A glance at Louis’ court and at his personal surroundings will suffice to give us a picture of the condition of the country. Uladislaus had already repeatedly complained that but a small portion of the revenues of the state ever reached his hands, and that his income during three years did not amount to as much as King Matthias used to spend on his clerks. Louis, who, besides, had to defray the expenses of his education, fared infinitely worse. He had to put off from day to day his journey to Prague, the capital of his Bohemian kingdom, because he was unable to procure the funds necessary for his travelling expenses. Things came to such a pass that the king could not provide decently for the royal table, which was all the more unfortunate for him, as he boasted of an excellent appetite; his contemporaries relating of him that when his resources permitted, seven meals were daily served at his court. His penury finally reached such a point that he lacked the means of paying the wages of his household servants, and then it was that a certain sum was set apart for royal expenses, to be paid into the hands of the treasurer and not of the king, a contrivance which was of little avail, the treasurers themselves being untrustworthy. King Louis remained as poor as he was before, and we read that at a reception given to the ambassadors of foreign powers, where the most brilliant display would have been in place, the young king sat on his throne in dilapidated boots. In spite of his poverty Louis found a way to indulge in pastimes and to squander money. At a time when they write of him that he could not call a sound pair of boots his own, he remitted to one of his courtiers a debt of 40,000 ducats in exchange for a trained falcon. George of Brandenburg wrote on one occasion that although the court was dreadfully poor, yet they managed to carouse all the time. These entertainments were marked by scenes and occurrences which but ill comport with the dignity of a court. The king was excessively fond of amusements, and on one occasion he wrote three months before the carnival: “Wherever we shall happen to be, even on a journey, we intend to make merry and to pass gayly our days.” The carousing at the court, however, was not confined to the carnival season, for we read that on the very eve of the battle of Mohács, the king and queen were enjoying themselves right royally. The queen, too, was fond of gayeties. No one would have foretold of her that she should ever become so versed in matters of state. The difference between Mary the queen and Mary the widow might well elicit universal surprise. The eventful battle of Mohács sobered her. While her husband lived she so freely entered into the pastimes and frolics of the king that the partisans of the king himself were compelled to remind her more than once of the rules of decency and propriety.
A fierce struggle ensued between the oligarchical and the national party as to who should be selected for the royal council. This rivalry sprang by no means from patriotic motives, or from a desire to serve the country in the royal councils, but from the more sordid aim of making use of the royal authority to extend and increase their personal power and influence. The party leaders were still the same. Szapolyai and Verböczy stood at the head of the middle-class party, whilst the royal party, led by Báthory, made common cause with the Fuggers. The Fuggers were the Rothschilds of the sixteenth century; they had amassed immense wealth in Hungary by advancing at first an inconsiderable sum to the king, and obtaining for it the privilege of working the mines. They fraudulently exported from the land all the gold and silver obtained from the mines, while of the money advanced by them but very little got into the king’s hands, as it had first to pass the hands of middle-men, who managed to keep large portions. In this way can it be accounted for that Thomas Bakacs’ household was far more lavish and brilliant than that of the king himself, and that Count Alexius Thurzó, being in collusion with the Fuggers, was enabled at one time to advance to the king 32,000 florins. Emeric Szerencs’ name figures most conspicuously amongst these money manipulators. He was a converted Jew, occupying a prominent position, and who subsequently became treasurer of the state. While he was never able to procure money for the treasury, he succeeded in constantly adding immense sums to his own fortune. The people at last rose against the unscrupulous treasurer, and attacked Szerencs in his own palace. He saved himself only with great difficulty from the fury of the populace by escaping through a window to which a rope ladder was attached.
The party of the nobility was at last victorious. At the Diet assembled at Hatvan 14,000 nobles assumed such a menacing attitude towards the government that all its members were compelled to give in their resignations, and Stephen Verböczy was elected by the triumphant party palatine of the kingdom. John Szapolyai became treasurer. To what extent the treasury was better managed under his direction it would be difficult to determine, for the sad fact remained that the treasury still remained empty, and that the new treasurer was constantly adding to the number of his estates and increasing his domain. The magnates as well as the burghers clearly saw that nothing had been gained by the change effected in the administration. They therefore combined to restore the former government, and were headed by the great nobles who had been deprived of their offices—Báthory, the late palatine, and Alexius Thurzó. The league is known in Hungarian history under the name of the “Kalandos” Society—the word “kalandos” having in the Magyar language the meaning of “adventurous,” but in truth the word was derived from the “Kalends,” the society being in the habit of meeting on the “Kalends,” or first of each month. This patriotic band of would-be saviors of their country went on with their intrigues even after the news had arrived of another Turkish inroad threatening the country. The league at last succeeded. At the Diet convoked in Buda they reinstated their party in power. Verböczy himself was not slow in perceiving that he had been used by Szapolyai merely as a tool, and, refusing to be an instrument in his hands, he resigned the dignity of which he had been already deprived by the Diet. In order to save his life he fled to Transylvania, but he could not prevent the Diet from declaring him to be an enemy to his country.
