John Hunyadi

“ The more land a noble owned, and the greater the number of his bondmen, the larger the number of the soldiers he was able to equip, and the greater the military power wielded by him, the better his prospects of promotion to a higher position in the state, in society, and about the person of his king. The first games of childhood were martial games, and the first tasks of youth were military tasks.
Such, no doubt, had also been the early training of John Hunyadi; by such means he rose, acquired a large fortune, and was able to support a great army. ”

“ When in 1448 the great Hungarian general, John Hunyadi, defeated by Sultan Amurath on the ill-omened field of Kóssovo, was seized in his flight by George, Despot of Serbia, and imprisoned in the fortress of Semendria, he owed his deliverance to another scion of the race, George Mergnjavić, perpetual Count of Zvornik and lord of Foinica, who hurried to his relief with a strong body of troops collected from his territories ”

“ They therefore occupied themselves with affairs of State more than members of the old dynasties had been accustomed to do; and in their anxiety to acquire dignity they also displayed greater luxury. In default of an ancient name they had recourse to their wealth, and they loved to surround themselves with eminent men in order to add splendour to their court. Such a monarch was Matthias, himself sprung from no royal race, but a son of the great general John Hunyadi. ”

“ These prisoners had just been captured by the king near Shabatz, and they were to serve as an evidence of Hungarian prowess. At that time half Europe stood in awe of the powerful Turks, particularly the Italians, who, although excelling in art and science, were wretched and pusillanimous soldiers. Both Matthias and his father, John Hunyadi, were known to the Italians as the most powerful and successful foes of the dreaded Turks, and the prestige of the names of these two warriors won greater respect for the embassy than all the wealth and luxury displayed by it. ”

“ To the Hungarians it seemed as if the god of war himself had descended to fight under197 their banners, and they were seized with wild enthusiasm. The Turkish general, with the remnant of his army, fled in dismay, and from this day forward the name of the raven knight continued to be the terror of Turkish warriors. This mysterious knight was John Hunyadi. To be sure, men like Pongrácz, Szentmiklóssy, Thalloczy, or Maróthy, had before this day proved themselves heroes in the many struggles against the Turks. ”

“ Myself. The Turk always keeps his word, I am told.
Hungarian. Which the Christian very seldom does, and even the Hungarian does not always. In 1444 Ulaszlo made, at Szeged, peace with Amurath for ten years, which he swore with an oath to keep, but at the instigation of the Pope Julian he broke it, and induced his great captain, Hunyadi John, to share in the perjury. The consequence was the battle of Varna, of the 10th of November, in which Hunyadi was routed, and Ulaszlo slain. Did you ever hear his epitaph? it is both solemn and edifying ”

“ We are so accustomed to regard Hunyadi as the incarnation of Christian chivalry that we are apt to forget that he was a great captain and a great statesman as well as a great hero. It has well been said that he fought with his head rather than with his arm. He was the first to recognize the insufficiency and the unreliability of the feudal levies, the first to employ a regular army on a large scale, the first to depend more upon strategy and tactics than upon mere courage. He was in fact the first Hungarian general in the modern sense of the word. ”

“ HUNYADI, JÁNOS (c. 1387–1456) , Hungarian statesman and warrior, was the son of Vojk, a Magyarized Vlach who married Elizabeth Morzsinay. He derived his family name from the small estate of Hunyad, which came into his father’s possession in 1409. The later epithet Corvinus, adopted by his son Matthias, was doubtless derived from another property, Piatra da Corvo or Raven’s Rock. He has sometimes been confounded with an elder brother who died fighting for Hungary about 1440. While still a youth, he entered the service of King Sigismund, who appreciated his qualities and borrowed money from him ”

“ In a moment the blood rushed to my head, and I cried out, “I am ready.”
“Be calm, sir. A mere word, a gesture, may prove fatal to him,” whispered the doctor to me. “His life hangs on a thread.”
Count Hunyadi was kneeling beside my father, and evidently trying to catch some faint words he was saying, as I stole forward and knelt down by the bedside. ”

