Constantinople, inflicting all the miseries attendant upon barbarian inroads. These horrors were first checked in the year 955, when the Emperor Otho the Great defeated the Magyars upon the river Lech, so completely annihilating the marauding host that, it is reported, only seven of the invaders survived to carry home the tidings of disaster.

Shortly afterwards began the conversion of the Magyars to Christianity, introduced here as elsewhere chiefly by female influence. The Christian dame Sarolta, herself a converted Magyar, who exercised this influence over her countrymen and their prince, her husband Geisa, was nevertheless the most extraordinary of lady missionaries, being addicted to the bottle, and occasionally, when angered, to the sword. Her power was such that she prevailed upon the Magyars to abandon their plundering expeditions, ally themselves with the Germans, and learn from them the arts of life. Waik, her son by Geisa, was christened by the name of Stephen, and married Gisala, a sister of the Emperor Henry II.* He was afterwards canonized, and is called by Mailáth "the greatest man Hungarian history can boast." St. Stephen sent an embassy to Rome to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, from whom he obtained a crown and the royal title, but to whom he conceded little authority in Hungary. He appointed bishops and marked out their dioceses; he founded churches, convents, and schools. He is said to have likewise given the Magyars a political constitution; but his laws are lost and forgotten: it is now only known that the monarchy was at once elective and hereditary, the individual king being freely chosen, but from the race of Arpad; that the nobles exercised much control over the royal authority, forming a sort of senate; that the administration was conducted by great officers of state with specific departments; that the country was divided as now into counties, each governed by a nobleman, with the title, first it is said of Comes parochianus, then of Comes supremus, and lastly of Obergespan; that guilds and corporations, often composed of immigrants, existed with especial privileges; and that, whilst there was a class of free peasants, the lower orders were villeins or serfs. It rather seems that the nobles, even if bound to military service, did not hold their estates in vassalage; because it is mentioned, as a distinct condition of tenure, that the king granted lands attached to the royal castles in vassalage, and in consideration of military service, to an intermediate

Mailath says a sister of Otho's, but no such sister of any of the Othos is known: Professor Luden, a most diligent inquirer, says a sister of Henry II.'s, and we have preferred his authority, as Mailáth is subject to mistakes in names and genealogies; for instance, calling Maria Theresa the grandchild of Joseph I., her uncle.

class of persons. Justice was administered in every county by the Comes in person; and the ordeal by fire or water, and judicial combat, were the usual modes of eliciting truth. In case of war the free peasants and communities were bound to send every tenth, or sometimes every eighth man to form the banderium or disposable force of the county.

After St. Stephen's death the claims of different candidates for the throne gave rise to civil wars, with foreign interference. The three sons of Bela, Geisa, St. Ladislaus, and Lambert, with disinterested virtue refused the crown on account of the superior rights of Solomon, the son of Andreas I., their father's elder brother and predecessor; nor did Geisa II. accept it until Solomon had proved himself wholly unfit to reign.

The male descendants of Arpad sat upon the throne of Hungary for upwards of 400 years, viz. to the end of the thirteenth century. This was a period of incessant warfare; proceeding partly from Magyar attempts at conquest, many of the adjacent provinces being at different times subject to Hungary; partly from the interference of foreign powers in civil dissensions. The period was further distinguished by some remarkable events; as the crusades, and the steady advance of the Mongol hordes upon Eastern Europe, which threatened again to submerge just as it began to revive. Of both Hungary was in part the scene. The earliest crusaders repaired by land to Palestine, and traversed that kingdom. The disorderly rabble composing the first bodies committed all sorts of outrages, cruelly ravaging the country; and suffered as cruelly from the vengeance of the Magyars. But with Godfrey of Bouillon King Koloman negotiated the terms of his passage; Godfrey maintained strict discipline, and Koloman took care that the progress of the army should be unmolested, and their markets abundantly supplied. The few subsequent crusades that proceeded by land, were, like Godfrey's, under military government, and thence caused less evils.

It was during the reign of Bela IV., that, in the year 1240, the Mongols, after desolating the east under Gengiskhan, turned westward under his successors; and, led by his grandson Batou overwhelmed, devastating and destroying almost without resistance Russia, Poland, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary. The first check they experienced was in Silesia: Henry the Pious, Duke of Breslau, gave them battle with very inferior numbers, and although he was defeated and slain, his gallant example encouraged his countrymen; the towns closed their gates and manned their walls; the Mongols besieged them unsuccessfully as unskilfully, and penetrated no further westward upon this line. In Hungary they overspread the country, while internal dissensions

paralysed the efforts of Bela to oppose them. He was defeated, and, escaping death only by the self-devotion of a few of his followers, sought shelter with his family in the furthest Hungarian province, Dalmatia. There and in Hungary some fortified towns successfully defied the awkward attacks of the Mongols. The death of Khan Oktay and the affairs of their own empire, rather than the resistance they encountered, appear to have determined the Mongols to return to Asia. Mailáth thus describes the state in which they left Hungary.

"In how horrible a condition did Bela, upon his return, find his kingdom!-For whole days' journies not a human being; the wild beasts so increased in numbers and were so audacious, that by broad daylight the wolves ventured into inhabited villages, tearing children from their mothers, and even attacking armed men. No where a field tilled; famine, with all its terrors, impending; sickness predominant. But great as was the need, commensurate was the energy of his counteractive measures."

