Ladislaus

“ On New Year’s Day 1442, the pope again preached a Crusade and called on all Christian princes, and especially on Ladislaus, king of Poland and Hungary, to help in the defence of the three bulwarks of Christendom—Constantinople, Cyprus, and Rhodes.136 Cardinal Julian was commissioned to advise Ladislaus, and the king was ordered to render every aid possible to him as the legate of Eugenius. George Brancovich of Serbia bound himself to aid the Hungarian king and for this purpose to send twenty-five thousand men and large sums of money, the produce of the Serbian mines. ”

“ The solitary success amid the general disorder in the Empire was the expedition undertaken in 1142 by Conrad into Bohemia, where he restored his brother-in-law Ladislaus to this throne. An attempt, however, to perform the same service for another brother-in-law, also called Ladislaus, who had been driven from his Polish dukedom, ended in failure. Meanwhile Germany was ravaged and devastated by civil war, which Conrad was unable to repress. Disorder was rampant in Saxony, Bavaria and Burgundy; and in 1146 war broke out between the Bavarians and the Hungarians. ”

“ By his influence, Ladislaus of Poland obtained the crown of Hungary; and the important service was rewarded by the title and office of Waivod of Transylvania. The first of Julian’s crusades added two Turkish laurels on his brow; and in the public distress the fatal errors of Warna were forgotten. During the absence and minority of Ladislaus of Austria, the titular king, Huniades was elected supreme captain and governor of Hungary; and if envy at first was silenced by terror, a reign of twelve years supposes the arts of policy as well as of war. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During 60 the earlier part of his reign, Ladislaus obsequiously followed the direction of the Neapolitan court in foreign affairs. In Hungary itself a large party was in favour of the Germans, but the civil wars which raged between the two factions from 1276 to 1278 did not prevent Ladislaus, at the head of 20,000 Magyars and Kumanians, from co-operating with Rudolph of Habsburg in the great battle of Durnkrüt (August 26th, 1278) , which destroyed, once for all, the empire of the Přemyslidae. ”

“ In 1446 Hunyadi, now governor of Hungary, harried the Cilli territories in Croatia-Slavonia; but his power was broken at Kossovo (1448) , and Count Ulrich was able to lead a successful crusade, nominally in the Habsburg interest, into Hungary (1450) . In 1452 he forced the emperor Frederick III. to hand over the boy king Ladislaus V. to his keeping, and became thus practically ruler of Hungary. In 1454 his power was increased by his succession to his father’s vast wealth; and in 1456 he was named by Ladislaus his lieutenant in Hungary. The Hunyadis now conspired to destroy him. ”

“ Now, at this time there was among the garrison of Szathmár a captain named Ladislaus Rákóczy. The Rákóczy family, after Helen Zrinyi's husband had turned papist, for the most part were brought up at Vienna, and many of them held commissions in the Imperial army. Ladislaus Rákóczy likewise became a captain of musketeers, and as the greater part of his company consisted of Hungarian lads, it was not surprising if the Prince of Transylvania, on the other hand, kept German regiments to garrison his towns and accompany him whithersoever he went. ”

“ Ladislaus was chosen on the ground that, if they could not get a Bohemian prince, the Bohemians should at least secure a king from a nation allied to them in language and race. This King accepted the crown on behalf of his younger brother, Casimir; and a war followed which might have been somewhat uncertain in its results, but that Albert, who had also been chosen King of Hungary, was compelled to hasten to that country to resist the invasion of the Turks. There, too, he found opposition, on the ground of his strong German feeling; many of the Hungarian nobles were disposed to revolt from him ”

“ Rome exacted every groschen for herself, and compelled obedience by enforcing poverty Rudolph had irretrievably bound himself to the church; and the repression of so-called heretics at once conciliated ecclesiastics, and removed a possible source of antagonism to himself. For these reasons, Rudolph encouraged Ladislaus in renewing in Hungary, during the spring of 1280, the almost obsolete laws against heresy. ”

