Reflections on the Condition of Hungary

August 20 marks the traditional foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary by King St Stephen, celebrated ever since as the National Day of Hungary and so it seems a good occasion to reflect on the state of affairs in the land of the Magyars. The Twentieth Century was not kind to the Hungarians to say the least of it. In 1914, as part of the “Dual Monarchy” of Austria-Hungary, they were dragged into a world war that they did not really want to be a part of. They did their duty but, when it was over, found themselves stripped of the vast majority of their territory which left one third of all Hungarians living in foreign lands. In the turmoil that followed they fell victim to communist revolutionary forces with the usual and horrific “Red Terror” that always accompanies such things. This then resulted in Hungary suffering the indignity of watching Romanian troops parade through Budapest. For some comparison, imagine the reaction if the French army had to restore order in England or if the Chinese marched down the streets of Tokyo and you might have some idea of how Hungarians felt about this.

The first years of Hungary without a monarch were certainly extremely unpleasant and since a great many Hungarians remained supportive of the monarchy, it was only natural that their last king, Emperor Charles of Austria, tried to restore himself to his rightful throne. Archduke Joseph von Habsburg had previously presided as regent, was forced out by the revolution but then returned, only to be forced out again by the Allies in 1919. The trouble still convinced the Hungarians to restore the monarchy, at least in name, the following year. So, for those keeping score, the Hungarian monarchy fell in 1918, was replaced by a regency which ended in 1919, nominally restored the monarchy in 1920 and then had the lawful king make two attempts in 1921 to restore himself, only to be thwarted by the ruling government on both occasions. In other words, the Kingdom of Hungary was never very far from a fully restored reality but something always seemed to get in the way.

In the 1930’s a full restoration of the monarchy seemed very possible in the person of Archduke Otto, the Crown Prince of Hungary and heir to the throne. The Archduke and the Chancellor of Austria, Kurt von Schuschnigg, came to an agreement on restoring the Habsburg monarchy in Austria which had the support of Mussolini in Italy. Schuschnigg had also restored friendly relations with Hungary and many believed that once the Austrian monarchy was restored, Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia would come together in a Danube confederation of sorts, presided over by the Habsburg monarch, backed up by the Kingdom of Italy (Mussolini having envisioned another Habsburg-Savoy dynastic alliance). However, this entire plan came to ruin when France and Britain turned against Italy over the war with Ethiopia, pushing Mussolini into the welcoming arms of Hitler and the Italians stood down as the guarantors of Austrian independence. Austria was annexed by Germany and the neighboring countries soon had to make their peace with Berlin.

Hungary became more and more economically tied to Germany, joined in the partition of Czechoslovakia (as did Poland, which is often overlooked) and then becoming a member of the Axis Powers. So it was that Hungary, a kingdom without a king ruled by an admiral without a navy, also joined in the invasion of the Soviet Union. In terms of regaining national territory lost after World War I, it had not been so bad an arrangement. Hitler saw to it that Romania returned at least a large portion of the territory taken after the Great War and after German and Italian forces invaded Yugoslavia, Hungary also regained some lost territory there. However, as everyone knows, the Axis invasion of Russia ultimately proved disastrous with the Hungarian army fighting tenaciously but suffering grievous losses. Admiral Horthy tried to extricate himself by secretly trying to negotiate with the western Allies. When Hitler discovered this he was, of course, furious and Horthy was removed and Hungary was occupied by the Germans.

Hungary, under new management, remained in the war but despite fierce resistance, nothing was able to stop the Soviet Red Army hordes from pushing ever closer. In late 1944 the Soviet troops invaded Hungary and by the end of the war fully occupied the country, installing a pliant communist puppet regime whose strings would be pulled from Moscow. In 1949 the “People’s Republic of Hungary” was declared, ushering in an era of privation, oppression and misery which did not end until 1989 when the countries of Eastern Europe rose up to reassert their independence as the Soviet Union collapsed in on itself out of sheer Marxist incompetence. As with everywhere the communists held power, Hungary had stagnated for decades and fallen far behind the standard of living seen in countries on the western side of the “Iron Curtain” when, in the distant past, the Kingdom of Hungary had, at times, been more powerful than any of them. In this weakened condition, the new, non-communist, Third Hungarian Republic joined NATO in 1999 and then the European Union in 2004.

Since that time, and increasingly so lately, there has been evidence to indicate that the decades of misery in communist captivity was a cloud not without some silver lining. Having been oppressed for so long, the Hungarians have clung more fiercely to their own national identity and the same Iron Curtain which kept the prisoner also seems to have kept out a degree of the liberal mentality which has so devastated western Europe. Not only have the Magyars refrained from wallowing in guilt and self-hatred like most of their western neighbors, they have remained proud of their history and have shown a willingness others have not to see that their people remain in possession of their own inheritance, even when that means defying the powers-that-be. The country has moved, not drastically but certainly noticeably to the political right in recent years, most noticeably under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Hungary has reasserted itself with constitutional amendments that condemned communism and stressed the importance of the family and traditional family values. A “flat tax” was adopted and a border wall was build to stop the flow of illegal migrants pouring into Hungary. When the EU elites in Brussels scolded the Budapest government and told them they could not behave in this way, the Hungarians told them to go climb a tree. All of which is to their credit.

Prime Minister Orban, of course, should not be ruling Hungary, at least not without having to answer to a Habsburg monarch for it, however, he seems to have done rather well and anyone who is criticized by Hillary Clinton, Angela Merkl, Jose Manuel Barroso and Jean-Claude Juncker must be doing quite a bit right. Where does the House of Habsburg fit into all of this? Well, the head of the house, Archduke Karl von Habsburg, resides in Austria and, while generally on the conservative side of things by European standards, would seem to be somewhat at odds with Orban’s nationalism and so-called “soft” Euro-skepticism. However, his younger brother, Archduke Georg von Habsburg, has lived and worked in Hungary for many years and all three of his children have been born in Hungary so there is definitely still a family connection.

If a Habsburg would choose to get involved, I think it not impossible to imagine a revival of something like Austria-Hungary, though it does not seem very likely at present that Austria would be included. Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland have all, to varying degrees, been at odds with their EU masters over their conservatism, nationalism and desire to keep their own countries for their own people. All of these countries have the House of Habsburg in common, Poland less so but certainly in part. The last Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary had hopes of becoming King of Poland as well and those readers who remember the article about “The Heyday of Hungary” will recall that most of this area, and more, was once united under the Hungarian Crown. It happened before, why can it not happen again? A look at the map of the lands ruled by the King of Hungary shows that it very much corresponds with those areas today most determined to maintain their national distinctiveness and to resist the encroachment of foreign powers and foreign peoples. This could be something to work with and, if the proper policies are pursued of course, I think could be extremely successful.

Monarchist Profile: Lt. Colonel Pál Prónay

Altogether, the story of the Hungarian soldier, monarchist and counter-revolutionary Pal Pronay is not a pleasant one. However, having already looked into the likes of Charles Dupin or even Baron von Ungern himself, monarchists with a villainous reputation are not unknown here and he is too significant a figure to ignore. Pál Prónay de Tótpróna et Blatnicza was born on November 2, 1874 in Romhany in the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary (Austria-Hungary at the time of course). His family was not very remarkable, being of the gentry class but only just and when the young Pronay decided to embark upon a military career he was able to attend the Lahne Military Institute. After graduation, however, his career was hardly exceptional. Promotions came slowly for Pronay, even in a time and place where rising through the ranks of the officer corps was quite difficult, as he was seen as being rather bad tempered. Reports about him show a man who certainly had drive and a degree of skill but who was hard to work with and believed to be excessively harsh, even brutal, when it came to the discipline of the men under his command.

