Hungarian nobility

The Kingdom of Hungary held a noble class of individuals, most of whom owned landed property, from the 11th century until the mid-20th century. Initially, a diverse body of people were described as noblemen, but from the late 12th century only high-ranking royal officials were regarded as noble. Most aristocrats claimed ancestry from chieftains of the period preceding the establishment of the kingdom around 1000; others were descended from western European knights who settled in Hungary. The lower-ranking castle warriors also held landed property and served in the royal army. From the 1170s, most privileged laymen called themselves royal servants to emphasize their direct connection to the monarchs. The Golden Bull of 1222 established their liberties, especially tax exemption and the limitation of military obligations. From the 1220s, royal servants were associated with the nobility and the highest-ranking officials were known as barons of the realm. Only those who owned allods Template:Spaced ndashlands free of obligationsTemplate:Spaced ndashwere regarded as true noblemen, but other privileged groups of landowners, known as conditional nobles, also existed.

In the 1280s, Simon of Kéza was the first to claim that noblemen held authority in the kingdom. The counties developed into institutions of noble autonomy, and the nobles' delegates attended the Diets (parliaments). The wealthiest barons built stone castles allowing them to control vast territories, but royal authority was restored in the early 14th century. In 1351, King Louis I introduced an entail system and enacted the principle of "one and the selfsame liberty" of all noblemen, but legal distinctions between true noblemen and conditional nobles prevailed. The most powerful nobles employed lesser noblemen as their Template:Lang (retainers) but this private link did not sever the Template:Lang' direct subjection to the monarch. According to customary law, only males inherited noble estates, but under the Hungarian royal prerogative of prefection the kings could promote "a daughter to a son", allowing her to inherit her father's lands. Noblewomen who had married a commoner could also claim their inheritanceTemplate:Spaced ndashthe daughters' quarter (that is one-quarter of their father's possessions)Template:Spaced ndashin land.

Although the TripartitumTemplate:Spaced ndasha frequently cited compilation of customary law published in 1514Template:Spaced ndashreinforced the idea that all noblemen were equal, the monarchs granted hereditary titles (mainly baron and count) to powerful aristocrats, and the poorest nobles lost their tax exemption from the mid-16th century. In the early modern period, because of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, Hungary was divided into three parts: Royal Hungary, Transylvania and Ottoman Hungary. The princes of Transylvania supported the noblemen's fight against the Habsburg dynasty in Royal Hungary, but prevented the Transylvanian noblemen from challenging their own authority. Ennoblement of whole groups of people was not unusual in the 17th century. Examples include the 10,000 Template:Lang who received nobility as a group in 1605. After the Diet was divided into two chambers in Royal Hungary in 1608, noblemen with a hereditary title had a seat in the upper house, other nobles sent delegates to the lower house.

After the Ottomans' defeat in the Great Turkish War in the late 17th century, Transylvania and Ottoman Hungary were integrated into the Habsburg monarchy. The Habsburgs confirmed the nobles' privileges several times, but their attempts to strengthen royal authority regularly brought them into conflicts with the nobility, who represented nearly five percent of the population. Reformist noblemen demanded the abolition of noble privileges from the 1790s, but their program was enacted only during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Most noblemen lost their estates after the emancipation of their serfs, but the aristocrats preserved their distinguished social status. State administration employed thousands of impoverished noblemen in Austria-Hungary. Prominent (mainly Jewish) bankers and industrialists were awarded with nobility, but their social status remained inferior to traditional aristocrats. Noble titles were abolished only in 1947, months after Hungary was proclaimed a republic.

Origins

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The Magyars (or Hungarians) lived in the Pontic steppes when they first appear in written sources from the mid-9th century.Template:Sfn Muslim merchants described them as wealthy nomadic warriors, but they also noticed the Magyars had extensive arable lands.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The Magyars crossed the Carpathian Mountains after the Pechenegs invaded their lands in 894 or 895.Template:Sfn They settled in the lowlands along the Middle Danube, annihilated Moravia and defeated the Bavarians in the 900s.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn According to some scholarly theories, at least three Hungarian noble clansTemplate:Refn were descended from Moravian aristocrats who survived the Magyar conquest.Template:Sfn Historians who are convinced that the Vlachs (or Romanians) were already present in the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century propose that the Vlach Template:Lang (or chieftains) also endured.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Neither of these hypotheses are universally accepted.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Around 950, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (Template:Reign) wrote that the Hungarians were organized into "tribes", and each had its own "prince".Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The tribal leaders most probably bore the title úr (now "lord"), as it is suggested by Hungarian terms deriving from this word, such as ország (now "realm") and uralkodni ("to rule").Template:Sfn The Emperor noted the Magyars spoke both Hungarian and "the tongue of the Chazars"^[1] (a powerful steppe people), showing that at least their leaders were bilingual.Template:Sfn

The Magyars lived a nomadic or semi-nomadic life but archaeological research shows that most settlements consisted of small pit-houses and log cabins in the 10th century. Tents in use are only mentioned in 12th-century literary sources.Template:Sfn No archeological finds evidence fortresses in the Carpathian Basin in the 10th century, but fortresses were also rare in Western Europe during the same period.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn A larger log cabinTemplate:Spaced ndashmeasuring Template:Convert Template:Spaced ndashwhich was built on a foundation of stones in Borsod was tentatively identified as the local leader's household.Template:Sfn

More than a 1,000 graves yielding sabres, arrow-heads and bones of horses show that mounted warriors formed a significant group in the 10th century.Template:Sfn The highest-ranking Hungarians were buried either in large cemeteries (where hundreds of their men were buried without weapons around their leader's burial place), or in small cemeteries with 25–30 graves.Template:Sfn The wealthy warriors' burial sites yielded richly decorated horse harness, and sabretaches ornamented with precious metal plaques.Template:Sfn Rich women's graves contained their braid ornaments and rings made of silver or gold and decorated with precious stones.Template:Sfn The most widespread decorative motifs which can be regarded as tribal totems Template:Spaced ndashthe griffin, wolf and hind Template:Spaced ndashwere rarely applied in Hungarian heraldry in the following centuries.Template:Sfn Defeats during the Hungarian invasions of Europe and clashes with the paramount rulers from the Árpád dynasty had decimated the leading families by the end of the 10th century.Template:Sfn The Template:Lang, a chronicle written around 1200, claimed that dozens of noble kindred flourishing in the late 12th centuryTemplate:Refn had been descended from tribal leaders, but most modern scholars do not regard this list as a reliable source.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Middle Ages

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Development

Stephen I (Template:Reign), who was crowned the first king of Hungary in 1000 or 1001, defeated the last resisting tribal chieftains.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Earthen forts were built throughout the kingdom and most of them developed into centers of royal administration.Template:Sfn About 30 administrative units, known as counties, were established before 1040; more than 40 new counties were organized during the next centuries.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Each county was headed by a royal official, the Template:Lang.Template:Sfn The royal court provided further career opportunities.Template:Sfn As the historian Martyn Rady noted, the "royal household was the greatest provider of largesse in the kingdom" where the royal family owned more than two thirds of all lands.Template:Sfn The palatine Template:Spaced ndashthe head of the royal householdTemplate:Spaced ndashwas the highest-ranking royal official.Template:Sfn

