Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe of almost 10 million people. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The country's capital and largest city is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and the Schengen Agreement. The official language is Hungarian, also known as Magyar, which is part of the Finno-Ugric group and is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe. The Hungarian people refer to themselves by the demonym "Magyar" rather than the term "Hungarian". The term "Hungarian nation" had a wider meaning, as it once referred to all nobles of the Kingdom of Hungary, irrespective of their ethnicity.
History of the country:
Following periods of successive habitation by Celts, Romans, Huns, Slavs, Gepids, and Avars, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád.
1) Before 895
The Pannonians (an Illyrian tribe) may have moved to the southern territories of Transdanubia in the course of the 5th century BC. The name Illyrians seems to be the name of one Illyrian tribe, which was the first to come in contact with the ancient Greeks, causing the name Illyrians to be applied to all people of similar language and customs
In the 4th century BC, Celtic tribes immigrated to the territories around the river Rába and defeated the Illyrian people who had been living there, but the latter managed to assimilate the Celts who adopted their language
Following 279 BC, the Scordisci (a Celtic tribe), who had been defeated at Delphi, settled at the confluence of the rivers Sava and Danube and they extended their rule over the southern parts of Transdanubia.
In that century the northern parts of Transdanubia were ruled by the Taurisci (also a Celtic tribe) and by 230 BC, Celtic people (the people of the La Tène culture) had occupied gradually the whole territory of the Great Hungarian Plain. Between 150 and 100 BC, a new Celtic tribe, the Boii moved to the Carpathian Basin and they occupied the northern and northeastern parts of the territory (mainly the territory of present Slovakia).
The Romans commenced their military raids against the Carpathian Basin in 156 BC when they attacked the Scordisci living in the Transdanubian region. In 119 BC, they marched against Siscia (today Sisak in Croatia) and strengthened their rule over the future Illyricum province south of the Carpathian Basin. In 88 BC, the Romans defeated the Scordisci whose rule was driven back to the eastern parts of Syrmia, while the Pannonians moved to the northern parts of Transdanubia.
The Scordisci were crushed in 15 BC by Tiberius, and became Roman subjects, playing the part as mercenaries. Other sources say the Romans made alliance with the Scordisci in Sirmium and Danube valleys following the Alpine campaign under Tiberius in 15 BC, the alliance would be crucial for the victory over the Pannonians (15BC) and later Breuci (12BC).They started receiving Roman citizenship during Trajan's rule. With their Romanization, they ceased to exist as an independent ethno-political unit.
The Roman Empire conquered territory west of the Danube between 35 and 9 BC. From 9 BC to the end of the 4th century AD Pannonia, the western part of the basin was part of the Roman Empire. In the final stages of the expansion of the Roman empire, for a short while the Carpathian Basin fell under Mediterranean influence Greco-Roman civilization - town centers, paved roads, and written sources were all part of the advances to which the "Migration of Peoples" put an end. Aquincum was an ancient city, situated on the northeastern borders of the province of Pannonia within the Roman Empire. The ruins of the city can be found today in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary.
It is believed that Marcus Aurelius wrote at least part of his book Meditations at Aquincum. The city had around 30,000 to 40,000 inhabitants by the end of the 2nd century, and covered a significant part of the area today known as the Óbuda district within Budapest. Ruins from the old Roman settlement can be seen in other parts of Budapest as well, notably Contra-Aquincum. These Roman structures were, during the 2nd and 3rd century AD, the heart of the commercial life of the Pannonia province. The excavations show evidence of the lifestyle of this period. The most important monuments in Aquincum are the two amphitheatres: the Aquincum Civil Amphitheatre and the Aquincum Military Amphitheatre, built in the 1st century AD. The Romans also founded several wine-producing colonies under the collective name of Sopianae where the city of Pécs now stands, in the early 2nd century.
After the Western Roman Empire collapsed under the stress of the migration of Germanic tribes and Carpian pressure, the Migration Period continued bringing many invaders to Europe. Among the first to arrive were the Huns, who built up a powerful empire under Attila in 435 AD. Attila the Hun was regarded in past centuries as an ancestral ruler of the Hungarians, but this is now considered to be erroneous. The Magyars (Hungarians) claim to Hunnic heritage. Although Magyar tribes only began to settle in the geographical area of present-day Hungary in the very end of the 9th century, some 450 years after the dissolution of the Hunnic tribal confederation, Hungarian prehistory includes Magyar origin myths, which may have preserved some elements of historical truth. The Huns who invaded Europe represented a loose coalition of various peoples, so some Magyars might have been part of it, or may later have joined descendants of Attila's men, who still claimed the name of Huns. The national anthem of Hungary describes the Hungarians as "blood of Bendegúz'" (the medieval and modern Hungarian version of Mundzuk, Attila's father). Attila's brother Bleda is called Buda in modern Hungarian. Some medieval chronicles and literary works derive the name of the city of Buda from him. There is a legend among the Székely people that says: "After the death of Attila, in the bloody Battle of Krimhilda, 3000 Hun warriors managed to escape, to settle in a place called "Csigle-mező" (today Transylvania) and they changed their name from Huns to Szekler (Székely)." When Magyars came to Pannonia in the 8th century, the Szeklers joined them, and together they conquered Pannonia (today Hungary).
It is believed that the origin of the name "Hungary" does not come from the Central Asian Hun nomadic invaders, but rather originated from the 7th century, when Magyar tribes were part of a Bulgar alliance called On-Ogour, which in Bulgar Turkic meant "(the) Ten Arrows".
After Hunnish rule faded, the Germanic Ostrogoths, Lombards then Slavs came to Pannonia, and the Gepids had a presence in the eastern part of the Carpathian Basin for about 100 years. In the 560s the Avars founded the Avar Khaganate, a state which maintained supremacy in the region for more than two centuries and had the military power to launch attacks against its neighboring empires. The Avar Khaganate was a highly organized nomadic Turkic confederacy, a khaganate, established by the Avars in the early Middle Ages. The Avars were a confederation of Eurasian tribes from the steppes of Central Asia. The Avar Khaganate was weakened by constant wars and outside pressure, and the Franks under Charlemagne managed to defeat the Avars, ending their 250-year rule.
2) Establishment of confederation of united tribes
Around 830, the seven Magyar related tribes (Jenő, Kér, Keszi, Kürt-Gyarmat, Megyer, Nyék and Tarján) formed a confederation in Etelköz, called "Hétmagyar" (ie, "The Seven Magyars"). Their leaders, the Seven chieftains of the Magyars, besides Álmos included Előd, Ond, Kond, Tas, Huba and Töhötöm, took a blood oath, swearing eternal loyalty to Álmos. Presumably, the Magyar tribes consisted of 108 clans. The Hungarians/Magyar, unlike their Slavic neighbours, speak a language of the group known as Finno-Ugric. Despite claims of Hunnish descent, it is thought that they came from the Ural Mountains in Russia and migrated east, then south in contact with Turks and Iranians, taking on a nomadic, herding lifestyle.
The confederation of the tribes was probably led by two high princes: the kende (their spiritual ruler) and the gyula (their military leader). The high princes were either elected by the leaders of the tribes or appointed by the Khagan of the Khazars who had been exerting influence over the Magyars. Around 862 the seven tribes separated from the Khazars.
According to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, Árpád (c. 840 – c. 907) was the first head of the confederation of the Hungarian tribes. Some sources assumes that Árpád was the gyula, and Kurszán was the kende while others propose that Kurszán was the gyula, and Árpád represented his father, Álmos kende.
3) Establishment of Principality of Hungary and Age of Árpádian kings
After that, an early Hungarian state (the Principality of Hungary, founded in 895) was formed in this territory. The military power of the nation allowed the Hungarians to conduct successful fierce campaigns and raids as far as today's Spain. A later defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 signaled an end to raids on western territories (Byzantine raids continued until 970), and links between the tribes weakened. The ruling prince (fejedelem) Géza of the Árpád dynasty, who ruled only part of the united territory, the nominal overlord of all seven Magyar tribes, aimed to integrate Hungary into Christian Western Europe, rebuilding the state according to the Western political and social model. Paul K. Davis, a military historian, writes: the "Magyar defeat ended more than 90 years of their pillaging western Europe and convinced survivors to settle down, creating the basis for the state of Hungary."
Stephan I of Hungary (born as Vajk) was the son of the Prince Géza of Hungary. According to his legends, Vajk was baptized a Christian by Saint Adalbert of Prague. He was given the baptismal name Stephen (István) in honour of the original early Christian Saint Stephen.
When Stephen reached adolescence, Great Prince Géza convened an assembly where they decided that Stephen would follow his father as the monarch of the Hungarians.This decision, however, contradicted the Magyar tribal custom that gave the right of succession to the eldest close relative of the deceased ruler.
In 997, his father died and a succession struggle ensued. Stephen claimed to rule the Magyars by the principle of Christian divine right, while his uncle Koppány, a powerful pagan chieftain in Somogy, claimed the traditional right of agnatic seniority. Eventually, the two met in battle near Veszprém and Stephen, victorious, assumed the role of Grand Prince of the Hungarians.
According to Hungarian tradition, Pope Silvester II, with the consent of Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor, sent a magnificent jeweled gold crown to Stephen along with an apostolic cross and a letter of blessing officially recognizing Stephen as the Christian king of Hungary. Later this tradition was interpreted as the papal recognition of the independence of Hungary from the Holy Roman Empire. The date of Stephen's coronation is variously given as Christmas Day, 1000 or 1 January 1001.
Stephen discouraged pagan customs and strengthened Christianity by means of various laws. In his first decree, issued at the beginning of his rule, he ordered that each ten villages would be obliged to build a church. He invited foreign priests to Hungary to evangelize his kingdom.
Stephen intended to retire to a life of holy contemplation and hand the kingdom over to his son Emeric (about 1000 to 1007 – 2 September 1031), but Emeric was wounded in a hunting accident and died in 1031.
Stephen mourned for a very long time over the loss of his son, which took a great toll on his health. He eventually recovered, but never regained his original vitality. Having no children left, he could not find anyone among his remaining relatives who was able to rule the country competently and be willing to maintain the Christian faith of the nation. Without a living heir, on his deathbed, he raised with his right hand the Holy Crown of Hungary, and prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, asking her to take the Hungarian people as her subjects and become their queen. King Stephen died on the feast day which commemorates the bodily assumption into heaven of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, in the year 1038, at Esztergom-Szentkirály or Székesfehérvár, where he was buried. The king's right hand, known as the Holy Right, is kept as a relic. Hungarians interpreted the incorruptibility of his right arm and hand - with which he had held the Holy Crown aloft from his deathbed when asking Virgin Mary to be the Queen of the Hungarians - as a sign that the Blessed Virgin Mary had accepted the king's offer to her of the Hungarian people, and she remains officially their queen. Saint Stephen became the first canonized confessor king, a new category of saint. He is venerated as the patron saint of Hungary, kings, children who are dying, masons, stonecutters, and bricklayers.
The Holy Crown, popularly attributed to St. Stephen, was removed from the country in 1945 for safekeeping, and entrusted to the United States government. It was kept in a vault at Fort Knox until 1978, when it was returned to the nation by order of President Jimmy Carter. It has been enshrined in the Hungarian parliament building in Budapest since 2000. The coronation crown is used by the Kingdom of Hungary for most of its existence; kings have been crowned with it since the twelfth century.
In the earliest times Hungarian language was written in a runic-like script. The country switched to the Latin alphabet under Stephen. From 1000 to 1844, Latin was the official language of the country.
After the Great Schism (The East-West Schism /formally in 1054/, between Western Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.) Hungary determined itself as the easternmost bastion of Western civilisation (This statement was affirmed later by Pope Pius II who wrote that to Emperor Friedrich III, "Hungary is the shield of Christianity and the defender of Western civilization").
Saint Ladislaus I (1045-1095) was King of Hungary from 1077 until his death, "who greatly expanded the boundaries of the kingdom and consolidated it internally; no other Hungarian king was so generally beloved by the people". After the death of King Géza, the nobles passed over Solomon, the son of Andrew I, and chose Ladislaus to be their king in 1077. Following a long period of civil wars, he strengthened the royal power in his kingdom by introducing severe legislation. He would also extend his rule over Croatia. After his canonisation, Ladislaus became the model of the chivalrous king in Hungary. No other Hungarian king was held in such high esteem. The whole nation mourned for him for three years, and regarded him as a saint long before his canonization. A whole cycle of legends is associated with his name. He was canonized on June 27, 1192. In a rather unusual manner for a saint, he is traditionally depicted with a battle-axe.
Ladislaus was succeded by Coloman I, the Book-lover. he was one of the most educated rulers of his age, e.g. the Polish chronicler, Gallus Anonymus describes him as the king "who was more educated in literary sciences than any of the kings who was living in his age". Coloman, as legislator, mitigated the austerity of his predecessor's decrees.
Coloman changed Hungary's foreign policy. While his predecessor had asked for the Holy Roman Emperor's help (instead of the pope's) when waging war on Croatia, Coloman wanted to stay on good terms with the Holy See. In the spring of 1097, he married Felicia, a daughter of Count Roger I of Sicily who was a close ally of the popes. In 1097, he made good Hungary’s claim to Croatia by overthrowing King Petar Svačić of Croatia, and by 1102 Coloman controlled the greater part of Dalmatia.
According to the pacta conventa, King Coloman of Hungary created a personal union between the Kingdom of Croatia and Hungary. However, some historians dispute its authenticity and claim that the document is a forgery and that Hungary seized Croatia which became a province, while other historiography generally accepts it as authentic. The Pacta Conventa is most likely a late medieval forgery, not a twelfth-century source. Its source of inspiration must have been the political and social developments that had taken place over a 300-year period following the conquest of Ladislav I and Coloman,
In 1112, Coloman married Eufemia of Kiev, daughter of Grand Prince Vladimir II of Kiev. However, a few months later, she was caught in adultery and immediately divorced and sent back to her father. Eufemia bore a son in Kiev, named Boris in 1112, but Coloman refused to acknowledge him as his son.
Coloman had his son, Stephen crowned in 1105, which resulted in the open rebellion of his brother, Duke Álmos. Shortly afterwards, Coloman had a meeting with Bolesław III who was going on a pilgrimage to Székesfehérvár and Somogyvár because of having made his brother blind. In 1115, Coloman, who had become more and more ill, also ordered to have Álmos and Almos' son, Béla blinded in order to secure his own son's inheritance. This caused later chroniclers, who lived in the court of his brother's descendants, to accuse him of viciousness.
Béla III (Hungarian: III. Béla, Croatian: Bela III.) (c. 1148 – 1196) was King of Hungary and Croatia (1172–1196). He was educated in the court of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I who was planning to ensure his succession in the Byzantine Empire till the birth of his own son.
In 1164, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos concluded a treaty with King Stephen III, and according to the treaty, Béla was sent to Constantinople to be educated at the imperial court. The emperor, who had no legitimate sons, intended that Béla should marry his daughter, Maria Comnena, and eventually succeed him as Emperor. In 1164 and 1165, Béla followed the Emperor Manuel I on his campaigns against Hungary which aimed at the occupation of Béla's "paternal inheritance", i.e., Croatia, Dalmatia and Syrmia. However, when King Stephen III transferred the three provinces to Manuel I, they were incorporated into the Byzantine Empire. When Alexius was born as a son of Manuel and his second wife Maria of Antioch in 1169, Béla's engagement to Maria was cancelled. Béla was deprived also of his title, and he was granted the lower title of kaisar.
When his brother, King Stephen III died childless on 4 March 1172, Béla became his rightful heir. However, some barons preferred his younger brother, the Prince Géza, as did their mother Euphrosyne. Béla concluded an agreement with the Emperor Manuel, who provided him with a large amount of money, while he promised that he would never attack the Byzantine Empire during the reign of the emperor or his son.
Béla wanted to amend the administration of his kingdom and ordered that all the issues discussed by the king had to be put down in writing. This order led to the establishment of the Royal Chancellery in Hungary.
After the death of Emperor Manuel I on 24 September 1180, Bela retook Croatia, Dalmatia and the Srem from the Byzantine Empire. His remains were confidently identified by archeologists during late 19th century excavations at the ruined cathedral of Székesfehérvár (In the Székesfehérvár Basilica, 37 kings and 39 queens consort were crowned, 15 rulers have been buried here, the diets were held and the crown jewels were kept here) where the Árpád monarchs had been crowned and buried. Béla's exceptional height, as documented by contemporary sources, rendered the identification certain. Based on the examination of his skeleton, he must have been over two metres tall, a really outstanding height at that time. His remains were afterwards reinterred at the Matthias Church in Budapest, with those of his first wife Agnes.
Ladislaus III was crowned on 26 August 1204 while his father was still alive. With the coronation, King Emeric wanted to ensure his son's succession to the throne. Emeric made his brother, Duke Andrew, who had rebelled against the king several times, promise that he would protect the child and help him in the governance until he became an adult. Duke Andrew promised this, and he was appointed to regent during the minority of his nephew. However, just after his brother's death, Duke Andrew grabbed all power to him and made the life of the little child and his mother hard. Consequently, the Dowager Queen Constance escaped to Vienna to Leopold VI, Duke of Austria with Ladislaus. Ladislaus died in Vienna but was buried in Székesfehérvár. Constance of Aragon (1179 – 23 June 1222) was an Aragonese infanta who was by marriage firstly Queen consort of Hungary, and secondly Queen consort of Germany and Sicily and Holy Roman Empress. She was regent of Sicily from 1212–1220.
Duke Andrew made preparations for a war against Austria, but the child king died on 7 May 1205, thus Andrew inherited the throne. Andrew was crowned by Archbishop John of Kalocsa on 29 May 1205 in Székesfehérvár, but before the coronation, he had to take an oath. Andrew made a radical alteration in the internal policy followed by his predecessors and he began to bestow the royal estates to his partisans. He called this new policy novæ institutiones in his deeds, and he declared that "Nothing can set bounds to generosity of the Royal Majesty, and the best measure of grants, for a monarch, is immeasurableness". He gave away everything – money, villages, domains, whole counties – to the utter impoverishment of the treasury. He rules from from 1205 to 1235 as Andrew II of Hungary. He led the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land in 1217. He set up the largest royal army in the history of Crusades (20,000 knights and 12,000 castle-garrisons). The Golden Bull of 1222 was the first constitution in Continental Europe. It limited the king's power. The Golden Bull — the Hungarian equivalent of England’s Magna Carta — to which every Hungarian king thereafter had to swear, had a twofold purpose: to reaffirm the rights of the smaller nobles of the old and new classes of royal servants (servientes regis) against both the crown and the magnates and to defend those of the whole nation against the crown by restricting the powers of the latter in certain fields and legalizing refusal to obey its unlawful/unconstitutional commands (the ius resistendi).
4) Mongol attacks
Béla IV (1206–1270) was King of Hungary (1235–70) and of Croatia (1235–70), duke of Styria 1254–58. He was one of the most famous kings of Hungary, he distinguished himself through his policy of strengthening of the royal power following the example of his grandfather Béla III, and by the rebuilding Hungary after the catastrophe of the Mongolian invasion in 1241. For this reason he is called by the Hungarians as "the second founder of our country".
He sent Friar Julian to find the Magyar tribes who had remained in their eastern homeland. Friar Julian, after meeting with the eastern Magyars returned to Hungary in 1239 and informed Béla of the planned Mongol invasion of Europe. During the Russian campaign, the Mongols drove some 40,000 Cumans, a
nomadic tribe of pagan Kipchaks, west of the Carpathian Mountains.There,
the Cumans appealed to King Béla IV of Hungary for protection. The
Iranian Jassic people came to Hungary together with the Cumans after
they were defeated by the Mongols (Cumans constituted perhaps up to 7-8% of the population of Hungary in
the second half of the 13th century. Over the centuries they were fully
assimilated into the Hungarian population, and their language
disappeared, but they preserved their identity and their regional
autonomy until 1876). Béla wanted to take precautions against the Mongols; therefore he granted asylum, in Hungary, to the Cumans, some 40.000 who had fled from the Kipchak defeat in Russia, in return for their military service. However, the nomadic culture of the Cumans caused tensions between them and the Hungarians which became more and more acute.
Béla tried to reinforce the eastern borders of his kingdom, but the Mongol troops, led by Batu Khan, managed to break through the frontier defenses on 12 March 1241. Bela did not have good relations with his barons, who continued to refuse to mobilize without being granted more independent concessions. They demanded the expulsion of the Cumans, which Bela refused. On 14 March 1241 some of the barons broke into the house where Köten, the Khagan of the Cumans and other Cuman princes were being held as a concession to the barons by Bela of their good behaviour. Köten killed his wives and himself, while the rest of the princes were murdered. This infuriated the Cumans in their camp, who destroyed the forces of the Bishop of Czanad (which were marching to the assistance of Hungary), ravaged the countryside including sacking Szombateley, then retired to Bulgaria.
Hardly anybody believed that the Mongol attack was a serious threat to the kingdom's security, and the Cuman defection was considered minor and usual. After the Cumans' departure, Béla lost his most valuable allies, but led an army of 100,000 against the Mongols. The Mongols attacked Hungary with three armies. One of them attacked through Poland in order to withhold possible Polish auxiliaries and defeated the army of Duke Henry II the Pious of Silesia (Henry was defeated and killed in action) at Legnica. A southern army attacked Transylvania, defeated the voivod and crushed the Transylvanian Hungarian army. On 11 April 1241, the main Mongol army led by Khan Batu and Subutai attacked Hungary through the fortified Verecke Pass and annihilated the army led by the count palatine. This was remembered as the Battle of Mohi. After the invasion, Hungary lay in ruins. Nearly half of the inhabited places had been destroyed by the invading armies. Around 15–25 percent of the population was lost, mostly in lowland areas, especially in the Great Hungarian Plain, the southern reaches of the Hungarian plain in the area now called the Banat and in southern Transylvania. In the plains, between 50 and 80% of the settlements were destroyed. Only castles, strongly fortified cities and abbeys could withstand the assault, as the Mongols had no time for long sieges - their goal was to move west as soon as possible. Béla fled from Hainburg to Zagreb and he sent his envoys to the Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX to seek their assistance against the Mongols. In the meantime, the Mongols were plundering the territories of the kingdom west of the Danube River - Pest was burned, Gran was taken with terrible atrocities, Buda was sacked. Moreover, in January, they could cross the frozen Danube and Béla had to flee from the Mongol troops, the khan sent to capture him into Croatia. The Mongols attacked the Dalmatian cities without major success, as the mountainous terrain and distance were not suitable for Mongol warfare. As the Mongols were invading Austria on the outskirts of Vienna, news arrived that the Grand Khan had died in Mongolia, and Batu Khan ceased operations to return to participate in the election of a new Grand Khan - central Europe was saved.
