The Danube

Again and again, too, we shall see the curious poles which mark the wells, and form a common characteristic feature of this lowland scenery. On the top of a tall perpendicular pole is another, placed transversely; from the thin end hangs a bucket, while the other end has either the trimmed stump of the tree of which the pole is formed, or else something heavy bound to it, to afford a counterbalancing weight when the bucket is drawn up full. A well of this kind is seen by each of the low white cottages or tiny farmsteads that we pass, and by them, too, are frequently seen little “granaries,” of the same size and shape as those to be seen in the north of Spain, but plainer in design.

If, however, there is a certain sameness about the river scenery from Budapest to Zimony (Semlin) and the neighbourhood of Belgrade, it is by no means unattractive; and on the journey we pass some places that are intimately bound up with the fortunes of the Hungarian kingdom, including a spot at which that kingdom received a crushing blow in one century and avenged it in the next. Just below Budapest the river branches, forming two streams along the island of Csepel, which is about thirty miles in length. Numerous water-mills are again seen on the river, both here and lower down—largely used, presumably, for the grain grown on that rich long strip of the Alföld, that lies between the Danube and the Tisza (Theiss). The steamer stops at several places not calling for special mention.

A little below Budapest we pass on the right a château, once the property of Prince Eugène—presumably part of the great inheritance which that celebrated “Mars without a Venus” bequeathed to a niece. Below this, at Nagytétény, are some ruins; while further along, at Erd, is a relic of the Turkish occupation, in the form of a strong tower. Some distance below the southern end of the Csepel island is Dunaföldvár on high ground, and beyond here the Danube, though maintaining its southerly course, winds tortuously through broad marsh lands. About forty miles west of the Danube, as we near Dunaföldvár, lies the great lake Balaton (Platten See).

From Kalocsa, some distance inland from Nszód, on the left bank is a short branch railway line to Kis Körös, the birthplace of Alexander Petófi.

When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu journeyed with her husband to the near East, they went from Vienna to Budapest and thence to Belgrade by the land route, refusing to wait until the Danube had thawed that they might travel by boat. “Almost everybody I see frights me with some new difficulty. Prince Eugène has been so good as to say all the things he could to persuade me to stay till the Danube is thawed, that I may have the conveniency of going by water, assuring me that the houses in Hungary are such as are no defence against the weather, and that I shall be obliged to travel three or four days between Buda and Esseek, without finding any house at all, through desart plains covered with snow; where the cold is so violent, many have been killed by it.” After she had passed over this stage of her journey, she wrote, “this part of the country is very much overgrown with wood, and little frequented. ’Tis incredible what vast numbers of wildfowl we saw, which often live here to a good old age—and undisturbed by guns in quiet sleep.”

It must be remembered that the “desart” through which she passed was part of the track of the conquering Turks, and though some time had elapsed since their final expulsion, the country had by no means recovered. Now the “desart” is largely settled, and away on the left we have some of the richest corn lands of the kingdom, but still in the marsh lands we have evidence of the continued abundance of wildfowl. Indeed parts of the river below here are regarded as a happy hunting ground for sportsmen and naturalists. A careful botanist, by the way, has pointed out that while only forty-four per cent. of the flowers of the Danubian plains are perennials, there are as many as ninety-six per cent. in the Alps. If we are able to leave the river-side, we shall see in autumn about the roads of the Alföld—frequently mere cart-ways worn across the flat land—an abundance of fine giant mulleins, white daturas, bright blue chicory, and yellow toadflax, while from above the stretching acres of maize will be frequently seen great sunflower disks, suggesting that the plant has become acclimatized to the point of self sowing.

The principal town of importance on this long south-running portion of the river from Budapest to Zimony is Mohacs—the most important, at once in point of size and as a centre of historic significance. Here, on 29 August, 1526, was fought the disastrous battle which made the Turks masters of Hungary; and here the Turks were finally defeated, and so driven out of the kingdom, on 12 August, 1687.

