17: The Sixteenth Century
<< 16: The Rule of the Hunyadi || 18: Rise of Transylvania >>
THE last reserves of the national wealth
and strength were dissipated by the terrible peasant rising of György Dózsa in 1514, of
which the enslavement of the Hungarian peasantry was the immediate consequence. The
"Savage Diet" which assembled on the 18th of October the same year, to punish
the rebels and restore order, well deserved its name. Sixty-two of its seventy-one
enactments were directed against the peasants, who were henceforth bound to the soil and
committed absolutely into the hands of "their natural lords." To this vindictive
legislation, which converted the labouring population into a sullenly hostile force within
the state, it is mainly due that a healthy political life in Hungary became henceforth
impossible. The same spirit of hostility to the peasantry breathed through the famous
codification of the Hungarian customary law known as the Tripartitum, which, though
never actually formally passed into law, continued until 1845 to be the only document
defining the relations of king and people, of nobles and their peasants, and of Hungary
and her dependent states.¹
Wladislaus II. died on the 13th of March 1516, two years after the
"Savage Diet," the ferocity of whose decrees he had feebly endeavoured to
mitigate, leaving his two kingdoms to his son Louis, a child of ten, who was pronounced of
age in order that his foreign guardians, the emperor Maximilian and Sigismund of Poland,
might be dispensed with. The government remained in the hands of Cardinal Bakócz till his
death in 1521, when the supreme authority at court was disputed between the lame palatine
István Báthory, and his rival, the eminent jurist and orator István Verbõczy, - both
of them incompetent, unprincipled place-hunters, - while, in the background lurked János
Zápolya, voivode of Transylvania, patiently waiting till the death of the feeble and
childless king (who, in 1522, married Maria of Austria) should open for him a way to the
throne. Every one felt that a catastrophe was approaching. "Things cannot go on like
this much longer," wrote the Venetian ambassador to his government. The war of each
against all continued; no taxes could be collected; the holders of the royal domains
refused to surrender them at the command of the diet; and the boy king had very often
neither clothes to wear nor food to eat. The whole atmosphere of society was one of rapine
and corruption, and only on the frontier a few self-sacrificing patriots like the
bán-bishop, Péter Biriszló, the last of Matthias's veterans, and his successor the
saintly Pál Tomori, archbishop of Kalocsa, showed, in their ceaseless war against the
predatory Turkish bands, that the ancient Magyar valour was not yet wholly extinct. But
the number of the righteous men was too few to save the state. The first blow fell in
1521, when Sultan Suleiman appeared before the southern fortresses of Sabác and Belgrade,
both of which fell into his hands during the course of the year. After this Venice openly
declared that Hungary was no longer worth the saving. Yet the coup de grâce was
postponed for another five years, during which time Suleiman was occupied with the
conquest of Egypt and the
¹ The Opus tripartitum juris consuetudinarii regnii
Hungariae was drawn up by Verbõczy at the instance of the diet in 1507. It was
approved by a committee of the diet and received the royal imprimatur in 1514, but
was never published. In the constitutional history of Hungary the Tripartitum is of
great importance as reasserting the fundamental equality of all the members of the populus
(i.e., the whole body of the nobles) and, more especially, as defining the
co-ordinate power of the king and "people" in legislation: i.e., the king
may propose laws, but they had no force without the consent of the people, and vice
versa.
siege of Rhodes. The Magyars fancied they were safe from attack,
because the final assault was suspended and everything vent on in the old haphazard way.
Every obstacle was opposed to the collection of the taxes which had been voted to put the
kingdom in a state of defence. "If this realm could be saved at the expense of three
florins," exclaimed the papal envoy, Antonio Burgio, "there is not a man here
willing to make the sacrifice." Only on the southern frontier did Archbishop Tomori
painfully assemble a fresh army and fleet, and succeed, by incredible efforts, in
constructing at Péterwardein, on the right bank of the Danube, a new fortress which
served him as a refuge and sally post in his interminable guerilla war with the Turks.
In the spring of 1526 came the tidings that Sultan Suleiman had
quitted Constantinople at the head of a countless host, to conquer Hungary. On the 28th of
July Péterwardein, after a valiant resistance, was blown into the air. The diet, which
met at Buda in hot haste, proclaimed the young king¹ dictator, granted him
unlimited subsidies which there was no time to collect, and ordered a leveé en masse
of the entire male population, which could not possibly assemble within the given time.
Louis at once formed a camp at Tolna, whence he issued despairing summonses to the lieges,
and, by the middle of August, some 25,000 ill-equipped gentlemen had gathered around him.
With these he marched southwards to the plain of Mohács, where, on the 29th of August,
the Hungarians, after a two-hours' fight, were annihilated, the king, both the
archbishops, five bishops and 24,000 men perishing on the field. The sultan refused to
believe that the pitiful array he had so easily overcome could be the national army of
Hungary. Advancing with extreme caution, he occupied Buda on the 12th of September, but
speedily returned to his own dominions carrying off with him 105,000 captives, and an
amount of spoil which filled the bazaars of the East for months to come. By the end of
October the last Turkish regular had quitted Magyar soil and, to use the words of a
contemporary observer, one quarter of Hungary was as utterly destroyed as if a flood had
passed over it.
