
double marriage between the son and daughter of Wladislaus, Louis and Anne, and an
Austrian archduke and archduchess; this was concluded by the family congress at Vienna,
July 22, 1515 to which Sigismund I. Of Poland, the brother of Wladislaus, acceded. The
Hungarian diet frantically opposed every Austrian alliance as endangering the national
independence, but to any unprejudiced observer a union with the house of Habsburg, even
with the contingent probability of a Habsburg king, was infinitely preferable to the
condition into which Hungary, under native aristocratic misrule, was swiftly drifting. The
diet itself had become as much a nullity as the king, and its decrees were systematically
disregarded. Still more pitiable was the condition of the court. The penury of Wladislaus
II. was by this time so extreme, that he owed his very meals to the charity of his
servants. The diet, indeed, voted him aids and subsidies, but the great nobles either
forbade their collection within their estates, or confiscated the amount collected. Under
the circumstances, we cannot wonder if the frontier fortresses fell to pieces, and the
border troops, unpaid for years, took to brigandage.
¹ 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.
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