Timeless Nation

After the death of the last Arpad King (Endre III) lengthy disputes followed in Hungary, but eventually the majority of the nation accepted Charles Robert of Anjou, Prince of Naples, as its ruler.

This was a fortunate choice; for CHARLES ROBERT (1307-1342), a descendant of Arpad on his mother’s side and of the French Capetians on his father’s side, became a good king and the founder of a short-lived but truly Hungarian dynasty. At the beginning, many rich magnates opposed his election and Charles had to enforce his rule with arms in several cases. In this task he received the enthusiastic support of the lesser nobles dad freemen, who had been suffering from the tyranny of the semi-independent feudal barons during the preceding decades. Charles rewarded his loyal followers with the highest offices, giving the nation an entirely new, honest government of poor nobles.

In the characteristic Hungarian variant of the medieval State structure, the free members of the’ nation owed services to the King not through feudal tenure of their estates (for it was their freehold) but by virtue of the King’s power, conferred on him by a nation which had freely elected him. A "feudal" relationship in the western sense existed only between the free members of the nation and their serfs, who worked as tenant (share-) farmers, paid one tenth of their produce to the landlord and one tenth to the Church. (They were better off than today’s taxpayers). Otherwise they were free to change their landlords or enter ecclesiastical or military careers (as many did).

Charles Robert reorganized the nation’s finances. By the economical use of the country’s mineral wealth – almost all of it crown property – he made the Hungarian florin the most stable currency in Europe. Related by birth to the French and Spanish dynasties and by marriage to the Polish and Czech royal families, he used his family connections to extend Hungary’s authority well beyond the frontiers. Under his rule Hungary became the most respected power in Central Europe, a leader of ‘economic and political alliances, such as the Czech-Polish-Hungarian bloc, a medieval "common market" created to counter German economic domination. The Polish-Hungarian alliance proved itself also during the common campaigns against Poland’s pagan enemies and the quarrels with the Teutonic Knights.

His sumptuous court at Visegrad (north of Buda) represented the best of the western and Hungarian ideals of Christian chivalry and became a centre of late-gothic culture and knighthood.

* * *

Charles Robert’s son, LOUIS I (THE GREAT) (1342-1 382), inherited e crown of a prosperous, strong country. He was called the last of the knight-kings a truly Christian monarch, like his ideal, Saint Ladislas. He saw the danger of the Osmanli Turks’ advance in the Balkans against the declining Byzantian Empire. So he improved on his father’s somewhat hesitant foreign policy and created in the south and northeast of Hungary a protective belt of vassal states under various degrees of Hungarian supremacy. After King Casmir’s death, the Poles invited him to their throne (1370). During this successful (albeit, short) personal union, the dual empire represented a giant zone of peace and prosperity between the east and west of Europe.

Ironically the Anjou kings of Neapolitan origin had little success in their dealings with their own home-state, Naples. Louis’ brother, Andrew, had inherited, the Neapolitan throne but he fell victim to the intrigues of the court (and of his own Neapolitan wife) and was eventually assassinated. Louis reluctantly led two campaigns into Italy to punish the criminals but achieved only partial success.

Louis was also a patron of arts and sciences, founder of the first Hungarian University at Pecs (1367)

Appointed by the Pope "Captain of Christendom" to head a crusade against the Turks, he led several victorious campaigns against them in Bulgaria with his Hungarian troops. He could not fully exploit these victories as the other Christian nations gave him no aid in the "crusade". Venice, the great sea power actually supported the Turks.

Louis died in 1382 after a long illness, probably leprosy, which he had contracted during his campaigns. He had no male heir: only two daughters.

In the century which saw the twilight of the Middle Ages, the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War at Crecy (1346), the internal wars in Italy, France and England, the struggle between the Pope and The Holy Roman Emperor, the "Black Death" (1347-1350) and the Turkish landing at Gallipoli, a prosperous and strong Hungary was the bulwark of stability, strength and peace in Europe.