When the Turks threatened invasion in the first-named year, King Louis of Hungary sought in vain to get foreign assistance, for his neighbours were all too busily engaged in defending their own interests. Louis then ordered a general rising to arms of all people “by sending round a bloody sabre to every house, in accordance with the ancient Scythian custom.” The gathering place was named as Tolna, some distance further up the river, near the right bank, and thither the prelates and nobles brought such forces as they could gather. When King Louis came to marshal his troops, he found that he could command but about twenty-six thousand men, and those but ill-armed and badly equipped. And the Turkish army, led by Solyman, was two hundred thousand strong and flushed with victories further east. It is said that the Hungarians—heroic in the circumstances to the point of foolhardiness—made light of the odds against them, though some of his cooler advisers suggested that King Louis should retire to the citadel of Buda. The archbishop Tomori, who was one of the leaders, thought that battle should be joined at once, and after the two armies had confronted each other on the plain by Mohacs for three days, he ordered the advance, having placed the king, surrounded by a chosen bodyguard, in the rear. The charging cavalry routed the first of the enemy’s battalions, and the king was at once told that the Turks were flying, and recommended to bring up his reserve to the pursuit. Louis galloped forward only to find the chief part of his army broken by the main body of the Turks under Solyman himself.

The Hungarians fought heroically, but their army was practically annihilated. Over twenty-two thousand men were left dead upon the field, including the ecclesiastic general Tomori, seven bishops and twenty-eight of the highest nobility of the land. All was lost, and the brave young king had to gallop off with a few friends. Crossing a marshy stream, his heavily caparisoned horse sank in the morass, and struggling to get to the bank, fell back upon its rider. A nobleman who had led the way, turned back to his sovereign’s assistance, drew him from the marsh and unbuckled his armour—but the defeated king was mortally injured and died shortly after. Before his disconsolate followers could bury Louis, the pursuing Turks came up with them, and they had to flee. Two months later the corpse was found and interred at Székes-Fehérvár (Stuhlweissenburg), an old royal town between Buda and the lake of Balaton (Platten See).

The conquering Turks swept the country after this decisive battle—“such was the terror inspired by their atrocities, that mothers killed their children and husbands their wives, to prevent them falling into their hands alive. Wherever they passed they left nothing behind but a howling waste, without food or shelter for living creature.” The battle of Mohacs has been described as even more disastrous to Hungary than was that of Flodden Field to Scotland. It decided her fate, not only in the sense of placing much of the land under Turkish dominion for generations, but in placing her also at the mercy of her Austrian neighbours. Not only did the country lose the flower of her manhood on these Mohacs plains, but the conquerors are said to have carried away over a hundred thousand prisoners. At the second battle of Mohacs, following on the recapture of Buda, the Turks were finally defeated, leaving on the field, it is said, sixty-eight guns, six hundred tents, and dead “sufficient to form quite a hill.”

The town of Mohacs lies on the right bank of the Danube, and has little beyond its battle associations to claim attention. The fact that it is a centre of the Hungarian coal industry and a river-port, gives it its modern importance. Unless we have time and opportunities for journeying inland, there are few places on the long stretch of the river which we are now following that specially invite the traveller to stay. The journey continues on through low country, now between reeds and rushes, past woodlands or willow-grown banks, with occasional glimpses of villages, but nothing that, in the broad view which we have here to take, calls for special notice. Again and again branches of the river go off, enclosing islands of various size—opposite Mohacs is one of these, about twenty-five miles in length, known as the Margaret Island, and near the further end of it, at Bezdán is the beginning of the seventy-four mile canal, which connects the Danube with the Tisza (Theiss) and forms a short-cut waterway between Budapest and Szegedin—the Alföld town to which the gondola-prowed grain barges that we saw at the capital belong. From that canal a branch goes off to Ujvidek (Neusatz.)

