Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 1. (Budapest, 2006)

Abstracts

privileges in the recaptured territories, and to let them pay the costs of reoccupation (jus armorum) for the enforcement of every privilege. Furthermore, no commutation was allowed in wartime, the towns got a chance to reach their goals only after the peace of Karlóca (1699). In the meanwhile, the towns managed to obtain the decree and ratification of a range of smaller privileges (market-rights, exemption from the trices ima (customs duties), etc.) from the Buda Chamber Administration, and respectively from the ruler. In 1701 four newly liberated, former free royal towns: Buda, Pest, Székesfehérvár and Esztergom tried to regain their rights collectively. The study presents details of the negotiations between the towns and the counselors of the Court Chamber. As a result the towns got the royal privilege letters, which confirmed their status as free royal towns against the payment of altogether 20.000 Ft jus armorum in 1703. However, the issue of the privilege letters did not imply the immediate acquirement of the status of free royal town. In the meantime, the so-called war of independence led by Rákóczi broke out. Consequently, Buda and Pest, as Habsburg-loyal isolated towns got into a very difficult financial situation. Thus, the payment of the jus armorum was deterred until 1705. At the same time the court also reduced its demands, due to the tense Hungarian situation and the Spanish wars of succession. The towns could only achieve the free royal status after the defeat of the so-called Rákóczi war of independence, in 1711. JUDIT PÁL The Price of Freedom: Szatmárnémeti'

s Struggle for the Status of Free Royal Town at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century Governmental bureaucracy was established also in the Habsburg Empire in the eighteenth century. But how did this system work considering it from beneath? How did the estates, the corporations and the free royal towns - which had enjoyed a fairly considerable autonomy until then - manage to assert their interests against the state apparatus and the competing authorities? These research questions were analysed in the case of Szatmárnémeti (today Satu Marc, Rumania), namely through its struggle of gaining the free royal town privilege. Szatmárnémeti was prior to the eighteenth century a privileged royal town in Eastern Hungary that played a fairly important strategic role in troubled times because of its location at the border and its fortification. In the seventeenth century the twin-towns (Szatmár and Németi) only separated by the river Szamos gained several privileges from the Hungarian kings and the princes of Transylvania. However, despite repeated attempts they did not manage to acquire the status of free royal towns