The Village Notary: A Romance of Hungarian Life

Note I.

KITCHEN-PRISONER

In all matters of internal management, the Hungarian prisons have always been arranged on the self-supporting system. While the service of the house, the feeding and airing, and the discipline, were in the hands of the haiduks, who acted as turnkeys, the meaner work was done by the prisoners. A few of them were always chosen to clean the wards and cellars, to sweep the yard, to cook the prisoners' dinners, and (not unfrequently) to assist the servants of those among the magistrates who occupied chambers in the county-house. The men who were used for this kind of work were called "kitchen-prisoners;" and as the occupation was not only a distinction but also a means of making them comfortable, the post was eagerly competed for. So accustomed were the magistrates to see certain functions discharged by prisoners instead of by free men, that once upon a time, when not a single evil-doer was confined in the county gaol of Wieselburg, and when the haiduks refused to sweep, char, and cook, such occupations being "infra dig.," the worshipful magistrates assembled, and, for the purpose of putting an end to so disgraceful a state of things, resolved to hire a prisoner, meaning thereby the engaging of a person who, for a certain pecuniary consideration, would condescend to act as servant to the turnkeys. This resolution was carried out, and the man whom they engaged was ever afterwards designated by the name of "The hired kitchen-prisoner."

Note II.

AGONY

The Hungarian criminal law held that the moral sufferings of a culprit on the eve of execution are quite as severe a punishment as death itself. Hence, if a culprit was hanged, and the rope broke, he was usually released. A free pardon was also granted to those whom the headsman failed to kill in three blows. If a culprit escaped, the circumstance that he had been ordered to be executed, and that he had suffered "the agonies," was a great point in his favour whenever he was recaptured and brought to trial.

Note III.

URBARIUM

Whatever travellers and politicians may have asserted to the contrary, Hungary has not, for many years back, known any privileges of race. Her social and legislative distinctions were founded on class privileges. In the very first year of her history we find, indeed, a distinction between a governing and a governed race. When Arpad invaded the country, his companions and the aborigines who joined him were free. But the majority of the Slowaks, who opposed him, were defeated and reduced to servitude. The number of the serfs was increased by the frequent predatory excursions into Southern Germany, Greece, and Upper Italy, in which the followers of Arpad indulged, and from which they returned with treasures, cattle, and captives. The latter remained as bondsmen on Hungarian soil.

When St. Stephen, king of Hungary, induced his people to embrace the Christian faith (in the year 1000), all Christians, even the serfs, and all converts to Christianity, became free men; but all heathens were reduced to, and remained in, servitude. Hence many nationalities were emancipated, while part of the original Magyars became serfs. This is the origin of the Hungarian peasantry.

In the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the Hungarian peasant had ceased to be a serf. He was merely "glebæ adscriptus," and bound to a robot; that is to say, he was compelled to work for two days each week for the benefit of the lord of the soil. In return, a certain portion of land (from thirty to forty acres) was ceded to him, and he was compelled to pay tithes to the church. The landlord had no right to remove him from his cession.

In the fourteenth century, the robot, or labour rent, was increased, and the peasantry were moreover obliged to give one ninth of their harvests to the landlord, but, on the other hand, they were freed from military service. The noblemen, or, more justly speaking, the franklins, alone defended the country against foreign invasions. At a later period, when the Turkish wars commenced, the attacks of that hardy, numerous, and warlike race, placed Hungary in great jeopardy, and the franklins, awed and terrified beyond measure, summoned the peasants to defend the country. A law was passed compelling twenty cessions to produce, equip, and maintain in the field one soldier; and the men who were thus raised were called hussars, from hus, which means twenty. The derivation of the name was of course speedily forgotten; and in later years the Hungarian cavalry used to boast that they were called hussars because each man of them was a match for twenty.36

In the year 1512, Cardinal Bakatsh, the archbishop of Gran, thought proper to preach a crusade against the Turks, and to exhort the peasantry to rally round the standard of the cross. They obeyed the call with great readiness, but once assembled and in arms, they advanced some new and dangerous doctrines. Property, they said, ought to be equally divided. No one was entitled to one inch more of ground than his neighbour. They protested that they saw no necessity for lords and magnates, and as for the king, they put him down as a luxury. Their cry was that Hungary was large enough for all to live in plenty, if the land were equally divided. For the furtherance of their doctrine, and for the purpose of giving a practical proof of their thesis, "that there was room and plenty for all," they attacked and slaughtered, not the Turks, but their landlords, and all other opponents of their fraternal democracy. Some priests who joined them directed their destructive fanaticism against the church, and, under the cry of religious and political liberty, all ecclesiastical and secular government was declared to be vicious and damnable.

