Queen of Hungary

“ To the world in general Elizabeth of Austria and Hungary will be little remembered as the queenly sovereign in all the insignia of her lofty rank, but rather as the beautiful and unfortunate daughter of the Wittelsbachs, following her solitary way through life, her lonely spirit ever seeking rest and peace in vain. ”

“ Elizabeth of Hungary
I think of that friend of the people that lady of long ago,
That high-born dame of Hungary who felt the common woe—
Who loved the work-worn multitude whose pillow is a stone,
And felt beat in upon her heart their sorrow as her own.
She bent to lift, for in her blood ran some heroic strain
Of simple serving majesty strayed down from Charlemagne.
Queen of a hundred legends, star of a misty past,
While cities rise and cities fade, her memory will last. ”

“ Sire, I repeat to you that Hungary is advancing either toward ruin or revolution. Like the Netherlanders, we will defend our constitution or die with it. Oh, your majesty, all can yet be remedied! Call a convention of the states—return the crown of St. Stephen, and come to Hungary to take the coronation oath. Then you will see how gladly we shall swear allegiance to our king, and how cheerfully we will die for him, as our fathers did before us, in defence of the empress-queen, his mother. ”

“ Reconciliation was at length effected over the new Hungarian constitution, when the Emperor and Empress travelled in state to Budapest, there to be crowned King and Queen of Hungary. The ceremonies were magnificent. All the various races of the dominions were represented, as the writer of The Martyrdom of an Empress, says:
The escort of one hundred and eighty-two aristocrats was an especially magnificent sight. ”

“ It is useless, not because the power of France has by long negligence been suffered to swell beyond all opposition, nor because the queen of Hungary ought not to be assisted at the hazard of this kingdom, though all these reasons are of importance enough to claim our consideration. It is useless, my lords, because the queen of Hungary may be assisted more powerfully, at less charge; because a third part of this sum will enable her to raise, and to maintain, a greater body of men than have now been sent her. ”

“ Her attempts to modify court etiquette, and her extreme fondness for horsemanship and frequent visits to the imperial riding school, scandalized Austrian society, while her predilection for Hungary and for everything Hungarian offended German sentiment. There is no doubt that her influence helped the establishment of the Ausgleich with Hungary, but outside Hungarian affairs the empress took small part in politics. She first visited Hungary in 1857, and ten years later was crowned queen. Her popularity with the Hungarians remained unchanged throughout her life ”

“ Queen Theresa, thus stripped of a large part of her dominions, fled into Hungary, and with all of a beautiful woman's art of persuasion appealed to her Hungarian subjects to avenge her wrongs. Her unmerited sufferings, her beauty, her tears, the little princess in her arms, stirred the resentment and kindled the ardent loyalty of the Hungarian nobles, and with one voice, as they rang their swords in their scabbards, they swore to support the cause of their queen with their estates and their lives. England and Sardinia also threw themselves into the contest on Maria Theresa's side. ”

“ At all events, it is to our interest to give Herr von Este to understand that, if he is determined to make Sophie both Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, Germany will support his mad scheme."
"Your Majesty thinks Hungary will accept her as Queen?"
"She has to, for a morganatic marriage is a real marriage according to Hungarian law."
"Which suggests the possibility of grave internal dissensions," said the Chancellor.
"Quite so; to Pan-Germanism this little governess is worth five army corps. ”

“ Hostile invasion threatens the kingdom of Hungary, our person, our children, our crown. I have no resource but in your fidelity and valor. I invoke the ancient Hungarian virtue to rise swiftly and save me.”
The queen was radiantly beautiful in form and features. Her eyes were filled with tears. The scene and the words roused the zeal of these wild Magyar warriors to the highest pitch. They drew their sabres, flourished them over their heads, and with united voice shouted Moriamur pro nostro rege, Maria Theresa—“Let us die for our king, Maria Theresa.” ”