Báthory occupied again his former position of a palatine, and announced his programme in these brief words: “We are not the cause of the ruin of the country”—a very strange assurance on the part of the councillors and leading statesmen of Louis II., coming too at a time when they were menaced on all sides by approaching perils. This conduct occasioned the papal nuncio’s remark that “they were playing comedy with their mutual protests.”
The Reformation added a new complication to the many dividing the nation, being a fresh source of discord amongst the people. This mighty religious movement spread as far as Hungary about the same time that it had won a large territory for itself in Germany. Here as there its adherents met with persecutions at the hand of the Roman Catholic Church. The new faith, although it had not gained large numbers, soon found its martyrs in the country. Both of the political factions were equally guilty of these persecutions, and we find a telling proof of this in the fact that Verböczy as well as Báthory, the respective palatines of the hostile parties, each had his share in the executions of the Protestants who laid down their lives for their faith. While Hungarian blood was thus shed by the Hungarians themselves, their proud neighbor, Sultan Selim, the mighty ruler of the Turkish empire, had registered a vow before Allah, in case he would vouchsafe victory to his armies over Persia, to build for his worship three magnificent mosques—one in Jerusalem, another in Buda, and a third in Rome. The sultan vanquished the Persians, but was prevented by death from fulfilling his vow. In Hungary they made merry, drinking death to the Turks, and little dreaming that the new sultan was destined to inflict upon them soon a most deadly blow.
Solyman the Magnificent succeeded the fierce Selim. He combined in his person the talents of a great warrior, a great legislator, and a great theologian. It was not long before the Hungarians themselves offered him an excuse for waging war against them. On his accession to the throne he had sent an ambassador to Louis II. for the purpose of prolonging the peace between them. The overbearing Hungarian nobles did not so much as enter into a parley with the envoy, but threw him into prison, dragged him with them all over the country, and finally, after cutting off his nose and ears, sent him back to his master. This dire offence against the law of nations, and the unprovoked insult to the sultan in the person of his representative, could not be left unpunished. Solyman swore he would be avenged for this affront, and vowed he would get possession of that Belgrade which at one time had maintained its independence against the warlike genius of a Mohammed II. “He attacked simultaneously two of the strongest border fortresses—Shabatz and Belgrade. The king was just then too busy with his wedding with the Austrian princess Mary to allow himself to be disturbed by the hostile inroad, nor did his chief councillors take any heed of it. Báthory, the palatine of the kingdom, was also celebrating his nuptials, whilst Chancellor Szalkay’s attention was entirely absorbed by the administration of the bishopric of Erlau that had been recently bestowed upon him.
Shabatz stood under the command of Simon Logody and Andrew Torma, both men of great heroism and rare courage. They shone out as conspicuous exceptions in this corrupt age. They preferred to face certain death rather than save themselves by deserting the fortress entrusted to their care, and solemnly swore to be true to the cause of the country unto death. They and their brave garrison kept their oaths faithfully; of five hundred men, but sixty were left on the 16th day of the siege. These sixty men were drawn up in soldierly array on the public square of the fort to receive the last assault of the Turkish army, and not one of them escaped with his life. Six weeks later Belgrade, the famous scene of Hungarian heroism, was taken by the Turks, and it is not often that an enemy achieved as easy a victory over such a stronghold as this border fortress as the Turks secured on the 29th of August, 1521. Francis Hedervári and young Valentine Törok had been entrusted with the defence of Belgrade. These selfish nobles, unmindful of their sacred duties, left Belgrade and proceeded to Buda, in order to obtain from the government repayment for the expenses already incurred by them for the maintenance of the fortress. Failing in their errand, they did not return to their trust, but left the garrison, numbering seven thousand men, to themselves, under the command of their subordinate officers, the brave Blasius Oláh, and the treacherous Michael Moré. Their desertion sealed the fate of this fortress. Moré became a traitor to the cause of his country; he deserted to the enemy’s camp, and, betraying to the Turks the weak points of the stronghold, he endeavored, at the same time, to prevail upon Oláh to aid him in his wicked designs. The patriotism of the latter, however, was proof against all the allurements of the tempter. The fall of the fortress was, nevertheless, unavoidable. The number of the garrison had dwindled down to seventy-two men, when a squabble ensued between those of them who were Hungarians and those who were Servians, which ended in their compelling Oláh to surrender the fortress. By the terms of the surrender the garrison was allowed to leave the fortress unmolested, but the Turks interpreted this clause in their own way. They were permitted to march into the Turkish camp, but on their wishing to leave the camp they were all of them massacred.
