Dániel Kiss, Universitat de Barcelona
In June 1703, a small band of armed men crossed the Carpathian Mountains from Poland into the Kingdom of Hungary. Their leader was Prince Francis II Rákóczi (1676–1735), a young aristocrat who took the lead of the simmering resistance against the oppressive rule of the Habsburg kings. The uprising spread quickly; within a year, its forces seized control of most of Hungary. Noble parliaments elected Rákóczi Prince of Transylvania and Commanding Prince of Hungary, and he allied with Louis XIV of France during the War of the Spanish Succession. But in 1710–11, his forces were pushed back by the Habsburgs; his military commander Sándor Károlyi settled for peace and he left Hungary for exile in France, and later Turkey.
This paper analyzes the vision of the state in two key texts connected to this war, written in Latin, which was the official language of Hungary until 1805. The manifesto Universis orbis Christiani principibus was issued by Rákóczi in 1704, backdated to the start of the revolt in the previous year (reprinted in Hubay 1948, 1121–23). It was drawn up by Rákóczi’s secretary Pál Ráday (1677–1733) and was revised by the prince before publication. It combines a vivid, dramatic presentation of historical wrongs with complex legal reasoning. The argumentation centres on the jus resistendi, the right of citizens to resist a ruler who has acted illegally, which was established in the Golden Bull of 1222, the foundational document of Hungarian law. A battery of legal references establish that the Habsburg kings have trampled on the law of the land. Thus the manifesto frames the revolt as a restoration of the rule of law in the country (cf. Várkonyi 2003).
The second text we analyze is the Confessio peccatoris, the moral autobiography Rákóczi set to paper in exile in 1716–19 (printed in Rákóczi 1876, 1–380). An experience of religious conversion led him to follow the example of St Augustine and confess his sins to God. On the surface, the Confessio (on which now see Várkonyi 2015) is an intensely private work, composed in secret and hidden away in a French monastery by its author, who still expected that it would be read in the future. In Book II, Rákóczi exhorts rulers to place their trust in providence: only God can lead them to success. However, his vision of his own role in history is anything but fatalistic. He describes in detail the causes for the revolt in Book I, in similar terms to the manifesto of 1704: the injustice and the transgressions of the Habsburg rule provoked popular anger and justified the revolt in legal and moral terms. But he also sheds light on his own reasons to become the leader of the revolt: as an aristocrat he felt obliged to come to the help of the masses whose suffering he witnessed.