Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/72
country and settled principally in the Malohont and Bylog districts of the Gemer county, and in Zvolensk and Lučenec in the Novohrad county.
Closer relations between the Bohemian and Hungarian populations took place particularly at times, when the two states, or at least parts of them, had common rulers, as under Sigismund of Luxemburg, Albrecht of Hapsburg and his son Ladislav, Mathias Korvin, Vladislav and Louis Jagielo, and finally under the Hapsburgs. During Ferdinands’ reign and under his successors the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian monarchy held for a century and a half only that part of Hungary consisting of the Slovak counties and a strip along the Austrian border, so that the Hapsburgs really ruled in Hungary only Slovaks and a mixture of Germans and Jugoslavs in the west of Hungary. The Slovaks in those days used the Czech language as their literary medium. In consequence of these political, language and neighbor relations the nobility of Upper Hungary maintained friendly relations with the nobility of not merely Bohemia and Moravia, but also of Poland.
Czech peasants also migrated into Hungary. There is a decree of emperor Leopold I. dated June 6 1699, in which reference is made to wholesale emigration of Moravian and Silesian peasants to Hungary, after the Turks had been expelled, in the hope that they would thereby free themselves of serfdom. The emperor forbade this migration. But early in the 18th century Moravian and Silesian peasants were still moving in large numbers into Hungary. Naturally peasants within Hungary were even more affected by this migrating fever. After the expulsion of the Turks peasants of many Slovak villages moved south into districts populated by Magyars, and many Slovak colonies in central and lower Hungary were then founded. The first and greatest of these settlements in the Hungarian Alfold (steppe) was Čaba (Bekes-Csaba) which was founded in 1715 and before the middle of the 18th century gave rise to several new Slovak colonies. In 1820 it had a population of 20,000, in 1840 over 25,000 and was made a market town.
In the second half of the 18th century there were established first Slovak colonies in what later became known as the Military Frontier and the Banat of Temešvar; many other races, especially Germans, settled here also. In Southern Hungary there were established not only Slovak, but even Czech colonies. They date from the second decade of the 19th century.
Extensive colonization was needed by Hungary, because the population was very scarce. At the end of the 17th century, when the Turks held only the Banat and Srěm, all Hungary had only about two million people, of whom Magyars numbered hardly more than half a million. Thus they had about 25% of the population, and this small percentage in itself made it impossible for them to dominate the rest. The administration of the state was in the hands of Austrian bureacracy. Only after the final expulsion of the Turks during the reign of Charles VI. were the supreme Hungarian offices reorganized, namely the Hungarian court chancery, Hungarian exchequer, governing council, court of the seven lords, and the royal court of justice. But throughout the 18th century Latin was the official language af all the Hungarian nationalities, and the Magyar language still lacked literary polish. It was first cultivated in the 15th century as a result of impulse communicated by the Hussite movement, and the Reformation in the 16th century also contributed to the development of the Magyar tongue. But after the flourishing period in the 17th century Magyar literature fell into decay in the 18th. Only in Transylvania which during the sway of national princes in the 16th and 17th centuries became a Magyar state did the Magyar language receive special acknowledgment; since 1665 it was the language of many provincial diets. The first Transylvanian codifications of laws, prepared for the three political nations of Transylvania, namely Magyars, Saxons and Szekels, called Approbatae Constitutiones (1655) and Compilatae Constitutiones (1669), were also written in Magyar. But after the Hapsburg dynasty secured Transylvania at the end of the 17th century, it began to favor Latin against Magyar and again introduced into judicial proceedings the use of Latin. In the 18th century Latin was the usual literary tongue of Hungary.
A new epoch in the cultivation of the Magyar tongue begins in the reign of Maria Theresa. But in spite of promising start made by the modern Magyar literature the