The fall of Belgrade spread terror all over the country—all the more as it was entirely unexpected, and certainly might have been prevented. Báthory, the palatine, and John Szapolyai stood, each with a great army, not very far from Belgrade; but these noblemen, obeying only the dictates of their mutual hatred, would not join their armies, and truly says the poet Charles Kisfaludy, that the deepest wounds inflicted upon the poor country were “no, not by her enemies, but by her own sons.” Louis himself was roused from his lethargy upon hearing the sad news. He upbraided his councillors for neglecting to warn him of the dangers menacing the country, and for not having taken measures to avert them; nay, in his exasperation, as we are informed by his chaplain, he struck one of his councillors, Bishop Szalkay, in the face. Repentance was now too late, and the impending catastrophe seemed unavoidable. It is true that the Hungarians achieved one more victory in the Hungarian Lowlands. Paul Tömöry, the newly appointed archiepiscopal captain-in-chief of that section, defeated Ferhat Pasha on the field of Nagy-Olasz, in Syrmia. But the passing glow of this success left no permanent effects; three years later the Turks were more formidable than ever to Hungary.
While the Hungarian Diet was the scene of fierce discussions, Francis I., King of the French, smarting under the defeat he had suffered at the hands of the Emperor Charles V., stirred up Solyman against Hungary and the Hapsburg crown-lands, in order to effect a division of the imperial army. In this scheme Francis I. succeeded so well that in the month of August, 1526, an army exceeding 300,000 men, with 300 cannon, under the lead of Solyman, was invading Hungary.
The news of Solyman’s approach found the country unprepared. The treasury did not contain money enough to pay the messengers, still less to organize an army. A requisition of the gold and silver plate and vessels of the church was of little avail, for what little could be collected, owing to the resistance of the clergy, was appropriated again by the nobles, who were charged with the duty of coining them into money. Caspar Serédy owed his wealth to such transactions.
In soldiers they were even poorer than in money. The sultan was already crossing the southern frontier, and not a soldier was near King Louis. The cities bought their exemption from military service with money, and the great nobles were dilatory. The king finally marched alone against the enemy. The guilty were seized with shame at this noble example, and about the beginning of August four thousand men had already rallied round him. He was steadily proceeding southward and reached Mohács in the latter part of August. The army had swelled by this time to twenty-five thousand men, but it wanted a commander, and there was not in the whole country a single general capable of wielding large forces. The king, under these circumstances, had no other choice but to appoint, as commander-in-chief, Paul Tömöry, whose victory achieved over the Turks was still fresh in memory. Shortly afterwards the Turkish army, which had occupied Peterwardein (Pétervárad) a few days before, made its appearance. A serious discussion arose now whether the Hungarians should stand a battle, or, retreating first, join the army of Christopher Frangepán, coming from Slavonia, and that of John Szapolyai, marching from Transylvania. Tömöry was in favor of accepting battle at once, and was sustained by the king. Francis Perényi, the witty bishop of Grosswardein, on seeing that Tömöry’s counsels had prevailed, is reported to have said: “The Hungarian nation will have twenty thousand martyrs on the day of battle, and it would be well to have them canonized by the pope.” The battle took place on the 29th of August, on a fine summer’s day. The Hungarians formed in battle array early in the morning. The king, surrounded by his lay and ecclesiastical magnates, occupied the centre. A thousand mailed horsemen were around the king, and in their midst John Drágfy, the Chief-Justice of the land, waving high up in the air the national banner. Seated on a white horse, he wore no spurs, according to the ancient custom, implying that flight to him was impossible.
Báthory, afflicted with the gout, rode with the king along the line of each troop, addressing words of encouragement to the men. The whole army impatiently looked forward to the moment when the battle should begin, and, finally, at five o’clock in the afternoon the Turks advanced. It was remarked that the king, on the silver helmet being placed on his head, became deathly pale, as if in anticipation of the near danger, but while it shocked the attendants, it by no means disheartened them.
The first onslaught came from the Hungarian horse, who rushed upon the enemy in front of them and drove them back. The Turkish troops thus attacked retreated without offering any resistance to the body of the army. The Hungarians, shouting victory, pressed on in hot pursuit, little dreaming that they were running into the jaws of sure destruction. The retreat was but a feint, for when the Hungarian army had been drawn on near enough to the Turkish centre, the retreating troops opened their ranks, and, through the gap left open, three hundred cannon and several thousand Janissaries poured a murderous fire on the advancing troops. The slaughter was dreadful; a large portion of the troops, including their commander and their standard bearer, fell at the first fire. The rest fled in every direction, but were greatly impeded in their retreat by a violent shower of rain which suddenly burst on the fugitives, among whom was also the youthful king. As he was trying to cross the Csele, a small brook, swollen by the rain, the horse, after reaching the opposite bank, stumbled backward into the waters below, and buried his rider under him.