Historians regard the Mongol raids and invasions as some of the deadliest conflicts in human history up through that period. Brian Landers argues that, "One empire in particular exceeded any that had gone before, and crossed from Asia into Europe in an orgy of violence and destruction. The Mongols brought terror to Europe on a scale not seen again until the twentieth century."Diana Lary contends that the Mongol invasions induced population displacement "on a scale never seen before," particularly in Central Asia and eastern Europe. She adds, "the impending arrival of the Mongol hordes spread terror and panic.
Following the Mongol invasion of Hungary, Béla broke with his former internal policy. Based on the experiences of the occupation, he began to grant estates to his partisans, but simultaneously he also obliged them to build up fortresses there, because only fortresses could resist the conquerors. He also encouraged the towns to protect themselves by erecting walls. He called back the Cumans to Hungary and granted them the deserted territories between the Rivers Danube and Tisza. Because of his successful internal policy, he is greatly respected in Hungary and commonly known as "the second founder" of the kingdom.
The Mongols returned to Hungary in 1286, but the new built stone-castle systems and new tactics (using a higher proportion of heavily armed knights) stopped them. The invading Mongol force was defeated near Pest by the royal army of Ladislaus IV of Hungary. As with later invasions, it was repelled handily, the Mongols losing much of their invading force.
These castles proved to be very important later in the long struggle with the Ottoman Empire. However the cost of building them indebted the Hungarian King to the major feudal landlords again, so the royal power reclaimed by Béla IV after his father Andrew II significantly weakened it was once again dispersed amongst lesser nobility. The countries of the Balkan region and the territory of Russian states fell under Ottoman/Mongolian rule very rapidly, due to the lack of the network of stone/brick castles and fortresses in these countries.
Andrew III the Venetian (Hungarian: III. (Velencei) András/Endre, Croatian: Andrija III, Slovak: Ondrej III.) (c. 1265 – 14 January 1301) was King of Hungary (1290–1301). He was the last member of the Hungarian Árpád dynasty on the paternal line. The death of Andrew III on 14 January 1301, at Buda, ended the male line of the Árpáds on the throne. One of his contemporaries called him "the last golden twig of the Árpáds".
5) Age of elected kings
The Kingdom of Hungary reached one of its greatest extent during the Árpádian kings, yet royal power was weakened at the end of their rule in 1301. After a destructive period of interregnum (1301–1308), the first Angevin king, Charles I of Hungary – a bilineal descendant of the Árpád dynasty – successfully restored royal power, and defeated oligarch rivals, the so-called "little kings". One of the primary sources of his power was the wealth derived from the gold mines of eastern and northern Hungary. Eventually production reached the remarkable figure of 3,000 lb. (1350 kg) of gold annually - one-third of the total production of the world as then known, and five times as much as that of any other European state. Charles also sealed an alliance with the Polish king Casimir.
The second Angevin Hungarian king, Louis the Great (1342–1382), led many successful military campaigns from Lithuania to Southern Italy (Kingdom of Naples), and was also King of Poland from 1370. During his reign lived the epic hero of Hungarian literature and warfare, the king's Champion: Nicolas Toldi.
In 1361 Buda became the capital of Hungary.
After King Louis died without a male heir, the country was stabilized only when Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387–1437) succeeded to the throne, who in 1433 also became Holy Roman Emperor. Sigismund was also (in several ways) a bilineal descendant of the Árpád dynasty. During the long reign of emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg, the so-called Fresh Palace of the Royal residence of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages.
From a small noble family in Transylvania, John Hunyadi grew to become one of the country's most powerful lords, thanks to his outstanding capabilities as a mercenary commander. He was elected governor then regent. He was a successful crusader against the Ottoman Turks, one of his greatest victories being the Siege of Belgrade in 1456. In Hungary, tradition still holds that the bells of Catholic churches are daily rung at noon to commemorate the latter victory. Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of every European church to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for the Christian defenders of the city of Belgrade.
On his deathbed Hunyadi said Defend, my friends, Christendom and Hungary from all enemies... "Do not quarrel among yourselves. If you should waste your energies in altercations, you will seal your own fate as well as dig the grave of our country."
Hunyadi is considered a Hungarian national hero and praised as its defender against the Ottoman threat. He is mentioned in Szózat, a poem which is considered a "second anthem" of Hungary:
'Twas here brave Árpád's mighty sword
ordained your land to be,
and here the arms of Hunyad broke
the chains of slavery.
Here Freedom's blood-stained flag has waved
above the Magyar head;
and here in age-long struggles fell
our best and noblest, dead.
Romanian historiography gives Hunyadi a place of importance in the history of Romania too. He is remembered in Romania as a national hero mostly due to his Romaniannote origin.
The last strong king of medieval Hungary was the Renaissance king Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490), son of John Hunyadi. His election was the first time that a member of the nobility mounted to the Hungarian royal throne without dynastic background. The cultural role of Buda was particularly significant during his reign. The Italian Renaissance had a great influence on the city. His library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles and philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second only in size to the Vatican Library. The Turkish invasion of much of Hungary in the 16th century destroyed the codices.Only about 650 Corvinae survived, now in several libraries in Hungary and Europe. The first Hungarian book was printed in Buda in 1473. After the foundation of the first Hungarian university in Pécs in 1367, the second one was established in Óbuda in 1395. Matthias rebuilt the Royal residence of Buda palace in early Renaissance style and further expanded it. Under his rule, in 1479, the Hungarian army destroyed the Ottoman and Wallachian troops at the Battle of Breadfield. Abroad he defeated the Polish and German imperial armies of Frederick at Breslau (Wrocław). Matthias' mercenary standing army, the Black Army of Hungary, was an unusually large army for its time, and it conquered parts of Austria, Vienna (1485) and parts of Bohemia.
Buda had about 5,000 inhabitants around 1500.
King Matthias died without lawful sons, and the Hungarian magnates procured the accession of the Pole Vladislaus II (1490–1516) from the Jagiellonian dynasty, supposedly because of his weak influence on Hungarian aristocracy. Hungary's international role declined, its political stability shaken, and social progress was deadlocked. In 1514, the weakened old King Vladislaus II faced a major peasant rebellion led by György Dózsa, which was ruthlessly crushed by the nobles, led by John Zápolya.
The First Congress of Vienna was held in 1515, attended by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, and the Jagiellonian brothers, Vladislaus II, King of Hungary & Bohemia and Sigismund I, King of Poland & Lithuania. It became a turning point in the history of central Europe. Vladislaus II made a Habsburg-Jagiellon mutual succession treaty with Emperor Maximilian in 1506.
During Vladislaus reign the Hungarian royal power declined in favour of the Hungarian magnates, who used their power to curtail the peasants’ freedom. His reign in Hungary was largely stable, although Hungary was under consistent border pressure from the Ottoman Empire and went through the revolt of György Dózsa.
6) Battle of Mohacs
After his father's death in 1516 the minor Louis II, son of Vladislaus, ascended to the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia Upon his father's death, Louis had been adopted by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1515. Louis owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1515 Louis II was married to Mary of Austria, granddaughter of Emperor Maximilian I, as stipulated by the First Congress of Vienna in 1515.
Hungary was in a state of near anarchy under the magnates' rule in 1520. The king's finances were a shambles; he borrowed to meet his household expenses despite the fact that they totaled about one-third of the national income. The country's defenses weakened as border guards went unpaid, fortresses fell into disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled.
Suleiman I, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire took Belgrade with a garrison of only 700 men in August 1521. This was disastrous for Louis' Kingdom, without the strategically important Belgrade and Šabac, Hungary including Buda was open to further Turkish conquests.
Suleiman turned his attention instead to the Eastern Mediterranean island of Rhodes, the home base of the Knights Hospitaller. In the summer of 1522, taking advantage of the large Navy he inherited from his father, Suleiman dispatched an armada of some 400 ships towards Rhodes, while personally leading an army of 100,000 across Asia Minor to a point opposite the island itself. Here Suleiman built a large fortification, Marmaris Castle, that served as a base for the Ottoman Navy. Following a siege of five months Siege of Rhodes (1522) with brutal encounters, Rhodes capitulated and Suleiman allowed the Knights of Rhodes to depart. (The Knights of Rhodes eventually formed a new base in Malta.)
The sultan then sent an ambassor to Louis II to collect the annual tribute that Hungary had been subjected to. Louis refused to pay annual tribute and had the Ottoman ambassador executed and sent the head to the Sultan. Louis believed that the Papal states, other Christian States including Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor would help him. This event hastened the fall of Hungary.
After the siege of Rhodes, in 1526 Suleiman made a second expedition to subdue all of Hungary. Louis made a tactical error when he tried to stop the Ottoman army in an open field battle with a medieval army, insufficient firearms and obsolete tactics. On 29 August 1526, Louis led his forces against Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire in the disastrous Battle of Mohács. The Hungarian forces chose the battlefield, an open but uneven plain with some swampy marshes near Mohács leading down to the Danube. The Ottomans had been allowed to advance almost unopposed. In a pincer movement, the Hungarian army was surrounded by Ottoman cavalry and in the center, the Hungarian heavy knights and infantry were repulsed and suffered heavy casualties, especially from the well positioned Ottoman cannons and well armed and trained Janissary musketeers. The Hungarians could not hold their positions, and those who did not flee were surrounded and killed or captured. The result was a disaster, with the Hungarians advancing into withering fire and flank attacks. The king left the battlefield sometime around twilight but was thrown from his horse in a river at Csele and died, weighed down by his heavy armor. Some 1,000 other Hungarian nobles and leaders were also killed. It is generally accepted that more than 14,000 Hungarian soldiers were killed in the initial battle.
In the aftermath, Suleiman gave orders to keep no prisoners.Next day he wrote in his diary: "The Sultan, seated on a golden throne, receives the homage of the viziers and the beys, massacre of 2,000 prisoners, the rain falls in torrents." Reportedly among those 2,000 were several notable Hungarian leaders. Suleiman could not believe that this small, "suicidal" army was all that once powerful country could muster against him, so he waited at Mohacs for a few days before moving cautiously against Buda.
The death of Louis II as he fled the battle marked the end of the Jagiellon dynasty in Hungary and Bohemia, whose dynastic claims were absorbed by the Habsburgs via the marriage of Louis' sister.
King Francis I of France was defeated at the Battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525 by the troops of Habsburg H.R. Emperor Charles V. After several months in prison, Francis I was forced to sign the Treaty of Madrid. In a watershed moment in European diplomacy, Francis came to an understanding with the Ottoman Empire, which then led to a formal Franco-Ottoman alliance. The objective for Francis I was clearly to find an ally against the powerful Habsburg Emperor Charles V, in the person of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. The Ottoman-French strategic, and sometimes tactical, alliance lasted for about three centuries. It did however cause quite a scandal in the Christian world.
The fall of Christendom's major strongholds spread fear across Europe. As the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Constantinople was to note, "The capture of Belgrade was at the origin of the dramatic events which engulfed Hungary. It led to the death of King Louis, the capture of Buda, the occupation of Transylvania, the ruin of a flourishing kingdom and the fear of neighbouring nations that they would suffer the same fate...".
Mohács is seen by many Hungarians as the decisive downward turning point in the country's history, a national trauma that persists in the nation's folk memory. For moments of bad luck, Hungarians still say: "more was lost at Mohács" (Több is veszett Mohácsnál). Hungarians view Mohács as marking the end of an independent and powerful European nation.
Bohemia fell to the Habsburgs, who also dominated the Northern and western parts of Hungary and the remnants of the Kingdom of Croatia, while the Ottomans held central Hungary and suzerainty over semi-independent Transylvania. This provided the Hungarians with sufficient impetus to continue to resist the Ottoman occupation, which they did for another seventy years.
The ensuing two hundred years of near constant warfare between the two empires, Habsburg and Ottoman, turned Hungary into a perpetual battlefield. The countryside was regularly ravaged by armies moving back and forth, in turn devastating the population. Only in the 20th century would Hungary regain its political independence, but denuded of much of its land, and it has never regained its former political power. Though the Ottomans entered the unguarded evacuated Buda and pillaged the castle and surroundings, they retreated soon afterwards. It was not until 1541 that the Ottomans finally captured and occupied Buda
The battlefield, beside the village of Sátorhely, became an official national historical memorial site in 1976 on the 450th anniversary of the battle.
Some Hungarian nobles proposed that Ferdinand, who was ruler of neighboring Austria and tied to Louis II's family by marriage, be King of Hungary, citing previous agreements that the Habsburgs would take the Hungarian throne if Louis died without heirs. However, other nobles turned to the nobleman John Zápolya who was being supported by Suleiman. Under Charles V and his brother Ferdinand I, the Habsburgs reoccupied Buda and took possession of Hungary. Armed conflicts between the new rival monarchs further weakened the country from the internal side. As a result, in 1529, Suleiman once again marched through the valley of the Danube and regained control of Buda and in the following autumn laid siege to Vienna. This was to be the Ottoman Empire's most ambitious expedition and the apogee of its drive towards the West. With a reinforced garrison of 16,000 men, the Austrians inflicted upon Suleiman his first defeat, sowing the seeds of a bitter Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry which lasted until the 20th century.
As a consequence of Ottoman advances through Hungarian territory and the capture of Buda, the city of Pozsony/Pressburg (present-day Bratislava) was designated as the capital of Royal Hungary in 1536.The cathedral of St Martin in Pozsony became the coronation church of the sovereigns of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1563, succeeding the Virgin Mary Church in Székesfehérvár, after the Ottoman Empire conquered that city.
In 1541 the Habsburgs once again engaged in conflict with the Ottomans, by attempting to lay siege to Buda. With their efforts repulsed, and more Habsburg fortresses captured by the Ottomans in two consecutive campaigns in 1541 and in 1544 as a result, Ferdinand and his brother Charles V were forced to conclude a humiliating five-year treaty with Suleiman. Ferdinand renounced his claim to the Kingdom of Hungary and was forced to pay a fixed yearly sum to the Sultan for the Hungarian lands he continued to control. The north-west (present-day Slovakia, western Transdanubia and Burgenland, western Croatia and parts of north-eastern present-day Hungary) remained under Habsburg rule; although initially independent, later it became a part of Habsburg Monarchy under the informal name Royal Hungary. The Habsburg Emperors would from then on be crowned also as Kings of Hungary. Turks were unable to conquer Northern and Western parts of Hungary.
Székesfehérvár, a royal residence (székhely),as capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, held a central role in the Middle Ages. As required by the Doctrine of the Holy Crown, the first kings of Hungary were crowned and buried here.Significant trade routes led to the Balkans and Italy, and to Buda and Vienna. The Ottomans conquered the city after a long siege in 1543. The Ottomans destroyed most of the city, they demolished the cathedral and the royal palace, and they pillaged the graves of kings in the cathedral. They named the city Belgrade ("white city", from Serbian Beograd) and built mosques. In the 16th–17th centuries it looked like a Muslim city. The Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built in 1010 by Saint Stephen I, the first King of Hungary. It was the most significant place of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages, as it contained the crown jewels, including the throne, the Holy Crown of Hungary, the treasury and the archives. 37 kings and 39 queens were crowned in this basilica and 15 were buried in it. . The royal graves were ransacked and the basilica was used to store gunpowder while St. Martin's Cathedral in Pozsony became the new coronation site. On 8 September 1563, the Crown of St. Stephen was placed on the head of Maximilian II, son of Emperor Ferdinand I of Habsburg. In total, the coronations of 11 kings and queens plus 8 of their consorts occurred here between 1563 and 1830, including that of Maria Theresa of Austria. After World War I and the formation of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918, the city of Bratislava was incorporated into the new state despite its representatives' reluctance.
The Ottomans pillaged Buda in 1526, besieged it in 1529, and finally occupied it in 1541. The Turkish occupation lasted for more than 140 years. The Turks constructed many fine bathing facilities within the city. Some of the baths that the Turks erected during their occupation period are still in function after 500 years (Rudas and Király).
7) The Zrinski–Frankopan Conspiracy
The Magnate conspiracy, also known as the Zrinski–Frankopan Conspiracy (Croatian: Zrinsko-frankopanska urota) in Croatia, and Wesselényi conspiracy (Hungarian: Wesselényi-összeesküvés) in Hungary, was a 17th-century attempt to throw off Habsburg and other foreign influences over Hungary and Croatia
The Ottoman conquests reduced Croatia's territory to only 16,800 km² by 1592. The Pope referred to the country as to the "Remnants of the remnants of the Croatian kingdom" (Latin: Reliquiae reliquiarum regni Croatiae) and this description became a battle cry of the affected nobles. The Sultan invaded and conquered the Transylvanian-held areas of Hungary in May 1660. The ensuing battles killed the Transylvanian ruler George II Rákóczi. Following a fairly easy victory there, the Ottomans directed their large army towards portions of Royal Hungary.
By late 1663 and early 1664 a combined Christian armies of Hungary and the Habsburgs had not only taken back Ottoman-conquered land, but had also cut off Ottoman supply lines and captured several Ottoman-held fortresses within Hungary. On August 1, 1664, the coalition won a decisive victory against the Ottomans in the Battle of Saint Gotthard. On head of the coallition was the croatian noble Nikola Zrinski and the hungarian magnate Ferenc Wesselényi. Following this clash, many Hungarians assumed that the combined forces would continue their offensive to fully remove the Ottomans from Hungarian lands. However, the Habsburg King Leopold I was more concerned with events unfolding in Habsburg Spain, and the brewing conflict that would come to be known as the War of the Spanish Succession. Leopold saw no need to continue combat on his Eastern front when he could return the region to balance and concentrate on potential conflict with France over the rights to the Spanish throne. Moreover, the Ottomans would have been able to commit more troops within the year, and a prolonged struggle with the Ottomans was a risk for Leopold. In order to end the Ottoman issue quickly, he signed the treaty that has come to be known as the Peace of Vasvár the treaand which was largely a gain for the Ottomans. The noble Croatian families Zrinski and Frankopan viewed the treaty as particularly supplicating to the Ottomans, with them actually having to give the territories that had just been liberated back to the Ottomans as terms of the treaty.
The treaty left many Hungarian magnates feeling as if the Habsburgs had pushed them aside at their one opportunity for independence and security from Ottoman advances.In response, a number of nobles led by Hungarian Ferenc Rákóczi I decided that they would physically remove foreign influence from Hungary.
The conspirators hoped to gain foreign aid in their attempts to not only free Hungary but also to overthrow the Habsburgs. The conspirators entered into secret negotiations with a number of nations — including France, Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Republic of Venice — in an attempt to gain support. Wesselényi and his fellow magnates even made overtures to the Ottomans offering all of Hungary in return for the semblance of self-rule after the Habsburgs had been removed; nevertheless, no state wanted to intervene. The Sultan, like Leopold, had no interest in renewed conflict — in fact, his court informed Leopold of the attempts being made by the conspirators in 1666.
While the warnings from the Sultan's court cemented the matter, Leopold already suspected the conspiracy — the Austrians had informants inside the group of nobles, and had heard from several sources of their wide-ranging and almost desperate attempts to gain foreign and domestic aid.
When the conspiracy's ideals began to gain some support within Hungary, the official reaction was swift. In March 1670 the leaders of the group, including Wesselényi, Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan were arrested and executed; some 2,000 nobles were arrested as part of a mass crackdown (many of the lesser nobles had had no part in the events, but Leopold aimed to prevent similar revolts in the future). Rákóczi, for his mother's merits in the Counter-Reformation movement and for a ransom of 300,000 Forints and several castles, was pardoned.
8) Siege of Buda
Following the Turkish defeat at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I saw the opportunity for a counterstrike. With the aid of Pope Innocent XI, the Holy League was formed on 5 March 1684, with King Sobieski of Poland, Emperor Leopold I, and the Republic of Venice agreeing to an alliance against the Turks. On 27 June, the imperial army met a strong Turkish army of 17,000 men at Vác and the Turkish troops were defeated. On 30 June, the imperial main army entered the city of Pest, to which the Turks had set fire shortly before. After the army crossed the Danube at Vác, it began the siege of Buda, which was defended by approximately 10,000 Turks.
The imperial army, consisting of 34,000 men, began the bombardment of Buda's fortress with 200 cannons on 14 July 1684, the anniversary of the beginning of the siege of Vienna.
On 19 July, the imperial troops took control of the lower part of the town of Buda. However, since too few troops were available to occupy it, Ernst Rüdiger ordered the houses in that part of the town burnt down.
Throughout July and August, the imperial army made several attempts to attack the fortress, but all were repelled by the Turkish defenders.
In 1686, two years after the unsuccessful siege of Buda, a renewed campaign was started to take Buda. This time, the Holy League's army was twice as large, containing between 75,000-80,000 men. By the middle of June 1686, the siege had begun. On July 27, the Holy League's army started a large-scale attack which cost them 5.000 killed. Prince Eugene of Savoy and his dragoons were not directly involved in entering the city, but secured the rear of their army against the Turkish relief army, which could not prevent the city from being entered after 143 years in Turkish possession. After resisting for 78 days the city fell on 2 September, and Turkish resistance collapsed throughout the region as far as Transylvania and Serbia.
Thus on 9 December 1687 Joseph, the 9-year-old son of emperor Leopold, was crowned, as a first hereditary king with the Stephanskrone crown. Hungary was a hereditary country of the Habsburgs.
9) Kingdom of Hungary (1538–1867)
As the Habsburgs' control of the Turkish possessions started to increase, the ministers of Leopold I argued that he should rule Hungary as conquered territory. At the Diet of "Royal Hungary" in Pressburg, in 1687, the Emperor promised to observe all laws and privileges. Nonetheless, hereditary succession of the Habsburgs was recognized, and the nobles' right of resistance was abrogated. In 1690 Leopold began redistributing lands freed from the Turks. Protestant nobles and all other Hungarians thought disloyal by the Habsburgs lost their estates, which were given to foreigners. Vienna controlled the foreign affairs, defense, tariffs, and other functions.
In the next few years, all of the former Hungarian lands, except areas near Timişoara (Temesvár), were taken from the Turks. In the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz these territorial changes were officially recognized, and in 1718 the entire Kingdom of Hungary was removed from Ottoman rule.
