Here, clad in deep mourning, with the crown of St. Stephen on her head, attended by a solemn retinue of the ladies and officers of her household, and holding in her arms her infant son (afterwards Joseph II.), Maria Theresa addressed the assembled orders of the state in Latin, to the following effect: “Deserted by my friends, persecuted by my enemies, attacked by my nearest relations, my last resource is in your loyalty, your courage, and in my own unshrinking constancy. The time has arrived when the faithful hearts and hereditary prowess of Hungary are to bear testimony before the eyes of the world. A crisis is at hand, when the sword must either be drawn in defence of your sovereign, or in support of her insulting enemies. But in the hearts of brave men, I have a resource in the worst emergencies; I have therefore chosen this hour to place in your hands the son and daughter of your sovereign, who in their extremity look to you for protection.” This simple appeal is said to have met with an instant response—those present drawing their swords and shouting, “Vitam et sanguinem! Moriamur pro rege nostro Maria Theresa!”

The whole country was roused; eighty thousand of the “whiskered Pandoors and the fierce hussars” gathered to the aid of their queen, and the tide of Fortune was turned.

This hailing of Maria Theresa as “king” has been ascribed by some writers to the Hungarian appreciation of the heroism of the queen, but it seems rather to have been in accordance with the Magyar tradition, for when King Louis the Saint died leaving no son, his daughter Maria, out of respect for her father, was acclaimed by the people sovereign, “but as if to mark the exceptional character of the arrangement, they insisted that she should assume the title of King, and affix to all public documents the signature Maria Rex.”

The dress, arms, and ferocity of the Hungarian soldiery are said to have struck terror into the disciplined armies of France and Germany. A contemporary writer said, “when the Hungarian nobility took the field for their King Maria Theresa, the first sight of such troops struck the French army with a panic. They had, indeed, often seen detachments of these “Diables d’Hongrie,” as they used to call them; but a whole army drawn up in battle array, unpowdered from the general to the common soldier, half their faces covered with long whiskers, a sort of round beaver on their heads instead of hats, without ruffles or frills to their shirts, and without feathers, all clad in rough skins, monstrous crooked sabres, ready drawn and uplifted, their eyes darting flashes of rage sharper than the beams of their naked sabres, was a sight our men had not been accustomed to see. Our oldest officers still remember the impression these terrible troops made, and how difficult it was to make the men stand against them, till they had been accustomed to their formidable appearance.”

Near the Danube side of the Coronation Hill “Platz” is a grand equestrian statue of Maria Theresa, with a hussar on one side of the horse, and a Hungarian noble on the other. This beautiful piece of sculpture, by John Fadruoz, which was erected in 1897, is simply and eloquently inscribed, “Vitam et sanguinem.”

Pozsony (Pressburg) was not only, until 1848, the meeting place of the Hungarian Diet, but its cathedral was also the crowning place of the Hungarian kings, who after the ceremony rode on to the Coronation Hill by the Danube, and there took the oath of fidelity to the nation, drawing the sword of St. Stephen, and turning to the four points of the compass, making the sign of the Cross with it, and saying, “I will defend my country, wherever it may be attacked, with this sword which the nation has given into my hands.”

The town no longer sees these sights, for it was deemed advisable to have the capital further away from the frontier, and so the seat of government was removed to Budapest; and it was there that the present Emperor of Austria was crowned king of Hungary in 1867. But if we cannot have the spectacle of the king thus publicly taking the oath of fidelity to his country at the ancient seat of government—and the breaking with such traditions has consequences which those responsible can scarcely gauge—we can visit the old cathedral where the actual coronation took place, and can picture for ourselves within that building something of the scenic splendour once visible there.

Here it may be said that it is a curious fact that, as it is at the first Hungarian town that we reach on journeying down the Danube we thus come in touch with the story of the crown of St. Stephen, so we come in touch with it again when we reach the last town before the river passes from Hungary to Rumania.