The prophecy of Perényi was fulfilled. Twenty thousand martyrs strewed the field of Mohács, and among them was the witty prophet himself. The Hungarians paid the heavy penalty of thirty-six years’ misrule and disorder, but the worst was yet to come. On the 10th of September there passed again a brilliant procession through the gates of Buda. This time it was not the crowned king of Hungary who made his entry into the fortress, but Solyman, who delivered it up for pillage to his soldiers. On this occasion was destroyed the famous library of Matthias.
While Islam was rapidly losing ground, and hurrying to irretrievable destruction on the peninsula south of the Pyrenees, it obtained a fresh foothold on another southern peninsula of Europe, in the regions of the Balkan washed by the Mediterranean Sea, and became there so powerful as to influence, for nearly five centuries, the political destinies of the Western world. At the same time that the power and culture of the Moorish state was declining in Spain, Europe found itself assailed by another Mohammedan nation, the Turks, who, taking up the standard of the crescent, attempted to force upon the Christian world their new ideas, religious, political, and social. On the first appearance of the Turks on the Balkan peninsula, they were met by the two states which opposed their further advance, and the struggle with these began at once. The first, the Byzantine empire, was, however, at this time already an effete and tottering organization, an ancient and venerable ruin, and it was able to make but a feeble resistance. It retreated step by step before the Asiatic conquerors, who got possession, first, of its entire outlying territory, and finally captured (in 1453) the seat of government, Byzantium, the renowned city of Constantine. The second opponent which withstood the advance of the Turks was Hungary, a state which, though still young, had shown a sturdy national vitality, and successively reduced to vassalage the countries of the Balkan, and was steadily engaged in extending its influence and authority towards the East. The Turks could not dispose of Hungary as easily and quickly as of the enfeebled Byzantine empire. More than a century of nearly constant conflict had to elapse before the Hungarian supremacy in the regions of the Balkan was put an end to, and the Turks were able to penetrate as far as Mohács, and there to inflict a mortal blow on the independence of Hungary. During this struggle of a century and a half the name and fame of Hungary were perpetuated by many a brilliant feat of war, and by many glorious victories, and when John Hunyadi, the most formidable foe of the Turks, died, all Europe mourned his death as the loss of the great champion of Christianity. His son, Matthias the Just, one of the greatest kings of Hungary, whose memory is held in pious reverence by the Hungarian people to this day, following in the footsteps of his illustrious father, through his many triumphs, made his own name, too, hardly less formidable to the Turks. But Hungary, as the offspring of the Western Church, the Church of Rome, turned her looks, at that time, to the West rather than to the East, and Hungarian statesmanship was far more intent upon humiliating the emperor of what was then known as the Roman empire, than upon breaking down the power of the Turks. King Matthias captured Vienna, and made large conquests at the expense of the German empire, but he chastised the Turks only now and then, and never seriously thought of endeavoring to thoroughly crush the Turkish power. Under his feeble successors, the Turks, who easily recuperated from the losses of single battles, grew into a formidable power, which soon brought Hungary to the verge of ruin. We have described, in the preceding pages, the fatal battle of Mohács, fought on the 29th of August, 1526, in which the youthful King Louis II. opposed an army of hardly 25,000 men to Solyman’s 300,000, to be swept away by the torrent of overwhelming numbers. To give an adequate idea, however, of this awful catastrophe in the annals of Hungary, we will add here that seven bishops and archbishops, thirteen lords of the banner, five hundred magnates, and many thousand nobles laid down their lives on the bloody battle-field.
The nation was seized with indescribable terror on learning the details of this dreadful calamity; entire villages were deserted by their inhabitants, who scattered in every direction. The widowed queen, finding herself utterly deserted in Buda, fled to Presburg, and the capital of Hungary, one of the finest cities of Christendom, which but a little more than a generation before had been made one of the chief centres of European learning and culture, passed, in less than two weeks after the fatal day of Mohács, without any resistance, into the hands of the victorious Solyman. The Turks sacked and set fire to the beautiful city, and all its magnificent buildings, save the royal palace, were destroyed by the flames. The victorious enemy met with as little opposition in ravaging and massacring in the country as they had encountered at the capital. There was no one to stay their devastations. The miserable peasantry still made some feeble attempts at defence; here and there a few thousand men collected at some fortified position to protect themselves and their families. Thus some 20,000 men retreated into the Vértes mountains, and, under the leadership of Michael Dobozy, entrenched themselves near the village of Marót, in a camp fortified by a barricade constructed of wagons. But the Turks had their guns carried up to the nearest eminence, and opened a fire on the occupants of the improvised wall. The peasants were struck with terror, and the undisciplined boors, the wailing women and children, deserted their sheltering wagons in despair. Dobozy, seeing that all was lost, mounted his gallant steed, and placing his young wife on the saddle before him, he sought safety in flight. The elated Turks fell upon the flying Hungarians, frightfully massacring their ranks. Among the fugitives, Dobozy especially attracted the enemy’s attention, owing to the superiority of his armor, indicative of gentle blood, and more particularly because of the young woman he carried in his arms. They pursued him like bloodhounds. The distance between the pursuers and pursued gradually diminished, and Dobozy’s horse began to show signs of exhaustion under the double burden. Wife and husband saw the fierce forms, eager for prey, draw nearer and nearer. Still there was a gleam of hope for them if they could reach the near brook, cross the bridge, and destroy it before their pursuers came up with them. They succeeded in gaining the bridge, but, alas, the flying peasants had already broken it off, and there was no other thoroughfare to the opposite bank.
