The Phoenix Land

by Miklos Banffy

  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 Transylvania83.

  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 this84.

  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.

  After the supper several of us, all men, sat round the prince. He was a tall handsome man, florid of complexion, with a small fair moustache: the type they call in England a ‘military man’ – which always means good-looking but does not necessarily suggest the possession of brains. The conversation turned to the guest’s Hungarian forebears, and one of us asked the prince if he possessed any work of art or weapon that had belonged to his ancestor, Prince Rédey. ‘Oh yes I have,’ he replied. ‘I inherited his sword.’ Someone must have whispered in his ear that I collected old Hungarian weapons, for he then said, not to me but to the general company: ‘I wonder what it can be worth? I have no use for it and would gladly sell it.85’ Poor prince! He was always short of money. His debts had more than once been paid by his sister, the queen, and so it was understandable that, after drinking a substantial quantity of heavy wine, he might think of peddling his great-grandfather’s sword in Hungary. However, it hardly sounded encouraging from the lips of one who might become a candidate for the throne. He was promptly nicknamed ‘Prince Tök’ – ‘Prince Pumpkin’ – and this was the sole result of his visit to Hungary.

  After King Karl’s escapade to Szombathely no oth
er pretender to the throne of Hungary was ever considered or even mentioned. This was when the legitimist movement had its beginnings, even if only with a number of aristocrats, some leaders of the Catholic church, a few Jewish bankers and those officers of the old combined Austro-Hungarian army whose most cherished memories were of their youth in the Imperial capital.

  But for those events now about to confront us in the summer of 1921 this sudden recrudescence of legitimist feeling did fatal and irreparable damage, for this was the moment when we had to face the cruellest condition imposed upon us by the Treaty of Trianon: namely the surrender to Austria, our former ally and comrade in arms, of part of our sovereign territory.

  The question of the Burgenland was upon us; and that is what will be the subject of the next chapter.

  Notes

  71. Three of Hungary’s most revered patriots.

  72. On 29 August 1526 King Louis II of Hungary was defeated by the forces of the Sultan Suleyman I. The king and the greater part of the Hungarian army lost their lives in the battle; and, although the Turks briefly retreated, by 1541 the area they controlled reached as far as Buda.

  73. From the mid-seventeenth century in the person of the emperor of Austria.

  74. King Stephen I, who founded the Arpád dynasty in 996, was the first monarch of a united Hungary. Their rule lasted for some three hundred years. Many of the noble families of Hungary and Transylvania claim descent from the Arpád kings.

  75. The two treaties of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War, which had devastated central Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century.

  76. In fact, following the defeat and expulsion of the independent King Frederick, husband of the Winter Queen, Elizabeth Stuart, sister of England’s Charles I, Bohemia was incorporated into the Habsburg domains, and a new and stricter constitution imposed in 1627.

  77. The complications of the struggle against the Habsburgs at the time when Hungary was also menaced by the Turks are described in full in History of Transylvania, issued by the Budapest Akadémiai Kiadó in 1994.

  78. In western Hungary near the Austrian border.

  79. This happened in 1684, the king of Poland being John III Sobieski. The first Holy League had been proposed by the Pope in 1569 and ratified by Spain, the Papacy and Venice in the summer of 1571, just four months before the decisive defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto.

  80. Count Miklós Esterházy was Palatine when, in 1627/8, he discussed with Archbishop Péter Pázmány the prospect of launching a war against the Porte from Transylvania.

  81. Ferenc Deák’s period of influence was the troubled times of the 1848 revolution that led, finally, to the 1867 compromise, incorporating many of the principles of Hungarian independence which he had declared to be essential and unchangeable.

  82. Baron von Bach became effective ruler of Hungary after the suppression of the 1848 revolution by the Habsburgs. The terror his rule inspired was only brought to an end in 1867.

  83. There seems to be some confusion here. A note in the Hungarian edition states that this Prince Teck was a brother of Queen Mary who had once been proposed as a husband for one of Archduke Joseph’s daughters. This is clearly unlikely since both brothers had been married years before the war. They had given up their German titles in 1917 when the elder was created Marquis of Cambridge and the younger Earl of Athlone. Lord Cambridge’s son was not married until 1923 and was no longer entitled to call himself Prince Teck. Lord Athlone had no son. Who then was this Prince Teck?