BOATS FROM SZEGEDIN

At Gombos—where the river is about 1080 yards wide—is a steam ferry, connecting the railways on either side. On the opposite or right bank is Erdöd, with a picturesque ruined castle. Continuing through a rich agricultural plain we pass Dályai, and at Vukovár, a town of over twelve thousand inhabitants, reach the centre of one of the chief Hungarian fruit districts—with many plum-orchards and vineyards. (Hungary exports dried plums to the value of over half a million sterling each year, while the national spirit, Slivovitz, is prepared from plums.) Here the Danube trends more directly to the east, and for some distance flows more or less parallel with the Save, which runs at the further side of the range of hills we see to the south.

These hills form the Fruška-Gora notable for their vineyards, the produce of which makes the famous Karlowitz wine. While on the left side the country continues flat, on the right are low cliffs. Ujlak (Ilok), on a rocky height, one of the most picturesquely situated places along this part of the river, is interesting as being on the site of the Roman Cuctium, and possessing remains of that distant past. Since then it has been occupied by the Quadii, the Magyars, and the Turks. In the monastery here lived the warrior-monk, John Capistran, who fought under the banner of John Hunyadi at the siege of Belgrade; here, too, he was buried, “his body being lowered into an almost bottomless well by the monks, in order that his remains might never, in any future incursions of the Turks, be disturbed and dishonoured by his enemies the infidels.” Opposite, on the left bank, is Palánka. As the river nears the foot of the hills on the right, the scenery becomes more attractive and more varied. Soon is seen ahead the famous fortress of Pétervárad (Peterwardein). After passing Kamenitz on the right, we soon reach Ujvidek (Neusatz), a large and pleasant old town, which is an important centre of the Alföld trade. Here the Danube has turned northerly to sweep round the little peninsula on which stands the fortress that has for some time formed a notable object in the view. Here the Danube is crossed by a bridge of boats (eight hundred feet long), such as was, well on into the nineteenth century, the ordinary means of communication between towns on opposite sides of the river.

Pétervárad (Peterwardein) which, from its situation, has been dubbed the Gibraltar of the Danube, consists of a large fortress on a rock about two hundred feet above the river, with a small town below it. It owes its importance to its strong, isolated situation and its position at the end of the old military frontier established or revived by “King” Maria Theresa, a frontier tract, all the male population of which had for three weeks out of every month to take military duty in guarding the land from any attack on the part of Turkish neighbours.

The town owes its present name—it is believed to have been the Acuminicum of the Romans—to the fact that it was here that Peter the Hermit marshalled the people whom he had gathered together in 1096 to take part in the first of the Crusades. The picturesque story which tells of Peter wandering through Europe riding on an ass and preaching the Crusade—as being, indeed, the originator of the great religious movement of the Middle Ages—is doubted by modern historians, but it is one that tradition will not willingly let die.

Gibbon tells us how, about twenty years after the Turks had taken Jerusalem, Peter visited the holy sepulchre and, moved by the position of the Christians in the holy city, exclaimed, “I will rouse the martial nations of Europe in your cause.” The historian tells us of the Hermit that “his stature was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye was keen and lively; and he possessed that vehemence of speech, which seldom fails to impart the persuasion of the soul.... From Jerusalem the pilgrim returned an accomplished fanatic; but as he excelled in the popular madness of the times, Pope Urban the Second received him as a prophet, applauded his glorious design, promised to support it in a general council, and encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance of the Holy Land. Invigorated by the approbation of the Pontiff, his zealous missionary traversed, with speed and success, the provinces of Italy and France. His diet was abstemious, his prayers long and fervent, and the alms which he received with one hand he distributed with the other; his head was bare, his feet naked, his meagre body was wrapped in a coarse garment; he bore and displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which he rode was sanctified in the public eye by the service of the man of God. He preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets, and the highways; the hermit entered with equal confidence the palace and the cottage; and the people, for all were people, were impetuously moved by his call to repentance and arms.” The first Crusade was known as the People’s Crusade, and it was probably a motley mass that the Hermit gathered together here before his numerous company set out on its disastrous enterprise. Most of those who did not fall en route, in plundering raids and other wayside troubles, left their bones to bleach on the soil of Palestine. All that we have of that tragic episode here at the Danube fortress, is the memory of the Hermit enshrined in the name of the place.