To happen, as I did, on my first visit upon a busy market day in Pozsony (Pressburg) is to participate in a scene of animation about which one is tempted to linger. At the top of the irregular market place stand a number of long narrow wagons with basketwork sides, laden with vegetables and drawn by large buff-coloured bullocks. Passing into the crowd of peasants and townsfolk, we see wares displayed on stalls or spread over the ground in a glorious confusion of colour. Roughly, the sellers of commodities seem to classify themselves. At one side of the “Platz” are the sellers of bread in many forms, in another part are to be seen rows of boot and shoe sellers, dealers in drapery and haberdashery. Glancing up a court we may notice a buxom peasant woman trying on a pair of high leather boots reaching above the knees. A little beyond are the dealers in fruit and vegetables; great mounds of dark green melons, like large cannon balls, are piled up, and here and there one that has been cut or broken reveals the beautifully contrasting purplish red of the flesh within; broad baskets or tubs tilted to one side show masses of paprika, the national condiment, a delicate red pepper the rare savour of which some visitors fail to recognize. All round are peasants who have brought in their wares, sometimes of the slightest, that they may make something if it be but a few fillers by the transactions; sometimes the wares consist of but a few handfuls of half-ripe beans of various kinds, sometimes of three or four dozen tomatoes, good, bad, or indifferent. From the vegetables, past the vendors of herbs and of flowers, cut and in pots, we come to rows of women selling butter and cream and cheese, and beyond them are stalls after stalls at which ready cooked geese and ducks are being sold whole or by the half or quarter bird, and beyond these again are the butchers’ booths. At the lower end of the market place live geese and fowls are being disposed of, while under the acacias that surround a statue sits a circle of women each of whom has spread upon the ground by her little heaps of various fungi unknown to English culinary art—“toadstools” of all shapes and sizes and colours. These fungi-sellers are a noticeable feature of many of the markets that we visit, but here and at Ratisbon they seemed more numerous than elsewhere. The whole scene is perhaps typical of many of the markets that may be visited, but it was the busiest of those which I happened to see. One is struck by the absence of any marked characteristics of local costume—the various coloured head kerchiefs are much the same as those to be found in places far apart as Bohemia and northern Spain, two dominant notes of colour being “butchers’ blue” in the women’s gowns, and a warm yellow-brown in the kerchief. Of striking costume but little is to be seen unless the visitor penetrates further from the river highway, or unless he happens upon some special festival.

Though Pozsony (Pressburg) is the second important town in Hungary and the old capital, its closeness to the frontier makes it less peculiarly Magyar in character than towns further inland, and a large proportion of its eighty thousand inhabitants are German. There are, too, judging by one or two of the streets, many Jews in the town, and the fact is further emphasized by the large, new (and ugly) synagogue near the cathedral. The cathedral itself is primarily interesting for its historical association, but its pyramid-topped tower, dating from Roman times and surmounted by the Hungarian crown, is worthy of notice.

One story that is told of a siege of the ancient capital is worth recalling as it suggests a similar incident in a Scots ballad. When King Andrew the First was on the throne in the eleventh century, his kingdom was threatened by Henry the Third, who entered Hungary at the head of a large army and laid vigorous siege to Pozsony maintaining a strict blockade on every side in the hope of starving the inhabitants into submission. As the attack was wholly unexpected and the townspeople therefore unprepared, it looked as if the invaders’ expectation might be realized. But while their force was unable to manage the opening of a passage on the river, their stratagem and the bravery of one man effected it. In the silence of the night a skilful swimmer named Zothmund dropped quietly from the wall into the river and swimming round the enemy’s vessels, bored holes in their sides below the water mark, and before the morning the majority of them were sunk, in spite of all the efforts of their crews, so the Emperor was forced to raise the siege. This is very like the exploit of the cabin-boy of “Ye Gowden Vanitie” who volunteered to sink a “French gallie, as she sailed to the lowlands low.”

Long connected with the south side of the river by such a bridge of boats as was the common means of communication across the Danube, Pozsony has for some years had an iron bridge which serves for both road and railway. It communicates with the woodland Au-Park, which forms a favourite recreation ground for the townsfolk.

