The Eighth Tribe, 1976 (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1976-03-01 / 3. szám

.*«* í;

REVOLUTIONS*

DE HONGRIS

0 V

L*ON DOKNE UKEJDtfi JUSTE

üt »OK

LEGITIME GOCVERNKMFNT rpME P ti M tf t,

Qui ccsóot nUbwt * érfoi

loco {«fejni r«o i*vttlM MM IvW Stm

Qí. Ti*; Vfexfr

increasingly one with the fate of his nation. He was elected Prince of Transylvania (1704), as well as “Ruling Prince” of Hungary (1705). True, he never permitted himself to be crowned king of Hungary (not even after the dethronization of the Habsburgs in 1707), but most Hungarians regarded him as their future monarch. That this never came about was due to the floundering of the War of Liberation, and ultimately to the compromise Peace of Szatmár (1711), which brought an end to this uneven struggle and obliged Rákóczi to become a political exile.

Why did Rákóczi’s struggle ultimately fail? The reasons for this include the lack of adequate foreign sympathy and support, despite promises to the contrary; the unfortunate turns in European great power politics, which pushed the Hungarian cause to the background; the selfishness of many members of the Hungarian nobility, who were unwilling to go along with Rákóczi’s measures for social justice, but were willing to compromise with the Habsburgs for their own class interests; the relative lack of training and poor equipment of the KURUC armies, as opposed to the professional imperial armies; and most of all the economic and social misery of the nation, which was totally unprepared to persecute such a lengthy and exacting struggle against the might of the Habsburg Dynasty.

But while Rákóczi’s struggle failed in its most important goals: National independence and social justice, it was still far from a total failure. While it lasted, the nation began to experience elements of social justice and religious freedom. In fact, this was the first time in Hungarian history when the concept of “nation” began to extend beyond the medieval

notion of “Natio Hungarica” (which included only the Hungarian nobility), and gradually came to include every single inhabitant of the country. And the traditions of this nascent egalitarianism and religious tolerance continued to linger on even after the Peace of Szatmár (1711). Moreover, even though the struggle as a whole was lost, the Habsburg victory was only a precarious one. Thus, instead of the oppressive rule that preceded it Rákóczi’s War of Liberation was followed by a more lenient Habsburg rule, that permitted the decimated and exploited nation to regain some of its former strength and will to live.

Prince Ferenc Rákóczi himself lost almost everything: his wealth, his position, his power; and he ended up as a nearly forgotten political exile in the remote Turkish city of Tekirdag (Hung. “Rodostó”) on the Sea of Marmara. There he devoted the remaining, increasingly lonely years of his life to the writing of his Confessions, Memoires and other works, many of which were destined to become some of the most significant literary and philosophical writings of his time. But, while Rákóczi himself sank into the position of a powerless political exile, and died almost forgotten over two decades later (April 8, 1735), his ideas and his self-sacrifice continued to inspire his nation. And today, on the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth, Rákóczi stands before us as an almost transcendent personification of personal heroism, humanity and self-sacrifice.

In 1908 Rákóczi’s body was brought back to Hungary and was hurried in the Dome of Kassa, now known as Kosica in Czechoslovakia.