“ Maximilian has been called the second founder of the house of Habsburg, and certainly by bringing about marriages between Charles and Joanna and between his grandson Ferdinand and Anna, daughter of Ladislaus, king of Hungary and Bohemia, he paved the way for the vast empire of Charles V. and for the influence of the Habsburgs in eastern Europe. But he had many qualities less desirable. He was reckless and unstable, resorting often to lying and deceit, and never pausing to count the cost of an enterprise or troubling to adapt means to ends. ”

“ His name, and that of his many votaries, have sorely puzzled Latin and Teutonic tongues; when not content, like the French, to term him St. Lancelot, his countrymen call themselves after him Laszlo, or Laczko, the Illyrians Lako, the Letts Wendis; but chroniclers vary between Uladislaus and Ladislaus in Hungary and Poland; and when the Angevin connection brought down a king from Hungary to revenge the death of his brother upon Giovanni of Naples, the Italians called him Ladislao ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hardly had the emperor dispatched his first messenger when a visit from Ladislaus, King of Hungary, was announced. This sovereign had been Rudolph’s chief ally, and well knew the value of his services. His country still entertained fierce animosity against Bohemia, and the king now determined to wreak full vengeance, especially as his neighbors of Poland had undertaken Otakar’s quarrel, and had formed the most numerous contingent that fought for Bohemia at the Marchfield. ”

“ Henry, however, died soon (1290) ; after a short reign of the Duke of Great Poland, Przemyslaw II (who was crowned King of Poland by consent of Pope Bonifacius VIII, but murdered by the Brandenburgers in the very same year, 1296) , and the five years' government of the Bohemian King, Wenceslaus, the indefatigable pretender Ladislaus Lokietek, having gathered the chivalry of Little Poland round the national standard, succeeded in getting hold of the Polish territory. ”

“ Ladislaus accepted the crown. Zuski was seized, deposed, shaved, dressed in a friar's robe and shut up in a convent to count his beads. He soon died of that malignant poison, grief. Dmitri made a show of opposition, but he was soon assassinated by his own men, who were convinced of the hopelessness of his cause. His party, however, lasted for many years, bringing forward a young man who was called his son. At one time there was quite an enthusiasm in his favor, crowds flocked to his camp, and he even sent embassadors to Gustavus IX., King of Sweden, proposing an alliance. ”

“ Obviously a warrior-king was preferable to a regimen of women and children, and the eyes of the wiser Magyars turned involuntarily towards Wladislaus III. of Poland, who, though only in his nineteenth year, was already renowned for his martial disposition. Wladislaus accepted the proffered throne from the Magyar delegates at Cracow on the 8th of March 1440; but in the meantime (Feb. 22) the queen-widow gave birth to a son who, six weeks later, as Ladislaus V. (q.v.) was crowned king of Hungary (May 15) at Székesfehérvár. ”

“ MYSTIC PRESS.
(Fresco Painting of the Fifteenth Century, in the Cloisters of the Franciscan Convent.) distinguished by tasteful design and delicate execution. One Reinhardus, appointed Governor of Cracow by King Wenceslaus in 1305, had been minter at Florence. The first Polish gold coins produced under Ladislaus Lokietek were modelled on the fiorino d'oro. The Florentine lily, being equal in signification with that of Anjou, becomes the symbol of our Gothic period. Of all branches of applied art, metallurgy stands foremost. ”

“ In Bohemia the Catholic party had an easier task. The opposition to Ladislaus’s former proceedings had been mainly based on constitutional grounds; and it now appeared that there was little religious sympathy with the Brotherhood amongst the leaders of public opinion. The power which the Utraquists had gained during the reign of King George had drawn them into sympathy with the leading nobles; and Rokycana had inspired them with a special dislike of the Brotherhood. ”

“ At last the king was brought to agree to a plan for ensnaring the great man who so often jeoparded his life and his substance in the defence of his country and religion. They summoned him in the king's name to Vienna, where (p. 144) Ladislaus as an Austrian prince was then staying, with the intention of waylaying and murdering him. But Huniades got wind of the whole plot, and, when he arrived at the place of ambush, it was at the head of 2,000 picked Hungarian warriors. ”

