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THE
SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
SLAVS AND PANSLAVISM
BY
THOMAS CAPEK
MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK BAR
Zbe Ikntcfeerbocfeer press
New York 1906
Copyright, 1906
BY
THOMAS CAPEK
Ubc mnlcfccibocfter prcee, IRcw HJorh
c/7i
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TO P. V. ROVNIANEK, Esq.
OF PITTSBURG, PA.
a tireless worker for slovak rights
a recognized leader among his fellow countrymen
this work is respectfully dedicated
By the Author
V
CONTENTS
PAGB
|
. 18 |
|
|
The Slovaks : Past and Present |
• 53 |
|
Language and Literature |
I02 |
|
Social Conditions .... |
. I44 |
|
Magyar Brothers-in-Law |
169 |
|
. 19I |
|
ILLUSTRATIONS
John Kollar .... Paul Joseph Safari Michael Miloslav Hodza . Matica Building (Confiscated) John Holly . .
v
LUDEVIT STUR ....
Dr. Joseph M. Hurban
SVETOZAR HURBAN-VAJANSKY
PAGE
18
3°
84
98
128
134
138 206
vu
I
INTRODUCTION.
N the steel mills alongf the Mononeahela River, in the Connellsville coke region, in the anthracite coal mines throuehout Penn- sylvania, and for that matter in every factory, mill, and industrial concern north of the Mason and Dixon line, you will find, doing generally the hardest and meanest labor, but doing it faith- fully and cheerfully, able-bodied "foreigners" whom their employers call indifferently "Huns," "Hungarians," or "Slavs." Of these work- men, skilled and unskilled, the Slovaks from Hungary form a considerable percentage. Pennsylvania has the largest Slovak population, and the name of Penn's Commonwealth is by all odds the most familiar English term in all Upper Hungary. How many of these people, who come to our shores in ever increasing numbers, are now in the United States can only be guessed. If we use for a basis of computation the enrolled members of ben- evolent and other organizations, of which Slovaks have a good many in our country, the
ix
x INTRODUCTION
number will run wellnigh to four hundred thousand. To obtain an even approximately correct count is impossible, for the reason that our census does not classify Slovaks separately as such, and because, furthermore, the popu- lation is constantly fluctuating. It may be stated without fear of contradiction, that prob- ably no other class of people travel to and fro as much as the Slovaks. Steamship companies find them very profitable patrons.
Nothing has been written in English about the Slovaks except brief articles in the various encyclopaedias, and even for these the reader was compelled to look under the collective title " Slavonians." Talvj (Mrs. Edward Robinson) has devoted a few pages to a criti- cal discussion of the Slovak language, but as her book did not touch on social and political conditions, dealing mainly with Slavic litera- ture and philology, and that in a manner now necessarily obsolete, the Historical Review of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations does not throw much li<rht in the darkness. The Millennium of Hungary, a compendious work issued in English by the Hungarian Government in 1890, is a publica- tion of the usual Magyar official type, and for hat reason must be taken only for what it is
INTRODUCTION xi
worth. As a matter of fact, any work that re- counts solely Magyar deeds and knows of only Magyar culture in Hungary tells mathematic- ally, if not actually, only half of the story of that country, when we bear in mind that Hun- gary is but one-half Magyar. More has been written about the Slovaks in German. An ex- cellent booklet appeared in Prague in 1903, entitled Die Unterdriickung der Slovaken durch die Magyaren.
The author of the present work is intimately acquainted with the American Slovak, his am- bitions and efforts, and in the fall of 1903 he had an opportunity to observe him at close range in his own home, and as a result of his observations he is prepared to say that Ameri- can dollars and American civilization have done more to uplift him than anything else that had been done for him by his own Government within the last half century. Ex- aggerated as the statement may seem at first, it is yet quite true. Just now the Slovak highlander is far more concerned over the scale of wages obtaining in and about Pitts- burg than he is over the wages paid in Pest. If the whole truth must be told, Hungary, ever since Kossuth's time and lono- before that, has been nothing but a foster-mother to the
xii INTRODUCTION
Slovaks and a cruel foster-mother at that. When Louis Kossuth came to the United States after the suppression of the Magyar rebellion, his powerful eloquence, and the cap- tivating cause of which he made himself the champion, won him the sympathy of every lover of freedom in the country. Terrible, though not undeserved, was Kossuth's arraign- ment of Austria for her shocking excesses in Hungary. But the Nestor of Hungarian liberty had nothing to say to Americans about the gibbets that he and his party caused to be erected for the prompt execution of Slovak and Servian rebels who demanded for them- selves exactly what the Magyars believed to be their due from Austria. During his travels in Hungary, the present author interviewed Francis Kossuth, son of Louis Kossuth, and now the leader of the Independents, and asked him whether the charge was true that the Slovaks were being persecuted ? Mr. Kossuth affected to be very much surprised. Perse- cuted? Impossible ! The very fact that they had survived the Magyar occupation of a thousand years disproved effectually any tale of persecution. Like Kossuth reasons the average Magyar. Truth travels slowly but surely, and observing travellers from France
INTRODUCTION xiii
and Germany have had occasion to correct some of the views which our fathers and grandfathers still hold concerning affairs in the Kingdom of St. Stephen. Ludevit Stiir better than anyone knew and felt how shame- fully ill-treated his people were, and he used to say that their lot in Hungary was worse than the position of the Christian raia in Turkey. It may not be quite as bad as all that, and things may have improved consider- ably since the time of Stur, who was a contem- porary of Kossuth, but nevertheless the fact is indisputable that no people in Central Europe are abused more impudently by a wicked and hostile Government than the Slovaks. And why ? Because all of them will not sell their birthright for a mess of Magyar pottage. If we recognize in principle the right of the Finns, or Jews, or Irish, or of any other people or sect to a separate exist- ence, is there any good or valid reason for denying that right to Slovaks ? The Irish make the welkin ring with their grievances at times ; the Finns can count on powerful sym- pathizers in their uneven struggle with Russia ; the Jews have formidable interests backing them everywhere ; in the same way the Mace- donians are not wholly without friends — but
xiv INTRODUCTION
whither shall the downtrodden Slovak high- lander turn for support? In his case the Lord is too high and the sovereign too far to save.
Is it denied that they are ill-treated ? The Slovaks constitute one sixth of the total popu- lation of the country, yet how many of them serve the state in higher spheres of life, as soldiers, churchmen, or statesmen ? Not a single name could be mentioned. What Slovak journalist has not been tried or sen- tenced to a term in prison for political libel ? What Slovak deputy was not forced to defend a suit for incitement against Magyar nation- ality ? What patriotic priest has not been under police surveillance at one time or another ? As often as the accusing finger is pointed at Pest, the answer comes : Panslavs alone are persecuted, not Slovaks ! But is a panslav a fore-doomed culprit who has no rights that Hungarian officials, from the gendarme up to the Minister of State, are bound to respect? Overwhelming must be the sense of injustice when a national poet, a minister of the gospel, relieves the bitterness of his soul in such a heart-stirring song as " Mor ho!" — "Kill!" " Experience has shown," sadly comments Paul Krizko, "that at the present time there is no
INTRODUCTION xv
legal protection for the Slovaks in their ancient home."
The present author has drawn his material almost exclusively from Bohemian and Slovak sources, consulting, however, Magyar publica- tions in so far as the same are translated into English. Below is a list of some of the writers and publications examined :
Charles Kalal, Meakulpinsky, Stephen Dax- ner, Jaroslav Vlcek, Zdenek V. Tobolka, Anton Bielek, Dr. Emil Stodola, Joseph Skultety, Joseph L. Holuby, Paul Joseph Safafik, Miloslav Bohutiensky, {Life of Kolldr), Pohlady ( Slovak Review), Dr. Samo Czam- bel, Sbornik Musedlnej Slovenskej Spolocnosti {Magazine of the Slovak Museum Society), Dr. Julius Markovic, LudevitStiir, Paul Sochan, Milan Lichard, Francis Pastrnek, Rudolph Pokorny, Joseph J. Touzimsky, Ziga Pauliny- Toth, Paul Krizko, Andrew Kmet, Francis Sasinek, Lubor Niederle, Arminius Vambery, Coxe, William H. Stiles, Julius Botto, Dr. Joseph Dejekelfalussy, W. R. Morfill, Talvj, E. L. Mijatovics, Valerian Krasinski, T. G. Masaryk, Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, L. Heilprin, Louis Leger, Arthur Gorgei, Professor Krek, Francis Palacky, John Kollar, Hurbans — father and son, etc.
xvi INTRODUCTION
That the subject-matter might be clear chapters on Slavs and Panslavism were in- cluded in this book.
In Moravia, close to the Hungarian frontier, are entire villages of Slovaks, but no mention is made of these although Moravian and Hun- garian Slovaks are one and the same race.
Diacritical marks are used wherever expedi- ent, except in the oft recurrent word " Slovak," which requires a mark on the vowel a, viz : a. Due regard is had to Slovak terminology, because its continued use is justified by cen- turies of approbation as against decades of Magyar official wantonness.
The ethnical map of the Slavic races follows the standard map of Erben and the ethnical Russian map of 1867.
Proper names of persons are written in ac- cordance with the accepted orthography of each race. Thus Safarik is given preference to Schaffarik, Jellacic to Jellachich, etc.
The Author. New York City, December 6, 1905.
THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
I
THE SLAVS
T is estimated that there are between 125,- 000,000 and 145,000,000 Slavonians.1 In the east live the Russians, the mightiest branch of the Slavic family, numbering some 86,000,- 000. They are divided according to dialect into Great Russians, Little Russians, and White Russians.
In the south are the South-Slavs or Illyri- ans, known as Servians, Croatians, Bosnians,
1 Under existing conditions it is impossible to state the accurate number of Slavs. In some countries, as for instance in Austro- Hungary, it is a practice to count according to the "language of intercourse," and not according to the mother tongue, by virtue of which stratagem Slavs lose enormously. Basing his figures on official census and minimal estimates, Professor Lubor Niederle reckoned that the Slavs in 1900 numbered 138,987,800. At the end of 1904 this should have been increased by 8,000,000, giving a grand total of 145,000,000 or 147,000,000. German statisticians reckon fewer Slavs. Thus, for instance, A. L. Hickmann, in 1904, found 132,000,000 of them.
1
2 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Montenegrins (Crnogorci), Slavonians, Dalma- tians, and Slovenes respectively. To these may be added the Bulgarians. All told, the South Slavonians number about 13,000,000.
In the west are found the Bohemians who, together with their nearest kinsmen, the Mora- vians and Slovaks, are 8,500,000 strong; the Poles, computed at 1 7,000,000 ; and 1 50,000 Serbs, living in the two Lusatias, all that is left of the once powerful branch of that name.
Slavs owe allegiance to four great govern- ments, Russia, Austro-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey.
The creeds of the Slavic nations are as varied as the governments under which they live. They belong to the Orthodox Church (Russians, Bulgarians, and Servians), to the Roman Catholic Church (Poles, Bohemians, Slovaks, Croatians, Slovenes), about 3,000,000 are Uniates, or United Orthodox, 1,500,000 Protestants (Lusatians, Serbs, Bohemians, Poles, Slovenes, and Slovaks), and 1,000,000 Mohammedans (Bosnians, Hercegovinans).
The Slavonians are members of the great Aryan family of nations. Originally they called themselves " Srbove," which signified "people of the same race." To Germans and
THE SLAVS 3
others with whom they came into contact, they were known as Vends or Vinds. In the sixth century, the use of the name Vinds be- came restricted to particular branches of the race and a new name, Slavonians, until then the ancient designation of a tribe settled around Novgorod, in Russia, gained universal recogni- tion. About the meaning of the word " Slav," " Slavonian " writers differ. Some derive it from " slava," glory, which interpretation, no doubt, is more fanciful than true. Others, like Dobrovsky, trace it to "slovo," word, thus meaning speech, as distinguished from "mutes," or "Nemci,"as the Slavonians called the Germans. " By chance or malice German and Latin writers degraded this national appel- lation of Slavs to the signification of servitude, slavery."
At what period the Slavic peoples migrated with other nations to Europe, by what route they proceeded, when they separated from the parent stock, what common tongue they spoke, are problems which, unsolved and seemingly unsolvable, continue to occupy the minds of scholars. At one time the so-called Old or Church Slavic, into which the missionary Cyril translated the Bible, or parts of it, was regarded as the mother of all the Slavic idioms, but re-
4 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
cent investieations have demonstrated that the Old Slavic is only an elder sister, and that the mother tongue must have passed out of ex- istence ages ago. White or Great Croatia, a country of indefinite extent, traversed by the Carpathian Mountains, and situated between the Vistula and the Dnieper, is spoken of by all the chroniclers as the fatherland of the primi- tive Slavs. There they lived, it is supposed, in common brotherhood, speaking, substan- tially, the same language, governed by the same traditions, and practising the same pagan rites. From this White Croatia, they afterwards spread north, west, and south, either in search of new possessions, or because they were thrust out by other nations.
In the seventh century their migrations ap- pear to have ceased ; and we find them a cen- tury later occupying in uninterrupted continuity a vast tract east of the Elbe, the Saale, and the Bohemian Forest, southward to the Adri- atic Sea, in the regions where, upon the whole, they are still to be found to day. The names of rivers, cities, and villages with Slavic roots or terminations prove irrefutably that in ancient times Slavonic was spoken in Saxony, Brand- enburg, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and other provinces now German. Some of the finest
THE SLAVS 5
passages in the prologue to KollaYs poem, Slavids Daughter? dwell on the sad fate of the nations that lived along the Elbe and the Baltic and were in time absorbed by the Germans.
Ay, here lies that country before my tearful eye, Once the cradle, now the coffin, of my nation.
• •••••••
Whither have you disappeared, beloved Slavic nations,
who here have lived, Nations that drank of the sea here and of the Saale
there ? The peaceful tribes of the Serbians, of the Obodritian
empire the descendants, Where are you, tribes of the Veleti, where, grandsons of
theUkri? Far to the right I gaze, to the left I turn my searching
vision, But in vain does my eye seek Slavs in Slavia. Speak, tree, their grown temple, under which offerings to
ancient gods were burned; Where are those nations, their princes, cities, That first gave life to these regions of the north ?
Of the Slavs in the days of paganism and idolatry our accounts are meagre. Native writers who possessed intimate knowledge of the country and its people did not appear among them until long after the introduction
1 Adapted from Leger's Histoire de V Autriche-Hongrie, translated by Freeman.
6 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
of the gospel. As all our knowledge of the manners, instincts, and sentiments of the robust Slavonian peasant of pre - Christian times is derived from foreigners, and, as the observations of contemporary writers rest mainly on hearsay, from tales that had been gathered in Slavic lands by Roman and Greek merchants, whom cupidity had tempted thither, it will be seen how untrustworthy such accounts must be.
In some respects, however, all writers agree — as, that the Slavs were eminently agricultur- ists. The Germans acknowledged that the Slavonians taught them both agriculture and horticulture. The name of plough, German " Pflug," is of pure Slavic origin. Therein they differed from the primitive Germans, their neighbors in the west, who were seldom tillers of the soil, but were more generally roving and predatory.
Before the introduction of feudalism among them, the Slavs were as free as any barbarians in Europe. To show that this was so, it is only necessary to cite an ancient law of theirs, which provided that captives of Slavonian nationality, by whomsoever held, should be free the instant they set foot on Slavonian soil. Castes and hereditary power were unknown.
THE SLAVS 7
All the traditions of the Bohemians, Poles, and Russians point to this conclusion. Everywhere the chiefs were elected from and by the people without distinction of rank or birth. Samo, surnamed the Great, who in the seventh century founded the first Slavonic empire in the west, was a jeweller before he became a ruler ; according to tradition, Pfemysl was called from the plough to rule the Bohemian nation ; and in Poland a wheelwright estab- lished a long line of kings. An historian who wrote in the sixth century says of them that they lived in a " democracy," recognizing no ruler. Such was admittedly the case with the Baltic Slavs, among whom each clan or village existed as a separate republic, and " all must be persuaded where none could be compelled." A father stood at the head of every family or clan. Upon his death a vladyka {ylddnouti, to rule) was selected, by free choice, to repre- sent the interests of the clan in the assembly. By virtue of their dignity all vladykas were zemans, or freeholders. Land being aliena- ble, it inevitably followed that some families acquired greater territorial possessions than others. In time the wealthier class of ze7?zans, to whom land had come through inheritance, received the name lechs, a Slavonic term sig-
8 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
nifying " field." The nobility of feudal times, the slechtici, as they are called in Bohemian, are indebted for their name and possessions to the leeks. To advise him on legislative and judicial matters, the chief magistrate (in Bo- hemia) chose a senate of wise men, known as kmets, meaning " old men."
Usually land was held and cultivated in common by each clan, out of which grew a custom, familiar to the Scottish Highlanders, requiring some responsible person to be secur- ity at court for the good conduct of the mem- bers of the clan. That they possessed a code of laws, differing in many respects from the laws sought to be introduced among them by the Germans, is well known.
The men tilled the soil ; the women per- formed domestic work. Families bore the name of their chieftain ; therefore, if the chief's name was Mladen, Bratron, Radon, the mem- bers of that family were Mladenovici Bratronici, Radonici, the patronymic, as will be observed, always ending in ici. In the same manner villages became known by the name of the clan, inhabiting them — Bratronice, Radonice, Mladenice. A union of families constituted a tribe. Bohemia, for instance, was inhabited by a number of tribes, all of Slavonic ances-
THE SLAVS 9
try, but of unequal strength and influence, and differing slightly in speech and manners. The Cechs, now the dominant race, were only one of a number of tribes that peopled Bohemia. Tradition names Lucans, Decans, Liutomiri- nas, Psovans, Lemusians, Croatians, Netoli- cans, Dudlebs, Zlicans, and Sedlicans as the other tribes. Some of these clans became re- nowned for their wealth and influence. It is asserted that the Vrsovici, celebrated in early Bohemian history, numbered 3000 heads at the time when they were ordered to be put to the sword.
Ever since the dawn of history we read of " Slavic discord." The Emperor Mauritius (539-602 a.d.) already comments on it. A disposition to quarrel among themselves ap- pears to be the common heritage of the race. Discord contributed to, if it did not entirely cause, the early downfall of some of the Sla- vonian nations that had lived in the north and in the west. From immemorial times a feeling of hostility seems to have existed between two powerful tribes, the Obodritians and the Lutians. Again and again they plunged into fratricidal wars. Tradition is silent as to the reason, but presumably it was tribal jealousy. A deep - rooted dislike kept the Serbs apart
io THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
from the Lutians, while both these nations re- peatedly fought the Cechs, who, we may im- agine, retaliated in kind. That the Polabian tribes did not live on any better terms with their more eastern kinsmen, the Croatians, Polans, Milcans, Pomeranians, and others, is quite certain. Divided by petty, intermin- able quarrels, was it any wonder that, notwith- standing their recognized bravery in war, they sustained innumerable defeats, becom- ing vassals to races less numerous than them- selves, like the Celts, Scythians, Sarmatians, and Goths ?
Although Christianity had been previously introduced mainly by the arms of the Franks, the new faith was not fully established among them till the ninth and tenth centuries. Some tribes, however, continued to worship their ancient gods in the sacred groves long after that time. To two brothers, the missionaries Cyril and Methodius, natives of Thessalonica, a city of mixed Greek and Slavonian inhabi- tants, belong both the glory and credit of hav- ing given to the Slavs the light of the gospel. To the missionary Cyril the Slavonians are, moreover, indebted for a knowledge of letters, an acquirement that distinguishes a civilized people from a herd of savages incapable of re-
THE SLAVS ii
flection. It may be, as some writers claim, that letters were known to the Slavonians long before Cyril's time (827-869) ; indeed, there are evidences that the pagan priests on the Baltic employed written characters in their rituals. Yet, as that circumstance appears to have been barren of result, Cyril must still be regarded as the teacher who taught the Slavonians the art of written speech. Incidentally, it may be remarked that the legends clustering around the persons of the " Apostles of the Slavoni- ans," a title conferred upon them by affection- ate posterity, constitute the opening chapter to Slavic history. Everything that took place be- fore their time appears blurred and indistinct to us, if not hopelessly lost in a maze of tradi- tion and fable.
It would be beyond both the scope and the purpose of this chapter to describe, even in a general way, the progressive, intellectual, so- cial, and political development of the Slavonian peoples from the time of Cyril and Methodius, which is coeval with Christianity among them, to the present day. Let us rather examine some of the causes that have retarded and checked that development.
The adoption of two irreconcilable creeds, the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox ; the
12 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
adoption of two rival civilizations, the Eastern and the Western, with their separate literatures and alphabets — is the first and, by many it is be- lieved, the principal cause. The missionary Cyril invented, as we have noted, an alphabet, consisting of forty-one letters, and known after him as the Cyrillic. Then he translated, or caused to be translated, part of the gospels and the liturgy into an idiom spoken at that time by the Macedonian Slavonians. If it had been possible to have adopted Cyril's language and alphabet, the Slavs would have achieved in time the same, or similar, literary unity as the Germans or Italians. But hardly had Cyril's invention begun to take root when a quarrel of thrones and churches broke out at Rome and Constantinople. The Slavic lands lay in the direct zone of the conflict. Whichever side won, the Eastern or the Western, they were bound to be affected. Reconciliation becom- ing impossible, the churches separated, and with them the Slavs : the Russians, Bulgari- ans, Servians, and a portion of the South-Sla- vonians being drawn into the fold of the Orthodox Church ; the Bohemians, Poles, Slovaks, and Slovenes becoming subject to the Church of Rome and to Latin influence. This was the beginning of an estrangement that
THE SLAVS 13
centuries of religious and literary prejudices have made complete.
Another ereat misfortune of the Slavs was their apparent inability or unwillingness to abandon their primitive life, which afforded more freedom than security, and to unite in great commonwealths. The historian Gibbon expressed the opinion that the Slavs were too narrow in experience and of too headstrong passions to compose a system of equal law or general defence. Be that as it may, the fact is that, with the exception of the Poles and Bo- hemians, none of the western tribes succeeded in establishing an enduring state. Samo's em- pire (627-662?), which included a number of nations, went to pieces with the death of its founder. The great Moravian kingdom of Svatopluk (870-894), mention of which will be made hereafter, survived its ruler only a short time. During the second half of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Bohemian princes Bole- slav and Bfetislav, imitating the example of Samo, again and again united numerous tribes under one sceptre. The monarchies of these princes, however, were no more permanent than those of Samo or Svatopluk. Even the mighty realm of Boleslav the Brave (967-1025) colapsed for lack of cohesive unity. That
i4 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
ambitious Polish prince aspired to rule over the Bohemians, Poles, Moravians, Slovaks, and Polabian Slavs. Prague was to have been the capital of Boleslav's empire and " King of the Slavonians " his title. Of all the Slavic races, the Russians alone were able, in face of every obstacle, to create and to maintain a vast and durable empire. The village republics of the Obodritians, the Lutians, the Serbs, the Rotars, and others, succumbed, one after an- other, to German domination.
Many as were the disasters that the Slavs often drew down upon themselves, none was followed by consequences more lamentable than the invasion and occupation of Hungary by the Magyars. Slavonic territory extended in the ninth century from Holstein on the north to the Peloponnesus. Almost in the centre of this territory, Svatopluk, with consummate skill, erected and maintained a powerful empire in face of numerous enemies. It was here that Cyril and Methodius first preached the gospel. Assured of the support of both Rome and Constantinople, Svatopluk's realm seemed to be destined for great things. In time, it is more than likely, all the western Slavs would have joined it for reasons of expediency and self-protection, or would have been absorbed
THE SLAVS 15
by it. From it they would all have received Christianity, together with an entire fabric of laws and institutions and, above all, a common language and literature. In short, Svatopluk's monarchy, like Russia in the east, would have become in time a bulwark of strength to the Slavs in the west. But the Magyars, a nation totally dissimilar in language and origin, hav- ing thrust themselves into this body politic, not yet coalesced in all its parts, forever shat- tered all these hopes. Disrupted anew and separated from each other by an alien race, the various tribes relapsed into their former state of independence, political and literary. That the Magyars, situated, as they were, in the midst of Slavic people, have not been absorbed by them is, indeed, remarkable.
The formation of the Slavs into several nations distinct from each other is an accom- plished fact that cannot be undone. They are related to each other in about the same degree of kindred that unites people of the Latin or the German races. There is this difference, how- ever, that, while the Germans developed uni- formly, never having been checked or arrested in their growth by alien races hostile to civili- zation,— we allude to the Tatars who for cen- turies dominated Russia, and to the Turks, the
16 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
evil masters of the Servians and Bulgarians, — the evolution of the Slavs was for these reasons slow and unequal. Even geographical condi- tions were against them, as any one can readily see by glancing at the map of Europe. It should also be borne in mind that, while the Latin and German peoples are free and inde- pendent, obeying no will but their own, a great many Slavic nations are controlled by sover- eign wills, not their own.
The Bohemians or Cechs are now contend- ing with the Germans for equal rights, lingual and political, in the ancient Kingdom of Bohemia.
The Slovenes aspire to the consolidation of southern Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Trieste, in all of which provinces their lan- guage is spoken. Neighbors of two hostile races, the Germans and Italians, their posi- tion is particularly trying:
The Hungarian Slavs are oppressed more or less by the Magyars. Croatia and Slavonia, together forming a political unit with territorial autonomy inside the dominion of Hungary, enjoy privileges in regard to the use of their mother tongue that are denied to the Servians, Rusenes, and Slovaks.
The position of the Poles is obviously peril-
THE SLAVS 17
cms. Of all the Slavs, they are losing most ground, and this is especially true of the Poles who were incorporated in Germany. Will these eventually meet the fate of the Obodri- tians and of the Lusatians ?
The hour of deliverance from Turkish yoke has not yet come to all the Balkan Slavs. The Crnogorci (Montenegrins) and Servians are entirely free and independent ; the Bul- garians are nominally free.
What remains of the once powerful nation of the Serbs, now confined to the two Lusa- tias, Upper and Lower, is doomed to perish sooner or later in the German sea that en- circles it on all sides.
PANSLAVISM
IN the St. Marx Cemetery in Vienna stands a simple marble shaft with this inscrip- tion : " Living, he bore the whole nation in his heart; dead, he lives in the heart of the whole nation."
This monument marks the resting-place of John Kollar (1793-1852), the " High Priest of Panslavism." By birth a Slovak, by affiliation a Bohemian, but by preference a "Slavonian patriot," Kollar devoted his whole life, or as much of it as his obligations to the Church allowed him, for he was a Lutheran minister, to the preaching of unity among Slavs. " What art thou ? A Russian ? What art thou ? A Servian ? What art thou ? I am a Pole ! My children, unity ! Let your answer be, I am a Slavonian."
This Slavic unity, in literature at least, or " literary reciprocity, ' as he styled it, was the keynote, the ambition of his life. Why could not the Slavonians adopt a common medium of communication as the Germans have done ? To Kollar's mind the analogy between the two
18
fa Jt^aasi^
PANSLAVISM 19
great races, the German and the Slavonian, was complete, — and in this respect Kollar showed a judgment lamentably deficient. As a result of this cardinal error, the phantom confederacy which he had reared in his lyric-epic poem, Slavias Daughter, and in his Literary Reci- procity failed to stand a practical test when the opportune time came.
But in one regard the " High Priest of Pan- slavism " was eminently successful, and for this, if for nothing else, his name deserves to be remembered by posterity. He it was who first soueht to inculcate in the Slavs the sentiment of " Slavonic patriotism." Moreover, by his prophecies, Kollar filled the Slavs with hope and confidence. If Isaiah was the oracle of the Hebrews, Kollar may be said to have been the seer of the Slavonians. To be sure, all his prophecies have not come true, but then the race, as a scholar of distinction expressed it, " has neither reached the flourishing con- dition of the Germans, nor is it decaying, but is the race of the future."
In that part of Kollar' s Slavias Daugh- ter which was published in 1824, we find these prophetic lines :
" What will become of us Slavs a century hence ?
20 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
What aspect will Europe wear then ? Flood-like, Slavic life will inundate all, Expanding its influence everywhere. And the tongue which was proclaimed to be
the speech fit for slaves, according to the
distorted judgment of the Germans, Will resound within the walls of palaces,
issuing even out of the mouths of its very
rivals. Sciences, too, will flow in Slavic moulds. The styles, customs, and songs of our
people Will be mighty, alike on the Seine and on the
Elbe."
No wonder that Kollar tried to solace him- self with the future, for the present in which he lived was dark and unpromising enough. Safafik had counted seventy nine millions of Slavs in Europe in 1842, but almost as many bondsmen : Bohemia, the vanguard of the race, almost German ; the Illyrians talking Italian ; the Hungarian Slavonians, under the tutelage of the Magyars ; Servia and Bul- garia yet unborn ; the cultured classes in Po- land and Russia affecting French manners and language — it will be remembered that around Elizabeth's throne a whole generation grew up, French in thought and education, while under Catherine II. the aristocracy was more
PANSLAVISM 21
French than Russian ; many of the historical traditions forgotten during their long tenure of servitude, — well might the bard bewail the pitiable state of the Slavonians !