As a military centre Pétervárad (Peterwardein) has seen its share of fighting. In that unhappy year, 1626, it was captured by the Turks, and remained in their possession until after the second battle of Mohacs.

Between Pétervárad and Karlowitz on 5 August, 1716, Prince Eugène won a signal victory over the Turks, who had broken the Treaty of Karlowitz, made some years before. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu crossed the battlefield some months later, and writing to Alexander Pope, said, “The marks of that glorious and bloody day are yet recent, the field being yet strewed with the skulls and carcases of unburied men, horses, and camels. I could not look, without horror, on such numbers of mangled human bodies, nor without reflecting on the injustice of war, that makes murder not only necessary, but meritorious.” It is said that thirty thousand Turks were slain in this battle.

From the fortress is to be had an extensive view over the low-lying country through which the Danube here flows, of its broad stream, and of the wooded islands formed by its branchings, while to the south are the beautiful hills and woodlands of the Fruska-Gora. After the river has turned southwards again, looking back over the winding course of the stream, the Gibraltar of the Danube remains long visible. Karlowitz, the next stopping place, on the right bank, is not only celebrated as having given its name to the wine of the district, but is a point of historical importance as that where the Treaty of Karlowitz was signed in 1699. That treaty, which removed the Turkish frontier to Servia, and by which Austria acquired the greater part of Hungary and Transylvania, was signed in a building above the town, where now stands the chapel of Mariafried.

The scenery here is pleasantly diversified, with its wooded and vine-grown hills, while the river is broken up by many islands. At Slankamen, on the right, is an obelisk commemorating a defeat of the Turks in 1691; a little beyond, on the left Tisza (Theisseck), is situated at the confluence of the Danube with the greatest of its tributaries—the Tisza (Theiss), which, rising in the Carpathians, flows for about seven hundred and fifty miles west and south, through the great Hungarian plain of the Alföld to its junction here with the Danube. As we approach Zimony (Semlin), its Millenary monument and castle remains are to be seen on the hill above it, while beyond we get a glimpse of the towers of Belgrade.

At Zimony (Semlin) we reach the last Hungarian town on the right bank of the Danube—a town which as a frontier station has been, and is, a place of some importance. From where the Drave flows into the Danube to where the Save comes in just below Zimony (Semlin), is the eastern boundary of the old kingdom of Croatia, now incorporated with that of Hungary. Largely masked by trees, much of the town is hidden from the water, and when we get into it we find in its low white houses, its shops and larger buildings a blending, as it were, of east and west. Two-thirds of its inhabitants are described as German, and the rest are mainly Croatian and Servian. Its small market square, a little distance from the quay, with its booths on which clothes, beads, and cheap jewellery, fruit, vegetables and meat are exposed, offers an animated scene. Here, too, are said to be many gipsies, and here, in the hotel court-yard, is one of the few places in which I heard one of the gipsy bands for which Hungary has long been famous.

The gipsies (zigeuner) have given their name to the lofty hill, the Zigeunersberg by the Danube side, on which are the ruins of the castle of Hungary’s chief national hero, John Hunyadi (whose name in its Hungarian form, Hunyadi Janos, is familiar all the world over as that of a medicinal mineral water!). The hill should be climbed for the view it affords far over the Danubian plain; of the broad flowing Danube, where it is joined by the seemingly greater Save; of the valleys of these two rivers; and of the towns and roofs of the “White City” of Servia—Belgrade. It is a magnificent view, and while contemplating it we may well remember something of the famous hero who lived in the old-time castle hundreds of years ago—within sight of the town before which he had repeatedly shown his prowess in fighting the Turks in days when the Crescent threatened to dominate a large part of Europe.