“ Hunyady alone remained at his post, resolute like a lion attacked. The energy of the old leader—he was now nearly sixty-eight—was only steeled by the greatness of the danger; his forethought and his mental resources were but increased. As he saw that it would be impossible to do anything with a small army, he sent his friend, John Capistran, an Italian Franciscan, a man animated by a burning zeal akin to his own, to preach a crusade against the enemies of Christendom through the towns and villages of the Great Hungarian Plain. ”

“ You will go to Graf Hunyadi, and speak with him. If he be—as many of his countrymen are—a man of high and generous feeling, he will not bring ruin upon us, when our only alternative would be to denounce our own. You are very young; but you have habits of the world and society. ”

“ You 'll find Hunyadi an excellent fellow, and the Countess charming; don't make love to her, though, for Tassilo is a regular Othello. As for the Erdödis, I only wish I was going there, instead of you;—such pheasants, such women, such Tokay, their own vintage! Once you 're down in Transylvania, write me word whom you 'd like to know. They 're all dear friends of mine. By the way, don't make any blunder about that Hunyadi contract The people here will want you to break it,—don't, on any account. It's the finest bargain ever was made ”

“ The next fourteen years form one of the most interesting and pregnant periods of Hungarian history. It marks the dawn of a public spirit as represented by the gentry, who, alarmed at the national peril and justly suspicious of the ruling magnates, unhesitatingly placed their destinies in the hands of Hunyadi, the one honest man who by sheer merit had risen within the last ten years from the humble position of a country squire to a leading position in the state. ”

“ A crown of another character awaited him—that of his Redeemer, in whose name he lived, fought, and fell. The exhalations from the vast number of unburied or imperfectly buried bodies, festering in the heat of summer, gave rise to an epidemic in the Christian camp, and to this the great leader fell a victim. Hunyady died August 11, 1456, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. He died amid the intoxication of his greatest victory, idolized by his followers, having once more preserved his country from imminent ruin. ”

“ Hunyadi had been able to raise only fifteen thousand of well-armed and disciplined men, though he had with him vast bands of people, who called themselves Soldiers of the Cross, but who consisted of inexperienced lads from school, peasants and hermits, armed with swords, slings and clubs. Hunyadi, undismayed by the great disparity between his forces and those of the Turk, advanced to relieve Belgrade, and encamped at Szalankemen with his army. ”

“ Hunyady crossed the Danube and raided Turkish territory, while Mohammad beleaguered the Servian fortresses of Ostroviza and Semendra (Smederevo) . He took Ostroviza, but Semendra—a stronghold of capital strategic importance for operations against Servia, Hungary, and Wallachia—was saved by the arrival of the Magyar general, and Mohammad retreated. A large detachment of the retreating army encountered Hunyady near Krusovac. No regular battle was fought; a panic seized the Turks and they were routed with slaughter. ”

“ On the 24th of January 1458, 40,000 Hungarian noblemen, assembled on the ice of the frozen Danube, unanimously elected Matthias Hunyadi king of Hungary, and on the 14th of February the new king made his state entry into Buda.
The realm at this time was environed by perils. The Turks and the Venetians threatened it from the south, the emperor Frederick III. from the west, and Casimir IV. of Poland from the north, both Frederick and Casimir claiming the throne. The Czech mercenaries under Giszkra held the northern counties and from thence plundered those in the centre. ”

“ It defeated an Ottoman army on the banks of the Masova and again at Nisch.68 It then crossed the Balkan range in winter—an operation of extreme difficulty, which has since only twice been effected, by General Diebitsch and General Gourko—and again defeated the Turks in a battle at the foot of these mountains. Strange to say, instead of marching onwards to Adrianople, as Diebitsch did in 1829, Hunyadi was content with the laurels already achieved, and returned with his army to Buda, where he displayed his trophies and received a triumph. ”

“ At the diet which met in February 1445 a provisional government, consisting of five Magyar captain-generals, was formed, Hunyadi receiving Transylvania and the ultra-Theissian counties as his district; but the resulting anarchy became unendurable, and on the 5th of June 1446 Hunyadi was unanimously elected governor of Hungary in the name of Ladislaus V., with regal powers. ”