If Kollar earned for himself the title of " Arch - priest of Panslavism," Paul Joseph Safaf fk ( 1 795- 1 86 1 ) deserves to be called a Sla- vonic Deucalion, because he peopled Austro- Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and Prussia with Slavonians where, before his time, there had lived subject races only. Like Kollar, Safafik was of Slovak extraction ; yet he felt himself to be a Bohemian, and he preferred to write in German. His Slavic Antiquities is a book which, to use Palacky's words, "will live imperishable, continuing to yield bountiful fruit so long as the Slavonians and their his- tory shall endure." Of different temperaments and inclinations — Safafik was a scholar, exact and critical, while Kollar knew how to appeal to one's imagination through his passionate ardor, even though his arguments sometimes lacked in depth and discrimination, Safafik and Kollar both worked toward the same end, the first unconsciously, may be, but the other with a design. That end was Slavonic brother- hood, panslavism.
Nationalization had come to the race later
22 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
than to most European people. Although French thought in the eighteenth century- dominated all Europe, and certain Slavonian scholars were thoroughly familiar with the labors of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rous- seau, yet it cannot be said that the national awakening of the Slavs was the work of the French. Paris was too remote from the Bo- hemian Forest, which marks the westernmost Slavonian line. The task of rousing the Slavs fell to their nearest neighbors, the Germans. Herder, Kant, Goethe, Lessing, and Schiller took their first lessons in the mental workshop of the philosophers on the Seine. In their turn, the Slavonians studied under the tutor- ship of these Germans. Though unknowingly, Herder sowed the first germ of panslavism. Herder's belief in the higher destiny of Slavoni- ans, not yet revealed, and his ideal humanity, captivated one after another every Slavic thinker of note. I n his Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit, Herder gave utter- ance to his now famous prophecy, that the Slavonians, until then held in a thraldom of oppression, would awaken from their lethargic sleep, and, freeing themselves from the shackles that bound them, would again recover the ownership of their vast domain, that stretched
PANSLAVISM 23
from the Adriatic Sea to the Baltic, and from the Don to the Mulda, and devote themselves, within the confines of this magnificent heri- tage, to the peaceful cultivation of the arts and commerce. Men like Dobrovsky, Safafik, Kollar, Palack^, Celakovsky. Surowiecki, Kopitar, and Jarnik at once ranged them- selves in support of Herder's theory, helping to disseminate it among their respective peo- ple. Those Slavic lands that lay nearest to Germany, or were tied to that country by his- torical associations in the past, naturally fell first under the Herderian spell. Not without interest is it that Leibnitz, on a certain occasion, addressed himself as a Slavonian to Peter the Great. The monarch and the philosopher met at Torgau in 1 7 13, and during a conversation Leibnitz said to Peter : " We are both of Slavic ancestry. You have wrested the world's mightiest power from barbarism, and I have founded a realm of equal extent. The origina- tors of a new epoch, we are both descendants of that race whose fortunes none can foretell." By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the work of nationalization had already made startling progress. Every new book that left the printing-press, be its theme Slavic phil- ology or history, only made more apparent
24 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
the close relationship that existed between the Russian muzhik and the Bohemian peasant, the Servian shepherd and the Dalmatian fisherman. Simultaneously the discovery was made that, with the exception of Russia, every Slavic country suffered more or less from the oppression of foreign masters, while two or three were threatened with absorption by other races. With such gloomy prospects be- fore them, it was only natural that the smaller nations, anxious to save themselves, conceived the idea of a confederation. The reasoning was perfectly logical. In unity lay strength and power, as the Germans had demonstrated ; in separation, the doom of the Polabians and Lusatian Serbs, now almost wholly extinct, awaited the Slavs. Chief in this movement toward confederation were the Bohemians — the most advanced of all the Slavic races, but at the same time the most exposed to the perils of denationalization. In this way the Bohemians earned for themselves the title of " Apostles of Panslavism."
One of the first, if not the very first, to make an issue of panslavism, or Slavic reci- procity, that being a more accurate term, was Joseph Dobrovsk^ (1753- 1829). Studies in Slavic languages had drawn him to this capti-
PANSLAVISM 25
vating subject. Dobrovsk^ was conscious and proud of his Bohemian ancestry, but he de- spaired of the future of his nation. As Bo- hemians, his countrymen were fated to die, he thought ; as Slavonians, they might survive. Hence he sought and found consolation in panslavism. The extent of the Slavic lands inspired Dobrovsk^. Reasoning further, he came to the conclusion that the Slavs, like the Germans, should adopt one common tongue. In course of time they might even succeed in building up a confederacy. Another Bo- hemian writer who found comfort and assur- ance in Slavic fraternity was Joseph Jungmann. Like Dobrovsk^, he, too, believed it to be a hopeless undertaking to try to resuscitate the Bohemian nation, then almost wholly Ger- manized. Toward Russia, which was powerful enough to conquer a Napoleon, Jungmann turned his hopeful gaze. Slavonians, he as- sured himself, should form a lingual union and select as a common language the Russian, that being the tongue of the strongest branch of the race. Jungmann's views, it may be said, were shared by the majority of the Bo- hemian patriots of that time. Kopitar, a noted Slovene author, advocated the founding of a Slavic Academy of Sciences in Vienna, and
26 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
he made other suggestions that clearly mark him the precursor of John Kollar.
Meantime a current of nationalism had swept over the face of Germany. In schools, literature, public press, and secret societies a war, bitter and uncompromising, had been de- clared against everything French. " Union and Liberty " were the watchwords that went the length and breadth of the fatherland. " When united, Germans were never defeated ; dis- united, always." This was the trend of Ger- man reasoning. Of this teaching the university at Jena was the recognized centre. Safafik and Kollar studied in this school. Already before their coming to Jena both Safafik and Kollar were ardent nationalists. Jungmann, the Nestor of Bohemian letters, had fired their souls with notions of Slavonic brotherhood. During their stay at the university, and under its immediate influence, these sentiments were probably crystallized. Quite possibly it was at Jena that the two Slovaks conceived the ambitious plan of doing for the Slavonians what Lessing, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe were doing for the Germans. Be it as it may, certain it is that Safafik and Kolldr left the university thoroughly convinced that what was good for the Germans must be equally bene-
PANSLAVISM 27
ficial for the Slavonians, and that if the Ger- mans clamored for " Union and Liberty," the Slavic nations must similarly seek unity among themselves. His ideas on the subject Kollar explained at length in a work written in Ger- man in 1837, and entitled On Literary Re- ciprocity among the Various Branches and the Idioms of the Slavic Nation} No new ideas were contained in the book, — nothing that had not been brought out by other Slavists, or that had not been proposed or commented upon by them in newspaper articles or private correspondence or confidential discussions. To Kollar, however, belonged the credit of having reduced to a system the material which had been accumulated by his predecessors and contemporaries. His notion of Slavonic reci- procity and fraternity was after the pattern of other writers. He essayed to make the weak strong by the simple process of associa- tion. Literary reciprocity, as planned by him, would not disturb established institutions, either of State or Church ; above all, it would not lead to the fusion of the various Slavic dialects into a common literary language. All that it required was that a Slavonian who had
1 Ueber die literarische Wechsclseitigkeit zwischen den verse hiedene?i Stammen und Mundarten der Slavischen Nation.
28 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
attained what the writer designated the first decree of culture should learn four idioms — namely, Russian, Illyrian (Servo-Croatian), Polish, and Bohemian. Reaching the second degree, our Slavonian should already be able to command other dialects and sub-dialects ; while he who had elevated himself to the third or last class should show familiarity with all the Slavic idioms without exception. In all cases this knowledge should be lexicographi- cal at least. Benefits from such literary reci- procity would be many. The more powerful branches of the Slavic family would in this manner be constantly reminded of the exist- ence of their weaker kinsmen. To smaller branches, reciprocity would impart strength and assurance ; as long as their mother tongue survived, they would be safe and secure, even though their sovereignty might be lost. All tendencies at separation should be combated and suppressed. Reciprocity indicated to Slavonians the way to their great mission among the nations of the earth. Belated as had been their appearance on the stage of world's affairs, nevertheless a glorious future was in store for them. Even the ways and means whereby he hoped to accomplish his purpose were set down by the author. Among
PANSLAVISM 29
others, he would open bookstores making a specialty of Slavic literature in Slavic capitals, establish chairs of Slavic lan^ua^es, found circulating libraries, publish panslavic reviews, compile comparative grammars, and edit folk- songs. Foreign phrases and expressions he would eliminate gradually, replacing them with pure Slavic words, to the end that the race might sooner reach the goal of a panslavic tongue — a tongue which should be readily in- telligible to all Slavs of whatsoever branch.
Kollar's panslavistic teachings, as expounded in Literary Reciprocity, and in Slavias Datigh- ter, made a great stir in Europe. Many there were who acclaimed them the " Slavic Evan- gel," while non-Slavonians, and of those particularly Austrian Germans and Magyars, assailed the author, condemning his theories as dangerous and subversive.
The South Slavonians espoused the cause of Slavonic reciprocity. However, Ljudevit Gaj (1809-1872), their brilliant leader, believed that the unity of his own countrymen, who were divided by religious differences, should precede the larger union of all the Slavs. With this object in view, Gaj worked for the creation of Greater Illyria, which should in- clude all the South Slavic races, known by
SO THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
their tribal names of Slovenes, Croatians, Sla- vonians, Dalmatians, Bosnians, Crnogorci (Montenegrins), Servians, and Bulgarians.
The Slovaks more than any other people were charmed with the lessons of the new evangel. Kollar and Safafik were their fellow- countrymen, a circumstance that insured in- dulgent criticism for them, to say the least. But, aside from this, there was another and deeper consideration that prompted them to embrace Kollar's faith. To them, threatened as they were by the Magyars, the union of the Slavonians promised security. Hence we see that in the early thirties almost all educated Slovaks rallied around Kollar's banner.
Through students attending the seminaries at Prague, Kollar's panslavism filtered among what there was left of the Lusatian Serbs. John E. Smoler and J. P. Jordan became the acknowledged leaders at home.
Under Alexander I. of Russia even the Poles cherished the hope that the Slavs might eventually group themselves around Russia. Prince Adam Czartoryjski, it is related on good authority, never ceased to remind that democratic and enlightened monarch that Russia should re-establish Poland. After Napoleon I. had broken his promises to them,
y^u^eJ
if&T /& &/o^rcA.
PANSLAVISM 31
the Poles more than ever clung to Russia. Stanislaw Staszic expressed the wish that Russia would begin the great work of re- demption of the Slavs by the upbuilding of Poland. When Alexander died, in 1825, and Nicholas I. succeeded him on the Russian throne, the Poles lost faith in the rectitude of Russia's intentions. Only those of them that lived under the Austrian Government sympa- thized with Kollar's ideas.
The Bulgarians prior to 1848 were all but unknown, and, singularly enough, the " Arch- priest of Panslavism " had forgotten them entirely. For a long time the Bulgarians con- tinued to be an enigma to the rest of the Slavs. Dobrovsky mistakenly thought that Bulgarian was a dialect of the Servian. Kopitar could throw but a feeble light on their lan- guage in 181 5, and even Safafik was unable to describe their exact location or state their numbers in his ethnography. A Moscow newspaper as late as 1827 manifested honest surprise that there should live a Christian people in European Turkey, speaking an un- known tongue that much resembled in sound the Old Church Slavic.
When, after the downfall of Napoleon I., Alexander I. of Russia committed himself to
52 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
the adventurous fancy of a universal monarchy such as the bold Corsican had planned but failed to realize, the Russian court sought to win the good-will of the rest of the Slavo- nians to that scheme. V. N. Karazin, the author, in 1804 called the court's attention to the wretched condition of some of the smaller Slavic nations, and when the Servians appealed to Russia for aid, he implored the Emperor, in the name of the common ancestry and faith which united the two peoples together, to render the help needed. Indeed, this com- munity of faith and origin played an all-im- porant role in all the ensuing wars between the Slav and the Turk. Panslavism was at one time propagated by a class of vision- aries in Russia during Alexander I. 's reign, who banded themselves into secret societies for that purpose. Of this class was a " Soci- ety of United Slavonians," founded in 1823, which hoped to unite the Slavonians into a confederacy. Russia, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Hungary were to be welded into one government, the representatives of which were to have resided in a capital centrally located. Alexander's successor suppressed this and other similar societies, being opposed on principle to every
MAP— SLAVIC RACE
ESTIMATED at 145.000.000 ,„19<H.
I.RUSSIANS. H. POLES. III.F.BOHEMIANSrSLOVAKS.
V. LUSATIANS.
1.1.11. SOUTH SLAVONIANS.
PANSLAVISM 33
radical change or opinion. When Michael Pogodin returned home from his journeys in Slavic countries (1842) the idea of Slavonic reciprocity more than ever began to engross public attention in Russia. What Kollar recommended as to the publication of a Slavic review, founding of libraries, bookstores, etc., Pogodin urged the Russian Government to do at its own expense. Later the term " Slavo- philes " was given by way of distinction to those of the Russian leaders who interested them- selves in any way in the western Slavs. The names of Hilferding, Lamanskij, Aksakov, and others are widely known in this connection.
But, while universally popular, it could not be said that Kollar's all-Slavic ideas were unanimously approved. At first opponents were few. Charles Havlicek, the fearless Bo- hemian publicist, was the first to raise a dis- senting voice. " Slavonians," wrote Havlicek,
"do not constitute one nation but are divided in four nations, each being as independent and distinct from the others as any European nation. Each branch stands by itself, for good or evil ; neither glory nor dishonor is theirs in common. Because of the great similarity of Slavic idioms, it is both useful and necessary for the different Slavic nations to keep up an
34 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
active literary fellowship and to draw recipro- cally from the literary treasures of all. As matters now are, the Bohemians and Illyrians are the only ones who are in position to bene- fit one another, their interests not clashing. For all Slavs to have a common literary language is impossible, and endeavors toward that end are senseless. Let no one point to the Germans, now wedded to a com- mon literature, though greater dialectic dif- ferences separate them than us Slavonians. Among Germans, political unity dates back to earlier times, and the conditions which were instrumental in creating uniformity of letters are wanting among Slavonians. In short, I shall proudly say ' I am a Bohemian,' but never ' I am a Slavonian.' Whenever I call myself a Slavonian, I shall always mean it in an abstract sense, geographically or ethno- graphically. Slavonians have four fatherlands and not one ; Slavonic patriotism is only a shade better than cosmopolitanism."
In 1848 panslavism had reached a new stage of development. Hitherto it had found ex- pression solely in literature ; now the time had come to subject it to a practical test. A revo- lutionary storm had begun to gather in Austria.
The first clash between the Slav and the Teuton came when the Germans, yielding to the popular demand for " Ein freies, einiges
PANSLAVISM 35
Vaterland," met in Frankfort, in March, 1848, and invited the Austrian people to send repre- sentatives to their parliament. Austria was not German, and the Slavonians, who constitu- ted a majority in that empire, resented the idea of being incorporated in the new " Deutsches Reich." As planned by the Frankfort Diet, Greater Germany was to have included Bohe- mia, Silesia, Moravia, and Illyria — lands inhab- ited by Slavonians. The nations living in the Hapsburg monarchy promptly took issue on the Frankfort Parliament. As a rule, the Aus- trian Germans were in favor of sending depu- ties there ; the Slavonians for the same reason bitterly opposed it. The Vienna Government did not know what to do. In one sense partial to the Frankfort Parliament, in another it felt distrust. While anxious to have a deciding voice there, Minister Ficquelmont feared that, eventually, Frankfort might defeat him at home. He had no objection to Austrians taking part in the election, if he could control it. With unrestricted suffrage, the probabilities were that the majority of electors would vote for a republic. " Let us remain Germans, while continuing to be Austrians," declared Ficquel- mont in a burst of wise patriotism. A situa- tion bordering on anarchy was produced, when
$6 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
the ministry at last made public its decision that it would neither order the election nor yet prohibit it, but would leave the right to vote or not to vote to the discretion of each citizen. On April 10, 1848, Francis Palacky, the Bo- hemian historian, received an invitation to take part in the deliberations of the parliament. Unhesitatingly Palacky declined the honor. On the following day, April nth, his letter had already left Prague. The document was worthy of that great historian's reputation. Palacky well knew that his letter to the pre- siding officer of the diet, Soiron, must be broad enough to speak for all the Austrian Slavs, whom the government was either unwilling or unable to protect. " I am a Bohemian of Slavic origin," wrote he to Frankfort, "and whatever I now possess or may yet own I have conse- crated wholly and forever to the good of my nation. Small in numbers is this nation, yet since time immemorial it has maintained its individuality and sovereignty ; true, its rulers have for ages been parties to the league of German princes, but the nation has never re- garded itself as one with the German nation, nor have others classed it as such during all these centuries. The relations of Bohemia, such as they were, first with the Holy German
PANSLAVISM 37
Empire and thereafter with the Bund, were always a pure formality of which the Bohemian people and their Estates took little or no notice. ... It is a matter of public know- ledge that German Emperors, as such, had no relations with the Bohemian nation ; that they were not vested with any rights in or over Bohemia, either legislative, judicial or execu- tive ; that at no time had they the power to levy armies or order contributions of any kind; that Bohemia, including her crown-lands, never formed part or parcel of any of the ten German states of those times ; that the mandates of the highest court of the realm did not apply there ; in fine, that the past connection between Bo- hemia and the German Empire should be re- garded not in the nature of a union between nations, but as a league between rulers. Who- ever now urges that this league of princes should give room to a union between the Bohe- mian and German nations, advances a new postulate, utterly at variance with the past."
The diet at Frankfort was still in session when the following proclamation appeared in Slavonic newspapers published in Austria :
" Desirous of unity, the Germans have summoned to meet at Frankfort a parliament
38 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
which calls on the Austrian monarchy to sur- render so much of its independence as is in- dispensable to German plans, requesting it, furthermore, to join the Germanic Empire with all its lands, excepting Hungary. Such a step would not only result in the disruption of Aus- tria, but would, at the same time, bring about the isolation and effacement of the Slavic races and imperil their nationality. Duty im- poses it upon us to bravely defend that which is most holy to us. The time has arrived for us Slavonians to meet in conference and agree on a common cause of action. Therefore, in response to numerous calls addressed to us from several Slavic lands, we hereby take pleas- ure in inviting all Slavonians from Austria, urging especially men who enjoy the confi- dence of their people and who have the welfare of the public at heart, to meet in the ancient Slavonic Prague of Bohemia on the 31st day of May of this year, to the end that we may jointly take counsel on all matters pertaining to the well-beincr of our nations and which the exigencies of these troublous times require. Slavonians living without the boundaries of the monarchy who may desire to honor us with their presence will be cordially welcome as guests. Prague, May 1, 1848."
Signed to the proclamation were the names of men eminent in letters and public life. Who first conceived the idea of a panslavic
PANSLAVISM 39
congress? It was said that it emanated from the pen of a Croatian journalist by the name of Ivan Kukuljevic — a warm advocate of Kol- lar's panslavism. Be this as it may, the sug- gestion met with instant favor : as a retaliatory measure against Frankfort, and as a warning to Germans and Magyars to cease persecut- ing the Slavonians, the congress promised to relieve a situation that seemed wellnigh intolerable. By June 2d, when it was form- ally opened, there were in Prague, to attend the congress, 42 deputies from South Slavic countries, 61 Poles and Little Russians from Galicia, and 237 Bohemians, Moravians, and Slovaks.
It will be noticed that the committee on arrangements, in sending out invitations, drew a fine distinction between Austrian Slavonians and Slavs in general. The first-named alone were eligible to membership ; non-Austrian Slavs were to be received as guests only. This was by no means unintentional. The Bohemians who were heading the movement were everywhere being made out to be rabid Russophiles, and unless the congress was to stand accused, justly or unjustly, before Eu- rope, of making propaganda for the Tsar, pru- dence and tact made this restriction imperative.
40 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
None the less the promoters were overwhelmed with abuse from the Magyars, hemmed in as they were by disaffected Slavic populations, and by the partisans of Frankfort, the latter asserting that the Slavs were about to set up an opposition " Slavonic Confederacy," to with- stand their Germanic Empire. Document- ary proof is extant to show that, acting on Kossuth's advice, Premier Batthyany lodged a protest in Vienna, in the name of the Hunga- rian Government, against the congress taking place. Failing to prevent it altogether, Eszter- hazy, who represented the Hungarians in the capital of the monarchy, was to have devised a plan, with the co-operation of the Vienna Gov- ernment, whereby the gathering might be made to appear before the world as a sort of Bohemian provincial diet. At any rate the Poles from Galicia were to be deterred, either by threats or promises, from going to Prague. How the congress alarmed the Magyars and how furiously opposed they were to it is proved by the letters of Kollar and Wett, now on file in the land archives at Prague. Under date of June i, 1848, J. Wett writes from Pest: " Great was our joy that we might all meet in Prague on May 31st. However, the moment our Pest newspapers printed an account of the
PANSLAVISM 41
congress, threats of the most violent nature were made by the Magyar public against Kol- lar ; he was given to understand that if he ventured to go to Prague, it would cost him his life." In a tearful letter, bearing the same date, Kollar excused himself to Palack^ for his inability to attend : " A few days ago a Mag- yar soldier sent a message to me through the regimental bandmaster to the effect that he would shoot me on sight if I went to the congress."
Preparatory labors being finished, the very first business of the congress was to issue a manifesto to European nations. " The Pan- slavic Congress now convened in Prague," says this manifesto, " is a novel occurrence in Europe and a new experience for us Slavoni- ans. For the first time since history mentions our name, the scattered members of this wide- spread family of nations have congregated in larger numbers from distant lands, that we might become better acquainted among our- selves and might peacefully and like brothers, as we are, deliberate on affairs that concern us all alike. Not only have we succeeded in mak- ing ourselves understood, as far as concerns our melodious language, spoken by eighty millions of people, but also by our hearts
42 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
beating in unison and by the sameness of our intellectual aims." Continuing, the manifesto explains the difference in the past between the Germans and Latins, invariably bent on con- quest, and the peace-loving Slavonians who, one after another, were deprived of freedom and independence, but now, when the old order of things is about to pass away, have stepped forward to reclaim their lost heritage of free- dom— freedom for all, irrespective of caste or race. " Liberty, equality and fraternity of every citizen is again our motto as it was a thousand years ago." The manifesto defends the principle of equal rights before the law ; reproves the Germans and Magyars for their contemptuous claim to superiority over the Slavonians ; repudiates the charge of " political panslavism," the spectre which had been in- vented by malicious people for the obvious purpose of discrediting the congress before Europe, but against which the remedy is sim- ple— justice to Slavic people ; makes a digni- fied yet forcible appeal to Prussia to desist in her cruel persecution of Poles and of Lusatian Serbs ; remonstrates with the Magyars for de- nying equal rights to Hungarian Slavonians; gives expression to the hope that kinsmen groaning under Turkish despotism might soon
PANSLAVISM 43
be freed. In conclusion the manifesto moves the establishment of a recurrent tribunal of nations for the peaceful settlement of all in- ternational disputes, thus foreshadowing The Hague Tribunal.
Among- the labors that were left unfinished was a petition to the Hapsburg ruler. This demanded the reconstruction of Austria as a federal empire, which alone is capable of guar- anteeing the sovereignty and inviolability of the many races living there. The meddling of Germans — this referred to the Frankfort Diet — in Austrian home affairs should neither be encouraged nor tolerated. What the Sla- vonians contend for is a powerful, sovereign Austrian state.
A multitude of other motions and propo- sitions remained equally uncompleted, for on June 1 2th, exactly ten days after it had been opened, the congress came to a sudden and unexpected close. Prague was plunged in the throes of a revolution.
"The ' Bloody Easter Week' that followed interrupted the work of the Slavic Congress," comments a noted Bohemian. " The dele- gates dispersed, some of them being ordered away, others leaving voluntarily, because it was inadvisable to continue in their work in a city
44 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
under martial law. For this reason, and no other, further sittings were discontinued, the congress terminating abruptly. However, these events only suspended its deliberations, failing to defeat them. Not one of the dele- gates in attendance, much less the municipal bodies and people electing them, relinquished the object before them : to make effectual and final the unification of the Slavonians who come under the Austrian rule ; to secure for Slavonians, in accordance with the grand prin- ciple of equality of nations, those rights, invio- late and inviolable, that are by nature inherent in all people alike ; to elevate the Austrian Slavs to that degree of worth that is theirs by reason of their culture and numerical strength, as compared with the other natives of Austria. The Slavic Congress was intended to lay the first corner-stone of this new policy of brother- hood. The fact that it was interrupted by untoward, uncontrollable circumstances, due to the plottings of enemies, does not justify the assumption that the cause was either aban- doned or that the deliberations were in vain, just as the happenings in Prague had not put a bar to the great mission of the Slavs among civilized mankind, nor diminished the weight of the Slavs in Austria in particular. Agree- ably to an expressed wish of the departing delegates the congress was only adjourned, to reconvene at some future; time, to finish what it had been prevented from doing at its first sion."
PANSLAVISM 45
Although none of the plans of the congress were put into execution, still it cannot be said that it was wholly without result. The good fellowship formed at Prague continued there- after to be a fountain of hope and force to Aus- tro-Slavism. Nor was this the last meeting of Slavonians. Once grown intimate, the newly- found relatives have never again allowed themselves to lose sight of each other. The next gathering of note took place in Moscow, Russia, in 1867, on the occasion of the Ethno- graphic Exhibition, held in that city. Except- ing the Poles, representatives of the entire Slavonic family were present at that meeting. And because the exhibition at Moscow hap- pened to take place in the same year in which dualism had been first put in operation in Austria, whereby Magyars and Germans fondly hoped to make lasting their hegemony over the Slavonians, a hostile press saw more than a mere coincidence in this. It was represented as a threat aimed at Austria. Kollar's phan- tom Slavonic confederacy again began to cast its shadows over Central Europe and to plague the consciences of statesmen. The Bohemian delegates to Moscow, among whom were Fran- cis Palacky, Francis L. Rieger, Dr. Brauner, Charles Jaromir Erben, Baron Villani, Julius
46 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Gregr, and Joseph Manes, were publicly charged with treason. Shortly before his death, Rieger, the venerable leader of the Bohemians, then in his eighty-third year, said, apropos of this shameful calumny, in a lecture which he delivered before the "Slavic Club" in Prague :
" What is the signification of Slavonic re- ciprocity ? Our enemies have invented the word 'panslavism' for it, and persistently claim that we contemplate the founding of a Slavonic confederacy, under Russian protec- tion. Such a contention is manifestly false and absurd. Only the other day a Vienna newspaper criticised me bitterly for having attended the Moscow exhibition in 1867. Can- not an intelligent person go to any exposi- tion he pleases ? If I live thirty years longer I shall still be reproved for making the journey, I believe. At the banquet at Sokolinky, near Moscow, where I spoke, I made it known in no uncertain lan^ua^e that a Slavic confed- eracy was out of question. Slavonic States — I repeat what I had said then — must be like so many chimes ringing in harmony."
At this same ethnographical exhibition Rie- ger declared emphatically that,
" in fraternizing, the Slavs had no politi- cal objects in view. The ideals which were
PANSLAVISM 47
agitating them were not and must not be inimical to the peace of other nations. As always, it is still true that whatever there is in panslavism of a political nature is due to dis- satisfaction of some sort or other. Remove that, and panslavism will have no reason to exist."
In conclusion, let us say a few words about panslavism in Hungary, with special relation to the Slovaks.
To begin with, every Magyar's political education includes a belief in panslavism. A thousand years have elapsed since the wreck- ing of the Great Moravian Kingdom on the fields of Pressburg, but patriotic Magyars still see Svatopluk's ghost hovering over that monarch's former domains. According to a popular theory, prevalent among them, pan- slavism is a dangerous political movement, which is directed not only against the crown of St. Stephen but against Austria and Turkey as well. If a person reads a Slovak newspaper, or salutes a stranger with " dobry den," instead of the Magyar "jo napot," he stands self-con- victed of being a panslav !
At a recent trial of a prominent Slovak journalist for political libel, an intelligent wit- ness for the prosecution was asked as to his
48 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
understanding of the term " panslav." The answer of the witness was that a panslav was one who did not feel himself a Magyar at heart. A professor of jurisprudence defined panslav as a person who was regarded as such in the community in which he lived. At the same trial, the attorney for the defendant, Isidor Ziak, made a remarkable plea for his client :
" Gentlemen of the jury, the verdict you render in this case will be watched with breath- less interest by thousands, nay, millions, of Slovaks. Baron Eotvos has said that one may live without happiness, but not without hope. What a splendid opportunity you have, gentle- men of the jury, to rekindle this hope, now almost dead, in the breasts of the Slovaks by acquitting their beloved writer. But the real- ity is sad, and though it may be customary among lawyers to plead for mercy for clients who stand accused of heinous crimes, I shall not make such an appeal to you ; for, having lost all, let it not be said of us that we have begged in places where justice and mercy do not exist for us."
And the unfortunate journalist was convicted, not because he was guilty, unless it be guilt to love and cherish one's native tongue, but be- ( ause In- was a panslav !