This insurrection was at its height, when the franklins and magnates of Hungary assembled under John Zapolya (afterwards King John), the Voyewode of Transylvania. A war of extermination commenced, and the forces of the fraternal democrats were eventually routed in a fierce battle, which was fought near Szegedin. Their leader, George Dozsa, fell into the hands of John Zapolya, who ordered him to be placed on a red-hot iron throne, while his temples were scorched by an iron crown. The other leaders of the insurrection were hanged, broken on the wheel, and quartered. The Diet, which assembled immediately afterwards, declared that the peasants had forfeited all their rights. They were degraded to the state of serfs, ad perpetuam rusticitatem; that is to say, they could never purchase their emancipation, and rise to the estate of citizens or franklins.

Fifty years later, we find some laws which prove that this cruel decree was "more honoured in the breach than the observance." The peasants have returned to their robot of two days each week; but nevertheless their condition is extremely precarious, for the law of the land is still against them, and whatever privileges they enjoy, they hold them, not by right, but by indulgence.

In 1715 occurs the first introduction of a standing army and of war taxes. The landowners refused to pay these taxes, because they protested that, as they were the proprietors of the land, and as every burden on the peasant was a burden on his landlord, it followed that all that the peasants paid was in reality paid by them, and that to tax peasant and landlord meant no more than taxing the latter twice. The war taxes were consequently paid by the peasantry. But as these taxes rested and depended on the tenure of the peasants, the government considered itself entitled to protect them against the encroachments of the landowners, and to establish them irrevocably in their cessions.

In 1764, the Empress Maria Theresa proposed a law to the Diet regulating and determining the duties and rights of the peasantry. The Diet found fault with the details of the bill, and rejected it. The Empress convoked no other Diet, but, deviating from the course of the law, she decreed that the bill should be enforced throughout Hungary by means of Royal Commissioners. The Estates of Hungary demurred against this decree, not only because the clauses of the bill were utterly impracticable, but also because the interference of Royal Commissioners was a source of great annoyance to the Hungarian magistrates and landed proprietors. The Hungarian Chancery and the Home Office supported the Diet in the question of details, because it was impossible to make one rule suffice for the whole country. One councillor only, M. Izdenczy, declared that the thing could be done, and he volunteered to prepare the code, if the Empress consented to let him have an unlimited quantity of Tokay from her cellars. His wish was complied with, and he undertook and finished his gigantic task in the year 1771. His code was that very year introduced throughout Hungary under the name of Urbarium.

Izdenczy's work has a strong resemblance to the Doomsday Book. Every village within the Hungarian countries and crownlands has its own Urbarium put down in it, stating the number of cessions, and describing the various tenures, burdens, and local rights (right of wood and turf-cutting, of pasturage, &c.) of the peasants.

The next Diet met in 1790, and memorialised the Crown about the manner in which the law had been introduced; but no complaints were made of the law itself, which obtained a provisional ratification under the condition of a future revision. But the French wars compelled the Diet to devote all its energies to matters of greater urgency, viz. to the defence and preservation of the House of Hapsburg. At a later period the subject would have been resumed but for the necessity under which the Hungarians were to struggle for their constitution against the attacks of the Emperor Francis; but still the revision of the Urbarium, though long delayed, was at length finished in 1836 and 1839. The revised work was far more liberal than the Urbarium of Maria Theresa: it tended to equalise the rights and duties of the peasants; and its leading principle was, that in no single case the condition of the peasantry should be harder than it was in the most favoured localities in the times of Maria Theresa. Exceptional rights were thus made general; emancipation was henceforth possible, and attainable even by common energy and industry. But the act of the free and unfettered emancipation was voted by the Diet of 1848, on the motion and by the influence of M. Kossuth, who, while he abolished the Urbarium, induced the Diet likewise to provide for the indemnification of the landowners. The present emperor of Austria has revoked all the laws of 1848; but he did not venture to repeal the Emancipation Bill. Nothing has, indeed, transpired as to what the Austrian government proposes to do respecting the indemnification of the landed proprietors.

Note IV.

TRIPARTITUM

Hungary had at no time a systematic code of civil laws, although several jurists attempted to codify the Hungarian common law and the cases in which it was modified by statutes. Their zeal was great, for, from the earliest times, the Hungarian lawyers found it necessary to protect their institutions against the encroachments of the royal prerogative, which were the more frequent and formidable as several of the kings were not only princes in Hungary, but also sovereigns of other countries. Sigismund, for instance, was emperor of Germany, and king of Bohemia and Hungary. Uladislaw I. ruled over Poland and Hungary; while Ladislaw Posthumus, Uladislaw II., and Louis II., united the two crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. At length Uladislaw II., who was a weak prince, and who was nicknamed Doborze, from his habit of saying "Well! well!" to everything which happened, consented to the urgent entreaties of the Diet that the common law should be codified; and Verbötzi, the leader of the opposition and a good lawyer, was instructed to compile a code of laws. He published his work under the title of "Opus Tripartitum juris Hungarici."

