The story of Hungary 18

The story of Hungary 18

The mind of King Béla was beset with anxious thoughts, but his courage

did not fail him. Although it was rather late for efficient military

preparations, he labored day and night to put the country into a state

of defence against the coming peril. He demolished the forests, and

barricaded with the timber thus obtained the Carpathian passes. He

invited his adherents to take counsel with him, and called to arms the

ecclesiastical and lay lords, the soldiery of the counties, and every

man in the country capable of bearing arms. According to ancient custom

he caused the bloody sword to be carried about throughout the land.

His active zeal was not confined to his realm alone, but, sending his

ambassadors to the western courts, he instructed them to beg, admonish,

and urge the rulers of the West, in the name of Christianity, to come

to his aid. It was all in vain. The foreign courts did not stir, and

the Hungarian lords, in their surprise and dismay, instead of devising

means to meet the danger, were wildly looking about them for some one

to be made responsible for the coming peril, and to serve as a victim

of their anger. They turned with passionate hatred upon the king and

the Kuns, saying that he with his Kuns should defend the country, and

that the king need not count upon them in this emergency. The spring

of 1241 was already nearing, and still the royal banner, floating

over Pesth, proclaimed to the world the absence of troops and the

defencelessness of the country. The Mongolian armies had, meanwhile,

already begun to press forward. Their right wing marched on Poland

and Silesia, in order to effect an entrance into the country from the

north-west; the left wing, passing through Moldavia, approached the

snowy mountains of Transylvania; whilst the army of the centre was led

by Batu Khan himself across the northwestern Carpathians to the pass

of Bereczke. Thus the two arms of the Mongol armies were preparing to

crush, in a deadly embrace, the doomed country.

 

Batu Khan crossed the Carpathians on the 12th of March, 1241, and,

having dispersed the troops of Palatine Héderváry, at the foot of

the mountains, the active Mongol cavalry troops overran with such

suddenness the plain watered by the Theiss, that four days later the

smoke of the burning villages, set on fire by the ruthless enemy, could

be discerned from the walls of Pesth. The Hungarian lords, even at this

critical moment, failed to arrive with their contingents, and those who

were under arms near Pesth nursed their wrath, not against the enemy,

but against the hated Kun immigrants whom they denounced as the spies

and allies of the Mongols, and as traitors to Hungary. They rushed upon

the unsuspecting Kuns with savage rage, massacring their king, Kuthen,

together with his household, at his quarters in Pesth. The Kuns,

incensed at this treachery, were not slow to retaliate. One portion of

them left the country, killing, burning, and devastating every thing

before them, whilst the other joined the Mongols in order to avenge

more thoroughly their unjust persecution.

 

Towards the latter end of March, Béla, inspired by despair rather than

by any hope of success, led the royal army which had gathered around

Pesth, and numbered altogether from 50,000 to 60,000 warriors, against

the Mongols. This scanty force was all that the Hungarian nation,

shorn of its valor and sadly wanting in public spirit, opposed to the

invading enemy. The Mongol army retreated before Béla as far as the

Theiss, and there Batu Khan, falling back with both wings of his army,

pitched his camp in the angle formed by the Sajó and the Theiss. King

Béla was intent upon reaching the same point, and placed his forces

on the plain extending along the right bank of the Sajó, opposite the

Mongol camp. Here on the plain of Muhi took place the dreadful conflict

between the two armies. From the dawn of day to late in the night

lasted the bloody engagement which ended with the complete annihilation

of the Hungarian army. On the fated battle-field perished the chief

prelates of the church, the highest dignitaries of the state taken from

the ranks of the best patriots, thousands of the gentry, and the hope

and last prop of the nation, her only army. Only few amongst those

who did not fall amidst the shock of battle could escape with their

lives. The pursuing enemy was everywhere close upon the track of the

fugitives. “During a march of two days,” says Rogerius, a contemporary

writer, who had been an eye-witness of these horrors, “thou couldst see

nothing along the roads but fallen warriors. Their dead bodies were

lying about like stones in a quarry.”

 

Yet, amidst all these misfortunes, there was one gleam of comfort in

store for the nation. Every thing, indeed, was lost, but her king was

saved, and whilst he lived the nation still kept up her hopes and

faith in a better future. A few devoted followers had rescued Béla from

the perils of the bloody engagement near the banks of the Sajó, and

the fugitive king, wandering for a while amidst the mountains of Upper

Hungary, finally arrived at the court of Frederic, Duke of Austria,

to whom he had previously sent his family and royal treasures. Here,

however, instead of meeting with hospitality, he was made prisoner,

and succeeded in regaining his freedom only by abandoning to his

avaricious neighbor, who turned Béla’s misfortunes to his profit, his

treasures, his crown, and the possession of three counties. Béla then

sent his family to the Dalmatian seashore, whilst he himself hurried

back to his unfortunate land, to the region near the Drave, in order

to save what could yet be saved. The Danube alone interfered with the

further advance of the Mongols. Two thirds of the realm had already

fallen a prey to the fierce rage, greed, and brutal passions of the

enemy. Whilst the Mongol Khan was dividing one half of the country, as

conquered territory, into hundredths and tenths, and the people, lured

from their hiding-places, lowered their necks, terror-stricken under

the new yoke, Béla collected anew an army in the western part of the

realm, and despatched ambassadors to the rulers of the western states.