All was lost now. Dobozy told his wife to fly by herself, whilst he would remain and stay with his own breast the progress of their pursuers. But the young spouse would not part from her loving husband, not even in death, and besought him to kill her rather than to expose her to the chance of falling into the hands of the pagan enemy. The desperate husband, seeing the Turks quite near to them, stabbed his youthful wife with his own dagger, and then, turning upon his adversaries, dearly sold his life. The spot where Dobozy and his faithful wife lost their lives is, to this day, called Basaharcz (the Pasha struggle).
The immense Turkish army spread all over the country, everywhere plundering, ravaging, and destroying defenseless lives, and reducing, in a war of a few months’ duration, the population of the country by nearly 200,000 souls. The capital in ruins, hundreds of other places deserted and laid waste, the country without a king, the church without any higher clergy, the greater part of the nobility, used to arms, killed—such was the condition in which Hungary was left by the Turks at the departure of Sultan Solyman. In October, 1526, he left the doomed country, having first laden his ships, sailing for Constantinople, with the treasures of the palace of King Matthias—its rare curiosities, its bronze statues, and a portion of the famous Corvinian library.
The fatal day of Mohács had entirely overturned the order in the state, and amongst the magnates who survived it party strife soon broke out. One party, acting upon the conviction that enfeebled Hungary was unable to resist, unsupported, the overwhelming power of the Turks, elected a Hapsburg archduke, Ferdinand of Austria, a brother of Charles V., the Roman emperor, king of Hungary, and since that time the royal crown has, in fact, remained in possession of the Hapsburgs. It was through this dynasty that the Hungarian people endeavored to secure the aid of the German empire against the Osmanlis. But another party amongst the great lords pursued an opposite course. In their opinion a native dynasty and peaceful relations with the invincible Turks were the means of rescuing the country from her pitiable plight. These patriots, therefore, elected as king of Hungary, John Szapolyai, the vayvode of Transylvania, and the most powerful lord in the country, and thus the nation had now two kings in the place of the one who had fallen at Mohács.
But neither of these parties nor their royal representatives could save the country from the Turks; on the contrary, the continual rivalries between the two kings not only demoralized public virtue and upset all law and authority within the kingdom, but they assisted not a little the foreign enemy in getting into their possession, by slow degrees, the larger part of Hungary, and enabled the Turks, within a brief period, to float their crescent on the towers of Buda, and there, to the ruin of the nation, and to the perpetual terror of the Christian world, it continued to wave for nearly one hundred and fifty years. The history of the Hungarian nation during this entire period is sad in the extreme—a tragedy, the scenes of which are supplied by an uninterrupted series of trials and sufferings. Owing to the incapacity of the leading statesmen and generals, the ruin of the country became more and more irretrievable. Yet, however dark and forlorn this period may seem, the national sufferings of those days are relieved and brightened by the glorious heroism and patriotism displayed by the people. The Hungarians, although menaced, in their very existence, by many enemies, by party strife, and religious dissensions, exhibited such rare moral courage, heroism, devotion, self-denial, and manliness, that the memory of the generations of that melancholy era will remain forever hallowed. Heroes arose on every side, and the struggle, sustained by the nation for nearly a century and a half against the oppressive power of the Turks, reminds one, in many of its features, of the protracted contest between the Spaniards and the Moors, and, like it, abounds in poetry, romance, and those noble examples of patriotism and loftiness of soul which kindle the human heart, arouse the sympathies of the poet, and are treasured up by the piety of after-ages as glorious relics of the past.