The Turks had no sooner quitted the land than John Zápolya,
voivode of Transylvania assembled a diet at Tokaj (Oct. 14, 1526) at which the towns were
represented as well as the counties. The tone of the assembly being violently anti-German,
and John being the only conceivable national candidate, his election was a matter of
course; but his misgivings were so great that it was not till the beginning of November
that he very reluctantly allowed himself to be crowned at a second diet, held at
Székesfehérvár. By this time a competitor had entered the field. This was the archduke
Ferdinand, who claimed the Hungarian crown by right of inheritance in the name of his
wife, Anne, sister of the late king. Ferdinand was elected (Dec. 16) by a scratch assembly
consisting of deputies from Croatia and the towns of Pressburg and Sopron: but he speedily
improved his position in the course of 1527, by driving King John first from Buda and then
from Hungary. In November the same year he was elected and crowned by a properly
constituted diet at Székesfehérvár (Stuhlweissenburg). In 1529 Zápolya was reinstated
in Buda by Suleiman the Magnificent in person, who, at this period, preferred setting up a
rival to "the king of Vienna" to conquering Hungary outright. Thus the Magyars
were saddled with two rival kings with equally valid titles, which proved an even worse
disaster than the Mohács catastrophe; for in most of the counties of the unhappy kingdom
desperadoes of every description plundered the estates of the gentry, and oppressed the
common people, under the pretext that they were fighting the battles of the contending
monarchs. The determination of Ferdinand to partition Hungary rather than drive the Turks
out, which he might easily have done after Suleiman's unsuccessful attempts on Vienna in
1529-1530 led to a prolongation of the struggle till the 24th of February 1538 when, by
the secret peace of Nagyvárad,² Hungary was divided between the two competitors.
By this treaty Ferdinand retained Croatia-Slavonia and the five western counties with
Pressburg and Esztergom (Gran), while Zápolya kept the remaining two-thirds with the
royal title. He was indeed the last national king of Hungary till modern times. His court
at Buda was maintained according to the ancient traditions, and his gyûlés, at
which 67 of the 73 counties were generally represented, was the true national diet, the
phantom assembly occasionally convened at Pressburg by Ferdinand scarcely deserving the
title. Indeed, Ferdinand regarded his narrow strip of Hungarian territory as simply a
barrier behind which he could better defend the hereditary states. During the last six
years (1534-1540) of John's reign his kingdom, beneath the guidance of the Paulician monk,
Frater György, or George Martinuzzi the last great statesman of old Hungary enjoyed a
stability and prosperity marvellous in the difficult circumstances of the period,
Martinuzzi holding the balance exactly between the emperor and the Porte with astounding
diplomatic dexterity, and at the same time introducing several important domestic reforms.
Zápolya died on the 18th of July 1540, whereupon the estates of Hungary elected his baby
son John Sigismund king, in direct violation of the peace of Grosswardein which had
formally acknowledged Ferdinand as John's successor, whether he left male issue or not.
Ferdinand at once asserted his rights by force of arms, and attacked Buda in May 1541,
despite the urgent remonstrances of Martinuzzi, who knew that the Turk would never suffer
the emperor to reign
¹ He was just twenty.
² It was kept secret for some years for fear of Turkish
intervention.
at Buda. His fears were instantly justified. In August 1541,
Suleiman, at the head of a vast army, invaded Hungary, and on the 30th of August, Buda was
in his hands, During the six following years the sultan still further improved his
position, capturing, amongst many other places, Pécs, and the principal city of
Esztergom; but, in 1547, the exigencies of the Persian war induced him to sell a truce of
five years to Ferdinand for £100,000, on a uti possidegis basis, Ferdinand holding
thirty-five counties (including Croatia and Slavonia) for which he was to pay an annual
tribute of £60,000; John Sigismund retaining Transylvania and sixteen adjacent counties
with the title of prince, while the rest of the land, comprising most of the central
counties, was annexed to the Turkish empire. Thus the ancient kingdom was divided into
three separate states with divergent aims and interests, a condition of things which, with
frequent rearrangements, continued for more than 150 years.
A period of infinite confusion and extreme misery now ensued, of
which only the salient points can here be noted. The attempts of the Habsburgs to conquer
Transylvania drew down upon them two fresh Turkish invasions, the first in 1552, when the
sultan's generals captured Temesvár and fifty-four lesser forts or fortresses, and the
second in 1566, memorable as Suleiman's last descent upon Hungary, and also for the heroic
defence of Szigetvár by Miklós Zrínyi, one of the classical sieges of history. The
truce of Adrianople in 1568, nominally for eight years, but prolonged from time to time
till 1593, finally suspended regular hostilities, and introduced the epoch known as
"The Long Peace," though, throughout these twenty-five years, the guerilla
warfare on the frontier never ceased for more than a few months at a time, and the
relations between the Habsburgs and Transylvania were persistently hostile.
