The reign of St. Stephen (1000-1038), who made the Christian faith obligatory upon all his subjects ( Glatz, 1996, p. 48), is often described as authoritarian, for example Bogyay has noted: “ Vor allem fällt der autokratische Charakter auf [...]” (1977, p. 22). Certainly it is obvious that the young Hungarian state had a centralized character: Stephen introduced a new system of territorial administration. He divided the country into fourty “megyék”, that means counties. He took away the landed properties of the tribal chiefs and integrated them into his “megye”-system. Thus the king was the greatest landowner and installed “ispáns”, who had administrative and judicative power over the counties as his deputies (Glatz, 1996, p. 48). The aristocracy, which consisted of parts of the tribal aristocracy and a small amount of freemen of public order, had social, economical and hereditary privileges. This class also owned most of the administrative offices. But the king employed and removed his officers on his own discretion and proclaimed laws and decisions as his personal will (Bogyay, 1977, p. 23). He also appointed the members of the royal council who only had a consultative vote. Thus we can summarize that the nobility had a high political status, but was dependant on the king. Bogyai states in his book “Grundzüge der Geschichte Ungarns” (main features of Hungarian history) that the authoritarian character of St. Stephen’s rule explains why the Western type of feudalism was never really established in Hungary. Anyway it is certain that “nicht feudale Hierarchie, sondern das unmittelbare, persönliche Verhältnis zum König ist zum neuen Ordnungsprinzip geworden.” (Bogyay, 1977, p. ). The quotation says that not feudal hierarchy, but the direct, personal relation to the king became the principle of arrangement. This principle of interdependence between the estates and the king lived on and is one of the factors that made it possible for the nobility to ascend and later become the most important political power in Hungary.
Under the rules of the successors of St. Stephen there were two main factors which furthered the beginning of the oligarch ascendance.
Firstly there were huge peripheral territories which remained uninhabited until the middle of the twelfth century. When roman, slavic and saxon people began to settle down in these areas during the second half of the twelfth century, the king sold this territories to private landowners. According to the historian Ferenc Glatz the sedentation of the foreign peoples could only happen under regional rule, i.e. the centralized royal power was not capable of organizing it. Thus the country was not only the king’s property anymore and his centralized power weakened.
The second reason for oligarch ascendance was that the kings started to go into action with the dynastic struggles of their neighbours (Bogyay, 1977, p. 37). For this purpose they needed military help of the nobles. The higher nobility was definitly able to support their kings and accordingly their political influence grew.
According to Bogyay Béla II (1172-1196) was the last absolutist monarch of the Árpád dynasty. Based on the fact that the stablilty of his reign was only bound to Béla’s II personal talent, Bogyai argues: “Die fortschreitende Umwandlung der Gesellschaft und die Verschiebung des politischen Gleichgewichts zugunsten der Aristokratie konnten nicht aufgehalten werden” (Bogyay, 1977, p. 39). This means that the progressive conversion of the society and the defferal of the political balance to the aristocracy could not be delayed anymore. Béla’s II successor Andrew II (1205-1235) distributed the whole royal lands to his barons and knights in order to gain money and support for the wars he fought almost yearly. Thus the material basis of the absolutist royal power was lost. The lesser nobility, which suffered under the new regulations of Andrew II, “compelled their king to sign the Golden Bull” (Ignotus, 1972, p. 25). The Bull- Ignotus compares it to the Magna Carta in England- guaranted to this class of “Burgministeriale” (lower officers in the castles) and propertied ignoble freemen “rights against [the king] and his barons (i.e., great magnates), and ... established prerogatives (which it further enlarged) against immigrants, non-Christians, traders, and the serfs who formed the mass of the people.” (Ignotus, 1972, p. 25). It happened around this time that this group of different kinds of lesser nobles transformed into a unique estate. This was also written down officially in 1351 in a law which defined the different social classes. The lesser nobility built the core of the “natio Hungarica” until the nineteenth century.