During World War I, Pronay served in an Austro-Hungarian cavalry regiment, as a captain, but was not all that remarkable. He saw some action, earned some medals but never advanced beyond a mid-level field officer. Pronay was harsh but certainly loyal and dedicated to his country and his Kaiser-Kiraly. The ultimate end of the war and the defeat of Austria-Hungary was a bitter pill for him and he was not content to simply give up on the cause of his country, even if it was to stand alone as the Kingdom of Hungary after the ethnic minority areas were detaching themselves. All too often people forget that, of all the Central Powers, Austria-Hungary was the only one which was erased from the map completely after the war. This was especially infuriating for the Hungarians who had never been enthusiastic about the war in the first place. In spite of this, after the war, the Kingdom of Hungary was stripped of two-thirds of its territory and, after land had been given away to Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia and so on about one-third of Hungarian-speaking people found themselves a Magyar minority in surrounding Slavic countries.

Added to this treatment, which was due to wartime agreements by the French and British with minority dissidents of Austria-Hungary and would take effect over a couple of years, in the immediate aftermath was internal disorder as the disease of communism, first unleashed in Russia, spread rapidly to the west. With the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary being forced to leave, the government proved totally incapable of maintaining order. A communist revolution erupted and seized power in March of 1919. It would not escape the notice of Pal Pronay that the dictator of the newly proclaimed Hungarian Soviet Republic was a Soviet Russian trained Jew named Bela Kun. Nor did it escape notice that all but one of the leaders of the communist revolution in Hungary were Jewish.

Bela Kun

When considering the eventual backlash, unpleasant as some may find it, this was significant. Jews had been disproportionately represented in the communist movement in Russia, it was Kurt Eisner, a Jew, who brought down the Bavarian monarchy and proclaimed the Bavarian Soviet Republic the year before and which was still holding on to power when Bela Kun took over in Budapest. Jews were disproportionately represented in the communist movement of Antonio Gramsci in the Biennio Rosso in Italy, the uprisings of “Red Week” in The Netherlands in 1918 (David Wijnkoop, one of the founders of the Dutch Communist Party was Jewish) and the short-lived Slovak Soviet Republic of 1919. The following year, another Jew named Ludovic-Oscar Frossard would found the French Communist Party (and ironically enough end up serving in the Vichy government of Nazi collaborators in World War II). One could go on but the point is too many Jews were too highly placed in these communist revolutionary movements to go unnoticed or be shrugged off as pure coincidence by many people.

In Hungary, Bela Kun only managed to hold on to power for a matter of months but it was a brutal period. Bully boys, trussed up in leather outfits assaulted and murdered hundreds of people in what became known as the Red Terror (and just about every country that has had an experience with communism has had a Red Terror). They targeted class enemies, landlords, Catholic clerics and anyone they considered counter-revolutionary, such as monarchists, but also anyone with whom they happened to have a particular grudge. This Soviet regime was, in the end, brought down when their antics sparked the intervention of the Kingdom of Romania and so it was that, after participating in their crushing defeat during the war, Hungarians had to endure the humiliation of watching their former defeated foes of the Romanian army march down the streets of Budapest. A new government was formed led, oddly enough in what was now a land-locked country, by former Admiral Miklos Horthy who called for officers to join in forming a new Hungarian National Army. Pal Pronay was quick to come forward and for a time even commanded Horthy’s bodyguard.

Pal Pronay

However, his rise to fame, or infamy to most, came in the summer of 1919 when he formed the first fighting unit of what would become known as the White Guards. For the next two years Pronay and his men swept through the Hungarian countryside meting out justice or taking revenge on those who had perpetrated the communist takeover of the country. This soon became known as the “White Terror” by those targeted, many of whom were Jews. His methods were brutal and he never made any effort to conceal that fact. The Red Terror which prompted this backlash, however, is not always mentioned nor the fact that this was in the context of a people watching their country, not just the traditional order but the country itself, on the precipice of being wiped out entirely. There were killings, there were mutilations (cutting off an ear was a fairly common practice) but the context of this cruelty is all too often forgotten. Like the vicious fighting between the Reds and the Whites in the Russian Civil War, this was not two sides meeting in traditional combat but two factions fighting for the very survival of their country as it had always been.

It is also worth repeating that not all of those who fell prey to Pronay and his troops were Jews. This was retribution against all those who had been communists, revolutionaries or enemies of the traditional Kingdom of Hungary. The extent to which Jews were targeted was because of the preponderance of Jews in the leadership of the communist takeover and not simply for being Jews. Again, three out of the four top leaders of the communist coup were Jews and the leadership overall was up to 75% Jewish and because of that, few of the counterrevolutionaries were very willing to give any Jew the benefit of the doubt. It was not, however, a purely racial or religious matter but was the effect of actual facts about who had perpetrated the communist takeover, the Red Terror and the subsequent humiliation of having the Romanian army march into Hungary. Pronay was not alone in what he did though he was probably the most zealous and the least inclined toward any pity or compassion on anyone he thought associated with the enemies of the old Kingdom of Hungary. His goal was to see the Kingdom of Hungary fully restored and to, as he put it, “restore the traditional good relations between the landlords and estate servants,”.

Admiral Horthy

Once the Romanians marched home and Admiral Horthy had consolidated his hold over the whole country, things became easier. Pronay, as a lieutenant colonel, had grown his band to a full battalion and billeted them in the Hotel Britannia. He wished to purge Budapest of its entire Jewish population, viewing them as suspect, before another communist coup could be launched but Admiral Horthy restrained him as already the media reports about the White Terror were causing outrage among the other countries of Europe. The Hungarian ruling class began to turn on the White Guards and though Pronay was able to shield his men for a time, eventually Pronay lost his command after being found guilty of insulting the leader of parliament and extorting a Jewish politician. Thoroughly disgusted with the Horthy government, he moved to the border and carried on with some of his troops as they had before, setting up his own sort of fiefdom where he was his own law and government. He also fell out over the failure of Horthy to restore the Hungarian monarchy in full.

Officially, the country was the Kingdom of Hungary and officially the Emperor of Austria, Blessed Charles I, was still King Charles IV of Hungary, however the King was away in exile and Horthy ruled on his behalf as regent. In 1921 the Kaiser-Kiraly (Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary) made two attempts to regain his throne. The first was more of a false start, while the second was more serious. Neither Pronay or any other Hungarian monarchist had much chance to support the first attempt but in the second Pronay was able to at least take to the field somewhat and wanted nothing more than to see King Charles IV restored to the throne and Admiral Horthy sent packing. The effort, as we know, did not succeed and this represented the final break between Horthy and Pronay (though undoubtedly the King would have been horrified by Pronay’s actions more than anyone). His battalion carried on for a short time under a new commander but was itself dissolved in 1922.

