The Eighth Tribe, 1976 (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1976-03-01 / 3. szám
March, 1976 THE EIGHTH TRIBE Page 3 Steven Béla Várdy, Pli.D.: PRINCE FERENC RÁKÓCZI II (1676-1735) The Three-Hundredth Anniversary of his Birth Few heroes in Hungarian history are so revered by posterity as Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II, the leader of the Hungarian struggle for independence in the first decade of the eighteenth century (1703-1711). He has generally been portrayed by historians — and is still so regarded today — as a most unselfish and compassionate leader of his nation and a defender of the rights of oppressed millions. This view about Rákóczi is substantiated by most of his actions, as well as by his writings (Confessions, Memories, Correspondence, etc.). He certainly appears to have felt that by assuming the leadership of the anti-Habsburg struggles of the early eighteenth century, he was fulfilling a divinely ordained mission to liberate his nation from alien oppression and to extend human freedom to the millions of exploited peasants. In this way he combined his struggle for national independence with a fight for social justice — a phenomenon that was unusually rare in his days. By answering this “divine call”, however, Rákóczi lost more than perhaps any single individual in the history of his nation. At the time of his birth on March 27, 1676, Prince Ferenc Rákóczi found himself the heir to one of the largest fortunes in Europe (his estates were allegedly larger than those of the Habsburg emperors), as well as to an unparalleled tradition of national leadership. Thus, he united in his person the political traditions of three of seventeenth-century Hungary’s greatest families: The Rákóczi’s, who gave three ruling princes to independent Transylvania; the Bethlen’s, who produced Prince Gábor Bethlen, the greatest seventeenth-century exponent of Hungarian political and religious freedom; and the Zrinyi’s, who, in the course of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, were the most powerful bulwarks against Turkish expansion in the western and southwestern regions of Hungary. But this political tradition inherited by Prince Rákóczi was not only glorious; it was also sad. The period of his birth saw a series of catastrophies in his nation's and his family’s history. Thus, the unfortunate political and military policies of his grandfather, Prince György Rákóczi II (1648-16601, undermined Transylvania’s well-being and independence, and made that eastern outpost of Hungarian culture and political independence into a tottering Ottoman, Ilona Zrínyi, mother of Rákóczi and later an exploited Habsburg province. His other grandfather’s, Count Péter Zrinyi’s involvement in the ill-prepared Wesselényi Uprising (1671) against the increasingly oppressive Habsburg rule brought him the executioner’s axe. His father, Prince Ferenc Rákóczi I — although able to save himself from a similar fate — soon died heartbroken, leaving his son and his estates under the uncertain protection of his young wife, Ilona Zrinyi. Finally, his foster father, Imre Thököly (1657-1705), the uncrowned “king” of the first KURUC (crusader) uprisings against the Imre Thököly, foster-father of Rákóczi