Béla IV (1235-1270) showed efforts to annul some of the land-donations of Andrew and to oppose the will of the oligarchs. But his options were ruined by the Mongols, who attacked and destroyed Hungary in 1241. In the interests of the defense and reconstruction of his country he gave up the direct opposition to the oligarchs and furthered the lesser nobility by privileges. The monarch hoped to create a balance of power between them and the higher nobility, i.e. the oligarchs.
After the death of Béla IV and two of his successors, a struggle between various dynasties and the reign of the very weak king László IV (or Ladislaus) furthered the strengthening of the oligarchs. At the end of the thirteenth century they had established twelve territorial units through which they ruled most parts of the country. When Andrew III, the last monarch of the Árpád dynasty, died in 1301, Hungary became an elective monarchy. The dynastic principle remained important, but the right to elect a king became another powerful political means which laid in the hands of the nobility. However, the three Anjou kings that succeeded Andrew III between 1301 and 1437, managed to delay the development of Hungary into a state of estates. “The Anjous smashed their little kingdoms” (Ignotus, 1972, p. 27), i.e. they smashed the twelve territorial units of the oligarchs. Furthermore they replaced these oligarchs by a new aristocracy which was loyal to the king (Bogyay, 1977, p. 57), proclaimed same rights and freedoms for all nobels and promoted the cities. Glatz describes this period as the “integrálódási korszak Európához” (Glatz, 1996, p. 101), the period of European integration. And Ignotus writes that under the Anjou kings “Hungary flourished and reached the peak of her power” (Ignotus, 1972, p. 26).
But once again, in the middle of the fifteenth century, the aristocracy ascended. The last Anjou king, Sigismund of Luxemburg, spent many years of his reign abroad. Thus he had to rely on the aristocracy in military as well as administrative concerns. The monarch also failed to raise the lesser nobility and the citizens as a counterbalance to the barons. Meanwhile the latter owned one third of the hungarian territory and a huge part of the lesser nobility was dependent on them (Bogyai, 1977, p. 62). Between 1437 (when Sigismund died) and 1458 the situation was similar to that after the deatch of the last Árpád king. The barons ruled the country and kept huge amounts of the taxes for themselves. But they did not agree on the royal succession. In 1439 they elected Albert of Habsburg as their king and forced him to convoke the diet regularly (i.e. every year). Since every nobel had the right to take part in these meetings individually, we have to imagine the diet as a very chaotic institution:
“ A fönemeseken kívül a köznemesség sokezres felfegyverezett tömegekben jelenik meg, számtalan törvényt hoznak, amelyeknek csak éppen végrehajtására nincs erejük” (Glatz, 1996, p. 166). The quotation says: Besides the higher nobility, the lesser nobility appeared in an armed mass of thousands of people, they passed numerous laws, but just did not have the power to implement them. Maybe the author exaggerates a bit, but the fact is that the real power laid in the hands of a few oligarchs. One of them, János Hunyadi, “ruled the country as her regent” (Ignotus, 1972, p. 29) while Louis V was absent. After the death of Louis V and a bloody war between two oligarch families for the succession, the diet elected the son of János Hunyadi, Mátyás Hunyadi, as their king in 1458.
The rule of Matthias Corvinus “as he styled himself [...] evolved quite differently from what was expected of it- at any rate, by the electors” (Ignotus, 1972, p. 29). Matthias straightened the state machinery of the estates out: He reduced the power of the diet and therefore that of the estates. He cut himself adrift from the military power of the oligarchs by establishing a strong, professional standing army. This army was financed by taxes which had to be paid from then on by the nobel classes as well. Furthermore the king contributed much power to the executive apparatus, the chancellery, and fills it and the royal court with humanistic intellectuals. He conduces to the development of a secular intelligentsia in Hungary by building a huge library at his court and inviting Italian humanists. This development also has the effect that education slowly freed itself from the church and thus from the high clergy which supports the high nobility. Matthias promotes the cities in order to achieve an economic counterbalance against the large land holdings of the oligarchs. Like the absolutist kings in Western Europe, Matthias supported the ignoble classes, like the emerging bourgoisie in the cities, in order to become independent from the noble ones.