As a consequence of the constant warfare between Hungarians and Ottoman Turks, population growth was stunted and the network of medieval settlements with their urbanized bourgeois inhabitants perished. The 150 years of Turkish wars fundamentally changed the ethnic composition of Hungary. As a result of demographic losses including deportations and massacres, the number of ethnic Hungarians in existence at the end of the Turkish period was substantially diminished
Leopold's successor, King Charles III (1711–40), began building a workable relationship with Hungary after the Treaty of Szatmár. Charles asked the Budapest Diet's approval for the Pragmatic Sanction, under which the Habsburg monarch was to rule Hungary not as Emperor, but as a King subject to the restraints of Hungary's constitution and laws. He hoped that the Pragmatic Sanction would keep the Habsburg Empire intact if his daughter, Maria Theresa, succeeded him. The Diet approved the Pragmatic Sanction in 1723, and Hungary thus agreed to became a hereditary monarchy under the Habsburgs for as long as their dynasty existed.
Maria Theresa (1741–80) faced an immediate challenge from Prussia's Frederick II when she became head of the House of Habsburg. In 1741 she appeared before the Diet of Budapest holding her newborn son and entreated Hungary's nobles to support her. They stood behind her and helped secure her rule. Maria Theresa later took measures to reinforce links with Hungary's magnates. She established special schools to attract Hungarian nobles to Vienna.
Under Charles and Maria Theresa, Hungary experienced further economic decline. Centuries of Ottoman occupation and war had reduced Hungary's population drastically, and large parts of the country's southern half were almost deserted. A labor shortage developed as landowners restored their estates. In response, the Habsburgs began to colonize Hungary with large numbers of peasants from all over Europe, especially Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, and Germans. Many Jews also immigrated from Vienna and the empire's Polish lands near the end of the 20th century. Hungary's population more than tripled to 8 million between 1720 and 1787. However, only 39 percent of its people were Magyars, who lived mainly in the center of the country.
Joseph II (1780–90), a dynamic leader strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, shook Hungary from its malaise when he inherited the throne from his mother, Maria Theresa. In the framework of Josephinism, Joseph sought to centralize control of the empire and to rule it by decree as an enlightened despot. He refused to take the Hungarian coronation oath to avoid being constrained by Hungary's constitution. In 1781-82 Joseph issued a Patent of Toleration, followed by an Edict of Tolerance which granted Protestants and Orthodox Christians full civil rights and Jews freedom of worship. He decreed that German replace Latin as the empire's official language and granted the peasants the freedom to leave their holdings, to marry, and to place their children in trades.
Joseph's reforms outraged nobles and clergy of Hungary, and the peasants of country grew dissatisfied with taxes, conscription, and requisitions of supplies. Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue. As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language and culture, and a cult of national dance and costume flourished.
Leopold II (1790–92), re-introduced the bureaucratic technicality which viewed Hungary as a separate country under a Habsburg king. In 1791 the Diet passed Law X, which stressed Hungary's status as an independent kingdom ruled only by a king legally crowned according to Hungarian laws. Law X later became the basis for demands by Hungarian reformers for statehood in the period from 1825 to 1849. New laws again required approval of both the Habsburg king and the Diet, and Latin was restored as the official language.
Enlightened absolutism ended in Hungary under Leopold's successor, Francis I (ruled 1792–1835), who developed an almost abnormal aversion to change, bringing Hungary decades of political stagnation. In 1795 the Hungarian police arrested Ignác Martinovics and several of the country's leading thinkers for plotting a Jacobin kind of revolution to install a radical democratic, egalitarian political system in Hungary.
The first great figure of the reform era came to the fore during the 1825 convocation of the Diet. Count István Széchenyi, a magnate from one of Hungary's most powerful families, shocked the Diet when he delivered the first speech in Hungarian ever uttered in the upper chamber and backed a proposal for the creation of a Hungarian academy of arts and sciences by pledging a year's income to support it.
In 1848 Pest replaces Pozsony/Pressburg (Bratislava) as the new capital of Hungary after the former was elected capital in 1536 as a consequence of Ottoman advances.
On 15 March 1848 mass demonstrations in Pest and Buda enabled Hungarian reformists to push through a list of 12 demands. The Hungarian Diet took the opportunity presented by the revolution to enact a comprehensive legislative program of dozens of civil and human rights reforms, referred to as the April laws. Faced with revolution both at home and in Vienna, Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I first had to accept Hungarian demands. After the Austrian revolution was suppressed, emperor Franz Joseph replaced his epileptic uncle Ferdinand I as Emperor. Franz Joseph refused all reforms and started to arm against Hungary. A year later, in April 1849 the independent government of Hungary was established.
The new government formed itself as a republic with under governor and president Lajos Kossuth and the first Prime minister, Lajos Batthyány. The House of Habsburg of the Austrian Empire was dethroned in Hungarian part of the Austrian Empire and the first Republic of Hungary was founded. The Habsburg Ruler and his advisers skilfully manipulated the Croatian, Serbian and Romanian peasantry, led by priests and officers firmly loyal to the Habsburgs, and induced them to rebel against the Hungarian government. The Hungarians were supported by the vast majority of the Slovak, German and Rusyn nationalities.
Initially, the Hungarian forces (Honvédség) defeated Austrian armies. In July 1849 Hungarian Parliament proclaimed and enacted foremost the ethnic and minority rights in the world, but it was too late: To counter the successes of the Hungarian revolutionary army, Franz Joseph asked for help from the "Gendarme of Europe," Czar Nicholas I, whose Russian armies invaded Hungary.
The huge army of the Russian Empire and the Austrian forces proved too powerful for the Hungarian army, and General Artúr Görgey surrendered in August 1849. Julius Freiherr von Haynau, the leader of the Austrian army, then became governor of Hungary for a few months and, on 6 October, ordered the execution of 13 leaders of the Hungarian army as well as Prime Minister Batthyány. Lajos Kossuth escaped into exile (The main square of Budapest with the Hungarian Parliament Building is named after Kossuth, and the Kossuth Memorial is an important scene of national ceremonies. Most cities in Hungary have streets named after Kossuth).
Many of its leaders and participants in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, including Lajos Kossuth, István Széchenyi, Sándor Petőfi, Józef Bem, are among the most respected national heroes in Hungarian history. The anniversary of the Revolution's outbreak, 15 March, is one of Hungary's three national holidays.
10) Austria–Hungary (1867–1918)
Due to external and internal problems, reforms seemed inevitable to secure the integrity of the Habsburg Empire. Major military defeats, like the Battle of Königgrätz (1866) where the Prussians defeated the Austrians, forced the Emperor to concede internal reforms. Negotiations between the emperor and the Hungarian leaders were intensified and finally resulted in the Compromise of 1867, which created the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
To appease Hungarian separatism, the Emperor made a deal with Hungary, negotiated by Ferenc Deák, called the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, by which the dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary came into existence. The two realms were governed separately by two parliaments from two capitals, with a common monarch and common external and military policies.
The first Prime Minister of Hungary after the Compromise was Count Gyula Andrássy. The old Hungarian Constitution was restored, and Franz Joseph was crowned as King of Hungary.
[According to a very common legend, Count Andrássy had a long lasting romance with Queen Elisabeth (Sissy), wife of Emperor and King Franz-Josef of Austria-Hungary, and fathered their only son, Archduke Rudolf. There is no evidence for this story except for the strong sympathy and devotion of both Sissy and Rudolf towards Hungary, its culture and national customs (they were both fluent in Hungarian and regarded Hungarian poetry highly).
]
Austria-Hungary was geographically the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire (239,977 sq. m in 1905), and the third most populous (after Russia and the German Empire).
In 1849 the Széchenyi Chain Bridge (designed by the English engineer William Tierney Clark) linking Buda with Pest was opened. The bridge has the name of István Széchenyi, a major supporter of its construction, attached to it, but is most commonly known as the "Chain Bridge". At the time of its construction, it was regarded as one of the modern world's engineering wonders.
In 1873 Buda and Pest were officially merged with the third part, Óbuda (Ancient Buda), thus creating the new metropolis of Budapest. The dynamic Pest grew into the country's administrative, political, economic, trade and cultural hub. Ethnic Hungarians overtook Germans in the second half of the 19th century due to mass migration from the overpopulated rural Transdanubia and Great Hungarian Plain. Between 1851 and 1910 the proportion of Hungarians increased from 35.6% to 85.9%, Hungarian became the dominant language, and German was crowded out. The proportion of Jews peaked in 1900 with 23.6%. Due to the prosperity and the large Jewish community of the city at the start of the 20th century, Budapest was often called the "Jewish Mecca" or "Judapest".
Due to various reasons like the policy of Magyarization and the migration of millions, the census in 1910 (excluding Croatia), recorded the following distribution of population: Hungarian 54.5%, Romanian 16.1%, Slovak 10.7%, and German 10.4%. The largest religious denomination was the Roman Catholic (49.3%), followed by the Calvinist (14.3%), Greek Orthodox (12.8%) /Romanians Serbians Ruthenians), Greek Catholic (11.0%), Lutheran (7.1%), and Jewish (5.0%) religions.
Budapest was united from three cities in 1873 and seven years later the diet resolved to establish a new, representative Parliament Building, expressing the sovereignty of the nation.
Construction from the winning plan was started in 1885 and the building was inaugurated on the 1000th anniversary of the country in 1896, and completed in 1904. (The architect of the building went blind before its completion.). The Parliament Building is in the Gothic Revival style; it has a symmetrical facade and a central dome. The dome is Renaissance Revival architecture.
The Elisabeth Bridge was built between 1897 and 1903, amid a corruption scandal. The Buda end of Erzsébet bridge runs directly into the massive foot of Gellért Hill, necessitating a complicated arrangement of roads to connect to the bridge. The bridge was designed in such a way because a wealthy nobleman, a member of the City Council owned the particular area of the riverbank. He wanted to make a fortune by selling the piece of land for bridge construction purposes, bribing the other councilmen and engineers on purpose. He managed to sell the land at greatly inflated prices. In the era of horse-drawn carriages the geometry issue was not considered significant and the resulting cost overruns were covered up, therefore no prosecution took place. In recent decades, many motorists have been permanently injured or killed in the sharp turn that immediately follows the bridgehead. After an accident in 2004, which killed a family, a speed limit of 40 km/h was posted for the west-bound lanes. The original Erzsébet Bridge, along with many other bridges all over the country, was blown up at the end of World War II by retreating Wehrmacht sappers. This is the only bridge in Budapest which could not be rebuilt in its original form.
11) World War I and Treaty of Trianon
After the Assassination in Sarajevo the Hungarian Prime Minister, István Tisza and his cabinet tried to avoid the breaking out of a war in Europe, but his diplomatic attempts remained unsuccessful. Austria–Hungary drafted 9 million (fighting forces: 7,8 million) soldiers in World War I (4 million from Kingdom of Hungary). In World War I, Austria–Hungary was fighting on the side of Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey. The military forces of Austria-Hungary remained largely unified over the course of the war, in spite of their multi-ethnic nature and some expectations to the contrary.
The Central Powers conquered Serbia and Romania proclaimed war. The Central Powers later conquered Southern Romania and the Romanian capital Bucharest. On November 1916 Emperor Franz Joseph died.
Out of over 8 million men mobilized in Austria-Hungary, more than one million died during the course of the war. In Hungarian areas, this meant a death rate of twenty-eight per thousand persons - a level of loss exceeded within Austria-Hungary only by German Austrians. In comparison of the total army, Hungary's loss ratio was more than any other nations of Austria-Hungary. There could be two possible causes: Hungary was more an agricultural country, where it is easier to mobilize forces, rather than from more industrialized territories (i.e. Bohemia), and secondly, the Hungarian soldiers were considered to be more trustworthy and disciplined than soldiers from other ethnic groups.
With great difficulty, the Central Powers stopped and repelled the attacks of the Russian Empire. The Eastern front of the Allied (Entente) Powers completely collapsed. Austria-Hungary withdrew from defeated countries. On the Italian front, the Austro-Hungarian army could not make more successful progress against Italy after January 1918. Despite great Eastern successes, Germany suffered complete defeat in the more determinant Western front.
With the collapse of the army, Austria-Hungary also collapsed. In the capital cities (Vienna and Budapest), the Austrian and the Hungarian leftist liberal movements (the maverick parties) and their leader politicians supported and strengthened the separatism of ethnic minorities. Austria-Hungary signed general armistice in Padua on 3 November 1918. In October 1918, the personal union with Austria was dissolved.The ethnic groups of Kingdom of Hungary called for independent nation-states, but this totally disconsidered the Hungarian population and national interests. István Tisza was assassinated on 31 October 1918 after several murder attempts.
As the Habsburg Empire disintegrated, the new state of Czechoslovakia was declared on 28 October 1918 in Prague. The leaders of Pressburg (where the majority of the population was German, the second biggest group was Hungarian) wanted to prevent Pozsony from becoming part of Czechoslovakia and declared the town a free town, renaming it Wilsonovo mesto (Wilson City) after the then President of the US, Woodrow Wilson. However, the city became part of Czechoslovakia after it was taken by the Czechoslovak Legions on 1 January 1919. The government moved to the city on 4–5 February. On 12 February, the German and Hungarian population, who made out more 80% of the city, demonstrated against the Czechoslovak occupation in Vásár square (now SNP Square). The Czechoslovak troops opened fire, shooting at the demonstrators, leaving 9 people dead and 23 wounded. On 27 March, the town's official new name becomes "Bratislava" – instead of "Prešporok"(/Pressburg) (Slovak) / "Pressburg" (German) / "Pozsony" (Hungarian).
In the Treaty of Trianon at the Palace in Versailles signed on June 4, 1920, Hungary was forced to lose two-thirds of its territory, more than half of its population, more territory than any other country at that time (excluding colonies). Eight million Hungarians left in Hungary and more than 3 million Hungarians were stranded outside of the newly established borders. New nations, such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were established and some already existing countries have extended their territories (Italy and Romania). The southern part of Hungary was given to Yugoslavia and renamed Vojvodina. Bosnia-Herzegovina was also incorporated in Yugoslavia and Croatia became part of Yugoslavia also, after a 900 years federation with Hungary. More than 104.000 square km — the whole of Eastern Hungary and Transylvania — were awarded by the Entente to Romania, more than what was left for Hungary itself 93.030sq.km. The northern part of Hungary was annexed by the newly created Czechoslovakia.
For Hungarian public opinion, the fact that almost three-fourths of the pre-war kingdom's territory and a significant number of ethnic Hungarians were assigned to neighboring countries triggered considerable bitterness. Most Hungarians preferred to maintain the territorial integrity of the prewar kingdom. The Hungarian politicians claimed that they were ready to give the non-Hungarian ethnicities a great deal of autonomy.Most Hungarians regarded the treaty as an insult to the nation's honour. The Hungarian political attitude towards Trianon was summed up in the phrases Nem, nem, soha! ("No, no, never!") and Mindent vissza! ("Return everything!" or "Everything back!"). The outcome of the Treaty of Trianon is to this day remembered in Hungary as the Trianon trauma.
12) Hungarian Soviet Republic
Two national traumas immediately following the First World War profoundly shaped the spirit and future of the Hungarian nation. The first was the loss, as dictated by the Entente powers, of large portions of Hungarian territory that had bordered other countries. The second trauma in some sense sprang from the first: in March 1919, after the first proto-democratic efforts at government in Hungary faltered, Communist Béla Kun seized power in the capital of Budapest.
The Hungarian Soviet Republic was the successor of the Hungarian Democratic Republic and lasted only from 21 March until 1 August 1919. The state was led by Béla Kun and was not recognized by France, the UK or the US. It was the second communist state in the world to be formed after the October Revolution in Russia brought the Bolsheviks to power. Following Lenin's model, but without the direct participation of the workers' councils (soviets) from which it took its name, the newly-united Socialist Party created a government called the Revolutionary Governing Council, which proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic and dismissed President Károlyi on 21 March.
Under Kun, the new government, which had adopted in full the program of the Communists, decreed the abolition of aristocratic titles and privileges. In a radio dispatch to the Russian SFSR, Kun informed Lenin that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" had been established in Hungary and asked for a treaty of alliance with the Russian SFSR. The Russian SFSR refused because it was itself tied down in the Russian Civil War.
In addition, a group of 200 armed men—known as the Lenin Boys—formed a mobile detachment under the leadership of József Cserny. The Lenin Boys, as well as other similar groups and agitators, killed and terrorised many people (e.g. armed with hand grenades and using their rifles' butts they disbanded religious ceremonies).They executed victims without trial.This caused a number of conflicts with the local population, some of which turned violent.
In late May, after the Entente military representative demanded more territorial concessions from Hungary, Kun attempted to fulfill his promise to restore Hungary's borders. The Hungarian Red Army achieved some military successes: under the lead of Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, it ousted Czech troops from the north, and planned to march against the Romanian army in the east.
The situation of the Hungarian Communists began to deteriorate when, after a failed coup by the Social Democrats on 24 June, the new Communist government of Antal Dovcsák resorted to large-scale reprisals. Revolutionary tribunals ordered executions of people who were suspected of having been involved in the attempted coup. This became known as the "Red Terror", and greatly reduced domestic support for the government.
The Hungarian Soviet found it increasingly difficult to fight Czechoslovakia and later Romania with the small volunteer force, and support for both the war and the Communist Party was waning at home, partly due to the most dedicated Communists having volunteered for combat. Kun then unsuccessfully turned the Hungarian Red Army on the Romanians, who broke through the weak Hungarian lines on 30 July.
Romanian forces entered Budapest on 6 August, putting an end to the Hungarian Soviet Republic.Miklos Horthy was elected Regent and was empowered, among other things, to appoint Hungary's Prime Minister, veto legislation, convene or dissolve the parliament, and command the armed forces.
The Romanian army retreated from Budapest on 14 November, leaving Horthy to enter the city, where in a fiery speech he accused the capital's citizens of betraying Hungary by supporting Bolshevism.
" ...The nation of the Hungarians loved and admired Budapest, which became its polluter in the last years. Here, on the banks of the Danube, I arraign her. This city has disowned her thousand years of tradition, she has dragged the Holy Crown and the national colours in the dust, she has clothed herself in red rags. The finest of the nation she threw into dungeons or drove into exile. She laid in ruin our property and wasted our wealth. Yet the nearer we approached to this city, the more rapidly did the ice in our hearts melt. We are now ready to forgive her."
13) Kingdom of Hungary and WW II
Horthy appointed Count István Bethlen Prime Minister in 1921. As Prime Minister, Bethlen dominated Hungarian politics between 1921 and 1931. He fashioned a political machine by amending the electoral law, providing jobs in the expanding bureaucracy to his supporters, and manipulating elections in rural areas. Bethlen restored order to the country by giving the radical counter-revolutionaries payoffs and government jobs in exchange for ceasing their campaign of terror against Jews and leftists.
Bethlen brought Hungary into the League of Nations in 1922 and out of international isolation by signing a treaty of friendship with Italy in 1927. The revision of the Treaty of Trianon rose to the top of Hungary's political agenda and the strategy employed by Bethlen consisted of strengthening the economy and building relations with stronger nations.
The Great Depression induced a drop in the standard of living and the political mood of the country shifted further towards the right. In 1932 Horthy appointed a new Prime Minister, Gyula Gömbös, that changed the course of Hungarian policy towards closer cooperation with Germany and started an effort to magyarize the few remaining ethnic minorities in Hungary.
Gömbös signed a trade agreement with Germany that drew Hungary's economy out of depression but made Hungary dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and markets. Adolf Hitler appealed to Hungarian desires for territorial revisionism, while extreme right wing organizations, like the Arrow Cross Party, increasingly embraced extreme Nazi policies, including those relating to the suppression and victimization of Jews. The government passed the First Jewish Law in 1938. The law established a quota system to limit Jewish involvement in the Hungarian economy
Parliament, under the new government of Pál Teleki, approved the Second Jewish Law in 1939, which greatly restricted Jewish involvement in the economy, culture and society and, significantly, defined Jews by race instead of religion. This definition significantly and negatively altered the status of those who had formerly converted from Judaism to Christianity.
With the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Hungary expanded its borders towards neighbouring countries at the outset of World War II. This started under the Munich Agreement (1938), and the two Vienna Awards (1939 and 1940), and was continued with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia (occupation of northern Carpathian Ruthenia and eastern Slovakia) and the Axis Invasion of Yugoslavia. This territorial expansion was short-lived, since the post-war Hungarian boundaries agreed on at the Treaty of Paris in 1947 were nearly identical to those of 1920 (with three villages – Jarovce, Rusovce, and Čunovo – transferred to Czechoslovakia).
On 20 November 1940 under pressure from Germany, Pál Teleki affiliated Hungary with the Tripartite Pact. In December 1940, he also signed an ephemeral "Treaty of Eternal Friendship" with Yugoslavia. A few months later, after a Yugoslavian coup threatened the success of the planned German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), Hitler asked the Hungarians to support his invasion of Yugoslavia. He promised to return some former Hungarian territories lost after World War I in exchange for cooperation.
On 3 April 1941, Teleki received a telegram from the Hungarian minister in London that British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had threatened to break diplomatic relations with Hungary if she did not actively resist the passage of German troops across her territory, and to declare war if she attacked Yugoslavia. Unable to prevent Hungary's participation in the war alongside Germany, Teleki committed suicide. His suicide note said in part:
"We broke our word, - out of cowardice [...] The nation feels it, and we have thrown away its honor. We have allied ourselves to scoundrels [...] We will become body-snatchers! A nation of trash. I did not hold you back. I am guilty"
To most Hungarians, Teleki was a national hero.The international community however views him as a controversial figure as reflected in a public dispute covered in the Hungarian media during early 2004 over a statue of him, marking the 63rd anniversary of his death, to be displayed in Budapes
In June 1941, the Hungarian government finally yielded to Hitler's demands that the nation contribute to the Axis war effort. On 27 June, Hungary became part of Operation Barbarossa and declared war on the Soviet Union. The Hungarians sent in troops and materiel only four days after Hitler began his invasion of the Soviet Union.
The first massacre of Jewish people from Hungarian territory took place in August 1941, when government officials ordered the deportation of Jews without Hungarian citizenship (principally refugees from other Nazi-occupied countries) to Ukraine. Roughly 18,000–20,000 of these deportees were slaughtered by Friedrich Jeckeln and his SS troops; only 2,000–3,000 survived. This event, in which the slaughter of Jews numbered for the first time in the tens of thousands, is considered the first large-scale massacre of the Holocaust. Because of the objections of Hungary's leadership, the deportations were halted
By early 1942, Horthy was already seeking to put some distance between himself and Hitler's regime. That March, he dismissed the pro-German prime minister László Bárdossy, and replaced him with Miklós Kállay, a moderate whom Horthy expected to loosen Hungary's ties to Germany. Then, in January 1943, Hungary's enthusiasm for the war effort, never especially high, suffered a tremendous blow. The Soviet army, in the full momentum of its triumphant turnaround after the Battle of Stalingrad, punched through Romanian troops at a bend in the Don River and virtually obliterated the Second Hungarian Army in a few days' fighting. In this single action, Hungarian combat fatalities jumped by 80,000.