PANSLAVISM 49
Recently a troupe of Bohemian actors from Moravia made an attempt to play at Kosice (Kassa) in Upper Hungary, but the local press saw a dangerous panslavist agitation in the performance and the manager was re- fused the necessary license. For the same reason, panslavism, the choir-master at Kosice was forbidden to render in the church Anton Dvorak's beautiful Stabat Mater. Very no- torious is the case of Rev. John Skultety, who was disciplined by his bishop for having baptized a child by the name of " Cyril." The bishop had no fault to find with Cyril as a saint, he said, but he would not tolerate, in his diocese, the baptism of children by the name of panslavic saints. Skultety 's argument that the child received the name of Cyril because it had been born on that saint's day was futile, and that the Cyril chosen by him was not the great panslavic Apostle Cyril ; the bishop re- mained obdurate ! A student in a seminary who may be fond of Slovak literature is in imminent danger of being expelled for pan- slavist cabals ; likewise a teacher's career is blasted and his name entered on the black list of panslavs the moment he begins to be sus- pected of writing, even clandestinely and under a pseudonym, for Slovak publications.
50 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Magyars like to point to Gabriel Ugron's utterance in the land diet to the effect that "the trees of all the races in the Hapsburg monarchy are planted in other countries than Austria, and that, having no kinsmen in Eu- rope, the Magyars are the only people who are destined to live and to die there." The in- stinct of self-preservation tells them to stand by the empire. Should they become disloyal to it, that moment the dynasty of the Haps- burgs is doomed to fall. History, they claim, has assigned to them the task of stemming the aggression of the Slavs, just as in the past they formed a bulwark against the Turks.
Let us reason a little. If it be true, as Ugron contends, that the various nationalities of which Austro-Hungary is composed have a tendency to gravitate outside the boundaries of that monarchy, and that, for instance, the Germans wink at Berlin and Vienna, that the Servians look for sympathy to Belgrade, and the Rumuns court the favor of Bucharest, whither do the Slovaks gravitate ? Toward the Bohemians, who are their nearest and most natural allies ? Certainly not. To prove the truth of this statement one only needs to mention their separation from Bohemian literature. Do they seek their centre in St.
PANSLAVISM 51
Petersburg ? For centuries the Slovaks have inhabited Hungary, admittedly longer than the Magyars themselves, have fought and bled in defence of the fatherland jointly with others of their fellow-citizens. Yet, how many plots are charged to them to further the alleged cause of panslavism? Not one. Prosecuting attorneys, when trying journalists for political libel, are in the habit of making sinister allu- sions to Russian subsidies. Have these base insinuations ever been substantiated with proof ?
" False, one and all, are the accusations that Slovak nationalists are in communication, in any way, with any of the Slavic committees, or that they receive pecuniary aid from them," angrily retorted Paul Mudron, on one occasion. " If there were an iota of truth in all this, why should the Slovak journals all suffer for lack of funds ? "
But did not the teachings of Kollir, Sa- farik, Hodza, Stur, Hurban, and of the other panslavs lead the Slovaks to revolt against Magyar intolerance in 1848 ? Yes. However, it is equally a matter of common knowledge, even though one may not read of it in Hunga- rian history, that Kossuth issued an ultimatum
52 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
to the Hungarian Slavs in his organ, the Pcsti Hirlap, that whatever rights they claimed to have in the kingdom they must make good, sworJ". in hand. Was there any alternative left after this challenge but to resort to arms ? The Slovaks have time and again sent dele- gates to the periodical gatherings of Slavoni- ans, and this, too, is brought against them as evidence of panslavism and disloyalty. Since when is it wrong to yield to the natural promptings of fraternity and consanguinity ? Surely, it is not in the province of any tempo- ral power to repress that inborn feeling.
v
THE SLOVAKS: PAST AND PRES- ENT.
TTUNGARY is now, and has been for cen- * * turies, a multi-national country. Owinw to its proximity to the Roman Empire, of which at one time it constituted a province, it was the stamping ground of many barbar- ous nations. The Huns, Goths, Gepidae, Lom- bards, and Avars occupied it successively. Now, Magyars, Slavonians, Germans, and Ru- muns jostle one another there. Until recently no one race had an absolute majority, which is very strange indeed, considering the length of time each had been domiciled there.
If we concede the claims of the Rumuns, whose main strength is in Transylvania, that they are the descendants of Roman colonists and of Romanized natives, they may be re- garded as the most ancient living nation in Hungary. Next to the Rumuns in point of antiquity come the Slavonians, known as Slo- vaks in the northwest, as Croatians and Servi- ans in the south, between the rivers Drave and
53
54 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Save, and as Slovenes (Slovinci), sometimes called Wends,1 in the west. To be sure, there were scattered settlements of Germans in the country as early as the Slavonians, but the bulk of the German colonists arrived in com- paratively recent times, after the expulsion of the Tatars and Turks. The same may be said of the Little Russians whose coming is assigned to the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.
"What do we know of Slovak history? Very little. Beginning with the Hussite wars, our knowledge is somewhat more accu- rate. But before the days of the Hussites, that is, before the fifteenth century, the past seems securely hidden. And yet the Slovak people had lived over a thousand years in their fatherland before the outbreak of the Hussite wars."
Such is the mournful admission of Prof. Pastrnek, a noted scholar.
There was a time when Slovakland was pro- claimed the cradle of the Slavic race, the lan- guage spoken there the nearest approach to the Old Slavic, and its people the autochthon- ous inhabitants of Hungary. Recent investiga- tions have, however, failed to sustain any of
'Also incorrectly designated as Winds and Windisch, but since
1S48 officially termed Sloweiu n, Slovenes, Slovinci,
PAST AND PRESENT 55
these high claims and contentions. " To-day it is agreed," says Niederle, " that the seat of the aboriginal Slavs must be looked for in Transcarpathia, in the region bounded by the rivers Vistula and Dnieper." Even the belief in the antiquity of the Slovak dialect is not shared by modern scholars. Some time in the fifth century the Bohemians and Moravians left their ancient abodes, in White Croatia, moving west. Their nearest kinsmen, the Slo- vaks, followed them, taking, however, a more southerly course that led them along the rivers Morava (March), Van (Vag) and Hron (Gran), down to the Danube.1
Here they seized the land that had been abandoned by the Gepidae, the Heruli, and the Rugi, which they have held continuously ever
'"lam really convinced," says Prof. Niederle, " that the Slavoni- ans entered Hungary from the north some time before the fourth and fifth centuries, and if the hypothesis which is being accepted more and more by west Slavonian archaeologists is correct, namely, that the burial grounds known as urn fields, of the Lusatian-Silesian type and which are common throughout eastern Germany of old, are evi- dences of Slavonian culture, marking the footprints, so to say, of Slavonians advancing toward Germany, then in that case we should be justified in assigning the arrival of the Slavonians from Transcar- pathia to Slovakland to prehistoric times. For in Slovakland, too, finds of the same kind have been made: burial grounds near Piichov (Pucho), Domanik (Domehaza), Medovarce (Me'znevelo), and Lisov (Liso). The existence of these grounds proves that those who made them have advanced in pre-Christian times from the Vistula to the valley of the Vah and of the Iiron as far as Ilont County."
56 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
since. Slovensko, the Land of the Slovaks, is first referred to by name in 860 by King Lewis.1 At present, — the ethnical conditions have changed little, if at all — the Slovaks oc- cupy a territory comprising the counties of Pozsony, Nyitra, Bars, Hont, Zolyom, Trenc- sen, Turocz, Arva, Lipto, Szepes, Saros, Zem- pldn, Ung, Abauj-Torna, Gomor, and Nograd, called in Slovak language : Presporok, Nitra, Tekov, Hont, Zvolen, Trencfn, Turec, Orava, Liptov, Spis, Sarys, Zemphn, Uzhorod, Abauj- Torna, Gemer, Novohrad. To the counties here enumerated should be added Borsod (Borsod) with a large Slovak population, Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kiskun (Pest-Pilis), Esztergom (Ostrihom), and Komarom (Komarno). This territory is bounded on the north by the semi- circular chain of the Carpathian Mountains and on the west by the river Morava. On the south and east there is no topographical de- markation. A well-defined ethnical line is all that separates the Slovaks from the Magyars and the Little Russians. How many Slovaks there are in Slovensko proper ~ and in the rest
1 Many writers insist that Slovensko is an unwarranted translation of a Latin name used by King Lewis.
• Says Andrew Kmct: "How many Magyars and Germans are scattered over our territory it i-* hard i<> say, but surely their numbers will not exceed the number of Slovaks who again live in sections
PAST AND PRESENT 57
of the country, is a matter of speculation. Official figures set the number down at 1,900,- 000. The true figure is nearer 2,500,000 or even 3,000,000.
So nearly related in language and origin are the Slovaks and the Bohemians and Moravi- ans that they may be said to have a common history. Between the Moravians and Slovaks, dwelling near each other, the relationship was especially close. From the meagre and con- fused accounts that have come down to us, it would appear that at one time Slovakland formed the nucleus of the Great Moravian Kingdom ; that native princes related by blood to the Moravian reigning house ruled the people from the town of Nitra (Nyitra) ; that the Moravian-Slovak Kingdom extended far beyond the river Danube, into a territory called Pannonia. Over this Great Moravia ruled successively Princes Rostislav, Pribina, Kocel, and Svatopluk. Here it was that the Slovaks first heard the wonderful story of Christ from the Slavonic Apostles, Cyril and Methodius (863). Here, too, the art of written speech was taught to them. Under Svatopluk
other than those that make up Slovakland, so that, if we applied the process of elimination in this particular instance, it would be seen that Slovakland is all ours."
58 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
the kingdom reached the zenith of power and glory. With his death it began to decline, falling in ruins at the memorable battle of Pressburg in 907. What transpired in Slovak- land after the disruption of Great Moravia by the Germans and Magyars has not been made clear. It would seem, though, that not only the Magyars, but the Poles, Germans, and Bo- hemians as well, tried to secure for themselves a portion of Svatopluk's inheritance. The re- sult of the many-sided contest was that the Magyars seized Pannonia and the flat lands between the Danube and the Theiss ; the Germans took the country situated west of Pannonia ; Moravia and Slovakland became the prize of Bohemians and later on of the Poles. Exactly at what period the Slovaks were made subjects of Hungary, is also dis- putable. Magyars pretend to believe that the event occurred during the reign of St. Stephen, the first Hungarian king, who ushered the country into the community of European civil- ization. According to their version of it, King Stephen made a successful war on Mecislaw of Poland, and, taking Slovakland from that po- tentate, annexed it to his own crown, to which it has belonged ever since. It is a significant fact, though, that prior to 1075 no direct refer-
PAST AND PRESENT 59
ence is made to Slovensko in any of the documents issued by King Stephen ; and, while that pious monarch built numerous ecclesiastical edifices in Pannonia and in his possessions on both sides of the river Theiss, it is not known that he erected a single church or monastery in northern Hungary. An old chronicle says that in the year 1000 the Polish boundaries extended to the banks of the Danube. From this it would seem that Slovakland did not belong to Hungary in Stephen's time, but if it did, was all but un- known to the court of that King. The Car- pathian Mountains, overgrown as they were with dense forests, presumably offered few at- tractions to the Magyar horsemen of the plains and no opportunity for exploitation.
Merged in the Hungarian crown, the Slo- vaks ceased to exist in a political sense. Henceforward they began to share in com- mon with the other people the glories and mise- ries of Hungary.
The Tatar invasion of northern Hungary occurred in 1241. It lasted a year. A pecul- iar interest attaches to it because, indirectly, it laid the foundation to the colonization of Slovakland by foreigners, chiefly Germans. Such devastation the relentless barbarians
60 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
wrought there that in many places not a soul was left alive. Only those who sought and found refuge in mountain recesses and forti- fied places escaped with their lives. This condition of things prompted several kings, be- ginning with Bela IV., to invite alien homeseek- ers to Hungary. The Germans were especially favored in the matter of privileges. Besides giving them large tracts of land free, an ex- ample that was followed in several instances by the clergy and the nobility, the crown con- ferred on the Germans the right to be governed by their own local laws and customs. Only judges of their nationality were competent to try them and the testimony of a fellow-coun- tryman was alone admissible. Non-German witnesses were disqualified from testifying. Such numbers of Germans appeared to have taken advantage of these unusual opportuni- ties that in the sixteenth century there was not a place in Slovakland but had German settlers. Eminently builders of cities, these Teutons and their descendants became a for- midable power in the country, in the course of time. Most of the commerce and all of the trade gradually centred in the cities which they had established and to which they success- fully refused to admit Slovaks and Magyars
PAST AND PRESENT 61
alike. Around these towns, some of which were noted for their opulence, was eventually formed a valuable element of Hungarian popu- lation, namely, the middle classes. While the peasants and the nobility continued to hold fortified castles and the villages, the Germans were in control of the cities. During the Turkish irruption many noble families from the south fled there to save themselves from the violence of Mohammedan soldiers. Being fortified and walled, these cities were the only places that could offer any resistance to the invaders. And, because the German burghers would not willingly receive them, a law was passed in 1563, making it compulsory for towns-people to admit within the gates of their cities all refugees, irrespective of nation- ality. At first the law was flagrantly violated, the Germans having powerful influence at court ; but in 1604, after the outbreak of the Bocskay Rebellion, which had found a hearty support in Slovakland, sweeping changes were made in the law. All Hungarians were put on the same footing in the towns and cities as the Germans. This was a serious blow to the privileges and exclusiveness of the Germans ; from that time on their influence began to wane and nothing could save them, not even
62 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
the efforts of Emperor Joseph II., who planned to make Hungary a German-speaking country. It is believed that in the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries the Germans in the Slovak territory must have numbered some 1,000,000 souls. To-day only about 30,000 are left on the boundaries of the counties of Tekov, Nitra, and Turec. A somewhat larger colony has survived in Spis County.
There are but few instances on record of Slovaks rebelling, resenting their vassalage to an alien race. They first gave vent to their political hopes and ambitions in the fourteenth century. Then the Slovaks, led by Matthew Csak (Csaky), otherwise known as " Matthew of Trencin," bade defiance to Charles Robert, the Anjou King. What led to this occurrence may be briefly told : In 1301, the male line of the Arpad kings became extinct. Three reign- ing houses, Bohemian, German, and Italian, who claimed to be related, in some way or other, to the female branch of the Arpdds, offered candidates for the vacant throne. All three claimants soon had supporters in the kingdom, After some deliberation the Es- tates chose Vaclav II., King of Bohemia. That prince, thinking possibly that the cares and honors of one crown were all he cared to bear,
PAST AND PRESENT 63
sent to the Hungarians a substitute in his son, Vaclav III., at that time a boy of thirteen. To this selection Pope Boniface VIII. promptly objected. Vaclav the elder, we are told, was a good-natured, easy going monarch ; and fear- ing violence to his child, and despairing of ever overcoming the opposition of the Roman See, he caused Vaclav III. to leave Buda in 1305 and come home to Prague.
Vaclav's irresolute action, it may be im- agined, was productive of instant mischief. Charles Robert, aided by the influence of Rome, now seized the crown that he coveted, but opposition was strong and almost uni- versal. Powerful nobles rose up in arms against him on every side. He had the throne but not the obedience of his subjects. Of all the rebels, Matthew Csak, the " Lord of the Vah and Tatra," as he liked to style himself, was the most formidable. Nobles, zemans, peasants, and shepherds flocked to his standard and willingly submitted to his authority. From his castle at Trencin, on the river Vah, Matthew ruled over a vast domain comprising the greater part of the Slovakland of to-day. Some thirty fortified castles belonged to him. In splendor and magnificence he vied with the King at Buda. Such was his power and the
64 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
magic of his name that to this day people are wont to call that part of the country where he once ruled " Matthew's Land." Csak held out longer than any of the other oligarchs. Neither the wiles of the King, nor the anathe- mas of the Pope, who had excommunicated him, could bring him into submission. Pre- cisely what his plans were, or for what price the " Lord of Van and Tatra " was willing to lay down arms, will never be known. It may be surmised, though, that the haughty rebel's ambition kept pace with his increasing power, and that when at the summit of his might he dreamed at his Trencin castle of emulating the great deeds of Svatopluk. Why not ? The people were with him. They had not yet for- gotten Great Moravia. Affairs in the country at larofe were unsettled and otherwise it seemed that the time was propitious for a bold move.
Charles Robert, it seems, divined Csak's schemes. Subduing by force or persuasion the nobles who opposed him, he prepared a supreme effort against the chief rebel. With a large army he entered Slovakland. At Rozhanovce (Rozgony), near the river Torysa, the armies of the King and of Csak met, in 131 2. The Slovaks fought bravely ; but they were overwhelmed by numbers and defeated.
PAST AND PRESENT 65
On this bloody battle-field perished, at one blow, the nucleus of a future Slovak state that had been gradually forming around Trencin Castle.
For over five hundred years after Matthew Csak had ended his brief but remarkable career the Slovaks remained inactive. The furies of war had swept the hillsides of their mother country, drenching it with the blood of its defenders. During the war for the Hungarian crown between John Zapolya and Ferdinand I., following the disaster at Mohacs (1526), the Highlands bore the brunt of the fighting, for the Slovak nobility sided with Zapolya. The evil rule of the Turk had come and passed away. The invention of the art of printing, followed by the Reformation, had revolution- ized human thought in Europe. Yet the Slo- vak people could not be stirred to independent action. It was not till the tocsin of revolution had sounded on the banks of the Seine, in 1848, that these children of Svatopluk, like other people who were enthralled, began to feel a sudden longing for freedom. Led by Stiir, H urban, and Hodza, a part of the Slovak nation rose in arms and demanded for itself the same rights for which the Magyars were con- tending with Austria.
66 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Since Svatopluk's time nothing has influ- enced the Slovak mind in a higher degree than the Hussite religious movement in Bohemia. With the high tide of the Hussite wars the Slovaks received from their near Bohemian neighbors a precious gift, a Bible printed in the language of Hus and Komensky, and it was probably this Hussite Bible that saved the nation from extinction, leading it later on to join the Bohemian republic of letters.
The Hussites raided northern Hungary more than once, for Sigismund, who broke faith with John Hus in 141 5, was King of Hungary and of Bohemia both. But these raids were only a prelude to bloodshed that was yet to come. King Albrecht of Haps- burg died in 1439 without issue. It became necessary to elect a successor. Two powerful parties arose at once. Elizabeth, the Widow Queen, gave birth to a posthumous child, known in history as Ladislav the Posthumous. All Slovakland, except, possibly, the counties of Hont and Novohrad, ranged itself on the side of the Queen and of her son. The Ger- mans generally also took up the Queen's cause. The Magyars, however, cast their fortunes with Vladislav I. of Poland. Bitter and relentless civil war was the result. In the
PAST AND PRESENT 67
beginning the warfare was carried on by indi- vidual oligarchs or by people of this or that county. To prosecute her claim more vigor- ously, Queen Elizabeth retained a renowned Hussite captain, John Jiskra of Brandos. This adventurous soldier with his Bohemian troops seized the eastern and middle part of Slovensko. Another captain, Pongrac, held the western counties for Ladislav Posthumous. In 1444 Vladislav fell at Varna, battling with the Turks ; and the Hungarian Estates at last recognized Ladislav's rights to the crown, pro- viding, however, that during his minority John Hunyadi should act as regent. The action of the diet did not stop the civil strife entirely, neither John Jiskra nor Pongrac being willing to recognize Hunyadi's regency. Not until Ladislav was old enough to reign, himself, was there again peace in northern Hungary. Al- together the Hussite troops remained about twenty years. Their settlements were espe- cially strong in the counties of Gemer, Hont, Novohrad, Zvolen, Liptov, Trencin, and Ni- tra. Judging from the solid dwellings and churches they built, it would seem that they intended to settle permanently with their fam- ilies in Hungary. Some of the churches con- structed by them are still standing and easily
68 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
distinguishable by their peculiar architecture. Originally the churches served the dual pur- pose of places of worship in time of peace and strongholds in time of public disquiet. Owing to the Hussites and to their teaching, Luther's Reformation in the sixteenth century found a large portion of the Slovak nation ready to embrace the new faith. During the Reforma- tion scores of teachers and ministers of the gospel came from Bohemia and Moravia to work among the native Slovaks, and, on the other hand, many students from that country went to seek education in the University of Prague. After the disastrous battle of the White Mountain, Bohemian Protestants again flocked to Slovensko to escape religious perse- cution at home. Every new arrival added a valuable element of strength to the literary unity of Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovensko that lasted until the time of Anton Bernolik, who codified the Slovak language and who inaueurated the secession movement from the Bohemian.
March, 1848, is the fateful month which forms the line of demarkation between the old and the new order of things in Austria. Be-
PAST AND PRESENT 69
fore March, Metternich and his invidious sys- tem of absolutism — after March, the dawn of liberty and constitutionalism. On March 3d Louis Kossuth yet spoke of the " poisoned air that issued from the charnel house in Vienna," and already on March 17th events had taken such a surprising turn that he could exclaim joyously : " We have attained all that we con- tended for. From now on our mistress shall be Pest and not Vienna."
The news that Louis Philippe had forfeited his crown to the French republicans in Feb- ruary, 1848, travelled quickly to every corner of the Hapsburg monarchy. All at once the several races began to clamor for civil liberty and equal rights. In Hungary not only the Magyars, but the Slovaks, Croatians, Servians, and Rumuns as well, formulated their partic- ular grievances and claims. In some respects these claims were antagonistic to each other, although by no means irreconcilable, and, un- happily for the cause of freedom in that land, no wise measures had been provided for to bring them into harmony. Hungary's first gift from the sovereign consisted in a re- sponsible ministry ; but this body of repre- sentative men, influenced by Kossuth, almost from the day of its organization committed
70 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
itself to a policy that was certain to offend and repel all or nearly all, save the Magyars.
The first public manifestation on a large scale among the Slovaks occurred on May ioth at Liptov (Lipto Szt. Miklos). Six arti- cles, supposed to contain the wishes of the people, were unanimously adopted. In sub- stance these articles were :
" We demand that our people be permitted to take part in the legislative deliberations of the land, and this not only in law but in fact. And as such participation can alone become real and profitable when conducted in a lan- guage that is intelligible to us, we ask for our representatives the right to speak Slovak in
the diet.
" We demand the right to plead and answer cases in the courts of law in Slovak.
"We demand that the school training of our youth, which is now so wofully neglected, be carried on in the mother tongue.
" We demand a just and equitable represen- tation in the diet.
" We demand for ourselves and shall forever ask that our nationality, which we will never renounce, remain inviolate and inviolable.
" We demand that this petition be made known within the entire jurisdiction of Hun- gary, in Croatia, and Slavonia, and may be brought to the notice of the viceroy and of
PAST AND PRESENT 71
the Hungarian ministry, to the end that all friends of liberty and humanity may plead our just cause."
Unwonted activity pervaded the atmos- phere of Slovakland in the spring- of 1848. Everywhere open-air meetings were held, in larger towns the audiences running into the thousands. Equality and liberty, the mainte- nance and defence of the Slovak language in the schools, judiciary, and administration, were the keynote of them all. The Liptov pro- gram was indorsed by a dozen towns, supple- mented here and there by subordinate local needs.
Kossuth and his followers at first affected to treat the situation in Slovakland with lordly unconcern. What resistance could be offered by an untutored mass of peasants just emerg- ing from mediaeval conditions — a people who hardly knew the meaning of the word " Slovak," preferring in their ignorance to be called Highlanders, Lowlanders, Trencans, Liptovans, Protestants, Catholics, Sarisans, and what not ? Kossuth, himself of Slovak extraction on his mother's side, well divined that it was not Slovakland that needed careful watching. The real danger lurked elsewhere, in the south,
72 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
among" the warlike Servo-Croatians in Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia.
Croatia and Slavonia, although " annexed parts" of Hungary since 1102, are, in a politi- cal sense, as free and independent as Hungary herself. These lands have their home gov- ernment, with a ban or governor at the head, but, by virtue of their relation to the Hun- garian Kingdom, send forty deputies to the parliament at Pest. On matters common to the whole crown, all deputies, including those from Croatia and Slavonia, have a vote ; when affairs are under discussion that concern Hun- gary alone, the deputies from the annexed lands have no voice. In a way, then, Hungary may be said to have two parliaments, one aug- mented, in which all the deputies participate, the other limited to representatives of Hun- gary proper. Dalmatia, which at the begin- ning of the twelfth century was united to Hungary, now belongs to Austria.
The relations between the Croatians and Magyars were not always of the friendliest, and immediately prior to the Revolution they were at snapping-point. Two main reasons were accountable for this hostile feeling. In the first place, most Croatians accused Hun- gary of undue meddling in their home affairs.
PAST AND PRESENT 73
Then again Ljudevit Gaj's scheme of United South Slavonia, or " Ulyria," as he termed it, had legions of enthusiastic partisans south of the Drave. Needless to say that every loyal Hungarian detested the thought of " Illyria."
On March 20th a popular assembly took place at Zagreb (Agram), the Croatian capital, which was attended by many South Slavonians of prominence. This national assembly passed a set of bold resolutions, indorsing the plan of Illyric unity as elaborated by Gaj. Other things that the convention demanded were freedom of speech and press, the election of a House of Representatives intended to meet alternately at Zagreb, Osek, Zadr, and Fiume, and the garrisoning at home of native regi- ments. But the most far-reaching act, as sub- sequent events have proved, was that the delegates present nominated and elected on the spot, as viceroy or Ban of Croatia, Colonel Joseph Jelacic.1
The election of Jelacic by a popular vote was, of course, illegal and contrary to prece- dent ; but the Emperor-King, gracefully yield- ing to the inevitable, confirmed the election
1 Jelacic de Buzim, also spelled Jellacic, or, in the old-fashioned way, Jellachich, is the name of an ancient noble family, originally from Bosnia.
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of the ban a few days before a deputation of Croatians, that was to have espoused their countryman's cause, had arrived in Vienna. If it be true that coming events cast their shad- ows before them, the governments in Vienna and Pest could have guessed what sort of man they would have to cope with in the new ban, judging from the tenor of the mani- festo whereby that soldier convoked the Cro- atian Constituent Assembly a few days after his installation : " That will be the ri^ht course for us to pursue which, disregarding the pres- ent Hungarian Government, will adjust our relations with Hungary along the lines of liberty and independence, as is worthy of a free and brave people."
Among the very first acts of Jelacic was the abolition of serfage. Restrictions were re- moved from the press. A national militia was reorganized. Magyar officials and renegades were removed from office and everywhere replaced by nationalists. Magyar correspond- ence from Pest was returned to the senders unopened. What, however, angered Pest above all, was the issuance by the ban of an order to all municipalities throughout Croatia and Slavonia enjoining them neither to receive nor to execute orders other than those from the
PAST AND PRESENT 75
office of the ban in Zagreb. Plainly this meant the severance, judicial and legislative, of Croa- tia and Slavonia from Hungary.
Encouraged by the apparent success of the Croatian s, the Servians who are massed in the southeastern part of Hungary also began early to show signs of restlessness. Both of Sla- vonic origin, and speaking substantially the same dialect, the Croatians and Servians differ only in the religion they profess, the Croatians being Catholics, and, as such, using the Latin alphabet, while the Servians, who are Ortho- dox, adhere to the Cyrillic.
On previous occasions the Hungarians have succeeded in checkmating the national wishes of Croatians and Servians by playing skilfully on their religious differences. A deputation numbering several hundred persons called on Metropolitan Rajacic, urging him to summon the Servians to meet at once to take counsel on their exclusive affairs. Accordingly, the Metropolitan sent out a call for a Constituent Assembly, to meet on May 13th, at Novy Sad (Ujvid^k). However, an order was issued from Pest, changing the date to May 27th and enjoining the participants to refrain from the discussion of political questions. But the Metropolitan chose to ignore the government
76 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
at Pest, and, as the town of Nov£ Sad had been placed under martial law, instructed the delegates to meet at Karlovac instead. Thou- sands of Servians from every district of the kingdom came to this truly national gathering. Even from the Servian principality delegates arrived. Among the many memorable resolu- tions passed by this novel parliament was one declaring the Servian people politically free and independent under the united rule of Aus- tria and Hungary, creating a " Vojvodina," or " Land of the Servians," and lastly elect- ing unanimously as its chief Colonel Stephen Suplikac. It could not escape notice that the newly-elected "vojvoda" and the ban were brother officers in the same regiment. Also, that the Servians agreed then and there to co-operate harmoniously with the Croatians.
Most backward of all the nationalities in Hungary, the Rumuns, too, were drawn in the whirlpool of discontent, demanding what they considered to be their own.
Portentous events were now fast develop- ing in the several centres of the monarchy. Vienna seething with political excitement, and centre of an agitation which favored the ambitious plan of the Frankfort Parlia- ment ; Prague in feverish anticipation of the ap-
PAST AND PRESENT 77
proaching Slavonic Congress that was to meet there on June 2d, and which was to protest against the bartering of Slavonic Austria to Greater Germany ; Pest on the eve of an open rebellion against the camarilla in Vienna, but at the same time dealing heavy blows to the national aspirations of the non-Magyar Hungarians ; Zagreb distrusting both Vienna and Pest and determined to strike out inde- pendently, if necessary. The Slovak high- landers, who were already wide awake to the situation, fast becoming critical, gave up all hope of relief from Kossuth's government, which spurned them and turned their eyes to the Prague Congress and to the parliament in Vienna. Several bloody collisions between the populace and the military had already taken place, when, on June 5th, the first freely elected Croatian Diet convened in Zagreb.
