Csiffáry Gergely - B. Huszár Éva: Heves megye II. József-kori katonai leírása 1783-1785 (Eger, 1999)

IDEGEN NYELVŰ ÖSSZEFOGLALÓK - The military description of Heves County from the era of Joseph II. (1783-1785)

Gergely Csiffáry-Mrs. Éva Huszár The military description of Heves County from the era of Joseph II. (1783-1785) It was because of the experiences of the 7 years' war, the lack of maps, and country descriptions, and the unreliability of the material avaliable, that Maria Theresa ordered the military mapping and description of her countries. The mapping of Hungary was carried out between 1782-1785 while the military description was done between 1783-1785. The description of the country (Militärische Beschreibung) wos done as a complement of the first military mapping (Josephinische Aufnahme). This publication is different from the previous ones because its source is the original German document written is Gothic letters. It contains the German and Hungarian texts written in latin letters, in a parallel form. The original German source written in Gothic letters is found at the end of the publication so that the reader can compare the latin lettered German description with the original. Many abbreviations are put in the text eg:by the incomplete points it is indicated with which settlement's data should it be completed in other cases inverted commas are used to refer to the data of the same kind of the previous settlement. The references of the sources (eg: see Gyöngyös) are put back into the text of the sources, otherwise the descriptions would be most simplified. In the publishment the German text is written in modern German language, white all the geographical names found in the source are written in original form. In the original text the geographical names are often distorted because of several reasons. The original text of the source has at least once been transcribed also the settlements have various names as the makers of the description were not Hungarian and the geographical names were put down phonetically after hearing them. The identification of all the geographical names written in Gothic letters have been carried out by the editors of the source-publishment, so the original and also the present names are indicated. It is the geographical indices which help to understand this rich and complex material of names. The names of the Gothic source are in alphabetic order, next to them the old and the present Hungarian names are found. The indices are self-indexing which means that all the names of the settlements and suburbs -altogether 148- are given a serial number according to the original order of the source. Therefore it is not the pages that are referred to in the indices but the descriptions that contain the place or object in question. This piece of work is not simply a source - publishment but it contains two studies as well. The first one is the geographical analisys of the part of the country description which deals with Heves County. Here the distance of the settlements, the condition of the relief, the bodies of water, meadows, protective ditches (Csörsz árok) the natural-geographical analisy, of the flora of the forests, as well as the traffic-geographical description of the region is dealt with. The other study lets us know about the existence and military-geographical aspects of the objects connected with economy (eg: mills, beer-houses, glass-works, alum-works, inns game reserves etc.) The military description of Heves County is complemented with maps. The most important ones were drawn for the personal use of Joseph II. between 1872-1874 and have never been published yet. On the occasion of the publishing of the Heves County part of the country description, it is for the first time that on the basis of the map-reconstructional work carried out in the 187