Probably no other country ever suffered so much from its rulers as
Hungary suffered during the second half of the 16th century. This was due partly to
political and partly to religious causes. To begin with, there can be no doubt that from
1558, when the German imperial crown was transferred from the Spanish to the Austrian
branch of the Habsburg family, royal Hungary¹ was regarded by the emperors as an
insignificant barrier province yielding far more trouble than profit. The visible signs of
this contemptuous point of view were (1) the suspension of the august dignity of palatine,
which, after the death of Tamás Nádasdy, "the great palatine," in 1562, was
left vacant for many years; (2) the abolition or attenuation of all the ancient Hungarian
court dignitaries; (3) the degradation of the capital, Pressburg, into a mere provincial
town; and (4) the more and more openly expressed determination to govern Hungary from
Vienna by means of foreigners, principally German or Czech. During the reign of Ferdinand,
whose consort, Anne, was a Hungarian princess, things were at least tolerable; but under
Maximilian (1564-1576) and Rudolph (1576-1612) the antagonism of the Habsburgs towards
their Magyar subjects was only too apparent. The diet, which had the power of the purse,
could not be absolutely dispensed with, but it was summoned as seldom as possible, the
king often preferring to forego his subsidies rather than listen to the unanswerable
remonstrances of the estates against the illegalities of his government. In the days of
the semi-insane recluse Rudolph things went from bad to worse The Magyar nobles were now
systematically spoliated on trumped up charges of treason; hundreds of them were ruined.
At last they either durst not attend the diet, or "sat like dumb dogs" during
its session, allowing the king to alter and interpret the statutes at his good pleasure.
Presently religious was superadded to political persecution.
The Reformation had at first produced little effect on Hungary.
Except in the towns, mostly of German origin, it was generally detested, just because it
came from Germany. The battle of Mohács, however, severely shook the faith of the
Hungarians. "Where are the old Magyar saints ? Why do they not defend the realm
against the Turks ?" was the general cry. Moreover, the corrupt church had lost its
hold on the affections of the people. Zápolya, a devout Catholic, is lauded by Archbishop
Frangipan in 1533 for arresting the spread of the new doctrines, though he would not allow
Martinuzzi to take the extreme step of burning perverts at the stake. These perverts were
mostly to be found among nobles desirous of amassing church property, or among those of
the clergy who clamoured for communion in both kinds. So long, however, as the old
national kingdom survived, the majority of the people still clung to the old faith. Under
Ferdinand the parochial clergy were tempted to become Lutherans by the prospect of
matrimony, and! in reply to the remonstrances of their bishops, declared that they would
rather give up their cures than their wives. In Transylvania matters were at first ordered
more peaceably. In 1552 the new doctrines obtained complete recognition there, the diet of
Torda (1557) going so far as to permit every one to worship in his own way so long as he
did not molest his neighbour. Yet, in the following year, the whole of the property of the
Catholic Church there was diverted to secular uses, and the Calvinists were simultaneously
banished, though they regained complete tolerance in 1564, a privilege at the same time
extended to the Unitarians. who were now very influential at court and converted Prince
John Sigismund to their views. In Turkish Hungary all the confessions enjoyed liberty of
worship, though the Catholics, as possible partisans of the "king of Vienna,"
were liked the least. It was only when the
¹ In contradistinction to Turkish Hungary and Transylvanian
Hungary.
Jesuits obtained a footing both at Prague¹ and Klausenburg
that persecution began, but then it was very violent. In Transylvania the princes of the
Báthory family (1571-1604) were ardent disciples of the Jesuit fathers, and Sigismund
Báthory in particular persecuted fiercely, his fury being especially directed against the
queer judaizing sect known as the Sabbatarians, whose tenets were adopted by the Szeklers
(Székelys), the most savage of "the three nations" of Transylvania, many
thousands of whom were, after a bloody struggle, forced to emigrate. In royal Hungary also
the Jesuits were the chief persecutors. The extirpation of Protestantism was a deliberate
prearranged programme, and as Protestanism was by this time identical with Magyarism²
the extirpation of the one was tantamount to the extirpation of the other. The method
generally adopted was to deprive the preachers in the towns of their churches by force,
Italian mercenaries being preferably employed for the purpose. It was assumed that the
Protestant nobles' jealousy of the burgesses would prevent them from interfering; but
religious sympathy proved stronger than caste prejudice, and the diets protested against
the persecution of their fellow-citizens so vehemently that religious matters were
withdrawn from their jurisdiction.
¹ At first the Habsburgs held their court at Prague instead
of at Vienna.
² According to contemporary records the number of prelates
and priests in the three parts of Hungary at the beginning of the 17th century was but
103, all told, and of the great families not above half a dozen still clung to
Catholicism.
<< 16: The Rule of the Hunyadi || 18: Rise of Transylvania >>
