The Phoenix Land (32 page)

The conviction that the written word always triumphed in the end became the cornerstone of Hungarian political thinking.

During the eighteenth century this feeling became ever stronger, while other political realities paled beside it. The earlier insurrections led by Bocskai, Bethlen and György Rákóczi had been started in defence of the national constitution, and they had resulted in the re-establishment of the ancient Hungarian laws. It was the same with Thököly and Ferenc Rákóczi. That those first successes in re-establishing the common law of the land were in great measure due to the Thirty Years War and later to the war between Austria and France – and that these victories were brought about by the political
realities following the peace treaty of Szatmár and the assembly of the parliament at Sopron – may have been grasped by the leaders of the day but was never understood by the Hungarian people.

The same could be said of the parliamentary successes in 1790 even though Emperor Joseph II had already found himself obliged to withdraw many of his decrees. At this time, although the stubborn resistance of the counties had carried some weight, the deciding factors had been economic chaos and the problems of foreign policy. The loss of the Belgian provinces, the
unsuccessful
war with Turkey and the growing tension with Prussia broke the will of the dying emperor. His successor, Leopold II, found it necessary to re-establish national government in Hungary but only so as to have a free hand to make order in the growing confusion of the empire. The revolutionary ideas
percolating
from France posed little threaten to Hungary but were spreading their poison in the Belgian and Italian provinces as well as those that bordered the Rhine. This threat of revolution and its possible effects were clear enough to Leopold who, as grand duke of Tuscany, had ruled as an enlightened reformer with methods very different from those of his older brother. But now, although as king of Hungary he might formerly have
followed
his brother’s less enlightened example, he promptly offered plans of reform to the Hungarian parliament and allowed the old popular constitution to be restored without demanding any changes at all.

In this way the great things that were happening in Europe played a decisive part in the development of Hungary’s political destiny. The country’s subsequent successes, disasters,
movements
and sins of omission cannot be understood unless this is fully understood too.

This was hardly noticed either by the average Hungarian or by the national historians. They saw only that the written law was ultimately successful, and the lesson they learned from this was that nothing was stronger than the law.

The 1848 crisis and its solution in 1867 seemed to prove the same argument, and even Ferenc Deák
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constantly referred to the law as existing in 1848 in his 1867 negotiations. For him this
was the most sensible tactic, as he was dealing with an emperor anxious to secure his throne by winning the sympathy of the Hungarian people. The signatories to the 1867 agreement knew this well, even if the Hungarian public neither grasped this nor the fact that there would have been no negotiations if Austria had not just lost two wars, one in 1859 and the other in 1866, both of which had gravely shaken her economy as well as
diminishing
her standing with the other Great Powers.

Hungarians still saw only the triumph of law over violence, and this is the origin of all dependence on legalistic thought in Hungary.

And national historians continued to interpret the story of Hungary from 1867 to the end of the century from the same point of view.

In human terms it is not difficult to sympathize with those historians who had themselves lived through the era of absolute despotism and witnessed the never-ending executions and imprisonments of the oppressive Bach regime
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. Their entire lives had been lived with these memories, as had those whose only experiences of being harassed by the Austrian police had taken place in their childhood. Here is an example. It happened to my father in 1850.

My grandparents had a house in Budapest in what was later called Széchenyi Square. There was a narrow strip of garden by the house where my father, then aged seven, often played. He wore a grey linen suit with braids instead of buttons, and he was extremely proud of it thinking it very Hungarian indeed. A
passing
policeman caught sight of the boy and as he too thought the suit Hungarian, took out a pair of scissors and threatened to cut off the offending braids. My father ran away, the policeman ran after him. Luckily the door of the house was not far away, and my father was nimble enough to dash up the stairs before the officer of the law could catch him. All the same the catchpoll yelled after him:
‘Rebellhund! Sau-magyar!’
– ‘Rebel dog! Hungarian swine!’ Even in old age my father would swell up with anger as he told the tale.

Other children must have had similar experiences, and so it is natural that the generation of historians who had seen what had
happened in Hungary after 1867 would tend to write in extreme terms, praising anyone who opposed the rule of Vienna and
casting
the blame for the failures of patriotic heroes not on the
shifting
balance of European power but rather on intrigue and treason. Eminent and sensible men, good Hungarians all of them, such as Palatine Miklós Esterházy, Pázmány, General János Pálffy, Ferenc Széchenyi, and György Festetics – realists who understood when it was fruitless to fight the decrees of Vienna – were either ignored or vilified. Those of them who, after the failure of a struggle against the government in Vienna found themselves obliged to accept the situation and do what they could to salvage what still remained to them, were branded as traitors. This is why Sándor Károlyi was called a traitor: he who had come to such an agreement with Pálffy in the peace of Szatmár that not only was there no possibility of retaliation but also that Rákóczi, had he so wished, could have remained in the country and retained all his possessions. This is why Görgey was also called a traitor even though it was obvious that Kossuth, while himself fleeing abroad, had appointed him governor at a time when the military situation was hopeless. Surrounded and with his army cut to shreds, Görgey had no alternative but to surrender. His decision to give himself up to the Russians and not to the Austrians showed that he hoped the Russians would treat as prisoners of war the Hungarian soldiers who had been fighting for their freedom. In this he was not mistaken, and it was not his fault that they were later handed over to Haynau by order of the tsar. Nevertheless, history has branded Görgey a traitor and so he has remained to this day.

It was this sort of biased history that was taught to two
generations
of Hungarian youth: to teachers, professors and country schoolmasters. In this way Hungarian thought was saturated with a historic creed that was both false and incomplete and
reinforced
the popular conviction that reliance could only be placed in the law.