Pal Pronay tried to keep up the struggle though, by going into politics as a far-right critic of the ruling government. He tried to start his own political movement, generally labeled fascist of course, but made little progress before, in 1932, being charged with incitement to civil disorder, stripped of his rank and sent to prison for half a year. Not much was heard from him during World War II as the end of the war on the east approached Hungary in October of 1944 he briefly reemerged again. When Horthy tried to make peace with the Soviets, he was ousted and the pro-Nazi Hungarian fascist party known as the Arrow Cross Party was put in power. Despite being almost 70 years old, Pal Pronay once again assembled a small military unit and began hunting down the enemies of his Hungary. By this point, however, time had run out. Pronay survived the siege of Budapest and carried on fighting the communists until he was captured on March 20, 1945 and sentenced to 20 years of forced labor for sabotage and espionage by the Soviet Union. He died in a Soviet gulag sometime in late 1947 or early 1948.

The Heyday of Hungary

It is well known that the Hungarian republic of today is greatly diminished from the kingdom it once was. After the disastrous First World War, the Kingdom of Hungary lost 71% of its territory and 63% of its population. Yet, even that Kingdom of Hungary, which was in union with the Austrian Empire, would have seemed rather small compared to what the Kingdom of Hungary had been in the XIV Century. Though, as with the period when the House of Hapsburg served as the Royal Family of Hungary, at the time the Kingdom of Hungary reached its peak in terms of size and power was also under a foreign Royal Family, the cadet Anjou branch of the French Royal House of Capet. From 1308 to 1395, four members of this French dynasty ruled over the Kingdom of Hungary and under their reign, the Hungarian nation was more powerful than it had ever been before or would be again to date.

Of course, this was not all the work of the Anjou royals themselves as they were building on the foundations already established by the native House of Arpad (though a number of those kings were not ethnic Hungarians either) but after that line had extinguished, Hungary had a Czech monarch, a German monarch and finally a French monarch with the establishment of Charles Robert of Anjou as King Charles I of Hungary in 1308. He was the son of the Prince of Salerno and his Hapsburg wife and the grandson of the King of Naples where the House of Anjou had previously been established. That grandfather, King Charles II of Naples, was married to Queen Mary of Hungary who claimed the Hungarian throne but later passed it to her son Charles Robert who was later elected King of Hungary in Pest (before Buda and Pest were united) in opposition to the previously mentioned Czech and later Bavarian Kings of Hungary.

King Charles I had the support of Pope Boniface VIII and fought many hard battles to win control of Hungary. One critical victory in Slovakia went a long way to establishing his rule and eventually he was able to gain control of most of the country though Croatia remained autonomous and Wallachia was moving in that direction. It may not have seemed the most auspicious of starts yet, King Charles I was a pivotal figure in Hungarian history as it was during his reign that large gold deposits were discovered in the country and quickly exploited, making the Kingdom of Hungary extremely rich, extremely quickly. Hungary, in fact, became the largest gold producer in all of Europe which made the country very important and certainly helped King Charles I, an absolute monarch who ruled absolutely but also a shrewd man who knew how to ensure loyalty in his officials and who, on one important occasion, acted as a sort of peacemaker between Poland and Bohemia. Most importantly though, the wealth and absolutist monarchy he built up would be wielded to best effect by his son and successor King Louis I, known in Hungarian history as King Louis the Great.

King Louis the Great

Louis the Great represented the zenith of Hungarian power and prestige. He started his reign with a crusade against the Lithuanians (at the time still pagans) and for anyone not sufficiently impressed by that, be aware that Lithuania was a major power in those days, a huge country that stretched across much of Eastern Europe. King Louis restored royal power in Croatia and also made successful war against the Tatars. He fought wars almost constantly and, fortunately for Hungary, was a very successful warrior-king. He took on the Golden Horde and won, invaded southern Italy, holding it for a time but ultimately giving up on it, gained Dalmatia from the Republic of Venice, won victories over the Serbs and forced rulers in Bosnia, Wallachia, Moldavia and parts of Bulgaria to recognize him as their overlord.

As his very pious mother had been a Polish princess, when the King of Poland died, rather than follow the will of the late king and see the country divided, the Polish nobility decided on a personal union with Hungary. As such, in 1370 King Louis the Great of Hungary became King of Poland as well. This represented the peak in terms of the amount of territory that the Hungarian monarch ruled as the country under King Louis the Great was known as the kingdom, “whose shores were washed by three seas” referring to the Baltic Sea in the north, the Adriatic Sea to the southwest and the Black Sea to the east. Louis the Great was not popular with everyone of course, his hired soldiers made many enemies in southern Italy by their brutality and his zealous efforts to convert pagans and Orthodox Christians to Catholicism were resented by many of his subjects but what is hardly disputable is that under his rule the Kingdom of Hungary had become the largest, most powerful and dominant power in Eastern Europe. In his time, pretty much everything east of Germany belonged to or at least answered to Hungary and there was not much beyond that as, at this time, most of Russia was still ruled by Asians.

Hungarian lands (red) and vassal lands (pink)

The legacy of King Louis the Great would cast a long shadow, in the realm of religion as well as politics as he was the father of the famous Queen St Hedwig of Poland (who would forge the union of Poland and Lithuania). When Louis died, the Polish throne went to St Hedwig while the Hungarian and Croatian thrones went to his daughter by Elizabeth of Bosnia, Queen Mary. However, many of the Hungarian nobility were not fond of the idea of having a woman in charge and Queen Mary faced numerous challenges and a rival for the throne in King Charles III of Naples (her cousin) who claimed the Crown as King Charles II of Hungary. The Queen Mother had hoped for a marriage alliance with the King of France but Sigismund of Luxembourg (the House of Luxembourg being extremely powerful in those days) invaded Slovakia and forced Queen Mary to marry him instead. She was deposed, restored, with the Neapolitan King Charles II ruling in the interim but after her marriage to Sigismund, she effectively lost power as he took control of the government and she died in 1385.

That was effectively the end of the Angevin era in Hungary with Sigismund of Luxembourg becoming the real ruler of the country and disaster soon followed with the Ottoman Turks launching a renewed wave of crushing offensives into central Europe. The Hungarians were devastated, vassal states were conquered and the Turkish onslaught was overwhelming. This ultimately resulted in the alliance that brought the Hapsburgs of Austria to the Hungarian throne. However, though the Turks first entered Hungary under Sigismund, the Hungarians fought back fiercely and in time, thanks to the victories of such national heroes as John Hunyadi and Matthias Corvinus, the Turks were expelled and the border of Hungary was stabilized and secure. The Italian Renaissance reached Hungary, bringing about a flowering of cultural achievements and, in time, with the union with Austria, the Turks began to be pushed back and old lands regained.

Nonetheless, the Kingdom of Hungary was never quite so large and powerful as it had been during the reign of King Louis the Great, dominating eastern Europe, made possible it should be remembered, by the great wealth, prosperity and unity established by King Charles I. It would, of course, have been preferable if everyone could have remained united after the death of King Louis, whether it was under an Anjou like Queen Mary, King Charles II or under Sigismund and the House of Luxembourg as, whichever one would have been preferable, it would have made Hungary stronger in the face of the Ottoman hordes invading from the south. There are also a number of lessons which this period of history can teach us about the events in and around the Hungarian nation today. The memory of the Kingdom of Hungary, in total, though we have focused here on the Angevin period, should never be forgotten. Hungarians, hopefully, have not but others should remember as well as it will provide a better understanding of Hungary today.