“ On the death of Hunyadi he made Cillei governor of Hungary at the diet of Futtak (October 1456) , and when that traitor paid with his life for his murderous attempt on Laszló Hunyadi at Belgrade, Ladislaus procured the decapitation of young Hunyadi (16th of March 1457) , after a mock trial which raised such a storm in Hungary that the king fled to Prague, where he died suddenly (Nov. 23rd, 1457) , while making preparations for his marriage with Magdalena, daughter of Charles VII. of France. He is supposed to have been poisoned by his political opponents in Bohemia. ”

“ Hunyadi for twenty years was a terror to the Ottoman armies. His first encounter with them was at Hermannstadt, north of the Danube, which was invested by an army of eighty thousand Ottomans. He led an army of twenty thousand Hungarians against them, in relief of the fortress, and inflicted a severe defeat on them, in despite of great disparity of numbers. Twenty thousand of the Ottomans were killed, including the general. The others were dispersed. Murad sent another army of eighty thousand men against him, under another Pasha. ”

“ But Hunyadi was warned betimes, and while admitting Ladislaus V. and Cillei, he excluded their army of mercenaries. On the following morning (9th of November 1456) Cillei, during a private interview, suddenly drew upon László, but was himself cut down by the commandant’s friends, who rushed in on hearing the clash of weapons. The terrified young king, who had been privy to the plot, thereupon pardoned Hunyadi, and at a subsequent interview with his mother at Temesvár swore that he would protect the whole family. ”

“ He forced them to relinquish Servia and Bosnia, and in his time both provinces were placed under the vassalage of Hungary. We may go further and say that had Hunyadi's plans for hurling back the Moslem invaders been seconded by the other Christian powers, we should not have the Eastern Question upon our hands in this our day. But, alas! all the solicitations of this great patriot were met with short-sighted indifference by the Courts of Europe. It is true that the Diet of Ratisbon, summoned by the Emperor Frederick, voted 10,000 men-at-arms and 30,000 infantry to assist in repelling the Turks ”

“ Against him first, then against Andàrssy and Hadik, a fury was lit: but Cabinet-director Seidler and Master-of-the-Household Count Hunyadi will find themselves heavily laden with every sin of commission or of omission. One cannot act against a People, without having to bear the consequences. ”

“ Fearful was the rage of the Turkish Sultan when he heard of the defeat and death of Mezid Bey, and he at once despatched another army against Hunyady, which like the first numbered eighty thousand men. This time, however, Hunyady did not let them enter Transylvania, but waited for them at the pass known as the Iron Gate, among the high mountains on the southern boundary of Hungary.
The Hungarian army was not more than fifteen thousand men, so that the Turks were at least five times as strong. But the military genius of Hunyady made up for the small number of his followers. ”

“ Hungarian. I cannot. One has described it well—Florentius of Buda. I can only repeat a few of his words:—“On the appointed day, Hunyadi, with two hundred vessels, attacked the Turkish flotilla in front, whilst Szilagy, with forty vessels, filled with the men of Belgrade, assailed it in the rear; striving for the same object, they sunk many of the Turkish vessels, captured seventy-four, burnt many, and utterly annihilated the whole fleet. After this victory, Hunyadi, with his army, entered Belgrade, to the great joy of the Magyars. ”

“ Great was the exultation in Hungary, in Germany and all over Europe. But this joy was speedily clouded by the intelligence that Hunniades, the deliverer of Europe from Moslem invasion, exhausted with toil, had been seized by a fever and had died. It is said that the young King Ladislaus rejoiced in his death, for he was greatly annoyed in having a subject attain such a degree of splendor as to cast his own name into insignificance. Hunniades left two sons, Ladislaus and Matthias. ”

“ On the 14th of July 1456 Hunyadi with his flotilla destroyed the Turkish fleet; on the 21st Szilágyi beat off a fierce assault, and the same day Hunyadi, taking advantage of the confusion of the Turks, pursued them into their camp, which he captured after a desperate encounter. Mahommed thereupon raised the siege and returned to Constantinople, and the independence of Hungary was secured for another seventy years. ”