All this had a further deleterious effect on Hungarian political thought.

Without exception, every leader of popular protest failed in his mission. These men were tragic heroes, but they achieved
nothing: and so for us they had something akin to the Jewish ideal of the Messiah who would suffer for the sins of others. This may seem beautiful in religious terms, but it can be
unrewarding
when it comes to politics because the role models are not men who have achieved anything for their country but rather those who have become martyrs in the attempt. In the public eye the glory lay in their misfortunes. Bocskai, Gábor Bethlen, and György Rákóczi were not popular figures even though they stood for freedom of religion as the very foundation of Hungary’s
constitutional
life and spent their lives defending it. Even István Széchenyi has never been loved – however much may be written about him, and despite the fact that in Budapest he built the Chain Bridge and the Academy; tamed the Vaskapu (the Iron Gates); brought under control the flow of the rivers and
revitalized
navigation on the Danube; that it was he who so reorganized the breeding of horses as to be the real creator of the Hungarian bloodstock industry; he who was the first to abolish noble
privileges
and liberate the serfs; and who was sufficiently farsighted to predict the adversities that, within a few months, would bring ruin to the country. What Ferenc Deák actually did is now often forgotten even though it was he who, in 1867, obtained for Hungary more independence that it had known since the Habsburgs had inherited the throne. The popular names are Thököly, and even more so Ferenc Rákóczi and Kossuth, whose policies led only to disaster: the first on the plains of Majtény and the second at Világos. Although it is beautiful and praiseworthy for a nation to remember and revere its heroes, from the point of view of political understanding it can only do harm to forget that the real basis of national prosperity lies in realistic and creative work that is successful.

A further disservice to the nation was inflicted by the lopsided rendering of our history as taught by those historians of the past century who followed the lead of Thaly, the self-appointed court chronicler to Rákóczi.

According to them, the downfall of their heroes was not brought about by the military might of the Habsburg army – previously occupied elsewhere but now free to bring its full force against the Hungarian uprising due to the improved situation in
other parts of Europe – but was really caused by either a lack of conviction and confidence on the part of their followers or by treason. This argument took it as self-evident that in reality the Hungarian people were naturally so strong that their victory in war was certain unless they were betrayed. The historic truth that, despite its courage, Hungary was such a small country numerically that it could never ultimately prevail against the strength of the Germanic Austrian Empire escaped their notice. Led by Jenö Rákosi, a whole school of Hungarian sages taught and thought in terms of twenty million Hungarians and a realm that stretched ‘from the Carpathians to the Adriatic’.

It is easy to comprehend how this view became so popular, for it fed the national vanity and that tendency to exaggeration to which Hungarians have always been so inclined.

The generation before World War I grew up with this teaching, and because it was taught in all the schools it soon became accepted as patriotic dogma. Those who praised it were patriotic; those who dared express doubts were not. Public
opinion
degenerated to the point where no one would accept the smallest criticism of the idealized popular heroes and became incensed if anyone spoke of them realistically. Typical of this attitude is what happened when an eminent historian of the new school wrote truthfully about the flight of Rákóczi. Such a storm broke out that the students broke into the bookshops, seized all copies of the offending works, made a bonfire of them in the marketplace and burned the lot. This occurred everywhere, not just in one or two cities.

I have described this particular aspect of Hungarian public opinion in such detail because without having fully grasped what people thought it is almost impossible to understand later events. The Hungarian conviction that the law is stronger than anything else and will always ultimately be victorious will be with us throughout everything I have to tell.

This sympathy for the theory of martyrdom, which is so
flattering
to the national consciousness, and the fact that
unsuccessful
venture, rather than political success, will always win the heart of the people – who, as they say in England, always loves the underdog – had some surprising effects. King Karl’s return
at Easter, which to every thinking mind only proved his childish thoughtlessness, had its partisans. ‘Look!’ they said. ‘Our king loves Hungary! How wonderful! How nice he is!’ That Hungary would only have meant for him a springboard from which he would leap towards Vienna, that his restoration in Budapest would have brought about a new invasion and the destruction of what remained of our small country, was never even considered by those who now discovered their royalist sympathies. Before King Karl’s first
putsch
most of these people had never given a thought to him or supported the Habsburgs. Until then most people who still wanted a monarchy only thought in terms of the policy of Admiral Horthy, although there were others who dabbled in the idea of selecting some member of the Italian royal family or even Prince Teck, the queen of England’s brother and a descendant, on the female line, of a Rhédey prince of Transylvania
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.

There was, perhaps, slightly more reason to think of this last personage than of any member of the House of Savoy. While in London I met a man called Felbermann, who busied himself promoting the cause of Prince Teck. He was a pleasant
well-meaning
little man who hailed originally from the Erzsbébet quarter of Budapest. He had lived for many years in London and there acquired a fortune and taken British citizenship. He had also become friendly with the Teck family and written a book about them and their connections with Hungary. He gave me a finely bound copy of this
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.

I believe that it was due to his influence that Prince Teck visited Hungary with his wife some time at the end of 1920 or the beginning of 1921. It seems likely that Felbermann had
suggested
to Teck that he should show himself there and that, if the Hungarians – whose enthusiasms were lightly given – should take to him then would it not be better to sit on the throne of a small country than to live in London on an empty purse?
Naturally
he was made much of in Budapest, for even a semi-royal prince was a rare bird for us in those days. We gave him an
excellent
supper in the ground-floor hall of the National Kaszino Club, with many flowers, gleaming silver, fine food and fine wines – very fine wines and plenty of them.