The first European generation of this century lived under the rule of the absolutistic kings, such as France's Louis XIV Russia's Peter I and Germany's Leopold I. The second generation saw the gradual weakening of these absolutistic empires. The third generation witnessed the rising of the oppressed in Europe and in America and the birth of new social structures and new, independent nations.

The Hungarians, with their "timeless" contempt for the logic of history, went through these three phases – in the reversed order. They rose against the monolithic German-Austrian Empire at the beginning of the century. They did the right thing –at the wrong time. The Empire had just defeated the Turks and now stood at the zenith of its power under its most Olympian monarch, Leopold.

Defeated, the Hungarians of the second generation watched at first stoically as their once mighty foe began to disintegrate for a rather ironic reason: the Habsburgs, who had established their rule over half of Europe through their clever marriage strategy, had suddenly run out of male heirs. Then, taken in by a clever, pretty queen, the Hungarians rushed to the rescue of the tottering Empire and offered their "Life and blood" to the same monarch whose grandfather had done his worst to wipe the Hungarian nation off the face of the earth. Having saved the Habsburg dynasty – the wrong thing for a Hungarian to do at any time – the third generation of Hungarians decided to do nothing – and they did it at the wrong time. While the rest of the world was busy creating new social, economic and state structures, the Hungarians turned their back to the world and went into a national hibernation of smug conservatism.

"Cum Deo- Pro Patria et Libertate"

FERENC (FRANCIS) RAKOCZI II (1676-1735) was a descendant of some of the greatest freedom fighters of Hungary. His mother, Ilona Zrinyi, the wife of Transylvanian Prince Ferenc Rakoczi I, was the finest example of patriotic Hungarian womanhood. She held the family fortress of Munkacs for three years against the Austrian-German imperial troops after the defeat of her second husband, Imre Thokoly, a great "Kuruc" leader. After the fall of Munkacs, Ferenc was taken to Vienna with his mother. There they were separated, never to meet again. The young Prince was left to the care of the Magyar-hating Archbishop Kollonich, who had him educated in a Catholic Austrian school. On completion of his studies, Rakoczi returned to Vienna, married a German princess and remained under the watchful eyes of the Emperor Leopold, his godfather.

The handsome, mild-mannered Prince of the Holy Roman (German) Empire, a loyal subject and a devout Catholic who could not even speak Hungarian, seemed unlikely to stir up a Magyar rebellion, so the Emperor allowed him to visit his estates in Hungary.

It may well be that, on his arrival in Hungary, Rakoczi sincerely wished to reconcile his rebellious compatriots with their pious Emperor. Soon, however, the impact of the conditions he saw in Hungary and information gained from his Hungarian. friends began to change his views about his "pious" godfather, the Emperor, and his "rebellious" Magyar subjects. He found the. peasants and common people burdened with exorbitant taxes, the nobility intimidated and silenced and. the imperial soldiers treating the country as their booty by right of conquest. His friends, especially Count Miklos Bercsenyi, urged him to lead an armed revolt but Rakoczi agreed only to begin negotiations with the dynasty. In his naive manner he wrote a letter to France's Louis XIV, seeking his sympathy and moral support for Hungary's demands for her constitutional rights:

The correspondence was betrayed and the angry Emperor had Ra koczi arrested and held in the same prison in which his grandfather, Peter Zrinyi had been executed for treason. Rakoczi managed to escape, however, and took refuge in Poland. The Poles offered the crown of their country to him, but he did not accept it.

In 1703 the insurgent peasants of Northern Hungary called upon Rakoczi in Poland to lead their uprising against Leopold. This time, the Prince responded to their appeals and to his friends urging and returned to Hungary to direct his nation's armed fight for freedom. In his moving manifesto, "Recrudescunt. .", he recounted his nation's grievances and stated that he wished to fight for the freedom of the entire nation, including the serfs and national minorities. It speaks well for the Hungarian aristocracy of the time that most of them joined Rakoczi's "Kuruc" troops. The nobles and the urban middle class joined them without reservation and so did the Slovak, Ruthene and Vlach peasants, and even the northern Hungarian Saxons. Catholics and Protestants swore allegiance to flags bearing the image of the Holy Virgin, Patron of Hungary and the motto "Cum Deo – Pro Patria et Libertate" (With God for Country and Freedom)

Only some prelates and magnates failed to join the uprising, either because they owed everything to the Emperor, or because they thought that the war was ill-timed and wasteful for a nation which had almost bled to death during the preceding three hundred years. Thus some honest and patriotic Hungarians remained in the imperial camp and their loyalty to both the Emperor and their nation was to alleviate later the sufferings caused by the war.

The bulk of the Kuruc troops consisted of light cavalry led by gallant, able but sometimes undisciplined commanders. They scored some spectacular successes at the beginning of the war but could not hold the occupied territory. More successful was the old general Bottyan in Transdanubia. In Transylvania and on the Great Plain, the imperials held most of the fortified cities but the Kuruc freed the countryside. In the north, the main theatre of operations, the Kuruc scored several victories but could not win decisive battles against the well–trained and better equipped imperials. In 1707 and again in 1710 the main Kuruc army was badly defeated, in both cases because the Kuruc commanders ignored Rakoczi's orders.

The lack of equipment, the general shortage of food and the lack of financial resources contributed to the final defeat of the Kuruc cause. Rakoczi did not tax the people. He tried to finance the war from his own income and the revenues of mines and excise – a woefully inadequate financial basis for a war lasting eight years. In 1710 a final, fatal blow struck the Kuruc army: the plague broke out in the Kuruc-held territory and killed half a million people, a fifth of Hungary's population.