But before he could yet see the results of his renewed exertions, the

severity of the winter, by covering the Danube with ice, afforded

the Mongols an opportunity to penetrate into the Western half of

the country. The places which guarded the most sacred memorials of

Hungarian royalty and Christianity, became a mass of smouldering

ruins. The waves of the Mongolian inundation closed now upon the

entire land. Béla was again compelled to seek safety in flight, and,

mistrusting the continent, he sought a refuge near the sea. He retired,

together with his family, first to Spalato, and subsequently to his

fortified castle Trau, which was defended on almost every side by the

sea. But his pursuers, who seemed to look upon their victories as

incomplete as long as the king was not in their power, were on his

track even there, and, devastating the seashore, as far as Ragusa,

they, at last, desperate with rage, laid siege to Trau.

 

The last hopes of the nation had centred upon the sea-fortress, and now

these hopes, too, seemed to vanish, when suddenly, as by a miracle, the

besiegers ceased their hostilities, folded up their tents, and departed

for the East. At the command of Batu Khan the whole Mongolian army,

with all their followers, left the razed country, the flood of the

invaders receding to the banks of the Volga, whence it had come. Oktai,

the Great Khan, was dead, and Batu Khan hurried back to be present at

the funeral feast, and to make his powerful voice, emphasized by the

arms of his entire army, felt in the election of the new ruler.

 

After the Mongols had withdrawn, King Béla returned, in company of a

few of his trusty followers, to his desolated land. He tottered under

the weight of the misfortunes and woes of his people. To use the

words of a contemporary writer and eye-witness describing the scene

of desolation which met Béla’s eyes: “Here and there a tower, half

burnt and blackened by smoke, and rearing its head towards the sky,

like a mourning flag over a funereal monument, indicated the direction

in which they were to advance. The highways were overgrown with grass,

the fields white with bleaching bones, and not a living soul came out

to meet them. And the deeper they penetrated into the land, the more

terrible became the sights they saw. When at last those who survived

crept forth from their hiding-places, half of them fell victims to wild

animals, starvation, and pestilence. The stores laid up by the tillers

of the soil, the year before, had been carried away by the Mongols, and

the little grain they could sow after the departure of the enemy had

hardly sprung up when it was devoured by locusts. The famine assumed

such frightful proportions that starving people, in their frenzy,

killed each other, and it happened that men would bring to market human

flesh for sale. Since the birth of Christ no country has ever been

overwhelmed by such misery.”

 

Great deeds spring up in noble souls harrowed by misfortune. Béla

showed himself greatest in the extreme misery of his nation. In order

to relieve the wants of the people and to enable them to till the

soil, he caused to be imported seed for sowing and draught cattle

from the neighboring countries. He colonized with new inhabitants the

depopulated regions, held out inducements to German artisans, miners,

and traders to settle in towns, and invited again the Kuns, who were

roaming in the regions of the Lower Danube, to return to their former

habitations on the rich lands of the Theiss. He bestowed especial

care upon the cities, founded new ones, and granted additional

privileges to the old ones. He was also the founder of Buda, which

stands to this day. He ordered the larger cities to be surrounded by

walls, caused forts, built of stone, to be erected in the neighborhood

of more important roads, and encouraged the great lords to build

similar forts. He was careful to guard the eastern frontiers, but

remembering that the durability of the internal order was as powerful a

support of the security of the land as well defended frontiers, he was

bent upon making the laws respected. Hardly five years had passed since

Béla engaged in his arduous task, and already the country recuperated

to such an extent that the nation could receive with composure the news

that the Mongols were making fresh preparations for a second attack,

and was even, for years, able to turn the weight of her whole power

against the Western states.

 

[Illustration: BELA IV. RETURNS TO HIS COUNTRY DEVASTATED BY THE

MONGOLS.]

 

The nation which stood in such great need of peace, was unfortunately

doomed never to enjoy its blessings. Béla himself, as soon as he

had gained sufficient strength, deemed it his first duty to punish

Frederic, the faithless Austrian duke, and to recover the treasures

retained by the latter’s treachery. The war between the two neighbors

began in 1246. The contest in itself was of no great significance but

its consequences were highly important. Béla achieved, with the help of

his Kun warriors, a complete triumph over Frederic, who lost his life

on the battle-field. Frederic was the last of the Babenberg line, and

the inheritance of the Babenbergs, the Austrian principalities, were,

through his death, left without a master. Béla coveted for himself the

masterless countries, but was opposed in his schemes in that direction

by Ottokar, the powerful king of Bohemia, who then already labored for

the realization of his ambitious dream, the founding of a great Slavic

empire. The Hungarian king could not expose his country to the dangers

involved in the erection of such a Slavic empire along the western