The kings from the Árpád dynasty appointed their officials from among the members of about 110 aristocratic clans.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn These aristocrats were descended either from native (that is, Magyar, Kabar, Pecheneg or Slavic) chiefs, or from foreign knights who had migrated to the country in the 11th and 12th centuries.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The foreign knights had been trained in the Western European art of war, which contributed to the development of heavy cavalry in Hungary.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Their descendants were labelled as newcomers for centuries,Template:Sfn but intermarriage between natives and newcomers was not rare, which enabled their integration in two or three generations.Template:Sfn The monarchs pursued an expansionist policy from the late 11th century.Template:Sfn Ladislaus I (Template:Reign) seized Slavonia Template:Spaced ndashthe plains between the river Drava and the Dinaric Alps Template:Spaced ndashin the 1090s.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn His successor, Coloman (Template:Reign), was crowned king of Croatia in 1102.Template:Sfn Both realms retained their own customs, and Hungarians rarely received land grants in Croatia.Template:Sfn According to customary law, Croatians could not be obliged to cross the river Drava to fight in the royal army at their own expense.Template:Sfn

The earliest royal decrees authorized landowners to dispose freely of their private estates, but customary law prescribed that inherited lands could only be transferred with the consent of the owner's kinsmen who could potentially inherit them.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn From the early 12th century, only family lands traceable back to a grant made by Stephen I could be inherited by the deceased owner's distant relatives; other estates escheated to the Crown if their owner did not have offspring or brothers.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Aristocratic families held their inherited domains in common for generations before the 13th century.Template:Sfn Thereafter the division of inherited property became the standard practice.Template:Sfn Even families descended from wealthy clans could become impoverished through the regular divisions of their estates.Template:Sfn

Medieval documents mention the basic unit of estate organization as Template:Lang or Template:Lang.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn A Template:Lang was a piece of land (either a whole village or part of it) with well-marked borders.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Archaeologist Mária Wolf identifies the small motte forts, built on artificial mounds and protected by a ditch and a palisade that appeared in the 12th century, as the centers of private estates.Template:Sfn Most wealthy landowners' domains consisted of scattered Template:Lang, in several villages.Template:Sfn Due to the scarcity of documentary evidence, the size of the private estates cannot be determined.Template:Sfn The descendants of Otto Győr, the Template:Lang of Somogy County remained wealthy landowners even after he donated 360 households to the newly established Zselicszentjakab Abbey in 1061.Template:Sfn The establishment of monasteries by wealthy individuals was common.Template:Sfn Such proprietary monasteries served as burial places for their founders and the founders' descendants, who were regarded as the co-owners, or from the 13th century, co-patrons, of the monastery.Template:Sfn Serfs cultivated part of the Template:Lang, but other plots were hired out in return for in-kind taxes.Template:Sfn

The term "noble" was rarely used and poorly defined before the 13th century: it could refer to a courtier, a landowner with judicial powers, or even to a common warrior.Template:Sfn The existence of a diverse group of warriors, who were subjected to the monarch, royal officials or prelates is well documented.Template:Sfn The castle warriors, who were exempt from taxation, held hereditary landed property around the royal castles.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Lightly armored horsemen, known as Template:Lang (or archers), and armed castle folk, mentioned as Template:Lang (or guards), defended the borderlands.Template:Sfn

Golden Bulls

Official documents from the end of the 12th century only mentioned court dignitaries and Template:Lang as noblemen.Template:Sfn This group had adopted most elements of chivalric culture.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn They regularly named their children after Paris of Troy, Hector, Tristan, Lancelot and other heroes of Western European chivalric romances.Template:Sfn The first tournaments were held around the same time.Template:Sfn

The regular alienation of royal estates is well-documented from the 1170s.Template:Sfn The monarchs granted immunities, exempting the grantee's estates from the jurisdiction of the Template:Lang, or even renouncing royal revenues that had been collected there.Template:Sfn Béla III (Template:Reign) was the first Hungarian monarch to give away a whole county to a nobleman: he granted Modrus in Croatia to Bartholomew of Krk in 1193, stipulating that the grantee was to equip warriors for the royal army.Template:Sfn Béla's son, Andrew II (Template:Reign), decided to "alter the conditions" of his realm and "distribute castles, counties, lands and other revenues" to his officials, as he narrated in a document in 1217.Template:Sfn Instead of granting the estates in fief, with an obligation to render future services, he gave them as allods, in reward for the grantee's previous acts.Template:Sfn The great officers who were the principal beneficiaries of his grants were mentioned as barons of the realm from the late 1210s.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Donations of such a large scale accelerated the development of a wealthy group of landowners, most descending from a high-ranking kindred.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Some wealthy landownersTemplate:Refn could afford to build stone castles.Template:Sfn Closely related aristocrats were distinguished from other lineages through a reference to their (actual or presumed) common ancestor with the words Template:Lang ("from the kindred").Template:Sfn Families descending from the same kindred adopted similar insignia.Template:Refn Template:Sfn The author of the Template:Lang fabricated genealogies for them and emphasized that they could never be excluded from "the honor of the realm",^[2] that is from state administration.Template:Sfn

The new owners of the transferred royal estates wanted to subjugate the freemen, castle warriors and other privileged groups of people living in or around their domains.Template:Sfn The threatened groups wanted to achieve confirmation of their status as royal servants, emphasizing that they were only to serve the king.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Béla III issued the first extant royal charter about the grant of this rank to a castle warrior.Template:Sfn Andrew II's Golden Bull of 1222 enacted royal servants' privileges.Template:Sfn They were exempt from taxation; they were to fight in the royal army without proper compensation only if enemy forces invaded the kingdom; only the monarch or the palatine could judge their cases.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn According to the Golden Bull, only royal servants who died without a son could freely will their estates, but even in this case, their daughters were entitled to the daughters' quarter.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The final article of the Golden Bull authorized the bishops, barons and other nobles to resist the monarch if he ignored its provisions.Template:Sfn Most provisions of the Golden Bull were first confirmed in 1231.Template:Sfn

An old manuscript with a large seal depicting a king — Golden Bull of 1222, the first royal charter summarizing the privileges of the royal servants

The clear definition of the royal servants' liberties distinguished them from all other privileged groups, whose military obligations remained theoretically unlimited.Template:Sfn From the 1220s, the royal servants were regularly called noblemen and started to develop their own corporate institutions at the county level.Template:Sfn In 1232, the royal servants of Zala County asked Andrew II to authorize them "to judge and do justice", stating that the county had slipped into anarchy.Template:Sfn The king granted their request and Bartholomew, Bishop of Veszprém, sued one Ban Oguz for properties before their community.Template:Sfn

The first Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241 proved the importance of well-fortified locations and heavily armored cavalry.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn In the following decades, Béla IV of Hungary (Template:Reign) gave away large parcels of the royal demesne, expecting that the new owners would build stone castles there.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Béla's burdensome castle-building program was unpopular, but achieved his aim: almost 70 castles were built or reconstructed during his reign.Template:Sfn More than half of the new or reconstructed castles were in noblemen's domains.Template:Sfn Most new castles were erected on rocky peaks, mainly along the western and northern borderlands.Template:Sfn The spread of stone castles profoundly changed the structure of landholding, because castles could not be maintained without proper income.Template:Sfn Lands and villages were legally attached to each castle, and castles were thereafter always transferred and inherited along with these "appurtenances".Template:Sfn

The royal servants were legally identified as nobles in 1267.Template:Sfn That year "the nobles of all Hungary, called royal servants" persuaded Béla IV and his son, Stephen V (Template:Reign), to hold an assembly and confirm their collective privileges.Template:Sfn Other groups of land-holding warriors could also be called nobles, but they were always distinguished from the true noblemen.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn They held their estates conditionally, as they were required to provide well-defined services to another lord, hence their groups are now collectively known as conditional nobles.Template:Sfn The noble Vlach Template:Lang who had landed property in the Banate of Severin were obliged to fight in the army of the ban (or royal governor).Template:Sfn Most warriors known as the "noble sons of servants" were descended from freemen or liberated serfs who received estates from Béla IV in Upper Hungary on the condition that they were to equip jointly a fixed number of knights.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The nobles of the Church formed the armed retinue of the wealthiest prelates.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The nobles of Turopolje in Slavonia were required to provide food and fodder to high-ranking royal officials.Template:Sfn Two privileged groups, the Székelys and Saxons firmly protected their communal liberties, which prevented their leaders from exercising noble privileges in the Székely and Saxon territories in Transylvania.Template:Sfn Székelys and Saxons could only enjoy the liberties of noblemen if they held estates outside the lands of the two privileged communities.Template:Sfn

