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reign of the monarchs of this house that military colonies of Mussulmans established themselves permanently in that kingdom. This circumstance is the more disgraceful to the long reign of Rudolph in particular, as the disappearance of the Zapolyas left him without a rival; and his impotence and tyranny can consequently be neither excused nor palliated. Unlike bold and ambitious princes, the Hapsburgs suffered the boundaries of Hungary, which they loudly pretended to protect, to shrink perceptibly from year to year, thus rendering themselves contemptible in the eyes of the people, both by their obsequiousness to the sultans, and the cowardice and cruelty of their military leaders. In fact, the Austrian mercenaries were more dangerous to the country during the armistices in their winter quarters, than in time of actual hostilities. Such intervals of leisure they uniformly employed in making war upon the defenceless population, sapping to the very bottom the physical and mental qualities of a once self-relying, brave, and high-spirited people. To rapacity the foreign mercenaries added. every imaginable insult to which the female sex is capable of being exposed. Rudolph, however, as has been seen, added to the other calamities religious persecution also; but the Hungarian Protestants, unlike the Huguenots of France or the Calvinists of the Netherlands, had no neighbouring country to flee to, or whence to expect help, unless from the sultan and his janizaries. This century, forming so bright an era for general European civilization, proved for Hungary a period of sad retrogression, with no signs of mental activity, and scarcely a muse to bewail her deep misfortunes. Nay, the very poetical productions of that time, as exemplified in the poetry of Tinodi,

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Balassa, and Rimai, forcibly demonstrate the absence of anything like national buoyancy and vigour. The last mentioned, after having fought under Bocskay, subsequently joined Bethlen, whom he served in the quality of secretary. Finally, the more fully to characterize the state of society as modified by the Hapsburg rule, particular mention must be made of the following two features in their policy: 1st, The grant to many of the more influential Hungarian nobles of the titles of count and baron; and 2dly, The unscrupulous nomination of foreigners as peers of the Hungarian realm, — nominations practised by Rudolph (under the pretext that the Hungarian nobility was dying out!) by simple letters patent, and with an utter ignoring of the authority of the diet.

With Matthias an era of comparative happiness appeared to dawn upon benighted Hungary. But this brave and half-liberal monarch's reign was too short to be productive of lasting effects. Already advanced in years, and unmarried, Matthias soon lost with his activity of mind his liberality of principle, all his cares being directed to securing for his family the possession of his different kingdoms. As his brothers, Maximilian and Albert, had no issue, he made up his mind to appoint Ferdinand, archduke of Styria, his successor. The Protestants of Bohemia, though with gloomy forebodings, consented to the coronation of Ferdinand in 1616; this prince having, two years later, been also crowned king of Hungary, after having, at the special requisition of the diet, signed a regal diploma, in which he confirmed all the ancient laws, and particularly those enacted by his predecessor Matthias.

SECOND PERIOD-1618-1711.

CHAPTER III.

FERDINAND II.-BETHLEN GABOR-FERDINAND III. -GEORGE RAKOCZY—FERDINAND IV.—( 1618-1655. )

THE following century is strongly marked by the community of character subsisting between the struggles and interest of Hungary and those of the rest of Europe. The political aspect at that time tended to awaken the ambitious designs of the House of Austria, and particularly to call into action her long-cherished desire of extinguishing Protestantism in her dominions. The assassination of Henry IV., the great king of France, relieved Austria of all apprehensions from that quarter, while the bold policy of Elizabeth in favour of the Protestants was no longer to be feared from the cowardly and bigoted Stuart, who then occupied the throne of England. The favourable opportunity was thus seized. Ferdinand II., who inherited from Rudolph all his religious hatred without his dreamy temper, and who burned to accomplish on

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SURVEY OF THE PRESENT PERIOD.

the battle-field what that monarch thought to execute from his covered galleries, marked the commencement of his reign by venturing his jesuitical rage on the descendants of Huss and Zsiska. Forsaken by the Lutheran princes of Germany, the Bohemians, in virtue of the recent confederacy of Presburg, applied to Hungary, which, as will be seen, in spite of her Turkish colonies and Austrian mercenaries, boldly stepped forth in defence of Protestantism, acting in the beginning of that great religious war a part more or less similar to that taken subsequently by the two powers of the Baltic. The stimulus, as was the case in the days of Bocskay, came from the mountain-girt principality of Transylvania, whose present ruler was Bethlen Gabor (Gabriel), elected prince of Transylvania in the year 1613. It will be seen that the struggle, once begun, continued in Hungary long after the traces of the havoc caused by the Thirty Years' War had disappeared from the surface of the rest of Europe; that religious and civil liberty marched hand in hand; that a single cry raised by a noble national leader was sufficient to rouse and lead to victory a people kept in bondage, and almost entirely exhausted; farther, that the Hapsburg kings, never sparing in liberal assurances when distressed, turned oppressors whenever momentary danger had disappeared; finally, it will be seen how a nation, with a huge pile of ever-renewed privileges, was still doomed to oppression, condemned to lead a long vegetating life, despised and hated by their foreign rulers, and humiliated in their own eyes. But if the sameness of the events which follow, and fill up the whole of the seventeenth century, is not calculated to excite interest or amusement, it derives, on the other hand, no common

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amount of importance from the naked awful truth which it embodies.

The first diet of Presburg of the year 1619, held under Ferdinand II., was yet sitting, full of joy at the profuse and solemn assurances of the new king, when the orders he issued for the demolition of the churches in Braunau and Klosterberg in Bohemia became the signal for the rise of the Bohemian Protestants. Their application to the Hungarian Diet was, however, at first entirely neglected at Presburg. This negligence was partly caused by some internal religious questions, referring to the Unitarians, not included in the treaty of peace of the year 1606, which had worn out the attention of the states, and especially by the artifices of the palatine Forgach. Ferdinand, in the meantime, tried covertly to do in Hungary what was already openly attempted in the rest of his states; viz., to extirpate the Protestants, according to his vow taken at Loretto. The work was begun by the Jesuits, the so-called janizaries of the see of Rome, their general being a Hungarian named Pazman. Peter Pazman was born at Gross-Vardein in the year 1517, and was brought up a Calvinist. At the age of fourteen he embraced the Catholic faith, and three years after became a Jesuit. Having subsequently occupied for some years the philosophical chair in the seminary of Gran, Pazman was sent as a missionary by the pope, for the purpose of converting the Hungarian Protestants. His talents and zeal were much commended by Ferdinand, and gradually raised him to the archbishopric of Gran, a dignity for which he renounced his monkish order, as the laws of the country excluded the monks from all ecclesiastical dignities. Versed in the scholastic philosophy, surpassing in controversial