Passing under this bridge, the steamer starts upon a long stretch of country marked by the sameness of tree-grown banks and islets, with for many miles little to vary a certain monotony beyond the passing of quaint water-mills, moored singly or in groups of as many as a dozen, now in midstream and now close to the bank. These mills consist of a small wooden house on one boat, with a large water wheel, the lower part submerged, connecting it with another boat. On the shore are frequent little granaries not much larger than the floating mills, both being common objects of the Danube for many miles. Before we reach them, however, it should be pointed out that arms of the river branch off left and right a little below Pozsony and do not rejoin the main stream for a long distance. That on the left forms the Csallóköz island or Grosse Schütt—a rich agricultural island nearly sixty miles long, more than thirty wide at its broadest part, and having scattered about it nearly a hundred villages. The right branch of the Danube, which rejoins earlier, forms the Kleine Schütt. These villages are, however, but infrequently glimpsed from the steamer as the island shores along the main stream are broken up into innumerable islets.

Here we are at one of the shallowest parts of the great river’s course, and exposed banks are not infrequent when the water is low, while the steamer has to pick its channel now close to the right bank and then close to the left—especially as we pass some of the rapids. The islands are said to be rich in wildfowl—which it is easy to believe when we have seen between Pozsony (Pressburg) and Esztergom (Gran) flocks of many hundreds of wild duck.

The first stopping place in the river’s long winding through this plain is Körtvélyes—the steamer station for Somorja (Sommerein), the chief town on the greater island; the next is Bös or Böös, a mere landing place, the town which it serves lying two or three miles inland. Passing the little-varying green banks, broken into islets, with a rare spire seen at a distance over the trees, or an occasional peasant with a small herd of cattle, we reach the end of the smaller of the islands where the river Raba or Raab (with which the Danube branch has united) comes in on the right. The town of the same name, once the frontier town between the Turkish and German empires, is a few miles up that stream—and then, on the same flat and unattractive bank, we reach Gönyö from which local steamers run up to Györ (Raab), an interesting old town, described as peculiarly Hungarian, on the site of the Roman station of Arabona, now an important manufacturing centre with more than forty thousand inhabitants.

The next place is Komárom (Komorn) a place with about twenty thousand inhabitants, which, though it does not look particularly picturesque from the river, has a long history, as a town that has withstood many sieges. It is now connected with the south bank by an iron bridge about 440 yards long, and is an important military centre owing to its situation at the extreme eastern end of the Csallóköz Island (Grosse Schütt) where the left arm of the Danube united with the river Vág rejoins the main stream. The town, largely hidden by the long Elizabeth Island, round the narrow eastern end of which we turn to approach the landing place, is strongly fortified and has the reputation of never having been successfully besieged, despite the many times that it has been attacked. The boast of its impregnability is typified in the statue of a virgin placed on the ramparts of the newer fortifications with the inscription “Nec arte, nec Marte.” An older form of the boast took the shape of a female figure in one of the streets, inscribed with a pun upon the town’s name “Kom-morn” or “come to-morrow.” The tradition is that when summoned to capitulate the scornful reply of the defenders was “Komme-morgen,” which an anonymous versifier rendered thus—

Komárom (Komorn) was one of the principal points of the War of Hungarian Independence. Near it a big battle was fought and won by the Hungarian leader, Görgy, and the Austrians were again defeated at the town by General Klapka less than a month later. During this war, indeed, the place justified its boast of impregnability, for General Klapka not only held it against all assaults but only surrendered the town—and then with all the honours of war—when the cause which he represented was known to have failed. In 1866, when Vienna was threatened by the Germans, the Austrians remembered the place that had stood out so strongly nearly twenty years earlier, and the national treasury was removed thither from Vienna. A statue of Klapka was fittingly erected some years ago.

But this town, strong in its pride as a place of strategical importance in the time of war, has something else that it may boast of, for here was born on 19 February, 1825, the great Hungarian romancer Maurus Jókai—the novelist to whom, more than any other English readers owe such knowledge as they possess of his country and of the character of his compatriots. Komárom (Komorn) will be regarded as one of the chief literary shrines of Hungary, as being the place of Jókai’s birth and upbringing, for his reputation became not only national but international, and we look with new interest on the town to which his fame first belongs.

A Hungarian critic, writing in 1898, said of Maurus Jókai: “The number of his works is very great, and although over fifty years have elapsed since the appearance of his first novel (in 1846), he is still enriching Hungarian and European literature with ever new works. Nearly everything has changed in Hungary during the last forty years; but the love and admiration for the genius of Jókai has never suffered diminution. In his chequered life there is not a blot, and in his long career there is not a single dark spot. Pure, manly, upright as a patriot, faithful and loving as a husband, loyal as a subject, kind as a patron, indefatigable as a worker, and, highest of all, a true friend both to men, fatherland and literature, he has given his nation not only great literary works to gladden and enlighten them, but also a sterling example of Magyar virtue and Magyar honour.”