Most noble families failed to adopt a strategy to avoid the division of their inherited estates into dwarf-holdings through generations.Template:Sfn Daughters could only demand the cash equivalent of the quarter of their father's estates,Template:Sfn but younger sons rarely remained unmarried.Template:Sfn Impoverished noblemen had little chance to receive land grants from the kings, because they were unable to participate in the monarchs' military campaigns,Template:Sfn but commoners who bravely fought in the royal army were regularly ennobled.Template:Sfn

Self-government and oligarchs

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The historian Erik Fügedi noted that "castle bred castle" in the second half of the 13th century: if a landowner erected a fortress, his neighbors would also build one to defend their own estates.Template:Sfn Between 1271 and 1320, noblemen or prelates built at least 155 new fortresses. In comparison, only about a dozen castles were erected on the royal demesne.Template:Sfn Most castles consisted of a tower, surrounded by a fortified courtyard, but the tower could also be built into the walls.Template:Sfn Noblemen who could not erect fortresses were occasionally forced to abandon their inherited estates or seek the protection of more powerful lords, even through renouncing their liberties.Template:Refn Template:Sfn

The lords of the castles had to hire a professional staff for the defence of the castle and the management of its appurtenances.Template:Sfn They primarily employed nobles who held nearby estates, which gave rise to the development of a new institution, known as Template:Lang.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn A Template:Lang was a nobleman who entered into the service of a wealthier landowner in exchange for a fixed salary or a portion of revenue, or rarely for the ownership or usufruct (right to enjoyment) of a piece of land.Template:Sfn Unlike a conditional noble, a Template:Lang remained Template:Lang an independent landholder, only subject to the monarch.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

From the 1270s, the monarchs' coronation oath included a promise to respect the noblemen's liberties.Template:Sfn The counties gradually transformed into an institution of the noblemen's local autonomy.Template:Sfn Noblemen regularly discussed local matters at the counties' general assemblies.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The Template:Lang (the counties' law courts) became important elements in the administration of justice.Template:Sfn They were headed by the Template:Lang or their deputies, but they consisted of four (in Slavonia and Transylvania, two) elected local noblemen, known as judges of the nobles.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Hungary fell into a state of anarchy because of the minority of Ladislaus IV (Template:Reign) in the early 1270s. To restore public order, the prelates convoked the barons and the delegates of the noblemen and the nomadic Cumans who had settled in Hungary to a general assembly near Pest in 1277. This first Diet (or parliament) declared the fifteen-year-old monarch to be of age in an attempt to put en end to the anarchy.Template:Sfn In the early 1280s, Simon of Kéza associated the Hungarian nation with the nobility in his Deeds of the Hungarians, emphasizing that the community of noblemen held real authority.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

The barons took advantage of the weakening of royal authority and seized large, contiguous territories.Template:Sfn The monarchs could not appoint and dismiss their officials at will anymore.Template:Sfn The most powerful baronsTemplate:Spaced ndashknown as oligarchs in modern historiographyTemplate:Spaced ndashappropriated royal prerogatives, combining private lordship with their administrative powers.Template:Sfn When Andrew III (Template:Reign), the last male member of the Árpád dynasty, died in 1301, about a dozen lordsTemplate:Refn held sway over most parts of the kingdom.Template:Sfn

Age of the Angevins

Ladislaus IV's great-nephew, Charles I (Template:Reign), who was a scion of the Capetian House of Anjou, restored royal power in the 1310s and 1320s.Template:Sfn He seized the oligarchs' castles mainly by force, which again secured the preponderance of the royal demesne.Template:Sfn He refuted the Golden Bull in 1318 and claimed that noblemen had to fight in his army at their own expense.Template:Sfn He ignored customary law and regularly "promoted a daughter to a son", granting her the right to inherit her father's estates.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The King reorganized the royal household, appointing pages and knights to form his permanent retinue.Template:Sfn He established the Order of Saint George, which was the first chivalric order in Europe.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Charles I was the first Hungarian monarch to grant coats of arms (or rather crests) to his subjects.Template:Sfn He based royal administration on honors (or office fiefs), distributing most counties and royal castles among his highest-ranking officials.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn These "baronies", as the historian Matteo Villani (d. 1363) recorded it in about 1350, were "neither hereditary nor lifelong", but Charles rarely dismissed his most trusted barons.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Each baron was required to hold his own Template:Lang (or armed retinue), distinguished by his own banner.Template:Sfn

In 1351, Charles's son and successor, Louis I (Template:Reign) confirmed all provisions of the Golden Bull, save the one that authorized childless noblemen to freely will their estates.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Instead, he introduced an entail system, prescribing that childless noblemen's landed property "should descend to their brothers, cousins and kinsmen".Template:Sfn This new concept of Template:Lang also protected the Crown's interests: only kin within the third degree could inherit a nobleman's property and noblemen who had only more distant relatives could not dispose of their property without the king's consent.Template:Sfn Louis I emphasized all noblemen enjoyed "one and the selfsame liberty" in his realmsTemplate:Sfn and secured all privileges that nobles owned in Hungary proper to their Slavonian and Transylvanian peers.Template:Sfn He rewarded dozens of Vlach Template:Lang with true nobility for military merits.Template:Sfn The vast majority of the Upper Hungarian "noble sons of servants" achieved the status of true noblemen without a formal royal act, because the memory of their conditional landholding fell into oblivion.Template:Sfn Most of them preferred Slavic names even in the 14th century, showing that they spoke the local Slavic vernacular.Template:Sfn Other groups of conditional nobles remained distinguished from true noblemen.Template:Sfn They developed their own institutions of self-government, known as seats or districts.Template:Sfn Louis decreed that only Catholic noblemen and Template:Lang could hold landed property in the district of Karánsebes (now Caransebeș in Romania) in 1366, but Eastern Orthodox landowners were not forced to convert to Catholicism in other territories of the kingdom.Template:Sfn Even the Catholic bishop of Várad (now Oradea in Romania) authorized his Vlach Template:Lang (leaders) to employ Orthodox priests.Template:Sfn The king granted the Transylvanian district of Fogaras (around present-day Făgăraș in Romania) to Vladislav I of Wallachia (Template:Reign) in fief in 1366.Template:Sfn In his new duchy, Vladislav donated estates to Wallachian Template:Lang; their legal status was similar to the position of the Template:Lang in other regions of Hungary.Template:Sfn

Royal charters customarily identified noblemen and landowners from the second half of the 14th century.Template:Sfn A man who lived in his own house on his own estates was described as living "in the way of nobles", in contrast with those who did not own landed property and lived "in the way of peasants".Template:Sfn A verdict of 1346 declared that a noble woman who was given in marriage to a commoner should receive her inheritance "in the form of an estate in order to preserve the nobility of the descendants born of the ignoble marriage".Template:Sfn According to the local customs of certain counties, her husband was also regarded as a noblemanTemplate:Spaced ndasha noble by his wife.Template:Sfn

The peasants' legal position had been standardized in almost the entire kingdom by the 1350s.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The free peasant tenants were to pay seigneurial taxes, but were rarely obliged to provide labour service.Template:Sfn In 1351, the king ordered that the ninth Template:Spaced ndasha tax payable to the landownersTemplate:Spaced ndashwas to be collected from all tenants, thus preventing landowners from offering lower taxes to persuade tenants to move from other lords' lands to their estates.Template:Sfn In 1328, all landowners were authorized to administer justice on their estates "in all cases except cases of theft, robbery, assault or arson" which remained under the jurisdiction of the Template:Lang.Template:Sfn The kings started to grant noblemen the right to execute or mutilate criminals who were captured in their estates.Template:Sfn The most influential noblemen's estates were also exempted of the jurisdiction of the counties' law courts.Template:Sfn