Imposing in the extreme were the cere- monies of the opening day, and such throngs crowded the old town of Zagreb that the installation of Jelacic, as ban, had to be per- formed in the public square, no building be- ing large enough to hold them. That the Hungarian Government protested against the installation of the " usurper ban " only served to heighten the effect of the occasion. That
78 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
which, however, worried the Kossuthists and Frankfortists more than anything else was the presence in Zagreb, as invited guests, of Bo- hemians, Slovaks, Servians, and Slovenes. H urban, the spokesman of the Slovaks, sent a thrill of indignation through his hearers when he declared that the lot of the Christians in Turkey was far more bearable than the con- dition of Slovaks in Hungary. Opening the diet, Ban Jelacic made this singular utterance :
" If the Magyars are anxious to play the role of oppressors toward us and our kinsmen in Hungary, let them learn that we still remem- ber the saying of that valiant Ban, Erd6dy, ' Regnum regno non prescribit leges' — 'A king- dom shall not prescribe laws to a kingdom.' With sword in hand we shall prove to them that the times are past when one nation may presume to rule over another."
All efforts to reconcile the many conflicting interests seemed unavailing. The Hungarian Diet, which held its first session on July 5th, only made the gap wider and deeper by its haughty attitude toward non-Magyar nation- alities. The mobilization of an army of two hundred thousand men was a challenge to all malcontents, the signification of which could not be doubted.
PAST AND PRESENT 79
The first to take up arms in defence of their rights, real or imaginary, were the Servians. " Vojvodina," with all that it implied, was an idea that every Magyar abhorred deeply, and the Hungarian Government inflicted swift and terrible punishment on all those who either aided or abetted the plan of the " Land of the Servians." Countless numbers of Servian patriots perished on the gallows, and if the Magyars complained of the Servians that they played the role of La Vendee, though the parallel is utterly inapplicable, the answer could be made that even La Vendee had its glories and honors. So brutal had been the treatment of the Servians who were unarmed, and so precarious the position of the brave fellows who had taken the field, that Patriarch Rajacic sent one frantic appeal after another for help to Ban Jelacic. In the name of a common ancestry, and in the name of the just cause that his followers were strugodinor- for, he entreated the Croatian not to forsake his brothers in their supreme hour of trial.
At last the die was cast. Jelacic set his whole army in motion, and with the watch- word, " Stobog dade i sreca junacka," " What- ever God may give and a soldier's luck," he crossed the swiftly flowing and turbulent waters
80 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
of the Drave in three columns on September nth. What the ban achieved, with the limited resources at his command, — most of the sea- soned men from the Military Frontier being absent from home and fighting under Radecky in Italy, — was really remarkable.
Owing to the ban's prompt action, affairs in Hungary at once took on a new turn : the sorely pressed Servians were relieved, atten- tion was diverted from the Rumuns, for the time being at least, and the Slovaks felt reas- sured. Most cruel measures were adopted to " pacify " the last-named race. Their leaders were imprisoned and tortured, and more than one, to recall the names of Sulek and Holuby, perished on the gallows. Among those Slo- vaks who suffered long imprisonment occur to us the names of Rotarides, Modrafi, and Borik. Hurban, btiir, and Hodza were under constant police surveillance, and many were their thrill- ing escapes. Even worse persecutions came when the diet ordered a partial mobilization of the home guards against the Servians and Croatians. Slovak communities, following the example of Tisovec, refused to post the draft, on the ground that it lacked the customary sanction of the King. To reduce the refrac- tory highlanders to subjection, gibbets were
PAST AND PRESENT 81
erected everywhere, and it is asserted that there was not a village alonof the Vah that was not provided with a rough gibbet. Strung up to them, or to the limbs of willow trees, were the mouldering bodies of rebels. Scoff- ingly the gibbets were named " Slovak trees of liberty." Later, when the insurgents en- tered the country from the north, they demol- ished, as they marched, the " Kossuth gallows," as these subsequently came to be known.
Hostile critics require us to believe that the great ban, in striking at Hungary, had other objects than to punish the alleged oppressors of his people, and higher ambitions than the salvation of Austria. That he stood sponsor for liberty and emancipation, they say, was only a bid for popular acclaim. Did he not join forces with the reactionaries in Vienna when the revolution was well under way ? In a sense this was true ; but why, it may be asked, did these self same accusers invoke the military aid of reactionary Vienna to suppress the agi- tation for reforms that made itself manifest in Slovak and Servian territory ? Assuredly what was wrong in one instance should not be claimed to be right in the other. No mean share of the responsibility for the ban's mili- tary undertaking rested with Ljudevit Gaj, the
82 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
editor of the Narodnc Novine Horvatsko Slavon- sko Dalmatinske. The originator and chief exponent of Illyrism or fraternization of Servo- Croatians, a staunch adherent of Kollar, Ljudevit Gaj was Jelacic's right-hand man, clearing the way with his resolute pen for the ban's larger projects.
It is not the purpose of this chapter to re- count, step by step, the many incidents that preceded the rupture between Austria and Hungary — the massacre of General Lambert in Pest, the execution of War Minister Latour by a street mob in the Hapsburg capital, the flight of Ferdinand V. from Vienna, and later his abdication in favor of Francis Joseph I., the stormy sessions of the young parliament, the clash between the Teuton and the Slav for the mastery of Austria, the Frankfort Parlia- ment, and the Prague Congress ranging their respective forces for the series of battles yet to come ; nor of the events that followed it, from the initial successes of the Magyars to the irretrievable ruin at Vildgos ; all these are matters which the reader will find treated in full elsewhere.
Soon after Jelacic let loose his Croatians, the Slovaks, or rather those of them, largely Protestants, who could intelligently grasp the
PAST AND PRESENT 83
situation, resorted to arms. For some time the Slovaks vacillated, being undecided where to look for sympathy and help. Should they form an alliance with Vienna, which was Ger- man, or would their particular interests be best subserved by remaining loyal, notwithstanding an open rebuff by Pest, to the Hungarians? A hard choice it was, with Scylla on one side and Charybdis on the other. At the Slavic Congress on June 3, 1848, Ludevit Stur is quoted as having declared : " You say it is to our advantage to preserve the Austrian mon- archy. Our paramount object is self-preserva- tion. First let us help ourselves, then assist others. Austria has managed to live until now — and we have rotted. What would the world say were we to put on record that our only aim was to save Austria ? " Nevertheless, and despite Stiir's bitter invective, we find the Slovaks casting in their lot with the dynasty.
A story is told of a French peasant who came down from the mountains to buy salt, and in this way was surprised to learn that the French Revolution had begun. Upper Hun- gary is traversed by a succession of steep mountains and rocky defiles, and it will readily be believed that many of the mountaineers, cut off as they were from the outside world
84 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
and destitute of reading matter, like the French peasant, hardly comprehended what all the stir was about. To these remote dwellers Kossuth's name, which was then on everybody's lips, must have come like some tale of wonder. Proverbially docile ; utterly devoid, it was believed, of the warlike spirit that has made the Croatians feared and re- spected by their enemies ; with national pride crushed out of them ; and weighted down by centuries of oppression and neglect, it was thought by all that the Slovaks were incapa- ble of organizing armed resistance. But the unexpected happened, and the despised high- landers, following the example of the Servians and Croatians, took up arms against Magyar tyranny.
Behind the movement stood, nominally, the " Slovenska Narodna Rada" (Slovak National Council). In reality, however, the entire work and responsibility lay on the willing shoulders of Stur, Hurban, and Hodza. Jaroslav Borik, who served in the political section of the Rada, had the misfortune of falling into the hands of the authorities, and he perished miserably. To Zach, Bludek, and Janecek was confided the care of the military preparation of the Rada.
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PAST AND PRESENT 85
The first expedition entered Slovakland on September 17th, from the north, under the leadership of Zach, Bludek, and Janecek. As the natives remained curiously indifferent, the volunteers had to feel their way slowly and cautiously. Moreover, a lack of military train- ing, and, above all, poor equipment must have made it clear to Hodza and H urban that the expedition could not achieve signal results. To add to their woes, the volunteers while engaging their energetic opponents, found it advisable in the early stages of the uprising to keep a sharp lookout on the imperial troops, in conjunction with whom they were supposed to co-operate ; for it often meant a punishment just as hard and swift to be captured by the imperialists as to fall into the hands of the Magyars. At no time did more than eight thousand volunteers respond to Stiir's call. After some minor successes, notably that of Brezova, where they dispersed the Magyar guards on September 2 2d, the volunteers were forced to disband. Nothing daunted by the first failure, in which the insincerity of Vienna played a prominent part, Hodza in October planned another invasion of Slovakland. In the month of November Bludek obtained per- mission from the Austrian Minister of War to
86 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
recruit Slovak volunteers. Bludek really did succeed in raising seventeen companies of them. In Silesia Bludek's contingent was augmented by four companies of imperials and a detachment of horsemen, and this ex- pedition, commanded by Colonel Frischeisen, forced the passage, on December 4th, of the northern Hungarian frontier at Jablunovsky Pass. Near Budatin, on December nth, Lewartowski defeated the Hungarians, but he was finally compelled to retire to Silesia before an overwhelming command. Afterwards, hav- ing joined General Gotz's imperial army, the volunteers once more returned to Hungary, and, retaking Budatin, operated in the northern counties. Early in 1849 Hodza and Janecek's men overran the region along the lower Vah, demolishing Kossuth's gibbets wherever they went. After the battle of Kaplna the insurgent bands were disarmed, thus bringing the Slovak uprising to a somewhat unsuccessful close.
What followed after the downfall of the Hungarian revolution before the combined armies of Austria and Russia is too well known to be recapitulated here in detail. Once more the black pall of absolutism settled over the dominions of the triumphant Hapsburg, sti- lling every expression of liberal and national
PAST AND PRESENT 87
thought, not only in Hungary but in Bohemia and the other states as well. Over night Min- ister Bach filled Hungary with his officials, to administer affairs there " impartially but sternly." No one must now complain of fa- voritism. Magyar and Slovak received equal treatment from Bach and his creatures — both races bein^ made to feel that a foreign master ruled over them. True, under Bach's regime the use of Slovak in schools and local admin- istration became much more general than had been the case under the Magyar rule. Even higher schools here and there were permitted to teach Bohemian-Slovak. Political life, how- ever, was wholly denied to every Hungarian citizen. Bach, the all-powerful, was charged to watch closely and to crush promptly every political movement of the Austrian nations, and contemporaries all agree that his gen- darmes, of whom he had an abundance, did much to please their exacting master. What bitter thoughts must have racked the brain of that impetuous rebel H urban, when he ob- served Bach's gendarmes tracking his foot- steps ! What must have been his estimate of Austrian gratitude !
Mirabeau has said that " privileges die, but the people is eternal." And so it was with
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Bach's system. In less than a dozen years his government by the police crumbled down as a direct result of the Austrian defeat at Sol-- ferino. In the fall of 1859 Bach was requested by his sovereign to " resign."
With the return of constitutionalism to Hungary, in 1861, there was every reason to believe that the Magyars would, in turn, be- come reconciled to the Slovaks, conceding them, at least, a part of the rights demanded in the manifesto of May, 1848. But it is a curious feature of modern Hungarian history, and one that has time and again found fresh exemplification, that every concession made to the Magyars has, in a corresponding measure, worked injury to the non-Magyars. Not that the welfare and interests of the Hungarian peoples are divergent or irreconcilable ; but because the favorite policy of forcible Mag- yarization is fundamentally wrong.
So it proved to be in this instance. When the Hungarian Diet opened, following upon the restoration, non-Magyars became anx- ious. What would the diet do for them, if anything? The sovereign had made peace with the dominant people ; would these evince the same spirit of magnanimity toward their less favored fellow-citizens ?
PAST AND PRESENT 89
No welcome message was forthcoming from Pest, and the Slovaks, impatient of delay, agreed to take matters into their own hands. On June 6, 1861, the leading men of the nation assembled in Martin, and there, amid genuine enthusiasm, unanimously adopted a petition of rights, called by Stephen Daxner, who drafted it, a " Memorandum."
What judgment a thoughtful student of Hungarian politics will eventually pass on the soundness of the doctrines set forth in the memorandum, is of course uncertain. The great majority of Slovaks of our generation indorsed it in full, insisting that it represented the minimal demands of the nation. As com- pared with the manifesto of 1848, the memo- randum impresses the reader as being far more dignified in tone and temperate in claims. Throughout the memorandum one observes a spirit of conciliation, which feature was almost wholly absent in the manifesto. Having made an appeal for harmony and thorough un- derstanding on the ground of community of interest, material and intellectual, the memo- randum urged a complete social equality, easy of attainment when it was once conceded that Slovaks were a separate and distinct nation, occupying a territory the boundaries of which,
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for administrative purposes, could be agreed upon later. In this territory, or "okoli," the Slovak language should be paramount, though not exclusive, in churches, schools, and local government.
A deputation repaired in due time to Pest to present the document to the diet. Baron Revay, Szentivanyi, and Justh, who were will- ing at first to put themselves at the head of the petitioners, backed out at the last moment, having learned in advance that the diet would not receive them. And this is what actu- ally happened. Instead of probing into the justice of the grievances and answering the petitioners frankly, the diet sought to create a public feeling adverse to the Slovak memoran- dum. Orders were sent out from Pest to the highland counties to solicit protests against it. Renegades were, of course, found in plenty, especially among the zeman class, who signed a vigorous counter petition. And this latter paper was afterwards read in the diet and applauded by the legislators as the true voice of all loyal Slovaks.
Failing at home, the memorandists later on decided to appeal direct to the throne. Ste- phen Moyses, the distinguished Catholic bishop, went with a delegation to Vienna. The Em-
PAST AND PRESENT 91
peror-King is said to have received his faithful Slovaks graciously. But, like the appeal to Pest, this pilgrimage to Vienna was also barren of material results.
Realizing at last the futility of seeking as- sistance from without, the leaders now turned their attention to self-help. A happy begin- ning was made in the organization of higher schools, of which the nation was then utterly destitute. The first to give themselves to this promising work were the Protestants, who founded two sectarian gymnasia, a higher at Velka Reviica in 1862 and a lower at Martin. To Stephen Daxner, the father of the " Memo- randum," belongs the chief credit for the es- tablishment of the first-named school. Charles Kuzmany did much toward the starting and successful operation of the other. Soon after, the Catholics opened a gymnasium at Klastor. Following close upon these auspicious events the "Zivena," a women's society, was organ- ized. In 1870, Andrew Radlinsky, with the co-operation of the Catholic clergy, laid the foundation to the " Society of St. Vojtech." The same year (1870), witnessed the incorpo- ration at Martin of a publishing concern on shares, John Francisci having removed his political newspaper, the Vcdomosti, published
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heretofore in Pest, to the new Slovak capital and renaming the Vedomosti to Ndrodnie Noviny. But by far the most eventful hap- pening of this memorable period of national development was the birth in 1862 of the "Slovenska Matica" — the "Slovak fund." The object of the Matica, as expressed in the by-laws which were officially approved in Au- gust, 1862, was stated to be "to publish and circulate Slovak books and works of art, to give lectures on educational subjects, to collect funds for the purpose of aiding literature, arts, sciences, natural history, and researches in an- tiquities, and also to subsidize native scholars and artists, and to offer prizes and rewards for works on science and arts." When the open- ing meeting was held at Martin, the Matica boasted of 984 members, the roll practically in- cluding every Slovak of note regardless of creed. On Bishop Moyses was conferred the honor of presidency ; Charles Kuzmany, a Protestant bishop, was elected first vice-pres- ident, and John Orszagh, another high church dignitary, second vice-president; Paul Mud- ron and Michael Chrastek were elected secre- taries ; Abbot Thomas Cerven, treasurer. About 90,000 florins had been raised by vol- untary subscription, the Emperor-King himself
PAST AND PRESENT 93
contributing 1000 florins. Gratifying in the extreme was the missionary work of the Ma- tica. Books were printed that otherwise could not be published because of the poverty of the authors or the limited number of subscribers. Of the Letopis, which is a kind of chronicle of national events, eleven volumes were issued by this educational society between 1864-74. Chiefly due also to the impetus of the Matica some 150 reading clubs and circulating libra- ries came into being. The lower clergy of both denominations, encouraged by their bish- ops, who stood at the helm, vied with each other in the patriotic enterprise.
The crushing defeat that Austrian arms sus- tained at Sadova in 1866 was of course bound to affect, in one way or another, not only the policy of the Hapsburgs toward their old-time partner and late antagonist, Germany, but the mutual relations of the several Austrian peo- ples as well.
In sullen opposition to the King since 1848, the Magyars, ever on the alert, decided to strike for concessions when Austria, weakened by the war, was least able to resist them. Dualism, the division of Austria in two parts, Austrian and Hungarian, was the direct out- come of the pressure brought to bear by the
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Magyars. Presently we shall see how the Slovak "hordes" profited by Hungarian au- tonomy in 1867.
Once more, but for the last time, the expec- tations of the patriots rose. Owing to Deak's initiative the diet passed, in 1868, the so-called " Law of Nationalities." In substance the " Law of Nationalities" emphasized the privi- leged position of the Magyar, but it recognized, in principle, the limited use of other tongues besides the dominant one, in districts where the non-Magyar idioms predominated. Article 44, paragraph 26, of the law provided that "every inhabitant of the land, irrespective of nation- ality, and every commune, religious denomina- tion and parish had the right to establish at his or its own proper cost and expense elemen- tary, middle and higher schools and to found societies having for their aim the promotion of philology, arts, sciences, agriculture, com- merce and industry under proper state super- vision, to formulate its own by-laws, if not inconsistent with the laws of the land, etc., the language to be used in managing the affairs of such private associations being determined by the founders thereof." Under the law litigants and taxpayers were to be served in their mother tongue. Thus a litigant, be he plain-
PAST AND PRESENT 95
tiff or defendant, could insist on being" heard in the language prevalent in his commune. Likewise the judge was obliged to conduct the trial, examine witnesses and enter the court minutes in the language of the parties to the action.
But alas ! wofully has the " Law of Nation- alities " failed of its purpose. For a year or two it seemed to respond to the ideas of its noble- minded framer. Times changed rapidly, how- ever, and the Magyar, confident of his growing power, again returned to his favorite policy of repression, which he had been forced to aban- don, at least in part, by the events of 1848. Probably the chief reason why the much- vaunted " Law of Nationalities " became an ornamental dead letter on the Hungarian statute-book was that, within a short time after its enactment, the country was stirred to its very depths by the " Magyar state idea."
What is the " Magyar state idea ? " A high government official, at one time a deputy, Adalbert Grunwald is looked upon as the elaborator of this doctrine, though not its originator, for the thought had been born in the reign of Joseph II. In 1878, Grunwald published a work, which he named Felvid^kiek (Highlanders), the guiding idea of which is
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that Hungary must be changed to a homo- geneous country, if it is to have a safe future. To accomplish this end it was necessary to strengthen the Magyar element and make it paramount in the land. To rule was the des- tiny of the Magyars ; to follow must be the mission of the rest. Danger to the state lurked in the national awakening of the Slo- vaks, Servians, and others, and this awakening should be promptly suppressed. A native of Hungary could not be a patriot unless he in- dorsed in full the Magyar state idea. While it might be permissible, reasoned Griinwald, for a peasant or laborer to converse, for ex- ample, in Slovak, a cultured person, reared on Hungarian soil, should under no circum- stances speak, think, or feel, except as a Magyar. A Slovak of education who re- mained true to his ancestry was deficient in patriotism and a traitor to his country. To Magyarize Slovakland was the government's manifest duty, and it should be effected by forcible means, if necessary. The Slovaks were slaves and nature intended them for drudges. Although faithful to their country and brave in war they seemed to have been born to eternal bondage, because the terms "Slovak" and "lord" were wholly incom-
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patible. There was no Slovak nation, only a horde speaking that language. The so-called Slovak party consisted of a few rebels, who should be done away with ; the peasants could then be subdued with ease. To the Magyars was allotted the task of exterminatine the Slavs living on Hungarian soil. A compromise with the Slovaks was impossible. There was only one expedient left — to wipe them out. If the Magyars wished to live, they must in- crease their numbers by assimilating the non- Magyar people.
Very little urging was required to put Grunwald's captivating theories into practice. Who dared to interfere with the ambitious designs of the Magyars, absolute masters in the country since the Act of Settlement ? Un- merciful and quick were the blows that were now to be dealt to the children of Svatopluk.
In the month of August, 1874, the govern- ment ordered the closing of the Revue school ; in January, 1875, followed the closing of the Martin and Klastor gymnasia. There yet re- mained the Matica. But the accusing finger had been raised against that fine institution, and to a few initiated ones it was known be- forehand that a condemnatory verdict had been pronounced against it. Futile was the
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pleading in Pest of William Pauliny, then vice-president of the Matica, and of Francis Sasinek, its secretary. Tisza had made up his mind. To all the eloquent arguments of Pauliny and Sasinek his only reply was that not Slovaks but panslavs were persecuted, and that all the three institutions had been proved to be hotbeds of panslavism. At last Matica's doom was announced officially. Three months after the suppression of the Martin and Klas- tor schools, the charter of the Matica was annulled, the library and the rich collections in the museum sealed, and the fund, which had been raised entirely by voluntary subscrip- tion, confiscated by the government. When Polit, a Servian deputy, called the ministry to account for this high-handed and barbarous proceeding, insisting that the funds confis- cated should be returned, as the by-laws of the Matica provided, to the donors thereof, to wit, to the Slovak nation, Premier Koloman Tisza made the famous utterance on the floor of the Hungarian Parliament, December 15, 1 875, "There is no Slovak nation."
Later an effort was made to reopen a gymnasium at Martin. Would the Ministry of Education give the necessary consent? Trefort thought it would. The law of 1868
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PAST AND PRESENT 99
was apparently favorable to the scheme, for it provided that non-Magyar peoples might estab- lish sectarian middle schools in their respective environs. V. Pauliny-Toth, hoping for the best, announced that voluntary subscriptions would be received toward the school fund. In a month one hundred thousand florins were raised. At this juncture Minister Trefort made the crushing announcement that the gymnasium could not be allowed — and this in direct violation of the law of 1868. How, then, the reader will ask, do journalists, school teachers, writers, and other professionals per- fect themselves in the higher knowledge of the tongue ? The answer is : by diligent pri- vate study. The few hundred communal schools hardly teach its elements.
The Slovaks appropriately describe the years succeeding 1875 as " dark days of persecution." Persecution it is of the most atrocious and merciless kind — the kind of which John Hay complained to the Rumanian Government in his famous note issued on August 11, 1902. Speaking of the cruel ill-usage of the Jews in Rumania, a condition strikingly applicable to the Slovak case, the great secretary then said :
" Shut out from nearly every avenue of self- support which is opened to the poor of other
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lands, and ground down by poverty as the natural result of their discriminatory treatment, they are rendered incapable of lifting them- selves from the enforced degradation they en- dure. Human beings so circumstanced have virtually no alternative but submissive suffer- ing or flight to some land less unfavorable to them."
Longest to resist the encroachments of Magyarization were the church organizations. Protestants of the Augsburg Confession, ex- clusive of Transylvania, number about 1,085,- 000. Of this total Slovaks claim 600,000, Germans 235,000, and Magyars 250,000. For- merly the whole country was divided in four districts or bishoprics, and because the Cis-Da- nubian district had 85 % Slovak communicants, it followed that Slovak Lutherans had the control of at least one bishopric. This consti- tuted quite a bulwark of strength to ministers and teachers in their patriotic work, in schools, churches, and denominational conventions. To the Magyar party, however, the arrange- ment was objectionable, and accordingly a law was formulated in 1894 by which two Slovak seniorates were detached from the Cis-Danu- bian and attached to the Thciss district. By this geometry the Slovaks, as had been fore-
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seen, lost a positive majority in every bishop- ric. Moreover, the government, to secure a firmer hold on the good-will of ministers of the gospel, stood sponsor to the passage of a law in 1898 whereby preachers who enjoy an annual income less than 1600 crowns are entitled to a subvention from the state. The meaning of this will be best understood when it is remem- bered that the tempting law affects almost every minister in Slovakland ! Those suspected of "sentiments unfriendly to the state" — note the application of the particular provision — may not receive subventions.
An event of more than passing interest, al- though without apparent results, was a meeting, in 1895 in Pest, of non-Magyar nationalities, including Slovaks.
i
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.
N the preface to his Literattire in Slovak- land, written in 1880, Jaroslav Vlcek, a recognized authority on the subject, says :
" The Bohemian-Slovak nation is divided politically, administratively, ethnographically, and linguistically into two unequal parts, the development of which has been totally differ- ent both in manner and trend. The first part embraces Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. It has a glorious past, all its own, which reached its culmination during the Hussite wars, waged to free man's conscience and secure spiritual free- dom from the thraldom of the Middle Ages. It has a rich blossoming literature, the golden flow of which is traceable long prior to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lastly, because of its rejuvenation, that should be regarded as the most remarkable occurrence in the history of mankind, it is recognized by all unprejudiced observers as a separate body politic, occupying a respectable place in the history of European culture.
" The second and smaller part of the nation, which inhabits northern Hungary, lost its polit- ical independence after the battle of Pressburg
102
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(907), hence as early as the dawn of the tenth century, and history is silent in regard to it. But this is only seemingly so, for it has never ceased to contribute its quota of culture, of letters, of military force, and of leaders of thought to the land into which it has been merged. Its legions battled in the crusades, against the Turkish hordes which repeat- edly invaded the fatherland, and rallied under every insurgent banner of the time, but all this was done under the name of ' Hungary.' The world is ignorant of its existence, and its literature is barely a century old.
" One name alone shines through the void of Slovak history since the downfall of Great Moravia, namely that of Matthew Csak of Trencin, ' the Lord of Vah and Tatra,' who tried to unite Slovakland with Bohemia in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Yet even this name suddenly vanished like the flight of a meteor. The single figures of Pongrac of Liptov, an illustrious Slovak lord; of Matthew Korvin, who was reared in the atmosphere of Slavic thought in Bohemia, and conferred patents framed in Bohemian on a number of towns in Upper Hungary; of Vladislav II., who likewise corresponded in that language, opening Hungarian Diets in Bohemian, and of a few others who in their respective times were familiar with Slavonic tongues; all else has disappeared behind an impenetrable screen of Latin which helped to obliterate every expres- sion of thought and racial characteristic of the
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people, from the time of St. Stephen to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
" And just as all traces of the Slovaks taking an independent action in the events of the world's history are lost to us, so the fact is ob- vious, too, that the native language, sheltered as it was by the nature of the country and cut off from intercourse with the outside, had failed to develop and to keep pace with its more powerful kin in Bohemia. The levelling influence of Latin in the Middle Ages appears overwhelming in Slovakland. Nowhere is ob- servable any literary movement, not even signs of any home culture whatever — of civilization that had not been transplanted thither from elsewhere. The Hussites entered the country and settled there in the middle of the fif- teenth century (1440). Especially they over- ran Nitra, Novohrad, and Zvolen counties. A portion of the inhabitants adopted their re- ligion, and with it the language of the Kralic Bible, for liturgical purposes. Yet the people remained unmoved. A second stream of Bo- hemian exiles followed the first, and after the battle at the White Mountain in the seventeenth century Slovakland welcomed to its hearth John Amos Komensky and other Bohemians of renown ; Slovak evangelical preachers re- ceived into their safe-keeping writings of the so- called golden era of Bohemian literature, books that were condemned to be burned at home; in- dividual Protestant clergymen went to Prague to acquire education there and composed theo-
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logical works, translated Bibles, compiled hym- nals, edited prayers and sermons. However, all this was not literature, only a series of dog- matical, apologetical, polemical, and theological writings and pamphlets, designed almost ex- clusively for the use of evangelical clergy and influencing, and that only to a degree almost imperceptible, the adherents of the Protestant faith. The bulk of the people remained in its former condition of intellectual torpor, unpro- gressive, immovable.
" Meantime Bohemia lay in the throes of a lethargic sleep. The Bohemian language, having been ruthlessly suppressed everywhere except in the wretched hovels of the peasantry, had been deprived of its right and power. From 1620 to 1820 Bohemia virtually did not exist. Property rights may be said to have been for- feited during this lengthy period. . . .
" It was the impulse of religion which laid the foundation of native literature in Sloven- sko. In the year 1718 a zealous Paulist monk, Alexander Macsaj, began to publish his harangues in a subdialect current around Trnava. His evident object was to get nearer to the comprehension and sympathy of the com- mon people. The innovation was obviously meant as a rebuff to the Protestants and it served to pave the way for Bernolak. A modest opening it was ; yet it made receptive the home soil for literature that was to sprout up later.
" The close of the eighteenth century was at
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hand. The reign of Maria Theresa and of Joseph II., while freeing the human mind in one direction, endeavored to fetter it in another by forcible Germanization. The French Revolu- tion shattered one after another the last rem- nants of mediaeval cults, fetters, and prejudices ; here and there were seen, illuminating the im- penetrable darkness, flashes of Slavic literature, emerging into life. All of them found inspi- ration in the grand idea of a national awaken- ing. In Russia, and especially in Little Russia, the native language sought to liberate itself from the deadening- influence of the Church Slavonic. A new light penetrated into Bo- hemia and the South Slavic countries.
" Slovakland at this juncture outstripped Bohemia, and this finally decided the fate of its literary language. The Slovaks nowhere hearing a word of Bohemian, which had been stamped out by the hoofs of mounted dra- goons ' and placed under the ban by anti-re- formers ; and, moreover, as Catholics, not being tied to it by tradition, grasped at the living tongue of their own people, a course as logical as it was natural. A band of patriots with Fandli, Bajza, and Bernolak at their head took hold of the language that had been som- nolent for eight hundred years, and began to mould it to literary uses. Bernolak issued the
1 During the Thirty- Vears War, missionaries accompanied by mounted troops visited one village after another, burning Bohemian books and Bibles. Liechtenstein s dragoons were especially notorious in this wanton work.
