The existence of an ample stock of public and private virtues even in those dark times becomes, however, more evident still when we study the collective actions of the Diets. After making all due allowance for their ultimate barrenness, one cannot but acknowledge that the public of that time, that is to say, the bulk of the magnates and common gentry, were at least very anxious to bring about in the government of the country a tolerable equilibrium between the powers possessed by the legislative, executive and judiciary authorities respectively. As to the legislative, they carried two great principles which in any other age would have been considered a distinct gain for any liberal constitution. One was the law that taxes can be levied by decree of the Diet alone; the other was the equally important law contained in the decrees of 1495, 1498, and especially 1507, by virtue of which the common gentry (not knights, there being no such Order in Hungary) were always to have an equal share with the magnates in the government of the nation, particularly in the Privy Council. Other important laws, salutary in themselves though still-born, were passed in great number; and immediately before the disastrous campaign of Mohacs the gentry of their own accord temporarily abandoned their exemption from taxation. Highly commendable from the same point of view are the motives discoverable in numerous measures of the time, endeavouring to regulate the working of the county organisation; and the very high reputation of Verb6czy, who was rewarded by a national gift for his codification, tends to show the genuine interest taken by the commonalty in the important work of legal reform.
The Renaissance, it must be admitted, left but a faint impression on Hungary. The magnificence with which Matthias had patronised Italian scholars and artists, and established his famous collection of books, the Corvina, was only feebly imitated by a few noblemen and churchmen. As late as 1491 we find that the Judex Curiae (Lord Chief Justice) of Hungary, Stephen Batori, was so illiterate as to be unable to sign his name at the treaty negotiations between Maximilian and Wladislav II at Pozsony (Pressburg). In the field of architecture there was some progress. Thus the largest and most beautiful cathedral in the Gothic style in Hungary, that of Kassa, was finished under the Jagello Kings; and Bakdcz embellished the great cathedral of Esztergom with much exquisite work. Nor were the seats of the nobles neglected, and the pleasant manor-style of fifteenth century Italy may still be admired in the northern counties of Zemplen and Abauj, whither the Turk seldom extended his ravaging expeditions.
But if, as will be noted below in connexion with other equally deplorable facts, the Renaissance proper can scarcely be regarded as having attained to any national importance in Hungary, the Reformation soon penetrated into the various regions and social strata of the country. Already in 1518 traces appear of the influence of the teachings of Luther and Melanchthon in Bartfa, Eperjes, Lcicse, and other towns of northern Hungary. Even among the magnates we find several adherents or patrons of the new creed, such as Peter Perenyi, Th. Nadasdi, Valentine Torok. The bulk of the population, however, remained faithful to the old religion, and in 1523, 1524, and 1525 very stringent laws were passed against the “ Lutherani?
In Bohemia the Hussite movement and the aspirations of the Utra-quists, which were not appeased before the Diet of Kuttenberg in 1485, paved the way for the Reformation. Gallus Cahera, a butcher’s son, who became vicar of the great Teyn-church at Prague, and John Hlawsa of Libocan were the chief leaders of a religious revival in the sense of Lutheranism.
There can thus be little doubt that, with all the undeniable drawbacks of oligarchic or aristocratic misgovernment, both Hungary and Bohemia still possessed numerous elements of prosperity, and that the relatively sudden downfall of both kingdoms, while certainly connected with some moral failing in rulers and ruled alike, cannot be attributed to ethical deficiencies. These were certainly not so exceptional as to account for the disappearance of national independence after a single great defeat on the battlefield. As was remarked at the outset of this chapter, the unexpected dissolution of the two kingdoms and their absorption by a Power not very much better organised than themselves and suffering from many similar evils, remains one of the great difficulties besetting this earliest period of modern history. To seek to remove such difficulties by moralising on the selfishness or greed of this Palatine or that magnate, supplies no historic synthesis of the true relation of facts. Whenever a disaster like that of Mohacs stands at the end of a long series of events, it is only fair to assume that the country in question must have been terribly misgoverned. The neglect, not so much of one or the other of the ordinary virtues indispensable under all circumstances, but rather of one of the directive forces of national life and progress, will-except when a nation is specially protected by nature, as for instance by the geographical configuration of the country-invariably land it in serious predicaments, and eventually in political ruin. One of those directive forces is what is commonly called foreign policy. In Europe at any rate, and most certainly since the downfall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the action and reaction of its several countries on one another have been so powerful, that Giuseppe Ferrari’s suggestion of writing history in a binary form ought to have been carried out long since for every one of them, as fortunately it actually has been for some.
In the latter half of the fifteenth century the whole tenor and nature of state-craft and policy changed from what it had been in the preceding centuries. The Middle Ages knew only of two “universals” in politics, the Empire proper, that is, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Catholic Church; the Byzantine Empire having little if anything to say in questions of Western policy since the days of Charlemagne. Of those two empires that of the Church alone possessed adequate organisation and means for the purpose of efficient government. The Holy Roman Empire was a fiction, or at best an ideal, lacking all the realities of power. In the face of that vague “Empire,” the less ambitious but more practical smaller sovereigns and lords in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy, and likewise those of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, endeavoured during the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, to build up well-knit and well-organised smaller realms. In this some of them succeeded but too well; and by about 1475 Europe was again divided into two groups,—but groups of a character totally different from the medieval classification.
Instead of a loose fiction, such as the Holy Roman Empire, and the Church, Europe then displayed a series of relatively large and fairly centralised monarchies, such as England, France, Aragon, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary on the one hand; and small semi-monarchies or still smaller but highly organised city-States, such as the duchy of Bavaria, the electorate of Saxony, the free imperial towns and the Italian city-States on the other. The old political “universals” however, the Empire and the Church, were not yet extinct. The Church, although undermined by deleterious influences, internal as well as external, could still draw on vast resources of policy, treasure, and men; the Empire, although antiquated as an institution, still possessed stores of vitality as a diplomatic contrivance and a political allurement. Owing to the “universal” character of both Emperor and Pope, nothing but an international policy could be expected from either; but all the minor sovereigns who were constantly striving to enlarge their domain were likewise inevitably driven into the maze of this species of policy. However, there was a great difference (though hitherto this has remained almost unnoticed) between the realms east and west of the Oder and the March. All the States west of these rivers, especially Austria, Saxony, Bavaria, Burgundy and France-to mention only the most important ones-consisted not of continuous territory, but of larger or smaller enclaves, broken territory straggling irregularly over several latitudes, and sometimes severed by hundreds