Looking back on this period, we can see what great things the Hungarian nation is capable of. Anyone who looks at this history can see that the Hungarian republic that exists today is a far cry from what Hungary has been and could be. Of course, a great deal has changed since those days. However, looking back at this era of national greatness, it should be clear why the Hungarians still possess a level of national pride that the elites in the European Union cannot comprehend. We can also see why, given that this period ended with a Muslim invasion, why today the Hungarians have been less willing than others to play the doormat to an influx of largely Muslim people from the Middle East. If you know what happened then, you can understand what is happening now and why many Hungarians do not view things the same way as the bureaucrats in Brussels. The people of Hungary have much to be proud of and have learned some hard lessons in their long and colorful history. Hopefully, the understanding of this will only increase until this spirit is revived in sufficient strength to see the republic abolished, the Kingdom of Hungary restored and thus have a more vital link to that past Hungarian heyday when Hungary had a king and was among the most wealthy and powerful in the western world.

The House of Hapsburg in World War II

The First World War saw the venerable Hapsburg dynasty deposed and exiled, their empire, Austria-Hungary, broken up. The Second World War saw the end of the last realistic hope for a Hapsburg restoration to date. When it comes to monarchies, history has tended to take an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude; if they do not have a throne, they are not worth remembering. However, the Hapsburgs came closer than almost anyone realizes to being restored to the Austrian throne just prior to World War II. It is also technically true that they retained, in name though not in fact, the throne of the Kingdom of Hungary until late in the war. Unlike the other Central Powers of the First World War, Austria-Hungary had ceased to exist entirely, yet, there were many factors in the inter-war period that encouraged hopes of a restoration in both Austria and Hungary. What had replaced the old “Dual Monarchy” did not seem to be working out so well. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were not nation-states but multi-cultural contrivances that faced serious ethnic tensions and other powers, such as Hungary and Austria found themselves isolated and wishing to be relevant again.

Altogether, the absence of Austria-Hungary helped pave the way to power for Adolf Hitler, a man who despised everything about the “Dual Monarchy”. There was the monarchy, the aristocracy, the multi-cultural nature of it as well as what he viewed as the pandering to the Jewish and Slavic populations by the Hapsburgs. There was nothing about it he liked and the international tensions created by the new borders drawn after World War I all worked together to create a situation the Nazis were only too willing to exploit. Yet, the former Hapsburg lands also posed the greatest threat to the Nazi movement ever gaining the domination in Europe they longed for even after coming to power in Germany. Czechoslovakia stood in the way and had an industrial center that Nazi Germany very much needed. To unite all Germans into a single nation-state also meant that the first “prize” on the Nazi wish-list was Austria and yet Austria was also their first obstacle as Italy supported Austrian independence as a buffer state between Italy and Germany and this also barred the way to the Italo-German alliance which Hitler considered paramount to his plans. A Hapsburg restoration, even if only over Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, would have created a power bloc that would have been a major obstacle to Nazi plans for German expansion considering how militarily weak Germany was at the time, even right up to the outbreak of war.

Archduke Joseph

Of the countries involved, probably none presented a greater cause for monarchist frustration than the Kingdom of Hungary. The full restoration of the monarchy there was tantalizingly close on several occasions and the fact that it ultimately failed can be attributed to two sources: the paranoia of the Allies (primarily France, though only God in His wisdom knows why) and the ambition of Admiral Miklos Horthy. At the end of the First World War, power in Hungary had fallen to the Hapsburg Archduke Joseph August of Austria, who was quite popular in Hungary and was given the place of regent. He put down one attempted revolution, survived another (communist) revolution and was restored to power again as Hungarian regent. However, in their blind and short-sighted opposition to a Hapsburg holding power in any part of the former Austria-Hungary, the Allies forced Archduke Joseph to step down in 1919. He then became a member of the House of Lords where he remained a respected figure until the German occupation in 1944 forced him to flee to the United States.

King Charles

Nonetheless, in 1920 the Hungarian government voted to restore the monarchy though they lacked a monarch and so Admiral Miklos Horthy was appointed regent. He was of service in preventing a communist takeover of the country, reestablishing stability and a general sense of normalcy but he proved to be ultimately treasonous by not handing power back to the last King of Hungary, Emperor Charles I (Kaiser Karl), when he tried to reclaim his throne twice in 1921 only to be forced out of the country on each occasion. Horthy protested that the time was not right, the Allies opposed it and though some of his arguments might have had merit, as regent it was not his decision to make. As regent, he was only to hold power until the King returned and as soon as Emperor Charles set foot on Hungarian soil, Horthy should have deferred to his legitimate monarch. According to some accounts, the idea that Britain and France would have taken action against any Hapsburg restoration in Hungary seems likely to have been exaggerated. If power had been handed over and the restored monarchy solidified, it seems rather unlikely that Britain and France would have risked a conflagration to keep the Hapsburgs from their Hungarian inheritance.

Horthy and Hitler

So, Hungary would go on through most of World War II as a nominal kingdom; a monarchy without a monarch. Without the monarchy, Hungary drifted ever closer to Nazi Germany, first by increased economic ties, later by taking part in the division of territory in Czechoslovakia and finally militarily by joining the Axis and participating in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hungary regained some of the territory lost to Romania thanks to Hitler, regained more in the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and took a slice for itself when Czechoslovakia was dismembered. Slovakia had been part of the Kingdom of Hungary prior to World War I and the Slovaks were persuaded to become a German protectorate when Hitler threatened to allow Hungary to swallow them whole if they tried to make any trouble about it. The Hungarians went on as less-than-enthusiastic members of the Axis but the Hungarian military was decimated at the Battle of Stalingrad and as the Soviet Red Army drew closer, Horthy began trying to get Hungary out of the Axis and surrender. When Hitler learned of this, not surprisingly, German forces occupied Hungary in 1944, Horthy was arrested and the Hungarian pro-Nazi “Arrow Cross” party took power as the willing instruments of the German occupation.

Crown Prince Otto

All of these events were watched very closely by the man who should have been King of Hungary, Archduke Otto of Austria. He succeeded as head of the House of Hapsburg on the death of his father Emperor Charles in 1922. It was at that time that he became the nominal King of Hungary but when he reached legal adulthood and was expected to actually take up the Hungarian throne, Admiral Horthy advised him not to try it. The Archduke knew well enough from the experience of his father that it would be useless to try so long as Horthy opposed him, given the current situation. With Horthy being replaced by the Nazis and they in quick succession by the communists, the opportunity to take up the Hungarian throne would never materialize for Archduke Otto. However, he did have reason to be hopeful about a restoration in Austria and if the Austrian situation had worked out, there is reason to believe that the situation in Hungary, and perhaps beyond, would have altered considerably and in favor of the Hapsburgs.

Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss

Very few people realize just how close Archduke Otto came to being restored to the Austrian throne. By his own accounts, it was a done deal, it was going to happen, the long-sought after goal of seeing the House of Hapsburg in Vienna again was no longer a question of “if” nor even of “when”. It was all planned out. The root cause for why it did not ultimately happen came from the last place anyone would have expected: Ethiopia. First, however, a little background information is probably in order. After the First World War, Austria was left as a small “rump state”, powerless and isolated in Europe. It is not surprising that Austrians initially favored a union with Germany but the Allies refused to permit this, fearing that it would strengthen the Germans. Austria went through turmoil, civil strife, the all too common threat of a communist takeover before order was finally restored by a short, fervent man named Engelbert Dollfuss, leader of the Fatherland Front. First coming to office as chancellor in 1932, Dollfuss solidified his hold on Austria after defeating the socialists in 1934 but would not survive the end of the year. He had courted the monarchists but never took them home from the dance.

Banning opposition parties, Dollfuss established a Catholic, corporatist state which has since been termed “Austrofascism”. He did manage to restore a proper patriotic pride to Austria, ended the threat of a leftist revolution and had very close and friendly ties with Benito Mussolini in Rome. He kept monarchists dangling on promises but did see eye-to-eye with Archduke Otto in their mutual loathing of the Nazis. Most importantly, this attitude was shared by Il Duce in Italy. Given the subsequent formation of the Axis, the “Pact of Steel” and so on, it can easily be forgotten that while Hitler hero-worshipped Mussolini since the Blackshirts march on Rome, that sentiment was not returned. Mussolini initially disliked Hitler and even after Hitler came to power and the two met face to face, Mussolini found something unsavory about him. This was important as the Nazis wanted Austria more than anything, it being the largest part of the German population outside Germany itself, and Italy was the one major obstacle to the Nazis being able to take Austria by force. In 1934, when Dollfuss was assassinated by the Nazis in an attempted coup, Mussolini was outraged and rushed Italian troops to the border, forcing Hitler to back down and denounce the Austrian Nazis who had done the deed.

Schuschnigg and Mussolini

At the time, Germany was still militarily weak but Mussolini was rather put off by the fact that, in that hour of crisis in 1934, he had been forced to act alone; neither Britain nor France had backed him up. In Austria itself, Kurt von Schuschnigg succeeded Dollfuss as chancellor and he knew that something more would have to be done to preserve Austrian independence and keep the country out of Hitler’s grasp. Restoring the monarchy was something Schuschnigg determined he could do. As Hitler and the Nazis in Germany grew in power and prestige there were not a few Austrians who longed to be part of the “Greater Germany” Hitler pledged to build. It was necessary then to give Austrians a greater sense of themselves as a distinct people, to recall the glory days of the past and there could be no better way to accomplish this than by restoring the Hapsburgs. There would be those in the European community who would oppose it but ultimately only two men mattered; Archduke Otto himself and the guarantor of Austrian independence Benito Mussolini.

Archduke Otto

Needless to say, Archduke Otto was more than willing to take the throne. Horrified by the thought of a Nazi takeover in Vienna and Austria becoming a state in Germany, the imperial heir offered to return at any time if he could be of help in saving the situation. The laws banning the Hapsburgs from Austrian soil were repealed and properties of the Hapsburgs were restored to them. The monarchists were jubilant, the Nazis were outraged and Schuschnigg finally put the issue to Mussolini. Would Italy support or oppose a restoration of the Hapsburg monarchy in Austria? By this time, Mussolini had come close to falling out with the Allies but still had no love for Hitler nor did he want to see the Germans on his border by annexing Austria. Surprisingly, given his background, Mussolini informed Schuschnigg that he would not oppose a restoration of the monarchy. He even went a step further and suggested that Italo-Austrian ties could be cemented by a Hapsburg marriage to a member of the Italian House of Savoy (something for which there was plenty of historical precedent). Schuschnigg arranged a secret meeting with Archduke Otto to inform him that the path had been cleared for the restoration of the monarchy. It was all agreed to and Schuschnigg stated that everything should be set for the restoration to happen the following year.

Fuhrer & Duce

Unfortunately, problems arose that prevented the speedy restoration that Schuschnigg and Archduke Otto planned. After an Ethiopian attack on an Italian outpost along the disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Mussolini launched his invasion of Ethiopia. Liberal world opinion came down hard on Italy with Britain and France denouncing Italy in the League of Nations. Sanctions were imposed on Italy that succeeded in infuriating the public but not in deterring the Duce from his war. Germany, of course, did not join in the sanctions against Italy but continued to offer an outstretched hand of friendship. Ethiopia was conquered by Italian forces within seven months and Mussolini was turned against the Allies firmly and irretrievably. Since the Allies had offended him, the Duce turned to Hitler. From that point on, Austria could no longer count on Italian protection from a Nazi takeover and Hitler immediately began planning for the annexation of Austria and to do it before Archduke Otto could be restored to the throne. Fittingly enough, the Nazi plan for the invasion of Austria was given the codename of “Operation Otto”.

Patriotic rally of the Fatherland Front

Today, few people realize how close Austria came to restoring the monarchy, were it not for the British and French sanctions on Italy over Ethiopia, it almost certainly would have happened. More than that though, few people realize just how seriously the Nazis took the possibility. They were positively panicked by the idea and their fears were not entirely unjustified. Stories circulated in Nazi Germany that Archduke Otto would be restored to the Austrian throne but also that Hungary and Czechoslovakia were planning to join together under the House of Hapsburg and attack Nazi Germany. Of course, the idea that Archduke Otto or any government he presided over would have launched an unprovoked attack on Germany is absurd, yet there was some elements of truth to the stories. Schuschnigg had worked to forge better relations with Hungary and Archduke Otto was already nominally the King of Hungary anyway, so it is not that far-fetched to foresee a restoration in Austria leading to a full restoration in Hungary as well. The idea of Czechoslovakia rejoining Austria and Hungary also seems far-fetched but considering that they were under threat from Nazi Germany themselves, if Italy, Austria and Hungary had become an all-monarchy, anti-Nazi power bloc, it is not impossible to imagine the Czech government joining in as a matter of practical necessity.

The anschluss is accomplished

But, as we know, it didn’t happen. Schuschnigg called for a referendum on Austrian independence and Hitler determined to take action before it could be carried out. The only one who could have stopped him was Mussolini and he was no longer prepared to stand in the way. When this news reached Hitler, the Nazi dictator was ecstatic, knowing that Austria was as good as his. To sweeten the deal, Hitler also renounced forever any claim to the Southern Tyrol (a German populated area ceded to Italy after World War I). Prince Philip of Hesse telephoned the Fuhrer from Rome to inform him that Mussolini would keep his troops at home this time. Hitler excitedly shouted into the phone, “Please tell Mussolini that I shall never forget this…Never, never, never! Come what may! …And listen -sign any agreement he would like…You can tell him again. I thank him most heartily. I will never forget him!…Whenever he should be in need or in danger, he can be sure that I will stick with him, rain or shine -come what may- even if the whole world would rise against him -I will, I shall-” No child on Christmas morning was ever so excited and, though it was said in an obviously exuberant moment, Hitler would be as good as his word, at least as far as Mussolini was concerned. On March 12, 1938 German army units drove into Austria and in quick order the annexation was accomplished.