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first Slovak grammar and a compendious Slovak dictionary. Benefactors came forward, chief among them being Prince Primate Alexander Rudnay, who generously aided the literature which was being ushered into life. Poets were born, Holty foremost of them, who sang for the first time familiar native songs which, despite their strange classic form, were nevertheless Slovak. H owever, Bernolak's dialect made slow headway in popularity, partly owing to the op- position of the Protestants, and partly because of its inherent imperfections. Bernolak, who labored in the neighborhood of Nitra and Pressburg, chose for his literary language, in- stead of pure Slovak, the faulty subdialect of these counties, the so-called Bohemian-Slovak. Equally defective was Bernolak's orthography, being purely phonetic, illogical, and lacking connection with the other Slavonic languages — a veritable linguistic jumble. It was a work faulty not alone in principle but in construction as well ; still, itwas the first signal effort to bridge the differences between the so-called Biblical, then dominant, and the Slovak language.
" The nineteenth century was opening. Once more vigorous breezes blew from west- ern Europe, breezes of liberty, and the Slovak people, heretofore immovable, were set in motion with the rest of the big Slavic family. The needs of the people multiplied, and all that was required was to throw a spark into the smouldering mass, appealing to it in a voice that all would at once recognize as their
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own. The Catholic and Protestant clergy, who had been defying one another all along, the first displaying marked partiality to Latin and " Bernolacina," the other with equal per- tinacity upholding the Biblical Bohemian, con- sented to listen to the conciliatory arguments of Ludevit Stiir, a great reformer, who, having grasped the situation, contrived to isolate Ber- nolak's dialect, and in the year 1844 with nu- merous followers (the young Protestant party) came forward with a dialect that is spoken in eight central Slovak counties, and which in miniature represents all Slavic tongues, not even excepting the Old Bulgarian, being besides melodious, sonorous, and chaste. The confusion which arose through the adoption of Stur's tongue and the retention of Bernolak's orthography, added to that of numerous syn- tactical and other errors and imperfections, were gradually removed by Hodza, and finally the work was systematized by Professor Martin Hattala, who gave the language a scientific and Slavic finish. This explains all. The philo- logical convention of Pressburg (1852), that completed the reform in orthography, was the means of firmly and lastingly uniting both factions, hostile to one another for cen- turies, namely the Catholic (lately Berno- lak's) and Protestant (Stur's) in one common tongue, which in due time took a position among other Slavic literatures as its youngest sister.
" From this it will be seen that Slovak liter-
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ature, as such, is the product of the nine- teenth century.
" But while it is admitted that the Slovak dialect was called forth by an urgent need, and while the innovation always had and now has a wide and appreciative public in both liter- ary and journalistic fields, yet purely scientific literature can never thrive in Slovakland, lack- ing as it does the requisite sources of material support. . . .
" The ties of culture that unite the Bohe- mian-Slovak nation are strong and indissolu- ble, and, notwithstanding the fact that the two peoples have parted, their literatures appear to us as a literary unit, forming a circle within a circle and supplementing one another as surely as that Slovakland and Bohemia are one linguistically, nationally, ethnographically, and geologically.
"Slovak belles-lettres may therefore be di- vided into two periods : the first period begin- ning from Bernolak's time and ending with Stiir ( 1 783-1844), the second from Stiir to the present day (1845-1880)."
Exactly what position should be assigned to Slovak in the family of Slavonic languages is a question on which philologists are not agreed. Is it entitled to an independent place along with the Russian, Polish, Bohemian, Servo- Croatin, and others, or should it be classed as a dialect of the Bohemian, to which latter it
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bears a striking resemblance in sound, gram- mar, and intonation ? Certain it is that no two Slavonians understand each other as readily as a Bohemian and a Slovak. What renders an accurate classification difficult is the fact that, but for fragments of songs, nothing is known to exist of early Slovak literature. If there were any, the evidences of them are now lost, or lie hidden, as is believed by some, in the still unexplored libraries of Hungarian magnates having estates in Slovakland. The " father of Slavic philology," Joseph Dobrovsky, added the weight of his authority in favor of the linguistic independence of Slovak. So did Safarik, at first, in a German work published in 1826. Later on, and having examined the subject more thoroughly, Safarik changed his mind. He thought he recognized in Slovak an old form of Bohemian. According to his version of it, the rustics in Bohemia and Mo- ravia, like all country people, indulged in local mannerisms of speech, yet on the whole devi- ating but slightly from the written standard. This, Safarik claimed, was not the case with the Hungarian Slovaks. Living in a rough and mountainous country, far from the refining influences of seats of learning, and without any national centre to unite them, they drifted
LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE in
more and more from the accepted forms of speech. It is on this hypothesis alone that we can account for the bewildering- multitude of dialects and subdialects that were evolved in Slovakland in the course of centuries. Jagic, having pointed out all the structural and lexi- cographical variations, sums up by saying that " science is justified in regarding Slovak and Bohemian as two constituent parts forming a unity in the group of Slavic languages." Florinskij took the same ground as Dobrovsky. In a treatise on the subject he enumerated no less than sixteen instances wherein Slovak is supposed to vary from its Bohemian sister. Already the geographical situation of the Slo- vaks toward the other Slavs seemed to justify, in Florinskij's judgment, the assumption that their idiom is a distinct one. Slovak shares all the peculiar characteristics of the languages which it borders — Bohemian here, Polish there, Russian and Servian where it mixes with those kindred tongues. Though nearer to Bohe- hemian than to any other Slavic language, reasons Florinskij, it nevertheless must be treated under a distinct head. Ludevit Stur had this to say in praise of his mother tongue :
" Viewed from the standpoint of philology,
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Slovak appears to us as a distinct and separate language, without which it would be impracti- cable to formulate a comparative grammar of Slavic tongues, because it forms a connecting link between them all."
Dr. Samuel Czambel, in one of the latest works on the subject {Slovdci a ich rec, 1903), also essays to prove the independence of his mother tongue. But if truth must be told, all the great philologists oppose Czam- bel and the other grammarians who hold with him.
Be it as it may, the fact remains that until Bernolak's time (1 762-1813) writers of Slo- vak birth, such as Daniel Sinapius (Horcicka), Daniel Krman, Matthew Bel, Bohuslav Tab- lie, George Palkovic, Stephen Leska, George Rybay, etc., all composed their works in Bohe- mian. Especially was this true of the Protest- ants, who have always remained faithful to the Bohemian. It is not without interest to know that Slovak Protestants to this day use Bohe- mian hymns, catechisms, and Bible. Indeed, the holy book has never been translated into Slovak.
Many reasons there were that led to the lit- erary secession from the Bohemian. Religious zeal and the ever-increasing antagonism be-
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tween the Catholics and Protestants were probably the chief contributing causes.
Then there was the cry : " Write as you speak ! " At home the people used Slovak ; in the church the preacher conducted services in Bohemian. That was a situation admittedly incongruous. " The present style of writing affected by Bohemians," wrote Safafik to Kol- lar in 1827, "can never become popular among Slovaks. . . We authors must play the role of Brahmins, of priests, whose sermons the people will not understand." Again, the terms "Slovak" and " Bohemian," each owing allegiance to a different country, were a serious obstacle to lasting unity.
Still another reason was that the Magyars neglected no opportunity to remind their Slovak brothers-in-law that Bohemian was a foreign language in Hungary. After the death of Joseph II., who had dreamed of making Hungary a German state, as related elsewhere, the Magyars founded, in 1 791, a chair of the Magyar language and literature at the national university. Jealous of this signal achieve- ment, the Slovaks also demanded some con- cession for themselves from the government. But as Bohemian was being stigmatized as " foreign " and inadmissible, the Catholics, in
8
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1793, formed a "Slovak Learned Society" for the cultivation of their own tongue. In this way they hoped to obtain in the future what was denied to them at that time.
Then aeain, between 1620- 1820 Bohemian had been practically dead in its own home. Expelled from schools and administration by the promoters of the anti-reformation move- ment— become the language of an ignorant and brutalized peasantry — how could it defend its rights in Slovakland when it was helpless on its native heath ?
Finally, why should the Catholic Slovaks favor Bohemian ? Surely no such reverent tradition and affectionate ties bound them to it as was the case with the Protestants. On the contrary, they had every reason to dislike it. It will be remembered that in the fifteenth century the Hussites, led by John Jiskra, of Brandys, had overrun Upper Hungary. The settling in Slovakland of these warriors, whom religious persecution had driven from Bohe- mia, was productive of far-reaching results. In the first place, the Hussites had sown the first seed of Protestantism among the people whose country they had invaded. Secondly, they imposed on the natives their idiom, forc- ing it to the front in schools and churches, and
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to a certain extent in communal affairs, to the exclusion of Latin. Most important of all, the Hussites brought about the regeneration of the people in a national sense. In the seven- teenth century, after the disastrous battle of the White Mountain, thousands of Protestants from Bohemia again flocked to Slovakland. The relations which spring from common faith were cemented anew. Naturally, the Catholic clergy could not remain indifferent, seeing what inroads " the religion imported from Bohemia " was making among the faithful.
Already before Bernolak's time the separat- ist tendencies were more or less noticeable. It may be laid down as a general rule that, while the Protestants always adhered scru- pulously to the chaste model of the Kralic Bible, the Catholics from the very start seemed to favor local forms of speech. Every pamphlet that came out in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the Catholic presses showed these grammatical deflections. In the six- teenth century two Bohemian letters, f and e, were dropped altogether, and such forms — typi- cal of the Slovak of to-day— /#' nesem (I carry), instead of the Bohemian jd nesu, otcowho (father's), instead of otcom, were introduced. Numerous words foreign to Bohemian, were
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adopted, z&vidiek (highland), raz (once), pdcit (to please), robit (to work), neskor (later), and so forth.
Slowly but steadily the divergence grew. Alexander Macsaj, a Paulist priest, published at Trnava, in 1718, a harangue in defence of the Catholic faith, in the " Slovak language." A bolder secessionist than Macsaj, and ad- mittedly more intelligent, was Joseph Ignace Bajza, also a priest, born in 1 754. While Macsaj wrote at haphazard, seemingly with no definite object in view, there was clearly a method in Bajza's composition.
To Anton Bernolak, however, belongs the full credit of inaugurating the separatist move- ment and making it a success. It was he who codified Slovak. Before Bernolak's appear- ance, one could not speak of Slovak literature, — rather, of literature in Slovakland. Born in Slanice, in the county of Orava, on October 14th, 1762, of the lower class of nobility, the "zemans," Bernolak was destined by his parents for priesthood. Slavic lore attracted him from his early youth. As a student of theology, in the seminaries at Trnava and Pressburg, he conceived, and later executed, a scheme whereby his mother tongue might be adapted to literary uses. With that end in
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view, at the age of twenty-five years, he pub- lished a Latin treatise. In 1790 appeared his grammar, a book in which the author's ambi- tious plans were set forth in full. H is " lexicon," which is quite an exhaustive and laborious work, was published between 1825-1827, thanks to the munificence of Canon Palkovic.1 Crude in material and replete with faults that even his admiring friends could not overlook, the first two volumes by the youthful priest had a startling effect. The Protestants ranged them- selves in sullen opposition to the innovating theories of Bernolak. But that was to be ex- pected. On the other side, all the Catholic clergy promised to support him. Time had proven that the author committed several errors of judgment. An irremediable mistake was that he chose the wrong dialect on which to build. Matthew Bel already guessed the truth when he said that the richest and purest dialect was the one spoken about an equal dis- tance from the seats of the Bohemians, Mora- vians, Poles and Magyars, and called, from its location, " Central Slovak." This self-evident
1 Many books printed in the " bernolacina " were issued at the expense of Alexander Rudnay, Cardinal Primate of Hungary, who is famous for his words: " Slavus sum; et si in cathedra Petri forem, Slavus ero ! "
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fact Bernolak either did not know or would not admit. He had recourse, instead, to the Trnava and Pressburg dialects ; whether he wished to compliment the Catholics, predom- inating there, or, as seems more likely, because more men of letters and publishers flourished around these parts than elsewhere, is unknown. Still another bad feature of Bernolak's lan- guage was its phonetic mould. To the one rule "Write as you speak "he subordinated every other consideration. Letters f, e, u, etc., which are not sounded in Slovak, he urged, should be eliminated altogether; and he advocated the adoption of consonantal combinations dz and dz. Even the logical connection between his creation and the other Slavonian tongues was lacking. Nevertheless, the " bernolacina," as it became known, endured some sixty years.
In order to make his innovation popular, Bernolak placed himself at the head of the " Society for Slovak Literary Art," every member of which had to take a pledge to further the work. Joseph Bajza, George Fandli, Adalbert Arady, Simon Falbi, Anton Dattel, George Holly, Joseph Nejedty, and Anton Saffarovic all enrolled as members of the society or lent their aid. Trnava, having a Catholic college, was chosen as a center of
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this movement, and in time, branches, with bookstores in each, were established at Nitra, Rovna, Banska" Bystrica (Beszterczebanya), Jager (Eger), Roznava (Roznyo). " The Society of the Friends of the Slovak Language and Literature" was another body that was organized to propagate Bernolak's language.
Whether it was jealousy or a desire not to be outdone by the Catholics, the Protestants, too, began to band themselves into literary societies. An " Association for the Advance- ment of Slovak Letters " was founded about this time by Bohulav Tablic, George Palkovic, M. Hamaliar, L. Bartholemaeides, M. Godra, and S. Cernansky. Owing to the extreme poverty of its members, the association did not last long. But already in 1803 a new organi- zation, having ample means at its disposal, took up the place of the defunct one. The " Institutum Linguae et Literaturae Slavicse," for the promotion of Bohemian-Slovak, is justly celebrated in the annals of Slovakland. The lecture-rooms of the institution in the Evan- gelical Lyceum at Pressburg, swarmed with patriotic youth. Under Ludevit Stur, the In- stitute reached the zenith of its renown. The last association of this kind among the Protes- tants was the " Slovak Literary Society at
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v
Banska Stiavnica" (Selmecbanya). J. Holuby, B. Tablic, J. Seberiny, A. Lovich, and J. Rybay were its founders. This latter-named society was instrumental in establishing a chair of Bohemian-Slovak language and literature at the Evangelical Lyceum at Banska Stiavnica. Still another literary schism was to come in 1 843- 1 844. This time it was the young Protestant party, led by Ludevit Stiir, that decided to secede from the Bohemian. His- tory has shown that Stiir was actuated by the loftiest of motives in taking this step. It grieved this zealous patriot to see his little nation torn up in so many factions. He sincerely deplored the centrifugal tendencies in the ranks of the Catholics. Unless checked in time, he believed there would be a complete rupture between them and the Protestants. Stiir was convinced that there must be some medium of under- standing between those two hostile factions, but what was it ? That " bernolacina " would ever unite Catholics and Protestants, he doubted. How to win back to the Slovak cause the renegade " zemans," with their well- known aversion to Bohemian, was another matter that occupied Stur. With the " zemans " in the ranks, the nation's fighters would find invaluable allies. Again, he perceived the
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need of awakening his people from their long sleep. Great events were imminent, and he felt that his people should be ready when the time came. How was he to strike the right chord in their hearts ? Stiir's intuition told him that it was useless to make an appeal in Bohemian. He must commune with his people in the tongue in which they prayed and sang, the tongue that alone was natural to them, and that was Slovak. Stiir went to work, and in due time the tenth Slavic language was born.
Thinking to profit by Bernolak's blunder, Stiir decided in favor of a dialect which obtains in the counties of Liptov, Orava, Turec, Upper Trencin, Upper Nitra, Zvolen, Tekov, Hont, Novohrad, and a part of Gemer. As far as concerned the dialect, the choice was a happy one. Here, in the depths of the Tatra Moun- tains, was a rich language, apparently least affected by surrounding influences. Unfortu- nately, the grammarian made the same fatal mistake as Bernolak. He adopted the pho- netic system.
Now Slovaks had three different schools of writing :
The Catholics continued to use " berno- lacina."
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The young Protestant party favored gener- ally Stiir's dialect, which was called " sturstina."
The older writers, like Kollar and Safafik, remained faithful to Bohemian-Slovak.
Bitter quarrels, lasting for years, broke out.
The Bohemian literary institution " Matice Ceska" issued a warning "About the need of one literary language for Bohemians, Mora- vians, and Slovaks."
" A number of the younger Slovak literary men [wrote Francis Palacky in 1846] began last year against the advice and entreaties of their colleagues to again lay the foundation of a new Slovak literature, which might be designated, by way of distinction from those previously tried, a Tatra literature. Lacking knowledge and experience, these men have taken a course that must lead them and their followers direct to destruction and ruin. If any of the Slovak dialects had found their way, within the last years, into legislative bodies and county conventions ; if laws had been framed therein ; if it were the language of the executive and of the higher schools, then hopes might be entertained that some- time it might usher into life a new literature, though it could boast of none in the past. Now, however, when Slovak is almost pro- scribed by law and excluded from the diet and the administration ; when the Magyar, follow-
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ing in the wake of victory, is beginning to force its way, with the aid of the state, into the very village school ; when the higher classes have deserted Slovak almost to a man for the Magyar cause, and the nation, weak numeri- cally, is bound to look for support to the middle and lower classes and, therefore, mostly poorer classes, who are, besides, divided and antagonized by several subdialects ; who have nowhere a public social life, nowhere indepen- dent centres of their more important affairs ; who are forsaken by every one, who struggle between life and death, and feel themselves whirled irresistibly into an all-engulfing vortex — it is a mistake, fatal and grievous, to think of such a work, to incite anew old disputes, to weaken by division forces that are already weak, perhaps to lose sight, in the heat of a new strife, of the principal object."
Jonas Zaborsky, addressing Caspar Fejer- pataky, argued as follows :
" You want the Slovaks to discontinue the Bohemian and to write in their mother tongue. Which of the Slovak dialects, however, will you choose for that purpose ? Will it be the Liptov ? the Trencin ? the Sarys ? the Gemer, or Lord knows which ? Can you not see that there are as many dialects in our land as there are counties ? That these dialects vary as much from one another as they all differ from the Bohemian ? Which one, pray,
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will you elevate to the dignity of written lan- guage ? Your answer will be : none of them ; that you will select and retain that which is best in all. But what dialect will you use as the groundwork, and who is to decide what shall be added thereto from other dialects? Friend, we should not give up the Bohemian, not so much for the sake of unity with the Bohemians, but in the interest of our own unity. Suppose we were successful in im- proving the grammar. Yet, in a lexicographi- cal sense, we will not, and in the nature of things cannot, have our own language. All the terms relating to higher, abstract notions, all the words in the realm of science and art, must be taken from the Bohemian storehouse. Create a literary language to-day, and you will find that you will not make yourself one iota more intelligent to the Slovaks. The poor qual- ity of our literary productions, which is due partly to the wretched condition of our schools and partly to the lack of public libraries, should deter us from trying to build up an indepen- dent literature."
" As matters are [pleaded John Kollar], Sla- vonians are already so divided, cut up, lacer- ated, scattered, and dismembered, externally and internally, that it is a treason to reduce these particles to atoms almost invisible ; on the contrary, the person would deserve well who would undertake to weld into one the many detached fragments. Other nations have shown us the way a long time ago. The ocean
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divides North America from England, and yet these countries have but one literary tongue. Among Germans, how many local forms of speech, dissimilar from one another, there are ! The Kralic Bible originated in Moravia. Komensk^, Zerotin, Ctibor, and other shining stars of the first magnitude in the old literature, were Moravians. Tranovsky was a Silesian by birth. Cernansky, Dolezal, Hruskovic, Semian, and other Slovaks wrote correct Bohemian. Some of the foremost Bo- hemian writers of recent times, whose names will live for ages in the history of Bohemian letters, belong, by birth, to Moravia and Pan- nonic Slovakland."
All appeals for harmony were in vain. One thing became evident even in the heat of the quarrel — namely, that a return to Bohemian was out of the question.
M. M. Hodza published, in 1847, what he called Epigenes Slovenicus, and a year later VUin o slovencine, and in both of these philo- logical works he tried to prove that the system of phonetic spelling, which was adopted by Bernolak and Stiir, could not be maintained. Unless the langugage was reconstructed on an etymological basis, confusion and dishar- mony were bound to continue. It appears that Hodza's books came out at a propitious
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moment ; every one seemed to be getting tired of the endless bickering. The two great par- ties, Bernolakists and Stiirists, were both will- ing to make mutual concessions. Peace was desired above all. Accordingly a conference was arranged between representative men at Cachtice (Csejte), in 1847, and the following resolution was passed : " It is agreed that a special philological commission be chosen which shall pass on the work of Michael M. Hodza, Epigenes Slovenicus, treating of the theory of our language and its grammar."
The most prominent writers of the two war- ring factions were named to serve on the com- mission : L. Stiir, O. Caban, E. Gerometta, J. Scasny, C. Cochius, B. Hrobon, and M. Hattala.
The revolution that broke out in 1848 of course made it impracticable for the commis- sion to come together. Some members of it, like Stiir, were too occupied with other mat- ters to think of grammars. They had been called to lead their people to battle. But there was one scholar on the commission who went quietly to work, and before the year 1850 was over he wrote and published, along the lines suggested by Hodza, a Grammatical Lingua Slovenica, This was Martin Hattala. In the
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month of October, 1851, another philological conference took place, this time in Pressburg. Bernolakists and bturists again came together, and in the most harmonious way unanimously voted their approval of Hattala's book. At the same time it was agreed to translate and publish it in Slovak. This was done in 1852, when it issued under the title of a Short Slo- vak Grammar. Three distinguished Protes- tants (Stiirists) and three equally renowned Catholics (Bernolakists) announced above their names in the preface that the "gram- mar met the approval of both parties, and that both have agreed to abide by it in the future." This Pressburg Conference at last made the Slovak language uniform.1
* * *
Five names are inseparably associated with the new literary and national movement that was born immediately prior to the revolution of 1848. They are those of John Kollar, Paul J. Safafik, Ludevit Stur, Joseph M. Hurban, and Michael M. Hodza. Properly speaking, Kollar and Safafik belong to Bohemian litera-
1 Dr. Czambel still recognizes five distinct dialects : That of the Calvinists in the neighborhood of Kosice and Uzhorod (Ungvar) ; Sarys ; Bernolak's ; Star's ; and Hodza-Hattala's.
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ture, having always made common cause with it, and upholding, to the end of their lives, the literary unity of the two countries. Still, their writings did so much toward the nationaliza- tion of the Slovaks that their names cannot be omitted.
A most singular circumstance, and one that even a casual student cannot fail to observe, is the number of names of ecclesiastics which one encounters in Slovak literature. So out of proportion are the clergy to the laity repre- sented that one is irresistibly led to believe that but for them Slovak letters might have never taken root for lack of cultivators. Espe- cially is this true of the early authors, most of whom, if not all, were either clergymen or peo- ple who in their youth had received a theologi- cal education at one of the many seminaries that flourished in Upper Hungary. Thus, Kollar was a minister of the gospel. The famous triumvirs, Stiir, Hodza, and Hurban, had all been prepared for the church. Of the lon£ list of writers with an ecclesiastical train- ing it will suffice to name :
John Holl£ (i 785-1849), a Catholic priest, a renowned poet of the Bernolak group of writers.
Evangelical pastors : Andrew Sladkovic,
JOHN HOLLY
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Samuel Chaliipka, John Chalupka, Dr. Charles Kuzmany, professor of theology, Samuel To- masik, Ladislav Pauliny, Paul Dobsinsk^, C. Zoch or Cochius, August Krcmery, Samuel Godra, Andrew Bella, Joseph Podhradsky, Daniel Marothy, Daniel Bachat, and host of others.
" Why are we meeting with such a small measure of success ?" complained young Hur- ban in 1847, and, forthwith, he proceeded to answer himself : " Because our leaders have been till now, almost without exception theo- logians. So abundant are the books and ideals with which they have befriended us, that we Slovaks should be the happiest nation in the world, provided literature and ideals were enough to make nations happy. Ours is a purely theological nationality. Until some genius other than a churchman places himself at the head of our affairs, we shall continue to decay."
When John Kolldr first published his famous lyric-epic poem, Sldvy Dcera — Slavids Daugh- ter, in 1824, Stiir and those of his compatriots who were destined to revolutionize Slovak- land were yet boys. This poem, written in Bohemian was a most stirring summons to the Slavs to unite.
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The Slavic peoples then living under the rule of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Turkey presented a composite picture of the direst misery. With aching- heart the poet tells of the woes that oppressed them. Like Childe Harold, he travels through the Baltic and Po- labian provinces (along the River Elbe) " that were once the cradle, but are now the tomb of the race." He recounts all the terrible wrongs inflicted on the Polabians by their old-time antagonists, the Teutons. In Bohemia and Moravia every place of interest is visited and the deeds of persons of fame recounted in the poem. From those countries the poet pilgrim goes to Slovakland and further down south and east to Croatia and Servia. Wrathfully he hurls sinister imprecations at the various foes of the Slavs, and greater yet is his anger at those who, turning renegades, have become traitors to their blood and ancestry. Every- where the bard beholds disunion and hurtful jealousy, and he deplores these hereditary sins of the Slavs ; for, in his opinion, they alone are to blame for the wretched condition of their respective branches. From all the fragments he would mould one immense statue before which Europe should kneel in awe. The key- note of the whole poem is an exhortation to
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unity. " Learn to love your nation ! " he thun- ders. " Let the words echo from the Tatra Mountains to Crna Gora (Montenegro) and from Krkonose to the Urals : Hell for traitors, heaven for patriotic Slavs ! "
The effect of the poem was tremendous, far greater than Kollar ever dared to hope. In time the whole Slavic world rang with the verses of the Sldvy Dcera. To the youth the poem became a creed to believe in and to the literates an example to follow. Schoolboys learned by heart most of the fine passages, with which especially the prologue abounds, vowing to avenge the wrongs done to their kinsmen. It was at this time that the pan- slavist spectre made its first appearance in Europe. Kollar was furiously attacked by Magyar and Austrian writers for fanning the national passions of the Slavs. In Hungary entire editions of the book were bought in and burned to prevent its circulation. But so great was the demand for it that many booklovers, unable to procure it, because of police vigi- lance, had complete copies transcribed by hand. In 1837 Kolldr issued a short treatise in Ger- man on literary unity among the Slavs. This publication created another stir in Central Europe.
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A man who had influenced the destinies of Slovaks to a remarkable degree was Paul J. Safafik ( 1 795-1861). Like Kollar, he too re- mained faithful to Bohemian. While the one was a poet, who prophesied a brighter future to the Slavs, the other was a savant, dispas- sionate and unprejudiced, who took upon him- self the task of revealing the treasures of their past. Safafik's volume on Slavic Antiquities, published in 1837, an<^ Slavic Ethnography, that came out in 1842, attracted wide-spread attention. Accompanying the latter work was a map on which the Slavs, to the number of eighty millions, appeared to occupy, in un- broken continuity, an immense part of Europe, extending from the Bohemian Forest on the west to the Ural Mountains, and from the Polar Sea on the north to the yE^ean on the south. To the Slavs this picture was at once inspiring and pleasing. They took new courage and hope. The satisfaction they ex- perienced from Safarik's researches was only second to the astonishment felt by the rest of Europe at the potentialities of the people, shown as a unit, on the ethnographic map.
No country welcomed the writings of Kol- lar and Safarik with greater enthusiasm than Slovakland. The Slovaks were proud of
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the achievements of their two countrymen, no doubt. But there was an infinitely deeper reason why they should rejoice. They felt that they were no longer without friends and allies. The knowledge that they were one of a family of eighty millions gratified and reas- sured them. Why fear for the future because the present was gloomy ? Did not Kollar, their prophet, predict that in time to come things would grow brighter? Enemies may persecute them, if they will. But their chil- dren will be free, and if not they, then their children's children. The Tatra Mountains were the cradle of their common ancestors. Would the Slavic peoples ever permit the alienation of that sacred land ?
Kollar and Safafik were already famous when Ludevit (Ludwig) Stur, then a young- ster just returned from a college in Germany, was beginning to make his entrance into public life. An ardent Slovak by conviction, whereas Kollar and Safarik were Slovaks only by the accident of birth, a tireless and enthusiastic worker, and an idealist wholly devoted to the Hegelian school of philosophy, a theologian whom the versatility of his talent and the mul- titudinous needs of his country made succes- sively an orator, writer, journalist, politician,
i34 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
and soldier — Stiir was, according to the unani- mous verdict of his enemies and friends, the most remarkable champion of Slovak rights since Matthew Csdk's days. Aiding him were Joseph M. H urban and Michael M. Hodza. Contemporaries and friends, these splendid pa- triots divided the enormous task that lay before them according to the respective talents and the natural bent of their minds. And so indis- pensable were they to one another and collect- ively to the cause which they served so well, that but for their united efforts it would prob- ably have failed. Very oddly, all three received the same training — for the Church. This felic- itous circumstance helped them to act in con- cert, even though it may have made their life work seem rather too one-sided. All three believed that by nationalization alone their nation could be raised to a higher plane, morally, socially and intellectually. Being pa- triotic Slovaks, it goes without saying that they were enthusiastic Slavonians at the same time.