Though the historians tell us that Hunyadi was the son of a small landowner, popular tradition gives him a more romantic origin, for the story runs that his father was no less a person than King Sigismund. It is said that the king, being in Transylvania, became enamoured of a beautiful young woman, Elizabeth Morsiani, to whom he presented a ring, saying that if she ever brought it to the palace, he would fulfil the promises which he had made “to load their child with honours.” Some months later Elizabeth married a Wallachian nobleman, and soon after gave birth to a son, to whom was given the name of Janos or John. When King Sigismund had his camp in the neighbourhood, Elizabeth visited him, showing the child and the ring, on which occasion the king renewed his promises, and told her to go to Buda, which, after her husband’s death, she did. One day little John was playing with his mother’s ring, when a crow flew down and carried it off. The boy, we may be sure, cried out, when the king, who happened opportunely to be passing, heard him, shot the bird, and was greatly astonished to recognize the token which he had given the Transylvanian maiden some years before. On finding out who the boy was, the monarch adopted him, gave him a military education, and when he grew up, gave him the estate of Hunyadi, in Transylvania, and many villages, and granted him as his coat-of-arms a crow carrying a ring in its beak. Thus it was that John acquired his surname, and also the nickname of Corvinus, which is most frequently associated with his son Matthias. This is one of several versions of the romantic story which has grown up about the fame of Hungary’s national hero—the man who in the fifteenth century saved the kingdom again and again, who again and again drove back the tide of Turkish conquest. Gibbon says of him that “the idea of a consummate general is not delineated in his campaigns. The White Knight [Philip de Commines calls him the White Knight of Wallachia] fought with the hand rather than the head, as the chief of desultory Barbarians, who attack without fear, and fly without shame; and his military life is composed of a romantic alternation of victories and escapes. By the Turks, who employed his name to frighten their perverse children, he was corruptly denominated Jancus Lain, or the wicked; their hatred is the proof of their esteem; the kingdom which he guarded was inaccessible to their arms.”

Though divided from each other but by a short branch of the Danube, which here forks round the large War Island, and the broad Save, Zimony (Semlin) and Belgrade differ greatly in appearance and character. From the tree-surrounded Croatian town at the foot of its green hill, we pass on to the Servian city with the pleasantest of anticipations, for Belgrade from the Zigeunersberg is remarkably picturesque with its fortifications and other buildings on the river-side hill, and the towers and roofs of the main part of the town showing beyond. But our anticipations are not altogether realized, and it is with something of disappointment that we wander about the town of warlike and tragic memories.

Arriving at Belgrade, we are for the first time made aware of the necessity of carrying passports. To be exact, passport formalities have to be gone through twice—once on the quay at Zimony before we are allowed to embark, and secondly at Belgrade, before we are permitted to get any further than the police office. Leaving the quayside on the Save, to which the steamer has brought us, we may take one or other of the steep streets up into the central part of the town; perhaps the best method is to follow the road to the left, and so reach the Kalemegdan Park, on the citadel hill, whence we get good views over the two rivers and the town, and may recall the distant times when the citadel of Belgrade was a kind of key fortress in the long struggle between the Turks and their northern neighbours; when it was occupied now by Turks and now by Magyars.

Here Hunyadi Janos for a time was commandant, and here when the Moslems held it, he fought for its recovery; here, too, when a huge Turkish army encompassed the place, came Hunyadi again with the warlike monk Capistran, and with a much inferior force, compelled the investing army to raise the siege and retire to the south. The Sultan, Mahomet II. had attacked the place with an army of two hundred thousand men on the land sides, and with a powerful flotilla from the river, and the Christian population had given up all hope, when Hunyadi appeared with such a force as the preaching of Capistran could bring to the task of upholding the Cross and expelling the hated Turk. So fiercely did the Hungarian army attack the Turkish boats, that they seemed to carry all before them, and the waters of the Danube are described as having run red with blood. Before the day ended thirty thousand Turks are said to have been slain, Belgrade was relieved and the besiegers in retreat.