By 1944, the Axis was losing the war, and the Red Army was at Hungary's borders.
An enraged Hitler summoned Horthy to a conference in Klessheim (today in Austria). He pressured Horthy to make greater contributions to the war effort, and again commanded him to assist in the killing of more of Hungary's Jews. Horthy now permitted the deportation of a large number of Jews (the generally accepted figure is 100,000) to extermination camps, but would not go further. The conference was a ruse. As Horthy was returning home on 19 March the Wehrmacht invaded and occupied Hungary. Horthy was told he could only stay in office if he fired Kállay and appointed a new government that would fully cooperate with Hitler and his plenipotentiary in Budapest, Edmund Veesenmayer.
Horthy acquiesced and appointed his ambassador to Germany, General Döme Sztójay, as prime minister. The Germans originally wanted Horthy to reappoint Béla Imrédy (who had been prime minister from 1938 to 1939), but Horthy had enough influence to get Veesenmayer to accept Sztójay instead. Contrary to Horthy's hopes, Sztójay's government eagerly proceeded to participate in the Holocaust.
The chief agents of this collaboration were Andor Jaross, the Minister of the Interior, and his two rabidly anti-Semitic state secretaries, László Endre and László Baky (later to be known as the "Deportation Trio"). The order to round up the Hungarian Jews and confine them in ghettos was signed by Lazlo Baky of the Royal Hungarian government on April 7, 1944. On 9 April, Prime Minister Sztójay and the Germans obligated Hungary to place 300,000 Jewish people at the "disposal" of the Reich--in effect, sentencing most of Hungary's remaining Jews to death. Five days later, on 14 April Endre, Baky, and SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann commenced the deportation of the remaining Hungarian Jews. The Yellow Star and Ghettoization laws, and deportation were accomplished in less than 8 weeks with the enthusiastic help of the new Hungarian government and authorities, particularly the gendarmerie (csendőrség). The deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began on 15 May 1944 and continued at a rate of 12,000 a day until 9 July.
Upon learning about the deportations, Horthy wrote the following letter to the Prime Minister:
Dear Sztójay: I was aware that the Government in the given forced situation has to take many steps that I do not consider correct, and for which I can not take responsibility. Among these matters is the handling of the Jewish question in a manner that does not correspond to the Hungarian mentality, Hungarian conditions, and, for the matter, Hungarian interests. It is clear to everyone that what among these were done by Germans or by the insistence of the Germans was not in my power to prevent, so in these matters I was forced into passivity. As such, I was not informed in advance, or I am not fully informed now, however, I have heard recently that in many cases in inhumaneness and brutality we exceeded the Germans. I demand that the handling of the Jewish affairs in the Ministry of Interior be taken out of the hands of Deputy Minister László Endre. Further more, László Baky's assignment to the management of the police forces should be terminated as soon as possible
World leaders, including Pope Pius XII (25 June), President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 26 June, and King Gustaf V of Sweden on 30 June, subsequently pleaded with Horthy to use his influence to stop the deportations. Roosevelt specifically threatened military retaliation if the transports were not ceased. On 2 July, Allied bombers executed the heaviest bombings inflicted on Hungary during the war. By that time, 437,000 Jews had been sent to Auschwitz, most of them to their deaths. Horthy was informed about the number of the deported Jews some days later: "approximately 400,000".
On 15 October 1944, Horthy told his government ministers that Hungary had signed an armistice with the Soviet Union: "It is clear today that Germany has lost the war… Hungary has accordingly concluded a preliminary armistice with Russia, and will cease all hostilities against her."
By December 1944, Budapest was under siege by Soviet forces. The Arrow Cross leadership retreated across the Danube into the hills of Buda in late January, and by February the city surrendered to the Soviet forces.
In 1944, towards the end of World War II, Budapest was partly destroyed by British and American air raids. From 24 December 1944 to 13 February 1945, the city was besieged during the Battle of Budapest. Budapest suffered major damage caused by the attacking Soviet and Romanian troops and the defending German and Hungarian troops. All bridges were destroyed by the Germans. According to researcher and author Krisztián Ungváry, some 38,000 civilians were killed during the siege: about 13,000 from military action and 25,000 from starvation, disease and other causes. Included in the latter figure are about 15,000 Jews, largely victims of executions by Hungarian Arrow Cross Party militia. When the Soviets finally claimed victory, they initiated an orgy of violence, including the wholesale theft of anything they could lay their hands on, random executions and mass rape. An estimated 50,000 women and girls were raped,348–350 although estimates vary from 5,000 to 200,000 Hungarian girls were kidnapped and taken to Red Army quarters, where they were imprisoned, repeatedly raped and sometimes murdered.
Heavy fights and artillery fire rendered the Buda palace into ruins. All the furniture vanished, roofs and vaults collapsed, and the southern and western wings were burned out. The destruction was comparable to that of the great siege of 1686.
After his arrest, Horthy was moved between a variety of detention locations before finally arriving at the prison facility at Nuremberg in late September 1945. There he was asked to provide evidence to the International Military Tribunal in preparation for the trial of the Nazi leadership. Horthy went out of his way to record in his memoirs every indignity suffered at American hands, but gradually he came to believe that his arrest had been arranged and choreographed by the Americans in order to protect him from the Russians.
On 17 December 1945, Horthy was released from Nuremberg prison and allowed to rejoin his family in the German town of Weilheim, in Bavaria. In March 1948, Horthy returned to testify at the Ministries Trial, the last of the twelve U.S.-run Nuremberg Trials; he testified against Edmund Veesenmayer, the Nazi administrator who had controlled Hungary during the deportations to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944.Veesenmayer was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, but was released in 1951.
He never lost his deep contempt for Communism, and in his memoirs he blamed Hungary's alliance with the Axis on the threat posed by the "Asiatic barbarians" of the Soviet Union. He railed against the influence that the Allies' victory had given to Stalin's totalitarian state.
After World War II, the Czechoslovak government with the Beneš decrees granted the forcible "population transfer" (deportation) in 1945–47 of about 2.6 million former Czechoslovak citizens of German and Hungarian ethnicity to Germany, Austria and Hungary.
The war left Hungary devastated, destroying over 60% of the economy and causing significant loss of life. In addition to the over 600,000 Hungarian Jews killed, as many as 280,000 other Hungarians were raped, murdered and executed or deported for slave labor by Czechoslovaks, Soviet Red Army troops, and Yugoslav. For instance in Bratislava (Czechoslovakia) Slovakian soldiers broke into the flats of Hungarians who were 20% of the city population and allowed them half an hour to pack. 90% of Hungarian population was transferred to Petržalka having about 20,000 people in detention camps between inhuman circumstances.
14) Communism Era
In 1949, Hungary was declared a communist People's Republic. The new Communist government considered the buildings like the Buda Castle symbols of the former regime, and during the 1950s the palace was gutted and all the interiors were destroyed. Only the Palatinal Crypt survived the destruction of World War II and was not demolished in the subsequent decades of rebuilding (Palatines were representatives of the monarchs as from 1723 they acted as vice-regent (viceroy)).
On 18 August 1949 the parliament passed the new constitution of Hungary (1949/XX.) modeled after the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union. The name of the country changed to the People's Republic of Hungary, "the country of the workers and peasants" where "every authority is held by the working people". Socialism was declared as the main goal of the nation. A new coat-of-arms was adopted with Communist symbols, such the red star, hammer and sickle.
Mátyás Rákosi, who as a chief secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party was de facto the leader of Hungary, possessed practically unlimited power and demanded complete obedience from fellow members of the Party, including his two most trusted colleagues, Ernő Gerő and Mihály Farkas. All three of them returned to Hungary from Moscow, where they spent long years and had close ties to high-ranking Soviet leaders there.
Their most influential leader, László Rajk, who was minister of foreign affairs at the time, was arrested in May 1949. He was accused of rather surreal crimes, such as spying for Western imperialist powers and for Yugoslavia
At his trial in September 1949 he made a forced confession and He also admitted that he had taken part in a murder plot against Mátyás Rákosi and Ernő Gerő. Rajk was found guilty and executed.
The showcase trial of Rajk is considered the beginning of the worst period of the Rákosi dictatorship. Mátyás Rákosi now attempted to impose totalitarian rule on Hungary. The centrally orchestrated personality cult focused on him and Joseph Stalin soon reached unprecedented proportions. Rákosi's images and busts were everywhere, all public speakers were required to glorify his wisdom and leadership.
An estimated 2,000 people were executed and over 100,000 were imprisoned. Some 44,000 ended up in forced-labor camps, where many died due to horrible work conditions, poor food and practically no medical care. Another 15,000 people, mostly former aristocrats, industrialists, military generals and other upper-class people were deported from the capital and other cities to countryside villages where they were forced to do hard agricultural labor. These policies were opposed by some members of the Hungarian Working People's Party and around 200,000 were expelled by Rákosi from the organization.
Rákosi had great difficulties managing the economy and the people of Hungary saw living standards fall. Although his government became increasingly unpopular, he had a firm grip on power until Stalin died on 5 March 1953 when a confused power struggle began in Moscow. Some of the Soviet leaders perceived the unpopularity of the Hungarian regime and ordered Rákosi to give up his position as Prime Minister. Rákosi gave up his position as Prime Minister in favor of another former Communist-in-exile in Moscow, Imre Nagy, who was Rákosi's chief opponent in the party. Rákosi, however, retained his position as general secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party and over the next three years the two men became involved in a bitter struggle for power.
As Hungary's new Prime Minister, Imre Nagy slightly relaxed state control over the economy and the mass media and encouraged public discussion on political and economic reform. In order to improve the general supply, he increase the production and distribution of consumer goods and reduced the tax and quota burdens of the peasants.
The fall of Rákosi was followed by a flurry of reform agitation both inside and outside the Party. László Rajk and his fellow victims of the showcase trial of 1949 were cleared of all charges, and on 6 October 1956, the Party authorized a reburial, which was attended by tens of thousands of people and became a silent demonstration against the crimes of the regime.
On 23 October 1956 a peaceful student demonstration in Budapest produced a list of 16 demands for reform and greater political freedom. As the students attempted to broadcast these demands, police made some arrests and tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas. When the students attempted to free those arrested, the police opened fire on the crowd, setting off a chain of events which led to the Hungarian Revolution.
The Central Committee of the Hungarian Working People's Party responded to these developments by requesting Soviet military intervention and deciding that Imre Nagy should become head of a new government. Soviet tanks entered Budapest at 2 a.m. on 24 October.
Imre Nagy now went on Radio Kossuth and announced he had taken over the leadership of the Government as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.He also promised "the far-reaching democratization of Hungarian public life, the realization of a Hungarian road to socialism in accord with our own national characteristics, and the realization of our lofty national aim: the radical improvement of the workers' living conditions."
Nagy's most controversial decision took place on 1 November when he announced that Hungary intended to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact as well as proclaiming Hungarian neutrality he asked the United Nations to become involved in the country's dispute with the Soviet Union.
On 3 November Nagy announced details of his coalition government. It included Communists (János Kádár, Georg Lukács, Géza Losonczy), three members of the Smallholders Party (Zoltán Tildy, Béla Kovács and István Szabó), three Social Democrats (Anna Kéthly, Gyula Keleman, Joseph Fischer), and two Petőfi Peasants (István Bibó and Ferenc Farkas). Pál Maléter was appointed minister of defence.
Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, became increasingly concerned about these developments and on 4 November 1956 he sent the Red Army into Hungary. Soviet tanks immediately captured Hungary's airfields, highway junctions and bridges. Fighting took place all over the country but the Hungarian forces were quickly defeated.
During the Hungarian Uprising an estimated 20,000 people were killed, nearly all during the Soviet intervention. Imre Nagy was arrested and replaced by the Soviet loyalist, János Kádár. Nagy was imprisoned until being executed in 1958. Other government ministers or supporters who were either executed or died in captivity included Pál Maléter, Géza Losonczy, Attila Szigethy and Miklós Gimes.
The 1956 peaceful demonstrations in Budapest led to the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution. This uprising was an anti-soviet revolt that lasted from the 23th of October until the 11th of November. The Leadership collapsed after mass demonstrations began on 23 October, but Soviet tanks entered Budapest to crush the revolt. Fighting continued until early November, leaving more than 3000 dead. This was the biggest tragedy for Hungary and to commemorate this sorrowful event, a monument was erected at the 50 years anniversary of the revolt in 2006, at the edge of the City Park.
After 1956 János Kádár, the Premier of Hungary, led an attack against revolutionaries. 21,600 mavericks (democrats, liberals, reformist Communists alike) were imprisoned, 13,000 interned, and 400 killed. In 1966, the Central Committee approved the "New Economic Mechanism", through which it sought to rebuild the economy, increase productivity, make Hungary more competitive in world markets, and create prosperity to ensure political stability. Over the next two decades of relative domestic quiet, Kádár's government responded alternately to pressures for minor political and economic reforms as well as to counter-pressures from reform opponents. By the early 1980s, it had achieved some lasting economic reforms and limited political liberalization and pursued a foreign policy that encouraged more trade with the West. Nevertheless, the New Economic Mechanism led to mounting foreign debt that was incurred in order to shore up unprofitable industries.
Hungary's transition to a Western-style democracy was one of the smoothest among the former Soviet bloc. By late 1988, activists within the party and bureaucracy and Budapest-based intellectuals were increasing pressure for change.
15) Third Republic (since 1989)
Hungary's transition to a Western-style democracy was one of the smoothest among the former Soviet bloc. By late 1988, activists within the party and bureaucracy and Budapest-based intellectuals were increasing pressure for change.
National unity culminated in June 1989 as the country reburied Imre Nagy, his associates, and, symbolically, all other victims of the 1956 revolution. A national round table, comprising representatives of the new parties and some recreated old parties—such as the Smallholders and Social Democrats—the Communist Party, and different social groups, met in the late summer of 1989 to discuss major changes to the Hungarian constitution in preparation for free elections and the transition to a fully free and democratic political system.
In October 1989, the Communist Party convened its last congress and re-established itself as the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). In a historic session on 16–20 October 1989, the Parliament adopted legislation providing for multiparty parliamentary elections and a direct presidential election. The legislation transformed Hungary from a People's Republic into the Republic of Hungary, guaranteed human and civil rights, and created an institutional structure that ensures separation of powers among the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government.
In the May 1994 election, the Socialists won a plurality of votes and 54% of the seats (with the new Prime Minister, Gyula Horn) after a campaign focused largely on economic issues and the substantial decline in living standards since 1990.
In 1998, Viktor Orbán leard of the Fidesz center right party formed a successful coalition with the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and the Independent Smallholders' Party (FKGP) and won the 1998 parliamentary elections with 42% of the national vote. Orbán became the second youngest Prime Minister of Hungary at the age of 35 (after András Hegedüs), serving between 1998 and 2002.
In the elections of April 2006, Hungary decided to re-elect its government for the first time since 1989, though with a new Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány. The left-wing strengthened its position, with the coalition of the Social Democrats (MSZP) and the Liberals (SZDSZ) reaching 54 percent of the vote
In the first round of the 2010 spring general elections, the center-right Fidesz received 2.704 million votes, i.e. the votes of 33.69% of the 8.026 million eligible voters or 52.73% of the 5.128 million actual voters for party lists, which resulted in more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. Fidesz took 263 seats, the Socialists 59. This result gave Orbán enough authority to change the Constitution. As a result, Orbán's government added an article in support of traditional marriage in the constitution, and a controversial electoral reform, which lowered the number of seats in the Parliament of Hungary from 386 to 199.
After the 2014 parliamentary election, Fidesz won a majority, garnering 133 of the 199 seats in the National Assembly. While he won a large majority, he garnered 44.54% of the national vote, down from 52.73% in 2010.
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Some famous Hungarian people:
- Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886), officially Franz Ritter von Liszt,was a 19th-century Catholic Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, teacher, and Franciscan. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age, and in the 1840s he was considered to be the greatest pianist of all time.
- Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818-1865) was a Catholic Hungarian physician now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Semmelweis
discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as
"childbed fever") could be drastically cut by the use of hand
disinfection in obstetrical clinics. Semmelweis proposed the
practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while
working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where
doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards. Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory.
- Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), a Jewish Hungarian-born American creator of the Pulitzer Prize (1917). Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer gave money in his will to Columbia University to launch a journalism school and establish the Prize. It allocated $250,000 to the prize and scholarships.
- Harry Houdini (1874-1927) was a Jewish Hungarian-American illusionist and stunt performer.
- József Galamb (1881-1955), creator of the Ford Model T (1908).
- Béla Lugosi (1882-1956) was a Hungarian-American actor, who is best known for playing the character Dracula in the 1931 film and for his roles in various other Universal monster and horror films.
- John von Neumann (1903-1957), a Catholic Hungarian-American mathematician and a founding figure in computing. He is the father of Binary Code and the Stored Program Computer that are the keys for modern computer programming, and game theory.
- Dennis Gabor (1900-1979), inventor of the holography for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971.
- Peter Lorre (1904 -1964) was a Jewish Hungarian-American actor.
- Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995): a Hungarian-American composer trained in Germany (1925-1931), and active in France (1931-1935), the United Kingdom (1935-1940), and the United States (1940-1995), with extensive sojourns in Italy from 1953. Best known for his nearly one hundred film scores, he nevertheless maintained a steadfast allegiance to absolute concert music throughout what he called his "double life. Miklós Rózsa was born in Budapest and was introduced to classical and folk music by his mother, Regina Berkovits, a pianist who had studied with pupils of Franz Liszt, and his father, Gyula, a well-to-do industrialist and landowner who loved Hungarian folk music. His notable Hollywood career earned him considerable fame, earning 17 Oscar nominations including 3 wins for Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947), and Ben-Hur (1959), while his concert works were championed by such major artists as Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, and János Starker.
- Edward Teller (1908-2003): He was a Jewish Hungarian-American theoretical
physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb"
(see the Teller–Ulam design). Teller was born in Hungary and
emigrated to the United States in the 1930s. He was an early member of
the Manhattan Project, charged with developing the first atomic bomb. In
the days before and after the first demonstration of a nuclear weapon,
the Trinity test in July 1945, his fellow Hungarian Leo Szilard
circulated the Szilard petition, which argued that a demonstration to
the Japanese of the new weapon should occur prior to actual use on
Japan, and with that hopefully the weapons would never be used on
people. Bolstered by his friend Robert Oppenheimer's influence, Teller decided to not sign the petition. Teller's
vigorous advocacy for strength through nuclear weapons, especially when
so many of his wartime colleagues later expressed regret about the arms
race, made him an easy target for the "mad scientist" stereotype.
- Estée Lauder (1908-2004): She was a Hungarian American immigrant with a French Catholic mother and Jewish father. She was the co-founder, along with her husband, Joseph Lauter (later Lauder), of Estée Lauder Companies, her eponymous cosmetics company. Lauder was born Josephine Esther Mentzer in 1908, in Corona, Queens. Estée controls 45 percent of the cosmetics market in US department stores under well recognized brand names: Estee Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Prescriptives, Origins, M.A.C., and Bobbi Brown essentials, Tommy Hilfiger, Jane, Donna Karan Cosmetics, Aveda, Stila, Jo Malone and Kate Spade.
- Robert Capa (1913-1954), a Jewish Hungarian war photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. Capa is known for redefining wartime photojournalism. His work came from the trenches as opposed to the more arms-length perspective that was the precedent. He was famed for saying, "If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough".
- John George Kemeny (1926-1992): was a Jewish-Hungarian
American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator best known for
co-developing the BASIC programming language in 1964 with Thomas E.
Kurtz.
- Gyula Grosics (1926-2014): was a Hungarian football goalkeeper who played 86 times for the Hungary national football team and was part of the "Golden Team" of the 1950s. Regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time, he was thought to be the first goalkeeper to play as the sweeper-keeper. Grosics was nicknamed "Black Panther" (Hungarian: Fekete Párduc), because he wore black clothing while playing
- Ferenc Puskás (1927-2006) was a Hungarian footballer and manager, widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.
- Ernő Rubik (1944), inventor of Rubik's Cube (1976). To date, the Rubik's Cube has sold over 350 million units, making it the best selling toy of all time.
- Charles Simonyi (1948), programmer and a key developer in the Microsoft Office suite of applications.
- Monica Seles (Szeles Mónika, 1973), a tennis player born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, nowadays Serbia into an ethnic Hungarian family. In 1990, Seles became the youngest ever French Open champion at the age of 16. She went on to win eight Grand Slam singles titles before her 20th birthday and was the year-end world no. 1 in 1991 and 1992. However, on April 30, 1993, she was the victim of an on-court attack, when a man stabbed her in the back with a 9-inch (23 cm) long knife.Seles did not return to tennis for over two years. Though she enjoyed some success after rejoining the tour in 1995, including a fourth Australian Open title in 1996, she was unable to consistently reproduce her best form.
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[
Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt (née Maria Anna Lager) and Adam Liszt on October 22, 1811 in Sopron Country, in the Kingdom of Hungary. Liszt's father played the piano, violin, cello and guitar. He had been in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven personally. At age six, Franz began listening attentively to his father's piano playing and showed an interest in both sacred and Romani music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight.
He appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg (Hungarian: Pozsony; present-day Bratislava, Slovakia) in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franz's musical education abroad.
In Vienna, Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, who was then music director of the Viennese court. He was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven and Schubert.
After his father's death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris; for the next five years he was to live with his mother in a small apartment. To earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to cover long distances. Because of this, he kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking and drinking—all habits he would continue throughout his life.
During this period, Liszt read widely to overcome his lack of a general education, and he soon came into contact with many of the leading authors and artists of his day, including Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine and Heinrich Heine.
After attending an April 20, 1832, charity concert, for the victims of a Parisian cholera epidemic, by Niccolò Paganini,Liszt became determined to become as great a virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin. Paris in the 1830s had become the nexus for pianistic activities, with dozens of pianists dedicated to perfection at the keyboard
In 1833, Liszt began his relationship with the Countess Marie d'Agoult (who entered into an early marriage of convenience with Charles Louis Constant d'Agoult).