Nothing ever daunted Stiir. Opposition only served to redouble his energy. Kolldr frequently gave vent to his despair, seeing the utter hopelessness of the situation. The na- tive nobility alienated ; the Catholic clergy
-^IW^-,
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hostile and irreconcilable ; the common people improvident and pathetically indifferent to their own fate — a disheartening outlook, in- deed ! All this Stiir knew and saw, but he would not concede that everything was lost. With a will he set to work in the Pressburg Lyceum, in which institution he had held the post of assistant professor. In time, and thanks to his unflagging energy, his lecture room be- came the most popular of all the Protestant schools of learning in Slovakland. Hundreds of young men flocked to Pressburg to be near him. Such was the affection of the students for the master, that when in 1844 Stur was re- moved from the lyceum, because of alleged anti-Magyar agitation, numbers of the youth left Pressburg to continue their studies else- where. To commemorate this exodus from Pressburg, John Matiiska, one of the voluntary exiles, composed under the spur of that bitter moment a touching song, now so popular :
Clouds above Tatra soar And lightning's thunders roar; O brothers, never fear : The skies again will clear, We shall live evermore ! '
1 Nad Tatrou sa bliska, hromy divo bijii : Nebojme se bratia, Vsak sa ony ztratia — Slovaci oziju !
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Happily for his nation Stiir devoted himself wholly to letters and journalism. His enemies might make it impossible for him to teach ; still they could not prevent him from express- ing his thoughts in writing. And, convinced that Bohemian was not less unsympathetic than Bernolak's literary invention, he grasped what he believed to be the most popular native dialect. The grammar he wrote has been termed a keystone of Slovak literature. On the lecture platform the same success marked his progress as in the literary field. Admiring followers took up "sturstina" at once, intro- ducing it not alone in journalism but in belles- lettres as well. While Bernolak's dialect has been preserved to us only in the poems of John Holty, Stur's school has produced, and rightly claims as its own, a whole galaxy of clever writers.
The appearance of the first number of Stur's Ndrodnie Noviny (National Gazette) on Au- gust 1, 1845, was an eventful day, long to be remembered. In this journal the nation at last found a fearless advocate and reliable guide. The publisher had to wait three years before the necessary concession was obtained from the £overnment, and it is said that but for the gracious intercession of Baron Kulmer,
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it would have never been granted. The times were just as hostile to the Slovaks then as they are now. Palkovic, the venerable professor at the Pressburg Lyceum, for instance, incurred the disfavor of the government because he dared to change the name of his publication from Weekly Gazette to Slovak National Ga- zette. After a searching trial that nearly cost him the concession, Palkovic won his case, but the word "Slovak" was ordered stricken out from the title page ! A supplement, the Tatransky Orol (Tatra Eagle), accompanied every number of Stur's journal, and these two publications, one devoting its columns to po- litical and economical questions and the other to belles-lettres, constituted in those days the chief literary repository of the Stur school of writers. For the treatment of scientific sub- jects H urban founded, in 1846, an excellent review called the Slovenske' Pohlady.
Meantime, revolution was approaching, and while its terrors lasted, literary activity ceased altogether, except for revolutionary airs, with which H urban, Chaliipka, Pauliny, Botto, Tomasik, Matuska, and others greeted the dawn that was approaching, and with which bluecoated Slovak volunteers went marching to battle. It is worthy of note that most,
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if not all, of the revolutionary songs have survived.
By turns a minister of the Gospel, a Biblical scholar, a writer on philological, educational and political subjects, an able organizer, a pro- found reasoner, Michael M. Hodza (1811- 1870) had but two equals among his con- temporaries, Stur and Hurban. As for con- summate tact and rare judgment he stood unrivalled. Many were the delicate and even danoferous missions intrusted to him. No Slovak was more cruelly or systematically per- secuted than he. His career was cut short at the height of its usefulness. Removed from the parish which was his only means of liveli- hood, excommunicated by the church of which his profound learning was an ornament, and ex- pelled by the government that feared and hated him, Hodza died a miserable exile. The Epigenes Slovenicus, already referred to, Vet in, and Dcr Slowak were his principal works.
Some twenty volumes, in addition to count- less articles in various periodicals, bear testi- mony to the industry of Dr. Joseph M. Hurban (181 7-1888). Yet it is not as a liter- ary man that Hurban commands the respect of admiring posterity. He will be remembered as a tribune of his people. But for Hurban's
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indefatigable labors, the storms of 1848 might have swept over the Hungarian highlands without arousing any interest on the part of the natives. Irresistible, indeed, must have been the powers of eloquence of this Slovak O'Connell to have moved to armed rebellion a nation that had remained quiescent for cen- turies. Stiir was the heart, Hodza the brains, but Hurban the soul of the revolutionary movement. He collected funds, provided weapons and ammunition, organized volunteer corps, chose trained soldiers to lead them, aided financially patriots who were in prison, besides conducting a vast correspondence.
Certain traits all the Stiir writers had in common : the folk song constituted their favor- ite material and Slavic fraternity their prime motive. All began by being idealists, Hegel- ians, but some of them, in pursuing their ideals, ended in becoming visionaries, who lost them- selves hopelessly in the mazes of mysticism and general vagueness, to cite only the case of Samo Hrobon. This was a serious fault of the Stiir school. To lead an austere life, to scorn civic honors, and to devote one's whole being toward the deliverance of the nation from the bondage of ignorance formed part of their teaching. The nationalism of Kollar's poetry
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attracted them no less than Hegel's philosophy. One of their beliefs was that the Slavs, with the Slovaks in the forefront, would be the first to realize Hegel's future perfect state. Why ? Because they claimed to have a better under- standing of the philosophy of that noted Ger- man than he himself had. The Tatras, as the alleged seat of the aboriginal Slavs, were glori- fied in patriotic verse, and even Safank's re- searches were idealized by them. The ambition to rule was, in their eyes, reprehensible ; and they prophesied that Slavic territory would crush those who entered upon it with hostile intentions.
Among the most renowned Sturists should be named the poets Chaliipka, Botto, Krai, Tomasik, and Sladkovic, and Kalincak, the novelist.
Samuel Chaliipka (18 12-1883), an evan- gelical pastor, was descended from a family of authors. The Turkish invasion of Upper Hungary and traditions and tales clustering around ruined castles were his most successful themes. Chalupka's were the first poems to be published in the new Slovak language.
Andrew Sladkovic (Braxatoris, 1820- 18 72), an evangelical pastor, is reputed to be the most talented poet ever born in Slovakland. Ala-
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rina, a lyric-epic poem, which portrays, in an idealized form, the object of the poet's own un- happy love affair, and Deivan, a romance of the time of Matthew Korvin, are supposed to be the culmination of his art. As a poet, Sladkovic ranks higher than John Kollar.
Samuel Tomasik ( 1 8 1 3- 1 887), an evangelical pastor, is chiefly remembered for the author- ship of Hej Slovdci, a song now familiar to every Slavonian.
John Botto's (1829-1881) claim to fame rests on his having created the " Janosik," a type of good-natured brigand, a giant in strength, with the heart of a child, who takes it upon himself to administer justice in his own way, by robbing the rich to give to the poor. "Janosik" is a kind of Slovak Cid.
John Kalincak (1822-1871) stands proba- bly unrivalled among novelists. Descended on his mother's side from an old zeman family, Kalincak gathered in his books much valuable material on the manners and habits of the zeman class of people, now almost wholly Mag- yarized. Restavrdcia has been pronounced his chief work.
Janko Krai (1 822-1 876) was an eccentric, a " Bohemian," who preferred the companion- ship of shepherds to the chicanery of law, for
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which profession he had been educated. His lyric poetry bears the stamp of his roving nature and erratic temperament.
Besides these, the following writers and versifiers deserve to be mentioned : Jacob Greichman, ballad writer of some note ; John Matiiska, remembered as the composer of Nad Tatrou sa bliska ; Ladislav Pauliny, pas- tor, and uncle of William Pauliny-Toth (1828- 1885), a bright satirist and humorist; John Francisci, known under the pseudonym " Janko Rimavsky " ; Paul Dobsinsky, pastor (1826- 1877), an industrious compiler of folk-tales; Peter Kellner (pseudonym " Zaboj Hostin- sky" 1 823-1 873), who professed to believe that the Tatras, according to him the birth- place of the Slavs, would yet astonish the world by the magnitude of ideas to issue from them; Nicolas Dohnany, a translator of By- ron and Shakespeare ; Dr. Charles Kuzmany ( 1 806-1 866), professor of theology and warm friend of Kollar and Safafik ; John Chalupka, pastor (179 1 -1 871), the elder brother of Sam- uel Chalupka, a popular dramatist; Nicholas Stephen Feriencik (182 5-1 881), a productive novelist and journalist; John Palarik (1822- 1870), dramatist.
Svetozar Hurban (pseudonym " Vajansk^ "),
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born in 1847, is a poet, journalist, and writer of the highest rank. The Tatras and the Ocean in verse and Withered Branch in prose are works of excellent merit. As editor-in- chief of the Ndrodnie Noviny, H urban is a power among his people. More than once in his life has this redoubtable champion been struck down by the brutal might of the tyrant. Paul Orszagh (pseudonym " Hviezdoslav"), born in 1849, ls a lyric of recognized ability, as is " Martin Kukucin " (pseudonym of Dr. Matthew Bencur), born in i860, a novelist. Other contemporary writers, whose names are familiar to every Slovak reader, are : Helen Marothy-Soltesz, Therese Vansa, Ludmila Podjavorinsky, Martin Sladkovic, Tichomir Milkin, and J. Somolicky. Among essayists and historical writers, Francis Sasinek, Paul Krizko, Andrew Kmet, Joseph Holuby, Joseph Skultety, etc., excel. With the name of Stephen Marcus Daxner (1822-1892) is linked the authorship of the famous " Memo- randum."
SOCIAL CONDITIONS.
ILLUSTRATIVE of the national traits of * the motley population of Hungary is the following humorous estimate found in Bielek's work in German, published in 1837 :
" The Magyar is proud and happy when he
can ride a fine horse ; the Slovak when he can talk familiarly to a person of distinction ; the German when he secures the burgomaster's staff of office ; the Rumun when twirling a handsomely carved cane ; the Little Russian when he attains to clerical honors; the Jew when renting landed property ; the gypsy when parading in scarlet trousers."
Anecdotes are related of the proverbial humility of the Slovak, and of the love of fight which again is said to be characteristic of the Magyar. A Magyar peasant runs to a tavern where a combat is in progress. " Why don't you take a stick with you, Pista ?" admonishes his wife. "It is not necessary," replies Pista, " I guess the man whom I tackle will have a stick."
144
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How many Slovaks there are in Hungary is a matter of speculation. The official count, which is notoriously unreliable and partial to the dominant race, computed their number at 2,008,744 in 1900. A prominent attorney in Martin assured the writer that, although no one in his native village spoke Magyar, yet every inhabitant had been returned in the offi- cial sheets as belonging to that race. Vam- bery's figure in a recent work is 1,800,000. Safafik estimated the number of his fellow- countrymen in 1842 at 2,753,ooo.1 Of this he credited 1,953,000 to the Catholics and 800,- 000 to the Protestants. Possibly Safafik may have been wrong. In 1850 the first census, according to nationalities, was taken in Hun- gary, and this official account gave to the Slovaks 1,704,000, or 13 % of the entire popula- tion. The Magyars appeared to have 4, 1 66,000, or 36.9% of the whole.' Now, however, official figures begin to puzzle us, for while in 1900 the Magyars claimed 8,679,014, or 45.4 % of the entire population, this being an increase between 1 850-1900 of 80 %, the Slovaks came in for 2,008,744 in 1900, or 10.5$ of the whole, an increase of only 32.6 % between 1850-1900!
1 Slovansky Ndrodopis. Prague, 1842, p. 98.
2 Czoernig's Ethnographie Jcr Ost. L'ug. Monarchic-. Wien, 1S55.
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How is this inconsistency to be explained ? The Slovaks, with their known fecundity — families of 10-12 children among them being nothing uncommon — have increased during the last 50 years only 32.6 %, while the Mag- yars, among whom large families are rather the exception than the rule, have gained 80 % during the same period of time. Taking as a basis Safank's computation, which is surely nearer the truth than the census of 1850, and deducting from it about 80,000 Slovaks settled in Moravia and elsewhere, there should have been 2,673,000 Slovaks in 1842. If the in- crease between 1842- 1900 had amounted to only 45 %, or 1,202,850, Slovaks should now be 3,875,850 strong. Every one who has ever travelled through northwestern Hungary is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the official figures, quoted above, are inaccurate. When it is remembered that the rural popula- tion is purely Slovak ; and that, with the ex- ception of the officials, school teachers, and nobility, the rank and file of the townspeople are of the same nationality, the conclusion is irresistible that the real figure is nearer to 3,000,000 than 2,000,000. There are, besides, colonies of Slovaks, large and small, through- out the whole kingdom. Some of these colo-
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 147
nics date back to the time when the country, laid waste and depopulated by the Turks, needed agriculturists to till it. The phrase " a nation over 3,000,000 strong-," with which we meet frequently in the Slovak press, must not be taken literally, however. What it means is that people of the Slovak blood num- ber 3,000,000. Naturally many of these, the nobility and the zemans to a man, having re- nounced their nationality can no longer be classed as Slovaks. Apropos of the origin of the nobility, " Were the lords all of Magyar and the peasants altogether of Slavic de- scent?" The mass of the peasantry, in gen- eral, were of the same race as their lords. In the Slovak counties they were Slovak ; in the Magyar counties of the centre, they were Magyars ; and in Croatia and Slavonia they were of that nationality.
In Bacs, Bodrog and Szerem are large and compact settlements of " Rusnaks," or Little Russians, who came to Hungary between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. These Rusnaks mix with the Slovaks in the east, and further east they replace them entirely. They number about half a million. Slovaks by speech and Orthodox Russians in creed, these Rus- naks have been for years a bone of contention
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between Slovak and Russian etymologists, both contending parties claiming them as their own. Safafik was of the opinion that there were only Protestant Slovaks and Catholic Slovaks. Of Orthodox Slovaks — and the Rus- naks all profess that faith — he would hear nothing. It was his judgment that the Rus- naks are what their name betrays them to be, Russians.
An official publication describes the Slo- vaks as
" generally of a lofty stature ; well built, with broad faces and prominent cheekbones. For the most part they let their light hair grow long, but do not wear beards or mus- taches. Their dress of white baize is comple- ted by a broad leathern girdle, a broad-brimmed hat, and sandals. Their dwellings are frail. They are simple, religious, humble and quiet, but when heated, quarrelsome. Their songs are as a rule of a melancholy character. They do any kind of work and are industrious. By preference they occupy themselves with the breeding of cattle and sheep and go down to the Great Plain to reap the harvest. They are very skilful in domestic manufactures. Their women are celebrated for their em- broideries."
" From immemorial times the Slovaks were a nation of peasants and shepherds," says
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Ziga Pauliny-T6th. " For these two vocations the love of our people is deep rooted and, although they may be taught other callings, they are happiest when ploughing, sowing and reaping.
" Generally the soil is poor, and with the exception of the Lower Trencin and the south- ern portion of Nitra and Pressburg, where the country is rich, nowhere in Slovakland is the soil fertile enough to support the farmer in independence. Of the many evils which still weigh down our peasantry," continues Pauliny- Toth " one is illiteracy. Before the fifties the people were, with some exceptions, wholly illit- erate. At the present time there are 51.44 % in Hungary unable to read or write. In the twelve Slovak counties the percentage of illit- erates is somewhat below the average obtaining in the kingdom, except in the counties of Trencin, Zemplin, Sarys and Ung, where it rises a trifle above. Still, the fact remains that over one half our population is unlettered."
A grave fault of the small farmer is his un- progressiveness. He insists on cultivating his fields in pretty nearly the same primitive fash- ion as his father and grandfather before him. Naturally the amount of the crops corresponds to the methods employed. Again, the soil is not sufficiently responsive. To this latter cir- cumstance is probably due most of the wretch-
i5o THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
edness with which one meets in Slovakland. In passing through the country the traveller is constantly reminded of the hills of Utah and Colorado. The woodlands which are unfit for cultivation will average 1 5 $ throughout, while in Turec the average rises to 33 % in Orava to 30$, Liptov 41 %, Zvolen 32 % Novohrad 26$, Gemer 47 % Spis 37 % and Sarys 43 % In Orava County there are 2761 farms that average from 1 to 5 acres of land of which only about two- thirds is arable. One village in that county bears the highly suggestive name of Hladovka — Hungerville. With a tiny patch of ground that yields hardly anything else than oats and potatoes — in the north part of Orava, where freezing weather comes early, potatoes are often due from underneath the snow — it is as- tonishing how the highland peasant manages to pay his taxes. There is a ground tax, the per capita tax, communal assessment, travelling tax, ecclesiastical dues, notarial tax, midwife tax, etc. A typical case of over-taxation : A poor mountaineer in a hamlet in Turec, with real and personal property valued at 180 florins, which is equivalent to $72, was taxed with 18 florins per year !
Among the most lovable traits of the people is their love of music. No less than 5000
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 151
folk songs were collected in the neighboring Margravate of Moravia, and it is claimed that fully one half of these, some of them admitted to be tonal gems and by far the best specimens in the collection, are the product of Slovak in- ventiveness. In the more modern airs the temperament of the gypsy and Magyar music is plainly discernible. But, on the whole, Slo- vak songs have retained the rugged simplicity of the folk song. That they are very old is plain, although Milan Lichard believes that there is no warrant for the assertion, repeated by certain enthusiasts, that some of the songs date back to pagan times. Almost without exception, the folk songs are written in a minor key, this giving them a sad and melancholy coloring, quite in keeping with the unhappy lot of the people.
Sheep farming is carried on extensively and with excellent results. Usually sheep are raised on shares by the communes. In the spring- time the "baca" or shepherd-in-chief takes his charge to the pasture on the elevated table lands, caring for them there with his assistants till the autumn, when the sheep are returned to their respective owners. In the hills the sheep are lambed, shorn of wool, and milked. The milk is used in the making of "brindza,"
152 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
a sharp-tasting, strong-flavored cheese which finds a ready market in central European coun- tries. The profit which arises at the end of the season is divided equitably among the owners. Cattle breeding yields a handsome revenue to the farmer. The census taker found within the Slovak territory in 1898 1,059,529 head of cattle, 249,818 horses, 3452 donkeys, 159 mules, 22,724 goats, 639,297 hogs, 1,311,777 sheep, 3,099,606 fowl, and 117,403 beehives.
The most pretentious house in every hamlet is invariably the property of a zeman family. The villagers call them residences. A lower class of nobility, these zemans used to be a power in the land until the serfs were liber- ated. Kossuth was descended on his mother's side from a Slovak zeman family. Exempt from taxation and enjoying the fruit of forced labor, the zemans lived for centuries in ease and affluence. The moment serfage was abol- ished the zemans found themselves on the decline. Slowly but surely their estates are now passing in the ownership of enterprising Semites, while the " Most Powerful Lords," as the humble peasant was wont to entitle them, are glad to earn their living as minor govern- ment officials. Obeying the law which has
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 153
guided the nobles in all ages and in all coun- tries, they all have joined the ruling element in Hungary. The Slovak zemans no longer exist.
Two festering sores sap the vitality of the unsophisticated highlander — drink and usury. Nowhere in the country have these terrible social evils taken such a firm grip as here in the mountains, " where rock begins and bread ceases."
It is true that the foremost mortgage banks lend money at a moderately low rate of inter- est, providing the borrower will take, say 20,000 Austrian crowns. But of what advantage is the Hypothecary Bank at Budapest to the small farmer? He is compelled to borrow from a local banking institution, and at what cost ! Including commissions and disburse- ments charged the interest will amount to J-8 % and not infrequently to 14 %. On short loans the borrower has to pay as much as 50 %. A savings bank in Slovakland with a capital of 60,000 cr., reserve fund of 18,000 cr., and de- posits amounting to 160,000 cr., cleared an annual profit of 2 2,000 cr. The average profit of banks in 1894 was said to be 13.58 % on the capital invested and in 1888 29.56 %.
Every Slovak of intelligence deplores the
154 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
drink habit among his people, and time and again appeals have been made in the newspa- pers and otherwise to regulate the sale of liquor in the highlands — apparently all to no purpose. The sellers are always successful in blocking every attempt at reform. Why should these pest dens continue their nefarious trade unrestricted ? An alarming feature of the rum business is that in ninety cases out of a hundred the rum dealer is apt to be a money lender to the poor country folks, which of course implies that he is a heartless usurer. Some years ago the Catholic clergy, seeing what ravages the drink habit was making among their flock, started to organize temper- ance societies to which was given the name of rosaries. Singularly enough, the government promptly suppressed the rosary organizations on the charge that they fostered panslavism. It was noted at the time that the chief wit- nesses against the leaders of the rosaries were the rum sellers.
Emigration from Slovakland is assuming such alarming proportions that it threatens to depopulate it. " Certain people would make the public believe," remarks Joseph L. Holuby, " that this emigration in masses is due to for- cible Magyarization. That is an error. The
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 15s
hungry man is not concerned with gram- mars, be they Magyar or Slovak. What he wants is bread. To him the quarrel between his nation and the Magyars is, after all, of secondary importance. He seeks work. It is no secret that people emigrate from districts where Magyars are all but unknown." In the two decades between 1 880-1900, it is computed, emigration from Hungary was as follows :
Via Hungary 372,979
" Antwerp 87,609
" Genoa 9,5°!
470,089
How many of these are to be credited to Slovaks ? Roland Hegedus, an authority on the subject of emigration from Hungary, esti- mated the number of American Slovaks at 160,000-200,000, in 1899. As the onrush of immigration to the United States has been especially great within the past five years, it is no exaggeration to say that at the present time the United States are the home of some 400,000 Slovaks.
Already the exodus of so many people be- gins to disturb local economic conditions. For example, employers are heard to complain of
156 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
lack of working men. Wages have gone up. The price of land has risen. A few figures will show what kind of material America is getting from Slovakland. During 1 869-1 890 the county of Spis had lost by emigration 14^ of youths from twenty to twenty-five years of age, the county of Sarys 34 %. Of men whose ages varied from twenty-six to thirty years, Spis lost 31 %, Sarys 44$, Abauj Torna 22 % and Zemplin 16 %. Owing to emigra- tion the old ratio of 100 men to 103 women, heretofore prevalent, has undergone a remark- able change. In 1890 there were, as against 100 males, 1 1 5 females in Spis, 1 16 in Sarys, and 115 in Abauj Torna. In many instances land values have arisen 100 % because of the influx of American money earned in the coal fields of Pennsylvania. The postal bank at Kosice, which is the distributing centre for the north- eastern counties, received in 1896 six and one half millions of florins in remittances from America. The village of Butka in Zemplin, with 1 156 Slovak inhabitants, was the grateful recipient in ten years of 351,435 florins from across the ocean.1
To regulate " wanton " emigration a special
1 Most of the figures adduced here are taken from Dr. Emil Sto- dnla's Prispevok ku Statistike Slovcnska, 1902.
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 157
law was enacted in 1903. The state promised to keep a watchful eye over its subjects even beyond the seas " in their own interest and for the good of the State." Pithily a newspaper characterized this determination of the Hun- garian Government to go into the steamship- ticket business : " Why do people leave their native country ? Clearly because they are being neglected by the home government. Suddenly the state, which has done nothing for them while in Hungary, becomes solicitous about their well-being, promising to watch over and protect them after they have taken leave of their homes."
What is the national dress of the Slovaks ? This is hard to answer. One might almost say that there are as many distinct styles as there are counties. Near industrial centres the handsome and striking national dress has partly disappeared ; but as industries are an exception and agriculture the rule in the high- lands, national costumes are still worn in abun- dance. The adolescent youth, the married couple, the old folks, each class affects a garb suited to its respective fancies or station in life. Dresses differing either in material or pattern are worn at such functions as weddings, funerals, dances, etc.
158 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Commonly, the men are smooth-shaven and wear long hair. The younger set, and par- ticularly those who have served in the army, cut their hair short. Near the boundary line, where they mix with the Magyars, both young and old are partial to mustaches. In the matter of trousers the Slovak tailor is as whimsical as his Magyar brother-in-law. While in certain districts fashion seems to dictate tight-fitting trousers, in other places again the pantaloons that are worn attain to the propor- tion of a bifurcated skirt. The same appears to be the case with hats.
The waistcoat only covers the chest and shoulder-blades. It is sleeveless. When the weather is cold it may be exchanged for a fur-lined "kamisol." As for the top coat, its nomenclature is as varied as the style in which makers cut it. " Halena" is a popular name, meaning literally a wrap, though "huna" is another well-known designation for a surtout. Of light, black, brown, or gray cloth, the halena may be either short, to the belt-line, or if fancy so dictates, long, to the knees. Short or long, all halenas are appropriately braided on the collar, in the centre of the back, in front, and in the corners of the skirt. No finery is com- plete without needlework, the designs being
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 159
lineal, geometrical, figurative, and floral. Of embroidery men seem to be as fond as women, displaying it generously on their shirt collars and sleeves and on waistcoats, "lajblik." When the latter article is made of cloth, it is sure to be ornamented with rows of fancy buttons, in lieu of embroidery. A loose cloak is worn over the shoulders. In the higher altitudes a fur coat has been found to be an indispensable garment, and the sagacious moun- taineer has a saying : " Until the Easter holi- days keep the sheepskin on ; after them do not let it go." " Krpce," which is a moccasin-like sandal fastened to the foot with thongs, was until recent years universally worn. The pride of every village gallant (among Moravian Slo- vaks) is a hat cockade, " pierko " or " kosirek," made of plumes or feathers — cock and heron feathers most commonly. To knock down one's "kosirek" would be an insult that no village beau could let go unpunished.
It is customary for girls to go bareheaded and to braid their hair, except in Upper Trencin and Lower Nitra. "Cepec," a sort of bonnet, is the distinguishing head-gear of mar- ried women. Among the well-to-do peasants down south, where the soil is rich, it is not un- common for a bride to have in her wardrobe
160 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
as many as sixty or eighty bonnets or "parts," a diadem-like head ornament with ribbons attached to it at the back, thirty detachable embroidered sleeves, thirty petticoats, etc. A thoughtful mother will begin to work on the trousseau of her daughter the year of her birth, so that most of the apparel may be complete by the time she arrives at maturity. Usually an outfit like that will do for the life- time of the woman, passing by inheritance to children and grandchildren, like jewelry in other countries.
First to the body comes the " rubac " or chemise, homespun of hemp or flax. Cloth skirts are in universal favor, the prevalent tints being blue, black, and green. In the summer- time, cloth skirts are replaced by linen "let- nica." In some counties skirts of customary length are worn ; in others again, as in Nitra and Pressburg, they barely reach to the knees. Attached to the skirt is the waist, or " zivotok," "brucel," or "kordulka," as it is alternately called. The " lajblik," which corresponds to the bodice, is a separate garment. Over the skirt is worn a tunic or " fertuch," as it is called. On this piece is lavished the daintiest em- broidery. In some districts the head is covered with a " polka," this being a strip of white linen,
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 161
muslin, or chiffon about nine feet in length, which is wound around the head like a tur- ban and tied behind, permitting the ends, also highly embroidered, to be seen to advantage. The feet are encased in " cizma," top boots. Justly famous is the needlework of Slovak women ; chemises, guimps, bodices, cravats, aprons, and sleeves, the latter always puffed to the elbow and flowing, — all these articles being rich with embroidery.
A familiar figure on every European high- way is the Slovak tinker. Having seen him once, you will always recognize him by his picturesque hat, long-hair, and mantle. With rolls of wire and mouse-traps slung over his back, the tinker is a tireless trotter who feels himself at home everywhere, without, however, losing his national type. Almost all the tin- kers come from the district traversed by the river Kysuca, opposite the Silesian frontier. In the town of Caca (Csacza), where they have their rendezvous, you may hear these tinkers conversing together in tolerably good English, French, German, and Russian, besides minor European tongues. House peddling supports hundreds of families who are attached to the barren districts. There are travelling vendors of wicker-ware, of hats, embroideries, spices,
1 62 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
and ornamental knick-knacks, of cloth and cali- co prints, of mouse-traps, etc. As raftsmen and shingle makers, Slovak skill is much ap- preciated in the lumber regions. In the har- vest time they go down to the great wheat belt to hire themselves as farm laborers. There is depressing poverty everywhere ; but here in the sub-Carpathian cliffs it is crushing. Ex- treme poverty drives thousands to seek a liveli- hood in other pursuits than agriculture. In winter the staple food of the peasantry is cab- bage and potatoes ; this is especially true in upper Trencin County.
