Hungarian people

“ And they are as proud of their country as of their capital. According to an old Hungarian proverb, “Extra Hungarian non est vita”—“Life is not life outside of Hungary.” [13] “Have we not,” the people here ask, “all that is necessary for our welfare? Our blessed soil provides for all our wants.” And Sandor Petöfi, Hungary’s greatest lyric poet, does not hesitate to declare:
If the earth be God’s crown,
Our country is its fairest jewel.
But it is the people of this fair capital that make the strongest appeal to the traveler. It matters not if he be a stranger. ”

“ Every European people has its own special gift. Greece and Italy have the gift of art; Rome has law England political liberty and the power of planting colonies; Germany has metaphysics and scientific method; while France is distinguished by good taste. Hungary's endowment was a strong sense of nationality, that is to say, the desire to found and to maintain a state which knitted the people into an organic whole. Simultaneously with the growth of the national spirit, and lending it strong support, arose the nation's literature. ”

“ As a consequence a fierce constitutional contest was raging, during the whole of the seventeenth century, between the nation and their kings, which quite overshadowed the struggle against the Turks. In these contests the Hungarian people leaned for support chiefly on the principality of Transylvania, whose rulers, Stephen Bocskay, Gabriel Bethlen, George Rákóczy I., not only made their comparatively small country the bulwark of Hungarian nationality and of the Protestant Church, but raised her to a position of exceptional influence in European politics. ”

“ The Hungarians are of Magyar descent and speak a beautiful, musical language, while the Austrians are a mixture of many races whose common tongue is a borrowed, unclassical German. Each country has its own government, its own parliament, and its own cabinet officers. The Hungarian nobility regard the Austrian nobles as mere upstarts. Nothing is so displeasing to a Hungarian as to be called an Austrian, or to be told that Austrians and Hungarians are one and the same people. ”

“ The Hungarians are a martial people, and are fond of reciting their exploits. Every old guide in Pesth will tell you, in a variegated English which will provoke your smiles, all the incidents of the Hungarian revolution, the events of 1848 and 1849—how the Austrians were driven across the great bridge over the Danube, etc.—with infinite gusto. The humblest wharf-laborer takes a vital interest in the welfare of his country, even if he is not intelligent enough to know from what quarter hostilities might be expected. ”

“ Well, little one, it is as nice to Americans, but when our Hungarian people go there they always come back. Sometimes the Slövaks remain, but never the Magyars. They go there and work and save. Then they send for their families, and they too work and save, and at last they all come home. There is a story told of the last war in Hungary. Two Magyar peasants had gone to America and worked in the far west. [111] One day in a lonely cabin on the plains they found an old newspaper and read that there was war in Hungary. ”

“ If we may be permitted to use the language of geology, the soul of the Hungarian people during the Middle Ages might be said to show in section three different strata. At the bottom is the primitive pagan nature, brought from their Asiatic home. The next shows a more cultured mental condition, the result largely of intercourse with Turkish, Slavish, German, and Italian neighbours. Last comes Christianity, introducing a multitude of new features into the life of the people. ”

“ Here the Hungarian is eminently patriotic: he endeavors as much as possible to forget that he and his are bound to the empire of Austria, and he speaks of the German and the Slav who are his fellow-subjects with a sneer. The people whom one encounters in that corner of Hungary profess a dense ignorance of the German language, but if pressed can speak it glibly enough. I won an angry frown and an unpleasant remark from an innkeeper because I did not know that Austrian postage-stamps are not good in Hungary. ”

“ A Hungarian noble is a very great man. A Hungarian eidelman is inferior to him, only if he be less wealthy. A Hungarian peasant is a serf. There is an excellent preparation made, doubtless, for better things in the future, but in its immediate working, the constitution which so orders matters, is to the people a thousand-fold more oppressive than the most absolute despotism.
I have spoken of the solemnity of the king's coronation as taking place at Presburg ”

“ The intellectual movement of the Reformation made the soil of Hungary, that had already been cultivated, bring forth a national literature, which the struggle evoked by the anti-Reformation succeeded in fostering to a higher development.”
Successive rulers of the Austrian House of Hapsburg were chosen as German Emperors too, and the effect of this was to make Hungary seem15 to them insignificant, and they tried to incorporate it as a part of their dominions without recognising the Hungarian people as a strong nation which had freely invited them to rule. ”

“ THE CSIKOS OF HUNGARY.
Of the chivalry, the gallantry, the splendor, the hospitality, the courage, and the love of liberty of the Hungarian noble or gentleman, no one doubts. Of his ideas of true constitutional freedom, or the zeal with which that or Hungarian independence has been maintained first through Turkish, and then German domination for some hundred years past, doubts may be entertained. Neither do the Hungarian peasantry or people reflect high credit on their "natural superiors." Something should be deducted for the forced vivacity and straining after effect of the littérateur ”

“ He is not easy to cheer by incitements which put heart into other people, for he does not readily respond to this sort of thing. There is a saying that the “Hungarian enjoys life with weeping eyes,” just as the Britishers are supposed to take their pleasures sadly, and it is true that a vein of melancholy runs through the folk-songs and ballads of Hungary. The gipsy who wants to rouse the Hungarian peasant has to begin plaintively and rise into gaiety if he wishes to catch his attention. ”

“ Hungary was declared by Francis Joseph of Austria no more to exist as a Nation, no more as a State. It was and is put under martial law. Strangers, aliens to our laws and history as well as to our tongue, rule now, where our fathers lived and our brothers bled. To be a Hungarian is become almost a crime in our own native land. ”