Archduke Otto

Austrian aristocrats and monarchists were immediately arrested by the Nazis, many of them being killed, along with any others who had opposed the union. The laws against the Hapsburgs in Austria were put back into effect, their property was again confiscated and Archduke Otto himself was declared a criminal, a wanted man and he had to take extra precautions for his own security. He moved to France and helped a great many Jews escape from Austria prior to the outbreak of World War II. He also remained adamant that the Austrians were not partners with Germany, but their first victims. Without the unity that the Hapsburg monarchy had provided, Hitler had a relatively easy time taking the German populated areas of the former Austria-Hungary for himself. First was the Sudetenland and then all of Czechoslovakia was partitioned with Poland and Hungary joining in the feast. Anyone who would dismiss the impact on the world of the loss of the “Dual Monarchy” should consider the fact that all of Hitler’s pre-war territorial gains were a nibbling away at the former lands of Austria-Hungary. It also warrants pointing out that the Allies took no action against Germany in these days and that should serve as an illustration of how unwarranted the fears were of Allied opposition to the restoration of the Hapsburgs. It would all seem to indicate that, despite the protestations of those who did not want to give up power, that the French and British would not have taken any action to oppose a return of the Hapsburgs if a country like Hungary had just gone ahead and done it. Ultimately, the only one who made a commitment to restore the Hapsburgs regardless of Allied opinion was Schuschnigg and he was abandoned.

The Archduke in Florida, 1942

When World War II broke out in Europe and the Germans finally got around to launching their invasion of France, Archduke Otto was again forced to flee, this time to the United States of America via Portugal. With the Nazi laws enacted against them, the Austrian Imperial Family in America were people without a country but Archduke Otto never relented in his anti-Nazi campaign. He settled in Washington DC but traveled across America extensively. He met with President Roosevelt several times and urged him and the American people (which at the time wanted no part of Europe’s war) to intervene and take up the cause of defeating the Axis. He also raised money for refugees from the former Austria-Hungary and charitable causes to benefit them as well as doing his best to make it clear to all that his people were not the enemies of America but victims of the Nazis just as much as the Czechs or the Poles. At the end of 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the United States in solidarity with their Japanese ally, America committed itself to the world war. Always a man of peace who greatly emphasized the role played by his father in trying to negotiate a peaceful end to the First World War, Archduke Otto nonetheless volunteered to fight for the Allied cause. While in America he tried to raise funds and gain support for an army battalion of Austrian exiles but was unable to bring it to fruition.

When the war progressed in favor of the Allies, ending ultimately in the total destruction of Germany and its division among the Allies, Archduke Otto was on the scene and was briefly able to visit his Austrian homeland in 1945. His immediate concern was lobbying Allied leaders to keep Austria out of the hands of the Soviets. He put forward his own proposal for post-war Central Europe, calling for the creation of a “Danube Federation” that would encompass much of the former territory of the Empire of Austria-Hungary. British Prime Minister Churchill seemed supportive of the idea but, not surprisingly, it was thwarted by the opposition of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. As nearly all of the territory of the proposed federation was within the agreed-to Soviet sphere of influence, Stalin was able to veto the plan. Although it was not stated outright that the “Danube Federation” would be another Hapsburg empire, for the Archduke was certainly not an ambitious man, it stood to reason that he would have been the only logical candidate to assume a position of leadership in such a state. As it was, he busied himself with arguing for the rights of the German-speaking peoples outside of Germany, trying to gain recognition of Austria as a victim of Nazi aggression rather than an accessory and to form an Austrian government-in-exile. The last goal proved unreachable and he also railed against the handing over of Eastern Europe to Stalin and the Soviets which was the primary impediment to most of his plans. Unfortunately, that concerned agreements already made and involved territory that the Red Army already occupied so that, even if the British and Americans had regrets, there was little to nothing they could do about it.

With the situation as it was at the end of the war, hopes for a Hapsburg restoration vanished quickly. However, it is still a mark of how much the power-mad politicians who seized control of Austria in the aftermath of the war were about the possibility of Archduke Otto gaining the throne that, while Austria was purged of all the laws and policies enacted during the union with Nazi Germany, the post-war republican government retained those that were anti-Hapsburg. The Archduke remained banned from Austrian soil for decades until he was obliged to renounce his claim to the throne simply to have the basic freedom enjoyed by any other citizen. It was an obscene injustice for a man who had opposed the Nazi movement from the very beginning, a man who had been singled out by the Nazi regime as an “enemy of the state” and who had devoted his entire life during the war to resisting the Nazis and rescuing Austria and the other Hapsburg realms from their grip.

Happy National Day to Hungary

Today is St Stephen's Day, the National Day of Hungary, a fine occasion to reflect on the contribution of the Hungarian nation throughout history and on the necessity of restoring the Kingdom of Hungary!

A World Without the Hapsburgs, Part III

Concluded from Part II

And what of the two primary partners of the Dual-Monarchy? In the case of Hungary, it is hard to imagine there being a more unjust outcome than the peace following the Great War as it affected the Hungarians. No other European power was as horribly butchered as Hungary who were certainly no more guilty than any other major participant in the war. When it was over, Hungary lost 70% of its territory and roughly a third of its entire population to the post-war carve-up. And all of this in spite of the fact that the Hungarian prime minister had tried to avoid the march to war in 1914. Istvan Tisza, Prime Minister of Hungary, was reluctant to the last to link the assassination in Bosnia with the Serbian government, only supporting the war once the ultimatum to Belgrade had been sent and the ties between the government and the “Black Hand” were concretely proven. He was worried (correctly as it turned out) that while troops were fighting the Russians and Serbs that Romania would enter the war and attack Hungary. He also opposed the planned-for annexation of a conquered Serbia even though this was quite popular with many military leaders in Vienna at the time. Painted as a villain after the war, even those who were most in agreement with the Allies ended up suffering along with the rest.

People starved, froze and leading republican traitors in Hungary enabled this by actually disbanding the Hungarian military. In the chaos that followed, the communist dictator Bela Kun seized power and was only overthrown by the humiliation of a Romanian army occupying Budapest. Brutal civil war raged between “red” and “white” factions and while a somewhat better state of affairs eventually prevailed the (entirely nominal) Kingdom of Hungary was left in such a weakened state that it had little choice but to stay on good terms with Nazi Germany, and Hungary did briefly regain some territory in World War II but it all ended with Hungary coming under Soviet occupation and being forced to submit to a communist dictatorship that was a puppet-state for Moscow. The Hungarian people were brutalized, the economy was in near absolute ruin and they had only decades of Soviet slavery to look forward to. Many tens of thousands of people were killed in the rebellions against communist rule before the collapse of the USSR finally brought an end to that era. There likely would have been even more conflicts, as seen in other areas, but Hungary had been left in such a weakened state that there was very little it could do as the people were brutalized by a succession of enemies.

Finally, there is the case of Austria itself. The Austrians, deprived of their empire, were naturally inclined, originally, to unite with Germany simply for the sake of security and economic recovery. The Allies refused to allow this and civil war, again, broke out between communist and non-communist forces with real stability only being restored by the establishment of the so-called “Austrofascist” regime of Engelbert Dollfuss. Ignore the labels, Dollfuss was a good man and a man who began setting the stage for the restoration of the Hapsburg monarchy and the wider world, certainly Europe, should be more aware of Dollfuss and inter-war Austrian history because it was the one, great opportunity for the European community to have stopped Hitler in his tracks. Because Dollfuss was a proud, Austrian patriot he was the number one enemy of the Austrian Nazi Party which wanted union with the “Third Reich” and the key moment came when the Nazis assassinated Dollfuss in 1934. Benito Mussolini, thoroughly outraged, ordered a partial mobilization and rushed Italian troops to the border, threatening war with Germany if Hitler took one step into Austria to take advantage of the situation. At that stage, Italy could have potentially defeated the Germans and Hitler backed off.