In 1835 the countess left her husband and family to join Liszt in Geneva; their daughter Blandine was born there on December 18. Liszt taught at the newly founded Geneva Conservatory, wrote a manual of piano technique (later lost). D'Agoult had three children with Liszt; however, she and Liszt did not marry, maintaining their independent views and other differences while Liszt was busy composing and touring throughout Europe.
They had threed children:
Blandine (married prime minister Emile Ollivier but died at age of 26)
Cosima (who married Hans von Bülow and then composer Richard Wagner),
Daniel (a promising pianist and gifted scholard who died of tuberculosis at the age of 20)
For the next eight years Liszt continued to tour Europe, spending holidays with the countess and their children on the island of Nonnenwerth on the Rhine in summers 1841 and 1843. In spring 1844 the couple finally separated. This was Liszt's most brilliant period as a concert pianist.
The largest and best-known portion of Liszt's music is his original piano work. His thoroughly revised masterwork, "Années de pèlerinage" ("Years of Pilgrimage") includes arguably his most provocative and stirring pieces. Much of it derives from his earlier work, Album d'un voyageur, his first major published piano cycle, which was composed between 1835 and 1838 and published in 1842.
Three Concert Études are a set of three piano études by Franz Liszt, composed between 1845–49 and published in Paris as Trois caprices poétiques with its three individual titles as they are known today. The third of the Three Concert Études is in D-flat major, and is usually known as Un sospiro (Italian for "A sigh").
In February 1847, Liszt played in Kiev. There he met the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who was to become one of the most significant people in the rest of his life. She persuaded him to concentrate on composition.
Composed in 1847 and dedicated to Count László Teleki, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was first published as a piano solo in 1851 by Senff and Ricordi. Its immediate success and popularity on the concert stage soon led to an orchestrated version, arranged by the composer in collaboration with Franz Doppler, and published by Schuberth. The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor is also well-known due to its frequent use in animated cartoons.
The following year, Liszt took up a long-standing invitation of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia to settle at Weimar, where he had been appointed Kapellmeister Extraordinaire in 1842, remaining there until 1861. Princess Carolyne lived with Liszt during his years in Weimar. She eventually wished to marry Liszt, but since she had been previously married and her husband, Russian military officer Prince Nikolaus zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Ludwigsburg (1812–1864), was still alive, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid. After huge efforts and a monstrously intricate process, she was temporarily successful (September 1860). It was planned that the couple would marry in Rome, on October 22, 1861, Liszt's 50th birthday. Liszt having arrived in Rome on October 21, 1861, the Princess nevertheless declined, by the late evening, to marry him. It appears that both her husband and the Tsar of Russia had managed to quash permission for the marriage at the Vatican.
Liebesträume (German for Dreams of Love) is a set of three solo piano works (S/G541) by Franz Liszt, published in 1850. Liszt called each of the three pieces Liebesträume;but, often they are referred to incorrectly in the singular as Liebestraum (especially No. 3, the most famous of the three). Originally the three Liebesträume (Notturni) were conceived as songs after poems by Ludwig Uhland and Ferdinand Freiligrath.
La campanella (Italian: the little bell) is the nickname given to the third of six Grandes études de Paganini ("Grand Paganini Études"), S. 141 (1851), composed by Franz Liszt. This piece is a revision of an earlier version from 1838, the Études d'exécution transcendente d'après Paganini, S. 140.
The Piano Sonata in B minor (German: Klaviersonate h-Moll), S.178, is a sonata for solo piano by Franz Liszt, published in 1854 with a dedication to Robert Schumann. It is often considered Liszt's greatest composition for solo piano.
The 1860s were a period of great sadness in Liszt's private life. On December 13, 1859, he lost his son Daniel, and on September 11, 1862, his daughter Blandine also died. In letters to friends, Liszt afterwards announced that he would retreat to a solitary living. He found it at the monastery Madonna del Rosario, just outside Rome, where on June 20, 1863, he took up quarters in a small, Spartan apartment. He had on June 23, 1857, already joined a Franciscan order.
In 1866, he composed the Hungarian coronation ceremony for Franz Joseph and Elisabeth of Bavaria. (Latin: Missa coronationalis) The Mass was first performed on June 8, 1867 at the coronation ceremony in the Matthias Church by Buda Castle in a six-section form.
Liszt fell down the stairs of a Hotel in Weimar on July 2, 1881. Though friends and colleagues had noted swelling in his feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month (an indication of possible congestive heart failure).
He died in Bayreuth, Germany, on July 31, 1886, at age 74, officially as a result of pneumonia, which he may have contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter Cosima. Questions have been posed as to whether medical malpractice played a part in his death.He was buried on August 3, 1886, in the municipal cemetery of Bayreuth in accordance with his wishes.
]
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| Map of Hungary |
Following periods of successive habitation by Celts, Romans, Huns, Slavs, Gepids, and Avars, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád.
1) Before 895
The Pannonians (an Illyrian tribe) may have moved to the southern territories of Transdanubia in the course of the 5th century BC. The name Illyrians seems to be the name of one Illyrian tribe, which was the first to come in contact with the ancient Greeks, causing the name Illyrians to be applied to all people of similar language and customs
In the 4th century BC, Celtic tribes immigrated to the territories around the river Rába and defeated the Illyrian people who had been living there, but the latter managed to assimilate the Celts who adopted their language
Following 279 BC, the Scordisci (a Celtic tribe), who had been defeated at Delphi, settled at the confluence of the rivers Sava and Danube and they extended their rule over the southern parts of Transdanubia.
In that century the northern parts of Transdanubia were ruled by the Taurisci (also a Celtic tribe) and by 230 BC, Celtic people (the people of the La Tène culture) had occupied gradually the whole territory of the Great Hungarian Plain. Between 150 and 100 BC, a new Celtic tribe, the Boii moved to the Carpathian Basin and they occupied the northern and northeastern parts of the territory (mainly the territory of present Slovakia).
The Romans commenced their military raids against the Carpathian Basin in 156 BC when they attacked the Scordisci living in the Transdanubian region. In 119 BC, they marched against Siscia (today Sisak in Croatia) and strengthened their rule over the future Illyricum province south of the Carpathian Basin. In 88 BC, the Romans defeated the Scordisci whose rule was driven back to the eastern parts of Syrmia, while the Pannonians moved to the northern parts of Transdanubia.
The Scordisci were crushed in 15 BC by Tiberius, and became Roman subjects, playing the part as mercenaries. Other sources say the Romans made alliance with the Scordisci in Sirmium and Danube valleys following the Alpine campaign under Tiberius in 15 BC, the alliance would be crucial for the victory over the Pannonians (15BC) and later Breuci (12BC).They started receiving Roman citizenship during Trajan's rule. With their Romanization, they ceased to exist as an independent ethno-political unit.
The Roman Empire conquered territory west of the Danube between 35 and 9 BC. From 9 BC to the end of the 4th century AD Pannonia, the western part of the basin was part of the Roman Empire. In the final stages of the expansion of the Roman empire, for a short while the Carpathian Basin fell under Mediterranean influence Greco-Roman civilization - town centers, paved roads, and written sources were all part of the advances to which the "Migration of Peoples" put an end. Aquincum was an ancient city, situated on the northeastern borders of the province of Pannonia within the Roman Empire. The ruins of the city can be found today in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary.
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| The ruins of the civil town of Aquincum and the Museum in Budapest. |
After the Western Roman Empire collapsed under the stress of the migration of Germanic tribes and Carpian pressure, the Migration Period continued bringing many invaders to Europe. Among the first to arrive were the Huns, who built up a powerful empire under Attila in 435 AD. Attila the Hun was regarded in past centuries as an ancestral ruler of the Hungarians, but this is now considered to be erroneous. The Magyars (Hungarians) claim to Hunnic heritage. Although Magyar tribes only began to settle in the geographical area of present-day Hungary in the very end of the 9th century, some 450 years after the dissolution of the Hunnic tribal confederation, Hungarian prehistory includes Magyar origin myths, which may have preserved some elements of historical truth. The Huns who invaded Europe represented a loose coalition of various peoples, so some Magyars might have been part of it, or may later have joined descendants of Attila's men, who still claimed the name of Huns. The national anthem of Hungary describes the Hungarians as "blood of Bendegúz'" (the medieval and modern Hungarian version of Mundzuk, Attila's father). Attila's brother Bleda is called Buda in modern Hungarian. Some medieval chronicles and literary works derive the name of the city of Buda from him. There is a legend among the Székely people that says: "After the death of Attila, in the bloody Battle of Krimhilda, 3000 Hun warriors managed to escape, to settle in a place called "Csigle-mező" (today Transylvania) and they changed their name from Huns to Szekler (Székely)." When Magyars came to Pannonia in the 8th century, the Szeklers joined them, and together they conquered Pannonia (today Hungary).
It is believed that the origin of the name "Hungary" does not come from the Central Asian Hun nomadic invaders, but rather originated from the 7th century, when Magyar tribes were part of a Bulgar alliance called On-Ogour, which in Bulgar Turkic meant "(the) Ten Arrows".
After Hunnish rule faded, the Germanic Ostrogoths, Lombards then Slavs came to Pannonia, and the Gepids had a presence in the eastern part of the Carpathian Basin for about 100 years. In the 560s the Avars founded the Avar Khaganate, a state which maintained supremacy in the region for more than two centuries and had the military power to launch attacks against its neighboring empires. The Avar Khaganate was a highly organized nomadic Turkic confederacy, a khaganate, established by the Avars in the early Middle Ages. The Avars were a confederation of Eurasian tribes from the steppes of Central Asia. The Avar Khaganate was weakened by constant wars and outside pressure, and the Franks under Charlemagne managed to defeat the Avars, ending their 250-year rule.
2) Establishment of confederation of united tribes
Around 830, the seven Magyar related tribes (Jenő, Kér, Keszi, Kürt-Gyarmat, Megyer, Nyék and Tarján) formed a confederation in Etelköz, called "Hétmagyar" (ie, "The Seven Magyars"). Their leaders, the Seven chieftains of the Magyars, besides Álmos included Előd, Ond, Kond, Tas, Huba and Töhötöm, took a blood oath, swearing eternal loyalty to Álmos. Presumably, the Magyar tribes consisted of 108 clans. The Hungarians/Magyar, unlike their Slavic neighbours, speak a language of the group known as Finno-Ugric. Despite claims of Hunnish descent, it is thought that they came from the Ural Mountains in Russia and migrated east, then south in contact with Turks and Iranians, taking on a nomadic, herding lifestyle.
The confederation of the tribes was probably led by two high princes: the kende (their spiritual ruler) and the gyula (their military leader). The high princes were either elected by the leaders of the tribes or appointed by the Khagan of the Khazars who had been exerting influence over the Magyars. Around 862 the seven tribes separated from the Khazars.
According to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, Árpád (c. 840 – c. 907) was the first head of the confederation of the Hungarian tribes. Some sources assumes that Árpád was the gyula, and Kurszán was the kende while others propose that Kurszán was the gyula, and Árpád represented his father, Álmos kende.
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| Árpád leading the Hungarians across the Carpathians – a detail on the Arrival of the Hungarians by Árpád Feszty et al. (Ópusztaszer National Memorial Site, Hungary) |
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| Árpád's statue at the Heroes' Square (Budapest). The construction began in 1896 to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin and the foundation of the Hungarian state in 1896, and not completed until 1906. |
After that, an early Hungarian state (the Principality of Hungary, founded in 895) was formed in this territory. The military power of the nation allowed the Hungarians to conduct successful fierce campaigns and raids as far as today's Spain. A later defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 signaled an end to raids on western territories (Byzantine raids continued until 970), and links between the tribes weakened. The ruling prince (fejedelem) Géza of the Árpád dynasty, who ruled only part of the united territory, the nominal overlord of all seven Magyar tribes, aimed to integrate Hungary into Christian Western Europe, rebuilding the state according to the Western political and social model. Paul K. Davis, a military historian, writes: the "Magyar defeat ended more than 90 years of their pillaging western Europe and convinced survivors to settle down, creating the basis for the state of Hungary."
Stephan I of Hungary (born as Vajk) was the son of the Prince Géza of Hungary. According to his legends, Vajk was baptized a Christian by Saint Adalbert of Prague. He was given the baptismal name Stephen (István) in honour of the original early Christian Saint Stephen.
When Stephen reached adolescence, Great Prince Géza convened an assembly where they decided that Stephen would follow his father as the monarch of the Hungarians.This decision, however, contradicted the Magyar tribal custom that gave the right of succession to the eldest close relative of the deceased ruler.
In 997, his father died and a succession struggle ensued. Stephen claimed to rule the Magyars by the principle of Christian divine right, while his uncle Koppány, a powerful pagan chieftain in Somogy, claimed the traditional right of agnatic seniority. Eventually, the two met in battle near Veszprém and Stephen, victorious, assumed the role of Grand Prince of the Hungarians.
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| Saint Stephen I in Budapest |
Stephen discouraged pagan customs and strengthened Christianity by means of various laws. In his first decree, issued at the beginning of his rule, he ordered that each ten villages would be obliged to build a church. He invited foreign priests to Hungary to evangelize his kingdom.
Stephen intended to retire to a life of holy contemplation and hand the kingdom over to his son Emeric (about 1000 to 1007 – 2 September 1031), but Emeric was wounded in a hunting accident and died in 1031.
Stephen mourned for a very long time over the loss of his son, which took a great toll on his health. He eventually recovered, but never regained his original vitality. Having no children left, he could not find anyone among his remaining relatives who was able to rule the country competently and be willing to maintain the Christian faith of the nation. Without a living heir, on his deathbed, he raised with his right hand the Holy Crown of Hungary, and prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, asking her to take the Hungarian people as her subjects and become their queen. King Stephen died on the feast day which commemorates the bodily assumption into heaven of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August, in the year 1038, at Esztergom-Szentkirály or Székesfehérvár, where he was buried. The king's right hand, known as the Holy Right, is kept as a relic. Hungarians interpreted the incorruptibility of his right arm and hand - with which he had held the Holy Crown aloft from his deathbed when asking Virgin Mary to be the Queen of the Hungarians - as a sign that the Blessed Virgin Mary had accepted the king's offer to her of the Hungarian people, and she remains officially their queen. Saint Stephen became the first canonized confessor king, a new category of saint. He is venerated as the patron saint of Hungary, kings, children who are dying, masons, stonecutters, and bricklayers.
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| Holy Right at the Basilica of King Saint Stephen in Budapest. |
The Holy Crown, popularly attributed to St. Stephen, was removed from the country in 1945 for safekeeping, and entrusted to the United States government. It was kept in a vault at Fort Knox until 1978, when it was returned to the nation by order of President Jimmy Carter. It has been enshrined in the Hungarian parliament building in Budapest since 2000. The coronation crown is used by the Kingdom of Hungary for most of its existence; kings have been crowned with it since the twelfth century.
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| Hungarian Crown at the Parlament |
After the Great Schism (The East-West Schism /formally in 1054/, between Western Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.) Hungary determined itself as the easternmost bastion of Western civilisation (This statement was affirmed later by Pope Pius II who wrote that to Emperor Friedrich III, "Hungary is the shield of Christianity and the defender of Western civilization").
Saint Ladislaus I (1045-1095) was King of Hungary from 1077 until his death, "who greatly expanded the boundaries of the kingdom and consolidated it internally; no other Hungarian king was so generally beloved by the people". After the death of King Géza, the nobles passed over Solomon, the son of Andrew I, and chose Ladislaus to be their king in 1077. Following a long period of civil wars, he strengthened the royal power in his kingdom by introducing severe legislation. He would also extend his rule over Croatia. After his canonisation, Ladislaus became the model of the chivalrous king in Hungary. No other Hungarian king was held in such high esteem. The whole nation mourned for him for three years, and regarded him as a saint long before his canonization. A whole cycle of legends is associated with his name. He was canonized on June 27, 1192. In a rather unusual manner for a saint, he is traditionally depicted with a battle-axe.
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| Saint Ladislaus I |
Ladislaus was succeded by Coloman I, the Book-lover. he was one of the most educated rulers of his age, e.g. the Polish chronicler, Gallus Anonymus describes him as the king "who was more educated in literary sciences than any of the kings who was living in his age". Coloman, as legislator, mitigated the austerity of his predecessor's decrees.
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| Statue of Coloman, Heroes' Square, Budapest, Hungary |
According to the pacta conventa, King Coloman of Hungary created a personal union between the Kingdom of Croatia and Hungary. However, some historians dispute its authenticity and claim that the document is a forgery and that Hungary seized Croatia which became a province, while other historiography generally accepts it as authentic. The Pacta Conventa is most likely a late medieval forgery, not a twelfth-century source. Its source of inspiration must have been the political and social developments that had taken place over a 300-year period following the conquest of Ladislav I and Coloman,
In 1112, Coloman married Eufemia of Kiev, daughter of Grand Prince Vladimir II of Kiev. However, a few months later, she was caught in adultery and immediately divorced and sent back to her father. Eufemia bore a son in Kiev, named Boris in 1112, but Coloman refused to acknowledge him as his son.
Coloman had his son, Stephen crowned in 1105, which resulted in the open rebellion of his brother, Duke Álmos. Shortly afterwards, Coloman had a meeting with Bolesław III who was going on a pilgrimage to Székesfehérvár and Somogyvár because of having made his brother blind. In 1115, Coloman, who had become more and more ill, also ordered to have Álmos and Almos' son, Béla blinded in order to secure his own son's inheritance. This caused later chroniclers, who lived in the court of his brother's descendants, to accuse him of viciousness.
Béla III (Hungarian: III. Béla, Croatian: Bela III.) (c. 1148 – 1196) was King of Hungary and Croatia (1172–1196). He was educated in the court of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I who was planning to ensure his succession in the Byzantine Empire till the birth of his own son.
In 1164, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos concluded a treaty with King Stephen III, and according to the treaty, Béla was sent to Constantinople to be educated at the imperial court. The emperor, who had no legitimate sons, intended that Béla should marry his daughter, Maria Comnena, and eventually succeed him as Emperor. In 1164 and 1165, Béla followed the Emperor Manuel I on his campaigns against Hungary which aimed at the occupation of Béla's "paternal inheritance", i.e., Croatia, Dalmatia and Syrmia. However, when King Stephen III transferred the three provinces to Manuel I, they were incorporated into the Byzantine Empire. When Alexius was born as a son of Manuel and his second wife Maria of Antioch in 1169, Béla's engagement to Maria was cancelled. Béla was deprived also of his title, and he was granted the lower title of kaisar.
When his brother, King Stephen III died childless on 4 March 1172, Béla became his rightful heir. However, some barons preferred his younger brother, the Prince Géza, as did their mother Euphrosyne. Béla concluded an agreement with the Emperor Manuel, who provided him with a large amount of money, while he promised that he would never attack the Byzantine Empire during the reign of the emperor or his son.
Béla wanted to amend the administration of his kingdom and ordered that all the issues discussed by the king had to be put down in writing. This order led to the establishment of the Royal Chancellery in Hungary.
After the death of Emperor Manuel I on 24 September 1180, Bela retook Croatia, Dalmatia and the Srem from the Byzantine Empire. His remains were confidently identified by archeologists during late 19th century excavations at the ruined cathedral of Székesfehérvár (In the Székesfehérvár Basilica, 37 kings and 39 queens consort were crowned, 15 rulers have been buried here, the diets were held and the crown jewels were kept here) where the Árpád monarchs had been crowned and buried. Béla's exceptional height, as documented by contemporary sources, rendered the identification certain. Based on the examination of his skeleton, he must have been over two metres tall, a really outstanding height at that time. His remains were afterwards reinterred at the Matthias Church in Budapest, with those of his first wife Agnes.
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| Hungary 1190 |
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| Statue of Andrew II, Heroes' Square, Budapest, Hungary |
4) Mongol attacks
Béla IV (1206–1270) was King of Hungary (1235–70) and of Croatia (1235–70), duke of Styria 1254–58. He was one of the most famous kings of Hungary, he distinguished himself through his policy of strengthening of the royal power following the example of his grandfather Béla III, and by the rebuilding Hungary after the catastrophe of the Mongolian invasion in 1241. For this reason he is called by the Hungarians as "the second founder of our country".
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| Statue of Béla IV, Heroes' Square, Budapest, Hungary |
Béla tried to reinforce the eastern borders of his kingdom, but the Mongol troops, led by Batu Khan, managed to break through the frontier defenses on 12 March 1241. Bela did not have good relations with his barons, who continued to refuse to mobilize without being granted more independent concessions. They demanded the expulsion of the Cumans, which Bela refused. On 14 March 1241 some of the barons broke into the house where Köten, the Khagan of the Cumans and other Cuman princes were being held as a concession to the barons by Bela of their good behaviour. Köten killed his wives and himself, while the rest of the princes were murdered. This infuriated the Cumans in their camp, who destroyed the forces of the Bishop of Czanad (which were marching to the assistance of Hungary), ravaged the countryside including sacking Szombateley, then retired to Bulgaria.
Hardly anybody believed that the Mongol attack was a serious threat to the kingdom's security, and the Cuman defection was considered minor and usual. After the Cumans' departure, Béla lost his most valuable allies, but led an army of 100,000 against the Mongols. The Mongols attacked Hungary with three armies. One of them attacked through Poland in order to withhold possible Polish auxiliaries and defeated the army of Duke Henry II the Pious of Silesia (Henry was defeated and killed in action) at Legnica. A southern army attacked Transylvania, defeated the voivod and crushed the Transylvanian Hungarian army. On 11 April 1241, the main Mongol army led by Khan Batu and Subutai attacked Hungary through the fortified Verecke Pass and annihilated the army led by the count palatine. This was remembered as the Battle of Mohi. After the invasion, Hungary lay in ruins. Nearly half of the inhabited places had been destroyed by the invading armies. Around 15–25 percent of the population was lost, mostly in lowland areas, especially in the Great Hungarian Plain, the southern reaches of the Hungarian plain in the area now called the Banat and in southern Transylvania. In the plains, between 50 and 80% of the settlements were destroyed. Only castles, strongly fortified cities and abbeys could withstand the assault, as the Mongols had no time for long sieges - their goal was to move west as soon as possible. Béla fled from Hainburg to Zagreb and he sent his envoys to the Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX to seek their assistance against the Mongols. In the meantime, the Mongols were plundering the territories of the kingdom west of the Danube River - Pest was burned, Gran was taken with terrible atrocities, Buda was sacked. Moreover, in January, they could cross the frozen Danube and Béla had to flee from the Mongol troops, the khan sent to capture him into Croatia. The Mongols attacked the Dalmatian cities without major success, as the mountainous terrain and distance were not suitable for Mongol warfare. As the Mongols were invading Austria on the outskirts of Vienna, news arrived that the Grand Khan had died in Mongolia, and Batu Khan ceased operations to return to participate in the election of a new Grand Khan - central Europe was saved.