It is estimated that there live in Pest, the capital, 25,000 Slovaks. Another city with a large Slovak population is Csaba, in the county of the same name, with some 30,000 inhabitants. Yet neither Pest nor Csaba, nor yet Nitra, the one-time seat of Svatopluk's kingdom, holds the same place in the affection of the Slovaks as Turciansk^ Sv. Martin (Turocz Szt. Marton), a little town of some 3000 people, on the river Turec, which is an affluent of the Vah. Here, high up in the mountains, where the winters are long and severe, the Slovaks have estab- lished their national centre. In the early sixties the municipality of Martin, which was then a village possessing no advantage or at-
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 163
traction over other country places, excepting the patriotism of its citizens, offered its hos- pitality to the " Matica Slovenska." That representative body was being persecuted by the government. The leaders of the Matica were so touched by the generous offer that Martin was then and there voted the future capital of the nation. In June, 1861, a memo- rable meeting was held there at which the dele- gates present adopted the " Memorandum," a " Slovak Bill of Rights." Stephen Daxner drafted the document. Since 1 86 1 , Martin has witnessed all or almost all the popular assem- blies held. Here stands the " Dom," contain- ing both an interesting museum and a library. Here some of the principal newspapers are printed and published, like the Ndrodnie No- viny, the review Slovenskt Pohlady, etc.; here theatrical performances are given. The " Spe- vokol," a singing society, and " Zivena," the foremost woman's society, have their head- quarters here. Likewise the "Tatra Bank" is established in Martin. Annually, in the month of August, a kind of national reunion takes place in the diminutive capital. Some- how or other a visitor to Martin feels that a tactical blunder has been made in selecting so small a place for the centre of an important
164 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
mission work. A just cause will often fail, or, if not that, at least suffer, for lack of a suitable environment.
Discouraging, if not critical, is the situation in regard to schools. Sad to say, there is not a single higher school in St. Stephen's king- dom, public or sectarian, where Slovak is either taught as a subject or used as a medium of instruction. Even the university at Pest is closed to the Slovak language, although it supports a chair of Croatian and has promised to erect one of Old Slavic (obsolete). Is it Svatopluk's ghost again ? Or is it a question of utility ? Hardly that. Any tinker will tell you that with his despised Slovak tongue he can travel over a vast territory in Europe and make himself understood, while with Magyar he is utterly lost the moment he crosses the boundary of the fatherland.
Elementary schools are of several kinds : confessional or sectarian, state, and communal. In the 1 6 Slovak counties there were in 1899 596 Protestant (Augsburg) schools, 351 Helve- tian, 2014 Catholic, 410 Russian Orthodox, 1 1 7 Jewish, 342 state, 190 communal, 69 mixed. Divided by the language which is used in teaching, 519 were Slovak, 35 Russian, 2076 Magyar, 6 German, 11 89 Slovak-Magyar, 192
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 165
Russian-Magyar, 117 German-Magyar. Of the teachers 16 % could not show their training certificates, being by occupation agriculturists and mechanics.
Slovakland supports 33 gymnasia, 6 real schools, 16 pedagogical institutes, 2 Protestant theological schools, 5 Catholic and 1 Russian Orthodox seminaries, several convents, and about 1 40 trade schools and commercial schools, but in all of these instruction is in Magyar. Students are forbidden to converse in Slovak either in or out of school. This rule is strictly enforced, non-compliance therewith being pun- ished with expulsion for panslavism. To read a Slovak book or a newspaper is a still graver offence, and teachers will not hesitate to go through the student's trunk and effects in search of the interdicted literature.
Six Catholic bishoprics attend to the spirit- ual needs of the faithful in the highlands, yet not one incumbent is a Slovak. Formerly there were Slovak libraries in Catholic semina- ries, but the ruthless hand of the oppressor has scattered every one of them to the winds.
An important personage in every commune is the " notary," whose office corresponds some- what to that of the city clerk in our Western States. One and all of these notaries are un-
1 66 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
compromising apostles of Magyarization. The mayor who attaches his signature to Magyar official documents, which he does not under- stand, is a helpless tool of the notary. The village has to do the notary's bidding. In many instances he is the local postmaster, and keeps a record of births, marriages, and deaths. The notary, by reason of his official position, possesses information within reach of no other inhabitant in the place. Nothing escapes him. He knows accurately what newspapers and books you read, whether you order your goods from "patriotic" or Slavonian firms. The local priests and teachers, if they be Slovaks, must be on guard before the notary, knowing that he watches and reports their every action. Even the butcher, the innkeeper, and the tailor find it profitable to court the notary's favor. Elections without his assistance or interfer- ence are unthinkable.
Only one kind of Slovak reading matter meets the gracious pardon of the mighty no- tary. It is the Vlast a Svet and Slovens ke Noviny, the two most widely circulated Slo- vak publications, but with a Magyar tendency. Slovakland is called systematically the " High- lands" in these papers; Slovaks, "High- landers." These two worthy journals publish
SOCIAL CONDITIONS 167
excerpts from Magyar literature ; they print the pictures of ministers from time to time — but Slovak authors and their productions are under ban in their columns.
In 1880 a society was established, having for its main object the Magyarization of proper names. Thousands of Slovaks have for divers reasons changed their old-time patronymics.
In 1898 a law was created whereby non- Magyar towns and villages shall assume Mag- yar names. Communes, says this law, can have but one official name, z. e., Magyar. This name shall be designated by the Ministry of the Interior.
Justice is administered only in Magyar, not- withstanding the plain language of the " Law of Nationalities." Attorneys may not plead in Slovak. Government officials, the clergy, and teachers are sure of promotion if they Mag- yarize ostentatiously.
In the railway, postal, and telegraph service, Slovak is studiously suppressed, and you will not find a railway or postal guide, manual, notice, or map containing one sentence in that language. No one ever thinks of appointing an official to a position in the highlands be- cause of his knowledge of Slovak. On the contrary, officials will openly deny a knowledge
1 68 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
of Slovak, for fear of being taken for panslavs. As a matter of fact, you may be refused a rail- road ticket if you ask for it in the language of Svatopluk.
In some towns, having pure Slovak popu- lation, you may see none but Magyar signs above shops and stores. A mechanic will hang out a Magyar sign above his workroom, not because he is forced by law to do so, but be- cause a Slovak sign would be looked upon as a provocation involving the sure loss of the patronage of the notary, the forester, and the rest of the local dignitaries. Besides, it is a matter of pride with every notary to have as few of these objectionable signs in " their " villages as possible.
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW.
IN their vernacular the Magyars call Hungary " Magyarorszag," or, literally, " Magyar- land." Is Hungary the land of somebody else, too? Certainly not, say the Magyars. And herein may be found the key to the whole situa- tion, a situation very perplexing indeed, when it is considered that the Magyar element consti- tutes hardly one half of the entire population of the country. Of late it is contended that the fatherland can be neither great nor happy unless all the inhabitants are Magyarized. Szechenyi, the great patriot, it is pointed out, could have had nothing else in mind when he declared : " There are many who think that Hungary has been. For my part, I like to think that Hungary shall be."
The year when the Magyars first set foot on the soil of Hungary may never be known. Writers caution us not to accept too readily the many stories and legends which have been woven around the early doings of these Tu- ranians by ingenious native historians. We
169
170 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
are assured on good authority that Arpdd never existed ; that it is not the name of a person, signifying, as it does, a rank. Almos likewise is said to be a mythical hero. The con- gress at Pusztaszeri was never held, and hence no covenant was entered into there. Similarly the election of early dukes should be relegated to the realm of fables.1 What battles the Mag- yars fought during the first decades of their occupation of Hungary, and with whom, is equally uncertain. No ray of light glimmers through the darkness which enshrouds the happenings of those distant days. The first authentic account that we have of them is that they assisted the Germans, in 907, at the battle of Pressburg, where Svatopluk's Great Moravian Kingdom was destroyed. After this, driving the Slavonians north and south, the Magyars seized the fertile plains of the in- terior, the Alfold, which they have regarded as their favorite home ever since.
"Who came first, Magyars or Slovaks?" This is a vexatious chapter in Hungarian his- tory. " It is of utmost importance to know," remarks a Magyar writer (Volf), " what peo- ple, if any, have a better claim to priority in Hungary than we. The Germans, Croatians,
'Julius Botto, in the Slovenski Pohlady, part 12, xv. (1895).
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW i;i
Servians, Russians, and Rumuns all came later than we Magyars, some of them even settling here quite recently. As far as the Armenians, Greeks, and Bulgarians, and other minor nationalities are concerned, that is a matter that hardly merits consideration. We also possess information bearing on the colonies of Slovenes, Bohemians, Moravians, and Slovaks. The only moot point is, whether the Slovenes and Slovaks of our times, or whatever is left of them, are descended in a direct line from the people who constituted the Great Mora- vian Kingdom and hence can claim priority." Then the author proceeds to answer his own questions by saying that the Magyars did not find any Slovaks at the time of the conquest, the latter having migrated to Hungary at a much later period ; that the Slovaks of the present day must not be confounded with the nation that lived in the time of Cyril and Methodius and King1 Svatopluk between the rivers Morava (March), Danube, and Hron ; that those of them that remained at the time of the conquest were soon assimilated by the Magyars. " Our Slovaks of Upper Hungary," we read in a work issued by the Ministry of Commerce, " came much later, after the
1 Properly speaking, " Prince " Svatopluk and not King.
172 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Hussite wars, from Bohemia and Moravia, and still later from Galicia."
Competent scholars like Safafik settled the question of the ancestry of the Slovaks a long time ago, and settled it for good. Still, Mag- yar writers are so persistent in repeating this mischievous invention, and it is responsible, directly and indirectly, for so much abuse on the part of a certain class of politicians, who affect to treat the Slovaks in their own home as colonists, even as foreigners, that the matter for this reason demands elucidation.
Let us see about the contention of the Mag- yars, that they assimilated the Slovaks soon after the conquest. If we are to believe their own story, the Magyars came to Hungary at the end of the ninth century. Henrik Marc- zali reasons that, as the chieftains usually went to battle with about 20,000 1 horsemen, his people, on invading Hungary, must have been 250,000 strong and numbered, including slaves, 500,000 souls. Scattered over the vast area of the country between the Carpathians and the river Sava and from Transylvania and Buko- vina on the east to Austria proper on the west, how many Magyars could there have been to
1 Paul Kri/ko in the Slovenski Pohlady, September, 1S9S, in an article entitled " Home of the Church Slavic ami the Magyar Occu- pation
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW 173
a square mile ? During the fierce wars that followed the conquest their ranks must have been thinned perceptibly. Is it believable that the conquerors were in a condition to absorb the natives, who were presumably more numer- ous than they? Again, is it probable that a race inferior in culture could have absorbed a superior race ? When the Magyars invaded Hungary, the Slavonians and Germans were permanently attached to the soil, cultivating it. Christianity and letters had already taken a deep root in the land. In everything, but in the art of war, the indigenous people surpassed the newcomers, who were as yet nomads. Con- tradict it as they may, the truth is that the Ger- mans and Slavonians were the first to teach the Magyars the crude arts of western culture. Everywhere the influence of the superior race was manifest. St. Stephen, who was crowned in the year 1000 King of Hungary, organized its administration in imitation of Slavonian state institutions. Even the titles of his officials, " Nadorispan " (Nadvorni zupan), "udvarnok" (dvornik), " ispan " (zupan), he borrowed from his Slavonic neighbors. Christianity came to the Magyars from the same source. Slavonic priests surrounded St. Stephen's throne — to mention the name of St. Vojtech, Bishop of
174 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Prague — and Magyar religious terminology is full of Slavisms. Most of the Magyar words relating to agriculture, field implements, plants, fishes, birds, trade, house-building, food, drink, social life, the notions of pleasure and pain and bodily ailments are either purely Slavonic or show unmistakable influence of that language. In 1830 Safafik wrote to Francis Palack^: " My friend, the most ancient repository of our Old Slavic is to be found in Magyar. You may laugh, but it is nevertheless true that our hairy ancestors in Scythia and Sarmatia used to say galamb, kasa, barat, instead of holub (pigeon), kosa (scythe), brat (brother), exactly as our bearded Magyars do nowadays."1
The Magyars could not have assimilated the
|
1 A small illustration of |
how the Magyars |
have borrowed from |
|
|
eir Slavonian |
neighbors : |
||
|
SLOVAK |
MAGYAR |
ENGLISH |
|
|
si am a |
szalma |
straw |
|
|
seno |
szena |
hay |
|
|
brdzda |
barazda |
furrow |
|
|
stolar |
asztalos |
cabinet-maker |
|
|
masiar |
meszaros |
butcher |
|
|
podkova |
patko |
horseshoe |
|
|
kovac |
kovacs |
smitli |
|
|
stvrtok |
cstltortok |
Thursday |
|
|
piatok |
pcntek |
Friday |
|
|
milost |
malaszt |
grace |
|
|
brana |
borona |
harrow |
|
|
oblok |
ablak |
window |
|
|
[>ohir |
pohar |
goblet |
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW 175
ancient Slovaks, " children of the soil of whom no one knew when they came," for the reason that they never colonized Slovakland. Relia- ble writers like Krizko assure us that in the tenth and eleventh centuries Magyars were all but unknown in the north. The few settle- ments they established there disappeared with- out a trace, merging in the dense native population, like the colonies of Germans with which Slovakland was dotted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and which latter were said to have been four times as numerous as those of the Magyars. Can we be persuaded to believe that the Magyars accomplished what the Germans, with their superior organization and Aryan language and incomparably higher culture, failed to do, to absorb the Slovak peas- ants and shepherds ? The truth of the matter is that ever since their coming to Hungary the Magyars were always massed on the Alfold. From the Alfold their expansion south and north for centuries has been inconsiderable. But even if it had been possible to have Mag- yarized the Slovaks, where was the incentive ? The idea of nationality, it should be remem- bered, had no place in men's minds then. First came the throbbing of religion ; then the sentiment of nationality. Properly speaking
176 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
there were no Magyars, or Slavonians, or Ger- mans, or Rumuns, before the French Revolu- tion. Caste and birth formed the sole division line — the nobility and zemans being on one side and the serfs on the other. In Hungary the nationalization of the people was late in coming. Until 1 791 Latin had been the lan- guage of the state, superseding all other languages. Again, if the present inhabitants of Slovakland are descended from refugees, religious and political, from Bohemia and Mo- ravia, why should the people call themselves Slovaks ? Where did they get the name ? There are Slovaks in Moravia. They speak a subdialect that differs from the Moravian dia- lect. Where did these Moravian Slovaks come from? True, Hussite Bohemians settled in Slovakland in considerable numbers. Colonies of them sprang up, especially during the armed raids by John Jiskra of Brandys. Numerous ex- iles settled in the country later, during the relig- ious persecutions in Bohemia in the seventeenth century. But all the Bohemian settlements are accurately known : contemporaneous docu- ments enumerate every church, castle, and town that Captain Jiskra or his lieutenants had held. We can even guess, taking the then population of Bohemia as a basis of calculation, what the
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW 177
number of these refugees had been. Suppos- ing that there were 100,000 of these Hussites, which is an exaggerated figure, we still have the bulk of the nation unaccounted for. The Slovaks are now estimated at 2,500,000 or 3,000,000, Bohemians and Moravians in round numbers at 5,000,000. We may assume that in the past the same or nearly the same ratio prevailed as now. How much population would it have taken from Bohemia to have colonized Slovensko by Bohemians ? Strange to say, the Bohemian chroniclers of that time, and they were numerous, have not recorded any such depopulation of their native country. So much concerning the absurd contention that the Slovaks are descendants of refugees from Bohemia.
The rise of the Magyar element in Hungary dates back to the end of the eighteenth cen- tury. It came spontaneously. Since King Stephen's time Latin had been recognized and employed as the official language of the coun- try. People of culture also preferred it as a medium of intercourse. A change occurred under Joseph II. That progressive but im- practicable monarch became dissatisfied that Austria should be a polyglot state. He wished his subjects to forget their mother
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tongues and to speak and to know one lan- guage only ; and he decided that that language should be German. Conformably to the reso- lution he formed Joseph II. issued a number of linguistic ordinances that are now chiefly re- membered for the odium they brought on their author. Every non-German land in the mon- archy was aroused to instant opposition. The Hungarian Estates were uncompromising, re- fusing to aid in the enforcement of the ordi- nances. It took just a decade to convince the Emperor that his hateful innovations were a failure, and that, in trying to make Austria German, he had been pursuing an unattainable dream. Therefore, he revoked the ordinances, in Hungary at least. Unimportant as it seemed at that time, the incident may really be said to constitute a turning point in modern Hun- garian history. Latin had in the meantime become an anachronism and the Estates con- cluded that that language was just as objec- tionable to them as German. Why not, since a change had been decided upon, replace Latin with the language of a people who have always guided Hungary's destiny, who were politically and numerically the strongest single factor in the fatherland? Unanimously the diet agreed that Magyar should be the succes-
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW [79
sor of Latin. First, the experiment was tried in schools. A law was promulgated in 1790 introducing Magyar in the higher institutions of learning. Another law was enacted in 1792 requiring every government official to show a competent knowledge of it. By 1830 the diet recommended to all employees of the state to transact business in Magyar exclusively. Six years later the recommendation assumed the form of an order.1 By 1848 Magyar became compulsory in the public schools. At present it is paramount in parliament, compulsory in schools, and used exclusively in the administra- tion of the government.
The prestige that the Magyar element at- tained as a result of the elevation of its idiom to the dignity of an official language was incal- culable and instantaneous. Until the passage by the diet in 1 790 of the famous ordinances, all natives of Hungary may be said to have re- garded themselves as equal. Since then their
1 A legal opinion which is entitled to some respect contends that a wrong interpretation was originally put on the session law of the diet of 1790-1791. What that law terms " lingua hungarica nativa" should not be translated to mean Magyar, because under an estab- lished custom a person of Magyar birth used to be designated as " Hungarus" while a native of Hungary, other than a Magyar, was styled "Hungarus nativus." "If this be true," reasons the above authority, " lingua hungarica nativa" cannot mean the Magyar lan- guage, but an idiom which is native to " Hungarus nativus," that is Slovak to a Slovak, Rumun to a Rumun, etc.
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mutual relations have undergone a radical change.1
You fall into the Magyar cul-de-sac the mo- ment you reach Marchegg, on your way from Vienna to Budapest. The transformation is wonderfully sudden, and to an Austrian must be painful. The harsh but familiar sound of German to which your ear has accustomed it- self during your stay in the Hapsburg capital ceases to be heard at Marchegg, a town near the Hungarian frontier, and its place is every- where usurped by Magyar. Even the Austrian double-headed eagle which in Cisleithania spreads its protecting wings over every " Ta- bak Trafik " is seen no more this side of the river Leitha. From now on the only coat of arms that one sees is that of the royal Hunga- rian crown. At home, in the H of burg, Francis Joseph I. may be Emperor of Austria if he likes, and wear the title which his ancestors assumed in 1804, but here in Hungary he must be King or nothing.
1 In 1848 the old-time Latin designation of the country, " Hunga- ria," was abolished for a new name, " Magyarorszag," and the law of 1868 created the fiction that Magyars were the sole nation in the land, the other inhabitants being mere "nationalities" and "alien nationalities" at that, Accordingly, no Slovak may refer to his people in print as a " nation," only as "nationality." Should the proscribed word "nation" nevertheless appear in print the local
prosecuting attorney may proceed at once to punish the author.
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The Austrians assert that Hungary contrib- utes as her share toward the common expenses 30% in cash and gets 50$ of rights in return. This reproach may not be wholly true ; yet, if any one ever thought that the Magyars got the poorer side of the bargain they made with Austria in 1867, let him glance at the balance- sheet of Hungary's commerce for the last twenty-five years, and, above all, let him go to Budapest and see that bustling city. With its wide, clean, and well paved "uts" and "utczas," teeming with business, Budapest bids fair to rival Vienna in the course of the next quarter of a century. But few ties — not those of blood and common ancestry, remember — unite Aus- tria and Hungary together. The army and the navy, finances, weights and measures, cus- toms, and foreig-n affairs are some of the things common to both halves of the empire. Of late years, one or two of those ties are beginning to snap. Already a party is forming in Aus- tria which favors the erection of a tariff wall between Transleithania and Cisleithania. Hun- gary's yearly output of wheat is so enormous that it is beginning to crush the small Austrian miller and flour merchant. Every wall so con- structed will, in the nature of things, mean one tie cut loose. At present the people demand
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that Magyar be substituted for German in their home regiments. To-morrow they are bound to ask some other concession. Eventually the relationship may narrow itself to that of a per- sonal union. And suppose there is a deadlock then ? It is well to bear in mind that, while Austria has survived the cesarean operation known as dualism, she has never been herself since. If another Beust were to be called in, who can prophesy the result ? The contem- plation is a mournful one, that, while Hungary could exist as an independent state without Austria, that power could hardly live without Hungary. Let whoever doubts it glance at the map of the empire. It will be seen that, with Hungary taken out of her geographical body, Austria's boundaries would become un- tenable, inviting territorial spoliation on three sides at once : by Germany, Italy, and Russia. Like most agricultural people, the Magyars appear to have no predilection for business. One can see it in the make-up of their capital, which is more Hungarian than Magyar. Al- though you may hear almost nothing else on the Kerepesi ut and the Andrassy lit but the euphonious tongue of the Arpads, still, scratch a Magyar, and cither a German or a Slavonian will turn up ! Rarely, to your query in Ger-
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW 183
man, will you receive the answer, " Nem ertem " — do not understand. In the principal thoroughfares of Budapest but few store signs bear names with a Magyar ring. On Jewish New Year the author noticed fully 95 % of the stores in the capital closed. As a matter of fact, the Hebrews lend the weight of their enormous wealth and intelligence to the Mag- yar cause. It is they who constitute the bulk of newspaper readers.
What one must respect about the Magyars is their " Schlagfertigkeit," or readiness to strike, to use a German military term. This " Schlagfertigkeit " has always been duly ap- preciated in Vienna. A nation that knew how to change the defeat at Vilagos in 1849, to victory in 1867, must surely possess qualities which even Austria is bound to recognize. The greatest fortune of the race was that the native nobility steadfastly espoused its cause. Unaided by the nobility, the simple-minded and proverbially hard-headed race might have never become the ruling factor in the country which it is to-day.
Francis Kossuth, son of Louis Kossuth, said to the writer in the fall of 1903 in Budapest :
" I fear that our relations toward Austria are not comprehended abroad. Hungary and Aus-
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tria are two sovereign states. The law of 1723 defines our respective positions clearly. We are bound to mutual self-defence, that is all. At each coronation the Austrian Emperor, who is King of Hungary, takes an oath to the effect that he will defend and uphold the con- stitution of the country, and we Hungarians pledge ourselves to defend him in return."
And, changing the course of his conversation a little, Kossuth proceeded :
" We do not meddle with the internal policy of Austria, but we view with apprehension the endless conflicts between nationalities raging there. It is this racial struggle which renders the country weak. The only hope I see for Austria is that she should reconstruct herself as a confederation. The Germans there are in a minority, and they cannot hope to maintain their hegemony over the Slavonians much longer. To this confederacy we Hungarians would have no objection. We sympathize with the Bohemians in their struggle for home rule. They are entitled to it exactly as much as we are. Their only misfortune was that they had been beaten and almost exterminated. Aus- tria could never down us, except in 1849 ; but she had to borrow troops from a neighboring power to do that."
" How is the Emperor-King liked by the Hungarians ? "
" There is no disloyalty in Hungary, none
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW 185
whatever. The greatest trouble with our King is that he is too much of a German." " And what do you want him to be ? " Kossuth answered readily, " A Magyar." " Suppose your relations with Austria were only those of a personal union and in time even that tie became too burdensome to the Hungarians ?"
" We Hungarians could not help that." " A pamphlet was issued recently in Buda- pest advocating the idea of a ' Nagy Magyar- orszag ' — a Greater Hungary, that should extend to the Adriatic Sea and should include some of the Balkan States. Is your 'Party of Independence ' sponsor to such a plan of terri- torial aggrandizement?"
" No. There are not one hundred men in all Hungary who take such phantasies seriously." " When your father, Louis Kossuth, visited the United States in 1851 he made a number of speeches there, in all of which he denounced the Austrian Government for tyrannizing the Magyars. It is now charged that your own people are guilty of the same acts of oppres- sion against others. Why is that right now which was wrong in 1848 ?"
" There is no persecution in Hungary. The very fact that our census shows 47 % of non- Magyar people in the country proves that there is not and cannot be any persecution."
So much for Kossuth.
It is the boast of patriotic Magyars that the
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constitution of Hungary is one of the most liberal in Europe. Recently a Magyar noble- man of distinction expressed the opinion, at a public function given in his honor in New York, that the people of Hungary enjoyed the same measure of freedom as Americans did, except that theirs was not a republican form of government.
Judging from the applause that greeted it, the sentiment found ready belief in the minds of those who were present. Another sentence that evoked enthusiasm was to the effect that all Hungarian citizens have equal rights under the law, and that protection is assured to the different nationalities in the use of their speech and the development of their respec- tive culture. Theoretically this may be true enough ; whether it is so in fact, and whether " Magyar freedom " implies the same notion as " freedom in Hungary," must be seriously doubted. Observing foreigners have noticed, for instance,1 that the restricted suffrage, the manner of voting, and the arrangement of the electoral districts is such that, except for the 40 members from Croatia and Slavonia, the Mag- yars, who according to Kossuth constitute only 53 % of the population, hold all but about a
1 Governments and Parties in Continental Europe, by A. Lawrence Lowell, 1896.
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW 187
score of seats in the parliament. Again, out of a total of 20,000,000 people but 1,000,000 are eligible to citizenship, the bulk of the voters being disfranchised. Until now the elections have been monopolized by the nobility, an- cient and new, by large landed proprietors, captains of industry, and their lawyers. Al- most all the leading statesmen and politicians were aristocrats by birth ! Aristocracy it was that stood at the helm of every revolution. Hungarian premiers, chosen from among the high nobility, managed to build up and main- tain a government party, to which was given the adjective, — does it not sound like irony ? — " Liberal."
" It is a well-known fact," comments an opposition journal, " that the Liberal party maintains itself in power by means of money wrung from wealthy men who are willing to pay well for a Hungarian patent of nobility. By far the most bountiful dispenser of titles was Koloman Tisza. During his premiership no less than 290 rich commoners were en- nobled. No Hungarian premier since 1848 made such a brilliant record in this particular line as Tisza. The stir that was caused by the elevation of the brothers Guttmann to the rank of barons is still fresh in the minds of opposition journalists in Hungary and Croatia.
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It was charged openly at that time that the government party swelled its election fund by some $240,000, this sum representing the assessment imposed on the Guttmanns for the title. ' Why wonder,' wrote Arpad, sar- castically, ' in the Middle Ages baronies used to be conferred on people who furnished their kings with large armed forces. Why in our times should not patriots be raised to the rank, who are able to supply the government with delegates willing to fight its battles in the more modern sense — on the floor of the parliament ? ' "
Recently a journal was prosecuted on the usual charge of " incitement against Magyar nationality," it having encouraged a Slovak town to resist, by every means at its command, the Magyarization of its name. Needless to say that the editor was found guilty, and the town authorities lost their cause. Systemati- cally the Slavic nomenclature of cities, castles, villages, mountains, streams, and hillsides up in the north is rubbed off, as it were, and re- placed by Magyar nomenclature. In no other European country has the craze for changing one's patronymic, voluntarily and otherwise, taken such a firm hold as in Hungary. In 1898 alone, 6722 persons changed their names, among the applicants being 58 priests, 123 professors, 116 school teachers, 58 physicians,
MAGYAR BROTHERS-IN-LAW 189
10 lawyers, 7 journalists, 33 merchants, etc. It is characteristic that while the government will permit a German or a Slavonian to assume a Magyar name it will in every case refuse the adoption of Slavonian or German patronymics. As things are, it would be clearly hazardous to guess a Hungarian's ancestry by his name. Thus, for instance, the name of that brave Magyar Deputy Polonyi used to be, before the transformation, Pollatscheck. Deputy Veszi, a noted chauvinist, bore the name of Weiss before the exchange. Deputy Visontay's origi- nal name was Weinberger. The publishers Rakosi and Legrady formerly answered to the names of Kremser and Pollack respectively. Irany once upon a time was Halbschuh ; Deputy Morcsanyi, Preslicka ; Deputy Heltay, Hofer ; Deputy-Canon Komlossy, Kleinkind ; Palmai used to be Pereles ; Szederkenyi, a foremost Ugronist, Schoennagel; Deputy Gajary, Bettel- heim ; Deputy Mezei, Gruenfeld ; Deputy Csar- tar, Loeffelholer; Fenyvessy, Griesskorn. With artists and writers it is likewise. It is gener- ally known that the paternal name of the most brilliant Magyar poet, Petofi, was Petrovic. Less known is it that behind Munkacsy, the painter, was concealed Lieb, and behind Laszlo, also a painter, Laub, and that Wilhelmina
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Parlaghy was a Brachfeld. The ancestral name of Matrai, the sculptor, was Mudrlak ; of composer Mosony. Brand ; of pianist Po- lonyi, Pollatsche k ; of composer Konti, Kohn ; of violinist Remenyi, well remembered in America, Hoffman ; of the actresses Fay, Helvay, and Naday — Jeiteles, Schweitzer, and Navratil respectively. Professor Kornfeld changed his name to Koranyi, statistician Hajduska to Korosi, Professor of surgery Kacenka to Racsay, the orientalist and historian Bamberger to Vambery, historian Morgenstern to Marczali, Professor Kominik to Komonyi, and so forth.
The Magyars have an instinctive distrust of the Slavs, and they like to believe that all Upper Hungary is steeped deep in panslav- ism. Yet the real danger they do not appear to see — the danger of pangermanism, which is stealthily enveloping Austria and Hungary, threatening to crush them both. The Slavs have still too many of their domestic troubles to settle and to occupy them before they are ready for conquests. Moreover, they are liv- ing in the morning of their history. The Magyars are nothing if not sagacious, but will it not be too late when they at last realize the true source of danger to their national hopes ?