“ That the queen of Hungary is now equally distressed, and that she has received no advantage from the assistance, which we have, at so great an expense, appeared to give her, is, likewise, very far from being true. Let any man compare her present condition with that in which she was before Britain engaged in her cause, and it will easily be perceived how much she owes to the alliance of this nation. She was then flying before her enemies, and reduced to seek for shelter in the remotest part of her dominions, while her capital was fortified in expectation of a siege. ”

“ The evening before the ceremony was to take place Franz Joseph and his wife made a visit to the cathedral, which had been magnificently decorated for the occasion, and were greeted everywhere with the wildest enthusiasm. As they were about to leave the church an old man fell from a ladder on which he had perched himself in order to obtain a view of “the good Queen of Hungary.” Elizabeth, who saw him fall, hastened at once to his assistance,—an act that called forth renewed cheers when it reached the ears of those outside. ”

“ Now have I laid myself open to blame and might fairly enough be asked why I have made this digression in the course of my Discourse. ’Tis to point out how that all these maids that did represent these characters had been chose out and selected as being the fairest among all the suite of the Queens of France and of Hungary and of Madame de Lorraine,—being Frenchwomen, Italians, Flemish, German and Lorrainers. In all the number was no defect of beauty; and God knoweth if the Queen of Hungary had been painstaking and exact to choose such as were fairest and most graceful. ”

“ The Hungarian nation was eager to testify their gratitude to their great king by a concession made to his dynasty—notwithstanding its foreign origin,—which they had refused to make to the glorious dynasty of the native Árpád family. After the king’s death his daughter Mary was proclaimed queen and the crown conferred upon her. But the crown brought little joy to Mary, for the festivities of the coronation were hardly finished when she was menaced by dangers coming from two sides. The Poles hated Sigismund, to whom Mary was affianced, and insisted also that their ruler should live amongst them. ”

“ The chivalry of Hungary, from Palfy and Esterhazy downward, and all the world, are there shining in loyalty and barbaric gold and pearl. A truly beautiful young woman, beautiful to soul and eye,—devout, too, and noble, though ill formed in political or other science,—is in the middle of it, and makes the scene still more noticeable to us. "See, at the finish of the ceremonies, she has mounted a high swift horse, sword girt to her side,—a great rider always this young queen,—and gallops, Hungary following like a comet's tail, to the Konigsberg, to the top of the Konigsberg ”

“ Elisabeth of Hungary, and some old writers attribute the formula and the story to her. But she was never queen of Hungary, and moreover she died in 1231 at the age of 25. Beckmann also denies the statement that the document pretended to be in Queen Elisabeth’s writing is preserved in the Imperial Library at Vienna. ”

“ There was greater danger threatening Hungary from the south. The nobles of Croatia were dissatisfied with female rule. There were some ambitious men who were incensed to see themselves excluded from the royal court, whilst a man of low descent, like Garay, the palatine, took the lead there. They were intent upon destroying the government in order to remove the queen. In Charles of Durazzo, who owed the throne of Naples to Louis the Great, they found a man who was willing to become a candidate for the throne of Hungary. ”

“ An event, however, of most tragic issue, which has furnished a fruitful theme to Hungarian poets and artists, almost overthrew the effect of the king’s wise policy and endangered his life. The scene of the occurrence, which took place on the 17th of April, 1330, was the magnificent palace of Visegrád. The former palatine of Csák, Felician Zách, had become one of the king’s chief councillors, and he, with his daughter Clara, one of the queen’s maids of honor, a lady of extraordinary beauty, resided in the king’s palace. ”

“ This hostility and opposition that met the young Empress at every turn only made her retire the more within herself, and really inflicted an irreparable wrong, for it developed in her an inherited love of solitude that, once acquired, soon became too fixed ever to be renounced.
Meanwhile the outlying portions of the Empire—Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, and Hungary—were waiting anxiously to welcome the imperial pair, and soon after the wedding they began a series of short journeys. ”

