Visegrád 1335 (Budapest, 2009)
The Congress of Visegrád by György Rácz
The Congress of Visegrád of the conference. In his letter dated December 3 King John talks about a 3-week- long meeting but the peace treaty between the Teutonic Order and Poland which took place on November 26 in the presence of all invitees indicates that the meeting lasted a bit longer. Casimir drafted another charter, addressed to the Teutonic Order and dated May 26, 1336, declaring acceptance of the arbitration. In addition to the two main points of the meeting's agenda (the peace treaties between Bohemia and Poland, and between Poland and the Teutonic Order) we also have information on the follow-up discussions between the three kings that took place after the arbitration process. The lack of written documents on these discussions does not mean that questions unrelated to the arbitration were unaddressed. For instance, the alliance forged on September 3 between Hungary and Bohemia was clearly designed against the Austrian dukes. It seems certain that the idea of a prospective campaign against them was also conceived in Visegrád. The military events of the following year, presumably also orchestrated from Visegrád, show evidence of prior arrangements, although they had not been documented. Therefore some historians regard the Visegrád meeting as a cradle of war rather than peace. Although the meeting received a lot of attention from all sides, each party tends to highlight its own points of interest. As the event represented a turning point in 14th century Polish international relations, it is not surprising that Polish historiography has addressed it in the most detail, primarily focusing on Polish-Teutonic and Polish-Bohemian relations. Such aspects remained in the background in the writings of Hungarian chroniclers and, instead, the Visegrád meeting was widely understood as a crucible of economic alliances. This assumption was based on a decree issued by Charles I, in Visegrád, on January 6, 1336, which regulates routes of commerce and the customs tariff between Hungary and Bohemia (6 January 1336 charter in this hook). The text of the decree suggests that Charles and King John had thoroughly discussed the issue beforehand - most certainly in November, in Visegrád. This move was most probably an attempt to evade Vienna's stable right English ss* 27