After the death of Matthias in 1490 the estates elected the indulgent Wladislaw II. They were able to influence him easily according to their interests. They smashed the centralized power Matthias established and forced the king not to levy further taxes. Thus, the treasury emptied within a few years and the standing army could not be paid anymore. Without this army, the „végvárrendszer“, a system of castles along the Hungarian border, could not function properly for defense anymore and made it much more easier for the Turks to invade Hungary.
But before the Hungarian army lost the decisive battle at Mohács in 1526, another event „swept Hungary away from the midstream of European development“ (Ignotus, 1972, p. 31). In 1514, György (George) Dózsa led a peasant revolt against the nobility. The serfs and unfree peasants had to suffer a lot under the „ Habsucht und ... Interessenkämpfe der machthungrigen ... Aristokratie“ (Bogyay, 1977, p. 72), i.e. the avarice and the interest conflicts of the for power striving aristocracy. Originally, the pope Leo X had called for a crucade, but the military leadership resisted this order. Surprisingly many unfree peasants and serfs came together and turned the crucade into a fight of the unfree mass against the nobility. The latter defeated the peasent. As a retaliation the diet decided that “serfs were tied to the soil” (Ignotus, 1972, p. 31) forever. István Werböczy wrote this and many othe laws down in his Tripartitum which favoured the noble classes and suppressed the serfs. As mentioned in the introduction the Tripartitum remained the basis of hugarian legislation and jurisdiction until 1848.
In 1526 the Turks won the battle of Mohács against the Hungarians and invaded the country which was divided into three parts. The largest one was ruled by the military government of the Turks. Transylvania had to promise loyalty to the Sultan, but managed to keep its inner affairs independently. The rest of the country was under the reign of the Habsburgs.
While in Western Europe souvereign states emerged, Hungary was divided for 150 years. The impacts of this division and occupation were crucial for the further development of the country. For example the Turkish troups carried off many people from both genders (and even children) into slavery when they moved home after the battles. They also plundered whole villages and destroyed the economical fundament of Hungary (Bogyay, 1977, pp. 88-89). The population diminished enourmosly: in 1600 one and a half million less people inhabited the hungarian territories than at the end of the Middle Ages.
We can clearly see that a main cause why Hungary was not able to defend itself against the Turks and thus besides the occupation of large parts of its territory also became dependant on the Habsburgs until the first world war, was the unappeasable cupidity for power of the nobility. This power served only a slight elite of the population and this elite ignored or did not acknowledge that they led a whole country into the downfall. The oligarchs destroyed the centralized state of Matthias Corvinus without further deliberation. Today we can see that for Hungary at that time, the ambitions of Matthias were in some respect the last chance to catch up with the developments in Western Europe and to save his realm from the Turks who were expanding westwards since the late fourteenth century.
References:
Bogyay, Thomas von (1977). Grundzüge der Geschichte Ungarns. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Evans, Robert J.W. (1986). Das Werden der Habsburgmonarchie 1550-1700: Gesellschaft, Kultur, Institutionen. Oxford University Press.
Glatz, Ferenc (1996). A magyarok krónikája. Gütersloh: Mohndruck GmbH.
Ignotus, Paul (1972). Hungary. London: Ernest Benn Limited.
Kann, Robert A. & David, Zdenek V. (1984). The Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526-1918. Seattle/London: University of Washington Press.
Niederhauser, Emil (1993). The National Question in Hungary. Cambridge: Cambridge Uiversity Press.
The Árpáds were the descendants of Árpád, the prince who led the- according to the national saga seven- hungarian tribes which invaded the mid-Danubian valley in the ninth century.
This term of course only refers to a political nation and excludes the serfs and ignoble peasants as it is explained in the introduction of this essay.
