Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
History
Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Biography
After these events Huniades continued to act as Governor or Regent of
Hungary for five years more, by which time the young Ladislaus, son of
King Albert, attained his majority. In 1453 he finally laid down his
dignity as governor, and gave over the power into the hands of the
young king, Ladislaus V., whom Huniades had first to liberate by force
of arms from his uncle, Frederick of Austria, before he could set him
on the throne of Hungary. The young king, of German origin had,
however, hardly become emancipated from his guardian, when he fell
under the influence of his other uncle, Ulric Czillei. This Czillei
was a great nobleman of Styria, but was withal possessed of large
estates in Hungary. As a foreigner and as a relative of King
Sigismund, he had long viewed with an evil eye Huniades' elevation. On
one occasion Huniades had to inflict punishment on him. He
consequently now did everything he could to induce the young king, his
nephew, to hate the great captain as he himself did. He sought to
infuse jealousy into his mind and to lead him to believe that Huniades
aimed at the crown. His slanders found the readier credence in the
mind of the youthful sovereign as he was completely stupefied by an
uninterrupted course of debauchery. At last the king was brought to
agree to a plan for ensnaring the great man who so often jeoparded his
life and his substance in the defence of his country and religion.
They summoned him in the king's name to Vienna, where Ladislaus as an
Austrian prince was then staying, with the intention of waylaying and
murdering him. But Huniades got wind of the whole plot, and, when he
arrived at the place of ambush, it was at the head of 2,000 picked
Hungarian warriors. Thus it was Czillei who fell into the snare.
"Wretched creature!" exclaimed Huniades; "thou hast fallen into the
pit thou diggedst for me; were it not that I regard the dignity of the
king and my own humanity, thou shouldst suffer a punishment
proportioned to thy crime. As it is, I let thee off this time, but
come no more into my sight or thou shalt pay for it with thy life."
Such magnanimity, however, did not disarm the hostility of those who
surrounded the king. On the pretence of treason against the king
Huniades was deprived of all his offices and all his estates. The
document is still to be seen in the Hungarian State Archives, in which
the king, led astray by the jealousies that prevailed among his
councillors, represents every virtue of the hero as a crime, and
condemns him to exile.
Fortunately Czillei himself soon fell into disfavor; the Germans
themselves overthrew him; and the king, now better informed, replaced
Huniades in the post of Captain-General of the Kingdom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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