1458-1490 - Matyas Corvinus
For the first time in Hungarian history there was now no candidate for the throne able to put forward a claim based even tenuously on heredity. There were, of course, pretendents enough, including the evergreen Emperor' Frederick, but this time the nation was tired of foreign kings. The name of Hunyadi was magical among the small nobles, and it was easy for Szilágyi to organise them to favor of the surviving bearer of the name. His younger son, Matyas [Matthias], was imprisoned in Bohemia. However, lesser nobles loyal to Matyas soon expelled Laszlo. After Laszlo's death abroad, they paid ransom for Matthias Hunyadi, met him on the frozen Danube River, and proclaimed him king.
On 24 January 1458, while the great men were still debating, a huge multitude of common nobles, assembled on the ice of the frozen Danube, proclaimed Mátyás king. Emissaries having with some difficulty extracted him from the keeping of George Podiebrad, in Prague (for the Czechs, too, had decided in favor of a national king), he was brought to Buda and enthroned amid scenes of national rejoicing. Known as Matyas Corvinus (1458-90), he was, with one possible exception (Janos Zapolyai), the last Hungarian king to rule the country.
Mátyás Corvinus, as he is commonly known from his crest, a raven, is, with the somewhat qualified exception of John Zápolyai, the only completely 'national' king to have worn the Holy Crown after the extinction of the old dynasty, and it is natural that Hungarian historians should have seen his reign, in retrospect, through something of a golden haze.
In less than three years the young king had justified their confidence, and delivered his country from its worst embarrassments. This prodigy was accomplished in the face of every conceivable obstacle. His first diet grudgingly granted him supplies and soldiers for the Turkish war, on condition that under no circumstances whatever should they henceforth be called upon to contribute towards the national defence, and he was practically deprived of the control of the banderia or mounted militia. It was with a small force of mercenaries, raised at his own expense, that the young king won his first Turkish victories, and expelled the Czechs from his northern and the Habsburgs from his western provinces.
But his limited resources, and, above all, the proved incapacity of the militia in the field, compelled him instantly to take in hand the vital question of army reform. In the second year of his reign he undertook personally the gigantic task of providing Hungary with an army adequate to her various needs on the model of the best military science of the day. The landless younger sons of the gentry and the Servian and Vlach immigrants provided him with excellent and practically inexhaustible military material. The old feudal levies he put aside. Brave enough personally, as soldiers they were distinctly inferior both to the Janissaries and the Hussites, with both of whom Matthias had constantly to contend. It was a trained regular army in his pay and consequently at his disposal that he wanted.
The nucleus of the new army he found in the Czech mercenaries, seasoned veterans who readily transferred their services to the best payer. This force, formed in 1459, was generally known as the Fekete Sereg, or "Black Brigade," from the color of its armour. From 1465 the pick of the Magyars and Croatians were enlisted in the same way every year, till, towards the end of his reign, Matthias could count upon 20,000 horse and 8,000 foot, besides 6,000 black brigadera. The cavalry consisted of the famous Hussars, or light horse, of which he may be said to have been the creator, and the heavily armed mounted musketeers on the Czech-German model. The infantry, in like manner, was divided into light and heavy. This army was provided with a regular commissariat, cannon and ballistic machines, and, being constantly on active service, was always in a high state of efficiency.
The land forces were supported by a river fleet consisting (in 1479) of 360 vessels, mostly sloops and corvettes, manned by 2600 sailors, generally Croats, and carrying 10,000 soldiers. Eight large military stations were also built at the chief strategic points on the Danube, Save and Theiss. These armaments, which cost Matthias 1,000,000 florins per annum, equivalent to Ł200,000, did not include the auxiliary troops of the hospodars of Walachia and Moldavia, or the feudal levies of the barons and prelates.
The army of Matthias was not only a military machine of first-rate efficiency, but an indispensable civilizing medium. It enabled the king to curb the lawlessness of the Magyar nobility, and explains why none of the numerous rebellions against him ever succeeded. Again and again, during his absence on the public service, the barons and prelates would assemble to compass his ruin or dispose of his crown, when, suddenly, " like a tempest," from the depths of Silesia or of Bosnia, he would himself appear among them, confounding and scattering them, often without resistance, always without bloodshed. He also frequency employed his soldiers in collecting the taxes from the estates of those magnates who refused to contribute to the public burdens, in protecting the towns from the depredations of the robber barons, or in convoying the caravans of the merchants. In fact, they were a police force as well as an army.
Despite the enormous expense of maintaining the army, Matthias, after the first ten years of his reign, was never in want of money. This miracle was achieved by tact and management. No Hungarian king had so little trouble with the turbulent diet as Matthias. By this time the gentry, as well as the barons and prelates, took part in the legislature. But attendance at the diet was regarded by the bulk of the poorer deputies as an intolerable burden, and they frequently agreed to grant the taxes for two or three years in advance, so as to be saved the expense of attending every year. Moreover, to promote their own convenience, they readily allowed the king to assess as well as to collect the taxes, which consequently tended to become regular and permanent, while Matthias' reform of the treasury, which was now administered by specialists with separate functions, was economically of great benefit to the state. Yet Matthias never dispensed with the diet. During the thirty-two years of his reign he held at least fifteen diets, at which no fewer than 450 statutes were passed.
Although Matyas regularly convened the Diet and expanded the lesser nobles' powers in the counties, he exercised absolute rule over Hungary by means of a secular bureaucracy. Matyas enlisted 30,000 foreign mercenaries in his standing army and built a network of fortresses along Hungary's southern frontier, but he did not pursue his father's aggressive anti-Turkish policy. Instead, Matyas launched unpopular attacks on Bohemia, Poland, and Austria, pursuing an ambition to become Holy Roman Emperor and arguing that he was trying to forge a unified Western alliance strong enough to expel the Turks from Europe. He eliminated tax exemptions and raised the serfs' obligations to the crown to fund his court and the military. The magnates complained that these measures reduced their incomes, but despite the stiffer obligations, the serfs considered Matyas a just ruler because he protected them from excessive demands and other abuses by the magnates. He also reformed Hungary's legal system and promoted the growth of Hungary's towns. Matyas was a true renaissance man and made his court a center of humanist culture; under his rule, Hungary's first books were printed and its second university was established. Matyas' library, the Corvina, was famous throughout Europe. In his quest for the imperial throne, Matyas eventually moved to Vienna, where he died in 1490.
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