Development in international politics also contributed greatly to Rakoczi's defeat. It had suited Louis XIV to have a rebel army in the east of the Habsburg empire but he never seriously considered concluding a formal alliance with Rakoczi. He kept encouraging him with vague promises and occasional financial support. It was on Louis' instigation that Rakoczi agreed to the dethronement of the Habsburg dynasty at the Diet of 0nod (1707). This assembly created Rakoczi "Ruling Prince" of the country. The timing of this fateful step could not have been more unfortunate: the Austrian-English victory over the French and Bavarians at Blenheim (1704) had already ruled out the chances of a military co-operation between the French and the Hungarians.

Rakoczi tried to find new alliances and hoped to negotiate with Peter I of Russia, who was even less reliable than Louis XIV. Still, the Prince went to Poland in 1711 hoping to meet Peter there. During his absence, his commander, Sandor Karolyi, correctly assessing the situation as hopeless for the Kuruc, concluded an armistice with the commander of the imperials,. Count John Palffy, an honest Hungarian soldier and statesman. Both commanders overstepped their authority but they were motivated by the best of intentions: the dying nation had to be saved.

When MARIA THERESA (1740-1780) ascended the throne, the Hungarians accepted her as their Queen but some provinces refused to do so. This eventually led to a war of succession between Austria and France-Prussia-Bavaria. Maria Theresa, whom someone once called the "only man of the Habsburg dynasty", began to show some remarkable qualities - mostly feminine ones, She had the Hungarian Diet recalled and appeared before the assembled nobles in mourning. With her infant child in her arms and tears in her eyes, she looked very much like the image of the Holy Virgin, Patron of Hungary – a familiar picture, indeed, as only a generation before this emblem had decorated Rakoczi's Kuruc flags. . . Now the beautiful, young Queen appealed to her "beloved, noble and chivalrous" Magyars for help against her enemies. Her "noble, chivalrous" (and forgetful) Hungarians stood up and cheered, promising her their "Vitam et Sanguinem. . ." ("Life and blood. .")

Whatever the historians may say about her, Maria Theresa was quite a woman.

So Hungary, not long before a subdued colony, a defeated rebel, came to the rescue of her oppressor, Austria. Hungarian hussars, commanded by Hungarian generals, fought gallantly to defend their "Queen in distress". Thanks to their help, the war, which began disastrously for the Austrians, ended in a compromise; so did the following Seven Years War (1756-1763).

The Queen rewarded the Hungarians by respecting their constitution and by guaranteeing the privileges of the landed nobility. Unfortunately, these privileges seemed to encourage agriculture and discourage urbanisation and industrialisafion – in the age of the Industrial Revolution. Thus Hungary remained the backward agricultural provider of rapidly progressing Austria and Bohemia. It seems that, in addition to her other qualities, Maria Theresa was quite an economist, too.

Her education policy was the product of "enlightened absolutism": a central, state-controlled system. Latin had been the language of government legislation and education in Hungary since the XVIlth century. Some historians have called this a "tactful" arrangement, as the use of Hungarian would have offended the nationalities. We have seen that, apart from the autochthonous Slovaks, all nationalities were immigrants settled with or without the Hungarians permission in the territory of Hungarian sovereignty. Thus this "tactful" arrangement is comparable to the suggestion that the United States or Australia should replace English by, say, Esperanto in order to spare the susceptibilities of its migrants.

Unfortunately, Transyilvania was still an Austrian colony and the drastic resettlement and military recruiting methods used by the Austrian commanders led to many clashes, such as the tragic incident at Madefalva where Szekely families were massacred for refusing to allow their lads to be recruited for the Austrian army. As a result of this "Siculicidium" ("Szekely massacre") (1764) whole Szekely villages left their homeland and settled in Moldavia and Bukovina, then under Russian and Turkish occupation. The Austrian military authorities encouraged the mass immigration of Vlachs and Serbs to the eastern and southern depopulated areas.

Among the nobles of Hungary, unaware of all this, Maria Theresas benevolent repression created an atmosphere of complacent, self-deluding euphoria.

Joseph II (1780-1790) brought the principle of "enlightened absolutism" to its logical conclusion: he decided to make his subjects happy, whether they liked it or not. He refused to be crowned and ruled by decrees, ordering reforms for which his multinational empire was neither ready nor grateful. He abolished the religious orders and granted freedom to all religions. Then he abolished the 700 year-old Hungarian county-system and replaced it with a German language central administration. He eased the burden of the serfs and prepared plans for universal taxation. Some of these reforms shocked the Hungarians and the other nationalities. Disappointed, Joseph withdrew his edicts before his death.

His successor, Leopold II, had little trouble pacifying the nobles – they saw the unpleasant things happening in France to nobles who insisted on their privileges.

At the beginning of his long, dull reign, Francis I (1792-1835) hastened to reiterate the standard Habsburg procedure of reassuring the nobles that their privileges will remain untouched – as long as they kept producing food for the Empire and stayed out of mischief. He had no cause to worry: the world-shaking events in France found very little echo in Hungary. Only a small group of amateurish intellectuals attempted to organise some sort of a "Jacobin" plot. This was promptly discovered and quickly and ruthlessly suppressed by the most efficient branch of the Viennese government, the police.

Thus Hungary's "lost century" ended with the nation still licking its well-healed wounds and looking with full confidence into its glorious past. .