The importance of the strategic position at the junction of two great rivers, and with an outlook towards the great plain on the north, seems to have been recognized in early times, for the Celts are said to have first raised fortifications on this rocky summit in the third century before our era. By them it was named, and for a thousand years it remained, Singidunum—during which period it was successively in the possession of the Romans, the Huns, Sarmatians, Goths and Gepids, and then again in that of the Romans. In the eighth century the Franks, and in the ninth the Bulgarians, secured it, and held it until the eleventh, when they were evicted by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II. The Hungarians, under King Stephen, conquered it, to be followed by Greeks, Bulgarians and Hungarians again. In the fourteenth century it seems first to have fallen into the hands of the Servians, who later ceded it to Hungary. Then it was alternately occupied by Hungarians and Turks during the long period of their intermittent warfare, while later Austria and Turkey held it by turn for brief periods. Austria captured it in 1688 to lose it two years later, again in 1717 to hold it until 1739, and yet again in 1789 to lose it in 1792. Then it was Servians and Turks who alternately disputed the mastership, and it was only in 1866 that the Turks finally gave up the citadel. It was presumably the Austrian attack of 1789 which was commemorated in the wonderful alliterative verses, the opening lines of which have become so popular that they almost deserve inclusion among our nursery rhymes. The lines, which were written in 1828 by the Rev. B. Poulter, Prebendary of Winchester, are not widely familiar in extenso, and may therefore be appropriately quoted when we are regarding Belgrade as a much-besieged city:—

BELGRADE

The town which may thus be regarded as one of those which have been most often besieged—I cannot say if it holds a “record” in this respect!—has little to show of its varied past. Its important buildings are comparatively few and modern, and though the capital of a kingdom, it has something of a provincial air about even the broadest and busiest of its ill-made thoroughfares, with their many little shops, their small old houses close neighbouring less small new ones. The white baggy trousers, the white coat, and the conical black Astrakhan caps of many of the people, give something of a new character to the place, and the market with the women with their bright head kerchiefs, the men with their conical caps and sheepskin coats, the swarthy gipsies, and the abundance of colour supplied by fruit and vegetables, form one of the pleasantest memory pictures of the Servian capital.

Yet somehow there seems a want of cheerfulness about Belgrade, as though the sense of tragedy yet remained from the murder of King Alexander and Queen Draga eight years ago. The palace in which that dynastic crime was perpetrated has been pulled down and a new residence for the present ruler erected near its site.

An incident recorded in the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu suggests that there is something in the air which leads to such tragic coups. She says that shortly before her arrival at Belgrade the pasha had fallen under the displeasure of his soldiers “for no other reason, but restraining their incursions on the Germans. They took it into their heads from that mildness, that he had intelligence with the enemy, and sent such information to the grand Signior at Adrianople; but, redress not coming quick enough from thence, they assembled themselves in a tumultuous manner, and by force dragged their Bassa before the Cadi and Mufti, and there demanded justice in a mutinous way; one crying out, Why he protected the Infidels? Another, Why he squeezed them of their money? The Bassa, easily guessing their purpose, calmly replied to them, that they asked him too many questions, and that he had but one life which must answer for all. They then immediately fell upon him with their scymitars (without waiting the sentence of the heads of the law) and in a few moments cut him in pieces. The present Bassa has not dared to punish the murder; on the contrary, he affected to applaud the actors of it as brave fellows.”

It was but a short stay that I made in Belgrade—possibly with a longer sojourn it might “grow” upon one, and the chief impression retained is that of its wonderful situation at the confluence of the two rivers. To that situation it owed its past importance as a strategic point and therefore its prominent position in the military annals of the neighbouring countries, and to it it will owe no small share of its probable future importance as a commercial city. Those visitors who are not the victims of a holiday time-table would probably find Belgrade a delightful centre for excursions into the very beautiful country which lies within easy reach of it both in Servia and Croatia.

From where the Inn joins the Danube at Passau to where the Save comes in between Zimony and Belgrade, we have had on the right bank the frontier of the Roman provinces of Noricum and Pannonia—provinces which, according to Gibbon, embraced the great stretch of country more or less enclosed by the three rivers named, and later became divided up into Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Lower Hungary, and Slavonia.