Historians regard the Mongol raids and invasions as some of the deadliest conflicts in human history up through that period. Brian Landers argues that, "One empire in particular exceeded any that had gone before, and crossed from Asia into Europe in an orgy of violence and destruction. The Mongols brought terror to Europe on a scale not seen again until the twentieth century."Diana Lary contends that the Mongol invasions induced population displacement "on a scale never seen before," particularly in Central Asia and eastern Europe. She adds, "the impending arrival of the Mongol hordes spread terror and panic.
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| The Mongols at Liegnitz display the head of King Henry II of Duchy of Silesia. - Freytag's Hedwig manuscript, 1451. Wroclaw University Library |
The Mongols returned to Hungary in 1286, but the new built stone-castle systems and new tactics (using a higher proportion of heavily armed knights) stopped them. The invading Mongol force was defeated near Pest by the royal army of Ladislaus IV of Hungary. As with later invasions, it was repelled handily, the Mongols losing much of their invading force.
These castles proved to be very important later in the long struggle with the Ottoman Empire. However the cost of building them indebted the Hungarian King to the major feudal landlords again, so the royal power reclaimed by Béla IV after his father Andrew II significantly weakened it was once again dispersed amongst lesser nobility. The countries of the Balkan region and the territory of Russian states fell under Ottoman/Mongolian rule very rapidly, due to the lack of the network of stone/brick castles and fortresses in these countries.
Andrew III the Venetian (Hungarian: III. (Velencei) András/Endre, Croatian: Andrija III, Slovak: Ondrej III.) (c. 1265 – 14 January 1301) was King of Hungary (1290–1301). He was the last member of the Hungarian Árpád dynasty on the paternal line. The death of Andrew III on 14 January 1301, at Buda, ended the male line of the Árpáds on the throne. One of his contemporaries called him "the last golden twig of the Árpáds".
5) Age of elected kings
The Kingdom of Hungary reached one of its greatest extent during the Árpádian kings, yet royal power was weakened at the end of their rule in 1301. After a destructive period of interregnum (1301–1308), the first Angevin king, Charles I of Hungary – a bilineal descendant of the Árpád dynasty – successfully restored royal power, and defeated oligarch rivals, the so-called "little kings". One of the primary sources of his power was the wealth derived from the gold mines of eastern and northern Hungary. Eventually production reached the remarkable figure of 3,000 lb. (1350 kg) of gold annually - one-third of the total production of the world as then known, and five times as much as that of any other European state. Charles also sealed an alliance with the Polish king Casimir.
The second Angevin Hungarian king, Louis the Great (1342–1382), led many successful military campaigns from Lithuania to Southern Italy (Kingdom of Naples), and was also King of Poland from 1370. During his reign lived the epic hero of Hungarian literature and warfare, the king's Champion: Nicolas Toldi.
In 1361 Buda became the capital of Hungary.
After King Louis died without a male heir, the country was stabilized only when Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387–1437) succeeded to the throne, who in 1433 also became Holy Roman Emperor. Sigismund was also (in several ways) a bilineal descendant of the Árpád dynasty. During the long reign of emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg, the so-called Fresh Palace of the Royal residence of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages.
From a small noble family in Transylvania, John Hunyadi grew to become one of the country's most powerful lords, thanks to his outstanding capabilities as a mercenary commander. He was elected governor then regent. He was a successful crusader against the Ottoman Turks, one of his greatest victories being the Siege of Belgrade in 1456. In Hungary, tradition still holds that the bells of Catholic churches are daily rung at noon to commemorate the latter victory. Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of every European church to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for the Christian defenders of the city of Belgrade.
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| Statue of Hunyadi, Heroes' Square, Budapest, Hungary |
Hunyadi is considered a Hungarian national hero and praised as its defender against the Ottoman threat. He is mentioned in Szózat, a poem which is considered a "second anthem" of Hungary:
'Twas here brave Árpád's mighty sword
ordained your land to be,
and here the arms of Hunyad broke
the chains of slavery.
Here Freedom's blood-stained flag has waved
above the Magyar head;
and here in age-long struggles fell
our best and noblest, dead.
Romanian historiography gives Hunyadi a place of importance in the history of Romania too. He is remembered in Romania as a national hero mostly due to his Romaniannote origin.
The last strong king of medieval Hungary was the Renaissance king Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490), son of John Hunyadi. His election was the first time that a member of the nobility mounted to the Hungarian royal throne without dynastic background. The cultural role of Buda was particularly significant during his reign. The Italian Renaissance had a great influence on the city. His library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles and philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second only in size to the Vatican Library. The Turkish invasion of much of Hungary in the 16th century destroyed the codices.Only about 650 Corvinae survived, now in several libraries in Hungary and Europe. The first Hungarian book was printed in Buda in 1473. After the foundation of the first Hungarian university in Pécs in 1367, the second one was established in Óbuda in 1395. Matthias rebuilt the Royal residence of Buda palace in early Renaissance style and further expanded it. Under his rule, in 1479, the Hungarian army destroyed the Ottoman and Wallachian troops at the Battle of Breadfield. Abroad he defeated the Polish and German imperial armies of Frederick at Breslau (Wrocław). Matthias' mercenary standing army, the Black Army of Hungary, was an unusually large army for its time, and it conquered parts of Austria, Vienna (1485) and parts of Bohemia.
Buda had about 5,000 inhabitants around 1500.
King Matthias died without lawful sons, and the Hungarian magnates procured the accession of the Pole Vladislaus II (1490–1516) from the Jagiellonian dynasty, supposedly because of his weak influence on Hungarian aristocracy. Hungary's international role declined, its political stability shaken, and social progress was deadlocked. In 1514, the weakened old King Vladislaus II faced a major peasant rebellion led by György Dózsa, which was ruthlessly crushed by the nobles, led by John Zápolya.
The First Congress of Vienna was held in 1515, attended by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, and the Jagiellonian brothers, Vladislaus II, King of Hungary & Bohemia and Sigismund I, King of Poland & Lithuania. It became a turning point in the history of central Europe. Vladislaus II made a Habsburg-Jagiellon mutual succession treaty with Emperor Maximilian in 1506.
During Vladislaus reign the Hungarian royal power declined in favour of the Hungarian magnates, who used their power to curtail the peasants’ freedom. His reign in Hungary was largely stable, although Hungary was under consistent border pressure from the Ottoman Empire and went through the revolt of György Dózsa.
6) Battle of Mohacs
After his father's death in 1516 the minor Louis II, son of Vladislaus, ascended to the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia Upon his father's death, Louis had been adopted by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1515. Louis owed allegiance to the Imperial Habsburgs as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1515 Louis II was married to Mary of Austria, granddaughter of Emperor Maximilian I, as stipulated by the First Congress of Vienna in 1515.
Hungary was in a state of near anarchy under the magnates' rule in 1520. The king's finances were a shambles; he borrowed to meet his household expenses despite the fact that they totaled about one-third of the national income. The country's defenses weakened as border guards went unpaid, fortresses fell into disrepair, and initiatives to increase taxes to reinforce defenses were stifled.
Suleiman I, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire took Belgrade with a garrison of only 700 men in August 1521. This was disastrous for Louis' Kingdom, without the strategically important Belgrade and Šabac, Hungary including Buda was open to further Turkish conquests.
Suleiman turned his attention instead to the Eastern Mediterranean island of Rhodes, the home base of the Knights Hospitaller. In the summer of 1522, taking advantage of the large Navy he inherited from his father, Suleiman dispatched an armada of some 400 ships towards Rhodes, while personally leading an army of 100,000 across Asia Minor to a point opposite the island itself. Here Suleiman built a large fortification, Marmaris Castle, that served as a base for the Ottoman Navy. Following a siege of five months Siege of Rhodes (1522) with brutal encounters, Rhodes capitulated and Suleiman allowed the Knights of Rhodes to depart. (The Knights of Rhodes eventually formed a new base in Malta.)
The sultan then sent an ambassor to Louis II to collect the annual tribute that Hungary had been subjected to. Louis refused to pay annual tribute and had the Ottoman ambassador executed and sent the head to the Sultan. Louis believed that the Papal states, other Christian States including Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor would help him. This event hastened the fall of Hungary.
After the siege of Rhodes, in 1526 Suleiman made a second expedition to subdue all of Hungary. Louis made a tactical error when he tried to stop the Ottoman army in an open field battle with a medieval army, insufficient firearms and obsolete tactics. On 29 August 1526, Louis led his forces against Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire in the disastrous Battle of Mohács. The Hungarian forces chose the battlefield, an open but uneven plain with some swampy marshes near Mohács leading down to the Danube. The Ottomans had been allowed to advance almost unopposed. In a pincer movement, the Hungarian army was surrounded by Ottoman cavalry and in the center, the Hungarian heavy knights and infantry were repulsed and suffered heavy casualties, especially from the well positioned Ottoman cannons and well armed and trained Janissary musketeers. The Hungarians could not hold their positions, and those who did not flee were surrounded and killed or captured. The result was a disaster, with the Hungarians advancing into withering fire and flank attacks. The king left the battlefield sometime around twilight but was thrown from his horse in a river at Csele and died, weighed down by his heavy armor. Some 1,000 other Hungarian nobles and leaders were also killed. It is generally accepted that more than 14,000 Hungarian soldiers were killed in the initial battle.
In the aftermath, Suleiman gave orders to keep no prisoners.Next day he wrote in his diary: "The Sultan, seated on a golden throne, receives the homage of the viziers and the beys, massacre of 2,000 prisoners, the rain falls in torrents." Reportedly among those 2,000 were several notable Hungarian leaders. Suleiman could not believe that this small, "suicidal" army was all that once powerful country could muster against him, so he waited at Mohacs for a few days before moving cautiously against Buda.
The death of Louis II as he fled the battle marked the end of the Jagiellon dynasty in Hungary and Bohemia, whose dynastic claims were absorbed by the Habsburgs via the marriage of Louis' sister.
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| Discovery of the corpse of king louis II by Szekely Bertalan (1860) |
The fall of Christendom's major strongholds spread fear across Europe. As the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to Constantinople was to note, "The capture of Belgrade was at the origin of the dramatic events which engulfed Hungary. It led to the death of King Louis, the capture of Buda, the occupation of Transylvania, the ruin of a flourishing kingdom and the fear of neighbouring nations that they would suffer the same fate...".
Mohács is seen by many Hungarians as the decisive downward turning point in the country's history, a national trauma that persists in the nation's folk memory. For moments of bad luck, Hungarians still say: "more was lost at Mohács" (Több is veszett Mohácsnál). Hungarians view Mohács as marking the end of an independent and powerful European nation.
Bohemia fell to the Habsburgs, who also dominated the Northern and western parts of Hungary and the remnants of the Kingdom of Croatia, while the Ottomans held central Hungary and suzerainty over semi-independent Transylvania. This provided the Hungarians with sufficient impetus to continue to resist the Ottoman occupation, which they did for another seventy years.
The ensuing two hundred years of near constant warfare between the two empires, Habsburg and Ottoman, turned Hungary into a perpetual battlefield. The countryside was regularly ravaged by armies moving back and forth, in turn devastating the population. Only in the 20th century would Hungary regain its political independence, but denuded of much of its land, and it has never regained its former political power. Though the Ottomans entered the unguarded evacuated Buda and pillaged the castle and surroundings, they retreated soon afterwards. It was not until 1541 that the Ottomans finally captured and occupied Buda
The battlefield, beside the village of Sátorhely, became an official national historical memorial site in 1976 on the 450th anniversary of the battle.
Some Hungarian nobles proposed that Ferdinand, who was ruler of neighboring Austria and tied to Louis II's family by marriage, be King of Hungary, citing previous agreements that the Habsburgs would take the Hungarian throne if Louis died without heirs. However, other nobles turned to the nobleman John Zápolya who was being supported by Suleiman. Under Charles V and his brother Ferdinand I, the Habsburgs reoccupied Buda and took possession of Hungary. Armed conflicts between the new rival monarchs further weakened the country from the internal side. As a result, in 1529, Suleiman once again marched through the valley of the Danube and regained control of Buda and in the following autumn laid siege to Vienna. This was to be the Ottoman Empire's most ambitious expedition and the apogee of its drive towards the West. With a reinforced garrison of 16,000 men, the Austrians inflicted upon Suleiman his first defeat, sowing the seeds of a bitter Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry which lasted until the 20th century.
As a consequence of Ottoman advances through Hungarian territory and the capture of Buda, the city of Pozsony/Pressburg (present-day Bratislava) was designated as the capital of Royal Hungary in 1536.The cathedral of St Martin in Pozsony became the coronation church of the sovereigns of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1563, succeeding the Virgin Mary Church in Székesfehérvár, after the Ottoman Empire conquered that city.
In 1541 the Habsburgs once again engaged in conflict with the Ottomans, by attempting to lay siege to Buda. With their efforts repulsed, and more Habsburg fortresses captured by the Ottomans in two consecutive campaigns in 1541 and in 1544 as a result, Ferdinand and his brother Charles V were forced to conclude a humiliating five-year treaty with Suleiman. Ferdinand renounced his claim to the Kingdom of Hungary and was forced to pay a fixed yearly sum to the Sultan for the Hungarian lands he continued to control. The north-west (present-day Slovakia, western Transdanubia and Burgenland, western Croatia and parts of north-eastern present-day Hungary) remained under Habsburg rule; although initially independent, later it became a part of Habsburg Monarchy under the informal name Royal Hungary. The Habsburg Emperors would from then on be crowned also as Kings of Hungary. Turks were unable to conquer Northern and Western parts of Hungary.
Székesfehérvár, a royal residence (székhely),as capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, held a central role in the Middle Ages. As required by the Doctrine of the Holy Crown, the first kings of Hungary were crowned and buried here.Significant trade routes led to the Balkans and Italy, and to Buda and Vienna. The Ottomans conquered the city after a long siege in 1543. The Ottomans destroyed most of the city, they demolished the cathedral and the royal palace, and they pillaged the graves of kings in the cathedral. They named the city Belgrade ("white city", from Serbian Beograd) and built mosques. In the 16th–17th centuries it looked like a Muslim city. The Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built in 1010 by Saint Stephen I, the first King of Hungary. It was the most significant place of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages, as it contained the crown jewels, including the throne, the Holy Crown of Hungary, the treasury and the archives. 37 kings and 39 queens were crowned in this basilica and 15 were buried in it. . The royal graves were ransacked and the basilica was used to store gunpowder while St. Martin's Cathedral in Pozsony became the new coronation site. On 8 September 1563, the Crown of St. Stephen was placed on the head of Maximilian II, son of Emperor Ferdinand I of Habsburg. In total, the coronations of 11 kings and queens plus 8 of their consorts occurred here between 1563 and 1830, including that of Maria Theresa of Austria. After World War I and the formation of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918, the city of Bratislava was incorporated into the new state despite its representatives' reluctance.
The Ottomans pillaged Buda in 1526, besieged it in 1529, and finally occupied it in 1541. The Turkish occupation lasted for more than 140 years. The Turks constructed many fine bathing facilities within the city. Some of the baths that the Turks erected during their occupation period are still in function after 500 years (Rudas and Király).
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| Central Europe in 1683 |
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| Buda and Pest in 1617 |
7) The Zrinski–Frankopan Conspiracy
The Magnate conspiracy, also known as the Zrinski–Frankopan Conspiracy (Croatian: Zrinsko-frankopanska urota) in Croatia, and Wesselényi conspiracy (Hungarian: Wesselényi-összeesküvés) in Hungary, was a 17th-century attempt to throw off Habsburg and other foreign influences over Hungary and Croatia
The Ottoman conquests reduced Croatia's territory to only 16,800 km² by 1592. The Pope referred to the country as to the "Remnants of the remnants of the Croatian kingdom" (Latin: Reliquiae reliquiarum regni Croatiae) and this description became a battle cry of the affected nobles. The Sultan invaded and conquered the Transylvanian-held areas of Hungary in May 1660. The ensuing battles killed the Transylvanian ruler George II Rákóczi. Following a fairly easy victory there, the Ottomans directed their large army towards portions of Royal Hungary.
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| It was largely ruins what the Christians found when the Hungarian towns were retaken at the end of the Turks wars in the 16th and 17th centuries. Above the ruin of a medieval church in Alsódörgicse |
The treaty left many Hungarian magnates feeling as if the Habsburgs had pushed them aside at their one opportunity for independence and security from Ottoman advances.In response, a number of nobles led by Hungarian Ferenc Rákóczi I decided that they would physically remove foreign influence from Hungary.
The conspirators hoped to gain foreign aid in their attempts to not only free Hungary but also to overthrow the Habsburgs. The conspirators entered into secret negotiations with a number of nations — including France, Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Republic of Venice — in an attempt to gain support. Wesselényi and his fellow magnates even made overtures to the Ottomans offering all of Hungary in return for the semblance of self-rule after the Habsburgs had been removed; nevertheless, no state wanted to intervene. The Sultan, like Leopold, had no interest in renewed conflict — in fact, his court informed Leopold of the attempts being made by the conspirators in 1666.
While the warnings from the Sultan's court cemented the matter, Leopold already suspected the conspiracy — the Austrians had informants inside the group of nobles, and had heard from several sources of their wide-ranging and almost desperate attempts to gain foreign and domestic aid.
When the conspiracy's ideals began to gain some support within Hungary, the official reaction was swift. In March 1670 the leaders of the group, including Wesselényi, Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan were arrested and executed; some 2,000 nobles were arrested as part of a mass crackdown (many of the lesser nobles had had no part in the events, but Leopold aimed to prevent similar revolts in the future). Rákóczi, for his mother's merits in the Counter-Reformation movement and for a ransom of 300,000 Forints and several castles, was pardoned.
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| The leaders of the Magnate conspiracy were held in Wiener Neustadt and beheaded on April 30, 1671 |
8) Siege of Buda
Following the Turkish defeat at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I saw the opportunity for a counterstrike. With the aid of Pope Innocent XI, the Holy League was formed on 5 March 1684, with King Sobieski of Poland, Emperor Leopold I, and the Republic of Venice agreeing to an alliance against the Turks. On 27 June, the imperial army met a strong Turkish army of 17,000 men at Vác and the Turkish troops were defeated. On 30 June, the imperial main army entered the city of Pest, to which the Turks had set fire shortly before. After the army crossed the Danube at Vác, it began the siege of Buda, which was defended by approximately 10,000 Turks.
The imperial army, consisting of 34,000 men, began the bombardment of Buda's fortress with 200 cannons on 14 July 1684, the anniversary of the beginning of the siege of Vienna.
On 19 July, the imperial troops took control of the lower part of the town of Buda. However, since too few troops were available to occupy it, Ernst Rüdiger ordered the houses in that part of the town burnt down.
Throughout July and August, the imperial army made several attempts to attack the fortress, but all were repelled by the Turkish defenders.
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| Siege of Buda in 1686 by Frans Geffels |
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| Benczur gyula (1896), the recapture of buda. |
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| Plaque commemorating the 300 Spanish volunteers that took part on the Siege of Budapest |
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| Statue of Eugene of Savoy in Budapest |
9) Kingdom of Hungary (1538–1867)
As the Habsburgs' control of the Turkish possessions started to increase, the ministers of Leopold I argued that he should rule Hungary as conquered territory. At the Diet of "Royal Hungary" in Pressburg, in 1687, the Emperor promised to observe all laws and privileges. Nonetheless, hereditary succession of the Habsburgs was recognized, and the nobles' right of resistance was abrogated. In 1690 Leopold began redistributing lands freed from the Turks. Protestant nobles and all other Hungarians thought disloyal by the Habsburgs lost their estates, which were given to foreigners. Vienna controlled the foreign affairs, defense, tariffs, and other functions.
In the next few years, all of the former Hungarian lands, except areas near Timişoara (Temesvár), were taken from the Turks. In the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz these territorial changes were officially recognized, and in 1718 the entire Kingdom of Hungary was removed from Ottoman rule.
As a consequence of the constant warfare between Hungarians and Ottoman Turks, population growth was stunted and the network of medieval settlements with their urbanized bourgeois inhabitants perished. The 150 years of Turkish wars fundamentally changed the ethnic composition of Hungary. As a result of demographic losses including deportations and massacres, the number of ethnic Hungarians in existence at the end of the Turkish period was substantially diminished
Leopold's successor, King Charles III (1711–40), began building a workable relationship with Hungary after the Treaty of Szatmár. Charles asked the Budapest Diet's approval for the Pragmatic Sanction, under which the Habsburg monarch was to rule Hungary not as Emperor, but as a King subject to the restraints of Hungary's constitution and laws. He hoped that the Pragmatic Sanction would keep the Habsburg Empire intact if his daughter, Maria Theresa, succeeded him. The Diet approved the Pragmatic Sanction in 1723, and Hungary thus agreed to became a hereditary monarchy under the Habsburgs for as long as their dynasty existed.
Maria Theresa (1741–80) faced an immediate challenge from Prussia's Frederick II when she became head of the House of Habsburg. In 1741 she appeared before the Diet of Budapest holding her newborn son and entreated Hungary's nobles to support her. They stood behind her and helped secure her rule. Maria Theresa later took measures to reinforce links with Hungary's magnates. She established special schools to attract Hungarian nobles to Vienna.
Under Charles and Maria Theresa, Hungary experienced further economic decline. Centuries of Ottoman occupation and war had reduced Hungary's population drastically, and large parts of the country's southern half were almost deserted. A labor shortage developed as landowners restored their estates. In response, the Habsburgs began to colonize Hungary with large numbers of peasants from all over Europe, especially Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, and Germans. Many Jews also immigrated from Vienna and the empire's Polish lands near the end of the 20th century. Hungary's population more than tripled to 8 million between 1720 and 1787. However, only 39 percent of its people were Magyars, who lived mainly in the center of the country.
Joseph II (1780–90), a dynamic leader strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, shook Hungary from its malaise when he inherited the throne from his mother, Maria Theresa. In the framework of Josephinism, Joseph sought to centralize control of the empire and to rule it by decree as an enlightened despot. He refused to take the Hungarian coronation oath to avoid being constrained by Hungary's constitution. In 1781-82 Joseph issued a Patent of Toleration, followed by an Edict of Tolerance which granted Protestants and Orthodox Christians full civil rights and Jews freedom of worship. He decreed that German replace Latin as the empire's official language and granted the peasants the freedom to leave their holdings, to marry, and to place their children in trades.