Solyman’s ambitious schemes looked for still wider fields of conquest, and in 1529 he marched towards Vienna, in order to attack King Ferdinand in his own capital. The city, however, was successfully defended. In 1532 Solyman advanced again upon Vienna. The sultan’s progress was unopposed until he reached Köszeg (German, Güns), in the neighborhood of the Austrian frontier. The keys of sixteen fortresses and fortified cities lay at his feet; Köszeg alone refused to do homage, and arrested the sultan’s triumphal march. Michael Juricsics was its commander; he was just about to remove his small garrison, consisting of twenty-eight hussars and ten cuirassiers, to Vienna, for whose defence all the available forces were being called in, when the Turks appeared beneath the walls of Köszeg. On beholding the approach of the immense Turkish army, Juricsics took a bold and noble resolution. He determined to hold the fortress, and to die rather than surrender it to the enemy. He immediately took measures to defend the place; he repaired the walls and bastions, armed seven hundred peasants who had sought refuge in the city, and purchased with his own money gunpowder and provisions. The Turkish army arrived under the walls of Köszeg on the 5th of August, 1532; a few days later the sultan himself joined them, and the siege was prosecuted at once with the utmost energy. The outer fortifications had already fallen into the hands of the enemy, the guns and mines had effected a breach sixteen yards wide in the main wall of the citadel, of its seven hundred defenders half had fallen, and on the 24th of August Juricsics had but one hundred weight of gunpowder left. Yet the plucky reply he gave to the sultan’s summons to surrender was: “As long as I live I will not surrender.” The Turks thereupon directed a fresh assault upon the citadel, and the garrison again lost many lives, while Juricsics himself was wounded. The Turks pressed into the city, but the inhabitants, at their approach, broke out into such dreadful howling and wailing that the frightened assailants retreated, and the city was once more miraculously spared. But Juricsics himself saw now the impossibility of further resistance; he had no more gunpowder, and most of the garrison were like himself wounded. For the purpose, therefore, of sparing the lives of the remaining inhabitants, he finally permitted the Turkish flag to be hoisted over the city. Solyman, seeing the Turkish flag floating over Köszeg, thought he had captured the citadel, and retired from under the walls on the 31st of August. But it was not towards Vienna that he directed his steps, but homeward. He had been delayed nearly four weeks near Köszeg, and during this time a powerful army had been collected in Vienna which the sultan had not the courage to face. Juricsics had thus, by his heroism, saved Vienna from a siege, the issue of which might have been calamitous to that renowned city of Christendom.
Many were still found in other parts of the country to follow the stirring example set by Juricsics, but unfortunately success but rarely attended their devotion. Most of them were fated only to be martyrs to the sacred cause, shedding their blood on the altar of their tottering country. The farther the Turkish conquests extended the more precarious and perilous became the position of the isolated commanders of the Hungarian border fortresses. The safety of a whole territory or country often depended upon the possession of one of these strongholds. Thus were the wealthy mining towns and the entire Hungarian mining region protected by the fortified place of Drégel, and it naturally attracted the attention of the Turks, always thirsting for plunder, who hastened to lay siege to it, hoping, by its possession, to open the road to the mines. Gallant George Szondi, the commandant of the fortress of Drégel, was a determined and magnanimous man who, fully conscious of the great importance of the place, was ready to defend it with his life. The fortress itself was not one of the first order, and was guarded only by a small garrison.
In July, 1552, a Turkish army numbering about 10,000 appeared under the walls. Ali, the Pasha of Buda, himself a chivalrous and noble-minded soldier, stood at the head of the besiegers, and, under the fire of his guns, the bastions crumbled to dust in the course of a few days. When the great tower too, was but a heap of ruins, and the walls were showing wide gaps everywhere, and all hope of being able to continue the defence seemed to have vanished, Ali sent a message to the commandant of Drégel. He employed a clergyman by the name of Márton, the parish priest of a neighboring village, to go to Szondi and to tell him that: “Ali reverently bowed before Szondi’s bravery and determined spirit, the report of which had reached him long ago, and of which he had had good occasion to convince himself during the present siege, but as the position could be held no longer, Szondi ought to preserve his heroic life and to surrender the crumbling fortress, and if this were done free departure should be guaranteed for himself and his people.” Szondi silently listened to the message of Ali, whom he knew to be a noble and chivalrous foe, but manfully declined to lay down his arms. He was resolved to defend the place to his last breath, and rather bury himself under its ruins than negotiate with the enemy. But he in turn asked now a favor of Ali Pasha, not for himself, but for two youthful troubadours, two young bards who were in the fortress, and for whom the Hungarian hero wished to provide before his death. He had the youths dressed in purple velvet and sending them, under the care of Father Márton, to Ali Pasha, he requested the latter to take these youths—some say they were his own sons—into his service, as he himself would not be able to bring them up, and to make brave men of them. Then summoning into his presence two Turkish captives remaining in the fortress, he bestowed upon them rich presents and allowed them to depart.
