Hungary: Battles for Freedom 1848-49

Preamble

In a disastrous battle in 1526 at Mohács (S. Central Hungary) the Ottoman Turks, under Suleyman I, defeated the main Hungarian army. The young Hungarian king Louis II (b. 1506), too, lost his life in the final hours of the fight.
After the battle, the Hungarian nobility elected János Zápolya king (1526-1540), whereas the Diet (session of parliament), in Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia today), voted Habsburg Ferdinand I (1526-1564) . The rivalry lasted until 1538, when Ferdinand I, who was already a Bohemian king, emerged victorious.
Although, not the first Habsburg on the Hungarian throne, he opened a steady chain of Habsburg kings. It directly led to the events of 1848.
After the Battle of Mohács (1526), the country had hoped that, through control over much of Europe, the Habsburgs would have the resources and will to effectively curb and throw back Ottoman conquests.
The wisdom of that belief has been debated since, as the Turks gradually swallowed up over half the country, while showing mixed respect for Hungarian sovereignty, some of them considering Hungarians as (more or less) equal to Austrians, others regarding the country a colony. The mercurial Habsburg behavior had caused revolts at times, such as that led by Ferenc Rakoczi II in 1703. A brief revolt by the Jacobean priest Ignácz Martinovics another signal of malcontent.(1774)
In 1848 Emperor king Ferdinand V was waffling between these extremes, facing the rise of nationalism in his polyglot empire in Italy, in Bohemia and - as we shall see - in Hungary.
As "national" languages were replacing the official Latin, and demands for abolishing serfdom widespread, the stage was set for reforms.

Milestones of 1848-49

The Hungarian National Museum, the people join in ...

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