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Ripple effects
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The territories east of Bohemia were known to contemporaries under the name “Upper Hungary” suggesting that the people living there were Hungarians. The fact was that a vast majority of the population was of Slavic origin and most of people of this particular ethnic group referred to themselves as “Slovakians” or “Slovaks” [1]. They were ruled by Hungarian aristocracy which subjected its Slavic subjects to a rule which was generally much harsher than it was typical even for this period of history. The urban population in Upper Hungary was mostly made of Hungarians and Germans, which meant that only very few Slovaks had ever received any education at all – even the priests were educated only in Latin and Hungarian. Such oppression led many Slovaks who had have that option to leave Upper Hungary and seek fortune elsewhere, usually in culturally close Slavic countries like Poland and especially Bohemia, whose inhabitants spoke a very similar mutually intelligible language [2]. This oppression also partly explains why so many Slovaks who settled in Moravia, the easternmost province of the Bohemian kingdom, embraced the Hussite religion.
Chalice - the symbol of the Hussites
Hussite religion was best suited to people living under constant oppression by the Church or the aristocracy. It was a religion of people who had have enough of injustice, corruption, maltreatment and hypocrisy displayed by authorities of any kind, so it comes as no surprise that it appealed greatly to Slovaks for whom injustice and maltreatment were the words best describing their everyday existence. At the same time, similar language made it easier for them to listen to and to understand Hus’s ideas which were being tirelessly explained by Hussite priests.
When the first Hussite rebellion in Moravia was crushed by Austrian forces, many of the Slovak converts (accompanied by a small number of Hussite preachers) returned to Upper Hungary and started to communicate Hussite ideas to the local population. It comes without saying that teachings like that about just aristocracy found a fertile ground among the disaffected Slovakian peasants. Soon the Hussite faith began to spread in form of underground (and highly illegal) rural movement which encompassed also the Slovakian national ambitions. Hussites were organizing secret sermons, charity and even few schools for Slovaks of higher social standing. Being a Hussite became a sign of rejecting the Hungarian oppression and so the power base of the movement grew rapidly.
Hungarian crackdowns against this movement led to a series of uprising against Hungarian rule in the early 1450s. Normally any such rebellion would have been drowned in blood as the Hungarian tradition dictated but unfortunately the 1450s were not the brightest period in Hungarian history. A dragged war with the Ottoman Turks had consumed too much money and manpower and left Hungary on the verge of collapse. The Slovaks couldn’t have picked a better time. Strengthened by their new faith and organized by educated émigrés, they managed to defeat Hungarian garrisons in Upper Hungary and took control not only of the countryside, but also the towns, including the fortified town of Pressburg (Bratislava) [3].
This success was hailed by the Bohemian Hussites who naturally supported their Slovak brethren, and presented a new dilemma to the Bohemian king. On one side, there were his Hussite subjects who were pressing him to support the Slovak rebels. Some argued that the king’s declared protection of Hussite faith was not officially limited by the borders of his own kingdom and therefore Hussites in neighboring countries had the same right to enjoy it. Cultural proximity between Czech and Slovak peoples was another argument he heard often from Hussite representative. On the other hand, nation states as we know them today didn’t exist in the 15th century, therefore territorial claims based on ethnic arguments had exactly zero chance of being accepted as legitimate. The same goes to the religious argument raised by the Hussites; their faith was viewed as nothing but heresy in the rest of Catholic Europe and Ladislav’s tolerance of it was a source of great suspicion. Declaring a protection of heretics in other sovereign countries as an official foreign policy would have undoubtedly ruined Bohemian relations with most of Europe and led to a formation of anti-Bohemian alliances.
Ladislav chose to walk the middle line. He ordered establishment of a special council composed of scholars, jurists and diplomats and tasked it with finding a legal argument which he could eventually use to claim Upper Hungary for the Bohemian crown. He never actually believed they would find anything, but it calmed down the Hussites in his own kingdom. The bigger was his surprise when the council announced that it had found a legal basis for the claim. Council scholars apparently found nearly 500 years old documents which supposedly proved that Bohemia as the legal successor of Great Moravian principality had never given up claims on the lands east of Moravia. As a supporting argument they mentioned king’s Sigismund lease of some Slovak lands to Moravian margrave in 1385. Having no other option, Ladislav reluctantly announced the claim knowing it would ruin his relations with Hungary [4].
Great Moravia (it was not a kingdom, but a principality) in the 9th century
Fortunately, Hungary was in no position to do anything else but protest diplomatically, since Ottoman troops were closing on Buda and Pest, Upper Hungary was controlled by rebels and Croatia openly threatened to separate from Hungary if its autonomy wasn’t broadened. The real opposition to Ladislav’s move would thus come from within the ranks of Bohemian aristocracy.
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[1] This has nothing to do with the AAR, but I tried to find the etymological basis of the name. Most likely it is related to
“Slověné”, the name proto-Slavic peoples used for themselves (in English, it’s simply “Slav”). Slovenia (the ex-Yugoslavian country) also derives its name from it which often causes a bit of confusion in Western Europe, because the flags of the two nations look similar too.
On a funny note,
“Slověné” means literally “people of the word” or “people who speak” while
“Niemtsi”, the old term for Germans used in many different forms in most Slavic languages (
Němci in Czech,
Niemcy in Polish), derives from
“niemi” or
“němý” so it literally means “mute people” or “people who can’t speak”. Personally, I find it very funny, since most people don’t even realize it when they’re saying it.
[2] It is baffling to me how could such a small nation manage to retain its language during 1000 years of Hungarian rule. Remember that it took the English only few centuries to force majority of Irish to abandon their language and I don’t think they were oppressed more than the Slovaks. Or perhaps I am wrong here. Even more interesting is the fact that Slovak language had remained very close to Czech, despite the long separation of the two nations.
[3] In other words, heretic rebels took control of Slovakia. Though they were not exactly Hussite, I decided to incorporate it into the story because it provided me with a nice justification for my claims and gave me an explanation for the 2nd Hussite revolution in Moravia (coming soon).
[4] In the game, I used a spy mission to produce claim for one Slovak province. I got two more cores in an event. I know this explanation sucks, but I couldn’t come up with a better one.
Great Moravia did exist and present-day Slovakia had been part of it until it was overrun by Magyars in the 10th century.
One more thing - I am using the term Upper Hungary, which wasn't used in the 15th century, but I don't know about a better one. "Slovakia" is a term that first appeared in the 20th century.