Emerging estates

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Royal power quickly declined after Louis I died in 1382.Template:Sfn His son-in-law, Sigismund of Luxembourg (Template:Reign), entered into a formal league with the aristocrats who had elected him king in early 1387.Template:Sfn Initially, when his position was weak, he gave away more than half of the 150 royal castles to his supporters, although this abated when he strengthened his authority in the early 15th century.Template:Sfn His favorites were foreigners,Template:Refn but old Hungarian familiesTemplate:Refn also took advantage of his magnanimity.Template:Sfn The wealthiest noblemen, known as magnates, built comfortable castles in the countryside which became important centers of social life.Template:Sfn These fortified manor houses always contained a hall for representative purposes and a private chapel.Template:Sfn Sigismund regularly invited the magnates to the royal council, even if they did not hold higher offices.Template:Sfn He founded a new chivalric order, the Order of the Dragon, in 1408 to reward his most loyal supporters.Template:Sfn

The expansion of the Ottoman Empire reached the southern frontiers in the 1390s.Template:Sfn A large anti-Ottoman crusade ended with a catastrophic defeat near Nicopolis in 1396.Template:Sfn Next year, Sigismund held a Diet in Temesvár (now Timișoara in Romania) to strengthen the defence system.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn He confirmed the Golden Bull, but without the two provisions that limited the noblemen's military obligations and established their right to resist the monarchs.Template:Sfn The Diet obliged all landowners to equip one archer for every 20 peasant plots on their domains to serve in the royal army.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Sigismund granted large estates in Hungary to neighboring Orthodox rulersTemplate:Refn to secure their alliance.Template:Sfn They established Basilite monasteries on their estates.Template:Sfn

Sigismund's son-in-law, Albert of Habsburg (Template:Reign), was elected king in early 1438, but only after he promised always to make important decisions with the consent of the royal council.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn After he died in 1439, a civil war broke out between the partisans of his son, Ladislaus the Posthumous (Template:Reign), and the supporters of the child king's rival, Vladislaus III of Poland (Template:Reign).Template:Sfn Ladislaus the Posthumous was crowned without election with the Holy Crown of Hungary, but the Diet proclaimed the coronation invalid, stating that "the crowning of kings is always dependent on the will of the kingdom's inhabitants, in whose consent both the effectiveness and the force of the crown reside".Template:Sfn Vladislaus died fighting the Ottomans during the Crusade of Varna in 1444 and the Diet elected seven captains in chief to administer the kingdom. The talented military commander, John Hunyadi (d. 1456), was elected the sole regent in 1446.Template:Sfn

The Diet developed from a consultative body into an important institution of law making in the 1440s.Template:Sfn The magnates were always invited to attend it in person.Template:Sfn Lesser noblemen were also entitled to attend the Diet, but in most cases they were represented by delegates, who were almost always the magnates' Template:Lang.Template:Sfn

Birth of titled nobility and the Tripartitum

Hunyadi was the first noble to receive a hereditary title from a Hungarian king, when Ladislaus the Posthumous granted him the Saxon district of Bistritz (now Bistrița in Romania) with the title perpetual count in 1453.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Hunyadi's son, Matthias Corvinus (Template:Reign), who was elected king in 1458, rewarded further noblemen with the same title.Template:Sfn Fügedi states that 16 December 1487 was the "birthday of the estate of magnates in Hungary",Template:Sfn because an armistice signed on this day listed 23 Hungarian "natural barons", contrasting them with the high officers of state, who were mentioned as "barons of office".Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Corvinus' successor, Vladislaus II (Template:Reign), and Vladislaus' son, Louis II (Template:Reign), formally began to reward important persons of their government with the hereditary title of baron.Template:Sfn

Differences in the nobles' wealth increased in the second half of the 15th century.Template:Sfn About 30 families owned more than a quarter of the territory of the kingdom when Corvinus died in 1490.Template:Sfn A further tenth of all lands in the kingdom was in the possession of about 55 wealthy noble families.Template:Sfn Other nobles held almost one third of the lands, but this group included 12–13,000 peasant-nobles who owned a single plot (or a part of it) and had no tenants. The Diets regularly compelled the peasant-nobles to pay tax on their plots.Template:Sfn Average magnates held about 50 villages, but the regular division of inherited landed property could lead to the impoverishment of aristocratic families.Template:Refn Template:Sfn Strategies applied to avoid thisTemplate:Spaced ndash family planning and celibacy Template:Spaced ndashled to the extinction of most aristocratic families after a few generations.Template:Refn Template:Sfn

The Diet ordered the compilation of customary law in 1498.Template:Sfn The jurist István Werbőczy (d. 1541) completed the task, presenting a law-book at the Diet in 1514.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn His TripartitumTemplate:Spaced ndashThe Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary in Three PartsTemplate:Spaced ndashwas never enacted, but it was consulted at the law courts for centuries.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn It summarized the noblemen's fundamental privileges in four points:Template:Sfn noblemen were only subject to the monarch's authority and could only be arrested in a due legal process; furthermore, they were exempt from all taxes and were entitled to resist the king if he attempted to interfere with their privileges.Template:Sfn Werbőczy also implied that Hungary was actually a republic of nobles headed by a monarch, stating that all noblemen "are members of the Holy Crown"^[3] of Hungary.Template:Sfn Quite anachronistically, he emphasized the idea of all noblemen's legal equality, but he had to admit that the high officers of the realm, whom he mentioned as "true barons", were legally distinguished from other nobles.Template:Sfn He also mentioned the existence of a distinct group, who were barons "in name only", but without specifying their peculiar status.Template:Sfn

The Tripartitum regarded the kindred as the basic unit of nobility.Template:Sfn A noble father exercised almost autocratic authority over his sons, because he could imprison them or offer them as a hostage for himself. His authority ended only if he divided his estates with his sons, but the division could rarely be enforced.Template:Sfn The "betrayal of fraternal blood" (that is, a kinsman's "deceitful, sly, and fraudulent ... disinheritance")^[4] was a serious crime, which was punished by loss of honor and the confiscation of all property.Template:Sfn Although the Tripartitum did not explicitly mention it, a nobleman's wife was also subject to his authority. She received her dower from her husband at the consummation of their marriage.Template:Sfn If her husband died, she inherited his best coach-horses and clothes.Template:Sfn

Demand for foodstuffs grew rapidly in Western Europe in the 1490s.Template:Sfn The landowners wanted to take advantage of the growing prices.Template:Sfn They demanded labour service from their peasant tenants and started to collect the seigneurial taxes in kind.Template:Sfn The Diets passed decrees that restricted the peasants' right to free movement and increased their burdens.Template:Sfn The peasants' grievances unexpectedly culminated in a rebellion in May 1514.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The rebels captured manor houses and murdered dozens of noblemen, especially on the Great Hungarian Plain.Template:Sfn The voivode of Transylvania, John Zápolya, annihilated their main army at Temesvár on 15 July. György Dózsa and other leaders of the peasant war were tortured and executed, but most rebels received a pardon.Template:Sfn The Diet punished the peasantry as a group, condemning them to perpetual servitude and depriving them of the right of free movement.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The Diet also enacted the serfs' obligation to provide one day's labour service for their lords each week.Template:Sfn

