Hungary then became a prey to all the calamities which anarchy brings along with it. Competitors for the crown appeared in the King of Bohemia and the Duke of Bava ria. The son of the former was elected by a party, and was kept upon the throne for six years, in opposition to the • wishes of the nation, and amidst the greatest troubles. Being recalled to Bohemia by his father, the Duke of Ba varia was immediately crowned ; but Ladislaus, waywode of the Jazyges, took him prisoner, and drove him from his throne and the kingdom. On the termination of these civil dissentions, Charles of Anjou was solemnly proclaim ed king in 1310. Under his reign, Hungary, whiCh had lately been regarded merely as a fief of the empire, be came more powerful than the dominions even of the em perors. Dalmatia, Croatia, Servia, Transylvania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Moldavia, and Walachia, received the laws of Charles. His marriage with the sister of Cassimir, king of Poland, who had no offspring, also secured a throne to his family. He died in 1339, beloved by his subjects and all his neighbours. The veneration which his memory in spired, and also the personal qualities of his son, fixed the choice of the nation on Louis. The reign of this prince was even more brilliant than that of his father. He pushed his conquests as far as Naples, to revenge the assassina tion of his brother Andrew, who had been strangled by his own wife Queen Jane ; and appointed the waywode of Tran sylvania as governor of that kingdom, which however he afterwards restored. Part of Russia submitted to his do minion, and he drove the Tartars beyond the Euxine. He was acknowledged also as king of Jerusalem; but, while Hungary rose in power and estimation during his life, his death plunged her again into new calamities and dissen tions.
Louis leaving no male issue, the Hungarians, as by a ge neral impulse of admiration and enthusiasm, called his daughter Mary to the throne, under the title of Maria Rex. She had been married to Sigismund of Bavaria, who was as yet under age, and in the mean time she shared the cares of government with her mother Elizabeth. The ty ranny, however, of Nicolas Gara the Palatine, who in her name actually governed the kingdom, soon made her sub jects regret their imprudent homage to the memory of Louis. They therefore °Wet ed the crown to Charles, king of Naples, the nephew of Louis, and the son of the unfor tunate Andrew. But scarcely hid lie entered Hungary, than he was assassinated by the Palatine, with the direction and countenance of Mary and Elizabeth. John Ilorvat, bane of Croatia, in revenge for the murder of a prince to whose interests he was attached, slew the assassin, and, af ter having made Mary and her mother be dragged as com mon criminals by the hair, cast Elizabeth into the river Bo zota. Mary was reserved for the infamous brutality of Horvat, and then shut up in prison. Horvat, however, dreading the rage of Sigismund, who was approaching with an army to reclaim his crown, set the Queen at liberty, alter making her promise upon oath that she would forget her injuries. These injuries, however, were too cruel to be erased from her memory, and repelling the oath which fear alone had extorted from her, she visited them upon the fierce avenger of Charles in a manner still more cruel and barbarous. Sigismund was twenty years of age when he ascended the throne ; but the whole of his reign was only a succession of wars, troubles, and calamities to Hun gary. Mary dying without children in 1392, new :Essen
tions arose; and the Turks, taking advantage of these, seized upon Bulgaria. Sigismund was defeated and put to flight at the battle of Nicopolis; when his subjects revolt against him, seize his person, and confine him in prison. The conspirators then offer the crown to Ladislaus, king of Naples. But Sigismund seemed to triumph over fortune and all his enemies. Escaping from prison, and collecting a consider able army, he obliges Ladislaus to desist from his preten sions, and recovers his kingdom. In 1410, he was elected emperor of Germany. At his death, Albert, archduke of Austria, who had espoused the only daughter of Sigismund by a second marriage, inherits all his possessions, and ascends the throne of Hungary in 1437. This event forms the earliest basis of the Austrian claim to the Hungarian monarchy.
The reign of Albert, however, was very short, and his death was succeeded by civil wars, which continued to de solate this kingdom for another century. Ladislaus, king of Poland, was invited to the throne ; but soon after perish ed in the battle of Verna against the Turks. The famous John Hunniades was then appointed regent ; and on the decease of another Ladislaus, the posthumous son of Al bert, in 1457, Mathias Corvinus, the son of Hunniades, re ceives the crown from the states assembled in the field of Rakos, near Pesth. Mathias seized Vienna and the other Austrian states, which he retained till his death ; and is regarded as the greatest prince that ever held the Hunga rian sceptre. He was brave, prudent, and generous, the friend of letters and arts, and a man of letters himself. He founded the magnificent library of Buda, which he fur nished with the best Greek and Latin authors, and many valuable manuscripts.
The descendants of Albert again fill the throne ; but upon the death of Louis II. the son of Ladislaus, who lost both the battle and his life in the plains of Mohats in 1527, the Hungarians were divided into two factions. John Za polya, waywode of Transylvania, was proclaimed king by one party, while the nobles assembled at Presbourg, offer ed the sceptre to Ferdinand of Austria, who had conducted some succours to the Hungarians against the Turks. Zam polya was unable to resist the forces of his rival ; and after his defeat at Tokay, was compelled to evacuate the king dom, when Ferdinand was crowned at Stuhl-a eissenbourg. Some time after, the waywode returned with the Sultan Soliman, at the head of a formidable army, who pushed his conquests as far as Vienna ; but on the death of Zam polya, his partisans, indignant at the conduct of the Turks, and preferring the dominion of Austria to that of the bar barian, immediately joined Ferdinand, who was crowned a second time. This monarch was afterwards called to the empire; but he retained the crown of Hungary till 1563, when he resigned it to his son Maximilian. The Hungarians, however, bore the Austrian yoke with much impatience, and every new election called forth their aver sion to their masters, who regarded them as their lawful inheritance. But their efforts were fruitless, and those who ventured to support the rights of the nation were si lenced by the stroke of the executioner. In vain did Te kely raise all the provinces to revenge these outrages ; and, supported by the Tufks, to whom the Hungarians in their despair had surrendered themselves, laid siege to Vienna.