Opposite to Kómarom (Komorn) is the small town of Szöny, with remains indicating a past of some importance in the distant days when it was the Brigetio of the Roman occupation. Leaving the low-lying place of many fortifications—mostly hidden from sight as we journey along the river—with its pleasant river-side promenade, the trees of which successfully mask the walls, we soon find ourselves approaching low hills on the right, which promise that the tedious sameness of this part of the journey is about to be varied, and among which half a dozen miles inland is the beautiful Lake Tata with the towns of Tata and Tóváros and their interesting surroundings, but they lie too far from the river for our present purpose. As we near the rounded hills, the northern portion of the Tata Mountains, some of the marble quarries for which the district is remarkable are to be seen, while a long row of handsome poplars near the shore is a striking feature. At Nezmély (Nesmühl) we reach one of the famous centres of Hungarian wine-growing.

The winding course of the river soon shows that this Italianate building is really situated on a high bluff on the right bank. It is the cathedral of Esztergom (Gran) which has been more than once spoken of as one of the most beautiful achievements of modern architecture. It is only appropriate that it should form so striking an object as we near it, for the town is the ecclesiastical centre of the kingdom of Hungary. It was the Archbishop Rudnay who re-established the primacy at Esztergom (Gran) in the early part of the nineteenth century and who is responsible for the magnificent cathedral, which he designed to rival St. Peter’s at Rome, and which, commenced in 1821, was completed in 1870.

Yet another appropriate reason for this town’s possessing the finest church in Hungary is to be found in the fact that it was here that St. Stephen, the first Christian king and patron saint of the land, was born, and that it was here that he founded an archbishopric in the year 1000.

Esztergom (Gran) was at one time a favourite residence of the kings of Hungary—a magnificent “Calvary” that once belonged to King Matthias Corvinus is shown in the cathedral treasury—but its history also goes back to Roman times, when it was known as Strigonium. On the opposite side of the river—with which it is connected by an iron bridge of over 550 yards—is Párkány and a little beyond, also on the left side, the river Garam (Gran) flows into the Danube. The river winds considerably during the next few miles, and looking back, the magnificent cathedral that we have just passed shows even more strikingly picturesque than as it is approached down-stream—especially when seen against a gorgeous crimson sunset sky. The hills draw together and the scenery once more becomes variedly beautiful. The heights on the left form the termination of out-lying ranges from the Carpathian Mountains. Ahead, the hills seem too close together to afford any passage for the river, which turns abruptly southwards and sweeping round the point doubles into a northerly and then an easterly direction. It is a wonderfully beautiful bit of the journey—the most beautiful between Vienna and Budapest—all the way from Esztergom (Gran) to Vácz (Waitzen). Rounding the point past Dömös, prettily situated among trees on the right, we see ahead of us the ruin-topped height of Visegrád—rich in historical associations. The steamer stops on the left bank at Nagy-Maros (Gross Maros) and looking around at the grandly beautiful scenery, we feel that this district is most justly a favourite holiday resort of the people of Budapest.

This portion of the river alone, made an English traveller of over sixty years ago declare that the scenery of the Danube “partakes much of the nature of the Rhine, only infinitely superior, from the far greater volume and majesty of its own vast stream, and the more imposing and bolder forms of its rocky banks.”

Nagy-Maros is pleasantly situated, but it owes its chief attraction to the great rocky hill of Visegrád on the further side of the river. Here was an ancient palace of the kings of Hungary, a palace celebrated for its splendour and for the magnificent gardens which one of the monarchs laid out on the mountain-side.