Early modern and modern times

Template:See also

Tripartite Hungary

Template:Further

The Ottomans annihilated the royal army at the Battle of Mohács.Template:Sfn Louis II died fleeing from the battlefield and two claimants, John Zápolya (Template:Reign) and Ferdinand of Habsburg (Template:Reign), were elected kings.Template:Sfn Ferdinand tried to reunite Hungary after Zápolya died in 1540, but the Ottoman Sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent (Template:Reign), intervened and captured Buda in 1541.Template:Sfn The sultan allowed Zápolya's widow, Isabella Jagiellon (d. 1559), to rule the lands east of the river Tisza on behalf of her infant son, John Sigismund (Template:Reign), in return for a yearly tribute.Template:Sfn His decision divided Hungary into three parts: the Ottomans occupied the central territories; John Sigismund's eastern Hungarian Kingdom developed into the autonomous Principality of Transylvania; and the Habsburg monarchs preserved the northern and western territories (or Royal Hungary).Template:Sfn

Most noblemen fled from the central regions to the unoccupied territories.Template:Sfn Peasants who lived along the borders paid taxes both to the Ottomans and their former lords.Template:Sfn Commoners were regularly recruited to serve in the royal army or in the magnates' retinues to replace the noblemen who had perished during fights.Template:Sfn The irregular Template:Lang foot-soldiersTemplate:Spaced ndashmainly runaway serfs and dispossessed noblemenTemplate:Spaced ndashbecame important elements of the defence forces.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Stephen Bocskai, Prince of Transylvania (Template:Reign), settled 10,000 Template:Lang in seven villages and exempted them from taxation in 1605, which was the "largest collective ennoblement" in the history of Hungary.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

In addition to the Székely and Saxon leaders, the noblemen formed one of the three nations (or Estates of the realm) in Transylvania, but they could rarely challenge the princes' authority.Template:Sfn In Royal Hungary, the magnates successfully protected the noble privileges, because their vast domains were almost completely exempt from royal officials' authority.Template:Sfn Their manors were fortified in the "Hungarian manner" (with walls made of earth and timber) in the 1540s.Template:Sfn Noblemen in Royal Hungary could also count on the support of the Transylvanian princes against the Habsburg monarchs.Template:Sfn Intermarriages among Austrian, Czech and Hungarian aristocratsTemplate:Refn gave rise to the development of a "supranational aristocracy" in the Habsburg monarchy.Template:Sfn Foreign aristocrats regularly received Hungarian citizenship, and Hungarian noblemen were often naturalized in the Habsburgs' other realms.Template:Refn Template:Sfn The Habsburg kings rewarded the most powerful magnates with hereditary titles such as baron from the 1530s.Template:Sfn

The aristocrats supported the spread of the Reformation.Template:Sfn Most noblemen adhered to Lutheranism in the western regions of Royal Hungary, but Calvinism was the dominant religion in Transylvania and other regions.Template:Sfn John Sigismund promoted Unitarian views,Template:Sfn but most Unitarian noblemen perished in battles in the early 1600s.Template:Sfn The Habsburgs remained staunch supporters of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the most prominent aristocratic familiesTemplate:Refn converted to Catholicism in Royal Hungary in the 1630s.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The Calvinist princes of Transylvania supported their co-religionists.Template:Sfn Gabriel Bethlen granted nobility to all Calvinist pastors.Template:Sfn

The kings and the Transylvanian princes regularly ennobled commoners, but often without granting landed property to them.Template:Sfn Jurisprudence maintained that only those who owned land cultivated by serfs could be regarded as fully fledged noblemen.Template:Sfn Armalists Template:Spaced ndashnoblemen who held a charter of ennoblement, but not a single plot of landTemplate:Spaced ndashand peasant-nobles continued to pay taxes, for which they were collectively known as taxed nobility.Template:Sfn Nobility could be purchased from the kings who were often in need of funds. Landowners also benefitted from the ennoblement of their serfs, because they could demand a fee for their consent.Template:Sfn

The Diet was officially divided into two chambers in Royal Hungary in 1608.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn All adult male members of the titled noble families had a seat in the Upper House.Template:Sfn The lesser noblemen elected two or three delegates at the general assemblies of the counties to represent them in the Lower House. The Croatian and Slavonian magnates also had seats at the Upper House, and the Template:Lang (or Diet) of Croatia and Slavonia sent delegates to the Lower House.Template:Sfn

Liberation and war of independence

Template:Further

Forces from the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth inflicted a crushing defeat on the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683.Template:Sfn The Ottomans were expelled from Buda in 1686. Michael I Apafi, the prince of Transylvania (Template:Reign), acknowledged the suzerainty of Emperor Leopold I, who was also king of Hungary (Template:Reign), in 1687.Template:Sfn Grateful for the liberation of Buda, the Diet abolished the noblemen's right to resist the monarch for the defense of their liberties.Template:Sfn In 1688, the Diet authorized the aristocrats to establish a special trust, known as Template:Lang, with royal consent to prevent the distribution of their landed wealth among their descendants. In accordance with the traditional concept of Template:Lang, inherited estates could not be subject to the trust. Estates in Template:Lang were always held by one person, but he was responsible for the proper boarding of his relatives.Template:Sfn

The liberation of central Hungary continued, and the Ottomans were forced to acknowledge the loss of the territory in 1699.Template:Sfn Leopold set up a special committee to distribute the lands in the reconquered territories.Template:Sfn The descendants of the noblemen who had held estates there before the Ottoman conquest were required to provide documentary evidence to substantiate their claims to the ancestral lands.Template:Sfn Even if they could present documents, they were to pay a feeTemplate:Spaced ndasha tenth of the value of the claimed propertyTemplate:Spaced ndashas compensation for the costs of the liberation war.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Few noblemen could meet the criteria and more than half of the recovered lands were distributed among foreigners.Template:Sfn They were naturalized, but most of them never visited Hungary.Template:Sfn

The Habsburg administration doubled the amount of the taxes to be collected in Hungary and demanded almost one third of the taxes (1.25 million florins) from the clergy and the nobility. The palatine, Prince Paul Esterházy (d. 1713), convinced the monarch to reduce the noblemen's tax burden to 0.25 million florins, but the difference was to be paid by the peasantry.Template:Sfn Leopold did not trust the Hungarians, because a group of magnates had conspired against him in the 1670s.Template:Sfn Mercenaries replaced the Hungarian garrisons, and they frequently plundered the countryside.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The monarch also supported Cardinal Leopold Karl von Kollonitsch's attempts to restrict the Protestants' rights. Tens of thousands of Catholic Germans and Orthodox Serbs were settled in the reconquered territories.Template:Sfn

The outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1715) provided an opportunity for the discontented Hungarians to rise against Leopold. They regarded one of the wealthiest aristocrats, Prince Francis II Rákóczi (d. 1735), as their leader.Template:Sfn Rákóczi's War of Independence lasted from 1703 to 1711.Template:Sfn Although the rebels were forced to yield, the Treaty of Szatmár granted a general amnesty for them and the new Habsburg monarch, Charles III (Template:Reign), promised to respect the privileges of the Estates of the realm.Template:Sfn

Cooperation and absolutism

Template:Further

Charles III again confirmed the privileges of the Estates of the "Kingdom of Hungary, and the Parts, Kingdoms and Provinces thereto annexed" in 1723 in return for the enactment of the Pragmatic Sanction which established his daughters' right to succeed him.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Montesquieu, who visited Hungary in 1728, regarded the relationship between the king and the Diet as a good example of the separation of powers.Template:Sfn The magnates almost monopolized the highest offices, but both the Hungarian Court Chancellery Template:Spaced ndashthe supreme body of royal administrationTemplate:Spaced ndashand the Lieutenancy Council Template:Spaced ndashthe most important administrative officeTemplate:Spaced ndashalso employed lesser noblemen.Template:Sfn In practice, Protestants were excluded from public offices after a royal decree, the Template:Lang, obliged all candidates to take an oath on the Virgin Mary.Template:Sfn