“ The male contents of Hungary offered their crown to Ladislaus, called the Magnanimous, King of Naples, who took possession of Dalmatia, which he afterwards surrendered to the Venetians. Desirous to provide for the defence and security of his kingdom, Sigismund acquired, by treaty with the Prince of Servia, the fortress of Belgrade (1425) , which, by its situation at the confluence of the Danube and the Save, seemed to him a proper bulwark to protect Hungary against the Turks. ”

“ No other men in Europe could command more courtly demeanor, more royal self-carriage, and more diplomatic learning and address. Abraham, himself a member of one of the most cultivated and exalted reigning families, who had augmented the splendor of Cordova; Solomon, a rabbi of the rabbis, of the school that had shed infinite luster on the science of Spain; and Witek, a knight unstained in honor, and not surpassed in grave discourse even by his brother, formed an embassy by whose presence Ladislaus felt himself abashed. ”

“ In short, the reign of Sigismund was marked by deadly errors of policy, and foolish obstinacy of character. The continued oppression of the peasantry, and the constant recurrence of eventual losses in wars, were in no degree compensated by the display of warlike virtues on the part of a democratic nobility.
It was of little advantage to the Poles, that Ladislaus IV., the son and successor of Sigismund, was a man of distinguished merit. At his accession the nobles devised a new condition. Hitherto they had guarded themselves against taxation; they now proceeded to tax the king. ”

“ The Sultan's army had, however, suffered so much in the battle of Varna that for the time he left the Hungarians unmolested.
The nation was disposed to choose for its king the child, Ladislaus, son of King Albert, the predecessor of Vladislaus. The child, however, was in the power of the neighboring prince, Frederick, the Archduke of Austria, who was not disposed to let him go out of his hands without a heavy ransom. Under these circumstances the more powerful nobles in Hungary took advantage of the confusion to strengthen each his own position at the expense of the nation. ”

“ While these events were passing in Bohemia, scenes of similar violence were transpiring in Hungary. After a long series of convulsions, and Uladislaus, the Polish king, who had attained the crown of Hungary, having been slain in a battle with the Turks, a diet of Hungarian nobles was assembled and they also declared the young Ladislaus to be their king. They consequently wrote to the Emperor Frederic, Duke of Styria, who had assumed the guardianship of the prince, requesting that he might be sent to Hungary. ”

“ Leopold III., duke of Carinthia and Styria, who was killed in 1386 at the battle of Sempach, had four sons, of whom two only, Frederick and Ernest, left male issue. Frederick and his only son, Sigismund, confined their attention mainly to Tirol and Alsace, leaving the larger destinies of the family in the hands of Ernest of Carinthia and Styria (d. 1424) and his sons, Frederick and Albert and after the death of King Ladislaus in 1457 these two princes and their cousin Sigismund were the only representatives of the Habsburgs. ”

“ Andrew died soon after the promulgation of the charter, and was succeeded by his son Bela IV. The beginning of this prince's reign was troubled with internal dissensions caused by the Cumans [an Eastern tribe which invaded Hungary in the later half of the 11th century—see COSSACKS] , who, after having been vanquished by St. Ladislaus, settled in Hungary between the banks of the Theiss and Marosch. But a greater and quite unexpected danger, which threatened Hungary with utter destruction, arose from the invasion of the Tartars. ”

“ Brother Primus and Secundus retired a short distance, and quietly requested from the magistrates additional guards to quell the commotion that had arisen, and now resisted the royal commands. They also demanded special protection for themselves, particularly from the violence of Boppo, Solomon, and others whom they designated, and also instant refreshments, provision, and secure lodging. A public meeting immediately held selected a deputation to proceed to Ofen to lay the dreadful occurrence before King Ladislaus.
Robberies and disorder among the hungry multitude created angry disturbance ”