Joseph's reforms outraged nobles and clergy of Hungary, and the peasants of country grew dissatisfied with taxes, conscription, and requisitions of supplies. Hungarians perceived Joseph's language reform as German cultural hegemony, and they reacted by insisting on the right to use their own tongue. As a result, Hungarian lesser nobles sparked a renaissance of the Hungarian language and culture, and a cult of national dance and costume flourished.
Leopold II (1790–92), re-introduced the bureaucratic technicality which viewed Hungary as a separate country under a Habsburg king. In 1791 the Diet passed Law X, which stressed Hungary's status as an independent kingdom ruled only by a king legally crowned according to Hungarian laws. Law X later became the basis for demands by Hungarian reformers for statehood in the period from 1825 to 1849. New laws again required approval of both the Habsburg king and the Diet, and Latin was restored as the official language.
Enlightened absolutism ended in Hungary under Leopold's successor, Francis I (ruled 1792–1835), who developed an almost abnormal aversion to change, bringing Hungary decades of political stagnation. In 1795 the Hungarian police arrested Ignác Martinovics and several of the country's leading thinkers for plotting a Jacobin kind of revolution to install a radical democratic, egalitarian political system in Hungary.
The first great figure of the reform era came to the fore during the 1825 convocation of the Diet. Count István Széchenyi, a magnate from one of Hungary's most powerful families, shocked the Diet when he delivered the first speech in Hungarian ever uttered in the upper chamber and backed a proposal for the creation of a Hungarian academy of arts and sciences by pledging a year's income to support it.
In 1848 Pest replaces Pozsony/Pressburg (Bratislava) as the new capital of Hungary after the former was elected capital in 1536 as a consequence of Ottoman advances.
On 15 March 1848 mass demonstrations in Pest and Buda enabled Hungarian reformists to push through a list of 12 demands. The Hungarian Diet took the opportunity presented by the revolution to enact a comprehensive legislative program of dozens of civil and human rights reforms, referred to as the April laws. Faced with revolution both at home and in Vienna, Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I first had to accept Hungarian demands. After the Austrian revolution was suppressed, emperor Franz Joseph replaced his epileptic uncle Ferdinand I as Emperor. Franz Joseph refused all reforms and started to arm against Hungary. A year later, in April 1849 the independent government of Hungary was established.
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| Flag of Hungary - The modern flag of Hungary originated from the national freedom movement from before 1848, which culminated in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Accordingly, the Hungarian flag features a tricolour element, which is based upon the French flag, as a reflection of the ideas of the French revolution; while red, white, and green are colours derived from the historical Hungarian coat of arms. Folklore of the romantic period attributed the colours to virtues: red for strength, white for faithfulness and green for hope. Alternatively, red for the blood spilled for the fatherland, white for freedom and green for the land, for the pastures of Hungary. The new constitution, which took effect on 1 January 2012, makes the ex-post interpretation mentioned first official (in the semi-official translation: strength (erő), fidelity (hűség) and hope (remény)). |
Initially, the Hungarian forces (Honvédség) defeated Austrian armies. In July 1849 Hungarian Parliament proclaimed and enacted foremost the ethnic and minority rights in the world, but it was too late: To counter the successes of the Hungarian revolutionary army, Franz Joseph asked for help from the "Gendarme of Europe," Czar Nicholas I, whose Russian armies invaded Hungary.
The huge army of the Russian Empire and the Austrian forces proved too powerful for the Hungarian army, and General Artúr Görgey surrendered in August 1849. Julius Freiherr von Haynau, the leader of the Austrian army, then became governor of Hungary for a few months and, on 6 October, ordered the execution of 13 leaders of the Hungarian army as well as Prime Minister Batthyány. Lajos Kossuth escaped into exile (The main square of Budapest with the Hungarian Parliament Building is named after Kossuth, and the Kossuth Memorial is an important scene of national ceremonies. Most cities in Hungary have streets named after Kossuth).
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| Execution of the Martyrs of Arad. Work by János Thorma (1896) |
10) Austria–Hungary (1867–1918)
Due to external and internal problems, reforms seemed inevitable to secure the integrity of the Habsburg Empire. Major military defeats, like the Battle of Königgrätz (1866) where the Prussians defeated the Austrians, forced the Emperor to concede internal reforms. Negotiations between the emperor and the Hungarian leaders were intensified and finally resulted in the Compromise of 1867, which created the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
To appease Hungarian separatism, the Emperor made a deal with Hungary, negotiated by Ferenc Deák, called the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, by which the dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary came into existence. The two realms were governed separately by two parliaments from two capitals, with a common monarch and common external and military policies.
The first Prime Minister of Hungary after the Compromise was Count Gyula Andrássy. The old Hungarian Constitution was restored, and Franz Joseph was crowned as King of Hungary.
[According to a very common legend, Count Andrássy had a long lasting romance with Queen Elisabeth (Sissy), wife of Emperor and King Franz-Josef of Austria-Hungary, and fathered their only son, Archduke Rudolf. There is no evidence for this story except for the strong sympathy and devotion of both Sissy and Rudolf towards Hungary, its culture and national customs (they were both fluent in Hungarian and regarded Hungarian poetry highly).
]
Austria-Hungary was geographically the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire (239,977 sq. m in 1905), and the third most populous (after Russia and the German Empire).
In 1849 the Széchenyi Chain Bridge (designed by the English engineer William Tierney Clark) linking Buda with Pest was opened. The bridge has the name of István Széchenyi, a major supporter of its construction, attached to it, but is most commonly known as the "Chain Bridge". At the time of its construction, it was regarded as one of the modern world's engineering wonders.
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| Széchenyi Chain Bridge |
Due to various reasons like the policy of Magyarization and the migration of millions, the census in 1910 (excluding Croatia), recorded the following distribution of population: Hungarian 54.5%, Romanian 16.1%, Slovak 10.7%, and German 10.4%. The largest religious denomination was the Roman Catholic (49.3%), followed by the Calvinist (14.3%), Greek Orthodox (12.8%) /Romanians Serbians Ruthenians), Greek Catholic (11.0%), Lutheran (7.1%), and Jewish (5.0%) religions.
Budapest was united from three cities in 1873 and seven years later the diet resolved to establish a new, representative Parliament Building, expressing the sovereignty of the nation.
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| Budapest Parlament Building |
Construction from the winning plan was started in 1885 and the building was inaugurated on the 1000th anniversary of the country in 1896, and completed in 1904. (The architect of the building went blind before its completion.). The Parliament Building is in the Gothic Revival style; it has a symmetrical facade and a central dome. The dome is Renaissance Revival architecture.
The Elisabeth Bridge was built between 1897 and 1903, amid a corruption scandal. The Buda end of Erzsébet bridge runs directly into the massive foot of Gellért Hill, necessitating a complicated arrangement of roads to connect to the bridge. The bridge was designed in such a way because a wealthy nobleman, a member of the City Council owned the particular area of the riverbank. He wanted to make a fortune by selling the piece of land for bridge construction purposes, bribing the other councilmen and engineers on purpose. He managed to sell the land at greatly inflated prices. In the era of horse-drawn carriages the geometry issue was not considered significant and the resulting cost overruns were covered up, therefore no prosecution took place. In recent decades, many motorists have been permanently injured or killed in the sharp turn that immediately follows the bridgehead. After an accident in 2004, which killed a family, a speed limit of 40 km/h was posted for the west-bound lanes. The original Erzsébet Bridge, along with many other bridges all over the country, was blown up at the end of World War II by retreating Wehrmacht sappers. This is the only bridge in Budapest which could not be rebuilt in its original form.
11) World War I and Treaty of Trianon
After the Assassination in Sarajevo the Hungarian Prime Minister, István Tisza and his cabinet tried to avoid the breaking out of a war in Europe, but his diplomatic attempts remained unsuccessful. Austria–Hungary drafted 9 million (fighting forces: 7,8 million) soldiers in World War I (4 million from Kingdom of Hungary). In World War I, Austria–Hungary was fighting on the side of Germany, Bulgaria and Turkey. The military forces of Austria-Hungary remained largely unified over the course of the war, in spite of their multi-ethnic nature and some expectations to the contrary.
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| European military alliances shortly after outbreak of war |
The Central Powers conquered Serbia and Romania proclaimed war. The Central Powers later conquered Southern Romania and the Romanian capital Bucharest. On November 1916 Emperor Franz Joseph died.
Out of over 8 million men mobilized in Austria-Hungary, more than one million died during the course of the war. In Hungarian areas, this meant a death rate of twenty-eight per thousand persons - a level of loss exceeded within Austria-Hungary only by German Austrians. In comparison of the total army, Hungary's loss ratio was more than any other nations of Austria-Hungary. There could be two possible causes: Hungary was more an agricultural country, where it is easier to mobilize forces, rather than from more industrialized territories (i.e. Bohemia), and secondly, the Hungarian soldiers were considered to be more trustworthy and disciplined than soldiers from other ethnic groups.
With great difficulty, the Central Powers stopped and repelled the attacks of the Russian Empire. The Eastern front of the Allied (Entente) Powers completely collapsed. Austria-Hungary withdrew from defeated countries. On the Italian front, the Austro-Hungarian army could not make more successful progress against Italy after January 1918. Despite great Eastern successes, Germany suffered complete defeat in the more determinant Western front.
With the collapse of the army, Austria-Hungary also collapsed. In the capital cities (Vienna and Budapest), the Austrian and the Hungarian leftist liberal movements (the maverick parties) and their leader politicians supported and strengthened the separatism of ethnic minorities. Austria-Hungary signed general armistice in Padua on 3 November 1918. In October 1918, the personal union with Austria was dissolved.The ethnic groups of Kingdom of Hungary called for independent nation-states, but this totally disconsidered the Hungarian population and national interests. István Tisza was assassinated on 31 October 1918 after several murder attempts.
As the Habsburg Empire disintegrated, the new state of Czechoslovakia was declared on 28 October 1918 in Prague. The leaders of Pressburg (where the majority of the population was German, the second biggest group was Hungarian) wanted to prevent Pozsony from becoming part of Czechoslovakia and declared the town a free town, renaming it Wilsonovo mesto (Wilson City) after the then President of the US, Woodrow Wilson. However, the city became part of Czechoslovakia after it was taken by the Czechoslovak Legions on 1 January 1919. The government moved to the city on 4–5 February. On 12 February, the German and Hungarian population, who made out more 80% of the city, demonstrated against the Czechoslovak occupation in Vásár square (now SNP Square). The Czechoslovak troops opened fire, shooting at the demonstrators, leaving 9 people dead and 23 wounded. On 27 March, the town's official new name becomes "Bratislava" – instead of "Prešporok"(/Pressburg) (Slovak) / "Pressburg" (German) / "Pozsony" (Hungarian).
In the Treaty of Trianon at the Palace in Versailles signed on June 4, 1920, Hungary was forced to lose two-thirds of its territory, more than half of its population, more territory than any other country at that time (excluding colonies). Eight million Hungarians left in Hungary and more than 3 million Hungarians were stranded outside of the newly established borders. New nations, such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were established and some already existing countries have extended their territories (Italy and Romania). The southern part of Hungary was given to Yugoslavia and renamed Vojvodina. Bosnia-Herzegovina was also incorporated in Yugoslavia and Croatia became part of Yugoslavia also, after a 900 years federation with Hungary. More than 104.000 square km — the whole of Eastern Hungary and Transylvania — were awarded by the Entente to Romania, more than what was left for Hungary itself 93.030sq.km. The northern part of Hungary was annexed by the newly created Czechoslovakia.
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| Hungary's Protest Poster over Trianon Treaty |
12) Hungarian Soviet Republic
Two national traumas immediately following the First World War profoundly shaped the spirit and future of the Hungarian nation. The first was the loss, as dictated by the Entente powers, of large portions of Hungarian territory that had bordered other countries. The second trauma in some sense sprang from the first: in March 1919, after the first proto-democratic efforts at government in Hungary faltered, Communist Béla Kun seized power in the capital of Budapest.
The Hungarian Soviet Republic was the successor of the Hungarian Democratic Republic and lasted only from 21 March until 1 August 1919. The state was led by Béla Kun and was not recognized by France, the UK or the US. It was the second communist state in the world to be formed after the October Revolution in Russia brought the Bolsheviks to power. Following Lenin's model, but without the direct participation of the workers' councils (soviets) from which it took its name, the newly-united Socialist Party created a government called the Revolutionary Governing Council, which proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic and dismissed President Károlyi on 21 March.
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| During the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, the Heroes Square of Budapest was completely covered by red cloth and at the base of the obelisk, a new statue was erected: Marx with a worker and a peasant. The statues of Hungarian national heroes were toppled. The Hungarian national symbols were banned; Hungarian historic monuments were destroyed in the name of internationalism. |
In addition, a group of 200 armed men—known as the Lenin Boys—formed a mobile detachment under the leadership of József Cserny. The Lenin Boys, as well as other similar groups and agitators, killed and terrorised many people (e.g. armed with hand grenades and using their rifles' butts they disbanded religious ceremonies).They executed victims without trial.This caused a number of conflicts with the local population, some of which turned violent.
In late May, after the Entente military representative demanded more territorial concessions from Hungary, Kun attempted to fulfill his promise to restore Hungary's borders. The Hungarian Red Army achieved some military successes: under the lead of Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, it ousted Czech troops from the north, and planned to march against the Romanian army in the east.
The situation of the Hungarian Communists began to deteriorate when, after a failed coup by the Social Democrats on 24 June, the new Communist government of Antal Dovcsák resorted to large-scale reprisals. Revolutionary tribunals ordered executions of people who were suspected of having been involved in the attempted coup. This became known as the "Red Terror", and greatly reduced domestic support for the government.
The Hungarian Soviet found it increasingly difficult to fight Czechoslovakia and later Romania with the small volunteer force, and support for both the war and the Communist Party was waning at home, partly due to the most dedicated Communists having volunteered for combat. Kun then unsuccessfully turned the Hungarian Red Army on the Romanians, who broke through the weak Hungarian lines on 30 July.
Romanian forces entered Budapest on 6 August, putting an end to the Hungarian Soviet Republic.Miklos Horthy was elected Regent and was empowered, among other things, to appoint Hungary's Prime Minister, veto legislation, convene or dissolve the parliament, and command the armed forces.
The Romanian army retreated from Budapest on 14 November, leaving Horthy to enter the city, where in a fiery speech he accused the capital's citizens of betraying Hungary by supporting Bolshevism.
" ...The nation of the Hungarians loved and admired Budapest, which became its polluter in the last years. Here, on the banks of the Danube, I arraign her. This city has disowned her thousand years of tradition, she has dragged the Holy Crown and the national colours in the dust, she has clothed herself in red rags. The finest of the nation she threw into dungeons or drove into exile. She laid in ruin our property and wasted our wealth. Yet the nearer we approached to this city, the more rapidly did the ice in our hearts melt. We are now ready to forgive her."
13) Kingdom of Hungary and WW II
Horthy appointed Count István Bethlen Prime Minister in 1921. As Prime Minister, Bethlen dominated Hungarian politics between 1921 and 1931. He fashioned a political machine by amending the electoral law, providing jobs in the expanding bureaucracy to his supporters, and manipulating elections in rural areas. Bethlen restored order to the country by giving the radical counter-revolutionaries payoffs and government jobs in exchange for ceasing their campaign of terror against Jews and leftists.
Bethlen brought Hungary into the League of Nations in 1922 and out of international isolation by signing a treaty of friendship with Italy in 1927. The revision of the Treaty of Trianon rose to the top of Hungary's political agenda and the strategy employed by Bethlen consisted of strengthening the economy and building relations with stronger nations.
The Great Depression induced a drop in the standard of living and the political mood of the country shifted further towards the right. In 1932 Horthy appointed a new Prime Minister, Gyula Gömbös, that changed the course of Hungarian policy towards closer cooperation with Germany and started an effort to magyarize the few remaining ethnic minorities in Hungary.
Gömbös signed a trade agreement with Germany that drew Hungary's economy out of depression but made Hungary dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and markets. Adolf Hitler appealed to Hungarian desires for territorial revisionism, while extreme right wing organizations, like the Arrow Cross Party, increasingly embraced extreme Nazi policies, including those relating to the suppression and victimization of Jews. The government passed the First Jewish Law in 1938. The law established a quota system to limit Jewish involvement in the Hungarian economy
Parliament, under the new government of Pál Teleki, approved the Second Jewish Law in 1939, which greatly restricted Jewish involvement in the economy, culture and society and, significantly, defined Jews by race instead of religion. This definition significantly and negatively altered the status of those who had formerly converted from Judaism to Christianity.
With the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Hungary expanded its borders towards neighbouring countries at the outset of World War II. This started under the Munich Agreement (1938), and the two Vienna Awards (1939 and 1940), and was continued with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia (occupation of northern Carpathian Ruthenia and eastern Slovakia) and the Axis Invasion of Yugoslavia. This territorial expansion was short-lived, since the post-war Hungarian boundaries agreed on at the Treaty of Paris in 1947 were nearly identical to those of 1920 (with three villages – Jarovce, Rusovce, and Čunovo – transferred to Czechoslovakia).
On 20 November 1940 under pressure from Germany, Pál Teleki affiliated Hungary with the Tripartite Pact. In December 1940, he also signed an ephemeral "Treaty of Eternal Friendship" with Yugoslavia. A few months later, after a Yugoslavian coup threatened the success of the planned German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), Hitler asked the Hungarians to support his invasion of Yugoslavia. He promised to return some former Hungarian territories lost after World War I in exchange for cooperation.
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| Pál Teleki with Adolf Hitler, when Hungary joined the Tripartite Pact on 20 November 1940 |
"We broke our word, - out of cowardice [...] The nation feels it, and we have thrown away its honor. We have allied ourselves to scoundrels [...] We will become body-snatchers! A nation of trash. I did not hold you back. I am guilty"
To most Hungarians, Teleki was a national hero.The international community however views him as a controversial figure as reflected in a public dispute covered in the Hungarian media during early 2004 over a statue of him, marking the 63rd anniversary of his death, to be displayed in Budapes
In June 1941, the Hungarian government finally yielded to Hitler's demands that the nation contribute to the Axis war effort. On 27 June, Hungary became part of Operation Barbarossa and declared war on the Soviet Union. The Hungarians sent in troops and materiel only four days after Hitler began his invasion of the Soviet Union.
The first massacre of Jewish people from Hungarian territory took place in August 1941, when government officials ordered the deportation of Jews without Hungarian citizenship (principally refugees from other Nazi-occupied countries) to Ukraine. Roughly 18,000–20,000 of these deportees were slaughtered by Friedrich Jeckeln and his SS troops; only 2,000–3,000 survived. This event, in which the slaughter of Jews numbered for the first time in the tens of thousands, is considered the first large-scale massacre of the Holocaust. Because of the objections of Hungary's leadership, the deportations were halted
By early 1942, Horthy was already seeking to put some distance between himself and Hitler's regime. That March, he dismissed the pro-German prime minister László Bárdossy, and replaced him with Miklós Kállay, a moderate whom Horthy expected to loosen Hungary's ties to Germany. Then, in January 1943, Hungary's enthusiasm for the war effort, never especially high, suffered a tremendous blow. The Soviet army, in the full momentum of its triumphant turnaround after the Battle of Stalingrad, punched through Romanian troops at a bend in the Don River and virtually obliterated the Second Hungarian Army in a few days' fighting. In this single action, Hungarian combat fatalities jumped by 80,000.
By 1944, the Axis was losing the war, and the Red Army was at Hungary's borders.
An enraged Hitler summoned Horthy to a conference in Klessheim (today in Austria). He pressured Horthy to make greater contributions to the war effort, and again commanded him to assist in the killing of more of Hungary's Jews. Horthy now permitted the deportation of a large number of Jews (the generally accepted figure is 100,000) to extermination camps, but would not go further. The conference was a ruse. As Horthy was returning home on 19 March the Wehrmacht invaded and occupied Hungary. Horthy was told he could only stay in office if he fired Kállay and appointed a new government that would fully cooperate with Hitler and his plenipotentiary in Budapest, Edmund Veesenmayer.
Horthy acquiesced and appointed his ambassador to Germany, General Döme Sztójay, as prime minister. The Germans originally wanted Horthy to reappoint Béla Imrédy (who had been prime minister from 1938 to 1939), but Horthy had enough influence to get Veesenmayer to accept Sztójay instead. Contrary to Horthy's hopes, Sztójay's government eagerly proceeded to participate in the Holocaust.
The chief agents of this collaboration were Andor Jaross, the Minister of the Interior, and his two rabidly anti-Semitic state secretaries, László Endre and László Baky (later to be known as the "Deportation Trio"). The order to round up the Hungarian Jews and confine them in ghettos was signed by Lazlo Baky of the Royal Hungarian government on April 7, 1944. On 9 April, Prime Minister Sztójay and the Germans obligated Hungary to place 300,000 Jewish people at the "disposal" of the Reich--in effect, sentencing most of Hungary's remaining Jews to death. Five days later, on 14 April Endre, Baky, and SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann commenced the deportation of the remaining Hungarian Jews. The Yellow Star and Ghettoization laws, and deportation were accomplished in less than 8 weeks with the enthusiastic help of the new Hungarian government and authorities, particularly the gendarmerie (csendőrség). The deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began on 15 May 1944 and continued at a rate of 12,000 a day until 9 July.
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| The Auschwitz Album is the only surviving visual evidence of the process leading to the mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is a unique document and was donated to Yad Vashem by Lilly Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier. The photos show the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia and they were taken at the end of May or beginning of June 1944, either by Ernst Hofmann or by Bernhard Walter, two SS men whose task was to take ID photos and fingerprints of the inmates (not of the Jews who were sent directly to the gas chambers). |
Dear Sztójay: I was aware that the Government in the given forced situation has to take many steps that I do not consider correct, and for which I can not take responsibility. Among these matters is the handling of the Jewish question in a manner that does not correspond to the Hungarian mentality, Hungarian conditions, and, for the matter, Hungarian interests. It is clear to everyone that what among these were done by Germans or by the insistence of the Germans was not in my power to prevent, so in these matters I was forced into passivity. As such, I was not informed in advance, or I am not fully informed now, however, I have heard recently that in many cases in inhumaneness and brutality we exceeded the Germans. I demand that the handling of the Jewish affairs in the Ministry of Interior be taken out of the hands of Deputy Minister László Endre. Further more, László Baky's assignment to the management of the police forces should be terminated as soon as possible
World leaders, including Pope Pius XII (25 June), President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 26 June, and King Gustaf V of Sweden on 30 June, subsequently pleaded with Horthy to use his influence to stop the deportations. Roosevelt specifically threatened military retaliation if the transports were not ceased. On 2 July, Allied bombers executed the heaviest bombings inflicted on Hungary during the war. By that time, 437,000 Jews had been sent to Auschwitz, most of them to their deaths. Horthy was informed about the number of the deported Jews some days later: "approximately 400,000".