The Peace of Szatmár and the Pragmatic Sanction maintained that the Hungarian nation consisted of the privileged groups, independent of their ethnicity,Template:Sfn but the first debates along ethnic lines occurred in the early 18th century.Template:Sfn The jurist Mihály Bencsik claimed that the burghers of Trencsén (now Trenčín in Slovakia) should not send delegates to the Diet because their ancestors had been forced to yield to the conquering Magyars in the 890s.Template:Sfn A priest, Ján B. Magin, wrote a response, arguing that ethnic Slovaks and Hungarians enjoyed the same rights.Template:Sfn In Transylvania, a bishop of the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, Baron Inocențiu Micu-Klein (d. 1768), tried to speak "on behalf of the whole Romanian nation in Transylvania" at the Diet in 1737 but he could not finish the speech because other delegates stated that he could refer only to the Romanians or to the Romanian people for the Romanian Nation did not exist. Five years later, he unsuccessfully demanded the recognition of the Romanians as the fourth Nation on ethnic grounds.Template:Sfn

Maria Theresa (Template:Reign) succeeded Charles III in 1740, which gave rise to the War of the Austrian Succession.Template:Sfn The noble delegates offered their "lives and blood" for their new "king" and the declaration of the general levy of the nobility was crucial at the beginning of the war.Template:Sfn Grateful for their support, Maria Theresa strengthened the links between the Hungarian nobility and the monarch.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn She established the Theresian Academy and the Royal Hungarian Bodyguard for young Hungarian noblemen.Template:Sfn Both institutions enabled the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.Template:Refn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Freemasonry became popular, especially among the magnates, but masonic lodges were also open to untitled noblemen and professionals.Template:Sfn

Cultural differences between the magnates and lesser noblemen grew. The magnates adopted the lifestyle of the imperial aristocracy, moving between their summer palaces in Vienna and their newly built splendid residences in Hungary.Template:Sfn Prince Miklós Esterházy (d. 1790) employed the celebrated composer Joseph Haydn. Count János Fekete (d. 1803), a fierce protector of noble privileges, bombarded the French philosopher Voltaire with letters and dilettante poems.Template:Sfn Count Miklós Pálffy (d. 1773) proposed to tax the nobles to finance a standing army.Template:Sfn Most noblemen were unwilling to renounce their privileges.Template:Sfn Lesser noblemen also insisted on their traditional way of life and lived in simple houses, made of timber or packed clay.Template:Sfn

Maria Theresa did not hold Diets after 1764.Template:Sfn She regulated the relationship of landowners and their serfs in a royal decree in 1767.Template:Sfn Her son and successor, Joseph II (Template:Reign), mocked as the "king in hat", was never crowned, because he wanted to avoid the coronation oath.Template:Sfn He introduced reforms which clearly contradicted local customs.Template:Sfn He replaced the counties with districts and appointed royal officials to administer them. He also abolished serfdom, securing all peasants the right to free movement after the revolt of Romanian serfs in Transylvania.Template:Sfn He ordered the first census in Hungary in 1784.Template:Sfn According to its records, the nobility made up about 4.5 percent of the male population in the Lands of the Hungarian Crown (with 155,519 noblemen in Hungary proper, and 42,098 noblemen in Transylvania, Croatia and Slavonia).Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The nobles' proportion was significantly higher (six–sixteen percent) in the northeastern and eastern counties, and less (three percent) in Croatia and Slavonia.Template:Sfn Poor noblemen, who were mocked as "nobles of the seven plum trees" or "sandal-wearing nobles", made up almost 90 percent of the nobility.Template:Sfn Previous investigations of nobility show that more than half of the noble families received their rank after 1550.Template:Sfn

National awakening

The few reformist noblemen greeted the news of the French Revolution with enthusiasm. Template:Illm (d. 1795) translated the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen into Latin, and Template:Illm (d. 1795) published its Hungarian translation.Template:Sfn To appease the Hungarian nobility, Joseph II revoked almost all his reforms on his deathbed in 1790.Template:Sfn His successor, Leopold II (Template:Reign), convoked the Diet and confirmed the liberties of the Estates of the realm, emphasizing Hungary was a "free and independent" realm, governed by its own laws.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn News about the Jacobin terror in France strengthened royal power.Template:Sfn Hajnóczy and other radical (or "Jacobin") noblemen, who had discussed the possibility of the abolition of all privileges in secret societies, were captured and executed or imprisoned in 1795.Template:Sfn The Diets voted in favor of the taxes and the recruits that Leopold's successor, Francis (Template:Reign), demanded between 1792 and 1811.Template:Sfn

The last general levy of the nobility was declared in 1809, but Napoleon easily defeated the noble troops near Győr.Template:Sfn Agricultural bloom encouraged the landowners to borrow money and to buy new estates or to establish mills during the war, but most of them went bankrupt after peace was restored in 1814.Template:Sfn The concept of Template:Lang prevented both the creditors from collecting their money and the debtors from selling their estates.Template:Sfn Radical nobles played a crucial role in the reform movements of the early 19th century.Template:Sfn Gergely Berzeviczy (d. 1822) attributed the backwardness of the local economy to the peasants' serfdom already around 1800.Template:Sfn Ferenc Kazinczy (d. 1831) and János Batsányi (d. 1845) initiated language reform, fearing the disappearance of the Hungarian language.Template:Sfn The poet Sándor Petőfi (d. 1849), who was a commoner, ridiculed the conservative noblemen in his poem The Magyar Noble, contrasting their anachronistic pride and their idle way of life.Template:Sfn

From the 1820s, a new generation of reformist noblemen dominated political life.Template:Sfn Count István Széchenyi (d. 1860) demanded the abolition of the serfs' labour service and the entail system, stating that, "We, well-to-do landowners are the main obstacles to the progress and greater development of our fatherland".Template:Sfn He established clubs in Pressburg and Pest and promoted horse racing, because he wanted to encourage the regular meetings of magnates, lesser noblemen and burghers.Template:Sfn Széchenyi's friend, Baron Miklós Wesselényi (d. 1850), demanded the creation of a constitutional monarchy and the protection of civil rights.Template:Sfn A lesser nobleman, Lajos Kossuth (d. 1894), became the leader of the most radical politicians in the 1840s.Template:Sfn He declared that the Diets and the counties were the privileged groups' institutions, and that only a wider social movement could secure the development of Hungary.Template:Sfn

Since the end of the Age of Enlightenment, nationality was more and more associated with the vernacular. Predictions by the German Romantic philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (d. 1803) about the inevitable assimilation of small peoples to a large linguistic group fanned the flames of linguistic nationalism.Template:Sfn Although ethnic Hungarians made up only about 38 percent of the population,Template:Sfn the official use of the Hungarian language spread from the late 18th century.Template:Sfn Kossuth declared that all who wanted to enjoy the liberties of the nation should learn Hungarian.Template:Sfn In contrast, the Slovak Ľudovít Štúr (d. 1856) stated that the Hungarian nation consisted of many nationalities and their loyalty could be strengthened by the official use of their languages.Template:Sfn Count Janko Drašković (d. 1856) recommended that Croatian should replace Latin as the official language in Croatia and Slavonia.Template:Sfn

Revolution and neo-absolutism

Template:See also

News of the Revolutions of 1848 reached Pest on 15 March 1848.Template:Sfn Young intellectuals proclaimed a radical program, known as the Twelve Points, demanding equal civil rights to all citizens.Template:Sfn Count Lajos Batthyány (d. 1849) was appointed the first prime minister of Hungary.Template:Sfn The Diet quickly enacted the majority of the Twelve Points, and Ferdinand V (Template:Reign) sanctioned them in April.Template:Sfn