Verbötzi was afterwards appointed to the post of Palatine; but he was overthrown by a junta of magnates, because they considered him as a radical and a friend to the bourgeoisie. They protested that his work was injurious to their privileges. Before the Tripartitum could be submitted to the Diet, King Louis II. (Uladislaw's successor) died in the battle of Mohatsh (1526). His death was the cause of a war of succession between King John Zapolya, Prince of Grosswarasdin, and King Ferdinand of Hapsburg. Verbötzi, who exerted himself on King John's behalf, and who was banished by King Ferdinand, took refuge with the Turks, who appointed him to the post of Cadi for the Christian inhabitants of the district of Buda, where he eventually died. After his death, the work of the exiled outlaw became the highest authority of Hungarian jurisprudence and the standard of common law. It was never formally enacted by the Diets; but as the kings of Austrian extraction considered the Tripartitum as injurious to the privileges of the Crown, they compiled another code of laws, which they published under the name of "Quadripartitum" and in which they set forth and enlarged upon the royal prerogatives. But the Quadripartitum was rejected by the Diet, who thus acknowledged the authority of Verbötzi's Tripartitum, which since that time has not only been considered as law, but as an integral part of the constitution; and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we meet with various statutes of the Diet, interpreting or repealing certain paragraphs of the Tripartitum.

The most important parts of the Tripartitum are those treating of the rights of the nobility (Trip. part i. ch. 4-9.); part ii. chap. 3., "Qui possint condere leges et statuta;" and part iii. chap. 2. "Utrum quilibet populus vel comitatus possit per se condere statuta."

The theory of voting in Verbötzi's work is extraordinary in its way. He has a maxim that the votes are to be weighed and not counted ("non numeranda sed ponderanda"), and consequently he speaks of a "pars sanior" of the community, and defends his doctrine by the following reasoning: —

"Verum si populus (i. e. nobilitas, part ii. ch. 4.) in duas divideretur partes, tunc constitutio sanioris et potioris partis valet. Sanior et potior pars autem ilia dicitur, in qua dignitate et scientiâ fuerint præstantiores atque notabiliores" – Verbötzi, Trip. part iii. ch. 8. s. 2.

Among the numerous peculiarities of the work, we find "capital punishment with a vengeance" (pœna mortis cum exasperatione) pronounced against those who maliciously kill any member of the Diet in the course of the session.

"Præmissorum nihilominus malitiosi sub Diæta occisores aut occidi procurantes præviâ tamen citatione pœnâ mortis cum exasperatione condemnentur."

Another obsolete punishment is that of making a man an "Aukarius." It is provided by law that the slanderers of magistrates shall be condemned to the "pœna infamiæ;" and, in explanation of this punishment, we learn that the culprit shall be made "ut omni humanitate exuatur." He is struck with what the Code Napoleon would term "mort civile," and, in token of his condemnation, a rope is tied round the culprit's body (the rope being the mark of infamy, which monks wear to show that they have resigned the pomps and vanities of this wicked world), and as the sentence is being publicly read to him, a goose is placed into his hands. The Hungarian word for goose is oeke, and from thence the Latin name of the person so treated is Aukarius.

Note V.

HAIDUKS ON HORSEBACK

The hussars are the Hungarian cavalry, while the haiduks or pandurs are foot-soldiers. Both hussars and pandurs act as county police. Whenever the statarium was proclaimed in any county, the persecutor, or chief of the county police, was instructed to provide horses for a reasonable number of haiduks, and to send them in quest of robbers.

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME

1

He was executed in 1795.

2

See Note I.

3

See Note II.

4

See Note III.

5

General elections.

6

See Note IV.

7

See Note V.

8

See Note VI.

9

See Note VII.

10

Constituents.

11

Hear! hear!

12

See Note VIII.

13

See Note IX.

14

See Note X.

15

See Note XI.

16

See Note XII.

17

See Note XIII.

18

See Note I.

19

See Note II.

20

See Note III.

21

See Note IV.

22

See Note V.

23

See Note VI.

24

See Note VII.

25

See Note VIII.

26

See Note IX.

27

See Note X.

28

See Note XI.

29

See Note I.

30

See Note II.

31

See Note III.

32

See Note IV.

33

Bojtar, i. e. helpmate.

34

See Note II.

35

Note V.

36

The nickname of the Hungarian infantry was Cherepai, or double dealers, because it was asserted that in the exchange of prisoners, two Turks were given for one Hungarian foot-soldier.