Of this one-time splendid centre of Hungarian Court life in the reign of King Louis (who died in 1382), the late E. L. Godkin in his “History of Hungary,” said: “The Magyar historians love to dwell upon the glories of his reign, and above all upon the splendour of his palace of Visegrád, in which he fixed his residence during the greater part of his life. They tell, with pardonable pride, of its vast extent, which could afford ample accommodation for two kings and many minor princes, with all their suites; of its three hundred and fifty chambers, furnished in a style of dazzling splendour; of its gardens stocked with the rarest exotics, and cooled by the rush of flowing water; of the soft and voluptuous music which every evening, from one of the highest towers, soothed or delighted the courtly guests, and floating on the breeze, cheered the peasant as he ‘plodded his weary way’ homeward; and the neighbouring mountains crowned with wood and studded with pleasant villas and rustic churches; of the pleasant and shady alleys that sloped away to the Danube’s edge, and afforded calm contentment to him who chose to escape for a season from the gaieties of the palace.”

GRAN

Now, however, the splendid palace is but a group of scattered ruins, and the rocky slopes are largely covered with trees. From the “high fortress”—for such is the significance of its Magyar name—to a ruined tower on a rock by the river, runs a ruined wall reminiscent of Dürrenstein.

It was by King Matthias Corvinus in the latter part of the fifteenth century—one of the greatest of Hungarian monarchs—that Visegrád was largely made the magnificent summer palace of the rulers, but it had been a royal residence for centuries earlier and in the tower near the river—known as Solomon’s tower—King Solomon was kept a prisoner by his usurping cousin Ladislas during the early part of the twelfth century. It is said that Solomon owed his release to a miracle; for when the ceremonies for the canonization of King Stephen were being arranged, it was found that no human efforts could remove a great stone from the entrance to Stephen’s tomb. A certain virgin, named Charis, informed Ladislas that the stone could not be moved owing to the imprisonment of Solomon! The prisoner was released, and lo! the stone was moved with ease, and the canonization of St. Stephen properly carried out. When the triumphing Turks in the time of Solyman the Magnificent, about 1526, after having annihilated the Hungarian army at Mohacs, overran the country, the royal castle was given over to destruction and plunder:—

Visegrád did not survive this visitation of “the terrible Turk,” but having been dismantled was left for time to beautify, and now it remains one of the most impressive of Danubian ruins—impressive from its grand situation and as offering to the sturdy climber a magnificent view.

A gruesome tragedy is said to have taken place in this old castle in 1336, when King Charles was on the throne. That monarch had married a Polish princess, whose brother Casimir, visiting Visegrád, fell in love with a beautiful girl named Clara Zacs. His affection was not returned, and his passion was such that the outraged girl had to flee with her story to the Count, her father. Count Zacs sought Casimir, only to find that he had fled, and rushing into the chamber at which the royal family were at dinner attacked the queen—whom he believed to have aided her brother—with a sabre cutting the fingers off her right hand. The king, who sought to defend the queen, was wounded, when three nobles, rushing in, fell upon the maddened Count Zacs and cut him to pieces. The royal vengeance was by no means satisfied, but seemed to increase by what it fed on; the unhappy girl was compelled to walk through the town having her nose, lips, and fingers cut off, to the cry of: “This is the punishment of traitors!” while her brother was dragged through the town at the tail of a horse until he died. Other members of the Zacs family only saved themselves by fleeing the country.

One traveller declared that he could have filled a volume with half of the legends told him of Visegrád, on the spot! In these more matter-of-fact days, my inquiries gathered accounts only of the former grandeur of the place as a royal residence, and the story of King Solomon’s imprisonment in the tower still known by his name. The massive hill with its rocks showing through the trees, its summit ruins, and its town grouped at the foot, is probably more picturesque than in the distant days when the castle was occupied by kings, and the mountain-side was largely given over to gardens.

Shortly after we leave Visegrád, the Danube forks at the end of the long serpentine island of St. Andreas, only to be reunited about eighteen miles farther on as we near the capital. The steamer follows the left branch and calls at Vácz (Waitzen) where the river takes a definite southern turn, and continues in that direction for about three hundred miles. The hills have fallen away from the river again, though they show as a background to Vácz (Waitzen) which stretches along the left bank, its eighteenth century cathedral and prison being prominent buildings. This is an old town which was so entirely destroyed by the Tartars in 1141-42 that it had to be refounded and recolonized, partly by the king Bela IV., inviting German settlers.

Below Vácz (Waitzen) the river flows between St. Andreas island on the right and the low land on the left, with no special features to take the eye or hold the interest until Budapest itself comes in sight.