The April Laws abolished the nobles' tax-exemption and the Template:Lang,Template:Sfn but the magnates' 31 Template:Lang remained intact.Template:Sfn Although the peasant tenants received the ownership of their plots, a compensation was promised to the landowners.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Adult men who owned more than Template:Convert of arable lands or urban estates with a value of at least 300 florinsTemplate:Spaced ndashabout one quarter of the adult male populationTemplate:Spaced ndashwere granted the right to vote in the parliamentary elections.Template:Sfn The noblemen's exclusive franchise in county elections was confirmed, otherwise ethnic minorities could have easily dominated the general assemblies in many counties.Template:Sfn Noblemen made up about one quarter of the members of the new parliament, which assembled after the general elections on 5 July.Template:Sfn

The Slovak delegates demanded autonomy for all ethnic minorities at their assembly in May.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Similar demands were adopted at the Romanian delegates' meeting.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Ferdinand V's advisors persuaded the ban (or governor) of Croatia, Baron Josip Jelačić (d. 1859), to invade Hungary proper in September.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn A new war of independence broke out and the Hungarian parliament dethroned the Habsburg dynasty on 14 April 1849.Template:Sfn Nicholas I of Russia (Template:Reign) intervened on the legitimist side and Russian troops overpowered the Hungarian army, forcing it to surrender on 13 August.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Hungary, Croatia (and Slavonia) and Transylvania were incorporated as separate realms in the Austrian Empire.Template:Sfn The advisors of the young emperor, Franz Joseph (Template:Reign), declared that Hungary had lost its historic rights and the conservative Hungarian aristocratsTemplate:Refn could not persuade him to restore the old constitution.Template:Sfn Noblemen who had remained loyal to the Habsburgs were appointed to high offices,Template:Refn but most new officials came from other provinces of the empire.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The vast majority of noblemen opted for a passive resistance: they did not hold offices in state administration and tacitly obstructed the implementation of imperial decrees.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn An untitled nobleman from Zala County, Ferenc Deák (d. 1876), became their leader around 1854.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn They tried to preserve an air of superiority, but their vast majority was assimilated to the local peasantry or petty bourgeoisie during the following decades.Template:Sfn In contrast to them, the magnates, who retained about one quarter of all lands, could easily raise funds from the developing banking sector to modernize their estates.Template:Sfn

Austria-Hungary

Template:See also

Deák and his followers knew the great powers did not support the disintegration of the Austrian Empire.Template:Sfn Austria's defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 accelerated the rapprochement between the king and the Deák Party, which led to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.Template:Sfn Hungary proper and Transylvania were unitedTemplate:Sfn and the autonomy of Hungary was restored within the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.Template:Sfn Next year, the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement restored the union of Hungary proper and Croatia, but secured the competence of the Croatian Template:Lang in internal affairs, education and justice.Template:Sfn

The Compromise strengthened the position of the traditional political elite.Template:Sfn Only about six percent of the population could vote in the general elections.Template:Sfn More than half of the prime ministers and one third of the ministers were appointed from among the magnates from 1867 to 1918.Template:Sfn Landowners made up the majority of the members of parliament.Template:Sfn Half of the seats in municipal assemblies were preserved for the greatest taxpayers.Template:Sfn Noblemen also dominated the state administration, because tens of thousands of impoverished nobles took jobs at the ministries, or at the state-owned railways and post offices.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn They were ardent supporters of Magyarization, denying the use of minority languages.Template:Sfn An emigrant aristocrat Baroness Emma Orczy (d. 1947) wrote her novels in English in the United Kingdom. She had left Hungary with her parents when farm workers fearing of losing their job set the Orczy manor on fire at Abádszalók in 1868. Her first novel featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel Template:Spaced ndash"the first character who could be called a superhero" (Stan Lee)Template:Spaced ndashwas published in 1905.^[5]

Only nobleman who owned an estate of at least Template:Convert were regarded as prosperous, but the number of estates of that size quickly decreased.Template:Refn Template:Sfn The magnates took advantage of lesser noblemen's bankruptcies and bought new estates during the same period.Template:Sfn New Template:Lang were created which enabled the magnates to preserve the entailment of their landed wealth.Template:Sfn Aristocrats were regularly appointed to the boards of directors of banks and companies.Template:Refn Template:Sfn

Jews were the prime movers of the development of the financial and industrial sectors.Template:Sfn Jewish businessmen owned more than half of the companies and more than four-fifths of the banks in 1910.Template:Sfn They also bought landed property and had acquired almost one-fifth of the estates of between Template:Convert by 1913.Template:Sfn The most prominent Jewish burghers were awarded with nobilityTemplate:Refn and there were 26 aristocratic families and 320 noble families of Jewish origin in 1918.Template:Sfn Many of them converted to Christianity, but other nobles did not regard them as their peers.Template:Sfn

Revolutions and counter-revolution

Template:See also

The First World War brought about the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918.Template:Sfn The Aster Revolution Template:Spaced ndasha movement of the left-liberal Party of Independence, the Social Democratic Party and the Radical Citizens' Party Template:Spaced ndashpersuaded Charles IV (Template:Reign), to appoint the radical Count Mihály Károlyi (d. 1955), prime minister on 31 October.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn After the Lower House dissolved itself, Hungary was proclaimed a republic on 16 November.Template:Sfn The Hungarian National Council adopted a land reform setting the maximum size of the estates at Template:Convert and ordering the distribution of any excess among the local peasantry.Template:Sfn Károlyi, whose inherited domains had been mortgaged to banks, was the first to implement the reform.Template:Sfn

The Allied Powers authorized Romania to occupy new territories and ordered the withdrawal of the Royal Hungarian Army almost as far as the Tisza on 26 February 1919.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Károlyi resigned and the Hungarian Communist Party leader Béla Kun (d. 1938) announced the establishment of the Hungarian Soviet Republic on 21 March.Template:Sfn All estates of over Template:Convert and all private companies employing more than 20 workers were nationalized.Template:Sfn The Bolsheviks could not stop the Romanian invasion and their leaders fled from Hungary on 1 August.Template:Sfn After a short-lived temporary government, the industrialist István Friedrich (d. 1951) formed a coalition government with the support of the Allied Powers on 6 August.Template:Sfn The Bolsheviks' nationalization program was abolished.Template:Sfn The Hungarian Social Democratic Party boycotted the general elections in early 1920.Template:Sfn The new one-chamber Diet of Hungary restored the Hungarian monarchy, but without restoring the Habsburgs.Template:Sfn Instead, a Calvinist nobleman, Miklós Horthy (d. 1957), was elected regent on 1 March 1920.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Hungary had to acknowledge the loss of more than two thirds of its territory and more than 60 percent of its population (including one third of the ethnic Hungarians) in the Treaty of Trianon on 4 June.Template:Sfn

Horthy was never crowned king, and therefore could not grant nobility, but he established a new order of merit, the Order of Gallantry.Template:Sfn Its members received the hereditary title of Template:Lang ("brave").Template:Sfn They were also granted parcels of land, which renewed the "medieval link between land tenure and service to the crown" (Bryan Cartledge).Template:Sfn Two Transylvanian aristocrats, Counts Pál Teleki (d. 1941) and István Bethlen (d. 1946), were the most influential politicians in the interwar period.Template:Sfn The events of 1918–19 convinced them that only a "conservative democracy", dominated by the landed nobility, could secure stability.Template:Sfn Most ministers and the majority of the members of the parliament were nobles.Template:Sfn A conservative agrarian reformTemplate:Spaced ndashlimited to 8.5 percent of all arable landsTemplate:Spaced ndashwas introduced, but almost one third of the lands remained in the possession of about 400 magnate families.Template:Sfn The two-chamber parliament was restored in 1926, with an Upper House dominated by the aristocrats, prelates and high-ranking officials.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