As soon as Márton had left with his youthful charges Szondi felt that the supreme moment, the moment of a glorious death, was near at hand. He ordered his money, his clothes, and all his valuables to be taken into the courtyard of the citadel, and, for fear they might fall into the hands of the enemy, he himself set fire to them and saw them reduced to ashes. Then he directed his steps to the stables, and thrust with his own hands his lance through his horses, his noble war steeds. Hastening now to his few remaining soldiers he addressed to them touching words of farewell. Outside, the approach of the Turks, preparing for the assault and shouting Allah, was already heard. Szondi, at the head of his two companies, rushed to the citadel gate and there laid down his life after heroically defending himself. A ball having penetrated his foot, the dying man sank on his knees and continued the fight to his last breath. He was finally cut down by the Turks, who surrounded him on all sides; his head was placed on a lance and carried in triumph to the victorious Ali. The generous Turk was deeply moved by this noble example of self-sacrifice, and, having given orders to seek out Szondi’s body, he caused his remains to be buried with great military pomp, in a neighboring hill. For a long time the spot where Szondi was laid into the grave was marked by a pike and a flag. One of the greatest poets of modern Hungary, John Arany, has perpetuated Szondi’s story in a beautiful ballad, and contemporary piety has just erected amidst the ruins of Drégel a chapel in memory of the departed hero.
Stephen Losonczy, another Hungarian hero, who shared Szondi’s fate a few days later, had no such noble opponent as Ali to deal with. Temesvár, the largest fortress in the country, was entrusted to his care. Fifty thousand Turks marched on Temesvár, and having quickly reduced all the smaller fortified places and cities near it, they reached the fortress in an over-confident mood. Losonczy immediately sallied out to meet the enemy, and so intimidated them that they soon gave up the siege and left the neighborhood. Yet only for a short time; they returned in greater numbers under the leadership of Ahmed Pasha. The latter at once called upon the Hungarian commandant to surrender the fortress. Losonczy collected in the public square the garrison which numbered altogether 2,200 soldiers, of whom 1,300 were Hungarians and the remainder Germans, Czechs, and Spaniards, and asked them if they were ready to defend to death the fortress in their charge. The enthusiastic shouts of the soldiers—that they were ready to die rather than yield up the place—was the answer he received. Losonczy at once swore in his men, and immediately answered the summons of the Turkish pasha by a sally from the fortress, driving the enemy from the vicinity of the trenches.
The Turks now proceeded to lay regular siege to the fortress—a branch of military science in which they were highly accomplished. They were masters in the art of reducing fortified places, in the mining works, and in the handling of the great battering guns. Thirty-six guns of heavy calibre soon poured their shots into the fortifications, which after a couple of days exhibited such breaches that the pasha thought the time for an assault had arrived. Thousands of brave Janissaries rushed at the tottering walls. There, however, they were met by the guard, who, themselves ready to die, made a frightful havoc amongst their assailants. The assault was repulsed in a few hours, the trenches were filled with the Turkish dead, and many a distinguished bey and officer of high rank was left lifeless on the scene of the sanguinary contest.
Losonczy, however, saw that all the heroism of his soldiers was thrown away if he did not receive aid from abroad. He therefore applied to the commanders of the royal and Transylvanian armies for soldiers, gunpowder, and other war requisites of which he had run short, but could obtain nothing from them. In this strait he resolved to devote his own fortune to the cause of his country, and wrote to his wife, the high-minded Anna Pekry, who was outside the fortress, to turn all he had into money, to mortgage his estates, and, with the funds thus obtained, to hire soldiers, purchase munitions, and send them into the besieged fortress. The generous woman was ready to bring any sacrifice to assist her husband in his extreme distress, and, taking into her pay five hundred volunteers (hayduks) whom she provided with the necessary military equipments, she bade them march to the relief of Temesvár. But the place was already completely invested, and the small troop was unable to penetrate the strong blockading cordon of the Turks. The five hundred hayduks were dispersed by the enemy, the gunpowder was taken away from them, and now Losonczy gave up all hope of aid from without.
Yet the gallant commander never for a moment wavered in his duty. He wrote, in one of his last letters: “We are patiently looking forward to the moment when we must die,” and all he asked of the king was to take care of his little orphans. The hour was not far off, for the long siege had already exhausted their ammunition and provisions, and the Turks were constantly renewing their assaults. Although the enemy lost at times three thousand men in one assault, they returned each day in still greater numbers and repeated the attack. St. Anne’s Day arrived, the day of the patron saint of Anna, Losonczy’s wife, which in brighter days he used to celebrate, according to ancestral fashion, by merry carousing, but it was now a melancholy day for the brave commander. The provisions and ammunition were all exhausted, and the Turks, after immense losses, had finally succeeded in occupying the large entrenched tower lying between the inner citadel and the town.
Hungry, without gunpowder, and with no hope of relief from abroad, Losonczy’s soldiers began at last to mutiny, and, wishing to save their lives, they insisted upon the surrender of the town. The Spanish soldiers—the foreigners—especially demanded the giving up of the place, while the Hungarians declared that they were still ready to follow their gallant leader to death. The inhabitants of the town, reflecting that by a capitulation they might save their lives and property, whereas if the Turks entered the city by force of arms they would be shown no mercy, finally sided with the Spanish party and were bent upon making terms with the enemy. At first Losonczy would not hear of yielding, but when Ahmed Pasha’s messengers appeared at the fortress and promised every one safe departure, besides the right of taking with him all his movables, the Spaniards compelled him to sign the capitulation.
