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Robin Hoods of the Puszta, Part One: Hungarian Betyars: Rebels Against Social Oppression
| Article
# : |
19688 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1991 |
4,239 Words |
| Author
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Agnes and Steven Vardy
Agnes Vardy is associate professor of comparative literature
at Robert Morris College. Steven Vardy is professor of East
European history at Duquesne University. The first part,
looking at betyars as rebels against social oppression,
appeared in the September issue of The World & I. |
During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, much of Hungary was terra incognita for the Western world. Having become the frontier between the Ottoman Turkish and the Hapsburg empires only about three decades after Columbus discovered America, the country also became the battleground in the struggle between Christianity and Islam for the next two centuries. Not until the early eighteenth century had all of Hungary been liberated. In practice, however, Ottoman Turkish rule was simply replaced by the rule of the Hapsburg emperors in Vienna, which at times was at least as exacting as that of the Ottoman sultans.
The country's unification under the Hapsburgs also meant the return of traditional feudalism, which survived into the middle of the nineteenth century. Feudalism also brought greater oppression to the peasant class. From among their ranks emerged a number of rebel outlaws, the betyars, who sought to exact justice from their oppressors along the Hungarian puszta (lowlands, prairies). As they grew in infamy, so did the legends, folktales, and songs about their cunning, chivalry, and prowess with women.
Lords of the prairies
As the nineteenth century dawned, the already difficult lives of the Hungarian peasants deteriorated further because of the burdens placed upon them by the series of wars against the French revolutionary and Napoleonic armies. During that period, over a million Hungarians had been conscripted into the Hapsburg imperial forces, although Hungary's population was less than ten million.
To this must be added that service in the imperial armies was long, miserable, and often cruel. Consequently, the only way the Hapsburgs could fill the ranks of their armed forces was through forced recruitment. The selection process was arbitrary, and it affected only the lower classes. In Hungary, it was basically up to the local county administrators to devise the method of selection. And given their unwillingness to recruit men of property--which would have violated their own ordinances--local authorities always conscripted from the ranks of the poor peasantry. In this way they prevented the enlistment of the upper and middle classes, and at the same time they got rid of the local "troublemakers"--the homeless, beggars, and everyone else whose presence in the locality could have created problems or would have placed burdens on the propertied classes.
This process of recruitment and its horrible impact upon the
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