Unfortunately, the other Allied powers did nothing to support Italy during the crisis at a time when Hitler was militarily weak and diplomatically isolated without a single major power supporting him. But no action was taken and what Allied unity there was soon broke up over, of all things, Ethiopia. France and Britain imposed economic sanctions on Italy after Mussolini went to war with Ethiopia and so the Duce finally dropped all pretense of friendship with the Allies and accepted the outstretched hand of Germany. That sealed the fate of Austria and any possibility of stopping Hitler and Nazism when it would have been the least difficult. Schuschnigg, Dollfuss’ successor, secretly agreed to restore the monarchy within a year when Hitler decided to move against him, having obtained the assurance of Mussolini that he would do nothing to stop him. And it was in large part specifically to stop a return of the House of Hapsburg that Hitler moved on Austria because he was afraid that the restored monarchy would be a beacon for unity to neighboring countries and that Hungary and Czechoslovakia might reunite and therefore pose a threat to Nazi Germany (which was still far from her full military potential).

When the Nazis occupied and annexed Austria it really was a turning point in European history. Before that, Germany was weak and surrounded by unfriendly powers. Afterwards, the military build-up continued, Italy was an ally, German strength was brought to the frontiers of Yugoslavia and Hungary, intimidating them into taking a more cooperative stance with Germany, isolating Czechoslovakia and so on. When the Allies finally decided to draw the line at Poland it was against a much stronger Germany with a network of support and in support of a country they could do nothing to directly assist. If they had earlier drawn the line at Austria there might have been no war in Europe at all. Germany was still weak, isolated and Austria could have been supported by the Allies via northern Italy and Hitler would have, in all likelihood been either contained or defeated outright and possibly overthrown by elements inside Germany itself. Like other countries, Austria went through civil war, foreign war, devastation and occupation which were all directly traceable to the fall of the monarchy but, more so than in others, the misfortune of Austria was the misfortune of Europe and much of the world. It is no exaggeration, it is a fact backed up by the evidence of history that the fall of the House of Hapsburg was a disaster, both for her member states and for people all around the world.

Monarchist Profile: Istvan Rakovszky

Istvan Rakovszky de Nagyrako et Nagyselmecz was a Hungarian born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary on June 18, 1858, one of four children born to Istvan Rakovszky (senior) and Baronness Ilona Majthenyi. He was a bright child who grew up with a commitment to national service. As a young man he studied law in Slovakia (then part of the Kingdom of Hungary) before joining the Imperial-Royal army. Illness cut short his military service and he was sent to Venice (then also part of the Austrian Empire) to recover but still had a desire to serve his country. After leaving the hospital he went home to Hungary and settled on his family estate near Nagyselmec (in what is now Slovakia). He became an advocate for the people in his county and in 1895 helped to co-found the Catholic People’s Party and in 1903 became vice-chairman of the party. The 1896 Catholic Congress greatly raised his profile as a politician where he spoke out in favor of Catholic social teachings, loyalty to the monarchy and the ancient rights of the aristocracy all geared toward protecting and uplifting the people on the local level.

Rakovszky gained enough prestige to enter politics on the national level, being elected in that year to the Hungarian House of Representatives in which he served until 1918 and in that pivotal year he entered the Hungarian Diet in which he served until 1926, becoming known as one of the most active and vocal Hungarian politicians in the Dual-Monarchy. In hundreds of speeches he made his views heard on everything from parliamentary procedure to foreign affairs and economic policy. Rakovszky was invariably loyal but of course put Hungarian interests first and was not always pleased with overall imperial policy. During the height of the Hungarian Constitutional Crisis of 1903-1907 (sparked by disputes over the language of the army but part of a long series of problems between Austria and Hungary) Imperial-Royal troops were sent in to close down the Hungarian Diet, something which Rakovszky strongly condemned and protested against while filling in for the absent Speaker of the House of Representatives. However, his reputation was so solid that Emperor Francis Joseph had earlier sought out his advice on how to handle the volatile situation in Hungary so there is no doubt he was quite trusted at court.

Despite often being at odds with the sitting Hungarian government, Rakovszky remained a prominent figure and was chosen to be a “secret” councilor by Emperor Francis Joseph in 1907. The following year he was chosen to be chairman of the League of Catholic People and in the next government session, as leader of the Catholic People’s Party he called for greater protection of ecclesiastical rights and more regular elections. Toward the end of World War I, however, he opposed government actions in spreading democracy too widely and too quickly. When World War I did begin, Rakivszky enlisted in the army but continued to be involved in politics being appointed to a special oversight committee to ensure that Hungarian interests were represented. However, when their recommendations were not taken up by the government the members resigned. During the war years he proposed several pieces of legislation to serve the interests of soldiers such as making it easier for the family of wounded men to travel across internal borders to visit their relatives. Unfortunately, wartime conditions prevented much solid action being taken and the political situation in Hungary became increasingly chaotic (as was the case throughout Austria-Hungary), worsening as the war began to draw to a close with various nationalities asserting independence and government funds being depleted.

As the government of the Kingdom of Hungary fell and the Dual-Monarchy began to fall apart, Rakovszky resigned from office and as he was known for being a staunch Catholic and monarchist, when the Hungarian Soviet Republic was declared the communists had him arrested and confiscated all of his papers. Nonetheless, he remained outspoken in his opposition to the Reds and continued to be a voice for the Catholic population and, as the communists cracked down on all religions, for Christian Hungarians in general. In 1920 he was elected to the National Assembly as a representative of the Christian National Party and became Speaker of the Assembly. He remained as vociferous an orator as ever and gave what was perhaps his most famous speech condemning the Treaty of Trianon which saw Hungary mutilated, drastically reducing the national territory and crippling the economy. He clashed bitterly with the leadership of the Independent Smallholder’s Party and their intractable opposition led him to resign his office in 1921.

Outside of politics, Rakovszky continued to voice his strident opposition to the government which earned him the wrath of many in power, leading ultimately to an attempt to assassinate him which was, fortunately, unsuccessful. Although the monarchy has been “officially” restored and the country was again, technically, the Kingdom of Hungary, Rakovszky and others were outraged that the King had not been invited back to take the throne and resume his royal duties. They became even more disgruntled as more time passed and it became clear that the government of former Admiral Miklos Horthy had no intention of ever actually handing power back to the King (Blessed Emperor Charles I then in exile in Switzerland). Rakovszky and other like-minded monarchists began working behind the scenes to weaken the regency as much as possible to pave the way for the return of the King. The government finally had to take them seriously and recognized that there was a great deal of public support for the complete restoration of the monarchy. Rakovszky was considered a moderate among the monarchists but one of the most effective and when Emperor Charles (in Hungary King Charles IV) began his bid to resume the throne and return to Hungary, Rakovszky was chosen to be his new prime minister. In fact, the return of the King had been planned in Rakovszky’s apartment.