So the brave soldier at last gave up the struggle, and, troubled by sad forebodings, he withdrew from the ruined fortress at the head of his decimated troops, who were still fully armed. Outside the gate he was received with military honors by the Turkish commanders. Losonczy was proceeding on his good horse through the ranks of the enemy which were in a line drawn up on either side, when suddenly there came from the Hungarians in the rear shoutings and cries. He turned back and saw that the Turks, in shameful disregard of the terms of capitulation, had fallen upon his pages and were pillaging them. The old warrior could not witness this disgrace unmoved; he drew his sword, once more the war-trumpet sounded the attack, and he rushed to the rescue of his men. The engagement became general and the small band was almost entirely cut down. Losonczy fearlessly braved death, and, bleeding from numerous wounds, was finally taken by the perfidious enemy, who, cutting off the hero’s head, sent it as a token of triumph to Stambul. Thus, in 1552, passed Temesvár, one of the most important fortified places in Hungary, into the possession of the Turks. It remained longer under the Turkish yoke than any other Hungarian stronghold of importance, for thirty years elapsed after the reconquest of Buda before it was again restored to the possession of the king of Hungary.
Szondi and Losonczy might have been spared martyrdom if the commander-in-chief of the royal army, who were all foreigners, had, in their vanity, had the courage to attempt their rescue. They witnessed, sunk in cowardly inactivity, the deadly throes of these heroes, and looked on with indifference while one fort after the other was falling into hostile hands. These foreign commanders, with their armies composed of foreigners, were never able to cope with the Turks. If they ventured to engage in a battle they were sure to lose it. In this way can it be accounted for that in spite of the superhuman efforts of the Hungarians who heroically battled for their country, the Turkish conquests grew apace, and the flat portions of the land, the rich and fertile lowlands, passed under the rule of the Osmanlis. Transylvania, the eastern portion of the country, had struggled into a sort of independence, and severing herself gradually from the mother-country, had a separate state organization of her own under her native rulers, so that Hungary may be said at this time to have been cut up into three parts. The largest portion accepted the Turkish supremacy, Transylvania asserted its independence, and the remaining and smallest division acknowledged the kings of the Hapsburg dynasty, whose residence was in Vienna. The German, Italian, and Spanish troops employed by the latter, together with those by whom they were led, so far from being instrumental in the liberation of the country, indulged in the same licentious and lawless behavior as the Turks themselves. They were utterly ignorant of the language, customs, and institutions of the Hungarian people, and were entirely indifferent to the interests of the country. These irresponsible military bodies harassed and plundered the native population to such an extent that it was not long before the Hungarians came to hate the foreign soldiery, and the Germans in general, as much as they did the Turks.
But even during the most depressing days, and under circumstances of a most desperate and hopeless character, the spirit of heroism did not die out amongst the Hungarian people. Shortly after the reduction of Temesvár the immense Turkish army marched against Erlau. Stephen Dobó was the commandant of the latter place. He knew by the sad examples of Losonczy and Szondi what was in store for him, and, although the royal troops were near, he also knew, from experience, that he could not depend upon any help from that quarter, and must needs look to his own resources to stay the progress of the overwhelming forces of the Osmanlis. “We expect aid from God only, and not from men,” he wrote at the approach of the enemy. He immediately took measures to defend the place; he laid in large supplies of ammunition, sulphur, saltpetre, and provisions, sent his lieutenant, Mecsey, a soldier worthy of his chief, into the adjoining counties to fire the hearts of the young men, and to invite them to enroll themselves amongst the defenders of the fortress. He made up his garrison of Hungarians only, knowing, from experience, that the foreign hirelings could not be trusted. He had altogether only nine guns and nine gunners, but he hurriedly drilled the students and the more intelligent amongst the peasants in artillery practice, and formed them into a separate corps of cannoniers. Having provided every thing in time, and placing his trust in God and his own strength, he calmly awaited the enemy.
No sooner had the immense Turkish army arrived, when Ahmed Pasha summoned Dobó to surrender the fortress. Dobó collected about him his men and publicly read to them the pasha’s letter. The gallant Hungarian garrison shouted, as with one heart, that they would never surrender the place. Dobó, his fellow-officers, and all the men, then took a solemn oath to fight to the bitter end, and that, if any one but breathed about the surrender, he should be hanged on the pillar of the town well. As an answer to Ahmed’s missive, Dobó caused to be placed upon one of the lofty towers of the bastion a large iron coffin with two lances, one of them floating the Hungarian flag, and the other the Turkish. This was to convey to the enemy that on this place either the Turks or the Hungarians must perish, and in order to give weight to his answer he sallied forth with part of his garrison that very night, and brought away from the besiegers a great deal of booty.