Prohászka László: Polish Monuments - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

István Báthory, prince of Transylvania (1533-86) was to acquire outstanding status in the history of Polish-Hungarian relations. Ascending to the throne of Poland in 1576, Báthory was to rule a country in almost permanent war during the ten years of his reign. But he did it very successfully. He reconquered Polock in 1579, Wielkie Luki in 1580, and blockading Pskov in 1581 he forced the Russians to accept a truce and re-conquered Livonia. During his reign internal order was confirmed and all branches of culture were flourishing. Standing in the Wawel, the tombstone of this humanist monarch, who founded a university in Vilna in 1579, has been honoured by fresh flowers to the present day.

István Báthory is also commemorated in Budapest. Béla Brestyánszky made two sculptures of the Hungarian statesman who rose to become Polish king: one decorates the southern wing of Parliament on the outside, the other, cast from zinc and coloured (like the similar statue of Louis the Great in the same place), was put up in the domed hall. (In the latter sculpture there is a page standing on Báthory’s left holding a shield with the Polish arms.)

The four hundredth anniversary of Báthory’s birth in 1933 saw the establishment of a committee entrusted with the task of erecting a monument to the memory of the Hungarian statesman and Polish king in a public square of Budapest. János Pásztor was given the commission and he completed his double life- size sitting stone sculpture of Báthory in 1943.

Architectural plans were made by Jenő Kismarty- Lechner. In the end the monument was not put up, due probably to growing suspicion on the part of Germany. The first few years after World War II were spent clearing away the ruins and restoring the enormous damage, and the years following the leftist turn in 1948 were not favourable for a memorial devoted to the Polish king. Emerging to power in the wake of the revolution of 1956, the Kádár regime was careful enough to counterbalance the retaliation with measures which would ameliorate the general atmosphere by appealing to people’s nationalistic senti14