Another remarkable event of this period was the wringing from the feeble Andreas II. a charter, bearing much analogy to our Magna Charta, to which it is little inferior, and subsequent but by a very few years. It is entitled the Golden Bull, and is, to this day, the law of the land; the constitution which, with the exception of one clause, every monarch at his accession still swears to observe. Count Mailáth considers the Golden Bull as superior to Magna Charta; and without entering into comparison, some points of the Hungarian document certainly deserve mention. The Golden Bull authorized the assembling of the estates of the kingdom, afforded security of person and property, ameliorated the condition of the lower orders, and sanctioned the forcible resistance of the subjects to misgovernment on the part of the king. This last is the clause excepted from the coronation oath, and is probably unique; it being more extraordinary for the sovereign to concede the right of insurrection, than for the subjects to assume it; as did the Aragonese nobles by the celebrated "Si no,-no," (if not,-not,) of their oath of allegiance.

This period likewise produced monarchs distinguished by other qualities than their courage and military proficiency. We have already mentioned St. Stephen; we may add Bela I., who, in a three years' reign, did much for the internal prosperity of the kingdom; his son, St. Ladislaus, a conqueror and legislator, the benefactor of the church and restorer of its discipline; Koloman, who in those early and superstitious times prohibited the persecution of witches, "because witchcraft has no existence;" and Bela IV., who, in addition to his other merits, began the im

provement of the judicial system, and restricted the use of the ordeal and judicial combat in legal proceedings. We cannot forbear extracting the noble historian's character of this Magyar monarch.

"Bela was certainly one of the greatest of rulers. His measures, equally energetic, comprehensive, and appropriate, saved the Magyar realm when upon the point of dissolution by the Mongol invasion. The rise of the towns, the repeopling of the country, a more regulated course of business, a fresh impulse given to the working of the mines; the ratification of popular liberties, in unison with corroboration of the regal dignity; security of the frontiers by alliances, augmentation of the revenue, such are the unforgotten effects of his wisdom. 'A man full of virtue, whose memory, like sweet honey, lives in the mouths of Hungarians and of foreign nations,' says the old chronicler Turocz."

In 1301 died Andreas III., the last male heir of the Arpad dynasty; and the historian remarks that of the three and twenty kings from A. D. 1000, only Bela IV. lived to the age of sixty; These premature deaths, combining with attachment to the here. ditary principle, render the accession of minors more frequent in the annals of half-elective Hungary, than perhaps of any purely hereditary monarchy.

Upon the extinction of the male line, an heir was sought in the female branch. Even when Andreas III., a collateral heir of the kings his immediate predecessors, was elected, Maria, the queen of Charles II. of Naples and grand-daughter to Bela IV., had claimed the crown for her son Charles Martel; and the Pope had, somewhat precipitately, conferred it upon him. Death prevented Charles Martel from enforcing his pretensions against Andreas; but when the throne was actually vacant, his son, Charles Robert, protected by the Pope, repaired to Hungary, and though not fifteen, contended with his rivals for the crown so strenuously and successfully, that after several years' struggle he carried his election, and in 1310 was crowned at Buda.

Charles Robert's reign was for Hungary uncommonly long, being thirty years from his coronation; and his posterity continued, with a short interruption, to rule for upwards of 200 years, in fact as long as Hungary remained independent. In 1526 the unfortunate battle of Mohaes against the Turks destroyed the forces of Hungary; and by the death of the young king, Lewis II., without children, made way for the election of his sister's husband, the Archduke, afterwards the Emperor Ferdinand I., who

* It should perhaps have been earlier stated, that the public revenue of Hungary was derived from taxes, the nature of which seems to be quite unknown, from customs and tolls, as well as from crown lands.

incorporated Hungary with the other dominions of the House of Austria.

This period like the former is full of wars, foreign and civil. The foreign were occasioned first by schemes of conquest and involvement in the affairs of Naples; afterwards also by the necessity of opposing the progressive preponderance of the Ottoman arms: when Hungary appeared as the bulwark of Christendom. The civil wars originated chiefly in contests for the crown. Like the former, this period produced some great men; of whom may be mentioned Charles Robert himself, an able, and generally speaking a prosperous ruler, although he greatly augmented the power of his patrons, the popes, in Hungary; his son, Lewis I., called one of Hungary's greatest kings, who added Poland, Red Russia, Moldavia, and part of Servia to his hereditary dominions; John Hunyadi and his son Mathias Corvinus.

Hungary was now no longer an independent kingdom; but its history, in some measure independent, does not cease simultaneously with its separate existence. Although Ferdinand was twice elected King of Hungary, the whole nation did not acknowledge him; rebellions and civil wars, envenomed by religious dissensions, followed; Transylvania, under the ambitious John Zapolya, aimed at independence; he and his successors even preferring vassalage to the Porte when the alternative was submission to Austria.

Favoured by these internal feuds that paralized resistance to the common enemy of Christendom, the Turks pursued their victorious career more successfully against Hungary under the Imperial House of Austria, than as a single, unassisted kingdom. They now reduced three-fourths of the country so completely, that the national division into counties was changed for a Turkish division into Sangiacks, all placed under the supreme authority of the Pasha of Buda. It was only under the Emperor Charles VI., in the early part of the eighteenth century, that the whole of Hungary was finally and completely recovered from Ottoman domination; and it is with the accession of Charles's daughter, Maria Theresa, whose wise and maternal government conciliated even the most turbulent of the Magyars, that Count Mailáth considers the separate history of Hungary as terminated. He concludes his narrative of heroism, chivalry, and romance, we must say unpleasantly to our feelings, by calling in question the celebrated, generally-believed, and heart-stirring burst of Magyar enthusiastic loyalty, "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!"

During the early part of this period it may perhaps be thought