  84. The House of Teck by Louis Felbermann (London 1911).

  85. These lines appear in English in Bánffy’s text.

  Chapter Four

  The peace treaty had specified that the new borders should come into effect the moment the treaty was ratified. The Serbs would have to evacuate that part of Baranya left to Hungary, while simultaneously we had to surrender the Burgenland to Austria.

  This was very painful for us.

  The other former Hungarian territories which Trianon had awarded to our neighbours had been occupied by them since the end of hostilities, and all Hungarian officials had been expelled by the occupying powers. It had not been so in the Burgenland, for there the Hungarian government still ruled and the order to evacuate would have to come from us. It would be we ourselves who had to order Hungarian officials to leave their posts; and it was like being told not only to chop off one’s hand but also to serve it up on a silver platter.

  The worst of it was that Sopron and its surrounding territory had to be handed over not to one of the victorious powers but to Austria. Not only was this deeply humiliating but in it there was also a diabolical irony. For centuries Hungarians had fought successfully to defend Hungarian land from Austria; but now, when the Allies had broken up the Austrian Empire, it was demanded of us that we should surrender to Austria land that had always been ours.

  This was exacted from us at a time when Austria was as much a vanquished nation as we were and, what is more, vanquished in a war into which we had been drawn only because of our connection with Austria, a war that was wanted by no one in Hungary and which had started because an Austrian archduke had been murdered. The ultimatum to Serbia had come from Vienna, and in the royal council that had ordered it the only dissenting voice had been that of István Tisza, prime minister of Hungary.

  It now was demanded of Hungary that she should hand over to Austria land that had been Hungarian since the days of the Arpád kings.

  This was a most perverse idea. It seems to have originated in the desire of the victorious powers to drive a wedge between Hungary and Austria and to create such hatred and distrust between our two peoples that we should never again become allies. It was a measure conceived in hatred, just as were all the other vindictive conditions imposed on the defeated by the conquering powers at Versailles.

  Already in June I had been discussing with Bethlen whether there was anything that could be done, for to the Hungarians the enforced surrender of the Burgenland was the deepest humiliation of all. He and I both saw the problem in the same light, and so we decided that we must do something about it.

  The first and biggest obstacle was that the decision of the Council of Ambassadors had decreed that the handing over of Baranya and the Burgenland must take place simultaneously. Both had to start, if I recall the date accurately, on 23 June. This would mean that if we attempted in any way to delay matters on our western frontier the Serb evacuation of Baranya would stop at once, and we would ourselves have created an impediment to the recuperation of territory to which we had full rights under the terms of the peace agreement. It was clear to us that while this condition was insisted upon there was nothing we could do about the Burgenland.

  Accordingly, my first task would be somehow to have this obstacle removed. It would be difficult, but I had to try. Luckily I was on good terms with the ambassadors of the Great Powers.

  The British ambassador was called Hohler. In his diplomatic career he had been in many stormy posts. Before being sent to Budapest he had been in Mexico, where he had lived through several revolutions, and before that, I fancy, was in Japan, where there had been a military revolt. He had hardly been in any post where there had not been some unrest. He seems to have been something of a stormy petrel. He was highly intelligent, shrewd, with a great knowledge of the ways of men, and basically a good man. I was on intimate terms with him.

  The French ambassador was Foucher. I was on even closer terms with him, perhaps because he too was a writer, and I had read one of his novels. This had not been world shattering, but it had shown he had a poetic instinct. He was not as sharp-witted as his English colleague, but he was as wholesome as a loaf of bread.

  The third was Prince Castagnetto. He was a real charmer, an enchanting Neapolitan: witty and clever as only Italians manage to be. He had a sharp and cynical sense of humour and the social grace of a real cosmopolitan, as is well demonstrated in the following anecdote.

 
; Castagnetto was the title he bore, but his family name was Caracciolo. It was one of the most distinguished names in the kingdom of Naples, and for centuries his family had played an important part in the history of southern Italy. It happened that about this time I had read a book about the battle of Lepanto, which in 1571 had brought an end to the supremacy of the Turks in the Mediterranean. The Christian fleet had been divided into three parts, one of them commanded by a Caracciolo. I thought it would flatter Castagnetto if I mentioned this, because his ancestor’s fellow commanders had been none other than Don John of Austria, the son of Charles V, and Admiral Doria, the famous Doge of Genoa. Such little remarks often give as much pleasure to the recipient as would a small gift; and there is a saying in French: ‘les petits cadeaux entretiennent l’amitié’ – ‘small presents keep friendship alive’. And so I threw this ancestor into the conversation.