“ He enchants the children of Hungary by his fairy-tales, and as they grow up into men and women he implants within them a passion for their native land and a knowledge of its splendid history such as only his poetic and dramatic pen could engrave upon their memory. His versatility of talent—for, besides being the Hungarian poet-laureate, he is a novelist, playwright, historian, and orator—enables the Hungarians to see in him their Heine, their Byron, their Walter Scott, and their Victor Hugo. ”

“ In no other poetry of the time is the note of love for the Fatherland so powerful and so fundamental. With other peoples the feeling of national unity was still lying dormant, while in Hungary it moved the heart of the nation with the unconscious but mighty force of an universal instinct. The fire of the Turkish wars only served to make this element in the Hungarian character as strong as iron; and the development, in the sixteenth century, of the feeling of nationality, was one of the most important phases of the evolution through which the nation's mind has passed. ”

“ Here’s the first gun: ‘The majestic words will find an echo in all parts of Hungary, which will ever remain in the debt of the great Hohenzollern, who has forever conquered the soul of every Hungarian; ... the love and gratitude of the Hungarian nation will follow the guest of our King wherever he goes.’ But that is mere rhetoric. Listen to this: ‘In every line there is so much heart and so much sympathy with the Hungarian nation, its glorious past as well as its promising future, that it seems not the language of politics only, but of a loving friend, on whose well-meaning we may ever rely! ”

“ Then, sir, the next question is, whether Hungary, as she exists in our ideas, as we see her, and as we know her, is distinct in her nationality, is competent in her population, is also competent in her knowledge and devotion to correct sentiment, is competent in her national capacity for liberty and independence, to obtain a government that shall be Hungarian out and out? ”

“ Germans and Bohemians, who for many years had filled all the public offices in Hungary, were compelled either to learn the Hungarian language or surrender their places to natives. In most cases the latter was unavoidable, and these aliens, furious at being driven from their prescriptive sinecures, went up to Vienna and did their best to make it hot for the Hungarians. As every war has its origin in an inkstand, students are, naturally, the greatest Chauvinists, and I was to find that out with a vengeance. ”

“ But the triumph of the reactionary spirit under the reign of King Francis made them conspirators. Those of their friends who joined them were all honest and enthusiastic patriots, who saw in the success of democratic ideas the welfare of Hungary. But they did not look to a revolution for the realization of their fond hopes. They entered the society for the sole purpose of preparing the minds of their countrymen for reforms to be obtained by constitutional means. Almost every Hungarian writer, who was not in some dependent position, belonged to the society. ”

“ Its deep underlying causes can only be understood in the light of the whole of Hungarian history. It is easy to denounce the dominant Magyar classes as a selfish oligarchy, and to criticize the methods by which they have sought to maintain their power. But a nation that for a thousand years had maintained its individuality in the midst of hostile and rival races could not be expected to allow itself without a struggle to be sacrificed to the force of mere numbers, and the less so if it were justified in its claim that it stood for a higher ideal of culture and civilization. ”

“ Hungary was once the land of kings, and it was still the land of nobles. Half oriental, half western, the Hungarian is next in magnificence to the Moslem. He gives his last ducat for a shawl, a jewel-hilted sabre, or a gilded cap, which nothing but his fear of being mistaken for a Turk prevents him from turning into a turban. The Princess Juliana of Marosin sat in the centre of a chamber that might have made the cabinet of the favourite Sultana of the Lord of the Infidels. ”

“ It must not be thought, however, that Hungarian literature is exclusively national in its contents and character. Just as the country itself is open to the waters of the Danube, rolling down from the west, so too, from the time of the Middle Ages, its literature received a stream of western ideas. Every epoch in Hungary's intellectual development was closely related to movements in Western Europe. ”

“ There were, no doubt, elements of discord in Hungary, of which Austria, on former occasions as well as now, took advantage; but their value to her in the present war has been greatly overrated. The population of the kingdom, like that of the empire, is composed of various races, amongst which there are differences of language, religion, customs, and sentiments. Of the 14,000,000 of people who inhabit Hungary, not more than 5,000,000 are Majjars, about 1,262,000 are Germans, 2,311,000 Wallacks, and, of the remaining 5,400,000, nine-tenths or more are Sclaves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Austria’s unsuccessful attempt to dominate Hungary’s economic life accelerated the growth of the germ of dissension between the two countries. The tie that links Budapest to Vienna, at present, is strengthened by Hungarian dread of the Slav. It might have given way long ago otherwise, for in truth Hungary has to face the menace of Pan-Germanism as well. The percentage of native Hungarians in their own country is under 55 per cent and gives them a bare majority over the combined alien peoples. ”

“ It was in the tenth century that the Hungarians came from Asia, founded their state, and embraced Christianity, and were thus brought into contact with the Europe of the Middle Ages, and shared in its civilisation. ”

“ To the east of Hungary is Transylvania, and south of it Slavonia and Croatia. Still we have only named the best-known divisions.
The whole comprises an immense area; a line drawn round it runs to over 5000 miles and encloses a territory larger than that of any other European country except Russia.
One quarter of the population is German, another quarter Magyar (or Hungarian) and Roumanian, whilst the remaining half is made up of Italians together with Slavs, namely Poles, Croatians, Czechs, Slovaks. ”

“ Hungary's three greatest poets, Vörösmarty, Petőfi, and Arany, happened to be contemporary with her three greatest statesmen, Széchenyi, Kossuth and Deák. Those men together, by herculean efforts, managed to awaken the country from its torpor, and to fill men's hearts with hope. They organised the population into a true nation. By their wisdom they created a future for their country, and by their poetry they surrounded it with glory. ”