Béla III. (1173-1196) was one of the most powerful and respected rulers of Hungary. He possessed great kingly qualities, and his character commanded universal respect. He had a great deal to contend with, after his return from Constantinople, before he succeeded in being firmly seated on his throne. He was received with feelings of suspicion by the powerful nobility, the chief dignitaries of the church, and by the queen-mother herself, who all looked upon him as a partisan of the eastern despotism, and as an enemy to the Roman Catholic Church, and who were anxious to place his brother Geyza upon the throne. Béla triumphed before long over all his enemies. He had his brother thrown into prison, sent his mother into exile, restrained and humiliated the powerful oligarchs, and conciliated the friendship of the high prelacy by his munificence and liberality towards the church of the country. Having restored order at home, he devoted himself to the task of obtaining again possession of the territory Manuel had seized. The reconquering of the Dalmatian seashore involved him in a war with Venice, the envious rival of the Hungarian kingdom, in the course of which Béla had occasion to give proof of his military power on a new scene of action, where the valor of his ancestors had never had an opportunity of shining, by achieving over the proud republic a great triumph on the sea. Béla had learned a great deal at the Greek court, but all his valuable acquirements he employed for the advantage of his country. He did not exactly open new avenues for the development of the nation; his chief merit consisted rather in leading her back to the road marked out by Stephen, and successfully pursued by King Ladislaus and King Coloman. His every effort tended to bring the nation closer to that western civilization which had fostered her tender beginnings, and the rejection of which all this time would have amounted to a stultification of her past, and a certain risk of her future. Two things, however, were of paramount necessity to enable the people to prosper by the king’s judicious exertions in this direction: to restore to the country the needful rest she had not now enjoyed for half a century, and to reëstablish order within the kingdom, torn by the partisanship of the last fifty years. Béla resolutely set to the task of establishing peace and order. He relentlessly pursued the thieves and robbers who rendered life and property insecure and had increased to a frightful extent since Coloman’s time, and, in order to do it more effectually, he appointed special officers in every county for that purpose, establishing, at the same time, a royal chancery at the court with a view to giving greater effect to the government of the country and the administration of justice. The proceedings in important affairs of state or private law-suits taken before the king—which hitherto had been oral—now had to be carried on in writing. The country, under