PERSECUTION.
" Full freedom is assured to the different nationalities in the use of their speech and the unfolding of their culture." — The Millen- nium of Hungary, 1897, page 415; official work approved by Ministry of Education.
COUNTLESS cases of the flagitious per- secution of Slovaks could be cited. A few instances, taken from here and there, are printed for the perusal of an impartial reader :
Dr. Julius Markovic was a candidate for par- liament from a Slovak district in the present year (1905). Contrary to expectations he was defeated, because over one hundred of his votes were thrown out, unjustly, as he charged. Markovic entered a protest. At once the Mag- yar party filled a counter-protest. The court to which the contest was taken ordered, in fine impartiality, that Markovic and his protestants deposit a security ample to cover the costs of the contest. And as the counter-protestants put in the names of some eight hundred wit- nesses to be examined, to defeat the ends of
191
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justice, of course, the court fixed the disburse- ments at eight hundred florins a day. As the examination of several hundred witnesses would necessarily have dragged on for weeks and weeks, and would have required a security equal to a king's ransom, Dr. Markovic very sensibly gave up the contest, and his opponent to-day sits in the "freely-elected" Hungarian Parliament.
The Hungarian postal authorities recently put on the prohibited list the Ndrodni Listy, an influential daily paper published in Prague, Bohemia. The editor went to Pest to see what the trouble was, and there a department head informed him that his journal was excluded from Hungary because, first, it from time to time printed articles hostile to the " Magyar state " ; secondly, " it accused the government of forci- ble Magyarization " ; and lastly, " it encouraged closer literary relations between the Slovaks and Bohemians."
On July 23, 1899, during Szell's ministry, a public meeting was held in Sv. Mikulas (Lipt6 Szt. Miklos). A school teacher, Salva, who has since been suspended for " panslavic agitation," attempted to speak concerning the lack of schools among Slovaks. Joob, a government
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official who was present at the meeting, cau- tioned Salva not to use the term " Slovak." The speaker then used the term " man " instead of " Slovak " ; but even this designation proved objectionable, and Salva was not allowed to proceed. The next speaker, Rev. Kubik, was also stopped by J 60b because he alluded to Slovaks as " the men from Liptov County," and to their language as " our mother tongue."
A schoolbook prepared for the public schools by John Gyorffy, and approved by the Min- istry of Education, says on page 10 : " Mag- yarorszag is our fatherland, in which live, besides Magyars, people of other tongues. Such people are designated as nationalities. In our country live citizens of German, Rumun, Servian, Russian, Croatian, and Slovene (Vend) nationality who, together with the Magyars, compose one Hungarian nation."
Slovaks, as will be noticed, are purposely omitted.
Formerly several of the middle schools and training institutes for teachers had modest libra- ries of Slovak books. All these have since been removed. In the pedagogical institute at Trnava, there was a collection of books gath-
13
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ered together by Matzenauer, a well-known writer and patriot, Matzenauer's successor hid the books in a garret and a still later in- cumbent consigned them to the flames. At Stiavnica eight hundred Slovak books were thrown on a rubbish heap.
There is a bank in Martin called "Tatra," incorporated originally with a capital of 400,000 florins. The incorporators, all of them promi- nent Slovaks, could not, hard as they tried, obtain a charter, until they consented to put Magyar partisans and government officials at the head of the executive of the board of di- rectors. Even now the bank has on its roster of officers pliant creatures forced on it by the government. Usually it is some renegade of the zeman class who is foisted upon the stock- holders, and who, in return for the salary he receives, keeps the government pretty well in- formed as to the bank's doings. If a loan is made to a " panslav merchant," that individual is sure to suffer for it in the end. The citi- zens of Brehy (Magasmart) applied for a loan to Tatra recently. The local teacher who assisted in the loan negotiations on behalf of the commune was persecuted and harried for it, till at last he was deprived of his place.
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About twelve years ago the people built a handsome Casino, or " Dom," as they call it, in Martin. Since the Matica building has been confiscated, the Dom is the only public property of the Slovak people. There are a number of taverns and inns at Martin, but the " Dom," though it is by far the most preten- tious building in the town, cannot get a liquor license. As a result the " Dom " is a pretty bad investment.
At Martin they built a cellulose factory in 1903. The " Tatra Bank " financed the scheme, which represented an investment of some $300,- 000 (1,500,000 crowns). Imagine the conster- nation of the promoters and stockholders when the government announced that it would not permit the operation of the cellulose works by the management then in charge. This plainly meant that the "panslavs" who put money in the enterprise must either get out or sell out. For months after completion the cel- lulose factory was forced to remain idle. The one concession that the authorities granted was to permit the management to run the costly machinery every Saturday to save it from rust and ruin. Otherwise not a wheel could be turned in the place. The writer happened to
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be in Martin just at that time, and when the circumstances were related to him he could scarcely believe the truth of it. At last, having first exhausted every means of getting a license from the authorities, but failing everywhere, the stockholders were glad to sell out the "pan- slavic cellulose" to a party of capitalists in Pest.
At present the Slovaks are represented by two deputies in the parliament, although by right — providing of course elections were free from violence, intimidation, bribery, and notori- ous partiality — they should have at least forty deputies. But it is only within the last decade or so that they are represented at all. Despite repeated trials in the past no Slovak candidate was fortunate enough to break through the iron ring, and that even in counties having, except for a sprinkling of local officials, pure native population. What is the reason ? The solution of this shocking condition of things is directly attributable to the Hungarian elec- toral law, which is everywhere partial to the Magyar race, and to the corrupt methods em- ployed in election times by government officials. In the first place, electors are arbitrarily dis- franchised by local notaries who prepare the electoral sheets. In Nitra county there were
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in 1895 22,812 electors. In 1897 the number was decreased to 17,073. Among the 5739 electors disfranchised for various reasons there was not one Magyar. The electoral lists are prepared with the view of catching the unwary. An old trick is to misspell names. Thus Valek, if he be an opposition Slovak, is entered as Valon ; Kasak as Kassan ; Kucera as Kucuri, and so forth. Another method employed is to enter on the register either the wrong age or occupation of the voter, which of course results in his disqualification, leading, possibly, to arrest and punishment. Deputy Gedeon Ro- honczy declared on the floor of parliament February 14, 1898, that the government spent in the fall of 1896 three millions of the people's money to defeat opposition candidates. Ro- honczy himself admitted receiving a bribe from the government that year, amounting to 5000 florins. 1
In 1879 a number of citizens of Tisovec (Tiszolcz) held a meeting for the purpose of organizing a singing society, and in compli- ance with the law in due time submitted for approval a set of by-laws adopted by them.
' Charles Kalal's exhaustive article in the Bohemian review OsvUta entitled " About the Magyarization of Slovakland," 1898.
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Because of some trivial technicality, the authori- ties rejected the by-laws. Promptly the petition- ers remedied the alleged error and handed in amended by-laws. What became of these no one knew ; but tired of waiting the petitioners in December, 1886, filed a new copy. A few days after the filing a notice was served on the attorney for the petitioners to the effect that his clients had incurred a fine of three dollars, owing to inadequate revenue stamping. An appeal was so far successful that the fine was reduced about one half. A higher court set aside the fine altogether. In the month of May the county authorities at last took up the matter of the by-laws, deciding, however, that in view of recurrent manifestations of disloyalty the by-laws must be disallowed. At once an ap- peal was instituted to the proper authorities in Pest, with the result that the government re- fused to interfere. A third draft of the by-laws appeared before the county authorites in 1890 ; but with no better success than before. Pan- slavism was still rampant among certain classes of Tisovec, explained a patriotic official, and for that reason the by-laws could not be recom- mended to be adopted. From this adverse decision the petitioners appealed anew to the ministry, which in turn ordered the county to
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set forth its dissenting reasons more fully and specifically. Thereupon the county reported that in its opinion the industrial classes of Tisovec harbored anti-Magyar feelings. On the strength of this argument, the ministry dismissed the appeal. Just before the elections to the diet, one of the head officials of the county met some of the petitioners by appoint- ment, and then and there entered into a com- pact with them to recommend their by-laws for approval, providing they in turn would sup- port the government candidate. Accordingly the much-tried by-laws were once more sub- mitted for the scrutiny of the authorities. Unfortunately the county clerk did not like the proposed name of the society. So he asked the petitioners to change it and hand in the by-laws at some later day. The suggestion was willingly complied with. After long and patient waiting, it became plain to them that the county officials procrastinated on purpose, and the petitioners, or rather those of them who were yet living, decided to ignore the local authorities and to send a certified copy direct to Pest to be filed there. This so angered the local Magyar patriots that their mouthpiece, the Gomor Kishonl, published a scathing article against Tisovec, calling the petitioners
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bandits! In course of time the government returned the by-laws to the municipality of Tisovec. What did that corporation think of them ? Of course Tisovec gave its glad sanction — but there the matter rested again. And thus the citizens of Tisovec waited for nineteen years for the approval of the by-laws of a sing- ing society.
A number of Slovak working men in Pest decided, a short time ago, to organize an edu- cational society. The ministry rejected the by-laws on the ground " that an educational organization pursuing nationalist tendencies could not be allowed."
The Martin Ndrodnie Noviny published an article on May 3, 1897, entitled " Paralysa Pro- gressiva," in which the writer denounced in scathing language the capricious Magyariza- tion of Slavic names of towns, etc., in Nitra County, urging the respective municipalities to resist the practice by invoking the law's aid if necessary. In support of his contention the writer cited the opinion of Charles Taganyi, a member of the Magyar Historical Society who was sent out to report on the matter. Taganyi was adverse to the plan, claiming that " local topographical names were the most
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trustworthy witnesses of the past of this or that place, equal in value to documentary proof, and, whenever possible, should be preserved." July 15, 1897, the Ndrodnie Noviny printed another stinging article, called " Slavery from Above and from Below," and written in the usual opposition vein. To the prosecuting attorney both articles appeared libellous, and on June 23, 1898, Ambrose Pietor, one of the editors, though not the author of the articles, was found guilty by a jury of twelve for " inciting against Magyar nationality," and sentenced to state's prison for eight months.
When the news spread in Martin that Pietor was returning home, having served his term in jail, the relatives of the popular editor, his friends, and admirers, flocked to the railroad station to shake hands with him and felicitate him on his home-coming. Mathias Dula, it appears, made a short address of welcome when his friend was alighting from the rail- way carriage, and three women, Viera Dula, Etelka Cablk, and Ella Svehla, presented Pietor with flowers.
Quietly and orderly the enthusiastic throng now proceeded from the railroad station to the town.
At this juncture appeared on the scene —
202 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
more as an agent provocateur than as an offi- cer of peace, for until now peace was not disturbed — Attila Ujhelyi and ordered his gen- darmes to surround the vehicle in which sat Pietor and Dula. Angry and insulted at this unnecessary show of force, the crowd began to sing the national anthem, and continued sing- ing this and other patriotic songs until the editor reached his home. Later Ujhelyi's gendarmes broke into the court of Mudron's house, where the editorial rooms of the Ndrod- nie Noviny are located, under the pretext of looking for a " tall man who sang defiantly in their faces." When ordered out of the prem- ises, which they had no right to enter without a warrant of law, the gendarmes loaded their muskets and threatened to shoot if interfered with.
The sequel to the above incident came later, when Ujhelyi, anxious to make a record for himself before his superiors as a " scourge of panslavs," lodged a complaint for seditious con- duct, on information and belief, against thirty- two citizens of Martin. Oddly enough Ujhelyi informed on every one against whom he either had a personal grudge or whom he suspected of panslavic agitation, no matter whether he or she were present at the demonstration or
PERSECUTION 203
not, as was proved by subsequent investiga- tion.
Long and ruinous — ruinous for the defend- ants of course — prosecution ensued, with the result that the criminal court sentenced to prison Matus Dula for 3 months, B. Bulla for 2 months, Svetozar Hurban for 1 month, Vla- dimir Mudrofi 1 month, Andrew Halasa 1 month, Joseph Skultety 1 month, Joseph Capko 1 month, Steve Cablk 1 month, John Cablk 14 days, Ludwig Soltesz 14 days, Joseph Fabry 14 days, Joseph Cipar 1 month, An- drew Sokolik 14 days, Samuel Kucharik 14 days, Konstantin Hurban 1 month, Paul Mud- ron 14 days, Peter Kompis 1 month, Gedeon Turzo 14 days, Julius Branecky 14 days, Anton Novak 14 days, Anton Bielek 14 days ; Viera Dula was fined 50 florins, Etelle Cablk 100 florins, Helena Svehla 50 florins. The Appel- late Court, to which the cases were taken, enor- mously increased the sentences and fines along the whole line. Thus Matus Dula received 6 months imprisonment, Svetozar Hurban 5 months, Mudron 3 months, and so forth.
In its insane desire to denationalize Slo- vensko at all hazards, the Hungarian Govern- ment lent its aid to the "transportation" of
204 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
Slovak children to pure Magyar districts. The first expedition of this kind, conducted ostensi- bly under the auspices of the " Culture Society of Upper Hungary," was undertaken in 1874, and netted 400 children. On the second ex- pedition, in 1887, 1 90 youngsters were captured and separated from their parents without the latter's consent. A third child hunt took place in 1888, and with the assistance of gendarmes 86 children were taken away. The fourth ex- pedition, organized in Liptov County, brought only 15 children. The fifth child crusade is recorded in Nitra County, in 1892, 174 child- ren being herded together for transportation to Magyar districts in the Hungarian lowlands. About this time a violent protest was raised against the inhuman practice and it was stopped.
In June, 1904, at Paludzka (Kispalugya) the Rev. Paul Cobrda, while conducting a school examination at that place, sang with the child- ren three popular Slovak songs, one of them being Kto za pravdii hori ("He who is afire for truth "), and at the end of a patriotic talk to the little folk said something like this : " Dear children, remember well your lessons, for it may have been your last examination in Slovak. They may want to deprive you of
PERSECUTION 205
your mother tongue in the future, and you may hear nothing but Magyar." On February 23, 1905, the reverend preacher was tried by a jury at Ruzomberk (Rozsahegy) on a charge of sedition, and sentenced to state's prison for six months, to pay a fine of 200 crowns and the costs of the trial, amounting to 560 crowns.
Relatives and admirers of the late Joseph M. Hurban, patriot and preacher, erected at Hlboka* a suitable monument to his memory. Arrangements were made to have the monu- ment unveiled on September 8, 1892. From all parts of the country people arrived to be present at the unveiling ceremony. To the in- dignation of the assembled multitude, and to the poignant grief of the family, gendarmes broke into the church and parish house and ordered the crowd to disperse, threatening to use force unless their orders were strictly obeyed. The widow and immediate members of the family were allowed to enter the ceme- tery conditionally. But the family was not in a mood to barter for conditions with the official in charge of the gendarmes, explaining that, as the local authorities had permitted the unveil- ing ceremony to take place unrestricted, and that as nothing had been done to disturb the
206 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
peace, the ceremony must go on as originally planned or not at all. Smarting under the brutal conduct of the gendarmes, and deeply hurt in his filial affection, the son of the dead patriot, Svetozar Hurban Vajansk^, who is editor-in-chief of the Ndrodnie Novz?iy, wrote a scathing condemnation of the government which tolerated such atrocities, heading his article " Hyenism in Hungary." For the authorship of the article the distinguished pub- licist was prosecuted, convicted, and promptly sentenced to two years in state's prison.
Isadore Ziak, in 1898, wrote an article for the Ndrodnie Noviny, under the heading " Megalomania." To put it somewhat irrever- ently, Ziak essayed to prove that the Magyars were suffering from a case of " big head." The district attorney of the place recognized in the article an insult to the dominant race ; in other words, the crime of inciting against the Magyars, and prosecuted the author. On the trial of the case, Ziak's attorney tried to convince the jury that panslavism, for which the Slovaks were being harried interminably, was a myth and an invention. " Not so, however, is pan-Magyar- ism, which purposes to denationalize Hungary." Continuing, /liak's attorney pleaded :
OJiHAjh^
PERSECUTION 207
" The prosecution urges you to act in ac- cordance with paragraph 172 of the Penal Laws, which treats of incitement against a class or nationality. Do you remember what that good and honorable Magyar Mocsary said when the law under which you, gentlemen of the jury, are asked to convict my client, was debated in the diet ? Mocsary maintained at that time that the law was a device to oppress non-Magyar people. True, Minister Pauler defended the measure, assuring the legislature that those who conceived the law had in mind the protection of Magyars and non-Magyars equally. But what does experience teach us from day to day ? That non-Magyar defend- ants alone are caught in the meshes of this law — for has any one ever heard that this kind of prosecution was brought against a Magyar newspaper for inciting against Slovaks, not- withstanding the fact that it is the latter who suffer most in the columns of the hostile press ? We suspect that the government has an object in bringing all these suits against our principal newspaper, the Ndrodnie Noviny. That ob- ject seems to be to muzzle and to ruin our press. In one year the editors of the Ndrodnie Noviny were saddled with nineteen months of state's prison, and 1600 florins in fines."
All pleading and eloquence were in vain, for the sentence of the court was : " Isadore Ziak, having been found guilty of incitement against
2o8 THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
the Magyar race in the article entitled ' Meg- alomania,' is sentenced to state's prison for three months, and to pay a fine of 800 crowns in addition to the cost of the trial."
In February, 1905, Igor Hrusovsky, editor of the Povazske Noviny, received a sentence of one year in state's prison and 500 crowns fine because of seditious incitement against the Magyars. Wherein consisted Hrusovsky's crime ? In disagreeing with a jury that had found guilty of the crime of incitement John Valasek, a Slovak representative to parliament.
As justly famous is the case of the brothers Markovic, one of whom is a lawyer and the other a physician, and of Ludevit Culik, a Protestant minister. On September 22, 1901. Rudolph Markovic, who was a nationalist can- didate for parliament, came in company with his brother to Home Bzince (Felsobotfalu) to speak to his constituents. It appears that both brothers Markovic in their speeches in this place condemned the mad course of the gov- ernment toward the Slovaks. From Bzince the Markovic brothers proceeded on the same day to Lubina, and there again addressed a crowd of about 600 to 800 people, in the usual opposition style of campaign speakers. Rev.
PERSECUTION 209
Culik also spoke at the latter place. To the local notary the speeches appeared seditious, and he lodged a complaint against the speak- ers, with the result that the criminal court at Nitra, which town was once the proud seat of King Svatopluk, sentenced Dr. Rudolph Mar- kovic to state's prison for five months with 500 crowns fine ; Dr. Julius Markovic to state's prison for two months with 200 crowns fine ; pastor Ludevit Culik to three months state's prison with 500 crowns fine. From this sen- tence all three defendants appealed to the " Curia Regis " at Pressburg, and to quote the exact words of a Bohemian newspaper," A most unheard-of thing happened in Slovakland — the Appellate Court reversed the Lower Court and set the defendants free. Of course, the Markovic brothers and Rev. Culik were inno- cent, but nobody expected that a Slovak in Hungary, once sentenced to prison for sedition, could be released from the clutches of the law." Dr. Julius Markovic, after his release, pub- lished the whole case in book form (252 pages) under the title : Nitriansky politic ky trestny
process. 14
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INDEX
Albrecht, King, 66. Alexander I., of Russia, 30,
31, 32. Arady, Adalbert, 118.
Bach, Minister, absolutism of, 87; resigns, 88.
Bajza, Joseph I., precursor of Bernolak, 106, 116, 118.
Bachat, Daniel, 129.
Bartholomaeides, 119.
Batthyanyi, Premier, opposes Slavic Congress, 40.
Bel, Matthew, 112, 117.
Bella, Andrew, 129.
Bernolak, Anton, codified Slovak language, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112, 115, 116, 117; founds societies to propagate it, 118, 121, 125, 136.
Bencur, Dr. Matthew, 143.
Bielek, Anton, 144.
Bludek, leads Slovak in- surgents, 84, 85, 86.
Boleslav, Empire of, col- lapsed, 13.
Bohemians, " Apostles of pan- slavism," 24 ; establish set- tlements in Slovakland,67; deplore literary secession of Slovaks, 122.
Borik, Jaroslav, 80, 84. Botto, John, 137, 140, 141.
Bfetislav, 13.
Caban, O. 126. Cernansky. S., 119, 125. Cerven. Thomas, 92.
Chrastek, Michael, 92.
Charles, King Robert of An- jou, 62, 63.
Chalupka, Samuel and John, family of writers, 129, 137, 140, 142.
Cobrda, Rev. Paul, 204.
Cochius, C, 126.
Csak, (Csaky) Matthew, noted Slovak rebel, 62 ; wars on King, 63; ambi- tions of, 64; defeated at Rozhanovce, 64, 65, 103,
134- Croatians, resent Magyar
meddling, 72; make war on
Magyars, 79. Culik, L., 208, 209. Cyril, Slavonic Apostle, 3,
10, 11, 12, 14, 49, 57, 171. Czambel, Dr. Samo, author
of " Slovaci a ich rec,"
112, 127.
Dattel, Anton, 118.
Daxner, Stephen M., drafted
"Memorandum," 89, 91.
143, 163. Deak, 94. Dobrovsky, Joseph, father of
Slavic philology, 23, 24, 25,
31, no, in. Dobsinsky, Paul, folklorist,
129, 142. Dohnany, Nicholas, 142. Dolezal, 125.
Elizabeth Queen, troubles during reign of, 66, 67.
211
2 12
INDEX
Eszterhazy, 40.
Falbi, Simon, 118.
Fandli, George, 106, 118.
Fejerpataky, Caspar, 123.
Feriencik, Nicholas Stephen, 142.
Florinskij, Russian philolo- gist, upholds independence of Slovak, in.
Frischeisen, Colonel, 86.
Francisci, John, 91, 142.
Frankfort Parliament, aims at entity of Austria, 35 ; precipitates Slavic Con- gress, 37, 38, 76, 82.
Gaj, Ljudevit, journalist, father of " Illyrism " or unity of South Slavs, 29;
^ supports Jelacic, 73, 81, 82.
Germans, builders of cities in Hungary, 60; at height of influence under Joseph II., 61 ; their settlements in Slo- vakland absorbed, 62.
Gerometta, E., 126.
Godra, M., 119, 129.
Graichman, Jacob, 142.
Griinwald, Adalbert, 95, theo- ry of extermination of Slo- vaks, 96, 97.
Hamaliar, M., 119.
Hattala, Prof. Martin, gives
to Slovak scientific and
Slavonic finish, 108, 126,
127. Mavlicek, Charles, Bohemian
journalist, 33; dissents
from Kollar's views, 34. I [( gediis, Roland, 155. Hegel, theories of, accepted
by Slovaks, 140. Herder, German philosopher,
panslavist seed traced to,
-'.?. 23, 26. Holly, John, Bernolakist poet
of prominence, 107, 128, 136.
Holly, George, 118.
Hodza, Michael M., 51, 65, 80, 84, 85, 86, 108; writes " Epigenes Slovenicus,"
125, 126, 127, 128, 134; per- secuted and exiled, 138, 139.
Holuby, 80, 120, 143, 154.
Hroboh, Samo, mystic and Hegelian, 126, 139.
Hruskovic, 125.
Hrusovsky, Igor, 208.
Hunyadi, regency of disputed by Csak, 67.
Hurban, Joseph M., soul of revolutionary movement, 51, 65, 80, 84, 85, 87, 127, 128, 134, 137, 138, 139; Slovak O'Connell, 205.
Hussites, 54, invade Slovak- land, 66; introduce Kralic Bible, 68, 104; nationalize Slovaks, 115.
Illyrism, abhorred by Mag- yars, 73 ; meaning of, 82.
Jagic, in.
Janecek, military leader of insurgents, 84, 85, 86.
Jelacic, Ban Joseph, 73, defiant toward Magyars, 74; abolishes serfdom at home, 77, 78; implored to aid Servians, 79; wages war on Magyars, 80 ; adverse criticism of the Ban, 81, 82.
Jiskra, John, of Brandys, Hussite Captain, 67, 114, 167.
Joseph II., Emperor, 95; tries to make Austria Hun- gary German, 62, too, 113, 177; his ordinances. 178.
Jungmann, Nestor of Bohe- mian letters; views on pan- slavism, 25, 26.
Justb, 00.
INDEX
213
Kalal, Charles, 197. Kalineak, John, 140, 141. Kellner, Peter, 142. Kmet, Andrew, 56, 143. Kopitar, 23, 25, 31. Kocel, Prince, Slovak ruler,
57-
Korvin, 103, 141.
Kossuth, opposes non-Magyar nationalities, 51, 69, 71,77; "Kossuth Gibbets," 81, 84, 86, 152; his son Francis Kossuth interviewed, 183, 184, 185, 186.
Kollar, John, author of " Sla- vy Dcera," 4; High priest of panslavism, 18; his literary reciprocity and "Slavonic patriotism," 19; appeals to Slavs to unite, 20, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 40, 41, 51, 82, 113, 122, 124, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132,
133, 134, 139, 141, 142.
Krai, Janko, 140, 141.
Krizko, Paul, 143, 172, 175.
Krcmery, August, 129.
Krman, Daniel, 112.
Kukuljevic, Ivan, first sug- gested Slavic Congress, 39.
Kuzmany, Charles, 91, 92, 129, 142.
Ladislav, Posthumous, 66,
Leibnitz, his utterance to
Peter of Russia, 2^. Leska, Stephen, 112. Lewartowski, 86. Lewis, King, 56. Lichard, Milan, 151. Lovich, A., 120.
Macsaj, Alexander, 105 ; pre- cursor of Bernolak, 116.
Maria Theresa, 106.
Markovic, Dr. Julius, 191, 192, 208, 209.
Marothy, Daniel, 129.
Matuska, John, author of " Nad Tatrou sa bliska,"
135, 137, 142.
Methodius, Apostle of Slav- onians, 10, 11, 14, 57, 171.
Mecislav, of Poland, 58.
Metternich, downfall of, 69.
Milkin, Tichomir, 143.
Modrafi, 80.
Moyses, Bishop Stephen, leads deputation to Emper- or-King, 90, 92.
Mudron, Paul, 51, 92.
Niederle, Lubor, 1, 55. Nejedly, Joseph, 118.
Orszagh, John, 92, 143.
Palacky, Francis, his letter to the Frankfort Parlia- ment, 23, 36, 41, 45, 122,
174- Palarik, John, 142. Palkovic, George, 112, 117,
119, 137- Pauliny, 98, 99, 129, 137, 142. Pauliny-Toth, 2iga, 149. Pietor, Ambrose, 201. Podjavorinsky, Ludmila, 143. Podhradsky, Joseph, 129. Pongrac, 67, 103. Pfemysl, 7. Pribina, Prince, 57.
Radlinsky, Andrew, 91. Rajacic, Metropolitan, 75, 79. Revay, 90. Rieger, Francis L., 45 ; views
on panslavism, 46. Rotarides, 80. Rostislav. Prince, 57. Rudnay, Primate Alexander,
107; munificent patron of
letters, 117. Rybay, George, 112, 120.
Safafik, Paul Joseph, author of " Slavic Antiquities,"
214
INDEX
etc., 20, 21, 23, 26, 30, 31, 51, no, 113, 122, 127, 132, 133, 140, 142, 145, 146, 148, 174.
Saffarovic, Anton, 118.
Samo, founder of Slavic em- pire, 7, 13.
Sasinek, Francis, 98, 143.
Scasny, J., 126.
Seberiny, J., 120.
Semian, 125.
Servians, revolt and plan "Vojvodina," 76; cruelly treated by Magyars, 79.
Sigismund, King, 66.
Sinapius Daniel, 112.
Skultety, 49, 143.
Sladkovic, Andrew, noted poet, 128, 140, 141.
Sladkovic, Martin, 143.
Slavic Congress at Prague, first family gathering of Slavs in centuries, 39, 41 ; ends abruptly by outbreak of revolution, 43, TJ.
Soltesz, Ellen Marothy, 143.
Somolicky, J., 143.
Stephen, King, fosters civili- zation in Hungary, 58, 59, 104; Slavic influence at his court, 173. *77-
Stodola, Dr. Emil. 156.
Stur, Ludevit, 51 ; revolution- ary leader in 1848, 65, 80, 83" 84, 108, 109, ill, 119; reforms Slovak language, [20, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127,
128, 133, 134. 135, 136, 137. 138, 139-
Svatopluk, ruler of Great Moravia, 13, 14, 15, 47, 57, 65, 66, 97, 171.
Suplikac, Colonel Stephen, Servian " Voj voda," 76.
Sulek, 80.
Szentivanyi, 90.
Tablic, Bohuslav, 112, 119,
120. Tisza, " There is no Slovak
nation," 98, 187. Tomasik, Samuel, author of
the hymn " Hej Slovaci,"
129, 137, 140, 141. Tranovsky, 125. Trefort, Minister, 98, 99.
Ugron, Gabriel, his utterance on Magyars, 50.
Vaclav II, King of Bohemia,
62, 63. Vajansky, Svetozar Hurban,
author, patriot and leader,
142, 206. Vambery, Arminius. 145. Vansa, Theresa, 143. Vladislav II., 66, 67, 103. Vlcek, Jaroslav, 102.
Zach, 84, 85. Zaborsky, Jonas, 123. Zapolya, John, 65. Ziak, I sudor, 206, 207. Zoch, G, 129.
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