“ The nation was seized with indescribable terror on learning the details of this dreadful calamity; entire villages were deserted by their inhabitants, who scattered in every direction. The widowed queen, finding herself utterly deserted in Buda, fled to Presburg, and the capital of Hungary, one of the finest cities of Christendom, which but a little more than a generation before had been made one of the chief centres of European learning and culture, passed, in less than two weeks after the fatal day of293 Mohács, without any resistance, into the hands of the victorious Solyman. ”

“ In his death Hungary suffered an irreparable loss, and throughout the kingdom there was genuine grief over his tragic fate, while the depth of public sympathy for the afflicted parents was shown in the warmth of the reception they received in Budapest. In a conversation with Dr. Christomanos some years before her death Elizabeth declared: “In every human life there is a moment when one dies inwardly and that need not necessarily be the time when death actually takes place.” ”

“ Eighty thousand soldiers went into the war to meet the queen’s enemies, who were anxious to divide the spoils of the empire, and during a combat of eight years the Hungarians, whilst defending their Pragmatic Sanction, upheld, at the same time, the integrity of the Austrian possessions. The dynasty had thus won in Hungary, by a spirit of conciliation, a country371 upon which it could count as a trusty support in case of danger from without. ”

“ The plight of Hungary at that time was a sorry one, indeed. The king had left no children behind him, and yet there was an210 heir to the throne. When Albert of Hapsburg, the predecessor of Uladislaus, died, in 1439, his widow was enceinte, and she afterwards gave birth to a boy. The partisans of the late queen caused this her son, Ladislaus, to be crowned at once. The great majority, however, and Hunyadi with them, wanted on the throne a man who would be able to be their leader in the struggle against the Turks. The result was the election of Uladislaus, the Polish king, in 1440. ”

“ While the Hungarian king spent his time in Constantinople, and afterwards in operations round Mount Tabor, Hungary became a scene of violence and rapine, aggravated by the careless and unconstitutional administration of the queen's foreign favourites, as well as by the extortions committed by the oligarchy on their inferiors. Receiving no support from the king of Jerusalem, Andrew resolved on returning home. On his arrival in Hungary, he had the mortification of finding, in addition to a disaffected nobility, a rival to the throne in the person of his son Bela. ”

“ Charles of168 Durazzo, called also Charles the Little, son of Louis of Durazzo, having conquered the throne of Naples, ordered Queen Joanna in 1382, thirty-seven years after the commission of her crime, to be thrown into prison, where she met her death by strangling.
During the Italian campaign Hungary was also called upon to meet another enemy in the East. Roving populations were making constant inroads on the eastern border, harassing the Hungarian inhabitants, who had by this time become accustomed to the peaceful avocations of the husbandman and tradesman. ”

“ Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew III., 151 Elizabeth, wife of Charles of Anjou, builds cathedral at Kassa, 162; goes to Naples in aid of her son Andrew, 162 445Elizabeth, wife of Louis of Hungary, offers to Poland her daughter Hedwig as queen, 176; strangled, 179 Elizabeth, daughter of Sigismund, married to Albert of Austria, 186 Emeric, son of Stephen, 90; education of, 90; death of, 94 Emeric, son of Béla III., ascends the throne, 123 ”

“ In a contest between the Russians and the Hungarians, the sympathy of all Germany, of all western Europe, would be with the Majjars. Half the Emperor of Austria's own heart would be on the side of the loyal nation to which his house owes so large a debt of gratitude; who, he must be aware, have been alienated only by the errors and the injustice of his advisers, and who, if they are sacrificed, will not, and cannot be sacrificed to his interests. Hungary was perfectly satisfied with her constitution and her government, as established by the laws of April 1848. ”

“ It is not a jewel, it is not an ornament, it is not pomp, it is Hungary itself. Kingdoms have come and gone, but there was no people in this world to whom its crown meant so much as our crown meant to us. The Hungarian crown is every Hungarian soul, every clod of its soil, every Hungarian harvest. With it is torn from the country’s head not kingship alone, but all that we have been, all that we may ever be. From century to century the ancient symbol wrought in gold has been preserved in an iron-bound chest up there in the religious gloom of the castle of Buda ”