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| The Raoul Wallenberg Emlékpark (memory park) in the rear courtyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue holds the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs — at least 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Made by Imre Varga, it resembles a weeping willow whose leaves bear inscriptions with the names of victims. At the same place there is also a memorial to Wallenberg and other Righteous Among the Nations, among them: Swiss Vice-consul Carl Lutz; Angel Sanz Briz, the Spanish Ambassador in Hungary; Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian man who, with a strategic escamotage, declared himself the Spanish consul, releasing documents of protection and current passports to Jews in Budapest without distinction (he saved five thousand); Mons. Angelo Rotta, an Italian Prelate Bishop and Apostolic Nuncio of the State of Vatican City in Budapest, which issued protective sheets, misrepresentations of baptism (to save them from forced labor) and Vatican passports to Jews, without distinction of any kind present in Budapest (saving fifteen thousand), who saved, with his secretary Mons. Gennaro Verolino tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. |
By December 1944, Budapest was under siege by Soviet forces. The Arrow Cross leadership retreated across the Danube into the hills of Buda in late January, and by February the city surrendered to the Soviet forces.
In 1944, towards the end of World War II, Budapest was partly destroyed by British and American air raids. From 24 December 1944 to 13 February 1945, the city was besieged during the Battle of Budapest. Budapest suffered major damage caused by the attacking Soviet and Romanian troops and the defending German and Hungarian troops. All bridges were destroyed by the Germans. According to researcher and author Krisztián Ungváry, some 38,000 civilians were killed during the siege: about 13,000 from military action and 25,000 from starvation, disease and other causes. Included in the latter figure are about 15,000 Jews, largely victims of executions by Hungarian Arrow Cross Party militia. When the Soviets finally claimed victory, they initiated an orgy of violence, including the wholesale theft of anything they could lay their hands on, random executions and mass rape. An estimated 50,000 women and girls were raped,348–350 although estimates vary from 5,000 to 200,000 Hungarian girls were kidnapped and taken to Red Army quarters, where they were imprisoned, repeatedly raped and sometimes murdered.
Heavy fights and artillery fire rendered the Buda palace into ruins. All the furniture vanished, roofs and vaults collapsed, and the southern and western wings were burned out. The destruction was comparable to that of the great siege of 1686.
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| Budapest January 1945 |
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| Hungarian Royal Palace 1945 |
On 17 December 1945, Horthy was released from Nuremberg prison and allowed to rejoin his family in the German town of Weilheim, in Bavaria. In March 1948, Horthy returned to testify at the Ministries Trial, the last of the twelve U.S.-run Nuremberg Trials; he testified against Edmund Veesenmayer, the Nazi administrator who had controlled Hungary during the deportations to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944.Veesenmayer was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, but was released in 1951.
He never lost his deep contempt for Communism, and in his memoirs he blamed Hungary's alliance with the Axis on the threat posed by the "Asiatic barbarians" of the Soviet Union. He railed against the influence that the Allies' victory had given to Stalin's totalitarian state.
After World War II, the Czechoslovak government with the Beneš decrees granted the forcible "population transfer" (deportation) in 1945–47 of about 2.6 million former Czechoslovak citizens of German and Hungarian ethnicity to Germany, Austria and Hungary.
The war left Hungary devastated, destroying over 60% of the economy and causing significant loss of life. In addition to the over 600,000 Hungarian Jews killed, as many as 280,000 other Hungarians were raped, murdered and executed or deported for slave labor by Czechoslovaks, Soviet Red Army troops, and Yugoslav. For instance in Bratislava (Czechoslovakia) Slovakian soldiers broke into the flats of Hungarians who were 20% of the city population and allowed them half an hour to pack. 90% of Hungarian population was transferred to Petržalka having about 20,000 people in detention camps between inhuman circumstances.
14) Communism Era
In 1949, Hungary was declared a communist People's Republic. The new Communist government considered the buildings like the Buda Castle symbols of the former regime, and during the 1950s the palace was gutted and all the interiors were destroyed. Only the Palatinal Crypt survived the destruction of World War II and was not demolished in the subsequent decades of rebuilding (Palatines were representatives of the monarchs as from 1723 they acted as vice-regent (viceroy)).
On 18 August 1949 the parliament passed the new constitution of Hungary (1949/XX.) modeled after the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union. The name of the country changed to the People's Republic of Hungary, "the country of the workers and peasants" where "every authority is held by the working people". Socialism was declared as the main goal of the nation. A new coat-of-arms was adopted with Communist symbols, such the red star, hammer and sickle.
Mátyás Rákosi, who as a chief secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party was de facto the leader of Hungary, possessed practically unlimited power and demanded complete obedience from fellow members of the Party, including his two most trusted colleagues, Ernő Gerő and Mihály Farkas. All three of them returned to Hungary from Moscow, where they spent long years and had close ties to high-ranking Soviet leaders there.
Their most influential leader, László Rajk, who was minister of foreign affairs at the time, was arrested in May 1949. He was accused of rather surreal crimes, such as spying for Western imperialist powers and for Yugoslavia
At his trial in September 1949 he made a forced confession and He also admitted that he had taken part in a murder plot against Mátyás Rákosi and Ernő Gerő. Rajk was found guilty and executed.
The showcase trial of Rajk is considered the beginning of the worst period of the Rákosi dictatorship. Mátyás Rákosi now attempted to impose totalitarian rule on Hungary. The centrally orchestrated personality cult focused on him and Joseph Stalin soon reached unprecedented proportions. Rákosi's images and busts were everywhere, all public speakers were required to glorify his wisdom and leadership.
An estimated 2,000 people were executed and over 100,000 were imprisoned. Some 44,000 ended up in forced-labor camps, where many died due to horrible work conditions, poor food and practically no medical care. Another 15,000 people, mostly former aristocrats, industrialists, military generals and other upper-class people were deported from the capital and other cities to countryside villages where they were forced to do hard agricultural labor. These policies were opposed by some members of the Hungarian Working People's Party and around 200,000 were expelled by Rákosi from the organization.
Rákosi had great difficulties managing the economy and the people of Hungary saw living standards fall. Although his government became increasingly unpopular, he had a firm grip on power until Stalin died on 5 March 1953 when a confused power struggle began in Moscow. Some of the Soviet leaders perceived the unpopularity of the Hungarian regime and ordered Rákosi to give up his position as Prime Minister. Rákosi gave up his position as Prime Minister in favor of another former Communist-in-exile in Moscow, Imre Nagy, who was Rákosi's chief opponent in the party. Rákosi, however, retained his position as general secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party and over the next three years the two men became involved in a bitter struggle for power.
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| Imre Nagy |
As Hungary's new Prime Minister, Imre Nagy slightly relaxed state control over the economy and the mass media and encouraged public discussion on political and economic reform. In order to improve the general supply, he increase the production and distribution of consumer goods and reduced the tax and quota burdens of the peasants.
The fall of Rákosi was followed by a flurry of reform agitation both inside and outside the Party. László Rajk and his fellow victims of the showcase trial of 1949 were cleared of all charges, and on 6 October 1956, the Party authorized a reburial, which was attended by tens of thousands of people and became a silent demonstration against the crimes of the regime.
On 23 October 1956 a peaceful student demonstration in Budapest produced a list of 16 demands for reform and greater political freedom. As the students attempted to broadcast these demands, police made some arrests and tried to disperse the crowd with tear gas. When the students attempted to free those arrested, the police opened fire on the crowd, setting off a chain of events which led to the Hungarian Revolution.
The Central Committee of the Hungarian Working People's Party responded to these developments by requesting Soviet military intervention and deciding that Imre Nagy should become head of a new government. Soviet tanks entered Budapest at 2 a.m. on 24 October.
Imre Nagy now went on Radio Kossuth and announced he had taken over the leadership of the Government as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.He also promised "the far-reaching democratization of Hungarian public life, the realization of a Hungarian road to socialism in accord with our own national characteristics, and the realization of our lofty national aim: the radical improvement of the workers' living conditions."
Nagy's most controversial decision took place on 1 November when he announced that Hungary intended to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact as well as proclaiming Hungarian neutrality he asked the United Nations to become involved in the country's dispute with the Soviet Union.
On 3 November Nagy announced details of his coalition government. It included Communists (János Kádár, Georg Lukács, Géza Losonczy), three members of the Smallholders Party (Zoltán Tildy, Béla Kovács and István Szabó), three Social Democrats (Anna Kéthly, Gyula Keleman, Joseph Fischer), and two Petőfi Peasants (István Bibó and Ferenc Farkas). Pál Maléter was appointed minister of defence.
Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, became increasingly concerned about these developments and on 4 November 1956 he sent the Red Army into Hungary. Soviet tanks immediately captured Hungary's airfields, highway junctions and bridges. Fighting took place all over the country but the Hungarian forces were quickly defeated.
During the Hungarian Uprising an estimated 20,000 people were killed, nearly all during the Soviet intervention. Imre Nagy was arrested and replaced by the Soviet loyalist, János Kádár. Nagy was imprisoned until being executed in 1958. Other government ministers or supporters who were either executed or died in captivity included Pál Maléter, Géza Losonczy, Attila Szigethy and Miklós Gimes.
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| 1956 Hungarian uprising |
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| The Gloria Victis Memorial created in honor of the casualties of universal communism is situated adjacent to the cemetery of the town of Csömör near the North Eastern boundary of Budapest. The memorial, being the first on this subject in the world, was consecrated and blessed on 21 October 2006 marking the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. A summary in three languages of the Resolution 1481 (2006) of the Council of Europe entitled The Necessity of International Condemnation of the Crimes Committed by Totalitarian Communist Regimes was carved on the back of the “world wall”. |
After 1956 János Kádár, the Premier of Hungary, led an attack against revolutionaries. 21,600 mavericks (democrats, liberals, reformist Communists alike) were imprisoned, 13,000 interned, and 400 killed. In 1966, the Central Committee approved the "New Economic Mechanism", through which it sought to rebuild the economy, increase productivity, make Hungary more competitive in world markets, and create prosperity to ensure political stability. Over the next two decades of relative domestic quiet, Kádár's government responded alternately to pressures for minor political and economic reforms as well as to counter-pressures from reform opponents. By the early 1980s, it had achieved some lasting economic reforms and limited political liberalization and pursued a foreign policy that encouraged more trade with the West. Nevertheless, the New Economic Mechanism led to mounting foreign debt that was incurred in order to shore up unprofitable industries.
Hungary's transition to a Western-style democracy was one of the smoothest among the former Soviet bloc. By late 1988, activists within the party and bureaucracy and Budapest-based intellectuals were increasing pressure for change.
15) Third Republic (since 1989)
Hungary's transition to a Western-style democracy was one of the smoothest among the former Soviet bloc. By late 1988, activists within the party and bureaucracy and Budapest-based intellectuals were increasing pressure for change.
National unity culminated in June 1989 as the country reburied Imre Nagy, his associates, and, symbolically, all other victims of the 1956 revolution. A national round table, comprising representatives of the new parties and some recreated old parties—such as the Smallholders and Social Democrats—the Communist Party, and different social groups, met in the late summer of 1989 to discuss major changes to the Hungarian constitution in preparation for free elections and the transition to a fully free and democratic political system.
In October 1989, the Communist Party convened its last congress and re-established itself as the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). In a historic session on 16–20 October 1989, the Parliament adopted legislation providing for multiparty parliamentary elections and a direct presidential election. The legislation transformed Hungary from a People's Republic into the Republic of Hungary, guaranteed human and civil rights, and created an institutional structure that ensures separation of powers among the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government.
In the May 1994 election, the Socialists won a plurality of votes and 54% of the seats (with the new Prime Minister, Gyula Horn) after a campaign focused largely on economic issues and the substantial decline in living standards since 1990.
In 1998, Viktor Orbán leard of the Fidesz center right party formed a successful coalition with the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and the Independent Smallholders' Party (FKGP) and won the 1998 parliamentary elections with 42% of the national vote. Orbán became the second youngest Prime Minister of Hungary at the age of 35 (after András Hegedüs), serving between 1998 and 2002.
In the elections of April 2006, Hungary decided to re-elect its government for the first time since 1989, though with a new Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány. The left-wing strengthened its position, with the coalition of the Social Democrats (MSZP) and the Liberals (SZDSZ) reaching 54 percent of the vote
In the first round of the 2010 spring general elections, the center-right Fidesz received 2.704 million votes, i.e. the votes of 33.69% of the 8.026 million eligible voters or 52.73% of the 5.128 million actual voters for party lists, which resulted in more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. Fidesz took 263 seats, the Socialists 59. This result gave Orbán enough authority to change the Constitution. As a result, Orbán's government added an article in support of traditional marriage in the constitution, and a controversial electoral reform, which lowered the number of seats in the Parliament of Hungary from 386 to 199.
After the 2014 parliamentary election, Fidesz won a majority, garnering 133 of the 199 seats in the National Assembly. While he won a large majority, he garnered 44.54% of the national vote, down from 52.73% in 2010.
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Some famous Hungarian people:
- Franz Liszt (1811 – 1886), officially Franz Ritter von Liszt,was a 19th-century Catholic Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, teacher, and Franciscan. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age, and in the 1840s he was considered to be the greatest pianist of all time.
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| Franz Liszt by Henri Lehmann (1839) |
- Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), a Jewish Hungarian-born American creator of the Pulitzer Prize (1917). Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer gave money in his will to Columbia University to launch a journalism school and establish the Prize. It allocated $250,000 to the prize and scholarships.
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| Portrait of Joseph Pulitzer by John Singer Sargent, 1909 |
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| Harry Houdini 1909 poster |
- Béla Lugosi (1882-1956) was a Hungarian-American actor, who is best known for playing the character Dracula in the 1931 film and for his roles in various other Universal monster and horror films.
- John von Neumann (1903-1957), a Catholic Hungarian-American mathematician and a founding figure in computing. He is the father of Binary Code and the Stored Program Computer that are the keys for modern computer programming, and game theory.
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| Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and John von Neumann with the world's first mainframe computer built in the US, 1952. |
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| Dennis Gabor |
- Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995): a Hungarian-American composer trained in Germany (1925-1931), and active in France (1931-1935), the United Kingdom (1935-1940), and the United States (1940-1995), with extensive sojourns in Italy from 1953. Best known for his nearly one hundred film scores, he nevertheless maintained a steadfast allegiance to absolute concert music throughout what he called his "double life. Miklós Rózsa was born in Budapest and was introduced to classical and folk music by his mother, Regina Berkovits, a pianist who had studied with pupils of Franz Liszt, and his father, Gyula, a well-to-do industrialist and landowner who loved Hungarian folk music. His notable Hollywood career earned him considerable fame, earning 17 Oscar nominations including 3 wins for Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947), and Ben-Hur (1959), while his concert works were championed by such major artists as Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, and János Starker.
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| Miklós Rózsa |
- Estée Lauder (1908-2004): She was a Hungarian American immigrant with a French Catholic mother and Jewish father. She was the co-founder, along with her husband, Joseph Lauter (later Lauder), of Estée Lauder Companies, her eponymous cosmetics company. Lauder was born Josephine Esther Mentzer in 1908, in Corona, Queens. Estée controls 45 percent of the cosmetics market in US department stores under well recognized brand names: Estee Lauder, Aramis, Clinique, Prescriptives, Origins, M.A.C., and Bobbi Brown essentials, Tommy Hilfiger, Jane, Donna Karan Cosmetics, Aveda, Stila, Jo Malone and Kate Spade.
- Robert Capa (1913-1954), a Jewish Hungarian war photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. Capa is known for redefining wartime photojournalism. His work came from the trenches as opposed to the more arms-length perspective that was the precedent. He was famed for saying, "If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough".
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| Robert Capa during the Spanish civil war, May 1937. Photo by Gerda Taro. |
- Gyula Grosics (1926-2014): was a Hungarian football goalkeeper who played 86 times for the Hungary national football team and was part of the "Golden Team" of the 1950s. Regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time, he was thought to be the first goalkeeper to play as the sweeper-keeper. Grosics was nicknamed "Black Panther" (Hungarian: Fekete Párduc), because he wore black clothing while playing
- Ferenc Puskás (1927-2006) was a Hungarian footballer and manager, widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.
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| FIFA President Jules Rimet pays homage to two great Midas-players, the greatest player in the world, Ferenc Puskás and Gyula Grosics, the greatest goalkeeper in the world prior to the kickoff at the 1954 World Cup Final. Puskás became an Olympic champion in 1952 and led his nation to the Swiss final of the 1954 World Cup (West Germany 3 - Hungary 2) where he was named the tournament's best player. |
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| Erno Rubik With His Cube |
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| Charles Simonyi |
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| Franz Liszt |
He appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg (Hungarian: Pozsony; present-day Bratislava, Slovakia) in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franz's musical education abroad.
In Vienna, Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, who was then music director of the Viennese court. He was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven and Schubert.
After his father's death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris; for the next five years he was to live with his mother in a small apartment. To earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to cover long distances. Because of this, he kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking and drinking—all habits he would continue throughout his life.
During this period, Liszt read widely to overcome his lack of a general education, and he soon came into contact with many of the leading authors and artists of his day, including Victor Hugo, Alphonse de Lamartine and Heinrich Heine.
After attending an April 20, 1832, charity concert, for the victims of a Parisian cholera epidemic, by Niccolò Paganini,Liszt became determined to become as great a virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin. Paris in the 1830s had become the nexus for pianistic activities, with dozens of pianists dedicated to perfection at the keyboard
In 1833, Liszt began his relationship with the Countess Marie d'Agoult (who entered into an early marriage of convenience with Charles Louis Constant d'Agoult).
In 1835 the countess left her husband and family to join Liszt in Geneva; their daughter Blandine was born there on December 18. Liszt taught at the newly founded Geneva Conservatory, wrote a manual of piano technique (later lost). D'Agoult had three children with Liszt; however, she and Liszt did not marry, maintaining their independent views and other differences while Liszt was busy composing and touring throughout Europe.
They had threed children:
Blandine (married prime minister Emile Ollivier but died at age of 26)
Cosima (who married Hans von Bülow and then composer Richard Wagner),
Daniel (a promising pianist and gifted scholard who died of tuberculosis at the age of 20)
For the next eight years Liszt continued to tour Europe, spending holidays with the countess and their children on the island of Nonnenwerth on the Rhine in summers 1841 and 1843. In spring 1844 the couple finally separated. This was Liszt's most brilliant period as a concert pianist.
The largest and best-known portion of Liszt's music is his original piano work. His thoroughly revised masterwork, "Années de pèlerinage" ("Years of Pilgrimage") includes arguably his most provocative and stirring pieces. Much of it derives from his earlier work, Album d'un voyageur, his first major published piano cycle, which was composed between 1835 and 1838 and published in 1842.
Three Concert Études are a set of three piano études by Franz Liszt, composed between 1845–49 and published in Paris as Trois caprices poétiques with its three individual titles as they are known today. The third of the Three Concert Études is in D-flat major, and is usually known as Un sospiro (Italian for "A sigh").
In February 1847, Liszt played in Kiev. There he met the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who was to become one of the most significant people in the rest of his life. She persuaded him to concentrate on composition.
Composed in 1847 and dedicated to Count László Teleki, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 was first published as a piano solo in 1851 by Senff and Ricordi. Its immediate success and popularity on the concert stage soon led to an orchestrated version, arranged by the composer in collaboration with Franz Doppler, and published by Schuberth. The Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C-sharp minor is also well-known due to its frequent use in animated cartoons.
The following year, Liszt took up a long-standing invitation of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia to settle at Weimar, where he had been appointed Kapellmeister Extraordinaire in 1842, remaining there until 1861. Princess Carolyne lived with Liszt during his years in Weimar. She eventually wished to marry Liszt, but since she had been previously married and her husband, Russian military officer Prince Nikolaus zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Ludwigsburg (1812–1864), was still alive, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid. After huge efforts and a monstrously intricate process, she was temporarily successful (September 1860). It was planned that the couple would marry in Rome, on October 22, 1861, Liszt's 50th birthday. Liszt having arrived in Rome on October 21, 1861, the Princess nevertheless declined, by the late evening, to marry him. It appears that both her husband and the Tsar of Russia had managed to quash permission for the marriage at the Vatican.
Liebesträume (German for Dreams of Love) is a set of three solo piano works (S/G541) by Franz Liszt, published in 1850. Liszt called each of the three pieces Liebesträume;but, often they are referred to incorrectly in the singular as Liebestraum (especially No. 3, the most famous of the three). Originally the three Liebesträume (Notturni) were conceived as songs after poems by Ludwig Uhland and Ferdinand Freiligrath.
La campanella (Italian: the little bell) is the nickname given to the third of six Grandes études de Paganini ("Grand Paganini Études"), S. 141 (1851), composed by Franz Liszt. This piece is a revision of an earlier version from 1838, the Études d'exécution transcendente d'après Paganini, S. 140.
The Piano Sonata in B minor (German: Klaviersonate h-Moll), S.178, is a sonata for solo piano by Franz Liszt, published in 1854 with a dedication to Robert Schumann. It is often considered Liszt's greatest composition for solo piano.
The 1860s were a period of great sadness in Liszt's private life. On December 13, 1859, he lost his son Daniel, and on September 11, 1862, his daughter Blandine also died. In letters to friends, Liszt afterwards announced that he would retreat to a solitary living. He found it at the monastery Madonna del Rosario, just outside Rome, where on June 20, 1863, he took up quarters in a small, Spartan apartment. He had on June 23, 1857, already joined a Franciscan order.
In 1866, he composed the Hungarian coronation ceremony for Franz Joseph and Elisabeth of Bavaria. (Latin: Missa coronationalis) The Mass was first performed on June 8, 1867 at the coronation ceremony in the Matthias Church by Buda Castle in a six-section form.
Liszt fell down the stairs of a Hotel in Weimar on July 2, 1881. Though friends and colleagues had noted swelling in his feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month (an indication of possible congestive heart failure).
He died in Bayreuth, Germany, on July 31, 1886, at age 74, officially as a result of pneumonia, which he may have contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter Cosima. Questions have been posed as to whether medical malpractice played a part in his death.He was buried on August 3, 1886, in the municipal cemetery of Bayreuth in accordance with his wishes.
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