When Emperor Charles did return to Hungary, Rakovszky was quick to join him and was also most concerned that the change in leadership happen peacefully and in keeping with the legal process so as to avoid any accusations that the King had reclaimed his throne by means of a royal coup. If that were the case it would give foreign states a pretext for opposing the restoration. Unfortunately, as it happened, the regent refused to give up power to the King and made more promises to the Emperor Charles professing loyalty but stating that the time was just not yet right for his total restoration. Troops were assembling but, of course, the last thing Charles wanted was bloodshed or a civil war and so he finally agreed to leave the country and go into exile again. Rakovszky was arrested, along with numerous others, by the government which wanted to ensure the monarchists never attempted such a thing again -they had come too close to being successful.

After his release, Rakovszky returned to politics, co-founding the National Farmer and Civic Party and remained a determined critic of the government. He finally retired in 1926 after a near lifetime in public service and died on August 12, 1931.

Halloween Special Profile: The Blood Countess

The case of Elisabeth Bathory is an ideal one for the Halloween season. Her life story reads like a modern horror novel and, indeed, the lurid tales of the notorious Hungarian countess have been cited as the inspiration for numerous works of fiction intended to terrify. She is known today as one of the most infamous serial killers in history and yet, as with so many figures who have gained such notoriety, it is difficult to separate the facts from the lurid fiction. Are the horror stories about her true? If not, she must be one of the most grossly misrepresented figures in all of history. If, on the other hand, they are, she would justly deserve to be known as one of the most vicious living nightmares known to man. Elizabeth Báthory was born on August 7, 1560 on the family estate in Nyírbátor, Hungary to George Báthory of the Ecsed branch of the family. Her uncle was the former Voivod of Transylvania, Andrew Bonaventura Báthory, and her mother was Anna Báthory whose father was Stephen Báthory of Somlyó, who had also been Voivod of Transylvania and King of Poland. She grew up at Ecsed Castle near the Romanian border and was given a good education, becoming learned in Greek, Latin and German.

On May 8, 1575 Elisabeth was married to a Hungarian count who was often away fighting the Turks, leaving Elisabeth to manage his extensive estates in the Carpathian mountains in his absence. In 1604 he was mortally wounded in battle, leaving Elisabeth completely on her own as she had little to do with the raising of their children. It was during his long absences and after his death that many lurid rumors began to spread about the countess. From very early in life Elisabeth was known as a great beauty with long, lovely hair, shapely figure and she was especially known for her white, spotless, almost shining complexion. As the story goes, she became excessively vain, perverse and increasingly obsessed with the occult, surrounding herself with all sorts of alchemists and other assorted charlatans. She recruited local peasant girls to serve in the castle, which was considered quite an honor as well as a duty. However, more and more of these girls began to go missing and most seemed to be very attractive young virgins, which only fueled the horror stories and speculation about what was going on in the castle.

As the tales go, Elisabeth Bathory had become fanatically obsessed with retaining her youthful beauty she was so proud of. She became convinced that the only way to accomplish this was to regularly bath in the blood of virgin girls. Some accounts said she was even given to vampirism and would drink the blood of the girls from fine, jewel-encrusted cups. All sorts of torture allegedly were carried out by the bad tempered countess in her house of horrors; servant girls slashed with razor blades, whipped to a bloody pulp, burned with red hot pokers, burned with red hot coins for stealing, having their mouth sewed up with needle and thread for talking too much or being tied naked to trees to be devoured by wild animals. Every conceivable horror was talked about to explain the disappearances and the summons of a young girl to the castle was considered as good as a death sentence. Many went in, none ever came out. Eventually, so the stories go, her habit of bathing in blood so depleted the local female population that there were virtually no peasant girls left, which forced the murderous countess to look for victims among the aristocracy.

So, the countess decided to advertise her castle as something of a “finishing school” where aristocrats could send their daughters to learn proper manners, behavior and all the things expected of a high-born, well-to-do young lady. Knowing the venerable name the countess represented, many, especially among the minor gentry, jumped at the chance to send their girls to study in such a famous household. They had no idea what they were in for. Upon entering the castle they entered a world of unimaginable horrors, presided over by the demented countess who would bite off chunks of their flesh, mutilate their bodies in a number of areas as well as presiding over sadistic sexual rituals before bathing in their blood. If even a fraction of the horror stories are true, the castle of the “Blood Countess” was a living nightmare if ever there was one. However, the pedigree of her new victims would be her undoing. Fellow aristocrats were not going to stand idle once it became clear that their daughters, sent to the countess for schooling, were never coming back.

If she had contented herself with tormenting her own people or could have stopped herself once her immediate supply was exhausted she might have escaped all punishment. But, of course, she could not. It was a compulsion, a sadistic depravity born out of vanity. She must maintain her famous beauty and so she must have more virgin girls to kill to fill her tub. To do this, she would have them suspended over it and then slash their throats. Eventually, her victims included some of the most important and powerful families in that part of Hungary and the nobility gathered to take action against the monstrous woman. Alarming reports had even spread to Vienna and so King Matthias sent agents to investigate. Before this was even completed, as more and more stories were collected, each more gruesome than the last, it was decided that the countess would have to go. She was arrested and the King, thoroughly disgusted by the reports that reached him, wanted to put her to death but he was persuaded that this would inflame the nobility who would not want to see one of their own executed no matter what the crime. Instead, Elisabeth Bathory was sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of her life. So it was the she spent the rest of her days, walled up inside a few rooms of her castle, screaming and ranting, totally shut off from the outside world with no doors, no windows and only a small opening to pass her food. Under such conditions she lived only another four years before her death on August 21, 1614.

And so Elisabeth Bathory, the “Blood Queen” or the “Countess of Blood” has gone down in popular memory as one of the most terrifying monsters of history. Her story has been the subject of many books, horror novels and even a few slasher films. But is it all a true story? Was she really responsible for torturing to death some 650 girls and some accounts claim? A few have their doubts. For instance, there is evidence that, when she was actually administering her estates, the countess acted with wisdom and even compassion. There is evidence that she championed the cause of poor women and those raped by marauding Turkish soldiers during the war. Much of the reported “hard evidence” for her crimes was also conveniently lost and lately some have even pointed to the possibility of a conspiracy against her. The countess was (officially anyway) a Protestant and thus none too popular with the very Catholic Hapsburg rulers in Vienna. Some now have put forward the theory that the whole story of the vicious “Queen of Blood” was part of a Hapsburg conspiracy to bring down a prominent Protestant noblewoman. If so, the tactic succeeded beyond all expectation. One would hope that humanity could not be capable of such crimes as have been attributed to Countess Elisabeth Bathory and yet, even if she really were the victim of the greatest “smear job” in history, the image of her as a nightmarish monster has become so engrained in popular culture it would be impossible to think she could ever be rehabilitated no matter what evidence ever comes to light. At least one film, made by a Slovakian filmmaker, has tried to tell the story of the countess as the victim of a conspiracy to ruin her by the villainous Palatine of Hungary but, so far, it is the more lurid (if harder to believe) stories of murder and depravity that prevail when the name of Elisabeth Bathory is mentioned.