Antisemitism was a leading ideology in the 1920s and 1930s.Template:Sfn A Template:Lang law limited the admission of Jewish students in the universities.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Count Fidél Pálffy (d. 1946) was one of the leading figures of the national socialist movements, but most aristocrats disdained the radicalism of "petty officers and housekeepers".Template:Sfn Hungary participated in the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 and joined the war against the Soviet Union after the bombing of Kassa in late June.Template:Sfn Fearing the defection of Hungary from the war, Nazi Germany occupied the country in Operation Margarethe on 19 March 1944.Template:Sfn Hundreds of thousands of Jews and tens of thousands of Romani were transferred to Nazi concentration camps with the local authorities' assistance.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The wealthiest business magnates of Jewish origin were forced to renounce their companies and banks to redeem their own and their relatives' lives.Template:Refn Template:Sfn

The fall of the Hungarian nobility

Template:See also

The Soviet Red Army reached the Hungarian borders and took possession of the Great Hungarian Plain by 6 December 1944.Template:Sfn Delegates from the region's towns and villages established the Provisional National Assembly in Debrecen, which elected a new government on 22 December.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Three prominent Anti-Nazi aristocratsTemplate:Refn had a seat in the assembly.Template:Sfn The Provisional National Government soon promised land reform, along with the abolishment of all "anti-democratic" laws.Template:Sfn The last German Wehrmacht troops left Hungary on 4 April 1945.Template:Sfn

Imre Nagy (d. 1958), the Communist Minister of Agriculture, announced land reform on 17 March 1945.Template:Sfn All domains of more than Template:Convert were confiscated and the owners of smaller estates could retain a maximum Template:Convert of land.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The land reform, as Cartledge noted, destroyed the nobility and eliminated the "elements of feudalism, which had persisted for longer in Hungary than anywhere else in Europe".Template:Sfn Similar land reforms were introduced in Romania and Czechoslovakia.Template:Sfn In both countries, ethnic Hungarian aristocrats were sentenced to death or prison as alleged war criminals.Template:Refn Template:Sfn Hungarian aristocratsTemplate:Refn could retain their estates only in Burgenland (in Austria) after 1945.Template:Sfn

Soviet military authorities controlled the general elections and the formation of a coalition government in late 1945.Template:Sfn The new parliament declared the Second Hungarian Republic on 1 February 1946.Template:Sfn An opinion poll showed that more than 75 percent of men and 66 percent of women were opposed to the use of noble titles in 1946.Template:Sfn The parliament adopted an act that abolished all noble ranks and related styles, also banning their use.Template:Sfn The new act came into force on 14 February 1947.Template:Sfn

Unofficial nobility

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The Communists took full control of the government between 1947 and 1949, and Hungary was proclaimed a "people's republic" on 20 August 1949.Template:Sfn The aristocrats were declared as "class enemies", and most of them interned to "social camps"Template:Spaced ndashactually, forced labour campsTemplate:Spaced ndashto work in the fields in the Great Hungarian Plain.Template:Sfn Mass internal deportations occurred in 1950 and 1951. Almost all aristocrats were interned from Budapest to under-populated villages in eastern Hungary, primarily in Hortobágy region within two months in May–July 1951. Figures of a final report shows that 9 dukes, 163 counts, 121 barons and 8 knighted noblemen – altogether 301 aristocrats – and their families were deported from the capital during this period. The deportees were prohibited to leave the boundary of their assigned village and were under constant police surveillance. They were deprived of their belongings, properties and civil rights – they were prohibited to take part in elections. Most of them could work as manual workers in agriculture at state farms on a limited basis, but their deprivation was constant.Template:Sfn

Some leftist aristocrats tried to cooperate with the new regime but the Communist leaders did not trust them.Template:Refn Template:Sfn As a consequence of the Khrushchev Thaw, those who had been interned were allowed to leave the labour camps, but their former homes were not restored to them.Template:Sfn Although Communist historians did their utmost to prove the aristocrats' preeminent role during the failed anti-Communist Hungarian revolution of 1956, few aristocrats took an active part.Template:Refn Template:Sfn Many aristocrats left the country following the suppression of the 1956 revolt.Template:Sfn During the 1960s and 1970s, people of aristocratic descent were mainly employed as blue-collar workers,Template:Sfn and their children needed a special permit for studying at universities until 1962.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Although official discrimination was abolished, former aristocrats were rarely appointed to higher positions.Template:Refn Template:Sfn Péter Esterházy (d. 2016) became a celebrated writer during the last decades of the Communist regime.Template:Sfn

The Communist one-party system collapsed in the late 1980s, and Hungary was proclaimed a republic in 1989.Template:Sfn The first prime minister of the democratic era, József Antall (d. 1993) offered positions in state administration to aristocrats who returned to Hungary, but the aristocracy did not regain its former position.Template:Sfn The restitution of former property was an important political issue in most new democracies in the early 1990s. In Hungary, in kind restitution was excluded because many pieces of formerly confiscated property had already been privatized during the last years of the Communist regime. Instead, monetary compensation was made available to the original owners and their descendants but its amount was limited to about US$70,000. In contrast, in kind restitution was the preferred method of restitution in Czechoslovakia, and the original owners could also claim in kind restitution in Romania and Poland.Template:Sfn Hungarian aristocrats regained part of their former properties in Romania, and at least one Hungarian noble family also seized property in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia during the restitution process.Template:Refn^[6]

The Hungarian act banning the use of noble ranks and styles has not been abolished, and the Constitutional Court of Hungary declared, in 2009 and 2010, that the ban was fully in line with the revised Hungarian Constitution of 1949. In December 2010, two members of the rightist Jobbik Group submitted a draft for the abolition of the ban but they withdrew it in two weeks.^[7] On the initiative of the former aristocrat János Nyáry, a private club, the Association of Hungarian Noble Families, was established for people of noble descent in Budapest in 1994. The association became a member of the European Commission of the Nobility in 2007.Template:Sfn

Notes

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References

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Sources

Primary sources

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Anonymus, Notary of King Béla: The Deeds of the Hungarians (Edited, Translated and Annotated by Martyn Rady and László Veszprémy) (2010). In: Rady, Martyn; Veszprémy, László; Bak, János M. (2010); Anonymus and Master Roger; CEU Press; Template:ISBN.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus: De Administrando Imperio (Greek text edited by Gyula Moravcsik, English translation by Romilly J. H. Jenkins) (1967). Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. Template:ISBN.
Simon of Kéza: The Deeds of the Hungarians (Edited and translated by László Veszprémy and Frank Schaer with a study by Jenő Szűcs) (1999). CEU Press. Template:ISBN.
The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary in Three Parts (1517) (Edited and translated by János M. Bak, Péter Banyó and Martyn Rady, with an introductory study by László Péter) (2005). Charles Schlacks, Jr.; Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University. Template:ISBN.
The Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, 1000–1301 (Translated and edited by János M. Bak, György Bónis, James Ross Sweeney with an essay on previous editions by Andor Czizmadia, Second revised edition, In collaboration with Leslie S. Domonkos) (1999). Charles Schlacks, Jr. Publishers.

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Secondary sources

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Origins

Middle Ages

Development

Golden Bulls

Self-government and oligarchs

Age of the Angevins

Emerging estates

Birth of titled nobility and the Tripartitum

Early modern and modern times

Tripartite Hungary

Liberation and war of independence

Cooperation and absolutism

National awakening

Revolution and neo-absolutism

Austria-Hungary

Revolutions and counter-revolution

The fall of the Hungarian nobility

Unofficial nobility

See also

Notes

References

Sources

Primary sources

Secondary sources

Further reading