* * *

As a mark of particular respect for Louis, the nation accepted, with some reluctance, the succession of twelve-year old Mary to the throne of her father. Her younger sister, Hedwig (Saint Jadwiga), inherited Louis’ Polish throne. While the barons were looking for a suitable King-Consort for Mary, the temperamental dowager queen, Elizabeth, ruled in her daughter’s name. This impetuous woman and her friend, the Palatin Gara, caused a series of tragic incidents. A pretender to the throne, the. Neapolitan prince Charles of Durazzo, who was the favorite of the Croatian barons, was killed in Queen Elizabeth’s court under obscure circumstances. In revenge, the Croatians abducted the two queens and eventually killed Elizabeth. On being freed from her captors, Mary married Prince Sigismund of Luxemburg, the son of the German emperor, who was thus accepted as King-Consort and, after Mary’s death, as the ruling king.

SIGISMUND (1387-1437) was an energetic young man. Some Hungarian nobles refused to accept him for a long time, such as the legendary Kont of Hedervar and his 30 fellow nobles who were executed for treason.

Soon after his ascension, Sigismund organised a crusade against the Turks with the participation (for the first and last time) of the great western powers: the French, the English and the Poles. However, the battle of Nicopolis (1396) was lost for the crusaders for lack of co-operation among the various Christian contingents.

After the defeat, Sigismund turned his attention to Germany. After the crown of Bohemia, he soon gained the crown of Germany and in 1410 was elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Upon his election he presided at the famous Council of Constance, trying to heal the ravages of the schisms, quarrels and internal wars of Christianity. He had tile Czech reformer, John Hus, executed. This roused the Czechs and caused a long, bloody civil war in Bohemia, Sigismund’s home-country.

Sigismund used Hungary’s considerable economic, military and political resources in obtaining his goals in Germany, but cared very little for the country, which gave him his strength. He gave up his plans to chase the Turks out of Europe. It was a tragic omission, as it was during this period that the Mongol ruler, Timur Lenk (Tamerlan) inflicted several crushing defeats upon the Turks in Asia and it would have been relatively easy to chase them out of Europe.

During his last years Sigismund tried to make up for his "absenteeism" and to befriend the Hungarians, but the resentful Magyars never quite accepted him as a truly Hungarian king

* * *

After Sigismund’s death the Hungarians turned to their traditional friends, the Poles, and invited the brave Prince Wiadislas (l440-l444) to the throne. Wladislas accepted the invitation and immediately undertook the struggle against the Osmanli Empire with the assistance of the greatest Hungarian general, JOHN HUNYADI. This great soldier of the Turkish wars was a professional officer of humble origins. By 1441 he became the commander of the southern forces of Hungary and the richest landlord in the country. He used his immense fortune to finance his campaigns against the Turks. His victories contained the Turkish advance for decades. Hunyadi was the typical representative of the militant Christian Hungarian who united religious fervor with ardent patriotism.

By 1443 he had pushed the Turks back to Bulgaria and restored the rule of the friendly Serbian king, an ally of Hungary. Wiadislas, following the Pope’s call for yet another crusade, attacked the Sultan’s army at Varna, in Bulgaria (1444). Though the Turks outnumbered the Hungarians and their allies four to one, Hunyadi’s strategy seemed to win the day. Then the impetuous King charged the Turks at the head of his Polish and Hungarian cavalry – and lost his life as well as the battle. Hunyadi himself escaped with difficulty

The infant Ladislas V (1445-1457) was elected king and during his infancy Hunyadi was elected Regent.

Sultan Mohammed conquered Byzantium (Constantinople, today Istanbul) in 1453. The Pope again urged the western nations to raise a crusade but this time no one came: the Hungarians were alone as Hunyadi wrote to the Pope: " . . . we only, left alone, have endured the fury of the war . . ." The Sultan led his huge army, reinforced with heavy artillery (a new feature on the battlefields of Europe) against Hungary.

Hunyadi and his friend, (Saint) John Capistrano, a Franciscan monk, hastily organised the Hungarians while the Pope ordered prayers all over Europe. Hunyadi’s strategy, the blood of the Magyar soldiers and the prayers triumphed once more: the Turks were utterly defeated at Nandorfehervar (today Belgrade) in 1456 and Europe could again breathe a sigh of relief. The Pope ordered that the bells should toll every day at noon in memory of Hunyadi’s great victory.

There was rejoicing in Europe – but mourning in Hungary. On the morrow of the victory Hunyadi and his friend, the survivors of countless battles died victims of the plague….

Timeless Nation